Trapped In A Cesspool of Thoughts

The tension after the ordeal between Dumbledore and Mr Delacour had manifested in an oppressive silence. The President, rightfully in Harry's mind, had come to the conclusion that only one thing could diffuse the situation.

Food.

"Oh yes! Yes!"

"You okay there, mate?" asked Harry, glancing at Ron.

Ron nodded, swallowing his food. "Okay? This is bloody excellent – finally something that makes sense about this place."

Daphne and Fleur, for once, seemed to share a similar opinion about something. Disgust. Their faces were a mask of revulsion as they stared at the redhead devouring his food like he hadn't seen sustenance in weeks. To be fair, though, thought Harry, the lasagna was glorious.

Dumbledore chuckled, sipping some more of the fancy wine that President Delacour had insisted upon for the adults. He sighed contently at the taste. "Exquisite…"

"Oui." Mr Delacour nodded with obvious satisfaction, whether at the wine or the compliment, Harry couldn't quite tell. "Only the finest shall suffice for such esteemed guests."

Daphne, sitting at Harry's side, leaned in. "You'd think he'd take the hint and stop trying to butter Dumbledore up, eh?"

Harry nodded, though for some reason he didn't think it was about that at all.

They sat at the banks of the city of Liberalia, looking out over the blinding splendour of Paris below, as the streets around them danced and moved with wizards and witches. Languages, like people, mingled and touched each other in a bustling unification of nations.

Harry heard what he thought was Spanish – or perhaps it might have been Portuguese – glide by, whispered in hush, intimate voices between a family of four. Two girls, little older than Harry, with medium blonde hair, spoke with a tongue he didn't recognize. They looked to be sisters – maybe twins? – certainly not many days between them.

"Mor sagde, at vi skulle være tilbage inden toogtyve," said one of them, looking flustered and nervous.

"Hun siger så meget," answered the other girl, smiling freely for the both of them. "Vidste du, at Patrice datede–"

Harry lost them in the crowd then, along with their voices and their foreign conversation.

"Danish," said Mr Delacour, looking at Harry.

"A lot of languages here," murmured Harry, craning his neck around to take it all in. "Though I don't think I've heard any–"

"English?" asked Mr Delacour.

Harry nodded.

Delacour glanced at Dumbledore, as though to ask for permission to let loose a great and terrible secret, and then quelled entirely for a long while – maybe still perturbed by the last confrontation.

Harry didn't fault him for that.

The only sound at the table for a while, save for the buzzing of the moving city around them, was the constant, slightly wet smooch of Ron's eating.

"It is a long and rather complicated tale, I'm afraid," said Mr Delacour at last, gaining some semblance of courage, when it seemed he could no longer hold his words back. His smile, to Harry, seemed particularly forced. "I'm sure lots, if not all, shall be revealed at the upcoming hearing. Right, Professor?"

Dumbledore nodded politely. "I intend to speak as I see the world."

"Our world, you mean?" Mr Delacour straightened in his seat, gesturing to the street around them. "This world. A world that has managed to unite people of different nations under a common goal."

"What's that goal exactly?" asked Mr Greengrass.

"Acceptance. Tolerance. The right for any and all individual to exist free of societal discrimination."

"Acceptance and tolerance," said Dumbledore quietly, "often means two completely different things."

Delacour seemed to dismiss the words as soon as they left the Professor's mouth. He rubbed at his temples, and sighed quite heavily, quite theatrically. Harry found it oddly comical.

"What do you mean, sir?" said Daphne.

"Yes, Albus – what could possibly be wrong with tolerance and acceptance?"

"Nothing perhaps. And yet perhaps everything, given the right or wrong circumstances."

"As ever, an none answer to defend the status quo – and the privileged who thrive in it," said Mr Delacour, grinning yet managing to look absolutely livid all the same. "A smokescreen, a phantom of an answer to deflect from the many pressing issues in English society, brought onto its residents by its government's refusal to evolve with the times. We have evolved, we've dealt with these issues and brought about real change. There's nothing wrong with either tolerance or acceptance. It will be our greatest strength. And, though I shall hope to the end for a different outcome, your end."

"I am quite sure you do," answered Dumbledore. "To tolerate someone, miss Greengrass, or indeed something, means that you have simply come to terms with something unpleasant and that there's nothing you can do about it, and thus am forced to live with it. Tolerance shows us neither–"

"NEJ! VÆR NU SØD! JEG BLEV JO FOR HELVEDE NØDT TIL DET!"

Ron dropped his fork in shock and whirled around in his seat, staring wide-eyed behind him. Harry, this time, managed to just about stop himself from reaching into his robes for his wand.

