Chapter 339: The Deadly Foe
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I would like to thank my beta, Awdyr, for his help in this chapter.
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31 October 1995, Azkaban (Earth 2)
"Oh, Tom. I'm disappointed. Don't you recognize me?"
The man removed his hood and revealed a familiar face with a very familiar scar, "Potter!"
"In the flesh. Now, Lord Voldemort, what did you say about beating Death again?"
Lord Voldemort wouldn't admit it but the casual way that Potter was holding himself, the magical prowess he exhibited made him anxious. He was different to how he acted in the graveyard just months prior, a boy who was traumatized at the death of his schoolmate, trembling with his life, and still cast a disarming charm of all things at him.
And yet, the boy in front of him had killed half a dozen people in less than a minute and was looking at him with an amused expression on his face. Still, as big of a progress Potter would have made, he was still only a boy. If anything, it emboldened him and made Voldemort think that he was foolish at being nervous, "You're a foolish boy, Harry Potter, to come all this way to challenge me. Brave, perhaps, but foolish, nonetheless. There is no Dumbledore to save you now, no mother is willing to sacrifice herself for you. You're all alone."
His followers understood his unspoken command and stood down, wanting to watch their lord kill the boy who had been the cause of his defeat over a decade prior. He had trained them so well.
"Do I look like I need anyone to protect me?" the boy answered with a snort, "Unfortunately, none of you will survive this night. It's nothing personal, really. Well, that was a lie; it is a bit personal. We have a score to settle, don't we, Tom?"
"Tom Riddle is dead," Voldemort snarled, "I am what remains."
"Yes, Tom Riddle could have been a man that I could respect. You, on the other hand, are a madman, a powerful one, perhaps, but your mind is as fractured as your soul. Did you truly think there were no consequences to what you have done?"
The Dark Lord stiffened and sent a killing curse at the boy who just dodged it by tilting to the side and conjured a giant blade of wind that Voldemort was able to shield against, but that bisected Macnair and a few of Greyback's men before he could stop it, "Are we done playing yet?"
Voldemort did not answer and decided to send a rotting curse this time, which the boy batted away carelessly. He conjured a beam of fire, that the boy just turned into smoke with a flick of his wand, before disappearing into the smoke.
He felt his breath hitch as he was banished back a few feet. He hadn't even seen the spell coming. With a snarl, he pushed his magic to push the smoke away, knocking down his followers as well.
He expected Potter to have been taken by surprise as well, only for him to reappear in the same spot he was in with a smug grin on his face, "Is that all you can do? Are you the man who was said to be Dumbledore's equal, who terrorized an entire country and brought it to its knees? I have to say, you're not living up to the legend."
Voldemort conjured a bolt of black lightning and sent it at Potter as the boy progressively walked closer to him. The spell fizzled out in mid-flight and his opponent chuckled, "Slow!"
He conjured a green glowing serpent that snarled at his opponent, which also promptly faded away, "Sloppy!"
The boy just kept walking forward and Voldemort cast a ball of darkness at him, which his opponent predictably avoided by slicing it into two halves. However, that allowed Nagini to attack him from the rear, only for her to be sent away with a casual flick of the boy's wand, ignoring the protections that the Dark Lord had personally cast on his familiar, "Sad!"
Voldemort tried to take him by surprise by casting his earlier beam of darkness. The boy wouldn't have the time to conjure any shield while being that close, only for him to be hit with an invisible wind cutter, on his wand arm, making him stop casting by the sheer surprise. Thankfully, his ritual-enhanced body resisted the spell and healed the damage in seconds, but that gave the boy a chance to conjure some kind of shadow scythe from the end of his wand.
He was only able to shield against it partially, the tip of the scythe scratching his chest, cutting up his cloak and a bit of his skin. Voldemort was frozen when the wound just didn't close up and kept bleeding. The boy followed up by conjuring a giant hand of light to press down on him, and Voldemort was able to top it in time with a quick shield, but he was still sent flying back by an oncoming spell that took him by surprise.
The Dark Lord hadn't been outmatched like this for almost half a century. His heartbeat became stronger and faster at the realization that in front of him was a foe he never battled before. The boy's smile widened at the realization, "Is that fear I can see in your eyes, Lord Voldemort?"
"You're not Potter!" he stated, and he was right. Harry Potter had never exhibited a single sign of this type of prowess. His followers had observed the boy ever since he stepped foot in Hogwarts. He was a mediocre student who was moderately more powerful than the average wizard. He wasn't a prodigy; he wasn't a powerhouse like Dumbledore or himself. And yet he kept escaping, kept surviving. He had thought that the prophecy was the reason he still lived, for only the hands of fate could have saved that boy so many times.
"Perhaps I am, perhaps I am not. Why does that matter to a dead man?"
His followers thankfully understood the unspoken command and started casting at the impostor before him. If anything, the boy's grin widened, and he slowly walked forward towards them. He redirected a blood boiler from the Rodolphus Lestrange towards Lucius Malfoy, only to dodge a dark-cutting curse that he somehow caught with a golden rope and use it to cut Avery in half and decapitate the last Lestrange. Just like that, a magical line over a thousand years old was gone, ending at the hand of the monster before him.
