Disclaimer: Check first chapter for full disclaimer and other warnings.
Chapter 37 – Judgement Day
Harry hid his wonderment at the beautiful Ministry atrium, and his surprise at the wand levelled to his chest. Upon recognizing him, the wand lowered and the woman who had received his call stuttered.
"I'm sorry, sir. I thought it was somebody else."
Despite the fact he hated it, Harry tried to act following the man's perceived persona. "And you let me enter nonetheless?" he scowled. "Without even asking for anyone to cover you? Had I been a... an enemy, you wouldn't have stood a chance!"
The woman paled, and took a few steps back. "But... sir... why didn't you enter through the Apparation point?"
'Because I'm too young to Apparate.' Harry wanted to say, just to see her face. However, his mission was more important than fun or curiosity. "Because I wanted to test our defences. Visibly, they have to be strengthened here."
"Please, sir... don't fire me! Please." the young woman, whose nametag told Harry she was working as secretary from some obscure service, was almost on her knees.
He snorted, not at the woman, but at his own attitude. However, she understood the wrong way and really went to her knees, crying already. Harry was ready to tell her to stand up, when he saw the benefit he could grasp from the situation.
"Well..." he said gruffly, "do you know all the services here?"
"Yes, sir." she said through her tears.
"You aren't fired, then. Stand up! And go wash your face, too. I don't like tears. You have one minute."
She stood and darted towards the closest toilets, while Harry was counting in his head. When he reached forty-five, she was already back, make-up and tears gone. 'She actually looks pretty.' thought Harry, before focussing on the task at hand.
"I'll give you a test. You are going to find the Lost and Found Items, then the Creatures Department, then the Unspeakables, then the Minister's office. In that order. I'll follow you to make sure you go there through the shortest path."
She looked at him, not understanding the reason behind this. However, she quickly moved when he barked "Now! Or I'll make sure you go up that elevator, not to come down again."
When he followed her out of the atrium, the atrium doorway emitted a weird sound. She turned around and looked at it.
"It must have grown rusty." growled Harry, kicking himself mentally. Of course, the ministry would have ways to detect animagi so as to prevent unwanted entry. But Harry wasn't exactly an animagus. Still, the device must have detected something. He passed under it again and back, but it stayed silent this time, its magic accustomed to Harry's strange signature.
After following her for some time, Harry found himself in the Lost and Found Items service, and, while looking around, he discreetly extracted the snake-like pendant Sly had given him and put it in his hand. The snake stayed coiled, so the souls vessel wasn't there. Harry repeated the process in the Creatures Department and in the door-less Unspeakable lobby. It could be anywhere, but Harry had selected the four places he thought had the highest probability of hosting the device. That left one.
When they arrived to the door of the antechamber of the Ministry, Harry turned to his involuntary guide. Motioning a room three doors down, he said "Wait for me in the coffee room."
He then entered. The secretary, another young woman, looked up from the magazine she had been reading and stowed it away, blushing.
"I'll introduce you." she said, before opening the enlarged end of a tube leading from her desk to the wall of the Minister's own office, and through it. Visibly, thought Harry, they weren't on par with muggle technology. While she spoke through it, he looked at his hand and almost jumped. The serpent was uncoiled, his head toward the Minister's office door.
"Captain Singleton is here, Minister."
The voice of Arthur Weasley echoed in the tube. "Enter."
And Harry entered the room.
"Ah. Bob." said the Minister, although it wasn't as gentle as Arthur Weasley's usual voice. "Captain of my soon-to-be-formed Special Supervising police. How was the old wand maker?"
Harry looked at the two men there, and imagined a probable answer.
"Easy, but he said nothing."
The man behind Arthur looked at him questioningly and put his hand in his pocket. Harry had to act quickly, as he knew his disguise wasn't enough to fool the two men for a long time.
"I found something in his shop, but it's quite... dangerous." he said, looking intently at the still-open connecting tube on the Minister's desk.
Arthur closed that end and the man behind him threw a silencing spell on the door. "Satisfied?" he asked.
"Very." said Harry, doing the wrist move which sent his metallic wand to his hand. The two men looked at the wand, surprised at its shiny aspect, and that gave Harry the necessary time to cast a Stunner toward them. Like last time, it covered a wide area, and the two men slumped on the floor at the same time. Harry removed their wands and looked at his snake pendant again. It was showing a bookcase. Not knowing about it, Harry only repeated the spell Hermione had shown him, such a long time ago. A spell to open doors.
"Alohomora."
The bookcase opened to reveal a small room, where several things rested. Several swords, shields, books, a set of armour, a grandfather's clock. And, in the middle, not even needing a pedestal, the vessel of souls. Harry looked inside and felt nauseous when he understood that the squirming grey substance was made of thousands of souls. Dozens of thousands of them.
He shook himself awake, and proceeded to store the device in his trunk before stowing it in his pocket afterwards. He then brought the two men inside and disrobed Arthur before tying them together. He knew that, if the two men were to be missing, he had to leave using his body. He removed his own clothes and, after morphing into the Minister, put Arthur's clothes on. Curious about the other man's identity, he fetched for the man's wallet, and learnt that the man was an Unspeakable named Broderick Bode. Harry suspected that, if the man had been seconding the Minister like that, he was perhaps like Arthur Weasley. A possessed body.
He closed the bookcase door and put one of the office chairs in the way. It was as innocuous as possible, but the door wouldn't open from the inside. Harry began to feel qualms at imprisoning people, but he convinced himself that he would release them later. After all, he had promised the goblins that he would take care of the problem. And he would need Arthur to publicly negate all the laws he had passed since... since he hadn't been himself. He would also need to put protection around each of the most important office's heads, so that they couldn't be impersonated by others.
Getting out, he greeted the secretary. "My guests have left already, and I am out for today. I will see you tomorrow."
"Yes, Minister." she said, standing. And she saluted.
Her right arm extended in front of her, the hand flat.
Harry almost retched on the spot. He had had inklings about the persona in Arthur's head, but it was getting clearer. And he didn't like it one bit. He had to act quickly.
He turned abruptly and exited the room, leaving behind a bewildered secretary, asking herself if she could release her salute as her boss hadn't answered to it as usual.
In a foul mood, Harry entered the coffee room three doors down, and the four employees there saluted him immediately.
"What are you doing?" he barked. Their salutes faltered as they didn't understand the question. "Get back to work!" he said, dismissing them all. The entrance secretary started to leave, and he remembered the reason why she was there initially.
"You! Captain Singleton said you knew the building quite well." she beamed at the praise. "Show me where you work." he asked. It was the most innocuous way to asking her to navigate him in the building again. After a quick tour of her cramped office and a swift note to her superior to increase her pay, he left, and headed to the atrium again, when he got called back.
"Minister! Minister!" it was his secretary.
"I thought I said I was leaving?" he asked, quite coldly.
She cringed, but continued anyway. "It's... I just received this, sir. I thought..."
Harry snatched the envelope she had been handing, and she recoiled. "Thank you." he said. "You can go back."
"But, sir, there's... the... owl... it's still there, sir. I think it awaits your answer."
"It will wait." said Harry, and she scurried back while he went for the elevator.
When he noticed the name on it, though, his mind reeled. The envelope had only three words on it:
To: Minister
Voldemort
Inside the mounting cabin, Harry morphed his face to an indistinct wizened old man, not able to shape-shift into his usual teenage body because of the clothes' length. He could try to transfigure them, but he wasn't use to it and didn't want to look sloppy right now. He then exited the phone booth and sat on a public bench nearby to open the message.
Dear Minister, the letter began.
It has come to my understanding that you asked for a meeting between us. You will acknowledge that I can't very well accept without speaking together beforehand. I suggest you firecall the "Gamer's Den" this evening at eight so that we might meet an agreement on our respective views. However, due to the quality of the laws you passed recently, as well as their quick enforcement, I don't think we'd need a long time.
