Disclaimer: Did ya cross ya fingers when you told me you'd be true?
A/N: Blimey, has it been nigh on three months between updates? I think it has. Fear not, I'll see this story through. My absence is best explained by general apathy, drunken bouts of scotch-fuelled rage, and a crippled flamingo. There was also a semester from hell in there, too. Here is a badass chapter, 5,000 words, to make up for it. Read and review, ladies.
Harry Potter and the Heartlands of Time
Chapter Four – Time's Saint
Jimmy died today. He blew his brains out into the bay.
~Green Day, Homecoming
"He asked for you, Harry Potter."
I reached out and snatched the tiny golden snitch from the air. A small amusement to pass the long hours in St. Mungo's terrible waiting room. I was surrounded by the good and the damned. Wizards and witches from across a hundred years of the old man's life.
Outside, a thousand more kept a silent vigil for the man who had steered the world from darkness to light and back again so many times across his long, brief life. Of all those people, all those of wealth and influence, he had asked for me.
My steps echoed loudly in the corridor as I made my way into the private room on the top floor of the hospital, and regarded Albus Dumbledore upon his deathbed.
For a long moment that stretched into a long minute we simply stared at one another from across the expanse of the room. It was an opulent space, more akin to a hotel suite than a hospital room. A terrible place to die, I thought, and meant it.
He breached the silence. "I am sorry to leave things so unfinished, my boy."
The words were painful to hear – and, I suspect, even more painful to say.
"The war needs Albus Dumbledore," I said, because it was right.
"Do not be silly." Dumbledore chuckled. A thin line of blood trickled from his nose and stained his silver moustache a final shade of crimson. "The war has Harry Potter."
"And that's why the world needs Albus Dumbledore."
"War is a young man's game, Harry." He sighed. "You, at least, look the part—"
"But I'm well and truly time-fucked, sir."
He managed to chuckle. "—and sound the part."
A sigh of frustration escaped me. Why could I never save this one? Just this one? Let the world burn, if it must, but allow me Albus Dumbledore a few more years… Goddamn you, Tom Riddle. But then that wasn't fair, was it. Even against Voldemort. After all this time, all these lives, didn't some of the blame fall my way? Yes and yes.
"You have done a brave thing with your life, Harry." Dumbledore began to weep. He looked old. He was old. But without his half-moon spectacles that age, even on his deathbed, made him feeble.
Which was, perhaps, the most awful thing I have ever seen.
"Time will decide that, I reckon."
From within my coat I made a bottle of old scotch appear as if by magic. It was an odd bottle, shaped of a foreign, alien glass in another world a very long time ago. Two crystal water glasses rested on the bedside table. I vanished the water.
"That looks intriguing," Dumbledore said, and even now, as Voldemort's curse addled his brain and liquefied his organs, a flare of curiosity blazed deep within the old man's eyes.
"Scotch from Atlantis." I handed him a glass and made a dismissive gesture. "Made with rose petals and starlight, of all things. Fairly potent stuff."
Dumbledore took a tentative sip and an expression of sheer joy masked the pain on his face, if only for a moment. "A good year, I take it?"
I shrugged. "Well, technically it's ten-thousand years old, as far as these things go… but yes, it has kept rather well. Savour it, old man."
We sat in silence for long minutes. Minutes of little meaning. Dumbledore was soon to die, as he always did, and yet time seemed to have died first. His breathing went from ragged, to desperate, to almost peaceful…
"I am going to miss you, Harry Potter," he said, with a sense of finality that was unmistakable.
I took Dumbledore's withered hand between my own. "I'll see you soon, Professor."
As white-hot fire flooded my humble little hotel suite, I blinked and surrounded myself with dark and powerful magics. Because when it comes to dark and powerful magics, I'm just that fucking cool.
The flames were like a river of molten heat, blasting apart the reinforced windows and tearing the room apart. There were demons in the flame. Fiery constructs of old Atlantean enemies.
Fiendfyre, I thought, as the bed was incinerated beneath me. How quaint.
Fiendfyre was mortal magic. Which meant wizards. Which meant I'd been disturbed from my sleep by a minor inconvenience. And I'm grouchy when I don't get my sleep… which was kind of always.
