Chapter 14:

The Grey Place Part 2


"What is this place, Tom?" Harry asked without the usual pleasantries.

He tilted his head to the side, as if trying to decide if Harry was actually there or not. It was a decidedly odd gesture, for only fractions of him were present but still moved as if connected to a full body. It was as if he rubbed invisibility ink all over himself but missed blotches, so that a seemingly shredded quarter of his head, a bit of his chin, bits and pieces of his torso and fractures of his arms and legs floated independently. the edges of his form had that same golden hue as it had when Harry stabbed the diary what felt like an eternity ago. Altogether these pieces probably added up to half a body, proportional to the amount of Tom Riddle's soul had been trapped in the diary and the same amount of Harry's soul standing there before his enemy. He wondered if, to Tom's eye, Harry had a similar appearance.

"Apathy. Despondence. Non-remembrance" Tom answered. "An antithetical existence to life and death alike, as if unto antilife."

If Harry had a spine, a shiver would have run down it.

"A place of magic unlike our magic, one of many such places theorized to exist separate from places men should walk." Tom went on, standing up. "I admit, you are one of the less unpleasant hallucinations. Surely you, of all people, couldn't create a horcrux. Although I can imagine how you came across the knowledge."

Harry considered lying and going the hallucination route, try to coax information out of him. Maybe learn the identity of the unknown Horcrux? But he didn't have it in him. This Tom looked to have suffered enough.

"Life has been unkind to me." Harry admitted, shaking his head. "And I did commit that sin. I fully intend to destroy it myself, after I finish destroying all of yours."

Tom stared at him for a time. The he began walking and Harry walked with them. Time passed. Slow, quiet, yet it passed in the blink of an eye. They were walking together along what looked like a shattered, floating piece of the great wall of China when Tom decided to break their mutual, comfortable silent contemplation.

"But... How are you here if your horcrux has not been destroyed? Are you not the horcrux?" Tom asked.

Harry shook his head again.

"I am the man. My body is breaking down, I think I died." Harry explained. "I'm sure my people will resuscitate me, so my time here is short. Is it possible your older self was trapped here for a time during his missing thirteen years of wraithiness?"

This time Tom shook his head.

"No. This is the place the destroyed Horcruxes go. If your body was destroyed your soul would still be trapped in the physical plane. You are a Horcrux." Tom revealed.

Harry raised an eyebrow. Tom didn't have all of the information. He was both correct and incorrect. Magic could be weird like that.

"So, you already know I created seven? Or at least I had planned to. If you came here specifically to try and ask me where or what they are, I'm sorry to say I'm not privy to that information." Tom said.

Harry laughed at the attempt to deceive.

"Tell me, what object of Rowena Ravenclaw did you seek out?"

Tom raised an eyebrow back at him.

"The lost diadem." He confessed. "I seduced the Grey lLdy, turns out she's Rowena's daughter."

"Small world." Harry commented dryly.

"Quite. Anyways, after a long Hamletian story of love, betrayal and murder-suicide it turns out she hid it in a tree in the forests o Albania." Tom explained. "I'm sure I would have hunted it down after graduating. And if I found it, it would become one piece of the seven I'm sure you're aware of. And then it would have found a new home. A safe home. Where? I know not."

Harry nodded. He had a what, and a where to start searching. Finally! A lead he could act on. Plans to attack Gringotts's still needed ripening. Still, something reeked of this situation.

"You're being awfully cooperative." Harry pointed out. "Why the sudden interest in helping me?"

Tom stopped walking and Harry stopped with him. They were on some tiled patio beneath a pagoda. It's surface, like the surface of all things here, was being reduced to dust and reformed in a constant state of undecay.

"I have been here a long time, though by the look of you not as long as it felt." To explained. "It's an existence I do not particularly enjoy, and outside of trying to find other damned souls to talk to, only to discover that Herpo doesn't exactly speak modern English, all I've had is time to think and I have decided I want to pass on. That cannot happen until all of us are destroyed."

Harry nodded, even if he didn't quite buy the explanation.

"And on what basis do you think that will be the undoing of your torment?" He asked.

"It just feels right." Tom answered with a shrug. "I also just want to get things off of my chest, and I feel no qualms sharing it with somebody who won't remember this conversation in but a few moments."

