Disclaimer: To see the world below (I know)…

A/N: This chappie kind of turned out how I wanted it to. So yeah, that's good. One out of twenty-six ain't bad. The opening quote (or salvo, can ya dig it) at the beginning is a long one – and it is credited, sourced and copyrighted fully to Castro & Calung over at Buttersafe. It is their work, not mine, but it has a certain flare I admire that seems to fit this story quite well. Just to be doubly clear – not mine at all. Head on over to Buttersafe to see this awesome illustrated short story. I am merely a fan…

Thanks again to my many constant reviewers, and to the darklordpotter clowns for their abusive kind words. All the best,

-Joe

*~*~*~*

Harry Potter and the Wastelands of Time

Chapter 26 – The Wastelands of Time

There was once a creature that crawled on the sky

With very sharp teeth that caused people to die

Made only of bone and an instinct to kill

It wound over oceans and stalked over hills

Any village that found this thing at its door

Very quickly became a village no more

One day, expecting the sunrise in the east

A child, instead, saw this shadowy beast

He thought to himself, 'I don't have much time,

If I don't act quickly it's the end of the line'

'I can't save my village, I'm not yet a man

But I know of someone… something who still can'

So he ran to the wastelands outside of town

And he stood on a cliff and shouted aloud:

'I've always been told not to come to this place

And to run if I ever caught sight of your face'

'But I think you now might be my town's only hope

So show yourself,' he squeaked through the lump in his throat

It seemed for a moment that the whole world stood still

But then down his spine ran a horrific chill

Behind him: the one he both needed and feared

Silently, Skeleton Harvester had appeared

Those leathery wings, that spidery hand

The boy was so frightened he could barely stand

The creature from tales that had haunted his sleep

Was moving right toward him, ready to reap

Yet courage and self-preservation prevailed

The boy voiced his plan, his gambit unveiled

'I can see in your eyes that my bones aren't enough'

(though, for reasons quite clear, this was a bluff)

'My skeleton is plain and really quite small

While over there is the rarest skeleton of them all'

'That ivory creature is one of a kind

And if you fail to act now it will leave you behind'

'So don't waste time ending my body-bone unity

Go and claim that unique harvesting opportunity'

With fear in his heart and his breath, oh how bated

He gazed at Skeleton Harvester…

And he waited.

~Culung & Castro, Buttersafe (Part I)

*~*~*~*

Begin at the beginning – everything else is just the devil and his details – then, when you come to the end, stop.

*~*~*~*

The Sleeping God.

Damn it all.

There was a certain… morbid resignation to the title, I'd give it that much. But nothing more.

"Gods don't die as often as I do," I told Father Time. I would dismiss this latest label as I did all the others. I was just Harry Potter, functioning alcoholic. Anything else was bitter hearsay and rumour.

The old man shuffled forward, his oaken staff biting into the stone beneath his feet. Centuries of dust fell from his shabby robes as he moved. "Have you ever honestly died, Harry? You've been right to the edge, gazed over the precipice of that Abyss, but always your soul has been blasted back through time before death could claim it. Gods don't die, Harry. You don't die."

My eyes flicked past the old man to the doorway suspended on air behind him. I had to follow Voldemort, had to undo all that was about to be done. The weight in my ruined jacket pocket was fiercely hot and heavy. "Do they bleed, hmm? Because I've done an awful fucking lot of that!"

"Say you fail this time. Say you're sent back to the start – but the pain is too much, so much, that it kills you again… only to have the game reset, sending you back again, and again…" He chuckled. "No doubt you've considered the ramifications of such an existence. Painful, at the very least. But with strange aeons, Harry, who's to say the Clock won't spit you back out, alive and well, some distant future down the line? What then, hmm? Would you accept it then?"

"I don't have time for this." I felt a weird, almost foreign, stirring in my chest. I realised with a start that it was fear.

"You don't understand," Time said. "But you will. The gods of old were never born, they were forged – through time and through circumstance, they were forged from the remnants of the past. Once you remember all you have forgotten…" He reached into his robes and removed a tarnished little item. "This is for you."

I accepted Time's gift with a certain weary detachment. It was a simple dull gold watch, heavy and round, numbers in black against a white face. An hour, minute, and second hand – it was currently half-past four and… thirteen seconds.

"I don't need a watch to tell the time," I said. "It constantly burns in my head. Every. Damn. Second."

"When this watch strikes four minutes to twelve – midnight in the minds of insanity, Harry – you will have failed for the last time and be lost to an eternity of near-death upon the grinding gears of the Infernal Clock. This I foresee."

"You… foresee that, do you?" I shook my head. "Even Time can't know the future with any certainty." The second hand wasn't moving, wasn't counting the seconds. "I think this is broken anyway, buddy. According to your math I've got seven and a half hours before I die."