Answer your acceptance of this appointment with the provided messenger. Use the bird also if you wish to reschedule it. Don't try to track it, and don't trap your answer. Don't try to trap the Gamer's Den either or to trace the call once started.
I think we'll come to an agreement soon.
Lord Voldemort
"Not bloody likely." muttered Harry, before tearing the old-looking parchment in small bits, dropping them in separate trashcans on his way to the Leaky Cauldron.
Once inside, Harry sat on a remote table, asking Tom for a butterbeer. He didn't have to wait for a long time to see Sly emerging from the corridor leading to the inn's rooms. Harry looked as the man glanced around and sat on another table, not far away from his. Two minutes passed, before Harry decided to meet the man.
"I'm sorry, gentleman." he said. "I couldn't prevent noticing your loneliness. Care for someone to talk to?"
The other man barely looked at him, but Harry's next words sank in.
"Or perhaps, you'd like a soul-awakening trip in the vessel I've anchored nearby?"
Sly looked up sharply, and met Harry's glinting eyes. He nodded and, without a word, left toward Diagon Alley and its Apparation point, followed by Harry, still under the disguise of an old man. Once there, he handed Harry a sheet of parchment, and they both were whisked away, just as three cracks were heard, coming from people Apparating in.
Harry found himself in a secluded cave, and immediately reverted to his usual self. He had been quite happy of his disguise's innocuousness, but was now finding it useless and quite cumbersome. Especially as he wasn't steady on his legs due to the shift in perspective.
"If you have just a second, I'd like my clothes transfigured a bit?" said Harry.
Sly sighed, waved his wand expertly, and Harry's clothes were entirely remodelled. It was now a dark green, with silver linings and a silver snake coiled on the left side of his chest.
"Cool." said Harry.
Sly's eyebrows shot up. Decidedly, the boy wasn't completely Gryffindor to not instinctually react to his colours and animal of choice.
"Where is it?" asked Sly.
Harry took the trunk from his pocket, and enlarged it. He opened it, and saw Sly's eyes go wide in front of the item. When the man spoke, it was in an altered tone.
"My preciousss..."
It was... Sly decidedly looked greedy as he surveyed the squirming mass of souls, and it disturbed Harry greatly. After several seconds, he spoke.
"Your part, now."
Sly didn't move.
"Sly? Sir?" To Sly's slight nod, Harry spoke louder. "I'd like you fill your end of the bargain, now."
The man looked up, visibly torn between the bargain and the act of keeping everything for himself. However, he had always been honourable, and he reluctantly straightened up.
"You want me to free all 'good' souls and give some of them to you. And you want to watch." Sly stated.
Harry nodded.
"Well... can you sit here and wait for a few decades?" asked Sly, smirking.
"What?"
"You heard me. How did you think I was going to do it? There's only one way to do that: extract each of them, one at a time, and check if it's 'good' or not. And that takes the hell of a time."
"But..." started Harry.
"However," continued Sly as if Harry hadn't interrupted him, "I can call for a given soul and extract it in mere seconds. Are you still interested?"
Harry nodded. Sly then went through his pockets, extracting three items. The first was a small booklet. The second was a small item, looking like a drum with a lock on its side. And the third was his wand.
"Alright." he began, and Harry straightened up. "The booklet gives you the procedures, incantations, and wand movements, to interact with the souls. This," he said, pointing to the small drum, "is a pensieve. It's a portable model, smaller than most other models, and it's equipped with a lock. I give it to you in exchange for your service to me. Put your hand on it."
Harry complied, and the man put his own hand on top of Harry's, mumbling several words. The drum-like item shone with grey light and Sly smiled. "It's yours, now. Only you can open it. The incantation I just said, as well as the pensieve's other properties are in the booklet."
"But..." started Harry again.
"You wonder why I'd offer you a pensieve?" asked Sly.
Harry nodded, and the man chuckled.
"Did you really think you would transport souls in your hands or in your pockets?"
Harry hadn't thought about the question, and shamefully shook his head.
"Don't worry. This pensieve can hold a dozen souls. Which ones?" asked Sly in a business-like voice.
"Ginny... you need the full name?"
"If you cast the spell, the mere intention, or the forename of somebody you knew, that's all you need. If I do the casting, I need the full name, as I don't know your targets as well as you do. The incantation is Pescare Anima Ginny, for instance, and the wand movement is like this." the man said, doing with his wand a gesture that any fisherman would recognize straight away.
"When you have the soul at the end of your wand, you can talk to it by saying Parlare Anima and moving your wand in a full circle. Note that speaking with souls is like a dream: it takes place at an accelerated rate. You can chat for a full hour, and only minutes would have passed outside."
Harry nodded, knowing the concept of different time frames thanks to his hideaway.
Sly wasn't finished, though. "Also note that you can include others in the discussion: they just have to be in contact with your wand hand as you cast the spell. There are other spells also: you can transform the soul into a ghost with Pamortis Anima, and 'release' it with Liberare Anima. When you release a soul, it disappears from this world, and is sent to the... to the gods."
To Harry wondering look, the man shrugged. "All is explained in the booklet. The last thing it how to deposit a soul from a wand into a pensieve: you just tap it inside. Beware: these are souls, not memories. If you bring one to someone's temple, even yours, it possesses that person, whose soul exits through the other temple."
After several seconds, during which Harry digested everything, the man sat back and motioned Harry next to him. "Ready?"
Harry swallowed nervously. "As much as someone ready to meet his deceased love."
He took his wand out, not thinking clearly and, not noticing Sly's suddenly alarmed expression, jerked his wand in the appropriate motion, speaking the words. "Pescare Anima Ginny."
Only then did he understand what he had just done. He had just fetched Ginny's soul with the most powerful wand ever known to Ollivander – and the old wand maker was knowledgeable – and, judging by Sly's round eyes, the man didn't know what to think. Especially as the soul which shot from the pensieve to attach itself to his wand tip, instead of staying its ashen colour, switched to a bright white upon touching the wand.
Harry looked at it, wondering. Was it Ginny? Was she alright?
"Is this normal?" he asked Sly. Not hearing anything from the still-shocked man, he spoke again "What does that mean?"
"I don't know."
Harry didn't know, either. But there was one quick way to discover if this was actually Ginny, and how she was faring.
"Parlare Anima." said Harry.
He found himself in a white countryside, with translucent trees and a house in a distance. A house which reminded him very much of a large family of redheads. The Burrow.
"Ginny!" he yelled, hope suddenly filling his heart. "Ginny?"
"Harry?" came a soft voice behind him. "Is that you?"
He whirled around, and saw her. She was sitting near a stream, and looked straight at him. He looked down at himself and noticed that he wasn't white or translucent like everything here. He was actually his normal self, colours included.
"It's me, Ginny. Are you... are you alright?"
"You know," she sighed. "I'm quite alright, now. When I died... when I felt the curse hit me, I felt a tearing inside me, and something like... like when you are portkeyed away." she said, while he sat next to her. "Then, I was in darkness. I knew there were people around me, all around me, and they were yelling and kicking, but I couldn't make out the words, and their kicks didn't harm me. But it was frightful. I stayed there a long time, Harry, and it really felt like hell." she said, her eyes welling up with tears, and he hugged her. "But I just felt hooked and found this wonderful place. I guess it must be heaven." she finished.
Standing, she stretched, before turning to look at Harry in the eye. "And you, how did you die, Harry?"
It took Harry a full hour to explain to her about his actions following her kidnapping, and the resulting conclusion that she wasn't exactly dead, and that he wasn't dead at all. After promising not to let her in the dark again and to return her to the living as soon as possible, he emerged from the trance, and found a smirking Sly looking at him. Harry smiled back, and tapped his wand inside the pensieve, freeing Ginny's soul, who slowly recovered its ashen tinge.