Harry was instantly on the defensive. Crouched down, fists up ready for a fight.

Tom merely raised an eyebrow at him.

"Um. No, I wasn't threatening you. You're leaving this place. It looks like you were right when you said your followers would resuscitate you, and when they do this entire interaction will be less than a forgotten dream to you." Tom explained. "Look at yourself."

Harry did, and indeed the grey and white was being driven from his form and replaced with color. As if blood was once again in his veins and heat on his skin. He looked back up at Tom.

"It's a shame too." Said Tom. "I have so many regrets I wish to confess, who better to confess to than somebody who will both understand, and not remember? But it will have to wait until next time we meet. Until then, I have other me's to hunt down in here. Don't suppose you'll tell me how many you destroyed?"

Harry was actually going to tell him, but before the word "three" could escape his lips he was dragged through nothingness. Pain and an accompanying stench and taste of filth greeted him on his awakening.

He was in a brightly lit room, blindingly white curtains and ceilings hung over him, but he could barely concentrate on any of it over the taste of rot and metal in his mouth and the stench of the same. Where was he? The last thing he remembered was the battle of the Taboo, coming back to Malfoy Manor, then... nothing.

"Oh god the stasis has worn off! Get me the vacuum tubebefore he chokes on his own blood!" Came an older woman's voice whose identity eluded him in his delirium.

The ache of a recently patched injury, the dual soreness and cutting pain of a sealed surgery, erupted along his entire abdomen and right limbs. Like your mouth after a dentist extracted a tooth, but everywhere. He strained against his disobedient body to try and turn, to see his surroundings, but then just as suddenly as it had come the pain and disgust vanished and he was falling, weightless, into an endless mist of grey.


James Warren Jr gazed upon the destruction of the Cruciform building and burned, shattered concrete and stone leading from it to the UCL main campus. He walked along the trail, through the gate that once welcomed him in his college days, and into the library courtyard. The marbled steps on the far side of the courtyard were somewhat obscured by the burned tree of the courtyard.

The damage didn't seem to reach the Slade school of Fine Arts to his left nor the Bernard Katz building. Small blessings.

"James. Thank you for coming." Officer McCartney, a Squib in his network, greeted him. "And who are your friends?"

James turned to the Roberts. They had been waiting for him at the airport when he returned from his trip to Australia weeks back. They had news of some strange occurrence in their campgrounds on Easter, news that had to wait for investigation after the Dursley incident. It was fascinating, an entire patch of grass wilted by dark magic, and the Myrtle engine did identify it as dark magic but couldn't discern which. They had thoroughly tested it on every spell and enchantment McCartney's father had been able to cast, and considering he was a war veteran from WWII, that was concerning. The Ouroboros mark, the field of dead plants, insects and animals. All very disturbing, but it was a mystery that had to wait for another time, because before he could.

Every single member of his network rang up his starTAC the night before. From the zoo to the university to a random monument in the London streets, battles had broken out and the Dark Mark was displayed in broad daylight for every Muggle in the world to see. Those marks had died down in the day of driving it had taken for him to return to London, but he was assured that the photographs were already in circulation and the morning paper would display them. He'd make sure to get a copy after he was done here.

"A pair of unimportant parents whose mediocre child has gone missing." He said dismissively.

For anyone listening in, they would think he was an asshole. To those who understood his code it meant they were Muggle parents whose Muggle child is missing. McCartney got the message.

"Do you have reason to believe she could have been caught in the gas explosion here?" He asked, now speaking in terms of the usual coverup, a tired one that soon wouldn't work anymore.

"We have reason to believe that an undesirable may have had a part to play in her disappearance."

McCartney glanced to make sure any of the police, or blatant Aurors in disguise, weren't listening in too carefully, before leaning in to whisper.

"The undesirable?"

James nodded.

"Number 1." He confirmed.

Harry Potter was well known among the Squibs, Muggles and rare witch or wizard in his network. The Grangers seemed to be the only ones out of the loop on it. He, and all of his allies, have been trying their best to get in contact with him for years.

