Disclaimer: It's a town full of losers!
A/N: There's a line in here about painting, which I shamelessly stole from a Joshua Kadison song – Painted Desert Serenade. Wonderful song. As for all your reviewing antics last chapter, all I can say is bravo! Thanks to everyone who reviewed, and there were a lot of you!
Here's another chapter inside a month to show my appreciation.
Harry Potter and the Heartlands of Time
Chapter Six – Satisfaction Guaranteed
That the Pearly Gates…had such eloquent graffiti, like 'We'll meet again…'
and 'Fuck the Man!',
and 'Tell my mother not to worry…'
~Iron and Wine
"You're going to… destroy—?"
"Destroy the Ministry, Minister, yes. Heh. Ministry-Minister-Ministry-Minister-Ministry-Min—."
"Stop it," Scrimgeour growled, slapping his hand down on the table.
A slow smile spread across my face. "Why, Rufus… you almost looked like a man in charge then."
"Will you answer for your crimes, Potter?"
"He will not," Fleur said, settling the matter.
The Minister glanced at her and then back to me. He folded his hands together and sighed. "I'd suggest doing as you're told – but I think even the twelve Aurors arrayed so menacingly over my shoulder couldn't make you."
Truth, or something like it. A force to be reckoned with, that's what I'd become. I had a hankerin' for some yam frites. Picture postcards from New York City, Bill's Bar and Burger on East 51st. Oh yeah… no. No time. Where were my thoughts?
I offered the Minister a winning smile.
"I've seen so… so many things. I've seen governments fall into anarchy, women and children crawling on bleeding, blistered hands from the ashes of their homes. I've seen fear turn to anger, to acts of such appalling cruelty that…" I had to pause, and let the memories fade away. "I've seen armies and cities swallowed whole by gaping maws in the earth, by cracks full of liquid fire… I've seen disease ruin nations, cutting down great swaths of people like a sickle through wheat."
"Potter, I don't—"
"But I do not have to explain the justifications for what I'm doing to you, Minister Rufus Scrimgeour," I said quietly, gently, shaking my head. "You haven't the faintest idea of what's just over the horizon. You think you do, but you don't. And no matter what I say… Well, we're done here."
I stood up to leave. Fleur did the same.
"We are not done here, Potter."
"What Voldemort will send to end you, Minister, will claw your sanity away in one foul stroke. As you drift into eternity, Hellspeak ringing in your ears, you're going to wish you ran. Goodbye."
Beautiful in my eyes, evermore beautiful – like a phone call at three in the morning.
Fallin' on stony ground, boss. The Sleeping God was tired. Time-addled and fatigued.
Fleur ran her fingers through my hair, whispering sweet nothings in my ear, and I tried to relax. I sat on the edge of her bed, she was on her knees behind me. I could feel the swell of her breasts between my shoulders. A small, much needed comfort.
"Will you stay with me tonight, 'Arry? Hold me as I sleep?"
"No."
Fleur sighed. "Where are you going?"
It was almost four in the morning. I had wanted to stay at Hogwarts, explain a few more things to Ron, Hermione and Dumbledore, and set them tasks for the struggle to come, but there had been no real time. I'd lost a day clearing the waste of a thousand years from the castle grounds.
Even now, time was ticking away… but my memory of events could not be trusted this life around. Not the smaller details, but there was still some terrible certainty, wasn't there? Oh yes. I'd send Dumbledore a message to meet later on today.
"I really want to stay," I whispered. Fleur's nails felt good along my scalp. So good. "If you let me paint you naked on this big brass bed, I might stay."
Fleur laughed softly. "Crazy old man – I look far too tired for such nonsense."
"Well, that's alright, I've never painted before…"
We laughed. We cried. We loved.
And we didn't yet know how utterly damned we were. Not yet. How awful love can be.
"And who is Fleur Delacour to you, Harry? Who is she to you?"
"Someone I care for very much—"
Dumbledore laughed and waved my words away, as if they offended him. "That is a terrible answer and you know it, my friend. It is a surface answer. It compliments her while avoiding the question entirely. To you, Harry, who is she to you?"
Lovely, I thought. To me, she is lovely. To hell if Dumbledore couldn't see the depth in such a word. I didn't say that, of course.
