It is apparently a whole bloody load of work to copy a chapter letter by letter, so my earlier prediction was way off. I am glad to finally have this chapter done. It is going to be a while until the next one, because university work is piling up and requires at least a month to be finished. I will update when I can.

Disclaimer: I do not own Twilight or Harry Potter, and this chapter belongs to the original author KennethRose.

Enjoy reading!

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Dying and waking up naked was not how Harry Potter thought his first experience in the afterlife would go, nor was being in that state of dress, or undress as the case may be, on a remarkably clean looking platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters with the vibrant Hogwarts Express hissing softly awaiting its passengers.

Curling up into a sitting position he took stock of his situation and really wished he had clothes when he saw a white-haired and robed man approaching; eyes twinkly as ever. "Harry my boy," the man smiled in a grandfatherly manner, "I see you have already discovered one of the wonders of the next great adventure."

Following the twinkling gaze Harry found himself clothed and snorted quietly. 'If this is heaven then I daresay the good Father wouldn't approve of old men looking at naked teen boys.'

As if the elderly headmaster has heard Harry's thoughts aloud the man's smile became strained for a moment before melting back into its former state as he took a seat on one of the platform benches - motioning that Harry should join him.

Getting to his feet, surprising himself with the lack of aches and pains that he had expected after being murdered, Harry walked over and sat observing Dumbledore's serene expression as he gazed at the Express fondly. "You far surpassed all my expectations, my boy." he admitted candidly, and Harry's eyebrows rose at the confession. Seeing Harry's look out of his peripheries, Dumbledore turned his eyes to the younger man's and endeavoured to explain. "While I have been here I have caught only glimpses of your struggles as you fought to defeat Tom, but that which I did see only confirmed all I knew and know of your character Harry."

"You have such a strong penchant for forgiveness, as I have always known, and show mercy and care in even the most trying circumstances. That, I always knew, was and is your greatest strength. Hate consumes wholly, my boy, and to let that animosity go is a credit to your character; a credit I myself could not lay claim to when I was fighting Grindelwald in the nineteen forties." He smiled sadly and then returned his eyes to the Hogwarts Express once more; his expression grim. "My mentor who lead me in my defeat of Gellert worked me hard - past exhaustion in many cases. My sacrifices were many... my sister, my innocence, my family and my friends."

"When Gellert fell to my wand I only felt immense hatred towards the man who had helped me achieve the feat. A year later I discovered that he had been gravely injured in the final battle and had been sending me owls requesting I visit him on his deathbed so that he could apologize for his mistakes and for stripping me of so much of my childhood and teenage years. Ever since that moment I have and still wish I had not ignored those summonses and hated him for so long... let alone at all."

Dumbledore swiveled his body slightly to face Harry and stared him sorrowfully in the eyes; pale blue meeting vivid emerald. "Forgive me, my dear boy. I knew, and you know I knew, that by placing you at the Dursleys I condemned you to their abhorrent treatment of you - but to have you grow up aware of your fame and becoming arrogant would have made you a lesser man than you are now. And what a man is sat before me."

Alice's unbeating heart dropped into the pit of her stomach as she watched, horrified, as the purpose of her being there was flung bodily and violently across the clearing, only to collide with a wet and sickening crunch against a tree before coming to a rest motionless in a heap. Alice, from the very beginning of her life as a vampire, had considered her self-control exceptional, and yet the anger that welled up in her throat and shook her small frame was unfathomable in its intensity.

She felt venom pooling in her mouth and her fangs extend, and a deep, pain-filled roar erupted from her throat; a sound that one would not consider such a small woman capable of. The Dark Lord Voldemort only had time to hear the beginning of the sound, and feel the soul-consuming terror that it elicited, before his head was ripped from his shoulders from the force of the blow from a small, feminine palm. Her pained roar petered off as her momentum crushed the head into the ground - rendering it into little more than a chunky, bloody smear against the dirt, and she immediately spun and rushed towards the fallen body.