Encased in cool air, inside a bubble of shielded intent, the fire swallowed me whole. The lecherous demons of flame and shadow pounded and screeched against the outer shell of my shield to no avail. It was impenetrable, forged a thousand years ago, and refined across my many lives.
I could see nothing but flame. The entire world could have been ablaze.
Through that fire and heat strode the Dark Lord Voldemort.
"We meet again, Harry Potter," he said, like a rather ominous twat.
Minor inconvenience, I thought.I hovered in the fire, aware that my scar was burning hotter than any fiendish constructs of old Atlantis. He had found me, as he always did. There was no place in this or any world we could hide from one another. Not now and not ever. Blood, soul and time magic fused us together beyond mere realities of life or death.
"What up, Tom?"
"I've come for Atlantis, Harry." His crimson eyes almost looked alive in the reflected light of the fiendfyre. "You will release the city to me."
"You and I both know that I won't. Can't you bring it down yourself?" I grinned. "Or have I been too clever for the great and powerful Lord Voldemort?"
The Dark Lord brandished his wand. A thick, dark oily fog whispered from the tip and down the length of the wood. "The city was destroyed. You destroyed it."
"Yes. Is there a question there?"
"How can it still exist?"
I shrugged. It was oddly calming in the heart of the explosion. I did my best work surrounded by destruction. "Time," I said, as if it explained everything. I took a seat on nothing but air, composed and at ease.
"Time," Voldemort whispered. "There is an element of time magic in your shield around the city?"
"There sure is. You can't bring it down without snapping the city in half, which is why I assume you've graced me with your presence this evening."
"Stop fighting me, Harry. You have no idea what I will do to you before the end—"
I snorted. "Oh let me guess, Tom. Just let me fucking guess. Does it involve the cruciatus curse, perhaps? Pain so blinding it eclipses all reason? Bellatrix did her best in Atlantis and she couldn't break me. Or perhaps you have something old school lined up? Pull my teeth out one by one, hmm? My fingernails? Cut large chunks of my skin away and pour acid into the wounds?" I laughed. Memories of other times flashed across my mind. "Because the best you have has never broken me. Never. Oh it could kill me, sure, but break me? Not in this or any life, Lord fucking Voldemort."
And there was ire to my words that could not be simple boasting or bravado. A subtle, deadly calm that spoke louder and did more damage than curses in the night.
I whispered my last, grinning like a madman and spinning my wand in slow circles… "You could transfigure my dick into a nail and hammer it into the wall before I break."
The creatures in the fire roared and slammed their fierce weight against the shell of my shield. They fractured and shattered, spilling back into pure flame as red as heart's blood. A reflection of Voldemort's own anger.
"Does the power not enrage you, Harry? The thirst to own it?" he asked into the silence. He spoke, of course, of the understanding we had both stolen from the Infernal Clock. The knowledge of the old world – of fabled, lost Atlantis…
"Don't give a shit, really," I said. A dark and terrible thought occurred to me. Could I show this monster the lives of another monster? Should I gift the Dark Lord with a thousand years of misery? Why not… why the fuck not?
I offered Voldemort my mythril hand; it passed through the shield easily. "Here's why. Shake the hand that shook the world, you snake-faced son of a bitch."
This isn't the end.
I promise I'll try again.
Blinding pain rippled through my scar, but I was used to that. After so long, it would feel wrong not to have the pain. My mythril construct closed around his pale, cold hand…
…and we took a trip down memory fuckin' lane.
Deep within the madness and chaos there is always a kernel of truth. A light that never goes out, if we're being hopeful – and I wasn't past trying to be.
The fiery hotel room faded as a wave of magic, of crystalline light spiralled around the pair of us. And we were whisked away.
Into thought.
Into memory.
Into Time.
"Our whole lives," I said, "we keep nothing but thoughts and memories. And if you don't get the reference, Tom, then I'm not going to explain it."
"What is this?"
I shook my head. "Call it transcendence – or ascension. Can you feel the memories? The lives of long ago?"
The bitter taste of copper on the air – a mouth full of pennies, a heart full of vengeance…
"We are enemies, you and I." And I showed the Dark Lord for just how long that had held true. "True enemies."
