A/N: Warning for some body horror in the first scene, starting from "Eleven years ago, the image..." and ending at "Harry had stared".

Mind the verb tenses. The most current scenes are in present tense, scenes that already happened are in past tense.


Chapter Two: A Course, Established

He had almost begun to think everything would be alright, when it happened. Eleven years after the Battle of Hogwarts on the dot, Harry Potter had woken up in his private quarters in a cold sweat, knowing something was wrong. He could not express how exactly he knew, but after so many years of constantly checking on the state of his soul, he'd become much more in-tune with it. The feeling of wrongness manifested as a dull ache behind his eyes and a flush to his ears, as if developing a cold. Anxiety settled around him as a sort of muted, manic restlessness. He had to move. He had to check.

He'd reached for his glasses on his nightstand, groggy but unwilling to wait, and wandlessly conjured three floating bluebell flames. The one benefit of being so in-tune with your own soul that it could wake you up, Harry had thought idly, was how much easier wandless magic then became. The downside was waking up at — he cast a quick Tempus — half past three in the morning. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and grabbed his wand anyway. Best to get it over with; he had a joint Slytherin-Gryffindor third year class first thing in the morning.

Though magically taxing, the ritual was simple. Harry had had to wait until Samhain the first time he'd done it, when the latent magic of the world was concentrated enough that he could use it to fuel the ritual, but it had gotten easier the more he'd performed it. Those days Harry could view his soul at any time, given some privacy. He shuttered the windows in the room and double-checked the wards he'd placed over his quarters. It'd be just Harry's luck for a wandering first-year to suddenly barge in while Harry was in the middle of a ritual that toed the lines of legality.

It had been intimidating, that first, desperate time nearly eleven years ago. The only ritual he'd ever been part of until then had been Voldemort's revival. Not the best introduction, to say the least. But this particular ritual had become familiar. Harry himself was not so easily intimidated.

He levitated his bed to make room, revealing the small chest that had been under it. From it, he took five small glass bowls and placed them in a wide circle. In each bowl he placed a small, carefully bundled, dried bunch of cypress sprigs, and stepped into the circle. Five small counts of Incendio had the sprigs burning, and a small cutting hex to the palm of his hand had finally chased the last of his grogginess away.

He pointed his wand at his bleeding hand, held out in front of him splayed as if against a barrier, and began incanting, "Anima fenestram." As he incanted, he moved his wand slowly left to right as if tracing a line with its point. "Anima fenestram," again, with each trace of the imaginary line.

The blood from his hand, which had been dripping down freely, stopped midair by the time he finished the first incantation. By the second, it had gathered, following the imaginary traced line, until it was an actual line of blood originating from the palm of his hand and floating midair in front of him.

"Anima fenestram… Anima fenestram…" he continued until he judged the line thick enough, just the slightest bit woozy, and gave one final upward flick to his wand. There was a soft tearing sound and the line split wide from end to end, as if it was a giant eye opening. It opened into a world of white, lighting up the room like daylight.

And Harry, as he had done the first time he performed this ritual, felt his heart stutter and drop to his stomach.

Souls, as Harry had come to find, do not exist in any shape comprehensible to the human mind, so when humans force a window into the realm of souls with the explicit goal of viewing them, the mind and magic compensate. The first view into the white world is something akin to an opal. There is a pearly sheen to it, iridescent and shifting. The longer one stares at it, the more a shape becomes distinct, coalescing first into a kaleidoscope of colors, all sharp edges, then converging into something one can understand.

Eleven years ago, the image that had greeted him had been his own naked seventeen year-old body, head cleaved completely open, like a watermelon, lying still. It looked like something had reached into his scar with both hands and pulled until his skull had cracked, and then attempted to crush what remained of it. He could see bone beneath the deep red mass of what had once been his face. He could make out teeth with what he supposed was half a tongue. Since the world of white had no floor, the blood pooled in an undefined mist around his body — the representation of his soul — like some sort of noxious gas.

The image had never changed throughout the years, hadn't even aged with him. But there — where the damage had previously stopped right below his chin — his neck ruptured down the middle smaller, thinner lines of blood stretching out from it like vines. A foretelling of the end.

