Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Call My Bluff

Harry lay limp in Hagrid’s arms.

The Great Hall had gone strangely quiet around them. With a certain hollowness to it's silence, as if the sound had been knocked out of the air and hadn’t yet found its way back. Rubble lay scattered across the floor. Smoke clung low to the ceiling, drifting in thin, acrid sheets between broken tables and shattered banners.

Voldemort stood before them, wand loose in his hand, expression composed in the way that came after certainty.

Harry felt the weight of Hagrid’s grip shift as they came to a halt. The giant’s breath hitched once, barely contained.

“Is he—?” someone whispered.

Harry did not move. For a long, fragile moment, the world balanced on the assumption of his stillness. Then he breathed.

It was shallow. Almost imperceptible. 

Harry’s fingers twitched where they lay against Hagrid’s coat.

The effect was immediate.

Gasps tore through the hall. Someone cried out. Hagrid froze completely, arms tightening in shock as Harry pushed himself upright with a sharp intake of breath and slid out of his grasp in one swift motion.

Voldemort turned. With fury. Then disbelief. And lastly: prompt recalculation.

The Great Hall erupted — angry shouts and bodies surging forward— but Harry and Voldemort were already moving. The space between them snapped tight, the air thickening as old reflexes slammed back into place.

Spells crossed the ruined hall in violent arcs, stone exploding where curses struck, shields flaring and collapsing in rapid succession. Harry barely registered the first curse he cast, only the familiar burn along his magic, the pull in his shoulder, the way Voldemort answered with ruthless precision.

Then the air went wrong.

Pressure folded inward, magic snagging like fabric pulled too tight. Harry’s next spell tore loose a fraction late, skidding sideways as white robed figures forced themselves into existence between shattered tables and fallen bodies.

They wore uniforms. Bone-white. Deliberate.

The duel broke.

Harry and Voldemort turned at the same instant, instinct overriding everything else, because whatever this was, it hadn’t come for one side alone.

The first shots hit Voldemort.

Not spells.

Kinetic impact. Sharp, concussive cracks that tore through the air without warning or magical signature. Stone exploded where rounds struck, fragments spraying outward as Voldemort’s shield flared on reflex—

—and held.

For a heartbeat.

Then compact white devices struck the floor around him, skidding and bouncing before locking into place. Their surfaces pulsed once dimly and the air shifted.

Voldemort felt it immediately: magic dragging, spells resisting clean formation, like wading through syrup that was getting denser by the second. A crawling static crept along his arms, raising gooseflesh as the ambient enchantments in the hall began to falter.

He reacted fast. Transfigured shattered stone into cover, warding as he moved, slipping out of the nearest radius before it could finish anchoring. A curse tore through the space where one device sat —

—and fizzled halfway through, dispersing into sparks as the field strengthened.

Another device chimed.

Then another.

Each one grew louder, brighter, the pulse tightening. A countdown. The magic didn’t vanish all at once. It narrowed. Frayed. Then snapped.

He staggered back as the pressure intensified, breath catching as his spellwork faltered mid-cast yet again. The magic he pushed through felt blunted, dulled, like shouting through layers of glass. Magic snagging and stuttering like breath cut short. 

Voldemort pivoted, compensating fast, as another volley tore through the space he’d occupied a heartbeat earlier. They weren’t trying to overwhelm him with force alone. 

They were boxing him in.

Gunfire drove him laterally while the deadened zones stripped him of clean casting space, every movement forcing him closer to another null pocket, another prepared line of sight. His counters came slower now, magic resisting him at every turn.

Then a woman arrived.

She didn’t explode into the hall. She settled into it. Changing the athmosphere visibly. Appearing near the center of the destruction without sound or spectacle, yet the system around her synchronized. Shooters adjusted their spacing. Devices activated in staggered sequence now, overlapping fields snapping into final alignment.

Her wand wasn’t raised.

“Proceed,” she said.

That was all.

Six additional figures closed in on Voldemort in practiced formation, rifles steady, timing precise. A shot punched through the stone where he’d stood. Another filled the gap immediately.

