Summary: Heady was the scent of terror- Harry barely blinked as he pointed a steady hand at Lily Evans, uttering two damnable words: Avada Kedavra.
Soundtrack: Licht und Schatten - Tokyo Ghoul, Jane's Lament.
Warning(s): Time travel, alternate universe, language, blood, violence, slash, disturbing themes.
Wordcount: 1400+
AN: I honestly have no idea where this is going.. so be prepared for anything.
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Eyes On Me
the world is broken and halos fail to glisten
1.
"Get up."
He opened his eyes and stared at the figure towering above him.
He got up, stumbling over the hem of his blood-spattered robes, before righting himself with an unsteady hand on the wall.
Corpses laid under his feet, torn appendages thrown all over the wide hall, a waterfall of blood dripped from the chandelier, he did not look up to follow the trail.
The air was clotted, thick and nauseatingly full of the release of bodily fluids – the carnage around him was bizarrely, disgustingly beautiful.
"Eyes on me, champion." The title was hauntingly familiar.
He thinks that he might once look at death in the eyes, unafraid. Yet now he can barely keep his head up, shame burning in his blood and clouding his eyes.
"I am no champion," he muttered, absently wiping a wet hand on his robes, he doesn't want to know what is the substance on it.
"You were, you are and you will be." Said the once-proud woman coolly, shoulders tense and lines deeply drawn over her smudged face – she aged terribly, her brittle grey hair a mockery of formerly silky dark locks, eyes once aloof and icy now blazing with unquenched rage.
Oh, the fury of a mother is one like no other.
"Get up, there is still one thing you have to do before you off yourself," she said callously, wand moving to pave a path for them through the scattered bodies of their friends, allies and enemies.
"I'm bloody tired," he said faintly, knowing that there's no escaping the furious gaze.
"Well, you will get plenty of rest in the afterlife," she snapped. "Finish what you are owed."
He stood frozen, staring blankly at her bowed spine. She turned and met his gaze. Her hands were shaking.
"And I always do," he said softly.
Did he not?
He always did. Not that it mattered now.
He could see the tears she refused to release - stubborn to the end, like her son. Or was her son like her?
Ah well, he can't ask him; the dead can't speak after all.
Unless he called him through the Stone, but he would rather not face his demons. Not now.
(What was his boggart again? the Dementors, the rotting Inferi wearing the faces of his friends, the mutilated and starved bodies of Hogwarts' children, or the eternally young corpse of her son? He has to check again to know)
He dragged his feet following the swift snap of her skirts; she refused to wear sensible and practical dragonhide pants like all the others, she claimed that she was a woman from the Old Days, and she will continue to wear what she wore then – declared that her competence was not determined by a piece of fabric.
Eloquent, she was. Now he can plainly see the resemblance between her and her batty sister – sanity barely clinging through unfinished quest of vengeance.
But who was he to judge, they all got a few screws loose.
Tendrils of the sun's final rays splashed against the corridors, a picture of hazy, dreamlike world of warm oranges, yellows and soft reds. From a hole blasted in the wall, figures draped in muted colors walked sluggishly over the plains, bowing over scattered bodies – searching for survivors. He doubted there's any.
He halted to stare dazedly at the setting sun, almost touching the scorched plains of Hogwarts, deceptive scenery of a day's concluded serenity.
He took a long, deep breath, turned his back against the scene and went back to following the woman.
Through charred and crumpling halls, they finally stopped before a semi-unsoiled room, with a massive multilayered array painstakingly blood-painted on its floor.
He wondered whose blood she meticulously collected – his, hers or their fallen foes.
She briskly crossed the room to stand on the first drawn array, and spun to give him an expectant look.
He hesitated. "The others?"
Her face twitched, mouth set in a thin line. "No one is left."
Ah.
.
.
.
.
.
It smarts.
The pain surprised him, he thought that he'd long became numb.
He nodded his head and stepped into the last array, deep into the room. He turned to stare at the last of his allies in the long, far too long, war and found her wand leveled at his heart.