Harry had stared, the only sound in the room the drip, plop of his blood on the floor; he'd forgotten to heal the cut on his palm and it ran in warm rivulets down his fingers, falling into a small puddle at his feet. Behind him, one of the burning cypress sprigs crackled. He'd stared, immobile and uncomprehending, as the sprigs slowly burned out and the window slowly closed, leaving only the dim bluebell flames lighting the room.

He would not go back to sleep that night.


It's only four days after Harry drops off his notes at Ron and Hermione's flat that the two of them barge in with no warning. The doorbell hasn't rung in years; the only people who have access through the wards at Number 12, Grimmauld Place are welcome at any time. Harry hears the crack of Apparition at the entrance hall and calls up, "I'm in the kitchen!"

His friends look harried. Hermione's hair, usually tamed down for her job at the Ministry, looks just as wild as it did during their school days, but it is hardly visible behind the pile of scrolls she's carrying in her arms. Ron is still in his Auror robes, clearly having just ended his shift, and carries only a muggle notebook, which Harry recognizes as his notes.

Harry stamps down his apprehension at the conversation yet to come and says, "Maybe we should move this to the library."

"Yes, please," comes Hermione's voice behind the wall of scrolls.

The library is on the second floor, and the three walk up the stairs in silence, tension mounting. They lay the scrolls down over different tables in the magically-expanded room, one in particular is unfurled, revealing a larger version of the ritual circle Harry had drawn in his own notes as well as several feet of comments, questions, and thoughts all in Hermione's hand.

She jabs her finger at the runes along the edges of the ritual circle. "First of all, you're going to tell me how this doesn't make a horcrux, when it's specifically designed to bind a soul to earth!"

Harry sighs and sits down at the table. "Did you read my notes on phylacteries?"

"Of course I did! And they sound just like —"

"They're similar only in that they serve the same purpose." Harry looks up at Ron, who's still holding his notes, and gestures towards them. May I? Ron hands them over without a word. "A phylactery," Harry says as he flips to the right page, "is a container for the soul, created by a wizard to bind his soul to this world so that he may live forever, yes.

"But!" Harry continues before Hermione can say something. "Unlike a horcrux, a phylactery doesn't require a split soul. It houses the wizard's complete soul, so no murder is required to create one. The process, too, is completely different from creating a horcrux — it's much more complicated, for one, and requires much more finesse, time, and materials.

"And — you know I won't actually be making one, right? You read — yes, okay, of course you did. So you know I only need this ritual to remove my soul from my body, not to live forever. There's just nothing else I could do. Giving my soul a destination — having a phylactery set up — is the only thing that could prevent me from just dying or becoming a vegetable when I, you know, remove it."

Hermione plants her hands firmly on the table, leans slightly forward to look Harry in the eyes with all the cold determination of a war general commanding their troops, and opens her mouth. What follows is a straight eighty minutes in which Harry does his best to summarize his knowledge of the soul magic at play, Hermione attempts to find all possible flaws in his plans by questioning everything she has not already concluded, all interspersed with grudging admiration at Harry's "quite ingenious" arrangement of how the two-fold ritual should be arranged, and finally —

"Of course, I have a lot of things to add to your notes regarding the past. The dates you gathered are all very useful, Harry, and I appreciate you extrapolating on the consequences of the events you want to change, but you didn't give any thought to the practicals of actually having to live in the past!"

There's a disbelieving scoff from the corner of the room, and Harry suddenly becomes aware that Ron hasn't spoken since this conversation started. Hasn't spoken to him today at all.

"Mate?" Harry says nervously. Ron's sitting a little ways apart from them, in one of the fluffy lounge chairs interspersed along the west wall, listlessly turning over his Auror's badge in his hands. "Are you following?"

There's something bitter about the way Ron smiles, something cold. "Does it matter? You seem to be having a grand old time without me."

"Ron!" Hermione drops the parchment and quill with which she'd been enthusiastically jotting down even more notes like they burnt her, guilt clear on her face. "I'm so sorry, I — you know how I get sometimes, with research —"

"I know." Ron turns his cold stare to Harry. "What's your excuse, then?"

Harry stares back at him, calculating. "…Something you have to say to me, mate?"

Ron sits up straighter in the chair. "Yeah, there's something I have to say! I —" he stops, takes a deep breath and exhales slowly after a pause. "I love my family."

