If someone told Harry that Nagini would come to him by herself, he wouldn't have believed them for a second.
However, as he caught a glint of scales, he realised that was exactly the case.
A whisper, almost affectionate, called: "Master?"
Sirius, who was just behind him, raised his wand. "What the hell—?"
Harry was faster, though.
He raised both of his hands and flexed his fingers.
Nagini was immediately encased in a pair of shackles, and she tried to slide out.
Pained hisses followed, and the snake stopped any attempts to move away.
"What did you do human?!" she said, despite not having seen her aggressor yet. The wards created an illusion of the whole area, and Nagini's eyes couldn't pierce through the magical barrier.
Harry didn't mind answering the snake, though, and stepped out of the wards.
"Hello, Nagini. I've been looking for you," he said and grabbed the snake by its middle.
Nagini writhed in pain, wondering just why the man in front of her was oozing with her master's magic.
Now that she was next to the source, she could feel that it wasn't just her master's magic, as she had first thought… Instead, there were two different magical signatures.
"Who are you and why do you smell like my master?" she managed to hiss through her pain.
Harry stopped to look at her.
'Huh, what the hell? Do I smell like Voldemort?' he wondered, a chill running down his spine. 'It's probably because we are both parselmouths, right?'
Harry shook his head, trying to stop himself from thinking about why he could smell like Voldemort, and stepped back inside the wards.
"Me? I'm just Harry."
He walked all the way back to the house, whistling a happy tune and fully ignoring the shocked snake.
Harry put Nagini inside a small cage, magically protected so that she wouldn't be able to escape—Merlin knew that'd be bad—and cast a silencing charm to stop hearing her annoying hisses.
He also removed the shackles, which had a bunch of small spikes on their inner shells. It was just a product of his quick thinking, and thankfully, it worked just as he hoped, making it impossible for Nagini to slide out the shackles without first inflicting two bunches of deep cuts on her.
Now that every Horcrux was found and secured, Harry could somewhat relax. Or try to at least.
There was just one last thing left now—Voldemort—and he had just the idea.
"So… What's the plan?" Sirius asked him at last; he had been silently following Harry the whole time. He couldn't believe what had just happened.
"I'll kill Voldemort."
If nothing else, the idea was quite straightforward.
As one would expect, killing Voldemort wasn't the easiest of pastimes. In fact, it was quite hard…
That's why three people found themselves in a never-ending argument.
"No, Harry. You can't just attack him in the middle of the Great Hall. Think about the possible casualties," Sirius said in a no-nonsense manner.
"Oh yeah? Do you want to know what I think?" he asked, everything he said was practically dripping with sarcasm at this point. "You think your idea has so much merit that you don't want to listen to anything else," Harry snapped.
Sirius got furious at that and made to stand up.
"BOYS!" Fleur shouted so loud that she made both males literally jump and go for their ears, cradling them protectively. She had cast the Sonorus charm at her throat.
"FLEUR!" Harry shouted back, barely able to hear his own voice. Did she just cause him ear damage?
Said woman simply glared at the two troublemakers, daring them to speak.
After a minute, when Harry and Sirius finally got their bearings back, and the former muttered something about how simple everything would be if Fleur ambushed Voldemort with the same tactic, they were ready to talk again.
"As I was saying, before you two buffoons got all emotional and started defending your ideas as if they were your mothers," she was glared because of that, "the only way to do this is to single Voldemort out. If we start attacking him in the middle of a crowd, we'd be immediately branded as pariahs for attacking Dumbledore. Needless to say, zere's the thing about getting innocents involved as well. Agreed?"
Fleur smiled at Sirius, who nodded, albeit reluctantly, and scowled at Harry's pompous expression.
She glared at him.
"Fine," he mumbled.
"Good."
"Whipped," Sirius whispered to him.
Harry stuck out his tongue.
"Boys!" Fleur said again, bringing their attention back to her. "What we need to come up with is a way to have Voldemort want to face Harry one-on-one. Do you think we can do that?"
"If this was the Voldemort from Little Hangleton's graveyard, I'd say yes. However, this Voldemort seems wary of me and likes to set up traps. There's no way he'd come to a place of my choosing and face me."
Fleur looked thoughtful. "Hmm."
"Well, it's quite simple, isn't it?" Sirius said, smirking. "If the old wanker doesn't want to come and see us, we just have to make it so that he doesn't have any choice."
Fleur raised her eyebrows and shook her head. "Right. Because that's sooo easy to do."
Harry, on the other hand, jumped up. "Sirius! That's brilliant!"
Fleur had to resist smacking both of them in the head. She looked up and murmured, "Les garçons sont stupides et les hommes sont encore plus stupides."
"What!?"
"Hey! I resent that," Harry said, not looking impressed.
Fleur shrugged without care. "What? I say it like I see it. You two are idiots."
"Right, right. You keep calling us dumb, but what, pray tell, is wrong with what we said so far?" Sirius said quickly before Harry could respond.
Fleur rolled her eyes. "I doubt we could come up with a bait so good that Voldemort would knowingly walk to a fight, yes, Harry, there's just no way he can't guess that you are scheming to end him."
Harry had to concede to that. If anything, Voldemort wasn't stupid. Mad though? Definitely.
.
.
.
Discord Link... [https://discord.com/invite/NJ3WV9RVgR]
Patreon Link: [https://www.patreon.com/Mr_0ne] or do a Google search of 'Patreon Fake Violinist'
Chapter 131: It's Finally Over