Harry Potter and the Soul of the Hero
Chapter 33 – The Beginning
Or perhaps, the Reality in Fiction
An ending of horror, a most dire ending. And yet,
I can't
help feeling a liberating ending,
in spite of everything.
~~Thomas Mann
Life to be understood turns into legend….
And legend, be it big or small, is always defiant.
There's not much more to be said in this tale, nothing much more to be done. All has been said and done, you might say, to simplify things. The villain has been defeated. We could end it right there, really, with that. Yet there are a few unanswered questions, one or two loose ends…
Which kind of means everything isn't really all said and done. Hmm… strike that last!
We've had some adventures, we've been to the farthest corners of creation, and fought the terribly things that breed in the darkness of the dead space between universes… we've walked a million worlds, laughed and cried with a millions souls.
And we've danced with the devil – we've held hands with eternity. We shook the hand that shook the world, and rode on the winds of time and left the vortex of destiny lying in the dust.
Quite a lot we've seen and done, looking back now over the years. We've walked alongside the greatest hero in existence, the last truly defiant man. A boy, actually, depending on how you accept the relativity of time.
Harry James Potter.
A name that has echoed down the halls of eternity, a name that has broken through the bonds of fate and time.
The name of the hero, wielding a sword of honest justice and struggling with the inhuman will that the circumstances of his life had fused into his very soul.
Sword – Defiance – Soul
None of these laws possible without imagination.
We've almost seen and done everything now, as you know, yet what remains to be done will count for all.
Rain hammering against the windows, all is never silent in the world of the writers, in the transformation of myth falling through the shattering of a thousand lost mirrors of desire.
And after all these years, what counts for all will matter less than the journey, and all that has been learnt by the Boy Who Lived.
We join him now, awake and aware once more – having made the right choice after making the wrong one. Having made a second choice, having taken the road less travelled, and the words unspoken. We join the hero of this tale for one last journey, his greatest and yet his shortest.
The rain stops yet the wind still howls through the dead of night, all is never silent. Remember that, in the heart of eternity… ALL IS NEVER SILENT!
*~*~*~*
"All is never silent…." Harry Potter whispered, catching the thought of a memory. Not my words, he whispered. What did that mean?
He rested on the bank of the river where he had returned to life a short time ago. Gently caressing the wound over his heart, the sealed yet still tender flesh from where the sword had been removed by the young girl – a hero in her own right. She had fled some time ago, to God knows where, because this wasn't Earth.
Harry could feel it in his ever-beating heart. This was not his home world, not even close, really, comparatively speaking. Was there any particular reason he had returned into his Creation at this very spot? Harry thought there must be, for him to be here there had to be a reason.
Wild roses, white, blossomed all around, filling the world with their pure scent. It had been a long while since Harry had just sat and watched the roses. They were bending in the wind – no, against the wind – toward where he sat with his legs dangling in the water of the river.
He was strangely at peace, content with his lot in life at the moment.
There was such a feeling of freedom running through his veins, of a job well done and the end to over a century of conflict that had culminated in the entire shell of Creation being unravelled. Only it hadn't been, and it existed now because Harry had sealed the shell together again with himself and Voldemort on the outside.
The destruction had never happened… yet it had, because he was here – he was back in existence, no longer of the void, and every breath he took was in defiance of the current state of peace Creation seemed to be in. Yet it was peace, of a kind.
The Mark on Harry's left arm, the White Rose Mark that named him the Heir to Creation, bestowed by Death himself, seemed to be humming softly… like phoenix song, he thought, but much greater – more eternal.
"What's going to happen next, I wonder?" he said aloud, speaking to the universe. A part of him, not a small part, expected an answer. He was still quite mad, yet sane enough inside that madness to realise it. Madmen who knew they were mad did not care anyway, for they are quite mad.
Dangerous as ever, Harry Potter threw back his head and laughed at the twilit sky. Everything had been set to right, he had done it. All was as it should have been since the dawn of time. There were no Destroyers, no Demons or madmen with enough power to wipe away existence – save himself – and he felt great.
At peace with the wars, at peace with the lightness that Creation now held. Everything had been set to right, after so long.
So why did he feel as if everything was still balanced upon the edge of a knife? That something was coming, that something was coming to destroy the peace he had created.
(Because something always was? Was that the unchangeable way of things?)
Harry could feel it, like an itch in the back of his mind – a taste on the tip of his tongue. Words of power rushing through his head and out of his mouth….
"All is never silent in the world of the writers…." he whispered. "All is never silent."
He'd already broken his promise to Ginny, to return to her within heartbeats of existing again – he could do it, just simply open a door to home… yet he was compelled to wait, by his own will. And nothing, not even the worst Hell had to offer, had ever broken Harry's will. He himself was slave to it.
