Life 58: Strange Tidings

I had fallen asleep with Kate, and awoke on the shores of disaster.

Just as before, in my first vision of this life, I saw the Arcadia Bay, and its lighthouse, as my eyesight spiraled in the vortex of wind crashing around me.

I stood in the storm once more, and this time… I felt the wind, I smelt the fires of Arcadia Bay, and I felt the blood pouring from my mouth as I struggled to keep standing.

"How… how could this have happened…?" I knew that my actions would have consequences, Death had said as much with my ritual's end… but for the storm to rise just as before?

How had I not averted the storm in some way?

If every choice had an effect, did I damn this world?

Regardless of my morals, I saw the tornado of devastation once more, the shore of the town being torn apart under its ferocious power.

I closed my eyes and hoped…. Because I couldn't be here yet… I had hours left, I knew I did…

The spell had to have done something…

And I heard a voice then, the storm blowing through my bones, a voice that I hadn't heard in a very long time…

"Harry, we can't stop here."

(Friday, October 11th, 2013)

I woke up, Kate's hair loose around us as I slowly climbed to my feet, leaving Kate sleeping away as I grabbed my shoes off the floor.

I turned to her lovely face as I pulled myself together, my eyes drifting to the window of my room, the red haze meeting my gaze.

It was midday already… I shouldn't have fallen asleep, but I had wanted to spend a bit more time with her… Selfish I may be, but I didn't want to go so swiftly.

After fifty seven deaths, and who remembers how much strife and anguish, I wanted to savor this one…

I took a breath then, and pulled some stationary from my desk, and began to write a letter, one more heartfelt than any I had ever written.

After what felt like an eternity, I finished writing, and signed the letter before enclosing it in a golden envelope, the film of the paper shimmering in the light.

Grabbing a quill that I had found in my short travels with Albus, I wrote five simple words on the envelope, and left it atop of Kate's bag.

I had written all I could, and made this all so clear, my thoughts more aligned than ever before.

I felt a calm in my heart that I had never known, and smiled at the girl that had taken this life of mine and turned it into something I hadn't expected.

Worth it.

I left my goodbye to her there, the black ink on the envelope drying in the humid air of the room.

I Open at the Close.

Albus Dumbledore sat alone in compilation, the warm diner around him leaving him with assurance to his decision.

This town held so many people, all with hopes and dreams and so much love in their hearts.

For their family, for their friends, and for this town itself.

"How quaint." Albus said with a chuckle, as he considered all he had done in this life, and what he was truly prepared to give up…

He knew that Harry, the greatest friend he had never known in this life, but had in another, was prepared.

Albus liked to consider himself a righteous man, yet still a piece of him remained behind, questioning whether there was more for him than sacrifice.

He wouldn't leave Harry to sacrifice themselves, not as the other Dumbledore had… but he knew that their actions that night would define or destroy this world…

And he knew they wouldn't stand a chance against the literal entity of Death…

So, he called in a favor, of which many were owed to him…

He asked his old ally Fillius to find a man for him, one incredible and yet unknown to this world… a man that had lived a life much different from that Harry had known of him.

And Fillius had sent him here, to meet the man that had eluded most of Europe.

A man almost as interesting as Albus himself.

The old wizard turned his head then, as he heard the jingle of the diner's doors open, and a slender man with short, groomed black hair walked into the diner.

He wore fine clothing, that which only money and prestige could grant you, yet a troubled look crossed his face.

The man had to be almost ninety years old by now, yet he looked only slightly middle aged, not a single gray in his hair.

Dark and unremarkable brown eyes looked out onto the world, only to lock eyes with Albus himself.

The two nodded at one another, before the man walked closer to him, their minds both whirling.

This was the man that Albus hoped could turn their destiny onto a brighter path, and save the world from so much pain and hurt…

"You're Albus the Renegade…" The man spoke in a posh accent, not a single question in his tone, merely a solid observation.

His intellect was what drew Albus to him, along with the stories of Harry's original life… and the difference between that world and this one.

Where as Albus had been a simple professor in Harry's world, and this man a criminal, in this world their roles had been reversed.

How interesting of a situation they found themselves in, relying on a man that Harry had been so opposed against, once upon a time…

"Mr. Riddle, have a seat."

"Please, call me Tom."

Thomas "Tom" Riddle was confused.

He had been led to this backwards, slowly decaying, Fishing Town in Oregon, with the promise of a job opportunity.

Instead, he found Albus the Renegade, the Magical World's most wanted, asking for his help in stopping the apocalypse.