"What was it?" asked Sly, whose face had found its usual seriousness back.
"Well... first of all, thank you. That was the most... intense moment I had to pass. This," Harry said, moving his wand around, "is my wand."
"Of course. What's the wood and core?"
It was Harry's turn to smirk. "You'll never guess."
"Well... I was good at riddles in my time, but I think you are more pressed by the time than I am."
"Alright, alright. The wood is teak and the core is a mix of a very old basilisk and my blood. It's-"
"Very old basilisk? And your blood? How comes they are even compatible? And how did you..."
"Well, last year, I had to fight a basilisk which was almost a thousand years old. Some people said that it was left there by Salazar Slytherin as a revenge tool when he fled from the castle."
The man, hearing all this, got red in the face and tried to say something, but only strangled cries came from his deformed mouth.
"Sir?" asked Harry. "Are you alright?"
After several minutes, the man recovered his countenance enough to motion Harry to continue his explanation.
"After I made my first wand, I-"
"Wait a minute! You made this wand?"
"Why... yes. Why are you acting strangely all of a sudden?"
Sly considered the question, and his impossibility to fully answer it. Shrugging, he said "No matter. I just found it unusual that somebody would make his own wand. Especially someone as young as you are."
"Well, if it calms you, I didn't steal anything. I fetched the parts myself, from the basilisk body which was still in the Chamber of Secrets."
Sly paled, now. In the time span of a few minutes, he had gone into more facial expression than his whole life. "You... you are a Parseltongue!" he said.
Harry sighed. "Well... my schoolmates already went into the 'dark wizard' thing, but I thought you were more adult than them."
"It's not that! How can you be a Parseltongue, after... after..." Sly couldn't tell him that Gryffindor had made experiments with Blood Magic and had cursed them both, preventing a common heir.
Harry shrugged, and his explanation surprised the man all the same. "Dumbledore said that Voldemort might have given the 'gift' to me when his killing curse rebounded on him."
If Sly hadn't informed himself of the current state of the magical world, he would have suffered another round of surprised expressions at Harry saying he made a supposedly unblockable killing curse rebound toward the powerful evil man who had cast it. As it was, he only looked at the teen with round eyes. Harry hadn't noticed the man's surprise, though, and was finishing his explanation about his wand.
"...and it's covered in platinum to hold the wood together, and the end is a diamond shaped into a lens."
Sly went silent for a time, digesting the information, and Harry, wanting to test something, used his other wand to extract Arthur and Broderick's souls. His insight was true, as his regular wand only yielded an ashen-coloured drab landscape. After briefly discussing with the two men, acquiescing to their request of returning to their body quickly, he immediately got another idea, and asked Sly about something related to it.
"Do you know of someone really evil in there?"
"Well. Yes. Quite a few, even. Why?"
"I had an idea I want to test. Can you give me a name?"
Sly thought about it for a second before answering. "Demetricus Aureus Longinus. He's a slob of a wizard who liked to stuff his face while watching others being tortured, especially young virgins. He was condemned to suffer the Kiss in 1130 if I recall correctly."
"Geesh. Thanks for the details." Said Harry sarcastically, before turning to the barrel of souls and lifting his powerful wand. "Pescare Anima Demetricus Aureus Longinus."
Like Ginny before, the soul changed colour upon reaching the wand tip. However, unlike Ginny, the new colour wasn't white at all. It was pitch black.
"Do you really want to see what's inside?" asked Sly.
Harry shook himself, before answering. "No. Not really. It's either his heaven of his hell, and both might include the torture you mentioned." he tapped the black blob inside the barrel, releasing it back to where it came, and smiled.
"I guess I have the perfect tool to help you sort them, when I'll have finished with all the 'current affairs'." said Harry.
Sly wasn't happy of being reminded about his duties, but he agreed nonetheless. As soon as the sorting would be done, he would be free to roam the planet.
Harry, having discussed with the Weasleys about him during the Romanian vacation, knew about Bill's death, and extracted his soul next. The brief chat he had with him was disturbing, as the man, visibly perturbed by the time he spent under Voldemort's control, only asked for forgiveness for his deeds. Harry didn't know where his body was, though, and thus couldn't promise to bring him back to life. Harry quickly followed by fetching Hermione. He had a quick chat with her too, thanking her for her sacrifice and promising her return to her body. She had numerous questions, of course, and he answered most of them truthfully, before returning to the real world, dropping her next to the others in his pensieve. He then turned back to the barrel again, his breathing uneven. There were others he wanted to meet. Two others.
"Pescare Anima my parents." he hadn't thought about it, and 'my parents' came naturally. To his surprise, and to Sly's shock, it worked, and two distinct blobs shot from the squirming mass to attach to his wand tip.
He then started to discuss with them, inside the translucent white reconstruction of their house at Godric's Hollow. To his surprise, even if they had spent the last thirteen years inside a dark barrel of squirming souls, Lily's connection to him had made it so that she was able to see a bit of what happened to him, in turn transmitting to James through their marriage link. Lily started by crying, asking for forgiveness for the Dursleys' treatment. At the same time, James growled about the fact that Harry hadn't been deemed to go there at all. They explained that their will had been to send Harry to his godfather, and didn't understand why the man had been sent to prison without a trial. Harry spent an hour of outside time speaking with them, which stretched into a dozen hours of catching up inside. They had much to discuss.
When he emerged, he was exhausted, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Sly was quite concerned about him, and transfigured several rocks into a comfortable bed while Harry put his parents' souls in the pensieve with the others. Remembering his promise to Ginny, he cast a Lumos spell on the pensieve lid's inside before locking it.
He then stretched, lied down, and fell asleep mere seconds after hitting the pillow.
At the same time, in Voldemort's cottage...
"That traitor! Offering help and then striking me in the back! And the wretched Minister who doesn't answer!" Voldemort was fuming, pacing in the safety of his throne room, in front of a small number of followers. "I have to do something about it, but what? That supposed ally had been self-sufficient and strangely resilient to threats. As if he didn't need anything on earth. Well, except for one thing. What was it already?" he stopped pacing, trying to remember. "Ah yes, a large pensieve."
The snake-faced man looked at his detachment of Death Eaters. "You!" he barked to the twelve cringing followers. "You are going to contact all our spies in the Ministry, before going there. Your target is a pensieve, larger than usual. Interrogate everyone. Kill if you have to. I want the thing. And if you find the traitor on the way..." he paused for effect. "Drop the pensieve search, and bring me the man. Maimed, disfigured, tortured, I don't care. But alive and conscious."
Back in Sly's cave...
Just as Sly was going back from looking at the sleeping teenager in wonder, he jumped in fright at the two persons watching him. Two persons who had appeared there without the customary pop or crack coming from wizards Apparating. Two persons Sly had seen already, a very long time ago. Although it hadn't been at the same time. Seeing both of them at the same place at the same time was a sign.
"You discussed about me." he stated dejectedly, knowing it was true.
They both nodded, and Sly sighed. Of course. How could he think of walking free with his past following him?
"It seems that we reached a sort of..." started the one in black.
"...agreement." finished the old one in white.
Sly rolled his eyes. A long time ago, he had found out about those two, and at that time already, they had numerous disagreements, which he had used to his advantage to build the device which now rested between him and the two of them. The fact that they had reached an agreement about him was rewarding in itself, but rather... foreboding.
"Thine time here is up." said the older-looking one, confirming Sly's thoughts. "Have the grace to accept thine fate."
"Besides, as you swore to the youngling here that you were going to sort these," said the younger, pointing to the squirming mass of souls, "you might as well do it efficiently."
"And, instead of walking slowly around this ball of dirt, thou couldst visit our domains."
"After you finish sorting the souls."
"Of course."
Both of them stopped talking and looked at Sly in askance.
"What?" he asked.
