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Harry Potter and the Breath of Life

"I can't do this anymore. The days have been wearing at me for years now. It's become a horrific routine and I can feel myself fading away. I no longer need to sleep, I don't know when that happened but by using the local population of rodents, I have eliminated the need for food as well. I will not detail the process, let it rest. I see things out of the corner of my eyes, hear sounds and voices when I'm alone and I have taken to simply keeping my mouth shut. There is no telling what will come out should I attempt to speak. Rowena understands, Godric doesn't know yet and Salazar has left. To calm down, he told us, to prepare but I was this close to killing him. If he ever gets it into his head to overtake Hogwarts, our school, then I will. I am not fit to be a teacher, for those that find themselves in my House, wear the badger with pride." - Excerpt from Notes on True Necromancy by Helga Sarah Hufflepuff


"I heard that Potter went missing yesterday."

At the word 'Potter' her head jerked upwards. She couldn't help it, both her and Life had interest in that person. Ever since she was little, she had been awed by Harry Potter. A boy just one year older than her who defeated the Dark Lord. He lost his parents, everyone knew about the Potters, but that left Harry as the sole heir to the Potter wealth and a hero. She never got tired of hearing his story and often dreamed of Harry Potter, messy black hair, emerald eyes and handsome being her hero. She knew she wasn't the only one to have this dream and believed that she did not have a good chance.

It would be nice, if the prince would take notice of the common girl but this was life, not a witch's tale. Some other girl, a pureblood like Greengrass, would snatch him and Ginny Weasley would be left out in the cold. Once she accepted that fact, Life had told her, then she would do much better.

And she was doing better!

Potter, through some twist of fate, was a Slytherin and she was a Gryffindor like the rest of her family. Going after him would just cause problems in the long run as everyone knew that Slytherins were Dark. There was just too great of a chance of the boy hero becoming the next Dark Lord, he could even speak to snakes! As long as she kept her mind of him, she was able to do well in school and she didn't need anyone else other than Life. If asked, she probably couldn't explain why this mysterious person was so important to her, she just was.

Life was perfect. Ginny was infinitely envious of her blonde hair, blue eyes and she could swear that Life's freckles were a lot cuter than her own! Each time she met Life face to face, it was like she was in some kind of dream. The meetings acted like dreams too and were often hazy or fuzzy a day later. Not that it mattered much, she was just thankful that someone was there for her.

In the Gryffindor Commons, seated on the couch in front of the fireplace, Ginny reopened the tattered black book. Almost immediately cursive writing with economic loops seeped through the page in silver ink.

You lost your patience, it read. What happened?

Removing her quill from behind her ear, she quickly scribbled in He tried to take the book.

I see. That is rather inexcusable. Nothing happened to you, correct?

Ginny's lips twitched upwards. Life was always understanding and more supportive than her own mother! I'm fine. Seh paused in writing, trying to remember what happened after she stomped out of the Library but it was just a haze of images. None of them made any real sense. I think I ran into Justin, that Hufflepuff but I took care of it.

She had, hadn't she? She couldn't remember what she said but there was a feeling of contentment in her whenever she thought about it, so it must have been something witty.

The writing this time was a little shaky and she knew that Life was laughing. I'm sure you did, love.

Do you know something I don't? she mock pouted and knew that Life could tell when she was teasing. It was just another thing that was great about her pen pal, it was like the woman knew everything about Ginny. She didn't have to explain herself, ever.

Accusing me of keeping secrets? Shame on you. But, you do have a mouth on you whenever you feel so inclined. I can just imagine you ripping the poor boy to shreds!

Ginny's smile grew and, on impulse, she hurriedly scratched a slanted, I love you onto the crinkled, yellow page. There was a pause after the ink disappeared from sight and then, hesitantly, she got a response.

I know. For what it is worth, you are a very dear child. A longer pause. I'm sorry.

It's ok! Re- Quite suddenly, she was writing on air. Confused, she looked up and saw Ron there, holding a familiar book in his hands up to the light.

"A diary? You sure do write in this old thing a lot, sis," he ignorantly stated. Ginny stared up at him blankly for a moment and then realized that he had her book. He had her book. He had the book! Ginny stood up and a strange little half-smile oozed onto her lips. Ron was still standing there, oblivious as her eyes flashed silver. A bit too calmly for what she was feeling, she took the book from him. "Alright, alright, don't tell me," he pouted.

Ginny shrugged and pushed her brother into the fire.


