This is mostly romance more than anything. And angst. Lots and lots of angst. And a little dramatic. Okay, very dramatic. You've been warned.
This is intended as two-shots, but I don't know when I can start writing the second part, and this can be seen as complete anyway (the ending is different, though)
((I needed to get this out of my system before I could continue with Chrysochlorous))
Btw, a warning: this is un-betaed and not yet reviewed by anyone other than myself, so... yeah. Expect a mess.
Heavily inspired by Arctic Monkey's 505 and Matthew and the Atlas' Counting Paths.
When you look at me like that, my darling,
What did you expect?
THE SEER AND THE TIME TRAVELER
1.
Some say that it's easy to develop a taste for killing. Blood spills once, then more, and more – until red soaks underneath rough fingernails. Some are repulsed at the first. Others are calm, unfazed. But they say that in the end it gets you. The grip of Death on your tainted hands, the chill of its breath along your spine. Horror turns into acceptance, acceptance into desire. Offer so many souls to Death's clutches—both the innocent and the vile, it never really matters, doesn't it?—and see how little human lives really mean.
Harry Potter hates killing. Yet he does it, again, and again until he can barely keep count. He remembers his first kill, dreams of it every night. He remembers thinking to himself that it couldn't be helped, that it would get easier, that he wasn't any less of a person for taking another's life.
It doesn't get easier. He gets quicker, certainly; his hands now move without hesitation, precise and deadly. But the disgust remains. The crawling beneath his skin, the need to escape his own body. Every time he takes a life, it hurts as much as the first one.
And every time, Death's shadowed hood smiles. Every time, it turns his insides into ice.
2.
Master of Death.
He flinched, the first time the title was uttered aloud. He still does, sometimes. Death knows how much he has come to despise it, and takes pleasure in drawling the name. Harry lets it. They both know that as much as Death lashes and bites and draws blood, Harry is the one that holds the leash.
He doesn't quite know what to do with it, at first. The power. The strength that has taken countless greedy souls, the supremacy that sent Gellert Grindelwald over the edge. The ancient magic that once tempted the great Albus Dumbledore, dancing on his fingertips, bending to his command.
Death remains quiet. It says nothing unless Harry asks, and when Harry does, he can feel the displeasure dripping in the answers. The deity takes great effort in answering as little as possible, but Harry soon learns to ask the right questions. Death's icy blue eyes scream with cold fire. Harry smiles.
3.
Time is a concept humans create. Everything happens everywhere. Simultaneously.
He only needs to learn to jump.
4.
Find us, the spirit of Hermione Granger says. Her eyes are wide, wild, and Harry wonders if this is one of Death's tricks. Find us, Harry. Kill him, before he does everyone else. End him before it all begins.
This isn't what he wants to hear. He has summoned her because he feels tired. Because dead or alive, Hermione Granger is his rock, and now he feels like he is slipping on cold stones to fall on giant rocks and crashing ocean. He wants to see her smile at him. He wants her to tell him that he is brave, that he is loved, that he will endure this and one day, a thousand years from now, it will end and everything will be as it is supposed to be.
But even in death, Hermione Granger is cold and calculating. Harry wonders where the bookworm with hesitant smile has gone, but then remembers that war changes everyone. He sees the way she looks at him now (like a rat at a stag) and thinks that maybe he has gone further than she ever has.
"I will," He promises. Gold bursts from the tip of his wand and encloses over his chest. Binding. For a second, Hermione looks like she's about to cry, but then her jaw sets, and she nods in satisfaction. Harry opens his mouth, countless questions on his tongue. How does it feel like, up there? How does she fare? Does she miss him, the way he does her? Does her heart feel like it wants to implode and swallow the rest of her body, the way his does? Does she care? Does it all matter?
But he holds his tongue. She was all he had, once upon a time. His sister in all but blood. He suffered for her, killed for her. All in vain. Now she stands on the other side, the mist of Death between them. And he can't bring himself to trust her.
5.
His first attempt ends with burn marks all over his body. It's hard to believe that ice can burn so hot, but it does, and the evidence is painted all over his skin. He inspects the new marks and can't help but to compare them with the rest of his scars. He can't remember his body unmarred by red and blue and black (even his childhood colored his body almost as much as the war did) but he tries anyway. White is a boring color, he decides.
Death's gaze is mocking, but Harry pays it no mind. He wraps himself in Ron's old blanket and tries to have the sleep he needs. Someone screams at the distance. He counts inside his head, matching it with the screeching voices, and finally drifts off to slumber.
"You will not succeed. You will only burn everything in your path."
6.
His second attempt lands him at the wrong place and the wrong time.
It also lands him with the wrong bones in the wrong places. Harry winces as he wakes, feeling copper in his mouth and searing pain in his every joint.
"It's a miracle that he's alive," someone says. Harry wants to retort that it would be a miracle if he wasn't, but he opts for silence. He wills the magic flowing in his blood to repair what have been broken, to return what were displaced. His bones move beneath his skin, finding their way back. He groans.
Someone stirs beside him. A sprawl of long dark hair was on his bedside moments ago, and now the face underneath it looks up in alarm. It is a kind face, Harry thinks. A pale face like his own, a pair of blue eyes that shines brighter than Luna Lovegood's. She hesitates but there is determination in her gaze, the way Hermione did when she came across an obstacle she scarcely knew how to get out of.
"You're alive," she says, like she is talking about the heavy rain outside. Harry's eyes flicker to the endless grey behind the window frame. He can almost feel Dementor's presence, lurking and unavoidable.
"An astute observation," He returns dryly when he realizes the girl is staring at him. There is no shame in her eyes when he stares back. She doesn't lower her eyes, doesn't pretend that she's not looking. Instead she smiles. It's a pretty smile, Harry thinks, but he doesn't return it.
His muscles are still sore, but he manages to stand easily. There is much to do, someone to kill, and he can't spend another day sprawled helplessly on a stranger's bed. He turns to her. The tip of his wand finds a spot between her blue eyes—as blue as the ocean, Harry thinks, as bright as the sky—only to find that she doesn't seem the slightest bit surprised.
