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Harry Potter and the Breath of Life

"He was a stately looking man, presumably of pure blood origin, with firey hair and almost unnaturally glowing green eyes. I don't know who could have told him of my interests but every day, always when the last ray of sunlight had just vanished, he was at the front door and the tales that came with him were riveting. The truth behind myths and legends, knowledge thought lost to Time, hidden locales and, underneath it all, was a promise of power. To avoid seeming desperate, I must admit that I tried to offer presents of fine wines, manuscripts and the like. He turned them down with an easy smile, we were almost friends. I went so far as to invite him to my daughter's union but he got so depressed at the mention that I didn't expect him to show. And indeed, he didn't. As the sun fell the day after, it wasn't him at the door, but a girl of around ten with hair the colour of molten gold and virbrant blue eyes to deliver a message: He's gone. And then she vanished right before my very eyes." -Translated by Ebediah Dumbledore, notes believed to have been penned by a scholar of early Greece


No one except the Weaver could explain why this was, not even Truth's visions reached this far into the universe's bag of secrets, but something happened when a living thing made a transition between mortal and immortal. A process that changed them from inside out into something more than different, the first thing to change was the scope of their thoughts. A normal mortal would think in terms of space: the immediate surroundings, their nation, their planet. A mortal would think in terms of value and they thought of seeking a purpose for their life, a reason for their existence. They create for worth, sentimental value exists for them and perhaps it is a good thing that mortals don't live for very long.

Incarnates might or might not notice things about them changing: getting paler, eyes changing color (or in some cases, losing them entirely), becoming thinner or fatter, etc. They made a distinction between what they considered their "true" form and the mortal body that the more powerful Incarnates were capable of reverting back to. Everything changed, sometimes their names changed with them, and in the end the thing that was left was little like the original.

The concept was something along the lines of Forgetting, no one spoke of it so an actual name might not exist. It was an accepted facet of their existence, Famine was currently going through it. No Incarnate worried about him getting attached to the mortal world he often visited, as in time they knew that one day he would simply stop. They had all gone through similar experiences. Now if, for some reason, afterwards he started to interact with mortals, then there would be concern.

There was something about being among mortals that made them feel...something. Was it their endless struggle against Time that made them so interesting? Their diverse range of behaviours? The nonsensical attachments to people, places, things that they had?

Not many stop to think about it. What did it matter? the Incarnates just...were and that was all. The Truth. Or the Truth as the Incarnate of Truth warned the Incarnate of Life.

Osiris had never been one to listen to Truth and over the marked span of a decade, he became something...more and at the same time less. No one knew how quite to describe it, at one moment he was just like the others. And then he would say something, like 'it's my favorite color' and leave them blinking in confusion. Or he would do something, like preserve the very last of a mortal species as immortals in his Realm, and remind them of just how different he was. The Weaver demanded that he be made to conform but since it was rather obvious that Death was fond of him, they left it alone. It wasn't disrupting anything.

Osiris picked up a Chosen rather suddenly, he had given no indication of wanting to move on, but they thought little of it. It would take at least an extra century to teach the girl everything she needed to know about being the Opposite to Death's rather abrasive personality. About two hundred years in total.

He took two months.

And then killed himself by wading into the River Styx. The Artifact whisked him away to Judgment before Death's very eyes.

Immortals were built for handling Everything, mortals were not. Visions of Everything, which the Incarnates took for granted, would kill a mortal outright. They were simply too frail and the Incarnates realised that forgetting that fraility, forgetting about living was the only way to protect themselves from their own minds. There were no illusions as an Incarnate. You did only what you were supposed to do, there was no luck, no coincedence, the Weave was dictating everything even if you didn't know what it was spelling out. Such silly notions like 'hope'...he was looking at an Eternity of an empty existence. Simply being wasn't enough for him but there was little else he could be.

What he knew as an immortal had been warring with what he had once known as a mortal.

He wanted to live but couldn't. He must have felt...trapped, hanging there in the middle, having only one way out. Once immortal, you were either immortal or dead. He couldn't go back, couldn't ever go back so he ended it.

Afterwards, they called this act, this ritualistc destruction of what they were made to be, Remembering.

Thanatos had been mortal for all of three minutes after her birth. There wasn't much for her to Remember but against her will, she was learning.

Palquenta had been mortal for ten years.

And for several thousand years, she never Forgot.


Palquenta missed her Tree. It was large, comforting, warm and was her primary Artifact. Within its leaves, it held the largest portion of the power Life naturally bled off and being away from it for so long...she was beginning to think that it physically hurt. It had always been there for her and even if she couldn't hear Life speak, there was something about her Tree that she loved.

