Disclaimer:
Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 124: One More
Harry stood there for a long moment, breathing, his shoulder still bleeding from an earlier graze.
He turned to the Admiral, who was lying in a pool of his own blood, staring up at Harry with a mixture of hatred and disbelief.
"The fragment," Harry said. "And the location of your Leader."
The Admiral laughed weakly. "Go to Hell."
Harry noticed him clenching his teeth tightly, and at first, he didn't understand what he was doing.
Then he heard a cracking sound and felt a faint, bitter almond scent reach his nostrils.
Poison.
"No—" Harry lunged forward, but it was too late.
The Admiral's eyes rolled back. His body went rigid for a moment, then slumped into the growing pool of blood. His chest stopped moving.
Harry knelt beside him, checked his pulse, his breathing. Nothing. The man's lips had already taken on a bluish tinge.
"Damn it." Harry sat back on his heels, frustration burning in his chest. He had intended to use Legilimency to pry the information directly from the man's mind, but now it was impossible.
He had not expected the Admiral to be so determined to keep his secrets.
He had defeated Gawain, survived their trap, and yet this soldier had robbed him of the most valuable prize…knowledge.
Harry closed his eyes for a moment, forcing down the disappointment.
Then he searched the corpse.
The Admiral's jacket had several inner pockets. Harry found ammunition for the anti-magic gun, a small photograph he chose to ignore, a set of keys, and finally…the transparent container.
Inside it, the fragment of Excalibur gleamed with a faint, golden light. Harry pulled it out and held it up. The metal was warm, almost alive. It hummed against his palm, resonating with something deep within him.
Or rather, with something on his back.
He drew the sword he had been carrying. The blade was still missing two fragments, and its current form was more like a long dagger or a short sword. Functional, but not the legendary weapon it was meant to be.
Harry placed the fragment against the sword's hilt.
The metal moved.
It flowed like liquid, merging seamlessly with the existing blade and producing a potent golden light that forced him to look away.
When he looked back, the sword had changed.
It was longer now. What had been a short blade was now a proper longsword, its edge sharp enough to split anything that came into contact with it. Runes that Harry had not seen before appeared along the length of the glowing blade.
But he knew it was still incomplete. There was an emptiness in the blade…a sort of hunger for the final piece.
'One more,' Harry thought. 'One more fragment, and Excalibur will be whole. Only then will it be able to showcase its full potential.'
He slid the sword back into its sheath on his back. It felt much heavier now.
A sound interrupted his thoughts.
Bang. Bang. BANG.
Someone was hitting the outer wall of the chamber. The impacts were powerful and came accompanied by bursts of magical energy that made the remaining wards flicker.
Harry walked towards the wall where the Admiral's ricocheted bullet had struck earlier. The enchantments were still active, but weakened. He could see them now…faint silver lines woven into the stone, like a spiderweb with several strands broken.
Bang…BANG!
The voice came next, muffled but unmistakable.
"Harry! Can you hear me?!"
"Morgan…" he muttered.
He looked down at the anti-magic gun in his hand. Three bullets left.
He aimed at the wall, but not at random places. He aimed at the points where the enchantment lines intersected; those were the nodes and the most important parts of the array. He fired once, twice…three times.
Each bullet struck its mark. The silvery lines flickered wildly and then dissolved. The runes on the wall went dark.
Harry stepped back, and a moment later, the wall exploded.
Stone fragments flew across the chamber. Harry raised an arm to shield his face. Through the dust and debris, a figure stepped inside.
Morgan's dark hair was disheveled, her robes singed in several places, and she was breathing heavily. In her hand, she still clutched her staff, which was smoking slightly at the tip.
Her eyes swept the room...the shattered pillars, the corpse of Gawain, and the body of the Admiral, before landing on Harry.
Her gaze dropped to his shoulder, where blood still seeped through his torn cloak. Then it paused for a moment at the gun in his hand.
"You're bleeding," she said. Her voice was flat, but he could hear the concern beneath it.
"It's a graze," Harry replied. "I'll live."
Morgan walked towards him, stepping over a piece of the broken pillar. She recognized the runes carved on them. They were very similar to the ones inside Galahad's chamber.
She glanced at the Admiral's body and then at the sword on his back.
"You got the fragment?"
"Yes." Harry held up the now-empty container. "One more to go."
Morgan nodded slowly. Her eyes moved to the kneeling corpse of Gawain, the ancient armor, and the great axe lying nearby.
"Is that…?"
"Gawain," Harry said quietly. "Another one of Arthur's knights. Resurrected with necromancy."
Morgan clenched her teeth. "He was a sweet boy."
Harry shook his head. "He's at peace now. That's what matters… and we are getting close to ending this. If there are more of them, we will put them to rest."
He looked around the ruined chamber one last time. The Admiral was dead. The fragment was recovered. Gawain was free.
But the Leader of the Argent Flame was still out there. And he had just lost one of his strongest weapons.
"We have what we came here for. Now we should leave," Harry said. "This base will be crawling with reinforcements soon." And he knew they were both quite exhausted by now.
Morgan turned toward the hole she had blasted in the wall. "I found another way out. Follow me."
Harry took one last look at the Admiral's corpse. 'You made your choice,' Harry thought.
He followed Morgan.