Chapter 4 Renewal
We were on the Chamber.
"You will have six hours," said Hermione.
"Before the split on your soul becomes permanent, if you don't come back earlier you will also be annihilated on rencouter."
Neville and I had poured his blood on a cup, when he crossed the veil his soul will split.
"Won't this make another Horcrux of my mother, split her instead of me."
"No, no once can do that anymore, Godric's curse is gone, this is another spell on I placed on you."
We had a special rope tied to us, the veil was rippling calmly, no sign of activity.
Too bad timer-turners did not work there.
"Ready?"
"Yes," Neville said.
I put on a new set of goggles. And we crossed.
As the ripple passed behind I saw the blinding light, and then.
"King Cross."
"The Entrance to the Main Garden."
There were now two different views of the afterlife, joined to each other.
"I thought for a second I would see Flamel here."
I put the goggles and the eyes on my pocket, apparently dying would restore your original eyes. Neville did the same, and I unwrapped from my sealed cloak-pouch the map.
"Okay, I don't see anything, not yet, wait." I unraveld the whole map/
There were a few tiny dots off to the distance, very far away, given the map's size.
"She must have been pushed, when we crossed the veil. I thought we would see her here."
As we trudged through limbo the cloud landscape of white mist beginning to dissolve, giving way to different shapes.
It was splotched like a stained cloth. We saw the on numerous places broken creatures and their remaining troubles, magics from all over the world, covering the landless ground.
The blurry terrain began to get steeper, it was like crossing a mountain rather that climbing it. Then it began to drop.
And just as suddenly as it peaked again, the ground in front then dropped once more.
In front of us there was a strange nebolous waterfall. Everything ahead was falling, falling to God knows where, and for the first time the high ceiling of the afterlife was very close to us. We were in cavern, on precipice-like—
Neville fell. To my right, part of the ground must have yielded.
Crap.
"Ventus."
The wind pushed me, and I avoided the dangeous pull.
I tried to cling to anything, but he kept pulling and pulling on the elastic rope, pulling so much. And I could barely avoid falling as it continued to slip past me.
"Circularis Ventus. Circularis Ventus."
I tried to run, but it felt like running on a treadmill, or in your sleep, I barely could make a stride. The rope was making friction in my hands. He has the Re'em blood.
Through the soft and cloggy clouds he was falling down, and I worried that I was going to follow him.
I tried to arrest the momentum of the ground, to freeze it.
Then something very strange happened, everything, including the ceiling seemed to move.
Cracks spread below my feet, torrents of gusty gas being realesed from within.
The ground now sloped upwards, chunks of loose afterlife object came to meet me.
Little gushes were blowing through the cracks, throwing the white mist to my face.
Wait.
I froze a section the rope, and the spell this time held it in place.
I stopped, stopped very close to edge.
The rope pulled taut.
"Haaarry."
Neville was dangling on the rope, and his body was hanging below.
Or above me.
He swung form side to side, big cunks and fragments still hurtled to wards me.
"It's a sphere Harry. I fell, and then instead of falling I went around it, the pull from below almost sucked me in."
While he said that the cracks were growing bigger, I felt the clouds wobbled below me.
"We only got a shot at this Neville."
"Pass me the Re'em blood."
Neville levitated the blood towards me.
"Now it's my turn Harry, levitate me!"
I gulped on the blood, feeling the increased strenght.
"Wait." I shouted.
In that moment the ground under my feet gave.
"Protego Maxima."
The winds from the frozen clouds threw me above, but I could direct myself. I did then three things very quickly.
Unfreeze the rope and let slide through my fingers.
Cut it.
Too bad Accio wasn't for persons, and I grabbed him as he fell.
With the closer and cut end of the rope in my teeth we then held to each other. We were being pushed several feet above. Neville tied my end to his, and the rope bent on the roof of the cave.
"Great!" Neville shouted, with a smile on his face, me with the rope on my hands.
"It's not over yet."
The sphere continued to rotate and fall, quickly consuming the slack rope I had perviosly let go, pulling us down to the hollow and blackish hole underneath us.
And then I pulled.