In actuality Ewah, the Incarnate of Insanity, had been involved with the Lovegood line for far longer than Burwright knew. From Merlin's time (pesky meddler) onward, he had been fascinated with mortals. Even before he became immortal, people interested him. What made them tick, why did they turn out the way did, they had so much potential! So he began to experiement. He took a nameless mortal (couldn't remember anymore) and would arrange events in his life and observed the effect it had on his children.

He didn't know when it was...but sometime ago he had found out that Thanatos had been immortal since birth. Krun had trained her up to be the next Death but anyone could see that her core personality was a bit too rebellious to be suppressed for long. It was his next project, a goal to his studies, a perfect Insanity Incarnate. Insanity had found the concept attractive and so it started.

He arranged the quirky personality through numerous behavioural checks. Was someone too fatalistic? Remove them (sometimes Death interfered but after Osiris, she meddled less). Too happy? Stage a tradegy and so on. Genetic traits were easier, it was simply a matter of pushing the right people together. If they got too stubborn, it was easy enough to arrange a rape. Desire never cared what her other Artifacts were used for, so long as he did not touch the Mirror. Once in a while he ran across someone who the Weave and Fate had a tight grip on but he worked around it with time. Once established, the family basically ran itself. There were a couple of false starts but Insanity made sure he killed the Spawn before they got too old.

But Luna, she was perfect. Brilliance and quite capable of carrying on his studies when he stepped down. It was a bit unfortunate that being a Spawn should she ever die, the Weave would erase all trace of her existence, but there was nothing he could do about that. Not yet anyway.

It was as Plague said, for his greatest achievment to just fade from sight like that would be a real shame. Unforgiveable even.


It was dark here. There was no light beside the faint glow that was coming from his body and even that light abruptly ended several inches out.

It was too dark and there was nothing but himself in this place.

Where was he, anyway?

"Hello?" he called out and heard it echo. How could it? There were no walls for the sound to bounce off of. "Anyone there?"

"I here ya."

Startled, he turned around and standing a little ways off was a girl. He knew her. Long black hair and heterochromatic eyes of blue and gold. She was smiling in a mysterious 'I know something you don't know' kind of way as she rocked back and forth on her heels, hands clasped behind her back. She was a little taller than he remembered her, almost dead even in height now.

He raised a hand in greeting. "Hi, didn't see you."

Her smile grew wider. "Of course you didn't. Don't you recognize where you are?"

"Um, no? There's nothing here."

A slighty puzzled expression appreared on her face. "Hmm..." He watched as she squatted where she stood and stretched a hand out towards him. "Well, come on out. You don't look like you're going anywhere."

Confused, he reached out and the lower half of his body was suddenly wet. "What the-" He was standing in a river. The water was dark and the girl was now reaching out to him from a black sand shore. It was familiar. "This is..." He looked behind him and he could just make out the outline of an obsidian throne. "It's Tartarus."

The girl laughed at him as he took her hand. "Where else would you go when you die?"

He paused in the act of climbing out onto the beach. "I'm dead?"

"Well," she tilted her head to the right. "I think so..." She gave a stronger pull and he spilled out into the sand. "But then again, you can come out of my River. I can't imagine someone ending up in there by mistake though..." He just grunted as he turned over onto his back.

"Story of my life."

Snorting, she also fell backwards onto her butt next to him. For a minute, both children stared up into the expanse of white that passed as the sky in Tartarus. "Hey," she spoke up suddenly. "Want to see something cool?" He raised an eyebrow and she gave him a cheeky grin. "Watch this." He blinked and was suddenly standing in outer space.

"...the fuck?" he murmured as he stared around at galaxies, stars, asteroids and planets all moving around him. The girl was giving him an expectant eyebrow lift and all he could do was grin goofily. He was in space. That was pretty awesome, no ifs, ands or buts about it. "Where are we?"

"It's just a vision of Everything, Always keeps something like this in his Throne all the time." He was a bit put off by how casually she dismissed it but he guessed that she probably saw it a lot more often than he had. But still...something in him was upset, disappointed maybe about her words. Almost like she offended him but he didn't know why that would be.

"Make something."

"Huh?" He gave her a weird look as she waved her hands impatiently.

"This isn't what I wanted to show you, you have to make something to get it. Like a star or something."

"And how do you expect me to do that!?" In answer she reached out and flexed her fingers as if she was grasping something. As she tightened the fist, her hand started to glow. A second later, her fingers snapped open with a hiss of pain.

"Hot, hot, hot..." she hopped around. He stared at the small ball of light that was now bobbing in the vacuum of space. A star. It didn't take long for the small thing to deteriorate and disperse back into subatomic particles but he wanted to try. Reaching out both hands, he tried collecting something but after three tries was getting nothing.

