Disclaimer: In which I undo a lot of hard work. Heh.
A/N: And here is your blasted update. Taking a turn for the absurd, now. Huzzah!
-Joe
Harry Potter and the Heartlands of Time
Chapter Eleven – To Dream, My Friend
The wood of suicides has changed since my last visit to Hell.
I remember it as a tiny grove. Now it resembles a forest.
~Sandman, Neil Gaiman
Tall, thin whirlwinds of destructive magic—fire and ice and black stone—gouged the tile work of the basilica floor. A heavy wind pushed against us, making it seem like we were moving with the slowness of old men.
I took a swig of thousand-year-old red wine and really wished I hadn't. Still, better rotgut than nothing, and stumbling upon that cellar had been a surprise even to me.
"Just stick to the runes for illusion—that should keep us safe!" Hermione yelled, pulling her cloak up over her face to ward away the flecks of stone and debris from the mini magical tornados. "Is that right, Harry?"
"Right again, Miss Granger! I told you you'd enjoy solving these puzzles! Hah!"
"Oh yeah," Ron mumbled. He had a nasty looking cut on his forehead from the swinging-axe room. "Laughing my head off over here."
"You almost were," Neville quipped.
"More wine, gents?" I asked. The old bottle of red, coated in dust, had stained my teeth and lips—dribbling down my chin—crimson, as if I'd gnawed away my own tongue.
Ron and Neville declined.
Hermione led the way, sticking to the safe tiles on the floor. As she had figured out, the whirlwinds of tempestuous fire could not touch us. A simple solution, really, but the scattered bones of centuries of explorers suggested otherwise.
We cleared the cathedral of fucked-up magic and progressed into the corridor of slightly less dangerous constructs. I tossed my bottle of disgusting wine into the rune-strewn gutter. It shattered and dyed the stone a bloody red.
"Anything we should watch out for in this hallway?" Hermione asked, glancing back at me over her shoulder as torches along the walls sprang to life for the first time in a long time.
"If memory serves…" I frowned and closed one eye, tilting my head to the side. "Either a horde of infernal travesties that bleed acid… or a brisk walk through an underground garden of weird and wonderful magical plants."
"What? You're not sure which one?"
"It might be both, actually."
"Harry, that's—"
"Thrilling? Exhilarating? Never knowing if your next stop will be doused with monster-acid!" I wasn't making a sale. "Okay, stand back. I'll take point."
It was the garden, in the end.
The corridor twisted along and then around in a descending spiral, ever downward, into the heart of the mountain. Why these old and ancient artefacts were always hidden in the hearts of mountains, I didn't know. Suitably majestic, I've been led to believe. But damn troublesome to get there.
At the base of the spiralled corridor we came to a vine-strewn square, lit with soft glowing orbs of ethereal light. It was quiet, and pleasant, and no one died.
"That's aconite," Neville said. "Oh, and look, a bushel of alihotsy. Don't touch that—it can cause hysteria. A nice bed of flitterbloom over there, and I… I've no idea what that is. Wow. Can I take a cutting, Harry?"
"Knock yourself out."
Neville drew his wand, a dopey grin on his face, and approached a large curled plant covered with purple blossoms. He worked carefully, quickly, to retrieve a vine cutting, and placed it just as carefully in his inner robe pocket. It didn't try to eat his face or drain his soul, either. So that was good.
"Through the garden?" Hermione asked. She had been perturbed a bit by the whirlwind cathedral, but the thrill of the hunt was gleaming in her eyes once again. "Are we nearly there?"
"Through the garden," I assured her. "Then into a particularly nasty star field of magical illusion. Something I encountered on the hunt to Atlantis—a favourite of the architect there, Janus. It will throw your memories at you. People we've lost, perhaps, or enemies still living."
"That sounds about bloody right," Ron grumbled. He had enjoyed the apple pie in Norway far more than this particular adventure.
