PROLOGUE: I SOLOMNLY SWEAR...
He would have loved to say that all that was left was darkness; an infinite abyss of burning ash and rubble, screams renting the air and blood dribbling over carmine-saoked earth and around a horizon full of clammy, lifeless corpses. He would have loved to be able to say -to anyone- that the only thing he could see was death and pain and magic lingering in the air like smoke, poisonous and foggy, clinging to crushed blades of grass and the grotesque sculptures of beaten-down walls that was all that remained of his home. That all he could hear was his own cries of anger and rage, and bone crushing despair, as one by one the soldiers, his FRIENDS and his FAMILY were crushed and beaten and snuffed out like the weak, wavering flames of hope that they had always been. Candles overrun by a sea of blackness and blood.
But he couldn't. There was light, blinding light painting the sky above him a dazzling crimson, and distant sounds of movement, the wind rushing tentatively through trees, birds hiccuping chirps, the occasional sob of someone he probably didn't know, and the scent of tangy blood and wet, winter-saoked earth, penetrating through the fog of ambient, poisonous magic. High above him, the branches of trees swayed in a heavy gust of wind, paper-thin leaves gleaming emerald with filter light the color of gold, and someone sang a song.
He tried to blink the image of a dream from his eyes, shaking, blurry hands rising from their bent positions in the soil to scrub at the crusty skin of his cheeks. Blood crumbled off of his face, his nail renting paths through old gouges, and he let his hands fall back to the ground where they lay with the rest of him; numb, buzzing with fading power, weighted down with a deeply set weariness.
" Are you, H-h-harry P-potter, sir?" A nervous hiccuping voice from his left. Harry contemplated moving his neck, tried a couple of times in the long awkward pause after the question to do so, but gave it up, waiting instead for the man to show up in his field of vision which - right now- was only sky and trees and wind. A head popped into sight, sweaty and streaked with dirt, large, jowl-like cheeks puffed and flushed red. Small, nervous blue eyes stared at him almost fearfully, as if he was a corpse.
" Sir? Are, are you alright? Do you need a medic?" The man was utterly terrified, and Harry knew he was probably scaring him- he dredged up a bitter smile, the muscles of his face twisting and contorting in painful ways beneath a crust of dried scum- but it didn't seem to mean much to the man, who looked even more scared now.
"…" Harry opened his mouth to say something, but the air only exited with a whoosh of sound, his chest caving into deflation, "….I….I…"
What could he say for that? His body was absolute rubbish, he could probably never stand again in his life. Maybe not see, it the shifting orbs of purple and black that swam across his vision meant anything besides the-dakness-is-waiting-go-to-sleep-Harry-go-to-sleep. He needed… he needed relief. He needed to erase everything. He needed his friends. His family. He needed to see them.
" I need to die."
The man flinched, looking taken aback.
" Excuse me, s-sir, " the man stuttered, astonished, his eyes shifting wildly, flitting over Harry's batters, twisted body, to the surrounding mesh of forest, to his wildly fluttering hands, " W-w-what d-d-did you just say…?"
" I said that I need to die." ((The poor man didn't need to hear this, you just want to vent. You never have been able to do that, have you? Not without upsetting the Dursleys, or Hermione, or Ron.))- a voice in Harry's head whispered.
Oh look, I have a concionce now. Aren't only crazy people supposed to have voices in their heads?
((You got pretty wacked up.))
…Yea, ah, yea…
" I don't know sir, I-I-I think y-you're in shock s-sir." the man mumbled, and Harry could hear him stumble back, could hear the whispery sound of his robe collar twisting as he undoubtably cast his gaze frantically about for help, " I'll go get the Medi-witches…yes, yes I th-think I'll do that….very helpful…he's very hurt…"
Footsteps pattering off. Harry closed his eyes and fell asleep.
Harry woke up twice. Once to blinding light, a lumos bathing his naked flesh in soft, glowing magic, and a hoard of lime, medi-wizard robes, crowding around his body. Voices cascaded down over him like waves of hissing, growling voices- meaning nothing. The second time he woke, was to darkness.