He falters. Her eyes are entirely on him, burning with something he can't name.
"What's your name?" He asks, not knowing why he cares.
Her eyes lowers now, and her smile becomes restrained. "Alice."
"Alice," He tests the name. It rolled off his tongue in swift, soft hiss. "Thank you."
She doesn't ask his name in return—something that he's glad for. The weapon at his hand remains fixed between her eyes. Do it. Do it. Do it.
He lowers his wand, finding it too heavy for his fingertips. Her eyes are still on him. There is no surprise, no fear, just mild fascination masked behind something he can't discern. He turns, and prepares to leave.
"It won't work."
He spins. Her gaze is fixed on the floor now, and she's biting her lip. She says again, "It will not."
"What won't?"
When her eyes return to his, they were brimming in tears.
"Everything."
She's mad, he decides. A mad girl. A kind girl, one that tends to a dying stranger's wound and falls asleep on their bedside as though it is her blood that has been spilled. A muggle who knows nothing, who has no right to look at him now the way Ginny Weasley did when he left for war.
Long after, after nights pass and days reign in chilling wind, he thinks of her. Alice. A-lice. Speaking her name feels like Parseltongue, like an ancient part of him that he has forgotten. He replays their encounter in his head. He tries to pretend that the reason he didn't obliviate her was anything but that he didn't want her to forget him.
7.
The night is cold and the storm is unforgiving. In the shadows of an alley he watches a woman with round stomach, too heavy for her fragile figure. Merope Gaunt. He doesn't feel hatred coursing through his veins at the sight, but he holds no love for her either. He does nothing when she falls down, blood between her thighs, tears on her cheek and a scream from her trembling mouth. He does nothing when she gives little Tom Riddle to the tall woman who opened the orphanage's door (she reminds him of Petunia Dursley, and he pursed his lips) and tells her how handsome her boy is, how much of his father's look the babe has inherited. He does nothing when she tells the flabbergasted woman her boy's name. He does nothing when Merope Gaunt draws her last breath.
Four years ago, he would have run to her. He would have fought tooth and nail to keep this innocent woman alive. He would have tried to save her so Riddle might have a mother, one that would undoubtedly love him with her every being. He would have hoped it would be enough to prevent the blood and screams that followed.
Now, he does nothing. The dead road is soon ignited with whispers and hushes. Only several of the bystanders actually do something—a rough, middle-aged man runs to her broken form as if she was one of his own. He carries her with difficulty he tries not to show, while Harry remains quiet, reveling at the sight of Slytherin's pure blood stepped on by muggles. He almost smiles. At its rightful place.
It is when the commotion dies that he finally moves. The locked door holds no resistance against him, and he slithers in like a snake. Lightning begins to light the dark sky.
One step. Two steps. He walks up the wooden stairs with weight on his feet. Thunder explodes in the distance—the room is blindingly bright for a second. His steps hesitate. He can almost see a body lying on the floor, black hair disheveled, brown eyes opened and lifeless behind broken glasses.
His grip on the wand tightens.
The door creaks slightly as it opens. The woman took Tom Riddle from his mother's dying arms turns, but a streak of green flash takes the light out of her eyes before she can see him, before she can beg for the baby's life. It is different, don't you see?
He steps over her corpse and moves to the wooden cradle. He doesn't know what he expects, really, perhaps a set of cold, grey eyes filled with malicious indifference. Whatever it is, it is not the innocence that stares back at him.
He trembles. He doesn't know why. This will be hardly the lowest of him, hardly the worst thing he's done.
"Harry."
The voice sounds real. But it isn't. She isn't here. She isn't speaking to him. Gently. Lovingly.
"You're so loved. You're so loved."
She's dead, along with others. She is dead, she has left—what's the difference, when in the end he's always alone?
"Mama loves you. Dada loves you."
He can almost see a scar forming on Tom Riddle's forehead.
"Harry, be safe. Be strong."
Something shatters inside of him. Something he doesn't know he still has, but it doesn't matter—it never does. Green shoots from the tip of his wand like a jet and fills the room. Tom Riddle lies dead, grey eyes half-opened. Harry's fingers move to close the baby's eyes, but eventually he decides against it.
He doesn't think as he exits the house. He doesn't think as he returns. He doesn't think as he throws himself to the ground, as he stares at the endless sky. He doesn't think. This is the only way he knows to cope, the only way he knows to be strong.
8.
It is dangerous to hope. He knows. How many times has he hoped, only to see the world crumble, see everything he loves destroyed?
But he hopes, now. He has killed at the beginning of the story, ended it before it began. He dares to hope, mostly because he can't help himself.
Yet now he stands, his feet cold and his hands unfeeling. The tombstones before his eyes are unmoving, unchanging, unforgiving.
Here Lie
The Heroes of the Second Wizarding War
RONALD BILLIUS WEASLEY
HERMIONE JEAN GRANGER
Death stands beside him. He can almost see the mocking smile beneath the hood. He resists the urge to cut it with its own scythe; he lets himself drown in a sea of cold rage instead.
Amidst it, a voice almost forgotten spoke from his memories.
It won't work. It will not.
Everything.
9.
He sends himself a few decades back. He has only seen the house once, through Dumbledore's hazy memory. The Gaunt's residence is an old, frail and forgotten thing, resembling nothing of the greatness of Slytherin. There is no violent shout or vile guffaws, no stern Marvolo Gaunt and cruel Morfin Gaunt. This is the time when Merope is alone and freed from her abusive family's grasp. He walks closer to the house, and peeks through the window.
At this angle he can see Merope's cascade of lank and dull hair, swinging as she moves around with haste. It isn't difficult to notice her strangeness this way. Her hands moved in a frantic circular motion, pink smoke emerging from the cauldron before her. The glint in her eyes is desperate and fearful.
