Harry reached the edge of the forest and stopped.

A pack of dementors was flying through the trees; he could feel their chill in the air and knew there was no way he would get through safely. He didn't have enough strength to cast a Patronus. His body was trembling uncontrollably. Dying, it turned out, wasn't so easy. Every breath he took, he could smell the grass, feel the cool air on his face—it all felt so alive. To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and here he was clinging desperately to each second. At the same time, he thought he wouldn't be able to go on, but he knew he must. The game was over, the Snitch had been caught; it was time to leave the air…

The Snitch. His fingers fumbled at the pouch around his neck for a moment before pulling it out. He stared down at it.

I open at the close.

This was the close. This was the moment.

Harry pressed the golden metal to his lips and whispered, "I am about to die."

The metal shell broke open. Harry lowered his shaking hand, raised Draco's wand beneath the Cloak, and whispered, "Lumos."

The black stone with its jagged crack running down the center sat in the two halves of the Snitch. The Resurrection Stone had cracked down the vertical line representing the Elder Wand. The triangle and circle representing the Cloak and the stone were still discernible.

And again, he understood without having to think. Bringing them back did not matter; he was about to join them. He was not really fetching them: they were fetching him.

Harry closed his eyes and turned the stone over in his hand three times. He knew it had happened because he heard slight movements around him that suggested frail bodies shifting their footing on the earthy, twig-strewn ground. When he opened his eyes and looked around, they were there. They were neither ghosts nor truly flesh—he could see that. They resembled most closely the Riddle that had escaped from the diary so long ago, a memory made nearly solid. Less substantial than living bodies, but much more than ghosts, they moved toward him, and on each face, there was the same loving smile.

James was exactly the same height as Harry. He was wearing the clothes in which he had died, and his hair was untidy and ruffled, and his glasses were a little lopsided, like Mr. Weasley's.

Sirius was tall and handsome, younger by far than Harry had ever seen him in life. He walked with a confident swagger, his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face.

Lupin was younger too, much less shabby, and his hair was thicker and darker. He looked happy to be back in this familiar place, a scene of so many adolescent wanderings.

Lily's smile was the widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close, and her green eyes, identical to Harry's, searched his face as though she would never be able to look at him enough.

"You've been so brave," she said.

Harry couldn't speak or stop staring. He thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough.

"You are nearly there," said James. "Very close. We are... so proud of you."

"Does it hurt?"

The childish question escaped before Harry could stop it.

"Dying? Not at all," said Sirius. "Quicker and easier than falling asleep."

"And he will want it to be quick. He wants it over," said Lupin.

"I didn't want you to die," Harry said. Like his question, the words came without his permission. "Any of you. I'm sorry—" He was talking to Lupin more than any of them, pleading with him. "Right after you'd had your son... Remus, I'm sorry—"

"I am sorry too," said Lupin. "Sorry I will never know him... but he will know why I died, and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life."

A chilly breeze that seemed to come from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Harry's brow. He knew they wouldn't tell him to go; the decision had to be his.

"You'll stay with me?"

"Until the very end," said James.

"They won't be able to see you?" Harry asked.

"We are part of you," said Sirius. "Invisible to anyone else."

Harry looked at his mother.

"Stay close to me," he said quietly.

And he set off. The dementors' chill did not stop him; he passed through it with his family, and they acted like Patronuses to him. Together, they marched through the old trees that grew closely together, their branches tangled, their roots gnarled and twisted underfoot. Harry clutched the Cloak tightly around him in the darkness, traveling deeper and deeper into the forest, with no idea where exactly Voldemort was, but certain he would find him. Beside him, making scarcely a sound, walked James, Sirius, Lupin, and Lily, and their presence was his courage, the reason he was able to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Harry's body and mind felt oddly disconnected now. His limbs moved without conscious instruction, as if he were merely a passenger, not the driver, in the body he was about to leave. The dead who walked beside him through the forest felt far more real to him now than the living back at the castle: Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and all the others seemed like ghosts as he walked toward the end of his life, toward Voldemort...

A thud and a whisper: some other living creature had stirred nearby. Harry stopped under the Cloak, and his mother, father, Lupin, and Sirius stopped as well.

