Voldemort's hand trembled as he reached into his robes.
The Elder Wand was gone—destroyed, unmade, transcended into the armor of the thing standing before him. But Tom Riddle had not survived seven decades through reliance on a single weapon. His fingers closed around familiar yew wood, thirteen and a half inches, phoenix feather core.
His *first* wand. The one that had chosen him in Ollivanders so many years ago. The brother to Harry Potter's own wand—or what had been Harry Potter's wand, before the boy had become something else entirely.
"You think you've won," Voldemort hissed, and his voice carried the venom of a man watching his certainty crumble. "You think this changes anything?"
Harry's helmet tilted slightly, the golden lenses flickering with crimson fire beneath. "I think you're about to find out what seven Horcruxes cost you, Tom."
"I am *immortal*—"
"You're *slow*."
Voldemort raised the yew wand, and decades of magical mastery poured into the spell. "AVADA KEDAVRA!"
The killing curse erupted from the wand tip—sickly green light that had ended hundreds of lives, that carried the weight of absolute magical law. Nothing could block it. Nothing could stop it. The unforgivable curse that made the caster a murderer and the target a corpse.
Harry *side-stepped*.
Not a dive. Not a desperate leap. He simply moved three feet to the left, and from everyone else's perspective, he did it faster than the spell could travel. The green bolt passed through empty air, missing by inches, and Harry was already moving again.
Voldemort's eyes widened. He spun, tracking—but Harry was already *there*, then *there*, then *there*, a blur of crimson and gold that left afterimages burned into the retinas of anyone watching.
"AVADA KEDAVRA! AVADA KED—"
Harry was behind him.
The Dark Lord whirled, robes billowing, wand coming up—
"CRUCIO!"
The torture curse lanced out, red light that promised agony beyond description. It had broken minds and shattered souls. It had reduced strong wizards to gibbering wrecks.
It hit empty air.
Harry stood five feet away, having moved so fast the curse passed through his afterimage. The armor pulsed with power, lightning crackling across every surface.
"Is that all?" Harry's voice carried something that wasn't quite mockery—more like profound disappointment. "Seventy years of immortality, Tom, and you learned two spells."
"I know THOUSANDS—"
"But you only *use* two." Harry moved forward, and this time he didn't stop. "Kill or torture. That's all you are. All you've ever been."
Voldemort backpedaled, firing curses in rapid succession. Killing curse, torture curse, killing curse, curse curse curse—green and red light filled the clearing in a deadly light show. The other Death Eaters dove for cover as spells meant for Harry carved through the space where they'd been standing.
Harry walked through it all.
Not dodging now—*phasing*. The Cloak's essence, transformed and amplified, let him vibrate his molecules at frequencies that meant the curses passed through him like light through glass. Each spell hit his armor and simply... *missed*, existing in the wrong layer of reality to make contact.
"Impossible," Voldemort gasped. "IMPOSSIBLE!"
Harry reached him in a single burst of speed.
His armored fist—crimson plates edged in gold, crackling with both colors of lightning—pulled back. For a fraction of a second, Harry existed in that accelerated perception again, watching Voldemort's face begin to register what was about to happen.
*Sometimes*, Harry thought, *sometimes punching is enough.*
He let the Speed Force flow through the strike.
---
**BOOM.**
The sound of Harry's fist hitting Voldemort's face was a thunderclap. Not metaphorically—the displacement of air created an actual sonic boom that shattered what remained of the clearing's calm. Trees bent away from the shockwave. Leaves stripped from branches. The Death Eaters who'd been trying to crawl away were thrown flat by the pressure wave.
Voldemort's head snapped back with the impact, his serpentine features distorting from the kinetic energy. Harry had pulled the punch—had calculated exactly how much force a body could take without disintegrating—but it was still like being hit by a freight train wrapped in lightning.
The Dark Lord left the ground, his body beginning a slow tumble through the air.
Harry was already moving again.
