AN: The first half of the flashback is taken from Harry Potter Book 7 so all credits go to JKR.

Thanks for all the follows, favorites, and reviews. I know I kind of went on a year hiatus with this fic but I'm back with my muse! Expect at least two chapters a month (hopefully). Enjoy :)


He lay facedown, listening to the silence. He was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching. Nobody else was there. He was not perfectly sure that he was there himself.

A long time later, or maybe no time at all, it came to him that he must exist, must be more than disembodied thought, because he was lying, definitely lying, on some surface. Therefore he had a sense of touch, and the thing against which he lay existed too.

Almost as soon as he had reached this conclusion, Harry became conscious that he was naked. Convinced as he was of his total solitude, this did not concern him, but it did intrigue him slightly. He wondered whether, as he could feel, he would be able to see. In opening them, he discovered that he had eyes.

He lay in a bright mist, though it was not like mist he had ever experienced before. His surroundings were not hidden by cloudy vapor; rather the cloudy vapor had not yet formed into surroundings. The floor on which he lay seemed to be white, neither warm nor cold, but simply there, a flat, blank something on which to be.

He sat up. His body appeared unscathed. He touched his face. He was not wearing glasses anymore.

Then a noise reached him through the unformed nothingness that surrounded him: the small soft thumpings of something that flapped, flailed, and struggled. It was a pitiful noise, yet also slightly indecent. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was eavesdropping on something furtive, shameful.

For the first time, he wished he were clothed.

Barely had the wish formed in his head than robes appeared a short distance away. He took them and pulled them on. They were soft, clean, and warm. It was extraordinary how they had appeared just like that, the moment he had wanted them...

He stood up, looking around. Was he in some great Room of Requirement? The longer he looked, the more there was to see. A great domedglass roof glittered high above him in sunlight. Perhaps it was a palace. All was hushed and still, except for those odd thumping and whimpering noises coming from somewhere close by in the mist...

Harry turned slowly on the spot, and his surroundings seemed to invent themselves before his eyes. A wide-open space, bright and clean, a hall larger by far than the Great Hall, with that clear domed glass ceiling. It was quite empty. He was the only person there, except for…He recoiled. He had spotted the thing that was making the noises. It had the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath.

He was afraid of it. Small and fragile and wounded though it was, he did not want to approach it. Nevertheless he drew slowly nearer, ready to jump back at any moment. Soon he stood near enough to touch it, yet he could not bring himself to do it. He felt like a coward. He ought to comfort it, but it repulsed him.

"You cannot help."

He spun around. Albus Dumbledore was walking toward him, sprightly and upright, wearing sweeping robes of midnight blue.

"Harry." He spread his arms wide, and his hands were both whole and white and undamaged. "You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man. Let us walk."

Stunned, Harry followed as Dumbledore strode away from where the flayed child lay whimpering, leading him to two seats that Harry had not previously noticed, set some distance away under that high, sparkling ceiling. Dumbledore sat down in one of them, and Harry fell into the other, staring at his old headmaster's face. Dumbledore's long silver hair and beard, the piercingly blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles, the crooked nose: Everything was as he had remembered it. And yet...

"But you're dead," said Harry.

"Oh yes," said Dumbledore matter-of-factly.

"Then... I'm dead too?"

"Ah," said Dumbledore, smiling still more broadly. "That is the question, isn't it? On the whole, dear boy, I think not."

They looked at each other, the old man still beaming.

"Explain," said Harry.

"But you already know," said Dumbledore. He twiddled his thumbs together.

"I let him kill me," said Harry. "Didn't I?"

"You did," said Dumbledore, nodding. "Go on!"

"So the part of his soul that was in me..."

Dumbledore nodded still more enthusiastically, urging Harry onward, a broad smile of encouragement on his face.

"... has it gone?"

"Oh yes!" said Dumbledore. "Yes, he destroyed it. Your soul is whole, and completely your own, Harry."

"But then..."

Harry looked over his shoulder to where the small, maimed creature trembled under the chair.

