A lone figure picked his way down the crumbled street. Once a place full of color and life, Diagon Alley was now nothing more than the gutted and desiccated corpse of its former self. As the traveler walked by shattered store windows and the craters that pocked the street, his mind's eye was flooded with images of his last visit. Fires raged on every surface that could sustain them. Bodies lay limp where they fell. Blood filled the cracks of the cobblestones like a macabre mosaic that painted a grisly picture of despair and loss. These memories came involuntarily, but the traveler did not fight them. Instead he basked in the sorrow. Seeped himself in it, for it was for these unfortunate souls he now made his solitary trek.

His feet brushed through tough grass as he walked. Most of the enchantments had long since faded, leaving only the ones that hid it from muggle eyes. Ancient Legacy enchantments that had been in place since the 1600s and would likely last several hundred more years before beginning to decay. But regardless of remaining hidden, without the magic to keep up appearances and the folk needed to maintain it, nature had steadily began reclaiming what was once its own and an added layer of decay covered the already ravaged alley. The traveler thought it a fitting monument to Magical Britain: a once proud and strong wall now bloodstained and crumbling to dust. The rest of the world, even the british fugitives long since fled, had chosen to forget about the tragedy that happened here, more so to cope than out of any malicious indifference, but the traveler did not have that luxury. He had stayed. And he had remembered. With every bloodstain he passed he saw a face and a name. Those he had not known personally, he had learned and written down with all their accomplishments and wasted potential. Three hundred and twenty-seven dead in this very place during the final battle. Over six hundred others over the years preceding it. They filled a heavy volume that lay shrunken around his neck. He read it every night.

As his mind filled with dark and sullen thoughts, his destination loomed in the distance. The Ministry of Magic had more direct entrances that avoided the long walk down the alley. Hell, there was a giant hole in the wall of the Department of Records leading directly into a Tesco on 7th that came so precariously close to breaking the muggle repelling wards that he had been forced to wall off half the store when he realized he couldn't fix it. Oblivating a few muggles was much easier than messing around with the bricks covered in goblin-etched runes. He had been using those entrances up until this point, in fact. But today was special. Today was his last day. And he had needed to walk these streets he had been avoiding for years one last time, not only in remembrance, but to steel his resolve for what was to come.

He stepped into the dilapidated entry chamber and let the crooked door creak close behind him. "Welcome to the ... 'istry of Magic. Ple ... 'te your name and ... 'son for your visit." The traveler smiled slightly at the nostalgic voice. Janet Thorgood was her name. He hadn't known the name behind the recording before the war, but he had hauled her body to the pyre and put her name down with all the others. He did his best to clearly answer the question with a voice that cracked and strained from lack of use. After a long moment, a loud clunking sound came from the wall and a pin shot out of the tube with some force. He idly pinned it to his robe with a whimsy that would have made Dumbledore proud. It read "Harry Potter - Repaying my Debts".

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The elevator doors closed in front of him and it began to lurch slowly downward. As he waited for the long descent to conclude, the brass panels in front of him showed an unwelcome reflection that was no longer his, and the tarnish and warping of the plates only served to further disfigure what time and war had done to him. Gone was the face of the young, idealistic boy who thought the worst thing that could happen was a summer spent at the Dursley's. And in his place was the grizzled visage of a man who had borne the weight of the world on his shoulders from too young an age and not borne it well. At only the age of twenty-five, he looked closer to forty, with scars littered liberally across his body, grey starting to speckle his haggard beard and hair and a noticeable limp to his step. This was not his face, he told himself as the elevator ground to a stop. This was the face of a man who had failed. And that wasn't him anymore. Or at least, it wouldn't be very soon.

The walk from the elevator was a short one, and while the Department of Mysteries was built like a maz, he had long since learned his way through its winding pathways to his destination through countless repetitions. Finally, his long meditative journey came to an end as he stepped into a large circular domed chamber. It had a raised dais at the center upon which sat The Veil, a seemingly empty simple stone arch in which hung a tattered drape of cloth. But more importantly, around that arch lay the culmination of the last four years of work.