"Was he dull like that a thousand years ago?" asked Thirteen to the other.
"It does not seem to me. He was quite sharp. Time doth have a strange effect on the mind of mortals."
"What do you want, exactly?" asked Sly.
"We propose you to be the one directing the souls upon their arrival." said the black-clad one.
"After their death. And only after thou dost that to your loot." specified the other one, pointing at the device again.
"If you refuse," said Thirteen smugly, "I'll have you know that a spot is free in my pits of eternal suffering. In fact, it had been reserved for you since your little... theft."
Sly sighed. There was no way out of it. "Alright. You win. I'll do it."
Both 'gods' smiled. Everything was going back into proper order soon, and the Superintendant wouldn't be disturbed.
"Although," started Sly, "what about him?" he asked, pointing at the prone form of Harry.
"Thou didst not share the information on the soul structure with him, didst thee?" asked the Creator.
On Sly's negative shake of the head, he continued. "Besides, even if thou hast, he is part of the game and cannot be removed until it finishes."
"What game?"
Thirteen nudged Sly's shoulder. "The game of power you disengaged yourself from. You'll see it soon."
The two eternal beings took hold of one of Sly's shoulders each, while the man was holding his precious barrel to his chest. "We hereby acknowledge you as central judge for the souls of the dead. May you accomplish this task fully and faithfully." they both said, before disappearing from the cave. With Sly and his souls. The only thing which stayed after them was an envelope, dropped from the Creator's fingers.
The surroundings changed, and Sly found himself in a beautiful room, with a desk and four large doors, all closed.
"The door in front of the desk is for the arrivals." explained Thirteen. "On your left, it's my domain, and on your right, it's his." he pointed to the Creator. "Behind you are your private chambers."
"Thou wilst start with removing all the 'good' souls from the barrel thou hast got there." said the other. "Remember our division. The creative ones go to me, and the regular folk go to him." he finished, while Thirteen was huffing in contempt. "Thou hast understood everything?"
"Yes. I think so." answered the newly-instated guardian of the Heavens.
"In this case, we leave you to your work. If you do well, we'll also appoint you for judging the final destination as well." said Thirteen. In front of Sly's interrogative stance, he explained. "In my case, hell pits or heavenly gardens."
Sly nodded in understanding and they went to their doors, before turning back to him. At the same moment, they spoke their final words before leaving the room.
"Welcome to your new home, Salazar Slytherin."
A few hours afterwards...
Harry woke up with a start, and found himself in a black place. Grasping his wand, he quickly cast a Light spell, only to have to blink repeatedly in front of the miniature sun which had appeared in front of him. 'I'll have to be careful with that wand.' he thought.
After being able to see again, he noticed several things, the foremost one being that Sly was gone with the souls' barrel. His initial reaction was anger at the man's departure, but he found an envelope on the ground where the man had been, and stood. Once he was upright, though, the bed returned to its original state. Harry picked the miniature pensieve and stored it in his pocket, before fetching the letter.
Harry, it began in a sophisticated writing.
Thou shouldst not try to find Mr Sly, as we offered him the best position one could imagine, and he will not be reachable again. He will, of course, begin by doing what he promised to you: sorting his looted souls. The very paper thou are holding hath been charmed as a portkey, which will activate upon thou uttering the word "Mission" and which will bring thee directly to the Ministry Apparation point. I know thou art needed there. This message will not accompany thee there.
Good luck in taking care of Voldemort.
The message wasn't signed, but Harry could feel the magic behind the portkey spell, and whoever it was, he or she was powerful. Anyone powerful and helpful in his war against Voldemort was an asset. He morphed himself back into Arthur Weasley's form, and was a bit surprised that Sly's transfiguration spell on his clothes reverted at the same time, returning his clothes into the Minister's. He shrugged and, with a last look around to check if he forgot anything, he spoke the activation word.
Several days later, a young and muggle Peruvian shepherd would find the grotto with the light inside and he would raise quite the spiritual commotion before several wizard came to dispel the light. It would need seven of them to cast the dispelling charm at the same time for it to work, and the cave would still be visited by religious pilgrims afterwards.
At the Ministry...
When he had been there the first time, Harry had memorized the location of the Minister's office, and he headed straight for it as soon as he appeared in the almost-deserted building. It was night time, and few workers were still there, mainly maintenance and security people. He barged in 'his' office, only to find several things amiss.
Firstly, the place was in shambles, the desk overturned and papers everywhere.
Secondly, there were people there. Around eight black-robed wizards or witches with white masks. Death Eaters.
Thirdly, the bookcase was open, and four other Death Eaters were 'interrogating' the Minister and the Unspeakable they had found already tied there, and had untied for a better use of the Cruciatus.
Harry was surprised, but not as much as the people there, because they hadn't been ready to see another Minister, fully clothed, enter the office at this point in time. Recovering, everyone whisked his or her wand and several spells were shot at the same time. Harry only used a regular Stunner, but was the target of two Crucio, two Expelliarmus, two Reducto, and two Imperio. The mind-control curses didn't work at all thanks to his improved mind defences. He also had the surprise of not releasing his wand even though the disarming spells hit home. His last thought before being hit with the two Cruciatuses and one Explosion – the other being badly aimed – was that his blood certainly allowed his wand to stay with him.
He felt hell again, barely being able to switch to his Elemental powers to keep the pain in check. He didn't have to concentrate on the Cruciatus for a long time, though, as it stopped right after it started. However, the Explosion curse had struck his left arm, and it was dangling on his side, unusable. Despite the pain which still shot through it, Harry opened his eyes and was greeted by four surprised gazes. Only four. The eight wizards in the office proper were on the ground, stunned. Visibly, his cone-shaped area of effect was... effective.
Realizing the danger, one of the four remaining Death Eaters grasped the man he was interrogating and, thrusting something in his hand, spoke a particular word, thus disappearing from view with the man. The other three Death Eaters began to act in the same way, when Harry sent the improved Stunner their way, and they fell on the floor.
Stepping over the unconscious bodies, Harry rushed to check about the remaining prisoner. The man had visibly been tortured for information, as he was shivering. However, Harry smiled at his luck. The body in front of him was Arthur Weasley's. Stunning him, he then concentrated on his Elemental vision and powers to block the pain messages from the abused man's nerves. He then extracted his miniature pensieve from his pocket, and fetched Arthur's soul from it. Praying for it to work, he approached the ashen blob to the body's temple, and it was quickly absorbed. Mere seconds afterwards, another one was leaking through the other side of the man's head, and fell on the floor. Harry quickly recovered it with his wand, and understood that everything had worked according to Sly's predictions. When he had fetched Arthur's soul, it had been coloured in white, and that one was black. So black that it appeared to dim the light around them.
Harry didn't want to see whether the man's soul was happy burning people or if it was burning himself, neither did he want to see the infamous man at all. He also didn't want that particular soul near the ones he loved. There was only one alternative left. Knowing that the man was already dead, he had no qualm in speaking the words to release his soul from the world. The gods who were governing the souls would surely find the appropriate punishment for Adolf Hitler.
Barely a minute afterwards...
Amelia Bones had been sleeping soundly when Susan came waking her. Amelia had welcomed her niece in her London flat the day before so that Susan would be able to explore the city a bit for a few days.
"Wake up, aunty! Wake up! There's a firecall for you!" said Susan.
"Tell them to leave me alone! It's not the time for society calls." she grumbled and turned over. Why did this always happen when she had wonderful dreams? Dreams of not answering to the enraged Minister anymore...
"I can't! It's the Minister!"
"What?" asked Susan, almost falling from the bed in the scramble which ensued.
"The Minister, aunty."
Now completely awake, Amelia sent Susan back to her bed, in the spare bedroom closest to the den and its fireplace, and she put on a robe before going to meet her employer.
"Amelia, I..."
