Disclaimer: My love affair with everywhere was innocent, why do you care? Someone start the car, time to go-ooh-ooo.

A/N: And now for something different. Hey, folks. Here’s an interlude for the story, seeing as how we’ve finished the first act (pre-Atlantis) and are about to move into the second act (Atlantis!), I reckon this fits. I’m battling uni work at the moment so don’t expect frequent updates for at least another two months. If I get on top of my shit then I may have time to write, if not then this’ll tide you over. I was quite pleased with how it turned out. I wasn’t expecting most of it.

All the best,

Joe

*~*~*~*

Harry Potter and the Wastelands of Time

Interlude – A Clock On the Face of Hell

Deserve victory.

~~Goodkind

“Can I help you?”

The silence was oppressive, the motes of sunlight dusting the stacks of books threatened to tip the haphazard piles, but there was an air about the place that suggested those books had leaned on the edge of the desk for years, and weren’t about to be disturbed now. I felt out of place – young and immature before so much compiled knowledge.

“Son, are you listening? What do you want?”

What did I want? That was a good question. I wanted answers, by hook or by crook, and I’d get them. “My name is... Harry,” I said.

“Harry?”

“Just Harry.”

*~*~*~*

This is my story, and I hear the cry of a terrible power…

*~*~*~*

“Can I help you?”

The silence was oppressive, the motes of sunlight dusting the stacks of books threatened to tip the haphazard piles, but there was an air about the place that suggested those books had leaned on the edge of the desk for years, and weren’t about to be disturbed now. I felt out of place – a little wiser than the last time I was here.

“Son, are you listening? What do you want?”

What did I want? That was an okay question. I wanted to undo the damage, by hook or by crook, and I wanted another chance. “My name is... Harry,” I said.

“Harry?”

“Just Harry. You were wrong, Professor Finn, it could be done.”

*~*~*~*

But perhaps it shouldn’t have been done…

*~*~*~*

“Can I help you?”

The silence was oppressive, the motes of sunlight dusting the stacks of books threatened to tip the haphazard piles, but there was an air about the place that suggested those books had leaned on the edge of the desk for years, and weren’t about to be disturbed now. I felt out of place – a madman loosed upon the world.

“Son, are you listening? What do you want?”

What did I want? That was a terrible question. I wanted to unmake the world, by hook or by crook, and I wanted to tear my soul asunder yet again. “My name is... Harry,” I said.

“Harry?”

I laughed hysterically. “You know me, sir, you do. I am the unfailing time traveller. I am the tricksy wizard of forever! You were right, Professor Finn, it all ended in paradox.”

*~*~*~*

Paradox… contradiction… cannot exist in reality. Not in part, not in whole, not by crook nor by hook.

*~*~*~*

Walking down the old paths of Faé and Forget, I felt the breeze warm at my back, urging me on along this foolish yet fucking necessary quest.

A quest for an idea, a quest for a terrible fate.

The forest was light surrounded by oppressive darkness. The last bastion of magical purity on the planet, a ward of broken realms and swaying promises. Soft petals of sparkling light cast the green trees, thick on all sides, into blurs of electric-blue amnesty.

“’Let me take you down,’” I hummed the words softly against the light, “’Let me take you down, ‘cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields…’”

Any other day and I would have been terrified; I would have been clawing at my eyes and on my knees before the weight of the magical world that was pressing down all around me. But this wasn’t any other day. This was the last day of my life.

There was a clock on the face of Hell, of that I was quite sure.

The path through the forest meandered back and forth, across fallen stumps and over moss-covered boulders, yet it cut west – forever west – through the debris. I saw nothing living save the trees, and yet I felt watched.

This path had started in the Forbidden Forest, on the Hogwarts side, and I had travelled for the best part of a day through that wood, my wand clutched tightly in my fist, spelling trouble more than a few times, and yet I was no longer in the Forbidden Forest. This forest, these trees, wasn’t exactly anywhere.

I’d left the whole world behind, what was left of it.

“’Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.’” The oppressive silence devoured my mumbled song, yet I had to make some noise. I had to rage against the darkness. “’Strawberry Fields Forever.’”

In time I came to a clearing in the trees, and yet a thick canopy still arched high overhead and cut deep into an enormous slab of stone that rose up and out of sight into the azure sky. In the clearing was a dark pool, fed from a heavy waterfall that cascaded down over the worn slab of stone. Where the waterfall struck the pool a radiant, foamy swash shot up sparks of pure silver light.

This was the place. I felt it in my bones – in my heart and my mind.

I was thirsty. Don’t drink the water. But to drink or eat in this… place… was death. Was worse than death. Was forever-death, can ya dig it?

Still, I’d have to go swimming to get this all done and dusted.

I was dressed in a pair of old Hogwarts robes over a shirt and jeans. I’d been going for the ‘wizardly’ appearance, but that now felt foolish. I shrugged out of the robes, pulled off my shirt and unlaced my boots before losing the jeans, as well.

In short manner, I stood naked before the secluded forest pool – save for my glasses and my wand, clutched in a death-grip in my right hand.

It was time.

And yet I hesitated. Of course I hesitated.

It would be an easy step down into the pool to begin my work, my dark and tricky work, yet I paused for a moment to take in my shimmering reflection in the water. Even in the twilight, my reflection showed the mess of scars and twisted fused skin that covered my body, burning over my shoulders and clawing at my neck. It had been a hard war, a desperate race for Atlantis… I was ruined.

And about to be as ruined as Voldemort.

I stepped off the edge of the path and into the pool. The water was warm, welcoming, like an embrace, and for a moment I felt like I was floating. The mud beneath my feet was as soft as silk… I was terrified.

