Of Wizards, Akuma, and Exorcists

Forty-nine: Farewell, Harry Potter

Disclaimer: I do not own any D. Gray-Man or Harry Potter characters/settings. They rightfully belong to Mr. Hoshino (D. Gray-Man) and Ms. Rowling (Harry Potter). Also, some conversations between the Harry Potter characters are direct quotes from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and that also does not belong to me!

Recap

"I shall see you in half an hour," Dumbledore said to Allen and Harry, the latter of which merely stared ahead blankly. Worried, Allen reached out his free hand and gripped his friend's shoulder.

"One... two... three..."

Allen closed his eyes as the floor left his feet, and as his stomach was jerked up, down, left, right, and as the Ministry of Magic disappeared.

I'll have to talk to everyone later.. I hope they're all right, I'll see them...soon enough.

Or so he thought.

"Ah... Harry Potter."

The portrait of Hogwart's least popula headmaster eyed the boy out of narrowed eyes when he awoke from his slumber. Allen was standing in the middle of the room, watching as Harry walked around the quiet office, breathing in and out sharply, eyes staring straight ahead

"And what brings you here in the early hours of morning?" Phineas Nigellus asked smoothly, gesturing out the window to the slowly rising sun. "This office is supposed to be boarded up to all but the rightful headmaster. Or has Dumbledore sent you heere?" Oh, don't tell me..." Allen glanced his way as he gave a yawn. "Another message for my worthless great-great-grandson?"

Harry had frozen in his steps while Phineas Nigellus spoke, but as a few more portraits of past headmasters and headmistresses started to stir, the boy turned on his heels to walk up to the oak doors. He tugged on the doorknob, but it would not budge.

"I hope this means," said a red-nosed wizard from behind Dumbledore's desk, "that Dumbledore will soon be back with us?" At Harry's nod, he continued, "Oh good. It has been very dull without him, very dull indeed."

As he sat back on his painted chair, the headmaster smiled kindly at Harry. "Dumbledore thinks very highly of you, as I am sure you know. Oh yes. Holds you in great esteem," he said, and Allen felt that he was the only one in the room who understood how Harry felt, the only one who could see the trembling of the boy's shoulders.

The only one who understood the pain of losing someone and feeling guilty of being the cause.

A slight twisting feeling in his stomach and chest made Allen clutch the front of his coat.

Mana, he thought forlornly.

Suddenly, Dumbledore's fireplace exploded in flames, and a tall, silver haired wizard spun around inside it before stepping out gracefully. Albus Dumbledore's return awakened the other, still-sleeping heads, and some of them gave him cries of welcome, although Allen and Harry could only stare in silence.

"Thank you," Dumbledore said softly before he walked past the boys and placed his phoenix, Fawkes, ugly and tiny and featherless, onto the ashtray on which the grown, large, and red Fawkes usually stood. Then, he turned away from it to speak.

"Well, Harry, you will be pleased to hear that none of your fellow students are going to suffer lasting damage from the night's events," he said serenly. Harry remained silent, as did Allen, who felt it was not in his place to speak unless spoken to. "Madam Pomfrey is patching everybody up now," Dumbledore continued. "Nymphadora Tonks may need to spend a little time in St. Mungo's, but it seems that she will make a full recovery. Oh, and--"

As Harry nodded at the carpet, Dumbledore approached Allen and handed him a piece of parchment. "Your friend, Miranda Lotto, asked for me to give this to you."

"Miranda?" Allen said, opening up the note. He read it, his heartbeat increasing with every word he absorbed.

Allen,

We've managed to fix it now. Komui tells me we will be leaving at dawn, and suggests you explain our situation and say your good-byes to Harry and the others. This device here that I sent with the note. Hold onto it, it's connected to our transport.

I'll see you soon,
Miranda

P.S. Komui tells me that Harry's godfather died in the fight today. Please give him our regards. Also, you need not worry about the Millennium Earl approaching him about Akuma. He has gone back, and he, the Noah, and the Akuma, none of them ever existed in this dimension.

"I know how you are feeling, Harry," Dumbledore said, pulling Allen's mind away from Miranda's words.

"No you don't," Harry said, his voice becoming stronger with every syllable.

Phineas Nigellus sneered at him. "You see, Dumbledore? Never try to understand the students. They hate it. They would rather be tragically misunderstood, wallow in self-pity, stew in their own--"

"That's enough, Phineas," Dumbledore cut in. He watched Harry, who had now turned his back to him and was determinedly staring out the window.

"There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry," he said sofly. "On the contrary... the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength."

"...My greatest strength," Harry said lowly, "is it? You haven't got a clue... You don't know..."

"What don't I know?"

Harry spun on his heels, facing Dumbledore with anger so strong Allen was taken aback. "I don't want to talk about how I feel, all right?" he demanded.

"Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human--"

"THEN - I - DON'T - WANT - TO - BE - HUMAN!"

Harry's roar exploded through the office like Lavi's Hiban. He seized one of the silver instruments off of Dumbledore's table and threw it. It shattered to pieces against the wall behind Allen, who was frozen stiff, feet glued to the floor.

One of the previous headmasters snapped, "Really!"

"I DON'T CARE!" Harry yelled at him, throwing another instrument into the blazing fireplace. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE--"

A table crashed to the floor and broke apart, one of the pieces tumbling and hitting Allen's boot.

