"That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die."

H.P. Lovecraft, Cthulhu

Works Referenced:

Craig, William L. "The Kalam Cosmological Argument." 1991. Ed. William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach, and David Basinger. Philosophy of Religion Selected Readings. Ed. Michael Peterson. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. 197-204. Print.


To Miss Granger, Mister Weasley,

11 o'clock, the Great Hall.

APWBD


When Ron entered the Great Hall with Hermione, they didn't so much cross the threshold as they did glide, like smoke and shadow ushered into darkness.

His head filled with a rushing sound; the air was thick and heavy with magic. It always was, but somehow now it felt overwhelming.

With a heavy groan, the ceremonial doors shut behind them. The Great Hall itself was huge. Tall ceilings were accented by floating, untethered chandeliers. Heavenly skies above. Their foot falls echoed across the marble floor and Ron felt distinctly uneasy. At the end of the hall, Ron saw a familiar old man with bright blue eyes, robes of an even lighter blue twinkling with stars. He was sitting precariously at the edge of the staff table.

An even more familiar young man with shaggy, black hair stood along the Gryffindor table. Harry's curious, green eyes met Ron's, a serene tilt to his lips.

Dumbledore, too, brightened upon seeing Ron and Hermione. Their affability mirrored each other in a frightening degree of similarity.

Ron was so unnerved by this that he could not appreciate their happiness. Nor did he feel inclined to do so. It had been impossible to get time alone with Harry; Ron hadn't spoken to him nor been able to get a letter through since mid-summer. Not for lack of trying. Even now, it was as though Hogwarts itself conspired for weeks to keep Ron and Hermione from confronting their friend, the now Professor Potter and Bringer of Lightning.

A general sense of what the fuckness had been perpetual since Ron had first heard of Harry becoming Albus Dumbledore's apprentice. It was a tipping point, Ron thought. A point after which the wizarding world had assumed a heavy, syrupy reality. Even more surreal were the newspaper articles detailing the ICW conference and the Wireless speech, rumors that Harry Potter had gone to Nurmengard, and reports from Ron's father, straight from the Ministry itself, declaring that Harry had taken his N.E.W.T.'s a year early and shattered every record ever held for them.

That had been when Hermione came up with the craziest theory Ron had ever heard, a thread of thought that he had only seen elsewhere in the Quibbler's outlandish articles.

Most people, when they thought of Hermione, did not think brilliant.

Most people thought of the overeager girl with her hand in the air, turning in essays that ran far beyond the requirements, the girl who compassionately campaigned for House Elves and froze when faced with a Boggart that showed she's failed her homework.

Most people didn't know Hermione at all.

When Ron thought of Hermione's mind, he remembered the girl with an eidetic memory and intrinsic understanding of magic, who brewed Polyjuice as a second year; the only person in a thousand years to figure out what monster lay within the Chamber of Secrets and how it concealed itself; the girl who deduced the identity behind the anonymous gifter of Harry's Firebolt, and had less than a minute's notice before embarking on a dangerous mission to save that same person's soul; the girl that outsmarted the reporter who freely plagued every important and powerful person in the country, and trapped that beetle in jar.

Ron knew that they had only seen a glimpse of what Hermione was truly capable of.

Hermione Granger, in her polished, flawless uniform and inversely wild hair, marched up to both wizards with a fierce scowl. Her warm, brown eyes flicked between Harry and Dumbledore both, before settling on the wizard who looked like their best friend. Ron had the rather strange thought that she had never been lovelier. When she spoke, Hermione aimed her question at the Boy Who Lived, her voice daring him to lie. "What madness is this, Professor?"

The wizard who appeared to be Harry sighed, while Dumbledore chuckled.

"I told you so," said Dumbledore bizarrely, a grin pulling at his lips. His beard swayed as he hopped down from the edge of the staff table. "She's the brightest witch of the age, Albus."

Harry tellingly, did not disagree. Instead he said, "Undoubtedly. Miss Granger, have you ever, in your many studies, come across the field of metaphysics in relation to the eternal soul and concept of self?"

Hermione's eyes brightened in the satisfaction of being right. "I knew it!" she said fiercely, before answering Dumbledore's question. "Existentialism and the fundamental nature of reality? I have browsed the topic, I actually made a segue into the concept of infinity. I was intrigued by the idea that no actual infinity can exist outside of abstraction without contradictions…"

Harry—or rather Dumbledore—nodded, while the real Harry met Ron's eyes with the same blank incomprehension that must be copied on his own face.