Between us, images of past lives flickered by so fast that it was just a blur of colour and pure time. Sparks shot from my mind, prisms of light from beyond reality.
"You are an old man, Harry." The Dark Lord laughed. "An old man who knows how to die."
I grinned. "That's what you're taking away from this? My death count?" Absurd, and yet I wasn't surprised. "What about the sky on fire? The cities crumbling under the weight of our endless warring? The sheer bloody end of the world?"
Only moments were passing in the maelstrom of magic around us, within the heat and the flame of my burning hotel suite, but years were flashing through my mind and into Voldemort's.
I gave him the highlights. Wars and battles against men and things less than men. Demons, Hellspawn and all the old, ancient evils I awoke from deep within the earth searching first for Atlantis, and then for the Twilit Diamond.
The blooper reel, really.
A thousand years condensed into thought and memory… I gave him nothing of Fleur, of Tonks or of Tessa. My friends were a source of great strength, but there is always weakness in such great strength. Best avoided.
"Fire is necessary to cleanse the world, Harry. The empire I could build from the ashes would last forever."
"Spoken like a true madman, Tom. Just stop and look – see." I showed him the planet scorched, oceans boiling… magic, our magic, become chaos. "This isn't a revolution, or a power grab. This is extinction. The end of the world. I know you probably don't remember much of your humanity, lost as it is in green curse light, but this war will make you emperor of nothing."
"Only if you stand against me, Harry. Cry off, and let me seize power uncontested."
"You really think you can make me that offer? Me?" I snarled, baring my teeth – a low, guttural animal sound. "I'd let the world burn another thousand thousand times before letting you have anything you desire."
"Always the fool—"
"Yes! Yes that's right! I am a fool – a powerful, time-travelling fool – and I've spent a millennium trying to topple you. This time will count for all. So you need to cry off, Tom. You need to flee. Do not test me on this."
"And what is different this time, Harry? How will you win, when time itself has shown you can do nothing but fall?"
From within the flames, and through the shield of energy and magic, floated a sphere of transparent blue light. Within the sphere was a seared and slightly tussled hat. My captain's hat. I guided it through the flame and into my shield bubble. The only thing I'd managed to save from the inferno. It settled onto my head and I released the Dark Lord's hand.
The memories-made-real faded as if they had never been – and, as far as most of reality was concerned, they honestly had never been.
"You know the truth of me now, Lord Voldemort." I spat the last, a curse and a bitter taste in my mouth. An enmity of ages. "I will tear down anything you try to build. I will kill anyone who follows you. Every step, every plan, I have seen it all before. You just got a glimpse of what I know. There is nothing you can do that I cannot anticipate."
"And yet, you die at my wand."
"Not again. This is the last reset, the last wasteland. I remember everything." Oh but there was so much I wish I didn't. "This time I will win."
Voldemort laughed. "I will enjoy watching you die… for the last time."
"Bring it, bitch."
There was a tremendous rush of flame – the fiendfyre reached a burning crescendo – and the top four floors of the hotel exploded in a storm of liquefied metal, stone and glass.
Both the Dark Lord Voldemort and I disappeared, leaving New York City far behind.
You have to be better than that, Harry.
I reappeared some eighteen thousand kilometres away on the coast of Western Australia.
Smoke rose in thin curls from my crumpled suit. The heat had bled through the shield in my suite and singed the fine fabric. I took a deep breath of cool ocean air.
It was bright and light under the midday sun in this part of the world. The sand beneath my shoes squeaked as I headed up a familiar beach path toward the shops along the coast. Cottesloe, I thought. That's where I am. I had apparated, subconsciously, away from the flames, toward Tessa. Away from Voldemort… and away from Fleur.
That made me sigh. The streets were busy, for a lazy weekday afternoon, and the sky overcast yet warm.
I had met Tessa so many lives ago just along this coast. Up the road at her bookshop.
Tessa worked as a barista at the bookshop. She could brew a shot of espresso to near-perfection, complete with a dark reddish-brown crema in under twenty-five seconds. How to describe Tessa fairly? Or at all? Near-perfection comes pretty close, actually. To me, there was nothing near about it.