"What is that, Professor?"

"Something that is beyond either of our help," said Dumbledore.

"Are you sure we can't do anything?"

"There is no help possible."

The creature behind them jerked and moaned, and Harry and Dumbledore sat without talking for the longest time yet. The realization of what would happen next settled gradually over Harry in the long minutes, like softly falling snow.

"I've got to go back, haven't I?"

"That is up to you."

"I've got a choice?"

"Oh yes," Dumbledore smiled at him. "We are in King's Cross you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to... let's say... board a train."

"And where would it take me?"

"On," said Dumbledore simply.

Silence again.

"Voldemort's got the Elder Wand."

"True. Voldemort has the Elder Wand."

"But you want me to go back?"

"I think," said Dumbledore, "that if you choose to return, there is a chance that he may be finished for good. I cannot promise it. But I know this, Harry, that you have less to fear from returning here than he does."

Harry glanced again at the raw looking thing that trembled and choked in the shadow beneath the distant chair.

"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love. By returning, you may ensure that fewer souls are maimed, fewer families are torn apart. If that seems to you a worthy goal, then we saw good-bye for the present."

Harry nodded and sighed. Leaving this place would not be nearly as hard as walking into the forest had been, but it was warm and light and peaceful here, and he knew that he was heading back to pain and the fear of more loss. He stood up, and Dumbledore did the same, and they looked for a long moment into each other's faces.

Suddenly, Harry was struck by a random thought. If the only options were to go back or move on, would it be possible to choose when exactly to go back to? Wouldn't it be better if he could go back to when everything, both the good and the bad, has yet to happen?

And as if summoned by Harry's fleeting thought, the gentle tapping of steps followed by the muffled thump of a cane could be heard.

The unexpected sound grew more audible as a dark figure moved out of the white mist that began to surround Harry and Dumbledore.

The mysterious figure stopped before the two surprised wizards, revealing the appearance of an older, cadaverous looking man of indeterminate age dressed in stiff black funeral wear. A pure silver ring set with a white stone was visible on the hand that rest lightly on a polished cane carved from yew.

"Well, now. I would say this is a pleasure, but then I would be lying." Lips pulled back in a grim mockery of a smile that the unknown man directed straight at Dumbledore, completely ignoring Harry's presence.

"You. You are not supposed to be here." To Harry's surprise, the palpable happiness and beaming smile were completely wiped from Dumbledore's countenance, to be replaced with a deep scowl of displeasure.

"Threw a wrench in your plans, I'm sure." The grim smile appeared more sincere this time. Turning, he finally placed his attention on Harry who was completely clueless at the turn of events.

Looking Harry's scrawny figure up and down, "While the shell is less than impressive, you do have one of the loveliest soul I've ever come across. And I've existed longer than I can remember." As if in an afterthought, the man added, "As Death's Champion, I could have done worse."

Before Harry can demand an explanation for the discussion clearly being held over his head, he was interrupted by Dumbledore who seem to be growing increasingly agitated.

"If you continue your plans, you will be upsetting the natural order. Death!" Dumbledore hissed.

"On the contrary, Fate. I will be fixing it. If you have my champion follow through your inane designs, I will have to clean up the mess. Just because I am older than you can possibly imagine, does not mean I enjoy cleaning up the messes left behind by bratty children!" A sudden crack of lightning followed on the end of the man's incensed word, startling Harry out of the stupor he had fallen into upon hearing the impossible names of Death and Fate being thrown around so casually.

Having enough of being ignored, Harry exclaimed, "Just what is going on here?! Professor, you know this man?"

Instead of Dumbledore, who had fallen strangely silent in comparison to the heated exchange he was just in, it was the strange man who answered him.

"Harry Potter, I'm sure you've heard of me. I did help your ancestors create those three little objects you collected after all. You may call me - Death." Smile wide and nearly ghastly in the way it stretched the thin skin over the man's skull.

