Chapter 17 - Goodbye

The ice cracked and slowly began to fall apart, bringing Harry back to his human form. He showed no emotion. His eyes were emotional voids.

He looked at his fist and opened it impassively, letting the piece of heart he had torn fall to the ground.

It twisted and writhed and disgustingly morphed into a ugly man. It was a snake like Voldemort. "You! You!" he moaned piteously. "How!"

"Is this the part where you offer me wishes and boons?" Harry asked softly. He could feel the tremendous power slip away from his grasp bit by bit.

Voldemort looked up and tried to crawl away but Harry calmly lifted his feet and kicked him down. "Come on, say it. Tell me you can bring her back."

"I can! Let me live! I can give you all that you desire! I can..."

Harry reformed his hand into a double edged sword and cut the creatures head off.

The desperate beggars look was forever etched on the face of Voldemort.

"You did it," said another voice. A voice Harry recognised with ease and a voice that summoned his rage.

His hand extended and caught Luna by the neck. He squeezed and brought her too his face. "You!" he snarled. "You let her die! You did this!"

"I-it was the only way you could get the power you needed," Luna choked.

Harry didn't care. He was going to kill her.

"Before you kill me maybe you should go back to the battle field," she said. She put all her power into prying his fingers off her neck but his power to too strong. She couldn't measure up to him.

"You didn't even fight, you don't deserve to live."

"She's still alive!" Luna gasped. If he kept his grip any longer, she really was going to die.

Harry froze. "What did you say?"

"Go see for yourself."

Harry didn't wait. He dropped Luna and apparated.

The battle ground was a wreak and the elves were sending all the injured back to Hogwarts.

Harry's eyes roved madly, looking for a familiar face when he spotted Sirius being treated. He flashed right in front of him and grabbed his robes. "Where is she!" Harry demanded.

"Harry wait," Sirius said sadly.

"Tell me now Sirius!"

Sirius sighed and looked around at all the death and destruction around him. "Hogwarts," he said dully, knowing Harry was not going like what he saw.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Hogwarts - 3 days later.

"We've done everything that we can Master Potter," the elf said comfortingly looking into Harry's stoic face. "She's alive only because of our magic but she is quite sadly dead."

Harry's jaws clenched. "What is that supposed to mean?" he choked out.

"The black magic pierced her internal organs. She was already dying when we began treatment and the only thing that we can do is prevent her from crossing over. We cannot bring her back. Her lungs, liver, trachea, hamstrings, stomach; all have been pierced by that black magic and they have permanently been destroyed."

"So bloody replace them!"

"We did. The replacement suffered the same fate. The parts of her touched by that magic have been fatally cursed."

Harry's jaws trembled. Grief was overcoming him. "You managed to keep her alive. That means you can save her."

"Let her go, Master Potter. She's already dead."

Harry caught hold of the elf's robes and slammed him into the wall. "She is not fucking dead! Do you understand me?!"

The elf gently pried open Harry's fist and wrapped his hands around the man's neck and patted his back soothingly. He whispered the words of a song of love and loss and Harry began to cry into his chest. His body was trembling and his heart was being crushed by grief and pain.

"She's not going to die," Harry said again, pulling himself together and drying his eyes. "She's not going to die," he repeated, "And don't you dare let her cross over to the other side or else I will burn this world to the ground."

It wasn't an idle threat.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Later that night he was back in the hospital wing standing over her pale and cold body, stroking her cheeks lovingly.

The room was empty and he was alone with her for an hour until the shadow of a man appeared at the door. It was Sirius.

"Are you alright?" Sirius asked him, leaning against the door, not coming inside.

Harry replied softly after a while. "No, I'm not."

"Do you want me to stay with her? You need to rest Harry."

Harry ignored the question and the ridiculous suggestion that he rest.

"Do you know how many prophecies were there, fixing my fate before I was born?" He didn't wait for Sirius to reply. "Almost ten that I know of and the first one was made millennia ago. I wonder if they also knew that my fate was not only to save their ridiculous world but also to lose everything that mattered to me while everyone else got to keep it all."

"That's not true, Harry."

Harry scoffed. "Do you know what people have been saying to me that past couple of days, Sirius?"

"No."

Harry smiled bitterly. "You're just fifteen," he whispered mockingly. "You have your whole life ahead of you. You'll get over it. You'll find someone, life is long. You lost someone close to you, I know how it feels, and it'll pass."

Harry scoffed. "They all mean well. Some of them cried, most of them hugged me when they said these things and I can see how they pity me and feel grateful and thankful for what I did to save them all. What we did to save them."

Sirius listened silently, not moving from the door, his face hidden by the shadows.

