A/N: Look, a third part! This would be the first time anyone's ever seen a third part from me! Consider yourselves blessed. Or cursed, depending on how much you think this story sucks. I'd like to take this opportunity to personally thank my reviewers, as they gave me such joy by filling my inbox with review alerts. Thank you to vmr (twice!), Portia, jennylovesnick (there's more story, see!), kateydidnt, Jessi, Perminator (nice job with the Six Degrees of Severus Snape), Alistian Black, Kelzery, Artimis, angel, Shayla Black (I'm afraid I haven't got a mailing list just yet), soulseeker (I studied Wicca for several years before deciding it wasn't quite the path for me--but you're right, I should've noticed that was a bit un-Harry Potter), Pixey, Liz, Savannah (if this is the best fic you've seen so far, you've got a lot more reading to do!), Coqui, and Ruka-chan. Please keep reading, and reviewing, because it makes me feel loved.
Disclaimer: All of the following characters, names, places and concepts are property of JK Rowling, much as that irks me. Several lines from this section were taken directly from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's (Philosopher's) Stone, as a means of flashback.
Part Three: The Destroyer
The scenes changed rapidly; the world shifted without so much as a sound. As in dreams, there was no connection at all between one image and the next. The tiny room with the sobbing Harry disappeared, and Sirius started as he realized that Harry was now standing directly in front of him, not facing him, but looking up at the house before them. It was the Burrow, the whimsical Weasley family house with its thatched roof and its additions poking out in every direction. Something about the tint of the world around the two of them was off; the sky was too orange, the colors too muted. The Burrow had the strange, abandoned feeling of a house deserted before a tornado.
Harry didn't seem to notice that Sirius was there. He walked forward, and reached out a pale hand to touch the plaster of the wall beside the door, where odd pairs of mismatched boots and a few gardening utensils lay. Before Harry's hand connected with the wall the plaster cracked, creating a shallow hole showing white beneath the cream-colored stucco. Cracks spread around the hole, spiderwebbing over the wall, and Harry moved his hand back down to his side slowly, expressionlessly, as if he had always know his touch could shatter.
"Harry," said Sirius, trying a fatherly, concerned tone, but he had the eerie feeling that Harry couldn't see him, couldn't feel his presence at all. Instead, Harry was pushing his way into the house, the wooden door crumbling little bits of oak as his fingers met with it. He left the door standing open behind him, as if reluctant to come in contact with it again. Sirius stood for a moment in the sickly orange light of outdoors, staring at the black rectangle where Harry had disappeared, and then followed him inside.
From the inside, the Burrow had an air of disaffected sadness. Walking through it was like walking through a graveyard of children's toys: joyful things that were lonely and fading as their owners found new games, relinquished games altogether, and moved away. There were black footprints on the floor, which Sirius at first thought were symbols to guide him, but on closer inspection realized that Harry's feet had burnt them into the wood and stone—sticky shapes that smelled acrid and looked like textured tar.
Sirius followed them, trying not to feel sick when he stepped in one, and found Harry in the kitchen, where he stood staring at the worn kitchen table with the same vacant expression he had worn outside the house. Below him, the stone floor of the kitchen was turning black and bubbling up around his shoes, smoke rising from the tar-like substance.
Suddenly, Harry's expression changed, or rather, he began to actually have an expression. With a look of bitter cheerfulness, he reached out a hand to graze the table top, and gave an odd-sounding, satisfied laugh when it splintered, its legs breaking as it heaved itself to the floor. All around them Sirius could hear faint groanings and crackings; the Burrow, which had seemed to be held together by magic alone for so long, was finally breaking apart.
"You don't . . . this isn't . . . you're not," fumbled Sirius, his voice rising as the sounds of creaking timber and tumbling plaster filled the air. Harry gave no more indication than he had yet that he even knew Sirius was there. The pans and saucers were sliding off the walls as the entire house quaked, china and glass tinkling to the floor. From outside, Sirius heard an almighty crash that could only be one of the gables tumbling to the ground. He was pelted with bits of stone and coated with the chalk-like dust of the plaster, but Harry remained oddly untouched, seemingly inside a bubble of protection that not even a falling beam could penetrate. He only smirked, his eyes vacant and hard as the Weasley home came down in pieces around him.
***
"Hey, Harry, how about a game of chess?"
Sirius blinked. The orange-tinted rubble of the Burrow had disappeared. Instead, he was standing in the Gryffindor common room, bright with firelight and winter sunlight from two tower windows. Ron was sitting in one of the best chairs in front of the fire, his grin infectious and his hair flaming orange. On the low table before him was his chess set, the black and white players leering at each other from opposite ends of the board.
"What, and lose again?" It was Harry, apparently responsive this time, coming down the boy's staircase in his pajamas, taking off his glasses to clean them on the edge of his top. The common room was uncharacteristically empty, and Sirius realized it must be the Christmas holidays.
Ron was smiling his smug chess smile that Sirius had only seen once or twice, a grin of complete confidence that Ron rarely displayed. "You might win," he said generously.
Harry laughed, a sound Sirius had become unaccustomed to. It was a genuine laugh that filled the room with its warmth, and Sirius cradled the sound, trying to memorize it if he should need it sometime in the future. Harry flung himself in the chair opposite Ron's and grinned. "You're on," he said.
Harry's pieces were white, and he started the game, pushing a pawn forward two spaces with the look of sporting determination that fit his features so well. Sirius moved closer and settled into a nearby chair where he could view the match more easily. The things inside him that had frozen during the interlude in the Burrow were thawing cautiously. Was this just a happy, innocuous memory that Harry had of Ron?
Both boys had quieted down and were staring intently at the board, Ron with the look of hushed concentration that he always wore when strategizing, Harry with his green eyes narrowed, glaring at his pieces as if determined to win by will alone.
They were halfway through when Ron suddenly shouted, "Look, if you don't hurry up, he'll already have the Stone!"
Sirius jumped, and then frowned. A total non sequitur—but neither Ron nor Harry acted as if there was anything at all strange about this outburst. Harry merely reached forward and moved his king up a space. Ron immediately pounced on the rook left unprotected.
"That's chess!" he said irritably. "You've got to make some sacrifices!"
"No," said Harry softly, his expression changing, his voice becoming desperate. Sirius had the impression of some huge merging, of something large and unpleasant bearing down upon the common room and the game and the memory. The chess board between them was shifting, pulsing, expanding, and Harry frantically tried to pull Ron away as the white queen reared up, tall and terrible and faceless in the white light of December.
Ron was struggling with Harry, his words coming out with a slight echo as if from very far away. "I take one step forward and she'll take me—that leaves you free to checkmate the king, Harry!"
But there was no king, thought Sirius suddenly, who sat rooted to the spot. Just a queen, made of blank stone, holding a deadly scepter and waiting with a ghastly patience.
"Don't," Ron snarled, pushing Harry aside, "Don't—hang—around—once you've—won—"
With one final shove Harry fell to the floor, panting, his glasses lost. Ron stepped over him, looking determined and triumphant, and the white queen—Harry's piece—held up a marble arm to strike him—
—to strike him . . .
—to strike him . . .
-—to strike him . . .