A/N: Here we go, folks. Next chappie – and the plot thickens. This is Part One of the Road to Atlantis – by the end, Part Eight – Harry should be there…

We’ve cracked three hundred reviews! Hooray! Thank you to all who have reviewed! Hoping to hear from you again. Special thanks to the DLP crew for scanning this chapter pre-posting for any errors. Awesome stuff.

~joe

*~*~*~*

Harry Potter and the Wastelands of Time

Chapter 10 – Dear Atlantis

Part One – The Gambler

On a warm summers evenin’, on a train bound for nowhere,
I met up with the Gambler - we were both too tired to sleep.
So we took our turns a’starin’ out the window at the darkness
Til boredom overtook us, and he began to speak…

--Kenny Rogers 

A blazing scream of thunder punctuated my words, cutting my laughter short. The very sky vociferated its defiance against me, as the three bolts of untamed lightning gouged the earth and cast back the darkness under a pall of electric-blue light.

“Bone-Men,” I heard Fleur whisper, grasping my arm hard enough to stop the circulation. “Merde, surely not…”

“Can’t you smell it?” I asked. We were both soaked through by the lashings of rain. If not for the lightning, we wouldn’t have been able to see a damn thing. “The sulphur? Can’t you feel it? In the lightning? Up there?” I threw my arm up, my wand pointed towards the heavens. “Something wicked this way comes…”

“I… I can smell eet.” Fleur looked at me as if I were someone she no longer recognised. As if she were holding onto a stranger. I knew the look on her face better than most – it was fear. Fear for herself, her own life, and fear for me, fear of me. “’Arry, I’m scared.”

And yet she hadn’t turned to flee – no, not Fleur. This was a woman who could, if the need called for it, battle dragons. A Champion by any measure, goblet of fire or no. And that gosh-darn summer dress, wet against her gorgeous body, made me feel a whole lot of things – scared wasn’t amongst those feelings.

“Me too,” I lied. Scared? I was fucking excited. This was something new – the lightning, anyway. That sulphuric stink was all too familiar. “Scared is okay. Don’t worry, I got this.” Behind Fleur, standing in the light of the doorway, were her friends – Emilie, Grace, Matthieu, Alain, and pretty-boy Sébastien – all of them clutching wands.

Hedwig screeched in my ear and reared backwards on my shoulder, her wing flapping against the side of my head. I snapped my neck around fast in time to see the three bolts of lightning fuse into one thick column of sizzling energy as wide as the archaic oak trees that stood silhouetted against the night, bordering the Delacour’s château.

“Fleur, what iz ‘appening? Magie noire! Get away from it!” A cry from the house that was almost lost in the howling wind.

My hand twitched around my wand. I was itching to unleash some chaotic spells, a few lances of power. Ready to shake the world. “Hey Harry, don’t let me down…” I hummed at the lightning. “And don’t you know… that it’s just you… Hey Harry, you’ll do…”

Something was riding the lightning down from the heart of the storm. A bulge in the thick column of energy a mile-high was falling – falling and falling and gaining speed. I felt Fleur tugging my arm, and I allowed myself to be pulled back into the square of light that flooded the garden from her open front door.

A blood-chilling scream broke through the wind, and the rain, and the thunder. It was, without being overly dramatic, a scream not of this world. It was the sound of a thousand cracked nails on a thousand dusty chalkboards, a million bones snapping and snapping over and over, the cry of a tortured soul writhing within bonds of pure, raw anguish. A scream that belonged to a very dark hell.

“Well…” I said, for lack of anything witty or clever to say. “Well.”

“Is eet… ‘Arry, is Voldemort doing this?”

I blinked. “You said his name – that’s good. And here I was thinking living in England had made you soft.” Fleur glared at me. “Yeah, in a way, if this is what I think it is – sulphur’s a dead giveaway – then this is Voldemort’s doing by default.”

The bulge in the lightning slammed into the ground a stone’s throw away, sending a swift tremor through the garden and almost knocking Fleur and myself from our feet. Almost on cue the rain stopped – as if some heavenly tap had been tautened tight, and an eerie silence followed the loss of the downpour. The beam of mile-high lightning remained, however, as did the low rumbling of thunder up overhead in the roiling clouds.

“Madness…” Fleur whispered. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her looking up into the sky, no doubt wondering at the abrupt halt in the freak summer storm.

My eyes were on the lightning, on the deep trough in the middle of the garden path. The high-electric-blue light was fading into something else… I took an unconscious step to the left, placing myself between Fleur and the throbbing pulse of darker light at the base of the lightning.

With the wind having died down to nothing, the stink of the sulphur grew oppressive and stagnant. I raised my free hand before my face, fruitlessly trying to waft the fiery tang away. It felt like time was up.

“Here we go…” I whispered, fighting the urge to giggle. I felt my right eye twitching a little. “Gonna be ugly,” I said. “Three galleons says it’s as ugly as sin.”

“’Arry…”

From within the lightning-soaked trench, a long and jagged arm of painfully-white bone punched through the curtain of lightning and dug five razor-sharp talons into the moist earth.

Behind Fleur and I came a joint cry of shock and surprise from her friends. I paid them no mind, as whatever had fallen from the stormy sky clawed its way out of the lightning like a heaving corpse rising from the grave. It was something monstrous, I gathered that much, as the skeletal arm became sharp points of silvery shoulder bone, and an elongated, misshapen muzzle riddled with fangs and dead flesh poked out from behind the crackling curtain of energy.

Fleur’s grip on my upper arm went limp. “Th-three galleons…” she muttered.

“Easy money.” I sighed – oh how I sighed.

What emerged from the lightning was impossible.

What emerged from the lightning was something so foreign, something so… so negative, that my first and only real thought was one of revulsion. I felt the same wave of nauseous distaste shiver through Fleur, as we beheld something that did not belong to this world. Something that belonged to elsewhere – and long ago.

Something impossible.

From the dark fires of what may as well be called Hell emerged ten-feet of white and silver bone, ancient joints spinning and cracking like the tumbling of a million dice and dead-eyes spinning in the dull yellow flame of the inferno. The Bone-Man rose to its full height and pierced the false-quiet of the night with that screech of elsewhere and long ago.

"Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate," I said, lapsing into traditional Italian. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here…

Now I knew darkness – better than most – I knew dark creatures. I knew the cruelty in the hearts of men. I knew Dementors, Werewolves, Vampires, Basilisks, and a hundred other things that could drain a soul, shred humanity, tear away flesh… yet all of these monsters belonged. They fit to the world – they were a part of life, and more often than not, death. However horrendous and needlessly cruel the dark of my world could be, it was, right at the heart of the matter, fucking necessary.

This skeletal horror didn’t belong to the world. This was pretty un-fucking-necessary. Its every movement, its very form – from the way it tilted its head to the way the bones heaved as if it were breathing – didn’t quite fit with the natural order of things. It wasn’t natural – it almost hurt the eye to behold. Calling it a fish out of water wouldn’t be too far from the mark, yet that made it sound almost harmless, and this thing was anything but harmless.

It belonged to the same scourge of nightmare that had been imprisoned deep beneath Rome in the Magnus Fontis. The demon of shadow and bone that I’d exploded alongside with Dumbledore barely a day ago, that had been guarding the hidden path to Atlantis. Creatures that had burnt the old world to so much dust and ash in the wind…

“’Arry…” Fleur’s voice was a whisper, throaty and dry. “Why is eet looking at me?”

I blinked. Fleur was right. Its fetid eyes weren’t appraising me at all – but her. I didn’t like that one bit. That nearly didn’t fit as much as the creature itself. “Stay close,” I said, and my voice was deadly serious, brooking absolutely zero-argument. “No sudden movements now…”

“What iz eet? Merde, where does eet come from?”

I didn’t honestly know where these creatures came from. My memories were hazy, always hazy – it was far too early in the summer for this – and I felt out of my depth. I knew for certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that they detested this world as much as I inherently detested theirs. It came right down to simple perception – nothing more – humanity and the Bone-Men (for lack of their true name) were inexorably repelled.

Because it was impossible. Because it did not belong.

Rain water dripped from the tip of my wand as I slowly raised my arm. The Bone-Man snarled low in a throat it didn’t possess and crouched down on its haunches, those tumbling-dice joints cracking as if rusted from disuse. Its dead yellow eyes swivelled to me, and I felt a vague concern that it sensed my intentions.

Memories of forever and of lives long ago raged through my mind. An almost incomprehensible blur of times to come, of times forgotten, that hurt. “It’s because it has no soul,” I said, all of a sudden, as a memory clicked into place.

Fleur was close enough now that I felt her breath on my neck as she spoke. “No… soul?”

I nodded, struggling to suppress the warm shiver that Fleur’s close-proximity sent through me. This was neither the time nor the place for that, curse my fucking luck. “What happens next probably won’t follow the rules as we know them, Fleur…”

“Rules?”

“Of life, of death, and all that’s in between.” Now that sounded overly dramatic. I flexed my wrist, spinning a slow circle with my wand. “I’m gonna have to pound this bastard until he breaks…”

With a roar that had broken the world a very long time ago, the Bone-Man shambled forward – fast and sure, silver talons shining with what remained of the fading blue beam of unnatural lightning – murder and chaos in its fiery eye sockets.

I charged forward, too, away from Fleur, the tip of my wand already aglow, bellowing a roar of my own, as Hedwig took flight from my shoulder.

It was game on.

“’Arry!” Fleur screamed, making a grab to stop me.

Too late. I was going head-to-head with this tall impossibility. I probably looked pretty fucking cool…

Well, maybe yes… maybe no… If I didn’t get my arse kicked.

I had the home-world advantage, at least.

*~*~*~*

The odds are stacked pretty high against me.

But you know what?

Fuck the odds.

*~*~*~*

“INCENDIOS GRATA!”

A raw blast of magical-fire exploded from the tip of my wand and struck the hide of blazing silver coating the Bone-Man. Thick tendrils of super-hot flame erupted across the demon’s skeletal chest, and knocked it back a step in its charge. Yet it recovered faster than a heartbeat, and kept on coming. I wasn’t overly worried – I’d expected its resistance to normal magic, at the very least.

These bastard things were just full of tricks.

Between Fleur’s cries and the low, deep rumbling of thunder overhead, I had time for one more quick spell and I brandished my wand up above my head and cried against the nightmare, “REDAREXIA!” and brought my wand cutting down in a vicious swipe through the air.

A crescent of dark blue light claimed the space between me and the Bone-Man, just as it came within arm’s reach. The spell struck the monster high across its shoulders with a blow of extreme force – and sent its momentum spinning off-course to the right, out of mine and, more importantly, Fleur’s path.

I wasn’t quick enough to dodge its flailing arms, however – and the thick tip of one of its razor-sharp talons caught me just above my left ear and sent me to the ground hard, snapping my glasses right off and opening up a fair gash across the side of my head. Warm blood, sticky and fresh, flowed down over my ear and down my neck. I felt sharp disapproval from beneath my shirt and bandages. Across my side, my stitched-up stab wound threatened to break open anew.

“’ARRY!” 

Fleur?

My vision was blurred without my glasses, yet I could see well enough that the Bone-Man had righted itself and was shambling towards Fleur, its gargantuan arms swinging back and forth. She was backing up quickly, her wand raised before her, a spell on the tip of her tongue.

“Verivelas!” Fleur cried.

Oh, Fleur, a confounding jinx? I had to remind myself that the gorgeous French witch had no idea what she was facing. Needless to say, the pulse of sickly yellow light that struck the demon didn’t slow it in the slightest. How could you confuse a mind that didn’t comprehend the world to start with? You couldn’t – but you could piss it off trying.

“Fleur, get down!”

The Bone-Man swung at her with a snarl of inhuman, animalistic rage, yet Fleur dropped to the ground, narrowly avoiding being torn in half. Undeterred and utterly mindless in its desire to harm, the Bone-Man raised a clawed-leg to pierce Fleur where she had fallen.

I saw red – red-raw anger – and spun about in the muddy grass, looking for all the world like I knew what I was doing.

Through necessity I had faced and destroyed armies of these creatures – creatures of the Old World wars – but never this early in my life had one been released into the world, to wreak what havoc it may. And for some reason this thing, that rode the lightning, had targeted Fleur Delacour. Trying to kill me was one thing, trying to kill her…

I saw fucking red – and in the space between one moment and the next, I channelled my rage into a cool tempered resolve, I fed my anger into hate for the Bone-Man, and spun about in the muddy grass, wand at the ready, knowing for all the world what I was doing.