An utterly emaciated man was being dragged down the street towards them between two wizards, wearing the same official–looking red robes as the two guards they'd met earlier in the evening. The little man between them was kicking and screaming and spitting up a storm, and the dwellers of the street veered far around them as they passed, as though fearful of catching a nasty contagion.

As they got closer, Harry could see more clearly the sheer, undulated panic in the stranger's eyes.

"What's he screaming about?" whispered Daphne, not familiar with the language of the thin man.

"He had to do it," said Dumbledore, his eyes never leaving the spectacle as they moved passed their table. "Over and over again… he had to do it – for his family. Do what, I wonder?"

Mr Delacour had risen from his seat and went to converse with one of the guards trailing the threesome.

"What – what did he do?" asked Daphne, eyes still trailing the struggling man, when Mr Delacour sat back down.

Mr Delacour sighed. "Liberalia is a forgiving place. But we have our laws and expect them to be followed."

"What laws did he break?" asked Mr Greengrass.

"No matter, no matter," said the President, waving away his concerns. "I'm more interested in your last thought, Professor Dumbledore."

Dumbledore was still staring after the man being dragged down the street, a deep frown marrying his features. Then he sighed to himself and turned to President Delacour. "Pity, like tolerance, is nothing more than the kindness of strangers – and enemies. There's nothing virtuous in it, nothing of value is revealed about your character. Only that you are able to muster the bare minimum of human empathy and decency." There was a moment of pause as the old man stared at the last spot the screaming man had been seen – now there was little else than silence, as though the whole street awaited what Dumbledore had to say. "And if you seek to be praised, Mr President, for your tolerance, or your pity – or indeed for the tolerance and pity of the world you've created – either by me or your peers, then at best you are a fool."

Delacour's face had hardened into something more resembling of stone than actual flesh. "And at worst?" he asked.

"At worst, truly, pity is all I have for you. Tolerance simply – at least pertaining to this – is nothing more than the lesser kindness. It is a word to cover up the hostility – maybe even hate – that you harbour in your heart… the hate towards the status quo, as you put it. And those you have deemed… privileged."

"Why are you here, then?" asked Delacour, sounding almost sad and defeated. "I don't understand the purpose of your visit if this is how you feel?"

Dumbledore smiled. "Over the course of my life I've learned that people seldom change their views of the world around them. No matter the evidence or maybe even magic running contrary to their beliefs… people are stuck in their ways." He sipped at his wine like a man who seemed unfazed to the spiteful stare he was getting from the man across the table. "And yet sometimes, on a good day, if I try very hard, even if no middle-ground or convincing is found, a good conversation is worth all the trouble. Maybe that's all it needs to be."

"You…" Delacour almost smiled. Almost. "You just won't give in, will you?"

Dumbledore smiled. "Will you show us my creation?"

"The Blackened Chasm?"

"Yes."

"Yes. I believe I shall."

They finished moments after – Ron gazing longingly at the leftovers – and stood, following Fleur and her father down the street towards the corner of Liberty Street, towards the small shop that housed the Portal back to the other levels. On the way they were stopped more than once. Sometimes it was because of President Delacour, who seemed to be a rather popular figure in the community. Sometimes it was because of Harry or Dumbledore, who seemed to be regarded with something close to reverence.

But mostly, to Harry's shock, it was because of Ron, Daphne and her family.

Mutterings followed them as they travelled, gazes lingered a tad longer than what was appropriate or polite. Harry, for the life of him, couldn't fathom just what it was he saw in their gazes, but it wasn't entirely pleasant, that was for sure.

It wasn't perhaps entirely unpleasant, either. Just strange. Noteworthy.

Daphne seemed to shrink in to her father's side at the attention, who also seemed to notice the stares. Ron and Astoria, however, seemed to pay it little mind, as they both had become engrossed in a conversation with Dumbledore and Delacour.

"Come again, Professor," said Astoria. "I don't fully understand…"

"It's controlled chaos, child," said Delacour, not unkindly. "When we first designed this place, out of the power of the Blackened Chasm, we found that Portals opened to places we couldn't… what's the word, trace. Follow. We have no idea, in truth, where the Portals go. In fact, we're not even sure the places really exist."

"That makes no sense," said Harry, tearing his eyes off the people round them.

"No? I guess it really doesn't. And yet, in a sense, it makes perfect sense." Delacour pushed the door open to the shop, and the room quieted down instantly upon their entrance. They went onwards through weary a glance or two and a most deafening silence. "As a tool to explain the concepts of them," Delacour continued, "it is a good analogy."

"But we clearly are somewhere."

"Are we?"