Harry watched, pulse hammering, as Voldemort was driven back step by step across the ruined floor of the Great Hall — not beaten by the sheer force alone. It was the timing that did it.

Then something arced through the air. Small. No magic signature. 

Voldemort knew what it was before it reached the apex of its throw. The dull metal cylinder spun end over end, compact and solid — a shape pulled straight out of another war, another century. A grenade. Muggle ordinance. Crude. Reliable. He’d seen them lobbed into trenches during the Blitz, had learned quickly which way to move when one appeared.

He lifted his shield.

It stuttered.

One of the anti-magic fields hadn’t finished anchoring yet, the air still resisting full nullification, and the ward came up thin and uneven, layers misaligning as they struggled against the encroaching dead zone.

It was enough to take the worst of it. Yet not enough to stop it.

The grenade passed cleanly through the outer layers of his shield before the inner wards snapped into place —

—and then the explosion hit.

Sound obliterated everything.

Pressure slammed into Harry’s chest, driving the breath from his lungs as the floor convulsed beneath him. Heat tore through the air. Shrapnel screamed. Stone and metal fragments shredding outward in a brutal, indiscriminate spray.

Voldemort was struck. Hard.

The force tore him sideways as what remained of his shield collapsed in a violent flicker. He slammed into the ground and did not rise.

Blood soaked into the churned earth beneath him — too much of it, spreading fast, dark and slick between broken stone.

Harry staggered, ears ringing, vision swimming.

Around them, the fight disintegrated.

White-clad figures moved through the chaos like executioners now. Order members went down screaming. Death Eaters fell just as fast. Curses intercepted, bodies dropped with brutal efficiency. No hesitation. 

They were being culled.

Harry caught flashes of familiar faces vanishing in sharp cracks of Apparition — wounded, dragging one another away. Kingsley shoving Hermione and Ron toward the perimeter, bodily forcing them past the edge of one of the contraptions. Hermione resisted for half a heartbeat, eyes snapping to Harry, before Ron hauled her with him. The three of them stumbled, then vanished in quick, staggered cracks of Apparition, just beyond the field’s reach.

Harry’s chest tightened.

Good.

They were out.

That changed the math.

A gunshot cracked past his shoulder, close enough that the air hissed. Harry twisted aside and ducked behind a fallen column from the ceiling, stone dust raining down as another round punched clean through where his head had been a second earlier.

His shield snapped into place on instinct and without resistance.

For a split second, the world didn’t make sense — and then there was no time to think about why.

He risked a glance. 

That woman was moving now.

She stepped through the wreckage toward Voldemort’s fallen form, boots crunching on shattered stone. The man tried to push himself upright as she approached. He failed. One arm shook violently before collapsing beneath him. Shrapnel jutted from his side and shoulder, embedded deep. His breathing was wrong — wet, uneven.

She stopped over him.

“Abomination,” she said, evenly, her voice carrying far enough to still the air.

A ripple passed through the battlefield. Spells stuttered. Movement slowed for a fraction of a second.

Then she lifted her foot and drove it down into his injured side.

Shock tore outward.

Harry felt it immediately — the hitch in the air, the fractional pause before instinct threatened to overtake reason. The moment where he either acted or watched everything collapse.

They had planned for Voldemort to be the hinge. The axis everything turned on. They had profiled him, measured him, prepared contingencies. That much was obvious in the focus their leader gave him.

Yet. They had not done the same with Harry. Which was a mistake, he decided.

Determination snapped into place. Harry stepped out from cover, posture rigid, wand already up. The grey-haired leader turned at once, attention fixing on him with open interest, head tilting slightly — like a mathematician encountering an unsolved variable.

“You are misguided, child,” she said calmly. “So step back. I am not here for you.”

Harry met her gaze, fury burning hot and unashamed.

“That,” he said, voice steady despite the roar of gunfire and screaming wards, “is your mistake.”

He didn’t hesitate. The cutting hex tore from his wand, forcing her to leap sideways as it carved a brutal gouge through the stone where she’d stood. The spell didn’t fizzle. Didn’t distort like it should. Instead: it held.

Gasps ripped through her followers.

