Chapter 378: The Blooming Rose

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20 April 1995, Mount Olympus, Greece

Damn it, Grindelwald must have distracted them, trying to surround them with the monster that he somehow commanded. And so, mother and son found themselves surrounded by one of the biggest and deadliest magical creatures that she had ever seen and one of the most dangerous Dark Lords in history.

Lily had always dreaded to be in this position. She was always careful to only get into fights with high odds of victory. If she didn't like the odds, then she made up for them with pure preparation. Most of the time, the most prepared fighter won and Lily had always taken that to heart. Entering the fight with Grindelwald without any preparation was reckless, and the redhead had no doubt that she would think of her own motivations for months, if not years, after the fight.

Thankfully, she didn't really have time to reflect at the moment, especially as the Hydra finally began to fire hundreds of bolts of lightning. Lily covered herself and her son with a cloud of scarlet ash, preparing to bank the hits, only for a giant circle filled with runes to light up and merge with her ash somehow, releasing a very powerful pulse of magic that disintegrated everything around them.

The hydra was mostly fine, with a few heads perishing at the most, with Harry having thankfully cauterized the cuts, meaning that the heads wouldn't regrow. Lily didn't have time to enjoy this small victory as a giant blade of shadows came towards them, courtesy of Grindelwald.

The Dark Lord was definitely not messing around, and Harry raised his hands and warped space in front of the attack, hoping to make it miss. However, the black flames that the sword was coated in somehow disrupted the warped space. Thankfully, Lily countered with a gigantic blade of ash of her own, which stopped the blade in its tracks.

It took a fraction of a second for Lily to understand what the attack was, and that it was a weaponized form of the conceptual destruction the dark lord liked to use so much. She had to actively conjure more ash for every second their blades clashed with one another, but that was definitely not something she could do for long.

Thankfully, Harry warped space around them, sending them to the other side of the Dark Lord. In the meantime, the Hydra was attacking once more, and Harry somehow redirected the blasts of black lightning towards the gigantic form of the Dark Lord armoured with darkness itself.

Unfortunately, if they expected the attack to hurt Grindelwald in any way, then it didn't happen, as the dark lightning splashed away on his armour. But it did distract him enough for him not to follow through with another attack.

She turned towards Harry with some steel in her voice, "Go deal with the Hydra. I'll handle Grindelwald."

"Are you sure?" he asked, "He's the bigger threat, by far."

"I think I can hold him off until you get rid of the Hydra."

Her son had a complicated expression on his face but nodded his assent. He quickly warped space around him, jumping into the air, yet finding hundreds of feet into the air, before conjuring a weird pulse of space magic that sent the gigantic creature staggering, before cutting off a few more heads and cauterizing them.

Seeing that Harry seemed to hold his own, she focused on Grindelwald, who seemed to be ready to send some form of black orb at the young wizard. Lily, unwilling to let that happen, released a gigantic beam of fire and ash, which the Dark Lord casually dodged, turning to send the ball of darkness at her.

She was barely able to jump into the air, helped by her wings, to dodge the attack, but she dodged right into some cursed spikes. She curled her winds, spinning in the air to defend herself from the attack, but did end up with a couple of cuts on her. She used her own dimension to regenerate, before conjuring a blade of fire and ash, swiping at her enemy.

The blade became elongated with blinding speeds, and yet Grindelwald ducked with barely any effort and was able to dodge the attack easily. She followed up by turning the blade into a chained sickle, and yet the Champion of the Dark easily bypassed it.

She tried to take him off guard by creating a blade of cursed fire behind him, only for him to casually grab it and destroy it. He just seemed invincible. It was like he could read her mind, which was something that Lily learned to defend against a very long time ago.

The redhead was a bit lost on how Harry even landed an attack, only for the boy in question to do his weird pulse of magic that destabilized her spells slightly. However, the spear that she had thrown at the Dark Lord actually landed, even if it barely touched the armour.

So, that was what Harry was doing. Grindelwald wasn't reading her mind; it was a form of precognition, which her son figured out how to mess with. That gave her ideas. Lily dodged a swipe from the Dark Lord's sword, leaping towards him. In mid-air, she made a blood contract to make her wings corrosive to magic. The Dark Lord dodged easily, and conjured some weird spiked black chains, binding her legs and throwing her down to the ground.

Lily used her wings to easily cut through the chains, righting herself in the air and landing on her feet. This small dance between them continued for a couple of minutes up until Harry did the pulse once more. She grinned, jumping towards her opponent, who prepared to dodge, only for her to activate the blood magic-powered rune trap, in the meantime. Red chains appeared from thin air, trying to bind him. The Dark Lord easily overpowered them with his armour and dodged her wings coming at him, but he failed to notice the blade with the same corrosive energy that she was controlling behind her. The blade impaled itself in the middle of the armour, making a ripple go throughout it.