"Minister. If you really want me to resign, it's the best way to do it." she said tersely. In the previous days, the man had worn her down, overriding her every decisions concerning the management of the Law Enforcement Department. She hadn't wanted to step down, intent on keeping track of Auror abuses. However, if the Minister was taking things personally, she would step down, and head for the Prophet immediately afterwards.
"I don't want you to resign, Amelia." said Arthur after a time. The voice was different than before, and Amelia Bones was quite surprised at it. Was it... shame?
"What do you want, then?"
"I want to tell you the truth about me, and about why there are eleven unconscious Death Eaters in my office at that very moment."
"WHAT?"
"I think you understood. Do you agree to meet me there? I'll keep the Floo connection open."
Amelia thought about it. Eleven Death Eaters? The truth about the Minister? It could take her whatever remained of the night and certainly a good part of the day. Susan was awake already, so she could bring her along.
"Alright, Minister. But I suspect the case will take time, and my niece is here. I don't want to leave her alone, can she...?"
Arthur turned his head in the fire and seemed to chat with somebody, before turning back with a smile. An amused smile like the ones Amelia hadn't witnessed on his face for a long time.
"Of course she can come. She'll be surprised, though. And, Amelia?"
"What?"
"Call me Arthur, please."
"Agreed, but you have to promise me something."
"Anything."
"Some coffee for when we'll arrive."
He laughed and agreed, before removing his head from the fire.
This sealed the renewed friendship between the two of them, and it only took five minutes for Amelia and Susan to get some clothes on before jumping in the fire.
Amelia looked around. The Minister's office was in shambles, even if Arthur and Harry had put the Minister's sturdy desk back upright. Eight bodies were lying around. She noticed that one of the bookcases was missing, completely destroyed, and saw the secret room and the three other bodies. Looking at Arthur's strained face, she smirked.
"Difficult night?"
He looked up, and she noticed he had been crying. "You have no idea."
She looked around. "Don't they need to be tied up? I mean... they look stunned, but they could come out of it at any moment."
"I doubt it." said a new voice.
The Minister didn't look, but Amelia and Susan turned around and noticed a young man in the entrance, holding a platter with four steaming cups. Unbeknownst to everyone, Harry had used his shape-shifting abilities to heal himself, modelling his bones so that they held true again. It would take them some time to heal completely, but it was better than having them disappear and painfully re-grown afterwards.
When nobody reacted, he smiled and put the platter on the desk. "Coffee, everyone?"
Susan reacted first. "But... you are... dead?"
"Do I look like it?" asked Harry. "I can assure you I'm not dead."
"Who are you?" asked Amelia.
"I'm sorry; my education didn't provide me with good manners. Nice to meet you, Madam Bones. I'm Harry Potter."
She gasped, and Susan fainted.
After calling for Aurors to move the Death Eaters into custody, Amelia sat to hear Harry and Arthur's recollection of the night's events. Afterwards, they explained about the pensieve-like item and the soul exchange. It took quite some time, and the sun was shining at the window when they finished that topic. Susan, who had been tired already, hadn't woken from her fainting and was sleeping on the couch nearby.
"So, to sum up," said Amelia, "you have no memory of what happened since you were thrown out of your mind."
"That's it." answered Arthur. "Harry told me some of the things "I" supposedly did, and I'm disgusted about it. No doubt other people are, as well. I need to step down."
"Not now!" said Amelia animatedly.
Arthur looked at her for a few seconds. "Why? I mean... people won't want to work with me anymore, and I just want to go home, and... wait a minute! Harry, what happened to my family? Did he..." he trailed, unable to formulate his darkest thoughts.
Harry looked at him and smiled, before speaking. "Everyone is relatively fine. They are in Hogwarts, now."
"Why Hogwarts?"
"I don't know all the details." Harry said, looking at his feet. He knew many details, in fact, but didn't want Arthur to lose the little grasp he still had on his position by visiting angry family members. Because they would surely be angry.
Arthur stood up and went to the fireplace.
"What are you doing?" asked Amelia, going after him.
"Going to Hogwarts." he muttered, taking a pinch of Floo powder.
She grasped his hand, making the fine powder fall to the ground. "No you are not! The first thing that you are going to do now is bring up a large meeting with all the Department Heads, and we are going to explain a bit and then overturn each and every law your horrible "substitute" passed in you place."
Arthur sighed. That would take a long time. But he understood that if he stepped down with the current state of the law, it would be hell to find an honest replacement.
"Let's do that, then. I think they must be awake by now."
Harry nodded along, before noticing that the sun was actually high enough for Gringotts to be open.
"If you don't mind," he said, "I have certain... errands... I need to be taken care of." said Harry, looking at Arthur. "Mr Weasley, you are going to Hogwarts today?"
"Yes." he answered, but a glance to his office remembered him of the similarity between its scrambled state and the current law. "If I can make it."
"Do you have an empty portable pensieve?"
Arthur frowned. "Yes, I mean... it's one of my work tools, so, yes. And I'm sure it's empty, because of security reasons. Why?"
"Can I ask you two to keep a secret?" Harry said, not comprising the unconscious form of Susan soundly sleeping behind him.
"Of course, Harry. What is it?"
Harry took his pensieve from his pocket and put it on the desk. Wrongly understanding that Harry wanted to give him some of his memories, Arthur took his own pensieve from one of his drawers and put it beside Harry's. They both opened it at the same time, and everyone save Harry, who had closed his eyes beforehand, was blinded by the light coming from his pensieve. While everyone recovered their eyesight, Harry fetched Hermione's soul and had a very quick chat with her, informing her of the proceedings.
"It doesn't look like a memory." said Amelia when she noticed the white blob at the end of the teen's wand. "What it this, Harry?" she asked.
"Madam Bones, Mr Weasley, this is Hermione."
They both looked at the soul, not understanding. Arthur was the first to react. "What do you mean? Has she been possessed like me?"
"No. This is the secret I want you to keep." he took a ragged breath, reminiscing the scene. "We were in a battle with Death Eaters. She jumped in front of me and took the brunt of a particular curse. The Avada Kedavra."
"WHAT?" they both asked at the same time.
"I discovered, thanks to a friend, that that particular curse doesn't kill. In fact, it painfully removes one's soul and stores it in a specially-designed device, which-"
"What device? And where is it? Do you understand the implications of what you are saying?" the two adults asked.
Harry put Hermione's soul in the Minister's pensieve, before lifting his hands, and they eventually calmed. "The man who shown me the device disappeared after allowing me to take some of the souls from it. Hermione was one of them. Because she died yesterday, her body will be able to absorb her soul back. All you have to do is take the soul with your wand and put it to her temple, as you would do with a memory. Don't do this to anyone else!"
"Alright, I understand." said Arthur, who, after a moment of thoughts, asked "You said souls, plural... Whose?"
Harry thought about the man's question. He wasn't ready to tell him about Ginny, but he could tell him a part of truth. "My parents." he said, looking at his feet.
"But... they can't be resurrected!" blurted Amelia. "I mean, you don't have their body."
"I was able... to have a chat with them." Harry said, his eyes welling up at the sweet memories.
But Amelia wasn't finished. "And that also means... it goes back a long time? Harry, you didn't take any other soul? How many souls were-"
Harry once again raised his hand, interrupting the woman's questions. "I didn't know who to choose, Madam Bones. There were dozens of thousands of souls in it, not all of them victims of the Unforgivable."
She was stunned by the sheer number, but Arthur had recovered. "What do you mean?" he asked.
Harry sighed. If he didn't stop speaking, he would spill everything. "Inside were also the victims of the Dementors' Kiss."
The three of them went silent for a minute, until Susan started to wake up.
Harry then said goodbye to everyone and, after reminding Arthur of his mission concerning Hermione, he used the fireplace to head for the Leaky Cauldron.