He caught Voldemort mid-flight—grabbed the front of his robes—and *dragged* him back down. The Dark Lord's face was just starting to register pain when Harry's other fist came around in an uppercut that lifted him off his feet again.
*CRACK.*
This time Harry stayed with him, rising into the air for just a moment before delivering a spinning kick that sent Voldemort hurtling toward a massive oak tree.
The Dark Lord's back hit the trunk with force that cracked the ancient wood. Bark exploded outward. The tree shook from roots to crown.
Voldemort slid down, leaving a crater in the wood, and Harry was *there* before he could fall, another punch already incoming—
*Right cross. Left jab. Uppercut. Each blow faster than the last, each one calculated to maximum impact without killing. Because Harry wasn't Tom Riddle. Harry didn't kill when he didn't have to.*
*But sometimes—sometimes people needed to understand what consequences felt like.*
The armor sang with each impact, servos whining as they amplified already superhuman speed into something that bent physics. Crimson and gold lightning erupted from each point of contact, creating a strobing effect that made it look like Harry was in twelve places at once.
Voldemort tried to bring his wand up—
Harry's hand *blurred*, faster than thought, and plucked the yew wand from Voldemort's grip. The Dark Lord's fingers closed on empty air.
"No," Voldemort whispered.
Harry held the wand up between them, examining it with those glowing golden lenses. The brother to his own first wand. The weapon that had killed his parents.
He snapped it between his fingers like a matchstick.
"*NO!*"
Harry's next punch sent Voldemort crashing through the oak tree entirely. The ancient trunk split with a groan of tortured wood, the upper half beginning its slow topple to the forest floor.
The Dark Lord tumbled through the splinters and emerged on the other side, his face—that inhuman, snake-like face—finally showing something other than arrogance.
*Fear.*
Harry walked through the collapsing tree, the falling wood parting around him as he vibrated just enough to let it phase through. He emerged from the destruction like a vengeful spirit, armor blazing.
"Seven Horcruxes," Harry said, his voice carrying across the suddenly silent forest. "Seven pieces of your soul. And what did it buy you, Tom? What did it *cost* you?"
He was in front of Voldemort again, moving too fast to track.
"You can't feel love." *Punch.* "Can't feel joy." *Punch.* "Can't feel *anything* except hate and fear and the certainty that you're special." *PUNCH.*
Each word punctuated with devastating impact. Each strike precisely calculated—enough force to hurt, to damage, to *teach*, but not to kill. The armor did the math automatically, adjusting for Voldemort's inhuman durability, for the dark magic that sustained his broken form.
"You made yourself immortal," Harry continued, catching Voldemort by the throat and lifting him one-handed. The Dark Lord's feet dangled above the ground, his red eyes bulging. "But you forgot to make yourself *fast*."
He threw Voldemort—not at superspeed, just hard enough to send the Dark Lord tumbling across the clearing like a broken doll.
"You forgot to make yourself *strong*."
Harry was there when Voldemort landed, catching him, lifting him, throwing him again in a different direction.
"You forgot that immortality means *nothing*—"
*Catch. Lift. Throw.*
"—if you're too slow to use it."
Voldemort hit the ground for the final time and didn't get up. He lay there, gasping, his robes torn and scorched, his wand hand empty, his face—that horrible snake face—showing something wizards hadn't seen in decades.
*Defeat.*
Harry stood over him, the armor's glow softening slightly. Lightning still crackled across the plates, but the violence had drained from it. Now it was just power, waiting.
"It's over, Tom."
"No," Voldemort gasped. "No, I am Lord—"
"*NAGINI!*"
---
The serpent erupted from the underbrush like a missile of scales and venom.
Twelve feet of pure magical monstrosity, moving with preternatural speed, jaws unhinging to reveal fangs that dripped with poison. Nagini—Voldemort's last Horcrux, his final tether to immortality, his most loyal companion.
The snake moved faster than any mundane creature had right to—augmented by dark magic, by the fragment of Voldemort's soul coiled in her belly, by rage at seeing her master broken.
Most people would have died.
Most speedsters would have dodged.
