章 338: 27

{ === + === }

[3rd Person Camera]

Crack.

Tom Riddle's party of eight arrive at the location indicated on the letter he had received.

Outwardly, Tom Riddle was the very image of unrestrained fury. Inwardly, he was calming himself down and readying himself for a fight.

"Why did he pick a place like this?" He hears Avery mutter. "Seems rather out of the way for a scrap."

"Keep your wits about you, Avery." Severus sneers. "You're dealing with the most troublesome of students."

"The brat goes to Hogwarts, doesn't he?" Goyle mutters. "I've heard about him from Gregory."

"If the description of him is anything less than a walking menace, then your son is being generous." Severus says lightly. "The boy can turn even the simplest charm into a weapon. I'd advise caution."

"And he's not a Slytherin?" Avery chuckles. "Hard to believe."

"Enough." Riddle cuts in. "Look."

The group of Death Eaters follow Riddle's wand, pointed at the burned down remains of a house in the distance.

The Gaunt residence. Tom notes in his head. So he has done his research.

Everybody else, however, notices the cloth banner floating some twenty feet in the sky. Emblazoned on it were the words "Looking For Death Eaters" along with images of disembodied winged penises flitting through the sky.

"I don't understand that boy." Severus sighs softly as everyone else raises their wands.

"Welcome, Death Eaters." Ash's voice booms over them. "How's it going?"

Tom casts the same charm on himself. "You have some nerve." He booms back. "We're coming for you, you damned mudblood."

"Ooh, scary." Ash laughs. "This is a warning for everybody else." He then says. "I'm giving all of you one chance to bug out without consequences."

Moment of silence.

"I repeat." Ash says. "This is your first and final warning to leave without getting hurt. Some of you have families, and it's because of them that I'm giving you this chance."

"Who in the blazes picks a fight and then gives us a chance to run?" Avery sneers. "The boy's a coward, it seems."

They all hear a sigh. "So be it." Ash says. "Hope your insurance is paid up."

Avery's head suddenly explodes, showering bone and meat onto the Death Eaters behind him.

"Mercy is overrated." Ash says with finality.

Tom suddenly blinks as the light around him is suddenly snuffed out. He judges from the cries of surprise from the men around him that this wasn't just some standard curse.

Then there's another sound of exploding bone and blood, and another body hits the ground.

"Form your defenses and stay low!" Tom yells in warning, already flattening himself on the dirt path.

"I can't apparate!" Goyle wails. "He's stopped our apparating!" His wailing is then cut short by the sounds of his body and the bullet that penetrated it hitting the ground.

Idiot. You can't apparate when disturbed. Tom notes with rather snide superiority. "Severus, do you see what's shooting at us?"

"Can't say I do." Snape replies. "It's too dark." He inwardly chides himself on picking up the boy's American mannerisms.

Just as Tom feels like his eyes are adjusting to the light, the darkness abruptly ends. Despite himself, he let out a cry of pain as the sunlight burned into his eyes. It's far too bright. Too unnaturally bright.

Tom feels something slam into his barriers and sends him rolling despite his low posture. Keeping his calm despite being blind and under fire, he takes off into the sky with his flying charm. If being still meant he could get hit, then the best thing to do is to go into all-range movement.

"Alright, let's get out of here." Snape whispers to Lucius. The two of them had 'fortuitously' ended up next to each other in the beginning moments of the attack.

"I'll need to have a word with him when this is over." Lucius mutters. The two of them reach into their robes and each put their hand around a small ring. Both of them then get yanked away into safety by those small portkeys. The rest of the Death Eaters are then unceremoniously executed while still writhing from being blinded.

"Traitors." Tom mutters. His eyes have recovered enough to see two blurs suddenly vanish from the ground even as the rest of them turn into bigger, messier, redder blurs. "Is this how you fight, mudblood?!" He yells towards the ruins.

"Yes." Ash calls back coldly. "Sucks being on the receiving end of sneak attacks, huh?"

Tom feels the hair on his neck stand, and turn just in time to see a small bird zip towards him. Without a second thought, he sends a blasting hex its way.

The resulting detonation nearly slams him back into the ground. Fortunately, he manages to catch himself midflight well enough to skid on the grass and come to a stop.

