A/N: Throughout this story I will be adding ideas from my favorite fanfictions, since this is a writing exercise and not an actual "original" fanfiction so let's say this is a fanfiction of fanfictions.
Also English is not my mother tongue so I'm sorry for the many mistakes I'll be making, I'm trying to improve and learn more and I'll be thankful for any comments and corrections.
In case anyone is interested in reading the stories I got the ideas from, here is the list:
Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past by S'TarKan
To Shape and Change by Blueowl
Harry Potter and the Trip to the Past by Priya Ashok
Blindness by AngelaStarCat
Harry Potter and the Wastelands of Time by joe6991
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Chapter
1
Harry stood at the edge of the clearing, his hands were sweating as he put the Invisibility Cloak beneath his robes, still resting on his shoulders but hidden from sight, he also put away his wand, securing it inside his sleeve. He did not want to be tempted to fight.
"I was, it seems . . . mistaken," said Voldemort who stood with his head bowed, and his white hands folded over the Elder Wand in front of him.
"You weren't." Harry said with a firm voice as he stepped into the clearing, his family still surrounding him, giving him the courage and the strength he needed.
He could also feel a warm vibrating pulse coming from the Hallows, even the Elder Wand, almost like a song no one else could hear, because they were only singing for him.
The giants roared as the Death Eaters rose together, and there were many cries, gasps, even laughter. Voldemort had frozen where he stood, but his red eyes had found Harry, and he stared as Harry moved toward him, with nothing but the fire between them.
Then a voice yelled: "HARRY! NO!"
He turned. Hagrid was bound and trussed, tied to a tree nearby. His massive body shook the branches overhead as he struggled, desperate.
Harry saw the panic in his friends' eyes and for a second he wished to have the power to save him, to save everyone, he wished his death would be the end of the Dark Lord, but he knew that wouldn't happen. The wizarding world would still have to fight for their freedom after Harry was gone. He could see Nagini as living proof of that, behind Voldemort's head, still swirling and coiling, floated in her glittering, charmed cage, like a monstrous halo.
"NO! NO! HARRY, WHAT'RE YEH — ?"
Harry shook his head and he felt a wave of the subtle power of the Hallows flowing towards Hagrid who went silent immediately, confusion showing in his eyes. He saw tears rolling down his cheeks and had to fight the strangled feeling that clutched his throat.
Harry looked back at red eyes. Voldemort had raised his wand, a gesture that brought utter silence through all the clearing as he tilted his head a little to the side, considering the boy standing before him, and a singularly mirthless smile curled the lipless mouth.
"Harry Potter," he said very softly. His voice might have been part of the spitting fire. "The Boy Who Lived."
His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry, whose heart was now throwing itself against his ribs as though determined to escape the body he was about to leave behind, wished it would happen at once, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost control, before he was betrayed by fear…
The boy embraced the song of the Hallows and he took one last breath when he felt his loved ones embracing him as his enemy's mouth moved and a ray of green light hit him.
He was sitting on a chair, probably the most comfortable chair he had ever sat on, he heard laughter and cheerful voices chattering happily, he felt happiness surrounding him, he felt peace.
It was over.
"It will never be over for you, Harry."
The voice sounded familiar and it seemed to come from nowhere and at the same time he could hear it everywhere. Harry opened his eyes reluctantly, he didn't want that peaceful feeling to go away. The purest light he had ever seen hurt his eyes but he saw a silhouette in front of him. It took some time to get used to the sterile white but when he was finally able to see, he gasped in surprise.
"Professor Dumbledore?" The old wizard was sitting in front of him, as majestic as he remembered him, wearing a long, wide dark blue tunic.
"My boy, you are so wonderful. A brave man, very brave. It is so good to see you again." The twinkle in his blue eyes was as bright as ever.
Harry's mind suddenly burst with questions while a cloud of odd feelings filled his chest for a moment. It felt like he should be angry, sad, disappointed, like he should want to scream at the man in front of him, make him pay for all the pain and sorrow he had to endure during his life because of the poor decisions Dumbledore made without asking anyone else about it, he should be hurt because the man he admired and respected most never trusted him enough... that should be the logical reaction after all, right? But instead he just felt at peace.
"Where are we professor?" his voice as calm as he felt.
"In the Light, where you belong."
