The graveyard had stopped breathing.
Harry could hear nothing but the high, piercing hum where his wand met Voldemort's. The golden thread of light between them pulsed like a heartbeat, bright and furious, and every tremor sent fire up his arms. His knees shook. His lungs burned. He could smell the grave-dirt splitting open beneath them.
Voldemort's face was a white flame beyond the glow, eyes wide in disbelief — the expression of a god remembering what it felt like to bleed.
And then the wand screamed.
From its tip, smoke began to coil — dense and solid, taking shape as something human. A head, a torso, the outline of an old man emerging as though pulled from the bottom of a deep, dark lake. He hit the ground with a soundless thud, mist rising from him like steam.
Harry knew that face. He'd seen it once before, framed in a dream. Frank Bryce, the old gardener.
"He was real, then," the man muttered, his voice echoing as if through glass. His cloudy eyes turned to Voldemort, cold and knowing. "Killed me, that one did… fight him, boy. Don't let him win."
Harry couldn't answer. His jaw was locked from the strain of keeping hold, his wand slipping in his sweaty grip.
Another shape followed — quicker this time — a woman, younger, hair falling like mist around her shoulders. Bertha Jorkins. Her expression twisted when she saw Voldemort.
"Don't let go!" she cried. "Don't let him—don't—"
Her words cut off as another shadow formed behind her, heavier, radiant — a woman whose face made Harry's breath catch. Her eyes, the same shade of green as his own, met him through the light.
"Mum…" he whispered.
Lily Potter stood within the dome of gold, her form soft at the edges, but her expression fierce — unbreakable. "Hold on," she said. Her voice was an echo of comfort and command all at once. "Hold on for your father."
The thread pulsed again, brighter, hotter. And then — another figure, tall and disheveled, stepped from the wand's light as if walking through a doorway.
James Potter's ghostly shape straightened beside Lily. His hair stuck up in every direction, his eyes — hazel and warm — locked on his son's face with something between pride and terror.
"Harry," he said quietly. The distance in his voice didn't dull the strength behind it. "When the connection breaks, we'll linger for only moments. We'll give you time."
Harry shook his head, his teeth gritted. "I can't—""You can," James said sharply. "You must. Listen to me."The wand between them shuddered, golden sparks raining down. Voldemort hissed through clenched teeth. "Get to the Portkey," James continued. "It will return you to Hogwarts. Do you understand?"
Harry blinked sweat out of his eyes, breath ragged. "Y-yeah," he gasped. "Yeah, I do."
"Good boy." James's voice softened, pride breaking through the tension. "When the link breaks—run. Do it fast. Don't look back."
Lily's voice joined his, gentler but no less urgent. "We're so proud of you, Harry. We love you. Hold on… just a little longer."
The light flared, growing violent, unstable. The ghosts began to circle Voldemort, whispering words Harry couldn't make out — but their tone was sharp, full of fury. The Dark Lord's face flickered with something Harry had never thought he'd see there: fear.
Harry could feel his body trembling from the effort. The connection between the wands tremored like a live wire. He thought of Hogwarts — of Ron, Hermione — of Alden, lying broken somewhere behind him. He couldn't fail now. Not after everything.
James's hand brushed his shoulder — not real, but close enough to feel. "Now," he whispered.
Harry's eyes burned as he forced his wand upward with all the strength he had left. "Now!"
The golden thread shattered.
The song of the phoenix that had been rising in the air cut off with a single, piercing note. The ghosts surged — Lily, James, Bertha, the old man — closing in around Voldemort like a tide of light. Harry staggered backward, the ground beneath him splitting, his vision a blur of motion and color.
"RUN!" James shouted.
Harry did.
The graveyard was no longer a place of rest — it was a scar.
Everywhere Harry turned, the world looked as though it had been torn apart. The earth was cratered, blackened with soot and magic. Stone angels lay in pieces, wings shattered across the ground. The air still crackled with the aftershock of spells — heat and frost clashing where they met. Even the moonlight looked warped, bent around the wreckage of power too immense for the living.
He ran, stumbling through smoke and ruin, wand gripped in his shaking hand. His lungs burned from the dust. Behind him, Voldemort's scream still carried, distant but furious, echoing off the tombs.
And then Harry saw him.
Alden Dreyse lay half-collapsed against a broken headstone — the same marble that bore the name Tom Riddle Sr. Blood pooled beneath him, dark and glinting faintly in the moonlight. His shirt was torn open down the side, skin scorched where fire had caught him. One arm bent at an unnatural angle, the other still clutching his wand loosely, knuckles white even in unconsciousness.
