"You were too late."
The words froze his heart as he heard them spill from her mouth. He didn't want to believe it; he wanted to make her take it back. But what was she doing here with the rest of the dead? The pain must have become too great; she must have suffered so horribly death was the only release. He had failed, and words eluded him as he slowly staggered towards her ghost, his family watching with great pity, his mother ineffectually reaching out to comfort him, her hand passing through his shoulder with a cold, tingling sensation.
He wished he could hold her in his arms, he wanted to feel the warmth of her life against him but it was vanished now. He wanted to press his lips against hers and feel the comfort of her kiss, or bury his face in her hair and inhale that sweet, familiar smell. But he knew he couldn't. He tried to look into her eyes, but he found himself dismayed by the fact that he was looking through her now, so he turned away with great effort. He found himself looking out over the edge of the cliff again.
If I jumped, I could be with them. This could all end; my war would finally be over. Evil would be something for the rest of the world to deal with. I could be with everyone I love. I could finally have a lasting sense of peace.
He walked towards the edge of the cliff, and looked far down below. It was certainly enough distance to break his bones, enough distance to end his life. He felt the warm breeze caress his face and wind whisper through his hair. Would he be able to feel these sensations in the afterlife?
He took a deep breath, perhaps his last. He was about to confront the last mystery to life. He would confront death for the final time.
"No" he said suddenly, whirling back towards the ghosts. "Something is not right."
"What's wrong Harry?" Lilly asked, her eyes almost pleading.
"I don't know... but I don't think you're real. This is not what I saw when I died fighting Voldemort. This feels... strange. It feels wrong."
"Son, this is your time now. Don't make the wrong decision" James Potter argued, but Harry was growing more sure now. This was not his father, or his mother or Godfather or Headmaster. These were just visions, and nothing more.
"You're still alive" he said to Hermione's ghost. "I feel it."
"Harry-" she began, but he ignored her, walking through the ghosts without another moment's pause and heading down the sloping hill towards the coliseum. He did not turn back for fear that his will would weaken. They aren't real he assured himself. They are visions of my own imagination, a final test to prove my will.
As he walked on he hoped he was right.
As he drew closer to the coliseum it rose up above him magnificently, the ivory white columns becoming more prominent against the clear night sky. It was the sort of ancient architecture that had mostly fallen to ruin on Earth. This was pristine in its design and breath taking in its enormity. The roaring flames of the torches attached to each column created a brilliant path, guiding him along.
He stepped across the threshold and entered the structure. The light surrounding it had been so bright he could not see within, and it took his eyes a moment to adjust to the strange sight before him. Ten men and women sat in a semi-circle of thrones to greet him. As he looked at them he quickly noticed that they all conveyed a sense of beauty and strength. In most respects, they appeared to closely resemble the paintings and statues he had seen of Greek Gods and Goddesses. However, instead of being dressed in togas they were comfortably clothed in more modern style, though the material of their clothing was still clearly expensive and elaborate.
He walked towards the center of them and felt humbled by the sheer power that he could feel from their presence. He did not bow to them, but he found himself unable to speak as he felt the eyes of the ten coolly study him like a specimen.
"We are glad you passed the tests Harry Potter" said the soothing voice of a woman, and Harry looked up to meet eyes with a light haired beauty. She looked to be not ten years older than himself, but he could sense she was far older than her appearances told. Her skin was nearly golden and she wore a bright red dress that was as shocking in its seductive nature as it was flattering to her perfectly sculpted figure.
"You have been marked by death in the three most important ways" said a voice that somehow reminded him of Snape. The voice same from a thin dark haired man clothed in black wizard robes. His skin was so fair he was nearly translucent and from his white skin his black eyes stood out starkly.
"You have come to sacrifice your right to die" boomed a third, powerful voice of a well-muscled man with a tidy white beard. He stated it as a fact, not as a question.
Harry managed to find his voice in his presence. "Yes, I have come to give you my right to die in exchange for power and immortal life."
"You will provide us with a strong source of power to replace this one" announced the bearded man, holding out an amulet that glowed from a chain around his neck. Harry gazed into the white light of the amulet and knew it held trapped the old man's right to die, it held his mortality.
"You will release that once I have given you what you want?" Harry asked.
"Yes" nodded the bearded man. "Its power has begun to fade somewhat with time. We are glad he found a suitable replacement for us."
Harry felt himself bristle at the words replacement. As through giving up a piece of his soul was nothing more than exchanging an old watch or buying a new piece of furniture. "Who are you?" Harry asked, his voice not hiding the ire in it.
"We are Gods" the fair haired woman replied.
"No" Harry insisted stubbornly. "Who are you really?"