“INCEDIOS GRATA!” Fire-magic was the only mainstream magic that worked with any real effect against these demons of undead-bone. With its leg raised to crush Fleur my blast of hot fire exploded with enough force to knock the Bone-Man off balance and send it tumbling into the ground.

The earth shook as it hit the grass and I set to work quickly in the precious few seconds I had. My arm seemed to act of its own accord as memories surfaced in my mind of past lives, future lives, and I plunged the tip of my wand into the soggy earth, beginning to chant and mutter under my breath words I had never honestly spoken before now.

“Vixis…btlar…gzwer…sargra…” My wand cut through the grass and dirt as if it were a hot knife through butter. I slashed down, left, back up and across, drawing a complex network of lines – a rune.

Old Magic. Magic that shook the air, that felt like something awakening after a very, very long time asleep.

Magic that little Harry Potter, fifteen-nearly-sixteen, shouldn’t have known a damn thing about.

“Ctholy…Swy…farsyp…vrat!” I was whispering words as they came to me – nonsense words, words of no meaning – words of a language so ancient that it had long since passed from the world. Beyond incantations of Latin and forgotten Latium, I spoke the language of the greatest sorcerers to have ever lived and breathed – the Atlantians.

The shallow grooves I dug into the earth suddenly flared with white liquid-light that flowed from my wand. The rune came to life and a beam of energy burst into existence, screaming through the air towards the snarling, shrieking Bone-Man.

One of Fleur’s friends – Grace – had rushed out into the garden and was helping Fleur gain her feet as the Bone-Man screeched and writhed, trying to right itself even as its weight sunk down into the sloshy, muddy ground. My blast of fiery magic had left a big black scorch mark across its chest and shoulders, and my shiny beam of energy from the rune in the dirt slammed into the creature and wrapped itself around its thin, horrifying neck – tighter than a noose.

The Bone-Man roared, the unholy sound of another world, and forgot all about Fleur as it writhed and flailed on the ground. Its pointed, misshapen muzzle of seared flesh regarded me now below two solid eyes of furious yellow flame. It had taken me seriously.

“That’s right, big fella,” I said, chuckling as I rose back to my feet. “If you can get out of this then you deserve to kick my arse.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what I had done, but the beam of heavy white energy emanating from the rune carved into the wet earth had bound the Bone-Man in place. It couldn’t do more than squirm and scream.

Which was good, because I needed a breather after that blow to the head.

My head hurt – and not only because of the new cool gash above my ear that had coated the left side of my face in blood. No, it was deeper than that. It felt as if my memories were on fire… burning and burning. I’d had to pull some pretty heavy shit to the forefront of my mind, a mind that just couldn’t handle the pressure yet, in order to inscribe and activate the old magic, the binding rune.

Fuck, but I needed a bottle of painkillers. At least I’d put my constant headache to good-freakin’-use… It took a monumental effort not to fall to my knees, and I was panting as if I’d run a marathon. I couldn’t draw a deep breath for fear of disturbing my stitches anymore than I had already during that bitch-slap to the ground.

“Are you okay, Fleur?” I stepped back away from the Bone-Man and into the flood of light around Fleur’s front door, where she and her friends were gathered – wide-eyed and incredulous.

“Am I okay?” Fleur glared at me. “You are bleeding, ‘Arry.” Her dress was still damp against her body, and her bare legs and shoulders were coated in slicks of mud and blades of grass from where she had fallen. Her eyes were narrow and alive with astonishment. She looked flawless, stunning… diamonds in the sun.

“I’m fi—”

The Bone-Man roared to wake the gods and the stained-glass panes on either side of Fleur’s front door shattered. The door itself trembled in its frame as the demon slammed its arms down into the earth, pulling and wrenching against the thick beam of energy that held it in place.

“Shut… UP!” I shouted, turning on the spot and pulling my wand across my body. The shaft of light binding the creature followed my wand movements and it hit the mud, screeching in distress and what was probably fury. I turned back to Fleur. “As I was saying, I’m fine. It’s ju—”

“Just a scratch? Shall I fetch ze needle and thread?”

I laughed.

“What iz that thing, Potter? Sébastien spat. He was sweating quite a bit, pale and shaking.

I tilted my bloodied face to meet his eyes – something in my gaze made him take a step back and rethink his tone. I could see him just fine this close without my glasses, being farsighted, and he was frightened. “Follow me, if you dare,” I said softly to the group, stifling a chuckle, and stepped back out into the garden.

I walked to just within reach of the Bone-Man, my upper lip pulled back in a feral-looking snarl, daring it to strike me down. The beam of thick lightning it had ridden down to earth had faded to almost nothing. All that remained was a thin transparent curtain in a wide crescent ditch, pooling with muddy rain water.

As expected, the Bone-Man shambled forward on the half-inch of slack it had over the noose and took a swipe at me. I calmly stepped back, just out of its reach, and five razor-sharp talons of blazing silver tore through the air where my face had been a breath ago.

“You weren’t left behind after the wars, were you?” I said, kneeling down on my haunches. “Ah, no… that sulphur is too strong, too new. You’re fresh from Hell.” I threw back my head and laughed at the clearing sky. The clouds of the freak storm were dissipating – starlight, distant and cold, peeked through the gaps in the canopy.

“’Arry…” Fleur was close by, just behind me. Emilie, Matthieu, Grace and Alain flanking her, with Sébastien hanging back near the front door.

“It’s okay,” I said, over the deep, constant growling that emanated from between the distorted jaws of the beast. “It can’t break free.”

“Why iz eet still staring at me?” Fleur said, her voice harsh. “Les yeux sont terribles…”

That was a good question. I clapped my hands together, drawing the Bone-Man’s attention back to me. “Can you speak?” I asked it, tilting my head back and forth. “Some of your kind can, some can’t… you’re just a foot soldier, aren’t you?” I paused. “Answer meI”

The Bone-Man shrieked, opening its hideous maw wide as if to swallow the whole world, and tore against the binding holding it in place. “Xéápq rá ázlí’ssui… béná’ilá… tú’lá…”

A vicious lance of pain pierced my mind and seemed to burrow deep into my skull and soul, as the demon uttered incomprehensible words from within the black gaping hole at the back of its widened throat. The words vibrated in the air, and an oppressive darkness absorbed what little light there was from the house and stars. I retched, and the salmon from earlier in the evening nearly made an encore reappearance. Behind me, Fleur and the others suffered similar reactions.

