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An Old and New World
by Lens of Sanity

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Interlude: Across the Universe

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Sunlight broke the dawn on August first, as it had yesterday, and as it would tomorrow. The days this summer had been hot and sticky in the mornings, blistering by midday, and dangerous to venture outside by early afternoon. Harry Potter would probably be contemplating the uncomfortable stifle of his bedroom's atmosphere had he not still been blissfully cradled in the arms of Morpheus, fast asleep, and dead to the world.

He was sleeping in uncle Sirius' old house of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, as he had been all these long weeks, cooped up part prisoner, unable to leave or have as much fun as he would wish to experience. Not to mention the other problems associated with incarceration.

There was a sound, a cat being stepped on, or car backfiring, Harry would never know. All he knew was that it woke him from his pleasant dream to a world so safe it was downright irksome. His green eyes cracked open and took in the sight of the same ceiling he'd seen yesterday morning, and the morning before, and the morning before that. White plasterwork of artex swirls, single dangling cobweb in one corner, and a black smushy mark he was certain was once a spider.

Harry let out a low sigh of lamentation, it had been a very enjoyable dream, good enough for the boy to be glad of his Occlumency training. He'd not been having the kinds of thoughts a person broadcast to any practicing Legilimens. Rubbing sleep from his eyes and mussing his hair even more than it was already, he got apathetically to his feet, fetching a fluffy dark green dressing gown.

For whatever reason the boy took a few moments to really see the room he was living in, it was at once the familiar abode he slept in all the times he lived in the ancestral home of the Blacks, and also gave a strange sense of oddness. A gnawing feeling he'd only seen the room for the first time a couple of weeks ago. New, that was the niggling description his brain offered. He shook it off being as unimportant as it was ridiculous.

Shrugging on the dressing gown Harry moved over to his desk, picking up the wand bought six years ago from Ollivander. Carefully running his fingertips with agonising slowness across the soft holly casing Harry felt his magic bridging ever so slightly, longing to couple with the phoenix feather of its core.

At this a tiny frown graced the seventeen year old's face, as it did every morning, each time he performed the little ritual. It had only been this summer that he'd become able to feel the magic of his fingers leap across this tiny gap, eager to join with his wand. Only this summer, and he seemed to know instinctively what was happening with great certainty. Harry was frowning because in all the years he'd been using a wand, and attending Hogwarts, he'd never been so in tune with his magic. And he had no idea what had so suddenly changed in him, hence the small frown of incomprehension.

"Hey," he let out a small chuckle. "I was seventeen yesterday."

Snatching up his wand, a smile banished idle thoughts, as it did the knitting of his brows. He was seventeen, which meant he was finally of age, finally legal to perform magic freely outside of school. He bisected an imaginary triangle and precisely intoned the incantation 'I call' using faux Latin.

"Accio Photograph!"

Using his 'Mad Skills' at chasing—as Olly Wood always used to call them—Harry snatched the photograph in question out the air, carefully placing it on his desk. Turning toward the mirror, he brought his wand up, slashed it toward his mirror self calling "K'Pow!" and bringing the weapon to bear awesomely, parallel to his head.

"What do you think Dad? Potter, Harry Potter, licence to kill," he asked the photograph, who just rolled his eyes. "There is just no pleasing some people."

Harry did not have a single memory of his father. Only proud stories told him by his mother, and tales more bordering on disgraceful from his godfather. James Potter was a hero. One of the real heroes, who fought for what was right, and never gave up when the path turned difficult. He'd died in a futile fight with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, giving his wife and infant son the time they needed to escape, sixteen years ago on a long forgotten Halloween night.

It was largely due to his father's memory that Harry knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. Most people his age had some vague idea of what they'd try to accomplish after seventh year was complete—they made you think about it during your OWL year after all—but few had the drive of purpose present in Harry.

There was a war going on. Just as there had been all those years ago, when events transpired to end the life of James Potter, and his son could not let himself sit idly by when innocents suffered.

Harry Potter was dead set on becoming an Auror. He'd apply right out of Hogwarts. He would fight the forces of darkness, as his father had before him. He would do his part to make a difference, help forge a world of light and goodness. This decision was half the reason he found being cooped up in the old house so frustrating. A Fidelius Charm protected the building, a safe house constructed as soon as they'd gotten word the Dark Lord was specifically targeting them, yet it required all occupants be nailed behind its threshold.