The meeting that ensued was hell for Arthur, but it was also heartening for everyone. After he explained about his possession for a short time, they agreed about overturning all the laws passed since he came back from vacations. They also freed the prisoners who had unjustly been imprisoned during that time, and agreed to enforce the security measures around each of their positions to prevent future cases of possession. And then, to their surprise, Arthur told them he wanted to step down.
The man was overcome with guilt, and he wanted to spend as much time as possible around his family. While they understood him, he was still good at this job and they didn't want to shake the wizarding world more than it already was. After an hour of discussion, Arthur relented, and accepted to stay for the duration of his mandate. However, they all decided that the man needed a vacation with his family to explain about his case, and that it would also be interesting to get the story to the press.
They needed another couple of hours to recall each and every law and decree that the Minister had passed in the last few weeks, writing down a list of suspect people that the man had promoted while possessed. Arthur hadn't known anything about his substitute, and was surprised of the massive amount of work they had to do to change the law back to its original state. The meeting ended around lunch time, and they called for all the registered newspapers to send several journalists for a press conference. After a brief meal, it took two hours for the tired Minister to tell an edited 'whole' story conveniently hiding Harry's role, and an additional hour to answer the uninterrupted flow of questions afterwards. A few reporters felt that several bits of information were missing, but didn't get anything else from the man.
After they all left, Arthur had barely five minutes to head back to his office before being almost assaulted with questions from Ministry employees. Some were delighted, some were ecstatic, and a few didn't seem that happy. Arthur made a mental note of these, and repeated what he had said to the journalists. Unbeknownst to him, hundreds of owls were already flying through the country to deliver special editions of each and every journal they had invited. With magic, many things were quicker than the muggle way, and publishing a newspaper was one of them.
It wasn't before the clock rang four in the afternoon that Arthur was finally left alone. He downed a dose of Peppering Up potion from his private stash – the Minister of Magic often worked late – and went to his fireplace, one of the most protected of Great Britain, and one of the rare ones directly linked to Hogwarts. Arthur intended to see his family as soon as possible and, now that his duties were fulfilled, he finally was able to. Just before leaving, though, he made sure that his important package was safely stowed in his pocket.
Earlier that morning...
Going to Gringotts in the same early hour and spotting the same teller as yesterday, Harry got rid of two problems: attention and repetition. No customer was there, and the goblin recognized him immediately, and asked. "Did you do it?"
To answer, Harry merely raised his right thumb, and the goblin grinned, ready to tear the infamous sign right away.
"However," said Harry, stopping his move, "I don't think everybody knows about it yet. They are holding a meeting right now so that the unfair laws may be removed today."
"You are right, Mr Potter." said the goblin. "When they will be actually removed, the whole goblin society would have a debt of honour toward you. I'm not the highest-ranked teller of Gringotts' employees, but I can assure you that something like that deserves acknowledgement."
Harry blushed. Another spotlight? Not likely. "I don't need a ceremony, you know." he said. "I don't like being shown or moved around. Especially as it generally ends up in the press."
"The press?" the goblin seemed shocked. "I was speaking about goblin ceremonies. Only few humans had witnessed them, and fewer had been the recipient. And no human journalist has ever been invited. We have ways to detect sneakers, you know. How do you think we protect our banks?"
Harry nodded, before speaking again. "You said yesterday that you could take me to Malf... to my place?"
"Yes. You wish to go now?"
Harry nodded vigorously.
"Alright. Come with me, Mr Potter." said the goblin, putting a 'Closed' sign on his booth. The sign didn't disturb anyone, though, because there wasn't anyone else anyway.
Harry followed the teller through a maze of corridors, until they arrived to a door where a sign was written, although it wasn't in a language or writing Harry knew. He supposed it was Gobbledegook, the goblin's own language.
"This is our transportation platform, Mr Potter. As the Malfoy have protected their house with the Fidelius, we are forced to use it, otherwise, I'd have given you the address."
"You mean... this can bring people to places under Fidelius?"
"Yes. It's powered by goblin magic, and only the appointed goblin can use it. In case you were wondering, very few wizards know about it, and there has been no case of treason on the goblin's side for as long as we have existed."
Harry went silent while the goblin opened the door. Inside was a simple room with a circle on the ground, and a tall and thin goblin behind a desk. The teller went to the tall goblin and the discussed quickly in a language Harry didn't understand, but he suspected it was Gobbledegook too.
"Goo inn ssirkel." said the tall goblin with a horrible accent while the other handed him the scroll. While Harry obeyed and entered the circle on the ground, the tall goblin snatched the scroll from the other's hand and merely looked at it. He then signed it, and put his hand flat on it, looking at Harry intently. The teenager felt strange under the gaze, and tried to move, but found that he was forcefully held. He couldn't even look at the other goblin to say anything. However, just as he was starting to suffocate, everything disappeared around him, to be replaced by the magnificent façade of Malfoy Manor.
'You have to give them that,' thought Harry, 'they have taste in architecture. Now, where is that trapdoor?'
He suddenly remembered the goblin's words from yesterday: Their house is right next to the ruins of your grandmother's house...
'At least, I won't be breaking in.' he thought, before chuckling. 'It wouldn't constitute breaking in anyways, because it's my property, now.'
Looking around, he didn't notice anything unusual but, knowing the Malfoy sense of decorum, they wouldn't want rubble visible from the front of their home. He walked around the large building and, true to his thinking, found a large pile of construction rubble behind the manor's back wall. And that wall didn't have any window. Harry smirked. Not only the Malfoy didn't want to see it from the front, they didn't want to see it from the back either.
He quickly went to the pile of rubble and started moving bricks and rotten beams out of the way, but a thought interrupted his hard work. He was a wizard! And, more than that, he was a Magius! Not only was he able to levitate things out of the way, he was also able to discover the trapdoor easily.
Dropping the two bricks he was currently holding, he concentrated on his Elemental vision, and discovered a square with a bit of light, under several layers of bricks. He then got his wand out and with the appropriate Wingardium Leviosa – correctly enunciated – he moved the bricks out of the way. It helped that his powerful wand allowed him to move bricks by groups of a few dozens each time. Otherwise, he would be more tired mentally than if he had removed them manually. After everything was out of the way, he concentrated again and found the trapdoor under a hiding spell which made it in the same colour and texture than the surrounding carpet. He eagerly opened it, and a ladder appeared.
His heart beating furiously against his ribs, he went down the ladder into the bedroom, and slowly looked around. Everything was in its place. Ginny's body was in the bed. The only strange thing was the metal arm protruding from the bed, holding a bottle of unknown substance, which was linked through several tubes to the girl's body. Harry didn't know what the near-empty bottle contained, but the setting was clear. The magical bed was doing everything in its power to keep the body alive.
He put the small pensieve on the desk, and extracted Ginny's soul from it. On wobbly legs, he slowly approached the body. He knew nothing about the delay of viability of a dead body, even with intravenous help. He decided to ask Ginny for the final decision, and uttered the appropriate spell.
"Hi again, Harry." she said.
"Hi Ginny." he answered tensely.
She frowned. "Why are you so nervous?"
"This is it, Gin. I found your body. Are you sure you want to do it?"
"Well," she answered, "there's no need to stay here, is there? It's beautiful, but it only happens when you want to talk to me. The rest of the time, I'm in a luminous place – thank you – but always with the squirming others I can't hear or see correctly."
"You'll see, then. I'll put you back in your head as soon as I leave."
"Harry?" she asked quietly as he stood up. She stood as well.
"Yes?"
"I love you."
He was amazed. Her usual chocolate were as white as the surrounding landscape, but he was still held by her passionate gaze. There was only one correct answer, and he agreed wholeheartedly.
"I love you too."