"Am I dead?," Harry was surprised to realize he was at peace with that possibility.
Yes, that sounded right, he had been ready, he had done all he could, he had given everything, even his life, to end the Dark Lord. He had done his part and now he was ready to rest.
"You are beyond that Harry." The twinkle in his eyes sparkling mysteriously.
"But ..." Harry raised a hand to the lightning scar and it seemed to him that he did not have it. "But I should have died... I did not defend myself and I'm sure the killing curse hit me."
"And that's what made the whole difference." Dumbledore radiated happiness; like light or fire: Harry had never seen him so jubilant.
"I don't quite understand, sir."
"But you do understand, at least a big part of it," Dumbledore replied, and fiddled with his thumbs, spinning them around each other.
"I let him kill me so he would destroy the part of his soul that was inside of me, but I thought my soul would be gone too."
"Yes and no. He destroyed the Horcrux, but your soul is intact, he could not harm it."
"I still don't understand, Voldemort used the killing curse and this time nobody died for me… I thought my mom's protection run out when I came of age, like the blood wards at the Dursleys."
"Harry, the type of magic that your mom used to protect you with her sacrifice does not have an expiration date and Voldemort did something very foolish in his ignorance, greed and cruelty. He actually signed his own downfall."
Harry began to ponder, thinking about all the events in his life that included Voldemort. Then the answer came to his lips with great ease, without any effort:
"He took my blood."
"Exactly!" Exclaimed Dumbledore. "He took your blood and rebuilt with it his physical body! Your blood in his veins, Harry, Lily's protection inside of you two! He bound you to life while he lives!"
"I live... while he lives? Was it not the other way around? I thought none of us would be able to actually have a life while the other lived because we were destined to end each other. The prophecy said: ...And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… " Dumbledore smiled.
"Well yes, that would have been originally the case but Harry, Voldemort does not bother to understand what he does not value. He does not know or understand anything of love, loyalty or innocence and the raw magical power that create those bonds. That power is beyond his reach; It is a truth that he has never grasped.
"So he took your blood, convinced that it would strengthen him, and thereby his body was bonded to the spell your mother laid upon you when she died for you. And there was another factor, one I did not consider or even realized it could be a possibility, I only came to understand it once I was here. I don't know how much Severus told you and since I have nothing left to hide I can be entirely honest with you.
"Through all my life I have made many mistakes Harry, I was always too proud, too sure of my own righteousness, my greatest fault was believing I was the only one that could see the whole picture, that could make the right decisions. I was so scared of making the same mistakes of my youth that I turned from what would actually keep me from making those same mistakes again, I turned away from my friends, my allies, my people. I didn't share what I knew, I wouldn't trust anyone and so people became pieces of a game I thought I was the master of…
"Professor, sir, I don't understand. You were the leader of the light, you were our hope against the dark. No one else could stand against him and live. You had the best intentions, we followed you because you were the only one that knew how to stop Voldemort, how to bring peace." It was so clear now for Harry, so easy to let go of the resentment and bitterness, so easy to just accept everything and be in peace.
"You have always been too kind my boy. It is true, the plan I had worked in the end, but at what cost... I am responsible for so many deaths, just because of my arrogance. Even your family Harry, all of that is my fault. You see, Harry I knew Severus had heard part of the prophecy, I knew he was going to tell Voldemort, I could have stopped him but I didn't…" Dumbledore's voice broke, the twinkle in his eyes gone, his face was a mask of regret, shame and guilt as he seemed lost in his memories.
Harry had never seen Dumbledore in a state like that, but after his confession he waited for the feelings that he surely should be feeling already, to explode inside of him. He waited for the screams to come out of his mouth, but none of that happened, he just sat there, waiting for the old man to continue. He knew he should be experiencing some sort of intense disgust, betrayal and rage toward the professor but nothing came, just that silent peace. Maybe he was in shock, maybe that place or state of not death yet not life gave him a more broad and profound understanding of everything and, if that was the case, he was thankful for it, he didn't want to fight, not anymore.
Dumbledore let out a long sigh before he continued, his eyes still lost in space.
