Disclaimer: This hurts more than you know…

A/N: Make mine a scotch and coke – and hold the coke. Hello, readers. I am back from whatever the hell it is I do when I’m not writing this story. Rest assured it is cool and there are many beautiful women, every one of them out of my league, that suffocate me with kindness and smiles of such stunning beauty—

This chapter would be longer, but it ends on an important point that no manner of scotch or time (Time?) can erase, God help me.

*~*~*~*

Harry Potter and the Heartlands of Time

Chapter Three – Scriptures Of A Distracted Mind

To die by your side… Well, the pleasure, the privilege
is mine.

~The Smiths

“You should get a healing draught for that cough, Harry,” Hermione said, as she let herself out onto the balcony of my stolen hotel suite. The glass door slid closed behind her and she hugged her arms to her chest, gazing out over the noise of New York City.

Ron and I watched her in silence for a moment, seated on the fine leather sofa and sipping scotch from crystal glasses. Well, I was sipping scotch. Ron was gripping his glass hard enough to turn his knuckles white.

All in all, my revelations at dinner had gone over remarkably well. My two friends hadn’t abandoned me – at least, not yet.

“She’s trying to convince herself she can deal with this,” I said to myself as much to Ron. “That rationality will out, and that the world still bears even a passing resemblance to a reality that matters.”

Ron opened and closed his mouth a few times, searched for words, and settled on a sigh.

“But you cannot rationalise the irrational, not in this or any world, and it is all irrational. Every second. Even without magic.” I grinned. “That sounded clever, but it wasn’t, not really… What I’m trying to say is that Hermione will deal with this her own way, and you’ll need to help her, Ron. She needs you right now more than she’ll ever need a thousand years of fucked-up Harry Potter.”

“I’m not really dealing with this, either, mate. You’ve watched me die… how many times?”

I took another sip of liquid gold. The fire soothed the raw, grating mess in the back of my throat. “You’re alive, Ron, and so is Hermione out there. Don’t dwell on pasts you can’t possibly remember – ever. They didn’t happen for you, they never really happened at all, if you look at time… Time… from a particular angle.”

“But you remember, Harry.”

“Aye, I do. More so than ever before.”

Ron shuddered. “I…”

“What?”

He shook his head and stood up. “I can’t look you in the eye, Harry. It’s terrifying… you’re terrifying.”

I nodded. “Yes, yes I am.” A millennium of insane time travel will do that. “And in the days to come, I’m going to ask a lot of you two – more than you ever thought you’d give to this war, and that’s saying something, considering how many times you’ve died for it. Terrifying… is merely the opening act.”

*~*~*~*

Rolling rivers of truth aside, could there have been a better way?

*~*~*~*

I returned Ron and Hermione to Hogwarts via portkey and left them to their thoughts and nightmares alone. After all the revelations, the truth of my sordid past, they needed time to absorb, to decide whether or not I was still worth following.

Time usually willed out, and they would follow me. I would use them up until they were spent. If this last life had to mean something, it would mean the death of my only true friendships – a price I would gladly pay – to see Voldemort in the ground.

“Ethan Rafe,” Mike the bartender said, buried in the depths of old London town. “How’s that bottle of Glenfiddich 50 treating you?”

“Afternoon, boss,” I said, pulling a stool up to the bar of the Sherlock Holmes on Northumberland Street. “We drank that bottle dry, I’m afraid. You have another?”

“You gonna lay another ten-thousand quid on my bar?” Mike was a gruff man, shaven head and simple white shirt over a toned and muscular form. Magic or not, he had a look about him that said he'd kicked a lot of kids out of pubs in his time.

“I’m short of funds, at the moment, unfortunately, and have had to resort to thievery.”

“What happened?”

I shrugged and cast my gaze along the various photos and portraits of Baker Street gracing the walls of the establishment. It was late afternoon, and there were only a handful of people in the bar. I missed Ron and Hermione, and wished I could have brought them here. To the scent of old beer and dust, to the slow static of the radio, and the atmosphere of time gone by, and time yet to happen…

“Shipwreck, would you believe.”

“I wouldn’t. Consider this one on the house then,” Mike said, and drew me a frosty pint of Stella Artois. 

“You’re a great man, Mike.”

The bartender nodded and laughed. Then he frowned. “Weren’t you missing half the fingers on that hand last time you were in here?”

