Disclaimer: I am one of those melodramatic fools.

A/N: Here's a nice in-between chapter, folks, as we delve into the initial opening conflict for this story. You'll see. A nice and easy 4,000 words. Good work on the reviewing last chapter – I think I replied to all those who asked questions. If I missed you, my sincere apologies – curse my good name in another review for this chapter!


Harry Potter and the Heartlands of Time

Chapter Seven – Dear Atlantis

Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare…

This is Major Tom to Ground Control, I'm stepping through the door,
and I'm floating in a most peculiar way.
And the stars look very different today.

~Space Oddity, David Bowie

From the top of one mountain to another, I apparated with Tessa through a maelstrom of international border wards, leaving a blazing trail of astounding magic across the face of the planet, taking no care or time to mask my presence until I came to Russia.

There I paused only a second out of phase before crossing into the Urals and to the summit of Mount Narodnaya, two-thousand metres above the world, making sure no one could follow.

I appeared in the early hours of the morning, just before dawn, in a crystal courtyard of an old monastery that had no place, none whatsoever, in this part of the world. Which was kind of why it was here, out of the way and unlooked for. The women of this particular monastery usually went out into the world to do their work, and brought their knowledge back.

Torches blazed in brackets along the enclosure, and my leather shoes crunched against a light snowfall.

Apart from the torches, it looked abandoned – and was, for the most part.

"HELP ME!" I screamed into the quiet. The sky was purpling toward blue overhead. Twinkling with about a billion dull stars. "RISE AND SHINE LADIES!"

Shock had given way to pain. Tessa was unconscious in my arms, but I couldn't hold her, not with my own burns screaming in brutal agony. I fell to my knees, defeated and confused. Her lower half slipped from my grip onto the frozen cobblestones.

This wasn't Voldemort. It couldn't have been Voldemort. Chronos… Saturnia? I'd burn this world to the ground for an answer. What if it had been Voldemort? Had I… had I fucked up?

My wand was in my hand but I didn't remember drawing it. What could I do? No one had answered my cries. I started shooting spheres of bright crimson magic into the air. They shrieked as they rose and exploded in bright, loud colours. The old stone walls of the monastery shook.

Tessa moaned. She was bruised, cut and burnt. I didn't dare try to heal even the smallest of her wounds. Long ago I'd given up the healing arts. Even for a god of time, that magic was beyond me. I wasn't wired right… in the mind.

"Remember that time we…" I shook my head. The world felt sluggish. How long had I been awake? The snow was stained a terrible shade of crimson in a widening pool around us… My blood? Or hers? "…and your brother, John, he never liked me, did he? Should've trusted his instincts, love, and we wouldn't be here…" The clock wound back through my mind. "…four hundred years later, as time has flown for me. Has it only been four hundred years? Tessa, sweet Tessa… it felt longer."

Dark spots danced before my eyes, and I knew what that meant. I was fainting. There wasn't any blood getting to my brain, not enough. I slumped to my side, already falling, and caught myself at the last moment, bracing my mythril hand against the ground.

"One sly son of a gun…" I smiled. "That's me, Tess. We'll be okay."

My arm gave way and all hopes faded to black.


You never did like to show your battle scars…


Waking up in a strange bed is always a touch disconcerting.

Waking up tied to a strange bed, doubly so.

Consciousness returned with the pounding intensity of all the demonic armies of the last thousand years. I moaned… There was very little pain, which was good, but what little there was hurt to all-fuckery.

I shoved it aside into the corner of my mind that dealt with such things. There was no way to be rid of it completely, but over time and through circumstance I had learnt to diminish and ignore something as weak and belligerent as pain.

Thinkin' 'bout that only road, boss.

"Hello?"

I was in a round stone room, like the sort found at the top of an old tower. I knew where I was.

There was a window across the room. Flurries of snow had gathered on the old stone, up against the windowsill. I could glimpse cold mountain peaks beyond that. It was warm, magically so. Heat radiated from blue fire floating in torch brackets on the walls. I was wandless and it was warm. Damn near comfortable, even.

I hadn't felt this rested in days, weeks, months, years… centuries.

An old wooden door on well-oiled hinges slipped open and an elderly woman, dressed in red robes and a white silk apron glided in as if she were a ghost. Her gaze settled on mine and she nodded once, briefly. A kind, elderly matron with eyes as hard as fuckin' stone.

"Untie me," I said. Demanded. Expected to be obeyed.

She said nothing. Her wand was a twisted, gnarled stick coated in bark, and she used it to switch the dirty bandages on my arms for fresh ones. I got a look at the skin – the burns were healing. I'd come to the right place. Probably wouldn't even leave a scar.

"Untie me… please?" I asked.