"Just remember that nothing is real—nothing—and walk with your head held high. It is designed to discourage and lead to despair. It… it drove me mad, once." I chuckled. "Madder. Maddest, perhaps. Hey, where's my bottle of wine?"
"You threw it away," Hermione said.
"That doesn't sound like something I'd do."
"You know," Ron said, as we ambled through the garden. "We could make a pretty good amount of gold treasure hunting. What with your future-knowledge, Harry—"
"Past knowledge, really," I corrected him.
"Yeah, that, however it works. We could do this professionally—like my brother does for Gringott's. I bet there are more than just stuffy old magical artefacts hidden away. There'll be treasure troves out there—mountains full of gold, probably. What do you say, Harry?"
"I say that sounds like a fine idea. Small matter of Voldemort and Atlantis and the Ministry and the world war to come, but once we get through all that—relatively unscathed, no doubt—we can talk about your business venture."
Ron's bright expression turned a touch glum. "Doesn't sound too appealing now."
"Well, cheer up. Next year the Cannons win the Cup against Puddlemere."
Ron gasped. "Really?"
"No."
"You wanker."
I strolled out of the garden and into a hazy, lazy cloud of glittering magic, like a fog rolling in off the morrows… it dulled sound and made distance uncertain.
And speaking of the heart of things, when it came right down to the heart of the matter, I guess I just didn't know how to make a difference. I knew how to make mistakes, sure, but a change for the better?
Was I any better than a blind man throwing stones in the dark? Hoping to hit a target that was not only moving but also fading? Better to shoot the devil in the face, wasn't it? At least you knew what the repercussions would be.
Ah, too many questions, really.
The blanket of cool, misty light seemed to cling to our clothes. It left drops of sparkling dew on the hairs of my arm. Hermione blinked away a speckle of drops from her eyelashes. The soft, floating sparks on the air, swept up like leaves caught in the wind, moved with age-old slowness. I half-expected Tessa to appear within the cloud, or—like in the heart of Everest—my father, perhaps. Or Lord Voldemort himself, just a shadow from beyond time and space of the real deal.
And yet, there was something almost peaceful about the cloud of rampant magic. It had rested here, undisturbed in the nerve centre of this ancient underground cathedral for the better part of a millennium. It was younger than I was, which was a thought that could still take me by surprise. A good thing, really. Life is surprise. If you knew what the odds were on every choice made, then how was that any different from being dead? From being robbed of free will?
"You humans are the only creatures in the universe that believe in free will," Father Time said, that hoary cripple with malicious eye. He appeared before us, in our road amidst the fog and the sparkling light. "Everyone else is not so easily distracted."
Hermione, Ron and Neville beheld the old man—for he was old, gnarled, leaning on a twisted and petrified walking stick—as if he were a demon. And perhaps he was, but this was just a memory pulled from my mind. The magic in the cloud sought the most painful memory it could. I was long past weeping for my lost family, or fearing the Dark Lord, so here was the err of my ways…
"Get out of my head, boss," I said.
"Harry, is this an illusion?" Hermione asked.
"This man is the personification of Time. He guards the way to the Infernal Clock below Old Atlantis. He's not real, and yet he is all that exists. Does that make any sense?" I chuckled. "Of course not, and it never will. However, yes, Hermione. This is merely an illusion."
"Do you still have that watch I gave you?" Time asked. "Four minutes to midnight, Harry Potter. To die and die again."
I stepped forward, through the old man, and scattered his figment into a thousand dull sparks that swarmed angrily around me. Each one tickled, like a buzz of warm energy, before dispersing back into the cloud. We moved on, but it was only a moment before another illusion formed—this one, again, playing at my mind.
"You promised to save me, 'Arry," Fleur Delacour whispered. She was pale blue and ivory. Half of her face had been eaten away. She looked sad... and pregnant. Heavily pregnant. "And yet here you are, no, running around after pieces of old stone... why do you think eet will make any difference zis time?"
"Because it has to," I said. "Because this time counts for all."