"Well…" Harry paused. "Well… yeah?"

"Hmm, I do agree, 'Arry, I really do, but… look at it this way. When you dream, where are you?"

"In my head. I guess."

Mr Delacour shook his head. "Bad example. Sorry. If you – do you know what a Pensieve is?"

Harry nodded.

"Okay – if you're looking at a memory inside a Pensieve, where are you?"

Was that a trick question? "Inside the Pensieve?"

"Exactly, Harry, exactly!" said Delacour. "And yet, no. Do you see?"

Harry laughed and furrowed his brow. "No. Well… so… we're still suspended over Paris? No matter what level we're on?"

Delacour smiled. "It's a funny thought, isn't it? What happens to our bodies when we travel outside of them with our consciousness? Are they still ours? Or do they take on a life of their own, until we reclaim them? Does life move around us, whilst we're gone? We could all of us, every single person go around inside a pocket aside existence itself, inside a shared dream inside our heads. And we build this world inside that shared experience – or maybe that world is the experience, being built upon our membrane."

Dumbledore smiled. "In any case, where the difference between what is real and what isn't is so blurred it becomes indistinguishable from one another, the fact of the matter becomes meaningless."

"Yes."

Ron blinked, looked between Dumbledore, Delacour and Harry.

"You followed that?" he asked Astoria.

She shook her head, wide-eyed and bemused. "I don't think we were meant to follow it."

Delacour smiled. "It can be a tricky concept for some people, I guess. We have a simplified version for some of our more challenged residents."

"Those of Pureblood, I presume," said Dumbledore, smiling benignly, but amusedly.

"Now, now, Albus," answered Mr Delacour quickly, smiling broadly – without authenticity. "Pure-blooded wizards and witches are just as talented as the rest of us. Some of them just take a little while to get there."

He drew his wand, even as he pushed out through the bar to the small courtyard out the back – it reminded Harry a great deal of his first introduction to the Magical World with Hagrid. It was a small, nondescript thing, with a gilded fence and a small open space with grey limestone for a floor. Everything about it was completely ordinary – except for the black, liquid-like hole in the wall.

The Portal – leading to the Hall of Portals.

People travelled through in a steady stream of muddled, happy noises, discussions and conversation that almost took on the characteristics of a sort of nonsensical tune of music, waffling upon the air like a heavy scent in a perfect, almost utopian unification of languages. None of the ruckus of moments ago, brought about by the thin, yelling man, could be gleamed in the faces of the people around them.

Mr Delacour stepped through the other way back to the Hall of Portals. Harry followed close behind him, along with everybody else, and as though with a snap of a finger the world shifted around him and Harry found himself back in the darkness of the Hall with the many wells

Mr Delacour, looking around for a moment, flicked his wand around and drew something upon the air. With a deft flick and a swish, a drawing with words attached began to assemble in front of their eyes, showcasing a three-dimensional structure of sorts in a burned-orange glow.

Like fire.

"The Upper floor – the balcony where you arrived – is at the top of the structure, schematically, and from there each floor–" he pointed at each level in turn "–is located from the top down in order of appearance – in order of discovery, really, I should say. So first we have the Lord's Suite, then the President and staff and so forth. Fleur showed you all of this, correct? Yes? Good, good. All of this, all the floors and all the worlds hidden within them, make up the entirety of Liberalia. And then there are the parts of Paris tied in to the castle, too, of course."

Harry thought it made little sense. After all, organizing something into a structure of sorts bore little reason when you didn't even know the locations of the things you were organizing.

Looking at the others, Harry wasn't the only one for whom this was confusing. Mr Delacour seemed to notice.

"Oui oui, this scheme might not represent facts – but they do represent a way to think about this place, to make it make sense in your mind."

Mr Delacour, no doubt tired of being misunderstood, turned to the Portal – the muddy one, the vile-looking Portal with the drops of sheer, fetid blackness running about its surface.

And then he approached it.

"Papa!" said Fleur fast, voice full of distress.

He held up a hand. "Easy, easy, just looking." He went about as close as Harry had – just close enough to start feeling the effect it had without the dire consequences it procured upon its victims. "You know, it's funny, really, standing at a threshold, the precipice of a huge fall, the people watching on will all fear – or indeed hope, eh? – that the person standing there will fall. That might be a concern shared by the person, but it's not the chief concern upon his mind. Do you know what it is – 'Arry Potter?"

Harry thought about the feeling he had, standing where President Delacour stood now. He thought about the power emanating off the Portal, like a pulse, like a vein filled to the brim with electricity and power and madness. He thought of the voices he had heard over the last ten months – and he thought about how much he yearned for it all to start making sense, for how much he wanted it all to be seen and understood.

