Disclaimer: There's a drought at the fountain of youth…
A/N: Two chapters inside a month? I'm too good to you. This chappie has some good stuff, some poignant and important stuff, and serves as a segway into much more important stuff – and some long overdure 'splainin in chapters yet to be.
Read and review!
Harry Potter and the Heartlands of Time
Chapter Five – Home
"I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road."
~ Stephen Hawking
Well. This was new.
I felt a touch embarrassed looking out over the grounds at my army of defeated corpses. It certainly put things in a stark, brutal perspective.
I had spent a thousand years failing.
The evidence of that lay rotting in the sun before me.
"Have we missed lunch up at the castle?" I asked into the silence. "I'm dead certain it's apple pie day. Heh. See what I did there?"
Dumbledore and Fleur failed to see the humour.
"Come on, people, it's not as if anyone's died." Well, not really.
"Harry, this is terrible. Do you not see what I see?"
I grinned and clapped Dumbledore on the shoulder. "Of corpse, I do. Ha."
"Stop it," Fleur whispered. I stopped.
"Please, Harry. Who could have done this?"
There were a few likely candidates, and yet I got the feeling Voldemort and Chronos may be innocent of this atrocity. Saturnia? Her agenda was cloaked in so many layers that it was hard to gauge just which side she was on—if any save her own. I felt a twitch under my arm where she had stabbed me some weeks ago.
I had to shake my head. "I want to say Voldemort, especially since he knows about my time-travelling antics now, but there's a piece of the puzzle missing. I can feel it."
"Probably nothing of grave importance," Chronos said, stepping up behind us on the crest of our hill by the lake. He was weeping, gazing out at the field of dead Harry Potters with something akin to misery, even loss, in his eyes.
Dumbledore took a step back, his grip tightening around the Elder Wand.
"Why am I not surprised to see you, hmm? Allow me to introduce Chronos, Professor," I said. "He's… well, not a friend. Sometimes an enemy."
Chronos turned to Dumbledore and offered the old man his hand. "Albus Dumbledore. I have heard nothing but good things."
"A pleasure, my boy," Dumbledore said, ever the optimist. "May I ask just what you are?"
Chronos sniffed and wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his fine suit. "No, no you may not."
"You are not human." It wasn't a question. Dumbledore's eyes sparkled but they were cold… careful. He was not a man to take lightly, whether you were a thousand years old, an immortal time god, or somewhere in between.
Chronos shrugged. "I used to be, a long time ago. Right, Harry?"
"I've no idea."
"Oh… well you'll figure it out eventually." He sighed. "Miss Delacour, you look radiant."
Fleur looked ill. All the colour had drained from her cheeks. She swallowed once. Twice. "Stop making light of zis, 'Arry. Please." She looked so sad. Her gaze swept the horrific grounds once more. "Is eet real?"
Now I was no judge of emotion. Especially when it came to woman. But I got the feeling Fleur was more than a touch distressed. I put my arm around her shoulders, rested my real hand on the slight bulge of her belly, and held her close. She let herself be held.
"It was real," I said. "Long ago and once upon a time. Those bodies, all of them, died in timelines that don't exist. Not anymore." I whispered the last. "Hey, come on, you know it. You've seen it. This timeline, this world, is all that's real now. I'm here and I'm okay."
"But you had to die for it to be real," Chronos said, not helping. "All of those bodies… lived and died as Harry James Potter, yes, yes. You remember each death."
I frowned, directing my considerable ire toward the demigod. "Have you come to claim responsibility? If not, then perhaps you should leave."
"No, I did not do this. But I have a theory, if you'd like to hear it."
"I'm taking Fleur home—"
"I would like to hear it," Dumbledore said gently.
Chronos inclined his head. "As you wish, Headmaster. This is Harry's last roll of the dice, yes, yes. His last chance to defeat the dastardly Dark Lord Voldemort and save the day. Time… Time may have caught up with him, after so many years and so many lives nipping at his heels."
"I am not sure I understand." Dumbledore looked thoughtful. "You are suggesting these bodies were following Harry through his unfortunate time loop?"
"No. Yes." Chronos chuckled. "I'm not sure you are capable of understanding it, sir. You fail to see time as Harry and I do… even Miss Delacour may suffer to grasp it, and she was submerged in what Harry aptly calls the Wastelands of Time."
"Do try and explain it anyway."