There was a moment of pause before the bearded man responded once more in his deep voice. "You may call me Zeus, her Aphrodite and him Hades, but it hardly matters what you call us. We are and we are not Gods. Thousands of years ago we were mortal like you. Wizards and witches who gathered together with the singular goal of gaining great power and defeating death. We devised a spell that would allow us to live forever and give us tremendous power over all things. So you might say that we are Gods in that respect."
"And that spell hinges on collecting the mortality of one who has been marked by death in the three ways doesn't it?" Harry guessed. "You are powerless without a Damned One."
At these words Harry saw a spark of fury in the eyes of the one who called himself Zeus. But just as surely as it had appeared it subsided. "I don't know why the term 'Les Maudites' had to come about. We allow you to share in some of our power, in some of our immortality. That is a gift, not a curse."
"It's only a gift to those who've forgotten how to be human" Harry spat angrily. "You sit on your thrones with all this pomp and circumstance, and you could change the whole world with little effort. You could vanquish evil, restore peace, but instead you choose to be lazy and decadent. You care of nothing but yourselves. You are just like the ancient Greek Gods... petty, foolish and self-absorbed."
"YOU WILL NOT SPEAK TO US IN THIS MANNER!" Zeus boomed with such great force Harry nearly fell backwards. Zeus pointed a well-muscled arm in Harry's direction, but Aphrodite touched a caring hand to his wrist and he let it fall back to his side.
"He is just a silly mortal" the blond woman said, and there was something like poison in her voice now. "He doesn't know what he speaks of. You see boy, the trials of man no longer concern us. We have moved above all that. We are at an elevated sense of reality."
"You play with lives for fun" Harry growled.
She smiled, her light pink lips revealing white teeth that seemed to glisten in the light like venomous fangs. "When you have lived for so long, your amusements may change. You will see Harry Potter. Just wait."
"I'll never be like you" he insisted. "But go ahead, I give you my mortality. It is yours to take." As he said these words he shifted his eyes to Zeus with a challenging glare. And then, for just a moment he saw a strange expression cross the bearded man's face. Surprise.
It vanished in a flash, and the large man rose from his throne and approached Harry, arm extended and chanting in a strange language. The others all rose as well and they were surrounding him, arms out, chanting in unison. They closed in around him; closer and closer until they were touching him with their outstretched hands and it felt like electric currents were passing through is body. It wasn't entirely painful but it was unlike anything he had ever experienced.
And then he felt a strange ache in his heart, like something was being torn from his chest and he tried not to cry out but he soon heard his own screaming as he saw a brilliant light come from the center of his body and there was the sensation of ripping within his rib cage. The light hovered in midair for a moment and then flew to the amulet hanging from Zeus' neck. The light that had been trapped previously flew away with great speed, and then it was only Harry's mortality left dangling from the Zeus' thick neck.
Harry collapsed to his knees as the self-proclaimed deities resumed their seats. He could still feel the electricity of their enchantment flowing through his body, and as he looked up everything seemed changed. The bright light of the torches seemed to be a part of himself, something he could cause to grow or extinguish with a thought. The magic he had once felt course through his wand now resonated in every cell of his body.
What have I become? He thought desperately.
You are like the great tales of men such as Odysseus, Achilles or Perseus. You have been given great strength by the Gods. They whispered in his mind.
He rose to his feet and looked at each of their faces. Then his eyes settled resolutely on Zeus, and this time the bearded man's look of surprise was unmistakable. You have abused your powers and become inhuman corruptions of nature Harry heard himself responding silently. I will come for you all. I will end this.
They laughed at his foolishness but he barely heard it as he had apparated suddenly from their presence. He did not care about their laughter. He would have the final laugh in the end.
' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '
Ginny's body was leaning over Hermione as though she could physically shield her now from what had happened. She was crying in a way that shook her entire body, the sort of crying she had been unable to do even for her own brother. They were the only two bodies in the darkened room, outside heavy clouds blocked out the sun and cast a black shadow on the room and threatened a fierce storm.
Harry saw all this as he appeared soundlessly in the hospital ward and his heart froze. Apparating onto Hogwarts grounds was said to be impossible due to the strong wards, but it did not seem to be a problem for Harry now. The blue stability orb that had been brightly lit above Hermione's bed had disappeared entirely. I am too late he thought with such devastation that his knees gave out and all color ran from his face. She came to me and told me but I was too stubborn to listen. And now I will never be with her again.
Ginny's heavy sobs echoed through the empty room, but Harry could not cry. He wondered distantly in a dizzy way if being a Damned One meant he was now incapable of tears. Or maybe his heart was just gone now that she was dead. Hadn't she always been his heart?
He felt his body shaking with rage at the unfairness of it all. Where he had initially felt utter hopelessness for the first time in his life, he was now filled with a dark anger. He could feel the ground beneath him shake as well, and he vaguely realized the destructive power of his mood but hardly cared.
