"Harry please calm down. Yes I can't change anything but you can." The woman pleaded, releasing her own power at full force to sooth the disturbed boy and prevent him from doing something that he would later regret, namely blowing the corpse of his friends up.
"She is glowing again." Harry thought drunkenly, her aura was even brighter than when she swore the oath. And the power made Harry giddy, as if drunk, or even high on drug.
"Are you okay now? Do you think if I cease to release power you will be able to refrain from destroying the castle?" she asked sarcastically. "Harry did you promise me to hear me completely than ask questions or didn't you?" she asked with a softer tone and received an almost shy node.
"Please ask your questions now, as my tale ended."
"What do you mean you cannot change anything?"
"Harry I may be fate and a deity, but when a change is made by a mortal, even when this change is not good, only a mortal can change it. Essentially only a mortal can change the changed. But the mortal must be as powerful as the one that made the change."
"Why are you telling all of these to me? I am certainly not as powerful as Dumbledore."
"Yes, you are right. You are not as powerful as him; you are two times more powerful." She said soothingly, and after a short pause she continued. "Harry you must understand that I couldn't change anything before the end of events, I couldn't go to Dumbledore and ask him to change his actions. I don't have this power, but you can change it, you can change everything Harry. You can prevent this massacre from happening. Lots of Voldemort's and his death eater's victims weren't meant to die. Your parents, Bones family, Prewett twins, McKinnon family, Longbottoms, Fenwick, Dearborn, Meadowes, and lots of others were fated to have a happy, and long life, you shouldn't have experienced death in youth, nor this misery.
"How? How can I do that? They are dead, nobody can bring death back." He said sadly, and he couldn't think straight, all the forced changes of mood, the hardship of the day, his tiredness, and more importantly the violence and deaths that he had seen wearing him out. It seemed that the deity could see it clearly too, as she looked at him with pity. She conjured a golden goblet and gave it to him.
"Drink it deary it will help you, we certainly cannot continue this discussion if you are like this." Harry took the goblet without any argument and drank it in one go, he know that he was tired and needed something to help him, as he couldn't think clearly anymore.
"Thanks, I feel so much better now." He said after a few minutes. He really felt better, as if the liquid has recharged him.
"Your inability in comprehending showed that something was wrong with you. Now, think again and tell me that you if understand what I said now?"
After a few moments he drew a breath in. "But this is impossible, tell me you are thinking about time travel! Tell me I am wrong, please."
"And why is that my dear Harry? Why should I tell you that you are wrong? And what is wrong with time travel?"
"It is insane; there cannot be two of me. With the smallest mistake I can destroy the whole time line, and I even may prevent myself from being born." He was talking frantically, while "she cannot expect me to do it" had become a mantra in his head.
"And why this is a bad thing? Have you forgotten that we really want to change the time line, and prevent all these people from dying?" Fate said to the frantic boy, silencing him immediately.
"But, but if I change something, perhaps I change my birth, and so I wouldn't existing. And if I don't exist, how can I change anything?"
"Calm down and let me explain the plan, and don't worry you wont disappear, I didn't come to this length to let you disappear at the blink of an eye. I want a happy life for you too." And she talked and talked, telling him about his plans for him.
After two hours, a lot of discussion, and persuasion, there was only one question unanswered.
"All that you say is right, but there is one problem, it would be a perfect plan if you do not consider it." Harry wanted it to work, and he wasn't joking when he said the plan was perfect.
"And what this problem is my dear?" Fate asked him after a long pause.
"Won't Death know about any of this? Will he not know about our plot in essentially stealing most of the souls that he gathered during the war? And will he not be angry at us and well, take my life as a revenge for stealing from him, so rendering our plans completely useless? Don't you think that this is a big hole in your plans?" Harry said all of this in one breath, while trying to show indifference, and praying in his mind that he was wrong and none of them was a problem.
"And please tell me how do you know Death so well that you analyze his behavior and know what he will do? A gruff voice said from behind him, Harry turned in one instant, wand drawn and ready to fire spells first, and ask questions later.
"Hey, hey, easy little boy, I think when you are talking about me I was allowed to come and answer your questions myself instead of leaving it to an old hag to represent me. Who knows what bullocks he will tell you about me, ha." He said amusedly, making Harry's jaw drop, while "shut up, you bastard" was heard from Fate.
"I let you know as I don't have parents the word "bastard" isn't an appropriate definition for me." He slowly said to Harry, making sure that Fate couldn't hear him.