Hermione took one look at both of them and burst out laughing.


It was incredibly funny to see pure bafflement on the face of Ron Weasley, but seeing it mirrored on Albus Dumbledore's face was so far past surreal that Hermione cackled like the witch she was.

"I'm sorry," she said, wiping tears from her eyes. "It's just, your faces…"

Harry and Ron had chuckled, and settled to the side, catching up while she and Dumbledore exchanged theories. Hermione was used to thinking in four dimensions, keeping track of what is, was, and what could be. Even keeping track of a non-linear timeline without creating a paradox came more naturally to her than thinking of ways to keep Harry and Ron out of trouble—

("I am entrusting this to you, Miss Granger," said McGonagall from behind her oak desk, pulling out an hourglass that glittered with gold and impossibility. "Use it well.")

—but as applied to the metaphysics of the soul… She wanted to tell Dumbledore that she was used to thinking of the soul in Cartesian terms— that there wasn't anything that could happen in which a soul would cease to be.

But after Horcruxes, and now this – what does it mean to say that the Harry she knows is numerically and entirely the same person at this later time than before, yet completely different?

("Is x at t1 the same φ as y at t2?")

She thought of Klein bottles and the Mobius strip. She thought of how half a soul was half of something eternal, and how half of infinity was still infinite.

Only Harry Potter could accidentally intrude on a debate between Descartes and Euclid to prove that a dimension of being can be defined as being any independent parameter outside of a point.

She thought of water, how it ebbed and flowed.

Like time.

She and Dumbledore talked for hours, so many words between them and not nearly enough time.

"If we consider moments in time as things that begin to exist," explained Hermione to Dumbledore, whose green eyes were alert with interest, "Then it is possible to synthesize the Reichenbach's cosmological argument by contingency into this argument to explain the contradictions of an actually infinite past…"

As Hermione continued to share her thoughts on how actual infinities are impossible in reality, that time without a beginning is an actual infinity, and how that may be applied to mathematical understandings of the soul, she was beyond pleased to have Dumbledore not only follow her argument flawlessly, but interject, confirm his understanding, and offer another perspective.

Dumbledore nodded. "You make a strong argument for the concept that actual infinities do not coherently translate to our expectations of reality and that it is nearly impossible or very unlikely for one to manifest in reality, especially in a situation with the causal relationships, however…"

Mostly, she thought about what Harry would do, if the situation were reversed, and she knew he would do anything to save her.

"What do you think of, Hermione, when you think of Sartre?'

"Oh, I think of the question he posed of an individual's ability to define themselves without the assurances of a mirror, or if their essence is dependent on the judgment of other people. Why do you ask?"

"You know, of course, 'Hell is—other people,'…"

Hermione closed her eyes, and felt delight and comradery the likes of which she hadn't since two young boys saved her from a troll in a bathroom.


Fall followed summer abruptly, and Harry somehow had made it through to the end of October, edging somewhat closer to a solution to the transmigration issue.

As he and Albus grew more settled in their alternative placements, Albus conveyed his theory on how the transmigration happened—a guess involving Draco Malfoy, a task to murder Albus Dumbledore, the acquisition of a subpar, incomplete copy of the Black Family grimoire, and a ritual performed at witching hour.

It was, as always, Hermione who extrapolated from expert research and came up with a plan. A horrible, disturbing plan, which brought the trio and Albus to spend the weekend of Halloween in the damp and dark library at Grimmauld Place.

( Hermione had sat them all down to propose her idea. "Samhain is when the Veil is at its thinnest, the dead most alive, and the chasm betwixt realms bridged. We may be able to summon Sirius' body back."

"His body?" asked Harry, a mix of horrified and longing to see Sirius once more, even if it was just to bury his godfather properly.

"The references to the Transmigration text indicate that the Blacks invented this soul-swapping ritual to elongate their lives. Usually it was performed on young children to rob them of their future and restore youth to the old. You've heard of heirs and spares. Spares were sacrificed."

"…And why do we need Sirius' body…?"

"Albus' theory is this: Draco Malfoy has an imperfect copy of this ritual through his mother, was not aware of what it did beyond 'render soul from flesh,' and attempted to perform it on Dumbledore. Black Family Magic honors the Head of the Family first, unless the Head allows it to bypass. It reached out to service you and perform this, for lack of a better word—honor— and… forgive me for saying this Harry, but were you feeling like you might want to be someone other than Harry Potter over the summer?"