Voldemort was the enemy, not necessarily wizards in general... Okay wizards in general had a reckoning coming too. From the obliviating to the covering up of crimes committed by their own against Mugglekind like the Chernobyle incident or the parts they played in both world wars, he didn't see a future of them coexisting unless the Nuremberg courtrooms opened up again and delivered a new dishing of war crime justice. This time hopefully without the torture and other crimes that make people question the testimonies thereof, but he wouldn't complain.

"How many people died?" Eric Roberts asked.

"Almost a dozen. All exceptional individuals, though not from around here.

Twelve wizards from the enemy's side killed in a surprise attack. Interesting. The wizarding savior was on the offense. Two battles in just as many weeks, though this time with far fewer casualties. None, by the sound of it.

"I heard there were similar gas explosions elsewhere. Four of them." Said Alison Roberts. "How many died in those."

"We are still tallying the casualties, but over fifty individuals. Thankfully no women or children, but important people all of them." Said McCartney. "We are scrambling to collect all photographic and video evidence of the incidences, but we may not be able to get all of the information in a timely enough manner if they weren't all accidents after all."

Excellent! No Muggle casualties, no rebellion casualties. It was an overwhelming victory for Potter's upstart army. And that the attempted coverup was already falling apart with photo-video evidence of it already being circulated meant they were one step closer to shattering the statute of secrecy, though on a faster timescale than most of them preferred. They really needed to join forces and compare notes, but the Boy Who Lived was adept at remaining hidden. Whatever he'd been doing for the past year he must be finished, as his all-out war was already something magnificant to behold.

"May we have a look around?" James asked.

"So long as I accompany you." McCartney told him with a nod.

And so they were off, a spycam on his lapel taking video and the Myrtle engine recording any and all magic she detected. And boy was she detecting a lot of magic.


Drip. Drip. Drip. Echoed his footsteps on the glassy ground as he walked, aimlessly, in this empty place.

An endless mirror stretched to the horizon, though where the horizon line was would be anybody's guess. The thick grey mist that tore at him like a vicious wind obscured his vision so totally that he could barely see ten meters in any direction. It reminded him a great deal of the curtains Sirius had fallen through nearly three years ago, but such comparisons would bring him no closer to understanding.

He occasionally heard voices, whispers, or perhaps muttering. Some were even in English, but all were far away or moved by him faster than he could identify.

Was he dead?

... No. His Horcrux was intact, even if he couldn't feel it in that moment. This was in his head, or at least partly was, but his experience with mind magics told him that in no way made it less real. In fact, it very much resembled a pensieve. Perhaps he had retreated into his own mind as his body broke down? The relationship between soul and mind was complicated, but very real. It certainly resembled what he imagined the inside of his head would look like.

Vast emptiness and murky confusion.

Were these voices ghosts of memories lost? His subconscious trying to talk to him? Full on hallucinations? The world may never know because his time in this place was up. His mind went bank, the feeling of life returned to him, and the grey mist subsided.


He was on a table. Petunia was on another table beside him. Both of their torsos were cut wide open, and from Harry's torso was a litany of tubes and clasps. Most prominent of these was one connected to a large machine that drew from him black, oxygen deprived blood and pumped red blood back into his veins.

There were people about the sterile room, going to and from, presumably operating on him and his dead aunt, whose presence took up the majority of his death-addled minds processing power. What little of it he had in his delirium. What remained after that was trying to parse the confusion of where he was, how he got there and what he had just been doing. He remembered feeling... something, but it slipped his mental grasp.

He reached out with his good arm, trying to touch the tubes attached to his insides, but a firm had stopped him and wrested his limb back to his side. Harry looked up to try and see the person who grasped it. His face was blurry and indistinct, as it ought to be without his glasses on.

A moment later the face faded into a grey mist, along with the rest of the room and everything in it. And so, Harry fell, endlessly, into a grey mist that went on forever in all directions, save below where his feet made contact with shimmering silver.

We Have a Visitor.

One who should not be here.

One who has come here thrice now, a most auspicious number.

Harry whipped towards the voices, ones that came in three distinct cadences, but seemed to speak as one. As if three people spoke together but each took turns controlling the cadence, and their individual mannerisms and syntax filled their respective lines. He saw no sign of them, just the endless mirror and grey mist.

"Who is there?" Harry demanded, only for his voice to echo painfully and be magnified beyond what a human ear should be able to tolerate. "Where am I?"