"Small toes," I said, and meant it. "Fleur is small toes crunching sand at the beach. Fleur is laughter at silly television ads. You know the ones that are never funny? She loves them. She is kind and sweet and precious. She is lavender in Provence." The words were getting away from me now. I was angry. "I'm lucky to know her. Lucky to see her smile, Professor. To me, she is not just lovely, she is most lovely."
Dumbledore wore that sad, old smile of his. The one that'd seen Dark Lords plunge the world into war time and time again. "There you have it. You must care for her very much."
"Yes... and I'm happy if she's happy."
"Oh you terrible liar." Dumbledore laughed. It was damn near pitying. "A lifetime, Harry. You forget I've seen a lifetime of years... never once in all that time has a man been honestly happy if the woman he loves is with someone else. If I'm certain of anything, I am certain of that. It is an infallible law of the whole universe."
"Okay, I'm not happy, but I can't and won't blame Fleur for that. My happiness shouldn't be dependent on her. That's not fair. So I want her to be happy, I want her kept safe, even if it's with someone else."
"However?"
I sighed. "However... no one will ever love her like I do."
Dumbledore clapped a hand on my shoulder. "You should be telling her all of this."
"And destroy our friendship? No. I know her well enough to love her, Dumbledore. To love her so much, but Bill Weasley knows her better."
"It would be a terrible shame if you were wrong about that."
The last few days, ever since I'd returned from Atlantis – that brief moment where I had tried to kill myself before Saturnia told me of the life inside Fleur – I've felt as if there were so much to do, so much to fuck up, that I've done nothing.
The world felt as if I were trying to move through treacle.
I'm proud to say I was still alive, I suppose. After all's been said and done… I was one sly son of a gun.
And, yeah, every man sells a bit of his soul.
A long time ago, I had come to the conclusion that I could not escape my descent into insanity, but I could capitalise on it. Spin a negative into a positive, or some such bullshit.
By the time I'd realised just how far beyond fucking normal I'd fallen, it was too late.
Which sums up the last thousand years nicely and brings me to today.
Difference between thieves and crooks, boss, may it do ya fine…
"He'll call it 'Necropolis' – a city of the dead. It's where he'll raise an army of mindless, zombified Muggles."
"You have seen this before?" Albus Dumbledore asked, over conjured tea and crumpets.
We rode the gondola in Banff National Park toward the summit of Mount Sulphur. It seemed as good a place as any to discuss the fate of the world, and a lot prettier than most. Especially in the summer. Near evening, rays of buttercup yellow danced along the mountains like fireflies emerging from a shadowed forest.
"Oh yes, many-a many-a time. They wont just be Inferi, either. You ever seen those old zombie films? A bite and you're infected? It'll be more like that. The Necropolis spawns many necropoleis… Europe falls within months. He leaves Britain, for the most part, untouched."
Dumbledore sighed, gazing out at the valley below as the motorised cart brought us closer to the summer summit. Canada was perhaps the most beautiful place in the world.
"Tom was such a quiet boy, in his youth."
"He was born a monster, Headmaster. If there was ever anything human in him, it died for that first horcrux."
"You will stop him?"
I shook my head, not dismissing the idea, but shying away from the task. There was murder to be done. "He usually picks Moscow, but on a whim I've seen him use Helsinki, Berlin… Once the infected Inferi are released upon the population, well then only fire will do."
"What do you mean?"
"I'll drop the magical equivalent of a thermonuclear bomb on Voldemort's city of choice, killing millions to save billions."
Dumbledore regarded me in terrible silence for a long moment. I stood undaunted, in a shiny new Armani suit, my awesome hat in place. His purple robes were something to be admired, I thought.
"No, you would not."
And to that I sighed. "Damned if I do… damned if I don't. I have in the past. I set most of Eastern Europe ablaze to stamp out his armies. But even if I cut the infection off in Moscow, or Berlin, or Timbuk-fucking-tu, there's nothing to stop him trying again the next day, or the next day."
"Truly, nothing?"
"He kills two birds with one stone – the Muggle world implodes, zombie apocalypse-style, and the magical governments collapse trying to contain the damage. Voldemort steps into the power vacuum back in Britain, and then all hail the new king."
"You paint a very bleak picture, Harry. Surely after a thousand years, you have some plan to thwart Tom."
The gondola swung gently back and forth as we approached the summit. There were familiar faces waiting for us at the top, whisked away from Hogwarts in the night. My army, of a kind, against the Dark Lord.
Tonight, we planned a war.
