Concurrent Existences

Chapter 35: Human

The final clash is at hand.

Last players, take a stand.

Struggle to maintain sanity.

Or lose what's left of humanity.

Death laughed.

"I might be more human than you at the moment, Hermione Granger."

Hermione didn't care if she was losing her humanity if she would get power in return. She could feel the threads continue to spread, allowing her body to also start siphoning small amounts of magic in her immediately area, converting everything into magic that she, herself, could use.

No point in being human without her.

There were no words, no incantations, just spells. Spell after spell after spell just continued to be fired off.

Hermione wasn't even aiming anymore. Any spell, any curse and any jinx she could use, she fired off without a word. Each spell that hit or missed left magical residue that the glowing white threads throughout her body began to reabsorb and recycle for her to fire off more destructive spells.

Beams of light.

Pillars of fire.

Spears of ice.

Boulders of stone.

Streams of lightning.

Hermione didn't care and just kept throwing spell after spell with both her hands. A few moments later, Hermione reached the threshold to where she didn't even need to use her hands. It seemed as if her whole body had already fully synchronized with the threads.

Her whole body was a wand. Spells continued to stream off her, fueled by all her magic power and rage. Only one hand was pointed forward now, a multitude of spells just being fired off from all around her. The other hand tried concentrating in absorbing excess magic to further prolong the battle.

Nothing could have survived her assault.

Not even Dumbledore or Voldemort or even the army of Aurors or whatever else could have survived that.

There was so much magic residue in the air that Hermione's magically enhanced sight was blurred, even her regular sight couldn't see due to all the smoke, flames, frost and whatever else littered what was left of the Brain Room.

And then a second later, she was thrown into the air as a large gust pushed her back and upwards. Hermione floated back down, spells were already coming to her instinctively, she didn't need to cast Wingardium Leviosa as it would always be active when she wanted it to be.

"I applaud your tenacity and variation, however, it is far too late." The gust of wind cleared all the magical residue and everything else that was clouding the room's visibility.

The only damage that her enemy took was a small bruise that immediately disappeared.

Death was unharmed, but Hermione didn't care. Death probably had some type of regeneration, it would eventually end. The brunette would keep throwing spells until either he died or she was destroyed. The girl began charging spells for another assault.

"Miss Granger. Now that most of the Deathly Hallows reside within me again, the regeneration of my host body is tied to my own magic power which is near limitless." It was true. The girl could fire off several thousand more spell barrages, but it would have little to no effect.

Death could absorb dark magics, just as Hermione could absorb magical residue and he was also able to feed from death energy itself. Death energy came from when living things died and there was just such an abundance of death everywhere. So many people in the world died every minute.

"Then why not just kill me?" Hermione grunted out. Her next barrage of spells was ready. If the next two spell barrages didn't work, then she would resort to higher magics and ancient magics that would decimate the entire area.

Hermione truly didn't care about the surrounding area anymore. She didn't care who would get caught in the blast.

Bellatrix was gone.

Everyone else didn't matter.

"Well, you're the only anomaly left and I do like having a prize." Death grinned. Breeding an anomaly may also bear a good host. Death was tired of having male bodies too.

Hermione began her spell barrage, stronger than the last. She would continued until her whole body would be spent. Her body was still evolving and adapting, she knew she would be able to go on days just absorbing magic, if she had to expand her area and start absorbing other people's magical and life energy than so be it.

If it didn't work, then Hermione had Obliteration spells and Self-Destruction spells.

Hermione Granger wasn't anyone's prize.

Death wouldn't get his trophy.

The Veil wasn't something that could be easily explained.

Volana could see so many images overlapping each other. Nothing made sense, it was as if everything was everywhere and nothing was anywhere at the same time.

The shade could see some people she knew from Luna's memories, she could see people that she's never seen before.

Volana saw an image of her dying, of her fading away as Hermione destroyed her before leaving the Room of Requirement.

She saw an image of Ron and Hermione having a wedding.

She saw an image of Harry Potter killing Ginny Weasley.

She saw an image of Bellatrix and her sisters all pregnant together and all in their early twenties.