He was staring at the black leather glove hiding my mythril construct. I had indeed only had half a hand the last time I’d visited this pub. Voldemort had severed the remains at the wrist not half an hour later. Half and half, heh.

“It’s a very convincing prosthesis.” Which was the truth, for a change. “Can I ask your advice on something?”

“Can’t promise it’ll help.”

“Even so…” Her name was Tessa. I was conflicted, and delaying doing something quite difficult. Fleur, sweet Fleur Delacour. The mother of my child. “Do you have kids, Mike?”

“A son. He turned seven on the day of the storm that set half the damn city on fire.”

Storms of bone and maelstroms of dark magic, I thought. My fault. Always my fault. Shouldn’t try and do the right thing so damn often… “I’m expecting my first in a few months… and I’m terrified.”

Mike nodded and reached above his head. He dropped a bottle of Tomatin 19 onto the bar and poured two neat glasses of the nectar of the gods. “This,” he said, “is the best scotch in the world. Congratulations, Ethan.”

I felt a shiver run through me as I accepted the glass and clinked it against Mike’s. “Simply put, Mike… how do I not fuck this up?”

He shrugged. “Well, you’re worried, so that’s a good sign. Every expectant father should be. And you will fuck up, mate, we all do.”

And wasn’t the last thousand years a testament enough to that? The last great testament to anything, given the final stakes of the game.

“You’re not married, are you?” Mike asked.

“No, but I love her.” And you burned for that love, barkeep, you and your son and the whole wide world. You all burned.

“Well, if you want advice, Ethan, then I advise you to sort that out before anything else. Kid needs a father, but I reckon you’re only here because you’re not on speaking terms with the mother, yes?”

“We had a falling out…” I shook my head. “She saw a very dark, very ugly side of me.”

The Wastelands of Time. I’ll never forgive myself for that – never. A regret buried so deep in the bone that to extract it would kill me. Just one amongst enough to fill a lifetime. Or a thousand of them.

“I don’t know where to go from here,” I said. “What my next move should be. What matters most…” I laughed, but there was very little humour in it. “Honestly, I think I’m just procrastinating. I’ve a thousand things that need doing, that need to be done, and none of them seem important anymore… which is insane. Insane, given how little time I have left.”

“You’ve lost me there, mate.”

“Is family more important than saving the world, Mike?”

*~*~*~*

I can almost forgive myself for making her love a monster. Almost.

*~*~*~*

Regrets are forever.

How many regrets can a person have?

One? Two? A few?

Enough to fill a lifetime?

Regrets are forever.

Wounds heal, bones mend, regrets are forever – regrets don't heal, they whisper and dig deep into our souls.

The sun was bright overhead. I used it to judge the time at around two, maybe closer to three, in the afternoon. More and more I was avoiding the accurate count of time in my head. It felt like cheating, and in these final days why track something that I now had very little control over?

I was kneeling in spongy grass within a luscious meadow in the south of France, surrounded by dandelions, heath, lavender and juniper. A cool breeze caught the loose dandelion bulbs on the air, fresh and light with the natural scent of summer’s end. The whole scene was warm and inviting.

I moved on, rising over a crest in the meadow until my destination came into view.

I left the fields of flowers and struck upon a country road that would take me all the way to the town of Carcassonne, if I had a mind to follow it. I didn't. I had a mind towards the large manor house, coated in creeping vines, just a stone's throw away.

Fleur's garden path was dusty limestone, and I felt the gentle pull of the wards surrounding the property as I stepped into the garden. Wards I’d designed to protect her against all save the worst of my enemies, given her current condition and my responsibility. Within the garden were statues and small fountains complete with ornamental birdhouses, enclosed in a small, full hedge that kept the massive oak trees on the edge of the land at bay.

It had only been weeks for me, three, since I’d fought a demonic bone-man unleashed by Chronos in this garden. For Fleur, four months had past in the dead city of Atlantis.

Four months a tiny little life had been growing inside her.

God, that was a terrifying thought.

I approached the large ornate mahogany door and grasped the brass knocker… then paused…

Turning from the manor door, I walked along the side of the house and under the hanging eaves of old oak trees, with trunks as thick as the towers of Hogwarts, and quietly opened and closed a heavy cast-iron gate that swung silently on well-oiled hinges.