The woman landed behind a slab of fallen masonry, white robes snapping as two of her people moved instantly to flank her, bodies interposing with drilled precision. Rifles came up. Another of those little devices clattered to the floor near her position, beginning its slow, deadly hum.

A white-robed man shouted, panic breaking through his control. “Contain him!”

Too late.

Harry was already moving.

Gunfire tore toward him, sharp and relentless, but his shield flared hard now with the certainty of it still being able to, bullets screaming off magic as he sprinted across the battlefield. He registered the rest only in brutal flashes: bodies falling, spells guttering uselessly inside dead zones, the attackers advancing with clinical efficiency.

They were too many. No way of winning this today.

Dumbledore was gone. And there was no one left who could—

Harry halted mid-thought.

Reassessed.

His focus snapped back to Voldemort. On the ground, chest still rising, barely.

They would lose... Unless he took the one thing these strangers clearly wanted gone. The thing they had already identified as their biggest threat by focusing intently on him.

So Harry jumped.

Shots rang out sharper as he changed his trajectory, vaulted shattered stone, shield stabilizing instinctively as metal screamed against magic. He hit the ground hard beside Voldemort, dropping to his knees in blood-slicked rubble. The man was fighting for breath, every inhale a jagged, furious sound.

Harry didn’t hesitate.

He rolled him, hauled him more upright, dragged him hard against his chest despite the blood soaking through his sleeves. Voldemort gasped — furious, strangled —and Harry felt the reflexive surge of resistance.

“Hold on,” Harry snarled, arm locking tight around him.

For one heartbeat, the battlefield froze in his mind. The leader’s gaze sharpening, realization blooming too late.

Then Harry apparated.

Pain shredded through him as he forced himself through whatever anti-magic field they’d erected, like knives in his bones and white flashing behind his eyes, then the world snapped sideways.

They hit the ground hard. Trees. Damp earth. Night air thick with moss and rot. 

Voldemort coughed, blood flecking his lips while Harry was already digging frantically into the mokeskin pouch, fingers shaking, hauling out the battered book on healing spells Hermione had forced on him months ago.

“Don’t,” Voldemort rasped.

Harry froze mid-spell as he saw it properly.

Shrapnel. Of course. Metal embedded into muscle, surrounded by angry welts of burned flesh. Healing magic would seal it in. Trap it. Kill him slower. He swallowed hard. 

Voldemort dragged himself upright with sheer will, leaning heavily against a tree. His face was chalk-pale, jaw locked so tightly it trembled.

Harry saw it the moment he knelt properly. The metal wasn’t just sticking in Voldemort, it was driven in deep. Jagged fragments sat at bad angles, some buried so far they weren't visible anymore, there was only swelling as an indicator. One piece near his ribs was almost flush with flesh, the surrounding tissue bruised dark and angry, as if something had slammed it inward after the initial blast.

Harry’s stomach turned as he realized: That kick. The force of it hadn’t just been humiliation. It had compounded the damage. Worsened it significantly.

Voldemort noticed his stare and gave a short breath that turned into a wince he couldn’t quite hide.

“She embedded them further,” he said flatly.

Harry swallowed and flipped the book open again, fingers suddenly clumsy. “If I use a closing charm now it—”

“You will seal them inside, yes,” Voldemort snapped, already bracing himself against the tree. 

He straightened with visible effort, one arm trembling as he raised his wand. Sweat had already broken across his brow, his breathing shallow and uneven.

“I will extract them,” he said. 

The first fragment moved a fraction of an inch.

Voldemort froze.

His jaw locked so hard Harry heard his teeth grind. The levitation charm faltered, metal scraping faintly against bone. He felt it then — not just pain, a wrongness that went with it. The way Voldemort’s magic resisted its own body, dark currents interfering the process. Pain making it stutter, worsening the focus needed.

“Wait,” Harry said, flipping pages wildly. “Just—just give me a second—”

“Do not tell me what to do,” Voldemort hissed, voice roughening dangerously. He inhaled sharply and forced the charm again. The fragment tore free another inch.

Blood followed. Too much of it.

Voldemort’s shoulders jerked despite himself, a low sound tearing out of his throat before he could stop it. He pressed his head back against the bark, eyes squeezing shut for a single, uncontrolled heartbeat.