Without waiting for a reaction, Death continued. "And do use your brain, won't you. Albus Dumbledore is dead and has long since moved on. I collected his soul myself. The being in front of you is the greater puppet master behind the tragedy that is your life. Dumbledore could never hope to compare. After all, unlike Fate, he is only a mortal." A dry, sarcastic drawl.

"What?" Harry gaped at the silent 'Dumbledore'. He felt slightly numb from the revelations that kept dropping on him.

"You might as well reveal your true face. You lost the moment that thought crossed the boy's mind." The strange man, now known as Death, smugly announced.

And before Harry's eyes, the familiar figure of Albus Dumbledore melted away and a young, petite blonde woman, with blue eyes and glasses appeared in his place. Her hair was long and impeccable, as was her attire - a suit consisting of a white dress shirt and plaid dress pants. In her arms was a heavy bound leather book embossed in gold. To Harry she looked like a Muggle librarian.

"You will be changing the future. You cannot change the past." The woman, Fate, directed her cold gaze at Harry. The disapproving frown she had only made the librarian look more convincing. "I refuse to scrap the entire book!" This she directed at Death.

With a dawning sense of realization, Harry furiously exclaimed, "You're the one responsible for my shitty life? So, what, my whole life is just a book then?!"

"My, there's hope for you yet." Death snarked. "Down to your birth in fact. Lily Evans hated James Potter. If not for the manipulations of a higher power -" here a meaningful look was casted at Fate "- they would have never gotten together. But that was not allowed, you see, your birth was necessary." Death gleefully recounted like a storyteller recounts a tale, taking amusement from the nearly identical scowls on Fate and Harry's faces.

"Yeah, well, I've had enough of being manipulated!" Harry was pissed. Even more so than when he found out Dumbledore had been keeping important secrets at the end of his fifth year.

Death nodded encouragingly, looking at Harry in approval. "Which brings us back to why I am here, despite someone getting in the way." A nasty look was shot at Fate, who only returned it in equal spades.

"What are you planning, Death? I'm warning you -"

"The main character here is Harry. So the question is not what I'm planning but what Harry's choice will be."

Under two very different stares, both equally no less in pressure, Harry made a decision that will alter time and rewrite history, changing the destinies of millions. Walking over to the ugly, wrinkled piece of Voldemort's soul, he bravely picked it up and cradled it in his arms.

"I want to go back. Before everything started."

.

.

.

He feels like he's floating on something very soft. As soft as what he would imagine a cloud would be. Though, do clouds smell like lilies? He's unwilling to wake, the lily scented cloud pulling him into a state of belonging and content. He stretches on his cloud bed, inhaling deeply that familiar and comforting scent. And when he cracks open his eyes ever so slightly to turn and roll over, he sees that his room is grand and opulent, ivory carvings, silk hangings, plush carpets, and colorful stained glass windows and lamps.

He sits up suddenly, blinking into the bright morning light streaming into the open doors of the balcony.

He looks down. Spread out on top of the fluffy pure white duvet is the emerald wool coat he had appropriated from Harry. It was where the scent of lilies, Harry's scent, was coming from. Everything else in the room is foreign and new. The bed must be three times the size of his old one, and far more comfortable. The room is enormous and as elegant and exquisite as the rest of the manor.

He sits in a daze, only startling into full awareness with the appearance of an excitable wrinkly little creature dressed in a severely ironed tea towel.

"Master Tom! It's being time for breakfast! Master Lord be waiting in the sunroom! Creaky has Master Tom's change of clothes!"

He immediately leaps out of the bed, grabbing the folded pile of clothes on his way to the attached bathroom. Tom has yet to get used to these house elves, but they definitely seem more efficient than normal human servants. Though he wonders why the house elf assigned to him is so excitable.

It wasn't long before he was following Creaky down the hallway which is as quiescent and majestic as the rest of the house; the whole place seem far too luxurious for someone like him - is he really going to live here?

Stepping through into the familiar sunroom, Tom finds the owner of this manor in the middle of the room at the round ivory table he had sat at for dinner just last night. Immediately, his attention focuses on the object of his fascination.