You ought to know.

You've been here twice before.

And with this visit you reach three, our patron number.

The world around him shifted, as if it were a treadmill he was hovering over, and countless lightyears of mist and watery mirror flew by him until he was upon the one imperfection of this infinite plane.

A hole. A hole the entirety of the entire sun could surely fall into, and where the mirror surface plunged like a waterfall of icy silver. Harry knew he shouldn't lean over the precipice, that he shouldn't look down into the abyss, and yet he did all the same. Thus, he beheld them. They were three, they were identical, and they were faceless. Like three naked corpses with the heads cut off above the jaw, and in the sunken recess of what remained of their fleshy skulls sat, or more accurately floated, objects of the blackest stone he had ever seen.

The recess of one held a triangular pyramid, rotating on no distinct axis but in all three independently and at alternating speeds. The second had the same, but a white marble sphere. And the third a perfectly cylindrical obelisk of gold, which rotated from the center like a twirling baton, but again with an inconsistent axis and speed. The triumvirate encircled a wireframe object that mirrored all three of their head ornamentation, a three-dimensional representation of the deathly Hallows, and so Harry understood.

How do you not know where this is or who we are?

You should know us well.

"After all, you make such prodigious use of our..."

"GIFTS"

The last they spat out in true unison and with utter disgust, and as one tilted their horrible heads to face him. The rest of them wasn't any less horrible, emaciated human bodies with limbs just too long and just sharp enough at every bend or tip to be utterly inhuman. For now, they kept their arms raised is holy reverence of the wireframe Hallows symbol. But if any of them should raise a hand in violence, their razor-sharp fingers could surely split the moon in twain.

"You're... death?" Harry gasped.

You insult us.

We are not something so simple or vulgar.

"We are something much more surreal, super-real, as a child of fate should recognize."

Harry knew this to be true. They were something far higher and more abstract, a form of nonexistence. Of unlife and uncreation and unfeeling and unthought. They were the end, the undoing, the antigenesis that predated genesis. Even the undoing of death itself. That's what they were. The Unmaking. Harry felt as if he'd know them all his life, and even before that perhaps, in the oblivion all men remember from before their birth and fear returning to.

Of all the many questions to go through Harry's head, of things one ought to ask veritable gods, his mouth voiced the most accusatory.

"Why have you enacted such cruel jokes as to gift humanity the terrible Hallows?"

There was a moment of silence, as if they couldn't believe his audacity or found the question itself odd. Perhaps both?

Those were not gifts.

We gave unto the Peverells three other gifts.

As we have many others in different ages, and each time said gifts came with counterbalances.

The Deathly Hallows are those counterbalances.

For the yin must accompany the yang.

"Thus a balance is struck, and our meddling goes unnoticed by beings that would call themselves our peers."

Harry hoped they wouldn't enlighten him on said peers, his disgust and horror at these three themselves was enough for one lifetime. But the other threads within their conversation demanded pulling.

"Then what were those three gifts?" He dared to ask.

You already know them.

The brothers sought to invent new magic.

"Magic meant to undo great suffering, and so that brought them to us."

One brother was a shepherd with a bleeding heart.

One brother was a duelist who suffered from what you call CIP.

"The third brother was a farmer who cared for many animals, magical and mundane."

The first brother sought a way to cause painless death to his sheep.

The second sought a way to cause pleasure so strong as to overcome his birth defect.

"The third sought to create better dominion over beast, forgetting man is nothing more."

"They All Succeeded."

Harry shivered at the unified voice. The Peverell brothers invented the unforgivables? The unforgiveables were gifts?!

"And they succeeded through you as benefactors?"

Correct.

And your kind forever despised our gifts.

Which we always give with genuine charity, but your kind always prefer the contravening powers.

"The Hallows? They only exist to nullify the power of the Unforgiveable curses?

Nullify and enhance.

For we are beings of tertiality.

"With each spell came a corresponding gift, each of which interacts uniquely with each of the gifts."

"As you have discovered for yourself."

Yes. He had. The Resurrection Stone was twin to the imperius. By the sounds of it the cloak was twin to the killing curse and the elder wand was twin to the cruciatus. What would happen if one cast it with the wand it was born to? What effects would the cloak or the stone have with the killing curse or the cruciatus? Could he torture the souls of the dead?... Could he destroy them with the killing curse?