*~*~*~*
The Reader! You dogged, uninsultable, print-orientated bastard, it's you I'm addressing, who else, from inside this monstrous fiction.
WHO ELSE?
You've read me this far then? Even this far?
How is it you don't go to a movie, watch TV, stare at a wall, play tennis with a friend, make amorous advances to the person who comes to mind when I speak of amorous advances? Can nothing surfeit, saturate you, turn you off?
Where's your shame?
*~*~*~*
Harry pressed a hand to his forehead. A blazing band of pain rippled through his mind. Only not from his scar, that infamous jagged lightning bolt. No, this was something else – this was the heartbeat of Creation pulsing through his head, demanding he stand and fight for his existence.
Harry stood, BUT HE HAD NEVER FOR A MOMENT SAT DOWN!
The trickling waters in the river surged up and over his boots, soaking his pants up to his knees. Strapped to his back was, of course, the sword of Godric Gryffindor – rather his sword, the sword of Harry Potter. He had earned it by now, you would think.
A long black cloak hung over the sword so that only the hilt was visible just above his left shoulder.
A thin ray of sunlight shot through the twin peaks of the mountains in the distance, highlighting Harry like the performer on centre stage. Twilight was about to fade from the world, giving way to millions of unfamiliar stars – yet they were familiar, Harry knew each one intimately. He was joined to them and they to him – he was the Darkslayer, and he had done just that – now he was the Guardian.
Petals of the roses broke away from their buds and swirled on the warm air, landing in Harry's hair, on his shoulders, and falling like snow into the flow of the river.
Something magical was happening.
"Truth in fiction," Harry whispered.
He wasn't quite ready to move on yet. Something told him to wait.
*~*~*~*
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other. Citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time, allowing us to voyage through time.
The one who tells the stories rules the world.
*~*~*~*
Walking on the surface of the water now, the rose petals swirling up a storm around him – yet peacefully, gracefully, and without a sound – Harry realised all at once what this stream was… or rather, what it could be.
"From a distance it looks like peace…" he murmured, tilting his head ever so slightly to the side and smiling. "Flames to dust…
The Ways of Twilight had never been some lost and inaccessible command centre of the Fallen Creator… no, they were here, right here. They were everywhere along the flow of time, always there just out of sight. Realising that, Harry began to laugh again – you didn't even need magic, or power, to access the Ways.
It was all imagination – so long as you knew how to use it.
It had taken him over a century to work that out. Yet he was unique in the way that he was the only person to have ever done so.
He felt vindicated, after so very long.
*~*~*~*
There are moments in your life that make you, that set the
course
of who you're going to be. Sometimes they're little, subtle
moments.
Sometimes… they are not.
Even if you see them coming you are never ready for the big
moments. So what
are we? Helpless? Puppets?
No.
Nobody asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. The
big moments will
come, can't help that. It's what you do
afterwards that counts, that's when
you find out who you are.
Who you will be.
*~*~*~*
Fate
Emotion
Power
Sacrifice
Balance
Hope
Forgiveness
Knowledge
Stars
Life
Harry sighed as the ages rushed through him a final time, as all power of the Ways of Twilight – power he had once held, once upon a time… – flowed from its true source and down through every possible pathway in existence, he basked in the radiance of the end of Time and Destiny.
Do you remember, Harry, those infinite Ways? You stood before eternity, and found the Door to everything hidden behind your own name?
What madness inspired that?
What Design of True Purpose decreed your name as the bolt that holds Creation together?
The power of time and space… the heir to the God Throne… yet none of it mattered, none of it at all.
The rose tattoo circling Harry's arm burned with his thoughts, and the thorns – although only appearing to be ink – pierced his skin. Blood, crimson and strong, began to flow. Harry could not recall a world he had not spilt his own blood upon…
"Time to be getting on with the end, Harry," he whispered to himself. "Long past time."
A thousand memories rushed through his mind, overwhelmed his feelings and emotions and dulled the pain to nothing… numb was better, some times, most times… if you were a hero.
THE WAYS….
Harry gasped as suddenly he was submerged deep beneath the water. He knew what had happened, and that this was not the shallow river he had been standing upon a heartbeat ago. Reality had… slipped, as it does, and he was no longer standing on a world of creation, but floating in the Stream of all time and illusion, in the dark space between universes. He was in the support network that fed power and life to all and every universe that did or could exist.
Years fell into seconds and seconds into years, day was night… floating in everything made of nothing, Harry's only constant was twilight – he swam toward the twilight. Only he did not need to swim, not here, it only felt like swimming because of the time it took to get there. Only a single second, only all the eternities of time and life.