"How do you dear, still obsessing over this case, ha?" said Death sarcastically.
"You are one to talk, as if you are not obsessed with this. Your presence alone shows it clearly." She said with the same tone, adding as much venom as she could to the sentence.
"Well, you got me there, yes I am interested in this as just like you, and I will loose a lot by letting it stay this way, dearest. More over, the other deities send me to help you clear this mess. Isn't it nice, dearest?' Death said with look of fake innocence in his face that even a child wouldn't believe.
"Wait, wait, what is it about loosing something, or the other deities that you are talking about?" Harry asked, his eyes narrowed in suspicion, there was something here that they were trying to hide from him, at least Fate did.
"You idiot." Fate roared, charging at Death and ready to kill him with her bare hands.
"Oops, sorry" Death said, but it made Fate more angry. When Death saw himself in danger, he changed his tactic. "I will fix it, I promise, I swear, just let me explain" he said this while walking backwards; his hands were up as a sign of surrender to the blood thirsty lioness that was known as Fate.
"will you explain instead of fighting?" uttering the sentence was so hard, Harry had to gather all his famous Gryffindor bravery as the sight of fate was really scary, and he didn't want her attention to him, but what could he do? He wanted answers.
After several long minutes when they didn't listen or cease their struggle to answer him, he lost any motion of danger and his fear of Fate and made a loud bang with his wand, so he succeed in obtaining their attention. They looked at him as if they just remembered he was there too. "Honestly, you call yourselves deities when you behave worse than two year olds." He exclaimed and was presented with the interesting sight of seeing two deities looking sheepish.
"Now, would one of you please grace me with the explanation of his true meaning?" he uttered after several moments that he spent watching them, his sarcasm was evident in his voice. Oh, brother, some thing was really fishy here. "As our dear friend here is angry to the point of silence, would you please explain it?" Harry smirked at the look that Fate shot at Death.
"I will explain it, but just like Fate I ask you to promise me not to interrupt me in the middle, and instead I will answer all your questions after it, do we have a deal?" after receiving a nod from Harry he continued. "The result of the Second Wizarding War wasn't only the death of all this people that you saw, neither was the death of people that you speak with Fate about, yes these people weren't meant to die, and their death and death of countless other people was truly unfortunate. But it is not all the problem, the real problem was the excess magic in the earth." Seeing Harry's confused face, he continued. "When a magic folk, whether wizard, witch, goblin, elf or any other being in procession of magic dies, his magic or life force goes to the earth, most of this power will be used for sustaining the earth, a bit of extra will be preserved for when the amount of released magic is not enough for sustaining the earth. But when a lot of excess magic is released, this extra will cause chaos and destruction in the world. The damage varies from destruction of a tree, or a yard of grass, to creation of a tornado, or an earthquake. Unfortunately, death and destruction wasn't low at all. More than three million magical beings were murdered in these two years, 99 percent of them above average, ten thousand powerful and at least two thousand of them extremely powerful. We lost nearly ten percent of the magical population, and this ten percent possessed more than twenty percent of magical prowess in the world. The earth cannot preserve such huge amount of power, thus the power will destroy instead of preserving, and it will kill instead of healing. It will reduce the earth's plant life in half in fifty years, and another twenty percent will be destroyed because of natural disasters created by the excess magic. There will be chaos. Famine will result in rebellion. The rate of robbery and even murder will increase because people cannot find another way to feed themselves and their families, and in this chaos wizards are no exception, and because of their careless ways in obtaining food, and their inexperience in dealing with non-magic technology, normal folks find about them. Another Dark Age starts, but this time normal folks are accompanied with technology. And as they think that wizards are the guilty party causing all this disasters, they hunt and kill them, and by doing it unknowingly worsening the situation. The natural disasters accompanied by two groups killing each other, excessive use of magic by wizards, and use of different weaponry especially nuclear energy by normal folks worsened the situation, and effectively ended the world. And when humans do not exist, neither will us. Does Fate love you? Yes. Does she want to help you? A definite yes. Was there any possibility of time travel without this disaster? I personally don't think so, because although you are her favorite character and she spend most time writing a perfect and fulfilling life for you, not ignoring the fact that she loves you like a son, and will do everything in her power to help you, this change requires more than her power to accomplish. So that is why I am here with the support of all the other deities. Because as much as I like you I won't go them just for you, and even if I wanted, I didn't have enough power." He said it with a large grin plastered to his face. "You can ask your question now, dear."
