Foward

Harry turned slowly on himself, grateful for the clothes that had appeared at his need, and let his eyes roam freely in the white, misty expanse of... nothingness.

He wasn't cold, he wasn't hot, the air wasn't stale, but he couldn't feel a breeze on his skin. He simply... was: he breathed, and he looked, observing the white nothingness invent itself before his eyes. He stood in a vast open space, a uniform brightness seemed to suffuse the very air, and as he moved, the translucent, dry mist rolled silently at the height of his knees. The place he was in felt somewhat like the Great Hall, even if it was obviously bigger, and on a scale that defied reason.

He shook his head slightly, trying to put together what had just happened to himi, only to return to observe his surroundings: he was alone, except for... something. When his eyes landed on the other being sharing that strange space, Harry recoiled in disgust.

A heavy frown appeared on his brow as he spotted a small, naked, and malformed child: it was all protruding bones and croaking, wet despair. A grimace took the place of the quiet wonder that had kept Harry from speaking out loud as his ears started to take in the pained gurgles of the misshapen creature, and he took a hesitant step in its direction.

He didn't want to approach the malformed baby, or whatever that thing was, and he almost hesitated: the child was curled on himself, its skin rough, looking almost flayed, and now that Harry approached, he could see that the being was shivering under something that could have resembled a stone bench. Out of sight, cast aside, as if it was a shameful secret. Something to be kept hidden, something that wouldn't be mentioned in a polite conversation.

He was repulsed, but still, he moved towards it.

"You cannot help him." a familiar, wise voice called Harry's attention towards the smiling form of Albus Dumbledore, who was walking towards him with open arms, both hands hale and healthy while the white mist that hovered on the floor parted as if waves broken by the bow of a ship.

Harry's frown deepened even while he felt the instinct to smile at his elder: "Can't I?"

Maybe it was the natural contrary nature of the younger wizard that pushed him to make that question, maybe a part of him was simply tired of listening to everything Dumbledore had to say, considering that his plan spanned the whole length of Harry's life with the only endgame of having Voldemort kill him, or maybe it was something else still.

Hesitation appeared on Albus' features then, his blue eyes blinking in surprise at the sarcastic remark he had just received, but still, the Chosen One stopped his advance towards the malformed child, focusing his emerald gaze towards his dead headmaster, who decided to ignore the whipping tone that had been the Chosen One's instinctive reply to the older wizard's first words to him.

"Harry, you wonderful boy, you brave, brave man! Walk with me." the smile on Dumbledore's face was serene in a way that would have been impossible to see while he was alive, and that thought brought the last Potter back on track where the mere visage of the man didn't succeed in doing so.

"Professor..." hesitantly, but with the familiarity born of a trust cultivated throughout the years -a cracked trust, but trust nonetheless- and a faint smile of his own, Harry followed the dead Headmaster until they reached another stone-like bench, "You're... you're dead."

"Quite." Dumbledore sat with a satisfied huff, and he waited patiently for the much younger wizard to elaborate on the implications.

With another glance at the misshapen, but now thankfully quiet, child, Harry joined his elder: "But that means... that I'm dead too?"

"Ah," the headmaster let out a gutsily sigh, "That's the question, isn't it? On the whole, dear boy, I think not."

It would have been too much to ask for Dumbledore to explain himself clearly now that he was dead, wouldn't it? Still, Harry focused on the main issue: "So I am alive?"

"Well, I wouldn't know about that."

"But, but... I should have died!" a distressed note entered the voice of the now even more confused wizard while he brought his hands into his messy hair, "I didn't defend myself, I wanted to die!"

"And that, I think, made all the difference." happiness and deep satisfaction radiated from Dumbledore as if he was a bonfire, and despite himself, Harry found himself smiling in turn.

Uncharacteristically, Harry frowned, only to let out an extremely tired sigh, his shoulders slumping with the motion: "Professor, just this once... could you answer me with plain English? Enough obfuscations and riddles, please."

The tone of the boy, no, the man, was tired as much as his expression suggested, but his eyes blazed with irritation that was close to blossoming into rage, and Albus, taken aback could only nod. Hadn't he defined Harry a brave man just a minute before? He owed him that much: "Very well, Harry: only the truth, with as little embellishment as I can manage."

The blue eyes of the headmaster met the green ones of his pupil, and they both nodded, taking Dumbledore's words as the promise thy had been intended as.