Fleur smiled. I watched the rotten muscle in her jaw stretch and then snap, and that was enough for me. I surged forward, pushing through the illusion, and dragged my friends with me. None of them had any idea of the nightmares in my mind. No real idea, at the very least. But the magic in the cloud could only take the truth of my deepest fears so far. I doubt even Janus, the original architect of this particular piece of mind magic, had ever considered it would be used against a mind such as mine.
One with the memories of a thousand years and tens of thousands of lives.
A scattered wasteland of mistakes and better-luck-next-times. Too few real horrors left to choose from, really. I was over it.
The sparkling mist diverged away from the true path, and in the very heart of the dank stone room, covered in those same creeping vines, we found a pedestal. Upon that pedestal sat a small circular rock—like an egg. Collars of rune-scripted gold ran in two quick bands around the Stone of Dreams.
"Oh my, is that it?" Hermione asked. "Well, that wasn't too bad, was it, Harry?"
I nodded. "No, not too bad at all, really." Father Time and Fleur Delacour. "It has been worse, but I guess I'm over a lot of that baggage."
Which probably wasn't true, not deep down. The magic just hadn't been able to get at the core of me. Too hot to handle, that's me.
"So we snag it and run?" Ron asked. "It's not booby trapped, is it? Like as soon as we grab it a dozen flaming arrows shoot out of the walls?"
"Not that I recall."
Neville stepped up to the pedestal and glanced back at me. I raised a single shoulder in a small shrug. Nev returned it and then plucked the stone from its bracket. When the roof didn't collapse, he tucked it into his pocket and breathed a sigh of relief. The sparkling cloud of mind magic dispersed as the treasure it had guarded was spirited away—purpose served.
"That was rather fun, except for the last bit there," Hermione said. "Where to next, Harry?"
"Wasn't that enough adventuring for one day?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Hmm..." I rubbed my hands together and licked my lips. "Well, I suppose we can go blow up a horcrux, if you like?"
"You mean one of those bit's of You Know Who's soul?" Ron asked.
"Yeah, let's do that." Neville's face was set—grim. "That sounds just okey-dokey to me."
It's no place for the old.
"You know, we're lucky in a way."
"How so?" I asked.
"Because of this-what we're doing. I mean, look. We're flying on a battleship built in what amounts to another world over ten thousand years ago. It's exciting, isn't it? We get to be the difference in the world. Isn't that better than standing on the sidelines?"
"I suppose it is, Hermione, but you know better than most that we're not always this carefree."
The sun was at our backs, dwindling in the west, as my Atlantean cruiser shook the heavens. We cut through cloud, speckled the deck with moisture, as Ron and Neville practiced their wandwork on the deck. I'd taught them a few useful old world spells not found in any dusty, musty leather bound Hogwarts textbook.
"Think a minute on it, Harry. I think you enjoy all this more than you let on. I think you let the bad memories, all those years of memories, pile on top of what is, essentially, freedom. You have the freedom to go anywhere and do anything." She shook her head. "I can't imagine any greater pleasure, can you?"
Images of Fleur fluttered through my mind. Hot, sweaty images in the dark. Greater pleasures? There were a few. Yet I took Hermione's words to heart and processed them, let them simmer. There were moments, through the haze of time, where I did allow myself to enjoy the power at my fingertips. Remarkable though it may be, I was still a ravaged husk more than a little to the left of okay.
"That's a nice way of looking at things, thank you, Hermione." I chuckled. "Don't think I don't see what you're doing, either. You're trying to make me feel better. It doesn't work like that... Too much time has passed for that. Far too much time. The thing about all this, 'Mione, the thing about memories. They're supposed to fade, supposed to dwindle. I remember it all. Every day of every year of every life. I think the Infernal Clock won't let me forget. So yes, this is amazing. This is better than nine to five at Hogwarts, but a pleasure? Forgive me, but you're rather naive. I don't say that to hurt—in many ways, it's a good thing—but we're on opposite ends of the spectrum here. And luck has nothing to do with it."
