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An Old and New World
by Lens of Sanity
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Chapter Twenty Seven: Paradox
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Vision swam back and Tam forced herself to her feet, mage-sense screaming at her some serious magic was going on not ten feet away. Wow, Harry looked pissed off, more than she'd ever seen before, and he was closing on Godric with an unholy gleam in his eyes. After a brief instant of assessment Tam figured out which spell-string he was using and immediately joined in. She called it "offensive four," but knew Harry thought of it in different terms.
Was that Norsefire?
Friggin' hell! No wonder the Founder started bugging out.
Tam watched as Harry sprinted after the man. Then took to the air after him! The werewolves were being dealt with by the vampires, so Tam just closed her eyes and felt out toward the hellstorm magic splintering across the skies. A few staggering beats of time and all magics ceased, her eyes snapping open to a scene of Harry plummeting to the earth.
"Aresto Momentum!" It took a moment of calculation to figure out where he was going to land, and on the ground beneath her target the whispered words formed a transparent bed of air, the gentle embrace of magic preventing Harry from experiencing a lethal reunion with terra firma.
This must have been why the note had asked her to wait outside.
The redhead swept toward Harry's prone form. "Stupify!" Tam brutally stunned him and transfigured his body into a small coin. Taking the Time‑Turner from Fleur and applying Invisibility rather than a Disillusionment Charm, she then legged it back to the rendezvous room as fast as her feet could carry her.
Arriving at her destination Tam was breathing heavily on the ragged edge of sensibility. Stowing the Harry-Coin in a plant pot she span back an extra hour she gave herself a little breathing space. Or maybe breathing time? The newly minted Tam-Two cautiously made her way through the compound, searching out healing potions.
She ran across an earlier version of Harry on his search for an Invigoration Draught, but the two didn't do much more than grunt at one another. Neither completely certain where exactly in the timeline their relative analogues were with regards to one another, both decided to keep communication to a minimum.
Outside the rendezvous room—a bare half hour after vanishing—Tam conjured parchment and wrote a hasty message to her first self. She made certain to use three polyjuice imposter codewords, and stuck it on the door:
Go somewhere quiet and wait twenty minutes before returning.
We have a Time‑Turner problem.
– Heir of Slytherin
Tam waited in the shadows until her first self—the one having freshly recovered from being clobbered by Malfoy—stumbled toward the room. Tam-One read the note with a frown, and after destroying it, took off in the opposite direction. Tam-Two remembered how annoying that message had been back when she was in the other redhead's position.
When the time came one of the Harry's strolled up to her looking pretty tired. He gave her a little advice and the two moved toward the rendezvous point side by side.
Eventually all the others and doppelgangers arrived. Tam joined them in the rendezvous room, retrieved the Harry-Coin from the plant pot, cancelled the transfiguration, and steadfastly ignored superfluous conversation. Setting to work the redhead began healing Harry's scrapes and pouring potions down his unresisting throat. Once done she pointed her yew and phoenix feather wand at the man, peeling back his closed eyes:
"Legilimens!"
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Harry-Six was floating in a big swirly sea of headachey pain. After an uncertain length of time he heard an irritable voice ring out, simultaneously booming from all directions and none:
"Wake up you lazy sack of shit!"
Great, it was Tam.
...
A long time past and Harry-Six got the distinct impression there was a fight going on, and that he really should be part of it.
...
More time past.
...
...
"Harry for Frigg's sake, are you even trying to help at all?" The all and nowhere voice bellowed from every side, interrupting Harry-Six from his enjoyment of the headache sea.
...
"The seventh version of yourself gets to kiss Fleur Delacour!" Ghostly Tam reminded him.
"Fine!" Harry-Six said, or thought, or maybe projected or something.
"Finally! I've been using Legilimency against you for ages and the Voldemort's fragment of soul keeps trying to destroy my mind."
Harry-Six furrowed his metaphorical brows and felt out at the softly uncomfortable water he was floating in. "What do you need me to do then? I don't even know where the hell I am."
Harry-Six felt a full brunt of emotion, a blunt smash of irritated grumbling devoid of any coherence nor the necessity of words, coalescing after a time into something more comprehensible. "Reclaim your body the same way you did when Voldepotter tried to cast the Killing Curse against Albus. You have my assistance this time so it should be easier."