The underbelly of the Hogwarts castle was nothing compared to Zion but she couldn't go anywhere else.

She had done many things to degrade herself: willingly surrendered an Artifact to Death's boy, channeled Death through herself, was smack dab in the middle of a Dead Zone without permission and was in the process of taking a life. The last would be the final blow. Hel, strangely enough, hadn't wanted her to go through with it but from the moment her Thana had lead this boy to her Realm, Pal had made up her mind.

Some things were just hard to do.

"Life?" she whispered in the dank darkness as she watched over a statue of a boy, frozen in the act of drawing something from his back. "I'm sorry."

She didn't hear anything and she didn't expect to but a weight had been lifted off her chest all the same. Her Rose was here, the boy was here and it wouldn't take long for Thanatos, her Opposite, to be here as well. It was only a matter of Time.

Soon it would all be over.


"Had fun?" There was something about those two words, or maybe it was just the way they had been said, that curled Harry's lip. He didn't have the stature to look intimidating, but as the boy drew himself up, there was the faint glimmer of a presence around him that sent the corners of the stranger's mouth downwards. The vision of Everything had disappeared, to be replaced with a blank zone, filled with swirling grey wisps of smoke.

"I did, actually," he sneered. "What does it matter to you?"

Starting to pace with his hands clasped behind his back, the man thought out loud, "It wasn't supposed to happen like that, I'm not Mystery, dang it, how was I supposed to know-?" He stopped and turned to face Harry with a dumb founded look on his face. "And cripes, your twelve, how the holy heck-" He paused thoughtfully. "It's not going to be fun when you hit puberty, is it?"

Slightly offended, Harry snapped out, "Explain?"

For some reason, the man looked a little hesitant, his face shifting through terror, regret, sadness before settling on a complicated mixture of affection and loathing. "In a few years, you aren't supposed to exist."

A lump of cold ice suddenly formed in Harry's stomach. A few years...grow up a bit...? "W-who is?" His voice cracked.

"I am. You can call me Eternity," he finished with a mocking, sweeping bow. "I must admit though, you're fun to be around."

"She was going to replace me...?"

"She doesn't know," Eternity cut in before the clouds of doom and gloom could finish manifesting over the boy's head. "Truth isn't her strong point, for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, I didn't look before I leaped. I don't want to find another, but Fate has quite the grip on you. Ever heard of a Born?" The boy shook his head 'no.' "Well, its an immortal creature, a phoenix, a thestral, a grim that seperates a prophecy from a Prophecy." The capital letter could almost be heard in his voice. "I've noticed you staring..."

Harry turned his head and flushed.

"Aren't you curious what this," he tapped his lightning bolt scar, "is at all?"

"I'll bite...what is it?"

"It's a link," the man started solemnly. "It's a weakness, it's a Thread of Prophecy, it's a destiny...Death's power stopped your soul from dying by bringing this piece here but its up to you to break free completely. She can't do any more, you're starting to walk, Harry. Congradulations, now hop to it!"

"Hop to what!?" Harry half shouted, almost deperately. The only person who had almost seemed willing to actually give him answers was now being irritatingly vague. "Where is here, piece of what, what's going on?"

"Where...is...here?" The man repeated languidly, looking upwards as he tapped his chin. "Funny you should ask..." With a start, Harry found that he could see through Eternity and on the other side was a vast expanse of stars. "Don't you recognize it?"

The darkness was sudden.

"Hello?" Harry called out as he moved about in what seemed to be absolutely nothing...there was no light save for a dim glow hovered to only about an inch off his form. There was nothing to feel, nothing to taste, nothing to hear but the sound of his own echoing voice...

"Anybody here?"

No one answered the call this time.

"Anybody?"


One man's justice was another man's crime. She fit that to a tee.

Everyone had their own illusions of what Justice meant. Often it boiled down into some moral argument over what constituted as "right" and "wrong," "bad" or "good," "fair" and "unfair" without realizing that the words they used were as unstable as the air it took to shape them. There was no such thing as "morals." There was only what you were and were not willing to do for an ambition. What would it take to reach a goal? What were you willing to sacrifice for it? Did you want it badly enough? Why should you get it, and not someone else? Did you believe, with ever fiber of your being, that you deserved whatever it was you were going for?

In this way, Justice favoured the fanatics. Those that were willing to do anything for their cause had an ally in her. At the beginning, she had more than happy to aid Death bring about the destruction of Everything as they knew it. Now, she could tell that Thanatos was beginning to waver in her resolve, she was changing something.