"Someone's there," came a rough whisper not far away. "He's got an Invisibility Cloak. Could it be—?"

Two figures emerged from behind a nearby tree, their wands raised. Yaxley and Dolohov peered into the darkness, directly at the spot where Harry and his family stood. But apparently, they could see nothing.

"Definitely heard something," said Yaxley. "Animal, d'you reckon?"

"That headcase Hagrid kept a whole bunch of stuff in here," said Dolohov, glancing over his shoulder.

Yaxley looked down at his watch. "Time's nearly up. Potter's had his hour. He's not coming."

"And he was sure he'd come! He won't be happy."

"Better go back," said Yaxley. "Find out what the plan is now."

The two turned and started walking deeper into the forest. Harry followed them silently, knowing they would lead him exactly where he needed to go. He glanced sideways, and his mother smiled at him, while his father nodded encouragement.

They had only traveled a few minutes when Harry saw light ahead. Yaxley and Dolohov stepped into a clearing that Harry recognized as the place where the monstrous Aragog had once lived. The remnants of the vast web were still there, but the swarm of Aragog's descendants had been driven out by the Death Eaters to fight for their cause.

A fire burned in the middle of the clearing, its flickering light casting eerie shadows over a crowd of silent, watchful Death Eaters. Some were still masked and hooded; others had bare faces, their expressions grim and resolute. Two giants sat on the outskirts of the group, their massive forms casting long shadows over the scene, their faces cruel and rough-hewn like boulders. Harry saw Fenrir Greyback skulking nearby, chewing on his long nails. The great blond Rowle dabbed at his bleeding lip. Lucius Malfoy stood among them, looking defeated and terrified, while Narcissa's sunken eyes were full of apprehension.

Every gaze was fixed on Voldemort. He stood with his head bowed, his white hands folded over the Elder Wand in front of him. He might have been praying, but Harry suspected he was counting silently in his mind. Standing still at the edge of the clearing, Harry thought absurdly of a child playing hide-and-seek, counting down to zero.

Behind Voldemort's head, the great snake Nagini floated in her glittering, charmed cage, coiling and swirling like a monstrous halo.

When Dolohov and Yaxley rejoined the circle, Voldemort looked up.

"No sign of him, my Lord," said Dolohov.

Voldemort's expression did not change. The red eyes burned in the firelight as he slowly drew the Elder Wand between his long fingers.

"My Lord—"

Bellatrix spoke from where she sat closest to Voldemort. Her face was disheveled and a little bloody, but otherwise unharmed. She stared at him with a mixture of awe and desperation.

Voldemort raised his hand, silencing her. She fell quiet immediately, her gaze never leaving his face, worshipful and enraptured.

"I thought he would come," Voldemort said, his high, cold voice breaking through the silence. His eyes remained on the flames. "I expected him to come."

Nobody spoke. The Death Eaters seemed as terrified as Harry felt. His heart pounded violently, as though it were trying to escape the body he was about to cast aside. His hands were slick with sweat as he pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and stuffed it beneath his robes, along with his wand. He did not want to be tempted to fight.

"I was, it seems... mistaken," said Voldemort.

"You weren't."

Harry said it as loudly as he could, with all the force he could muster. He did not want to sound afraid. The Resurrection Stone slipped from between his numb fingers, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw his parents, Sirius, and Lupin vanish as he stepped forward into the firelight. In that moment, it felt as though nobody mattered but Voldemort. It was just the two of them.

The illusion broke as quickly as it had come. The giants roared, and the Death Eaters rose together, a chaotic chorus of cries, gasps, and laughter. Voldemort had frozen where he stood, but his red eyes found Harry instantly. He stared as Harry moved toward him, the firelight flickering between them.

Then a voice yelled out: "HARRY! NO!"

Harry turned sharply and saw Hagrid, bound and trussed to a nearby tree. His massive body shook the branches overhead as he struggled, desperate. "NO! NO! HARRY, WHAT'RE YEH—?"

"QUIET!" shouted Rowle. With a flick of his wand, Hagrid was silenced.

Bellatrix sprang to her feet, her wild eyes darting eagerly between Voldemort and Harry. Her chest was heaving in her tight corset, and for a moment, it seemed as though she was the only thing moving, aside from the flames and Nagini, who coiled and uncoiled in her glittering, charmed cage behind Voldemort.