As an old man one hundred and sixteen years old he had first found the Ways of Twilight. Now he was seventeen again, in body at least, and more so in his mind as his younger self – fresher, stronger – fought for dominance against the old memories and scars… a fight Twilight Harry would let himself win, in the end. Better to be young, than live with his responsibility.
The Stream faded and before Harry's feet a crystal road made of stars appeared, and a warm breeze travelled distant leagues through the darkness of memory to brush his unruly hair about his head, and make him smile in sweet remembrance that peace, true peace, was in his grasp.
Light had won out over the balance of opposites, yet it had to hold for ever. Harry intended to see that it did, at the Ways of Twilight.
He began a long walk along a road of stars.
A walk he had begun so very long ago, a walk he had finished once, only to find he hadn't even really begun… a bittersweet defeat for the Darkslayer, a chance of redemption for the boy who had been, and would be again, Harry James Potter.
As if God himself were painting on a giant canvas reality began to impose itself on the blackness of the void around Harry. His road hardened, turned into dusty limestone, and a wash of twilit sky stretched across the heavens, defining the world. Rolling hills and sun swept meadows covered in white roses were etched ever so carefully, flawlessly, on to the canvas of creation.
After a time that could have been days or years, it didn't matter anymore, the roses on either side of the road began to thin, and then finally disappear altogether. Harry looked back at one point, just after the last rose fell from sight and could not see a single petal anywhere. It was as if they had never been....
~~Defiance of the Hero, Chapter 29 – The Last Hero
"I know this dance…" Harry whispered. "Some of our hardest challenges never seem to end."
The road went on though, as roads usually do, and Harry topped a rise some hours later to find himself face to face with a phantom from his past. Allarius stood at the top of the hill, silent and unmoving. His eyes of fire burned strongly and his charred flesh let off thin tendrils of smoke. In his hand was the lone curved black sword that he had stabbed Harry with one hundred years ago.
Harry did not even spare him a second glance, and walked through the memory without blinking. Allarius was just the first of many, many memories though.
Vampires and Death Eaters, all of his enemies. Dark humans, demons and creatures that shouldn't exist lined either side of the road for miles ahead. Every one of Harry's conquered enemies stood silently by the road, staring without thought at the man who had destroyed them.
Harry moved on, the only sound his footfalls, and gave up counting his foes at seven thousand – most of them vampires and creatures similar. Hours he walked with the eyes of the dead upon him and not once did they move or did he reach out to touch one. They were memories, that was all, eyes to follow him as he completed his century old quest.
The lines of the dead stretched on beyond sight, and after a while Harry found himself walking with his eyes cast to the ground, unable or perhaps not wanting to look at his body count. He felt no remorse though, unless it was over what he had had to do. They all came looking for a fight, never once did he take it to them.
At long last, and after many hours, the last thousand or so phantom memories faded away, and it was only then that Harry realised he had not seen the one enemy that should count. Tom Marvolo Riddle – Lord Voldemort.
His Voldemort, the one from his own world. The man who was more snake than human, with blood red eyes and pale skin, slits for nostrils and an air of evil surrounding him. Every other conceivable enemy in existence had been there, staring accusingly from the side of the road... but not Lord Voldemort.
~~Defiance of the Hero, Chapter 29 – The Last Hero
Harry had defeated him. He had scattered Lord Voldemort's very essence and soul into Oblivion, from which he himself had suffered and ceased to exist, only to break that final rule and reclaim life because – All is never silent – and the one who tells the story rules the world.
Everything has an opposite, and Dark was frequently balanced by Light.
It was Ron first, and why shouldn't it be? Ron had been his first friend. Ronald Weasley, sixteen year old Ron Weasley stood smiling by the side of the road, in place of where his enemies had stood before. Seeing him there actually made Harry pause, but he moved on without a word.
Hermione followed, Hermione Granger. She smiled at him also, dressed as she was in her Hogwarts uniform. Perhaps that was what she had died in? Harry moved on, giving her only a glance. Then it got harder.
Ginny was next, and Harry stopped when he came to her. She was standing there without a care and smiling at him, holding her hand forward for him to take it. Her deep brown eyes were filled with such love that it actually made Harry smile. He reached forward, intending to take her hand, but was not surprised when his own slipped through it.
She was a phantom, a memory, they all were.
Friends he had known over his long life stood beside the road smiling now. Dumbledore and the Weasleys, Remus Lupin and Sirius Black, James and Lily Potter, even Michael and Melissa, his brother and sister from another world, were there. His friends in Gryffindor and at Hogwarts as a whole made an appearance. Then their numbers started to thin, and those he knew as friends was a much shorter walk than those he knew as enemies.