Neville grabbed onto the rope that was below us, sliding it to me, and we ran.
Hundreds of cluttering objects darted towards, we ran keeping on the same place, Neville collecting more and more rope.
The world was rotating under our feet, cities and mountaintops, all milky white, coming closer.
With my powerful legs I carried us between them. I was strong but not impervious.
More and bigger things, wonders of the imaginations came, as was conjuration useless I put a cloudy rock below me to skate any intruding piece.
We crushed through the windows of gigantic temples, blowing holes withing the protego. We grazed spires bigger than any ever made. The sphere wasn't garguantuan, but it was full with afterlifes passages.
And after we passed a pyramid, skating, slinged to freedom.
"It's dropping, faster."
I held.
On one end was the entrance to the real world, its rope close to us, under its margins the veil was visible.
On the other the hollow and hemespheric world, the limboes under our feet.
And I held, held feeling the gigantic strain of the veil uncut end and the other end grasped between my fists, holding the weight off the world in my arms.
The world continued to fall, but I continued to pull.
We felt the nauseous tumble once more, and—
It stopped.
Quickly, before I ran out of time, we crossed the limboes to the other end, and I tied the rope.
This rope too heated then, with visible light and then it was completely spliced.
"How did you cut it?" Neville asked me.
"With the only thing that can cut things like this on this place."
"The Killing Curse."
We recovered the missing rope that dangled below the other end, getting all of it, not a single feet lost.
Now the rope made a complete turn around the half-globe, we froze more ends (as Neville did during the fall)of it to make sure it didn't slip under.
Up above us was the murky, empty end of another waterfall, pulling towards it. It was equal to the one underneath. There many other tiny worlds, littering that space withing the infinite cascades.
"What if they are the same?" I wondered. "Both leading to nothingness."
With his spelled eyes Neville saw our original, tumbling hemishpere getting farther and farther.
"We should return," Neville said.
"We will leaving a piece of us I think. We are very close in any case."
Neville saw where I pointed, on the distance we could see clusters of persons, on the right extreme of this shallow hemishpere.
"What if she was on of the falling half?"
"There's nothing we can do then." I said.
"We should have brought the brooms like I said."
"They might have not worked, they were too bulky even when shrunk," was what you said.
Neville did not reply.
Now we advanced, we walked to where many people seemed to be clustered, gathering.
Two hours had passed.
The geometry of this place was strange on some of the places we visited.
Twisting mazes, suddenly apearing structures, all popping randomly, acommpinied by a confused ghost.
We passed after seeing his history, his life, his memories unraveling and revealing who he was.
And after more than half an hour.
We saw the spirits, wandering in marble halls, opaque and golden white.
"St. Mungo's."
The hospital was nearly unrecognizable, in fact, withouth Neville it would have been unrecognizable.
The deceased saw us arrive, they seemed to be puzzled by our presence.
And on the high floor of the asylum, visible through the atrium, was the room of Neville's mom.
We ascended the spiralling and square halls, running as fast as we could.
Higher and higher, her mother ran.
We met on the middle, she had big rolling tears on her face.
Neville hugged her, and it seemed to be over.
Neville sat with her mother, we had some spare time to make it back.
Neville talked with her, he seemed so happy, and they talked about the smallest things.
At this point we were near the veil once again, it was below the floor so we had to climb down.
"So soon."
No not him, not now!
He thre himself between me and Neville, and with Neville's wand he pointed it to his neck.
"How? We"
"I can read too Potter, I destroyed one of my horcruxes, or rather the soul within."
And he avoided the recounter.
"Let him go, there's nothing you can—"
The cloak.
"Stay here." I told Neville's mother.
I jumped after him, we were wildly running between worlds, I with my little remaining Re'em strenght, him floating like a ghost.
"End of the line. "Let him go."
I grabbed onto the cloak, having caught with him, he pulled and pulled. He probably had drunk the few remaining blood, and the cloak was torn.
He grabbed Neville on to Neville.
"Voldemort!"
And they were gone, gone through the misty wall of the cataracts.
Neville's mother and I came back then, we wrapped ourselvels on the tattered cloak.