To make things worse, he cast a spell onto the man's head that made it explode in shards of ice that cut through dozens of men. Fenrir Greyback seemed to try to run and kill the boy physically, only for him to burst into hundreds of ravens, and the werewolf to be impaled by hidden stone spears. The ravens reformed into the boy once more and with a flick of his wand, the infamous werewolf had turned to dust.
With their pack leader dead, the werewolves stood there, frozen in shock and that gave the boy more than enough time to get the roof to drop down dozens of spears that impaled most of them. The rest had died with a giant wind cutter.
Slowly, the boy walked forward, ducking under a purple spell from Dolohov, which he hit with a cutting curse on the wrist, cutting his hand off entirely. The fake Potter casually made the hand merge with the stone, which appeared behind Yaxley and broke his neck. Dolohov was then finished with a quick piercing curse to the heart, having barely enjoyed a few minutes of freedom.
Meanwhile, Voldemort stood there, frozen by the carnage, of the death of his followers. Most of his followers had died in less than twenty seconds. Deciding to cut his losses, he conjured Fiendfyre. If his followers would have died anyway, then what was the point of trying to save them? He had enough followers at his back and Nagini had sneakily slithered to safety behind him.
A giant serpent of hellish flames surged into the wing and incinerated it completely, including Potter. For full measure, he waited a good minute before recalling the Fiendfyre. He expected the boy to have finally died, only for him to freeze as dozens of ravens made of darkness appeared from thin air and entered his followers' chests, ignoring any shields.
For a few seconds nothing happened, and he thought that it might have been a trick. That was until black smoke came out of their mouths and they fell to the floor, dead. Voldemort found himself being thrown away, his wand leaving his palm into the air and falling down.
Right where the wand landed, a swarm of ravens appeared once more and merged back into his opponent, who palmed his wand silently. The Dark Lord's fears were confirmed when the wand burst into ash in his hands. He couldn't help but mourn his oldest companion, the wand he had used in his rise to power, that comforted him in those cold dark times in his first years in Slytherin. It was proof that he was special, and just like that, it was gone.
The downed Dark Lord looked around and saw a prison wing filled with corpses. He was the only survivor, bar Nagini. His protections must have held up against the ravens somehow.
The boy spoke up casually, "It hurts, doesn't it? To see something precious to you being destroyed. It's a special kind of pain, one that people do not forget easily. How many lives have you taken? How many children have you orphaned? How many husbands and wives became widowers through your hand? And all for what? For obsession over power and fear of Death."
These worse, if anything, made Voldemort even more furious, "Spare me your sanctimony. You just killed hundreds of my men. You've just ended family lines. How are you better than me?"
The fake Potter tilted his head slightly, his eyes cold and unwavering. "I don't need to lecture you, Tom. Your legacy does it for you."
Voldemort's body trembled, not from fear—he told himself—but from rage. His gaze flickered to the ruins of his wand, the ashes slipping through his fingers. Power. Legacy. Immortality. They were supposed to be his. Yet here he stood, cornered, wandless, watching as everything he had built began to crumble around him.
He tried to apparate away, to activate the hidden portkey that he kept in case of emergency, only for them not to work. He wasn't being blocked, not with a ward that he could overpower, at least. No, the spell itself refused to be cast. Space refused to be warped to let him out, all because of the being in front of him.
"What are you?" he couldn't help but ask.
The boy ignored his question, "What was it you liked to say again? Oh, right! You have beaten death, right? You haven't even come close, really. Do you think your little trinkets will protect you against the natural order of things? I am the consequence of your fear. The shadow of your sins. You tore yourself apart to live forever, but all you've done is carve out the path to your own undoing."
Then his opponent did the unthinkable. He threw a wand at Voldemort. He recognized it; it was Harry Potter's wand. It was strangely familiar, but he still remembered what it looked like from the graveyard. The fake Potter gave him a dry look, "Pick it up! You're too pathetic to kill like this."
Voldemort didn't need to be told twice. He palmed the wand, ignoring the small burn he felt as he did so, and overwhelmed it with his magic, and yelled out, "Avada Kedavra!"
A jet of green light raced towards his enemy, only to freeze in the air. Voldemort stared at the killing curse which was still cackling in energy and saw the fake Potter having down nothing but raise his hand.
He couldn't help himself and muttered, "This is impossible."
The boy snickered, "Oh, honey. You have no idea what's possible."
Suddenly, the killing curse started to fizzle slightly, its energy slowly being sapped out and swallowed by a dark sphere of some sort.
The moment the killing curse was swallowed up, Voldemort felt a burning pain all over his body and everything went black.
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AN: This chapter was kinda hard to write. I tried to make Harry as terrifying as possible from Voldemort's perspective. I hope I pulled it off, but I don't mind rewriting it if I didn't. It would be a pleasure to rewrite it and incorporate new ideas. I'm already looking forward to writing the next one. Anyway, as usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.