"In all my arrogance, I believed I could protect whoever Voldemort would choose. You see, prophecies have no power unless one of the parties involved in them believes in it. My reasoning was that by allowing Severus to tell Voldemort about the first half of the prophecy, he will give it the power it needed to actually be fulfilled and the Light would get it's hero, we would know who would bring peace to our world and we would be able to train the one that would bring the Dark Lord down. But I failed, yet another time, I let your parents down, unprotected, because I didn't insist and I assumed everything was under control. My mistake not only broke your family, it also broke Severus, his life became hell and I was too ashamed to tell him, to give him a tiny bit of peace.
"I thought the best I could do would be to carry on and do the best I could with the circumstances we had. I didn't want to lose my precious spy, I knew no one else could do that job like him so I kept him in ignorance, punishing himself for something that was my fault as much as his.
"When he learned that Voldemort had targeted your family he came to me, but he also begged Voldemort to spare your mother's life and he accepted. Maybe he thought by doing that he would have Severus' loyalty secured or that he could use Lily to make sure he would follow him, I don't know…
"Then when he was in front of Lily that night, he gave her the option to step aside, it was in that moment that the sheer desperation of Severus to save your mother created a magical bond between Voldemort and him, because he had agreed to spare her. He asked three times but Lily didn't accept nor did she refuse, instead she begged for your life. Voldemort got tired and he broke his promise so the deal he made with Severus was broken and magic made him pay by fulfilling Lily's most desperate desire, which was protecting you Harry.
"And so the magical bond created by Severus' loyalty and love for your mom and her own magical bond created by her sacrifice for you, protected you that night, stopping the unstoppable, deflecting the killing curse. That was the power the prophecy talked about, a power the Dark Lord didn't know and when he used your blood to resurrect, he sealed that magic in his body keeping Lily's sacrifice alive and Severus pact active and as long as the spells survive, you will survive too. It did not deflect the killing curse again, but it kept your soul intact."
At the end of his explanation, Dumbledore smiled again. Harry was shocked by the new information and for a second he felt a wave of rage in his chest again. He had never liked Snape, and for the past year everyone believed he was a traitor, he died a horrible death with no one that cared for him. Harry couldn't understand the feeling that overtook him when he realized the injustice and the horror that must have been the life of the man. He gave everything and got nothing in return, not even a sympathetic thought when he died. He never got to experience love, true friendship or acceptance...
As he thought about Snape's life, Harry realized with a shiver that they had been very similar in many ways, they both came from a family that didn't care for their well being, they had been abused and neglected in their childhood and when they got to Hogwarts, they were bullied and made fun of for different reasons, the difference between them was that Harry found good friends that supported him and never left him alone, even in his lowest and most difficult moments. For Snape not much had changed once he got to the school, he was sorted into a house that looked down at him because of his blood origins and then when he started making mistakes in his youth just because he wanted to be accepted and fit in, the one he thought was his best friend abandoned him, choosing his enemies over him. He was left with nothing but the darkness and its promise of a new society that would accept him.
Not that any of that could excuse Snape's actions, but still... Harry wondered how the man would have turned out if he'd had different and better circumstances in his life, if he'd had good friends. Then suddenly Harry felt a cold shiver going down his spine when he thought what would have happened to him if he have had the same circumstances Snape had faced, for a moment Harry imagined being sorted into Slytherin, friendless and unaccepted, hated by his own house and the others and not being able to trust anybody.
"That was a lot to take in," he finally manage to say. "Have you seen Snape… where you able to talk to him when he… when he died?"
Dumbledore nodded gently.
"Did you tell him?"
He nodded again and Harry let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. It was obvious the old man didn't want to talk about it but he still had so many questions… Maybe a lighter subject would wash away the awkwardness he was feeling.
"I'd like to know something else," Harry said. "Why did my wand destroy the one he borrowed? Certainly, I did not have more magical power than him."
"That is not entirely true but what you must understand is that you and Lord Voldemort have traveled together to areas of magic hitherto unknown and unexplored. But I think this is what happened: Without wanting to, as you now know, the Dark Lord reinforced the bonds that united you when he returned to human form. After entwining your destinies as never two wizards were united in the whole history of magic, he proceeded to attack you with a wand that shared the same core with yours. And then, as we know, something very strange happened: the priori incantatem.