Harry is reclining on one of the cushioned wicker chairs, looking as sublime as the rest of the manor; he slides into this tranquil greenery as if he was meant to be there, sunlight glinting off his dark hair, highlighting warm crimson. His attention was currently engaged on a little metal square that fit into the palm of his hand. As he nears, he sees with curious eyes that one side is white gold metal, but the other is bright and full of lights and letters.

Catching sight of his ward, Harry presses a button on the little box before placing it down on the table, its surface darkened.

"Good morning, Tom. Slept well?" Harry greeted the neatly brushed and dressed child following behind Creaky, with an indulgent smile.

"Good morning," Tom replied quietly, not sure what to do. He had woken up disoriented and confused before he remembered being taken from the orphanage by the mysterious green-eyed-man named Harry. It still felt like he was dreaming. This was his wishes made true. Though, never could he have imagined the extent of it all, from his mysterious and fascinating new guardian to the elegant and majestic new surroundings.

He watched Harry smile warmly at him, illuminated by the bright morning sunlight streaming in through the glass ceiling and walls of the sunroom. It made his chest feel warm and fluttery. Tom recalled all the revelations from yesterday. They still made his heart race despite having a night to sleep on. He doesn't think the excitement will ever fade.

"Come sit, Graves made chocolate croissants," Harry told him as he pushed the plate towards Tom across the round ivory table.

Embarrassingly, Tom felt his mouth salivate. Before yesterday he hadn't even known he had a sweet tooth. He had nearly gorged himself sick on the huge birthday cake Harry had told him was a red velvet chocolate cake.

"We're going out shopping today. For your clothes and some other essentials," Harry said as he spread raspberry jam on a slice of toast.

Tom still felt uncomfortably wary that someone was willing to buy him stuff. Or give him birthday presents. He still felt shocked when Harry had gifted him Creaky as his personal servant. Tom had never owned anything of value and now he was dressed in fine new clothes and owned another being.

Once Tom finished the bountiful breakfast, he hesitated slightly before looking to the young man sitting across from him.

"Thank you for the meal," he said and the same warm feeling bubbled up in him as Harry smiled bright and fond at him. As if Tom delighted him somehow.

And then Harry did something that made Tom freeze and his mind go completely blank. Harry bent down and planted a kiss on his cheek. "You're welcome Tom."

Tom stared after Harry in a daze as he lightly touched the cheek that had been kissed. It was the first time another had shown such physical affection towards him. He had seen it happen from parents towards their children and between married couples but he had never thought that he would one day be a recipient as well. There were no positive touches in the orphanage. Indeed, most were of the negative kind - punishment from the matrons, pushes and shoves from the other orphans. This all lead to his general dislike of human contact.

Tom lowered his lashes to hide the dark possessive glint. However, he likes Harry's hugs and kisses, therefore they should only belong to him. Harry is his, so it's only fair, right?

.

.

.

"Everything ready, Tom?" Harry stood by the open front doors, dressed markedly different from what Tom has seen Harry in. Instead of casual dress wear that are cut differently and more figure fitting than the usual suits Tom has seen on Muggle men, Harry was clad in black high collared military style robes of indeterminate fabric that look very much like silk. Tom, too, was dressed in dark blue robes of the same mysterious fabric. It was the only other piece of clothing he found in his wardrobe aside from the set of pajamas and the set of Muggle clothes he was familiar with.

"Harry, why are we dressed like this? It looks like fancy bathrobes." His more so than the one Harry had on. At least Harry's robes could pass for a military coat.

Harry grinned in amusement. "These are called wizarding robes. Wizards have their own fashion that is quite different from the Muggles, as you can tell. I personally prefer Muggle clothes but well, since we are going to a wizarding shopping district…"

Tom's disgruntlement was slightly appeased by the mention of a wizarding shopping district.

Following Harry down the front steps, he heard Harry call over his shoulder, "We'll be getting there the old fashioned Muggle way this first time as you should know how to get there without magic."

