A/N: Hitting that weekly update streak like a right proper writer, me.


Harry Potter and the Heartlands of Time

Chapter 17 – The Corruption of Riau

Maybe everyone can live beyond
what they're capable of.

~Markus Zusak

One thing they don't advertise about getting sober, about giving up the bottle, is how many hours there are in the harsh, sober light of day. I mean, good god, I had more problems than most, more vices, more on my to-do list, but even I struggled to keep busy with all the extra time sobriety brought with it.

Like sleep.

I slept.

A bottle of strong whisky could put me to sleep—but that wasn't really sleep, was it? No, that was passing out. There was a subtle but important difference between falling asleep and passing out. One was about rest, the other was about being afraid of the real world and dealing with your fucking problems—whether those problems were as simple as a Dark Lord hell bent on world domination, or as impossible as getting in shape for summer.

Passing out was easier, far easier, often preferable. And what were those old words of wisdom, Professor Dumbledore? Something about right and easy and how we always should choose the less fun option.

Such is life.

At least I could eat as much pizza as I wanted. With double anchovies.


Think of the last thing you want to do in the world, the very thing you're dreading, and go do that.


Many years ago, the best part of one thousand years ago, I'd taken a pretty girl on a boat ride along the Canal du Midi in France, circling that ancient and most noble city, Carcassonne.

We'd sailed in the sun, drifted along the winding canal keeping pace with the breeze, eating olives, drinking crimson glasses of wine, and—for the very briefest of moments—I could forget about the future, the past, and just live in that moment.

I usually made that canal trip one of the first things I did at the beginning of every new life, every reset to that summer after my fifth-year. None of the subsequent trips made me forget like the first, the first was a special moment in time, an afternoon I had never forgotten, not after a thousand years and twenty thousand odd resets, but it wasn't always about forgetting.

Here was that afternoon again, later in the summer, well within the bounds of autumn's first grasp. Halloween was just around the corner, and I had me a sneaking suspicion this Halloween was going to be a fiery one.

Fleur Delacour and I sailed the Canal du Midi once more. We had olives, again, but in place of red wine we drank sparkling apple juice. Fleur because she was with child—our child—and me because I was a drunk who couldn't handle his drink. Not that I hadn't given it a few centuries of effort. The booze won in the end. Always.

"I had thought never to see you again," Fleur said, trailing her delicate fingers in the cool, clear water. "You have been aloof to the point of insult, Monsieur Potter."

Hay fields eased past on either side—dotted with sheep—and we were alone on this part of the canal. Carcassonne loomed in the distance, turrets and keeps on green hills under blue skies, a mile or so away. The sun eased over the tops of those turrets, sinking toward the Atlantic Ocean.

"I've been afraid to speak with you," I said, because it was the truth, and if anyone deserved my honesty, it was Fleur.

"We did this trip when you saved my life in Diagon Alley, 'Arry," she said, her face giving nothing away. The delicate bump of her belly stretched her green blouse tight but not too tight. She wore a flattering silk skirt, showing about ten miles of pale legs ending in her small feet, bare, toenails painted red. Her hair was a curtain of spun gold. "You brought me here. How many lives, I wonder, to perfect this date of yours? I started to love you here, on this canal. Was that love born in deceit?"

"Me too," I said quietly. "It was never a lie, Fleur. Never that."

She arched one perfect eyebrow, rested her hand on her baby bump, and said nothing.

"I've come to ask you and, well, anyone you like—your parents, your sister—to travel with me to Hogwarts. The castle is soon to be the safest place on the planet. When the final battles begin, and they will soon, because I'll start them, Hogwarts will be last to fall." I thought on the futures I'd seen in the past, the way the dominoes fell, one after the other. "Of course, I hope it doesn't come to that last siege, but I'd feel a whole lot better about it if I knew you were safe… until the end."

Fleur held my gaze for a long and careful moment, one of those moments, one of those looks, that made me feel just sixteen years old. The mind to fit my body. Perhaps that look was why I was drawn to her, life after life, love after love—Tonks was the same. Something in the eyes, something… knowing, wise, far more ancient than I could ever hope to be. A look that understood me, to my core, something I had never achieved in over a thousand years of flawless defeat.

"You always wear such nice suits," Fleur said. "Why is that?"