~~Defiance of the Hero, Chapter 29 – The Last Hero
It had been a long walk the first time, it was just as long the second. Yet no measure of time touched Harry James Potter, the Boy Who Lived. He felt, and this was true, that he had walked this path before, and knew where it ended. No place important to most, to those bound to the wheel of fate…
"Fate is an excuse for the weak…" Harry whispered.
*~*~*~*
It is destiny, phase of the weak human heart.
It is destiny,
dark apology for every error.
The strong and virtuous admit not
destiny.
*~*~*~*
Wherever he was and whenever he was, Harry felt as though he was approaching the end. Everything rested on the blade of a razor, and his final choices here would decide it all. Eventually, and without much preamble, Harry Potter came upon a door in the middle of the road.
It was a simple door, made of wood and possessing an iron handle fashioned in the image of a lion. It stood in the ground on hinges that were latched to the air and it was completely bare.
~~Defiance of the Hero, Chapter 29 – The Last Hero
Every muscle in Harry's body was tensed and his hand itched to reach for his sword. If an attack was coming, it would come now, just before victory was sure. Yet what was there left to throw at him, who was left to stand against him? All his enemies had long since been defeated. Allarius was
Voldemort and Voldemort was Allarius. Both done and dusted…
After all this time, it came down to opening a single door….
Harry reached for the handle, and gently pushed the door open on its hinges….
No, that wasn't right. Just as it had not been right the first time.
Harry did not push the door – the door pushed creation around itself, it swung the whole shell of time and space, of not-time and not-space, around its
hinges and Harry and the door remained motionless, caught in the eye of the storm. Facing another twist in reality, however, the door now appeared open…
And Harry was standing on a familiar glowing pedestal in a room that was showered with starlight. The Stream, that inexorable flow and pull of time, lapped at the base of his pedestal. He dared not look down just yet, a look could drive one mad, but knew he would have to soon. Being submerged in the Stream was one thing, easier to handle, looking back into the Stream from a vantage point outside of Time… well, that was another thing altogether.
The pedestal began to move, spurred by Harry's thoughts. He floated through the starlight above Time toward an archaic stone staircase that was older than Creation itself. Not much older, but before the universes, at least. How could one measure the age of something that existed above Time?
Just before he reached the staircase Harry looked down into the dark water he moved through and that one look was… worth nothing. He saw into time, saw it stretching back beyond imagination and how it effected and changed everything. He saw eternity wrapped in destiny and fate, fused with purpose and infinity, and he saw himself echoing down through the ages, from Time's beginning to Time's end.
Harry Potter, The Last Hero.
It did not drive him mad – he had lived through it all, after all – as he had thought it might – not precisely lived – He was as mad as could be regardless. But it was the right kind of mad, always had been. He ascended the stairs at the end of the journey.
At the top of the stairs everything changed again, and he found himself standing in a room similar to the one that led to the Department of Mysteries in the Ministry. A circular stone room with ten doors aligned around him. All polished nicely and standing like sentinels, hiding the truth about life and everything.
Truth in Fiction.
Harry knew exactly what needed to be done.
The Ten Doors:
Fate
Emotion
Power
Sacrifice
Balance
Hope
Forgiveness
Knowledge
Stars
Life
He closed his eyes, standing in the heart of Creation – he was the heart of Creation – and concentrated pure thought on what he needed. There were no tricks or magic involved, just simple human thought and imagination.
Perhaps imagination was a kind of magic… the only kind.
In the centre of the circular room an age old door appeared, a door seeped in blood and the wars and ashes of time and all its many incarnations of evil, and the ravages of Oblivion. Harry's eyes fell upon it and his soul was riven, torn asunder, at the sight.
P.tt r
It was his door, the door that led to the end. And it was entirely alien from the old oak frame he had seen on his last visit here. His name was corroded, almost worn away to nothing.
Harry approached the door with all the fury of the Darkslayer burning in his eyes. As he had done before, he hurled his fist into the crimson frame and it splintered, shattered into a millions pieces – but not before it transported him to the next level of Twilight, the very stairs that led to…
"The Godhand," he said, feeling nothing but the need to end the inevitable and maintain the fragile peace Oblivion had wrought.
It was the staircase, and the previous time he had walked it the stairs had been shining and golden, made of twilight and stars. Now they were dead, or as close to it as twilight could be. Thick tendrils of black oil swayed like seaweed just under the transparent steps. The steps were dull, like old bronze, and not at all forever.
Harry didn't like this.
