The howling winds that had been screaming through the ruins gradually subsided down to an eerie whisper. The rain eased moment by moment to a gentle drizzle. Even the continuous rolling thunder that had been shaking the earth suppressed itself, retreating to its lowest depths.
The scattered remnants of the Death Eater army and the exhausted Aurors both ceased their desperate struggle.
A pressure suffocating like being submerged in deep water covered the devastated ruins of Diagon Alley, thickening the very air itself until breathing became difficult.
Every single eye turned up toward the roiling dark clouds that formed that massive, terrifying face in the sky. And then down toward Bryan Watson, who had descended upon the battlefield like an avenging angel.
The stone spikes that had been cruelly pinning Sirius in place dissolved suddenly into nothing more than fine sand in a passing magical breeze.
His body, freed abruptly from its restraints collapsed heavily into a muddy puddle with a wet splash. His trickling blood quickly spread through the water staining it a spreading crimson.
"Bryan..." Sirius called out weakly.
Bryan gave Sirius an apologetic smile. With just a slight flick of his wand, he showered down a soft golden radiance that lit up the darkened world around them like gentle sunlight.
The magical light settled over Sirius's multiple wounds, and immediately the bleeding stopped.
After tending briefly to Sirius's most critical injuries—Bryan turned his attention once more to the churning sea of clouds hovering above.
The rippling breeze stirred his hair, making it dance around his face as he spoke in a remarkably calm tone:
"Your appearance here today was a grave mistake, Riddle."
Thunder rumbled again in response, a sound like a vast beast growling deep in its chest. Lightning began to rage completely out of control within the clouds, branching and forking in chaotic patterns.
Thick columns of black smoke descended endlessly from the giant face still hovering in the sky, pouring down like dark waterfalls as it observed the mortal world far below with those terrible, inhuman eyes.
The smoke gathered on the muddy ground, swirling and merging, gradually solidifying. A humanoid outline slowly took definite form within the darkness, becoming more solid and real with each passing second.
Click—
Voldemort stepped forward, emerging from the dissipating black mist.
"Hiss!"
A chorus of sharp intakes of breath swept across the suddenly silent battlefield!
Since Harry Potter had miraculously destroyed the Dark Lord fourteen years ago in Godric's Hollow, the general magical public had heard almost no confirmed word of him during those long years of peace.
Beginning in February of this very year, after Hogwarts had hosted the second revival of the legendary Triwizard Tournament, Albus Dumbledore had been tirelessly trying to warn anyone who would listen that the Dark Lord had somehow returned to life and power.
But given the Ministry of Magic's determined desperate cover-up combined with most people's own deep psychological unwillingness to face such a terrifying reality, few wizards could truly bring themselves to accept that the Dark Lord had been resurrected.
Now, however, all uncertainty had been violently settled once and for all!
The Dark wizard standing there confronting Bryan Watson wore black robes that seemed to move of their own accord, wafting around him like living shadows. His skin was paler than a bleached skull. His vertical pupils gleamed blood-red like a serpent's. His nose was as flat as a snake's, with narrow slits for nostrils.
His entire being radiated an aura of trembling, overwhelming evil that seemed to corrupt the very air around him!
Having revealed his true form at last to the watching world, Voldemort stood upon the giant's massive corpse—the same giant that had, ironically, just helped Sirius escape certain death moments before.
He turned slowly in a complete circle, clearly savoring the moment. His cold gaze swept across both the resisters and his own supporters scattered across the battlefield, taking in their reactions to his presence.
Every single person whose eyes accidentally met Voldemort's directly felt an irresistible deep chill rise suddenly in their hearts. They instinctively lowered their heads and gazes to avoid his attention.
This universal reaction of fear and submission pleased Voldemort greatly. A thin smile touched his lipless mouth.
But when his sweeping gaze finally met Bryan Watson's calm, utterly unrippled purple eyes, the cold, superior smile at the corners of his mouth vanished completely.