Sliding into the sleek pale car, Tom caught the black eyes of the only other sentient being -other than Harry and his house elves- that he has encountered so far in his new home. Harry had introduced him as Mortimer.

Even though the strange man is Harry's subordinate, something about him has Tom feeling wary. For one, the man certainly doesn't fit the description of a subordinate or servant for all that he addresses Harry Master. In fact, Tom could detect the hint of amusement whenever he spoke the moniker. Not in mockery, but more as if he is sharing a private joke that Harry is clearly aware of judging by the same amusement he feels when referring to the man as his subordinate.

Tom didn't like that at all.

His discontent feelings must have shown on his face because he clearly caught the brief flash of a smirk in Mortimer's black eyes. It only had Tom feeling more incensed.

Thankfully, he was soon distracted by Harry who had been oblivious to the silent exchange and was enthusiastically pointing out where he kept the different breeds of winged horses - abraxans, aethonans, granians, and thestrals. They also passed by where the hippogriffs and griffins nested. Harry had always enjoyed flying and over the centuries he had gotten into the habit of breeding these fierce winged creatures ever since the first time he had been introduced to competitive winged horse racing. The exhilaration and energy rivaled that of quidditch games.

The breeding of hippogriffs and griffins, however, came later when he had rescued pairs of both from an illegal ring of hunters. The descendants of the first two pairs of hippogriffs and griffins have continued to breed and flourish under Harry's care and have lived on the grounds of the summer manor since.

"We'll have a full tour later in the afternoon when we get back from the shopping trip and if you still have energy left. I think you'll enjoy meeting them. There's also an upcoming winged horse race the month after next in March. We'll make a day of it. I haven't attended one in a long while, it's going to be exciting." Harry enthused.

Tom was excited as well. He had only caught a glimpse of the magical creatures that he had only thought to exist in story books and already he was awed. He hadn't known Harry was a breeder of any magical creatures but it was quite clear that Harry adored them and obviously had a preference for the winged variety of magical creatures.

The rest of the ride to London was passed with Harry describing the many strange creatures kept hidden from the Muggle world, referencing Newt Scamandar's bestselling book, which was incidentally published the year of Tom's birth.

Without utilizing the space warping abilities of Mortimer's pale car, they arrived in London in an hour and a half as opposed to the couple minutes taken the first time.

Stepping out of the vehicle, Harry led Tom unhesitatingly towards the dingy pub and inn nested between a Muggle bookshop and a record store.

Despite his reservations, Tom followed Harry into the Leaky Cauldron.

The establishment was as dark and shady as ever, with a bar and a number of tables in the shadows of the corners. A few witches and wizards, dressed in the familiar bathrobes but in eclectic colors and cuts were seen drinking and having a late breakfast. Conversations were kept at a low murmur. It was Tom's first time seeing so many wizarding folk but for some reason he was hardly impressed. They were nothing like Muggles of course, but they were nothing like Harry either. He didn't know whether to be disappointed or not.

Noticing Tom's confused and slight wrinkle of his eyebrows in disdain, Harry grinned, "I know it doesn't look like much, but it's famous for its luncheon and for serving as the gateway between the Muggle world and Diagon Alley, the main shopping district that we'll be visiting today. Did you know, when it was first open in the 1500s it was open to Muggle visitors as well? Though that changed a century later when the Statue of Secrecy was imposed and any magical presence had to be kept hidden."

Tom listened to the fascinating bit of history as they made their way to the rear of the pub which opened up onto a chilly courtyard which Harry says contains the entrance to Diagon Alley.

Tom was dubious at first, but when he saw Harry pull out a long grey stick -wand- Harry had called it, and tapped at the bricks, Tom was witness to the bricks rearranging themselves into an archway.

He gaped. Tom just couldn't help the unattractive (adorable) expression of astonishment.

Reaching over to ruffle little Tom's hair before smoothing it back to its neat order, Harry grinned in delight, "Welcome, Tom, to Diagon Alley."