And it was disgusting.

"Verily I say thus, it would be better for us all if thou were to eliminate him." She watched Thanatos' head move just enough for her to see the far corner of her lips and one pale blue eyes.

"I've come quite a ways, stopping now isn't an option," the other Incarnate remarked flippantly. The shimmering form of a boy had his head in her lap as she traced a sickle shaped scar. "Besides, this one is rather low maintenance." This was said with more than a hint of sarcasm.

"Death loathes him, of this thou are aware," Justice observed casually and Thanatos snorted.

"Yes, well, Death is rather selfish." The beginnings of an odd smile were flickering onto Thanatos' face, as if she discovered some hidden Truth in what she had just said. "I expected Hel to comment, but you too? I'm losing my touch."

Justice could figure out what the woman meant, even if she didn't understand the saying. What did touch have to do with this conversation? After a moment, she decided not to bring her ignorance to light.

"All have noticed that thou art weaker than before," Thanatos scoffed but didn't deny it, "Famine is of the belief that thou art also rejecting thy true nature."

Death Incarnate nodded lazily but then she blinked, sitting up straighter as something caught her attention. "What do you mean 'also?'"

"Life," was the simple answer.

"I knew it!" Thanatos exploded. "I fucking knew it!" Her voice dropped off into a vicious snarl. "Oh, she wouldn't dare..." Justice watched in detached amusement as the woman turned to the boy on her lap and started shaking him. "Alright, boy, play time over! Come on! Wake up!"

"Awake, he will not. Art thou truly so blind to thy own influence?" She gave Oblivion's Gate a meaningful glance.

"Morgan..." Thanatos gritted through her teeth, blue eyes flashing dangerously. If she bothered to look closer, Justice might have noticed a faint golden sheen in them. "Kindly shut up."

"Eternity is but a fake, a pale imitation," she continued anyway. "What would thou do?" There was a cold silence and for a moment, Justice was sure that Thanatos was going to kill her. It was an uncomfortable realization, she had killed Time with hardly a second thought, after all. Justice, like every other Incarnate, had never really considered the possibility of dying without their consent. Now, it was staring her in the face.

"Weaver has stopped me before, right?" Not quite following the train of thought, Justice nodded. "That means she and Fate are stronger than Death, right?"

Again, a nod.

"Then that settles it. Let's see what happens when I don't play along..." With that cryptic message, Thanatos closed her hand around the boy's throat and hesitated.

"Neither can live while the other survives," Justice intoned softly. With a sigh, her amethsyst eyes fluttered shut. "Thou art willing to test it."

"Always Ever Changing," Thanatos muttered sourly, ignoring Justice's rather violent flinch at the word 'Always.' "Did everyone but me know what the hell was going on with Potter?"

Justice didn't see it fit to answer and a second later, she didn't have to. A loud, grinding crack! split the air. Even though his head now lolled to the side fluidly, the boy didn't even twitch. "It would appear that Death transcends the Prophecy."

"Nope..." Thantos was watching the body with a strange intensity. Pain had been on her face but it had soon been replaced with a glimmer of knowing, a healthy amount of surprise and a dash of...not quite lust but close enough. "No, Eternity is still there," Thanatos began in an excited whisper, growing more amused with every word. "Boy's not dead yet, imagine that."


No, Harry Potter wasn't dead although at the moment, he sure felt like he was. It completely went against everything he knew the after life to be like (namely, with a Thana and a certain River) so he knew that he wasn't 100 percent dead...if that made any sense at all...

Hermione! Harry hissed at the back of the girl's head. She and Luna were in the Library and he had noticed with no small amount of concern that her entire right arm was covered in bandages. Hermione! Please tell me you can hear me! Either the Gryffindor truly could not hear him, or she was doing a bang up job of completely ignoring him.

Luna, on the other hand, was staring right at him.

Hermione noticed. "God, what is it now, Luna?"

"Hmm?" The blonde blinked languidly even as a tiny frown appeared. "Oh, just a Quorxat." Anticipating the question, Luna elaborated. "It's a rare creature that lives in people's heads and makes them stutter."

"Riiiight..."

Harry could have kissed Luna at that moment. While it didn't explain how he got to be wandering around the castle like a ghost when he had been in this strange darkness barely five minutes ago, it did tell him where to go next. To the Hospital Wing! As he floated along, Harry was justifying himself. He and Draco, they were almost like best mates, weren't they? The blond boy had invited him over for Christmas and everything...

In the Hospital Wing, literally strapped into the bed, the young Malfoy was raging.