She saw an image of Voldemort walking over the dead bodies of the students of Hogwarts.

The most Volana could make of the Veil was it was an amalgam of all possibilities of the past, present and future of their world.

Volana kept looking.

She saw an image of herself and Luna, both existing with real bodies.

She saw an image of house-elves taking over the earth.

Even an image of Bellatrix and Hermione standing upon scorched earth and shattered bodies, both with glowing black eyes.

So many possibilities. Infinite outcomes.

The Dementor didn't know how long had past, but she saw thousands upon thousands of images. It could have been a second, it could have been a thousand years, but it was as if time didn't matter within the Veil.

Whether it was a second or a thousand years, Volana finally saw her goal.

Luna.

A ghostly image of Luna seemed to be floating, not part of the images around her, but it seemed the girl was slowly being pulled further and further away.

Volana exercised her dark energies and began trying to traverse the Veil. It might have taken a second or centuries, but eventually she felt a tug on her solidified arm.

No. I need more time.

The magical anchor that Helena had placed on her was being tugged. It could only mean that Helena was close to being pulled in and all three of them would be lost within the Veil.

Volana tapped into whatever power she had within her, the power of Death. Death had gone through this Veil into Luna's world. If Death could traverse this, then she should be able too.

She could feel pain.

She could feel herself losing cohesion.

She could feel herself slowly break apart as she got closer to Luna.

But, all that mattered was Luna.

Volana didn't live long at all, but she knew what was important.

Eventually, she was able to latch onto Luna's body. She felt all her strength waning as she attached the tether to Luna.

Luna opened her eyes, it felt like it had been years since she was conscious, but she could feel herself slowly strengthen.

The sight in front of her wasn't what she expected at all. Luna somehow wasn't surprised upon seeing all the images...

...then, she realized that she wasn't surprised because she had seen it before.

Through Volana's eyes.

"Vo-la-na..." Luna could barely make out the shade in front of her, it was as if her body was nearly gone. There were only several wisps of shadow left that made a broken image of her upper body.

Volana tried to smile at the image of her... sister, but she felt her hold on reality leaving. She had a few moments left.

"There's no other way. Humans weren't meant to traverse the Veil. I'm somehow barely able to travel through it, but to get you back, you will need my essence." Only one of them would be able to return through the Veil, it would be the one that had the essence of Death. Volana's soul was one tiny part of Death's soul and without Death's essence, her soul would dissipate into nothingness.

The shade already came to term to what would happen.

"Luna, Volana. In the end, it all means one thing..."

Volana knew her existence was at its end, but she had no regrets. Even though her soul would dissipate, a piece of her would forever reside within Luna.

Luna's new found strength had her grasping for the shade, but her clutch was met with the disappearance of the shadowy wisp. She could feel a tug on the other hand that was pulling her backwards as she watched the last fading sliver of darkness slowly dissipate.

"... all derived from moon." Volana had only chosen the name 'Volana' because it was a variation of Luna, of the moon. Perhaps, this was all how it was meant to be.

Maybe, this really was the reason for her existence.

Luna could see a small smile as Volana truly disappeared.

Luna started crying for the sister she had just lost. She didn't know how long she was crying while being pull backwards through the Veil, but it seemed as if she truly lost a part of herself even if they had somehow merged.

Luna knew that Volana was gone forever.

Bellatrix saw Hermione through a weird glass structure that come out of nowhere. She heard the all the explanations even if she was silenced.

Death.

It seemed as if it was an impossibility, but everything made sense now. Every little detail made sense now. No wonder dark or death magic had little to no effect against a being that seemed to thrive on it.

The dark witch agreed as Hermione rejected Death's offers. Well, she might have accepted to save her significant other before backstabbing the guy, but Hermione was a bit more truthful than her.

"Pity." Potter nod towards Bellatrix and she could feel herself suddenly falling backwards.

Hell fucking no!