Still more normal than when Hepzibah Smith offered him a job as her personal consort… He didn't want to remember that too much…

Regardless, the Renegade offered him his horde of treasure in return for his help, and Tom knew that it would be worth it… if they all survived that is…

They only had to stop a storm powered by the strength of Death itself…

Tom might have been a bit smug, but he felt they stood a pretty good chance.

Now then, they just had to get Harry to agree…

"No, no, absolutely fucking not!" Harry screamed out, their wand pointed straight as Tom with a snarl on their face.

Tom merely held his arms behind his back. Albus stood at their side, his place not to defend the man.

He knew Harry held much contempt for Tom Riddle, and knew that Harry must vent his hatred before they could proceed.

Even though Voldemort never formed in this world, Tom still wore the face of the man Harry hated, which was enough.

"Might I remind you, I am not the man that took everything from you, as the Renegade already said." Tom pointed out, his wand still tucked away. He knew that they couldn't work together if they killed each other, and he needed that treasure trove.

He still had college loans to pay off…

"That may be true, but I really need to kill something." Harry snarled, their wand glowing a sickly green… only to take a deep breathe.

Albus just smiled, as he knew that they were set.

"Say I let you live, you've agreed to fight the storm with us?" Harry asked, almost sure that he had, considering that Albus even brought him before them.

They were sure that Albus would have killed the man if he disagreed.

"Of course, and might I say, it is quite something to be working with the actual Master of Death." Tom said with something akin to reverence in his voice, only for Harry to groan in anger.

"I keep being called that, but I've never gotten anything for it. Hell, I don't even control him, more of the opposite really…" Harry muttered, his eyes drifting as he ordered some sort of food off the menu. Joyce simply ignored the three cloaked figures in her diner, considering that she had gotten many strange customers in her diner since the week's beginning.

She'd gotten used to weirdos, as long as they paid.

"Yes, I've heard of our mutual enemy… Is it truly Death?" Tom asked them, his curiosity re-emerging as he sipped from the god awful drink the muggle woman had given him, coffee or some such confection.

"Yes, or some dark god masquerading as it. This is my fifty-eighth life, and I'm still not sure really." Harry said with a shrug, as they truly didn't know about their patron's identity.

"Good. I've got a debt to settle."

As one, the three of us split up across the town, enacting measures I had created in the event of armageddon.

Drawing runes across the town, activating natural barriers and refueling the protection Albus and I had cast against the sky, and overall furthering the magical defenses we'd created.

I'm still not confident we were going to survive the night, but at least we wouldn't die with regrets.

I still didn't trust Tom, considering the last time I had seen Tom Riddle, he had killed my friends… but as Albus kept reminding me, this was a Tom Riddle who had never become Voldemort, never killed my parents… because I didn't exist in this world.

There was no Harry Potter in this world, and furthermore, no Potters.

Aside from that existential crisis, I made good time activating the paranoid defenses I had set, and locking the town within a dome construct.

Yes, I was locking everyone in the town inside, but it was the most effective means of protecting the town.

With a magical, and psychical protection on the town, I had almost completely ensured the town would survive… but I wasn't sure if it's people would…

We played this ridiculous game that was basically us flipping on magical light switches, until I froze in place. The sun was setting…

I took a breathe and shot a burst of red sparks into the sky above the town, knowing that they would see it.

It was time to meet, as the time came that we had agreed on…

Time for us to meet our fates…

The sky burned red.

For what seemed to be the millionth time, Albus and I stood on the edge of the bay, but rather than the shore, we stood upon it's cliff.

The lighthouse to our right, we overlooked the bay, in the exact place that my visions had showed me.

The tornado, the damn ominous thing that it was, loomed in the distance… growing ever closer to us, the wind slashing at us as the disaster approached…

As the literal end of days came closer, I checked my watch in what must have been an anticlimactic manner.

7:43

I let out a huff, as for once, I was almost in a hurry to die.

We couldn't do a damn thing to stop anything, if the storm wasn't even here yet.

I looked over us, three old relics of another age, drafted together to prevent the end of this entire world.

Of course, if they were relics, I was an ancient myth…

I might as well have been, considering I was almost inhuman… a force of nature as unnatural as resurrection, being forced into lives so far from where I had come, my spirit prolonging so long after my time…

It was ironic, that I now worked with Tom Riddle, considering I now lived the immortality that he had longed for in my world.

If only he had known what it would entail… perhaps Voldemort would have never existed, in any world…

Would I still be cursed like this, if Voldemort had never killed anyone?