"The night that happened, he got more scared than you, Harry. You had accepted, even embraced, the possibility of death, something the Dark Lord has never been able to do. Your courage won, and your wand surpassed his. I think that night your wand was imbued in part with the strength and qualities of his, which is to say that from then on it contained something of Voldemort himself. That's why your wand recognized him when he chased you, recognized a man who was both friend and mortal enemy, and regurgitated some of his own magic against him, a magic far more powerful than Lucius's wand had ever done. From that moment, your wand contained the power of your enormous courage and that of Voldemort's lethal ability; What chance did that poor wand of Lucius Malfoy's stand?"
"But if my wand was so powerful, how is it that Hermione managed to destroy it?"
"My son, his amazing effects were directed only to Voldemort, who, with great blunder, had tried to alter the most complex laws of magic. That wand only exerted an abnormal power against him. For the rest, it was a wand like any other ... although good, no doubt " Dumbledore conceded.
Harry stayed for a long time in silence, or maybe a few seconds. In that place it was difficult to be sure of concepts such as time.
"Voldemort killed me with the wand he took from you."
"No, Harry, Voldemort could not kill you with my wand or any other wand for that matter, I told you, you are beyond that now," said Dumbledore, the twinkly slowly coming back to his eyes. "Although, of course," he added, as if he feared he was discourteous, "I am not minimizing your sufferings, for I am sure they have been enormous."
"I still don't understand what you mean by that, does it have something to do with the Deathly Hallows?" Harry was glad to see that those words erased the smile from Dumbledore's face.
"Ah yes, that's the other part, the more complicated one."
The old director looked worried.
"Well?
For the first time since Harry knew him, Dumbledore did not look like an old man, but a little boy who has been caught being naughty.
"Do you forgive me, Harry?" He begged. "Could you forgive me for not trusting you? For not telling you? My only fear, boy, was that you failed like me, that you made the same mistakes. I beg you to forgive me. I've known for a long time that you're a better person than me."
"But what are you talking about?" Said the boy, surprised by the tone of Dumbledore and by the tears that suddenly flooded his eyes.
"The hallows, the hallows... The dream of a desperate man!"
"But they exist! They are real! It is not a dream, professor, I saw all of them, had two with me before I came here."
"Real and dangerous; a lure for fools. And I was very foolish. But you already know, right? I no longer have secrets for you; you know."
"What do I know?
Dumbledore looked at him; the tears still sparkled in his eyes.
"Master of Death, Harry, Master of Death! Was I better, ultimately, than Voldemort?"
"Of course you were… are! How can you say that? You never killed, if you could avoid it!
"True, true," said Dumbledore like a child letting himself to be confronted. "But even so I was also looking for a way to beat death, boy, what an irony."
"But not like him," Harry said. It was strange to be sitting there in that white nothingness, defending the old director from his own criticisms. "It was Hallows, not Horcruxes."
"Hallows," Dumbledore murmured, "not Horcruxes. Exactly."
There was a pause while they both got lost in their thoughts.
"Grindelwald was looking for them too?" Harry asked suddenly realizing that he just have gotten another piece of the puzzled placed.
Dumbledore closed his eyes and nodded.
"That's what united us, more than anything else," he muttered. "We were two smart, arrogant boys who shared an obsession. He wanted to go to Godric's Hollow, as you surely have guessed, because that was where the tomb of Ignotus Peverell was. I wanted to explore the place where the younger brother had died."
"So it is true? All is true? The Peverell brothers..."
"...were the three brothers in the tale. Yes. They really ran into Death on a lonely road, that's no longer a mystery... I used to believe that the Peverell brothers were simply dangerous and talented wizards who managed to create those powerful artifacts. The version of the Deathly Hallows seemed to me a kind of legend that must have arisen around the creation of those objects. However now..." He paused.
"Sir, the hallows did something to you, didn't they? You seem… different." He said without being able to contain himself when an impossible idea crossed his mind, he didn't dare ask what he actually thought cause it seemed impossible but it would explain why Dumbledore had been able to talk to Snape, why he was there talking to him, when supposedly, Harry wasn't really dead and why he hadn't pass to the other side like all souls.
Dumbledore looked at him surprised for a few seconds and then gave him a sparkling look.
"First Harry, let me explain. The Invisibility Cloak, as you know, was passed down over the years, from father to son, from mother to daughter, to the last living descendant of Ignotus, who was born, like him, in Godric's Hollow." He smiled at Harry.