How much he wanted to control and touch – to become one…

"You do not fear the fall… you fear the fact that you might want to fall," said Harry, voice whisper-thin and hollow.

"Fascinating!" Delacour at last stepped away from the well that spelled disaster, stepping closer to Harry with a curious look that bore a striking resemblance to something entirely too manic for comfort. "How much hardship, I wonder, have you had to endure in other to grasp such complex concepts at such a young age – a broken need of the human psyche."

Harry shrugged. "Living most of your life with muggles will do that, I guess."

Mr Delacour's face fell. "They probably did the best they could – given their limited resources."

"They had plenty resources. Just not enough goodwill towards me." Harry frowned. "They were – are – not good people."

"You – you can't say that."

Harry blinked. "Sorry. Can't say what?"

Delacour stared hard at Harry for a long moment, and Harry tried his best not squirm away from the look. Something he had said seemed to piss off the President.

"You figured out the secret, Dumbledore?" Mr Delacour said at last, turning to the wizened wizard – and not deigning Harry with another look or word.

"Yes. Mr President. Yes, I do believe I have."

"Of course you have, of course. You do the deed, then?"

Dumbledore pulled his wand from his robes and brandished it towards the well containing the muddy Portal, the pathway to secrets great and unknown and whose nature seemed dark and volatile and all-too-frighteningly human.

Harry sensed Dumbledore's thoughts manifesting on the tip of his wand in small tendrils of prodding magic, as though Dumbledore was creating magic on the spot to find a solution to a problem only he seemed to grasp.

Everyone was silent, everyone was watching, as light slowly began emanating off the tip of his wand, and left it in slow waves and spread about the well, caressing it almost, urging it to let go of its secrets.

There was no strength involved. No otherworldly might with which you could conquer Ministries and impose upon others your will. No, there was only skill, mastery the likes of which Harry knew he'd never seen before. Subtle. Gentle.

Superior.

Dumbledore straightened; secrets, apparently, found in the unseen.

"Hmm, but of course," whispered Dumbledore, almost as though irate at himself. "Only illusory in nature, hence the mucky appearance of the magic – it's not real, not entirely there."

Ron leaned close to Harry. "What's he on about?"

"I dunno," whispered Harry back. "I'm not sensing a thing. Not beside that."

"You're not? Shit."

"Yeah. Shit. Whatever it is it's well hidden from view."

Dumbledore, wand alit in crimson hues that cast dark shadows traced by barely-brighter lights across his gnawed face, flicked his wand in an elaborate and spectacular manner.

There was a second of pause. Then the well shook for another – and then promptly split in two.

Harry, along with Ron and Daphne who stood closest, jumped back in fright as a second well coalesced into existence beside them. The liquid inside the well, the Portal itself, was pure as the rest of them, unspoiled, snow-white, with a mirror-sheen gleam that glittered in the dark. Upon it, Harry noticed, was an inscription that read The Training Grounds of the Vanguard.

"Merlin's shit…" whispered Ron beside him. "How can black be so disgusting?"

"What are you talk–" Daphne cut off abruptly, having caught sight of the other well, standing where the original stood.

It was black all right. The closest Harry could describe it to was oil in uproar, turmoil; it rippled and pulsed as though a current of raw power ran through it. It shone and glittered blackness upon even the darkest of shadows. Harry's hair stood on end even here several yards away, and he shook, partly because of the lance of goosebumps that travelled up his spine, though mostly because of the towering column of fear that now took possession of his heart.

Usually with fear, Harry had found, you could trace from where it came. This was different, and that made it all the scarier. He had no idea what he was afraid of, no idea from where, in his mind, the fear originated. All that was clear to him, all he was sure of, was that fear was all he was.

"What is that?" managed Harry, and he found himself proud of the fact his voice barely faltered.

"This," said Mr Delacour and paused, inflicting just the right amount of gravitas; he had been waiting for this moment, that much was clear, "is the gateway to everything that's never been."

And on the inscription, saw Harry, it read The Blackened Chasm.

And as soon as he read the words, his mind faltered and slipped.

Harry noticed his presence before Ron. He shifted into a higher focus in the eyes of the boy – a greater kind, if you would.

He remembered this. He'd seen this, lived it, breathed it…

Fought it before. From the outside – inside.

A flick of his wand, it was a simple gesture. Ron, at the steepest mount of the hill, froze and was blinded by unconsciousness, tumbling down. But then he – Harry – turned as if guided by instinct, flung out his wand and caught Ron in his spell.

What fun! The boy wanted to put up a fight – friendship could turn madness upon all of man – even a boy.