His birthday was yesterday, and none of his friends could come celebrate with him. He'd tried not to let it get to him, not to let it show, but the absence really hit him hard. Harry was only going to become an 'of age' wizard once, and none of his closest friends had been allowed to come to his birthday. Because it wasn't safe! Yesterday he'd worn a smile his mother saw through, and he knew it wasn't that big of a deal, so he'd done his utmost to be cheerful.

Stuffing the wand in his dressing gown Harry moved over to the large poster smiling at him brilliantly from the back of his bedroom's door. He really should take that down. He should, but Harry knew he wasn't going too, just like he never took it down when the thought crossed his mind.

He'd even met her once. Well, he'd been in the same room at least. Back when he was a little fourth year, and she was the shining champion of the Triwizard Tournament. The waist length platinum blonde hair framed the face of an angel, a goddess, the picture of flawless beauty. It was like she'd been built to be the envy of every other woman on earth, and the woman all men aspired to claim.

The poster had been taken the day Fleur Delacour won the tournament, proving to the world she was more than just a pretty face. Harry knew he should take the thing down. A guy can dream but it was unhealthy to shoot so high, to think for an instant a woman like that was anything but out of one's league.

Besides, Harry had a girlfriend, one whose photograph was predictably glaring at him. The dark and seductive Ms. Davis had been walking out with him since the middle of sixth year, much to his godfather's fake horror. A Griffindor and a Slytherin, uncle Sirius would shake his head at the absurdity, all the while hiding a small smile.

"Stop glaring at me like that Trace, you know you're the only girl for me," Harry told the photograph with a boyish grin.

And it was true Harry mused, shower and dressing for the day, she really was the only girl for him. A guy could fantasise about barely real individuals like the Belle of Beauxbatons, but people you truly know in your life, real people, those are the ones which mean the most to you. It was funny but Harry really did love her, he hadn't ever, even once, told a soul of his plan. But becoming an Auror was not the only thing he'd decided on once his final year of school was over.

He intended to ask Tracy to marry him.

They were close, had shared some great times, but he knew this was the one girl he wanted to spend his life with. Harry wasn't like the guys on Griffindor Quidditch team, he wanted his fist time to be special, with the woman he loved and a ring on her finger. And Tracy Davis was the woman for him.

Harry was about to go downstairs and see what his mother had cooked for breakfast when he caught sight of a dog-eared copy of the Alexandre Dumas book, The Count of Monte Cristo. He suddenly felt that itch again, preposterously remembering times long ago, when he'd lived as Edmond Dantès on an island prison, incarcerated for a crime he did not commit.

"Je souhaite être la providence moi-même, car je sens que la plus belle noble, chose la plus sublime au monde, est de récompenser et de punir."

Harry spoke a bunch of nonsensical sounds to the air, before ignoring his early morning's inane gibbering, and going in search of some breakfast. He swept down narrow winding stairs, nodded to Phineas Nigellus' portrait who was always so cranky and dying for company, eventually making his way into the kitchen and his shockingly youthful mother. If he didn't know better he'd think his mum was barely out of Hogwarts, slight of build with the face and mannerisms of a woman who knows she's a bombshell.

He'd never told anyone, but there was a good reason he avoided redheads like the plague, vicariously making out with one's mother was just not on the cards! Hell, a few weeks ago he'd had a dream where his mum had walked in on him having sex with her. How's that for impossible, ludicrous, and paranoid.

Also, squicky as all hell!

"Good Morning Harry," his mother began, looking him over from across the room, emerald eyes with the same tightness he'd been noticing more and more each day. "Have a seat, the bacon is almost done."

Harry did so idly, returning the morning greeting, taking stock of the frying pan sizzling with sausage and eggs. A full English, the best thing to start the day. His mother always used a wand when cooking, which Harry never quite got the hang of, the Muggle way always feeling more natural as if from the ease of long practice.

"Why couldn't Hermione visit yesterday?" The boy eventually asked his nagging question, kicking himself as he did so because he'd been trying to let it go. "Surely she could have gotten a couple hours off. Albus Dumbledore can't be working her around the clock."

Hermione Granger was his closest friend, met on the Hogwarts Express as a hesitant Muggleborn on a noble quest to rescue a boy's pet toad. The two had been inseparable ever since. Well, that last was sort of true, the two having been inseparable until early the previous year, when she'd been apprenticed to the Headmaster of Hogwarts.

Harry was actually kind of envious, and not of his friend's status as "the most prominent witch of the age." Hermione was everything they said and more. No, he was envious of the Headmaster and all the time together he spent with Harry's friend. While he'd been studying for next year's NEWTs, and preparing for his future life with the Aurors, Hermione was off learning all the skills and magic Albus Dumbledore could teach her, leaving precious little time for the two to simply spend time together as they used too.