Harry found the spell.

“Okay,” he said, voice shaking. “Okay—this will just— it’ll dull it. Not numbing it completely. Just—take the edge off.”

Voldemort didn’t answer.

So Harry cast it. He could feel Voldemort’s magic stuttering under his own, flickering unevenly — raw, volatile, refusing to settle. They didn’t have long before shock or unconsciousness would take him.

The magic settled slowly, almost like sleep, like a heavy blanket pulled over exposed nerves. Voldemort’s breath hitched — then eased, just a fraction.

The fragment came free at last with a wet sound.

Harry didn’t hesitate.

He pressed his hand to the wound and murmured a stabilizing charm — not closing, nor healing fully as this would need time and concentration that was currently not possible. It was just enough to stop the bleeding, to coax torn tissue into holding. The blood slowed under his palm, heat flaring briefly as magic knitted the surface to stop the man from bleeding out.

Voldemort watched him the entire time. Measuring.

When Harry pulled his hand back, Voldemort exhaled slowly, catching his breath as if he hadn’t realized he’d been holding it.

The second piece was even worse.

It caught.

Harry watched in helpless horror as the metal resisted, lodged deep where the kick had driven it sideways right under the chest. Voldemort’s wand hand shook violently now, knuckles white, forearm locked as he tried to adjust the angle without tearing himself open further.

The fragment refused to move.

For a long moment, nothing happened.

Then Voldemort swore — low and vicious — and cut the levitation charm entirely. He sagged against the tree, chest heaving, eyes unfocused.

Harry didn’t speak.

This wasn’t just pain. This was his body failing him, magic misfiring from exhaustion where it had once obeyed without question.

Harry recast the dampening charm, gentler this time, layering it carefully until Voldemort’s breathing steadied again. He waited. Counted breaths. Adjusted the magic when it spiked.

When Voldemort lifted his wand again, it was slower.

More careful.

The fragment came free in a wet, nauseating pull that made Harry flinch. Voldemort’s head dropped forward as he rode out the aftershock, shoulders shuddering once — just once — before he forced himself upright again.

Harry was already there.

Stabilize. Seal enough. Stop the bleed.

It went on like that.

Piece by piece.

Pause by pause.

Extract. Breathe. Dampen. Stabilize.

Harry lost count of how many times Voldemort had to stop, lean, gather himself. Lost count of how many times the dampening spell had to be retuned as pain spiked unpredictably — or how naturally his hands had begun to move, precise and unhesitating now.

By the time the last fragment finally fell free into the dirt at their feet, Voldemort looked wrecked — pale to the lips, sweat-soaked, magic flickering erratically around him like a dying flame.

It hit Harry all at once.

He stared at Voldemort — alive, breathing, leaning slackly against bark— and felt something in his chest twist violently. God. He had finally given in to necessity: caving to the prophecy and it's whims in accepting his role to kill Voldemort. And half an hour ago, that had been the only thing that made sense. Yet now—

Harry pressed his palm hard against his sternum, breathing shallowly. Voldemort had come this close to dying. Another minute under that assault. Another kick. Another fragment lodged soewhere deep—

Madness.

Utter, howling madness.

He dragged a hand through his hair and turned away, vision blurring as the full scope of it caught up with him. The strangers in white. The way they had moved. The efficiency. People dying without speeches, without hesitation. Order members, Death Eaters, names Harry knew, faces he’d fought beside or against for years, gone in seconds.

He didn’t know who else had made it out.

Harry sagged back against a tree opposite Voldemort, the bark biting into his shoulders. His legs trembled now that the adrenaline was bleeding out of him. The forest was too quiet. Every rustle sounded like a threat.

Across from him, Voldemort drew a slow, careful breath and then another, each one visibly taxing. The debris were gone now, yes — but whatever had been disrupted inside him hadn’t settled. Couldn't, as it wasn't yet healed, only...halted. Frozen in time.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke.

For Harry it felt like torture.

So he pushed himself upright, moved on instinct, wand coming up as if this were muscle memory — which, horrifyingly, it was. Protection charms snapped into place one after another, layered cleanly and efficiently. Wards spread outward in a widening arc. Alarm charms. A muggle-repellent ward that sank into the trees like mist.