Harry felt the weight of his wand against his chest but made no move to draw it. He knew the snake was too well protected. Even if he managed to point his wand at Nagini, fifty curses would strike him before he could cast a spell. He kept his gaze on Voldemort, and Voldemort stared back, tilting his head slightly to the side, a mirthless smile curving his lipless mouth.

"Harry Potter," Voldemort said softly, his voice blending seamlessly with the crackling fire. "The Boy Who Lived… come to die…"

None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting. Everything was waiting. Hagrid struggled violently against his bonds, while Bellatrix panted with anticipation, her eyes never leaving Voldemort.

Harry's thoughts drifted, strangely detached from the tension around him. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, his hands slick with sweat. He thought of the wand and the Invisibility Cloak he had just stuffed beneath his robes. He thought of Ginny, with her blazing look and the feel of her lips on his. He thought of Madame Rosmerta, Cho, Romilda Vane… and then, absurdly, he thought of Bellatrix, standing there now, and what her heaving chest might look like without the corset.

Harry wanted to believe that he was dying without regrets. But as he stood there, waiting for Voldemort to raise his wand, the truth gnawed at him.

If he was honest, there was one regret, small but persistent, that had been nagging at him since he had seen Snape's memories. He thought of the way witches had acted around his father and Sirius—their shy, nervous giggling, their inability to meet their eyes. Snape had hated it, hated the reminder of how popular James and Sirius had been. But it had shocked Harry, because he had only just realized that the same thing had happened to him.

He had thought, for so many years, that girls acted strangely around him because they didn't want to talk to him—or worse, that they were laughing at his awkward attempts to talk to them. But now he knew the truth. Now he understood.

He wished he hadn't been so oblivious.

It was a selfish, childish regret, but it was there, nonetheless.

His childhood with the Dursleys had left him ill-equipped to deal with the opposite sex. He had grown up painfully introverted, and during his years at Hogwarts, he lacked the social awareness to understand how famous he was. He realized, too late, that from the moment he had stepped into the castle, he could have had seventh-year witches pulling him into broom closets.

And there had been no one to teach him.

None of the teachers at Hogwarts would have told him that his unruly black hair was attractive or that the scar on his forehead, the lightning bolt Voldemort had left behind, made witches' knees weak. Sirius might have told him—Sirius would have told him—but Sirius had left his life too early, before he could share that particular wisdom.

Harry thought about it now, as he stared into Voldemort's red eyes. He thought about how oblivious he had been, stumbling through school, clueless to how many witches would have dropped their robes in the Great Hall, in front of Dumbledore himself, just to say they had shagged the Boy Who Lived.

The realization had flipped his worldview upside down. He thought of all the opportunities he'd missed: the shy smiles from Parvati Patil at the Yule Ball, her sister Padma too. He thought of Romilda Vane, who had tried to drug him. He thought of how easily she could have just told him she liked him. Maybe then, the light would have clicked on in his brain, and he would have seen all the other signs.

And now it was too late.

Voldemort had raised his wand. His head tilted slightly, like a curious child wondering what would happen next. Harry smirked, the corner of his mouth twitching. He wondered, absurdly, how Voldemort would feel if he knew that the Boy Who Lived was dying thinking not of him, but of all the witches he could have, but didn't, shag.

It was silly. Silly and pointless. But he was dying. He could afford to be honest with himself.

Harry saw Voldemort's lips move, and the flash of green light filled his vision.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

The flash of green light filled his vision, expanding until it consumed everything. There was no pain, just the rushing sensation of being torn from his body, a momentary weightlessness, and then...

Harry opened his eyes. The metal ceiling above him was a far cry from the star-filled sky of the Forbidden Forest. He didn't bother sitting up, or even moving at Instead, he lay perfectly still on the thin mattress of his cell. His lungs filled with the stale, recycled air of the Ark—processed, filtered, and utterly lifeless. So different from the countless breaths he'd drawn in his previous lives: the salt-laden air of coastal villages, the spice-infused warmth of eastern markets, the crisp freshness of mountain peaks, the earthy richness of forests after rain.