“Okay.” I gritted my teeth as the darkness was lifted. “You speak that language again and I’ll destroy you – is that clear? Do you understand me? Read my eyes, you son of a bitch.”

“What was that, ‘Arry?”

I stood up and took a few steps back to stand next to Fleur. How to explain? “Well, that was Hellspeak. Um… demonic language, tongue of the devil, pit-chatter.” I ran a hand back through my matted hair. “There’s no understanding this thing, Fleur, not really…”

“But what is eet?”

“The enemy,” I said, quite calmly and simply. “The original enemy. This thing is older than magic as we know it – that’s why your spell didn’t faze it, why no magic wielded by wizard’s today can harm it, save fire – and only just at that. It’s immune, resistant, to our young and carefree way of slinging spells. This thing was around before we tamed magic, before we civilised it.”

“So what ‘ave you done? Why does your magic hold it?”

Because my kung fu is old school. Because I’ve died countless times, before and after reaching fabled lost Atlantis, because I’ve picked up a few tricks here and there, fought these creatures before… “I bound it with ancient runes. Really ancient runes. It’ll hold for a good while…”

Fleur wasn’t convinced. “But how did you know…?”

I shrugged, playing it as innocently as I could. “These creatures aren’t new – there are records of them across the whole world… Dumbledore and I destroyed something similar to this in the catacombs beneath Rome just over a day ago – we used dragon’s fire. Dragons are creatures of the Old World. Their flame packs the right kind of punch.” I paused, weighing up how much more to say. “And about six hundred years ago, according to legend, Merlin himself encountered something much like this – bone and shadow and sulphur – in a place known as Avalon. He destroyed it, but not before it destroyed a nation-city and plunged England and most of Europe into some very dark decades.”

“Merde…” Emilie whispered.

Fleur was biting her bottom lip, and it was a long moment before anyone spoke above that constant deep grumbling from the Bone-Man. “This iz impossible,” Fleur finally said. “And you ‘ave ruined another perfectly good suit, ‘Arry.”

I grinned. “It’s just a little mud and blood – scrub right out.”

“That cut on your head needs looking at,” Alain said.

“It’ll keep.” I waved him away. “More pressing matters… Fleur, this wasn’t a coincidence – that story you read to me, about Atlantis and Shambling Bone-Men, someone else overheard you…” Something else…

For a moment Fleur looked terrified – of me, of my words and my implications – but she masked it well. Champion – anyone’s measure. “But who?”

“I have my suspicions…” Beautiful, scantily-clad in a red dress, suspicions. Suspicions that had stabbed me and kissed me in the same moment. “Question is now though, how to dispose of this chap here… any suggestions?”

There was a heavy silence until Fleur found some words, “You seem to know what you are doing…” Her tone was uncertain and hesitant – afraid.

Was it my imagination, or was she standing just a little further away from me than she had been all day?

“That I do, but teamwork is important… No matter.” I leant back down on my knees in front of the twisted pile of screeching bone and flesh and yellow fire, making sure it could see my eyes. “I can’t understand you, but can you understand me? Growl once for yes, two for no…”

The Bone-Man’s malformed muzzle snapped forward, disturbing nothing but the air before my face. A wave of pungent sulphur washed over me, but I didn’t flinch. I waited a moment for it to finish snapping…

“Whoever sent you here sent you here to die,” I continued, as if discussing the matter over dinner. I chuckled – my head was killing me – and my ear was a little clogged with blood – but I had won – and in this game, winning was what mattered. “Are they watching right now, I wonder? As you struggle?” The mirth fled from my eyes as if it had never been, and what remained was not friendly. “This is my world, my time. You understand, don’t you? The boundary between my world and yours may be in flux for now, but you have no right to be here.”

I could still sense the others behind me, but they had moved back. None of them said a word, not even Fleur. I couldn’t blame them. They were seeing Harry Potter now, and not just Harry. Just Harry laughed and joked over dinner, whereas Harry Potter – the Boy Who Lived, the Time Warrior – battled would-be-gods and demons, Dark Lords and Death Eaters, Dementors and Dragons… without mercy.

The Bone-Man understood me – well enough, anyway. The set of my eyes, the tone of my words…. Oh, it understood just fine.

“And when I tear Voldemort from the battle-strewn nightmare of Atlantis, stop the damage he’s doing, and send your gateway into this world howling back into the abyss…” I paused and laughed, dipping my hand into a muddy puddle at my feet, and used the dampness to dig the blood out of my ear. Ugh, it was all squelchy… “I’ll be coming for the one that set you loose early – the one that gave you that little extra push to break through to my world and my time so soon, and so poetically-timed… No one, fucking no one, gets to use Time against me like this!”

I rose to my feet, brandishing my wand up at the night sky. “D’you hear me, demon-bitch? Oh, Saaa-turnnn-iiaaa!” My voice seemed to echo for miles across the countryside surrounding the Delacour’s château. Even the Bone-Man had fallen silent, its smouldering yellow eyes beholding me with wary, mindless chaos.

 

A whisper reached me from the front door, and the inviting warm light pouring over the threshold, “He’s mad…” Sébastien said.

Mad? Insane? Crazy? No doubt – but there was insane and then there was insane. I was the right kind of insane. I had to be to do what I did. And the longer I did it the crazier I got, and then I usually died and hurtled back in time to a few days ago. That hurt like all hell, and was probably scrambling more brain cells every time it happened.

Was I insane? Does it matter? Probably – but I enjoy it. I suppose that is quite terrible.

“Not answering me, huh?” I said to the stars. It really was a clear night now that the storm clouds had dissolved as quickly as they had arrived. It was warm again, a perfect summer’s evening, with a million million pinpricks of ethereal light twinkling away overhead. “Then watch me work...”

“’Arry, who are you shouting at?” Fleur had stepped back into the garden, halfway between her friends and me – and the Bone-Man. “We need to call ze Aurors or someone to get rid of this creature…”

I regarded her with the relatively blood-free half of my face. “Nah I told you I got this.”

Fleur stamped her foot into the mud. “’Arry…” She was exasperated. “What iz ‘appening? You seem different – frightening. Where iz ze charming boy who saved my life in Diagon Alley?”