Father Time laughed – a horrible, wheezing sound. His breath stank of old parchment, of moss-covered stones. "The watch does not measure time, Harry, it measures harm. You must make a final move against your enemies before four to midnight, or be doomed to a never-death of mindless agony – alone and eternal."

I slipped the watch into a spare pocket. I thought I could already hear it ticking away like a time bomb. Another uncomfortable weight to drag me down into the dirt. Do your worst, I thought, cursing Time, the universe, and everything. Just do you fucking worst. I won't break.

Don't break.

Can't break.

Shan't break.

"Could'a, would'a, should'a." I sighed. "Step aside, old man, time's up."

"You won't be able to undo what you have planned, Harry." A crooked grin below bloodshot and yellow eyes. "Just Harry."

I returned his crazy bug-eyed stare with one of my own. "That's why I'm doing it, Ace."

In the end, that's why I did anything.

*~*~*~*

The definition of insanity… is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome.

Ah shit.

"Time to try something new then."

*~*~*~*

Stepping through a doorway suspended on nothing but air feels about as strange as stepping through a doorway suspended in a wall leading into the kitchen. Considering my destination, the Heart of Time itself, there was very little fanfare or much to-do.

One moment I was in the forest, a fading old man dying a slow death behind me, the next I was standing atop a wide and broken plateau, gazing up at a sky strewn with heavy dark clouds, bruised purple and worse, speeding across the atmosphere as fast as spell fire.

I could smell sulphur on the air. The dark stone beneath my feet was cracking – arcs of red light glittering through the darkness. All of the cracks were splintering out from the centre of the plateau, where Voldemort stood gazing into the… abyss.

The world was empty around me – the doorway had disappeared, it only swung one way – and there was nothing but an ocean of dust surrounding this solitary island, which itself was just a spire of basalt rock thrust up out of the harsh landscape.

A curious place to find a white rose.

"But then a rose is a rose is a Rose," I whispered, and stepped forward toward Voldemort and his beautiful abyss, the end of the road, the white rose of moment – the Infernal Clock.

Here was the final prize – the reward for the last month of work since I awoke back in Privet Drive. All that I had done, all that I ever did, was to gain this moment under the burnt sky, amidst the dust and the sulphur and the dew-speckled petals of Time.

Memories came to me now, more and more. I saw myself here so many times. I saw Voldemort… always the two of us, always the rose. Always the understanding. The knowledge, the know-how of the universe, being thrust through our minds. Or the understanding that it was always there, locked away, inside everyone, waiting for the right key.

It was like a song, really, a terrible song of forget, caught in the back of my mind. I could feel the Clock ticking inside my mind, and I knew Voldemort felt the same. It ticked away, second between second, and I understood what it was saying, singing, screaming.

"Can you hear it, Harry?" Voldemort asked, his voice barely a whisper as I drew level with him. "It speaks many secrets, secrets of such… power."

"I hear it." My head was pounding. Memories were being unleashed in fierce torrents. So much memory, so many wasted years. And yet I would never remember it all, I would never awake the supposed-god within. Fuck you, Father Time. "This is True Atlantis, the Lost City, the Font of All Magic."

Voldemort seemed almost humbled. But he was merely absorbing the song from the rose. "Avenues of magic, pathways to immortality… it is all here, all within reach. I can see it, hear it." He laughed. "Dumbledore does not stand a chance!"

"Hey," I said. "You still got me to contend with. I hear the same thing, buddy. I remember how to do magic of such magnificence that the world will crumble before we're through. You and I, not Dumbledore, are the true enemies in this war. Don't ever forget that."

"I should kill you now, but not before you tell me how to return—" Voldemort cut himself off, his crimson eyes lost and distant for a moment. "Oh, I see now… Of course. The portal can be inverted, twisted, even bypassed entirely. The magic is so simple, and yet, beyond that of any wizard alive save Lord Voldemort!" The Dark Lord met my eyes. "Your assistance, Harry, is no longer required."

To that I could only shrug. The magic was already at work within us – as fast as thought. Voldemort knew how to Apparate, for use of a better term, back to Atlantis, and then back to the real world, because it was all there, in the understanding of the rose. That was what the Infernal Clock did.

What it always did.

Unlocked the knowledge, ended the confusion… it had to be stopped, and I was the one to do it. All at once I felt a certain undeniable stirring of righteous fury, of anger unmatched. This time would count for all.

I fell out of my thoughts and found myself staring down the twisted length of Voldemort's wand, the tip almost touching my nose. "Farewell, Harry Potter."