Harry stares stupidly, thrown. Even Hermione looks confused.

Despite this, Ron continues. "I love my children — dunno if you've noticed, I have two. I like my life. My job. My home." He throws his hands in the air, gesturing all around him. "Hell, Harry! I like how far we've come — all of us, and not just us three, but the world. In general. I'm happy."

A light bulb must have gone off in Hermione's head because she suddenly looks understanding. "Oh, darling, I know. I love our life, too, but… Maybe we should talk about this first." The without Harry goes unsaid, but he hears it none the less.

"Don't. Don't — just — let me finish." Ron turns back to Harry, leaning forward slightly. "I look at all the things around us and I can't help thinking… how much of it was all chance? How much of our life was just… circumstances lining up just right? Would I have kissed Hermione if our lives hadn't been in danger? Would I have become an Auror if I hadn't seen my family fight a war? Would I — if we hadn't found you wandering King's Cross alone, would I have gone to find your compartment on the train? Would we even be friends anymore?

"Harry, you wrote down all these things," he motions vaguely to the scattered notes, "about how you plan on defeating Voldemort, and saving all these people and fixing things, but… you only ever consider the war. What about the rest of it? What about — our lives, Harry?"


The soft, startled "oof!" of a student trying to backtrack at the sight of him had finally snapped Harry out of his trance. He'd been staring out a window in the west fifth floor corridor for an indeterminate amount of time. He had just wanted to see the sun set over the forest. He had just wanted to think…

It was nighttime.

Harry turned around, clasping his trembling hands behind his back in what he'd hoped was a casual manner. Immediately, he spotted the form of a student trying to tiptoe away into the next corridor. "Miss Andrews, shouldn't you be in your common room?"

Ana Andrews, a very curious second-year Hufflepuff already infamous among staff for her nighttime wanderings, had turned to him with a sheepish expression. "There's five minutes until curfew still," she'd said. "You wouldn't take points now, would you, sir? Exams are already over!"

"You'd be surprised the kind of things that happen after exams. But that's neither here nor there. Come on, I'll walk you down."

She'd gone willingly enough, seemingly excited to talk to him despite the circumstance. They walked together through the halls of Hogwarts (his school, his work, his home, and once — just once — a battlefield), Ana chattering all the way. Harry only half-listened, mind elsewhere. It was a shame, really, to not have truly listened to her that last time they spoke to each other.

It would be his last term at Hogwarts (in ruins, bodies all lined up side by side in the Great Hall, rubble and blood and broken glass — ). He could tell, after only a month of observing the progress and effects of his worsening soul, it would not be long until he could no longer reliably perform magic around students. It was just as well, he tried to tell himself. He needed the time for research anyway. Perhaps he could come back, once he figured it all out. This wouldn't be the end of him.

This couldn't be the end of him.

Eleven-year cycles, he'd thought. Eleven years living, eleven years dying.

"…heard there was this room, from the house elves in the kitchens! Erm, not that I've ever been to the kitchens of course. This room, it's supposed to give you what you want — anything you want, when you most need it! But I think — and Marcia agrees with me — that if Hogwarts had a room that grants wishes, then surely it wouldn't stay in one place? What if I wished it was right next to our dormitory, what then? Alfred thinks —"

The Fiendfyre had taken the Room of Requirement out of commission for years before it finally burned itself out. All the artifacts in the Room of Hidden Things had been lost to it, but the Room itself remained, cavernous and empty, black with soot, the air heavy with the hint — the slightest trace — of dark magic. It was something he'd learned to recognize over the years studying his soul and all the magics that could influence it. The last time he'd walked into the Room, he'd gone not three steps before he could hear it — faint, so faint, but making the hairs on the back of neck stand on end — the last, desperate, wailing cry of a soul dying.

And there — there, beyond Hogwarts' (his home, his life, his death, his end) front doors, slightly ajar as noted by a sliver of moonlight — there lay the Forest. It stood tall, and dark, and just as imposing as the first time he'd seen it, barely eleven and so, so blissfully ignorant of what would await him there. What he would lose. What he would… leave behind.

He hadn't gone very deep into the Forbidden Forest since… since…

He didn't want to know. He wouldn't be able to bear it, if he took three steps into that clearing and heard — faint, so faint it could almost have been his mind playing tricks on him — the final throes of a soul dying.