"You do care," Dumbledore said to Harry, watching serenely as the boy vandalized his belongings. "You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it."

"I - DON'T!" Harry yelled, and he twitched, as if he might just start running at Dumbledore now, break that old man, anything. Allen stayed where he was.

"Oh yes, you do," Dumbledore pressed. "You have now lost your mother, your father, and the closest thing to a parent you have ever known. Of course you care."

"YOU DON'T KNOW HOW I FEEL! YOU - STANDING THERE - YOU--"

But Harry seemed to be at a loss for words now as his green eyes, bright with malice, darkened into hopelessness, as his shoulders slumped, and an air of defeat overtook him. He turned to the oak door behind him and tried to open the door that wouldn't open, tried the knob that wouldn't turn. He spun around to face Dumbledore again.

"Let me out," he said flatly.

"No," Dumbledore said, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips.

Allen felt he could cut the tension with his hand as Harry and Dumbledore stared at each other.

"Let me out," Harry repeated.

"No," Dumbledore replied.

"If you don't - if you keep me in here -if you don't let me--"

"By all means, continue destroying my possessions," Dumbledore welcomed. "I daresay I have too many."

"Let me out," Harry said for the third time as Dumbledore sat down calmly behind his desk.

"Not until I have had my say," the headmaster said.

"Do you-" Harry stuttered, his voice rising again. "Do you think I want to - do you think I give a - I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'VE GOT TO SAY! I don' want to hear anything you've got to say!"

"You will. Because you are not nearly as angry with me as you ought to be. If you are to attack me, as I know you are close to doing, I would like to have thoroughly earned it."

Allen couldn't help himself. "What are you talking--?" he said, but he wasn't the only one who spoke, and both of them were cut off mid-sentence.

"It is my fault that Sirius died," Dumbledore stated. "Or should I say almost entirely my fault - I will not be so arrogant as to claim responsibility for the whole. Sirius was a brave, clever, and energetic man, and such men are not usually content to sit at home n hiding while they believe others to be in danger. Nevertheless, you should never have believed for an instant that there was any necessity for you to go to the Department of Mysteries tonight. If I had been open with you, Harry, as I should have been, you would have known a long time ago that Voldemort might try and lure you to the Department of Mysteries, and you would never have been tricked into going there tonight. And Sirius would not have had to come after you. That blame lies with me, and with me alone."

Allen watched as Harry stared at Dumbldore. All them were silent for a while.

"Please sit down," Dumbledore requested, and for some reason, Allen knew he was speaking to both Harry and himself.

Although Allen approached a chair without hesitation, Harry faltered a moment, then gingerly sat himself down next to Allen, facing Dumbledore.

"Am I to understand," said a shaky voice, and Phineas Nigellus appeared paler than usual as he shook in his painting, "that my great-great-grandson - the last of the Blacks - is dead?"

"Yes, Phineas," Dumbledore told him forlornly.

"I don't believe it."

Without looking, Allen knew that the headmaster had disappeared from his canvas, perhaps visiting the house where Sirius Black used to live, calling as he stepped through every portrait in that house, calling for the man that would never answer to anyone.

"Harry, I owe you an explanation," Dumbledore began. "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..."

The soft warmth on the top of his head told Allen that dawn had arrived, but as he fiddled, folded, and crumpled Miranda's note in his hands, he kept his eyes on the hands in his lap, feeling like an intruder as he listened to Dumbledore, feeling as if he did not belong... and he didn't belong here, he knew.

Not anymore..

He could feel the device in his hand vibrate, give a pulse, and he could feel something changing in him. An invisible hand slowly wrapped around his being, tight enough to make him feel its presense, but not so tight that it crushed him. He noticed that his body was slowly becoming more and more transparent with every moment passed as he stared at it, and he knew that Dumbledore and Harry were watching him as he disappeared from the office--

From the world--

From this dimension--

Forever, out of their lives.

"Allen?" Harry's confused voice said, and the Exorcist looked up, seeing the black-haired boy reaching out to touch him, but keeping a distance between his fingertips and Allen's arm, as if afraid.

Allen let a smile reach his lips as he bit back the telltale tears in his eyes.

"I guess this is it," he said, "this is good-bye, Harry."

"No," Harry whispered. "You can't be leaving, you can't--"

"I never belonged here with you," Allen said as he grasped one of his coat buttons, ripping it away from the fabric and handing it to Harry. As it landed in the other boy's hands, the silver regained its opaqueness. "But keep this, and at least I'll feel as if I accomplished something here."

"What are you talking about--?"

"Just listen," Allen sighed. "Listen to Dumbledore, hear him out, because you need to know this. Harry, you would never remember me once I disappear, I would never have existed in your memories because I am not supposed to have been in this dimension." He could barely see his hand now, and he was speaking quickly. "Continue living, Harry, keep moving forward, and someday... all of this would end."

"I--"

"Trust Dumbledore," Allen pressed, and from how his voice seemed to echo, he only had time for a few more words. He wanted to say so much more, but his mind could not settle on just one. Finally, just as he thought he himself would disappear, the office was gulped up by darkness - or was he gulped in? - and he only managed to say, "Good-bye, Harry Potter."

One more chapter to go, but I must tell you... it will be quite short. And after this, most likely there will be a sequel, but don't get your hopes up high for a fast update. I am not a procrastinator just for show.