A fraction of a second later she had the young man's head cradled in her lap and she looked despairingly down at his rugged features; marred with dirt and blood and yet still with his confident grin turning his lips upwards. So deep was her despair at failing Harry, the overwhelmingly intoxicating scent of his blood that, had she not been so emotionally overcome with anguish, would have sent her into a frenzy went unheeded.

Had she been able to cry she would have.

She did not know this man. Did not know of his ideals, his morals, his convictions and goals. Didn't know of his odd powers or why he fought so desperately, and yet the words he had spoken before fighting the evil man lying headless behind her had resonated deeply. He had been a good man; loyal and pure, even while fighting to kill. And she had failed him, and that filled her with a sadness she hadn't thought possible to feel.

And as she closed her eyes as she brushed his hair away from those alluring, unseeing emerald orbs something more than his words resonated through her entire being.

Ba-dum...

Amber eyes snapped open.

Harry was a little speechless after his mentor's heartfelt confession. He hadn't expected it, and while the apology was, in his opinion, well overdue, there was something in how Dumbledore was acting and his timing with such words that stopped him from jumping the gun and doing what he had always done in instantly accepting the apology and giving exactly what the man was asking for.

"You truly did belong in Slytherin, Albus Percival." came a rasping hack from behind them, and both Harry and said man spun around - the latter's face draining of blood and mouth twisting in terror.

Harry, on the other hand, instantly knew who - or rather what - was standing behind the bench. Faintly resembling a dementor in appearance, the towering figure was caped in a pristine black robe with only shadow contained within its hood. While not eliciting the same feelings as a dementor would produce, the being seemed to command respect, and if the presence didn't command it then the huge scythe it held in its left almost-skeletal hand would.

After Death's unseeing eyes peered judgingly down at Dumbledore for several seconds the hood turned to Harry and gave a small nod of acknowledgement. "Harry James."

Trying not to stutter in the presence of a primordial being Harry nodded back. "Death."

Turning its attention back to the trembling form of the elderly headmaster, Death let out a rattle of annoyance. "Truly Albus Percival," it intoned in a spine-chilling rasp, "you are one of the despicable ones I relish in taking to the afterlife. Seeking to provoke an utterance of forgiveness from the one to whom you have done so much wrong... all to cause my decision on where to send you to become invalid."

"Eh?" Harry questioned eloquently, and Death's hood once more turned to him.

"Harry James, you are dead - as I am sure you have already surmised." At Harry's nod he continued, "your vaunted ex-headmaster would have you free him of my sentencing of Hell for his inhuman actions against you, only to allow you to fall to Hell yourself thanks to that soul shard of Tom Marvolo imbedded in your skull."

Harry's head snapped around to face Dumbledore, who was looking paler than a ghost and was staring anywhere but at either of them. "What?" he hissed darkly, "What the fuck is going on here?"

The venom in Harry's voice prompted a wince from the old man, but he didn't speak. Death, it seemed, was more than happy to explain on the headmaster's behalf. "Yes," Death's voice grated, "Albus Percival knew that he would face me before his 'next great adventure'. With your blanket forgiveness of his actions against you - known or unknown, and trust me Harry James, there is much he has perpetrated against you that you do not know - he would be released of his sins and sent to the pure place."

Flicking a venomous glare at Dumbledore for a moment - prompting yet another wince - he returned his gaze into the never-ending dark contained within Death's hood. "And what of my going to hell? What the bloody heck have I done to deserve that?"

"Not you, Harry James, but the... what is the word you mortals use? Ah yes, Tom Marvolo's horcrux that he unknowingly created in that distinctive scar of yours. That soul is so entwined with your own, you would share the same fate as it."

Harry caught the small twitch of a smile on Dumbledore's lips at that revelation, and gritted his teeth. "Excuse me for a moment, Death."