A subtle twist of his wand and he launched a spell like crimson lighting through the fires of the night. It forked at the boy and he, as he remembered, threw himself to the side to evade. He turned the evasion into a clumsy yet highly effective tuck and dash down the hill, and he humoured the boy – throwing spells upon spells after him, never truly aiming to hit.

He would have his fun, even if he had to make it himself.

But then something grabbed hold of the boy, something vast and beautiful, and whilst mid-fall down the hill, he swished his wand and an extraordinarily powerful protection charm manifested before him.

Harry Potter, like a fucking madman years beyond his years, gained his footing and raised his wand towards him – oh, the irony, if only the boy knew! Couldn't he tell him? It would be such fun! To watch his little head explode!

He shook his head, shaking away the musings to find himself casting spell after spell meaninglessly against the powerful shield charm.

With a violent swish he summoned a small tree beside the boy. Guiding it easily with his wand, he smashed it into Harry, watching as the boy was thrown down the hill again – with a battered and broken body.

How amusing!

At the foot of the hill, the threshold of the Forbidden Forest, his fall broke and he came to rest limply. Slowly as he approached, Harry, wobbly and moaning, gained his feet anew.

Then he fell, face first, moaning in pain. Face in the snow. And yet, though it was obscured, he remembered that face, the edges etched in bloody defiance.

Harry tried again. Rising from the snow. Fell.

He, The Man in Black, waited for him, waited for what he knew would come.

Waited for Harry Potter to stand up.

Harry tried to get up again and failed again, and yet he tried once more, refusing to give in, refusing to admit defeat, refusing, refusing, always refusing.

Never surrender! Never give in! C'mon boy!

And finally, as Harry at last gained one foot and raised his wand without so much as a shiver, he tore it out of Harry's broken fingers with another casual flick of his wand. As though taking candy from a baby.

"You're a fascinating creature, Harry Potter." You really have no idea, boy. But you will. What to say, what to say… What could he say? What did he say? "The hand of Death lingers on you. Oh… yes, it does… You reek of it. Oh, I can positively taste it. Yes, yes – I can…" The wound in his side, self-inflicted, hurt like a motherfucker, throbbing away like madness in his mind. "I wonder… would you flesh taste the same – as mine?"

Or has the decay of darkness and time and forever and death dealt another fatal blow?

Harry gurgled out incomprehensible words from a broken, twisted throat that he knew to be fuck and you.

"I wonder… you shouldn't have seen the light of your second year on this Earth and yet… here you are. Here we are. Together. You. With me. All together. We – are – the same…"

Little too much on the nose perhaps?

"Oh, and here we are, courting Death. Defying it with our every breath that we can muster. Cheating it of its dues. There's so much Death in you, locked away behind a door in your mind you can only glimpse at in nightmares unfound… Two in the hands of he who desires them above all… One in the ground of a shack. So much violence… in a child so young and innocent. It's all in your mind, Harry Potter – oh yes, I see it clearly. You will be – the greatest of us – the last of us…"

He was raving now, the madness coming easily and freely – from where he had no idea. The words spilled and made sense in a senseless manner, like a being of higher authority had taken hold and were speaking unfound truths through him. He was, in a sense, little more than a vessel of truth and dreariness, here to depart upon the boy a brief remark of all the foolishness he had seen upon his travels of distant pasts and futures yet to be realized.

Caught in a cesspool of thoughts. Waiting between worlds for it all to coalesce into meaning. Waiting between worlds… for it all to finally end.

He lowered himself, crouching over the boy, the boy who was slipping away for now, and spoke his last brief remark at the crest of his ear – his warning of Lord Voldemort and his attack upon the school this coming Christmas.

"Beware, child, for the gateway straight down to hell opens on the day of Christmas. And the devil will be seeking you."

And then he stood, gazing down upon the sleeping boy with a solitary thought…

You'll never again have a peaceful Christmas, Harry Potter.

Never again…

Then the world of darkness, of night claiming the light, all at once brightened in crimson hues, and he spun around to face the light that threatened his back.

"You!"

Harry tore his eyes away from the black well, tore his mind away from the memory that made absolutely no fucking sense.

No one noticed his turmoil, however, for silence held for a brief moment's thought, as everyone around Harry seemed to contemplate the President's strange words with the same befuddlement as him.

"I don't understand," said Ron, unafraid of his lack of knowledge. "What do you mean, gateway to what's never been?"

"It means, Mr Weasley, that from our limited perspective, this doesn't exist," said Dumbledore, never taking his eyes off the object of everyone's attention.