The surprise quickly disappeared from Bellatrix's face as she did one last desperate lunge towards Tom Riddle's hand that pushed her. She bit and dug her teeth in as hard as she could on the sleeve of his robes. The look on Voldemort's face as he was pulled into the Time Vortex along with her wasn't satisfying as he still had the 'zombie' expression. Bellatrix didn't care much though, at least she brought the piece of shite with her.

There was no way out of this one.

Sorry, love. Sorry, baby. It was a good run. All the times she had spent with Hermione had been the highlight of her life. Whether it was in the past, in the middle of her stint in Azkaban or in her fifteen year old body in the present.

She only wished there could have been more time.

Time always has been a fickle bitch.

Bellatrix could feel herself unravel, she felt her body getting old and younger at the same time. She could feel herself wither away into dust and rejuvenate at the same time.

Such a shite way to die.

Nothing worked.

Hermione and Death had been fighting for over several hours without stopping.

If Hermione had her way, the Ministry wouldn't even exist anymore. She had thrown dozens of Obliteration level spells and even Fiendfyre, but Death was prepared.

Most of the smaller spells that Hermione had thrown were fully ignored by Death, as if it was nothing. All kinds of elemental magics that could have killed a person in one hit were shrugged off. Jinxes, hexes and curses were all absorbed or cancelled out without much care or effort. When Hermione had gotten to the bigger spells, Death began to reduce the damage output of all her spells somehow. Obliteration spells were contained and dispelled and Fiendfyre spells were reduced into campfires.

Hermione was slowly getting tired. Her body had continuously absorbed residual magic from the area for hours. She could tell many people from the lower levels of the Ministry had probably already fainted from the magics she had absorbed. She could also tell that the Ministry was half abandoned already with people running from the 'mysterious illness'.

The brunette had actually tried a full on Self-Destruct type spell a while ago, but it was simply dispelled before it could be cast.

Hermione truly was out of options. The strain of the magically embedded thread was already slowly reaching its peak. Her body still wasn't used to acting like a wand and now she was paying for it.

Death never attacked. The bastard seemed content to absorb, deflect and dispel her magics. It was as if he was sure that there was no way to beat him.

And, it really did seem like there was no way.

Still, Hermione didn't care. She would go on until the last bit of her magic.

I love you, Bella. Hermione began throwing another spell barrage even as the glowing light in her eyes slowly dimmed.

Luna didn't know how much time had passed, but eventually she was pulled out of the Veil.

"Luna!" A desperate sounding voice shouted out.

Luna's vision was failing her, she couldn't see anything. She could hear someone calling her name, but it seemed so distant. She couldn't even feel her body, it was as if it was slowly breaking apart and dissipating.

"Luna! Concentrate on my voice!" The desperation increased.

The blonde tried her best to concentrate on the voice.

Helena.

Slowly, Luna started to feel a hand on her cheek and an arm supporting her waist. Her eyes that seemed to have been closed and crying for several years opened.

Luna tried to call out to Volana, to try and feel her dark counterpart's consciousness within her body, but it was to no avail. Volana really was gone.

The next thing Luna noticed was that she was being held. It wasn't such a big deal if the person holding her wasn't a ghost.

"How?" Luna looked up, straight into Helena's eyes and realized that Helena had color. The ghost that could only exist in a ghost-like grayscale state had color. Helena still retained the translucency from being a ghost, but Luna could see her whole body in color.

Still mystified at the events, Luna raised an arm up to cup Helena's cheek, to try and see if she could do it as well and was surprised again as her hand touched soft skin. It was amazing and it would truly have put Luna in a state of euphoria had she not noticed that her own hand seemed different somehow.

Somehow, Luna was indeed touching a ghost.

"You aren't human anymore, Luna..." Helena brought Luna's body closer into a hug trying to keep Luna's body together to avoid Luna's shadowy body from dissipating like it nearly had earlier.

Bellatrix wasn't sure how much time passed within the Time Void, but it was actually starting to get annoying. She wasn't even sure why she was alive or conscious at the moment.

The dark witch was thankful that she wasn't stuck in perpetual darkness at the very least, but this weird kaleidoscope of forward and backward moving colors wasn't much of an improvement.

What the shite have I gotten myself into again?