Spinning around in a full one-eighty and, as he'd been trained, really putting his hips into it as he twisted to standing, his clenched fist powered into Dumbledore's jaw. The man was flung off the bench from the sheer force of the blow as the crack of broken bone echoed out over the quiet hissing of the steam engine. Shaking his smarting hand and then ignoring the pathetic groaning of the downed man with a now broken jaw, he spat, "Oh get over it you pathetic excuse of a man - I'd had worse than that before I was five."

"Alas, young Harry James," Death rattled with a sandpaper chuckle, "I said you would share the same fate as that abomination... however..." Harry could have sworn that if there was a face under that hood it was grinning maliciously.

Alice Cullen was beyond words. The head resting on her lap, belonging to the man with eyes that would make a carat of emerald jealous with their intensity - even dull and lifeless as they were - felt and looked dead. But there was no mistaking it; she had felt the dual thud of his carotid against the inside of her knee, and as weak as it had been it might as well have felt like a sledgehammer strike. And that sound; the ba-dum and the concurrent sound of blood rushing through veins and arteries with a quiet swish was simply unmistakable.

His eyes were glazed and unblinking; his chest deathly still; his body cooling with every passing second... but that had been all the hope she needed. Somehow, somehow, the man lying lifeless on her lap was still there - just; hanging on by but a rapidly weakening thread. With a blur of movement, she was knelt beside him and lowering his head softly onto the pine needles underneath; venom already pooling in her mouth, and the woman once known as Mary Alice Brandon made - albeit unbeknownst to her - the most important decision of her eternal life.

From his position on the ground, his jaw cradled gingerly in his wrinkled hands, Dumbledore had held in his groans of agony to eavesdrop on the conversation between the only person that could save him from hell and Death itself - and judging by the 'waiting for the shoe to drop' expression on young Harry's face, the little bastard was just as confused as he was by Death's words.

That was until Harry Potter collapsed to his knees and let out a soul-chilling, unearthly scream as he clutched at his head. Dumbledore couldn't, or rather didn't want to, comprehend what he was seeing as black ichor erupted from between the teen's fingers and formed a churning puddle at the feet of Death itself. As if his strings had been cut, Harry collapsed to his side; the scream from his lips muffling into desperate attempts to drag air into his heaving lungs. Death stared down at the puddle that had begun to churn even more desperately with, dare Albus think it, amusement?

When the black discharge surged upwards and coalesced into a very familiar figure with sharp, demonic eyes Dumbledore's jaw very painfully dropped in horror. "Fool!" came the venomous hiss from an elderly Tom Riddle; hair greying at the temples, as he beheld Death with not an ounce of fear. "You think to take me from my rightful immortality? Avada Kedavra!" he roared at almost point-blank range. The spell collided with Death, who rattled a jagged laugh loose from its throat.

"And you, Tom Marvolo, think you can challenge me?" Without waiting for a response Death, with a blindingly fast movement, scythed Tom Riddle's wand in half, earning a roar of anger from the self-proclaimed Lord. Not even considering the consequences of his action, only thinking of the threat this being posed to his immortality, Voldemort drew in every single ounce of power and energy from the Dark Marks tethered to his magical core and, with a wordless cry of primal fury, held out his hand and released it all at the cloaked figure directly in front of him.

To Tom and Dumbledore's utter disbelief, as Harry was still recovering from the agony experienced at the expulsion of the Horcrux, Death didn't move a single solitary millimetre. Not until its emaciated and diseased hand erupted forward and snatched Voldemort around the neck in an iron grip. Harry opened his eyes just in time to see Death tear a void open in mid-air and hurl the Dark Lord through it, screaming the whole way as flames belched out of the darkness.

"Holy shit." was Harry's hoarse murmur to that action, and Death hacked out a chuckle itself.