Slowly, cracks started to form, and the armour of darkness crumpled into black shards that dissolved into the air like mist.

However, the Dark Lord was nowhere to be seen. She gasped as she felt a blade of pure destruction impale her from behind, showing a smug Grindelwald that had appeared from her own shadow.

She released a pulse of flame and ash, making the Dark Lord stagger back slightly, and used her realm to make up the mass that she had just lost, healing her. However, Grindelwald seemed to have smelt the blood in the water and sent whips of darkness towards her.

Lily had to work overtime using her wings to fly, spinning in the air, cutting them up before blasting the Dark Lord with her fire. However, before as the fire was in mid-air, she used blood magic to make a pact that her flames would vaporize everything they touched.

It was pretty costly, energy-wise, but still barely a drop in the ocean of her dimension's energy. She had hoped to take Grindelwald off-guard, but the man conjured a blast of his own conceptual destruction, locking them into a stalemate of some sort, which was broken when a large boulder fell from the sky right above her. She jumped in the air, flying with her wings, snapping it in half, before conjuring chains of ash that wrapped themselves on both halves of the boulder.

With a snarl, she threw both boulders at the Dark Lord, who coated himself with a cloak of his conceptual destruction, erasing anything that came near him. However, it gave her time to put her plan into effect. She discreetly carved up runes all over them in his obscured vision, and then, as if he was reading her mind, Harry messed with the Dark Lord's precognition once more. She quickly activated the runes, channelling one of the most complex impromptu rituals that she had ever had to make. Like all blood magic, it was based on the idea of equivalent exchange, and in its region, it stopped any form of connection to outer dimensions in the areas delimitated by the runes.

She had to sacrifice a pretty significant chunk of her realm's energy to make that happen, something that she probably shouldn't have done with a rip in her dimension that already leaked enough energy to be worrisome. Honestly, it had taken almost as much energy as the magical release of a single broken prophecy. Sure, people could say that having an entire dimension's worth of energy was cheating, especially after having mastered blood magic, but it did put things into perspective regarding how costly what Grindelwald and Dumbledore were planning was. It was far more efficient to just break prophecies than to drain entire realms for their fancy ritual, which had to have some kind of dimensional component to necessitate that much magic.

Still, the sacrifice was more than worth it when she saw the look on Grindelwald's face. For the first time since Harry had almost killed him, the Dark Lord's eyes widened, as his control over his conceptual destruction evaporated.

In the meantime, Harry seemed to have defeated his enemy as the Hydra's final head was finally cut off, the wound vaporizing. However, instead of just dying, its body started to dissipate into some kind of golden dust, which gathered into Harry's palm. His fingers curled around the gathering energy as it solidified into a shimmering, translucent prism—its surface fractured like glass as if it existed across every possible reality at once. The strange, glowing object hummed with power, each facet of it distorting the space around him, bending dimensions in a way that felt unnatural.

The attack shot out from his hand with blinding speed, forming a razor-thin line of crackling, kaleidoscopic light. As it flew forward, reality itself seemed to ripple and tear apart in its wake, each dimension feeling the strain of the attack, as though the fabric of existence itself had been sliced. She could even feel it in her own dimension, which was almost unbelievable.

As the blade of light connected with Grindelwald, it felt like the world was splitting in two—Grindelwald's form flickered and fractured. His body was cracking apart, and Lily decided to help as she unleased a cloud of her disintegrating ash directly towards the Dark Lord.

Harry warped space and arrived near her, and Lily landed nearby. She was glad to see that he was alright, even if she was a bit frightened by that attack of it. It would have killed her, anchored to another dimension or not. A part of her was impressed by that. She couldn't see anyone surviving this, even a Champion of the Dark, especially one that was cut off from his source of power.

She didn't know what to say to Harry, or how to start the conversation. There was so much that she wanted to say, so much that she wanted to make up for. She wanted to say that she was sorry for hurting him, that she wished that she'd never fought him in Durmstrang. She was sorry that she clearly manipulated a young woman that she clearly cared for, that if she could go back, she wouldn't have performed that ritual in Godric's Hollow, that she would have preferred to raise him, to watch him grow up. She wanted to say that she was proud of him, of the man he had become.

Instead, of saying anything, she just remained silent, and simply stated, "Do you think he's dead?"

Harry seemed to be as lost for words as she was and replied, "I don't know. What I do know is that he's pure bullshit, so be careful."

He stayed silent for a fraction of a second before replying, "Thank you, you know, for coming."

Her response was interrupted as her glowing runes, signifying her blood magic, started to glow black and purple instead of crimson. She could feel them slowly fracturing, slowly, and conjured a shield of ash in front of them.

With a gigantic explosion, her pact with reality, enforced with a prophecy worth of energy, came undone. Lily and her son were sent flying back and watched in both awe and despair as a mass of shadows slowly took the form of a man, before turning into flesh.

