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.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
21 June 1995, Nurmengard
It was the first true idea he had had since Dumbledore arrived, beyond fighting for as long as possible while hoping for the best. Now, things were different. Harry Potter had a plan, and well, that rarely tended to bode well for his enemies.
Harry watched as the spiral of ordered destruction flew towards him, and despite the stakes of his fight, despite the danger the attack posed, he had to admit that it was a very impressive piece of magic. Or could it even be called magic anymore? It was more like a combined dimensional attack, essentially a fragment of the Light's and the Dark's might themselves, something that no one, not even previous champions, had done before.
Yet, despite the intensity of the attack, Harry had to admit that the combination of two completely opposing forces into something greater was inspired. The Light and Dark had been enemies for eons, and their energies reflected that, but for that energy to use this hatred to enhance the potency of the attack, was beyond impressive, but it also provided an opportunity.
He was tempted to use his invisibility cloak and phase through it, but his crest warmed up, telling him that taking this attack head-on was probably a bad idea, and instead he did something slightly reckless. With a swipe of his scythe, he opened a breach to the void between worlds and let the chaos through it.
The spiral of ordered destruction met pure chaos, and the world held its breath. The Light gave order to chaos, and the Dark slowly consumed it, as it inched closer and closer towards the source of the breach, closing it. Yet, this gave Harry time to prepare for his second part of the attack, creating a pulse of space-time that spread rainbow fractals as it traversed the battlefield. The pulse destabilised the incoming spell, not by fighting it head-to-head, but by using the very small amount of lingering chaos to make it so the energies of the Light and Dark essentially forget their collaboration. After all, it was their nature to fight one another.
Just like that, the spell attacked itself, collapsing into a concentration of magic that warped everything around it, ending in an explosion that disintegrated everything it touched, either through the Dark's destruction or the Light's sheer stillness.
And wasn't that a good metaphor for the Light and the Dark's alliance? It was powerful yet would turn on one another with just the right bit of chaos, which Harry was planning on fully taking advantage of.
The young mage stood there, his cloak waving from the wind of the explosion, looking back at Grindelwald and Dumbledore, who were completely still, likely not having expected Harry to survive the attack.
Of course, it didn't take long until they followed up on their own attacks. His arcane hearing warned him that someone would attack him from the back, and he dodged the slices of shadows coming his way, followed by the spikes of Light ahead. He warped space around him, as a blade of Darkness almost skewered him, only for it to hit Dumbledore instead.
The Champion of the Light glared and released a burning attack with his eyes, which Harry redirected by opening a small portal in front of him, making it disintegrate Grindelwald's torso. As expected, the Dark Lord regenerated without any issues, and Harry released a pulse of space to send them flying back. He conjured a magic circle beneath his feet, sending him flying up, before turning into a raven and landing in a safer place.
Expecting that they'd attack him, Harry opened a portal to the bottom of the ocean near Antarctica, letting jets of freezing cold come at blinding speeds, due to the extremely high pressure. His two enemies barely had time to dodge the attack, conjuring shields that redirected the incoming jets.
Harry froze them with a pulse of magic, sucking up their heat, which he used to power a small running array that made the newly frozen water morph into blades and start attacking them. However, in a pulse of Light, the portal shut down, the ice melted completely, and it was time for Harry to be on the defensive.
Grindelwald created chains of destruction that tried to bind Harry, who used his invisibility cloak to phase through them. He used his scythe to cut through them with a single slice, having warped space to make it hit all of them, but he grabbed the remnants of the Dark energy with the tip of his weapon and used it to create a fractal cutter at Dumbledore, who blocked it with his spear. However, when it was blocked, it resulted in an explosion of the absorbed Dark energy, sending him flying back.
That left Harry to deal with the furious Grindelwald, who growled in anger and started to swallow the shadows all over the battlefield, growing into a gigantic black dragon with glowing red eyes.
Harry rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, and leapt back just in time to avoid a wingbeat that shattered the earth beneath him. Harry saw the Grindelwald's form drag tendrils of Darkness like oil across the water with his every movement, corroding anything it touched.
The young mage prepared to set up an attack, a way to destabilise Grindelwald's new form, only for him to dodge a spear of Light coming at him from Dumbledore, who had recovered from Harry's attack. The Champion of Light raised his hand, and a halo of spears, dozens of them, all miniature replicas of his own, manifested in a perfect circle behind him. A single gesture sent them flying, piercing the air in coordinated formation.
Harry used his invisibility cloak to phase through the barrage, and grabbed the last spear with his scythe, sending it flying with a pulse of space, enhanced with just a bit of power from the resurrection stone towards the Dark Dragon's opening maw, right as he was about to release the black entropic fire he'd been gathering for the previous few seconds. The spear exploded, its Light fighting off Grindelwald's Darkness, and yet, Harry didn't have time to celebrate, as he ducked under Dumbledore's thrusting spear, which had cut his calves, its soul magic draining him once more. Damn it, he couldn't risk being hit with that thing again.
