He Who Lived
I
"In this world, it is not just one or two changes. It is many, with their snowballing effects, that have led to this present so distanced from the present you know…"
He opened his eyes to darkness. It wasn't black, just… dark.
He rubbed his eyes, blinking and shaking his head before accepting that this was all he could see.
He bit back the feeling and urge to panic, a difficult task when he sat up and nothing changed. Still seeing nothing and feeling nothing about him to indivate where he was or what was going on.
The floor was hard beneath him, somehow feeling harder as hepulled himself up to his feet and felt around blindly for anything.
Sensory deprivation. He could hear only the sound of his heart and his breathing and could feel nothing more than the ground beneath his feet and the clothes on his form. He touched himself down briefly to make sure he was okay, fine. He was a little relieved to feel the knicks, scratches bruises and scars he knew belonged on his body (beneath his grubby and tattered feeling clothing) even if he could not, at present, remember how or why he had them.
But, despite those two senses, nothing. There was seemingly no air, nothing to hear, smell, see or taste. Well, scratch the see, there was something he was looking at. For there was a colour, a colour to the darkness that filled his vision.
It was a hard colour to describe, the void that Harry had opened his eyes to, dark and devoid of light. But most certainly not black.
It was the odd colour that came when you closed your eyes and pressed against your eyelids with your fingertips. Complete with the static-y pseudo-shapes that leave you wondering whether there is even anything to see or if it is some kind of trick of the mind.
"Why not both?" Loud and feminine in the silence, Harry near jumped out of his skin and fell into a ready stance to fight off a would be attacker as the voice continued heedless to him, "Why is it that humanity deals in such absolutes? Why does it have to be one, or the other? What silly little thoughts you mortals have."
The voice was a slow, lazy molasses, like honey dripping down glass. Reaching Harry's ears from the left, then the right. No matter where he turned it was off to the side, and all his squinting eyes could see was darkness.
"Oh, hey, chill out, buddy. Heart rate's getting a little high there, don't be dropping dead on me there 'Boy Who Lived.'"
She giggled for a bit and, had Harry not been feeling the world tilt and drop around him as his mind grasped at anything it could perceive, he would have noted the sound to be melodic and quite pleasant,
"Who are you?" He ordered an answer from the figure, "Are you… no. You're not Death. Are you?"
His words were firm, almost coming out as a threat rather than an interrogative. His tone still demanding a response which he got from a very annoyed sounding speaker.
"Tch, guy goes to Limbo once and thinks he's an afterlife expert." A mutter that still assaulted his ears on one side then the next, he had no trouble hearing it and shuddered a little in response. Heart beat hammering in his ears as a cold sweat developed on his back, "At ease, Harry Potter. I'm here to save your life."
Behind? He turned and there, the speaker. Just a silhouette but the first person Harry had seen since his 'awakening'. They were a black shape against the not quite black backdrop with no discernible features for Harry to latch onto to identify them by.
The sweet giggle came again as the speaker chose that time to speak once more,
"If you like, you can call me Fate?"
Her arms flew out, the sudden increase of volume and display of showmanship caused Harry to step back whilst her words had his eyes narrowing and his hairs standing on end. He bristled, and she snickered, "I've not struck a nerve with you, have I?"
"Tell me who you are before I kick you in the stomach and beat the answers out of you." He scowled, not just in irritation towards the speaker, but towards the quiver in his voice as he spoke. His hand, on instinct, had sought his pocket and come up empty. Wand gone. He was far from powerless without it but without it… he was neither as powerful nor as at ease without it on his person. His heart sank to his shoe's.
He was very much speaking out of his ass, and the non-chalant way she stood, hands on her wide hips and shadowed gaze never leaving him, Harry KNEW she was more than aware of this fact.