The Ark hummed around him, a constant mechanical drone that never ceased, never changed. It was maddening in its consistency, a sound that offered no respite, no variation—just an endless reminder that they were suspended in the void, clinging to existence in a metal cage.

Harry hated it here more than any life he could remember. More than being a kid while all his friends were adults. More than the blood-soaked trenches of the Great War. More than the radiation shelters during the final days before the bombs fell. More than that stupid mountain.

Because here, trapped in this floating prison, there was no escape from the memories.

The human mind wasn't designed to hold the experiences of multiple lifetimes. Even wizards, with their extended lives and enhanced mental capacities, weren't meant to carry the weight of centuries. Each morning was the same brutal process—waking to the crushing pressure of too many memories, too many identities, all fighting for space in a single consciousness.

His fingers twitched involuntarily, reaching for something that wasn't there. It had been only a few hundred years ago—barely a blink in his long existence—when the solution had finally been created.

But now, in space, it was beyond his reach.

Harry could have attempted to use the Summoning Charm. Somewhere on Earth, he knew the device would respond, but if tried to summon it from Earth to the Ark it would burn up in Earth's atmosphere, and even if by some miracle it survived, the sealed environment of the station would deny it entry.

He didn't want to risk losing it forever, so he would tough this life out and hopefully be reborn on Earth again in his next life.

The cell's lighting brightened gradually, simulating dawn in a place that never saw the sun. Harry continued to lie motionless, listening to the quickening pace of activity in the corridor outside. The rhythm of the Ark coming awake was familiar after months of imprisonment—the distant voices of guards changing shifts, the mechanical whir of doors opening and closing, the hollow echo of footsteps on metal flooring.

Harry pressed his palms against his temples, trying to quiet the voices inside his head. Hermione's tearful goodbye during his third life. The wife and children he'd had and watched die. The horrors of war as a Royal Marine commando, the blood, the loss, and the comrades he couldn't save. The lonely death he faced being bled out in that bloody mountain. Fragments of lives lived and lost, all clamoring for attention.

The buzzer sounded, the harsh electronic tone signaling morning on the Ark's artificial schedule. Harry ignored it, keeping his eyes fixed on the ceiling, counting the rivets in the metal panel for the hundredth time until he heard a commotion in the hallway. Raised voices. The sound of boots on metal.

His cell door slid open, and Harry knew it was finally time for him to die.

Again.

He turned his head and saw the guard's boots first. Black and polished. He braced for the rush of fear, the flood of desperate panic that always came no matter how many times he died. But as he rose up onto his elbow, peeling his shirt from his thin sweat-soaked cot, all he felt was relief.

Harry yawned, enjoying how it wiped the smirks off the two guard's faces. They probably were expecting him to be scared. He'd been transferred to solitary after assaulting a guard, but for Harry, there was no such thing as solitary. He heard voices everywhere. They called to him from the corners of his dark cell. They filled the silence between his heartbeats. They screamed from the deepest recesses of his mind.

It wasn't death he craved, he wasn't suicidal or anything like that, but if that was the only way off the Ark, Harry was prepared to die.

He just hoped he was born on Earth again in his next life.

The guard cleared her throat as she shifted her weight from side to side. "Prisoner number 457, please stand." She was younger than Harry'd expected, and her uniform hung loosely from her lanky frame, betraying her status as a recent recruit. A few months of military rations weren't enough to banish the general malnutrition that haunted the Ark's poorer stations.

Harry took a deep breath and rose to his feet.

"Hold out your hands," the guard said, pulling a pair of metal restraints from the pocket of her blue uniform.

Harry shuddered as her skin brushed against his. He hadn't seen another person since they'd brought him to the new cell, let alone touched one.

"Just sit on the bed. The doctor's on his way."

"Doctor? For what?" Harry asked. If a doctor was coming, did that mean that he wasn't getting floated. It shouldn't have come as a surprise. According to Ark law, adults were executed immediately upon conviction, and minors were confined until they turned eighteen and then given one final chance to make their case. But lately, people were being executed within hours of their retrial for crimes that, a few years ago, would have been pardoned.

The guard spoke without meeting his eyes. "I need you to sit down."