"You're having a cookie with this," she told me the first time we spoke, slipping me a shot of burnished gold across the counter. It was near-midnight, and I was suffering a helluva lot of pain from my scar. Pain where every minute is an hour and every hour a blinding headache. "You look like you need a cookie."
There was nothing but kindness in her eyes. No demonic soul or magical malady affecting her beauty. Nothing biting her neck and feasting upon her life force. That alone was worth a tired smile, but an unexpected cookie drew an honest laugh from me.
"Are they good cookies?" asked Harry James Potter, thousand-year-old Wizard, Time Warrior, and Last High Lord and King of Atlantis.
"Of course," Tessa said, utterly serious as she removed a gooey chocolate chip treat from the microwave and slid it across the counter. She winked. "There's even a magic wish inside this one."
"A wish?" I raised a sceptical eyebrow at the baked good. The aroma of the cookie was warm and delicious. "Bit late for wishes, isn't it?"
Tessa Quinlan had smiled at me and said, "Not at all. Four minutes to midnight is the only time of the day wishes can come true. Take a bite..." her eyes flickered to mine and promised everything, "...and see for yourself."
I did just that, thinking of her smile.
My wish did come true.
God save me, but she would not have died so many times if it hadn't.
And now here I was again – bruised, battered, beaten – walking down the same street in the same town in the same old way… toward that same girl. Did I really hate her that much? Best to stay away, wasn't it?
All the old mistakes in brand new ways. Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for Harry 'Déjà vu' Potter – it's only taken him a thousand lives and an ocean of churning blood to see the light. No, I did not believe that. Could not believe that.
But what would Tessa think of me now? As dishevelled and burnt as I was, with naught to my name but an awesome captain's hat?
I stopped in the middle of the street and laughed.
Screamed.
Hanging on every single word and every single moment here… The last tendrils of New York smoke drifted from the shoulder pads of my suit and disappeared into the bright, innocent, Australian air.
Jesus Christ.
"You have accused me of practicing Dark magic. You have accused me of murder, of treason and war against this Ministry. I accuse you of being woefully ignorant. You know nothing of my crimes – nothing! I am guilty of all your accusations and much, much worse."
A whole world of trouble.
Yes, I suppose it was.
Was it a mistake to gift Voldemort with the truth of me? The sordid, sexy truth of my thousand-year existence? Oh probably.
But something had to give.
Something had to change, and in my favour.
I could not rely on his overconfidence in this matter… but his ego? Again, probably. After fighting so hard and for so long, something had to change. More than it already had. After all, I was slated to lose this fight – as I had always done – and with my body so time-fucked and the Infernal Clock severed at the roots…
There was no going back.
Onwards because onwards. One life to live.
Yeehaw...
I had left Tessa well and truly alone and apparated back across the face of the world – to France. It was night when I arrived in the wild lavender fields of Provence, and I spent the warm evening under the stars, waiting for dawn.
Dawn broke, as it always did, and thin, strong beams of sunlight pierced the eastern horizon, casting the purple fields into stark, ethereal contrast. I had not slept for one minute, but there was an almost-peace here. An almost-forgetfulness that was to be savoured.
Tick-tick.
I wanted to go and see Fleur.
Tick-tick.
Carcassonne, her hometown, lay not five miles to the west along the Canal du Midi. Her family manor only a mile or two beyond that. I could get breakfast, a new suit, and see the mother of my child.
A slow, careful smile—Tick-tick—what the hell was tick-ticking?
I reached into my jacket and removed the old broken pocket watch that Father Time had given me in the Fae and Forget beneath Atlantis.
"You don't understand," Time said. "But you will. The gods of old were never born, they were forged – through time and through circumstance, they were forged from the remnants of the past. Once you remember all you have forgotten…" He reached into his robes and removed a tarnished little item. "This is for you."
It had stopped working at four minutes to midnight, cracked and the face shattered. Time had said I would die when that happened. Instead I had lived, and Atlantis, a city I had well and truly annihilated, came spinning through the void – alive and well – on top of Blackpool.
Now it was tick-ticking again. The hands were moving. Backwards.
What the hell could that possibly mean?
The morning air was cool, heady with lavender, and broken by my short, mirthless chuckle. I started, only just realising I had been laughing the entire time. Merlin save me, but I was wrecked… in the head.