I shrugged. “I’m still here,” I said, with a small frown. All of a sudden I felt like I was coming down off a high. All of a sudden… everything wasn’t so funny anymore. Had I been laughing at the sky? “I just… I just can’t be showing any mercy right now. Not to this thing.”

“You’ve got eet trapped, no? We can ‘ave ze Ministry come and take eet away.”

I was shaking my head before she’d finished speaking. “Can’t do it – without a doubt, people will die. In their thousands. You can feel how wrong this thing is, can’t you? Right through your soul?” I waved at the pile of writhing bones and rotten flesh with my wand. The creature had been strangely silent for a few minutes now… the silence was more disturbing than it’s throatless growl. “I have to put it out of our misery.”

“You mean kill eet?”

“Is that a problem?”

Fleur thought about her answer, buying herself time by pushing her damp hair back over her shoulders, exposing a fair amount of pale creamy skin across her shoulders and neck. “No… that’s not a fair question to ask me.”

I nodded. “All it knows how to do is destroy – to kill, Fleur. That’s its function, as normal to it as breathing is to us.” I paused, choosing my words carefully. “And I don’t think it was sent here after me…”

“But then…” Fleur shivered. “Non, why? Can you get rid of eet at all?”

“Oh yeah, with ease.” I began to walk away from Fleur and the Bone-Man, across the garden and towards the low wall and hedge that surrounded the property. Before me loomed one of the massive oak trees that bordered the property on two sides – its dense canopy casting a dark silhouette against the night.

I appraised the mighty tree for a moment, in the gentle glow of my rune-magic and the lights from the house and stars overhead. It was a sturdy looking thing, several hundred years old, with a thick trunk about two metres in circumference. I estimated the height at about fifty feet – a fair size, and the crown spread out in a complex tangle of branches and slick leaves for about sixty feet.

“Oh you’ll do,” I whispered, raising my wand towards the intertwining branches high up near the far end of the trunk. “Lacero!” I flicked my wrist and sent my wand tip across the length of the tree.

A curved beam of crimson light burst from my wand and shot up toward the top of the tree, striking it on a forty-five or so degree angle. It struck the trunk just below the main canopy and tore into the old wood. The tree emitted a low groan as my spell ate through it faster than any chainsaw, severing the top of the tree in its entirety.

I stood watching the red light fade for a moment as it burrowed out of the other side, and almost missed the half a tonne of wood and leaves that slid cleanly from the trunk and fell toward me.

“Ooh, shit… Wingardium Leviosa!” I caught the top of the tree before it impacted with my head and then the ground, but a shower of loose branches, leaves and rainwater fell down around me. I was soaked all over again in cool, refreshing water. A white blur burst out from within the long, knotted branches and squawked furious disapproval at me. “Heh, sorry, Hedwig. Of all the trees to pick…” My owl disappeared around the side of the house, probably never to return.

I levitated the tree-top back up and over the severed trunk and hurled it across the tree line and into the meadowland surrounding the château in all directions. The mass of wood and leaves struck the ground with a dull thud and the sound of a hundred branches splintering at once.

“Merde, ‘Arry, what are you doing?”

I looked over my shoulder, ignoring the deep growl the Bone-Man was sending my way and met Fleur’s eyes. “Lopping a tree, I guess…” I turned back to the tree and directed my wand towards the base of the trunk, just above the complex warren of thick roots that claimed the soil. “Lacero!”

My second beam of magical-chainsaw-light tore through the base of the deciduous oak just as neatly as the first, dissipating to nothing on the far side in a plume of sawdust. With a mighty groan of something dying, the severed trunk began to tip on its side towards the house. The sheer weight of the thing would tear through the wood and plaster of Fleur’s home as if it were tissue paper.

“Wingardium Leviosa!” It was a damn-sight heavier than a feather, but my intent was sure, and I caught the trunk as it was still mostly upright in a levitation charm. I chuckled. “Harry smash now.”

I stepped backward towards the garden path, directing my forty-feet of thick oak tree to hover just overhead and to the left. The tree and I moved silently in the night, watched by five pairs of incredulous eyes, and one pair of malevolent yellow ones. I brought the weight of my wooden hammer to rest just above the captured Bone-Man.

“Here’s the deal then,” I said, speaking to no one and everyone – to the demon just out of reach. “Someone always has to try and stop the madness, don’t they, and we all know that a Killing Curse wouldn’t even scratch you, would it, Bone-Man?”

Those terrible yellow-eyes, fetid and dark, beheld me with a look of what could almost be mistaken for understanding. They flickered up to the wide base of the trunk hovering directly over it, and then back down to me. The misshapen jaws of the thing’s head opened wide. “Íló… vráx’jóé’hóth…´déf’ón—”

A shiver rushed through me at the Hellspeak. I raised my voice above it as what little light there was, from all sources, grew dim under those hideous words. “No time to go track down some dragon’s fire - and who knows what might come along to set you loose in the meantime? – so here’s the three-dollar solution!”

“Síóá’k… l´arnáz—“

With a snarl I flicked my wand down and slammed a good forty-feet of oak tree into the Bone-Man. I heard either Emilie or Grace screaming behind me and Alain cursed quite spectacularly. Of Fleur there was no sound, and I didn’t look back. The trunk disappeared about three feet into the wet earth, and the Bone-Man with it, in a mess of ill-jointed limbs that splintered like twigs.

I almost sighed at the sound. Oh, that’s satisfying… My beam of white rune-magic disappeared into the earth under the trunk, not letting a little thing like several tonnes of oak tree stop it from doing its job.

The world was strangely silent after that, the light returning as the last syllables of demon-tongue faded on the warm night air. I flicked my wand back towards the sky, drawing the length of the oak tree out of the ground and up above what remained of the Bo—

Two skeletal arms, blazing silver, reached out for me, razor-sharp claws swiping at the air. “Bé’lál… F´ÓRNÍ—”

Yep, flicked my wand down, slamming the base of the trunk back into the mangled and hewn pile of steaming bones. I caught a glimpse of heavy, acrid smoke – as black as the night and as lively as living shadow – pooling around the Bone-Man before my makeshift giant hammer crushed it… again.

“Yikes,” I chanced a look over my shoulder and tried to look as surprised as I felt. I met Fleur’s eyes and found her gaze unreadable. Hmm… I was in trouble. Of that, I could always be sure.