There were times where scenes would play out. Probably of whatever the Time Vortex had consumed before.

Most were of her life. It did get tiring after a while since it kept repeating random memories over and over. The few months of memories with Hermione in them were the only solace she had in the torrent of other depressing memories.

It was weird though, it was as if she was within the memories themselves and also watching them at the same time.

The other memories were of the room itself. She could see when the Time Room was still in use and when many wizards and witches were researching time spells. She even saw a scene of Eloise Mintumble and her subsequent death at the hands of time. Aging a few centuries in a span of a few seconds wasn't pretty.

Another odd thing was that her body continuously shifted ages. At one time she would be a baby, another time she would be an old woman, it was a random process. It made her want to cry at first because she could not feel a trace of her baby during most of the forward and reversing age process, but eventually there was that one point in time when she was fifteen and pregnant.

Bellatrix watched as her baby hands slowly aged into an old woman's.

More memories began playing, this time it was one she hated. Tom Riddle had been pulled into the Time Vortex along with her, but it seemed as if his mind was destroyed. She could see Tom Riddle's ethereal body go through the same process as her, aging and de-aging infinitely.

Even if Bellatrix did not want to see Voldemort's memories, it was played as well, part of an infinite shuffled playlist that you had no control over.

There were also splashes of a few memories of other wizards and witches that were absorbed during the early stages of the Time Vortex, when the Unspeakables and other Ministry members were trying to diffuse and contain the vortex, but they were few and far in between.

It did make her wonder, how long would she last in this infinite Vortex? It seemed as if there were a time limit, if not, she would have seen others that were victims of the Time Vortex before her.

Bellatrix observed her hands again as she waved it around making the kaleidoscope of colors ripple outwards.

The dark witch really did wish Hermione and herself could have had more time and grown up together in their teen years. She noticed her decrepit hands slowly de-aging again, back into the smooth, unwrinkled skin she had in her teens.

They would have had much more adventures together, not just the barely a month she had in school before the world decided to fuck them both over. She had so many plans. Fuck with the Gryffindors, fuck with the professors, fuck with the purebloods, fuck with everybody and of course fuck Hermione.

She would have also wished them to both grow old together, probably watching over their grandbabies while spending time with their own kids. She noticed that the smooth, unwrinkled skin she had began to age again, slowly back into the wrinkled, decrepit hands that she would have had in her hundreds.

A thought suddenly came as she noticed something.

Bellatrix willed herself to focus on something... on a memory. The memory that came to mind was when Hermione had restored her youth.

The scene filtered in, an image she, herself, willed to come into view. She was there at the same time and not.

Bellatrix was currently viewing the past where Hermione was levitating both the incomplete Philosopher's stone that she made and the degraded Time-Turner.

She watched as the stone was turned into dust.

She watched as each dust particle of the incomplete Philosopher's stone slowly bond with the decaying Time-Turner's grains of sand which resulted in the temporal empowerment of the Time-Turner.

It can't be.

She watched as the empowered Time-Turner was turned into dust with a Reducto and was then quickly infused straight into the dark witch. Bellatrix remembered that the process took a while as each particle of dust bonded straight into her magical core and body.

And, finally, she watched as Hermione activated a time spell she had made herself which resulted in the blinding light and unconscious forms of both witches as her body began to de-age into her fifteen year old self.

Holy shite. What are the odds?

The scene dispersed back into the unending cycle of colors.

Bellatrix laughed and began watching her hands again as she willed them to de-age back before everything, back before she was pregnant, before the transformation, before Azkaban and before Voldemort.

She now stood or floated, it was hard to tell in the vortex, in her twenty year old form. Tits included.

A quick thought of forwarding her time and she was now in her fifteen year old form, her present form that was pregnant with Hermione's baby.

Bellatrix understood it now. She could control her time. She was all her ages all at the same time. It wouldn't make sense to anyone else, but to Bellatrix it made perfect sense.