The nurse shook her head. "Rest. Potter, you rest." Her English was broken, but then this was Russia. "You move too much. Scream in sleep. Tied for safety."

I was too vulnerable tied to this damned bed. It was all too easy to imagine a Hellbeast or something similar tearing the roof off this tower and finding me staked out like a sacrificial lamb.

"Tessa, the girl I brought with me…?"

The nurse frowned, shaking her head. "Sleep. You sleep."

"Is she alive, woman?"

"You sleep." She tapped her wand against my forehead and muttered calming, soothing… words.

Sleep sounded like the best idea in the world.


All that I wanted, stolen in the night.


Waking up all over again. Sad song stuck on repeat, baby.

It was dark outside the window now. My arms were still strapped to the bed.

I was well rested. As rested as I was going to get. There were enemies out there in the night, I was sure of it. There were always enemies. Unlucky for them, I had work to do. Vengeful, angry work.

Whoever had hurt Tessa would suffer.

It wasn't Voldemort, of that I could be sure. Voldemort would not have left her alive… if she was still alive, that is. Are you sure? Yes. No.

I cleared my throat and was about to call for some assistance… but had a better thought.

My mythril hand was uncovered – stripped of its glove. I wore nothing but my fancy silk boxer shorts, actually, and the bandages wrapped around my forearms. I concentrated on that mythril hand.

It looked like a hand, but the magic I'd used to create it was malleable. With enough thought I could reshape the damn thing, T-1000 style.

The fingers melded together and elongated. I curved the fluid metal back and up my arm, narrowing the tip to a razor sharp edge. The leather strap around my bicep was thick, but the mythril construct cut through it like a warm knife through butter.

With one arm free the other only took moments. I sat up, groaning, and wiped the sleep from my eyes. My arms ached under the bandages, but what I could see of the skin looked whole.

These wonderful witches had healed me, as I knew they would. What had they done for Tessa? Was she even alive? I felt sick at the thought – at not knowing.

It's all the same story, just the voices that change…

Leaping up out of bed, the room spun. I sat back down, breathing deep, angry breaths at my weakness. The dizziness dissipated after a long, bittier minute and I reassessed my condition. Healthy, for the most part, but weakened. Steak and scotch levels were dangerously low.

Of my clothes there was no sign, but I found my wand on a table beneath the window. Judging the day was hard, but I had a feeling I'd spent the best part of thirty hours unconscious. That felt right, according to the clock in my head.

I twirled my wand around the back of my hand and headed toward the door. I was in the corridor, winding down an old staircase of cool stone, before I remembered what I was wearing, which was almost nothing.

I could have conjured another suit, and a damn fine lookin' one at that – indistinguishable, for all that mattered, from the real thing – but it wasn't the real thing. It felt like wearing a cheap knock-off, even though it was made from the raw power, the ascending oils of magic, that fuelled the whole fuckin' universe.

So cheap jeans and t-shirt it was, until I could get back to my tailor. Such things were important, after all.

One of the nurses was waiting for me at the bottom of the staircase. She held a book, her fingers caught between the pages, and smiled when she saw me. It was a warm smile, one of trust and… faith.

"Tessa," I said. And then, as an afterthought, "Thank you for healing my arms."

She inclined her head and motioned for me to follow her along the stone corridor. A rich velvet carpet felt cool beneath my bare feet.

"How did you find us, Harry Potter?" the young Healer asked quietly. Her accent was British. She didn't look much older than me.

"I know one of your order – Madam Pomfrey, the matron at Hogwarts. Once upon a time—a very long time ago—she brought me here." There was no real name to the place, just an idea, a dedication, to the healing arts. "But you wouldn't remember that, it never happened."

The nurse frowned but didn't push me. She led me in silence from then on, through the monastery's winding hallways and up and down multiple staircases. It was a large place, home to dozens, and yet we saw no one else. It was quiet, almost too quiet.

At long last we came to a solitary wooden door at the base of another tower. The nurse's face was grave, pale. I put a hand on the door and she grasped my wrist.

"The girl you arrived with… she was damaged, Mr. Potter. So very damaged." Her brow crumpled, tears welled in her eyes. "And it was no accident, was it? I have never seen such cruelty."

"She lives?"

"Yes, but she sleeps. Her mind must rest. Do not wake her."

Her tone brooked no argument, and I wasn't inclined to disagree. I may have been, through long years, trial and circumstance, one of the most powerful wizards on the planet, but I respected certain boundaries. The word of this woman, for one, and her expertise.

There was a quiet ambience in Tessa's room. A thin, soft light from a single torch. It was almost pleasant, if not for the stench of blood, sweat, tears and burnt flesh.

Tessa lay on clean sheets, wrapped in bandages and observed by no less than three of the monastery's witches. A gentle blue light encased her, and her hair defied gravity within the magic, floating above her face. She was frowning.