"I'm sorry, Professor," said Harry, recognizing this conversations from moments ago, but still not getting it, "but it clearly does."

"Yeah, it's right there," said Ron, pointing.

"Yes." Dumbledore blinked and, flicker-quick, cast his glance toward Harry. "And no."

It was a fleeting moment, so fleeting that Harry might have imagined it; he was still a little shook about in his head, after all, except for one thing.

He didn't imagine the fear behind the old man's eyes. He had seen something then, and didn't much care for what he saw.

"I'm sorry for being dumb," said Ron, and he even managed to sound sincere. "But I don't understand you at all, Professor. Nothing of this makes sense."

Dumbledore gazed for a long while into the darkness, as though contemplating not what the answer was, for he clearly knew that, but whether or not he should share what he knew.

"Bear with an old man's thoughts for a moment," said Dumbledore at last, and then folded his hands in his robes. "The world, Mr Weasley, is made up of parameters in which we as humans endure and try to find meaning and understanding. We name things, when we discover them, when we create them, when we experience them. We theorize about the things that we may not fully be able to quantify in order to make sense not just of the world, but our place and ourselves in it. We've learned much over the years, grown, but sometimes we find…" Dumbledore paused and smiled, as though something just occurred to him – something that made the storm in his mind rest, and he glanced now with twinkling eyes for a brief moment at Harry again. "Sometimes we happen upon events or discoveries that are so contradictory to everything we thought we knew – so paradoxical that they challenge our beliefs about even the simplest of things. Things so illogical that they shouldn't be, exists right in front of our eyes. What stands before us is a paradoxical marvel, I believe, if I am not mistaken – which, between you and I, happens all too rarely."

A chuckle and a soft smile touched the old man's lips, then, almost rueful in his arrogance. "Alas, this is something of so profound might that it can bend and swallow light and thwart our understanding of reality, of how time touches upon reality as we know it. It can hold and store matter in a way that makes no sense to our perception of reality. And yet…"

"And yet?" probed Delacour.

"And yet something of even greater magnitude has mastered even that monster in front of us – mastered it and controlled it so that it doesn't devour us, too. How extraordinary!"

"And what is that something?" asked Harry.

"That is the quetion, Harry. Alas, it is also a question of which I can provide no answer," said Dumbledore, quite happily, as though he had been granted a gift of tremendous scale. "I suppose you want to show us what exactly we can find inside of it, Mr President?"

Ron leaned over to Harry. "I still don't get it."

"Not inside it, no," said Mr Delacour, answering Dumbledore. "We've never been inside it, but as close to it without being touched by its curse, yes, you will see."

Harry shrugged, answering Ron. "Neither do I. Just go with it."

"The Blackened Chasm," said Dumbledore, as though tasting the word, tasting the meaning.

"And how could he take one look at that and get all of that?" asked Ron, as the rest of the party edged closer to the black well.

"I think he has thought about them before, whatever they are – the concept of them," replied Harry, something slowly turning-turning-turning inside his mind, slowly spinning away like a fickle speck of madness had reached inside his ocean of thoughts and touched it with a lover's caress – a cascading fallacy of reason and awry memories – slowly unravelling. "I think – I think Dumbledore's head, when he's bored, goes places we wouldn't even dream about in our wildest imaginations."

Oh, yes, yes we would, Harry Potter. That, and so much more.

"Mental, that one – absolutely fucking bonkers," said Ron – with awe.

Kill the spare!

Harry shook his head. Fucking thoughts.

"Gather around and stay close," said Mr Delacour. "This is not a place you want to get lost inside of."

They gathered around the black well, Harry's heart hammering away at a racing gallop, rising and swelling for every step toward it. His head was in a state of disarray, thoughts of old and new mended together in a way that made no sense to him – as though the blackness had found all the vile wrongness inside of him and laid claim to it, laid it bare, and Harry was trapped – trapped in a cesspool of thoughts.

"Something wrong, mate," whispered Ron, noting the shake in his hand with a meaningful glance of worry.

"No," whispered Harry back, voice clammy and unconvincing.

They stood now in a circle around the well, together in a sense, yet each facing it alone. Harry chanced a glance around and found no reflection of the same worry and upheaval upon their faces as the one beset upon him now.

Dumbledore – and damn his understanding eyes – bore into his soul with a clear blue gaze. There was a barely perceptible nod and a smile that spoke of pain to come rather than comfort to be had.

"T-touch your wands to the zubstance on zree," said Fleur, and Harry found an odd strength in the fact that her voice did waver a smidgen. He wasn't alone, it seemed, in the clutches of fear.

He was just suffering more openly with it.