"I don't end," I said. My wand was tucked away in my pocket – alongside my new watch and the item I'd brought all the way from Atlantis. "And I guess I don't die, but you can't kill me, Tom, not until you've heard the full prophecy."

"Avada Kedavra!"

Ah goddamn it!

*~*~*~*

Gambled and lost gambled and lost gambled and lo—

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

*~*~*~*

I had gambled and lost.

That's all I had time to think before sick, terrible emerald light filled my vision and the cold, numb tendrils of death reached for me through the screeching void of ignorant mortality.

Only I was still breathing.

The light was very green – very dark – and all that I could see. It absorbed the spectrum of my vision.

I blinked. All still green. A slow frown creased my brow and I took a careful step back… away from all that was green and death.

The Dark Lord came back into view, eyes wide and shocked at what was occurring between us. The Killing Curse, that all-too-familiar green light of death, hung suspended in the air, a sphere of rippling emerald energy, hovering inches from my face and inches from the tip of Voldemort's wand.

It had stopped dead in the air, scant milliseconds before blasting me into an eternal agony of chaotic, universe-ending time travel.

"Wow," I said. "Okay. Born to run…"

I took another careful step back. And then, just to be safe, a careful step to the side – out of the intended path of the curse – and very calmly removed my wand from my pocket.

I glanced at Voldemort. "Now let's look at this as a potential learning experience—"

"Avada Kedavra!"

I leapt before the words were out of the snake-faced bastard's mouth. I leapt high into the air, flying once again, on invisible cords of magic and strength that came to me as fast as thought. Over the Dark Lord, over the Infernal Clock, and landed on the far side of the plateau – opposite a punk kid in a suit as fine as mine had been, once upon a time.

"Hiya, Harry."

"Hey, Chronos," I said, not missing a beat. "Didn't think you'd show up to this party."

"Please stop what you're doing," he said. "What you're about to do."

"Not a chance. I think it's what you wanted me to do anyway, all those weeks ago when we first met."

"We've known each other a lot longer than that…" He winked. "Do your worst then."

"POTTER!"

I turned to face Voldemort across the expanse of the plateau. The Infernal Clock grew between us on a bed of twisted ivy, glittering in the half-light. Its song was still drumming a beat through my mind. I felt clear – fresh. The headache was still there, still agonising, but in a strangely bearable way. I never lost it completely, it just didn't happen.

There was a second orb of death, a writhing emerald curse, hovering in the air where I had been standing only moments ago. I was a little flummoxed by that. Why were the curses all… caught? No time – never any time – and all the time in existence beating away within the buds of a white rose only a few feet away.

"Lord Voldemort, allow me to introduce Chronos. He's some sort of immortal time-god. Those Orc-Mare that tried to kill me earlier on – they're his lapdogs."

"There is ancient magic at work here," the Dark Lord said, regarding his hovering curse-orbs with evident distaste. He kept his wand trained on the pair of us. "Is this your doing, Harry?"

"We've just had the entire collective knowledge of the Atlantean Empire embedded in our minds, Voldemort, you figure it out."

"I will destroy you both—"

"WHY?" I roared. I was always angry – always – but now the anger felt just, divine, righteous… "You desire dominion over a world of inbred, arrogant pricks! You want the Muggles destroyed – a world only for the 'worthy'. You're a misguided fool, Voldemort. If you'd just stop and look, fuckin' look, you'd see the world for what it is – terrifying!" I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Desperately terrifying and so, so amazingly wonderful. Why would you ever want to tear that down?"

"Because he can," Chronos whispered. "There's no time left, Harry. Those arrogant curses hovering across the way are testament enough to that."

"What are they?"

"They are horrific intent caught in rips of Time. Already the effects of what you are about to do are altering reality, yes, yes."

"But I haven't done it yet."

"Exactly! You haven't, but clearly you will… and we're all damned for it."

I tried to think it all out, to get it all straight and a-okayed in my head. But it was mindboggling. The curses were magic, true, caught in… time rips… that were the result of what I was about to do to the Infernal Clock. I guess there was some sense to that, time being a relative concept and all, but it seemed lacking.

Voldemort had turned to the edge of the plateau and was gazing down across the ashen wastelands that stretched to the far horizons. Great clouds of ash rose on distant winds, screaming into the silence under the azure sky. I knew what he was doing… what he was sensing. I could sense it to, hidden just beneath the surface.

I guess it was time for the end game.

The Dark Lord raised his wand and the tip shone with crimson radiance.

About a hundred million lengths of shiny white bone burst forth from beneath the ocean of ash surrounding our desolate plateau. About a hundred million arcs of yellow lightning coursed between the bones, fusing them together, giving them form, affording a dead army awful shape, and sealing another lock on this twisted fate we all shared.

The Dark Lord raised his wand… unleashed his army… and I let him.