I turned back to the oak tree and began to spin my wand in slow circles through the air. The trunk mimicked my movements and rotated clockwise in the ground. I could hear muffled screams from the Bone-Man as I applied a fair helping of magical force to the trunk. It began to spin faster and faster and I grinded the monster beneath it into so much pathetic dust.

It’s awful to say, but few things in this world feel as good as having complete and utter control over a life – and ending it. Of overcoming a challenge and snuffing out the competition… does that make me as much of a monster as the Bone-Man? In a way, yes, but there were enough villains and madmen trying to do the same to me.

I was just keeping the playing-field level.

The stench of sulphur had been overpowered by a more pungent stink – death, or something like it. Thick, oily smoke, as black as shadow, seeped up and out of the ground around the trunk, and the splintered bark withered and flaked away at its touch. The cries of the Bone-Man had abruptly ceased a few moments ago.

I got the feeling the job was done.

Just to be sure, I lifted the trunk up and out of the ground, keeping my wand at the ready to drop it back down if what remained of the Bone-Man so much as twitched. Through the wet earth I’d burrowed a hole about six feet deep with my novelty-size wooden grinder. At its base, in a pool of liquid-smoke that burned with flames of dark yellow-black light, chunks of crushed bone sizzled and hissed in the heat of the fire.

Nothing remained of the Bone-Man that was recognisable. Already misshapen and difficult to comprehend, the creature had been smashed into a few loose pieces of dull silver bone. Even as I watched the black smog and flames were dissolving what was left of the demon, erasing its presence and existence from this world.

“Yep,” I said, and levitated my tree trunk back across the garden and through the gap in the tree line, dumping the shaft of wood on the dark meadowlands just beyond sight. It landed with a loud thud that rattled the windows of Fleur’s house in their frames. “Done is done… is done.”

With the Bone-Man dead the world seemed a lot lighter. Funny how that worked. How the creatures’ very presence seemed to make everything feel that much harder. Funny, but no one was laughing.

What I’d just done – and everything I’d said – looked quite crazy on reflection. A shiver rushed through my entire body as I realised I might have alienated Fleur, turned her… not against me, but not really with me. I’d worked some pretty impressive magic – frightening magic – nothing too apocalyptic, but that binding rune alone counted for more than most in this age of ordered and tepid magic. And the way I’d kept my head, so to speak, when faced with the demon… I didn’t look normal.

I spun on the spot, fearing the worst…

And found things much worse than the worst.

“Bravo, Harry James Potter, bravo!”

Fleur stood stock-still, her chin held high, shaking on the spot in the light offered by her open front door. She was the closest to me, her feet brushing the beginnings of the muddy garden path, and her friends still stood in the doorway… terrified and unable to act, for fear of getting her killed.

A man stood behind Fleur – holding a long knife of dry, grey metal to her elegant throat, the hilt of the blade resting just beneath her ear, and one arm around her waist, holding her tight.

My heart began to race.

“Barbaric, no doubt, crushing poor Boney like that, but no one can fault your resolve – and believe me, they want to.” The man threw back his head and laughed. “Oh they want to, yes, yes.”

He was young, athletic and tall – his eyes were blue, his hair wavy and black, streaked with bolts of crimson-red. It was the small details that stood out the loudest at times like this. “I… you…” I searched for the right words. Things were happening very quickly. Too quickly. “You do know that you’ve just signed your life away, don’t you?”

He was wearing a suit of the exact same cut as mine, down to the silver buttons and shiny black shoes. Only his was in a lot better condition – free of mud and blood – and he had a grin plastered onto his face that, beneath the laughter in his eyes, looked hideous. I imagined the one on my own face, streaked with drying blood from the gash above my ear, looked no better.

“’Arry…” Fleur whispered, and her throat moved up and down, pushing against the knife. A line of crimson-clear blood bloomed along her neck, barely a scratch, but the new monster had made her bleed, and the number one goal in my life would now be to tear this bastard’s heart from his chest.

“Ah, oops…” The stranger chuckled. “Hey, that’s a nice suit, Harry James Potter, yes, yes. I have one just like that.”

“Let her go,” I said. My gaze should have burned him to ash.

The man frowned, and then he nodded. “Oh, okay.” And he did, removing the knife carefully from Fleur’s throat so as not to cause her further harm, and stepping back.

“To me, Fleur,” I said quickly, and she ran down the path without question. I raised my wand against the knife-wielding stranger. “Red, green, or blue, friend?”

“Pardon me, Harry James Potter? I do not follow.” He still held the knife, but his hands were folded in front of him – his tone was polite, cultured.

I was unnerved. I hated that feeling so goddamn much. Nothing should be new to me, nothing at all. Tonight was entirely new – this man was entirely new.

“Red, green, or blue,” I said slowly. “The colour of the curse that will kill you. Red will snap your neck, and that might hurt for a minute. Green will be swift, instant – probably your best option – whereas blue… you’ll bleed out in about three minutes if you choose blue, but that sort of tingles – doesn’t hurt.” I clicked my fingers a few times. “Personally, blue might be the most exciting from an end-of-your-life viewpoint.”

“Exciting? I would not know, I have never died.” He tilted his head down, and his grin seemed to stretch up to his ears. “Is it exciting to die, Harry James Potter? Yes, yes?”

More than one death rushed through my mind on a wave of bitter failure and agony. My most recent death in Diagon Alley a few days ago on the sword of Tweedledum or Tweedledee… That scar was itching over my chest. Still, it was not the most pressing mystery – this man knew who I was, and what I could do. Which made him more than a man…

“Who are you?”

“Ah, a pertinent question. Yes, yes…” He took a few steps forward, waving his dagger back and forth. “’Who are you?’”

Behind him, Alain and Matthieu raised their wands, pointing them at his back. I met their eyes and shook my head. “You’ll answer me—”

He cut me off. “I’m a balance of… forces, Harry James Potter. Yes, yes. Forces. Two sides of a coin, fifty-fifty, up and down… opposite forces.” He laughed, tossing that damned dagger between his hands. “Today I am your friend, tomorrow I shall try my best to kill you.”

“Get off my property,” Fleur said on my left, holding a hand to her throat. Her eyes were narrowed and enraged.

