Of Harry and Harry

Prologue – The Laws of Magic

Thou shalt not kill by use of magic.

“Avada Kedavra!”

Thou shalt not transform others.

“What was left when Potter and Voldemort were done with each other could no longer be called human. It… it was awful. Awful and terrifying and all kinds of insane.”

“What did you do?”

“What did any of us do? We ran. We ran screaming.”

Thou shalt not invade the mind of another.

“Legilimens!”

Thou shalt not enthral another.

“Imperio!”

Thou shalt not reach beyond the borders of life.

“What the Dark Lord has done is an abomination. The dead have risen – the spirit world is in turmoil and the Nevernever crumbles. God! He made himself fucking immortal by killing the innocent.”

“Yes… but what Harry Potter has done is far worse.”

Thou shalt not swim against the Currents of Time.

“But if I could go back!”

“There is no going back… we were damned in the past and we’re damned now. All that’s left is forward. You have to know this.”

Thou shalt not seek beyond the Outer Gates.

“…They were both guilty of this, in the end, the Dark Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter. They dared and lost – and so we all lost. In the end it took the strength of another Harry, of Wizard Dresden, to destroy them both.”

*~*~*~*

Harry traced his fingers down her naked back, her soft skin the colour of smooth cream in the moonlight. His glasses reflected the sparks of a million – a hundred million – stars beyond count. It was a quiet world, atop of the Astronomy Tower and in the early hours of the morning. He raked his nails down her sides and smiled distantly at the small, pleased moan she made beneath him.

“Do that again...” she whispered.

Her body was so warm, so human, and – as opposed to the lifetime of scars he had gathered in seventeen short years – so flawless. Harry moved his hands down to her hips and then ran them fast back up her sides until he cupped the sides of her breasts. She shivered in the best way.

“I needed to tell you something, but it doesn’t seem important anymore,” Harry said. It was important, though, and devastating. “How come the sight of you naked makes everything else, even the war, seem like such a distraction?”

She laughed. “Imagine that, would you? The great Harry Potter, the Chosen One, the Dark Lord’s bane and a hero to thousands, undone by a pair of tits.”

“In my defence, they are really good tits.” Harry slipped his hands underneath her and covered two hard nipples with his palms. “Yep, I’m thinking we should get you out of these pants, too. Bit of ass does it for me, as well.”

“Really? Trying your luck, Mr. Potter?”

“As always, this could be our last night alive.”

She snorted. “Do you use that line on all the girls?”

Harry offered a sad smile – a smile with the tempered grace of tragedy. “Hey, it’s true. I’ve got all the Dark wizards from here to bloody Australia after the price on my head. Not to mention the king-high bastard of the lot, Voldemort.”

“Five hundred thousand galleons is an awful lot of gold,” she said, squirming under Harry’s touch. “Oh... stop that!”

“Never.” Harry slipped one of his hands down across her stomach, to the waistband of her jeans, and worked on the button and zip. “Angle’s all wrong...”

“What was it you wanted to tell me?”

The button couldn’t be worked upside down and one-handed. “Where’s my damn wand? I’ll charm the pants of you yet.”

“Merlin, is this all it takes to disarm Harry Potter? I guess we’re all doomed if Voldemort transfigures himself a pair of tits.”

“Shut up.”

“Make me.”

Harry did. He sat astride her on a thick woollen blanket, on the edge of the crenulated balcony overlooking the dark and silent Hogwarts grounds. This was the highest point in the castle, an outlook sealed away behind a door that was firmly locked. Confident and sure, Harry gently turned her over beneath him, his breath catching at the sight of her naked in the moonlight, gazing back at him with lips as full and red as strawberries, with eyes as dangerous as curse light.

He kissed her, tasting the stolen bottle of Dumbledore’s aged wine on her tongue. His heart raced, his blood rushed through him. He set back to work on her jeans.

“You’re hands are so cold,” she said.

Harry blinked and held back a sigh at those words. Cold? As cold as Winter, sweetheart. “It’s just the air up here.”

“Hmm... Here, let me help.” In one deft movement she had her jeans unzipped. “Honestly, Harry.”

“Thank you. Hey, you’re wearing black silk underwear?” He paused. “You planned to work your charms on me tonight, huh?”

She giggled. “I may have heard a rumour from Dumbledore that he expected you back in the castle tonight. Where did you go anyway?” Harry shrugged. “And you brought the wine and blanket, mister, no doubt expecting to get that little wand of yours polished.”

“Little?” Harry feigned offence. “It’s not the length of the wand, baby, it’s the magic in the stick.”

“Ha. Ha.” She rolled her eyes, brining her arms up to wrap around Harry’s neck. “Can you promise me something?”

“Uh-oh.”

“I’m being serious.”

“Fine. I promise I won’t come in your mouth.”