He then hears the clink of coins on the ground. In response, he immediately throws up barriers around himself in several layers.

The coins suddenly switch places with primed claymore landmines, and they explode almost immediately.

Tom Riddle, despite being a teenager, is still Voldemort. The strength of the blast plus his flying charm allows him to ride the explosion and he soars back into the sky. His shield charms, something that he despises using, nevertheless withstood the force of the blasts and saves him from losing his legs.

Now airborne again, he sees more birds coming at him. This time, he transfigures the birds into wildly misshapen pieces of metal, correctly deducing that they would keep flying at him regardless of what he tried. As the wildly shaped pieces of metal veer off target, Tom feels something glance off of the shields around his leg.

A sniper? He realizes. A mere muggle sniper? He scans the ground for any glint of metal but sees none. How is it possible that a muggle knows about Occlumency? He snarls inwardly as another bird tries to make its home in between segments of his spine.

It doesn't reach and explodes prematurely, destroying Tom's flying posture and sending him towards the ground again. He sees more birds flying towards him, and with a wave of his wand he turns them into bones.

The bones explode prematurely and scatter smoke over a massive area. Tom instinctively blows away much of the smoke coming towards him with a wind spell. In the corner of his eye, he notices some of the smoke behave strangely.

Something heavy hits his leg.

Tom looks down to see a massive iron claw wrapped around his leg. Though it doesn't pierce his shields, the excess weight drags him down a good ten feet before he removes it with a wave of his wand. Before he could take a breath, another iron claw slams into his other leg and continues to drag him down.

Tom realizes suddenly that the claws are invisible before they make contact. He feels the wind of possible invisible claws blow around him. With a wave of his wand, he mass dispels the disillusionment charm, making the hundreds upon hundreds of claws visible. With another wave, he clears the claws around his leg.

With a third wave, the claws all turn and head towards the ruins of the Gaunt residence.

Some of the iron claws slam into each other, and the resulting CLANG makes Tom flinch. Instantly, the claws turn right back and make a beeline for him again.

A permanent cast. Tom muses. Very dedicated. He throws barriers in front of him and allows the claws to hit them. The force of the initial impacts propels him back extremely quickly, and he separates from the rest of the group without issue.

In the corner of his eye, he sees what could have passed as a golden snitch were it not several factors larger. He turns in time to see the large golden bird-like blur close to an extremely close range and waves his wand. The bird blinks out of the way and is suddenly replaced by a person.

Tom, in his surprise at suddenly facing a person, loses his focus long enough for said person to engulf him in a bear hug. As his surprise quickly drains away, he realizes that the person was attaching something to his wand.

"YOU—" Tom says, and the person blinks out again, replaced by the yellow bird once more. He looks down at his wand and sees that a quickly-darkening piece of sticky gum had been placed upon it.

Tom barely has the time to register exactly what had happened before the magically modified C4 explodes in his hands, taking the wand and his left arm with it. He grits his teeth and pulls a backup, stolen wand hidden within his other sleeve, but the cost in time allows the iron claws to reach him.

The claws slam into him in a torrent, and Tom is pressed into the ground. As his back hits the floor, the blades of grass beneath him transmute and transform into chains of iron. The chains spring forth and wrap themselves around every reachable section of Tom's body. He struggles, but the chains just wrap tighter.

A wooden crack helpfully informs him that his backup wand had been splintered by the chains' actions. A less wooden crack informs him that his legs were broken. Then his arms.

The last thing he sees is the blue sky. A blue sky covered with hundreds upon thousands of little clay birds, and all of them homing in upon him.

…

[1st Person Camera]

…

Did…did I get him? I got him, right? I got him?

"Holy shit." Sirius mutters. "Is this how a muggle fights?"

"This is how a muggle deals with Voldemort, yes." I reply.

The smoke of the exploding birds has mostly cleared out, and it looks like…yes, there is a body. It's heavily bound by chains, but there is still a body.

The smoke clears out some more.

…Correction. There's a pair of disconnected arms and legs and no body. And a lot of blood. Wow, that is a lot of blood.