He returned to the outside world, and slowly approached the wand tip to her body, noticing on the way that she wasn't wounded anymore. She had been bloodied when he had tried to rescue her, but it seems the bed had healed her quite a bit. He blushed. In healing the wounds, the bed had also exposed a rather large expanse of skin which, without being off-limits, was more than everything he had seen of her. It also appeased him to know, thanks to the bed, that the Death Eaters hadn't tried anything indecent toward her.
The soul was swiftly absorbed by the head, and the bed hummed in response, the strange-looking bottle and tubes returning to the potion store while other syringes gave her other substances to deal with. She started to move, weakly at first, then forcefully, although it wasn't coordinated. She was convulsing. Harry didn't know what to do, and decided to hold her, while repeating appeasing words to her ears. After several minutes of doing so, she started to glow and the shaking stopped. Mere seconds afterwards, she looked up.
"Harry..." she said, but her gaze wasn't focused on him. "Who is he?"
Harry looked over his shoulder, and noticed the man too. He looked old, but his eyes looked even older than that, as if the man had lived many millennia. Or more. Actually, it was more.
The Creator took a step forward and his move allowed Harry to notice the new item on his desk, beside his small pensieve.
Sly's device.
"Who are you?" asked Ginny.
"What have you done with Sly?" asked Harry at the same time.
"Thou wouldst better sit down, both of thou. The story that I am about to tell thou is quite long and complicated. Perhaps, Harry, thou wilst allow me to decelerate the time here so that thou wouldst not be stranded too long. I know thou hast one more target today."
"Well..." started Harry, not sure about what he should answer to.
"I thank thee." the man said, blinking once, and the trapdoor slammed shut, the ladder disappeared, and the rooms began their discreet humming again.
"Ere it is. By thine terms, it is set on a factor ten. Alright?"
They both nodded, and the man continued his speech.
"Thou see, the man thou callest Sly made an interesting deal with me and my colleague, separately, and ended up practically immortal. Yes, Harry, I know. The souls. He fed on souls. And he invented two tools in that regard. The Dementors, and the Avada Kedavra spell." He ignored the gasps and continued. "Both transferred the souls into that container ere." he pointed to the barrel on the desk. "It actually is quite large, is it not? We both checked, my colleague and me, and came with the grand total of 25319 missing souls. Souls which were reportedly missing from our realms."
"You are... you are..." started Ginny.
"I am not the all-powerful god, if that is what thou thinkest, and I know it is. However, on this earth, I have been given the task to create and my colleague hath the task to destroy. In the initial setting, the deceased souls could go to his realm to either spend all eternity in heavenly gardens if they were deemed good, or spend the same time in burning pits if not. Me, on the other side, I only keep the best creators, inventors, artists, composers, writers... I give them the best conditions to produce, and we enjoy the work of each other."
"Why do you tell us all this?" asked Harry.
"Because..." the man stopped, and looked at the pensieve. "Because I made a mistake. In the idea of creation, I gave some people magic, and it started with discoveries leading to interesting creations. However, some people started to use magic to destroy, and I do not like that. My colleague likes it, but he knows that, like the weapons invented by the people thou dost call muggles, too much magic could destroy the world. And we both do not want that."
"What are you going to do?" asked Ginny.
"My colleague wanted to strip all humans from magic, and we disagreed for a long time. We also established chess-like games where humans would be the pieces, but the last game was... is... quite unusual."
Harry gasped. "Is? It's not finished?"
"No it is not. But we will come to that later. Because of the strangeness we noticed, we had to intervene. Each of us pushed in a way or another. For instance, I allowed thee, Harry, to gain strength each time thou avoided death."
Harry looked at the man in wonder, finally understanding several things about himself. The Creator wasn't finished, though, and he looked at Ginny.
"Unto thou, Ginevra, I did that just now, because I could not do it before thine soul returned to thine body. Had I not done it, thou wouldst not have survived the shock, despite all Harry could have done. Thou seest, it's not the first time that somebody retrieved a dead soul and brought it back into a human body, but doing it after a certain delay is very dangerous. Necromancers sacrifice their very life to know and experiment about things like this. Moreover, even if thou hast survived, thou wouldst not be strong enough to follow Harry into the final battle, and he will need thou there."
"Thank you, sir. Thank you for Ginny, and for everything!" said Harry, on the verge of tears.
"I am not finished."
"Oh. Sorry, sir. Go ahead, then."
"My colleague allowed the man thou called Sly to escape, several months ago, but without the souls container. Thou brought it back to him just as he disengaged himself from our chess game, and we could finally take him back to our place. He just finished judging the souls from the container, as promised to thee, Harry, and he is now judging the arriving ones. Let me tell thee, Harry, that that one thou sent us was thrown in the deepest pits."
"Which one, sir?" asked Harry.
"Well, that Adolf thou 'liberated' a short time ago."
"Oh. Oh! Okay... I mean, it's alright... sir." Harry stuttered, before remembering something the man had said just before. "If I may, sir, why did you bring the soul container here? Isn't it empty?" asked Harry.
"I asked Mr Sly... to judge but only remove the 'good' souls. Here are the evillest ones. And some of them had been waiting in it for a thousand years. I guess that they are quite angry." the man opened the desk's bottom drawer and took Harry grandmother's pistols from there.
"What are these?" asked Ginny.
"Harry will tell thee later. Thine grandmother is someone full of surprises, Harry. I welcomed her in my realm, and she continually invents new things. Now, hold these firmly."
He gave both guns to Harry, who held them in the proffered position, canon down and gem up. The man then grasped the barrel of evil souls and, ever so slowly, upended it so that the souls glided into the ruby, which absorbed them. When it was halfway done, he switched to the other gun and finished emptying the souls. Harry was sweating, and Ginny was quite pale. The man put the now empty soul vessel down and concentrated. A second later, it had disappeared. He then pried the guns from Harry's clenched hands and put them on the table. The gems, initially dull red and blue, were now pitch black, both pulsating with an evil power Harry had rarely felt.
"These are to be used against Voldemort, and only him. The other can be emptied into the sky if thou dost not use it." the Creator said.
Both teens nodded.
"Now that the soul container is destroyed, the Dementor Kiss and the Death Spell will not work anymore. That hath been one of Mr Sly's piece of work and he had designed it that way. Use this information to thine advantage when facing the other death cheater. And you would rather do it swiftly, before he comes across another way to kill."
"Death cheater, sir?" asked Ginny.
"Voldemort. He died thirteen years ago. He should not be alive now."
"What about us, sir?" she asked again. "We sure did escape death a few times."
"That is my next point. The two of thou are going to obliterate the current dark lord and look after any other mass murderer after him. Since thou werst made stronger, thou wilst also live longer. In time, thou wilst attain the political level of Mr Dumbledore."
"What about his power level, sir?" asked Ginny.
"This, I think Harry can answer." said the man.
Harry reflected for a second, and nodded. "I've outgrown him already, Gin. And I'm sure you will, too."
"Thine assessment is correct. Not for a couple of years, though. And thou wilst never reach Harry's global power level, Ginny, because he hath something that thou do not."
"His lightning thingamajig?" blurted Ginny, before remembering the man's identity and blushing. In a little voice, she added "I don't care, really."
"Well, if everything is taken care of here," said the man, noticing that Harry had shifted nearer to his girlfriend, "I will be leaving. Take care of yourself, and take care of the world."
They both nodded respectfully, and the man disappeared.
A short time later...
Harry had had the presence of mind to ask Hermione about Voldemort's location, and he and Ginny looked up an atlas of England in a public library, before heading there. Because they didn't know how to move faster, they used the train and arrived there for lunch. None of them was hungry, but they couldn't fall because of hypoglycaemia in the middle of a fight, could they? They grabbed a bite at the local fast food line, before searching for the place. Harry made good use of his sparrow form to look at the town from the sky, quickly determining the place. It took them a while, though, and only as the local church was chiming 3pm did they find the exact location.