Disgust stirs in him. He's tasted it before. He remembers the haziness, the growing obsession and urge for a person he hadn't bothered to glance before. He remembers Romilda Vane's naked form beneath his sheets, their feet tangled together, his fluids between her thighs.
Nothing holds him back as he walks briskly to the front door, unlocks it, and points his wand squarely to her chest.
She barely has time to react. Her mouth opens to scream, but before a syllable escapes, the green light hits her and she falls, eyes wide and unseeing.
10.
"Why?" He finally asks, when he returns to the same, unmoving tombstones with the two most important people in his world beneath the ground. Death turns to regard him, but it offers nothing but silence. Harry feels his throat tighten, his fists tremble.
"I've killed him. I've killed his mother. Why does nothing change?" He demands, grasping Death's hood so hard he almost tears it. He remembers a time when those icy blue eyes frighten him. Not now, not when he is filled with fury and power dances on his fingertips. "WHY?"
The answer is as cold as its tone. "Because Fate does not allow it."
The garment between his fingertips tears. Blood rings in his head, boiling in his veins.
The Boy-Who-Lived. The Chosen One. The Savior. All of those were Fate's gift to him. All his life, the entirety of his childhood and youth, there was never a choice.
"Fuck Fate," He hisses, finally letting Death go. Let the deity or whatever the fuck it is hear him. Let it try to destroy his life further. Let it try to take and take and take—he has nothing left to give, only to gain.
11.
He returns to the same orphanage, to the same tiny house of the last direct descendant of Slytherin. He sees the same corpses. Dead. Dead. Dead. They are all dead, they can't hurt anyone now, so why does nothing change?
12.
He drinks. He smokes. He tries anything, magical and muggle alike, to take his mind off the chase. He doesn't have a permanent residence anymore, not since all of this started. He jumps between timelines only out of necessity (There is a limit of stay for one in a time to which they do not belong). He's learned to pack everything into the rugged backpack Hermione once charmed for him. His home is now his tent, and although at first he felt suffocated inside the enclosed space, he has come to love the warmth it provides. He finds that the less the empty space the better—that way it doesn't feel as though something is missing.
Stacks of parchments and pages torn from books lie atop of his desk. Some find their way to the floor, some have wine spilled over them. It looks like blood, but Harry doesn't flinch at the sight of it anymore. Across all of the papers are his frantic handwritings, marks, passages he has highlighted and runes he tries to manipulate.
He doesn't count how many nights he spends on his desk. There is nothing left in this life but this, nothing else worth looking forward to. He eats, he sleeps, he reads and reads until his brain hurts. He forgets what another voice sounds like, except for the ones in his nightmares.
He almost forgets about her entirely. His own little savior, even though he never needed saving. He has forced her out of her mind before, especially when he needed to concentrate at the task at hand, but at the moment, when his head is burning and overwhelmed, he welcomes the distraction.
It won't work. It will not.
Everything.
What did that mean? What did she know?
She is a muggle. She is peculiar, but she holds no magical power. The knowledge in her eyes can't be anything but false, the conviction of hers can only be imaginary.
It is a week later when finally, he packs everything back into his backpack and jumps straight into the vortex.
13.
He can't find her.
He is back in Biloxi, right where his first attempt landed him. His memory of the date is hazy, so it is possible that he is off by a year or two, but she should be here. She couldn't have been dead, he would know. He knows she isn't.
He walks around the city like the tourist that he isn't, seeing into one mind and then another and another. Days and nights he strives through memories about which he doesn't care, faces he doesn't bother to remember. Until finally, a homeless man in a dark alley has memory worth inspecting.
"Father, you have to believe me—"
He freezes. The girl in the memory is nothing like the one he remembers, but he knows without a doubt that it is her. Foreign and familiar all at the same time. He watches helplessly as she cries, feeble knuckles hitting her father's arm, the hem of her dress colored from muds and rain. The older man, slick as a snake, pays her no mind. His grip on her is so tight that from the distance Harry can see hints of purple.
"You've tarnished our family name enough," The man's whisper is as harsh as the way he drags her. Alice whimpers. Her eyes are red, as are her cheeks; Harry notices that the shape of the red mark matches her father's hand.
His fingers twitch on his wand. He reminds himself this is a memory, remaining motionless as he watches the man take her into a washed out building far from the main street. The fence that surrounds it stands tall and proud, but the sign above has been repainted a great number of times.
BILOXI MENTAL INSTITUTION
14.
Fury.
He's surprised, to say the least. It's an emotion he hasn't felt in a long time. Anger now comes to him in shards of ice; fire in his veins is a startling change. He wonders if the two are really simply interchangeable, and he's just slowly losing his reason, losing his mind.
But that's what he feels—this explosive rage—when the metal door opens and reveals the broken form of the girl he's been searching for. When he sees what has been done to her.
She barely registers his presence. Her body is frail and weak and so breakable in his hold. Her eyes are half-opened but they are looking past him. For a single moment, his anger subsides and all he can think is he needs to feel the ocean-blue on him again.
When he departs, the entirety of the building is on fire. The smoke runs high to the starless sky, the heat scorching and as bright as his fury. It would have burned anyone it touched, if only there were anyone left alive.
15.
It feels strange, taking care of someone. He spends days and nights tending to her wounds. All the while she stays still, even when her eyes are open and alight with something that is lost to him. He wonders if she even sees him at all. He wonders if to her he is dressed in white, keys dangling on his belt as he delivers her stale bread through the small opening of thick metal door—her only source of light.
He comes to her in the mornings, leaves before the dark arrives. He spoon-feeds her because both of her hands still tremble. He uses wooden spoons and plates because seeing metal makes her eyes wide with fear.
He can't help but note that their roles are now reversed, the vulnerable and the savior. He wonders if she will leave as well, when she becomes able.
All the while, the questions are on the tip of his tongue. What did you mean what did you mean what did you mean –
But she looks back at him under her wet eyelashes and his thoughts died in his throat. He wonders if she does this on purpose. If she already knows she holds this absurd power over him.