“Fuck that,” I whispered. “Fuck the fear.” I gathered my will and waded out into the deep water, up to my knees, wand at the ready…

The forest was silent save for the cascading curtain of water before me. It was time to get down to business.

Like any good magic worth a damn, this summoning required blood fresh from the vein. I muttered a quick spell and a razor-sharp point of silver grew out of my wand tip. Without any preamble, I drew the tip across my free wrist and slashed it open. Blood, hot and brilliant-crimson, spurted from the wound, down my hand, and began to drip into the water.

I turned and tossed my wand back onto the bank amongst my clothes. I wouldn’t need it again, the voices in my head whispered. Voices I’d come to trust and yet understood as the jagged hooks of insanity.

I sensed its presence gathering before I saw it. The water around me began to churn, like the tide of the sea, drawing my oh-so-precious blood down into its dark, impenetrable depths. I was convinced coming here had been the right decision, but still…

From within the waterfall I caught it’s eyes staring at me. Twin sparks of soft purple light. There was a soft giggle, feminine and striking, as the spirit of the past surged forward through the water and came to rest before me.

“Hello, Harry Potter.”

I took a step back in spite of myself. The creature before me was beautiful, shapely and curved, and as naked as I was. Her form consisted of nothing more than sparkling silver water and those deep, distinctive purple eyes. She was a creature of Faé times, of the Old World… not even close to human.

And yet her form was beautiful… beautiful and complete. Her liquid-figure looked human, looked like a woman. A fall of flowing water clung to her face on either side, a drop of clear hair, resting on her shoulders. My eyes glanced down to her chest, to her breasts and the suggestive flow of nipples.

I took a deep breath.

“Hello…”

“It has been an age of ages since one so young and so mortal sought the company of one such as me…” Her voice was smooth, seductive… “I know why you are here.”

“Really?” I doubted that. No one had ever dared to do what I had planned.

“Of course,” the spirit said, gliding around me on the surface of the pool. “You are here for them. For the lost. For… Fleur Delacour, for Nymphadora Tonks, and Albus Dumbledore. You are here for Hermione Granger, you are here for Ronald Weasley. So many ghosts haunt you, Harry, so many corpses paved your path through my forest…”

“The world is burning.”

“No, it has burnt, and you seek to undo it. You seek to unmake the Infernal Clock. Such a task of inspired madness!”

Well, I guess she did know what I had planned. Despite the shields that guarded my mind, this creature could see right through me. I was still bleeding into the water… “What I want—”

“Is not what you need. I can give you what you need.” Her watery smile, her full lips shot with the silver sparks from the waterfall, promised pleasures I could only imagine.

I let out a deep breath slowly. “And what is it you think I need?”

“Time.”

That one word echoed throughout the forest, breaking through the veneer of unnatural silence. Behind me and all around the trees groaned, swayed… a smile crept onto my face.

“We’re on the same page, you and I.”

“To challenge the universe, Mr. Potter, as you have done, as you will do for a very long time to come, is the most reckless, foolish… and heroic undertaking in the long life of your world.”

“I’m no hero—”

“Thrice damn your modesty, Harry. You are the last hero. You echo back and forth across time and the ripples of what you have done – and what you will do – are legend.”

I didn’t care for that, not at all. “Legend…?”

“Legends of defying chaos and entropy – of resisting the inevitable march toward nothing.”

I shook my head. “Are you speaking in riddles?” I hated riddles. “Speak clear, as the Atlantis Proclamations command your kind. I invoke the Treaty.”

The spirit, the demon, the shade-creature before me swirled back under the curtain of falling diamonds and became indistinct against the rush of the waterfall. She laughed at me – a cruel, cunning laugh born of my ignorance. “Your Lord Voldemort broke that truce when he seized the Lost City.”

“I claim the truce unbroken – Voldemort does not speak for mankind and the Wizarding World. I do.”

The spirit flowed forward again, sparks of silver light coursing through her watery form. It flowed forward, close enough to where I stood up to my knees in the pool that I feared attack.

“That,” the spirit said. “That… is what I hoped to hear.”

I sighed. “Thought you might…”

“Then you accept the mantle of Champion?”

There was no reason to hesitate. No reason not to sell my soul and damn the consequences. I was going to die, of that I was quite sure, and soon. But it would be worse to live. “I must. It’s time.”

The spirit shook her head and one clear arm of sparkling water came up to rest on my shoulder. Her touch sent ripples of raw pleasure, hot and sure, through my body. I felt myself growing hard…

“You must stop thinking of time as a straight line, as a perspective of cause and effect. Time, for you, Harry, is no longer… forward.”

I shrugged. Strawberry Fields Forever. “I’ll try.”

“Yes, you will.” A heavy, pregnant pause. “And the universe will break you for it.”

“Oh let that bastard do its worst…” I was beginning to feel light headed. I’d lost a lot of blood. “Just name your price, lady…”

Her smile was sweet, if such a thing was possible, and her hand on my shoulder moved down my chest, over the crisscrossing scar tissue, across my stomach and lower until she held the length of me in her soft, clear grip.

“You seem more than… willing… to pay my price.”

I almost smiled. “Well, so be it.”

*~*~*~*

Somehow we’ll make it.

Because that’s what we do.

*~*~*~*

A/N: Well, there we go. A glimpse of how Harry did it, how he accomplished his damned fate. He had to screw a spirit-whore of silver sparkling water as he bled to death. And that wasn’t even the full price. Heh… heh. Thanks for reading, folks, please review.

No real ETA on the next chapter, but I will get this story done – that’s a promise.

Thanks again. All the best,

Joe