"Thank you," I said, and meant it. The three nurses around Tessa's bed said nothing, did not even look my way.

My guide nurse patted my forearm. "You will leave now, yes?"

"Yes, yes."

"To find who did this?"

I nodded.

"And you will hurt them?"

Your circuits dead, there's something wrong… "I could lie to you, but I think you want me to hurt whoever did this, sweetheart."

The nurse pursed her lips together and turned away, but I saw a fierce glint in her eye before she did. Body language didn't lie.

"Violence does not solve anything," she said.

"Until it does."


Get busy livin'…


It all began with Atlantis.

And now, it would end that same way.

The shields surrounding Malfoy Manor had been upgraded considerably from their usual fare. Heh, I guess Voldemort had decided to take me somewhat seriously after the memories I'd shared.

I had apparated from Russia, back across the continent and home to the United Kingdom. It was still early here, barely scraping dawn. The manor house stood tall and arrogant, a vicious sore on the countryside. I stood just out the front of the large wrought-iron gates, a few feet outside of the ward line.

"VOLDEMORT!"

He wanted the city, did he? Well, so did I. Perhaps it was time to well and truly change this old, tired game and unleash a lost civilisation upon the world. It couldn't be any worse than what was to come, after all.

"VOLLLDEEEMOOOORRRRTTT?" I cocked my ear to the gate. "VOLDEMORT, IT'S ONLY ME. HARRY JAMES POTTER, LORD OF TIME!"

Dead silence. The wind blew the leaves on the manicured hedge somewhat menacingly, or so I thought. No one home, maybe, but I didn't think so.

"Okay, fine." A complex and horrifically cruel ward structure stood between the front door and me. I rolled my head, cracking the joints in my neck. Time to get magical.

I picked up a piece of gravel and rubbed it between my hands. Sparks of raw silver magic burnt through the friction. The tiny rock began to glow. I tossed it up and down a few times, walking back and forth before the gate, and bit my tongue, taking aim.

I raised my palm before my face, eyeing the glowing stone, and then flicked it with my good hand through the iron bars and against the ward line.

It struck the intricate shield with a tiny ping.

And the whole darn thing exploded in a miraculous cacophony of sound, light and magic turned to chaos. A million tiny sparks of shattered green light fell like snow above the manor home and grounds of Lucius Malfoy.


Doesn't matter how big the fucker is, he's still got a neck.


Appearing out of shadow, a night within the night, Lord Voldemort regarded me from behind the arrogant and gilded gates of Malfoy Manor. Green sparks, the dissolved wards, burnt along the hedges and grass. A thousand tiny little spot fires.

"Harry," said Voldemort, "I am… surprised to see you here. Tell me, what happened to that ridiculous hat you had taken to wearing?"

I blinked—gasped—and patted myself on the top of my head. Good gravy, nothing but my majestic midnight locks. My awesome Captain's hat had been stolen by those Healer-witch vixens.

No matter. I'd retrieve it later. "Did you hurt her to send me a message, Tom?"

Voldemort stepped forward and through the gates, as if they were illusion. He held his wand against me. I kept my hands crossed behind my back. I was barefoot, in jeans and a loose polo. Not overly intimidating, but it would do.

"I do not follow you, old man," the Dark Lord whispered. "But please, allow me one question, yes? I ask that you answer honestly."

I licked my lips. He may have been lying about Tessa, but I didn't think so. There was no way he could know about her. The memories I'd shared were just a glimpse of the whole… "Okay, but then we have to talk shop. I have," I swallowed, hiding a grimace, "…an offer for you, in exchange for certain codes of civility and conduct in the war to come."

Voldemort stepped in close. I could taste the dark magic that held him together. Blood and copper, and stinging, acrid smoke. He was cold, so cold. He stood two feet taller than me, as well, in his resplendent black robes. I was not afraid. Death… was something to be embraced, after all. Greeted like an old friend.

My scar was burning like a sunovabeetch.

He placed his wand at my throat. I still made no move for mine. "Why, Potter, should I not just kill you now?" The crimson spark in the Dark Lord's eyes was honestly curious. "I have pondered this for some days now. Since our altercation in New York City. Tell me, why shouldn't I kill you?"

"Well, that's an easy one. I have something you want. Atlantis, city of. Also, you won't kill me because it will only send me back to the start, reset the whole wide world."

"For you, perhaps. Your time magic will reset reality for you. Here, now, in this world, I will have defeated you."

"I don't think it works like that." Did it? Were there thousands of realities out there, somewhere, parallel to this one – the realities where I had failed and died? God, that was an awful thought. The Infernal petal buried in my heart seemed to twitch.