"These bodies are the only remnants of all those lives Harry fought and died in. His deal with the devil, forged in the lost Infernal Clock, demanded the clock reset eight years upon the very instant of his death – forcing his soul across time and reality into his younger self." Chronos waved his hand across the expanse of the lake, across the thousands of bobbing, bloated corpses floating on its surface. "But what of those other lives, in that very last instant before Harry's reset came into effect…?"
"You are suggesting that echoes of Harry's past lives have followed him across time, across the thousand or so years he has been doing this, and arrived here? Today?" Dumbledore frowned. "Because this is, as you say, his last roll of the dice?"
Chronos kicked a clod of grass down the hill. "No. And yes. Just a theory." He shrugged.
"Then I've no one to blame but myself," I said. "Tens of thousands of my decimated corpses come spinning out of the void… why here? Why Hogwarts?"
A desperate sob escaped Fleur. She leaned in and kissed me on the corner of my mouth. "Oh, 'Arry. Sweet, sweet, 'Arry. You were coming home." She shivered against me, and looked out once again at the ocean of corpses. "All of you… just wanted to come home."
I've seen a lot of things. I've seen creatures – men among them – without a soul.
It is my role in this world to end such creatures.
"I guess I'm going to have to clean this mess up," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. With the fog dispersed, the sun was shining down hot and warm. "Before an ungodly stink chokes the castle. I take it all the students are still inside, Headmaster? Ron and Hermione?"
"Confined to their dormitories," Dumbledore said. "Until further notice. The older students are keeping the younger years away from the windows."
I nodded. "Good. That's good. No one should see this."
"How long will you need?" Dumbledore asked.
There was a literal sea of my dead and decaying bodies scattered across the grounds. Thousands upon thousands. How far had they appeared into the Forbidden Forest? Hagrid was investigating that. My awesome magical prowess would simplify things somewhat.
"Some hours, maybe as much as a day." I shook my head. "A day I'll have to spare, I guess. The Ministry will probably interfere, if they know where I am. Kinda hard to miss me here."
"I'll help you," Chronos said. He looked a bit sick at the prospect, but there was laughter dancing in his eyes. Always two sides to the man – or whatever he was.
"What are you going to do?" Fleur whispered.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Not sure, but it's probably going to involve lots and lots of fire."
"You do not think we should bury…?"
I hated that idea. "No, I don't. And you won't be helping, sweetheart. I would like you to head into the castle, speak to my friends, and let them know I'm okay. Stay inside. Have some apple pie."
Fleur didn't argue. She looked, if anything, grateful.
"I can assist, Harry," Dumbledore said.
"I'd rather you didn't," I said. My tone brooked no argument. A gust of wind blew in across the lake. I could smell old blood. "This is my mess. Always my mess. I'll fix it."
Dumbledore stared at me for a long moment, and then nodded. "As you wish."
The four of us stood in silence atop of our hill for several minutes. After a time, Dumbledore offered Fleur his arm and she took it. Without another word the two of them headed toward the castle. It would take them some time, navigating a path through the dead. I thought about apparating them to the Entrance Hall, seeing as how mere anti-apparation wards could not stop me, but didn't want to break the silence.
Wind whistled through the trees, rustling the leaves, in the forest. Hundreds of dead eyes stared at me in what felt like accusation. I licked my lips, tasting the air. Could I ever have a life with Fleur after this? After all of it? Did I want to? An image of Tessa swam through my mind… Didn't I deserve a semblance of a normal life after all I had sacrificed?
Maybe yes, maybe no…
"I've thought of another pun," Chronos said. "You're gonna die laughing when you hear it."
I snorted. "Shut up and let's get this gruesome business over with."
"Yes, boss." Chronos's grin faded as he surveyed the work to be done. "This is truly awful, Harry."
"Yes, yes," I agreed. "Come on, I'm dying to get started."
Badum-ching...
'It was worth it.'
Should probably carve that into my tombstone.
"This war will be the biggest catastrophe in the history of mankind. Tens of millions dead, entire swaths of the earth rendered uninhabitable, and all because—" I had to stop and lean over, wracked with vicious coughs. My throat was raw and bloody. Long weeks I'd had this damn cough.
"Because?" Chronos prompted, levitating another Potter-corpse on to the pile. His magic was wandless – more akin to sorcery.
I took a deep breath, grimacing at the pain in the back of my mouth. "Ugh… Because I can only figure out ten of the eleven secret herbs and spices. Why do you think?"
