บท 376: Chapter 376: Dark Tides
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20 April 1995, Mount Olympus, Greece
Harry shivered as he turned towards a sight that still gave him nightmares, "Gellert Grindelwald."
"Harry Potter," the younger wizard gulped as he heard the hidden anger in the Dark Lord's tone, "It seems that you've made a nuisance of yourself."
He did his best to appear confident even if he knew that he was completely outclassed, "What can I say? I have that effect on people."
"Do you have any idea what you've done, what the consequences of your actions are?" the Dark Lord hissed.
"I think I have an idea. You didn't get as much power and you needed to power that elaborate ritual of yours, you know, the one you and Dumbledore have been making for a year, destroying one prophecy after another."
"Dumbledore was reassured by your mother that you'd no longer be a threat after your interference in Rome. It is, without a doubt, the reason you're still alive. It seemed that this was a mistake."
Harry made sure not to show his nervousness, "Would it make you feel any better if I said that this was never the plan? I actually wanted nothing to do with you and your plans. I wanted to disappear into the wind."
There had to be a sense of irony to it. The only time Harry had been able to mess with Dumbledore's and Grindelwald's plans was when he wanted nothing to do with it. When he had healed Daphne, he didn't think about the consequences of his actions at all. He just wanted her healed and whole, nothing more, nothing less.
The Dark Lord chuckled bitterly, "But we rarely get what we want, do we?"
Just like that, Harry knew that he wasn't going to talk himself out of the fight, not this one. Time slowed down as he analysed his position. His main goal would be to make sure that Daphne would be safe. He wasn't under any illusion that distance would stop Grindelwald if he was determined to hurt her, but at this moment, she was more likely to get hurt by a stray spell than anything.
Grindelwald's main advantages were the fact that Harry was exhausted, his magic circuits were beyond strained, and his comrades were easy hostages to have. The older wizard was also a far more powerful and experienced wizard, a champion of the Dark and very skilled in using divination when fighting.
Harry's advantages weren't as many. There were the remnants of the prophecy's energy in the Elder Wand, maybe his mastery of space and time, and the small pieces of insights in the other universe's Grindelwald's diary.
He knew from there that the Dark Lord's greatest strength lay in his divination, in using his counterparts from other universes to make predictions about the world itself, and that provided him with an opportunity.
The Dark Lord prepared to throw some form of shadow lance at Harry who simply turned and banished his comrades from the solid water platform they were standing on. Harry then discreetly conjured a portal beneath them, while also dodging the attack.
The moment Perseus disappeared through the portal, the water construct dissipated, making him and Grindelwald fall down into the destabilized realm disguised as an endless mountain.
As they fell, Harry warped space so that a giant boulder would strike Grindelwald in the back, only for it to dissipate into thin air, as the Dark Lord foresaw it using his divination. Harry used this to turn into his Animagus form, a raven, to guide his fall a bit better, before turning back in his fall and conjuring a bolt of lightning at the Dark Lord.
Grindelwald conjured some kind of weird black shield that seemed to have been powered by the bolt of lightning, turning it into a beam of pure destruction, being sent barrelling at blinding speed towards Harry.
Thankfully, the young wizard warped space around him to redirect the attack, but he did so in a way that destabilized a chunk of ice that fell towards him. Harry activated the invisibility cloak, phasing through it, before telekinetically pushing it towards the Dark Lord, discreetly carving a giant exploding rune inside it.
As he was falling to his doom, something clicked, something that he hadn't thought of before. Grindelwald should have seen this coming and should have known that Harry would have messed with things. He was a seer, probably one of the most powerful ones to ever exist. He should have seen this coming, except… Except, he didn't. Something stopped him. Something about Kronos' realms made his divination malfunction, or maybe it was something that was messing with Grindelwald's connection to his alternates, significantly weakening his divination.
Still, in mid-air, Harry decided to test out a theory he'd been having throughout the encounter with Grindelwald. He released a pulse of space and time, one that didn't really affect anything physical, but temporarily disrupted faint dimensional connections. It wasn't really anything powerful. It was like making a small splash in the water that lasted seconds at best. It would do nothing to an ocean, but something small, like a bathtub, would be completely disrupted completely for a moment.
It was a bit of a useless piece of magic really. It wouldn't do anything against a champion of the Dark, their connection was extremely deep and durable. However, the countless small connections with other universes, ones that had to be weak to be accessed properly, well, Harry theorized that they could be severely impacted by it.
As he expected, Grindelwald destroyed the chunk of ice, only for it to explode. That seemed to have taken him off-guard, as he was sent flying towards an avalanche. Harry used it to turn back to his Raven form to find the Dark Lord. He would not get a chance to take him off-guard again.
As he dived, hoping to go for the kill, he felt the coming avalanche freeze completely, a complete mastery over magic that he had never seen before. The Dark Lord stirred up, from the snow, and Harry landed in front of him. He brought his hands to his lips and grinned at the sight of blood, "All of that for a drop of blood. I haven't been taken off-guard like this in a very long time. Give me a fight, Harry Potter. Show me the legacy of the Peverells."
Of course, that was when Grindelwald released his control over the avalanche. No, it was worse than that. He guided it towards Harry, who turned into a raven and flew up to avoid it, only for some weird form of black lightning to appear from the sky and strike him down.
Harry was able to turn back into his human form and redirected the bolt of lightning towards Grindelwald, but he fell down towards the avalanche once more. Thankfully, he warped space around him to push himself up and sent a few spikes of ice towards his opponent, which turned to dust in mid-air.
He used this to conjure hundreds of ravens using the corrosive magic of his crest, which flew towards Grindelwald. The Dark Lord conjured a wall of black flames that somehow erased them from existence, before sending them at Harry in a single beam of pure destruction.