Harry started, a fire in his green eyes, passion that died after the battle reborn again. "How many times have you sent a person to the past to change something?"
"None, Harry you must understand that this kind of massacre of magical beings never happened in the history. It is the first time that so many magical lives are lost." This time it was fate that answered him, his voice still having its angry tone that was fortunately aimed at Death. Harry was frankly afraid of him.
"Why so many deaths, I am sure Voldemort couldn't have killed that many. I mean the first two million victims. I don't even think that Britain had that many magical folks." Harry asked after a few moments of his thoughts.
"Actually, the magical population of England is more than two million of which one and half million are wizards and witches. Wizards have the biggest community, then goblins with two hundred thousand populations, than elves, house-elves, mere folks, werewolves, centaurs, vampires, and a small community of veelas, nymphs, dwarves, sirens, and other beings. Half of goblins were killed because of rebelling against the new policy, Griphook and Gornuk who you see in the run were of those few rebellions still alive. One of the biggest centaur villages was completely destroyed by werewolves. Those werewolves that didn't join Voldemort were hunted and killed; those that joined him were sacrificed in meaningless raids. Hunts and raids decreased their number to half, and most others were killed in this battle. English vampire clan attacked the elven city, destroying it entirely and killing most of its citizen, and losing most of their forces in the process. Veelas and nymphs were captured and killed or used as sex-slaves for death eaters and the dark-world ally's. The number of murdered house-elves is astonishing, as they were either died protecting their masters when a house was attacked, or died when their masters were killed by a curse created by death eaters that kills all the beings bonded to a person, like one's familiar, house-elf or even one's husband or wife. Voldemort also poisoned two whole lakes, killing most of the mere-folks living there. One hundred thousand people were killed because of being muggle-born or half-breed by the ministry, ten thousand more lost their souls to Dementors. Countless magical villages were destroyed by armies of giants, werewolves and vampires all over the world. Did you ever wonder why none of the other countries were able to help you on this crisis, in spite of England being one of the first countries joining ICW? They had problems of their own, oblivating mundane people, and trying to protect their citizen. Though they lost a huge number of people, either citizens, or trying to protect citizens. So much potential was lost over the world." He finished with a sad tone.
"The curse that you mentioned was the reason that people were dying without any reason, wasn't it?" Harry asked thinking about the moment that he saw Bill's death, and then saw Fleur fall without any reason; her death was nothing short of surprise in the midst of the battle.
"Yes, it was." Death answered. "Nearly ten thousand magical beings died this way."
After a few moments of Harry started talking again with an extremely heartbreaking voice. "You know it is hard to believe you, despite knowing that you are telling the truth. It is hard to believe that destruction awaits this world. This world that my friends and I tried so hard to save will be nothing more than ruins. It is hard to believe that so many thing deaths were for nothing, we didn't achieve any thing. They sacrificed their lives for nothing, we failed." He said glumly, reliving every death, every misery that he experienced in the war. He saw the bloody and broken bodies of his friends again, Ron and Hermione's dead bodies in each other arms, a large pool of blood around them. He saw the burned face of Draco Malfoy, and his family who were killed trying to fight the Lestrange family, elder Malfoys protecting their son, who was defending two Slytherin first year, whose parents had not joined Voldemort. Those two little bodies rested just behind them. Remus damaged boy near the mad-wolf who was Fenrit Greyback, he had taken revenge with his life. Severus Snape lost his life delivering Dumbledore's last massage. His body lying near his tomb showed that even in death, he was loyal to the old man who was the only one kind to him after his beloved's death. Harry was so deep in thought that he almost missed Death's voice.
Important please read:
I am sorry, this chapter isn't even complete, I waited for more than two months but I couldn't complete it. Not because I didn't have any more ideas, or that I faced writer's block. No, unfortunately life wasn't kind to me in the last several months. Both my parents are ill, my father suffers from heart problem, and my mother faces cancer. Add university and homework to this mess, and you will know how deep in shit I am. And I am also strongly addicted to reading and reading fanfiction so I can certainly say that I won't have much time. Well to be honest I didn't have time to even read a single chapter for two days. So I must regretfully say that this story is officially ABANDONED. Perhaps later I will start this story again, but it will be the re-written form, so this story won't be updated ever again. Thanks to all of you for reviewing, for adding this story to your favorite, or alerts. I hope that I will be able to rewrite this story in the near future.
Yours,
A very sad Sabrina