The Time-Turner that Hermione infused into me... Bellatrix didn't know how, but somehow the degraded Time-Turner that Hermione used to reverse her age was able to resonate with the Time Vortex. The Time Vortex in its basic form are all the Time-Turners and other items in the Time Room all coalesced into one loop that wasn't one with the present.

But, now?

The Time-Vortex had an anchor to the present, or to whatever Bellatrix deemed the present. The Time-Turner infused particle by particle within Bellatrix somehow allowed her to control the Time-Vortex.

Scenes weren't appearing anymore. The colors stopped moving.

Bellatrix willed everything in the vortex to stop.

"Holy fucking shite, it actually worked. I can now add Time witch to my resume!" Bellatrix cackled and willed herself back into her past twenty year old form from her present fifteen year old and pregnant form.

Thank you, Hermione! Now, to get out of this dump... Wait.

A scene came to life, multiple scenes where Hermione and Bellatrix were... intimate.

This is like porn in a Pensieve! Bellatrix shook her head, trying to get serious for the moment even if time wasn't truly moving within the Vortex. How she knew? Well, she just knew.

Bellatrix willed an exit to come up and suddenly she could see the room she came from. She was about to leave the Vortex when something caught the side of her eye.

Voldemort.

His body was still stuck in the perpetual aging and de-aging, but the expression remained deadpanned since there was barely any soul left in the husk.

Voldemort's floating form floated towards Bellatrix's outstretched hand. She peered into his deadened eyes as she gripped him hard by the robes. Slowly, his form began to go in reverse and she could see clarity within his eyes return when his form reached the body that he had during the Battle at Hogwarts.

"Bellatrix!" A hiss came out from the noseless person in front of her.

Bellatrix eyes narrowed in hatred and immediately punched Voldemort in the face. Voldemort crashed down hard with his face impacting the floor that just appeared.

"What are you doing! We must go to battle and kill Potter once and for all!" He screamed, but she only continued her assault.

The dark witch waved her hand again and Voldemort was pulled towards her again. His form began to grow younger, to the time where Bellatrix had first met him where he had forced himself to be her mentor and teacher.

"Bellatrix, I told you not to consort with your sisters anymore."

And she punched him again.

And again.

And again.

Several seconds or several years did not truly matter within the Time Vortex and Bellatrix had some pent up stress. She kept doing the same thing over and over again, beating him and then reducing his age over and over until he reached his years as a whiny child then she stopped when that point came.

There was no more point in beating a dead horse down, but she wouldn't allow him to live. Not even to relive his life as a child or infant.

The hatred Bellatrix had within her eyes finally died out as she levitated the small form of baby Tom Riddle.

Even Voldemort looked so innocent as a child.

It was still Voldemort though.

Without a second thought, Bellatrix willed Voldemort to be unborn.

Goodbye forever, you piece of shite.

Bellatrix eyed the opening she created to exit the Time Vortex.

It was time to save Hermione.

Maybe I can unborn Death too? Fuck it. Bellatrix could feel the Time Vortex collapsing from behind her as it seemed to attach itself to Bellatrix.

Bellatrix smiled.

Time to even the odds.

AN: It seems the last chapter went quite well.

Time in the Veil and in the Time Vortex cannot be calculated. The Veil is the amalgam of all possibilities within a dimension and leads to other dimensions, it was how Death arrived in the first place. The Time Vortex only contains memories of what it has absorbed, people that stay in the vortex too long are either unborn or die of rapid aging.

Luna's body reformed only with Volana's own. Volana's soul was reabsorbed into Death as it lost its container. Luna is now a weird mix of human/ghost/Dementor, I don't even know what to call it.

Badass Bella never surrenders even if she can only use her teeth! And, now~ She just got even more broken, brokenly OP. This whole thing was planned ever since I decided to fuse her with the Time-Turner way way back.

Bella's age: Past - 15 - 17 - 20 - 47 - 15(Present) - Future. Bellatrix's past 15 year old age is different from Bellatrix's present 15 year old age. Explaining time travel and spells suck. Bear with me x.x

Oh, and about my Twilight - Jane/Bella fic. I might update it later or tomorrow. The chapter just seems iffy, I'm trying to straighten it out.