Chương 315: Ch305- Even the Dark Lord Needs Light

Cassian lifted his hands, palms out, as if he were soothing a skittish herd rather than two men who'd happily flatten continents.

"Alright, relax. We've done this dance before. Two years ago, remember? You both threw a tantrum, we smacked you about, and you legged it." Voldemort's fingers tightened round his wand. Marauder cut in before Voldemort could explode.

"You had numbers. And your grandfather, Magnus the Curse-Eater Rosier, well. He's not someone you want to meet in a corridor. You know the stories. That man learned every Rosier curse in the vault and then tested them on the frontline when he was barely out of school. Mad as a kicked hornet nest." Cassian raised a brow. He looked at Dumbledore. Dumbledore murmured, "Later." Cassian nodded, filing that away with all the other nonsense he'd chase him about later. Marauder went on, cheerful as ever.

"And if we're tallying past injuries, Tom did bounce you off several walls. Very memorable." Cassian gave him a deadpan.

"I'm stronger now." Marauder's grin sharpened. He tipped his chin at Voldemort.

"So is he." Voldemort didn't bother hiding it. He stood taller.

"Fantastic." Cassian sighed, looking over his shoulder at Dumbledore.

"You're taking Marauder?" Dumbledore gave a nod. Cassian grimaced.

"Brilliant. Try not to die." Dumbledore smiled faintly.

"I intend to." And with that, the two of them drifted apart, Dumbledore striding toward Marauder, Marauder waving cheerfully like he'd been invited to tea, and then both slipped away. Leaving Cassian on the cliff ledge. With Voldemort. They stood there for a moment. Voldemort looked him up and down.

"Rosier," he hissed, spitting the name like a curse. Cassian raised his wand at him.

"Tommy," he said lightly, "you know you can't win this. Why do you keep trying?" Voldemort's fingers curled round his wand in that twitchy little way he did when murder seemed appealing.

"You mock me as if you stand above consequence," Voldemort said.

"You forget what I am." Cassian scoffed.

"Oh, I'm painfully aware of what you are. You're a man who keeps stapling his soul into household items and then throws a tantrum when people bin them." Voldemort's eyes thinned.

"Humour. You think you can distract me with it."

"I think," Cassian said, leaning into the words, "that you've had more second chances than anyone deserves, and you still choose the option marked 'self-sabotage.' It's getting embarrassing."

"You insolent-" Cassian cut in, tone sharp.

"Oh, come off it. You're still going to fight us, knowing you're outmatched, outnumbered, and out of surprises. Why? Pride? Habit? Or are you hoping if you say 'Dark Lord' enough times, the universe will give you a medal?" Voldemort's voice dropped into a cold rasp.

"I rebuilt myself from ash. You think I fear children? A schoolteacher?" Cassian gave him a very slow smile.

"Mate, I watched a group of teenagers throw full fledged Auror into a wall yesterday. Trust me. Fear the school." A vein on Voldemort's temple pulsed, but he didn't act.

"Here's the truth, Tom," Cassian said quietly.

"You're not the biggest threat in the room anymore. And deep down, you know it. The world's moved on. Marauder's playing with horrors older than you can pronounce. And you? You're fighting ghosts. Chasing trophies. Pretending you've got a destiny." Voldemort's jaw clenched. Cassian lifted his hands out to the sides.

"You don't scare me," he said.

"You don't scare most people anymore. All you've got left is anger. Anger at a world that didn't slot you exactly where you wanted. Anger at the bloodline you spend half your life rewriting. The woman who brain-raped a Muggle just to conceive you. If she hadn't meddled with his mind, you'd have been a full Gaunt, not a half-blood Slytherin Heir who denied his lineage. Pure line, shiny crest, all of it. Instead, you're built on a lie she forced into someone else's skull. Pure-blood royalty, inbred and proud.

Imagine it, your little dream come true." Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. The flash of green came before he said the last word.

"Avada Kedavra!" Cassian dropped two fingers through the air. The curse split clean down the centre, veering past him and slamming into the stone behind him. He shook his head lightly.

"I don't even need my wand for that anymore." Voldemort's eyes widened. That trick from before... Rosier had stopped a killing curse at the Ministry two years back, but it hadn't come to heel this easily back then. Cassian chuckled coldly.

"You want to know how, do you? Fine. I don't usually explain my tricks, but you've had a rough decade, so here's a freebie. That split only works if I predict the exact point of impact. If I'm wrong by a hair, I die. But you?" He tilted his head.

"You're painfully predictable." He stepped left. A fireball ripped through the air where his head had been. Cassian pointed at the scorch mark it left on the stone.

"See? You telegraph everything. I'm living rent-free in that skull of yours, Tommy. Every 'secret' defence you're proud of, every mental wall you think no one can touch, wide open." Voldemort snarled, wand lifting. Cassian kept talking.

"You spent years convincing yourself you'd mastered fate. That nothing could touch you. Split your soul with the cheapest immortality hack in magical history, strutted round like you'd broken the universe. And the best part? You were so full of your own legend you stopped noticing betrayal altogether." Voldemort's wand twitched. Cassian went on, unfazed.