He continues the ministration, even as color returns to her skin and hair, as her back stands straight without her wincing. He studies every move, every gesture. This is an investment, he tells himself.
He gives, and she accepts, but it doesn't feel like a proper transaction. Can it ever be, with one party oblivious to the ordeal?
16.
"That day," Harry begins, when she's strong enough to walk and sit at the edge of the window in the tiny flat he has rented, staring at the endless city lights. "You said something to me."
She turns to him. Her legs are draped comfortably at the pile of pillows he has placed there, but she moves them. He takes this as an invitation and sits, barely at the edge. They can fit three persons in the space between them, but even then the closeness feels suffocating.
"It won't work," He recites.
"It will not," She confirms. She is looking at him with pity, as if he was the one locked and tortured at the order of his own father. He tenses, but stays silent. She seems to notice anyway. She lowers her eyes, and then turns her gaze back to the city view.
"What won't?"
"Everything."
He sighs. Has it all been for naught? Has he killed and burned the whole asylum for one mad girl?
"How would you know?" He asks, unable to keep skepticism out of his voice.
She smiles at him as if she has heard it all her life. "Because I've seen it."
She tells him the things she has seen. In her wake, in her dreams. She tells him a story about a girl who saw the things no one else could see, the foolish girl who opened her mouth and told the world about it. It is a sad story, he knows immediately as soon as she opens her lips, but Harry has his fair share of sad stories. Still the hollow cavity of his chest tightens as she speaks, as she tells him of a little doe-eyed girl bawling at her mother's deathbed, surrounded by people who never believed her warnings. Her father was a meticulous, cold man but even he could find it in him to fiercely love his dead wife. But he couldn't for her – the little girl who cried alone beside her mother's tombstone, even when everyone else left and rain started to pour.
She was a dreamer, the little girl. He was too, once, back when he was stealing Dudley Dursley's old story books to read under flickering candles, in the darkness of his cupboard.
Of course, she speaks not a word about that part. But she might as well have, because he can tell by her features, by the hesitant way she looks back at him, eyes blazing with something that is terrifying and familiar all at once.
Her story halts after her mother's funeral. There is so much more, Harry knows, and he wants so badly to ask but holds his tongue. This isn't what matters, he tells himself. He does not care how her story ends; he wants to know what's behind it. Her gifts. He wants to use them. He wants to use her.
"So you've been wrong before," He says instead.
"I have."
"What makes you think you're not wrong now?"
She's silent now. He can't decide if it's because she's thinking what to say, or how she should say it.
"The days are liars, and the nights are true," She says. "And you only ever come to me in the dark."
18.
There are two kinds of visions, she later explains. You can't trust the ones that come in the wake. They change as quickly as the weather. But never doubt the ones that come in the dreams—those are the ones set in the stones. They ring true, and they will never change.
And you only ever saw me in your dreams?
Yes, she admits, then bites her lip. And each time, I saw you fail.
19.
He steers clear from her for the first few days. He can't look at her, he can't not look at her, and her silent pity only adds fuel to the cold fire.
She stays. He has no energy to travel at the moment, so he settles into the warmth of his tent and the privacy of his charm-protected bedroom, and she stays. He doesn't know why he lets herstay. He can't bring himself to continue his research now, with her eyes burning to the back of his head and her words ringing inside his skull. She is a liability; her presence brings nothing but discouragement. An obstacle in the way to his goal.
He doesn't believe her. He can't. He knows she tells no lies, but her mind itself is questionable. These dreams that she speaks of – she can't even summon them on a whim. It is a series of meaningless, vague omens that haunts her before the tragedy even begins.
In other words, she is useless.
The wise decision is to send her away. Obliviate her, give her a place to stay far from her little hometown. It would be a kindness, and he would be freed from this constant, mind-numbing anxiety. He wouldn't be forced to look into the pair of blue eyes too bright for someone with a past so dark.
He doesn't, in the end. Somewhere along the way, he has convinced himself that she will be of use in the future, but he has never been that good of a liar, even to himself.
20.
She screams in her sleep. It sounds too similar with the ones in his head. He entertains the idea of giving her a vial of Dreamless Sleep Potion, but decides against it. There is no need to thrust her into another thing she can't get out of.
Some nights, he wakes up drenched in sweat, not knowing if the screams are hers or his own.
21.
When she steps into the vortex for the very first time, he doesn't know what to expect. His own first taste was a painful, abhorring experience etched to his memory to this day. It is not something he hopes to see her endure, but he doesn't stop himself from telling her to step inside. The vortex no longer hurts him now - or he can no longer tell the difference, he doesn't know. But he knows pain awaits her. He doesn't give her soothing whispers and reassuring touches. But he does warn her.
"It will hurt."
Alice raises her eyebrows, as if offended that he doesn't assume she knows. He hides a smile behind his hand.
She doesn't scream when she steps in, but her grip on his wrist tightens that has his skin not turned into steel, she could have broken it. As reality around them swirls, her eyes entirely on his, he wonders how he can be so cruel to inflict this path on her, how selfish of him to want her - this fragile, brave little thing - by his side.
Yet when they arrive, as she falls on her knees and bawls over with blue and red on her skin, all he can think is how similar they are now. They bear the same mark, now one and the same.
"It doesn't hurt too bad," she says, the brave little thing.
Harry lets his smile show this time. He can be kind enough not to point out her wince. "The pain eases over time. Eventually, you'll feel nothing at all."
"Do you feel nothing?"
He pauses. He isn't sure why, but it feels like she is talking about another matter entirely. When he doesn't answer, she continues, "Pain is better than nothing. Anything is better than nothing."
Death enters his mind, and Harry can't help but agree. But he doesn't voice it. He lets her think whatever she wants to think of him – it doesn't matter, it never does. The conversation ends there, almost forgotten until later that night when she falls asleep on his couch and the sleeve of her oversized shirt drifts to her arm, and he notices the lines on her wrists.
He has noticed it before, when he first took care of her. But then the scar was faint pink, and this one is a set of angry red. It's new. He feels if he moves closer, he can smell the blood on her.