"The Shambling Bone-Men," Chronos said, running a hand back through his hair. He chuckled. "This is what Atlantis awoke ten millennia ago. This is what ground that civilisation into dust."

"Yes," I said. Weary resignation didn't seem to cover the depths of hopeless fatigue in my voice. "The Atlanteans dared to come as far as we have and awoke a force buried in the heart of Time itself. The armies of Forget, nothing but dust in the wind, and yet Atlantis was overrun in a war that lasted centuries…"

"What hope does your world have then?" Chronos asked. "If Atlantis could not defeat this scourge, if all that power and might was annihilated in an endless war, then what hope for your world, Harry?"

I smiled. "There's me." Hope enough for anyone, maybe yes and maybe no. "Guess you don't know everything, Chronos. I've sent this army howling back into the abyss more than once. Where Atlantis failed I succeeded. I told you right back at the beginning, all those weeks ago, that the only way to stop Voldemort from seizing the power of Atlantis and unleashing a demonic horde upon the world, is to let him seize the power of Atlantis and unleash a demonic horde upon the world." I laughed.

The Dark Lord was laughing into the sky across the expanse of our dread-plateau. His new army of demonic hellspawn was busy assembling itself from the filth of a fallen world and all was strangely, eerily rushed – as if Time itself had some place to be.

And the army of bone… the Bone-Men… well…

From the dark fires of what may as well be called Hell emerged endless 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-Men rose to its full height and pierced the false quiet of the twilight with that screech of elsewhere and long ago.

After a moment, in which that yellow lightning tore apart the sky and in which I barely noticed, Voldemort turned to face me.

"Prophecy or not, Harry, the world is mine. Follow me home if you dare." He inclined his head and then, in utter silence, the Dark Lord turned and disappeared – taking his shambling army with him as if they were nothing more, nothing less, than mere dust on the wind.

"God he's an arrogant prick," I muttered. The thousands upon tens of thousands of creatures faded away – gone but not forgotten. "Wouldn't you say?"

Chronos shrugged, brushing a few flecks of ash from his lapel. "Perhaps the same could be said of all of us, Harry, yes, yes."

"Perhaps it could." That item burning a hole in my pocket demanded to be drawn. I reached for it and Chronos grasped my arm.

"Everything that happens from here or on out will be different from what you know."

I nodded. "How many lives did I waste trying to figure that out, I wonder… do you know?"

"More than a dozen, less than a thousand. Fate… will not be pleased, yes, yes."

I shrugged out of Chronos' grip and removed the shrunken item from my pocket, switching my wand for it. The metal was cool in my hand, biting. I whispered a word and a long, vicious blade of dark metal burst up and out of my palm, growing within my clenched fist.

A sword.

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 looked like the hand of a clock – the long minute hand.

"Time," Chronos said. "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."

"It's my time now," I whispered.

I levelled my sword against the golden-green stem of the Infernal Clock. A long, harrowing cry for mercy echoed throughout my skull. I heeded it not at all…

…and severed the spine of all that ever was, and all that ever could be – borne upon those blasted, those awful, those dum-de-de-dum-dum… Wastelands of Time.

*~*~*~*

"Bravo, Harry James Potter, bravo!"

*~*~*~*

The universe screamed as I cut it in half.

But then the universe would. Complainin' sumabitch that it is.

It was a scream heard in dreams, on the edge of the wind, and across the Wastelands. A near-silent scream of mercy unheeded, of regret turned into Forget. The radiance of the petals in the rose seemed to die as my sword passed through the fragile, eternal stem.

I caught the rose before it fell to the barren ground. The thorns cut my fingers, my palm. It stung like a motherfucker, but considering the crime against humanity I'd just committed, the pain was bearable.

The earth began to shake. Torrents of liquid flame burst forth through the dust across the harsh horizon. The two hovering orbs of emerald death shot forth and criss-crossed over my head, missing me by the skin of my teeth. The rose was heavier than it should have been – worlds heavier, can ya dig it – and it was shaking in my grasp.

"What time is it?" I asked. The clock in my head was doing everything and nothing. It was half past the end of the world. I dug around in my pocket for my new watch – the gift from Time itself, which I now literally held in my hands. The hour hand had slipped two hours closer to midnight. "Time is in flux, Chronos!"

I laughed at the sky as it began to burn.

*~*~*~*

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

*~*~*~*

"Harry Potter…" Chronos exhaled with all the weight of eternity bearing down upon his shoulders. "Harry James Potter. The last King of Atlantis. Do you have any idea what you have done? Any idea at all? Because of you, all bets are off. Darkness – Raw Hell – will descend upon the world in a wave of terrible nightmare intent on devouring all humanity."