He had appeared out of nowhere – silent apparation, I thought – but no… I hadn’t noticed it straight away behind his width and height, but behind the young man was something I had seen before, two and a half days ago in Diagon Alley. Hanging in the air, just in front of the house, was a… gap. Just in the air, about three feet off the ground, a thin slit of nothing – a tear in the fabric of reality. No one else in the Alley had been able to see it, but touching its razor-edge had sliced open my finger. I knew without a doubt this man – or whatever he was – had stepped out of this narrow opening that led… somewhere.

“You are really in over your beautiful head, child,” the man said to Fleur. “Isn’t she just, Harry James Potter?”

“If you—” Fleur began, but I placed a gentle hand on her arm and she fell silent, glaring at me but acquiescing.

“What can I call you then?” I asked. “Demon..? Dark Lord, even?”

The young man’s eyes danced with mirth he didn’t even try to suppress. “My name is Chronos.”

Dumbledore’s words in the Magnus Fontis flashed through my mind. “Saturnia in Roman mythology, Harry, was the goddess of Time. She appeared as a woman of unrivalled beauty who was there to settle grave accounts between mortals and archaic deities.” And there was more. “Saturnia – and her Greek partner, Chronos – guarded the sanctity of time itself.”

“So we’re playing at gods, are we?” I scoffed. “You’re a supposed guardian of time.”

“Time.” Chronos grinned. “Whose time? My time, your time, her time? Time’s time, Harry James Potter, you know that – better than most. Yes, yes?”

“No, no.”

“No?”

“No,” I nodded. “No lies, no cryptic riddles or misleading truths. I want to know what you are, what your agenda is, and why you’re trying to kill me.”

“Today I am not trying to kill you.” Chronos shrugged, moving another step closer, that knife almost a blur as he tossed it from hand to hand. “My nature, you see. Yes, yes… today I want you alive, and in the game. Tomorrow I want you dead, to put a stop to your interference. Balance, balance, always balance. Night and day, light and dark… war and peace. It is the way of the universe.”

I didn’t follow – at all. This was all different, all new, and it was ruining my chances of building a relationship with Fleur. “You’re not making any sense. If you’re not trying to kill me, why’d you send that Bone-Man? That was you, wasn’t it? You were listening to the story.”

Chronos laughed until a tear rolled down his cheek. “Pretty lady has a nice story voice – beautiful story voice. The Bone-Man, as you call it, Harry James Potter, was sent as a warning, a warning the only way you’d understand, and it was tasked to kill the pretty lady – not you.”

I stepped in front of Fleur with a snarl, brandishing my wand forward and ready to unleash the fires of forgotten, ancient magic. For a single moment everything seemed to pause, the whole world held its breath, and then I opened my mouth to release a cur—

“Hear me out,” Chronos snapped, and his demeanour changed to cold anger so quickly that I stopped. It was gone a moment later, hidden again under that horrible grin. “You want to hear what I have to say, yes, yes.”

“It better be good.”

His smile could have cut glass. This bastard smiled way too much. “You have met Saturnia, have you not? She spoke of someone who has taken you seriously, and that wants you dead… I am that someone. I sent the Orc-mare after you, to sever your magic, to send you into the final sleep… and reset the chaos.”

“And yet here I am, alive and well.” The Orc-mare? Tweedledum and Tweedledee…

“Yes, yes – exactly. And today, being alive, that is well.”

Fleur whispered in my ear, “’Arry, what iz he talking about?”

I had an idea, and it was awful. “So you can’t make up your mind whether you want me dead or alive?”

Chronos shook his head. “There are benefits to seeing you die – great benefits – and there are benefits to seeing you succeed in your quest to destroy the old world – also, great benefits. I have made up my mind, I do so every day – every second of every minute of every day. Today, I want you in the game.” He paused. “Tomorrow is a coin toss, and I may annihilate you half a world away…”

I tried to wrap my head around that. “You haven’t yet, and you won’t… you can’t.”

“Do not presume to understand me, Harry James Potter. You, a mere mortal, matched against the wrath of a god.”

My grip tightened around my wand. “I wouldn’t bet against me.”

“No…” Chronos sighed. “Neither would Saturnia. It is a cruel twist of fate that you suffer so much to gain so little, and that destiny blocks all the exits, so you circle closer, and closer… to the flame.”

“You and Saturnia are not gods.” He merely smiled that infuriating smile. I changed tacts. “Why did Saturnia take my blood?”

Chronos blinked, and it was my turn to smile. He’d just flinched. I got the feeling he had no idea what I was talking about. He wasn’t all-knowing and all-wise. I guess there were good gods and bad gods, false gods and would-be-gods.

“You fascinate her, Harry James Potter,” Chronos eventually said, and did I detect a hint of jealously in his tone…?

No, surely not.

“I’m going to tell you once to leave me alone,” I said. “Over the last few days you and Saturnia have done enough to warrant your destruction, but you get one warning… this is it.”

“Tonight I send one Bone-Man, as you call the denizens of Hell, Harry James Potter, tomorrow I may send a thousand.” Chronos laughed. “It is my nature, yes, yes. And I am so very sorry. Yet tonight, at least, I want to see you succeed, and raise Atlantis from the ashes of time. So I have something for you…”

Chronos reached out into the air, and his hand disappeared into nothing – into absolutely nothing. And from that nothing he pulled a long hilt fused to a blade of cool, dark metal. He tossed it towards me through the air.

I caught it on pure reflex, and the would-be-god took another step closer, just out of arm’s reach now. “Why are you giving this to me?” I had to admit, I was mesmerised by the sword in my hand. It was long, just over a metre, and the blade was thick – of a metal I couldn’t recognise, and the design was apt, if nothing else…

Chronos’ grin faltered. He fought it for a moment, but eventually his smile failed. “Because the game has changed.” He shook his head. “You’ve changed it.”

“How so?” I whispered, following the edge of the sword towards its tip. The blade bulged at the top, at the north point, and two longer points aiming east and west from the tip reached out, infinitely sharp, almost making the weapon a double-bladed axe. “It looks like the hand of a clock – the long minute hand.”

“Time,” Chronos replied. “Oh, Harry James Potter, time.” He reached forward and ran his pale finger up the length of the blade in my hand. “Who better to wield time itself, a weapon that can hack through the armies of the void, of Hell, than a Time Warrior – his very sword a symbol of all that passes around him.”

I shook my head. “A sword will just slow me down.” I tossed the blade aside, over into the grass. It hit the ground with a muddy thud. “If you’re not full of bullshit, why give me a weapon that could kill a Bone-Man, when not even magic can really do that?”