The Chosen One stared at the empty ceiling, at the infinite, bright whiteness that characterized everything in that odd place, and he found himself folding his hands in his lap. "I let him kill me." he resumed, exchanging a glance with Dumbledore before staring once more towards the absentee sky, and after a kind nudge from the dead headmaster, he went on: "The killing curse struck me, and... the piece of Voldemort's soul that was in me is... gone?"

"Oh yes! The Horcrux that Voldemort never meant to create is gone, and you are yourself as it should be." Dumbledore almost giggled, his happiness deep and resonating in the air, "You have done much more than what anyone could have any right to ask of you my boy, and I will never be able to apologize enough for..."

Harry waved away the apology that the older wizard hadn't managed to completely utter, only for his emerald green gaze to land once more on the misshapen, desperate figure of the child hidden under another stone-like bench: "But that means..."

"That is something beyond either of our help." the headmaster repeated, with some undefined quality to his tone, his blue eyes twinkling less than when he had first appeared.

Was it odd, that of all the thoughts Harry's mind could summon, the words of the very same wizard sitting by his side were the ones to ring louder than any other? We'll soon have to choose between what's right, and what is easy.

Dumbledore had been the one to make that distinction, back when the world seemed dimmer, and danger started to loom over the horizon in a way that had made the sun feel just a bit colder.

The Chosen One rose from his seat with a frown born of confusion and determination on his brow: in a couple of strides, he was kneeling at the side of the misshapen child, and a soft cloth appeared out of nowhere in answer to his need. Softly, slowly, carefully, the young wizard wrapped the flayed form of what was left of Voldemort in that cloth, and once he felt steady, he sat with the creature held in his arms.

"Harry." Dumbledore insisted gently, this time a note of what could almost be recognized as censure present in his voice, but the wizard in question cast aside the part of his head that told him to simply listen to Dumbledore. It would have been the easy thing to do, after so many years in which following Dumbledore's lead had been the only unwaveringly right option for so many.

As Harry observed the broken child in his arms, he could only think, oddly enough, of Aunt Petunia, and of the repulsion and disgust for him that she had made him feel every day of his life. His mind flashed through every abuse, every insult, every deliberate act meant to hurt a his muggle relatives didn't dare risking to purposefully harm him, not when accidental magic casually reared up its head in the oddest moments.

The broken creature he held shivered in the soft cloth that had been wrapped around it, and it opened by a fraction what could pass for eyes: a slated pupil in a dull, almost oozing red. These were not the same eyes of the Voldemort in the forest, and Harry knew exactly what he was holding, there was no denying it: he knew it with every fiber of his being.

"Harry, that is..."

"I know who this is." Harry felt acutely everything that he had gone through because of Voldemort, the gaping absence of loving parents, an unhappy childhood, schooling that had threatened his life with almost mathematical precision, and the first year of his adulthood spent shivering in fear, hunger, and in growing hopelessness. The wizard knew his own rage, the fury that had taken a concrete shape after the death of Sirius, when Dumbledore finally explained the prophecy. And yet, now that he gazed upon what that Voldemort had made of himself, he could only feel a great pity.

Rage was an exhausting emotion, and too often that had been the only thing to push Harry forward. There was nothing that he could do to save the child, the wizard knew that in the same way he knew what the child actually was, and the Chosen One didn't want to outright help that malformed creature, simply, his own rage, the distant temptation of rubbing metaphorical salt into that being's wounds, the action of ignoring it... it felt utterly unnecessary.

"Some say that mercy upon the guilty is a crime towards the innocents." Dumbledore's voice rang again from where he had sat originally, and Harry couldn't help but frown heavily in his direction. Something in his gut told him that there was something wrong going on.

Still, he returned his attention to the pitiful shape in his arms, to the unseeing, wandering red eyes of the creature, to the jerking movements that the soft cloth managed to contain. "It's not up to me to deliver mercy, or punishment." the words that slipped by his lips had the same distant quality of the invisible rustle of leaves, the same overbearing certainty of the impossibly vast groaning trunk that Harry felt had to be somewhere nearby, he was sure of what he had just said, just not of the origin of that thought.

"But his suffering means nothing to those he hurt, it won't help them find peace, either." the Gryffindor wizard shook his head while his emerald green gaze roamed over the helpless form in his arms, "This one can't harm anyone else, and that is enough."