He knew evil when he saw it, knew it by scent, and sight, and smell, and taste. He could even hear it, eating away at Twilight, at a Twilight that cried out for mercy in its death throes. Harry began to climb the stairs, and for a long moment that feeling of time not existing, not ever and not again, held him and aeons passed for seconds…
Bathed in light, Harry climbed the final few steps and stood upon a great cliff miles above a world that swirled and changed with a rainbow of colours, as if an artist painting it was doing so in layers. Harry thought, and instantly he knew his thought was correct, that he was seeing a world being born – one made from a choice of another world. It was incredible, a sight to remember.
~~Defiance of the Hero, Chapter 30 – There Are Still No Happy Endings
Seeped in darkness, Harry climbed the final few steps and stood upon a great cliff miles above a wor—Nothing. There were no new worlds being created, only a sea of seething and roaring purple fire and vicious lightnings tearing into the spray of undulating flame…
He turned away, sickened and disheartened. Was it all for nothing? Was Creation damned again already? Without new worlds and universes, all would fall stagnant. Creating new worlds, imagining great stories, was how existence breathed. Something was blocking its airways…
Then there were the doors. Two of them, standing in the air again, hinged to nothing but reality… which was a malleable thing here.
The gold plaques on the doors read what Harry had expected, and he felt a moment's relief that this at least was going as planned.
One door said Time.
The other read Destiny.
Harry stepped over the filthy ground and ran his hands along the solid oak doors. His fingers brushed the tarnished golden plague that Timewas inscribed upon and he flinched back, expecting to be plunged into the Stream as had happened last time. But that didn't happen. The plaque fell away, revealing a new word on a plaque of the darkest cold steel, a word written in letters of fire.
Game, it said.
Harry roared and swept his hand across the plaque on the Destinydoor, already knowing what it would read…
Fiery letters glared at him defiantly. Over, was written in place of Destiny.
"Game over," Harry said, and the Ways should have turned to ice at the coldness in his tone. "Only one bastard with sense of humour so lacking to pull a stunt like this…."
Harry calmly, oh so calmly, reached over his shoulder and pulled his sword slowly but surely out of its sheath. He licked his lips, moved away from the doors and looked down over the massive cliff at the ocean of purple flame once again…
"SHOW YOURSELF, ALLARIUS!"
*~*~*~*
He's like fire and ice, and rage. He's like the night, and the storm in the heart of the sun. He's ancient and forever. He burns at the centre of time and he can see the turn of the universe.
And he's… wonderful.
*~*~*~*
Nothing can be eternal.
*~*~*~*
The thing about real life is, it normally costs you.
*~*~*~*
I've held a torch against the darkness…
only to have its
light stolen from me.
Let the heavens fall now, I'm ready.
*~*~*~*
Meaningless words flowed through Harry's head so fast and so sure that he almost wept. He couldn't support himself against the weight of those words and he fell to his knees, a grimace of pain marring his young and careworn face.
It's okay to die… do you believe that?
No.
What was happening? Why was the heart of Creation, why were the Ways of Twilight, dying?
It could only be the demon – somehow the demon… always and forever the demon.
'There's no one coming, Harry.'
And that voice sounded like Ethan Rafe – at times the voice of reason, and at other times the voice of insanity. One and the same in Harry's head, most of the time. Time… bandits. Yet Ethan no longer existed as part of Harry's soul. That was all said and done.
Wasn't it?
Was anyone still left to fight?
"There is no one coming, Harry." He needed to say that aloud. "It's just me alone now…." Harry found that thought entirely alien, and completely humbling. There was no one left to fight, no one was coming… "I win, fancy that."
He wanted to slap himself for feeling mildly disappointed about this… No one left to fight, it was almost an insult.
Oh well, he thought, but what does that mean for all of this mess?
Game Over.
Harry thought long and hard, trying to figure it out, trying to understand why this ocean of fire existed, why the doors to time and destiny were a joke, and came to the quite solid conclusion…
That he did not care, not in the least.
He was going home. He needed to go home, and try and slip back into a life of mortality and meaning. To Ginny, to Ron, to Hermione… to
Hogwarts. Back to a hidden world, small and unseen, yet teeming with life. Out on the plains of non-creation, within the Ways of Twilight, life wasn't wanted or needed. It was a cold and lonely place, and Harry wanted well shot of it.
It was awful, actually, dealing with the power of existence. After a hundred years and a million battles, all Harry had to show for it was a life devoid of meaning and purpose. He was left feeling… incomplete, without a fight to be fought. Crazy, definitely, but eggs were eggs no matter what way you looked at them.
Having stood up, Harry returned to the doors and rested his hand on the handle that had been the Destinydoor. All at once he gasped as his five senses failed… for one heartbeat… two, he could not see nor hear nor touch… smell and taste of eternity all swept away under the weight of—
He snapped out of it to find his bare arm, more specifically the white rose tattoo, shining with undying – unyielding – radiance….