"The Flint patriarch stared you in the eye for months while feeding me updates. You didn't suspect a thing. Not even a hint. Because whatever you pulled from his mind wasn't his. Occlumency trick. Hand-stitched. I gave him the script myself." Voldemort's breath quickened. Cassian smiled.

"You see the problem now? You built your empire on fear, but you never learned to read people. You only learned to terrify them. And the moment someone stopped shaking, you couldn't tell the difference." He waved his wand, bored.

"You thought you were untouchable. Immortal. Above the rest of us. But all it took to get round you was one man with a steady face and instructions." Voldemort's magic flared. Cassian raised a hand.

"Come on, then. Throw something else unoriginal at me. Let's see if I can predict that too." Voldemort snapped his wand up and a serpent thicker than a man's waist appeared between them. Its head lifted, already waiting for orders. Voldemort hissed in parseltongue, leading the snake forward. Cassian lifted his hand.

"Cute." Darkness covered the area. Voldemort reacted fast. A pulse of magic left his wand in a ring. The spell should've found Cassian in a breath. Instead it returned twenty signatures. Human shaped. All around. Shifting slowly. He dropped low, quieting his breath, and slipped sideways across the stone. He smothered the sound of his boots with a charm and flicked his wand at the ground. Earthen figures pulled themselves up beside him, taking form with rough limbs.

They spread around him, ready to confuse whatever counter-pulse came their way. Which arrived immediately. A ripple swept over him. Voldemort froze. The dummies stood still. He summoned the Snake for this reason in the first place. Snakes didn't need light to find their prey. Cassian spoke, voice coming from everywhere.

"Come now, Tom," He said, "I know why you summoned the snake. It's quite endearing. Bit old-fashioned, but endearing." The snake flicked its tongue toward a point near the cliff ledge. Voldemort spun, wand up, and fired. Stone cracked. Nothing screamed. Cassian's voice chuckled somewhere he wasn't.

"You're going to tire yourself long before you hit me." Voldemort sent another pulse. Twenty figures again, all moving with the same slow shuffle. Cassian had matched their movement perfectly. Nothing broke rhythm. Even the spacing stayed identical. The serpent hissed once more, confused, its tongue darting. Whatever warmth it found shifted too quickly to track. Voldemort gritted his teeth.

"Show yourself."

"No," Cassian replied, tone bright.

"You get angry when you see my face. I'm helping you regulate." Voldemort flicked his wand and snapped out a slicing curse. The air shuddered around him. He heard earth crack, a dummy cleaved clean through, but nothing else He wheeled round. Cassian's voice drifted across the empty black.

"I'll give you a hint. I'm the only one here who isn't walking." Voldemort froze. The serpent curled tighter round his boot. He checked the ground with a wordless spell, nothing answered except jagged stone. Cassian's heartbeat should've been somewhere, yet Voldemort felt nothing but the tide of his own magic pushing back against the dark. Cassian spoke again, closer this time, though closeness meant nothing in this spell.

"It's rather relaxing, actually. You should try being intangible sometime. Very freeing." Voldemort snapped his wand out.

"Desino Umbra!" A wave of nullifying force burst from him, the sort meant to unravel illusions built on shadowcraft. It met Cassian's darkness, and fizzled uselessly into nothing. Cassian laughed.

"You're trying to cancel it? Tom, this isn't shadowwork. You should know better." The serpent lunged at a sudden shift of air. Its fangs hit stone. Voldemort jerked it back. He tightened his grip on his wand. His next spell cracked the stone beneath him, flinging half the dummies back in a spray of dust. The serpent whirled, trying to keep hold of a direction that shifted maddeningly with each second. Cassian's voice softened, calm in the dark swirl.

"You're hunting shadows, Tom. But the problem with shadows..." His voice moved again, circling him.

"... is they don't stand still when you shout at them." Voldemort raised his wand, charging up a strong fire. And Cassian whispered, right beside his ear-"Boo." Voldemort spun toward the whisper, wand already lifting just as the dark dropped with a crack. Light bled back in thin strips, blinding him for a second, just as roots snapped up around his ankles, then his shins, then his wrists. They yanked tight before he could sever a single one. His wand tore free and floated up. Straight into Cassian's waiting hand.

He caught it with a pleased hum, as if Voldemort had kindly handed it over instead of losing it in front of an audience of cliffs. Voldemort's face twisted.

"Give. That. Back." Cassian twirled the wand, then tucked it beside his own.

"Mm. No. You've had quite enough fun with murder sticks for one lifetime." The roots tightened. Voldemort jerked, teeth bared.

"Unhand me, insect." Cassian let out a bright laugh.

"Absolutely not. And that's a dreadful insult, by the way. You can do better." Voldemort strained against the bindings, magic sparking under his skin. The roots creaked but didn't snap. Cassian stepped closer, enough that Voldemort had to tilt his chin up. Cassian lifted both hands, palms open. White light gathered between them, thin threads tightening as he brought them toward Voldemort's temples.

"I need you alive for this," he said.

"I know, very inconvenient. I'm sure you'd prefer we settle this with screaming and fire, but I've got a task and you happen to be the jar it's stored in." Voldemort stiffened.

"What are you doing?" Cassian sighed at him as though Voldemort had refused to read a memo.

"Cleaning. You've got a bit stuck to your soul. Needs scraping off."