"Target killed, I suppose." I breathe out a sigh of relief. "Tom Marvolo Riddle is down." I raise my hand for a high five, which Sirius rather weakly returns. I don't blame him.

So, what was the plan?

Given that I was going up against Voldemort, who has, like, fifty years of combat experience, I figured that trying to take him out with one flashy massive attack was just not going to work. Best case scenario he tanks the hits, worst case he just apparates out and everything is wasted.

So, learning from my fight with Bellatrix, the plan was to just throw material at him nonstop. Bellatrix proved that a skilled witch could deflect hits with even a single second of awareness, so this time we're just going to give Tom literally no time to do anything but react on instinct. To achieve this, I had to use a lot of material, a lot of preparation, and a lot of manpower. The material came out of my wallet, and the manpower came from the ministry. Props to Kingsley for disarming Tom (again) at the very end.

Anyways.

One: with the Gaunt residence as the center, there exists a circle that extends out a good ten miles. Anybody who steps into the circle will have their shoes painted with silver powder. This powder is charged. Severus and Lucius were given special insoles to their shoes that negated this silver powder along with packets of Portkeys with no-timer activators (same kind as the one on the cup).

Two: An Imperioused Sniper is put into a disillusionment charm and placed on a hill about a mile away. When the operation starts, he is to take out anybody with silvered shoes. Somebody who is operating under the Imperious curse is harder to detect through Legilimency, as I've found out through a little testing (thanks, Severus). He's using 20mm caliber cannon rounds, and I think I saw Tom tank one of them and take no damage. That bastard.

Three: Swarms upon swarms of the exploding birds—Avis + Exploding hex—are to patrol the skies. If we see anybody take into the sky (hint hint Voldemort) then the birds would be tasked to strike at that target. This step had some issues because a) Tom could dispel the birds, which he did, and b) some of the birds didn't react to the attack command. The Ministry's manually dispelling the rest of them as we speak.

Four: A large dome, coated with layers upon layers of black paint and enchanted to be entirely lightproof, is to be Portkeyed in over the target. Remember book four? How the pedestal took both the contestants and the cup to the graveyard? This is basically the same thing. I had a dude grab a portkey while keeping his hands on the dome. This took a few practices to get right, but it worked without too much of a hitch.

Five: A large magnifying lens—as large as the dome—is then portkeyed in and Leviosa-ed over the combat area. Because physics, it can't be used as a literal magnifying glass, but that's fine. The point of it is that, after the Death Eaters have adjusted to the darkness, the dome is then suddenly removed. After removal, we focus the sunlight into their general area and amplify the level of blindness they have.

Six: After the dome is deployed, enchanted coins are then scattered into the combat area. Each coin is tied with a claymore landmine and are enchanted with the ability to move. With a modified Point Me spell, they're designed to orient towards the closest target with silvered shoes. When they're stepped upon, they switch with their designated claymore, which is forced to activate at the same time, and hopefully it would be enough to kill the target along with the sniper and the birds.

If not, the back-up plan.

Back up One: specially made explosive smoke bomb birds are deployed. If they hit, great. If they don't, then they'll scatter a huge amount of smoke in the combat area.

Back up two: iron claws placed in disillusionment charms are then deployed. Their job is to just hassle the target by being like thirty pounds each. They'll also (as we saw) drag targets to the ground if they happen to be flying.

Back up three: Iron chains are then deployed to bound any targets that are on the ground. They operate the same way as the coins (Point Me to the nearest silver shoe).

Back up four, and the last thing I had prepared: send everything, and I mean everything, at silver shoed targets.

If that failed, then we would have had to move into close range combat, of which…well, I had every reason to believe that we would have given Riddle enough breathing room for him to get his bearings and then bail, and then we would've lost our opportunity to permanently kill him for a long time. I mean, hell, I basically *had* to go into melee combat in order to disarm him the first time.

How'd that work out?

The golden bird is basically the closest thing I had to an ace in the hole (or a panic button, depending). It's a mix of a switch spell target and a portkey, which lets me instantaneously switch positions with it as I choose…up to two times, so I get to switch in and out, and that's it. But it does…did, let me land a surprise hit on Tommy and nuke his wand, so that's good.

