Randomly regular update (This must be madness).

Thanks to Stauneage (yet again) for giving me the idea to write this chapter.

I thought this might clear up one more plot thread.


Even at 17 years of age, Harry Potter hadn't been here much. He had come to Kings Cross Station to see his cousin go to far off places or to greet various Dursley relatives. Once, he had come here to go to a camp. Once, he had come here to visit a friend (a precious commodity he'd been allowed since he turned 11).

But even with the limited exposure, he had also thought of the high ceilinged train station to be the ultimate place of coming and going.

Perhaps it was no surprise that it was this place that he imagined.

The boy did wish though, almost desperately, that the small, soft thumping sound from the mist would stop. It sounded pitiful, as if something was flapping, flailing and just generally struggling. As if something small was struggling. Like a child-

Harry cut himself off and looked around at the oddly clean train station once more. It occurred to him that he was unclothed and, just as he wished that wasn't true an outfit appeared before him. Jeans, a shirt, underwear - the works.

Except that clothes don't just appear out of nowhere. (It's freakish.)

The boy did not put on the clothes.

He looked around again (trying to distract himself from the weirdness) and was once again drawn to the simpering sounds. He looked around, trying to spot the source. Eventually the mist in front of him cleared enough for him to see the babe-like thing shoved under a bench with raw, rough skin. He recoiled from it.

Harry Potter would not approach the repulsive thing.

"Harry."

The boy spun at the soft sigh of words. Behind him stood an old man with long silver hair and beard, a crooked nose, piercingly blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles and dressed in some sort of robe dyed midnight blue.

"You don't know who I am, do you?"

The boy shook his head (what kind of teenager needs manners anyway?).

"I am Albus Dumbledore."

The old man seemed to pause for a response. Except the boy had no response to give. As the expectant silence ran on, he said the only thing he could think of.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Harry Potter."

By the distraught look that fell over the man's face that was not the thing to say and Harry couldn't help but follow through with the impulse to say,

"Sorry sir."

"It is hardly your fault, m'boy. This spiraled far out of hand far too quickly."

His blue eyes seemed to pierce Harry's very soul and Harry remembered that he was, in fact, still naked. Stealing a glance at the (impossible) clothes he decided to at least hold them in front of himself.

The old man muttered, seemingly to himself, as he looked into the boy's heart;

"I wonder, though, what would have happened had you come to school that first year."

The old man walked closer, stepping a few strides away when Harry backed away nervously.

"Please, sir, do you- do you know what happened to me?"

"Indeed. You are, as it stands, in a limbo. You are no longer living but not yet dead."

"I'm…" Harry could barely finish the thought.

"Harry, please listen. There is a way you can return to the world of the living. There are indeed a great many people wishing you were alive and depending on you."

"But I'm dead."

The finality was disturbing. Dumbledore had expected the boy - the young man - to be far more prepared for death than the one that stood before him. Yet the man in front of him seemed to accept it readily. (No hope in magical miracles to set everything right).

The old man looked as if he would speak again, but scene was broken. Over and over again the boy repeated those three words.

Not always audible.
But always repeated.

And the train took Harry Potter away.


Thanks to all my reviewers and alerters; Justpucky, Stauneauge, minerva.m1997, sarahpotter42, Balmz and pollypocket95.

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