Feeling the sudden Earth quake beneath her feet Ginny's tear streaked face looked up and saw Harry there. Her brown eyes widened with shock at the sight of the raven haired boy, dressed all in black kneeling shoeless on the stone floor. "Harry?" she gasped.
He looked at her through hard eyes. "Did you kill her Ginny?" and the hostility in the question shocked even him. He felt the shaking stop as he observed the pained look in her eyes, the fear, the panic. "I'm sorry, I'm sure she was in a great deal of pain."
Ginny finally found her voice. "She IS in a great deal of pain Harry. If you can help her, you must hurry."
"She's alive?" he exclaimed, and then finally there were tears. He ran to her side and realized that she was actually breathing. In fact, now that his mind wasn't so clouded he could feel the life in her. And with his new powers he could also feel a touch of the pain she was experiencing and it was terrible.
"She seems to be awake because she moves and sometimes her eyes are open, and she screams... but she's somewhere else entirely. I'm not even sure she can hear me anymore. Madam Pomfrey went..."
But Ginny's words had faded out of Harry's ears. He fixed his eyes on her face, and he focused intensely. He placed his hands on her shoulders with the light tenderness that only lovers can accomplish. He felt himself lift the pain from her, and the curse slowly rose from her body like a black cloud.
Ginny moved back as she watched this happen, not sure what her eyes were seeing. And then Hermione took a long, audible breath, as though she hadn't inhaled in a very long time, and the darkness around her dissipated.
She had been in a place close to complete hopelessness. It was pitch black everywhere she looked, but still she could FEEL the pain crushing down on her like heavy wave, and the desperation of not knowing how to escape, which direction to head, and all the while the assault of unbearable memories that seemed to eat at her even worse than the pain.
As hope continued to fade from her the pain only increased, and she began to realize she would soon cross a line from where her sanity could never be restored. She tried to find strength, to envision what Harry would say to her but instead there was just the lonely echo of he's dead, he's dead, he's dead.
And she began to forget things, like how his voice sounded, how he smelled, how it felt to have him nearby. She had nearly forgotten his face when suddenly color came rushing back into her dark world. And she saw emerald green eyes.
She blinked at him, the pain completely gone now, her strength renewed. She was looking right into his eyes, those familiar eyes that she had always been able to read with ease. But something was different now. He looked changed in some way, and in an instant she knew what he had done.
"Oh Harry" she said softly, tears springing into her eyes. "I didn't want this for you."
For a moment he didn't respond, simply burying his face against her, his body covering hers. A tear had escaped her brown eyes and was trickling smoothly down her cheek and as he moved back from her he wiped it away. The touch of his finger against her skin, while brief, felt so comforting that she knew despite what he had done he was still her Harry. Still the scruffy, raven haired boy who had chased down a mountain troll when they were first years, the same boy who was brave and confident, but also lonely and insecure in a quiet way, still the one who had surprised her with his confession of love, had set her on fire with the passion behind each kiss and could make her feel safe and unsafe at the safe time in a dizzying, intoxicating experience.
As she realized all this she sat up quickly from the bed where she had been laying and wrapped her arms fiercely around him. "I know you didn't want this for me, but it was my choice" he breathed in her ear. "I don't want any more tears from you. Let's just be happy. Even if it's only for a while." Despite the fact that she was still crying she nodded in agreement and he kissed her gently and she decided being happy might not be so difficult. Even if it was temporary.
Just then the doors busted open and a panting, red faced Ron Weasley came stumbling in. His eyes widened with surprise at seeing Harry sitting there with a very healthy looking Hermione by his side. "Blimey, how did you get back here so quick?"
There was a strange silence as Harry tried to think about how to explain it all to Ron, but it was Ginny's laughter at the sight of her flustered brother that came as a simpler solution. Her laughter at the sight was infectious and soon even Ron was grinning slightly, and had forgotten to worry about what Harry had done and was simply glad to see his best friends were alright. The trio had survived once more.
' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' '
Madam Pomfrey had finally appeared with a medi-wizard from St. Mungos who was amazed to see Hermione's full recovery. "Whoever cursed you must have retracted it" was their only guess at her sudden health, and Ron, Hermione, Harry and Ginny all stayed quiet. Harry's new power was dangerous and it was unspoken agreement between the four that the less people knew about it, the better off they would be.
With no choice but to hand Hermione a clean bill of health the four decided to clean up and take a walk around the Hogwarts grounds. It was just around sunset, but the cold winter air felt good to Harry as he walked with Hermione's hand firmly grasped within his own. He had only been away from Hogwarts for a couple days but he had missed his home. He felt right surrounded by his friends. They had become his family, and Ginny was right when she had said that no drama should come between them.