"Bryan Watson—"
Voldemort assessed Bryan with new intensity. This was genuinely the first time they had truly met face-to-face since his physical return to the mortal world.
Of course, technically Bryan Watson had also attended his resurrection ceremony in that graveyard. But Voldemort preferred not to dwell on that scene.
"You prepared this entire grand stage just to lure me out into the open, didn't you, Watson?"
Voldemort's high, cold voice echoed clearly through Diagon Alley—the street that had been so prosperous and alive now lay reduced to a wasteland.
He spoke not only for Bryan's ears but deliberately loud enough for the entire wizarding world to hear:
"Do you truly think you can destroy me again like that lucky Potter? Voldemort is unconquerable—even by death itself! I have conquered death!"
All eyes turned immediately to Bryan Watson, waiting to see how he would respond to such a grandiose claim.
"Since ancient times, throughout all of human history, the world has never lacked for arrogant schemers and brutal dictators, Riddle—"
Bryan stood perfectly steady amid the surging winds that pulled at his robes, his remarkable purple eyes were filled with a profound weariness that seemed far beyond his apparent years, as if he'd seen this same tragedy play out countless times before.
As the dark shadows of Azkaban's Dementors flickered through his mind—Bryan continued in that same calm tone.
"They all believed themselves to be immortal, exactly like you do now—to be as eternal and unchanging as nature itself.
Those people all possessed power far beyond the reach of their contemporaries. They wielded magic or might that made them seem invincible. They wrote their chapters boldly on history's parchment, carved their names in stone and bone, declared their eternal dominance.
But where have they all gone now, Riddle?"
Bryan's gaze shifted away from Voldemort's pale face.
He looked instead at the people scattered across the battlefield watching this confrontation—at them, or perhaps more accurately at their descendants yet unborn.
Bryan absolutely did not want this war, this confrontation, to spawn "the next Dark Lord" in the coming years and decades.
Though Bryan's voice was not particularly loud, everyone present could hear him.
"Death is the ultimate, inevitable fate of all things in the universe—unconquerable and needing no conquest.
Life requires freedom to have meaning. But it also must walk inevitably toward withering and ending. That is the natural order.
Therefore, any attempt to dictate, control, or resist against the natural cycle of birth, growth, age, sickness, and death is utterly foolish and will inevitably bring terrible, unforeseen consequences upon the one who tries.
And you, Tom Riddle—"
Bryan's gaze swept the entire circle of watchers before returning to Voldemort's face, which was now tinged with a sickly pallor.
"It's time for you to take your final bow and exit the stage."
"So you refuse to submit to inevitability, Watson. You refuse the gift I offer—"
Voldemort's tone turned completely cold, dropping several degrees until frost might as well have formed on his words.
"Considering that you are a Slytherin, I was magnanimous enough to consider giving you a genuine chance to reform your position. To join me. But you've thrown that opportunity away."
"Slytherin House is deeply ashamed to have produced a wizard like you, Riddle. So is Salazar Slytherin himself, wherever his spirit rests."
Bryan's words carried double meaning.
The battle erupted with sudden and spectacular violence that made the earlier fighting seem like children playing.
Those still conscious on the ground watched in absolute awe and terror as the Dark Lord and Watson both appeared in midair without any warning, simultaneously perhaps fifty feet above the ruins.
Both swung their wands at each other in the exact same instant with mirror-image precision!
Two massive curse-lights blazing as bright as miniature suns—one sickly green, one pure silver-white met and collided in the air between them.
The very instant the lights touched and merged, everything in sight began to shake violently. The air itself produced violently layered ripples spreading exactly like an enormous meteor from beyond the heavens plunging into the ocean's surface!
The fierce air shock waves swept with absolutely matchless force, moving faster than sound. People touched even glancingly by the expanding ripples were thrown to the muddy ground as if struck by speeding cars.