Harry Potter, Master of Death, did something else.
He raised his right hand, and crimson lightning answered.
Not gold. Not the Speed Force's kinetic energy. This was something darker, something that came from the Hallows merged into his core. This was the lightning of endings, of mortality made manifest, of death given form and velocity.
The crimson bolt erupted from Harry's palm like a spear of pure annihilation.
It hit Nagini mid-lunge, and the effect was *surgical*. The Speed Force guided it with mathematical precision, the Hallows' power gave it substance, and Harry's will directed it with the certainty of someone who'd looked death in the face and walked away wearing its power.
The lightning didn't burn the snake. Didn't cook her from inside. Didn't blast her apart.
It simply *unmade* the connection.
The Horcrux died first—that fragment of Voldemort's soul that had been festering in the serpent's core. The crimson lightning found it, isolated it, and *severed* it from existence with the authority of Death itself. The soul fragment had no time to scream, no opportunity to flee. It was there, and then it *wasn't*, excised from reality as cleanly as a surgeon's knife.
Then the lightning continued through, and Nagini's massive body split lengthwise.
Not explosively. Not violently. The crimson energy simply parted the snake like someone unzipping a jacket. Scales. Muscle. Bone. All dividing along a perfectly straight line as the lightning traced its path from head to tail.
The two halves of the serpent fell away from each other, already dead before they hit the ground.
The Horcrux fragment materialized for just a moment—a screaming, malformed thing, barely recognizable as part of a soul—before the crimson lightning consumed it entirely. It burned away like morning mist under the sun, leaving nothing behind.
Not even ash.
Harry lowered his hand, watching the electricity fade back into his armor. The crimson light pulsed once—satisfaction, perhaps, or acknowledgment—then settled back into its eternal dance with the gold.
Behind him, Voldemort made a sound that wasn't quite human. A keening wail of loss and rage and *terror*.
"That was your last one," Harry said quietly, not turning around. "Seven Horcruxes. Seven fragments. All gone now. The diary, the ring, the locket, the cup, the diadem, me, and now Nagini."
He turned, and the glow of his lenses seemed to pierce straight through Voldemort's defenses.
"You're mortal again, Tom. For the first time in decades, you can actually *die*. How does it feel?"
Voldemort tried to rise, tried to speak, tried to summon any scrap of the power that had made him the most feared wizard in a century.
Nothing came.
He slumped back, defeated, mortal, and alone.
And somewhere in the forest, something else arrived.
---
**Barry Allen - Approaching the Forbidden Forest**
Running across the Atlantic Ocean at several times the speed of sound was not new to Barry Allen.
What was new was the urgency driving him.
The Speed Force had been *singing* since that surge of power—a harmony he'd never felt before. Two energies, gold and crimson, spiraling together in patterns that shouldn't exist. A new speedster, yes, but also something that predated speedsters entirely. Ancient power merged with the eternal force of motion.
*Death*, the Speed Force had whispered to him, and Barry had nearly stumbled mid-stride. *Death has touched me, Barry. Not to end, but to begin. Two champions now. Two kinds of velocity.*
He'd left Central City without explanation, without hesitation. Just *ran*, following the connection that pulled him east across the ocean, across Europe, toward a country whose magical community had just felt reality bend around one of their own.
Scotland came into view. The Speed Force guided him toward a forest that registered as a void in his senses—magic, apparently, interfered with speedster perception. But he could feel the *echo* of what had happened there. Could sense the massive discharge of kinetic energy that had erupted not five minutes ago.
Barry slowed as he hit the treeline, dropping from supersonic speeds to merely faster than normal human reaction. The forest was ancient, oppressive, and there was something in the air that made his connection to the Speed Force flicker slightly.
*Magic*, he realized. *Real magic. The kind that doesn't exist in Central City.*
He pressed forward, following the trail of disturbed air and residual energy. Whoever this new speedster was, they'd cut loose here. The trees showed signs of impact—shattered trunks, scorched bark, blast patterns that suggested sonic booms and displaced air at extreme velocities.