Numbly, Harry agreed. He remembered wanting to be anyone else other than the one fated to kill Voldemort, someone other than the person responsible for getting their family killed over and over again.

"The ritual sensed this, and aided its Head of House," explained Hermione, and suddenly it made so much sense. "Suddenly, you were not Harry Potter."
Harry knew in his bones that this was what happened. "What now?"

"Now, I believe I have a solution. Sirius was a Black on both sides of his family, and any physical properties from his person can be…imbibed… in a restorative manner in order to supersede the permanent nature of this ritual as cast by someone half of Black blood and affecting a half-blood Head of House Black."

Harry did not want to discuss in what context 'imbibed' was used, nor did he want to linger on the abhorrent idea of Sirius' remains being used as a potions ingredient. "What about his brother, why couldn't, er, his… physical properties be used instead?"

"In theory, yes, since they were both born to Blacks, but no one know what happened to Regulus. Only that he died young, and a Death Eater.")

Even when Sirius had lived here, the library had always had the smell of both petrichor in the air and a stench of rotting, but there was something now in the house itself that disturbed Harry. After his forays into more powerful pieces of magic and the experience gained from destroying the ring horcrux, Harry had found himself much more sensitive to magic as a whole. Harry knew now without a doubt that the house was sentient.

Grimmauld Place was alive with a latent menace which followed Harry's every step. By design it seemed to lust for the death of any who were not pure of blood. It seemed even more malevolent and tormented in the wake of the death of the last Black who could carry on the bloodline. It chilled Harry to the bone, but it almost felt as though the house's hatred had coalesced into an eldritch horror which issued threats via the voice of Walburga Black's portrait.

("You dare to defile the House of Black with your presence," and Walburga's voice had changed to something terrible and inhuman, "Disgusting usurpers, abominations of Magick, we shall Stamp.You. Out—")

Albus held the wards though, recognized by magic as Sirius' heir, and despite his unyielding will, Grimmauld still bucked his harsh authority at every opportunity.

All the water in the house tried to scald Harry's skin from flesh; the family tapestry grew literal branches that attempted to ensnare him and drag him into the walls; a chalice shattered in Harry's hands and bits of ceiling fell over his head; cognizant shadows lurked around corners; cursed objects tried to lure and ensnare him.

Harry knew without a doubt that the only thing that would slake Grimmauld's bloodlust was his murder. Even the house knew it was his fault that Sirius had died.

Now though, there was a sound coming from upstairs.

Harry looked up warily and shut the book in his hands.

He could hear a barely discernible melody, a captivating song, a strangely familiar call…beckoning him, and it was the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard…

He blinked, and somehow… now stood upstairs in front of a dark cabinet…

He blinked again and a gold and emerald locket was heavy in his hand.

Harry, without knowing why, placed it around his neck…

Suddenly the world violently tilted.

Someone shouted in alarm—

There was a surge of power, a shifting like the movement of tectonic plates. Harry slammed into a barrier that tried to rip him apart.

"… Fawkes… ouldn't…happened!"

He felt lightheaded, dizzy, weak, aware and yet not that he was delirious. Somewhere in the back of his mind there was a sibilant voice seething with malice. 'I have seen your heart, and it is mine.'

"…get…lbus…sword…"

There was the horrifically unsettling feeling of being helpless prey as something monstrous trying consume him utterly.

"…HARRY!…what've you…?"

Harry was vaguely aware that he was shaking violently, simultaneously frigid and feverish.

"Stand back!"

"Dumbly will NOT steal from the House of BLACK!"

There was powerful blast of magic, and Harry knew no more.


When Harry woke, it was on a couch in one of the many living rooms. Albus was the first to rush to his side. "Harry," he murmured, pressing a cool hand against his forehead. The room seemed bright. "Harry, you scared a decade off me."

Ron, standing off a bit to the side, didn't look much better. His familiar mop of burnt-orange hair was sticky with sweat, plastering it to his forehead. When Harry managed to meet his cornflower blue eyes, Ron sagged in relief. Hermione looked as though she had been sobbing, her olive skin flushed and eyes red. She held a hand out to Ron to steady him despite looking like her primary desire was to run over to Harry.

Albus looked the worst. His glasses were shattered and the scar, that jagged cicatrix bisecting his face into scarred and not scarred, was bleeding profusely. Albus' green eyes were swollen with tears, starkly different from the sparkling, enigmatic blue for which he was so famous.