Fleur's backyard was basically an extension of the vibrant meadowlands that surrounded the whole house for miles around. Thick wavy grass had been cut into a large oval lawn, complete with various statues of men and women, of animals, with a flare for avian creatures. There was a large swimming pool, the water sparkling and blue, and a fountain in the centre propelling streams of foamy spray high into the air. A chair-swing sat on the decking, looking out to the west and what would probably almost always be an excellent sunset.

In the heart of the garden, lying upon a picnic blanket, her long blonde hair cascading over her shoulder and her hands cradling her lower stomach, was Fleur Delacour.

I stepped out from under the eaves of the trees and into the warm sun. The last time I’d seen Fleur was two days ago, at that farce of an inquisition held deep beneath the Ministry. We had said only a few words to one another, she out of fear, and I out of blind anger at what they had put her through.

To die by your side… I thought.

“Hello there, Fleur.”

As if expecting me, Fleur opened her eyes and sighed. A mirror of the last time we had met here, three weeks for me and four months for her, she whispered, “My, my, ‘Arry Potter himself. He strolls into my garden as if from a fairytale – every young girls dream, no?”

Then she smiled… or she had the last time. There were tears, now, instead. Too much Time had fallen between us for something as honest as a smile.

I sat down on the grass, near the edge of her blanket, fearing to get too close less she run screaming, and let her cry. What could I say? What could I ever say? Ron and Hermione knew the truth of my existence now. They knew it and were afraid. Fleur… sweet Fleur… had seen it.

Crystal rose petals, the hands of the Infernal Clock, had forced her mind across a cosmos of forgotten time, across the expanse of my guilt and regret, and given her a glimpse of eternity. For a wonder, she still appeared sane.

I hadn’t remained sane, not by a long shot, how had she?

Perhaps the small bump, the curve of life, straining just a touch against her blouse had something to do with it.

“Do you know what it’s like to see the darkness inside someone, ‘Arry?” Fleur whispered.

“Yes,” I replied without hesitation. “I’m part-Voldemort.”

Fleur shivered. Her sun-kissed, near-glistening skin lost some of its vibrant colour. “Yes, I saw that…” She sat up and, pausing only for a moment, leaned across the blanket and brushed my dark fringe aside. Her fingers were cool against the constant, burning pain in my infamous scar. “There is a horcrux here, yes?”

“Oui.”

Fleur sighed and folded her legs under herself, sitting up across from me, her knees touching mine and settled her hands in her lap. “I am pregnant, ‘Arry. The baby is yours, from our night in Atlantis.”

I nodded. There are no nights in Atlantis. “I’m starting a revolution tomorrow. Going to topple governments and madmen alike. I would very much like for you to be a part of that.”

I expected her to slap me. To curl her tiny hand into a fist and knock the teeth from my mouth. Or to reach for her wand and curse me with something nasty, something mean and well deserved. I wanted her to do that, to punish me and cast me away… so I could not hurt her anymore.

Fleur hugged me. Fleur hugged me and I felt the curve of her pregnant belly pressed against my fine suit, her breasts against my chest… a knife through my heart.

“I’m afraid I ‘ave more important things to do.” She took my hand, my real hand and not the mythril monstrosity, and placed it under her blouse on the bare skin of her stomach. “And if you were anyone else, ‘Arry Potter… you would as well.”

*~*~*~*

Try and break me.

*~*~*~*

“There are no words to excuse what you had to see, Fleur,” I said. “But for the very little its worth, I am so truly sorry.”

Fleur closed her eyes for a long moment, absorbing the sun and gently removing my hand from her baby bump. “This garden is even more beautiful in ze winter,” she said. “I love snow.” And then, in the same breath, “Tessa was a lovely girl, ‘Arry. I am so truly sorry that you ‘ad to lose what you made with her.”

“God, you saw it all, didn’t you?”

She nodded, her eyes threatened tears again, but remained resolute against the sheer enormity of my past crimes. “You loved me.”

“I watched you die to end a war,” I said. “Who wouldn’t fall in love with that?”

“And you ‘ave a lot of work to do, ‘Arry. Please do not waste what leetle time you ‘ave in my garden.”

I think, even at my best, I exist in a constant state of abhorrent and dangerous self-delusion. Delusion that everything is going to work out for the best one day… and delusion that I have ever made a godforsaken difference. To wander down these paths toward false truths threatened to bring my sanity, or lack thereof, into clarity.

But I couldn’t afford to die just yet. Not with the Clock still demanding a reset. I would be ground to dust and less than dust, and the world would crumble with me.

“Who is Chronos, ‘Arry?”