He wrenched the door open and it felt like tearing away the foundations of creation once again. The Rose Mark screamed, and Harry felt a million universes spiral away into the void as the door screeched on its invisible hinges and opened out upon the last, final truth of this tired existence….
A voice was laughing deep inside of his head… Harry could not see or feel the smile on his face. He could have just gone home… but no, he had to know what lay beyond this final door… After all, when would he ever be back here?
*~*~*~*
Almost against his will – almost – Harry floated over to the door on the right, the Destiny door, and ran his hands along the smooth wood, careful not to touch the word that would open the door and reveal to him, without a doubt, the destiny of everything.... the purpose of Existence.
For a long time in this life Harry had thought himself fearless, that he had seen and done enough to be completely unafraid of the unknown – of war and pain... and yet, here he was shaking uncontrollably before the ultimate Truth. He fell to his knees, fear coursing through his veins and wept.
He also felt a presence beyond this door.... beyond the door... and knew that should he open it, he would go mad. Completely and without mercy his mind would destroy itself. Ethan had been silent for many weeks but Harry could still feel him in there, despite his best efforts to get him to talk, the teenager seemed unwilling. There was something wrong.
The door, now that he got a closer look at it, wasn't as smooth and as pure as he had first thought. It was cracked in parts, hairline cracks that were almost invisible. It also seemed, around the edges, that a poison was eating away the wood. It was spotted and flecked with wood rot. Something was destroying the door, and Harry instinctively knew that it was Evil, his Evil in the scar link and that which had spawned Allarius.
Through this door lay hope, salvation, truth and the force that had created the universe. To find it behind a door that held his own name worried Harry, why should he lead the way to the Truth? But it also led the way home. For now he could not worry about the poison eating its way through the door, that was for another time, he knew, when he returned to this place.
~~Defiance of the Hero, Chapter 30 – There Are Still No Happy Endings
*~*~*~*
H.. Ptt..r d t.h.e So…ul of he He o
Shaptor 33333333 – Da Begin
Or per'aps, da joker in da pak
Harry… Potter… opened… Pandora's Box…
Beyo..nd the do..or o..f Destinyrea..lity crumbled…
All. Existence. Denied.
The…
End…
Thanks for stopping by, Harry, but you were always too late.
Hugs & Kisses from,
Your pal Allarius
#$[[//??/|||\\\~~"Don't fight him, Harry, you can't win.",,,,.';][[[[;!^&*](
)*&)^$&)!%)"It's not about power, never was, you were too blind to see that.")*#$$
"Forgive me, Lord Darkslayer, but some doors were not made to be opened… they are closed to keep nightmare innocent."
)(*^%!*)(*&%!))))!SYSTEMS-ERRORPLEASE CONTACT YOUR HOST PROGRAM ADMINISTRATOROR, IF OPERATING FROM THE BRINK OF INSANITY, DIAL 1300-YOU-FUCKED-UP-BIG-TIME-POTTER, AND THE NEXT
AVAILABLE HEIR TO CREATION WILL ANSWER YOUR CALL SHORTLY. BEEP!
*~*~*!!!!!111!!
Harry raged against the wave of non-existence pouring through the open door of destiny. His mind tore itself to the far corners of creation, as thought and sensation from all across the plains of reality flooded his senses and nothing made sense. All his fuses were blown, and the door was opening upon…
*~*~###
&)*(!!$$$_+_+==~!%%THANK YOU FOR HOLDING, YOU HAVE PROGRESSED IN OUR QUEUE. WE UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF YOUR CALL, AND ONE OF OUR FRIENDLY STAFF WILL BE AVAILABLE SHORTLY, BECAUSE AT THE END OF TIME, WE'RE HERE TO HELP. BEEP!
"Wow, this is messed up… even for you, Harry Potter."
YOUR. CALL. IS. NUMBER. 1. IN. LINE. To speak to an operator about any technical difficulties you may be experiencing, please hang up the phone now and pray for your death to be swift and painless. Beep!
LOLROFLMAO, Harry.
This program is proudly brought to you be the good people of TwilightCorp™. All rights to the apocalypse reserved.
C:\WHITEROSE\Allarius_Voldemort_
C:\WHITEROSE\Delete_
C:\WHITEROSE\Abandon_All_
Execute command…?
*~*~*~*
It's weird… you know the end of something great is coming,
but
you want to hold on, just for one more second…
just so it can
hurt a little more.
*~*~*~*
If you want a happy ending that depends, of course,
on where
you stop the story.
*~*~*~*
Eschatology, kids, is a word you may not have heard.