"Are you alright?" asked Harry, looking at the ominous door.
"As ready as I can." she answered, although the small tremor in her voice told him she wasn't really. Both of them had their wand out and the gun ready.
"Remember," he said. "whatever happens inside, I'll love you. Always."
"Thank you, Harry." she answered, before stepping closer. She looked up at his eyes and murmured "Me too."
They hugged, and their mouths found each other quickly. The kiss was soft and heartfelt, as well as inspiring. Harry felt his emotions swell, and his lightning power up. Now, he was able to quench this, but he had a better use for residual energies. He broke the kiss tenderly, and looked at her. She looked back at him, and saw his determination, as well as the energy around them. Thankfully, nobody was in the secluded street. Harry concentrated, and sent all the gathered power toward the doors, which exploded inwards, blasting half of the six guards there. The other three switched to battle mode, but a wide-area Stunner from Harry got the two guards on the right, and Ginny used the other one's surprised state to aim her own Stunner carefully. The man dropped, unconscious.
Harry didn't have a way to safely send the men to prison. However, he could do something with their wands, knowing that Ollivander would then see them soon. While picking the Death Eaters wands and masks, to check if he recognized anyone, he thought about asking the Minister about posting an Auror on guard duty at Ollivander's.
They left the unconscious guards and headed inside the cottage proper.
After an hour of dwelling in the maze of corridors, encountering very few Death Eaters, but always making short work of them, they arrived to an intersection with several dark wizards. Repeating the earlier actions from the front gate, they succeeded in making all of them fall. In the flurry of spells, though, they didn't notice that one of the wizards stepped back from the fight and flew in a side corridor.
Harry repeated the action of removing the Death Eaters wands and mask, but froze at the third one.
"What is it?" asked Ginny, who had finished her share.
"It's Mr Bode." answered Harry. "He's possessed."
He took his portable pensieve out and extracted the man's rightful soul, before putting it to the unconscious man's temple. After recuperating the other one, he noticed its blackness, and released it at once. He didn't know about its identity, nor did he care about it. What he didn't know, though, is that a place had already been reserved for that man in the burning pits, right next to Hitler. After all, the two men had done horrendous things together, it was only justice that they'd suffer side by side.
After waking the disoriented man, they told him to Apparate outside, and, after he did, they headed deeper inside. Mere minutes afterwards, they came upon a large door behind which they heard voices. They started to walk a few steps back to establish a plan, when a shrill voice yelled behind them.
"Intruders! Intru-"
Harry had whipped his wand out and stunned the yelling man, but the warning had been heard, and several doors closed magically, while the teenagers heard heavy and numerous footsteps approaching, as well as a high-pitched laugh. In the battle that ensued, they were quickly separated and outnumbered, before being hit with several spells at the same time. Wanting to revel in his enemy's defeat, Voldemort undid almost all the spells except the full body bind, and watched as the two teenagers looked fearfully at him, unsuccessfully trying to escape the bind.
"Well well well... what do we do have here?" he asked. "Harry Potter, and... little Ginny?" He frowned, not the most beautiful sight on his already ravaged face. "How is that possible? I'm sure that..." he muttered, before his eyes lit with an evil glint and he fetched his wand. "As someone said, 'when it doesn't seem to work, that's because you didn't try enough times.' Avada Kedavra!"
The usual green beam soared toward the young girl, who almost shrieked, her fear not quite enough to break the body bind, though. However, nothing else happened. Harry could have laughed too, if he wasn't magically held, because of Voldemort's surprised face. The Dark Lord tried the spell again, then on Harry, then on one of his follower, who fainted because of the approaching green light. But nobody died.
"My Lord." said a Death Eater near Ginny. "She has something in her pocket, my Lord."
"Bring it to me!"
The Death Eater took hold of the silvery-looking item and extracted the sleek gun. None of the Death Eaters there knew muggle weaponry, but Voldemort did, and he gasped, as the Death Eater brought him the gun.
"Soooo..." he drawled, "you want to attack the Lord Voldemort with mere muggle toys? Tsk, tsk, tsk... it seems that you brought your own demise instead."
He aimed the gun at Ginny, and fired.
The noise made by one angry man can be bothersome. The noise made by thousands of them was deafening. A dark bolt shot from the gun toward Ginny as the six thousand evillest souls to have been killed in the last millennium rushed toward her. Harry desperately wanted to jump in front of her and fought the body find with all his being. It didn't yield before she was almost hit, though.
However, inches before touching her, the pitch black beam separated in a large number of distinct shapes, which swirled around her, trying to touch her, but withdrawing them arm-like appendages in shrieks which sounded like pain. Everybody was astounded at the happenstance, even Harry who had forgotten that he wasn't held anymore.
Not able to touch her, the souls turned around and sought other targets nearby. And they found the Death Eaters. Twenty-four wizards suddenly felt the anger, despair, and longing of thousands of damned souls. This time, the angry souls succeeded in taking a hold at the wizards, and they pulled. Hard. Until something came out while the victim's body fell. Each targeted Death Eater, all of whom guilty of at least one murder because of their initiation ceremony, found his or her soul ripped from his or her body, before the soul was feasted upon by the angry ones. After their feasting, they all disappeared in a cloud, and Harry heard a sound.
A yelp of pain, which reminded him that they weren't alone. He and Ginny were still with Voldemort. Remembering the Chamber of Secrets, it gave him an eerie feeling of déjà vu, even if the being in front of them didn't look like a human anymore. The yelp was quite human, though.
Voldemort was holding his right hand – the wand hand he had had so much problems re-growing – in pain, and a puddle of metal was all that remained from the gun which had been just used. Harry suspected that the charge of the angry souls was enough to make the gun melt, and that the Creator wasn't disturbed that these weapons of destruction be destroyed.
Profiting from the situation, Harry quickly drew his own gun and, aiming the gun at Voldemort's surprised face, pulled the trigger. In the same way, several thousand souls came out and engulfed the Dark Lord in several layers of evilness.
While the dark souls were pulling Voldemort's soul from his body, Harry dropped the gun on the floor and fetched his wands back, before using his regular one to end Ginny's paralysis.
"Do you think the Creator knew about the outcome?" she asked.
"I don't know." he answered, looking at Voldemort's predicament. The Dark Lord's body was slumped on the ground, and the large dark cloud he witnessed behind the numerous and smaller souls reminded him of his first year. After Ginny got her wand back, he took her hand in his. They didn't leave yet, though. He wouldn't until he was sure that Voldemort was away and done with. He continued to watch as the angry souls picked at the dark lord's soul, bringing its defences down one after the other. There was a moment of relative pause when the last barrier crumbled, as if the dark souls were readying themselves for the final assault. Understanding that, Voldemort's soul began to scream desperately.
The last thing that happened was the rush of six thousand hungry souls on a defenceless Dark Lord's. And, like the matter problem with a singularity, the combined rush of all the dark feelings, memories, and abilities brought upon the largest magical explosion known to man.
It was felt by wizards and witches all over Europe, and they anxiously began sending owls to each other. Owls which finally arrived to the British Ministry of Magic, which didn't have the answer either. Albus had immediately investigated, helped by Minerva, but the old wizard didn't find anything. Besides, he had other questions to ask to the crying Minister he had left with his family at Hogwarts, where Hermione had just been resurrected. He had tried to send owls to Harry, asking for explanation about the Minister, Hermione, the magical surge, everything. All the owls came back, looking bewildered, with the unopened letter.
The explosion had been purely magical, though, and there was only one physical proof of its happening: the Dark Lord's house location, confirmed by Hermione. There wasn't anything there anymore.
And no dark activity afterwards either.
To be finished in the next chapter: A Reversal of Roles...
Aye aye! I'm done! Well... not quite.
Seems I have one more
to write
To bring a closure in here,
'Cause I know the end is
near.