Harry took a few short steps back and sat down on the edge of his narrow bed. Although he knew that solitary warped your perception of time, it was hard to believe he had been here—alone—for almost six months.

A figure appeared in the door and a tall, slender woman stepped into the cell. Although her shoulder-length brown hair partially obscured the pin on the collar of her lab coat, Harry didn't need the insignia to recognize her as the Council's chief medical advisor. Like most other people on the Ark, he'd seen Abby Griffin a few times in the medical station.

"Hello, Harry," she said pleasantly, as if she were greeting him in the hospital dining room instead of a detention cell. "How are you?"

"Better than I'll be in a few minutes, I imagine."

Dr. Griffin winced at the dark humor and turned to the guard. "Could you undo the cuffs and give us a moment, please?"

The guard shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not supposed to leave him unattended."

"You can wait right outside the door," Dr. Griffin said with exaggerated patience. "He's an unarmed 17-year-old. I think I'll be able to keep things under control."

The guard avoided Harry's eyes as she removed the handcuffs. She gave Dr. Griffin a curt nod and stepped outside.

"You mean I'm an unarmed eighteen-year-old," Harry said, giving the doctor a smile. "Or is the Ark lowering its execution age?"

He had assumed because of the violent nature of his crime that would be the case. There were rumors of other prisoners being murderers, but Harry didn't believe that. With how strict the Ark was on rationing, well, literally everything, he doubted the council would let something as insignificant as age stop them from floating a killer instead of wasting years of supplies keeping them locked up just to float them the moment they turned 18.

"You're still seventeen, Harry," Dr. Griffin said in the calm, slow manner she usually reserved for patients. "You've only been in solitary for three months. And no, the Ark isn't changing the law."

"Then what are you doing here?" Harry asked, unable to quell the annoyance creeping into his voice. "The law says you have to wait until I'm eighteen."

Dr. Griffin closed her eyes as if Harry's words had transformed from sounds into something visible. Something grotesque. "I'm not here to kill you," she said quietly. She opened her eyes and then gestured to the stool at the foot of Harry's bed. "May I?"

Harry shrugged and Dr. Griffin walked forward and sat down so she was facing him.

"Can I see your arm, please?"

Harry held out his arm. Dr. Griffin reached into her coat pocket and produced a cloth that smelled of antiseptic.

"Don't worry. This isn't going to hurt."

"You know, people on death row used to get a last meal," Harry said as she swept it along the inside of his arm.

Dr. Griffin shook her head. "The Ark doesn't have the rations for that."

Harry grinned. "Well, I was thinking my last meal could be you, Dr. Griffin. Wouldn't cost the Ark a thing."

Dr. Griffin's hand froze mid-swipe. Her eyes widened, and a deep crimson flush spread across her face, from her neck to her hairline. The look of scandalized shock was so complete, so genuine, that Harry couldn't help but laugh. It felt good—real laughter after months of nothing but the echoing voices in his head.

"You're a child," she finally sputtered, her professional composure cracking for the first time since she'd entered his cell.

Harry shrugged, the smile never leaving his face. "Old enough to die, old enough to fuck."

The color drained from Dr. Griffin's face as quickly as it had appeared. Her shoulders slumped slightly, and Harry could see something behind her eyes shift.

"I told you, I'm not here to kill you."'

Harry felt a prick on the inside of his wrist. He looked down and saw a metal bracelet clasped to his arm. He ran her finger along it, wincing as what felt like a dozen tiny needles pressed into his skin.

"What is this?" he asked pulling away from the doctor to lift his hand in the air, testing the weight of the device.

"It's a vital transponder," Dr. Griffin explained. "It will track your breathing and blood composition and gather all sorts of useful information."

"Yoosful... infor-mation f'r wha?" Harry asked, his words unexpectedly running together. He blinked slowly, surprised at how his tongue suddenly felt uncooperative.

Harry looked down at the bracelet, at the tiny punctures in his skin where the needles had pressed in. They're drugging me. Why would they need to sedate me to go to Earth? he wondered, his eyelids growing heavy.

Dr. Griffin stood as the guards came back into the cell. "We're clearing out the detention center today," she paused, seeming to choose her next words carefully. "You're going to Earth, Harry."