"It's something I can control. A piece of my day, my life, I don't have to think about. I can concentrate on the important things—like you, and our child."

"And the Dark Lord Voldemort," she whispered with that sexy French inflection. The shade of subtle seduction so suggestively said.

"Well, no need to bring him into every argument."

She rolled her eyes, not unkindly. "We are not arguing. And yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes, I will come with you to Hogwarts Castle."

We passed under the shadow of an errant tree growing against the canal bank, bent over and crooked like an old man, a fall of leaves on the water, before passing back into the warm light.

"I expected more of a fight," I said.

Fleur shrugged. "I will fight, but not you, 'Arry. For you, perhaps, you've enough enemies."

I found half a smile. "Are we OK, Fleur?"

"I love you," she said, and leaned back in the small canal boat to soak up the sun. Her legs came up to rest in my lap and I stroked her knee with my real hand, small circles with my fingertips, while I steered us west toward the setting sun.


I can't promise I'll always be there with you, not with all I must do, but I can promise I'll always be there for you, Fleur. In this life…

or the next.


A few nights later, I cloaked my battleship above the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts and hovered the ship above the top most parapets. I slipped down a mythril rope ladder and leaned back against the warm stone on one of the viewing platforms, staring up at the billions of stars and the thin crescent of the moon, just the smallest rind of pale white light.

It had been a busy few days—forging alliances, sourcing materials, the occasional fight—but I was feeling more and more prepared for what lay ahead. I had to balance the scales where I could, save as much as I can… but for every hour I spent protecting London, or another city, it was an hour I stole from somewhere else.

If Edinburgh wasn't worth the cost of attacking, it was only because I hadn't protected Newcastle, or Glasgow—and when things really heated up, and the war stopped playing grab-ass and went international, who did we decide to save? New York or Paris? Sydney or Singapore? Who was I to make such decisions?

Well, the latter question was easiest to answer—I was Harry fucking Potter, Lord of Time. I was the only one to make such decisions. Because I'd done it before, because I could live with it. Who must do the hard things? He who can. I forget which ponce of a bastard said that, but they did know what they were talking about.

I held up the softly glowing cerulean gemstone, given to me in a dream—in a moment of stolen time—by my granddaughter, Lily. Magic beyond anything I understood, perhaps because I couldn't understand. Lily had claimed to be more than magical, somehow linked to Atlantis. Was that my fault? Of course it was. Who else?

"What sort of child are you going to give birth to, Fleur?" I whispered, the gemstone swinging back and forth in the air, almost hypnotic. I let time pass, minutes where I could be busy, because I must. Because sometimes… some times.

While I had no reason to think our child would be anything but normal, healthy, there was the concern that my magic, if not my body, had matured a thousand years beyond the normal human lifespan—even for wizards. What could be born of that?

Footsteps creaked on the spiral staircase up to the viewing platform.

"You are out after hours, Potter," Severus Snape said. "Ten points from Gryffindor."

I snatched the gemstone from the air and slipped the chain back around my neck. With a sigh, the groan of old bones, tired joints, I stood to face the surly old potions master.

The pallor of his skin in the moonlight made Snape look a week dead. His eyes, beady and black between locks of greasy hair. He held his wand in one hand and surveyed me from head to toe—stopping for a second on my silver hand, a question on his lips.

"Ask your questions, Severus," I said tiredly. "Make it count."

"Is it true?" he asked.

I nodded.

"All of it?"

I nodded again.

Dumbledore had been spilling the beans. Well, why not? I had no real secrets left this late in the game, none I cared to keep secret anyway. Cards on the table, as it were.

A conflicting range of emotions flickered across Snape's face. He didn't know how to feel. Give it a thousand years and you may start to grasp the edges of it.

"What…" He sighed and decided to drive the dagger in deep. "What would your mother think?"

I bristled at that, bit back on a scathing reply. Mostly because it was a fair question, and one I had been avoiding thinking about for hundreds of years. I rarely thought of James and Lily Potter, because doing so still hurt, stung, as it had done in my first life, where I had more questions than answers, more hopes than realities.

Because they would be ashamed of me.

"I wouldn't know," I said. "Of all the lives I've lived, I've never met her. Closest I ever came was the phantom that bled from Voldemort's wand during his resurrection ceremony."