That was a thought for another time, as my attention was brought back to the storm, that which was now blowing the sea breeze onto the land.

"If you have anything left to say my friends, I believe this would be the time." Albus said with a grim smile, his eyes trailing down his spiraled wand, one that I had only seen Albus use in a life akin to my first, long before it…

A wand aside from the damned one of Death's design…

"This isn't the first time I've died with you Albus, but never have I imagined dying with Tom Riddle on my side." I said truthfully, my arms flying backwards to rest my head, my eyes gazing over the dark sky.

While sheer horror had consumed the world, there was a sick beauty to it all.

There always was in my deaths, a perverse enjoyment in the end of my lives, a sense only earned through immortality.

I smiled.

"You two are completely insane." Tom said with a breathe, his eyes closing as the pulsing winds tried to pull us over the cliff-side, our forms resisting Death's grip.

"Not really." I said with a aloof chuckle, only to freeze in my place, a pain splitting my focus in half.

Darkness began to consume my sight, as exhaustion began to fill my mind.

I fell then, my body falling over the cliffside, my mind falling into a void.

I was really getting sick of dying…

"Where… where am I?" I wondered aloud, as the darkness retreated from my sight.

I laid on a stone floor, I knew that much, as I felt a familiar warmth in my chest.

I pulled myself to my feet, ignoring the voice inside my head that said I should be dead, and looked around.

I stood in a void, torn apart buildings and places, all thrown together in an amalgam of places I had known in my lives.

In the distance stood a skyscraper, one so very familiar, but lost from my memory, a castle standing behind it.

So many things I didn't recognize, but I knew the place that I stood now.

I stood on a stone platform that floated in the dark abyss, my feet bare on the harsh stone.

A part of me almost expected to be myself, the green eyed boy that once saved the wizarding world, but looking down revealed myself still to be the hipster of Blackwell Academy.

Looking up, however, told me just where I am was in this strange combination of places I knew.

Candles floated above my head, casting an odd red light down on me, the light so familiar.

"Is this… Hogwarts?" I muttered out, only to be thrown backwards as stones and scattered wood all flew through the darkness to recreate the Great Hall of Hogwarts, just as it looked in my childhood…

This was some weird realm of my memories, that just confirmed it.

Ignoring the thrum of power echoing through this place, and the pain shooting through my joints, I pulled myself up from the floor, my eyes locked on the large doors leading out into Hogwarts proper.

Bracing myself, I pushed through the doors… and stepped onto a filthy city street.

Looking behind myself, the large doors were gone, and now I stood alone in the alleyway, the darkness once more surrounding me.

I brushed my hands clean of imaginary filth, and began to walk through the filth, the sensation of what felt like glass under my feet.

I knew this place… Gotham.

It had to be, but my time there was long gone, so I brushed aside my memories, and approached a large building at the edge of the street.

This place held some relevance to me, but I couldn't remember why…

Taking another breath, I stepped through the front door, and fell forward through what felt like water.

My lungs burned as I felt my body break apart into burning agony, my eyes watering as it all came crashing down.

I'm really getting sick of this.

"Harry! Get back from the edge!" Albus screamed out as he grabbed his young friend, pulling them back from the edge of the cliff.

Harry just collapsed in his arms however, the light completely absent from their eyes.

"Albus, what the hell is going on!" Tom yelled through the wind of the storm, their ears deafened from the harshness of the piercing gales.

Albus didn't have an answer as he dragged Harry's unconscious body from the cliffside, the tornado heading ever closer, the winds almost mocking them as their doom moved to cut them off.

"I have an idea, but I dare not say it…" Albus muttered, his fear settling in as a grim look came across his face.

The unfairness of this all enraged him, as he knew Death had played his hand in this horrible game.

However, Albus had an ace up his sleeve, as it were.

"You can do it Harry, I know you can."

"Would you like to know your purpose?"

I knew that voice… it was a voice that I had heard oh so long ago, and never from the outside…

That was my voice…

I was on my back, my wounded head against the wet floor of a place I remembered not so fondly.

I was in the Chamber of Secrets.

"I asked, would you like to know?" That voice, the voice of the man I used to be, asked me again as I came to focus in the chamber.

In the same place that young Tom Riddle, his diary projection at least, once stood, was Harry James Potter.

There was me, the same as I looked in my second year, my old familiar emerald eyes looking upon me with fiery intensity.

I wonder if I looked like that when I killed the Basilisk…

"How…?" I asked in a whisper, my lungs aching as if I was still under water, the familiar feeling of drowning burning through me, even though I breathed stale air in the chamber.