All his life had been defined by Voldemort: marked by prophecy, and by the actions of those that tried to interpret it one way or another, Harry had never known a normal life. Even discarding the genuine terror that his mere existence inspired into his muggle relatives, and the consequences of that fear and envy that Petunia clung to like a starving dog with a bone, he had parted peacefully with people that turned his childhood into a little slice of hell.

"I'm truly sorry, Harry." the headmaster's voice was more hesitant now, as if for the first time he couldn't quite foretell with precision what the younger wizard's reaction would be: "You stopped me before, but let me say this much."

With his hand clasped over his long beard, looking with eyes drowning in tears at the form of Harry holding the misshapen creature that was what was left of Voldemort, Dumbledore spoke: "You didn't deserve any of the pain, any of the danger, any of the hurt. And every time I hardened my heart and put you into Voldemort's path, was so that he'd use your blood to resurrect, and in doing so that he'd take upon himself a measure of your mother's protection: just as the Horcrux unwittingly created so many years ago protected him from true death, the sacrifice of Lily Potter shielded you, even now, from Tom Riddle's hate. All I did, you didn't deserve, and yet, now you are truly free: neither of you could live as the other survived, and each had to die at the hand of the other."

When the red eyes of the creature met Harry's, the words of the headmaster ringing in the younger wizard's ears, the Chosen One could almost feel the agonizing pain, the shuddering broken-ness of the being in his arms, and with no further hesitation, he gently stroked the creature's forehead, hoping to calm it somehow: "Shhh."

The misshapen being in his arms quieted and stilled, and Harry looked upon the tearful expression of his headmaster. There was hardly any accusation in his green eyes, hardly any resentment for what he should have had and what instead had be thrust on his shoulders for all of his life. "All my life, has been defined by Voldemort: I refuse to let him have any say in my death."

With a careful movement, the quiet, broken form of Voldemort was placed upon one of the benches that populated the odd version of King's Cross that Harry was in, and once more, the Chosen One turned towards the headmaster, not for the first time at loss for words. It is done. A humongous weight was lifted from Harry's shoulders then, and he felt like he could for the first time stand tall, utterly separated from the tangled mess that the prophecy had wrought.

"There is nothing to forgive." before he had waved away the beginning of an apology, but now that the headmaster had spoken it out loud, he deserved to be answered in kind: "There wasn't an easier, or better way."

That was the last, implicit question that Harry James Potter allowed himself: he didn't dare ask outright, he had long since resigned himself to being Voldemort's nemesis, with all that it entailed.

"If only I could have taken your place my boy, I would have." Dumbledore's voice was heavy with grief, "I would have taken the place of any of our friends that fell in this conflict, for one reason or another, but the lives they led, those were theirs, and I won't spit on their sacrifice by wishing to take that from them."

It was an odd thing to say and Harry found himself chuckling at the endless obfuscations and half-riddles that defined Dumbledore's way of speaking, and with a start, the younger wizard found that they were both weeping, and the headmaster removed his half-moon spectacles, his hand temporarily hiding his face: "You're a good man, Harry Potter. At the risk of repeating myself, you truly gave far more than any had any right to ask..."

"Nobody can ask for what I gave willingly, professor." Harry took a deep breath and walked to another bench in the odd world that was defined as a cleaner, bigger, quieter version of King's Cross: "And I know that I wouldn't have allowed any other to take my place..."

The intuition had come with the same stark clarity that had made him point at Draco Malfoy when Katie Bell had been cursed, the same certainty that led him to catch the snitch in his matches of Quidditch: "I did what my mother did for me, didn't I? They're all safe from him now."

"That you did, Harry." Dumbledore's voice barely managed to distract the younger wizard from the not-there tree that he kept hearing, "But I think, that I've kept you long enough... as things stand now you have a decision to make."

"A decision?"

"You can choose, I think, between going forward," the headmaster peered at him from above his half-moon spectacles, his eyes twinkling as always, "or turning back."

"How would I do either?" Harry sighed as he stretched on the bench: he hadn't felt so well in months,

"It depends, I think..." the dead headmaster's voice brought Harry's attention back on track, "Where would you say we are?"

"Something like King's Cross, I think." Harry replied, his mind finding yet another thing to ask now that he felt like their time together was coming to an end: "Professor, why are you here? When I used the Resurrection Stone, I expected..."

