Harry Potter and the Heartlands of Time

Chapter 22 - Don't Stop Me Now

'You have no faith to lose, and you know it.'

~Stereophonics

The war council, such as it seemed, was held at noon, under a sparklingly blue autumn sky, in the pavilions erected along the crescent edge of the lake. With Hogwarts as backdrop, the air brisk with chill and anticipation, the whole sordid affair was finally underway. It was like watching a re-run of an old television show for me, and not one of my favourite episodes.

Like the ALF Christmas special.

Representatives from across the world were in attendance, more than a few translators, as well as remnants of the British Magical government.

There was only one key party missing, and I'd do for them personally once the same old plan had been made...

I made it clear in the grand and absurd meeting with the captains, the wizards and witches of the nations that had come to fight Voldemort's armies, that I'd take no part in the grudge work. I was here to headbutt Voldemort and nothing further.

Dumbledore and I sat as equal, he perhaps a shade deferential to me, given the task at hand. I guess I'd earned the benefit of the doubt when it came to knowing what came next, though following the plan of a madman who had failed twenty-odd thousand times across a millennium of years was, perhaps, fresh folly.

No matter. My strategy for the army of Aurors wasn't about winning. It was about minimising the damage the Dark Lord would cause, the world on fire, while I took my last shot at the snake-faced son of a bitch.


Put yourself in my shoes... what would you have done?


After the war council, I took the time to enjoy a spot of lunch - beef and taters, hearty food - grasping the fork as hard I could to stop my hands from shaking. Faint lines had appeared along the back of my hand, dark lines, shining faintly with a pulsing blue light.

Hermione, Ron, and Neville tried to engage me in conversation, but it was all I could do not to shake with the power and promise destroying my body. It had to work this time. Winning was all I had to live for, as much as I wanted to rest. What about Fleur…

"Are you going to be OK, mate?" Ron asked. From his tone, I guessed he already knew the answer to that.

"Have any of you seen, Fleur?" I asked.

"She's taken apartments in the staff quarters," Hermione said softly.

I nodded once. Fleur. My fiancée.

"No time," I muttered. "A thousand years, and now no time..."

I stood and walked away from the Great Hall, making sure I was steady on my feet, before I breached the wards, slipped under the magical doorway like a sheet of paper, and Apparated across the country.

I appeared in the grand Vale Crystalis, the monumental throne room in the tallest spire of Atlantis. Through the vast marble pillars, the pantheon of white towers, I glimpsed the North Sea. Clouds darkened the horizon, miles away and far below.

The entire council of High Lords stood in attendance, as if I'd been anticipated. I suppose I had been. Thirteen men and women, atop thirteen severe thrones, stared down at me with hard expressions on their faces.

I took a step forward, felt my legs shaking, a shudder rushed through me, and in the next step conjured a simple brown cane to steady myself. The foot of the cane resounded against the pristine marble floors, echoing like a gunshot.

"You," I began, "are the only uncertain element in the game."

My voice echoed much like the cane, before falling quiet in halls that should have been long dead. I allowed them time to respond, though I got what I expected in their silence.

"For a thousand years, and lives ended in blood and fire," I said softly, "I have found this city. I have protected the ruin of Atlantis from Voldemort's attempts to pry away her secrets. Secrets you all left unguarded when Atlantis was swept across the Void. You, all of you, so certain in your power, so convinced you were invincible, indestructible." I didn't need to scoff.

I let the silence stretch longer this time, noting a few cracks in the hard faces staring down at me.

"Do I accuse you of murder?" I pondered. "Death caused by negligence, perhaps? Manslaughter?" I chuckled. "For there has been slaughter, blood enough to drown the world twice over. I may have harnessed time to see its undoing, but I was there, my good lords and ladies, I remember."

Funny how few times it took watching the world end before you got used to it.

My voice grew low, certain, and brooked no argument. "I hold you to an accounting," I whispered, may as well have shouted in that reverberating hall, that citadel of power-forgotten. "This very hour magical armies gather to advance against the Dark Lord Voldemort. I will do for Voldemort myself. You will submit the legions of Atlantis to the command of Professor Albus Dumbledore. You will fight and you will die alongside the rest of us." The last I growled.