My impostor merely laughed at me, this cruel and mocking sound that I don't remember ever making, as his eyes looked down upon me from my position on the floor.

I tried to stand, yet my body felt an exhaustion that I had never known.

I tried with all my effort to try and stand, yet I could only manage a weary crouch, my eyes burning with tired determination.

"Simple. I'm what you could be if you simply accepted your role. You haven't considered it, have you?" The other me asked, his feet circling around me as he looked over the sad, pathetic mess I must have been. I was almost sure that my ribs were all broken, judging by the hollow feeling in my chest.

I spit up a putrid glob of blood then, my teeth aching as I struggled to breath.

"You're… you're detachment… You're me if I gave up my emotions… aren't you?" I asked through the pain, my eyes clearing as I recognized the emptiness of his eyes. I knew that look, as I had once wore it on my own face.

I had struggled with nihilism before, but this fraud had let it swallow him up, had let the darkness in.

I growled, my right hand pushing my chest up as I finally managed to pull myself together.

"Impressive… you're almost broken, and yet you're still so philosophical… It says a lot about you, I must say." My doppelganger said to me, clapping his hands in congratulation. I just snarled at him as I pushed him away from me.

He just slapped my shaking hands aside, laughing at my failure to master any strength aside from just standing.

"I must say, your determination is admirable, yet I have seen your heart, and it is mine." He chuckled then, his eyes, the ones that used to belong to me, now burning a bright red.

This impostor was starting to piss me off something fierce…

"There's where you're wrong pal…" I said with a chuckle of my own, Max Caulfield's blue eyes melting away into my original emerald depths, my body straightening as I found some superhuman strength flooding my body.

My impostor stepped back then, a look akin to fear appearing in his eyes.

I smiled.

"You see, you say you know me, but Harry Potter died a very long time ago… and his heart even longer than that." I said with a twisted grin, a light beginning to burn in my chest, the dour chamber filling with an almost holy divinity.

"Impossible… I foresaw-" The shadow of who I could have been spluttered out, his body pressed against the statue of Slytherin, his eyes wide as I punched my hand clean through his chest, ripping free an orb of light not too different from a prophecy orb.

"You can keep your purpose, I know mine already." I said with a grin, feeling stronger than I had in ages.

I knew what laid ahead of me now, and I accepted it.

Harry Potter may be dead, but that didn't matter.

I was here now.

A light appeared before my eyes.

I stood in a world of light, simple wooden planks rested under my feet, a path appearing before me, leading upwards and out.

Taking a breath, I began to walk in this realm I now found myself, having a distinct feeling that I knew where this path would lead.

I saw flashes then, appearing before my eyes in an assault, images of lives lived and worlds lost, the people I knew and those that I killed.

Places, loves, and death all filled my sight as I continued this airward walk, a rising tension forming in my chest as I breathed clearer than I had in years.

It was when there remained no further steps to take, that I took in a familiar sight.

A train station, one I had seen only in my dreams, stood before me.

King's Crossing, but not as it was, but as it had been inside my mind.

This was the Spectral Station, the land between life and death. Limbo, for lack of a better term.

And as I stepped forward, I heard the soft sound of a train pulling closer, a tunnel appearing at the edge of the station, a blinding light resting at the end of it.

I knew why I was here, but I wondered who was here this time…

Walking forward, I saw a bench appear from nothing, the same bench I had sat on once before.

I did as I had before, and sat down, taking a breathe as I did.

"So… who's the next ghost of my past?" I asked aloud, knowing that it couldn't be Dumbledore again, considering I had gotten to know a new Dumbledore, and had long gotten over the loss of my own.

"Now, I wouldn't consider myself a ghost, but you can call me what you like pup." A light heartened voice joked, as a familiar presence sat down beside me.

I didn't even need to look to know who it was, but I didn't believe it.

This had to be a trick… though Death had stated he could affect those that I once knew, but this had to be a trick of some sort.

"Hello Sirius." I said in a dull tone, leaning back on the bench, as I waited for the offer that I knew was coming.

"Hello Harry." My godfather, Sirius Orion Black, or at least a man fitting his appearance, said to me with a smile as he rested against me.

It was then, that I realized I had been reverted back to my original appearance, unruly black hair and all.

If this was Death's best, then he's disappointed me.

"I assume this is the point where you say that I should go with you, finally give up and go to Heaven or someplace similar to be with all of you?" I asked him, a sad smile forming on my face. I knew I wouldn't be released so easily.