"Ah," Dumbledore nodded sagely, the delight of a teacher instructing a pupil painting itself once more on his ancient visage: "I once thought that the Peverells, I assume you figured out that you're the last descendant of Ignotus," at the other wizard's nod, the headmaster went ahead, "I believed, or wished to believe, that the three brothers were either rather extraordinarily gifted, to the point of creating the Hallows, or that they stumbled upon ancient relics on their own... yet when I died, I found myself able of waiting for you here. The Resurrection Stone called for those beyond, so that they might guide you when needed, while I was waiting here, so that I could be of use, if the situation arose."

"So the Master of Death thing..."

"I wouldn't know, Harry, I can deduce much from very little, as my ideas are usually on point, but baseless speculation will aid you little in the choice you still haven't made."

"About... going forward, or turning back. " Harry repeated dully what the headmaster had more or less explained before, his green eyes spacing over the endless white expanse that was the entire world now that he was 'dead'.

The wizarding world was at war, and Voldemort could no longer harm any of his friends. Lightning quick, a doubt arose: "Professor, my mother died for me, and that cast her protection... will my the protection cast from my death vanish if I go back?"

Dumbledore, not for the first time since he had found himself facing this adult form of Harry Potter, who was a boy only in appearance, but that was in truth a character without fear, for he had faced everything that could be thrown at him, and the only worry remained for those he had died to protect, for those that he had completed his last walk in the Forbidden Forest. Perhaps, were the events a little different, Dumbledore would have skirted the truth: perhaps, had he remained Harry's professor and nothing more, the ancient wizard would have tweaked his words just enough to push the Chosen One to turn back.

But he couldn't, not when he had promised, man to man, to tell the truth to Harry Potter. A person who had enogh decisions made in his stead, who had enough paths decided for him before he could even begin to walk them: "In truth, I cannot be sure... My heart wants to say yes, that surely the intention is what matters more when the magic of Love is involved, for that was that which pushed you to the extreme sacrifice, I could speculate that maybe if you returned, the protection would merely be weakened, but magic like this is more unique than rare, and I cannot truthfully say one way or another what the consequences would be on the protection you cast."

"Voldemort's got the Elder Wand." Harry forced himself to focus on what truly mattered: his friends were back among the living, and his nemesis hadn't yet been vanquished, not fully, not forever. The oddities and the strange feeling the Dumbledore gave off were discarded. Ron, Hermione, Ginny, countless others, people that he didn't even know: too many were still at risk.

"Has he?" the question bubbled out of Dumbledore's lips with a serious tone that not often had graced the headmaster when he was alive, and a simplicity that nobody would have believed in if Harry ever got around to telling the tale of it, "Has he truly the Elder Wand, Harry?"

"What do you mean professor?"

"When I was dying of the curse taken from the ring," the headmaster explained easily, "I planned with Severus so that he'd kill me: I hoped, in truth, that such actions would finally break the bloody history of the Stick of Death: but even if we planned for it, it wasn't our dear Potions Professor to win me that night, was he?"

After a handful of seconds, Harry's eyes widened as he explained in surprise: "Malfoy!", and then the memories of the Manor flashed behind his eyes, making him laugh disbelievingly. "I disarmed Draco while we were escaping, so..."

"You were truly the Master of Death when you walked to your doom, and as I once planned and acted to have Severus end my life, you did with Voldemort: even as the Elder Wand killed you, it acted following your wish, and even in death, you remain its only master."

"But if I go back, and then I'm defeated, the Wand will work as it always did, won't it?" Harry buried his face in his hands, feeling yet another weight being placed on the scale that would guide him in one direction or the other.

After a defeated sigh, Dumbledore nodded: "I believe so, yes."

The headmaster could read Harry's choice in his eyes before he voiced it out loud, in truth, it was hardly a surprise. "What do I need to do, to go forward?"

"You said we're somewhere like Kings Cross, didn't you?" an odd grin blossomed for an instant on the headmaster's face then, the unbound curiosity of a researcher blossoming fully now that he was facing the beginning of another great adventure: "Then, I suppose, we'd just need to catch a train."


AN

I have been unbelievably busy in RL recently, I think I have figured out a thing of two about what I like to write and how I like to write it, and as my only free time had been spent travelling, unable to write, I could only think about either new plots, or checking the progression of my other stories.

Reading the beginning of Elder Son, it struck me how perfect it'd be as a starting point for a more classical crossover in which some characters are dragged into another fandom. In the specific, I once more ready myself to play with Bleach.

Let me know what you think of this idea, keeping in mind that it'll take a few chapters to properly get the ball rolling.