…also, the coin thing didn't work too well. Once one of them triggered, all of them triggered, so I lost all my claymores for functionally no damage.

Why was Lucius Malfoy given special treatment?

A suggestion from Dumbledore, mostly. Something about 'making as few enemies as possible'. I also gave a thing to Goyle for him to give to his dad, but since only two people portkeyed out I guess that didn't happen.

…Anyhoo, mission complete. Pack up, let's go home.

…

[3rd Person Camera]

…

"I'm very happy I took Draco's advice." Lucius muses. He and Severus were on the sidelines alongside the ministry's aurors as the operation's home base packed up. The aurors were ten feet underground, observing the fight via camera to minimize the risk of being detected.

"Yes." Severus nods. The two of them watch the ministry's repair team restore the damaged land back to its burned but otherwise smooth state. "Ash is, above all things, dangerous to all living beings."

"Aye." Lucius mentally starts tallying the money he should send to stay on Ash's good side.

…

[1st Person Camera]

…

Post operation…

On the next day, the muggle newspaper ran a small piece on a thunder strike out in the countryside.

The Daily Prophet ran a front-page article on the destruction of the 'Voldemort' golem. Per my instructions, my name was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the credit was given entirely to the ministry's auror team, as well as "Defecting Death Eaters who made the ultimate sacrifice." Because an operation of this size needed heroes, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Sirius Black were both given Order of Merlins (first class) as the strike leaders.

Good deal.

On the first day of class after New Year's, we've gone back to Hogwarts to debrief Dumbledore on the 'proper' version of events.

The main cast caught me as I entered the Great hall. I dragged them to Dunny's office because I wasn't going to spill the beans in front of everyone.

"So he's actually dead?" Ron asks after my debriefing. "Riddle is actually dead?"

"As far as I know." I nod. "We'll see in the next few weeks on whether if the police killings stop, but he should be out of the picture."

"Oh my." McGonagall whistles (yes I'm debriefing all the teachers). "It seems you've made good use of what we taught you." She has a complicated expression on her face.

Eh. "Would've been better if it wasn't to kill someone, but yes." I shrug. "Thanks."

"But that's not the entire reason you're here, I assume?" Dumbledore says to me with a rather knowing wink to Harry.

"…Yeah." Welp. "Could I have everyone besides yourself and Harry leave the room please?" I say. "That includes everyone in the portraits."

"I don't see why." Flitwick muses. "But I also don't see why not." He gives me a pat on my elbow. "Jolly good work, young lad." He says, then leaves.

Soon, everyone else files out (with Hermy giving a rather worried look back into the room). Only a small number of the portraits cleared out, but I wasn't expecting them to play along anyway.

"So…what's this about, Ash?" Harry asks curiously.

…welp.

"Headmaster, as I'm sure you are aware, Voldemort was making himself nigh immortal through the copious use of a branch of magic known as a 'horcrux'." I exposition to make sure everyone's on the same page.

"I have indeed come to that conclusion." Dumbledore nods. Harry nods along, though with markedly less certainty. The portraits give off a wide variety of reactions.

"He created those horcruxes through killing very specific targets." I continue. "And I have reason to believe that he has seven of these horcruxes in total." Ah shit, Nagini. "Thanks to the efforts of the ministry, five of the seven have been eliminated."

"Reporting." One of the portraits connected to the ministry suddenly pipes up. "Lucius Malfoy's mansion was just raided. Kingsley killed a snake of some kind."

Lucius made the arrangements for the 'raid' to help clean up his own image.

Well. That's nice. I don't know how many snakes are in the Malfoy Mansion so I'm going to assume that the correct one has just been murdered.

Anyways. "Of the two remaining Horcruxes, I have reason to believe that one of them is Voldemort's pet snake Nagini, and…the other being the scar on Harry's forehead."

"O…kay?" Harry frowns. "I'm not sure I follow."

Dumbledore frowns as well, but since we've turned to face Harry we don't see it.

I'd rather not just say it straight out. "In a nutshell, for Tom to die for good, you're…uh…gonna have to take one for the team." I mime pointing a gun to my head. "Permanently."

Harry blinks. "I have to die?"