He adjusted them twice. Three times.

Voldemort watched through half-lidded eyes, breathing shallow but growing a bit more steady, tracking every movement. He recognized the precision immediately. Fieldwork. Survival.

Horcrux hunting, his mind supplied bitterly.

The boy should be dead. 

Yet instead of already tearing through the Ministry, Voldemort was here — magic guttering, body wrecked, dependent on the very same boy he’d intended to kill for good moments earlier.

The irony tasted like the blood in his mouth...

Harry finished the last charm and let his arm drop, shoulders tense with the effort of staying upright. He reached into the mokeskin pouch and tugged the old tent free, the familiar weight grounding him. He set it up swiftly, movements clipped, almost brusque.

Then he turned back to Voldemort.

Up close, the damage was impossible to ignore.

Voldemort was holding himself together through sheer force of will — that much was obvious. His posture remained rigid by habit rather than strength, shoulders set too square, spine too straight. His eyes had gone unfocused at the edges, breath shallow and uneven, like his body hadn’t quite decided whether it was still obeying him.

Harry swallowed.

“You can’t stay out here,” he said flatly.

Voldemort’s lip curled, a reflex more than a threat. “I hadn’t planned to.”

“You can barely stand.”

“I am aware,” Voldemort bit out, irritation riding hard over something thinner underneath.

Harry stepped closer despite himself, close enough now to see the tremor the man was trying to suppress in his leg. “You won’t make it one step without collapsing.”

Silence stretched between them, taut and unpleasant.

Voldemort studied him, eyes still sharp even through exhaustion. Pride flared — hot, automatic — then recalibrated with visible effort. He’d done this before. He knew when denial was no longer strategy, just waste.

“…Temporary,” he said at last, voice rough. “Do not mistake necessity for indulgence.”

Harry snorted, harsh and humorless. “Trust me, that’s not a risk.”

He didn’t offer a hand.

Voldemort drew a measured breath and braced himself, one palm pressing briefly to the tree behind him as he shifted his weight forward. The movement was careful, calculated. And it cost him immediately. His breath hitched, jaw tightening as pain flared hot and uncooperative through his side.

For a moment, he didn’t move at all.

Then he pushed.

His leg trembled more as it took his weight, muscle locking more out of defiance than strength. He managed to straighten — barely — posture snapping into rigid alignment by habit alone.

It lasted half a second.

His knee buckled outright.

Harry caught him without thinking.

The impact drove the breath from both of them. Voldemort’s weight was heavier than Harry had expected — deadweight, poorly distributed — and for a split second Harry had to brace hard, feet sliding in the dirt as Voldemort sagged fully against him.

Voldemort stiffened instantly, a sharp intake of breath betraying him before control snapped back into place. His hand came up, gripping Harry’s sleeve with involuntary force, fingers digging in as pain spiked.

Harry adjusted his hold without comment, arm locking around Voldemort’s waist, grip firm and impersonal. No gentleness. No hesitation. Just what was necessary to keep him upright.

They stood there for a beat, too close, neither of them acknowledging it.

Then Harry shifted, hauling him forward. Slowly, unevenly. Voldemort leaned far more heavily than he would have tolerated under any other circumstances, each step precise and miserable, his breath hitching despite obvious effort to keep it controlled. Harry could feel the tension in him, the way his body fought every jolt of movement, every forced transfer of weight.

The tent loomed closer.

Harry reached the flap and hooked it open one-handed, dragging Voldemort with him in a careful, awkward pivot that sent a fresh tremor through the man’s frame.

“In,” Harry ordered. “Sit. Don’t argue.”

Voldemort didn’t argue. He didn’t sit, either, not properly. His strength gave out halfway through the motion, knees folding as Harry guided him down, the last of the descent more controlled collapse than choice. So he landed hard on the cot, shoulders slumping the instant the effort ended. His head tipped forward, breath shuddering once — just once — before he forced it back under control.

For a fraction of a second, his eyes closed. 

Harry saw how close he was to slipping... He turned away before he could think too much about that.