"More un-holy, Harry James." Dumbledore froze when Death turned to regard him with its crushing presence, and tried to scramble backwards when the imposing figure all but glided towards him. Escape, Harry mused to himself - still rather miffed as to just why and how Voldemort had been ejected from his forehead - was really an exercise in futility considering they were in the realm governed by Death itself.

Sure as Harry's thoughts, Death had Dumbledore by the neck just as he had Tom Riddle mere seconds before within moments; the old man's hands coming up to desperately try and pry the deity's fingers away from his windpipe - his efforts becoming increasingly more frantic as he saw the portal nearing with every second. "No!" he managed to gasp, only to get a dry, "Yes." from Death.

Casting his eyes desperately to Harry, his eyes begging for him to show mercy, the young man shakily stood to his feet and cleared his throat. Death paused in his glide towards the portal, however his grip on Dumbledore's throat did not lessen. Death seemed to anticipate Harry's unspoken question and gave a rough exhale of breath that Harry guessed was some expression of amusement or exasperation.

"Such curious creatures you humans are Harry James, but I suppose you have been kept in the dark enough, and I shan't stoop to Albus Percival's antics and riddles. Fate, it would seem Harry James, is... very pleased with you. You and another that you shall meet soon hence - a Mary Alice. As so much has been taken, the same must be returned - the balance of things, you understand."

"You were never destined for my guidance this day, Harry James, not for a long, very long time... if at all. As Lily Marie and James Fleamont's murderer sought through destruction, hate and conflict, you shall receive through an act of selfless love, loyalty and the desire Fate has to give you what you have always wanted. Love, affection, loyalty returned, freedom and family."

"For many decades now, Fate's unknowing operative on the earthly plane has suffered for her glimpses into the future, and she is exceptionally pleased with how Mary Alice has had the resilience to always do what is right... and not what is easy. Just as she is, in this case, your salvation Harry James... and more, you will find that you are hers in ways you cannot yet comprehend. Her time of being Fate's messenger on Earth is done; no more will she suffer through the pains of seeing what is to come. When you see her, Harry James, tell her that the powers that be are very pleased with her - just as we are pleased with you."

Dawning realisation and horror begun to twist Dumbledore's face, while Harry was equal parts confused and lightly blushing at Death's words. "No!" Dumbledore gasped desperately, "No! He cannot-"

The last sight and sound Harry saw before his world was engulfed in the most fierce, blinding and otherworldly pain he had ever experienced was Death groaning in irritation, "Oh do shut up, you old coot." before the pale, horrified, swollen-jawed visage of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore was sent hurtling through the breach to hell.

Forcing herself to not think about the most delicious flavour she had ever tasted that still lingered in her mouth, she waited. Only the quiet rustle of the canopy above permeated the still, fog-ridden air, and the pale, lifeless body, once again with his head in her lap, was the centre of her world at that moment.

Alice was terrified she had been too late in injecting the young man with her venom - gods but she hoped she hadn't been, and a moment later an odd feeling of mixed guilt and elation rushed through her still veins as Harry Potter's back arched sharply upwards; his face a visage of pain unimaginable to most. The scream that tore from his throat a moment later made Alice's heart almost break. She had only vaguely remembered her own turning; the memories of it had probably been repressed, Carlisle had once told her, but if that scream was anything to go by then she was silently glad that she couldn't remember.

When she lifted him into her arms his entire being remained rigidly arched, and she winced at the sheer volume and suffering contained within his constant screams. With her foot she dragged together a soft bed of pine needles and carefully lay him on it before brushing her cold hand over his feverish brow once more, almost as if assuring herself and him that they were both there; alive in each their own ways, soon to be the same. Looking around the clearing, her sharp eyes easily piercing the murky darkness, she got to work.

Had Harry been aware enough to see, or had anyone else been watching, they would liken the sight of the shelter being built to a time-lapse film. Alice was a blur as she sped around the clearing tearing bark off trees, erupting upwards into the canopy to grab leaf-covered branches, and gathering more pine needles that she gently built into the bed that Harry was screaming from. Within mere minutes a more than respectable shelter had been constructed, and Alice sat down next to Harry; her back against the tree she had used to anchor the small bivvy. For hours she gently ran her cool hand over his burning forehead hoping that her presence was giving him at least a little comfort.