"You're doing it wrong." He gave her an irritated glare but she neatly side stepped it to grab his hands. "You have to focus on creating something, not putting stuff together. Look, just-" he tuned her out as something clicked in his head. He created something before, hadn't he? He reached out and this time, he could feel something between his hands. 'You're still doing it wrong!" he heard the girl say but he ignored her. This was right, he knew it was. Draw, collect, compress...he squezed his hands together and...release. A ball of light popped out.

The girl coughed. "Fine, show off."

He grinned. She looked cute pouting like that, biting on her index finger. "Thana."

"What?" she snapped at him and then her eyes widened. "You remember!" A second later she was poking him in the chest with a tiny scowl. "You took off that bracelet, you shouldn't even be here much less remembering."

"Story of my life," he quipped again. Before she could get even more annoyed with him, he leaned in and kissed her. It was short, practically a one second peck on the lips but it was...

Well, it was nice.

He pulled back quickly and watched her face for any sign of danger. She was just staring at him, mouth opening and closing like a fish and quickly turning a bright red. "Y-y-y-you..." she sputtered but couldn't get any further. "Y-y-you..." He leaned in again but this time, his lips met air. He caught himself before he fell flat on his face. Where'd she-

"You're late." He looked and it was himself. Only older, much older and...harder. Colder. He was straight backed and had his hands clenched into fists at his sides. There was the same messy black hair, only in another cut, and green eyes but there was this strange lightning shaped scar on his forehead. The boy's eyes kept wandering back up to it.

"Late?" he asked quietly, still staring at that scar, and the man smiled thinly.

"Had fun?"


It had gone too far. Beyond too far. It was as if he could look over his shoulder and see the 'too far' line miles away in the distance. He had sworn-he had sworn that-! Fawkes! The Chamber! With some effort, Albus Dumbledore managed to calm himself by locking it all away behind his Occulemency walls. Potter, the boy, he was missing. Without Hogwarts' sentient wards, there was no way of knowing where the boy had gone. It was just like that time, before he ever started Hogwarts. The tracking spells had never worked and ever since that time, the charm designed to keep track of his health wasn't responding.

How long had this been going on, how long was the boy able to just get up and disappear while he thought that everything was under control!?

"Albus, he's slipping!"

Absently, he shifted his grip. That was the entire problem wasn't it? This entire time he had been treating Potter like the boy he should have been instead of the pawn he was. An easy mistake to make, he was sure but it wasn't making him feel any better. This wasn't like that time, it wasn't a matter of 'leave me alone and I'll leave you alone.' Something was happening, shifting balances he-

"Albus!" He looked up sharply at the alarm in Poppy's tone and his feverish eyes came to rest on a cloaked figure, blocking the gate. Well, it was leaning against the gate but he knew that hindering their progress was the intention. He drew his wand.

"You are not looking well, Headmaster." His eyes narrowed as he recognized the voice. It couldn't be, could it?

"Narcissa, my dear, what are you doing?" The woman shook her hood off and he could feel Poppy tense beside him.

"What is the meaning of this!?"

"Until the challenge is done," the aristocratic woman stated with a sardonic smile, "none of the pieces may leave." At the word, "challenge" Albus went pale and clutched his wand ever tighter. Challenge, who? A moment later he bit his tongue to keep from swearing. Who else? Potter.

"I don't know what you think you are trying to pull, but we have a student who is dying here!" A few fat tears were making their way down the medi-witch's cheeks and he knew it hurt. He had been asking a lot of her over the past few months, it was the only way to keep things quiet and now it seemed that he had grossly miscalculated. A Hufflepuff was gone, Justin Finch-Fletchley. Muggleborn, thankfully, but that only meant that time was running out.

"Student?" Narcissa almost sneered the word.

Poppy drew herself up. "You-! I'll have you know that this boy is pureblooded for all the good that does anyone! It-"

The blonde woman cut her off with an unladylike snort. "I can care less about issues of blood purity. I know the boy, Theodore Nott, am I correct? Until the challenge is done, " she began to repeat, "none of the pieces may leave."

With a sharp snap of his wand, Albus transfigured the ground into a large mud golem. Overkill it may be but there was little time to waste. He knew that there was no way to really reverse the strange permanent wounds and illnesses but he had the theory that it only affected those withint Hogwarts grounds. As long as he had that loop hole (he had tested it but unfortunately Fawkes was too weak to be moved), there was no need to rush.

But if they couldn't leave...