Harry could tell with his Arcane Hearing that whatever this thing was actively destroyed magic. It ate through his warped space when he tried to redirect the blast, and the young wizard had to manipulate the gravity surrounding him, sending himself flying out of the way of the spell, before landing in a roll and getting up.
He expected to shield himself from another attack since he was in a vulnerable position, but instead, Grindelwald watched him with a glint in his eyes, "You would have been a sight to see in a few years. I was perfectly alright to just leave you be, to see how you would grow up. You are the living representation of what I stand for, mages who truly understand the power they grasp, who try to push the boundaries of what is thought to be possible. You would have been a marvellous prize, dear boy. And it breaks my heart that I have to cut your potential short. I have kept you alive once, out of curiosity more than anything, out of hope that you would reach your potential. But you have just proven to me how much of a wild card you are, and I cannot allow you to live."
Harry snorted, "So, keeping me alive didn't have anything to do with Ragnarök?"
The Dark Lord froze at the response before bursting into laughter, "I'm very rarely taken off-guard, boy. Truly, what a shame."
Then just like that, the Dark Lord snapped his finger, and a gigantic rock fell towards Harry as if it were a meteor. He was so taken aback by the sudden action that he barely had enough time to redirect the projectile by warping space around it, making it miss. He was then accosted with a gigantic hole that seemed to swallow everything within, which Harry barely transmuted into broken shards of glass, which he turned on the caster once more.
A gigantic purple hand appeared from the mountain, trying to crush him, only for Harry to send himself up and use the invisibility cloak to phase through it. He used his Arcane Hearing to send a pulse of magic that destabilized the construct and barely was able to dodge the incoming bolt of black lightning by conjuring a magic circle to change his direction.
With a flick of his wand, Grindelwald conjured his black fire once more, only this time, he manipulated it into a veritable wave originating from himself. Harry didn't know how to counter that form of conceptual destruction and conjured a magic circle so that he could stand on it, without landing on the burning ground.
He wasn't going to win if he continued like this. Harry knew that for a fact. He was far from his best shape, even at the start of the fight, but now, every spell he cast had a cost on his body. He was very doubtful that he could match Grindelwald's spell to spell normally, let alone when he was tired and injured. He didn't even know if he could kill Grindelwald even if the Dark Lord stood there unmoving for an hour.
A small idea grew in Harry's mind, and he suppressed a grin. He didn't have to kill him, did he?
Harry sent a volley of spells which Grindelwald casually dodged, before the man conjured a gigantic beam of red energy, sending it towards his opponent. The young wizard closed his eyes and tried to replicate what he did with Daphne. He sang and a white light shield came out of nowhere, stopping the attack in its tracks. Harry then sent a pulse of space-time to mess with Grindelwald's divination, before activating the gigantic runic trap, that he had been carving discreetly since they landed.
The trap was supposed to stop any form of dimensional magic, which was essentially stripping Grindelwald of his connection to the Dark. Well, it wasn't exactly effective. It was like trying to stop a flood with a few sticks, but it was inconvenient enough for Harry to channel a spell to slow time around the trap completely.
Grindelwald looked frozen as Harry then gathered whatever remained of the broken prophecy's energy inside the Elder Wand, and sent a beam of light at the Dark Lord. Somehow, the Dark Lord's eyes pulsed with power, breaking the frozen time, and shattering the runic trap, before dodging the beam of white light.
He conjured a slash of red energy, which ran towards Harry, only for it to have been an illusion. He then gasped as a sword of black ice, enhanced by the resurrection stone, impaled him through his gut from an invisible Harry. Suddenly, everything froze as the Dark Lord gave him a disbelieving look. The young wizard capitalized by sending the Dark Lord flying back into the breach that Harry had created earlier.
The beam of light was never meant to be a physical attack but used the energy to create a breach back to the Labyrinth. The energy contained in the Elder Wand wasn't nearly enough to send him to another dimension, but it was more than enough to create a new portal to the Labyrinth, a collapsing realm that was being overcome by the void between worlds.
As the Dark Lord flew back, Harry thought for a fraction of a second that he might have won, only for the Dark Lord to freeze in mid-air, and the breach to collapse into itself with a loud crack. For the first time since the encounter began, the Dark Lord began to glare at him.
His chest turned into some kind of shadow before turning back into flesh, healing him without the injury that Harry had given him. His eyes turned completely black, with a mixture of black and red energy enveloping him completely. Suddenly, Harry couldn't breathe, and the Dark Lord waved his hand, sending him flying back into multiple trees.
Grindelwald walked confidently, some sort of protective cloak of energy surrounding him. He seemed more than he was before, "Messing with my battle precognition to land a soul-based attack and trying to trap me in a dying dimension. That wasn't very nice, was it?"
Harry ducked as a swipe of black energy threatened to cut him in half, only to be sent flying back, landing on a bunch of rocks.
The Dark Lord continued, "This has been the best fight I've had in a while, but it's time for the fun to stop. This is the end of the line. Goodbye, Harry Potter."
The Dark Lord conjured a spear of energy, ready to send it flying at him, only to conjure a shield as a cloud of flames of ash materialized out of thin air, ready to swallow him hole. Grindelwald conjured a black shield which stopped the attack with a loud bang.
For a fraction of a second, Harry thought that luck was on his side until he stiffened as he saw the familiar red hair swaying to the winds in front of him.
Lily Evans glared at Grindelwald, her crimson hair glowing with tendrils of flames and ash swirling around it, "Stay away from my son."
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AN: This fight scene was very hard to write. Keeping the balance between Grindelwald and Harry's power was pretty delicate and I'm not even sure I pulled it off. 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.
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