(Whose soul? Whose soul would he hear? He knew — he was the only who knew — more than one soul had been destroyed during the Battle of Hogwarts.)

"…sor? Professor Potter? Are you alright?"

He wasn't. He was incredibly far from 'alright' but that's not something one tells a twelve year-old student, late at night after exam week.

Harry had become aware that he had stopped walking altogether, staring blankly at the Forest through the slightly open door as little Ana Andrews attempted to bring him back to earth. Curious as to what had him so entranced, she peeked around him. "Marcia says there's a nest of Acromantula in the Forest. But Marcia says a lot of things… Is there actually?"

"There used to be. The Headmistress got rid of them once the colony… made itself known." Hagrid had been devastated, but he had been the only one. There hadn't been many spiders left anyway, not after the Death Eaters…

Everyone had lost something.

"I trust you can make your way to the Hufflepuff common room from here, Miss Andrews," Harry said absently. This would be his last term at Hogwarts. He would try to come back. Hogwarts (everything, everyone) would always be his home, and if Harry had any say in it, he would come back.

But.

"Erm, yeah, I can go by myself. Professor?"

This could be his last chance. If he couldn't fix his soul, if he couldn't find a way to stop its degradation… He had to see them again. One last time.

"Then this is good night. To sleep, Miss Andrews."


"Your lives." Harry's voice is flat.

Ron's face is steadily growing red, whether in embarrassment or anger, Harry isn't sure yet. "Everyone's lives! Everything we've accomplished, all we've fought for! We won the war, rebuilt the wizarding world. And, yeah, I'll admit there are a lot of things we could be doing better, but we're working on it, Harry. I — I'm proud of us, who we are as people," Ron ends in a mumble. It's embarrassment, then; his best friend never really got the hang of speaking frankly about his feelings. He clears his throat. "I need to know you've got all this in mind, is what I'm saying. How you're going to change not just the war — everything."

Harry stares at him, head reeling. He knew, logically, that not everyone's life is dictated by the actions of a man fifteen years dead. Not everyone is defined by Voldemort, what he did, and what he caused. The war ended years ago, but Harry has always been fighting, has kept fighting one way or another. He forgets, sometimes, that people have moved on.

Hermione, looking misty-eyed, is off her own chair in a flash and throwing herself to her husband's arms with a heartfelt "Oh, Ron!", as she's wont to do whenever Ron says something she deeply approves of. Positive reinforcement, she had told Harry after many a raised eyebrow when it happened in public. Can't skive on it. She'd been flustered but clearly enjoying herself, clearly comfortable in her husband's arms. Ron is in a similar state now, sputtering slightly but holding tight to her, to her shoulder, the small of her back. He reciprocates the kisses she plants on his forehead.

Harry looks away.

Hermione's notes are in disarray, scrolls spread out over three different tables. It takes him a minute to find his own notes buried among them, the single notebook in which he'd tried to explain, convince, reassure. It seems paltry in comparison.

He understands, Harry thinks as he flips through it, stopping at the section labeled Deviations/Consequences. He's never had a family of his own, but he's had hints of it. He'd tried very hard with Teddy, every time he visited over the weekend, over the holidays, on the odd day that Andromeda needed a babysitter. One could track Harry's efforts through letters and gifts, through gently-wiped tears and soft-spoken comforts after a bad dream. There was tangible, observable evidence of the effort Harry put in being there for his godson, which he tried to build upon every time they saw each other. Before Teddy went home.

Harry had tried, too, at Hogwarts. The members of his dueling club, the regulars at his seminars — they, too, as they parted ways at the end of their seventh year, said it had felt something like family. The teachers in the staff room on Christmas Eve, as they exchanged presents and prepared to leave, would say something in the same vein. The Weasleys, after the awkwardness of seeing Ginny and himself in the same room had abated, would assure him…

Always a step removed, but Harry understands. In the same, intimate way a drowning man knows the value of dry land, Harry understands.

Family is important.


Harry trudged through the Forest, following a memory, heart pounding in his ears.

(You've been so brave.)

The moon had been bright that night, nearly full. It was only after he had passed the expanse that separated Hogwarts from the Forbidden Forest, once he was under the canopy of trees, that Harry conjured three, floating bluebell flames around him. He would need his wand free.