Smiling softly, she watched as the lightning-bolt shaped scar became slightly fainter. His skin, from what she remembered of the vision that had led to this entire journey, had always been pale, but she could see it very slowly lightening into what would one day be a flawless porcelain. What concerned her however, was that his screaming had lessened in volume and intensity. Because of the change she knew that it wasn't because he'd damaged his vocal cords from the screaming; the developing vampiric healing would have taken care of that... so why on Earth did he sound to be in less pain?

Harry gritted his teeth as he glared at the huge wall he was erecting. Built of a mirror-like obsidian, block by block he toiled. "This goddamned pain better bloody stop when this is done." he grumbled to himself as he worked at levitating the huge blocks.

He had awoken in his mindscape what felt like days ago. Funny how it took what he suspected was a vampiric transformation to get him here when Snape hadn't managed in a year's worth of 'lessons'. Then again, Harry had never thought the greasy git had ever really considered them lessons. Harry was pretty sure the main goal in those 'detentions' was to dredge up his worst memories so that Snape could taunt him about them.

The pain he had come aware to had been overwhelming at first, until he had, through sheer force of will, all but ordered a protego around his foetal form. Oh, the pain was still there; still almost crippling in fact - Harry wasn't about to sugar-coat that fact - but it was just, just manageable enough that he could concentrate. And concentrate he had.

His mindscape had naturally conformed to the first place he had ever called home. Hogwarts towered high in his mindscape, and it was being besieged by pain beyond all understanding coming from far beyond its walls. So, Harry was building a bigger wall. Made of obsidian. Very polished and reflective obsidian; massive room-sized blocks of it.

With every block placed it would flash - become molten and then cool back to a solid just as quickly resulting in a seamless expanse of inky blackness - not a join or imperfection in sight.

In a dome.

That was the hardest part, Harry thought. The walls he had completed in five mind-days; they spanned from the far shore of the Black Lake all the way to the hills behind Hogwarts. That had been easy - but making the protections into a dome was a hell of a lot harder. The angles of the blocks had to be precise, and he had to keep every single block in the overhang levitated at the same time until the arch from the exact opposite side had met it, else gravity would take hold and the entire construct would fall. He sat back and sighed tiredly as his very first arch over the top of his mind flashed and every single block fused flawlessly.

Rubbing his eyes and shaking himself out he raised his hands up once more. "One down, only a few thousand to go..."

Alice really was concerned now. Just minutes before, Harry's screams had petered off into grunts of pain and his back had relaxed; now only violent twitches torturing his increasingly more muscular frame.

She had never heard this happening during a turn, and she hazarded that Carlisle hadn't either. The pain of the turn was meant to last until the moment the heart stopped and the vampiric venom had finished its work. She had the feeling that she was witnessing the first time in history that this had happened during a turning, and the thought that she had done something wrong laboured her thoughts.

It had been nearly a day since she had bitten Harry and she had left his side only once to feed, but she knew that she had to risk him relapsing into agony and get to civilization where she could ask an expert; an ex-Volturi in fact, what the hell was happening.

Picking Harry's body up off his makeshift bed she cradled him easily in her arms and sped through the forest once more, following the path that she had taken a day before. Coming to the road she wasn't surprised to see the unlocked Aston Martin still sitting there untouched. The countryside was a relatively quiet place, and this road especially - almost in the middle of nowhere. She gently laid him down in the back seat, cradling his cheek for a moment before blurring around to the driver's door and hopping in.

The GPS guided her to a small, rustic town and, after pulling over and asking one of the locals, she found herself driving down a long driveway to a farmstead. The owner quite happily informed her that virtually all of his cottages were available thanks to it being the off-season, and a wad of cash quickly ensured them a quiet, isolated place to wait out the change.