Harry-Six thought about this.
...
Time past.
...
...
"What the hell are you waiting for Harry?"
"I can't remember how I did it last time."
He got another full burst of emotion and decided Tam was swearing in parsel. Why parsel he couldn't really guess, but she was definitely not using English. Nor was she cursing in Chinese.
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Harry-Six awoke, looked around in confusion, his movement interrupting Harry-Five in the process of issuing orders. Taking the opportunity to fish out his Time‑Turner, offer a brief word of thanks to Tam for saving him from his own mind, Harry-Six span back his final hour.
He was now Harry-Seven.
The room was empty and a Tempus informed he was at roughly the same point the earliest version of himself was nearing the end of a Wedding Ceremony. He smiled a little remembering that, Fleur looked great and kissing her was like taking a right cross from Tyson, only in a good way.
Thing was, he no longer had a plan.
Fleur would be spun back six hours and asked to raise an army for him, and right at the moment of Harry-Six's defeat that vampire army would show up to save him from a different army of werewolves.
While this was going on, Dumbledore and the French Aurors would join against the Death Eaters at the north and east. Maybe he should head that way. But then there was Luna—or more accurately the Lunas—and what those seven were up to he didn't fully comprehend either.
Shaking the cobwebs from his mind, Harry-Seven decided to go help Dumbledore, idly wishing he still had his Invisibility Cloak. Getting to his feet he started to apply a half-assed Disillusionment Charm, and while he didn't actually growl he did loudly deadpan the word "groan."
Harry-Seven was knackered.
He'd channelled a hellstorm of magic killing Godric, but fatigue came from the sheer number of hours he'd been concentrating. The nonstop moving around, fighting and decision making... The unnerving nature of dancing on a knife-edge of paradox... Knowing without the shadow of a doubt that if he made one wrong move, or failed to keep track of where his past and future selves were, are, and had been... Not to mention the various analogues of all his friends who'd similarly been Time‑Turning... And if he lost track of any of that, he was sure he'd die in some kind of time explosion of something.
Don't fuck with Time‑Turners.
It was a simple rule.
Simple, and in Harry-Seven's newly enlightened opinion, an incredibly good rule.
Bollocks. He doubted anyone who wasn't him could have done anything save die ages ago.
Harry-Seven spent most of his time before the final meeting doing nothing but poke around this "out of the way" wing of Châteaux Delacour, the one with "low security traffic." Opening a few doors at random he noticed how many of them were filled with stunned and bound Delacour security personnel, stuffed in there by one person or another. He knew a few of them were attacked by various versions of Harry over the course of the past six hours, but not this many!
In fact. Why the hell did they need this much security anyway? It was a wedding for fuck's sake!
Eventually concluding that it really didn't matter, he was on the home stretch, nearly over. Harry-Seven came upon one of the two Tams he knew about, and given that she was carrying a number of healing potions, concluded this was the one who helped him recover from the recent changeover.
"If you start having trouble, remind me that Harry-Seven is the one who gets to kiss Fleur," he advised the redhead, flashing a tired smile.
She quirked an eyebrow, "You bet."
The brothers entered the rendezvous room side by side, and for the final time.
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Fleur's nervous fingers touched her bracelet and she chastised herself for fidgeting like an idiotic child. The cleric spoke the words she'd long been waiting for, finally permitting her to kiss the man she loved for the first time: "—now declare you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."
Their lips met. Fleur let out a gasp. An onrushing sensation crashing over her. A fragmented memory of holly and owl feathers. Fleur's big blue eyes met grey and it all came slamming home.
I am marrying that ponce who'd killed Harry? Merde!
The French woman twitched like she was going to hit him, or move, or do something when she noticed the glittering in the foolish child's eyes. Fleur knew that look! That was the look Harry always wore just before the vampire one was unknowingly dancing with, sunk its teeth into you. Or right after the Draught of Peace wore off and he asked if you had enjoyed yourself!
So when she heard Harry's voice in her mind using a tone which clearly stated he was having a great time, she was not all that surprised:
It's me Harry. I've come to get you out of here. Act casual.
Of course it was him.