Basically, it concerns itself with the branches of theology and philosophy that delve into the chaos and madness associated with the end of the world, with the ultimate destiny of humanity.
You know, that deep bullshit.
Ha, oh yes, we're going to dance this dance one last time… didn't think you could get away without at least one final waltz along the borders of
forever, did you?
Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
Harry: 'My head hurts, writer, why is all never silent in your world?'
Dumbledore: 'Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!'
Dumbledore knew why:
"Harry, I owe you an explanation," said Dumbledore. "An explanation of an old man's mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failings of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are
guilty if they forget what it was to be young...and I seem to have forgotten lately."
Also:
"Time is making fools of us again."
Purpose is what makes our lives worth living. Purpose gives us the feeling and enforces the belief that what we do with the few short years given to us matters, that our place in the world is marked by our passage and that, as we die, someone somewhere somehow will remember that we were here...
Who will be left to remember the end of the world?
Not with a bang, but a whimper – not with a shout, but a sigh – do not go silently into that good night: rage, rage against the dying of the light.
'Are you as tired as I am?'
'Yes, Harry, for what it's worth… I've never been more tired in my life.'
'Funny that, I feel it through my very soul, and my heart tells me sleep (peace) will always be a long way off.'
'Ha, so wise you've become. The heart is a strange thing, Harry. It's also a significant weakness.'
'I disagree.'
'You would.'
We're falling through the pages of chaos, lost in the
senseless
madness of a happy ending.
Pandora's Box?
Such a thing was never a true temptation,
there would have
been legions willing to pry off the lid
and unleash all hell upon
creation.
Why do this, you ask?
Just for the hell of it.
*~*~*~*
Was there a God, behind the door of Destiny, or just a corrupt Throne that could throw all of Creation into endless chaos, that could undo and backspace all the moments that matter in our lives and leave existence a shattered and hollowed out shell that, whilst it would still exist within Oblivion, would not be worth inhabiting?
Surely not.
Surely the final truth of fighting to exist was something a lot more… meaningful.
If the Creator has fallen, Harry thought – a stray thought, almost unheard, as he raged against the whirlwind of corruption flowing out of the open door of Destiny. He was blinded to all, anchored only by his defiance. It the Creator has fallen, he thought, shouted with his mind, then show me a corpse…
His thoughts became words that echoed across the Ways of Twilight, demanding of the corruption a reason and purpose for it to exist… "THERE IS MORE THAN AN END OF CORRUPTION! ENTROPY CANNOT BE INEVITABLE!"
A voice replied, skimming the crest of the waves of destiny and the storm of time, riding the lightning and burning in the fires of eternity, a voice that came from everywhere and nowhere, a voice that refused to exist and existed in nothing but an ill-used reality…
'I recognise you for what you are, Harry Potter. The last of your kind – maybe even a hero.'
Harry paused, shuddered, and his thoughts jumped on the voice with all the justice left in the universe. "And who are you in this story?"
'Just a dried up old corpse with nothing better to do than talk to you.'
"Oh?" Harry needed a break from the madness. His mind hurt so very much.
'Go home, Harry, you found a meaning and purpose there long before you ever began to dabble in the laws of Creation. Here, here you have found nothing but broken truths beyond all understanding…'
"My purpose?"
'Chocolate brown eyes, fiery red hair, curves in all the right places…'
Harry let a single tear fall down his cheek. It followed the curve of one forgotten scar, a scar gained somewhere and somewhen. He'd promised himself no more tears so very long ago. He had not even wept on the brink of Oblivion. "Ginny…"
'Aye, lad, always comes back to love for you no matter what role the writer gives you. It's your greatest strength.'
"How much longer will this drag on for? I gave up caring a long time ago."
'You've opened Destinywhen you should have just walked away, Harry. Destiny is there to be fulfilled. That's what you have to do now.'
Here the voice paused, and Harry sensed uncertainty, perhaps even fear. 'And I'm sorry, so very sorry; it is going to hurt so much.'
"Pain I understand."
'Do you understand death?'
"Death is when the monsters get you."
'So very true… your imagination is remarkable.'
Harry braced himself, he thought the world was fading back into place, but darkness was impossible to pierce without light. "How do I fulfil this destiny of yours?"
'Take me hand.'
At that Harry sighed. "No."
'Why not?'
"I work alone. I don't need faith… not in you."
'Again, I must ask, why not?'
Harry shook his head. A bead of blood flowed from his eye down the same track that his single tear had fallen. "You abandoned Creation to so much pain, to so much suffering."
'Ah, you think you know me!' The voice sounded amused. 'You can't have meaning without pain. There can not be purpose without suffering.'
"That's so cruel… unfair."
'That's life. Do with it what you will.'
