"Ellie? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, I just-" She starts walking toward the line of Dementors.

"Fay's out behind the greenhouses. Can you send someone to check on her?"

"...Is she okay?"

"I had to stun her. She was going to kill herself. For me. Do the same ritual my mom did."

"Don't let her."

"...Okay. I'll get her myself, and I won't let her die."

"Ellie - "

She sounds a bit choked up.

"I love you. I'm coming back and I love you. He'll be dead, and I'll come back to you. By the time you get up here I'll be past the Dementors so don't-"

"I need to come back to you."

"I'll stay safe. I promise."

"I'll wait for you to come back. And if you don't, I'll stay alive so I can resurrect you."

"I love you."

"I promise."

She presses a kiss to the locket and tucks it back into her shirt.

She forges onward.

The Dementors are agitated, roiling. They don't look like they'll want to let her through - and if they're right that Voldemort needs her for his sacrifice, well, it'll reset and Voldemort can make a new horcrux even if she's Kissed -

A few thestrals approach her, falling along her path - all pale, the palest of them - one she's never seen, and it should be horrifying, but -

It's stark white. It's probably a horse.

It's not a horse.

It looks at her with dead eyes and a toothy grin, and it says,

I will take you there.

She lifts a hand to pat it on the snout.

Thank you.

It nudges her hand. Its ?skin? is smooth. Soft. A little bit cold, but - not too bad.

And then it kneels, back lowered to where she can easily get on between the ?wings?.

Climb on, Master.

On she gets.

You know where I have to go.

Yes. You are very near.

The world looks even stranger than it usually does from under her cloak. Starker. Colder. All color drained, unliving things rendered into dark, barely noticeable shadows. Dementors as wisps. Insults to reality. People, behind the Dementors, in the castle, glowing with a soft silver light. White flecks, following them.

There are a lot around Ellie. There aren't so much around the castle's other inhabitants. They have a long time to live, probably.

She can see her path. See where Death goes, now and in the future.

And Death hangs like a seething cloud around Voldemort.

The Thestral begins to walk, moving swiftly, its companions falling in around it, shrieking - the Dementors give way before them, the nearest, the slowest torn apart. Destroyed, perhaps.

If she tries to think too much about this she's just going to- to break, to shatter like dropped glass. So she won't.

There's no fear. Just the next step. What has to be done.

She slides off the thestral when they get to Voldemort, the cloak coming undone so she's only half covered, the hood falling back. Does no good if he can't see she's arrived.

"Welcome, Ellie."

"I must say, I hadn't expected you to be so Gryffindor about this. That was rather fast."

(He - doesn't seem able to see any of the thestrals, actually, as they fan out behind her, snorting and stomping.)

"Never been much good at waiting pointlessly. I can go back if you need more time to work up your nerve. It's always tricky trying to face a problem you failed so profoundly to solve before."

He laughs, loud and sharp.

"Failure is but an opportunity to begin again."

He raises his wand, points it at her, and, clearly, slowly, voice curling with amusement: "Avada Kedavra."

The cloak on her shoulders, the wand in her right hand, the stone cupped in her left.

She doesn't even try to dodge.

It doesn't hurt, at least. Just a flash of green.

And then she's elsewhere. It's cold and dark, the wind howling in a low moan, waves and rain lashing against stone. There's no water falling on her.

There's rock beneath her feet, sloping down to two boats pulled up onto a little landing. One's decrepit, pulled farther up and tied weakly to a post. One's nice, not rocking in the waves around it and tethered only by its own magic.

There's someone standing beside her.

Who is it?

Lily Potter, her wand out, maintaining the warm bubble of air around them.

She looks - thoughtful.

"Mom?"

"Ellie," she says. "I'm sorry it came to this, but - you did well."

"...Am I dead?"

"Depends on how you define it."

"This is the boundary line between the realm of the dead and the realm of the living. You're in neither, right now - and so I would say you're not dead, but neither are you alive."

"Most people cross too quickly to even perceive the line exists, and once over, they cannot return. I've lingered here, watching over you." She glances up at the sky, frowning a little. "You have choices now, though. Ones that have been granted to very few others."