"Do you, Harry James Potter - the Last Potter, Champion of Magic, Master of Death, pay the debt you owe me, Narcissa Druella Malfoy née Black?"
The array flared to life. Golden and horrendous, calling for his magic and blood.
The foulest of magickes used in the halls that once housed the brightest of magical generations. The Founders must be rolling in their graves, their sanctuary defiled and sullied.
Well, they were not here, were they?
"I do." He simply replied.
"Then by the right of the Life that is owed, the Magic that is sworn by and the Blood that was freely offered and justly taken, I demand what is owed."
The last he saw before the searing, burning light swallowed him was the sight of her lifeless body collapsing on the floor, and Narcissa Malfoy – dubbed the Lady Terror - was no more.
Harry Potter's world was, likewise, no more.
.
.
2.
A Muggle once said that eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and he was right.
For the sake of whatever sanity he had left, he never counted. For there was no measure of anything to be counted – no hours, days and no years.
Simply silence. And a vast, endless white space filled with swirling pale kaleidoscopes. And he knew - oddly enough - that those were merely incomplete universes still yet unborn.
After an eternity - a flicker of an ancient being's gaze, or a mere moment of a mortal's life - he woke up.
He was laying on hard ground, wet and slippery, and his nose was instantly assaulted by the smell of waste – long expired leftovers, the familiar unpleasant odor of piss, bile and feces.
He dragged his aching bones up, and was met by wide brown eyes.
The child quickly scrambled off and desperately clutched something to his raggedly clothed chest. He wordlessly held his hand, and the boy – of six or seven years – gazed stubbornly back at him.
He lifted his eyebrow, and wiggled his fingers. The wand instantly slipped from grimy fingers to his own. The boy's eyes flew wider and he gasped, displaying a row of decayed teeth.
The absence of paralyzing fear in his eyes was stunning.
"You a wiza'd?" he breathed. Harry felt his lip turning up; his weakness for kids widely known and was grotesquely exploited more than once.
"Yes, I am."
"Thas wicked!" The boy scooted closer, a fresh display of trust their kind's kids learnt the hard way to never show. "'M names Dee, whas you's?"
He hesitantly raised his hand and put it on the mob of matted hair, softly patting it. "Nice to meet you, Dee. My name is Harry." He replied seriously.
The boy giggled. "You's funny."
They stayed still for a while, and he allowed the boy the gawk at him to his little heart's content. But sadly it had to end; he has to know where and when he landed.
So with slight reluctance he withdrew his hand, rummaged inside his bottomless pockets and got hold of a few candies and a bagful of undoubtedly half-stale Bertie Botts. The boy took them with absolute delight, happiness unreservedly shining through his eyes.
The way theirs were never allowed to.
His fingers scraped the wall beside him as he slowly rose on unsteady legs, his vision blurring slightly before clearing to show him the cramped corner he was in, the distant light a few meters away made it obvious that it was a cloudy midday in wherever he was.
"Tempus," he murmured.
12:27 PM. Tuesday, June 7, 1976.
It looks like Lady Malfoy sent him way back than intended. Well, better to be done with it sooner than later.
Ten years ago, around this time of the year, he was nervously waiting for the results of his OWLs and seething at the whole stupidity of the Wizarding world, having to deal with Headmistress Umbridge, full of anger and righteous indignation, snapping at every corner.
Ah, the misery of hormonal teenagers.
He shook his head, charmed his robes to dry – though he really needs to wash, he smells positively rank – and with a halfhearted farewell to the distracted street boy, he stepped out from the shadowed alley.
Well, apparently he was in London.
An unbroken, unscathed London.
Brilliant.
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AN: some of you readers may have noticed an annoying habit of mine- never updating as promised. Well, there may have been some worthy excuses or simply a lack of inspiration, but hopefully this project won't face that. I'll try to update on the 12th and 22nd of every month, unless notified otherwise. Oh, and the quote below the title is from Muse's Neutron Star Collision (Love Is Forever).
Love,
Abby.