you enough to run forward this time and take my curse. So what will stop you dying now
when I strike?"
"Just one thing," said Harry, and still they circled each other, wrapped in each
other, held apart by nothing but the last secret.
"If it is not love that will save you this time," said Voldemort, "you must believe
that you have magic that i do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"
"I believe both," said Harry, and he saw shock flit across the snakelike face,
though it was instantly dispelled; Voldemort began to laugh, and the sound was more
frightening than his screams; humorles and insane, it echoed around the silent Hall.
"You think you know more magic than I do?" he said. "Than I, than Lord
Voldemort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of?"
"Oh he dreamed of it," said Harry, "but he knew more than you, knew enough not
to do what you've done."
"You mean he was weak!" screamed Voldemort. "Too weak to dare, too weak to
take what might have been his, what will be mine!"
"No, he was cleverer than you," said Harry, "a better wizard, a better man."
"I brought about the death of Albus Dumbledore!"
"You thought you did," said Harry, "but you were wrong."
For the frist time, the watching crowd stirred as the hundreds of people around the
walls drew breath as one.
"Dumbledore is dead!" Voldemort hurled the words at Harry as in the marble
tomb in the grounds of this castle, I have seen it, Potter, and he will not return!"
"Yes, Dumbledore is dead," said Harry calmly, "but you didn't have him killed.
He chose his own manner of dying, chose it months before he died, arranged the whole
thing with the man you thought was your servant."
"What chldish dream is this?" said Voldemort, but still he did not strike, and his
red eyes did not waver from Harry's.
"Severus Snape wasn't yours," said Harry. "Snape was Dumbledore's.
Dumbledore's from the moment you starting hunting down my mother. And you never
realized it, because of the thing you can't understand. You never saw Snape cast a
Patronus, did you, Riddle?"
Voldemort did not answer. They continued to circle each other like wolves about
to tear each other apart.
"Snape's Patronus was a doe," said Harry, "the same as my mother's, because he
loved her for nearly all of his life, from the time when they were children. You should
have realized," he said as he saw Voldemort's nostrils flare, "he asked you to spare her
life, didn't he?"
"He desired her, that was all," sneered Voldemort, "but when she had gone, he
agreed that there were other women, and of purer blood, worhier of him - "
"Of course he told you that," said Harry, "but he was Dumbledore's spy from the
moment you threatened her, and he's been working against you ever since! Dumbledore
was already dying when Snape finished him!"
"It matters not!" shrieked Voldemort, who had followed every word with rapt
attention, but now let out a cackle of mad laughter. "It matters not whether Snape was