A whole slew of bodies levitated through the air and on to our latest pile down by the lake. My magic was doing the work for me. Behind us were smaller piles of… ash. Ash in the wind. We had burned over twelve thousand bodies so far. In fire so hot it left nothing but white, smouldering dust.
"Paprika?" Chronos mused. "Chilli powder and oregano, most likely."
"Oh that's obvious," I said with open disdain. I clicked my fingers and a spark of magical fire sprung to life above my mythril hand. Not quite sorcery. It swirled through my fingers, reflected in the shiny metal of another world. "I'm thinking it has to be something unexpected. Like safflower, or lemongrass. Cloves. Mayhap a teaspoon of marjoram."
"A thousand years of hot'n'spicy and the best you got is marjoram?"
I snorted. "Work in progress, sunshine. Work in progress."
"Yes, well, if you don't figure it out then very soon the atmosphere on Venus will be more hospitable than the one above us." Chronos sighed and looked up into the burnt azure sky. Twilight fading to true night.
"I tried to apparate to Venus once." Now that was a memorable death.
I clenched my mythril hand around the sphere of fire and the flames burst between my fingers. With a sigh, I flicked the magical energy into the pile of corpses. It took to flesh like flies to shit.
And we moved on to the next pile, corpses in their hundreds silently floating across the grounds to the lake's edge. Gruesome – a nightmare made real. It made me chuckle.
"You don't want to kill me today?" I asked Chronos. "I've been expecting you to spring a trap all the live long day."
"Not in the mood," Chronos mumbled. He wiped a few flecks of ash from his suit. "I'll get you tomorrow, yes, yes."
Hogwarts looked magnificent in the fading light. The mythril bricks I'd used to reconstruct the castle after crashing the Reminiscence into her at twice the speed of sound caught the sun and burned with a gentle afterglow. If not for the stench of burning flesh, the scene would have been most beautiful.
"You want to go get a steak and scotch at the Three Broomsticks and come back to this later?"
Chronos nodded. "Okay. But I have one question."
"Oh?"
"What in the seven hells is marjoram?"
Thinking about that low road.
It took fourteen hours to collect and burn somewhere in the region of twenty-two thousand of my lost lives. Chronos and I had spent the day, the best part of the evening, and as midnight crept towards one in the morning, I declared the task done.
A horrible, miserable – grisly – task. Good god, some twenty-two thousand! I'd lived just over a thousand years, which meant I'd averaged twenty-two deaths a year since the whole sordid business began… all that time ago.
The Ministry, bless their incompetent hearts, found me just as we were finishing the clean up. I suspected Dumbledore may have been keeping them away, as best he could, but our little foray into Hogsmeade had not gone unnoticed.
The wind had scattered ash across the grounds, and in the starlight it looked like fresh snow – not the waste of my worst mistakes. A dozen wavering lights marched with purpose up to the castle along the driveway. Wand light, flickering dark shadows against crimson Auror robes.
Within the group strode Rufus Scrimgeour, a permanent scowl etched into his face. He could be a good man, when he chose to be.
"I think I should take my leave now, Harry Potter," Chronos said. "I… thank you for dinner. It was a pleasant moment of calm within the storm."
"That it was." I could just apparate away and leave the Ministry to its own… No. "One of these days, before we kill each other, you need to tell me who you are."
"Time will tell, Harry Potter."
I lifted my glasses and rubbed my eyes. "Time… yeah, it always does. So long as you're not me from the future or something."
Chronos laughed. "No, I am most certainly not."
"Good."
The demigod who had spent the day burning corpses disappeared, faded, like so much ash into the wind, leaving me on my own under the cool night sky. The Minister and his Auror guard were still minutes away from the castle. Best to meet them at my leisure.
I Apparated into the Great Hall, through the complex and restricted wards of the castle, and took a seat at the Head Table.
It was cold and lonely at this hour of the morning, and yet I wasn't alone.
Fleur Delacour sat at the Gryffindor table, staring up at the enchanted ceiling. She had one hand on her stomach, slowly stroking the small life within, singing softly under her breath.
Her gaze turned from the roof to me as I appeared. She smiled – warmly – and I went to join her.
"What are you still doing awake?" I asked, taking a seat opposite the most beautiful woman in the world.
"I knew you would be here," she said, and pushed a plate across the old oak table toward me. "I saved zis for you."
It was a piece of apple pie.