"A Horcrux is a fragment of a soul." Dumbledore explains. "I believe Ash is supposing that, on the night of his attack on you, Harry…he transferred a part of himself into you."

Out of context: ew.

"Not on purpose, I would assume." Dumbledore continues. "But it does explain your unique connection to him."

"I…see." Harry says slowly.

"I should note that you do have the right to refuse." I say quickly. "In the unlikely event that you do become the next Voldemort some years down the line, I will happily solve the problem at that time." Hey, I killed him twice already, what's one more?

"Thanks." Harry laughs. "That doesn't make me feel better, but thanks." He stops laughing. "So…I have to do this?"

I shrug, because honestly no. "The choice is yours to make." I mean, it's not like he only has an hour to make his decision. "Take all the time you need to think about it."

In the end, I'm pretty sure Harry has to willingly let himself get murdered for something like this to work, so rushing him right now would be pointless.

…And, like I said, it's not like he has to do this. We have options now.

With that little tidbit out of the way…

…The two of us excuse ourselves from the Headmaster's office, where we…re-meet the cast at the entrance to Dunny's office.

"Are you coming back to Hogwarts?" Hermione asks immediately.

"How did you kill V-Oldemort?" Ron asks near immediately.

"Does that mean you're now the new Dark Lord?" Luna asks next immediately.

"Do I get paid?" Sirius asks last immediately. One at a time please, jeez.

"No. With Planning. No. Yes." I say quickly and toss a sack of coins and bills to Sirius. It's pretty much done for the sake of amusement because he was paid already.

The bag has a money sign on it.

I think he just wanted us to use the bag for something.

"Why not?" Hermione demands. "Your job is done, isn't it? Your education is important! You're still a year off from graduation!"

I think I touched a nerve? "Yeah, but I don't plan to take a job within the magical community in the first place, so I don't see the point."

Oh I touched a nerve. Hermy is now flushing in anger and I am legitimately afraid for my life.

"No surprises there." Sirius chuckles. "The lad is so rich he'd put Lucius Malfoy to shame."

A bit of an exaggeration, there.

"What are you going to do, O great demon lord?" Luna says. She ignored me didn't she.

I should get a round table. "Not sure. I want to play with portkeys and switching some more, and I can't do that inside the castle." Also I should not have responded.

"Is that so?" Flitwick's interest is piqued. Why is he still here? "Do tell me of your results when you've finished."

I shrug. "Sure, though it might take a while."

…

[3 Months Later]

…

Christmas! Hello from the inside of a metal box!

…What?

Well, kind of a metal box. It's about…ten meters on each side, with a big window that looks down on the blue marble that is the Earth. Hello from space, I guess.

My experiment is going well. Kinda.

About…oh, a week ago? I got a small coin to be included on a rocket being shot into space. You might guess where this is going.

The small coin, upon reaching orbit*, was then switched with a portkeyed metal box, which I am currently inside.

*We had no idea if the coin was in orbit or not, and so just crossed our fingers and hoped for the best after the rocket was in space at the supposed halfway point of its suborbital flight.

This metal box is enchanted as magically invisible, so it's untouchable, unseeable, etc etc etc. Like the Knight bus. Anyways, once this box was in space, I then…

Erm. Minor tangent. Switch can be used to transfer objects. Those objects then retain the same energy level as the object previously switched. Remember that I got my ass proverbially beat because I accidentally created a railgun after switching a teapot with a coin. Anyways.

Long story short, I switched Daisy the T-Rex with a piece of rocket debris that floated by the window, had her fix her claws to the box, and then I Summoned Daisy.

The Summoning charm doesn't run out of power until the object reaches the target, mind, so I got the box to accelerate to what I think is orbital speed. The box hasn't flown into the atmosphere and burned up, so I suppose it's stable.

How did you get Daisy to stop?

I plucked a strand of my hair and switched Daisy's nail with it.

Anyhoo…the inside of the metal box includes a large, plushy unicorn. The purpose of this unicorn is to 'fix' this position in my head. Back on Earth, I have a room that is empty except for a large, plushy tiger. With these two rooms, I can Apparate back and forth without worrying about splinching because of bad details. To that end, I've also been slowly engraving the rooms to make them more unique.

