He was running.
He had needed to run.
He had always been running.
He wasn't able to stop.
He didn't deserve to stop.
Stopping is for the weak.
Stopping is for the dead.
He didn't know what stopping was.
He was a hypocrite, but he knew: he couldn't stop.
Sometimes, he was running from Dudley. Other times Voldemort, or Malfoy, or the basilisk, or whoever, but he was still running. And then, he was done.
The end of the war had came abruptly, and people didn't notice their enemy was gone until 10 days after, when the news seemed to explode out of the populace, as if they had known but their minds wouldn't tell them they knew until it was sure that the goddamn bastard was dead. And Voldemort certainly was dead, Harry had seen to that.
Someimes he didn't know how he'd killed Voldemort. Other times he'd know all too well. He'd remember Hermione's screams as they sawed off her arms. He'd remember Ron's head staring at him, right in front of him, torn off after he was quartered by four thestrals. He'd remember the twice-turned-traitors, both of them, impaled right besides each other, Peter and Snape. Both traitors first to the light, then to the dark, then murdered because neither had wanted them.
That day he knew: the ideas of light and dark weren't different. Darkness was a type of light, and light was a type of darkness. The people, Light and Dark, were also exactly the same. Neither liked being betrayed, and neither could stand the other getting an upper hand.
And then there was The Middle. If Harry was more naive, he would have thought The Middle to be on his side, but he realized that the middle, too, had its own agenda. The balance, it said, was neccessary, and balance can mean pruning of both light and dark. And the people he loved, it said, they lived outside of this world, they lived inside of you, just ideas. If you cut their physical bodies down mercilessly, if you scatter their entrails so you can maintain the balance, you didn't hurt them, you helped the world.
The Middle, he soon learned, was the most cruel. Where Light and Dark would protect their own, The Middle only cared about end goals, about the results. The Order, Dumbledore, even the Ministry to a smaller extent, were producs of The Middle.
Yet, The Middle helped him kill Voldemort, it had the power to put down Dark and Light each. But Harry soon realized, you are what you eat. And Harry, in order to kill Voldemort, had devoured his power.
He began to realize: he was hungry for more. The holes that the deaths of Ron and Hermione, the twins, Sirius, Remus, Hagrid, Hedwig, all of them, that they had left in him, they needed to be filled. Harry wanted power. At first it was a little nudge here and there, then it grew into a torrent. He required power, now, or his body made him feel like it was so.
He needed power, so he got it.
Some power he gained himself, through training and dedication.
Other power he stole and drained from artifacts, thousands of years old.
Still more power he researched for, finding power in knowledge.
And Harry Potter forgot that he was supposed to die. It's a strange thing really. Death could only take him if he knew he was to die, but with himself immersed in finding power, he simply forgot to do so. So he kept on living, getting power, and the universe went on. Sometimes it went straight, other times backwards, sometimes a round about way again, and he didn't quite know what was causing the inconsistency. He didn't much care, however, since they only opened up more opportunities for power.
The Middle kept pushing him to get more and more, more anything that it would consider power. Yet The Middle, too, remembered that it was supposed to fade away, long after Dark and Light had stopped being whispered about. And Harry Potter no longer needed power, so he simply waited.
And then, one day, he realized he was alone. Almost everyone else had died some trillions of years ago, and he found himself standing on the last vestiges of humanity. It was a castle, suspended in nothingness, with a king, a queen, a jester, and no subjects. The maid, the knight, and the chef had all withered away, having been forgotten by everyone else, and eventually themselves.
Harry watched, as a young boy and a blind man appeared, and then a Goddess, dressed quite appropriately as a punk rocker.
The Goddess sent the young boy and the blind man somewhere, somewhen. She turned to Harry, and for the first time in what must have been a few thousand trillion years, someone smiled at Harry Potter.
She said to him, "Hello."
Harry had no words to reply back with, all having faded away long ago.
She smiled again, "I'm Death. I suppose you could call me an old friend."
Harry's words, again, failed him.
"I suppose you still want to go on, don't you, Harry? You haven't found what you're looking for, yet." She smiled once more, then nodded to herself.
Behind her, a little dot seemed to grow, and she grew excited. "Ah, that would be The End of the Universe, and The Beginning. The Chicken, you could call it", she said, laughing a little at her own joke. Harry had forgotten how to smile.