He supposed it was the kind of invitation one could not refuse. Dumbledore, the defeater of Grindelwald, had never in all his years taken an apprentice after all. This didn't change how Harry felt about it however.

"I do not know Harry," Lily Potter said in delicate, feminine tones, all the while filling his plate with deliciously greasy breakfast foods. "You will help with your sister today like you promised?"

"Yeah, no problem. Sarah is great anyway, hardly cries at all unlike aunt Bellatrix's kid," he responded after carefully chewing and swallowing the rasher of bacon. Something which occurred to him ages ago but never asked flashed into his mind. "I thought it was supposed to be your side of the family which always names their girl children after flowers, yet my sister is named Sarah and my cousin is named Rose."

"I've never been one for those family traditions. It was more your grandfather's thing," Lily told him, going over to the three-week-old baby girl fast asleep in her small cot, the same tightness in her eyes Harry could never fully understand.

At first Harry was unsure what to think about the upcoming baby in the family, children didn't just come along out of nowhere, so someone had to have done the honours. But the identity of that someone was never revealed, causing the seventeen year old some understandable speculation.

His money was on one of two close family friends, and Harry really hoped it was one of them and not the other. Either his godfather was closer to his mother than propriety would dictate, or it was Snape. He remembered praying to whatever gods in existence that it wasn't Snape. How the man was a friend of hers Harry could never guess, being an abominable teacher not the least of the problems Harry had with him.

Eventually Harry concluded that having a younger sister was going to be fun, and he'd someday get the opportunity to act the cool older brother, embarrass people with stories of her when she was young, and all the other good stuff too.

Harry enjoyed his meal in subdued silence, contemplating as he did so the world, his life, and his place in it. When eating he took the time to talk intermittently with his only parent, attempting to put his best face on the overstressed look on her pretty visage, focusing as he did on how he would help, rather than hinder.

Somehow, Harry concluded in his own mind, that the stress his mother was trying valiantly to hide was for reasons other than the obvious. She was once again tending an infant—something she'd not done in more than a decade—but that was not it. Their family was a target of You-Know-Who, a personal target no less, and that was not it either. No, the stress she was hiding, and the tightness of her eyes, it was something he was not being made aware of...

It was a shame Harry hadn't become a member of the Order of the Phoenix. He'd not graduated Hogwarts and so could not join, but at least he was acutely aware of the existence of such an organisation, and that there were things he was not privileged enough to know. Nonetheless, being cognizant there were thinks being kept from him was still aggravating.

Breakfast finished he thanked his mother and moved off to the one room in Grimmauld Place which made the building worth visiting. The Black Library was such a comprehensive collection of books and scrolls one could get lost in it for years, although some of the tomes were uncomfortably dark in nature. Harry hated dark magic, dark wizards and witches, and anything to do with the Dark Arts. They were evil, and needed to be fought, destroyed utterly, they had no place in the world.

Harry knew this. Harry believed it, down to his bones.

He also knew how hypocritical he was for believing so. This was due in its entirety to a single fact; Harry hated dark magic, and for all but a single infraction, he spurned its use completely.

Staring blankly at an old Dark Defence Force manual—the organisation which became the Aurors in later years—Harry failed to take in any of the recommendations for footwork drills, advice to keep a combatant from being hit with unanticipated curses when caught in a duel. He was distracted by more than his unfathomably tense mother, baby sister, absent girlfriend, or missing best mate.

Actually, thinking of that last, his best mate, Hermione "the world is my oyster" Granger made him smile a little. Hermione would kick his arse if she found out what he'd done, the depths of Dark Arts he'd stooped, and Harry smiled because he knew he'd done it for all the right reasons. Harry knew he wasn't anything special, pretty good in charms class, and decent with a wand in defence, but he wasn't the boy who would grow up to set the world on fire.

However being only a little above average did not mean he could not live his life, and live up to the expectations he felt his father's memory deserved. Consequently, when he ran across some old notes last year he came to a firm and instantaneous decision, the kind of decision which one knew to be right and just, far beyond thoughts of paths paved with good intentions.

Harry wanted his family to be safe.

At any cost if necessary.

The notes he'd found, scribbled and half formed, ideas coalescing yet incomplete, gave him the means by which to achieve his goal. Should the worst happen, and the Dark Lord himself came to call, he'd have a chance. It had taken him months as his skill in Arithmancy was notably lacking. Yet the spellcrafling and calculations Harry performed, checked and double checked in secret over the course of his sixth year, ended in the success of great accomplishment.