And then he heard it: voices. One modulated, mechanical, carrying harmonics that made Barry's teeth ache. The other... older. Broken. Defeated.
Barry emerged into a clearing that looked like a war zone.
Unconscious people in dark robes scattered across the ground. A massive oak tree split clean in half. Scorch marks and impact craters everywhere. And in the center—
*Oh.*
A figure in armor.
Not like Barry's suit, which was form-fitting and aerodynamic. This was *battle armor*—layered plates of deep crimson and black, all outlined in brilliant gold. It covered the person completely, from the sleek helmet with its swept-back lightning-bolt crests to the reinforced boots. The entire suit pulsed with energy—and Barry could see it clearly now, the thing that had made the Speed Force sing.
Golden lightning, standard for speedsters. But *woven through it*, inseparable, were tendrils of crimson electricity that crackled with power that tasted of endings and mortality and something so ancient it made Barry's millennia-old connection to the Speed Force feel young.
The armored figure stood over a man who looked... *wrong*. Pale skin, snake-like features, red eyes that burned with hate even in defeat. Barry's speedster instincts screamed *danger*, but the man was clearly beaten. Broken. Mortal.
And then the armored figure turned.
Golden lenses locked onto Barry, and for a moment, the Flash of Central City felt what it was like to be *measured* by something that existed partially outside normal time.
"Flash," the modulated voice said. Not a question. A statement.
Barry raised his hands, trying to look non-threatening. "Hi. Yeah. I'm—you felt it, right? When you connected to the Speed Force?"
The armored head tilted. "You felt it too."
"Kind of hard to miss. It was like..." Barry struggled for words. "Like a star being born in there. But also—there's something else. Something that's not the Speed Force at all."
"Death," the armored figure said simply. Lightning—both colors—arced between the plates. "I'm also Death's champion."
"That's... not how speedsters usually work."
"I'm not a usual speedster."
Barry took a step forward, hands still raised. "Look, I'm not here to fight. I just wanted to—the Speed Force has never done anything like this before. Creating armor, merging with other power sources. I needed to know if you were..." He trailed off, unsure how to finish.
"If I was good or evil?" The helmet turned slightly, looking down at the defeated man. "I'm just trying to finish what I started. Stopping someone who's been murdering people for seventy years."
Barry's eyes went to the figure on the ground. To the unconscious people in dark robes. "Who *is* this?"
"Someone who thought immortality meant invincibility." The armored figure paused. "His name is Tom Riddle. But most people called him Voldemort."
The name meant nothing to Barry—but the *weight* behind it, the history, the fear that even now clung to the syllables? That meant everything.
"And you?"
The helmet turned back to him. For a long moment, the two champions of speed—one gold, one crimson-and-gold—regarded each other across the clearing.
Then, slowly, the helmet began to retract.
It didn't unfold or slide back. It simply *dissolved*, the material flowing back into the armor's collar like liquid metal, revealing the face beneath.
A young man. Maybe nineteen, maybe twenty. Messy black hair. Bright green eyes behind round glasses. A lightning-bolt scar on his forehead that glowed faintly with the same crimson-and-gold energy that pulsed through his armor.
He looked exhausted. He looked determined. He looked *human*, despite everything.
"Harry," he said simply. "Harry Potter."
Barry stared. Processed. Tried to reconcile the name—so normal, so *ordinary*—with what he was seeing. With the armor that radiated enough power to rival anything Barry had ever encountered. With the Speed Force signature that sang with impossible harmonics.
"What happened to you?" Barry asked quietly.
Harry Potter looked down at his armored hands. At the symbol glowing on his chest—some kind of triangle with a circle and line, pulsing with merged energy.
"I died," Harry said. "And the Speed Force decided that wasn't good enough."
---
**The Space Between Spaces**
In a dimension that existed perpendicular to all others, two entities watched.
The Speed Force had taken form here—female and lightning, gold and kinetic and *alive*. She observed her new champion with something like pride, watching as he explained to her oldest champion the impossible circumstances of his transformation.