Bastard!
And while Fleur wouldn't admit it, he'd come at just the right time, and she may have deepened their kiss more than was appropriate. Even though it was mostly fuelled by relief the contact did leave Harry visibly dazed. Much to Fleur's approval. Nevertheless this was not the time so she shook him, the two scampering from the room.
Harry led her up and down several flights of stairs, clearly having a destination in mind. After a time the polyjuice potion worn off and they encountered the girl Riddle. The redhead informed of a single fact to confirm that this plan was about to go off the rails in typical Harry fashion.
"Yeah, Draco threw off my Imperius. He got away."
About five minutes later Fleur was in a room with a number of people she had at least met in passing. Harry's godfather, the tiger animagus who was forever following him around, the girl Hermione who everyone hides things from, Albus Dumbledore, and an auburn haired woman Fleur thought she recognized but couldn't quite place.
Oh, and there were seven Harrys and seven Lunas. Fleur noted in surprise that for some reason she seemed to take this ridiculousness in stride. The group began bickering and the Harry who'd accompanied her into the room vanished using a Time‑Turner.
Fleur took particular note of one of the Harrys, mainly because the look the man was giving her caused her mouth to dry. He'd clearly been through the wars, slashes and scratches across his face and body, hair messier than usual, and a look of deep fatigue in his stare. It really didn't help Fleur in that this particular Harry's fights left him barefoot and shirtless, showing off surprisingly pleasant attributes, toned muscles without an ounce of excess body fat.
"Will one of the future mes please hand it over then?" The look of unfettered desire on his tired face stopped her processing the phrase, and it took the man embracing her closely to snap her back to the present.
Harry said something about vampires, and an imminent attack by werewolves. But when he kissed her, thought itself vanished. Fleur was panting heavily when she opened her eyes six hours in the past.
...
"Wow."
...
The lone word echoed back to her in the bare room.
...
...
Since when had Harry been able to do that?
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Whoa, I'm really going to have to find an excuse to do that again.
Harry-Seven thoughts were unsteady once the French woman was gone, the scene playing out the way it had oh so many times before. As he'd recently taken to doing, Harry-Seven was ignoring the goings on and the repeated conversations. He scanned Tam as her eyes locked with Harry-Six and he wished the redhead luck. It seemed to be much more challenging from her end than it had been for Harry, taking it easy as he had been, floating in the headache sea.
His eyes moved toward the Luna group and the four who were playing table tennis, each obviously taking great care not to physically touch any of their analogues. One of the seven blondes looked far more frazzled than the other six. Not to say you'd be able to tell unless you knew the woman well, but Luna was clearly under an enormous level of stress. He'd bet anything she was Luna-Seven.
"Norsefire Harry?" asked Tamsyn, an eyebrow raised in accusation. "I was under the impression you'd sworn against 'learning such horrible spells in the future'."
Hmm.
Harry-Five and his associates seemed to have hauled ass off to the battle, leaving Harry-Seven, the second Tam, and all seven Lunas alone in the rendezvous room. "Yeah, I know its Class Nine, but it just seemed so damn useful."
"For the next six weeks; no more Dark Magic!" Tam commanded as she conjured a mirror. "Just look at yourself."
Harry-Seven did as asked, noting dark circles under bloodshot eyes, as well as finally acknowledging the ringing of his ears. To anyone who knew what to look for these were all blatant signs of Dark Arts abuse.
"Yeah, I agree. Six weeks minimum." Harry-Seven frowned. "You ever noticed that loads of Dark Magic have fire or fyre somewhere in their titles. I mean; Devil's Fire, Fiendfyre, Norsefire... there is even that lethal security ward I've seen you cast called Fyrewalling."
"Shut up Harry, we have stuff to do," said Tam.
Offering the Time‑Turner to Luna-One, six of the Lunas escorted Tam from the room, and the smile slipped from Harry's face.
"Bad new there Yellow?" he asked, trying out the nickname Bella always used.
"Huh," began Luna-Seven. "For the past six hours I've been wondering what the two of us discuss during these ten minutes. I should not be surprised you saw it the whole time."
"I didn't see it. At least not really. Not until this last spin-back," said Harry-Seven. "Any chance you'll survive?"