Harry floundered for a moment. He thought of the infinite void and the half-remembered sensation that he was being destroyed across eternity, vanquished from alpha to omega. The words what the fuck didn't even begin to describe it. Yet, it still sounded like a good starting point.

"What – what the fuck wasthat?" Harry croaked. "It was like, the absolute worst floo trip ever mixed with the greatest portkey malfunction in history."

Albus peered at him with overwhelming concern. "It seems as though you came into contact with another of Tom's horcruxes."

"Here?" said Harry, absolutely incredulous at how bad his luck was. "So all of that—being folded and feeling like I was dying—was because I was being eaten by a horcrux? How did one get in here?"

Sadness passed over Albus' face. "A strange, tragic tale…Regulus Black died a hero's death in an attempt to destroy what he believed to be Tom's only horcrux. He tasked Kreacher with its destruction and went to his death."

Harry looked for Kreacher, but the wretched elf was nowhere to be found.

As always, they were on the same wavelength. Albus said, "We subdued Kreacher after sufficient investigation; he is resting now. The destruction of the locket moved him considerably."

Harry, who could not picture Kreacher being moved by anything less than the simultaneous resurrection of Walburga Black and the murder of all residents currently in the House of Black, decided to agree to disagree.

Ron snorted at Albus' words, then grinned weakly. His freckles were far more noticeable than usual due to his pale skin. "I stunned the shit out of him, mate. And Fawkes brought me Gryffindor's sword. Reckon you owe me one, now."

"This-this makes us even," argued Harry despite the effort it cost him to speak, eager to move conversation away from the unease of his own mortality. "Don't you try to take advantage of a man while he's down. 'Follow the spiders—.'" Harry used air quotes for exaggeration while catching his breath. "You-you owe me for that. Which of us got us away from Aragog? " He pretended to think, tapping his chin and stroking his beard, and even that took more energy than Harry had. Stubbornly, he pushed through the exhaustion. "Was it the one of us which was shrieking like a banshee…or was it the one of us who was dragging the other to the car and running away?"

Ron glared. Harry tried to glare back harder.

"Oh, so you're accusing me of… you know what, Harry? You want to bring up screaming like a banshee?" Ron said in a drawl, picking up in volume. "That sounds like a good description for the noise you were making over a piece of You-Know-Who's jewelry. Didn't know you wanted a necklace so badly. What's next, a crown?"

Harry paused, panting. He almost said too soon, but managed to smile sweetly. "I don't understand what you're saying," he said haughtily, with a sniff, "and I don't think it's my fault."

The color had come back to his face, and Ron said with the infuriating, satisfied smirk of someone who knew they had the last word, "Don't feel bad, Harry, it's the best you can do. Especially at your age."

Albus raised a single, black eyebrow before turning to the side and covering his mouth with a hand; Hermione had no such tact and doubled over giggling, her hands on the knees of her blue jeans.

"That's it, you hooligan," rasped Harry, and moved in an attempt to sit up find his wand. "I'll teach you to respect your elders!"

"Yeah, he's fine!" shouted Ron over his shoulder as he raced out the room, his laughter a firelight which burned the last of Harry's fear away.


As they swam across frigid water, the scent of brine suffocating them just as surely as the sea lusted to, Harry couldn't help but think that Voldemort was an utter bastard.

"This is way worse than a bunch of snakes," spat Harry as he emerged on the other side, long beard dripping icy water. "Even with the near-miss of that withering curse."

"I'm afraid that it only gets worse from here, but it is a far easier solution to retrieve young Regulus' body instead of performing an unprecedented ritual involving the Veil," said Dumbledore, though there was a smile on lips. He took a second to dry their clothing and cast a warming charm before his hands mapped out the cliff-side. Dumbledore came to a rest. "Ah, how crude," he said.

At Harry's curious stare, he explained. "It requires a toll, in blood."

Harry held up his wrist, bleeding from the sharp rocks, and Dumbledore tried to refuse. "Your blood is too valuable."

"Harry Potter's blood is too valuable," Harry corrected, and moved so that he could bleed onto the entrance. The wards gleefully accepted the blood of Albus Dumbledore.

Albus rolled into the cave like a thunderstorm; Harry felt death in his steps and worried.

They eventually came upon the island of black sand within the cave. It housed a basin in its center and was surrounded by eerily still, dark water. None of it splashed against the rocky floor. Even the air felt unmoving, as though everything about the environment were in a stasis.