With another fast flick he animated it but when it came to actually getting it to move against his former student, it might as well have been a tonne of rocks. Instead of obeying him, it fell to pieces along with a frigid blast of coldness that swept through his body. A genuine smile replaced Narcissa's cruel one.

"Gil." Albus blinked at the affectionate way she said the word. "Always punctual."

The newcomer looked like a foreigner with strangely greyish hair even though he looked young and despite popping in from nowhere, the tell-tale crack of displaced air was missing. Solemnly, he handed the young Nott over to Poppy and got into a battle ready stance. There was just no telling-

"Albus Dumbledore." Narcissa nodded to him as if they were friends and entwined her hand with the stranger's. "Gilgamesh, Greater Being."

Quite suddenly, instead of his wand, it felt like he was holding nothing more than a brittle twig.


Thanatos opened her eyes and spent anywhere from five minutes to a couple of hours just staring up. She had been confused before. The feeling of missing something, being puzzled, baffled, bewildered, etc had become almost common place since she had first been shut out of the Weave a decade ago. But now she was faced with a mystery she wasn't sure if she even wanted it solved.

He remembered...

And...

Always Ever Changing this was going to drive her nuts, she could tell. She turned her head a bit and could clearly see out the corner of her eye, the shimmering form of the boy she had pulled out of her River. He was like his mother, remembering when they weren't supposed to, she'd never forget how Lily Potter fought against the tide. It still amazed her though that Harry, her Harry (that was important), had remembered her.

But...it felt weird looking at him. Awkward now, so she moved her head back until she couldn't see him anymore. But she knew he was there and in a couple of minutes it was getting uncomfortable being in the same Realm as him. She didn't know where she was going to go, but Jumped anyway, trusting her unconscious mind to pick a place.

It brought her to Eros.

"Back again," Adi-Mailagu, Incarnate of Desire said plainly and there wasn't much Thana could do besides nod. "What is it that you want?"

She was about to say 'nothing' but caught herself. "Would you..." the words got stuck in her throat and she could feel her face get warm. Why the hell am I so embarrassed now? "I mean, just...kiss me?"

Desire raised an eyebrow and Thana squeezed her eyes shut. Don't ask why, don't ask why, don'taskwhy... And then Adi's lips were against hers. It was...soft was the word that came to her mind. Soft fit. Adi had kissed her before but this was the first time she was actually thinking about it (or had asked, for that matter. Adi could be kind of pushy). And it was missing...something. Thana had no idea what it was she was hoping for but it wasn't there.

"That was longer," was the first thing she blurted after Adi's tongue left her mouth.

"Than what?" It was the first time Thana could remember Desire actually looking confused and she fought the urge to cry out 'Got cha!'

"And it felt different," she said instead, avoiding the question unsubtly. It didn't seem to make a difference because Desire's acid yellow eyes lit up in realization.

"Ah."

"Ah?"

"Well since you are here, would you mind fixing my Mirror?" Thana gave her a look but shrugged. It wasn't like she had anything better to do and she wasn't going to go back to Tartarus just yet. She turned towards the gigantic oval mirror and felt a pang. It was the equivalent of having her own Throne smashed and she had left Adi to deal with it for almost a year.

"I never apologised for this did I?" she mused as she tilted her head.

Adi raised an eyebrow again, this time looking at her like it was the first time she was seeing her. "Apologize?"

"Yeah, well," Thana jerked her petrified arm at the mess of glass shards and the empty frame. "Sorry." Desire caught the arm before she could return it to her side and ran her fingers over it.

"Thanatos...you poor thing..."

She yanked her arm away, a hair's breadth from snarling. "Don't you pity me, no one pities Death." Adi didn't speak but her eyes said enough. Thana reached out and pulled all lingering influences of Death on the mirror into herself. Immediately, the glass shards quivered and then shot up into place, melding together to form a flawless Mirror of Erised, complete with their distorted reflections. Work done, she should have left five minutes ago.

"Thanatos..."

"I said don't pity me! I'm not an invalid, geez. It's just-"

"You Remember, don't you?" Thana froze for only a moment. Adi...didn't know when to leave things alone. Really, asking if she remembered being mortal right off the bat like that, no tact whatsoever...

"No," Thana lied.


I don't really know what to say other than the end of the challenge is coming up. I wonder how many people are still reading this..? Eh, anyway, I hope no one was too annoyed with the Ginny section of the chap. As this story is mostly centered around Harry and Thana's viewpoints, there is plenty of stuff going on that neither know about. That being said, what's up with Eternity? Dumbledore vs Gilgamesh, who saw that coming? And Insanity is...interesting...

I just realized that this is my second long chapter...hopefully I'll be able to keep the length up...