9.

A Center

"I think now is a good time to turn back."

Black smoke rose in front of the window, pluming into great, swelling masses. They clung to the sides of the plane, blocking their vision. Arthur's knuckles turned white as he gripped the wheel harder, looking back at the rest of his crew.

"I think now is a very good time to turn back!"

Clack-clack-clack debris plummeted on the roof and sides, hard pebbles and then larger chunks crashing into the metal and creating dents. Arthur's voice grew to hysterics, his breath coming in rapid rasps.

"TURN BACK NOW! ARE YOU INSANE?"

"WHAT? I can't hear you!" The man with the charming brown mustache called to him.

"TURN BACK!"

"WHAT?"

Arthur grabbed his radio and screamed his orders until he turned hoarse.

"TURN BACK TURN BACK TURN BA—"

A large object plummeted into the side of the plan, debris from a plane above. Arthur's engine ripped off, hurtling down through the air and into the land down below, crushing innocent lives into smithereens. Arthur lost control of the plane, rocking in his seat as the plane turned and roared. It fell to the earth, smoke rising from it and fire budding on the dismembered hulk. Arthur shut his eyes and placed his head against the wheel, knowing what would come next.

And what came next was a nurse's soft hand placing a wet cloth against his forehead, washing his face and scrubbing the bloody bandage around his head. He slowly opened his eyes, green semicircles visible under heavy lids. He attempted to understand his surroundings and instead shot out of bed.

"TURN BACK THE PLANE!"

"Sir, please relax," the nurse said, gently pushing him back down. He was aware of pain leaping from his bones to his muscles and back again. He cringed and leaned his head back.

"Where am I?" he muttered once his breathing resumed as normal.

The nurse smiled. She was an unremarkable girl with brown hair tied back and a pair of soft pink lips. Arthur hated her immediately.

"Don't you worry now, Mr. Kirkland. You should be amazed, in fact! You survived that horrible crash. No one else in your regiment did, however," she shook her head twice, and applied something to a wound on his arm. "You were pretty badly demolished. And, in the time you were unconscious in this hospital the war even had time to end!" She went on to describe America's moves in the war and the bombs dropped.

Arthur relaxed visibly. At least he wouldn't have to fly anymore of those horrid flights. He couldn't recall anything since the plane crash. It felt like a moment snapped in half, jarring pain at one end and at the other soothing bliss.

"Now we'll get you your meal…" the nurse said and stood.

Her hair bobbed as she walked and the other patients muttered something or other. Arthur was engulfed in a sweet white cloud of delirium. He floated in the air for a long time until he realized it was a memory he had seen.

Then, that moment snapped in half again, he shot his eyes open and found himself on the floor, his hair matted with something hot and wet. He gazed up and found drops of crimson beading down his forehead, pooling into a puddle by his head. The ground under him was a carpet, red and oriental, and smelling rotten. He began to sit up but was instead stopped by a wall of pain hammering down on him. His muscles couldn't move, his legs were tied together. He moved his eyes and his neck, which seemed alright, and saw no bindings of any physical forms on his body. His hands were clamped at his sides, his robes damp with blood and rain, and his wand nowhere in sight.

"So, he wakes."

Arthur painfully looked over, trying to look up the black robes surrounding him. Gruff hands seized his sides and heaved him into a sitting position. His head lolled back until those same hands grabbed him by the temples and faced him forwards. His vision swam. The figures before him, one man and one woman, drifted in and out of focus, ending finally with the woman grinning at him in striking clarity. She held his wand, gnarled and old, but fine all the same.

Her grin fell away, fruits falling from a branch as their stems crack. "What's a wizard so powerful doing on that side?"

"Yes," the man intervened, his black hair casting shadows on his face.

The room they stood in was an old house, demolished by Death Eaters, and marked with signs and signals of all shapes and forms, some not of wizardry, some not even of humanity.

"They forced you on that side, didn't they?" the man continued.

"No, I chose it." Arthur said, his breath shaking.

"Then choose this side next! We know you're under some spell."

Arthur felt the pain in his legs heighten, and then vanish all at once. He looked down, seeing them perfectly fine and shapely, long as well, under his robes.

"Well?"

Arthur looked up groggily, smiling. "I will never choose your side."

"Do you want people killed?"

"Yes."

A hand met his head and his mind seemed to rattle in his skull. It was a back-handed strike, done so close that it couldn't knock it out. Besides, he had suffered far worse.

"Sirius, don't hit him." The woman said.

"Sorry, Lily, but he was asking for it."

Arthur coughed, shuddering with laughter. "Why don't you just kill me now, then? You're resorting to hand-to-hand combat, and why would wizards have any use of that? You are horribly impractical. Don't you see why our side is better? The Dark Lord can change the world for good."

Lily stared at him, her green eyes shifting uncomfortably.

"We won't kill you because you know you can't die!"

"James!"

"We found the only book that tells your story. We locked it away, safe and sound. It was hard getting through it, but we managed. Oh, we really did manage. In fact, it's at our school now!"

"James!"

"Lily, you know there is no hope."

"There is," Arthur intervened, a smile stretching at his lips in similarity to a snake. "You, then, know much about me. You then also must know that taking my wand is not going to stop me from killing your right here and now."

The three took a step back. He could hear Sirius's feet sliding back behind him, echoing through the broken house. The very sound seemed to have been propelled through the cracks in the walls that showed the night sky in a strip.

"Then why haven't you?" Lily's voice shook.

"I haven't because I can't wreck your fate. Now, let me go."

"So you're saying you won't kill us?"

"I know fates much more horrible than death. For example: being practically immortal is not fun at all. That stone, the philosopher's stone, is the worst possibly fate one can imagine." Arthur then stopped speaking and gazed at that strip of sky, clarity and gorgeousness combined in a ribbon of stars at night, and the dark mark. The three stared at it. One screamed and then another and Arthur found himself lost in that murky world so airy and white. Green and red sprung from his wand and bodies fell by the hundreds.

But that murky fog was to lift again. The Dark Lord was terminated by a baby boy. Arthur slipped back for good into the world of nations, his wand hidden, and his past again clandestine.

And then his legs were being broken. They were damaged by both magic and sheer brute, hard objects falling against them, crushed, tortured, assailed, defiled, broken, crushed, annihilated. He blanched and fainted in horrible convulsions. He was captured again and some hands he recalled. Some eyes blue and bright glowered at him, their nails digging into his hands.

"This is what you'll have to do! You'll pay, Artie, you'll pay!"

The voices were white hands crawling from the darkness, scratching his very sanity as his legs were gone and he lost several inches of his height for they would never be healed again.

"Francis, Alfred…" Arthur muttered weakly, tears slipping down his cheeks. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry…"

"Why did you do it?"

The voice echoed in the chamber of his mind. He knew his legs were attacked, for there still burned a fire. Darkness swelled, breathing, living, an organism with organs and genes and cells multiplying and dying off, sloughed into the rest of its infinite body, all incased behind his eyes.

He knew the voice. He knew the sharp sounds, the gruff edge; the accent.

"I thought it was…"

"What was it? Fun? Good? Jolly?"

"Evil cannot leave me."

"What?"

"I nursed on evil. I was bred in it. You understand so well that."

"You didn't have to kill so many people! I don't know much about your wizarding world, Arthur, but it hurt us all."

"You say I am bad, and here you are torturing me…" His voice was fading away, dripping through the cracks and seeping through the pours.

And when Harry Potter turned fourteen, he was venturing back into the world he nearly destroyed.