These were all truly terrible revelations and summoned more horrifying questions.

You will have time to find all of the answers.

For you already own all three.

Master of Death seems inadequate a moniker, we shall rechristen thee as you have christened us.

"The Unmaker."

Harry shuddered at the undesired title, and the unwelcome revelation that they were cognizant of his inner thoughts despite his rapidly improving occlumancy. Especially since he now thought them deceivers.

"But I am not master of death. I only have the stone and the cloak. The wand isn't mine." Harry objected.

It isn't?

Isn't it?

Is it not?

Now that one was definitely condescending and sarcastic. He seemed to have amused his patron deities, for he held no delusions of how they viewed him.

Our beloved champion.

Go now and unmake the universe.

Writhe and rebel against it like you did the fate you once had, but this time expect no escape.

"For in time you will come to hate life... as much as we do."

They each reached out to him with a single hand as if they might crush him, and as they approached Harry felt gravity shift and his body was pulled into the direction of each as if multiple Jupiters fought gravitationally with the earth to keep him grounded. The glassy surface beneath his feat lost this battle and he was flung skywards into the hand of the Pyramid Unmaker. As he fell, at a greater terminal velocity than he could ever experience on earth, every crack and break on the Unmaker's metallic skin served as a canyon deeper than the Valles Marineris,or as a mountain taller than Everest.

Before he could crash into the depths of his fingerprints, Harry was flung from the world of grey.


Johnathan Cresspool was rather surprised when Harry sat bolt upright, and even more surprised when he found himself grasped by the throat and bodily lifted by his patient only to be slammed against the wall.

"Do NOT allow me to go under again." His master snarled through the respirator and feeding tube.

He could only nod piteously against the palm enclosed round his throat, but was mercifully released.

Harry promptly collapsed against the nearby chair, holding himself upright with his good hand.

"Report." He ordered.

Johnathan stood upright and did so.

"Taboo destroyed. Captives at Malfoy manor free and in training. Malfoy has kept everything in order for the three days you were under."

Harry nodded, and began testing his limbs as he listened.

"The location of the concentration camp?"

"Confirmed and in the process of being scouted."

"By whom?"

"Jessica and her little golden friend."

Harry seemed pleased by this. After all, these were all the orders he left in the event he was incapacitated or unavailable. He kept whole week of forethought available for all to read, and likely had more to be released if he did perish before the war ended.

"And what have you and Warbeck done to me?"

"Transplanted your heart and lungs, implanted blood purifying catheter-like device." He explained. "Your aunt was the donor. We've... well there's no good way to put it, we've harvested and begin preparing the rest of her for when, WHEN NOT IF, the rest of you starts to go."

Harry nodded as he paid particular attention to his blackened right hand, arm and fingers.

"Did you do something to my joints?" He asked, perceptively.

"Indeed. Replaced them with peek - it's a plastic with great strength and low friction - and coated the bones on your right side with a thin varnish of titanium with more peek embedded into it."

"The titanium binds to the bones, the peek reduces friction with my necrotic muscles and tendons, thus somewhat alleviating my constant agony." Harry concluded aloud. "Is there a particular reason you didn't do this with my left side?"

Johnathan raised his hands apologetically.

"Our oath..."

"Ah! Yes. Preventative surgery like that would fall under the preview of 'do no harm' that prevents magical plastic surgeons and religious surgery practitioners from existing." Harry said in understandingly. "The most you can do is attempt to slow or stop the spread and make further augmentations as they become necessary. How long until I can take off this respirator?"

"We don't know. Your aunt's lungs were neither as large as your old ones, nor well trained. Your body may never fully adapt to them." He explained.

Harry nodded but then disrobed. Johnathan cast his eyes downward as Harry removed the medical gown to examine himself. He performed a squat and a couple lunges before deciding he was content.

"Cloak me." He commanded.

With a flick of Johnathan's wand Harry was restored to his usual decency.

"What are your orders, my lord?"

Hary snorted, but must not have felt up to the task of trying to battle against the title they had all given him.

"Come. We have work to do." Was his simple order.


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