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

“And Grace was… not human, oui?”

I nodded. “Both she and Chronos claim to be gods – of time and chaos. As such, you can see why they have taken an interest in me. We’re of a kind, I guess. As ugly as it is.”

Fleur shivered. “But who are they? Where do they come from?”

I answered her question with another. “Have you ever heard of the Twilit Diamond?”

“You searched for such a thing in a few of your… lives.” Her eyes grew distant, gaining a measure of how my own looked – far away and insane. She was traversing the lonely wastelands of time. “Myth, fairytale. ‘Arry, you cannot afford to chase false hope this time.”

“I’m not. Revolution tomorrow, remember.”

*~*~*~*

Or pizza.

*~*~*~*

From Fleur’s home, I disapparated across the face of the world, through international ward platforms and anti-apparation curtains, and reappeared off the north-west coast of England, just south of where Blackpool… used to be.

Atlantis, the city of myth and fairytale, stood encased inside a shimmering green dome of my own making. The entire city, some several miles across, shining and new, half submerged in the sea and half on land… sealed away inside an impenetrable bubble of magic.

It was late in the afternoon, edging toward twilight, as I inspected the dome’s integrity, as well as the time-dilation field I’d placed over the town to ensure none of the ancient magical folk that had returned with the city, that had been pulled ten-thousand years across time, destroyed my shield from within.

For every second that past inside the dome, months and years would pass out here in the real world. It gave me time to deal with this problem. Although I hadn’t a clue what I was going to do with the entire city…

I considered myself the Last Lord of Atlantis. The final wizard to unlock its secrets and then, when the time came, send it hurtling into the abyss deep within the Fae and Forget. I had done that not three weeks ago. But now…

Sand crunched beneath my fine leather shoes as I approached the edge of the great dome, the swash of the sea curling in and out and against the barrier encasing the city. No one and nothing could pass through the dome. And yet…

And yet.

There was something growing along the perimeter, snared along the edge of the vast magical shield. Something that didn’t belong to this world.

I knelt down on my haunches, rubbing a tired hand across my stubbly jaw and muttering a few choice curses. Atlantean wildflowers, a deep bruised purple and oozing a scent akin to white roses, had burst up through the sand and were crawling up the dome.

“Well, fuck me sideways,” I said, for lack of anything better to say.

The Ministry was doing all it could to keep the Muggles away from Atlantis, but they didn’t even know it was Atlantis. Atlantis was a myth, after all. A fairytale utopia. Their efforts amounted to the widest spread Muggle-repelling charms in history, a five-mile radius all around what used to be Blackpool. Memory charms, controlling the media, and Auror patrols. But they could only hide it for so long. Thousands of Muggles had been crushed to death here, after all.

Another sea of blood on your hands, Harry, my broken mind tittered away.

And now this. Foreign flowers – foreign magical flowers, and who knew what else, growing out from under the city. They stretched as far as I could see away down into the water on my left and over the countryside on my right. Just a thin strip, but miles long.

Oh what to do, what to do?

Burn it, the madness whispered. Burn it all. But there are thousands, tens of thousands, of Atlanteans under the dome. So? They died ten-thousand years ago, Harry. You know that best of all.

Still, they live now.

They shouldn’t. You can’t stop Voldemort with the power he has gained from this city. Would you unleash that power a thousand-fold? You’ve only got one more chance to set all to right.

Fleur, Tonks… and Tessa. They would hate me for it. That alone should make it wrong.

Aye, it is wrong, but necessary.

There’s another way. I’ll think of another way.

You’ll circle closer to the flame until you have no choice but to annihilate—

“I won’t be responsible for another genocide,” I said simply, and that silenced the voice, for a time.

“Well, that’s good to hear.”

I spun on the spot, wand in hand, and… relaxed.

“You owe me twelve galleons, Harry,” Kingsley Shacklebolt said. “And I’m supposed to arrest you on sight.”

“Is that so?” I nodded. Twelve galleons for the wand I’d stolen in London. “How many charges am I up to now? I’ve been averaging ten or twelve new ones a day, by my humble reckoning.”

“Honestly, I’ve lost count. Are you going to come quietly?”

“Eh… no, nope.”

Kingsley shrugged and put his wand away. “Dumbledore said to help you however I could. What are you doing here, son?”

“Admiring the roses. The unnatural, deadly, deadly roses. Spread the word that these flowers are pure poison, would you? Wouldn’t want any Aurors picking them and dying.”