"Better than nothing," He murmurs, unable to stop himself. He crouches down, his knees hitting the carpet, as he touches the red lines. Alice stirs. His gaze turns to her face. She is so young, but he so easily forgets. Her bright-blue eyes are as old and haunted as his own. Once they are closed, it is impossible to not notice her youth, her stolen innocence.
Without thinking, he places his lips on the inside of her wrist. He doesn't know why he's doing this, but before he has time to ponder about it, a pair of ocean-blue eyes opens and locks with his.
Neither of them says a thing. What is there to say? He keeps staring, transfixed, as he feels her pulse beneath his fingers races.
Then, as if burned, Harry drops her hand and stands, leaving her in silence, his heartbeat loud in his ears.
22.
It is time to move forward, he decides. She has been distraction enough.
He hasn't dared to look at her, since that night. He can't help his little glances, the wanderings and musings of his mind that somehow have the tendency to return to her, but he doesn't allow himself to look. He can feel her staring, though. It helps his agony – not that he will ever admit it to anyone but himself.
He has advised a new plan. His attempts so far have been futile – killing both Merope Gaunt and her infant child changes nothing in history. He has spent weeks wrecking his brain and crumpling countless ink-smeared parchments, yet so far research has brought him nothing but baseless musings. Death has been uncharacteristically silent, even more so, even when Harry raises his voice and tightens the magical leash he has on its throat. The entity winces, as if in pain, but there is mirth in its eyes at the thought of denying him knowledge that is never in its power in the first place.
The secrets of Fate's are lost to all but itself.
And thus he is left with himself. Out of three, the brawn with emotions on his sleeves – the charmer, the inspiration, the leader of the army. Knowledge is Hermione's expertise and strategic maneuvers are Ron's. Now he is facing both, with his own forte lacking – what makes the Boy-Who-Lived, the Savior, other than the sheer stubbornness to die that inspires thousands to follow? – against the grandest adversary in his existence.
He is left with no precedents, no subtle hints from Dumbledore beyond the grave. He is left with no other means aside from groundless speculations, to form his own theories, and to do so requires experiments. Experiment means failing over and over again just the way she has seen him, but damn it, if there is one thing on his side, it is Time.
He has nothing but tenacity at this point. And if he has to relieve his nightmares as he kills each of Riddle's ancestors a thousand times, he will.
And this is how it starts. Under the raging storm, rain soaking through his shoes and Alice's scrapped boots, cold seeping through the thick layers of their garments. The house they're approaching seems as though it's cowering in fear.
When he peers inside, he sees Merope Gaunt, this time nothing more but a child. He doesn't see Marvin, but he sees Marvolo, red-faced with alcohol, sprawled across his blood-red armchair.
In an instant, Merope's eyes snap to him. He instantly stiffens. Can she feel it – her own death? Does she know what he has done – what he will do – to her and her only son?
Once he steps a foot inside, Marvin is the one he kills first. Barely a teenager, he puts up no resistance. The thud of his lifeless body to the ground awakes Marvolo, but he was far too inebriated to reach his wand three feet away from him, and he too soon falls onto the floor, eyes wide and unseeing.
He didn't notice when exactly Merope started to cry, but now her sobs feel too loud to his ears. He has killed a teen before – a child, an infant. But none ever had the chance to process their own ends; he gave them quick, clean deaths.
To see this little girl cowering in fear almost makes him forget just who she really is. Who she will grow up to be. Is he that far gone, to kill a child barely old enough to understand the fear of Death, the fear of him?
In the end, he is. Her deathless is quick and painless yet he is trapped in the moment, watching light leaving her eyes on his command.
This is neither the first time nor the worst thing he's done. Still he is reluctant to move an inch, afraid to see the eyes burning at the back of his head. In the end, he gathers his courage to turn. Alice doesn't pretend she is not staring. He searches her eyes. He wonders what she thinks of him now.
She says nothing. Her eyes say nothing – Harry has learned to read people for survival (misplaced trust directly brings death) but he can find nothing. Anything is better than nothing.
The whole way back, she stays silent. Harry finds he doesn't mind. Silence by his own is maddening but with her it is a welcome void.
23.
He returns to his books, hungry for knowledge the way only Hermione was. Death's mocking voice is a constant presence that he later learns to tune out, though deep in his consciousness, drawing blood from the entity older than himself is nothing but sweet. Death says nothing that Harry hasn't ever heard, and although the first few moments Harry's blood boiled for it, his exhaustion eventually overcomes anger. He spends days and nights flipping pages, burning parchments, scrabbling theories – it is a hellish cycle with no end, and he can feel his own sanity slowly leaving his grasp.
At the very least, it keeps his attention from her.
She doesn't say anything. She never does. Their situation reminds him of the time he was left to research with Hermione, but the lack of insistent demands for his rest is enough reminder that this is far from it. Alice is not his partner – not in this quest for knowledge and vengeance, not in any sense. She is a girl with wicked powers that compliment his own, but then again she has no control over them. Again, he tells himself that he should have left her. Now is as good time as any, he thinks. He should, if he can. But he can't.
The first time Alice acknowledges what he is doing is when he awakes against the cold hard wood of his bedroom floor, Firewhiskey reeking around him. He looks up, exhausted. He is tired of this, tired of the silence, tired of not knowing what she is thinking, tired of wanting to.
Tears shine in her eyes, blue as the pensieve. "It's not working."
"It is," He denies, but even to his ears it sounds weak.
"All I dream of now is you," She says bluntly. "You, in front of tombstones you can't reverse. You, in front of another body whose life you've taken. It's not working. It's not, you hear me? It's not working, you're wasting time, you're wasting your life—"
She is shaking his shoulders now, and as soon as he registers her words in his inebriation he snatches her hands. His grips on her wrists are hard and he can see purple beneath it. Instantly, he releases them.