The ripples expanded rapidly in all directions like rings in water. The few remaining buildings in Diagon Alley that had somehow survived the earlier battle now collapsed one after another under the pressure!
But remarkably, no one could actually hear the roar of those collapsing buildings or the crash of falling stone. Their ears registered only one overwhelming sound—the noise of the Dark Lord's and Watson's spells colliding and grinding against each other!
WENG, WENG, WENG!
The sound was not a simple thunderous boom or explosion but rather a deep, resonant, almost subsonic hum that seemed to vibrate in the chest and skull. Yet despite its relative quietness—
"Urgh!"
Many people scattered across the battlefield, including the fallen Sirius, suddenly began coughing up bright blood without warning.
Sirius's face twisted in unexpected agony as he struggled desperately to raise one hand to his chest. He could feel his own heartbeat synchronizing with the terrible humming, his heart was beating to its rhythm instead of his own!
The magical resonance was disrupting his very life force.
Sensing clearly the serious harm this powerful magical clash was causing to everyone present regardless of affiliation—Bryan's purple eyes flashed cold with decision.
He suddenly jerked his wand sharply up with tremendous force, hurling the combined "sun" that had consumed and merged both their tremendous magical powers toward the sky above.
BOOM!
The blazing "sun" of merged curse-light shot toward the heavens at literally unimaginable speed, moving faster than the eye could properly track.
The instant it touched the massive rain clouds still blanketing Diagon Alley, it exploded with the force of a bomb. Fierce wind waves and searing heat dispersed the dense clouds in mere moments, blowing them apart and scattering them to nothing.
Natural sunlight—real, warm sunlight that seemed absent for ages, that people had almost forgotten existed finally returned to the devastated earth below!
The dazzling sunshine suddenly flooding the blood-soaked land made many people squint and raise their hands to shield their eyes—including Voldemort himself who flinched slightly.
Bryan appeared instantly at Voldemort's right side in a crack of displaced air, his wand was already moving. Silver curse-light blazing like a meteor slammed directly toward Voldemort's exposed flank.
The attack was deflected and shattered by the sickly green light of an Avada Kedavra casted with terrifying speed.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Those who had managed to adjust to the sudden bright sunlight and opened their eyes fully discovered with shock that both Bryan Watson and the Dark Lord had completely vanished from normal sight.
They could only perceive two black shadows or blurs constantly Apparating in midair with extreme speed and frequency!
The two shadows flashed by at incredible speed—one moment were visible in the distance against the blue sky, then appeared in an entirely different location with a single blink of an eye.
Moody's magical eye spun so frantically in its socket, trying desperately to track both combatants, that it looked like it might actually fly out of his skull!
Bright curse-lights of every conceivable color clashed violently again and again in the air between the two fighters.
Ripples spread continuously through the very atmosphere like raindrops falling on a still lake's surface. The whipping, displaced winds howling around the aerial battlefield felt and sounded as if dozens of supersonic military jets were flying at full throttle!
This absolutely furious exchange, exceeding the limits of anyone's imagination or experience continued for two full minutes of sustained combat before ending as abruptly and suddenly as it had begun.
Both combatants simply stopped.
The figure that suddenly appeared directly before him startled Sirius badly despite everything he'd already witnessed.
"Bryan!"
He only had time for that one shout.
BOOM!
A surging, roiling sea of thick black mist suddenly stained and darkened the sky that had just been cleared to blue moments before.
No one on the ground noticed Harry Potter's sudden, unexpected appearance on the battlefield—their terrified gazes were fixed only on the threatening black mist sea spreading rapidly across the sky and on Bryan Watson standing alone below it.
"Breathe."
Bryan's expression was absolutely stern, harder than anyone had ever seen it.
He inhaled deeply, drawing air far down into his lungs, then exhaled a stream of scalding white vapor that misted in front of his face.
In the very next second, golden Fiendfyre erupted suddenly around him in a roaring pillar!
The cursed fire wrapped him completely, engulfing his entire body!
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