"You would have broken her heart," he said. Not unkindly, not with venom in his voice, just as a simple statement of fact, of his belief. That was somehow so much worse than hate.

"He knows," I said, as Snape turned to leave. "Not yet, but soon. Voldemort figures it out, Snape. That you're Dumbledore's man… no, sorry, that isn't fair. That you're your own man. When he summons you, just you, do not go."

I'd seen what was left of the man after the Dark Lord was through with him, more than once.

Professor Snape, one of the first men I'd ever considered an enemy, before I knew what true horrors the world held, sneered at me. He swept from the silent rooftops, robes billowing in his wake. I wondered if I'd ever see him alive again.

And then wondered why I was thinking of him at all.


Take two parts Captain Morgan's Dark Rum, mix in some Lord Calvert Canadian Whisky, splash of ginger beer—called a Dark Lord. They don't go down easy.


So you start to stand, make a difference, and the stakes spew into the world like a lost city, a forgotten thread, a broken shadow of time. It's all the same, you don't know what you're doing, only that you're unhappy and never giving your liver a chance to sleep. You have a pathological need for people to like you, pretty girls in particular, and this leaves you sadder than sad. Because they do like you, but you don't close the deal. Fuck 'em and leave 'em. You're that messed up. You hurt them.

You got lucky with Tessa – one less heart you had to break, that first life you knew her. Easier to just let the world end, let the clock reset. But she never saw you as you. She got the indifferent drunk, the miserable bastard, who was only there to grind against her. Which is awful. She deserved better. So did the others. You don't have better, you have a self-destructive streak and you're a drunk.

Drunk and a fool. Sounds almost romantic, a cliché worth dying for, but it's the worst kind of dumb. And you're meant to be clever.

Can you chalk the failure up to being clever? No. Clever people don't get to make these mistakes. At least, ideally. So what's the plan? What's the excuse? Who's going to care as you get fatter and sadder and tired and the world burns? Certainly not any of the people you let get close. Those are the ones that see a glimpse of the truth and find it somewhat disagreeable. And, if you continue along this path, then who will want to get close? You ruined the best thing that's ever happened to you. You fucked and cast aside someone who really needed you. And don't the words just scream far louder than you ever will. Round and fucking round you go, as the wind whistles past your ears aboard another stolen battleship.

Don't quote song lyrics. Don't quote the quotable. Write your own epitaph, drowned in enough whisky and gin to see off even the most irredeemable of time demons.

So what's the solution? What's the answer? No one is going to help you, so what do you do, as the night closes in and the only warmth is liquid and golden? How do you do it? Will there be an end game? You could kill yourself again, but twenty thousand deaths must have taught you that that's not the answer. But that's one extreme. The other is far clearer, far… better.

Stop drinking so much.

Stop drinking.

You can't measure yourself, you can't resist. The gin seeps in. One is too many and ten is not enough. A sad, sorry state of affairs.

Be better.

Be happy.

Stop lying.

Go for a run.

Embrace life instead of trying to numb it into non-existence with dim light and expensive booze. Because it doesn't matter whether you're a top shelf or bottom, tins or tap, the point is the same. It's been long years since you drank because you liked it. You drink to get drunk. Nothing more, and about as less than it can get. Each drink another teaspoon of dirt dug from your own grave.

Six feet deep, they say.

Got to be nearly there now.

"Harry, are you listening?"

I fell out of my thoughts, piloting my battleship through cool wisps of low-level cloud somewhere over… I'd zoned out, well and truly, and had no clue where we were.

"Sorry, Hermione, I was wool gathering. What did you say?"

"I said, do you know where we are?"

I gazed over the portside, then starboard, quick check aft. Below us was sparkling blue ocean on all sides, no land in sight. "Heh," I said. "Sorry, I got lost in my thoughts for a minute there. We're somewhere over the ocean."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Well, yes, that's clear."

"Possibly the Indian Ocean. How long have we been flying?"

She checked her watch. "Just over five hours. I came to get you because dinner's ready. Neville made spaghetti bolognaise and baked camembert."

I nodded. "I'll be down in a minute, once I've course-corrected us a touch."