Beside her, another presence coalesced.
Where the Speed Force was motion and energy, this one was *stillness*. Not absence—something more fundamental. The final moment of rest that came to all things. The ending written into the universe's source code.
Death.
She (for she chose to be she, here and now) was neither skeleton nor shadow. She was simply *inevitable*. Her form suggested a woman in black robes, but looking too closely revealed that she wasn't really there at all—just the space where things stopped being.
"He's magnificent," the Speed Force said, her voice crackling with enthusiasm. "Did you see how he adapted? Three minutes as a speedster and he's already calculating trajectories I didn't teach him."
Death's voice was the absence of sound, the moment between heartbeats. "He walked to his death with open eyes. No hesitation. No bargaining. Just acceptance." A pause that might have been a smile. "He was already my champion before you claimed him, old friend."
"Then we share him." The Speed Force turned to face Death directly, and where their essences met, reality bent in fascinating ways. "Two aspects. Two powers. Both flowing through one vessel."
"You merged with the Hallows," Death observed. "My greatest failure and my most interesting success, all bound together. The artifacts I commissioned to help mortals accept their ending, transformed into instruments of motion itself."
"They were always meant to come together." The Speed Force gestured, and a vision appeared between them—the Hallows dissolving, their crimson essence spiraling with her golden lightning. "Three gifts to master death, but their *true* purpose? To create something that exists beyond mortality's reach while still understanding its weight."
"Mors Velocitas," Death murmured, and the words resonated across dimensions. "Death Speed. The one who runs so fast he outraces endings, yet carries the weight of every ending in his wake."
Below them—in every sense that mattered—Harry Potter was explaining to Barry Allen about Horcruxes and prophecies and walking to his own execution. The Flash of Central City listened with growing horror and fascination, his speedster mind processing implications at superspeed.
"He will never be as fast as your Barry Allen," Death said. "Not in pure velocity. The crimson energy I provide is not about motion—it's about *endings*."
"But he'll have something Barry doesn't." The Speed Force's enthusiasm built. "My Barry can run through time, can phase through matter, can perform miracles of speed. But your Harry? Harry can *kill* at superspeed. Can deliver endings with precision that would make a surgeon weep. Can see the future because he carries the Stone's power, can phase through dimensions because he carries the Cloak's essence, and can strike with the Elder Wand's absolute authority."
"The perfect balance of our aspects," Death agreed. "Motion and ending, combined."
They watched as Harry demonstrated his crimson lightning to Barry—conjuring it carefully, letting the red energy dance across his palm while explaining how it felt different from the gold. How it tasted of sacrifice and acceptance and the quiet relief that comes when suffering finally stops.
"He will need training," the Speed Force said. "My Barry can teach him the basics, but we'll need to guide him ourselves. The balance of our powers is delicate."
"Agreed." Death's presence solidified slightly, taking on more definition. "And we'll need to name him properly. Champions deserve titles."
"I was thinking 'Crimson Flash,'" the Speed Force offered.
"*Mors Velocitas*," Death countered firmly. "Death Speed. Let reality know what he carries. Let his enemies understand that he brings endings at the speed of lightning itself."
The Speed Force considered this, running through a million permutations in the span between moments. Then she nodded, and the gesture sent ripples through dimensions.
"*Mors Velocitas*," she agreed. "Death Speed. The champion who walks the line between our realms, who carries velocity and finality in equal measure."
Together, they reached out across the barriers between spaces, and their combined will touched Harry Potter's mind like a whisper of thunder and silence:
***MORS VELOCITAS***
***DEATH SPEED***
***CHAMPION OF MOTION AND ENDING***
***RUN, HARRY POTTER***
***RUN AND SHOW THE MULTIVERSE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN DEATH LEARNS TO MOVE FASTER THAN LIFE***
---
**The Forbidden Forest - Moments Later**
Harry gasped as the names burned themselves into his consciousness.