"Oops." I had a think about that. "Wait, hang on, that's just business as usual. Fuck you, Chronos. You know it wouldn't hurt to smile once in awhile."

"I only remember how to smile in my dreams…"

I stroked my chin. "That was morbid. Come on, let's get back to Atlantis and burn it to the ground. Chaotic enough for ya, pal?"

Chronos smiled.

*~*~*~*

Let it begin…

*~*~*~*

From here on out, things were going to move fast.

Very fast.

I had five hours to save the world, according to the Clock of Doom, and if that wasn't enough, no amount of time would be. Five hours to save the world. Not stop Voldemort, that'd take more than mere finite minutes, but enough to stop his demon horde descending upon the world above London?

Yeah, plenty of time.

I'd done it in less.

From the plateau upon which I had murdered Time, Chronos and I stepped sideways through reality – we Apparated – across the length and breadth of Forget and back to Atlantis.

The way to do it was ridiculously simple, and I was amazed and disgusted that I had to make it this far every life to remember it. The Infernal Clock was tearing all the flesh it could from my hand, but at the same time it was still singing through my mind. More memories came to me now… more lives gone by.

I didn't know what I was going to do with this thing. It was growing increasingly hot and persistent. Cutting it in half had seemed like a pretty sweet move at the time, now I wasn't so sure…

So the world melted and I spun through nothing with Chronos at my side. We reappeared on a familiar dry dock looking out over the barren dustbowl of an ocean that was the coastline of Atlantis. I had brought us back to the Shipyards, to my battleship. As close as I could get without setting off the numerous wards and protective spells surrounding the old Atlantean cruiser.

Which didn't look so old anymore…

It looked shiny and new.

Like someone had put a few months work into it.

"So when and how are you going to try and kill me?" I asked Chronos, setting off along the old rusted walkway toward my ship.

Chronos eyed the rose in my hand, still sparkling and shaking, eating away at chunks of my skin. "I wouldn't dare touch you so long as you hold that, Harry James Potter."

I snorted. "You sound afraid."

"Of the damage you could do, oh yes, yes." He paused. "You have changed… everything."

All seemed quiet up on the battleship. There was no sign of Fleur, of Tonks, of Jason or Grace. How long had I been gone, I wondered… a few hours in Forget would be the equivalent of…

I marched through my wards, allowing Chronos to do the same. I had a strange feeling he was on my side, and had been for a very long time, and up the gangway onto the polished decking of the ship.

"Hey!" I called. "I'm home. Me, Chronos and the white rose of all creation!"

Jason and Tonks burst out from under the deck first, one after the other. Tonks brandished her wand and Jason a familiar mythril axe – the very same I had chopped and slashed with not so long ago on this deck.

"You're back!" Jason exclaimed.

"Harry…" A grin blazed across Tonks' face. "At last!"

"Guess I owe you a Coke," Jason said, nudging Tonks in the ribs. "I was sure some monster or another had eaten you, kid."

I winked. The Infernal Clock spun in my hand, biting through more of my flesh. It was burning me now, as well. Blood ran in rivulets down my arm, across my fingers, and splashed along the deck. "I like what you've done with the place."

"Harry," Tonks said. "Where have you been for so long? Who is this?"

"I've only been gone an hour or two," I said, with a somewhat sad, weary grin. Time was a relative concept, linear for all that matters, but oh so open to manipulation and… I looked at the writhing rose in my hand… mutilation.

"Three months," Fleur Delacour said, emerging from below deck with her arms wrapped protectively across her middle. She looked beautiful, and torn between desperate relief and anger. "Three months, 'Arry Potter."

Like I said, mutilation. I'd been gone only a few hours in my mind, a few hours since Fleur and I had slept together down below in her quarters. A few hours since that intimate, delicate, fucking awesome time… yet to Fleur it had been three months.

Damn, talk about not calling the next day.

"Hello, Fleur," I said. "I missed you."

"I forgot to miss you. You are bleeding, 'Arry," Fleur sighed. "Why am I always saying zat to you, hmm? 'Ave you brought me a rose?"

Grace emerged last, next to Fleur. Chronos looked between all four of my companions, all eyeing me in various states of relief and annoyance, and leant back against the ship's mast and laughed. "Here to save the whole wide world," he said. "And these are the days of our lives."

"Shut up," I said, stepping across the deck closer to my friends. "Is everything ready?"

"Everything except ze igniton," Fleur said. "Your instructions were to leave zat until you returned. Ze starlight may explode, you said. 'Arry… your hand needs attention."

"Let me," Tonks said. "We finally getting out of here, Harry? Back to England?"

I nodded. "Leave the rose, we don't have time and I haven't decided what to do with it yet. Have any of you been outside today?"