And Fire.
" Child. Child, awaken. I can hear our voice and smell your heart, your heat I feel within mine own. Child, I bid thee, awaken."
An ancient voice speaking ancient cracking words in an echoing chorus of magic humming. Harry opened his eyes.
"Wind child, Child of fiery will.I can see you."
And Harry could see the voice. A blinding flower of red and gold and light aching in graceful curves, feathers patterned with archaic and elicit symbols, wide, luminous eyes, cracked and crusted with ages, a murky blue. The taste of ash exploded in Harry's mouth, perfume, and scented sweetly.
" I can see you." came the hushedly whispered greeting, falling from his lips involuntarily, " Who…?"
His voice echoed also in the balck, flung back at him through endless folds of murky grey shadows, amplified and chorussed by a trill of what he could feel as his own Core- humming noted in every octave. It made his tired, dry rasp sound beautiful, round and all-encompassing, pulsating with magic and heat and life.
"I am the Flame of the Ages, " rumbled the voice, even as the bird withdrew it's head from pressed against Harry's forehead and puffed up the iridescent feathers of it's breast, " I am the heart of Magic, the soul of all things bathed in power. I have come to meet you, my Child."
Harry couldn't speak, but the words fell from his lips; " I see you Heart."
" With eyes unclouded with hatred, unburdened with purpose." the Heart said, as if kindly, his old, wise eyes blinking gently at Harry, " I see you, warrior made by my hand and by the touch of Fate. I have come to claim you as my own."
The rest passed as if by dream. The haunting, frighteningly loud voice of the Heart painting a world of thought and feeling in the blank void of the surrounding dream, streams of light spoken from the birds cracked beak spilling forth and twining together, tugging at Harry's magic, whispering to his core. Too much knowledge… too much age… too much power, monopolizing his every thought and breath- his body thrumming and bursting with the feeling of falling asleep and wakening, over and over.
"Your enemy, you defeated, and by your hand released Death from his ancient bonds to Man…. it was a great service, an event foretold…. the beginning of all life… the beginning of all death…"
The bird spread his wings and his words carried the sound of the wind, whispering secrets in a hushed, inhuman voice- the language of the leaves, the call of lighting singing of a tale, a prophecy, the powers and sentient forces of life weaving together a lullaby soft and ominous, full of solemnity and promise.
"He who defied the track of life, disrupted the flow of the River… a pebble cast into the current of a brook…"
The smell of Lilies, Harry realized with a pang, and the strong vision of a flowers petal, silently disturbed by a ripple. Bobbing for a moment before twirling lazily on down it's path of glimmering blue.
"He left his Mark upon this land…Dark and Light in equal balance… Power held by none but shared through the strings of the soul…"
A sickening taint, staining the ambient magic of the earth, besmirching her gentle light and tugging at her shadows, a fingerprint, streaked across a clear glass pane.
"Magic CANNOT BE HELD… Magic CANNOT BE RESTRAINED….WE CANNOT STAND THE WOUND HE MARRED APON OUR SHORES.."
Fury. agony of caring and protecting and being too weak, being too far away to sooth the blistered palm of his home. Harry felt an old, lingering anger bubble to the surface of his psyche, old hurts reopened so that he would understand what pain the heart felt ( losing Sirius, losing his parents, losing Cedric, Fred, Tonks, Remus, Luna, Neville, Ron, Hermione, Collin, Ginny, EVERYONE )
"He left his magic behind, when he departed forever more… and it cannot move from th site of it's abandonment…"
A phantom ghost that fell and rose over and over, robes billowing, the light of Harry's final curse blossoming against his bare expanse of white, scaly chest. The edges of his skin overlapped with reality, the color of bark and grass shining through.
"I weep for it…. I weep for it…"
"You, my warrior, brave child who holds within him Heart… Rescue it…. print the travesty…"
"Death you freed, and now…free…me…"
His body didn't hurt like a bitch, and that was a new sensation. Harry woke up slowly, the void of his post-dream sleep focussing into the grainy, grey and gold darkness of his eyelids, the tingling, buzzing sensation of feeling returning to his limbs piercing the muggy fog of his sleep-weighted body like knives. It didn't hurt like a bitch, it just hurt, and Harry was used enough to that that he could completely ignore if he had to. And he had to, for, as his eyelids slowly fluttered open and his chest filled with a sudden jerky breath of burning cold air, Harry reached for his magic.