Hermione gave me a slow nod, an uncertain frown, and disappeared back below deck. Are you alright, Harry? she didn't ask. Are you… with us? Stop drowning the demons, even when they know how to swim, and ugly things start crawling onto the shores, into the sun, of the mind.

One of the banks of glowing crystals along the control column to my left had something to do with navigation, if I remembered that right. I slowed the ship down to a quick cruise and began shoving crystals about on the column. After a moment in which I'd either released the ballast or primed the main cannons, a sphere of light appeared above the console.

A representation of the earth, as it had stood ten thousand years ago when Atlantis was lost. Not much continental drift since then, and the image was mostly accurate. A pulsing yellow dot on the map had us somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Whoa, I'd been way off. How long had I been lost in my thoughts? At least an hour, possibly more. I rubbed at my eyes, fighting fatigue. It was entirely possible I'd fallen asleep at the wheel.

I flicked the autopilot on after punching in a rough destination—Singapore. We'd be there in two hours at max speed. Enough time to enjoy dinner with my friends, discuss the plan, catch a proper nap.

I headed downstairs for a bite to eat.

"Thought you said we'd be there by now," Ron said. "Not that I'm complaining, mate."

The smells from the galley, warm steam, cooked pasta, fried meats, melted cheese, was intoxicating—in a good way.

"I overshot our destination a bit," I said, taking a seat at the wooden table next to Luna. She patted me on the shoulder, looking up from her magazine, before returning to a thrilling column about using cauldrons as broomsticks or some such nonsense.

"A bit?" Neville asked, juggling pans on the stove.

"Eight thousand kilometres. Heh." I ran a hand back through my hair. "Sorry. Though if you ever wanted to see New Zealand, let me know. We'll pass over in about ten minutes."

"You OK, mate?" Ron asked.

"Tired," I said. "Lot on my mind. Hell, sometimes I worry I was better on the booze."

"What?"

"Nah, nothing. Thinking out loud. Come on, Nev, let's eat. Hungry work ahead."


Final tally? Something so absurd as to reduce the struggle to pointless, the fight void it of all meaning. It has to be about redemption, doesn't it? What's the point if I don't come out the other side… better?


From Singapore, I piloted the cloaked battleship to the north, crossing swiftly into the airspace above Malaysia. When we were at the right longitude, I swung the ship to the east back out over the water. It wasn't long before we were in Indonesian territory, and looming on the horizon…

…the last truly untamed, wild piece of magical landscape on the planet.

The Riau Islands. Home to a few Muggle settlements that didn't know any better, and little else.

There are corners of the world, this being the darkest, where humanity had never tamed, made peace, with the magic running through the planet's veins, saturating the air. Sure, places like the Forbidden Forest on the borders of Hogwarts were dangerous, fraught with lost magic and creatures not seen anywhere else in the world, but the ruins and temples on the island of Riau was something else entirely.

I'd never known the full history of the island, what menace had birthed it, even though my fight against Voldemort brought me back here time and time again. That son of a bitch had found this place early in his life, during all the wandering he did post-Hogwarts. It was a terrible place, claimed by nature and corrupted magic, and so attracted the unbalanced or those stupid enough to rend their souls asunder.

As we drew closer, the battleship—more than a little sentient—wanted to veer back toward New Zealand. It sensed the malice lurking ahead in the forgotten jungle.

Hermione and Neville were with me above deck. They moved to stand closer to each other, though they didn't realise, life closer to life. Riau Island had that effect on the pure of heart.

"What is that?" Hermione asked.

On the horizon now, grey-black storm clouds, rippling with yellow lightning, hovered above the Indonesian island. Even at distance, you could tell that the storm was a damn convincing warning sign to stay away.

"Magic here is… corrupted, is probably the closest word," I said. "Cruel, hurtful, a few other words that touch the edge of the issue. Wild magic, raw veins of power, gathered on this island a long time ago, and over time the veins have rotted. Like blood poisoning. One day, years from now, this island and the power gathered here will erupt—and take most of the southern hemisphere with it."

"Gosh," Hermione said. "Isn't there anything you can do about it?"

I chuckled. "One world ending problem at a time. If I ever defeat Voldemort, I may swing round and focus on this malady in the future. Though I swear to Merlin if I spend another thousand years fighting it I'll be furious."