They all shook their heads. "Nothing out there but dust and regret," Grace said. "And monsters, of course. We've been on this damn ship pretty much since you disappeared."

The Infernal Clock was causing me so much pain that my hand was actually going numb. Time (heh) to deal with it. I'd brought it across realities, from one world to the next, and it was pissing and moaning about that. There were no outward effects that I had broken anything, though, which I suppose was for the best.

"Can you hear that?" I said, trying to open my fist around the rose. It wouldn't budge – the thorns were in deep. It was agony trying to release it.

"Hear what?" Jason Arnair asked, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "I don't hear anything..."

"Exactly." I gritted my teeth and managed to pull my thumb and index finger from the rose. Since the ring and little finger were missing entirely, that left the Infernal Clock dangling from the middle – my hand was all torn and bloody. "It's quiet, too quiet, even for Atlantis. We're about to come under attack."

"From You-Know-Who?" Tonks asked, tightening her grip around her wand.

"His shiny new army," I said, flicking my hand and loosing the last of the thorns. The Infernal Clock fell from my grasp. "Bone-Me—"

The white rose, stained red with my blood, hit the lower deck at our feet and exploded.

A noiseless, vicious explosion of blue crystal shards. The flower shattered, like glass, and shrapnel blasted outwards in a wide arc. The blast knocked us all back – Tonks went spinning away over one of the old cannons, Jason was thrown back over Grace and cracked his head hard against the heavy oak mast.

There was no heat or flame – just a wave of concussive force and deadly projectiles of pure Time shooting through the air. I fell in a slow arc, slow and useless. Chronos was unaffected and I watched him dive in front of Fleur! But he was too slow, much too slow…

Three petals, three splinters of the Infernal Clock punched Fleur in the stomach, straight through her blouse. They were travelling fast enough to tear her open and blood, hot and fresh, blossomed across her middle.

A soundless scream was caught in my throat – for Fleur – as a thin splinter, a single petal, cut into my left shoulder, just below the bone and into the meat above my heart. It hurt. A lot. That scream emerged from my throat as raw agony.

I hit the deck hard, blinded with pain.

Fleur was screaming. Her tones piercing the pall of quiet regret aboard my ship amidst the ruins. I couldn't sit up, the pain was excruciating. I raised my head enough to see the crystal-blue shard of the Infernal Clock burrowing into my left shoulder, heading down toward my heart.

There was nothing I could do.

After a moment, I mastered the pain and managed to rise. I used my good hand to try and dig the shard out of my shoulder, but I could barely touch it without swaying. Blood flowed down my chest, through my shirt. The shard dug itself in deeper, as if it had a mind of its own. Unaware that I was still screaming, I left it and dragged myself over to where Fleur lay… bleeding far worse than I was.

"Merde," she said. Her eyes saw me, but there was something else there, something foreign. She was looking through me. "Eet iz so beautiful…"

"Fleur—"

"Move aside, Harry," Tonks said urgently. She had a nasty looking cut along her cheek but other than that appeared unharmed. She began waving her wand across Fleur's stomach. There was so much blood.

"Oh 'Arry…" Fleur whispered, her eyes distant and beautiful. "What 'ave you done…? So old, so ancient and lonely… you shouldn't 'ave done eet!" Her words descended into desperate, painful sobs.

"I-I don't understand," Tonks said. "I'm not coming up with anything." She tried her charms again, pale pink light flowing from her wand. "It's not working!"

Chronos stood over us all, seemingly unfazed and unharmed. He had tried to protect Fleur. I'd seen it. "They're coming," he said, as I met his gaze. "You don't have a choice here, Harry. Let me heal her while you deal with your Lord Voldemort and Forget."

"I can't trust you," I said. Tears were swimming in my eyes. I hadn't cried in centuries… "I'm barely back two minutes and I've already killed her. Her blood is on my hands… always on my hands." I blinked away the tears and looked down – at Tonks who was hopelessly casting charms over Fleur's wounds. There was no hope of removing the shards… not with simple Auror training.

Chronos smacked me – hard – right in my wounded shoulder. I felt the sharp, crystal petal dig in a little deeper. A spike of vicious cold aiming straight for my heart. What happened when it got there, I didn't know – or care. "I want her to live as much as you," the demigod said. He was so young, so young and so old – just like me.

"Trust him, Harry," Grace said. She was holding Jason's head in her lap, stroking his hair. He was unconscious, a nasty bruise swelling across his brow. "You have to trust in something."

I met her eyes, sapphire-blue and pretty. "Grace Connor… why did you come along?" A spent, mirthless chuckle escaped me. "We all know why, don't we. Very well."