For a heartbeat, Harry thought he was dead. Then he saw the faint rise and fall of his chest — slow, shallow, defiant.
Harry froze. The sight rooted him to the ground. All at once, flashes tore through his mind — the maze, Alden's steady voice saying, "We go together." The way he'd stood between Harry and the Cup, not for glory but to prove something the rest of them couldn't see. How, every time, he could have chosen himself and didn't.
The world blurred again, but not from pain. From light.
Two figures had appeared beside Alden's still form — translucent, shining faintly gold where Lily and James's light had left the air tinged. They weren't Harry's parents. The resemblance to Alden was immediate and startling: both had the same pale hair, the same deliberate poise that made silence feel heavier than speech.
The man's expression was measured, calm — the kind that came before thunder. The woman's heartbreak in motion. Her eyes — bright silver-blue — flicked between her son's broken body and Harry's trembling form.
"Harry Potter," she said softly. Her voice didn't echo like the others. It settled, certain, in the center of his chest. "You must take him home."
Harry stumbled forward, disbelief etched into every motion. "I—he's hurt, I don't—"
"Please," she said, and the plea wasn't desperation; it was love distilled into command. "He will not ask for help. He will try to crawl, and bleed, and die before he burdens another. But he has carried others far too long."
The man stepped forward beside her, folding spectral hands behind his back, the movement so precisely like Alden that Harry's breath caught. "He stayed for you," the father said simply. "Even when you told him to run, he chose to stay. That is who he is. Do not let that choice end here."
Harry's throat tightened. He looked down at Alden again — at the blood matting his hair, the soot streaking his jaw. A boy who'd spent a year being called a dark lord, yet had done nothing but protect the people around him. And he stayed.
The woman's voice trembled as she knelt beside her son, tracing a ghostly hand near his cheek. "Tell him," she said, looking up at Harry through tears that caught the light but never fell, "that we are proud of him. That we watch him always. That his strength is not in his power, but in his heart — though he'll never believe it."
Harry's chest ached."I—" he began, faltering. He didn't know these people, not really. But he understood. "I'll tell him," he said quickly, nodding once, firm and terrified and sincere. "I promise."
Her smile — faint and shattering — was enough."Then go," the father said quietly, his voice deep as the grave beneath them. "Take him, and leave this place. Let him live."
A gust of wind passed through, scattering dust and ash. Their light flickered.
"Tell him…" she whispered one last time, voice thinning, "…we love him. Always."
The figures began to dissolve, fading like starlight at dawn — their forms breaking apart into motes that drifted over Alden's body before vanishing.
Harry exhaled shakily, realization crashing down like a wave. He moved, stumbling the last few feet, and fell to his knees beside Alden. Up close, the damage was worse. His breathing rattled, shallow and uneven. His skin was torn, blistered where spells had burned through fabric, one side of his face crusted with dried blood. His ring — the one Daphne Greengrass had made for him — was gone, shattered completely.
Harry's hand hovered over him for a moment, uncertain where to touch without hurting him. Then he gripped Alden's wrist, tight. "You're not dying here," he said under his breath. "Not after all that."
Another scream tore through the graveyard — Voldemort's, furious and rising again. Harry flinched, then glanced up. The Triwizard Cup glinted faintly through the dust and smoke, lying toppled near a shattered statue.
Harry squeezed Alden's wrist once more. "I promised," he whispered. "And so did you."
He dragged Alden up, one arm around his shoulders, half-carrying, half-pulling him toward the Cup. Every step left a streak of blood in the dirt. The world shook with magic still unsettled, but Harry didn't stop — not even when a curse scorched past them and shattered the wing of a stone angel.
"Accio!" he cried, thrusting his wand forward. The Cup leapt into the air, spinning toward him. He caught it in his free hand, clutching Alden with the other.
The pull came instantly — the jerk behind his navel, the wild spin of color and wind.
The last thing Harry saw before the world disappeared was the faint shimmer of two silhouettes watching from the smoke — a mother's hand raised in farewell, and a father's proud nod — before the graveyard, the screams, and the light collapsed into nothing.
Harry's fingers were still clenched white on the lip of the Pensieve when the graveyard fell away.
Dumbledore's office surged back into focus: shelves, portraits, the ticking silver instruments, Fawkes rustling softly above them. Sirius was breathing hard, jaw tight. Snape's face was colorless, unreadable but for the sharp line cut into his mouth.
Alden Dreyse, half-dead at Voldemort's feet, still seemed to hang in the air between them.