I dug a little trench in the dirt beneath the lavender and buried the broken-yet-not clock. No reason to keep it – none at all. This was the last hand, and the cards had been dealt. I was no longer on Time's watch.
And that sounded cool, but I was more than a little afraid. I took a deep breath and apparated to the outskirts of Carcassonne, to breakfast, and soon to Fleur. There was no sense dwelling on the past, after all.
Someone should stop me.
I found Fleur as I always did – basking in the sun on a picnic blanket in her back garden. There was a touch of fate about that, I was sure, but not a fate I wanted to fight. Beautiful, sweet Fleur Delacour resplendent in the afternoon sun.
"I missed you, so here I am," I said, sitting down on the edge of the blanket.
Fleur had not been surprised at my arrival. She closed the book she had been reading and glanced over her shoulder, back at the manor house.
"My father is home, 'Arry. He would not be glad to see you."
"No, I expect not." I was still wanted for murder. "Does your family know…?"
"About our baby? Non. I 'ave told no one, save you."
I nodded. "For the best – for now."
Fleur fell silent. She stretched one of her thin, perfect legs out from underneath her and stroked my knee with her foot. Her toenails were painted an amazingly bright red. I could have stayed like that for hours, watched the sun go down with a woman I loved. She should hate me. I hated me.
But it was not meant to be.
A marvellous golden phoenix appeared in a sphere of flame and alighted upon my shoulder. "Hello, Fawkes."
The bird cried once – short and sharp – a note of urgent desperation in his tone. I frowned and accepted the note clutched between his talons. It was from Dumbledore, of course.
Harry,
You must attend Hogwarts at once. Hagrid's cabin.
-AD
"From Albus Dumbledore," I said. "I guess I have to go, Fleur. That was short and sweet. Not even five minutes."
"Where are you going?"
"To Hogwarts."
Fleur hesitated only briefly. "Take me with you."
"Not a chance. You are safe here – as safe as I can make you."
"We need to talk, 'Arry, and I will not 'ave you disappearing to war or worse until we 'ave done so." Her accent was thick and strong – she was becoming angry.
I grinned. "Of course. Hogwarts is just as safe, I suppose. May I take your hand?"
Fleur nodded. We disapparated north, to Scotland – to Hoggy-woggy-Hogwarts – and whatever urgent matter had Dumbledore worried.
We reappeared outside of Hagrid's cabin in his absurd yet endearing vegetable patch. The rickety fence encased a pumpkin the size of a minivan. It was bright and sunny—
No, no it wasn't. But it should have been.
The world was cloaked in a thick, stagnant fog. I could just make out Hagrid's cabin away to our left. The sun was a pale ball high overhead, unable to penetrate the cold, false air. Something… was amiss.
On the threshold of Hagrid's cabin stood Albus Dumbledore, his hands clasped before him – good one over the bad. He looked old. Alive, but old. His eyes were sparkling with tears.
It was quiet. Too quiet.
"Headmaster," I said, closing the brief distance between the enormous pumpkin and the cabin. "You know Fleur Delacour."
"How lovely to see you again, my dear." Dumbledore doffed his wizard's cap. "I only wish it were under kinder circumstances."
"Professor Dumbledore." Fleur curtsied. "I hope you are well."
"Yes, your letter seemed urgent." I shrugged my jacket closer around my shoulders. The fog was cold. "Is Hagrid okay? There's something off about this fog."
"Hagrid is in the forest... seeing just how far the damage has reached."
"Damage?"
Dumbledore clasped his curse-free hand on my shoulder. "You died, Harry," he said. "You have died so many times."
Now I was feeling somewhat uncomfortable. I shrugged his hand away. "Not this time. Not yet. Fleur knows everything, by the way." How I wish she didn't. "Everything. Now what is this about?"
"There is something… troubling… in the fog," the Headmaster said.
I drew my wand. "Dangerous, demonic, or Dark Lord?"
"You best see for yourself."
"Okey… dokey."
Dumbledore sighed a terrible sigh – the kind of sound only the dying can make – and stepped down out of Hagrid's cabin and set off across the grounds towards the lake. The fog closed in around him on all sides.