Chronos had already kneeled down next to Fleur. He picked her up in his arms effortlessly, as if she weighed less than a feather. Blood stained her blouse and jeans, and the decking beneath her. There was so much and it was so warm. Her brow was creased, pale… her platinum hair tangled and astray. She was so beautiful.

"I've nothing left to threaten you with," I told Chronos. He looked at me from beneath his sharp brow. We were heroes, I guess, and indistinguishable from madmen and villains. "So I'm just going to beg… please take care of her."

He nodded once and then turned on his heel. I watched him disappear down into the bowels of the ship with Fleur Delacour bleeding to death in his arms, and then I turned away, because the enemy was at the door, the world was about to come to a violent end, and I was the only one who could stop it.

Drum roll, if you please…

My wounds hurt. I limped up toward the bridge of the ship, sparing Jason and Grace a sad, tired glance. "Anything you can do to help," I said with a shrug, which sent bolts of pain lancing through my body, and tried to climb the steps. Why had the Clock exploded? Why had I brought it back at all?

Questions, questions – too many questions!

"Easy, Harry," Tonks said, offering me her strength. She ducked under my arm and kind of carried me up the steps. "So... you do know what you're doing, yes? Because I really want to go home now."

I offered her a comforting, friendly grin. At least it would've been comforting if not for the blood staining my teeth. My headache was killing me. "This is the easy part, Tonks, saving the world from the horrors of Forgetful Atlantis. We'll be having beer and chips for dinner tonight, mark my words."

"…And Fleur?"

I sighed and Tonks helped me into the seat next to the control column. Hands on the steering wheel, so to speak. We gazed out over the docks and through the slipway doors, out at the barren, lifeless seabed beyond that disappeared over an azure horizon. "If she dies, its my fault, if she lives… we learn something either way."

There was an empty bottle of Stella Artois on the control panel. I remembered Fleur and I sitting here and watching the sun-never-set. I brushed it aside. It had taken me a few days to repair this part of the ship, before I let myself be captured by Voldemort. It hadn't been switched on yet, but if memory served, and it did, this baby was about to show us some serious shit.

"Harry!" Grace screamed from the deck below.

I leaned over in my seat, straining my neck, just in time to see the far doors of the docks and most of the roof torn away under the force of a thousand demonic claws.

"Here we go!"

I started pushing buttons, keeping one hand on the wheel. Crystals and cool black stone panels began to glow with old Atlantean runes. A heavy, constant vibration ran throughout the ship and the deck beneath our feet. Tonks gripped the back of my leather chair hard, her face tense and afraid.

"Smile, sweetheart!"

The metal walkways buckled under the weight of a thousand tonnes of mythril-enforced steel being torn asunder. These creatures were the only things in existence that could unmake mythril. The noise was deafening, the reek of ancient bone near-maddening. Sulphur and dust and damp, dead earth all rolled into a cacophony of tormented screams.

Thousands of Bone-Men poured into the Shipyards, overrunning the broken and barren remains of the defeated Atlantean battle fleet. But there was one ship still ready to fly, one last battle to be fought. Wasn't there always?

The entire ship was shaking now. Sparks and heavy groans emanated from the control column. Yet it slowly began to rise, as if rolling waves had her across the bow… Yeehaw!... My ship would fly – that's about all she would do – but then that was enough.

The stone, metal, wood and mythril that had gone into her design over ten-thousand years ago was polished as good as new, yet I could hear things tearing in the guts of the ship. There were groans and echoing creaks across the hull. Splinters of wood were snapping across the railings alongside the decking. But she held, she held firm.

The last flight, the first flight, in so many long millennia… as time moves in a line, that is. A reminiscence of times gone by, of long ago, of all the past mistakes bound into the fate of Voldemort and I… a reminiscence.

I laughed aloud, bleeding into my chair as my ward platforms collapsed and the howls of a thousand and more yellow eyes surged across the Shipyards for my head. It certainly fit – a good name.

The Reminiscence.

The Atlantean battleship Reminiscence rose on invisible winds. The starlight engines fuelled by the lifeblood of the heavens. There was a heavy cargo on board – gold, mythril, ancient texts and weaponry – as well as my friends and allies. Sweet Fleur and gorgeous Tonks. We were headed for the end game now, up and out into the twilit sky!

Seconds before we were overrun I hit the big red glowing crystal in the centre of my control column and the Reminiscence was thrust forward. A great gout of steam and superheated magical energy burst forth from the aft engine ports, twin beacons of raw fuel burning the metal dock behind us into hot liquid ash, and we were away.

"Hang on tight!" I yelled to Tonks. The noise was deafening. The wind howling through my air hot and alive.