"Would I have failed so many times if my plans ever worked?" I asked. "We have to hound him, Albus Dumbledore. We have to go on the offensive, burning and routing his followers. We have to annihilate his hidden horcruxes, and…"
"And?" The gondola came to rest in its bracket at the terminal station atop Sulphur Mountain. We stepped out into the cool summer's evening. There was a scent of maple leaf and warm, freshly baked pie on the air.
"And we have to give him Atlantis. He covets that city, Professor. The very nature of his broken soul was what led him to its remains. What led to a thousand years of war and death for me. To have it renewed, alive, and seething with raw power today, now... Well, how could he resist?"
Empty road at happy hour.
"Call it the calm before the storm, but soon – weeks – I won't have five minutes in which to shit, shower or shave. I'll need you then. All of you."
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me. How did I know all of this wasn't in my head? That I wasn't bouncing off the walls in St. Mungo's and imagining a thousand years of rape, murder and that shitty custard made from packet-mix.
It hurt too much to be false, I guess. Either way, reality was reality – even if it was insane dreams.
Atop of Sulphur Mountain there was a steakhouse. It served a premium scotch fillet with peppercorn sauce, always medium-rare, and I had not found its equal anywhere else in the world. If this steak was a dream, it was almost worth Voldemort, Atlantis and day after day of nightmarish Lovecraftian horror.
It was over steak and scotch that I laid the framework for my war against Voldemort and, when the time came, the British Ministry. I kept the latter goal to myself. Dumbledore, however short his life had become, would not approve.
"What do you want us to do, mate?" Ron Weasley asked. I noticed his hand over Hermione's. As was the way, my two best friends banded together in my absence and my… insanity.
"Ron – you and Neville both." Neville Longbottom blinked and poured some more sauce on his steak. "I'll give you a list of Voldemort's horcruxes in Britain. You'll take Gryffindor's sword and have done with them."
"Won't they be protected?" Neville asked.
"Very much so, buddy." I sipped a crystal goblet of single malt. We were seated on the terrace, next to a log fire, overlooking darkened mountains – more mountains than most people ever get to see. It was brisk, but not cold. The air smelt fresh. "You'll have a list of instructions – very specific instructions."
"I don't think the boys should go off on their own," Hermione said.
"As usual, sweetheart, you are right." I glanced at Dumbledore. "I think you could probably provide some assistance, Professor."
Dumbledore was admiring the patterns on the tablecloth. Intricate swirls of red silk against a sapphire-blue net. "Hmm… oh yes, yes indeed. A horcrux is an abomination I would gladly destroy."
I nodded. "Hermione, I'll want you to do some fancy work with a few artefacts I'm going to acquire in the next few days."
"Artefacts?" Hermione asked.
"Acquire?" Dumbledore frowned.
I tapped the side of my nose and pointed at the old man. "Steal, I suppose, but with the best of good intentions."
"And what will you be stealing, Mr. Potter?"
There was a shopping list somewhere in my head. I would need some time to make all the preparations. I was powerful, ridiculously so, and could probably outdraw and beat any wizard in the world – save Voldemort, who shared my Infernal power boost – but a stray curse could still bring me down.
Me and the whole wide world, this last little life around.
"The Hand of Merlin, for one. The Stone of Dreams another…" Why did steak always come with so much salad? The Italian dressing made it somewhat manageable. "Road's Fire and the Lost Portal. The Battle Scar."
Hermione's eyebrows rose into her fringe as I checked off the list, Ron looked lost and Neville curious. Dumbledore chuckled. "All of that, Harry? Magical artefacts and devices that have been lost almost as long as Atlantis itself?"
"I found Atlantis, didn't I?" A small, sad grin. "And I spent lifetimes finding all that other nonsense. The Hand of Merlin is in the Magnus Fontis below Rome, would you believe. We had fun down there, didn't we?"
"What's the Hand of Merlin?" Ron asked.
"A shield," Hermione said. "A mythical shield that could span for miles and block even the Killing Curse. I didn't think it real."
"Just lost to time," I said softly.
"I've never heard of Road's Fire," Neville said. "What's that, Harry?"
"A guidebook, of a sort." There was a basket of wedges on the table. I dipped a few into the peppercorn sauce and devoured them whole. "The Lost Portal is the key to a network of ancient Atlantean doorways scattered around the world. Road's Fire is the instruction manual, a cache of magical knowledge, on how to use those portals."
