Harry Potter and the Harvest of Sorrow
Summary: Picks up from an alternate Final Battle where Harry dies but is transported to a new life. Tries to avoid cliches of this genre, and create a new epic fiction involving a powerful Harry with many powerful enemies. A struggle to survive through an odyssey of love and tragedy. Pairings undecided and subject to plot development.
Prologue. The Duel and the Forest
Harry shivered. Opening his eyes, he stared at bright light, and after a fleeting moment of excruciating pain, quickly shut it close again. Slowly, he opened again and took in the sight in front of him. Bright Light. Everything was white, a brilliant shade of the color he had never even imagined possible.
"Where… where am I?" Grimacing at the hoarseness of his own voice, he propped himself up on his elbows and fell down with weakness. Once again resorting to taking things slowly, he supported himself with his hand and picked himself from the ground. With a sudden influx, memories came hurtling back into his mind.
// flashback
"So we meet again, Harry Potter," a cold serpentine voice hissed and Harry stood face to face with the skeletal figure of Lord Voldemort, his nemesis of a lifetime.
"For the last time, Tom. This ends today," Harry spoke quietly, marveling at the confidence and calmness in his voice.
"Fool, this will never end," the voice laughed maniacally. "Do you not realize? The prophecy says only you can kill me and yet that is exactly what you can't do while a part of my soul lies in you. Harry Potter is the only one who can kill me but in order for me to die, Harry Potter must be dead." He laughed uproariously at the irony and several Death Eaters joined their master, resulting in a tumultuous din of harsh and coarse voices.
Harry shuddered. He knew what the Dark Lord said was quite true… but he had a plan - a last, desperate plan. "Tom Riddle," Harry spoke loud and clear, making sure his voice reached the ears of all present – Death Eaters, the Order of the Phoenix, Harry's Army and Aurors. "You are being judged. For the murder and torture of countless innocents, I charge you with guilt. For the corruption of numerous naïve and impressionable young minds, I charge you with guilt. For the desolation of England and Europe, I charge you with guilt."
After pausing for a moment, he continued in a softer and sadder tone, "For the murder of my wife and unborn child, I challenge you to mortal combat. Let the fates decide the outcome." He waved his wand and drew two runes in the air, an ancient and long forgotten rune – Baudh-amarth, the judgment of fate. Fate was called forth as witness.
"A duel you want, fool? Then a duel you shall get! Let the world witness the final battle between Lord Voldemort, Master of Darkness and Wielder of the Silver Venom against Harry Potter, Child of Light, the Windlord."
Harry inwardly sighed. His hatred was spent and the only emotion he could muster for the lean figure in front of him was abject pity. To willingly come forth to destroy a seventh part of his own soul was a madness Harry could not bring himself to hate any longer.
Both waited as the rune grew in size, a large circle surrounding the combatants. The spectators stood mesmerized as the two most powerful wizards stood facing each other in what would be their seventh and final encounter. As the sound of a horn blasted stridently from nowhere and yet permeating the very air around him, Harry raised his wand and whispered, "Expelliarmus."
At that very instant, his mortal enemy shouted, "Avada Kedavra!"
Red light met green as green eyes stared fixedly on crimson, and a battle of wills ensued. Golden beads appeared in the beam of light and phoenix song could be heard full of grief yet hope. The abject pity of the younger dueler overwhelmed the anger and hatred of the Dark Lord and Voldemort's wand flew out of his hands in a spiral and straight into those of Harry Potter's.
A flicker of fear passed in the red eyes of the serpent lord and Voldemort shrieked in fury. And then he laughed.
"You may have my wand but you cannot kill me, boy."
Harry sighed. The moment had come and there was no hesitation in his eyes. He had decided long ago and knew what needed to be done. Holding both wands in either hand, he advanced on his enemy.
"Do you remember Merope, Tom? The mother whom you never met except in the memories of other people. Think of her now and perhaps the fates might yet show some mercy," Harry said in an emotionless voice as he pointed both wands at the Dark Lord and whispered, "Petrificus Totalus! Levicorpus!" Two jets of light shot forward and Tom Riddle found himself tied in ropes and floating in mid-air, and yet his laughter didn't cease.
But then Harry did something the Dark Lord would never have expected even in his wildest dreams, and he stared at his adversary with eyes wide with terror. The raven haired warrior raised the wand in his left hand and pointed it at his own neck, the other wand unerringly fixed on the floating wizard. Harry Potter had a wand pointed at Voldemort and at himself.
