Nothing is mine.

This one's the last one in Acheron's Ambition and super short. But you can always hop onto Discord and get the chapter that comes after if it leaves you feeling moreish! (not to mention the growing mountain of other written things that are maybe trying less to be clever but are more fun)

The Lake of Memory

The breeze traced small waves across the glimmering river ripples, scattering the slim dark shapes of fish beneath its surface and rustling the willow leaves above their heads.

So nearly perfect. Harry watched Fleur's feet swing from their branch before the veiled Mirror of Erised. So close.

'This is how it was meant to be,' Fleur whispered, resting her head on his shoulder; her silver hair spilt down his chest, tickling his collarbone. 'This is how it is going to be afterward.'

Almost. It'll be you and our baby bird up here instead of you and me. Soft sadness tugged at his heart. But that's the price. And it's better that way. Katie will need her maman more than me.

'I'm ready,' he said.

'Are you?' she murmured. 'I am not, mon Amour.'

'I am.'

I am. A small smile crept onto his face; wry, bitter humour buoyed on a swell of endless despair. Perfect wishes can come true, but not for me. I always knew.

'We should go save our little chick, mon Amour. The calm before the storm can't last forever,' Harry said, leaning his head onto hers. 'She's waited long enough. You wanted her back soon, didn't you?'

'I do,' Fleur breathed, a soft gleam of hunger in her blue eyes as she stared at the dark silk fluttering over the Mirror of Erised. 'I do. But—'

'Whatever it takes.' He cupped her hip, running his thumb along the line of the rose tattoo beneath her robes. 'And we did it. We did all of it. Now it's just one last step.'

Into oblivion.

Harry eased his head off her shoulder and apparated down to the edge of the pensieve, staring down at the interwoven rings of white runes. Quiet despair wrenched at his heart, but he shoved its cold claws away. Katie first.

Fleur appeared before the mirror, sweeping the silk away. She stared into the shining silver surface, her fingers creeping to her hip. 'Salut, petit ange.'

'Pass the Elder Wand, mon Rêve,' he called.

'You do not want to look?' Fleur held out her hand, the Elder Wand and its ball of purple runes appearing in her fingers.

Harry summoned them across into his grasp. 'No. Not right now. Maybe—' he swallowed a sharp pang '—maybe in a moment or two.'

She drew out the gleaming red dragonbane gem, the three dark pearls, the lotus heart, the damaz-kar, the resurrection stone, the cloak and Roxie's gold ring and levitated them up over the pensieve with Fawkes's cage, sweeping the black silk back over the mirror. 'Where do you want them?'

'Put Fawkes in the centre.' He cast the violet runes up into the air above his head and stared at the long pale wand in his hand as Fleur swept Fawkes's cage up into the sky. 'It doesn't matter where the rest go.'

One of two. And we know what our purpose is. Harry slipped his wand from his sleeve and let its soft, insistent murmur wash through him. A beautiful sunset for our baby bird and her maman.

Ebony mist curled through his fingers, stretching out to coil around the floating items; it drew them across into a ball of swirling dark. Countless needle-like teeth bubbled and burst within its black whirl, eating into the gleaming ruby gem and the lotus's glowing heart.

Harry watched it consume them one by one, swallowing the resurrection stone in a puff of dark dusk and crushing Roxie's gold ring in a flash of ink-black magic. The ebony mist ground the Elder Wand to splinters in his palm, letting it crumble to dust and pour through his fingers.

'Mon Amour?' Fleur whispered. 'Are you sure it will get through Gabby's magic?'

'It doesn't have to,' he replied. 'It's soul magic. And souls do not play by the same rules as something like the Caduceus or even blood magic. The magic doesn't have to touch her to bind her to us.'

'Do you hear that, little chick? We will see you soon.' A little shudder swept through Fleur as she stared into the Mirror of Erised. 'Do not pout and flap your little feathers, you only have to wait for a tiny bit longer. For your poor papa, it will feel like—' she blinked hard, her lip trembling '—forever.'

'Would you turn the mirror around, mon Rêve?' Harry took a deep breath and wrapped his horcux's magic around himself, floating down into the bottom of the pensieve. 'I'd like to look now.'

Just in case.

Fawkes let out a soft, sad trill, poking his head through the copper wires of his cage to stare at the Mirror of Erised with one dark eye as Fleur vanished the black silk veil.

The purple runes swirled overhead beneath the willow fronds, spinning in their slow spiral around Fawkes's gleaming copper cage, casting faint flickering shadows over the white pebbles. Fleur watched them whirl beside the Mirror of Erised, her hands balled into white-knuckled fists, and Katie reached out from beneath the shining silver surface with both arms, her green eyes full of tears.

He drank in the sight of them.

The cascade of hair over Fleur's shoulders, its stray strands glowing like spun silver, the endless warm blue of her summer sky eyes, the faint soft curve of her pale rose pink lips, the line of her nose, the flutter of her lashes, the faint tremble of her breath and the little silver curls falling to Katie's shoulders, her little hands and the familiar bright green eyes pleading from behind the cold glass; he stared, burning them into his memory.

Just in case it has to last forever. Somewhere beneath the brittle resolve of desperation, despair waited with open arms and that small, sad, knowing smile he felt creeping across his lips. Because perfect wishes never really come true for me in the end.

'Je t'aime, mon Rêve,' Harry whispered, watching the black mist seep back into the ebony and slipping his wand into his sleeve. 'Je t'aime à la folie.'

'Folie à deux, mon Coeur.' Fleur's voice shook, tears glistening on her lashes. 'Je t'aime. We will see you in a moment.'

For you it'll be a moment. Who knows how long the moment will last for me? A day? A month? A year? Forever? Harry's eyes slipped to Katie and he swallowed a burning surge of fierce yearning. Whatever it takes. Au revoir, my baby bird. I love you very very much.

Purple light seared his eyes and he flinched behind his arm, pressing his face into the warm dark of his elbow and taking long deep breaths as he stared down at the small pale stones between his boots.

White pebbles…

A faint pull drew at Harry's heart, as if a slim red string was hooked beneath his ribs, and he pressed a hand to his chest. What is that? Harry lowered his arm, watching the runes gutter away before a blue sky. What is that feeling?

Sharp pain lanced through his temple, ripping the breath from his lungs. Shit.

It bit deeper, sawing through his skull with dull jagged teeth.

Double shit. He clenched his jaw and squeezed his eyes shut, burying his face in his hands.

The pain ebbed.

Harry peered through his fingers.

Pale flagstones stretched to the foot of a tall mirror.

'I show not the truth but your heart's desire,' he whispered, the words slipping from his lips, a familiar weight on the tip of his tongue.

Soft, insistent need tugged at his heart and Harry frowned, dropping his arms. There is something… He wrestled with the faint echo of yearning, dragging his gaze to the glass. There was something…

A single soft shadow swirled in the shining silver, faint as summer shade and silent as winter snow; it writhed far beneath the shimmering surface like the glimmer of gold beneath a river's bright ripples. Desperate need clawed its way up his throat like a fistful of razors; his heart seized beneath his ribs and a fierce heat stung at his eyes.

What is that? He tried to crush it all away into the dark and focus on the shadow, but the deeper he stared into that faint twisting shade, the further through him the storm of emotions tore. What is this feeling?

'Back again, Harry…?

AN: Ah, this is one of the three spots I was tempted to end everything when I first planned out this story. Originally, I chose the end of A Cadmean Victory, and since I'm writing the rest of what I planned, I couldn't really leave you all here watching the spinning top wobble. I was tempted definitely tempted though...