Hermione shivered slightly at a cold breeze from across the frozen lake, and she felt a warmth spread quickly over her like a blanket. She looked curiously at Harry, knowing he must have soundlessly summoned a warming charm, but if he had done so he did not indicate it in any way. Has he become so powerful that he can perform magic subconsciously? and she shuddered again, this time not from cold but from the certainty that he had in fact become that powerful. There was a tugging worry in her stomach about what Harry's future would hold but she tried to ignore it.
They walked Ron all the way back to Hogsmeade where Harry extended his hand to offer Ron a firm handshake. "Thank-you" he said to the tall red head. "For everything."
"It's never a dull moment with you Harry" Ron joked, but then sobering he looked at his friend with a sincere expression of loyalty. "I wouldn't have it any other way."
Back at Hogwarts Harry allowed Hermione some time alone and he crept up to his room wishing he felt tired but he did not. He was suddenly afraid that he would never feel fatigue like a normal person. He wondered what else he would cease to feel. He sat in his room and soundlessly played with the flame of the lantern by his bed, feeling its energy in his mind. Some sensations of mortality had been lost, but he had gained some new senses that were strange and addictive in a troublesome way.
He made the flame float up into the air and he watched it transform into the image of a phoenix, sending it flying around the room. All of this required very little energy or focus but it amused him. He could sense that Hermione was coming up to his room now. How he could feel this he couldn't quite explain, but he had a feeling he would get a better control over it with time. He sent the phoenix swooping back to its perch in the lantern where it resumed the normal shape of a flame.
The door creaked open and he smiled to see her shuffling into the room in her pajamas, a large book tucked under her arm. "Do you plan on studying?" he asked jokingly.
"Yes" she said "and so should you. I've been bed ridden for a few days, I don't want to fall behind again."
"Well you can have fun with that, I'm all set on studying."
"You know Harry, you may have all these new powers but knowledge is a form of power too. Don't forget that."
Despite her admonishment he grinned. "Well, in case I do forget, I'm sure I have you to remind me."
She sat down on the bed and opened the book. She appeared to be trying to read for a moment, but then looked at him with pleading eyes. "Please just study with me for a while. I want things to feel more... normal again."
"You mean you don't want to think about what I've done. That I'm a Damned One."
"Don't call yourself that" she said angrily, her brown eyes flashing.
"That's what they said to me too. The Gods. But they're not really Gods, they're more like giant fucking pricks."
"Harry!" she gasped, but she had nothing else to add because she had no clue what he was talking about. So he explained about the Underworld, about being tested and about how it wasn't really a world of the undead, it was more like a secret lair for a group of very ancient, very conceited wizards and witches.
"They play with the lives of mortals. They could have ended Voldemort before I was even born but they don't care about that. They don't care about starvation or war. In fact, before leaving I was nearly positive that they take amusement in suffering. I think they will create a plague just to have a laugh at how they are above it all. They place bets and gamble with lives."
"Greek myths often described the Gods as being petty in this way."
"I know. But they aren't Gods, not really. And they're not invincible. I want to destroy them."
There was a darkness in his tone that made her fearful. "Are you sure you can Harry? How would you even find them?"
"I'll need you help" he admitted. "But I know they can be destroyed, I could sense something... a weakness in them. Their conceited, they don't expect to ever be challenged. For thousands of years they've become complaisant. They won't expect it when I come for them."
She chewed her lip nervously. This talk of destroying false Gods was alarming and troublesome to her still frail mental state. As if he could sense this he stood up and grabbed his potions book and flopped down next to her on the bed. "Alright. Let's study."
They read in silence for a bit, but Hermione realized try as she may, she could not escape into a book the way she had many times before. After a half hour she finally broke the silence. "Now that you're immortal will you not age?"
Glad to escape the boredom of his studies Harry carelessly tossed his book aside. "I will age just like normal I believe. The old man, he looked ancient. But he could shape shift to escape the pains of his age. This body will grow old though, I'm quite sure."
She was somewhat relieved by this. The idea of Harry staying in his 18 year-old body forever seemed problematic for many reasons. "So, you can still grow old with me" she smiled softly.
"I plan on it" he said, and moving closer he kissed her deeply now, with all the passion he had stored up inside of him for the past few days. He kissed her with the memory of nearly having lost her, and the joy of having found her again. And as his lips pressed against hers, she could feel something different about his embrace. Like a heat radiating from him and moving through her entire body. She realized she was sensing some of the magical power stored inside of him and the experience was elating like a drug.
She deepened the kiss further, wanting and needing more of him. She moved on top of him, her book toppling from the bed but she vaguely noted it hadn't hit the floor. Pulling back for breath she saw the book was hovering in the air.
"I didn't want your book to get all banged up" he said with a mischievous grin.
She laughed at him and moved back into his kiss, deciding that in some ways, these powers had their perks. For now she would try not the think about the dangers.