As she laid Harry down on the large king-sized bed in the room, she took a moment to finally behold him outside of a warzone. His face was uncharacteristically relaxed for a person going through the change, and his stubble was more pronounced than it had been in the vision. His face was angular, almost aristocratic, and yet in an understated way rugged as well. The wrinkles between his eyebrows that were slowly fading told her that he had frowned a lot in his short life, and yet there were smile lines at the edges of his lips as well.

His hair, well that she almost laughed to herself about. She had the feeling that it had always looked like that, not just after a battle. Alice snorted quietly - pulled through a gorse bush backwards described the style quite aptly. Or caught in a hurricane. Her bell-like laugh tinkled out in the quiet room before she quieted with a small smile - that would quickly become a non-issue with the turn.

His clothes were in tatters after the fierce battle he had partaken of, but even though the clothing was baggy she could see that his frame was much like that of a swimmer. Nothing like Emmett, who made devoted body-builders blush in shame, rather more like a gymnast. Tall, lean, broad shoulders, lithe, and yet with well-toned muscles ready to explode into action at a second's notice.

His hands looked calloused, yet another thing that would be changing soon... so much would be changing for him soon, Alice mused. Heading to the kitchen she wet a towel and came back out just as his body gave another violent spasm. She winced, wondering what was going on in his head, but quickly shook off the thought and stripped him down to his boxers intending to wipe him down of all the grime and dirt, only to gape.

Ignoring for the moment the delicious physique in front of her, which Alice refused to admit to herself was incredibly hard to do, it was the scars that captured her focus. Looking to his face she shook her head in disbelief - he couldn't be older than eighteen. No eighteen-year-old should have scarring like that.

A large patch of scar-tissue rested on the inside of his right bicep in the shape of a circle, and considering he was a day into the turn already she knew it must have looked far more prominent in years past. There was a long scar that curved from underneath his armpit to just above his navel and another that crossed it from the base of his neck and over his chest. When she rolled him over, she couldn't hold back the gasp that she quickly hid behind her hand; taking a step back as if she had been physically pushed.

His entire back was a criss-crossed lattice of scars - both thick and thin - all the way from his shoulders to underneath his boxers. They curved a little around his sides as well, and Alice just couldn't believe what she was seeing. She wasn't an idiot - she knew exactly what scars like that meant and where they came from.

'What has this man been through?' she wondered to herself. No man should still be sane after a life resulting in this... and yet when he spoke in that vision, he was nothing but determined and... good.' Shaking her head as if to rid herself of her musings she carefully wiped down his back of all the grime and sweat - unable to help herself from caressing a couple of scars while she did. 'Just checking to see how much they've got to go until they're all gone.' she lied to herself.

"Thank fucking Merlin that's done." Harry gasped, covered in sweat. How one could even work up a sweat in their own mind he didn't know, but he felt as if he'd just run a marathon. Waving his hand, the pitch-black darkness was pierced by a thousand glowing lights on the dome above, and a huge orb resembling the moon cast a gentle, calming light across the Hogwarts grounds.

It had taken him what felt like weeks to finish his mental shield, and it wasn't hard now to make them thicker by allowing molten metal and rock to defy gravity and coat the dome from the inside, which was what he was watching now. With the pain no longer torturing him he would devote all of his attention to building his mindscape to be the most defended in the world... At least that was his goal; he had nothing better to do in this place.

Sighing and heading inside Hogwarts, allowing the molten layers of his shield to carry on unattended, he moved to his favourite armchair in the Gryffindor common-room and peered down at where his hand rested on the smooth wood with a frown of thought. "This is my mind..." he pondered to himself, "and there's nobody to tell me rules, or to stop me from doing whatever the hell I want I guess..." He thought for a few more moments and then gave a downright cheeky grin. "So, I guess I'm God in here..."