She doesn't reach for him when he leaves, doesn't say anything. Or maybe she does, but he can't hear her. His blood rings in his ears, having draining strength from everywhere in his body. He doesn't believe her. What does she know? She is nothing but a mad girl.
24.
His nightmares has never really left, but lately they haunt him even in his wake. Somehow she has made her way into his subconscious, torturing him from the inside of his own brain. He wonders if she knows. If this - the way he can't stop thinking about her, in his nightmares and daydreams - has been a part of her plan all along. It is easier to blame her rather than asking himself why he has let her this far into his head.
He has grown accustomed to her screams - on the miraculous nights when he has no dreams, he is more often than not awaken by the echoes of her nightmares. He is sure sometimes it happens to her too, and somehow the thought that they know each other's screams so well, the thought that someone else knows and understands, is more intimate than any physical contact.
He is immediately proven long. He doesn't know how many nights it has been, since the death of the child Merope Gaunt and the silent treatment they have given each other. But one night, he is awakened by her - not her voice, not her screams, but by the sound of her body hitting the space of his bed beside him.
Her hair is sprawled on his bedspread, and the sight sends him a jolt throughout his body. Instantly he is awake. At once he wonders what on earth she is doing. She is lying so close, that he can feel her heat, can imagine the way her skin would taste on his lips.
He lets her. He tells himself that he is too tired to protest (which is true, he has spent the last thirty hours awake, hyped on a theory that is later proven useless) but knows it is really this newfound intimacy that prevents him.
And he is not a believer, never has been, but by god she takes his breath when he wakes up to her bright-blues.
25.
It becomes a routine. There hasn't been a single night that she sleeps on her own bed since then. Still, they rarely talk. When the day comes, she leaves him to his own devices, and he pretends that she isn't on his mind. He obsesses over his research, drains his energy for it, and she lets him - she hasn't said a thing against it since that night. He tries his theories, kills people he needs to kill, and she remains quiet. He wants to ask if it is because she doesn't care or she thinks he is a lost case. He doesn't know which one he prefers.
But when it is dark, they release this, this strange dance that they do. She climbs into his bed, careful not to touch him as though he would burn her (does she know how he thinks her touch would burn him?) but it doesn't stop her from looking at him, unabashedly. And it doesn't stop him from looking at her too. The blue in her eyes are often the last thing he sees before he drifts off to sleep.
And like any other routine, it doesn't last. One morning, he wakes not to bright blue eyes, but to a closed pair, and they are so, so close that he can almost taste the heat of her on his lips. Their legs are tangled together, her nimble hands are on his chest, his arousal inches away from her center.
Her eyes open, and he watches as surprise sets in her eyes. This is truly unplanned, then. But she doesn't move. He doesn't move. He should; it is morning, and in mornings their dance come to an end. But he doesn't move, not even when she closes the distance between them and presses her lips against his.
He has been right, all along. As far as kisses go, it can be considered innocent - a soft, long peck on his mouth. Yet it burns, burns his lips, wrecks his mind, shatters his control. He doesn't know when exactly his hands settle on her waist to pull her flush against him. He doesn't know how long it has been, he finds he doesn't care at all, not when she begins to kiss him more ardently. He is tired of their silence, of pretending not to think about her all the goddamn time, and he makes sure to relieve the frustration against her mouth.
When she lets him go, they are both breathless. She looks at him with wide eyes. Apprehension bubbles inside of him as he realizes he has just made a huge mistake, but then she kisses him again - this time, a one-second peck on his lips - and leaves him for the remaining of the day.
26.
It doesn't happen again. She doesn't initiate more, and he knows it is a mistake to even attempt. He doesn't know how far he will drown. He doesn't know how far he will let himself drown, when she is a river and he is dying of thirst.
Is he? Dying?
He is incapable of dying the way mortals do (the way she someday will, and his heart freezes at the thought), but he wonders if this is the same. Death is a transcendence, the stage of liminality between life and afterlife, the ambiguous between two certainties. And everything about this, about his goals, about her, about himself, is nothing but uncertainties.
Except for one. A few times she told him of this certainty, and he hated her for it. He advances, ignoring her cries of warning. He kills more than maybe Riddle himself. He is soaked by the blood of his enemy's ancestors, and with every drop on him he feels his mask cracking, his resolve shattering.
He has killed every single person with Slytherin bloodline and the future remains unchanged. Still, he refuses to believe her. No, it isn't the wake-up call. Not then.
Not even when he kills Salazar Slytherin himself. He forces himself to feel nothing when he watches the life behind steel grey eyes fades into nothingness, but deep inside he feels pride. Not Dumbledore, not Grindlewald, not Riddle could say that they have killed the most terrifying man in history. It is him, all by his blood-soaked hands.
It is when he tests one of his theories by killing an innocent. He kills a man, barely important but with enough influence on the wizarding world history. He jumps to the future, and finds that some parts of it have shifted. The man has been erased in this universe, by his hands.
This infuriates him more than anything. Is this man just expendable, then? Is he a piece in the game that Fate allows to be lost for eternity? Are Riddles and Gaunts essential pieces to this grand, fucked-up scheme of Fate and that is why no matter what he does the impacts cannot be reversed?
Is he also a piece in the game, and this quest he has started on his own free will is just one of Fate's maneuver?
Are some souls worth more than others?
He laughs humorlessly at the thought of his own soul. It must be destroyed beyond repair.
He finds he doesn't even care if he has created horcruxes across time. It doesn't matter. It never does.
27.
He doesn't even know when exactly he stops trying. Stops believing. Perhaps she did get to him, in the end, with words that demanded interpretations yet hit home. He does his research like it is a mundane routine of life - the way a man waters his garden every morning. It feels domestic, even though this life thrust upon him is anything but.