"Me?"
"Indeed, you. I know you guessed why I had this cape on the night your parents died. James had showed it to me a few days previously. Then I understood why he managed to do so many pranks at school without being discovered! I did not believe what I was seeing, so I asked her to borrow it to me to examine it. I had long since abandoned my dream of gathering the hallows, but I could not resist, I was not able to miss the chance to have it in my hands ... I had never seen anything like it: incredibly old but perfect in all aspects, it wouldn't wear down, nor could it be harmed or destroyed and it protected it's owner from any type of sight. I knew then I had in my hands another hallow... Then you father died, and finally I had two relics for me alone!"
The director spoke with great bitterness.
"But the Invisibility Cloak would not have helped my parents survive," Harry said quickly. Voldemort knew where they were and the cape would not have protected them from curses."
"True. You're right, the Cloak alone doesn't have that power."
Harry waited a while, but as the teacher did not continue, he asked him to cheer him up:
"So, you had stopped looking for the relics when you found the Cloak?"
"Yes," he replied with a thin voice. He seemed to find it hard to look Harry in the eye. "You know what happened; now you know. You can not despise me more than I despise myself."
"But I do not despise you..."
"Well, you should. You are aware of the secret of my sister's illness, how those muggles attacked her and what she became; You know my poor father wanted revenge and he paid for it, because he died in Azkaban, and you also know that my mother sacrificed her life to take care of Ariana.
"I was resentful, Harry." He said it bluntly, coldly, but with his eyes lost in the distance." I was talented and brilliant, but I wanted to escape. I wanted to shine. I wanted to achieve glory.
"Do not get me wrong," he added, and the pain darkened his face and he recovered the old man's appearance." I loved them, I loved my parents and my siblings. But I was selfish, Harry, more selfish than you, who are an amazingly unselfish person, more that you can even imagine.
"And when my mother died and I was faced with the responsibility of a sick sister and a wayward brother, I returned to my village full of anger and bitterness. I felt trapped and wasted! And then he came, of course..."
He looked Harry in the eyes again, and continued:
"Grindelwald. You can not imagine how his ideas attracted me, how much they inflamed me: the Muggles forced to submit to the wizards, the triumph of the wizards, Grindelwald and me turned into the glorious and young leaders of the revolution... Deep down I had some scruples. But I calmed my conscience with empty words: it was going to be for the good of all and any damage that we provoked would be more than compensated for the benefit of the wizards. Although, did I know, deep down, who Gellert Grindelwald was? I think so, but I closed my eyes to the truth. If we managed to bring our plans to fruition, all my dreams would come true.
"And behind our plans were the Deathly Hallows. How they fascinated him, how they fascinated us both! The invincible wand, the weapon that would take us to power! For him, although I pretended not to know, the Stone of the Resurrection meant having an army of inferi; for me, I confess, it meant the return of my parents, something that would free me from all responsibility.
"And the Invisibility Cloak ... I do not know why, but we did not talk much about that hallow. We both knew how to hide very well without needing it, whose true magic, of course, is that it can be used to protect other people than its owner. I thought that if one day we found it, it could be useful to hide Ariana, but what interested us most about the cape was that it completed the trio. According to the legend, the person who gathered the three objects would become the true Master of Death, that is, the relics would make him invincible.
"Grindelwald and Dumbledore, the invincible Masters of Death! It was two months of madness, cruel dreams and inattention of the only two relatives I had left ... The rest of the story you already know. Reality prevailed, embodied in my brother, a rough, uneducated and infinitely more admirable young man than me. But I did not want to hear the truths that he shouted at me, or to tell me that I could not undertake the search for the relics by dragging a frail and unstable sister.
"The discussion led to a fight and Grindelwald lost control. What I had always sensed in him, even if he pretended to ignore it, came out in an awful way. And Ariana, after all the care and all the caution of my mother, lay dead on the floor."
Dumbledore gasped and burst into tears. Harry wanted to comfort him and was glad to discover that he could touch him; He pressed his arm and the director recovered his composure little by little.
"So, Grindelwald left, as anyone (except me) could have predicted. He disappeared with his plans to take power and torture Muggles and his dreams about the Deathly Hallows, dreams that I had helped to consolidate. He fled, and I had to bury my sister and learn to live with the feeling of guilt and terrible pain, the price of my dishonorable behavior.