Fleur slipped her hand into mine and squeezed. She was frightened. I was angry.
The mist swirled and rose from the ground in thick tendrils, as if it were alive, blocking out the sun and casting a dull shroud across the world. All was silent. Too silent. The air was chilled, painful to breathe.
"'Arry…"
"I know, sweetheart. Stay close."
We followed Dumbledore. He hadn't gone far, not even thirty feet. He stood, shoulders slumped, staring down at the dirt. There was something at his feet. Obscured by fog, a ragged shape was splayed out before him. I knew what it was even before Dumbledore cleared away some of the fog with his wand and revealed the truth.
It was a corpse.
Fleur gasped as we drew level with Dumbledore. Her grip on my hand tightened until it was painful, and then fell slack.
"'Arry," she said. "My god—?"
"Huh," I said, kneeling down on my haunches to inspect the body. I was more surprised than anything. The face was coated in blood, the eyes long dead. It was a young man. His chest had been torn open – from the inside – as if his heart had exploded.
"There is more," Dumbledore said. His voice broke a dread silence that had settled in the air.
Bracing ourselves now, Fleur and I followed Dumbledore on towards the lake. The terrain slumped and then crested into a small hill that I knew overlooked the area quite spectacularly. If not for the fog, we'd have a panoramic view of the entire castle and her grounds.
There were three, four, five more bodies scattered across the dew-soaked grass as we climbed the hill. All of them miserably, painfully dead – horrific grimaces marred what remained of their faces.
"How many?" I asked Dumbledore as we reached the top of the hill. The fog seemed thickest here, hiding all but the nearest few feet. We could have been on an island in the middle of nowhere. "Where did they come from?"
"I…" Dumbledore shook his head. "I do not know. The fog rolled in this morning, and then… Is this Voldemort's doing, Harry?"
"Doesn't quite feel like his style, no." Chronos, perhaps? That didn't feel right either. "Right then. Let's get a better look, shall we." I raised my wand and tapped my real hand, muttering minor incantations and concentrating on the magic. A golden aura of sparkly weather-magic encased my fist. "That'll do."
I waved my hand back and forth through the air slowly, as if through water, and the fog began to clear across the wide expanse of the castle grounds.
Slowly but surely the mist dissipated. The warm sun, carrying the first light of summer, blazed magnificently through the murkiness. It lit the world in all its terrible splendour.
It lit the truth, and even I wished it hadn't.
There were thousands – tens of thousands – of corpses littering the grounds of Hogwarts.
Strewn along the shoreline, bobbing in an unbroken mass across the surface of the lake itself. Piled haphazardly and carpeting the open grassed areas, as well as the driveway leading up to the Entrance Hall. Slumped up against the walls of the castle, broken and bleeding. Disappearing away into the forbidden forest…
A massacre? No.
All of these bodies – burnt, decaying, drowned, shot, stabbed, disembowelled and so many other memorable deaths – were long dead.
I knew each and every one of them. Fleur's hands flew to her mouth to stifle a terrible, pain-filled moan. She fell to her knees as I began to laugh.
"'Arry…" Fleur whispered, sobbing. "No. Please…"
"Yes," I said, stifling my chuckles. God, I couldn't even fake sanity anymore. "Oh yes, sweetheart."
I had lived a thousand years. Across that time I had died ten thousand deaths. Here was the price of that.
I knew each and every one of these corpses because each and every one of them belonged to me.
From the jet-black hair to the lifeless emerald-green eyes, Harry Potter lay dead and defeated against the majestic, picturesque grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
A/N: Well that was morbid…ly awesome. Where to from here, hmm? Had to get Harry back to Hogwarts somehow. Heh. Certainly entertaining, yes? Throw your theories, questions, and concerns at me in a review! Already working on the next chapter, so there's that.
Joe's Fic Recommendation: Hmm… Go and read Renegade Cause, by Silens Cursor – it's a well-written Harry-turned-badass story. Where I make most of this stuff up as I go along and distract you quite often with epic action and loud noises, Silens actually puts some thought and intrigue into his story – yeah, I know, weird. Go read and review it.
Bow-chicka-bow-wow,
Joe the Loyal and Enormous.