Death still had a use for his favorite toy, and that meant he wouldn't give me up.

He just wanted me to stop fighting.

"No, I believe this is the point where I say I'm proud of you and tell you to go and see this mess to the end." Sirius said with a bark of a laugh, his hand coming to rest on my shoulder as I looked to him with surprise.

I… hadn't seen that coming.

"Really?"

"Of course Harry, I love you kiddo, but you still have a lot to do before you get to be lazy with the rest of us." He said warmly, as the white train pulled into the station, its whistle echoing like the bell of a forgotten tower.

I reached for him, only for my hand to phase right through Sirius, like he wasn't even there…

"Well Pup, there's my ride. You be good now, alright?" He asked me with a sincere look, bringing a tear to my eyes.

He smiled then, and stood from the bench, walking towards the train, its door flying open for him.

I expected him to step on, but then he turned back to me, and gave me one last piece of information.

That which would keep me going forever if I had to.

"She's waiting for you."

I awoke a final time, and heard the storm before I saw it.

I opened my eyes to see the ruins of the lighthouse around me, the unconscious and bloodied bodies of Albus and Tom around me, Tom's arms around me.

I knew what happened just from seeing the ruins.

They saved me, and Tom sheltered me from the storm.

I was thankful at least, that they hadn't sacrificed themselves in saving my useless body, just so I could do what I must.

I had gotten spoiled then, in my final vision, as now my body felt the full brunt of what I had gone through.

Just as my vision of the storm had given me, I felt my ribs in their pulverized state, my lungs strain to simply keep me alive, and my heart beat like the battered engine of Chloe's truck.

I was almost dead, but I wasn't quite yet…

Shaking myself free of Tom's protective grasp, I pulled myself to a weakened stance, walking slowly out of the lighthouse, and watching the full destruction of the storm.

The sky burned with the fires of Hell, lightning striking the innocent Earth and burning the plant life in an unbiased manner, while the primary enforcer of Death's will continued its rampage.

The tornado now glowed with a Dark energy, the darkness of Death, and now flowed freely over the beach, its power trying to pull me from the ground and into the air.

I stood strong against the storm, and limped down the hill, coming to stand mere feet away from the tornado, and simply looked up to the sky.

"I know." I said in a whisper, my anger and rage disappearing like a drop of blood in the ocean, and watched in awe as the tornado stopped in its tracks.

The storm paused, as I knew Death was listening.

And I spoke.

"You wanted to teach me… that I can't control everything… This storm… it was going to happen anyway, with or without me, right?" I asked the darkness, blood beginning to fill me mouth as I felt my shattered ribs cut into my lungs.

I was dying, no matter what I did here.

So, I did the right thing.

"I… I tried to change things… to forge my own destiny in this world… but there isn't room for me here… is there?" I questioned Death, watching as the red began to fade from the skies, a dull grey replacing it as the tides began to calm.

I knew what was happening, and I accepted it.

"This… this was a lesson… wasn't it? This wasn't my life to live… was it? You put me here… to learn that I'm mortal… no matter my curse… right?" I muttered, my sight blurring as I fell to my knees, the metallic taste of my own blood sickening me, but I kept going despite it all.

I wondered to myself, what this all would have been like, if I hadn't replaced Max… if she had lived her life as she chose to… Would she have succeeded where I failed, or would she have failed where I didn't?

Would there still have been a storm?

I would never know, so I focused on my own struggle, that to understand.

"You're… trying to show me… that I should be humble… and wise… I understand…" I gurgled out, trying to breath as my senses began to leave me.

I marveled as the storm began to dissipate, the moon beginning to shine behind the fearsome clouds, a cool light falling upon me.

It was a beautiful sight, but not the one I most wanted.

What remained of the tornado quaked then, reminding me of where I knelt, and I took another deep breath, as I began what would be the end of this life.

I tried to stand once more, only to fall onto my side, the harsh ground meeting my face, as I saw him there…

Death stood before me, his skeletal face shaped in a look of sympathy, his shadowy robes flowing in the breeze, the storm standing behind him as a echo of his power.

I struggled to keep my eyes open, as I made a single request, one for this world.

For Albus.

For Kate.

Hell, even for Tom.

They didn't deserve to go down with me…

"Leave… them."

And to my happiness, he did… and then I felt it. The pull, the tether… pulling me from this world, and onto the next.

Despite the uselessness of my efforts, the hope to live in peace… the desire for more… I accepted this, and let go of all my ties.

Hopefully… they'd let me go as well.