And it was there. Whole. Cloaking him like a glimmering aura of stormy grays, thrashing, sky-like blues contorted into greens and streaked with angry reds. A heavy, pungent blanket of His magic, streaming in through his nostrils to fill a wounded pair of lungs, clogging his mouth with fuzzy, healing warmth, cutting off his startled cry with a tendril of roiling energy down his abused throat, and dancing tauntingly, gleefully before his eyes. Free.
"What…?" His breathless question rung in his ears painfully, and his magic flinched and coiled around him, a lightly warning shock tingling his parted lips. Like the reprimanding tap of a lover.
But this isn't possible! He thought dazedly, raising slightly glowing hands into the air above him, turning them over and around as if examining for wounds he knew had been there earlier, but had been knit over with pink flesh and sinewy muscle.
It can't be! Tom, he- he sealed this! Harry marveled, basking in the fiery glow of his power as it slithered into his cuts and wounds and healed them.
The golden colored hands, his own, dropped to the ground, feeling hard packed earth there- not the slippery blood-soaked one he had blacked out on, nor the tiled floor of the infirmary- and pushed. The work spun and bucked as Harry rose shakily to his feet, his legs struggling to stay under him, his magic undulating and rippling angrily around him.
" Err, thanks…" he muttered, as one grey-green cloud of power steadied his elbow, " Thank you." he said again, warmly, and the hard clump of magic dissipated back into mist. Harry squinted, shaking the buzzy, cottony feeling from his head and blinking the last blurry remnants of sleep from his eyes.
He gasped.
There, before him, towering just a rolling slope of patchy green and straw-colored grass away, stood Hogwarts. Spires and turrets of shambling stone bursting upwards, flickering lights behind tall, arched windows, the distant, billowing capes of magical wards, glinting in the frigid winter sun. Harry took a shocked step backwards, tripped, his ankle wobbling precariously, and was flung backwards into a hard tree trunk by his own momentum. He spared a fleeting glance upward at the tree (one of the Forbidden Forests, tall, extremely leafy, draped in a few dusty spider-webs), beforee his gaze jerked front and landed, riveted, on Hogwarts.
It was as if the ancient walls had a gravity all it's own, pulling him with limping, stumbling steps forwards, the sky and ground arching and swirling out of focus around it- dissolving into just him, Harry, struggling forwards up the grassy slope, and his home, the only place he had ever loved. He didn't notice he was crying until the first involuntary, mumbled apology burst from his lips.
" Oh god, you are so beautiful, so lovely, your alive, you're alive, I'm so sorry, so sorry, so very very sorry I could't, it was impossible, I died, but I couldn't save you, I couldn't help you, please gods please please be whole be the same. Oh thank you, thank you, thank gods, thankgodthankgodthankgodthankgod…!"
Thank you, He wept his eyes squeezing shut as his fingers softly, reverently reached the tall stone walls, Thank you so much, Heart, so much.
Harry didn't allow himself to collapse himself against the stones of Hogwarts and weep himself once more into a healing sleep, but he did slump against it's cold, hard surface and just bask in the spicy, volatile nature of Hogwarts natural magic. His hands weren't idle, they skimmed the rough, craggy stones gently, revealing in the feeling of the innate heart-beat that the castle held, and his eyes devoured the beautiful view of the Hogwarts crest, flapping above him in the wind. He was home. He was back.
Everything would be okay, now. He had his magic, he had his Home, and inside him, whispering on the fringes of his mind, the hauntingly beautiful voice of the Heart urging him on.
A rueful smile twisted his face as Harry glanced upwards again from his marvelously healed hands, and his mind called forth the voices of all he had cared about.
Oh yes. I'm ready this time, and I solemnly swear, I am up to no good.