His blonde friend scooped out the Time‑Turner she'd been wearing around her neck. The thing was nonstop spinning like crazy, glowing starbright white. That was not a good sign.
"I saw it happen last time," said Luna. "Partially anyhow. Maybe I'm wrong and today will all end with cognac and cunnilingus."
"Classy," Harry-Seven commented sarcastically. "What happened?"
She told him what she'd seen as Luna-Six, a wry smile flickering on her mouth.
...
A little time ticked by.
...
...
"Will you show me your glamour if I ask?" Luna raised her eyebrow, looking strangely similar to Tam when she did so. "Sexy blonde English woman. With pale skin. Living in China? In a world ruled by Voldemort? You'd stick out like a sore thumb! Obviously you didn't walk around looking like yourself."
Luna closed her eyes briefly and appeared to be concentrating. A moment later stood an attractively slim oriental woman, with jet black hair and deep black eyes. If only because Harry had been looking for it, he noticed the subtle stabbing of Suggestion, and the fact her face shape and bone structure screamed Luna.
"Cute," Harry said with a smile, "a Shadow's Masquerade?"
"It was the last thing Tam taught me before we agreed to give up the fight," Luna agreed, uncharacteristically sharing her past. "It helps when a former rebel wants to be a good little citizen of the Empire."
"Bollocks. I've been afraid of that for ages," Harry said despondently. "Voldemort isn't that bad is he?"
"Stay away from the Death Eaters and so long as you don't publically disagree with him... No, not really. He could have been a lot worse. I'd even go as far to say the common folk were quite a bit better off."
This confession was not something which surprised Harry at all. He knew the way Luna thought, just as much as how Tam and Voldemort's thinking process worked. Still, Luna being a happy citizen under Lord Voldemort's iron fisted rule was not something any of their friends seemed to have even considered. Hermione especially assumed Luna to have been eking out bare existence on the fire basted planes of end world.
As Harry and his friend approached the exit of the rendezvous room he asked a final question. "Would you tell me the person's name? Or how old you really are?"
"Hmm?" Luna grunted in feigned ignorance. "I am twenty five Harry."
"You said that last year." She merely smirked. "And the person's name?"
"Whatever are you talking about?"
"You hate Helga with a passion. Not Voldemort, nor any of the Death Eaters. Just Helga," Harry said, looking directly into her eyes. "I'm interested in the name of whoever she took from you."
Luna gave a lopsided grin. "It wasn't Siri if that's who you're guessing. I stopped shagging him years ago."
Harry wrinkled his nose in amusement.
"You gonna tell me?"
"Maybe next time Harry."
As they exited the room for the last time, the two friends bumped knuckles
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"Reducto!" Harry-Seven winced as the fourth year curse painfully drained his magic.
Tam was very pointedly not laughing at him. She was however staying very near him and dazzling the Death Eaters with an awe inspiring display of power and finesse. The redhead was commanding a complex and intricate exhibition of Dark Arts that Harry would never admit to being impressive. The sole reason she was showing off was to rub it in his face.
"I hate you," he informed, watching Tam finish constructing that emerald hydra Harrymort used ages ago.
They split off from the Lunas after making sure Luna-Seven knew the exact when and where Helga was going to apparate. It didn't seem like such a bad idea to go join up with Albus, Hermione, and the French Aurors. Tam "generously" applied a Disillusionment Charm to him, and the two staked out invisibly beneath a tree until the moment Hermione showed up to save Dumbledore.
The vanishing British Minister of Magic, and accompanying huge explosion half a mile away, had signified they could begin helping. It took about thirty seconds of Death Eater battling before Harry-Seven was all but spent, and Tam set about making him look as bad as possible.
That had been five or ten minutes ago.
"...sorry Harry, I already have a girlfriend," replied the demonic redhead, cheerfully mocking him.
"Im-Ped-Ih-MEN-Tah!" He intoned the jinx loudly, slowly, and precisely. Yeah, this was pretty embarrassing.
Tam giggled at him, strolled slowly up to the masked figure hit with an impediment jinx, and punched that person's mask with ritual enhanced strength, probably killing him. "I think that was the last of them," she commented, looking about at the idling Aurors and downed Death Eaters.