"Well, I suppose it's time for you to get going, eh, Harry?" She said, and everything went black for the last time for Harry Potter. And, perhaps, the first time as a new man.
Harry felt like he should feel something, now, to be here to witness the universe constrict into a dot outside of normal human comprehension, and expand into everything and anything. He could see everything stretching, light, space, and time, past his head. He seemed to be everywhere and nowhere for all time and no time as stars exploded and reformed, as rubble moved past, and heat spread throughout the universe. He decided to watch.
He saw planets break down and reform, alien civilizations so different yet so similar to humanity be re-done. All made out of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, the common chef's ingredients for life. He saw the laws of science he'd learned so long ago be put to work. Natural Selection, irresponsible use of resources, over-stressed worlds, all brought down planets in their own solar systems. Some planets with civilizations were close, and formed new civilizations and societies cut off from the rest of the universe. None of them lasted longer than a million years, it seemed.
Some of these places had powers of their own, gods who would rule. They always fell into the Light, Dark, or The Middle. The Light, Dark, and The Middle, were indeed reborn out of The Void of space, and though they tried to stake their claims on him, couldn't as he now existed under a different power: Time. Time wasn't Light, nor Dark, nor of The Middle, it simply was and always is, and never stops being. AS it moves forward it rewinds, and as it rewinds it moves forwards, never stopping, always running somewhere. Although now, the running felt more like a leisurely stroll in a pleasant park in London for Harry.
Harry then thought back to the gods. They wanted perfection, more than anything else, knowing that all other planets had fallen into the void of time, that they weren't perfect enough. That they made mistakes, and that was unacceptable. Some gods searched for perfection through creation, others through destruction, others through training, and the rare few slipped through the cracks that had given up on true perfection.
And this was how Harry's time passed. Learning about the universe and how it worked, and how it operated, and he began to remember where he came from. He remembered the tiny speck called Surrey, and another called Hogwarts, and what they called Magic, and all the little things. He remembered there were humans, and times to teach, and so much bustle in such a little time. He remembered so little and yet so much happened and he wondered if any of it mattered.
Then he shrugged and turned back to the universe. And Harry Potter became lost in the depths of time, and the slightly flowing waters of reality.
The chill bit into his chest, and he sat up gasping. It was nighttime, October 3rd, of Harry Potter's third year at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
The dream, to Harry, seemed vivid and surreal, watching the universe pass and unfold. He wondered if any of it was true, so he looked up at the stars. It was as if the night sky was suddenly full of them, bright and bustling and enchanting and calling and crooning to him, begging him to go there.
And Harry yearned to go there, he truly did. He wanted to fly up to the stars, twirling, leaving his bed behind him like he was Peter Pan. Everything twinkling and laughing, and he was laughing too.
The chill bit again, and Harry shook his head to clear the cobwebs. He was in some sort of trance, and he didn't quite know where it would lead him. To the stars, or to nowhere, or maybe it would just be forgotten.
Throughout the night, he couldn't stop thinking about his dream and about the stars. Then, it was the morning, and he walked out of his room, still with thoughts turned astrologically. Then, the day, the week, the month, and it seemed every year from then on might be filled with just stars in his head.
So he began to research. Harry spent more and more time in the library, looking for all the information he could. He spent his time in Astrology deep in thought, of how he was to get up there. He found himself spending nights in the Forbidden Forest, staring at the stars so much the centaurs soon began to join him, discussing them in their own unique way.
And still, Harry wondered how in the world to get up there?
He learned the muggles could go to the moon with their rocket ships and their jet propulsion, but the moon was far too close for Harry to be satisfied with it. Their sattelites and their rovers, still, stayed close to and within the solar system. So Harry turned to magic.
Harry soon learned that there wasn't a single magical discipline that existed that by itself could send him to the stars, they were just too linear. Charms couldn't carry him higher than the atmosphere, transfiguration was the same, rituals and the like were restricted by his own speed, and runes felt too archaic.
So Harry thought, if he couldn't do it with technology, and he couldn't do it with magic, why not try it with both?
By this time, his third year was winding to a close, and while he had gone through with saving his godfather, his thoughts remained firmly on the stars as he came closer and closer to returning to Privet Drive Number 4.