The ritual was not something for anyone with a fragile constitution, performed in the secret room of Hogwarts School. Steeped in that hated feel of Dark Magic, the swirling and the chaos, sickly sweetness which clings long after the deed is done, corruption and evil taken near physical form.

The final stage was the hardest on his soul, but the boy knew one life, his own, was well worth the safety of his close friends and family. It was not like he would be the first nor last to die doing what was right. Harry unwittingly smiled, the smile coming from a place he was not capable of acknowledging, born from a certainty this dark was done out of bright, happy, good intensions.

As though fate and destiny intervened, knocking the boy from idling thoughts, the faint buzz of magic shimmered across his skin. It was the kind of thing—like the bridging of his fingertips and wand—which Harry knew he should not have been able to sense. He was not connected enough with his own magic to feel subtle changes like the buzz which startled him, yet feel it he did, brushing almost playfully against the small hair on the backs of his arms.

Then it got bigger and thicker, gaining menace and intensity, and even a magic blind food would be stupid not to notice.

The wards of Grimmauld Place were under attack.

It was strange the emotion coursing through Harry's veins and across his chest, a feeling not of fear or concern, but cold purpose, airily light and uplifting. He had hoped the entire time things would not come to this, but fate laughs as mortals plan, and the seventeen year old wizard knew what he was going to do.

There were shouts and screams, and Voldemort's magic battered against the walls of this ancient and barricaded home. Harry left his wand behind in the library where he'd been sitting, unneeded as it was for his next noble task. He caught up with his mother, sister held protectively in her grasp, lovingly and fearfully at a single stroke.

"Severus has betrayed us," Lily Potter informed, tightness and stress of her eyes reaching levels never before seen, drawn and grim. "The emergency portkey failed and Apparition Nets are in place."

"I'll hold him off," Harry told his mother, with resolve like an avalanche, as cold as it was unstoppable. "Perhaps you can get to a broom or something."

A clattering explosion signalled the wards had been breached, splinters of wood and stonework blasting inwards, a chaotic wave of destruction with the Dark Lord in all his serpentine glory backlit by mid-morning sunlight.

"Harry Potter at last you are within my grasp," hissed the man in sibilant tones.

"I will not allow you to hurt them," declared the boy, standing tall and virtuous, a pose of heroic lines.

"Injured as you are it is almost a pity," the Dark Lord spoke to himself, at once wary and hopeful. "Goodbye Potter boy, your race is run."

Harry did not move or run, or plead for his life, nor for that of his family.

"Avadakedavra!"

As the onrushing beam of green death flew toward him, Harry thought of all those he loved, and all those he wanted kept safe. His mother, the youthful Lily Potter, pretty face and cutting wit. His baby sister, just starting out in the world. Tracy and her smile, the feel of her dark locks between his fingers. And he thought of Hermione, his greatest and best friend, absent though she was, he needed her out of harm's way.

The instant He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's bolt of emerald light hit the boy, a memory shuffled to the fore, impossible in its content. Harry remembered a time in France kissing flawless Fleur Delacour, lips and tongues dancing, desperation and relief, and raw naked desire. Then she vanished...

...right as Harry Potter died.

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Harry was standing with eyes closed, wind whipping lightly around his bare form, kissing skin, ruffling his wild raven hair. Hesitantly he broke open his eyes, unsure as he did so of what he might find on the other side of the veil. What welcomed him was hell on earth, a scene straight out of a nightmare, something one half dreamt when alone and scared at four o'clock in the morning.

Everyone he'd ever known, everyone he'd ever met or seen in passing, all surrounded him, up to his thighs in some murky purple liquid. Watching were his mother and godfather, his best friend Hermione, and cousins Tonks and Tamsyn. Albus Dumbledore himself was there, near aunt Bellatrix holding her three month old child, and Fleur Delacour, who was looking right at him.

And he was naked!

And she was staring right between his legs, giggling at him!

Fleur Delacour was giggling at his painfully hard erection. Harry flushed scarlet, right too his toes, covering himself as best he could and trying to cope with the mortification, embarrassment thick enough he was certain he could die all over again.

"Aww, he's blushing," Hermione said in clear delight. "Can't we leave him like this for a while longer? He's so cute..."

Aunt Bellatrix looked at his friend with murderous intent, a viscous brutality behind the eyes, a look Harry could scarcely believe gracing her usually placid face.