Raising his voice so his audience could hear, Harry said, "Tell the world that Voldemort is gone forever. An evil that should never have been allowed to grow is now ended. Tell the world also that it must now pause a second look at itself. Tom Riddle became Voldemort because the world allowed it. Social apathy gave him hate, pureblood mania gave him cause, ministry corruption gave him power and your fear made him immortal. The world made Tom Riddle into Lord Voldemort and put all their hopes on a mere boy. Great wizards like Albus Dumbledore, Nicholas Flamel, Filius Flitwick and Alastor Moody left the job to a teenager instead of taking responsibility on their own. Prophecies count for nothing. A prophecy has no power of its own and is only a recounting of a possible future, one that does not occur unless those who have heard the prophecy themselves strive to make it happen. That is what you did," he sighed, his voice devoid of all emotion.
"These are the last words of Harry James Potter - I now complete my task but do not expect the next Dark Lord to be defeated by another one year old. Farewell." Ignoring the screams of his nemesis over the rising din of protests from the spectators, Harry closed his eyes and gripping both wands tightly, whispered, "Avada Kedavra."
Flashback //
"So, this is death," he whispered to himself. He gazed at the never-ending sea of white and shook his head. "Some adventure."
A merry laughter reached his ears and he turned to the direction it was coming from. Shocked at seeing nothing, he called out, "Who's there?" Another laughter came - the same voice, but from another direction. Then another… and another. Soon, Harry found himself surrounded by laughter and he covered his ears in pain.
The laughter stopped instantly and the white light swirled around him, shooting beams of color in every direction. Colors swiveled with light and Harry gaped as green grass appeared at his feet. Looking up, he saw trees springing out of the green grass. He was in some sort of forest. He walked uncertainly to a pond to have a sip of water. Before he touched the water, a voice called out.
"Wait."
Harry jumped in surprise and whirled to find the source of the voice. A frog came hopping towards him.
Harry gaped at the frog and looked around him once again. Not finding anything else, he turned to the frog. "Did you just speak?"
"Of course I did, foolish human," the frog stared at him with what appeared to be mirth.
Harry scowled at him. "Well, hurry up. I am thirsty."
"Foolish human, did you not just hear me speak? Does that make me an ordinary frog? And if I am not ordinary, then why should this forest or anything within it be ordinary?" The frog hopped to a stone near Harry and hobbled up and down. "You are being judged, human."
"What?" Harry asked in surprise. "This is a mistake. I invoked the baudh-amarth for Riddle. He's the one who should be judged, not me."
"Aye, and he faces judgment even as we speak. But did you not die in the circle? Then judgment comes to you as well." The frog transformed into an old man with a flowing white beard until his knees, clad in the dark robes of an inquisitor. "Your life shall be depicted in the pond. See now and judge your own actions."
In bemusement, Harry sat on a stone near the pond as the water swirled into life, breathing colors and images of his past. Life at the Dursleys, the Cupboard, the first letter, Hagrid, Diagon Alley, King's Cross, the Weasleys and Malfoys, the Sorting, the Stone, the Chamber, Moony and Padfoot, the time-turner, the Goblet, the resurrection, Umbridge, occlumency, the veil.
"Stop," the frog-turned-man spoke in a commanding voice and the image paused at Harry's destruction of Dumbledore's office in his fifth year. "What have you learnt so far?"
Harry pondered in silence for several moments. Seeing his life from an observer's point of view put several things in fresh perspective. "My life… it was nothing more than a carefully laid out scheme by Dumbledore and his supporters. The abuse at the Dursleys, Hagrid's prejudice, the meeting with the Weasleys, Moony's sudden appearance just before Padfoot's…"
The wizened old man chuckled. "So, you see the truth finally. Continue."
The water came back to life again and showed images of the war - the death of his friends and family and culminated at his last desperate ploy - the duel.
"And now?"
Harry frowned, and after a slight hesitation shook his head. "They planned it perfectly. I would kill Riddle but would have lost all desire for life. Did Dumbledore intend that from the start? I don't know what to think. At least, my wife was true to me."
"And for that, she had to die. You have been judged," the man said with a flourish, jumping up, instantly transforming into a small boy of about five or six. "And you are granted a second chance."
"A second chance? At what?" Harry asked, bewildered.
The boy transformed back into the old man, and grunted, "Don't they teach the youth anything these days. A second chance at what, he asks. At life, of course." The old man smiled at Harry's expression.
"What? But I don't want to live, not in a world where everyone I love is dead… where everything I believed to be true was nothing but a fabrication to create the perfect weapon." Harry paused suddenly, a strange feeling rising in the pit of his stomach, "Wha…" he began when he felt himself shrinking in size.
The man laughed merrily. "And you shan't. You shall start afresh. A new life. A new world. A chance to forge your own destiny, boy," he peered at Harry, who had reverted to a teenager's body,"and you can do as you please. It shall not be easy. A whole new world. Different, so very different. But the same people."
Harry barely heard the final words as he lost control of his vision and a blinding flash of white light overwhelmed his senses. And then all turned black.