"Your suit iz all sooty, 'Arry. Did you… did you finish your work?"
I nodded. There was always a heap of sugar on the crust of these pies. I scooped some up with a finger and touched my tongue. Sweet. "I love you, Fleur."
"Oui, I know." She reached across the table and placed her hand over mine. Her touch was warm. I hid my mythril hand under the table. "Je t'aime, 'Arry Potter, but I… I am so afraid."
The Minister and his entourage would not be far away. The doors of the Great Hall were wide open. They wouldn't fail to see us here.
"Of the war?"
She nodded. Her eyes reflected the enchanted stars above, wet with tears. "Of the damage you could do, oui. I fear for our child." Fleur laughed – possibly the saddest, most hopeless sound in the world. "We are too young for zis."
"Well… you are."
Fleur sniffed and dabbed her cheeks with her sleeve. "In all your stolen years you 'ave never raised a child, 'Arry. You may know of war and of pain, but in this you are even younger than I."
"I promise to keep you safe."
Fleur pulled her hand away. "Although I do not remember eet, I believe you 'ave made that promise before."
Ouch. That hurt. Hurt more than twenty-two thousand deaths. Curses could make me bleed, swords and knives could cut me, but Fleur scored a deeper wound with such simple words…
Regrets are forever, after all. Death is easy – living with mistakes, not so much.
I stood up, leaned across the table, and got close enough to Fleur to rest my forehead against hers. Her scent was maddening, as always, strawberries and fresh rainfall. Her breath was warm on my face.
May I?
"Kiss me?"
Yes, you may…
Fleur's lips were soft and sweet. A moment of sheer pleasure amidst the thunderclouds, the roaring tempest, of that same old weary storm.
Over too soon. Always over too soon.
Fleur sighed and cupped my cheek. "You taste like time," she whispered. "Young and old, never there but all zat matters."
In the silent air of the early morning, the ancient castle doors in the Entrance Hall swung open on heavy, creaking hinges. A dozen pairs of boots broke the moment, slapping against the stone floors.
"I'm about to cause some trouble," I said. "Want to stay and watch?"
Shouldn't this make more sense after so long…?
Insane or just insecure, I didn't know, but it wasn't arrogance or confidence so much as apathy and wearied fatigue that found me calmly eating apple pie as the Minister of Magic strode into the Great Hall, flanked by a dozen Aurors.
"Minister Scrimgeour," I said as he drew level with Fleur and myself. "Please, you and your friends take a seat. I'm sure there's more pie around here somewhere. Does Albus Dumbledore know you have invaded his castle?"
"Potter," the Minister said – not unkindly, but with a raw frustration that should have shamed me. "You are a hard man to find."
"Yes, well… I've been busy." There was a smell of old, dusty parchment and copper on the air. None of the Aurors, arrayed behind the Minister, had drawn their wands.
Scrimgeour took a seat next to Fleur. She shuffled a few inches further down the table, putting the Minister and myself at an eye level across the chessboard. "So I hear. The ambassador to the United States tells me you are responsible for the destruction of the top three floors of a Muggle hotel in New York City."
"That was Voldemort."
To his credit, the Minister nodded. "I suspected as much. We have also been at great pains to convince the French that you were not responsible for the murder of Thomas Laurent."
"Have you?"
Scrimgeour scowled. "Potter, be reasonable. We are fighting the same enemy, are we not?"
I sliced a section of pie and contemplated my response, savouring the sweetness. I wasn't usually a fan of sweet things – being sweet enough already – but apple pie was a weakness.
"I thought so, yes," I said, licking my lips. "But then you drew Miss Delacour into the bowels of your antiquated and corrupt Ministry, the very nerve centre of all that is wrong in the world, that let a creature like Lord Voldemort rise to power – not once, but twice – and you can see my hesitation, Minister, yes?"
"No man is above the law, Pott—Harry."
"No, we're not on first name basis, Rufus."
Clouds were gathering overhead. The enchanted ceiling was scattered with a billion stars, strewn amid the summer storm.
The Minister nodded. "Very well. We can prove you were elsewhere when Thomas Laurent was murdered."
"I was with Fleur, yes. You owe her an apology, by the way."
Scrimgeour blinked and turned to Fleur. "Miss Delacour was simply answering our questions, Potter. Questions you were summoned to answer under the laws of the Wizengamot."
"You made her cry. I wanted to kill you for that. Be glad I only destroyed two of you damned Dementors."