Not painfully—it was more like suddenly *remembering* something he'd always known. Like finding a word on the tip of his tongue that perfectly captured everything he was trying to express.
*Mors Velocitas.*
Death Speed.
The armor blazed with the recognition, crimson and gold spiraling together in a pattern that finally settled into something stable. The lightning that had been erupting wildly from every seam now flowed in controlled streams, dancing across the plates with purpose rather than chaos.
The symbol on his chest—the transformed Hallows—pulsed once, twice, three times, and then locked into a steady rhythm that matched his heartbeat.
Barry Allen took a step back, his eyes wide. "What... what just happened? The Speed Force just—it *spoke* to you. I felt it. But there was something else, something that's not the Speed Force at all—"
"Death," Harry said quietly, looking at his hands as the crimson lightning settled into familiar patterns. "She named me too."
"*She?*"
"Death is a she. Or at least, the part of her that matters is." Harry looked up, meeting Barry's eyes. "I'm not just a speedster, Barry. I'm something else. Something that shouldn't exist but does anyway."
He gestured to the unconscious Death Eaters, to the defeated Voldemort, to the split corpse of Nagini still steaming on the forest floor.
"I'm what happens when someone accepts death completely—and then decides to come back anyway."
Barry processed this at superspeed, his mind running through implications. "So you're—you can do everything I can do?"
"I don't know." Harry looked at his armor, at the way the two colors of lightning played across the surface. "I can run. I can phase. I can see time differently. But the crimson lightning—that's something else. That's endings. That's the power to *stop* things, not just move fast through them."
He held up his hand, and a small bolt of red electricity danced across his palm.
"This killed a fragment of a soul," Harry said softly. "Cut it out of existence so cleanly there wasn't even ash left behind. That's not speed, Barry. That's *death*, moving at the speed of lightning."
The Flash of Central City stared at the red electricity, and for the first time in years, felt genuinely unsettled by another speedster's power.
"We need to talk," Barry said finally. "There's—there's a lot I need to teach you. About the Speed Force, about what you can do, about the *rules*—"
"Later." Harry's helmet materialized again, flowing up from his collar to cover his face. The golden lenses blazed to life. "Right now, I have to finish this."
He turned back to Voldemort, who'd been listening to everything with growing horror.
"No," the Dark Lord whispered. "No, you can't—I am immortal, I am—"
"You're mortal now," Harry interrupted, his modulated voice carrying finality. "Completely, utterly mortal. And you're going to answer for everything you've done."
He looked up at Barry. "In my world, we have a prison. Azkaban. It's guarded by creatures called Dementors—things that feed on happiness, that drain hope and joy until there's nothing left but despair."
Barry's expression darkened. "That sounds—"
"Horrible? It is." Harry's armor pulsed. "But for him? For someone who's spent seventy years murdering, torturing, and terrorizing anyone who stood against him? I think it's exactly appropriate."
He knelt beside Voldemort, one armored hand gripping the Dark Lord's robes.
"You wanted to live forever, Tom. Congratulations. You get to spend eternity in a cell, with nothing but your broken soul and the memory of everyone you killed for company."
Voldemort's red eyes widened in absolute terror. "No. NO. *Kill me*. Kill me now, I won't—I *refuse*—"
"You don't get to refuse anymore."
Harry stood, lifting Voldemort with one hand. The Dark Lord dangled there, too weak to struggle, too broken to resist.
"Barry," Harry said, not looking away from his defeated enemy, "I need to take him to the authorities. My world's authorities. Can you—will you wait here? I'll be back in a few minutes, and then... then we can talk about what comes next."
Barry hesitated, looking at the scene around them. The unconscious Death Eaters. The shattered trees. The body of a twelve-foot magical serpent split cleanly in two.
"Yeah," he said finally. "I'll wait. But Harry—"
The helmet turned toward him.
"—we have a lot to talk about. About responsibility. About what this power means. About—"
"About not killing people," Harry finished quietly. "About being better than the monsters we fight. About *choosing* to be a hero even when being a villain would be easier."