He reached for his wand, as did everyone, and together they held them above the entrance to the blackened chasm. It hymned with something that Harry thought resembled glee. Did his hand shake or was the wand trembling with excitement?

The conquered wand.

The wand of olden days.

The Elder Wand, Harry – the gift of all gifts! The One! The Wand to rule them all!

Harry shook his head violently – the what wand? – almost gasping and yelling against the noise in the back of his head.

"What happens when we touch it?" asked Mr Greengrass, holding Astoria in one arm upon his hip. She looked tiny on his arm, tiny and excited, like a little ball of emotions. Mr Greengrass looked beyond worried.

"We enter the realm of the Blackened Chasm."

"Yeah, I gather that. How, though?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"Yes. The experience of entrance is different for everyone. It takes differently."

"Meaning?" asked Mr Greengrass.

"There seems to be no rhythm or reason to it," answered Mr Delacour. "For some it's as easy as waking up from a pleasant sleep, for others…" He stopped and seemed to think for a moment upon his answer, glancing at Dumbledore, then at Harry. "For some – like me – it's like walking through Hell."

"Hereby motivated," said Mr Greengrass, aiming for some levity. He looked at his youngest daughter for a moment, wrestling with thoughts. "I think it best… if my family stays back."

"What? No!" said Daphne and Astoria in unison.

Putting Astoria down, he held up his hands. "I understand, girls, trust me, I do. I want to see it, too, just as much as you, but sometimes one ought to consider one's own limitations. This is one of mine. I can't – I won't! – risk it. Risk you."

"A wise decision," murmured Dumbledore, looking at the Greengrass family over his half–moon glasses. "However, in my opinion, you have little cause for fear."

"Know something we don't, Albus?" asked Mr Greengrass.

"Quite a deal, if I may be so modest," replied Dumbledore, before turning to Harry. "I reckon, however, that you ought to consider taking a step back, as well, Harry."

Harry shook his head. "No. I know what you mean, Professor… or I think I do. But no, I have to do this."

"How do–"

"I don't know, but I do. I have to be here, do this. I know it, and I think… so do you."

"Yes. Yes, alas I feared as much – but I do understand. Mr Weasley?"

"I go with Harry."

Dumbledore smiled and nodded. "I expected nothing less."

Mr Greengrass stepped back, dragging his reluctant daughters with him, and Dumbledore at last raised his wand above the substance along with the others, awaiting Fleur's countdown.

And when she began, Harry's head, and some of the things that was trapped in it, began to unravel in some stark measure.

"Zhree…"

Tendrils of dark light rose towards the tip of their wands from the well, as Fleur connected them with her intent – and with the dark light came…

Memories…

–Do you have any idea what you are?–

–Can you save them?–

–Can you save them?–

–You chose that, Harry? How? How do you bear it?–

–How do you go on?–

"Two…"

The strings of fetid light touched each of their wands in turn and Harry noted before the clutches of psychosis claimed his sight how all of his companions tensed violently – President Delacour more so than the rest.

But no one more than himself.

Harry tried to close his eyes and fight the onslaught of images and holistic sensory overload, but to no avail; the beast kept biting, kept riding the howling wind on the back of his mind.

–You created this! You created them! Do you have any idea the violence they beget? Your defiance is the creation of violence and war itself!–

–Chosen One, can you save them?–

–O, Chosen One, can you save us?–

–Can you see his eyes? He shall have other names before the end… the oncoming avalanche, the harbinger of the Hallows… unless we stop him now, whilst he's still but a child… he will lay destruction upon us all–

"One…"

Fleur's voice was but a distant echo.

Harry couldn't even close his eyes anymore, perpetually opened, yet he could see nothing at all. He was forced by the monster behind them to just stare into the blackness of the well with wide-eyed, blank and watery sight, and await an end – any end.

–The Demon sat on that great hide, blessed upon him with a curse so great it could topple the world for but the briefest of moments, before he would revisit upon the moment – The Moment – for an age again that bled across all eternity. And it would steal into his most private horrors, his most lonesome nights in darkness and despair and his most treasured loves and degenerative thoughts of lust and awry compulsion–

–And he'd never be alone, for he was with him. For ever–

–Can you save us?–

–Can you save us?–

–Death… is merely the beginning, Harry…–

–Will you, O Chosen One, please just save fucking us!–

–And what if that Demon said unto you in your final hour, when at last you'd found peace in defeat, that you'd not lost and that you'd never suffer loss, not for long, for there was no such thing as loss or victory. And what if, at your lowliest low, you were told by this frivolous, mean-spirited Demon, that you were on a path great and terrible and known, and you'd revisit its every nook and its every cranny all again and again and eternally again. Every thought you'd ever mustered you'd muster again and every tear you'd ever squeezed through those sad eyes would be squeezed through those sad eyes would be squeezed–

–Can you go on?–

–Can you bear it?–

–But, O Chosen One, who shall save you?–

–Who will save you?–

"Now!"