The notion is completely shattered whenever he jumps into Time. He feels like a young god, with power on his fingertips, and her by his side. He kills Tom Riddle over and over again even if he knows it will not change a thing. He kills Merope Gaunt before Marvolo Gaunt's eyes, and finds himself surprised that the father sheds a tear at the sight of his daughter's lifeless body. He wonders why it does - why does such an expected gesture shock him? Is he so far gone to demonize his own victims (yes, it is what they are, his victims, because this time he is no longer the savior but instead the villain), maybe finding it easier to deal that the demons are not in Death's whispers, not in Alice's warnings, not in the faces that haunts him in his sleep, but that the demon is him all along.
Alice stays quiet. He honestly has no idea what she thinks of him now. He wonders if she will flinch, if he touches her. The thought of it freezes his chest, but touching her again is not his plan, anyway. It was mistake. A breath-taking, mind-blowing, heart-stopping mistake.
But then he catches her eyes, with Tom Riddle Sr.'s body near his feet. There burns something that he never expects to find - not in those innocent blue eyes.
A chill goes up his spine. A thrill he has not known in years, the one he has so (fruitlessly) tried to ignore.
"Is there someone you want dead?" He asks.
She doesn't say anything, at first. She stares at Riddle's blood with fascination, before kneeling. Her fingers touches the red on Riddle's temple and she looks at the blood on her hand like they are rings adorning her fingers.
Killing gets to you.
She looks at him, and all he can think about if this was another time, another life, another him, he would have bought her a ring.
28.
He already knows, before she tells him. Who else would a victim want dead, if not the abuser? Hand in hand, they arrive at the house with the nicest fence in town. It stands proud, taller than the others, with lush gardens embellished with statues and fountains. He can't imagine her there; the old her, the little girl that everyone thinks mad. She is a walking, burning torch, and her presence is too strong in this lifeless residence.
He is prepared to placate her should the familiar setting trigger her forgotten wounds, but she doesn't seem like she needs one. If anything there is now an odd carefreeness in the way she walks. Her posture is straight. Her hair is braided carefully, flying with her every step. She truly looks like a girl coming home, if for all the wrong reasons.
A servant, tending to the garden, spots them. As soon as his eyes land on her, he screams, before scattering away. Harry doesn't care. The only thing that matters is sitting inside the house.
When the front door opens, five sets of eyes fall to their direction. The reaction is more or less the same; scream of horror, fumbling skirts and terrified wiles. Beside him Alice remains calm, seeming neither disturbed nor delighted.
Heavy footsteps echo in the poorly-lit living room, but Harry can perfectly scrutinize the silhouette running down the stairs with panic. "What? What is it?"
When the face of her father comes into view, he tenses. The memory of him dragging her and bruising her wrist seeps into his system like acid. The fingers on his wand twitch, but he holds himself from doing anything, focusing his attention to the girl beside him.
She isn't looking at Harry, and he isn't sure if at the moment she can see anything other than her father. The man in question finally registers their presence, and takes a step back in horror. Who wouldn't? His own flesh and blood, supposedly dead, the one he tortured - stands here in front of him, knife in hand?
He glances at her again. Her face betrays nothing, but he notices her short breath, the hard rise and fall of her throat.
Her father snaps out of his paralysis, and hurries upstairs. He barely makes two steps before his spell hits him square on his chest and throws him against the brick wall. Then follows a loud CRACK, and Harry knows the man would have screamed had he been able to move.
She walks with infuriatingly slow pace, and he can't help but wonder if it is on purpose. He is barely grasping the idea that this is what she wants; that she may be capable of sadism is beyond his imagination.
He watches, both fascinated and horrified. Will she? Can she take another human life, not to save her own, but to avenge herself? Can she forget every smile his father has ever given her - little as they may be - and focus on his sharp words and wounds he has inflicted on her instead?
He isn't the one to make the decision, but he is the one who is torn. He wants her to go through it, to go follow him to the depths of hell, to prove to him that he's not alone in this and that she can be like him - that she wants to be like him. And he wants her to stop, wants her to go home and forget all about this, all about him, live a happy life in which she doesn't take another life and damages her own. He never would have done it, before. He had wanted her since the moment he met her and he would have never let her go, but seeing the way her hands tremble convinces him that he can never deny her anything.
In the end, the knife falls from her hands. At once he thinks she wants to spare her father, but then she takes his hand in hers and points the wand to the man lying on the stairs, eyes pleading.
"Please," she says, barely audible.
When the Killing Curse hits, her tears fall. She is soundless that he wouldn't have noticed if he hasn't been looking at her closely. He feels his own chest constrict as he takes her into his arms. This is something they have never done, another completely foreign territory, but he finds he doesn't care.
She does not need to plead him. He would kill, he would save, he would live, he would die, if she is the one to command it.
29.
They remain attached, even until night falls. He is tired of fighting himself, so he lets himself touch her and her touch him. She overwhelms his senses - her taste, her scent, her heat, her whimpers, all of them burning and drowning him all at once, and he is gasping amidst the ocean of fire.
Alice, the name rolls off his tongue as though it's spoken in Parseltongue, syllables of his future spoken from his past. Their bodies entangle, their tongues intertwine, their moans echo in a harmony and the sounds he draws from her are as pure as they are obscene. Alice. Alice. The dagger in his heart, the warmth in his frozen chest. His life, his death, his soul.
For a fleeting second, he thinks that he can let it all go – for this, for her.
She cries his name when she comes, and Harry feels his heart clench with ecstasy and despair, disbelief and resignation. He shouldn't have done this, shouldn't have taken her – he should have kept her from the dark, but her fire wouldn't have burned so brightly in the light.
Her fingers smooth over his disheveled hair, and Harry closes his eyes at the touch, nuzzling to her chest. Her name is what he thinks of when he kisses her sternum.
"What are you thinking?" Harry asks, finally, after what feels like a lifetime of resisting to.
"That everything ends. Everyone leaves."
Harry looks up to her. Her eyes aren't glassy, but the light in them has faded, even if a little. He feels his gaze soften as he trails circles over her hip.
"I'll always be here," He lies.
Her response is a pained smile. He finds he both hates it and loves it.
"You won't," She replies. "But I'll love you anyway."
30.