Hermione went and joined Ron and Neville on the lower deck and left me piloting the ship. A small part of me recognised that I had probably hurt her feelings, whether I'd meant to or not. She was so young. But then, to me, who wasn't? Perhaps it would do well to remember that age did not necessarily grant wisdom.
Doubly so in my case.
My thoughts turned to naming my mighty ship. This was now my home, the base of operations, from which I would launch my campaign against the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters. Against Astaroth and his old magic. Against the Ministry. Against Chronos and Saturnia. Against them all. Every last one of them. Seriously, boss, you dunno who you be fuckin' with. It was time my oh-so-eager enemies were reminded of that.
The Reminiscence had been a good name for my first ship. It was a memory of things long dead.
But that didn't fit here. My ship was new, shiny, all systems a-go. It deserved a name to reflect such majesty. But what?
I had nothing.
Truth is, I'd never been that creative. It's all just scotch and steak and heartache. Hmm.
The Scotch'n'Steak… No, too obvious.
And, after losing Tessa for the last time below deck, this place deserved a proper name. Something with meaning.
"So where we headed, Harry?" Neville asked, joining me on at the control column. "Back to England? To find the… the Horcrux?"
I blinked. "Oh yeah, Horcrux hunting. Sorry, miles away. That kind of slipped my mind."
We must have been flying through some storm clouds, because a grey haze seemed to cloak the ship. I steered us down, into thicker atmosphere.
"Are we still—?"
"Yes, yes. Although it won't be as exciting as all this relic hunting nonsense we've been up to…"
"Harry!" Neville grabbed my arm. "You're… Merlin, your eyes are bleeding!"
"Of course it's still fairly impressive," I continued. "Seeing one of the bastard's soul fragments go up in smoke. Let me tell you, Nev, nothing as satisfying—no greater pleasure, even, heh—as…"
There was the sound of footsteps echoing down a long, empty corridor. A rather feminine giggle that made me think of Fleur. A flash of crimson. A dollop of sour cream.
A touch of strange.
—Please, tell me what you are?—
No matter what happens, isn't it important to try?
—Very well, I am Lady Time.—
Time?
—Time.—
Oh…
—Just who were you expecting?—
I do not know… but Time's up, isn't it?
—Yes, yes it is, Harry James Potter. And this is really, really going to hurt…—
Fuck it, do your worst...
I awoke from the dream—the Dream, the same Dream—and turned to glance out of the window above my bed, as I always did, wanting to catch the first rays of sunlight beaming in on my renewed life.
I sighed and basked in the warmth. Back again. And where I'd come from there had been no… That was odd, I couldn't remember my last life.
All of those memories were fuzzy, swimming in and out of thought and consciousness, as they always were at the beginning.
The future is never written—remember that, even if you remember nothing else—and trying to hold memories of a time that hadn't happened yet, and that had virtually no chance of playing out the same way again, was like trying to hold water in a sieve.
Impossible and pretty much pointless.
Yet I always remember enough of the last time and the times before to do things differently. To make all the old mistakes in new and exciting ways… That was a funny thought in a sad and lonely way. I think I've had it before, maybe not.
I jumped up and out of bed at Number Four, Privet Drive. There was work to be done, after all, and already events were in motion that would lead, inevitably it seemed, to the end of the world.
It was the summer after the battle at the Department of Mysteries, and Sirius' death was fresh in my young mind. More than once I had tried to go back earlier than this, to prevent Voldemort's rebirth entirely, but no matter how much power I used or how hard I wished it so, this was as far back in time I could go.
And still, eight years was pretty damned impressive, especially when all the theory said it was impossible.
Moving out of the small bedroom and onto the landing, I could hear the Dursley's moving about downstairs and went into the bathroom. Looking in the mirror, first of all, just to make sure I looked like I should – a teenager, only weeks away from his sixteenth birthday. My unruly hair stuck up every which way, and beneath my heavy fringe the damned lightning-bolt scar was red and enflamed.
And moving.