Chronos closed the gap between myself and Fleur, gripping his knife firmly. The tip of my wand sparked with barely suppressed curse light… I wanted to attack, to kill and maim and bring destruction down upon this pretender before me. But I didn’t – for one thing, I wasn’t sure I could take him. Perhaps he felt the same about me.

“Because today I want you alive, Harry.” Chronos stressed his words. “Tomorrow, more than likely, I’ll want you dead. The sword is to ensure you have a fighting chance of surviving anything I send against you. You see, yes, yes? I aid you today, as best I can, in my best interests, so the other half of my nature – the balance – does not tip the scales tomorrow, or yesterday, or five minutes from now.”

“I… see.” And I did – it made a crazy kind of sense, if whatever Chronos truly was became bound by his nature like he claimed. “You want me to reach Atlantis, why?”

Chronos shook his head, barely chuckling now. “Oh, Harry James Potter, you know the trials and tribulations of the Lost City, drowned in the blood of the Old World.” He glanced at Fleur, gazing through her and at something beyond sight. “You know of the power there, yet you have barely scratched the surface of its… potential.”

He was being careful with his words, so to speak. He didn’t want to give away to Fleur that I had died, and died again, attempting to defeat Voldemort and avert worldwide catastrophe. That I had already been to Atlantis, unlocked its secrets.

“How so?” I said carefully, my tone guarded.

“The old world… Atlantis… it is where the heathen gods entered this world, and their legacy speaks to those that will listen. I…” He looked troubled – afraid. “…I can’t explain it any better than that, not to a mortal mind.”

“Try me.”

“No – you only need to know one more thing.”

I weighed up my options, and chose the worst. “What?” I needed to know.

“That if you don’t take up my gift, that if you turn aside from Atlantis – as you might, oh yes, yes – I will send more Bone-Men and worse after this young lady here.” Chronos winked at Fleur. “I will end her existence, just as surely as your Dark Lord Voldemort would. You changed this game, Harry James Potter, you challenged fate, and now here is how the board is set.”

He very nearly pushed me over the edge. I admired my own restraint. “Leave. Now.” I bit each word off as if it were a Killing Curse. Oh how I wanted this man before me dead and his ashes scattered to the four winds. No one, absolutely no one, used the world I knew against me like this. “Leave… before my nature asserts itself.”

Chronos laughed. “Goodbye, Harry James Potter.” He moved to place a hand on my shoulder, still holding that knife, and then thought better of it. “You know, the next time I see you I will probably want you dead.”

I offered this god a crooked smile. There was nothing friendly about it. We were at a stalemate, neither of us willing to strike the first blow. Perhaps I should have, perhaps I will, but not today. “And the next time I see you, I’ll show you why they call me Godslayer…”

Chronos frowned bemusedly. “Who, Harry James Potter? Who calls you that?”

“Heh, well, I…” I paused, my mind suddenly blank. No, not blank, there was just no memory. Who calls me Godslayer? “I-I do.”

Chronos sighed and reached down to pat me on the shoulder. “It must be very lonely inside that head of yours.”

I wanted to snap his arm off – I would’ve done, and hang the consequences – but I blinked and he was gone.

Fleur gasped and I cursed beneath my breath, as air rushed into the space Chronos had occupied with a short, quick and noisy clap. I felt a rush of relief as he disappeared, and the gap in the world a stone’s throw away sealed itself away to nothing. I didn’t know what those gaps were, but they were the work of Saturnia and this new chap, the one who had taken me seriously, Chronos – which made them bad news.

“Can you believe all this…?” I whispered, turning to look at Fleur. My head was throbbing to the beat of my heart, and my vision was a little impaired without my glasses, but I understood the look on her face perfectly. I was in trouble – big time. “I’m sorry all of this happened tonight, Fleur.”

Fleur said nothing for a long moment. “Tonight was utter madness, ‘Arry. Complete and utter madness! Are you sure we are done? Will zere be any more surprises? Voldemort himself, perhaps? Merde, you scare me ‘alf to death!”

I didn’t quite no what to say. All at once I felt just fifteen – just little Harry Potter, and nothing more. “You’re bleeding.”

Fleur held a hand to her perfect neck. “No, you are bleeding. If the madness is over for the evening, then come inside and I will clean out that wound – with magic, mind you – no Muggle stitching, and we will discuss what ‘as just ‘appened, and where we go from here.”

From here? Perhaps there was hope for me yet. Fleur stormed off back towards her house, and her gob-smacked friends. There was an explosion of words from them all at the same time as Fleur cleared the threshold of her home, casting a cool glance over her shoulder to make sure I was following.

I shuffled slowly up the garden path, as if climbing the gallows with a noose already tightened around my neck, dreading what was to come, and how I was going to explain even half of what had happened – what Fleur and her friends had seen, what I had done.

For the first time in a long time, I questioned my decision to break the flow of Time and send my soul back eight years to this summer, to the beginning of the war that ends the world… All of my choices always led to the suffering and death of those I could care for, of those who trusted me to set all to right. And now beings that might as well be called gods were using me for their own ends – I had more enemies than when I’d started.

I had to ask myself if it would just be best to let the world die…

I paused only to pick up my shattered glasses and to gaze at the sword that Chronos had left behind, made of some unknown metal and shaped like the hand of the clock. I reached out my hand to grasp the blade… but…

“’Arry, you need to get cleaned up.” Fleur was not in the mood for an argument.

“I’m coming,” I said, and left the sword lying in the sodden grass.

The game has changed, I thought, and not for the better.

Events were spiralling out of my control – faces and monsters were moving against me and with me, all in new and unexpected ways. I could not stay ahead of the game if the rules had changed, if I could no longer cheat my way through what was to come.

I was vulnerable… and what’s more, so were those closest to me.

I closed Fleur’s front door behind me as I stepped back into the house after what felt like hours. A small sigh escaped my lips as warmth rushed into my tired and wet limbs, yet it was one of regret.

Regrets are forever…

One thing I knew for certain, out of all of this. Wherever I went from here, Fleur had to come with me.

Her life – and what remained of my sanity – depended on that.

*~*~*~*

A/N: Lacero is Latin for lacerate – go figure. Thanks for reading and hopefully reviewing. Did I do good? It’s three in the morning so I’m knackered now – sweet dreams, folks.