Harry set off to collect his Cloak of Invisibility, and he assumed Tam was going to start collecting bodies for her inferi horde. The battle was over and surprisingly enough it looked like they'd won.
Voldemort wouldn't have seen that one coming.
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Luna-One was kind of excited. Spending more than four hours in a secluded room with Bellatrix at Châteaux Delacour, she was readying herself to finally meeting up with her other selves. As well as all the Harrys and the rest of the crew of course. Bella told her there was to be quite a lot of confusing Time‑Turning to be done, and that the tiger animagus herself found the whole thing simply too difficult to follow. Relying, as she always did when at a loss, on her trust in Harry knowing what he was doing.
She liked Bella, even if the woman was completely bonkers, and perfectly willing to eat one of her own children if Harry told her it would amuse him.
She liked her, but sometimes that attitude could be pretty unnerving.
Luna-One, with the help of six other analogues of herself, was going to get an honest crack at killing Helga. This was what had her so energised, brimming with anticipation. That bitch was going down!
She was handed the Cloak of Invisibility and a short while later Tam escorted her and five of her analogues from the room for what would turn out to be a ten minute wait. Luna-Seven came out side by side with a Harry, who nodded to her in acknowledgement, leaving with Tamsyn as possibly their final versions? Urg. So "Luna-Seven" conjured and charmed for their group a Snitch, rendering it visible to anyone with the Lovegood bloodline, and out they trailed.
The group of blondes collectively wrapped themselves in their Invisibility cloaks and followed the tethered Snitch. Luna-Seven was using it as a beacon to guide them as they themselves could not see through a Deathly Hallow. The group was presumably being guided to the future point where Helga would show up. That was her assumption at least; that at some point soon, one of her future analogues would learn of the location which needed to be attacked, and move to attack it.
In the hours hiding with Bella, Luna-One had gone over the spell she'd decided was best to use. Basically the most deadly thing she could think of. Before her target could portkey away, her magic should be capable of not only killing Helga's current body, but totally annihilating the Horcrux.
It would take seven people standing in a septagram all facing inward toward the centre, the location which was to be devastated. Seven "seals" needed placing; single element Earth, Fire, Metal, Water, and Wood, constituted the "seals" Lunas one through five would set. The sixth would be the highest order five elemental she knew, a finicky piece of magic which she'd prefer not to use had there been another way. Finally Luna-Seven would be the one to harness the power built up by the six previous versions of herself, casting at their foe a pyre of apocalyptic fury.
A little slice of Armageddon just for the one bitch Luna hated more than any other.
With a smile Luna-One set her single element Earth Seal and fed into it all the magic she could.
Unfortunately she couldn't watch the fireworks because she needed to spin back as soon as it was in place. Nevertheless, in six hours she'd be Luna-Seven, and she couldn't wait to see the look on Helga's face when she gets torched by a spell so few could even name:
All Under Heaven.
As far as Luna-One knew nobody had cast it for almost fifty years. This was going to be fun.
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Mulling it over a while in her mind Luna-Seven decided smiling really was appropriate for this situation. She could feel the unpleasant heat of the whirling Time‑Turner nestled between her breasts, the soft grass between bare toes, and running through her hair, the tangy sensation of active magic flitting in the wind.
She watched the woman at her left vanish on her first spin-back, Luna-One ploughing a huge burst of magic through the Earth Seal. A handful of seconds later the glowing crimson of Luna-Two's Fire Seal ignited and she too disappeared to the past.
Luna-Seven was the only one not covered by a Cloak of Invisibility, having had the foresight to place the Deathly Hallow behind a rock for Harry to find once this was all over. The Metal Seal lit up in a bright flash of yellow, Water Seal in blue, Wood Seal in green, and Lunas two through five vanished as she had back when she'd been in their position.
Luna-Six would stay until the end though. A blinding multitude of spectral colours, the Core Foci necessary for this most powerful of weapons. Luna-Seven realised with surprise that the whole thing looked pretty damn impressive.
Ten seconds.
Luna-Seven winked at her younger self and began chanting:
"Ni Ta Ma De. Tian Xia Suo You De Ren Dou Gai Si."