He stops killing Tom Riddle's ancestors, but he doesn't stop killing his prophesized nemesis. He comes to him in many different time; once Tom is a boy barely a month into Hogwarts, another Tom is a deceitful charmer that puts the blame of the basilisk upon Hagrid, and sometimes Harry travels further, to the time when Tom is already a Dark Lord. But never, not even for one second, has he traveled further than the start of Tom's second reign. It is a chapter of his life he never wishes to remember.
All the while, she is with him. She watches him, holds his hand, predicts his methods of killing precisely every time (sometimes he lies and claims she is wrong, but she sees through his lies anyway).
When they are done with murder, they become one in the heat of each other, lost by the warmth of his fireplace. Her blue eyes are almost onyx in this light, and Harry thinks that this is the closest to happiness that he can get.
But then one day, he sees blood trickling down her nostrils and she falls – her head hits the ground before he can catch her.
31.
How did he miss this?
How did he not realize how frail her body was becoming? How did he not realize the shortness of her breath, the way forced her posture straight after each time they jumped?
He had been by himself for so long that he failed to notice how physically stronger he was compared to anyone else. He had been deprived from human contact for so long that all he could think was how it felt for him, that he wanted her to be marked the way he was, wanted her to have this life with him, that she might be suffering and holding silence for it (how did he expect any less from her?) had not crossed his mind.
She doesn't say anything when he tends to her. He is hesitant to give her anything, not when he has seen firsthand what magic has done to her. He wipes blood of her lips, off her chin, carries her to bed and holds ice against her forehead - and all the while she smiles, her watery blue eyes soft. No one ever looks at him the way she does, like she knows all his sins and loves him for it. He often wonders what is in that mind of hers – does she see the devil striving to do good or the fallen angel clawing his way back to path of righteousness?
As if he can atone all he has done just by worshipping her. But he finds he doesn't care about anything else.
32.
He wonders when exactly he starts to hope. He thinks himself better than this, especially after he has seen it again and again how hope is crushed as easily as it is built. He relishes the feeling of her in his arms, but his chest stammers each time her fever returns. He rocks her, whispers soothing lies in her ears – ones he knows she doesn't believe, but they calm her, and it is enough. He regrets every drop of blood he has spilled with the sight of hers.
But then she gets better; her breathing grows steady, her grip stronger, her cheeks redder. Hope bubbles up in his chest and this time he doesn't resist. He lets himself relish this, relish her, kissing every inch of her body as if he's guiding her blood in her veins.
She laughs, the sound sweeter than honey, and he loves it, loves her, almost admits it aloud until he remembers. He releases his touch from her legs. Dread is swirling inside of him like a contained storm. He inwardly chastises himself for feeling this way when his goddess is laid out before him.
She seems to know what he is thinking. She always seems to know. Her eyes sadden, and before he can say anything she moves forward to claim his lips.
"I'll love you anyway," She says again.
He wants to scream, he wants to curse, he wants to kill - he wants to destroy everything there is but her. But instead he settles for silence, and his forehead against hers.
33.
(There is a limit of stay for one in a time to which they do not belong)
34.
It feels like a lifetime has passed since he last called Hermione into this plane. It feels such a long time ago, when he first attempted to step into the vortex of time. It is almost like it was another life, and a new one began when he met Alice.
Perhaps that is precisely why the one that now stands before him seems nothing like the girl he once called his sister in all but blood.
"I'm tired," He rasps. "'Mione, I'm fucking tired. I'm done. I can't do it. I'm sorry."
He wants to say he has done his all, maybe even say that he has overdone himself—for undoubtedly he has overdone his own morality. He says nothing, though, because Hermione is staring at him like she has never known him at all.
And she hasn't. Her spirit shifts, and all of the sudden it is Death standing before him.
It has never been her, not even then.
Blood boils in his veins. He snaps, "Having fun, aren't you?"
"How can torturing oneself be pleasant in any kind?" Death quietly replies. He hasn't heard its voice for so long that now the echo in it surprises him. "You have a knack for forgetting, Master. When you embrace the power, you become it."
His fist marches forward, but halfway it is stopped. Blood drips down his knuckles as cracks spread in the air, as if it is not the three dimensional reality that he knows. When his gaze returns forward, he can see his own face underneath Death's shadowed hood.
35.
Storm rages outside. Rain falls like bullets against the wood-shingled roof above their head. There is neither a fireplace nor warming charm here, so the wind chills, but this is the place she has chosen for herself and she says she needs to adapt. He argues that even the coldest of creatures need protection against cold, and in the end she lets him put in the fireplace the way a muggle does. She's still too weak to help, so she watches. He slowly places the stones one by one. The simplicity of the moment, her eyes on him for the same simple reason, puts his nerves on ease.
When he is done and the fire is alight, he climbs to the couch beside her. She moves – for a second he thinks that the proximity is now too much for them – but then claims a new position so she can place her head on his right shoulder, her hand on his chest. He wonders when exactly he fell for her. He can't pinpoint a single moment. She is like poison in his system – by the time he notices what she does to him, it is already too late.
She is looking at him now, the way she did when they first met.
"Don't," She says, when his wand touches her temple. "Don't erase it."
He counters softly, "It's easier if you don't remember."
"I want to remember you," She says simply.
This is the moment he should tell her he loves her, but he doesn't. He strokes her hair, kisses her lips, her cheek, her forehead, hoping that she understands. That she can feel what he can't say.
When he steps into the vortex, her taste is still burning on his tongue, her tears on his cheeks. Yet nothing compares to how it feels to look at her and knows that it is the last time.
If this was another life, another time, another him, he would have bought her a ring. But it isn't. He isn't her hero, he is the villain she needs to vanquish. He is the one on a rampage against time, and she is the one with the power to stop him. He is the time traveler and she is the seer, and their story ends not with them conquering time, but with time conquering them.
35 is one of tetrahedral numbers, or triangular pyramidal numbers, which are figurate numbers that represent a pyramid with a triangular base and three sides, called a tetrahedron. (Wikipedia)
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