As though on higher command than instinct, Harry snapped out of the troubled waters of his thoughts and placed the tip of his wand on the blackened well. For a moment, one pregnant pause in which the world seemed to hold its breath, nothing happened.

Then one by one his friends gasped and fell out of sight, as though they transcended and slipped away, stolen by the quiet good night. Ron first. Then Fleur. Professor Dumbledore came next. President Delacour, last man with him, grunted in discomfort and then he, too, slipped away.

Then came pain. Pain beyond belief and reason. His scar split open in a ravenous, raucous nightmare of hellish agony, and Harry felt his knees wobble and give way, and surely he should have fallen to the ground, but instead dark spectres with ghostly, yet corporeal hands reached out and seized him, dragging him through hell – to deliver him unto the Devil himself.

The world around him seemed to shrink inwards and the wall of it became liquid with fire and magma, and it dripped off of them as he was sent hurdling through this new world of flame and woe and tortuous anguish. He screamed and he screamed and no sound would so much as stumble across his lips.

He could see shapes standing above him, looking down on him, shapes beside and beyond, looking up and away at him – and all the while he fell through wind and fire and chaos unfound.

And then it stopped. Just like that.

Shadows, protruding and throbbing at the edges of his sight, fell back slowly, abated by the return of consciousness, and with it came his faculties and the recognition of the shapes around him. It was Ron. It was Dumbledore. It was President Delacour and Fleur Delacour. And looking beyond them, looking at the world on fire, he could see a path leading towards a black spot upon the horizon. Like an eye it stood, on the crest of a mounting, burning hill, round and pounding and so very clearly alive, grasping and gasping for whatever it could reach.

Midways, between them and the black spot, the Blackened Chasm, stood two men on a sort of pedestal.

"My God…" said Mr Delacour, looking at Harry. "I've never seen so violent a reaction to the entrance…"

"Harry," said Ron, stooping beside him with a hand on his shoulder, "Harry – you hear me?"

"Yeah," rasped Harry. "Fuck!"

"Why is it always you? What did you see?"

"I…" Harry looked around at all the flames, thinking about the question. What had he seen? A cesspool of thoughts? His thoughts? No, it wasn't his, it was his – the other one.

The one with the other lives. The one who had seen this before.

What?

"I don't know – it made no sense," said Harry, shaking the last remnants of the nightmare as far away as he could manage. "What now? What is this place?"

"This is the last place before the Blackened Chasm," explained Delacour. "The last spot where you can see it without being too affected by its pull. Fleur told you of the consequences of being a member of the Vanguard, right?"

"Yes." Harry stared at the two men in the distance. You could just about make out the shape of their silhouette in the mayhem of fire and magic. "Why do they need to stand so close, when you can observe, without consequence, from here?"

"Because they are not just observing," said Dumbledore slowly, and Harry noted he had once more drawn his wand and was casting some sort of spell. "They are… you have… you have managed to hold in it place. How… oh, I see, ingenious. You turned the pull back on itself, creating a loop, a flat circle."

Going round and round and into eternity, Harry Potter.

Harry shook his head, more out of habit than anything – it made little difference. The voices seemed born from the flames.

Dumbledore continued. "I cannot for the life of me determine how you managed this?"

"We didn't."

"Truly?"

"Yes."

"Fascinating. Utterly cruel and yet majestically beautiful and self-aware. Or so it would seem. I suppose it has a secret or two hidden within its bottomless depths. And those two, the members of the Vanguard, are there to make sure it stays in place – and to try and gleam every bit of knowledge from the blackness."

"That's the idea," said Mr Delacour. "So far, nothing. Nothing of worth at least."

Come to me, Harry Potter, whispered the darkness, come to me in the light of yesteryear.

"I've seen enough for now, Mr President," said Dumbledore, holding Harry in his eyes. "Yes. This is quite enough. For now."

End of Chapter

This took an age to write, almost a year on the date – sorry about that. I've already laid out the plot for the rest of the summer before Harry's second year and his second year at Hogwarts. Now it's just a matter of finding the time to actually write it. If my life pans out the way I want it to, there should be more time to write again next year. The overarching plot for this story is also coming along nicely. The breadcrumbs have been laid.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Oh, and because that event, that chapter, was posted years ago. The memory Harry relives, sort of, happened at the end of chapter 4, if you want to read it again.

Take care.