Harry conjured a wall of black ice that Dumbledore just destroyed with a casual flick of his hand, only for the ice to freeze in mid-air during the explosion, where chunks of ice, a few as large as a fist, and other practically microscopic, stayed there frozen in time, enhanced by the resurrection stone.
Dumbledore gasped as he mistakenly got through him, and dozens of cuts started to form on his body, including one extremely close to his eyes. Harry, though, used the invisibility cloak to phase through them and attacked Dumbledore with his scythe. The former headmaster dodged out of the way but ended up getting a deep cut in his chest, instead of a killing blow, and yet, while he moved, he ended up getting cut from dozens of small ice shards.
He growled and released a pulse of Light, overwhelming the enchanted ice and disintegrating it, and Harry used this time to conjure runes, in conjunction with Solomon's magic, to discreetly absorb as much of this energy as possible.
Right as he was about to renew his attack once more, he noticed Grindelwald's dragon form getting out of the shadows next to him, hoping to trap him in the maws, only for Harry to use the stored Light released, and turn it into a beam of Light that attacked him right as he neared. Light and Dark met violently, and it was explosive.
Harry hadn't expected the detonation. He thought the attack would stagger Grindelwald, maybe injure him enough to force a reversion from his draconic form. What he didn't expect was the resulting shockwave to ripple like a giant exploding charm, tearing apart the immediate space around them.
The force struck him before he could react.
What the hell had Dumbledore put in that attack for it to react like that?
He didn't have time to contemplate as the blast sent him hurtling backwards like a ragdoll, crashing through conjured walls, broken earth, and warped stone. He finally stopped against a cracked stone, the air knocked from his lungs, blood pooling in his mouth.
Grindelwald, for all his size, had been thrown even farther, his draconic form smashing through the distant mountain ridge in a cloud of shadow and fury.
Harry groaned, dragging himself upright with his scythe, vision swimming. "Okay," he muttered, "I'll admit… that one's on me."
He limped slightly, doing his best to ignore the pain. At a reflex, more than anything, he sang a soft tune, and a small world appeared around him for just a moment. For a fraction of a second, he was surrounded by an endless field of greenery, and soft wind flowing around him, he barely noticed that his wounds started to close and that he wasn't limping anymore.
And just like that, he stopped singing, and the small reality marble faded away, and instead gave way to the sad sight of Albus Dumbledore looking at him impassively, "You cannot defeat us, Anathema. You must have realised that you'll run out of tricks eventually, and all it would take is a single mistake. You cannot win."
Harry shook his head, releasing a small chuckle, which morphed into hysterical laughter, "You got it all wrong. Winning, that's what you think this is about? I don't want to win. Believe me, I loathe you with every fibre of my body, but I haven't done any of this because I want to beat you or hurt you. I'm fighting you, right now, because it's the right thing to do, because what you're doing, what you're planning is just that abominable."
"This is the only path for humanity's survival," Dumbledore growled back.
The young mage, on the other hand, groaned, "That's the thing. It isn't. And you can't see that because that entity whispering in your ears desperately wants Ragnarök to happen. But I know how futile it is to argue with you on the matter, so I won't. I know that fighting both of you will likely not end in my favour. You both regenerate at blinding speeds, and your patrons are giving you more power than you know what to do with, bailing you out whenever you get close to losing. So, yeah, maybe it's all useless, but it's the best I can do, and I will keep doing it until it kills me."
"You're prepared to die for no reason."
Harry grinned, "Not for no reason. It's who I am, and if this is where I fall, then so be it."
"Then you will fall," the former headmaster uttered neutrally, raising his spear of Light.
Alright, he bought enough time to get things started a bit with his little speech, and now it was time to follow through. He had bought enough time, and he could tell that his final plan was almost ready to flourish.
Dumbledore was ready to attack, and Harry sang. The world turned into fractals, essentially, and Harry saw through three versions of himself at once. It was nothing he'd ever done before, but he had essentially superimposed reality into three different timelines at once, each one being autonomous. Each one of his versions swung the scythe differently. Dumbledore was able to block one of them with his spear, but two got through, cutting through his chest easily.
He was about to press further on the attack before the Light healed him, only to be attacked by Grindelwald's gigantic form, and he did the stupid thing, of running at Dumbledore, phasing through the incoming thrust, and through the man in general, and used his scythe, combined with space warping, to take the man's army, and get the spear to hit the gigantic dragon in the head. It absorbed some magic from Grindelwald's form, and even a few from the ritual.
Harry suppressed a grin and, with a small sweep of his scythe, got Dumbledore's spear to hit the ground in the exact space he'd been conjuring a small runic array using Solomon's magic, specifically, one that he used to freeze time in a certain location, with himself being exempted.