The floor swayed beneath his feet and tremors ran throughout his body. His tongue feeling like sandpaper in his mouth as he reached inside for that warm light at the core of his being and allowed it to eagerly run up and down to the tips of his fingers and toes to lie in wait. She let out a 'hmph' from across the space and, despite his fear, Harry prepared to go out fighting…
The figure shrugged a pair of slender shoulders. Thin, razer-like fingers fiddled away at the scalp of her chin length hair. Her figure and features becoming more visible and pronounced with every word she uttered. Harry could make out the curve of a small nose, the blade like pearly whites behind her dark lips, and the occasional flash of pink and violet as the colour of her eyes registered in the back of his head.
"Again, only call me that 'if you like'. I'll happily answer to Dee for the time being. It's close enough to my real name anyway."
She came into the 'light', an inaccurate statement in a sense there was no light in this place, Harry could just see) a womanly figure marching into sight. She could have passed for human if she had remained a shadowy silhouette. But now, in full view, he could tell that was not quite the case.
She was neither tall nor short, from across the way Harry could surmise that their heights were similar. As previously surmised, her eyes were an odd melding of pink and violet, no whites and the barest pinpricks of pupils. Both of the orbs, in their entirety, devoted to the orbs and their shifting colour.
Then came her skin, a soft blemishless canvas of midnight blue that matched with her short hair and allowed her unblinking eyes and marble teeth to pop out against the darkness. Said teeth were sharp, filed into their triangular blade like shape that very much struck a sense of apprehension into him as he took it all in.
"Who- what even are you?" Harry breathed out, more mesmerised than afraid in that instant as his mind worked to seek some
She sighed, pouting a bit,
"We've been over this!" She whined petulantly, folding her arms over her chest and shaking her head, "You're supposed to be one of the smarter ones, what even is this conversation?!"
Harry flinched; sparks lit up in his hands out of a fearful reflex. Her two-toned eyes falling to the display in an instant with a pensive glare that-
Fear. Harry caught it. The briefest flicker behind her eyes that had Harry standing a little straighter and had his bones feeling a little lighter. Maybe it was wrong to hope (maybe Snape wasn't too far off in calling him arrogant) but hope he did. Hope that whoever this… woman was, and whatever she had done or planned to do to him, he could fight her off,
"Alright, I know that look. You're clearly not in the mood for this, right?"
Her left hand was raised, thumb poised against her forefinger as every instinct in Harry's body screamed DANGER. Fire leaped to life in the palms of Harry's hand but a sharp 'CLICK' at the volume of a gunshot and the subsequent rush of light and sound snuffed that out as his concentration took a hammer blow.
A familiar hooking feeling ripped into his body and yanked him forward, pulling him closer and closer to the distant light as everything span and dance and fall apart around him. This was surely the feeling of a Portkey, yet different. More like someone tried to simulate the effects of a Portkey and hurled him through their first draft.
Harry felt a hammering force in his head, bludgeoning his brain regardless of what shields and protections he had in place, as his body shifted uncomfortably. White hot pain reverberating through every muscle and fibre as he felt his bones creak and change, his muscles shrink and contract and every piece of him just morphed into a form he could not see.
Then her voice again, disembodied and coming from all around, yet also fading as Harry was yanked further and further away,
"When you're ready to act like an adult… THEN we'll have a conversation."
The light and pain reached a crescendo, peaking at a level Harry's mind could not commprehend. Something had to give. There was a SNAP and Harry was gone to the world...
...
...
"How did it go?"
"Eugh! Awful! I didn't even get to explain the basics to him. He just decided he wanted to fight and that was that for the idiot."
"Heh, mortals are weird."
"Mmm hmm, tell me about it."
"…you worried?"
"Nah, he's a clever boy and I have faith in him. Even if he doesn't figure out why I sent him along there, he'll still do what I want him to."
"You're certain?"
Laughter. Cold, high and irrefutably amused,
"No version of Harry Potter can resist saving the innocents, right? The poor dear is very much doomed." A shark-like grin with oh so sharp teeth, "Just you wait, you will NOT regret letting me deal with this…"
...
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To be continued, I hope you are interested on how this moves forward.