I held the glares of each man and woman on their thrones for a good five minutes before the High Lord himself cleared his throat and leaned forward.

"We stand aside," he said.

I apparated away before bringing the whole fucking tower down around their heads.


Time to have done with it.


"You do not look well, Harry," the Dark Lord Voldemort said.

I sat on the edge of a sheer cliff, about a thousand-foot drop, high up in the Canadian Rockies—just outside of the town of Banff. Lights in the valley twinkled in neat patterns, grids, cars trundling along the streets. Tourists aplenty drank and fuck themselves stupid down amidst the scenic valley.

You know, the good life.

A bite to the air had me shaking—or perhaps that was the sickness, the ravages of time rushing through me. I leaned against my cane, head almost on my shoulder, and clenched my fist against a surge of magic once again pulsing beneath my skin. The world spun and I swayed over the edge, tempting fate and an indifferent universe to take the choice out of my hands.

"You missed a great sunset," I said, the last vestiges of light clinging to the western sky, the end of twilight. "The Bow River looked like glass, set to shining. Nothing but snow-capped peaks stretched into the distance.

"Why open your mind to me here?" Voldemort asked softly, his presence at my back colder than any wintry frost. "Why give away your location? You are alone, Harry."

"Your horcruxes are destroyed. All of them that matter." I rubbed at my old scar, dead and dying, though still painfully connected…

"Yes."

"You haven't sought to make another."

"No."

I chuckled under my breath, almost wheezed from the pain. Each breath felt like a dagger in my side. "Trying to stop you," I said, "actually gave me what you've always wanted. What you've always feared."

"And what do I want? What do I fear?"

"Death," I said. The wind tousled my hair about my head. I gazed down at the drop, a thousand feet to a pebbly scramble of rocks and boulders far below. "I lived a thousand years trying to stop you live one more. You remember some of it, don't you? Both because of our connection and the mess of stolen magic that came from ruined Atlantis."

"I must admit," Voldemort said, "that even I would not dare the ragged immortality you achieved, Harry."

I raised an invisible glass to that and laughed harshly. "Last toss of the dice."

"You can barely stand, Potter," Voldemort said. He pressed the tip of his wand against the back of my neck. "You should jump. I see your mind, Harry. Why linger on?"

"I am terrified of what will happen, to be honest." I swatted his wand away. "The time magic is still in me. Look at my arms, withering away. It's killed me as sure as you would. If I die now, if I reset, I won't get another chance... but the reset will still happen. I'll be ground to dust and less than dust against the surge, caught in a loop I won't even feel. You and the whole world with me."

Voldemort sighed. "You have trapped us all, then?"

I stood with great effort and met the Dark Lord's blood-red eyes, glowing faintly. He reeked of death defeated, as much as I did, now.

"I will not stand aside," I said. "I will come for you and try to end you. Only then will I attempt to undo the time magic. Only when you are defeated." I snarled. "A thousand years has to count for something. I am owed by this world."

"I cannot kill you and risk the reset, but you will risk breaking time itself to stop me?" Voldemort's mouth moved soundlessly. "You are insane."

I bared my teeth into something approaching a feral grin. "Welcome to the party. You could do the world a favour and jump." I waved at the cliff fall behind me.

He almost looked like he was considering it, for a moment, then the Dark Lord smiled—a grin as ugly as my own.

"I do not have to kill you," he said. "If I trap you, imprison you in stasis, then nothing can stop me."

I raised my palms, showing him the black poison running through my veins, running up my limbs toward my heart. "You think you can stop this? For a time, perhaps, but I will die, stasis or no. The world dies with me."

"Time enough, perhaps, to undo the deal you bartered in the Fae and Forget, Harry."

I threw up my arms and cursed the sky, the stars, creation itself. "A gamble for both of us then," I said, recovering my cool. "I'll be coming for you soon, Tom."

"You will fail in this, as you have failed the last thousand years, Harry." He disapparated.

I spat on the rock as a clap of air rushed in to fill the Dark Lord's wake and turned to gaze out at the mountains again.

Time to say a few goodbyes.