Harry had the sudden thought of a trapdoor spider keeping very, very still as its prey walked closer to where it could be hunted. "Do you also have that feeling of imminent doom, or is it just me?" he asked Albus just to break the eerie silence. "And what is with all these creepy places? You never take me anywhere nice."

Albus was far too dignified to roll his eyes, but Harry got the impression he might have liked to. Harry felt like his were very reasonable questions.

"I'll remember that sassiness when I pick out your Christmas present, young man," threatened Harry as Albus kneeled at the edge of the lake.

Harry could sense the shape of magic coiled beneath the surface…Harry glanced at Albus, silently asking his question.

"Ah, a boat," said Albus helpfully. "We have no need of it, as the false horcrux is not what we seek, but it would have been our only method of crossing should it have been our treasure."

Then Albus brought up his wand to illuminate the water, and Harry could feel the magic in the cave start to hum. The cave, like Grimmauld, was so soaked in ambient magic it too was nearly sentient. He got the distinct impression that it was…hungry.

As soon as Harry looked down at the water where Albus' wand now allowed them to see beneath the surface, he wished he hadn't.

Dark figures floated silently in the depths of the water, unmoving.

Those he could see were horribly maimed. They were undeniably Voldemort's victims.

Fighting the violent urge to be sick or weep with rage for the dead, Harry asked, "How will we know which one is Regulus?"

Albus just said quietly, "I will know. I knew him when he was a boy," and closed his eyes, giving the lake his full attention.

The light from Albus' holly wand set off like a snitch. It trilled and searched the cave, lingering at certain points above the water more than others. Harry wondered to what degree Albus could really see with magic, as his eyes were still closed.

Finally, the light dove beneath the water. It multiplied and grew in size until it encased a dark figure in what resembled a golden bubble. As Albus opened his eyes and began to pull on the light like a lasso, the inferi rose in turn from the water, all cold inhumanity.

"We are so fucked," Harry breathed in horror.

"At the risk of sounding derivative, my dear friend, I understand the sentiment. However, we will not be joining them today." Albus then reeled the body of Regulus in entirely, until the floating corpse was within Harry's reach.

The inferi were moving quickly now, savage jaws unhinging and threatening to consume them.

"Fawkes!" shouted Harry, and in a burst of peaceful warmth and overwhelming red, he, Albus, and the body of Regulus Black disappeared from the cave.


In the brief time in between here and there while Fawkes transported them, Harry felt more than saw a flash of darkness— a call from, if Harry had to put a name to it, the Void. A boundary, a place, beyond here.

Harry shook his head from side to side upon landing upon the seaside, trying to clear out his ears from the ringing. From their vantage point now, they overlooked the cliffs where lay the entrance to the cave.

For a moment, Harry simply watched the sea crash into the rocks, the white foam trailing and roaring up again.

He thought of bodies beneath water and people who never found answers. He thought of drowning and unsung heroes.

Harry shivered.

He turned to Albus, who slowly unraveled the threads of golden light which had cocooned Regulus' body.

His dark head of hair came first, followed by arms roped with thick, painful scars harkening back to a cursed fire that failed to defeat the horde of inferi. Harry felt tears in his eyes as he saw the parts of Regulus' chest and legs that looked as though they'd been ripped off by human teeth. The worst of all was Regulus' young, aristocratic face frozen in death as though still screaming.

On instinct, without thinking about why, kneeled beside Regulus.

He thought of here and there and the feeling of belonging in between.

He thought of the infinite void that the locket horcrux tried to condemn him to, the same locket which Regulus had died for, just as Harry would have done had it not been for his friends. Harry grieved for the dead, forever eighteen-year-old Regulus Black, who had lacked those same bonds.

Harry drew with his wand on Regulus Black's cold, bare chest.

A triangle, for cloak.

A circle, for stone.

A line, for wand.

The symbol finally came together.

There was a voice in Harry's head for the briefest instant which seemed to acknowledge him, speaking three words at once: Master. Vanquisher. Bringer of Storms.

It was infinity, it was a single moment. It was as though he'd lived eternity across eons, walking from the beginning of time and back.

"You poor bastard." He grabbed Regulus' pruned hand, and something in Harry knew to say: "You must live."

The universe roared back at Harry in a massive thunderclap. The sky flashed a blinding white; Regulus' body jerked as though struck.

As Harry blinked in the cyan-orange afterimage of lightning, Regulus Black opened his grey eyes and screamed.