(We are… so proud of you.)

The Forest is treacherous at any time, but more so at night. More so while walking alone, upset and uncaring of the amount of noise he'd been causing as he scrambled through the twisted roots and grabbing brambles. The Acromantula colony was gone, but they were far from the only dangerous creatures in the forest.

(He will want it to be quick. He wants it over.)

But the prospect of danger had never stopped him. As it was, no creature stumbled across his path, not even the most benign wildlife. The Forest was silent but for one Harry Potter.

He had followed this path exactly twice in his lifetime. The first, back when he was twelve, he'd followed the spiders with Ron at his side, neither knowing what awaited them. The second, Harry had walked escorted by the dead, following a couple of Death Eaters and knowing exactly what waited for him at the heart of the Forest.

(Quicker and easier than falling asleep.)

That night he walked alone. He followed only his own desperation.

(You are nearly there. Very close.)

What he found was this: The clearing that had once housed Aragog and his descendants was being slowly encroached by the rest of the forest, though not nearly as much as one would have expected, being utterly empty. It was like the forest itself had paused at the edges of the small clearing, as if the wildlife sensed something unnatural had happened here, as if the land itself shirked it. There were no new saplings, no vegetation claiming the space as its own. Even the moss, inching its way slowly over the carcasses of fallen trees, seemed to resent its own presence there.

Harry, too, stopped at the edge of the clearing. He knew, from the angle at which he stood facing the center —

(I thought he would come. I expected him to come.)

— that this was where he'd dropped it.

The bluebell flames flared, and Harry swept his eyes feverishly over the ground even as he managed to croak out, "Accio Resurrection Stone."

Nothing happened.

A ragged breath, and Harry said, more firmly, "Accio Resurrection Stone!"

But nothing stirred on the forest floor.

(I was, it seems… mistaken.)

"No… Accio Resurrection Stone! Goddammit, Accio Stone! Accio!" Harry fell to his knees, sweeping his hand over the top layer of leaves, brushing aside the dirt on the ground even as he continued, wand in a death grip, "ACCIO RESURRECTION STONE!" He dropped his wand, using both his hands to search the ground. "Please!"

(You'll stay with me?)

"Just once!"

(Until the very end.)

"Don't do this!" he pleaded — to the Stone, to fate itself, to the hand life had dealt him — Harry didn't know, but he hoped the words carried. He hoped, irrationally, that the words had reached him, standing here on the same patch of earth more than eleven years ago. He wished beyond all reason that the words had carried backwards, that his seventeen year-old self had heard them. He wondered how he could have ever been naive enough to believe that the dead — of all things — would wait for him.

The dead moved on. They went on.

Harry couldn't.

He had willingly given up two of the Hallows. Even now, as he searched for the Stone, he was running from death. Harry was Master of nothing, why would it answer to him?

"…Accio Resurrection Stone." Wandlessly, for all it was worth. "Acc—"

He allowed himself one single, gut-wrenching sob that resounded in the forest clearing like thunderclap, before joining the world in its silence.

There was nothing waiting for him. There was no one here.

He clapped a hand over his mouth, scrunched up his eyes.

And then — there! — faint, so faint, as if through the veil of death — a mockery, an accusation, the promise of retribution.

The sound of a soul dying.


Harry gives his two best friends a moment to themselves and focuses on his notes. His head bowed, eyes tracing the slant of his own handwriting, Harry says, "I'm sorry if I sounded flippant in my notes. I do know what's at stake, Ron. Truly." Then, a bit quieter, "I'd never risk your happiness if I could help it."

"That's not to say you shouldn't do it," Ron says, and his tone makes Harry look up at him. Ron is staring at him so intensely that Harry feels somehow exposed. He shifts in his chair, uncomfortable. "I'll still help. I see you, Harry. I know what's at stake, too.

"I'm not saying this," Ron waves one hand to encompass the whole conversation, the other still gripping Hermione, who's half sitting on his lap, "to make you feel guilty. It just needed to be said. I read your notes, too, mate. You weren't thinking about my family when you wrote them. No, don't deny it. It's — well, it's not fine, but I get it. Not sure you do, though.