"Should we find out?" A fierce light burned at the tip of his wand. He placed it against my chin and the skin sizzled – like putting out a cigarette on my face.

I ignored the pain. I was good at that. "What say we go unleash Atlantis instead?"

Voldemort removed his wand. "Oh?"

I grinned. "I know you can't break through my shield. I have perfected that over the course of many lifetimes. It would take you at least as long to even make a dent."

Voldemort sneered. "You do not understand the smallest sliver of what I am capable—"

"Bullshit, I know exactly what you're capable of. I've died enough times at your wand, haven't I? No, the shield has you vexed, irked, trumped… cursed? Whatever, I'm offering you access to the city in exchange for an agreement."

"What agreement?"

"An Unbreakable Vow, Tom. Sworn on the very magic that keeps you from fading away like smoke on the wind, you soulless bastard." I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "A vow that you will not use, or create, Inferi in our war to come. I've seen you do it before, you know. Turn a city of muggles into mindless slaves. I won't have it – not this time. Agree to that and the shield around Atlantis comes down today."

Voldemort stared at me in a silence that grew quickly uncomfortable, given how close we were standing. He was no doubt weighing up the odds of my offer, the truth of the Unbreakable Vow. Cost/benefit analysis on whether or not he slaughtered millions in the months to come.

By Merlin's balls, we were both far too insane to be making these decisions. But who else, I ask… who else?

"You would give up the hold you have on the most powerful, magically-advanced city in the world… for Muggles?"

I could smell the scorn. "Yes, yes I would. Tom, if I knew it would end this war right now and send you to a hell you very much deserve, there's nothing I wouldn't do." The sincerity in my voice caused the Dark Lord to blink. "Understand, I am tired. So very tired. I have lived enough for ten men, and died some twenty thousand times. I want this to be over. This is the last roll of the dice – whoever is left standing takes the world this time. But I won't leave it a smoking wasteland. I'll have your Vow on this."

"Why not just flee Britain, Harry? You know I will win. Take your friends, that old fool of a Headmaster, and flee."

"Someone has to stand against you. Fate fucked me on that one. I did run once, a long time ago." I shook my head. "No, we'll fight it out this one last time—some of my friends will probably die, yes, but they'll die on their feet. Not cowering half a world away."

"Admirable, I suppose. But ultimately pointless." Voldemort laughed. "I accept your offer, Harry Potter. Let us head inside and have Lucius oversee our Vow."

"Awesome."


Deals with the devil aside, I could taste victory indistinguishable from defeat.


Dawn had broken, as it always did, casting a pall of dull light against the shining silver city of Atlantis.

I stood with Lord Voldemort on what had once been Blackpool beach. Creeping purple vines and amazingly alien wild flowers were growing along the sand and up the edge of my enormous shield. Remnants of the past world, of life ten thousand years ago, slithering through the cracks.

Twiddle my thumbs just for a bit… sick of all this same old shit. I took a swig of bitter, aged firewhiskey, stolen from Lucius Malfoy's personal collection. A fine year, goblin-made. It was scotch o'clock somewhere.

I flexed my good right hand around my wand and pointed it at the city, shimmering within the shield. Impossible towers, skyscrapers a mile high… all alive and vibrant, unbroken by time – mythril lined the streets and there was no… dust.

"You know, all the magic in the world won't make people like you, Tom."

"Do as you have Vowed, Harry."

"I'm just saying – you're a clever man. I understand you want to rule the world, or whatever. Britain, at least. Forge a magical society of pure blood and seek immortality. But what's that worth if you're alone?"

"When the time comes, Harry, I am going to relish killing you."

"Heh." I coughed, tasted blood. Took another swig of amber liquid. "You always do. It will be at Hogwarts, you know. Not the Ministry, or some seat of power. A school. We will fight and one of us will die at that school. Full circle, wouldn't you say?"

"Bring down this shield."

I nodded. "What a good idea." Soft white light flowed from the tip of my wand. "Abra," I intoned, "mother-fuckin'-kadabra!"


A/N: Somewhat of a segway chapter, yes, yes. Deals with the devil aside, I think Harry has a plan – Heartlands has so far been a lot of Apparating around and accomplishing very little, so feels good to be on track to something of particular awesomeness.

I was going to end with a scene inside Atlantis, but it would make more sense next chapter. Look out for it soon (I'm aiming for two weeks in between chapters – this one was 17 days, so shoot me): Chapter 8 – Hail To The King, Baby.

Joe's Fic Recommendation: Go read The Gunslinger and the Mage by Voice of the Nephilim. It's an awesome Harry Potter/Dark Tower crossover. You need not have read the Dark Tower to follow it. It's an awesome one-shot, good and long, and the final scene was written by none other than Motherfuckin' Joe (me).