A vast runic array lay before him that covered the entirety of the dais and several meters of the surrounding floor as well. Two thousand eight hundred and sixty-four individual runes all linked together in intricate patterns and etched one at a time into the floor with a silver chisel and filled with his own blood.

While the majority of the array had simply been copies rune for rune from a theoretical book on time-travel, the original author had never gotten it to work without a powerful conduit of magical energy. He had theorized that The Veil would suffice but had been denied the rights to examine it by the British Ministry of Magic, so had never been able to confirm his theory. Luckily for Harry, said Ministry had abruptly dissolved some years ago and no one was still around to tell him 'No'. So, by necessity, the remainder of the array, the part tying it to both the Veil and himself, was his own design. He had briefly considered getting an expert to assist on it, but in the end, had rejected the idea. Even he had been able to convince one of the world's few runic masters to brave the Dark Magic that to this day still permeated the areas of high magical density of Great Britain, like the one he was in, at best they would call him crazy and at worst they would attempt to stop him. And so he carried on alone.

Oddly, despite the trepidation of using his own, admittedly amateur, work, it gave him satisfaction to know that he was directly contributing to what he hoped would save his world. Maybe that was the pride talking, but it helped him take the final few steps into the center of the array. The Veil fluttered not even a meter from his face. He took a deep breath and double checked that the shrunken chest that contained all his few worldly possessions was safe on the chain around his neck. Then, drawing a bone-white wand from his robe sleeve, he activated the array. His dried blood all around him bubbled to life anew as magic permeated the air and caused the Veil to flap violently. Then, after only a moment's hesitation and without a backward glance or word spoken, he took a single step, and vanished from his broken world.

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The world was a swirling mist of grey, black and white.

Harry walked through it endlessly.

Walked? Floated? Or perhaps he wasn't moving at all. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

Time passed. Or...perhaps it didn't.

How long had he been here? Minutes? Weeks? Decades?What even was 'time', and why did he care so much about it now? It hadn't worried him before had it? Harry shook his head, or at least he thought he did. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered.

Harry watched the Mist. Felt? Heard? It didn't matter. All was grey and black and white mist all around.

No. Wait.

Not all. Just there. A small golden thread. It seemed to lead away from him. So small. So faint.

Harry blinked. Or...perhaps he didn't. What was he looking at again? Thats right. The mist. All grey and black and...

No! The thread! Where had it gone? Harry looked around. Or...perhaps he didn't. It was difficult to focus.

There! Right where it was, leading away from him. The faint golden thread.

Harry put all his energy on focusing on the thread. It was important. He knew it was important.

He tried to move toward it. Or...perhaps he didn't. He couldn't be sure. His brain was so muddled.

Then, with his last bit of will, he reached out and grasped the thread. And this time, he knew he had done it.

The thread brought clarity to his thoughts and with that clarity, came the pain. A weight settled on his shoulders and a fear gnawed at his gut. Somewhere in the back of this mind he screamed and begged to let go of the thread. That the pain, the weight and the fear was only worse at the end of that thread.

But he knew the thread was important. It mattered. So he blocked out the screaming...and pulled.

Light blazed at the end of the thread, still distant, but it seemed to blind him. He began to understand now, pieces at a time. He had to go. He had to go back. He pulled again.

The light blazed even brighter but he couldn't shut his eyes. The fear ravaged inside of him and the weight felt unbearable. But he saw it for what it was. He finally understood why. So when every instinct told him to let go, he gritted his teeth...and pulled one last time.

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Author's Note:

If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading. Let me know what you thought of the first installment of "The Lies We Told". Some people might notice a slight similarity to another story "I'm Still Here". It was definitely an inspiration for me and it's a shame it was never finished, but trust me it will vastly differ from here.

If there are any of you poor souls still following me from when I was writing The Darkness Within, ... for one I really appreciate you being here. But for second, The Darkness Within is well and truly dead, as I am sure you suspected already. So, if anyone was still holding on to hope for that, I am sorry.

Again, thank you all for reading and I will see you soon with the next chapter!

-Lord Sweater