"You are going to change things, Harry. Without meaning to. So I want you to really think about it — and get the crisis over with before you jump headfirst into the past."

"I have thought about it," Harry insists, frowning. "I'll stay out of it as much as possible and only change things for the better."

"That's not the point." Hermione straightens up with a sigh, standing fully upright with a hand on Ron's shoulder. "He's doing it again," she tells her husband, who nods sagely, and the two seem to have an entire conversation with only a look. "You're doing it again," she says to Harry. "You're putting the whole world on your shoulders. And look, if there's anyone who can bear that weight again, I'd trust you to do it. But you shouldn't have to.

"What my dear husband," she squeezes his shoulder, "is trying to say, is that — you're not omnipotent, Harry. Different circumstances will lead our lives in different directions. You won't be able to help it. You're setting yourself up for a ton of guilt when you realize that, so you better realize it now and not when you're fighting a war near single-handedly."

Harry shakes his head. "I won't even touch your lives, I swear."

"I appreciate the thought, but it's just not possible. You're going to drastically change your own past self's life by saving your parents. When we meet the 'you' from the past, our lives will have changed. Anyone who meets any other person you save — their lives will change, too."

"That's what I'm saying, mate," Ron adds. "You only thought about the war. You know, short-term."

Nothing about the war has been short-term, Harry wants to say. He can think of a dozen ways in which the war haunts the wizarding world off the top of his head — the chaos that came with restructuring a Ministry whose top officials had been Death Eaters or sympathizers, the rampant accusations of being said Death Eaters, the ardent denials, the ramifications of rushed trials, the consequent push for maximum punishment and no-tolerance stance against anything remotely Dark or Dark-leaning, the missing Muggleborn files that left hundreds of magical children unidentified in the muggle world, the relation between the muggle Prime Minister and their own left in tatters, the widespread mistrust in the wizarding government, the immediate attempts at historical revision…

Harry holds his tongue because his friends know all this already, none of them quite agreeing with the other two over which direction the Ministry should have taken. It's something they used to argue about, around the same time Harry had first started studying soul magic. The stress of being one of the few people that the public still saw as a powerful, trusted figure — someone who everyone expected to take a leading role in restructuring the government and handing out justice — had been a major factor in the breakdown that led to it.

Harry fiddles with his wristwatch as a thoughtful silence settles over the room. It's nearly half past seven. His friends will have to leave soon, no doubt having asked Molly to watch the children until dinner.

"I know I can't control everything," he says finally, throwing his notes onto the table and turning to face them directly. "I'm not delusional. When have I ever had anything under control?"

That earns him a small chuckle from Ron but Hermione looks troubled. "I checked, you know," she says, pointing to the notes on the table. "I checked your writing for signs of onset madness, delusions, excessive fear or obsession. I couldn't find anything; the whole thing is quite sound."

"Gee, thanks," Harry says wryly.

"You're welcome," says Hermione, completely unapologetic.

"It really isn't about being mad, though," says Ron, also glancing at his watch. "It's about your — thing. Your saving-people thing," he clarifies, distracted.

"Thanks," Harry says again.

"You make bad decisions when you focus on your failures," he says matter-of-fact, and Harry has to bite down another thanks. Ron continues: "So when it happens, just focus on all the people you're helping instead."

When it happens, Harry notes. Not if. When I fail to change the world for the better.

"We'd best be going," says Hermione, also noticing the time. "Can we leave the notes here?"

Harry nods.

"Great, then. Read them over. Ron's got a late shift tomorrow, but I'll drop by as soon as I'm out." The two of them start heading out, and Harry holds the door open and walks them to the entrance hall, where the wards allow outside Apparition. Hermione stops to give him a hug just as they reach it. "Take care of yourself, Harry," she says quietly next to his ear. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Ron likewise claps him in the shoulder. "Goodnight, mate."

And with a crack! his two friends are gone, a marked improvement from their last departure.

Harry thinks about goodbyes.


A/N: Fun fact! The sun's magnetic poles shift places every eleven years. And just like some potions are influenced by the moon, my version of soul magic is influenced by the sun. Hence the whole eleven year cycles thing.

Also! The last time the sun's poles shifted was around October/November 2013 - exactly when Harry intends to perform the ritual to go back in time. You know, in case you're wondering about the timeline in this fic.