And you came to this conclusion because…

Because Sirius would only apparate across the Atlantic once we had an established base.

Anyways, going from my base on Earth to this box is a smaller distance than the distance between London and our warehouse. My base is also no longer in the warehouse, because I needed more room.

I've named my new base area 51, and it's somewhere in Utah. I think I'm in Utah. I didn't pay too much attention to the map. The old warehouse in Detroit and Grimmauld Place both have apparate targets (a giant stuffed bald eagle in one, the area around the screaming portrait in the other). This way, I have a lot of mobility to travel around.

So…yes. I have a prototype space station. I'm going to add to it over time, because Portkeys are literally the most broken things in existence.

…

[3 Months Later-ish]

…

Valentine's Day!

The new space station now has 1) a spare bedroom (because why not) and 2) a storage unit. I don't really know how to equip a space station.

Each section is also ten-meter cubes, because it's easy to make. Everything is attached together with magic. I've also attached a small camera station so I can take pictures of the Earth.

The reels of film are anonymously donated to museums (that I pick at near-random). One such museum has gotten a pretty big drawing from these pictures, which is really neat.

…I should send some chocolates to some people.

…

[3 Months Later-ish]

…

It's…may…day? I don't think there's a majorly advertised holiday in May.

The starbase is coming along nicely. I've been changing the orbit so it'd be more stable and a bit farther. I've added a dedicated camera room for more picture goodness. No development room, though, sadly.

Anyways, the starbase project is more or less a success. Now for the next step.

And the next step is…

To send out self-accelerating drones and see what happens.

…what, I'm bored. I can do whatever I want.

…

[End of School Session]

Harry has opted not to murder himself. I think it is for the best.

Everybody graduates.

I crash an apparate-enabled box into the dark side of the moon and begin magically digging in. I take two-hour work shifts. Other times are spent randomly traveling the planet for the amusement value.

In other words?

The Harry Potter crew gets the best weekly vacations.

…

[The "Where Are They Now?" Section]

…

Harry Potter – The Boy Who Lived

Graduates and becomes an Auror of some fame. Experiences the occasional headache from time to time, but nothing serious.

Status: Married to Ginny Weasley.

Ron Weasley – Harry's Best Friend

Graduates and becomes an Auror of some fame. Considered to be Harry's second in command in all things.

Status: Married an NPC.

Hermione Granger – The Philanthropic Genius

Graduates and creates an agency dedicated to the equality and fair representation of non-human races in wizard society. Eventually her agency would be based on the moon.

Status: Married Fred Weasley

George Weasley – King Jokester

Becomes the proprietor of the largest wizarding goods chain in the world. Becomes filthy rich and puts the Malfoys to shame.

Status: Marries a member of the supporting cast.

Fred Weasley – The Surprising One

Gets roped into providing equipment for Hermione's agency and stays for the fun, as it were. Much better at advertising and human relations than his hard working wife.

Status: Married Hermione Granger.

Luna Lovegood – Mars One

Somehow hears about Ash's new venture to Mars and pesters him to be the first person on the planet. Is the first person on Mars, and responsible for about 99% of the construction that occurred there.

Status: Married an NPC (eventually).

Neville Longbottom – Professor of Herbology.

Teaches at Hogwarts and becomes the assistant headmaster after a fashion.

Status: Married an NPC.

Ginny Weasley – Quidditch Ace

Amazing at Quidditch. Has kids who are amazing at Quidditch. We really know very little about her after the time skip beyond "had kids", huh?

Status: Married to Harry Potter.

Draco Malfoy – Decidedly Average

Lacks the political and economic acumen of his father but manages to keep the Malfoy estate reasonably profitable.

Status: Married to a member of the secondary cast.

"Ash" – "Demon Lord".

Singlehandedly responsible for moving the wizarding world off planet to Mars and the Moon. Eventually learns enough biology to make himself literally invincible.

Status: Single, but does enjoy the occasional fooling around.

[The Stinger?]

{Around 2015, 1st Person Camera}

Ohey, he's running for office of the United States of America. Let's see if we can make him win.

{November 2016}

I have made a terrible mistake.