I.
When the Battle of Hogwarts ended, there were bodies everywhere. But Harry…
Harry had eyes only for one.
Voldemort is small, in death. Ordinary.
Harry looks at him, details the way he lies, bent, but not broken. Dead, but not gone. And he feels as if there is no one that matters but the two of them.
Oh, he's sure there's others around him, watching what their great savior will do. Waiting to swarm him, waiting to take the body away. But something––something about this moment, so profound... Something must be holding them back.
Harry walks over, slowly.
He stands over the Dark Lord, just for a moment, and he knows that this would be the biggest slight of them all. To stand over this all-powerful being, to tower of his dead body, as if to say, I am stronger.
But Harry isn't, and even if he was... It is so wrong, he thinks, that either of them should be above the other.
Not when their pasts have raised them on even ground.
So, quiet and careful, Harry Potter kneels at the Dark Lord's feet, and for the first time in his life, he does so willingly. He will kneel before this man. This man that has succumbed to his greatest fear, and has been forced to make peace with it. This man, that has taken so much, because he was never given anything.
Harry, hesitant as the lightest of breezes, reaches out. Pauses, an inch from that skin of marble. His fingers meet cold scales; a snake's, almost, but smoother. On the knife-edge of animal.
He traces the skin of his jaw, a sharp cheekbone. The fine skin under his eyes. He closes them, because the red, once bright as fire, has dulled to the rusted color of dried blood.
And he wonders.
The Wizarding World will celebrate. They will fill their glasses with champagne, their hearts with joy and love and relief, just as they had sixteen years ago, on that day of false celebration. Now, true in their purpose, they will be full with the promise of a better tomorrow, the promise of freedom, and their eyes will fill with tears of happiness.
But Harry Potter... He wonders if he will ever feel as full of that glowing pride, that bubbling joy.
Harry Potters wonders, because he can already feel the ache of it.
The magical theory on horcruxes is very, very sparse. Voldemort did what he could with what he found, but the knowledge was incomplete––even the man that had come up with the ritual was not entirely sure what it would do. Voldemort, though, had always been stubborn, and he had made the horcrux, despite the warnings. Triumphant he had been, but even he knew the Diary was never intended to turn out the way it did.
Even less was the magical theory on a human horcrux. It was unexplored, uncharted territory, and even when it did happen, it was never intentional. It was not by Voldemort's, nor Harry's, design.
But that time, despite his lack of knowledge, his lack of intention, somehow it had been perfect.
Now, Voldemort wonders if Time has always been a rigid thing. If that was always Fate's design, for the two of them. Inextricably connected, inexplicably polarized.
He sits on a bench. It is not white, where he is. Nor is it black, a void, as he had so often been afraid in life.
No. His resting place...
His is simply red.
It looks like King's Cross, but it is empty. It is not the bustling place of Voldemort's childhood.
He doesn't know how long he has been waiting, nor does he know what he is waiting for. But he sits, and he stays.
And he feels the pain of separation.
In the moments before his death, Voldemort had been offered redemption. The chance at a mended soul.
Voldemort had not taken it, and he had fallen, the villain of the story. Harry Potter had risen, the savior of the world.
And in a blink after his body had hit the ground, his soul had been shocked into this place. This red, red place. The color of his eyes, in that body he'd had. The color of the blood he'd taken from Harry Potter to get it.
And his soul had been stitched together, loose and haphazard, at risk of fraying with any wrong movement.
It stings, itches, a scratching at his chest, but it is there. It is a rough, patch-work thing, but upon arriving here, his soul had flew to him and settled within him, fighting for the space of a complete body after so long without.
Even now, they are unsure of how to become whole.
And Voldemort, despite his discomfort, despite these confused parts of himself, despite this itching in his chest that could someday be called yearning––despite that he has already done so for so long... Waits.
And one day, he thinks, as he stares at the empty, crimson-bathed tracks in front of him...
One day, he will know what he is waiting for.
...Even if, somehow, he is already distantly certain that is a who.
When Harry Potter finally stands, his legs stiff, his back aching, his whole body so, so tired of it all...
He thinks one thing.
Perhaps, in another time…
Perhaps this man would have known love.
Perhaps this man would have known peace.
Harry bows his head, and he thinks, perhaps…
Perhaps now I will know peace.
As Voldemort waits on his bench, he thinks he hears the echo of a word.
Perhaps, a voice says. Perhaps... Love. Perhaps, peace.
And Voldemort, stubborn, ambitious, powerful, and yet always so, so afraid...
Smiles.
Love, he thinks. Perhaps, peace.
And Time, ever fickle, ever unmerciful, and yet always the romantic… Listens.
When they see this boy––so good, so pure, so kind, Death's very own chosen––kneeling, sorrowful, at the foot of his enemy (who had taken all that he could from this boy and was still taking––), and hears the echoing refrain of hope and love from a man with a fear of Death so heavy, with a darkness so deep in his heart it looks like ink...
They know they can make an exception. They can be made to bend, just this once.
And timelines, Time's very own veins, grow.