"The Halloween Feast is today, I can't miss it! Do you hear me!? Let me out this instant, woman!" McGonagall gave him a disdainful look, and then disappeared behind the curtain. "Get back-!" The blond suddenly shivered, biting down so quickly that there was an audible click!

Harry quickly took a step back.

"What in Merlin's name...was that?"

Malfoy? the black haired boy ventured.

Suspiciously, Malfoy glanced around his corner. His face was paler than Harry remembered it, thinner too and red was showing through the gauze wrapped around the boy's hands. "Potter?"

He clamped down on the urge to start dancing in joy. Look, I need your help with something...

Seemingly ignoring the fact that Potter's voice was coming out of thin air, Malfoy nodded imperiously. "What's in it for me?"

Harry smirked. A stutter...

"What?"

It was deceptively easy getting into Malfoy's head. He just walked through him with the intent of "sticking" there and poof! It was disorienting, as suddenly his arms and legs belonged to someone else. It felt...cramped but he couldn't move around to make himself comfortable. It was also very cold. Malfoy was shivering.

"W-what the hell, P-potter!"

You don't seem that surprised, Harry observed, feeling almost giddy. It was uncomfortable, but really, it was too cool for words. He was possessing someone!

"Oh, I will be," the blond griped. "It's called shock. Just give me a minute." Harry wasn't interested in waiting for Malfoy to flip out (he could feel it coming, bubbling up from the depths like he was in a kettle and without knowing how, he squashed it) and with a thought pushed, forcing the body to tumble out of the bed, snapping the restraints. For a moment, he worried about harming a body that wasn't his but brushed it aside. He'd just have to be careful is all. He could feel Malfoy's conscious mind pressing against his, warring with it as the thought patterns collided and ricocheted around and Harry realised that if he hadn't been Harry, Malfoy's mind might have rejected him.

He had to have some kind of permission or else it probably wouldn't have worked.

If there had been any pity left for Quirrel in the boy's heart, it was gone now. Bastard, he grumped while out loud he said, We have to find Ginny.

"The b-blood traitor? W-w-what for...argh! S-stop that!"

She's the reason I'm like this, get a move on!

Malfoy took a step and then stopped with a wry smile. He held up his hands, "I-I-I'm n-not sure if you've n-noticed b-b-but I'm not in the b-best of shape."

It'll be fine, just don't touch her book.

"...You are g-going to owe me f-f-for this, P-potter..."

Harry sighed. Yeah, yeah.


"Albus! His breathing-!"

"REDUCTO!" Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts and severely out of his league, bellowed in response to Poppy's warning. The brightly coloured orb of what was most likely the strongest reducto Albus had cast in his entire life streaked through the air. Gilgamesh looked at it, and then casually slapped it upwards into the air where it fizzled out. Useless, just like all of his other attempts. Not even disapparating worked.

A split second later, the Greater Being hissed in pain, shaking his hand. "Ah," he muttered. "So that's where it went."

"Gil?"

"I am perfectly fine, Narcissa. That wand doesn't suit him."

It was like someone had dumped a bucket of ice cold water down his back. It was as he feared, despite all that he went through, despite his accomplishments, he was not yet master of his wand. Dumbledore knew his past would come back to haunt him one day but he never thought...Of course.

He almost laughed out loud. He had been warned.

"Your son is one of the affected, would you deny him?" Was it possible to feel this tired? He never used to think so but it was as if just looking at the blonde's cold face had made him age over two hundred years. Narcissa and Gilgamesh exchanged glances and then simulataneously smirked.

"Until the challenge is done," the Greater Being started.

And with a careless wave of her hand, Narcissa finished, "None of the pieces may leave. I'm afraid the boy dies."

As if her words were a signal, Theodore Nott stopped breathing.


New Incarnate: Incarnate of Justice

Despite her relative youth, Justice is the only Incarnate besides Weaver to currently be almost indistinguishable from the universal Force that inhabits her. Most of the time, she goes by the name Justice rather than Morgan. She answers to Life along with Gilgamesh (Mystery) and her half-brother Arthur, who is often referred to as Truth due his unique memory conditions. The siblings both hail from England during the Middle Ages and have known Merlin personally. Her Realm has not yet been visited.

Geez...don't expect the chapter to stay like this, I'm going to have to rethink how I write this thing. I've noticed my style changing, its like someone else wrote Death's Incarnate and the scene breaks I am using in this chap are getting on my nerves. So! Harry is hitch hiking in Malfoy's head, who saw that coming? For those who know of Dumbledore's past, you can guess what Gil is referring to. for those who don't, you'll have to wait, sorry.