In seconds, Gellert Grindelwald stood before them, completely unharmed, aside from the black gash in his chest, where Harry's attack hit him. If he had been angry before, he was furious now, and it showed.

An entire cloud of darkness appeared from him, overlapping the entire mountain, maybe even the school itself. No, it was even worse than that. He hadn't conjured some kind of darkness but brought the Dark itself into being, making the entire mountain become its very domain. The sound of the avalanche and of the collapsing mountain disappeared, the boulders all turning into dust the moment they fell. The silence was deafening compared to the constant noise that they had gotten used to during their fight.

Their surroundings were instantly swallowed by the abyssal void, the once vibrant colours of the mountain and the school fading into an oppressive blackness that seemed to consume every trace of light and hope. The air grew thick with an unnatural chill, each breath becoming a struggle as the darkness pressed in from all sides. Lily felt the weight of Grindelwald's power bearing down on her.

He spoke up, his voice barely more than a murmur but resonating all around them, "Did you think that my connection to the dark could be interrupted by something like this? It might have worked in my youth, but not as I am now. Still, you came close, far closer than anyone else bar Albus, and for that I commend you. It would have been a wonder to see you both grow. I wish I could let you live. I truly do, but I cannot, not anymore. You are a threat to my life's work. At the very least, you may pass on knowing that I acknowledge you both as worthy opponents."

His tone was soft, but there was an undercut of anger there, and suddenly something stiffened and she felt the very darkness surrounding them turn into flames, suffocating them, killing them. She tried to access her dimension to shield her, but she couldn't. She was going to die; she was sure of it. She grabbed her son's hand. She didn't know why, but she wished for it to be her last act.

However, against all odds, Harry started to sing, and the pressure disappeared. It was different to see up close than from outside. She could feel the power coming through it. He released the energy from his wand, which had been used to absorb the magical release of the prophecy and used it to shape something that seemed to slow down the Darkness coming at them.

She realized what he was doing. Harry was technically making a realm. It was miniscule, but its nature was still there. It was an anomaly in space and time, with boundaries that upheld rules that he created, which in this case was the specific shield against the Darkness. It was the definition of a realm, even if it was contained and he was bringing it forward without an anchor into the material world. It wouldn't survive for a millisecond in the void between worlds. Hell, even the material world would have overwhelmed it, but it was still the single most impressive piece of magic she had ever seen. She knew at that moment that Harry would surpass her, if he hadn't already, without having an entire dimension to rely on.

However, she also knew that all of this was created fully powered by the wand somehow and that it would run out. He was probably performing the single greatest feat of magic that anyone had ever made in over a century, and it was all to buy them some time. She could see it in his eyes, the desperation, as he was trying to figure out what to do next and failing miserably.

Something niggled inside her head, especially about Grindelwald's injury. It hadn't healed. He had survived being completely disintegrated but not the injury from Harry's attack. An idea came towards her and slowly started to take form.

They hadn't broken the connection between Grindelwald and the Dark, but Harry's attack, one that specifically targeted multiple dimensions, had damaged it. It was probably barely more than a chip, but it was there, and that was an opening.

She had researched for months about what Harry had done to her, about how her connection to her realm was affected, and she couldn't help but feel vindictive about what she was about to do. She yelled at Harry, "On my mark, mess with his precognition."

Her son seemed confused but nodded in agreement. She ran forward and raised her hand right as she was about to leave the borders of Harry's realm. Right as she was about to do so, the borders grew with a gigantic pulse, and she felt her control over her dimension shake slightly.

With a grin, she used the fraction of a second, where Grindelwald's control faltered and ran towards the surprised Dark Lord. He hadn't seen her coming as she grabbed him and ripped open her connection to her dimension to channel every single drop of energy through her body. Dark Lord's eyes barely had any time to widen as she gave him a vindictive smile and said, "For the greater good."

Just like that, she erupted and commanded her realm's energy to erupt, focusing everything on the wound that he got from Harry, which was the small tear in his connection to the Dark. Everything, her life's work, was being used to hurt the Dark Lord as much as she could.

Her last thought was of Harry, hoping that he would survive. She only wished she had enough time to talk to him one last time. And just like that, Lily Evans, the Red Witch, died, with a smile on her face, at least before her very body turned to ash with her last act.

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AN: This chapter was a beast to write. I actually felt exhausted in the end. Before you ask, yes, this was always the plan with Lily, from the very first chapter I wrote her in. I hope I did her justice, but I guess that's up to you to decide. But damn, the fight sequence was extremely hard to write. I never really have any trouble with those, but it's very hard to have a fight with stakes whenever Dumbledore or Grindelwald are involved since they're so powerful. I'm not sure I pulled it off, but I hope I did. Like always 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.