“No! You dirty...” She slapped Harry, not hard enough to sting, and then ran her slim hand back through his unruly hair. “Promise me you won’t keep too many secrets from me, okay? I know there’s a lot you can’t tell me, because of the war, but important things... things that may, that may stop you from coming back here one day. You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

The light from the heavens was not enough to hide the dark cast that fell over Harry’s face for just a moment, just for a fraction of a heartbeat. Thoughts rushed through his mind, thoughts of endless blizzards and a man crucified in ice. A man he had killed. Why do the good feelings have to cost so much? There was madness in those thoughts, of that he was sure.

But did it matter anymore? He had made his choice, defied Dumbledore and Voldemort both, and all that mattered was he had found a way to end it. To destroy all the Horcruxes and the devil himself in one last attack.

“I promise,” said Harry, because it was the right thing to say.

“Good. Mind your glasses.” She reached down and pulled his shirt off over his head. “Are you going to finish taking my pants off or what?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And while you’re down there, Harry, put that cheeky tongue of yours to work.”

Harry grinned and the next hour was spent in a blur of raw passion, of youth on fire. The stars and the moon gazed down upon Hogwarts with perfect indifference, as the two atop the castle’s highest point took a few moments to become one. It was hard, it was fiercely fast and achingly slow, as hard as it was soft... and then it was over. As all good things must come to some sort of end, so did Harry.

Afterwards, she lay in his arms and Harry held her close against him with his cold hands. There was always silence after good sex, a comfortable kind of silence, as passions relaxed – relented – and the feeling of being content spread like the last of the summer roses.

“Not a bad effort, really,” she said, smirking. “Yeah I’ll keep you around a bit longer.”

“I’m going away again tomorrow. Not for long.”

She sighed. “Is that what you wanted to tell me? I could’ve guessed as much from the way you and Dumbledore were in cahoots over dinner. You going to tell me where?”

“Nowhere I can’t come back from.” Harry shrugged and ran his fingers in slow circles around her belly button. “See about a silver cup. And that wasn’t what I wanted to tell you.”

“Oh?”

Harry paused and took a deep breath. Here goes... “I’ve fallen in love with you, Daphne.”

Daphne tensed and then shifted in his arms. Harry loosened his grip so she could sit up, a curtain of her messed-up blonde hair falling down over her face, as she regarded him. It would’ve been easier fighting an army of Dark wizards than trying to read the look on her face.

“Do you mean that?” she asked.

“No truer words ever spoken.” Harry brushed her hair back behind her shoulder, framing her face in the half-light of the moon. “We’ve had a helluva two years together, you know. Kept me going ever since that slaughter in the Department of Mysteries.” When I ended up in the Nevernever for the first time... 

Daphne looked troubled. No, worse, she looked close to tears. Tears? Not in all the time he had known her had Harry ever thought words, even those words, could make Daphne Greengrass cry.

“Why did you say that?” she asked. A war of emotion rippled across her face. “You would never have said that before... before when you knew you were coming back.” Now she looked angry – furious. “You promised to tell me, so tell me! What’s got you loving me all of a sudden, Harry? What have you done? What... what are you going to do?”

“End it,” Harry said. As simple as that. As if he wasn’t talking about the darkest war in the history of the Wizarding World. As if... as if he had nine lives to waste and a death wish. “I’m going to end it.”

Daphne took a moment. “...How?” It was the last thing she wanted to ask.

Harry turned away from her and looked out over the side of the tower, out over the Forbidden Forest, silhouetted against the night. He looked further than that, at futures uncertain and battles yet to come. Daphne shivered in spite of herself. She knew that look in Harry’s eyes well, and it scared her half to death. It was a look that could face down a Dark Lord, that could stare true evil in the eye and laugh. A look that could rival the greatest wizards of the age, even Dumbledore.

It was the look of a man not afraid to die.

Harry shook his head and his eyes found Daphne’s again. “I can’t say, sweetheart. You understand.”

“Does Dumbledore know?”

Harry laughed. “Merlin, no! He suspects quite a bit, and in his own way he’s pretty close to the truth.” Too close? No.... “In other ways he has no idea what’s to come. None of them will see it coming. That’s why it’s going to work, and afterwards we can disappear together for a year... or more... somewhere warm, somewhere away from magic.”

“You terrify me, sometimes, Harry,” Daphne said, shaking her head. “You must know that.”

Harry knew it. He scared himself, sometimes, and more than enough times for him to question his own sanity. The price he had paid and the power he had gained recently were testament enough to that.

Was there time to go back? he wondered. Time to undo the contract he had made. It was all good and well to promise Daphne the world once he fought and destroyed Voldemort, but would he have any freedom beyond that impossible task? He had dabbled with magic beyond anything he understood, or could understand, in a world that was alien and with creatures that could look human but were something... else.

“Harry.”

“Yes?” He knew what was coming, and dear Merlin, but the words could break him, as well.

“I love you, too, Harry Potter.”

Why did that feel so much like saying goodbye?

*~*~*~*