The tall Auror nodded and came up alongside me, giving me careful half-looks out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t trust me, not one bit, which was wise. I didn’t trust myself most of the time.

“We’ve been burning them,” he said. “But they grow back quickly. They stretch all the way around the… city.”

“Atlantis,” I said. “This is Atlantis, Kingsley.”

Kingsley was silent a moment and then let out a heavy breath in a quick gush. “Dumbledore had said… did you do this, Harry?”

“Not intentionally.” But that’s not entirely true, is it? “Yeah, this is my fault. I did this, I’ll fix it, and live with it either way…”

“What are you going to do?”

I spent a moment kicking the sand from my shoes and buttoning up two of three buttons on my jacket, trying to look reasonably sane. Although against the backdrop of Atlantis, and with a mythril hand shining freely in the fading light… should’ve kept the glove on.

“Voldemort,” I said, choosing my words carefully, “is going to fuck shit up like you would not believe.” Not too carefully. “In a few months the Ministry will be his. He could take it now, but it’s not at the top of his to-do list.”

Kingsley frowned and raised his hand to his brow, no doubt nursing a headache. It was the high levels of magic running rampant through my magnificent emerald-green shield causing that. “What is at the top of his list?”

I chuckled and took a small bow.

“I see…”

“Fear not, he won’t kill me that easily. But the Ministry will fall, one way or another, then the Muggle government as it becomes impossible to hide the war. Inside a year, the United Kingdom will be lawless, save for a cruel magical government under Dark Lord Dickhead’s control.” I whistled low under my breath. “The death toll will rise and keep rising.”

“You know this?”

“I’ve seen it,” I said. “Call it prophecy, Kingsley. You Order lot put stock in those, don’t you?”

“I’m not saying I believe you, Harry, but what can we do? What are you going to do?”

“Fight as if the whole wide world was at stake.” I laughed… and laughed and laughed and laughed…

And then disapparated.

*~*~*~*

Pretty deep abyss you got there, mate. I’d hate to see what’s at the bottom of it.

*~*~*~*

I slept three hours that night. A personal record, and yet nothing to be proud of, I guess.

Waking up at midnight and my first thought isn’t of the war, of the time travel or even of the hideous monstrosity out for my blood, Lord Voldemort.

I think of Tessa. Only of Tessa, and if that isn’t love then I don’t…

Of her smile, her infectious laughter and clever mind. Her kindness and beauty. I was in love with someone I could not have. Not for the usual reasons, I suppose, such as her having a boyfriend, but it hurt just the same.

It hurt enough to remind me I wasn’t just the Sleeping God, as powers beyond time and space decreed, but still very much human. It hurt. How do you give up everything you want?

I’ve never been one for giving up.

I can’t remember where I heard it, but trying to forget someone you love is like trying to remember someone you never met.

Impossible.

Her name was Tessa. She had forgotten about me, and that was a lonely thought. Can’t really blame her though, given the breadth of time between us…

And to think of Fleur in all of this. Sweet, precious Fleur Delacour. The mother of my child.

Can you love two people, Harry? whispered the raw insanity in the back of my mind.

“Yes,” I said aloud into the dark of my hotel suite, “but never fairly.”

I sat up in bed, coughing that terrible cough, and reached across to the bedside table and the half-glass of liquid gold resting atop of it. The scotch soothed the burn in my throat and gave me a moment’s respite from thinking of Tessa. God, there was more of her in my head than fucking Voldemort—

I tilted my head and frowned, sniffing the air. Something was amiss, something was out of place. Oh, of course…

Through the darkness and the dim lights of New York City outside my suite, a glow of deep red light fell across the room, bathing the darkness in fetid crimson colour. The colour of burning.

“Ah hell,” I muttered, as two roiling spheres of raw crimson fire slammed into the warded plate glass, glass I had charmed to be unbreakable, of the windows and burst through as if it were mere paper.

Shards of unbreakable glass became deadly missiles and fire as hot as the sun flooded my hotel room.

*~*~*~*

Tessa loves this world, you selfish asshole. Tessa. She sees hope where you see fire.

Be happy for her…

*~*~*~*

A/N: Now, the cliff-hanger here isn’t as important as the paragraphs that precede it. Tessa is important, and real, and lovely. I think about her every minute of the day.

I’m sure you have your own Tessa. I’m sure it hurts.

- Joe