"The years passed and rumors circulated about him. They said that he had obtained a wand of immense power. In the meantime, I was offered the position of Minister of Magic, not once but many times. I rejected it, as is logical. I had proved to myself that I did not know how to handle power.
"But you would have been better, much better than Fudge or Scrimgeour!"
"Do you think that? I'm not sure. Even as a young man I had shown that power was my weakness and my temptation. It's funny, Harry, but the most capable of exercising power are those who have never aspired to it; those who, like you, are forced to show leadership and assume that responsibility, and usually they discover with surprise, that they know how to do it. I was far less dangerous at Hogwarts. I think I was a good teacher..."
"The best…"
"You are very nice, Harry. But while I was engaged in instructing the young wizards, Grindelwald prepared an army. They say he feared me and maybe it was true, but I think not as much as I feared him.
"No, I was not afraid to die," he clarified before the boy's inquisitive gaze, "nor what Grindelwald could do to me with his magic, because he knew we were equal; maybe I was even a little more skilled than him. What scared me was the truth. You see, I never knew which of the two, in that last, spooky fight, threw the curse that killed my sister. Maybe you call me a coward, and you're right. But what I feared most, above all, was to know for certain that it was me who caused Ariana's death, not only because of my arrogance and stupidity, but because of the blow that took her life.
"I'm pretty sure he knew what my fear was. For that reason, I was postponing our confrontation, until there came a time when it would have been too embarrassing to keep putting it off. People were dying because of him, and Grindelwald seemed unstoppable, so I had to do what I could to stop him.
»Well, you know what happened next. I won the duel. I won the wand."
Again silence. Harry did not ask if he had come to find out who killed Ariana. He did not want to know, and even less did he want Dumbledore to have to speak about it. At last he understood what Dumbledore must have seen when he looked in the Mirror of Erised, and why he was so sympathetic to the fascination it had exercised over Harry.
Finally, Dumbledore continued:
"Grindelwald tried to prevent Voldemort from getting the wand. He lied to him: he assured him that he had never had it." Tears slid down his crooked nose. "They say that much later, when he was serving time in his Nurmengard cell, he repented. I hope it's true. I would like to believe that he understood how horrible and shameful what he did was. Maybe that lie he told Voldemort was his attempt to repair some damage, to prevent another Dark Lord from getting the hallow...
"Or maybe to prevent him from opening the grave you were resting on," Harry suggested, and Dumbledore wiped away his tears. "You tried to use the Resurrection Stone, didn't you? When you found that ring."
"Indeed. When I discovered the hallow I so longed to possess, buried in the abandoned house of the Gaunts (although in my youth I wanted it for very different reasons), I lost my mind. I almost forgot that it had become a Horcrux, and that it must have been cursed. So I picked it up and put it on my finger; for a moment I imagined that I was about to see Ariana and my parents, and that I could tell them how sorry I was...
"I was stupid. After all that time I had not learned anything. I was unworthy to gather the Hallows, I had shown it on more than one occasion and there was the ultimate proof. I could have never been Master of Death, instead I was given another role. For most it is a curse but, for me it was a gift that I accepted with humility, otherwise I could not be here with you now and this was of vital importance.
"Then it's true, the Relics did changed you, sir. You became Death!" Harry exclaimed at the discovery.
"You're very perceptive Harry, it's the price that fools like me who want to get the relics for their own benefit have to pay. Apparently it has been like this since before the Peverell brothers obtained the relics. In my case, I deserved only to possess the most humble of the three, the least extraordinary: the Elder Wand, but not to flaunt it, or to kill. I was allowed to tame it and use it, because I did not obtain it for my own benefit, but to save others from its power.
"But I took the Invisible Cloak out of sheer curiosity, and that's why it would have never worked for me like it did for you, because you are it's true owner. And the Resurrection Stone, I would have used it to bring those that rested in peace for my own benefit and selfish purposes, you used it just to be surrounded by your loved ones as you were going to join them, it was never your intention to bring them back to a world they didn't belong. You are now the worthy owner of the relics. And I am a simple messenger."