He paused, and Barry could hear the weight in his voice even through the modulation.
"I know, Barry. I've spent my entire life learning those lessons." The crimson and gold lightning pulsed across his armor. "I'm not Tom Riddle. I'm not going to let this power turn me into something I'm not."
"Then we'll get along fine." Barry smiled slightly. "Go. Do what you need to do. I'll be here when you get back."
"Thank you."
And then—
*CRACK*.
Harry vanished in a burst of crimson-and-gold lightning, taking Voldemort with him.
Barry Allen stood alone in the Forbidden Forest, surrounded by unconscious dark wizards and the evidence of a power that shouldn't exist.
He looked up at the sky, feeling the Speed Force humming contentedly in the back of his mind.
"Death Speed," he murmured. "Mors Velocitas."
The lightning scar on Harry's forehead—he'd seen it glowing with that same merged energy. A brand that declared the boy had been marked by death and had come back wearing its power as armor.
Barry had mentored young speedsters before. Wally. Bart. Others who'd found the Speed Force and needed guidance.
But this?
This was going to be different.
---
Daphne Greengrass had never been the type to panic.
Even now, with the Hospital Wing transformed into organized chaos—students on every bed, overflow cots lining the walls, the air thick with the smell of healing potions and Madam Pomfrey's increasingly frantic instructions—she maintained her composure.
"Miss Greengrass, the essence of dittany, if you please!"
Daphne's hands moved with practiced efficiency, passing the requested bottle to the matron. She'd been at this for hours now, ever since the battle had spilled through Hogwarts' corridors. Tending wounds. Administering draughts. Keeping pressure on bleeding injuries until Madam Pomfrey could get to them.
The Slytherin prefect had surprised herself with how steady her hands remained.
She was repositioning a cooling charm on a third-year Hufflepuff's burns when the world outside the window turned crimson and gold.
Daphne's head snapped up, her breath catching.
A *streak* of lightning—no, not lightning, something more solid, more *real*—blazed across the castle grounds. It moved faster than her eyes could follow, leaving a trail of brilliant color that hung in the air for a heartbeat before fading. Deep crimson red interwoven with radiant gold, the two colors spiraling around each other like a double helix of pure energy.
The sound hit a second later: a sharp *CRACK* that rattled the Hospital Wing's ancient windows.
"What in Merlin's name—" Madam Pomfrey began.
But Daphne was already at the window, pressing her face close to the glass.
The streak had vanished—moved beyond sight in less than a second—but she could still see the evidence of its passage. Leaves swirling in its wake. A ripple in the air itself, like heat shimmer on a summer day, tracing the path it had taken toward the castle's main entrance.
"Did you see that?" a voice asked beside her.
Daphne glanced over. Susan Bones, one arm in a sling, had joined her at the window.
"I saw... something," Daphne said carefully. Her analytical mind was already processing what she'd witnessed. "Moving incredibly fast. Red and gold."
"Potter's colors," Susan whispered. "Gryffindor colors."
Daphne's breath caught. Harry Potter had been *dead*—or as good as. They'd all heard the rumors spreading through the castle. He'd walked into the Forbidden Forest to face You-Know-Who. To sacrifice himself.
But that lightning—
"Is he alive?" Susan's voice carried desperate hope. "Could that have been—"
"I don't know," Daphne admitted. But her pulse quickened as she stared at where the streak had vanished into the castle. "But I've never seen magic that moved like that. That *looked* like that."
The crimson and gold still burned in her mind's eye—not the simple red and gold of house colors, but something deeper. Crimson like spilled blood made beautiful. Gold like captured lightning. Two impossible energies merged into something that defied every law of magic she'd been taught.
Whatever had just entered Hogwarts, it wasn't just Harry Potter anymore.
It was something new.
Something *fast*.
Daphne's hand pressed against the cold glass, and she found herself hoping—against all Slytherin pragmatism, against all sense—that the boy who'd walked toward death with open eyes had somehow found a way to run back.
---
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