Harry was about to follow up with an attack, only for a gigantic black arm to appear from one of the shadows, grab him, and slam him into the ground. Harry was barely able to phase through before the impact and turned into his raven form, escaping.
However, right as he was about to leave, everything turned grey. Their surroundings, while destroyed and in a sorry state, still had a hint of nature. Now, something seemed to envelop the entire area, and there was absolute silence.
Not the silence of anticipation, nor the silence of a battlefield stilled, this was deeper. Harry's breath caught in his throat as pressure settled onto his shoulders.
Suddenly, the world was divided, not through distance but essence. To his left, Light. Unbending, blinding, a realm forged in rules and absolute order. The sky there gleamed white, no clouds, no sun, just presence. The ground was smooth and unmarred, a polished marble of certainty, where every breath felt judged.
To his right, Darkness. Not mere shadow, but the absence of anything comprehensible. The landscape devoured meaning, with angles that bent wrong and skies that wept ash. It was entropy made manifest.
Harry quickly realised what it was. After all, it was his speciality. Somehow, Dumbledore and Grindelwald worked together to impose their will on reality, essentially warping it into a mixture of the manifestation between the Light and Dark.
And in a matter of seconds, each one of them conjured an immense beam of Light and Dark and sent it flying towards Harry. He couldn't phase through the attacks. It would exhaust him far quicker, given that he'd not only need to use the cloak but also overcome the rules that Dumbledore and Grindelwald imposed on reality.
Seeing no other way, Harry used his scythe and created a subspace to block the attack, only for it to be torn through in seconds. Yet, it was these seconds that gave Harry time to sing. A small realm appeared in front of him like a dome, which alleviated the imposing feeling he had. It blocked both attacks, but it was obviously fracturing.
And so, he layered another realm beneath it, and then another. Each one was different. A realm of stone and flame. A realm of storm and song. A realm of silence where sound couldn't exist. Dozens of them, stacked like plates of glass, each bending the attacks ever so slightly, each fragmenting the overwhelming pressure just enough for him to survive.
But survival came at a price.
Each realm, when shattered, didn't simply vanish; it collapsed inward, and the backlash slammed into Harry like a freight train of raw metaphysical force. He stumbled with every destruction, his lungs burning, ribs cracking, magic circuits screaming. His vision blurred, and his hands trembled. Still, he endured. He bit down on the pain, forcing himself to stay upright, forcing his hand to tighten around the scythe's haft.
Because he wasn't wasting that energy. No. He was storing it.
The scythe drank deep from the destruction, its fractal edge pulsing, shimmering with wild light and void-touched shadow. He screamed as the last realm shattered, the sound raw, primal, part agony, part defiance.
And then, with one final breath, he swung.
The scythe cut the imposed realm like a scalpel through rotting flesh. It didn't slice terrain, it sliced meaning. The entire constructed space fractured, breaking into cascading shards of logic, colour, rule, and reality. Fractals exploded outwards, blooming like broken glass reflecting a thousand worlds, and then it detonated.
And Harry stood at the centre of it all, his body barely able to hold on, using his scythe to keep himself up at best, and yet, the world was back to normal.
He suppressed the urge to groan when Dumbledore and Grindelwald appeared, moments later, looking relatively unharmed. It seemed he couldn't delay it as much as possible. He to activate his plan right away.
Grindelwald gave him a vicious look and grinned, "You should have accepted my deal, boy."
Suddenly, Dumbledore thrust his spear into Harry's chest, and the young mage didn't have time to move away, his body slowly being consumed by Light before turning into ash. Or at least, it would have, if Harry hadn't used his remaining magic, which he'd been readying since the fight began, creating a temporal clone of himself, essentially a puppet he commanded in the last moment, while he hid using his invisibility cloak.
It could have been detected if his opponents were specifically listening for temporal anomalies, but Harry's last attack meant that there were a lot of them happening anyway. After all, this was the plan. Harry wasn't lying when he said that this wasn't about winning against them. It had taken him minutes to realise that he wasn't going to do it, not when they were supported by the Light and Dark. This was always about buying as much time as he could, and now that he was spent, he needed another alternative.
It wasn't hard. With their common enemy dead, Grindelwald and Dumbledore, as expected, turned towards one another, each one ready to attack, and that suited Harry just fine. After all, if his enemies were ready to do his job, then why would he stop them?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
AN: Holy shit, that was hard to write. I never really struggled with fighting scenes, but this one took the cake. It was pretty tricky to make Harry competent enough to hold both champions, which I wanted to feel more like forces of nature. I rewrote it twice, and I'm not sure I pulled it off, really. I think I did a disservice to Grindelwald here, but I wanted to have fun with the Harry/Dumbledore part of the fight. Don't worry, I've been saving up a few things for him for the next chapter. As usual, I don't mind rewriting this chapter depending on your feedback, so please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
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.