Dumbledore patted his hand, and the boy smiled at him helplessly when everything fell in place, now the song of the Hallows made so much sense, they were greeting their Master, embedding him in their power. He was very happy he didn't feel a trace of anger or resentment and that he was able to accept everything with ease. However, he asked:
"Why did you make it so difficult for me, sir?"
Dumbledore smiled.
"I'm afraid I counted on Miss Granger helping you take things slower, Harry. I was afraid that your heated mind would dominate your good heart, and that if I openly presented the facts about those tempting objects, you would take possession of the relics, as I did, at the wrong time and for the wrong reasons. If you were to get them, I wanted you to possess them safely. So now you are the true Master of Death, because the true Master does not want to flee from it, but accepts that death is just a part of life and understands that in life there are much worse things than death. And that's why we're here now."
"And Voldemort never knew the existence of the relics?"
"I think not, because he did not recognize the Resurrection Stone that he turned into a Horcrux. And even if he had known, Harry, I doubt he would have been more interested than in the first one, because he would not have thought that the cape would be useful to him, and as for the stone, who would he want to bring back from the world of the dead? He fears the dead, because he does not love."
"But did you know that Voldemort would look for the wand?
"You see, since your wand surpassed his in the cemetery of Little Hangleton I knew he would try to get the Elder Wand. At first Voldemort feared that you had overcome him thanks to superior skill. However, after kidnapping Ollivander he discovered the existence of the twin cores, and believed that was the reason of what had happened. But the wand he borrowed did not work better against yours! So, instead of wondering what quality of yours that had made your wand so powerful, what a gift it was that you had and he did not, he decided to look for the only wand that, they said, was capable of defeating any other. For him, the Elder Wand has become an obsession comparable to his obsession for you. He believed the wand would eliminate any hint of weakness and make him truly invincible. Poor Severus..."
"If you planned your own death with Snape, it was because you wanted him to end up owning the Elder Wand, right?"
"Yes, I admit that was my intention. But it did not go as planned, right?"
"No, that did not work."
They were silent for an even longer time. During those long minutes, the revelation of what was going to happen next descended on Harry like a slow snowfall.
"I have to go back, right?"
"That you must decide."
"Can I choose?"
"Of course my boy," answered Dumbledore, smiling. "Even without the power of the Hallows you would have been able to return but you are Master of Death, you can do so much more than that."
"What does that mean, sir?" Harry had the feeling he knew, at least some of it but he wasn't sure he actually wanted to know.
"That means that no mortal laws apply to you any longer, you have power over both sides of the Veil, that gives you access to magic that is beyond anyone else's reach, you possess the power of Death which, ironically, grants you the power of Life too. In few words Harry, you will not die, at least not until you decide to."
They fell silent again as Harry tried to digest that. He started to feel the panic building up in his chest, he never wished for any of that, all he ever wanted was to have a nice normal life with a family that would love him and then it struck him, the irony was so strong he started laughing. Dumbledore stared at him with amusement in his eyes until Harry recovered.
"You know, professor, this is so ridiculous. It's the Mirror of Erised and the stone all over again. Only the one that wouldn't want to use the power for themselves would be granted said power."
Dumbledore started laughing too.
"It makes sense my dear boy, you would never dare misuse that kind of power, in fact, I don't think you would even consider the option… It's not like being Master of Death makes you the most powerful person but it certainly balances things out. Maybe, after all, this is what the prophecy was talking about." He reflected.
"Maybe it was both, sir. Voldemort still has the Elder Wand, the world is not safe yet."
"True, he has it and he can still cause great damage. If you decide to return to the clearing now you will have to figure things out, the same way you have always done. But one thing I'm sure of, Harry: you have much less to fear than him."
Harry thought about that and a bitter feeling filled his chest.
"But I do, sir. All the people that have already died and all the ones that can still be taken away…"
"Do not pity the dead, Harry, but rather the living, and especially those who live without love. If you come back now, you may be able to prevent many more deaths and injuries, more families destroyed. If that is what you want to do, then you and I will say goodbye until next time."
"Tell me one last thing," Harry asked before opening the door that had just materialized in front of him. Is this place real? Or is this all happening just inside my head?"
Dumbledore looked at him smiling, and his voice sounded high and powerful, even though a gleaming mist descended over him and started to hide his body.
"Of course it's happening inside your head, Harry, but why would that mean that it's not real? This place is your domain and I'll be here waiting, every time you return."