The three brothers approached the stone hut and surrounded it forming a perfect triangle with the structure at its center.
They began to move their hands in a rhythmic, fluid motion, tracing symbols in the air with their fingertips.
The blue mist of Harry’s magic responded instantly to their motion, swirling and glowing as it gathered at the tip of their fingers.
Tracing the motions of their fingers, complex figures began to take shape in the air.
These were runes and though Harry had zero understanding about them, he could feel the complexity and the intricacy behind them.
He could feel them pulsating with a life of their own.
With a synchronized nod, the brothers pressed their palms forward, launching the glowing runes toward the hut.
The impact was silent but absolute.
The stone structure did not just break.
It crumbled into fine dust and collapsed on the ground like a sand structure.
The moment the containment vanished, a suffocating aura erupted from the centre.
The darkness and foulness that had been trapped within the hut surged outward in a violent storm, drowning the gorge in a thick, dark and oppressive gloom.
While the Peverell brothers stood like pillars in the gale, entirely unfazed, Harry shivered.
He could feel the weight of the evil pressing against his very soul.
He gathered his courage and forced himself to look at the spot where the hut had stood.
He staggered back, his heart hammering against his ribs as he saw what had been unleashed from inside the hut.
In the centre of the triangle stood a pale and noseless wraith.
Its features were blurred and almost skeletal.
It was a terrifying and harrowing mockery of a human form.
It did not take a genius to identify this soul fragment.
Though not exactly the same, Harry had faced a similar kind of wraith.
It was no one but Voldemort.
Harry felt a wave of pure disgust and hatred wash over him which was followed by a cold spike of fear.
Even though he had faced Voldemort before, as a baby, in front of the Mirror of Erised, and deep within the Chamber of Secrets, standing before the raw, unfiltered essence of that darkness in his own mindscape was different.
He was not fearless.
He was frightened.
He was a boy facing a monster that had been hiding inside him all along.
If not for the assuring presence of the three brothers, he would have already started to run away.
Or would that have helped?
He did not know.
The wraith let out a low, raspy hiss, its sightless eyes seemingly sensing the presence of the three powerful entities holding it as their prisoners.
He could feel that triangle bounding him in his place.
“The ‘Dark Lord’ finally shows his pathetic face.”
The wraith let out an unnatural scream that reverberated through the entire mindscape before he turned and faced towards Harry Potter.
Although he could sense the power of the three men bounding him, he did not put them in his eyes.
He recognised Harry Potter and was more interested in his nemesis.
“Harry… Potter….,” he rasped, his voice shrill and guttural.
“Have you come to offer me your soul?
Tell me, how did you trap me in that hut?”
“Did Dumbledore teach you these parlor tricks?
Or did these three men help you?”
“You made a mistake,” he echoed.
“You should never have released me.”
“You cannot defeat me.
I am a master of the Mind Arts.
It is my specialty.
You caught me off guard once, but not again.
Soon, I will possess the body of the Hero of the Wizarding World.
Ha-ha-ha!”
“You are quite full of yourself,” Antioch scoffed, drawing Voldemort’s attention, “considering you are not even a complete soul, but a mere broken fragment of an already insane one.”
“It is no surprise though,” Cadmus added.
“The foul rituals you performed would drive anyone mad, though I suspect you were not particularly sane even before you began them.”
Only after the mockery of the two brothers did Voldemort truly register the presence of the three strangers and turned to face them.
“Who are you three?” He raged.
“How do you know of the ritual, and how dare you taunt me… taunt Lord Voldemort!”
“A Great Lord you are indeed, Voldemort,” Ignotus chuckled.
“A great Lord who got crushed by a fifteen-month-old baby.”
He laughed before continuing.
“Harry has already defeated you two more times while your original soul-wraith tried to resurrect itself,” he remarked, pinching Voldemort even more.
Before Voldemort could erupt further, Ignotus taunted him again.
“And one of your Horcruxes, the diary of Tom Marvolo Riddle, has already been destroyed.” Ignotus laughed almost childishly, then manically.
“I will tear you to pieces and then take over Potter’s body!” Voldemort screeched in fury.
And he finally made his move.
With a violent wave of his hand, a red beam of light shot toward Ignotus.
Your ‘tricks’ are the games we played as children,” Ignotus simply scoffed unbothered by the incoming attack.
He waved his hand, and a shimmering dome formed around Voldemort, with the three brothers acting as its axis.
The red beam collided against the dome and vanished instantly.
There was not even a scratch on the dome.
“Enough of this nonsense,” Antioch thundered.
“Do not waste more time!”
With that statement, the three brothers nodded to one another.
Before Voldemort could rage further, each of them pressed a finger against the surface of the dome.
Runes after runes began to ignite across the barrier, and just like the stone hut before it, the soul-wraith of Voldemort began to crumble into dust.
Voldemort let out one final, agonizing screech, “Noooooooo,” before he vanished completely.
Harry felt a wave of profound relief wash over his mind as he saw Voldemort vanishing from his mindscape.
The foulness that had been accompanying him also began to vanish.
He began to run toward the Peverell brothers, but as he approached, the three of them turned to him one last time.
They spoke in a single, unified voice.
“All the best, Harry.
Be happy.” The voice echoed through the entire mindscape.
With those final parting words, the three brothers also began to dissolve into nothingness, ultimately disappearing from his mindscape forever.
Harry finally let go of his controlled emotions, and tears began to stream down his face.
Though he had known from the beginning that they would have to leave him, he felt an enormous sense of loss at their departure.
A vast, heavy emptiness seemed to surround him.
Lost in his grief, Harry tried to regain control over his feelings when a sudden, violent quake rocked his mindscape.
Abrupt changes began to tear through the environment.
Some mountains surged upward, growing taller and sharper and even more majestic, while others collapsed into the earth with a roar.
The forests began to grow wild and thick in some areas, while in others, trees withered and dried to ash in seconds.
Harry tried to reach out with his will to stop the chaos, but a crushing fatigue washed over him.
Darkness consumed his vision, and he collapsed as his mind finally succumbed to the exhaustion.
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