"Why hasn't anyone done anything before now?" Neville asked.

I shrugged. "It's been this way for thousands of years. Like a volcano everyone knows is going to erupt. Overdue an eruption, actually. What would you do? Magic, our magic, won't do much against it. Just add fuel to the fire."

"Do the magical governments know?"

"Yeah, sure, but again, it's a problem for another day."

Hermione wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. We were closer now, close enough to hear the crackle of the yellow lightning, smell the harsh copper in the air. "How can anyone live here?"

"Muggles don't see the clouds," I said. "They feel it, though. The few settlements on the island and the surrounds have the highest murder and suicide rates in the world."

"And we really need to go there?" Neville said. "New Zealand still an option?"

"There's a ruined old temple in the heart of the jungle. Sort of a half-buried pyramid. Guess who used it to hide a horcrux? I'll give you a hint – it rhymes with Poldermort."

Hermione surveyed the island, our ship nearly upon it now. Dark stretches of jungle like twisted, rusted steel, infested the land mass. Overhead, we lost the light entirely as we passed through the cloud barrier. I steered us low, well below the lightning, but each strike still stung my nerves, jarred the teeth in my mouth with sharp bites of pain.

"What Tom Riddle did," I said, "when he split his soul into seven pieces was obscene. This island calls to him, screams at him. He can feel it from anywhere on earth. They were made for each other—two supremely corrupted sources of magic."

"How long will we be here, Harry?" Hermione asked. "I'm scared."

"As long as it takes. And me too, Hermione. I'm scared, too. This place is… wrong. Outside of everything we know to be true. It doesn't play by the rules." I paused. "But it's a powerful thing, being scared. Use it."


What do you have to be afraid of? You, who have conquered time and death?


I parked the battleship above the ruins of the slumped, broken pyramid, about a dozen feet above a clearing in the jungle. My friends and I armed ourselves and climbed down to the ground.

From the jungle floor, the pyramid—black, awful stone, slick with something that looked like grease but wasn't—looked even more menacing.

"Is it…" Ron paled. "Is that temple bleeding?"

"That's residue from burnt magic," I said. "Here, on this island, magic is tangible in its rawest form. Like oil, oil is a good way of thinking of it. Don't get any of it on your skin."

"Why?" Luna asked. Of all my friends, she was always the hardest hit by this place. It hurt her lovely soul. But, of all my friends, she was always the most insistent when it came to saving the world with me.

I'd tried to talk her out of it in the past, often succeeded, but I wanted my friends with me. I didn't want to do this one alone.

"It will burn like acid. If it gets into your blood, you're dead. I learnt that the hard way."

"I think I'm going to be sick," Neville said, as if discussing the matter over drinks. He thought about and decided that yes, he was going to be sick, and disappeared behind a tree for half a minute. "Sorry," he said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "I don't feel much better…"

"We're all going to feel worse the longer we're here," I said. "So let's make it quick. See the entrance over there? That dark, gaping maw of jagged rock and tunnel?"

"Oh, come now," Hermione said. "That's just too much."

"In and out. Twenty minutes." I could feel the horcrux, even through the maelstrom of corrupted magic and cruel thoughts the island was pumping our way. When it came to Voldemort, I could always feel him. "We're looking for a diadem, sort of a tiara effort. He moves it here once he knows I'm onto him, time after time, life after life."

"If Voldemort knows about all your other lives," Hermione whispered as we crossed the courtyard of stone and dead jungle vines. The bones of countless small animals littered the square. "Why doesn't he hide it somewhere new?"

"He can't resist this place," I said. "The others, he changes up quite often. Some lives it takes me months to track down where he moves all the horcruxes, but this place, always this place. Asking him not to come here is like asking the sun not to set. It just… will."

Hermione shared a look with Ron and then took his hand in hers. He looked surprised, even pleased. "I hate him," she whispered. "I hate Voldemort so much."

"Use that, too," I said, as we reached the entrance. Light seemed to fail, what little light there was, a line of pure black shadow marking the way ahead. Nothing pierced that veil. Nothing dared.

I winked at my friends and stepped forward into the dark.


A/N: Heading into the final arc of the story. Dark and terrible times ahead. Please leave me a review. Next update of Heartlands is scheduled for Wednesday, 5th of July, 2017.