The instant she cast, and her magic physically touched that of her other selves, Luna-Seven paradoxed. Her Time‑Turner exploding outward with tremendous force, and the universe ripped open in a gaping blackness of infinite depth. Tentacles wrapped around arms legs and torso, and in less than a moment everything that made up Luna, was yanked from creation.
Luna-Six was watching this with wide, surprised eyes, and visibly forced herself to spin-back the moment All Under Heaven was completed. Luna-Seven offered the slight contented smile which had so confused her for the last sixty minutes, realisation dawning as to just why she was wearing it.
As the blonde left this world, Helga apparated directly into the centre of the septagram, her eyes bulged and Luna caught the look of fear just before the Founder was completely immolated.
Worth it.
Totally worth it.
The universe clenched shut its space hole and Luna was gone forever.
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"I miss Hedwig," Harry said miserably later that day. The owl had come to say hello just as he and Tam left Châteaux Delacour for the final time. Harry had tried very hard to stun her and send a conjured owl off to go save him, but it hadn't worked, and Hedwig made her displeasure known quite strongly.
She'd fluttered down onto his shoulder and pecked at his ear affectionately. Harry couldn't begin to guess how she knew where he was, and where his past self would be, but then again Hedwig was far and away the most intelligent person at Hogwarts.
Hedwig was the best.
Harry had actually shouted at Bellatrix when she suggested stuffingher! Like he would ever put his familiar through such an indignity. Still, he felt bad about snapping at Bella, it was the first time he'd ever done it, and that kind of made it worse.
"Guess this makes you my new favourite avian creature, eh Fleur?" Harry said, seated in Caerbannog's main room with a slight smile for the French woman.
Fleur didn't bite, which was probably for the best, he wasn't in a bantering mood anyway.
The battle had gone amazingly well. Greyback's head had gone with Frost, and the rest of the werewolf army was in shambles. Bellatrix seeded the woods in which the werewolves retreated with Tam's Horde of the Inferius, so even those who withdrew from the fighting ended up taking losses.
Tam shamelessly collected lots of dead Death Eaters and fallen werewolves before the Aurors could stop her, so she had lots of base material to rebuild. At times the redhead wasn't all that tactful.
Frank Longbottom had been killed by Harry or maybe Harrymort, they weren't too certain, which was good news even if the Sword Horcrux had gotten away. Frank's tremendous magical power was a pain in the arse they were better off not having to deal with. Helga had been obliterated utterly by Luna, which was truly excellent news, as she was arguably more dangerous than Voldemort himself.
And thanks to Dumbledore, Hermione, and the efforts of the French Aurors, the Death Eater army on the north and west had been massacred. They'd been unprepared for such strong resistance, expecting a small force of maybe five or six at most, not an entire army and well prepared fighters.
So they'd won.
Completely.
That was good.
Harry moped over the loss of the most awesomest owl in the history of mankind-owl relations. Fleur stuck around all afternoon but they didn't really talk much as the airship flew majestically over the French countryside on the return trip to Britain. Albus' phoenix Patronus informed the two of them Hogwarts was under siege, and it was for this reason Voldemort himself had not been present for the supposed ambush of Harry and Fleur after the wedding rescue.
The castle was holding and now that Dumbledore was back beneath the protections it would do so without them for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless Harry took the "healthy" option and forced the loss of his friend beneath a nice strong application of Occlumency, so as not to have to think on it, and be forced to act like an emotional little girl.
Lily and Hermione came in a while later to the scene of Harry shamelessly hitting on the Veela girl, and demanding all sorts of inappropriate restitution for saving her from a fate worse than death.
"You've gotten over Luna's death awfully swiftly Harry," Hermione commented with badly concealed concern.
"Gotten over whose what?" Harry asked with a frown.
"We just lost Luna, you said so yourself," replied Lily.
"What? I never said Luna was dead. I said she'd told me the final version of herself paradoxes and gets sucked into a crazy hell dimension by a tentacle monster," Harry said slowly. "And from her description it sounded like one of the mean kind, not one of the fun kind."
"I don't understand," said Hermione.
"Are you saying you think she's... alive?" his mother asked incredulously.
"Well yeah."
There was a long silence following this ridiculous claim.
"Why?" The three women asked together.
Harry just shrugged.