"Tempting, but I do not believe it would be the right thing to do," Albus Dumbledore said with a chuckle. "Furthermore, I get the distinct impression Madame Black would take exception to such an arrangement."

"I agree," Fleur Delacour shared her view. "It would be amusing I admit, but I do not like 'ze way he looks at me."

The world had gone mad or he was insane, the Dark Magics he'd stooped to having driven him crazy, Killing Curses and Dark Arts the tools of fools, as he'd always known and believed.

"Obliviate!"

The spell designed to tear away memories crashed into Harry's occluded mind with a force he'd never believed possible, crashing, churning, and tearing down the walls, like Jericho once the right note was sounded.

Fifteen inches of pale elder wood were removed from between Harry Potter's eyes leaving behind fractured remnants of the Block.

Then memories returned with thunderous cascades, hammering his mind and soul from each side, a relentless churning of pain and power, rightness tilting, returning to the world.

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"You've got to be fucking kidding me!" Harry screamed, standing in position, still naked in the massive cauldron. "That was the single worst experience of my entire life."

He was standing tall and suddenly unconcerned of his state of undress. In fact, the very idea that he should care about something as stupid as that was laughable in the extreme. Gods he'd been so, so... Gyaah!

"Worse than being surrounded day and night by Dementors?" Tam asked once more beside her girlfriend.

"A million, a billion, a googolplex number of times worse," Harry shouted as more thoughts screamed for his attention. "Circe. I was saving myself for marriage! How sick is that."

"I thought you were quite sweet Harry," Lily threw out her amused thoughts. "Very helpful indeed."

"I was sweet," he said with a small voice and a large shudder. "Guess it worked then? I mean, you're alive. What day is it by the way?"

"It is August second, Harry," his brother answered. "I tried my idea with the Resurrection Stone. The potion was pretty much the same only we did not need to wait for a quarter day."

"Oh, holy hell," Harry wailed, another horrifying memory crashed into him. "I wanted to be average Joe fucking Auror..." His hands began shaking and he closed his eyes. "Just doing my job ma'am, move along now, glad to be of service."

"Get over it Harry, you were only at Grimmauld for two weeks," Padfoot admonished.

"Merlin, I used to jack off to my poster of Fleur. I did it last night for crying out loud!" he informed everyone sickly, turning a little green at the memory. "I didn't even know the first thing about the woman. She was just a hot body with a pretty face."

Had his eyes been open Harry would have noticed the surprised and pleased look on the French woman's face, but as it was he didn't. He was brought out of the harrowing memories by two hands firmly gripping his primary appendage.

Eyes snapping open again he caught sight of a very determined looking Bellatrix, gaze firmly fixed on something other than his eyes. "No, Bella, get off. Bella dear, I have a girlfriend now, we can't do that."

"Mine," the tiger animagus said shortly.

She was holding on like a mastiff and Harry did his best to release himself from her grip. This didn't really help things, and like ten people were watching with distinctly differing reactions. Hermione seemed to be getting worked up at the sight for gods' sake.

"Bella, no!" he tried forcefully, ignoring the sensations being caused as a by-product of his attempts to get free.

"Oh for heaven's sake 'Arry, just go," Fleur spoke after a while. "Bellatrix has just healed your death."

Harry stopped resisting his friend and looked over to the part-Veela. "But, I erm—, I thought we were going out now," he started in confusion, recalling that memory distinctly. "I thought when people have a proper boyfriend-girlfriend relationship, you weren't supposed to do that stuff with someone else."

"Normal people don't 'Arry," Fleur informed him with exasperation. "But as you are fifty percent of the people in 'zis relationship, it could not possibly be normal!"

"I dunno," Harry told her, it seemed iffy somehow.

"Just go before she pops you in the middle of 'zis graveyard."

He looked around and thought about it for a while. Bella really wasn't looking as though she was letting go any time soon. Eventually he came to a decision.

"Do you mind if we get a little bit nasty Bella dear?" She smiled getting her own way and gave a little shrug. "Excellent, because I need to wash off the stench of heroism and goodness, and I know just how to go about it." Harry felt he really needed to debauch away the filthy stench of piety from his body and soul.

The two vanished, leaving behind an echoing crash of dispparition.

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Lens of Sanity
I need a French national. Specifically a Literature student (if there is even one reading this right now.) Both my copies of The Count of Monte Cristo are in English—I'm handicapped that way—and I'd appreciate someone checking this for accuracy:

"Je souhaite être la providence moi-même, car je sens que la plus belle noble, chose la plus sublime au monde, est de récompenser et de punir."