"But none of them understand what I feel. They throw these numbers at me that have no meaning. They say I'm fifteen? I feel like it's been a hundred years since I came to Hogwarts. I feel like it's been a hundred years since I was born with the shadow of death. A hundred years since I grew up with monsters. A hundred years since I found this castle of magic. A hundred years….."

Harry choked on his voice and he clenched his eyes as a wave of grief clenched his heart again.

"A hundred years since I found love. I remember every second that we spent together, every word that I said to her and she to me. I have memories that span a hundred years of life with her and now…. Now she's gone and all I hear is bullshit advice, telling me to move on."

"They don't know what she meant to me and they're telling me to move on and look forward to the future because on paper I'm fifteen fucking years old."

"Harry," Sirius whispered, feeling terrible that there was nothing he could do to ease the pain Harry was feeling.

"Without her, I feel like there's nothing in the future but a black empty vacuum to keep looking through."

Harry turned around and looked at Sirius's silhouette with miserable red eyes, showing the depths of his grief and anguish. "She can't die Sirius, she just can't. There has to be a way to save her."

"All life ends, Harry, some sooner than most. You've spent an eternity with her; do you think she'd want to see you keep her alive like this?"

"No she wouldn't," Harry said sadly. "She would burn my balls to a crisp if she saw me keeping her alive like this."

Sirius laughed but Harry wasn't being funny. He was saying it like it was.

"And after she'd burn by balls I'd still hold on to her because she still has a chance. She's not dead yet and until you take away all the fight in me, I will not let them allow her to die. As long as that minuscule particle of light is there in my vision, I will not let her die when she could have a chance."

"I'm not trying to fight you Harry," Sirius said gently. "I'm just…"

"Just what? Convincing me to let go?" Harry glared dangerously. "I will never let her go."

"I'm just trying to show you there's still a life to be had."

Harry sighed. "Stay with her and hold her hand. I'm going out and I want to be alone."

"Harry!" Sirius protested but Harry just shoved him aside and walked into the darkness of the castle to the lake.

He felt like he just walked into a blanket of cool air and a light atmosphere when he walked through the entrance doors and into the grounds. It was a new moon night and the outside world was completely dark. It suited Harry just fine and he didn't need to see to know where he was going. With practiced movements, he reached the banks of the lake and sat on his knees, resting on calves, at the edge of the lake. The water rippled around his knees with the sound of gentle churning at times and Harry took a deep breath of the peace around him.

He closed mind and blankly stared into the darkness with the sound of the lake to accompany him. A little while later, the sounds of insects joined in but the darkness persisted.

An hour passed by in the same state of stillness and a dot of light popped into the sky some distance away. Harry's eyes immediately spotted the speck of light and he tracked its movement in the sky and watched it grow larger and larger until he was able to hear the flapping of wings with the lantern of light.

It was an owl and with a powerful stroke of its wings, it slowed down and landed with a thump in front of Harry. A lantern was clenched in its claws and it dropped it a little to the left before it touched ground.

Harry stared at the strange behaviour in bewilderment.

The owl looked at him in the eye, hooted and ruffled its feathers. Harry blinked, trying to understand what this owl was saying and then he noticed the letter that was attached to the lantern.

"Huh," he said.

He reached out and removed the letter from the lantern and looked at the name under the light. It was his.

Curiosity filled him and he quickly tore the top and removed a sheet of paper, not parchment. "Dear Harry," it was written.

Sometimes sacrifice comes with reward. Your life was never yours but now and forever, it is.

With the best wishes for you future,

Penelope and Nicolas Flamel.

The moment Harry finished reading the letter, a small package dropped out of the thin paper. Harry removed the paper covering and found a box with another folded paper attached to it.

Harry opened it and found a key attached to the top of the paper. This is the key to the knowledge we have collected over the centuries. Harry held his breath and opened the box and found a stone at the bottom. A black cube with white runes etched into all its sides and looked like it was made of onyx.

Harry's world suddenly brightened up and blazed with light when he recognised what that cube was.

Faint light began to encroach the domain of darkness. Black gave way to blue as the fiery star of hope rose from the east.

The stone of eternal life smiled at Harry and tears rolled down his cheek.

Harry choked back a sob of joy and looked up at the heavens. His heart was beating painfully but he didn't care. It was a pain he would embrace for the rest of his life.

"Thank you," he whispered, his voice trembling. "I... I hope we can meet again Penny, Nicolas. Thank you for everything."

He took a moment to calm his overwhelming emotions and rose to his feet shakily and wiped the tears that shone bright in the dawn.

A new beginning had come.

~The End~