"Sounds useful."
"Useful, yes, and even more dangerous, but it will be vital."
"You mention the Stone of Dreams, Harry." Dumbledore clapped his good hand over his withered death sentence. "The legend surrounding that particular object suggests it was a means of communicating through dreams—"
"Yeah, things are going to get pretty fucking magical."
"—and also a way of entering dreams, of moving through a world of sleeping consciousness."
"Yes. It is."
"You have used it before?"
I nodded. "That and many more objects of questionable power."
"I question the ethical implications of such measures."
"You always do." I offered the Headmaster a tired smile. "But necessity doesn't always walk the straight and narrow. There's a difference between being corrupt, Professor, and getting your hands dirty."
Dinner descended into dessert – into sticky date pudding and ice cream. If not for the impending war, the world pushed to the very brink of annihilation, the evening would have been a solely pleasant one. Still, talk of death and destruction were not quite enough to dull any appetites. Not yet, at least.
"After all things said and done, there are worse ways to end the day I suppose. Beats burning twenty-two thousand mistakes."
"Do you think we can fight a war, Harry?" Neville asked. "This is a little different than wand battles in the Department of Mysteries."
I nodded, admiring the flickering flames in the log fire. Tiny little fire sprites dancing in the dark. "I know none of you can, or ever will, remember it, but you've fought this war before. You've fought, you've won… you have lost and you have died." I chuckled. "You lived some hell, don't we all, but this time… this time. This time we win, Nev."
"If you say so, Harry."
"I do. I do say—"
There was a tang of harsh, acrid magic on the air – of copper, a mouthful of pennies – and I jumped up, my chair falling back, wand in hand as a burst of bright silver light appeared in the air over the fireplace.
The light hovered for a handful of seconds, revealing a twisted and broken form. Something, someone, fell out of the light and into the fire, scattering the logs and sending the sparks into furious whirlwinds.
My hands were quicker than my mind. I lunged forward, but even as I thrust my arms into the roaring flames and grasped the battered and bruised flesh, the lacerated and ruined skin, I knew what I had just seen.
Who I had just seen. Oh sweet Merlin no…
The woman was naked – and looked worse than dead. But the dark hair with a streak of soft red, her small frame and delicate ears… My own skin burning, my friends and others on the terrace screaming, I roared a pure guttural cry and heaved her from the flames.
No.
My suit was on fire, as was the woman's hair. I fell back with her in my arms. Shaking, pained, but alive and aware. We were doused with jets of cold water from Dumbledore's wand. He extinguished the flames and sent wisps of curling, flesh-scented smoke into the air.
My fingers sought the curve of the woman's neck, searching for a pulse. I blocked the pain, forced it aside, and… and there! Yes, she lived. Her pulse was thin, thready, but there. A wave of fierce relief washed over me, tempered only by an anger so unholy—
She moaned in my arms and I choked back a raw sob, brushing the burnt hair back from her face with my silver hand.
It was Tessa.
We learned to laugh and we learned to dance…
It could have been five minutes or a thousand years – ten thousands miles and naught but a heartbeat – caught in that same old weary maelstrom of persuasive insanity.
Time – that old fickle FUCKER – swam through me as if in a dream. An unfamiliar feeling trickled down into my stomach.
"Harry!" Hermione cried.
It was only a handful of seconds, but a million thoughts rushed through my head. All of them dark and vengeful.
Tessa had been… ravaged. Desolated and ruined. I blinked, looked up at the people and my friends surrounding me, and out at the endless mountains beyond twilight. Then back down at Tessa, in my arms, and watched a piece of burnt skin slide off the back of my good hand.
"I'm… afraid," I said.
Gathering Tessa as close as I dared, we disapparated across the face of the world.
A/N: Huh. I didn't know that was going to happen until I wrote it. Writing is like that sometimes – surprising. For that reason alone, I recommend it. Good place to end the chapter, I think. A lot of important stuff in this one.
Now you can review, if you wish, or check out my profile. How about this? If you have any questions (I won't give away the plot, mostly because I'm making it up as I go along), but any questions about my stories or my writing, then leave me a review and I'll get back to you – you'll need to sign in, of course.
How's that for a deal? I get a review and you, at long last, get to find out about my impressive yet devastating girth. You're welcome.
All the best,
Joe-zizzle.