Harry began to laugh; it was a desperate, bitter sound, echoing off the unseen walls of Twilight's End.
'That's all I really am, you know, Harry.' The voice was soft now, ever so soft. It was almost pitying. 'An echo of a memory of an idea…'
"You're nothing but a thought."
'And yet I was there at the true beginning, I'll be there after the true end, when all the lights of Oblivion burn out and the void itself is consumed into nothing… And I'll be there when it starts all over again.'
Harry shook his head. "That's madness… where's the purpose in that?"
'There is no purpose in eternity, Harry – come now, you're smarter than this. Purpose comes from mortality, from being just human.'
And Harry saw the truth in that, however bittersweet and, at times, small, it may seem. Heaven above and Hell below, he saw the truth in living again.
But to what end?
"Why me? Why a Darkslayer at all, when you exist?"
'You are Harry Potter, Champion of the Light.'
"But why!?"
'Because I don't exist, Harry, I have no existence at all.'
"Then am I just talking to myself here? Is this real? Or is all of this happening just inside my head?"
The voice brimmed with energy. 'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?'
Harry sensed amusement. 'Dumbledore told you that, once upon a time…'
"I'd remember if he had," Harry replied.
'No, no, my dear boy, you wouldn't.'
A long silence stretched through the timeless expanse of Twilight. Worlds and universes, white and black roses, all or nothing… time for the final act.
All that held back ultimate corruption, the end of the Darkslayer, and the return of the embodiment of pure evil, was Harry's will power. He had a reason to hold on…
"So where do we go from here?"
'I go nowhere, I stay everywhere, and the great wheels of time click over another notch. But for you, Harry, you have a chance no other has
ever had in any Creation…'
"Sounds… magical." Defiantly sarcastic to the end…
'Yes, it comes full circle to magic, to your power. You have strength enough within you to scour existence, this existence, from Oblivion. You have strength enough to travel the void of Oblivion, encased in your strength, and unmake all the universes that ever were, that ever could be… power enough to challenge the Creator…' The voice chuckled. 'You could be there at the True Beginning, you could exist forever, live infinite lives and enjoy infinite pleasures across all of time and creation, and witness the True End… and continue to do it all over again.'
The voice grew sombre, serious. 'You could be eternity, Harry Potter.'
"And if that doesn't sound appealing enough?" Harry replied.
'Then you can return to mortality, to the human race. It would not be hard. Perhaps if you walk through this door, you'd find an empty pool…' Although the voice sounded calm, Harry could feel the fear, the anticipation. If he could have seen the voice, physically seen it, it would have shaking, unable to stand. 'And if you were to sacrifice your tremendous strength, fill the pool…and cleanse the heart of creation… Well, what then, aye?'
"I win."
'Checkmate, Harry Potter, against the darkness of Oblivion and the anti-life that breached this Creation when you threw Lord Voldemort out.'
"If I give up my power, what will I become?"
'Human again, mortal and unable to resist the laws of life and death anymore. You would have one life, one chance, and then you would die and your soul will enter the afterlife – perhaps forever, perhaps to be reborn… in this age or the next.'
After over a century of war, it was a choice that took only a heartbeat for our boy Harry.
He stood up, and reality crashed back in so hard and so fast that it nearly forced him back to his knees. The door of Destiny came back into focus and the storm-strewn sky of Twilight above the seething purple ocean of terrible flame – who knew what monstrosities swam beneath the crimson-
tinged waves – stank and roared with defiance enough to challenge Harry.
He recognised that ocean for what it was – the breeding ground for the next generation of evil. And it could be stopped now… before it really got off the ground.
Beyond the door there was only darkness. It had swung open outwards revealing a rectangle of the sharpest night. The inside of the door was corroded and pitted with rot, and even now thick tendrils of slimy oil reached out, bulged out from the doorway, screeching at Harry, demanding his blood.
'You know what to do, Lord Darkslayer.'
"Yeah…" Harry found a small smile. "But its gonna hurt like hell."
'The right thing always does.'
Harry nodded. He understood that, better than anyone. "Goodbye then, mysterious voice that may or may not exist."
'I'll be watching you, Harry. Stay out of trouble, okay.'
"No promises…"
The voice smiled. In his head, Harry felt it smile. He also thought he felt someone embrace him, gently, almost beyond all his senses… yet he felt safe.
'Madmen and demons promised you it would never be over, Harry Potter, yet here you are so very near the end. You've earned it; you've earned life a million times over. And I am really sorry for what happens next, but there is no meaning without pain… brace yourself, lad.'
Harry took a deep breath, that was all, and turned his back on Twilight forever, as he fulfilled a Destiny of his own making… and ended his story at long last.
*~*~*~*