My skin was moving, crawling… stretching. It looked hazy, almost out of focus. My entire body seemed to be fluid, moving within the bounds of my form. I smiled grimly and waved my hand through the air. I left a shadowy imprint before the mirror like a flesh-coloured rainbow, as if I were moving in super-slow motion.
Oh yeah, things were as they should be.
Splashing my face with water, I braced myself—it was coming any minute now. I could already feel it building in the back of my eyes. Just a tingle for the moment… yet the pressure rose fast. I grabbed one of the hand towels from the rack next to the mirror and put it between my teeth – if I was quick enough I'd be able to catch the worst of it. I gripped the edge of the sink as the tingling in my eyes became uncomfortable.
Travelling back through time and cheating death all at once is not nearly as easy as it sounds. And each time it seems to hurt a little more. I wonder about that sometimes, why each time I go back hurts more than the last. It's a difference, and differences are worth their weight in gold.
The necessary force and sheer amount of power required to transport me not only through time, but into my younger self, was simply extraordinary. I wasn't just transporting matter—which was impossible—but my soul, which was equally impossible. To this day I do not really understand how it was done. All I know was that it worked, and that was good enough.
I had some idea, scraps of half a dozen crazy theories… born in the wastelands of a Lost City.
It had something to do with negatively charging every molecule and particle in my body to twice the speed of light, and then hitting the afterburners and throwing it all into reverse so hard and so fast that reality was torn apart—only locally mind, around me—and a gateway was opened between one time and another.
Always this time, always this summer, why not any other time? Why?
It meant I always arrived with my molecules still vibrating, hence the appearance of slow-motion movement. It wasn't—parts of me were actually still spinning near the speed of light, nothing slow about that at all, and it meant that when time caught up with me and my mind relaxed, the aftershock of such a trip hurt like all the cruciatus curses ever cast hitting me at once, whilst getting kicked in the balls.
And here it was…
I gripped the sink, clenched my teeth, and nothing happened.
Huh?
I blinked and frowned. My skin was no longer slurry in the mirror. In the distance, I heard a knock at the door downstairs.
Then I remembered.
"Of course it's still fairly impressive," I muttered. "Seeing one of the bastard's soul fragments go up in smoke. Let me tell you, Nev, nothing as satisfying—no greater pleasure, even, heh—as…"
…as what? And then what? I had been alive, aboard my battleship, about to summon the Dark Lord's horcruxes to me. And now this? Now this?
A reset where there could be no reset.
A death where there had been no death.
I was back at the start.
No…
"Harry," Petunia Dursley called from downstairs. Her tone was like water trickling over loose pebbles. Uninterested and not really there. Possessed, even. That was the word for it. "There's something to see you."
It had all been for nothing.
I fell to my knees. A thousand thoughts ran desolate through my mind. This is different. Where was the pain? There is never anyone at the door. I can't…
"I can't do this again." My voice was a whisper—a hoary cripple. A malicious eye. "Don't make me do it again…"
A reset should not have been possible. It should have torn the fucking fabric of existence asunder and ground me to dust on the damned clockwork at the heart of the universe!
And yet, no. No fucking fabric, no damned clockwork, no pain. Just a green marble sink and a wet tiled floor. Nothing, for all that mattered. Oblivion itself would have been kinder than this.
Just what in the seven hells had gone wrong now? I must have died.
Another thought clicked over through the maelstrom in my mind. Something to see you, Aunt Petunia had said.
Something.
A/N: This seems like a more than capable spot to leave off. It is good to be writing again. I took a break for a month, as I just wasn't feeling the magic. Also had to design and set up my new website, which promotes my original fiction and advertises my upcoming novel! That's right, folks. More Joe for you. Check out the links in my profile.
Okay, so next update is for An Unfound Door. I encourage you to go read that, if you haven't yet. It is garnering some very positive reviews. Then Heartlands again.
Wouldn't it suck if I've actually reset the story? After all the words and all the strife Harry has faced? It would suck quite thoroughly. Stay tuned for more!
-Joe