The Aurors were staring me down behind the Minister. I didn't recognise any of them. No Order members. That made me think of Tonks, and of Jason Arnair. I hoped they were happy, wherever they were. It would be time to call on them all too soon.
"How did you destroy those creatures?"
"Practice." I was down to the crust of my pie. This air of indifferent arrogance would only prevail a moment longer. My mythril hand, resting in my lap, shook with anger.
"There are questions that need answering."
"The answer, Minister, is 'yes'. Yes, Voldemort wants to takeover your Ministry. Yes, you are going to die. Yes, that is Atlantis off the northwest coast. Yes, I am wearing an awesome hat."
"'Arry," Fleur whispered. "Be kind."
And no one save a woman could make me feel that guilty. I sighed, long and hard, into the pie crumbs. Fleur knew the truth of me – she had glimpsed the thousand years and tens of thousands of deaths. The dum-diddy-dum-dum Wastelands of Time. She knew more than enough, not everything, but enough.
I regarded Rufus Scrimgeour through a lens of time, and found him small, but on the right side. He always meant well – to the best of any good intentions.
"Minister, you are here for my advice. You don't think you are, but you are. My advice is thus – run. Run away. Run and hide. You and your… Ministry of fools have a very small part to play in the events to come. You are negligible, unimportant and collateral damage. I say this not to offend, but to help. Run and you may live. Stay, fight, and you will die in the crossfire."
"You sound so sure of this, Mr. Potter."
I tapped my nose and winked. "Nothing is ever certain. Especially now. But time often tells the same tale, and cannot be trusted. Oh sweet Merlin's balls no." I chuckled. "Do yourself, your family, a favour, and let Voldemort and I kill one another alone."
"You are not leading this war, Harry Potter, and neither is Albus Dumbledore. The Ministry, with its armies, will stand against the Dark Lord. We understand that you, the Boy Who Lived, are a sign of hope to many. Stand with us – a Ministry united."
"I've tried that before. It doesn't work." But then neither did any other way. "Still, there's no do over this time… Maybe we do have to try things a little differently."
Like creases in old parchment, the Minister's brow furrowed. He raised his arm and one of the Aurors handed him a scroll. He unfurled it and slid it across the table.
"Now what's all this?"
"A list of charges you are guilty of, Potter. Among them, attacking and disarming Aurors of Britain and France, killing nineteen members of the goblin nation – not without cause, or so I'm told, but a charge you have to answer for. Further down the list, consorting with Miguel Blue, the American crime lord, several counts of illegal apparation and operating an unknown magical vehicle in the skies over London."
"You do know I stopped the demonic hordes of Hell itself from descending into our world, don't you?"
The Minister nodded slowly. "We… we recovered some of the remains."
"Well, then you know what it is I am fighting. What it is Voldemort has at his command. And I did not kill them all. There are scattered remnants loose upon this world." I was going for deep and dangerous, but I think I just sounded drunk.
I wish I were drunk. There were brief moments of oblivious happiness in the bottle. Over too soon? Oh yes indeedy.
Come on, now. Are we still waiting?
Forget-me-not.
"You didn't come here to pull me up before the Wizengamot, Scrimgeour. We are beyond that, yes. What do you really want?"
"Your help, Harry."
I opened my mouth to curse the man and all that he represented, but then I felt a gentle caress on my leg, beneath my ruined suit pants. Hmm… either the Minister wanted to be more than 'allies', or Fleur was trying to tell me something I should have already known.
Her delicate foot stroked my shin and I found an honest smile.
"No, not this time," I whispered to myself. "Same old mistakes… heh. Okay I'm going to save your life, Rufus, and the lives of so many others."
The Minister rested both his hands on the Gryffindor table and raised a single eyebrow. "Oh yes. How?"
I grinned, tipped my hat back on my head, and offered the Minister my shiny metal hand. "Why, I'm going to destroy your Ministry before it destroys you, of course."
A/N: Comedy and tragedy, ladies and gentleman. Once upon a time I knew the difference. You have read, now please review. Think of how happy/angry/turned on you could make me with an honest critique.
Review, damn you! Do it and I'll consider a Harry/Fleur/Tessa threeway.
It's scotch o'clock,
Joe
Joe's Fic Recommendation: Dagger and Rose, by Perspicacity. Go look it up and be blown away. A Harry/Fleur tale, exceptionally written.