The docks collapsed behind us, crushing the Bone-Men under the weight of one of the larger structures in the Lost City. Flecks of burning metal and chunks of bone rose on a wave behind us, a cloud of arrogant dust hot on our tail. But we were flying! The repairs had worked, as my mind told me they always did, if I did it right.

We had burst out of the docks approaching the speed of sound. Already we were miles out over the barren, lifeless ocean. Great crags of ancient coral dead in the endless sun clawed at the hull, but the ship was made of sterner stuff than mere rock. We smashed into the dry reefs, we punched through the dry sea, before my exhalation at escape turned back into bitter resolve at the cost we were paying.

I pulled back on the controls and the bow rose – we shot toward the sky. The burnt orange sky, strewn with effortless cloud. Eternal twilight above the heart of time—

But then the Infernal Clock was no more.

I had broken Time's incessant, eternal struggle. Why was the world – this world, any world – still in one piece? Was everything truly in flux? Could the choices I make be made differently now? No matter. There is more to heaven and earth, Harry, than even you know… and Hell, I suppose. The three are, almost always, indistinguishable from one another.

My head was really killing me. The headache was… killing me.

Soaring up below the clouds, miles above the dead oceanic vista, I got a real good look at what had been happening to Atlantis since I'd been away. It wasn't pretty.

"Harry… Merlin," Tonks breathed.

Voldemort had taken his army from the heart of Forget and returned to Atlantis only minutes before I had, but those minutes were hours here in the Lost City. Hours the Bone-Men had used to assemble their forces, arrange their onslaught.

The towering skyscrapers and miles of dusty, low buildings were overrun. Creatures of varying size - from the very small to the mammoth – raged over Atlantis with mindless hate, mindless hunger. They were devouring the city, all save the centre tower – Voldemort's tower – and upon the very summit of that a gateway was opening, a way back.

"They're heading for our world, Tonks. I think we ought to do something about that…"

Beyond the city, the large snow-capped mountains, rising for miles above the metropolis, dwarfing even fabled Atlantis, stood uninterested in the battle that was about to get underway. Sentinels of a time gone by so very long ago.

Voldemort could pass between Atlantis and the real world as easy as thought. I could too, now, but he'd been able to do it since Day One. He could even bring half a dozen Death Eaters with him, through the murky waters of dreamt reality. It was how he was built – how he had torn himself apart – that afforded him the shortcut to Atlantis, and he could step back into the real world whenever he wanted…

But he couldn't take his new army that way.

That took time, a bit of patience, and one monumental fucking gateway that was going to open up in the skies above London, if the Dark Lord was to have his way… and I was going to have to let him have it. But not before doing some damage while I could.

It would be nearly September 1st back home, if my math was right. The time spent in Forget, which had been hours to me and Voldemort, three months to Fleur, Tonks, Jason and Grace, would be different again back in the real world.

It would be close, if not dead on, September 1st. My timing was never off. It was time to go back to Hogwarts. It was time to go home.

We were blazing a trail across the sky enough for any demonic soldier to see. The Reminiscence was running hot, the engines burning loud. We hadn't breached the sound barrier, but we had the power to… and I was tempted.

"What do we do then?" Tonks asked. Her hair was a rainbow of violent colour. "This is incredible, Harry!" She laughed – it sounded a touch unhinged. Insanity could be catching.

"We got two wands between us, Tonks." I glanced over the bow and began a fast descent toward the demon-riddled city. "A ship that only just flies, one or two life-threatening wounds, and a bunch of ancient cannons on board that will never fire again. Any ideas?"

Her eyes were wild against the constant sky. Her breath was hot against my face. We were alive, we were dying – moments like these… I wish I could have stopped time.

"I still have your Time-Turner." Tonks reached into her Auror robes, under her shirt, and pulled out the silvery chain from around her neck. "Yes?"

I shook my head. "Deader than dead, if I use that. I've got an idea…"

Tonks brushed my hair back from my brow and kissed my forehead. "Didn't doubt you for a second, kid."

It was like riding a broom, really. Once you figured it out once you never forgot how. It was the same with my memories, and all the years I had spent learning how to first fix then fly one of these badass battle cruisers. I flew down – hard – and I flew fast.

Grace dragged Jason below deck and Tonks strapped herself in next to me. The wind howled through our hair, our bodies were pressed hard against one another. Without the shields or any wards, the force was incredible. We left our stomachs back up somewhere in the lower stratosphere. A rollercoaster ride from hell. I tried to keep it steady for Chronos… and whatever he was doing to heal Fleur.

The Bone-Men had spotted our descent from miles away, and already some – those that could fly – were rising to meet us. I pushed it faster and levelled out about a mile above the lower parts of the city. Almost level with the tip of Voldemort's tower, away in the distance. A great shuddering roar echoed throughout the city as the dark and horrific army challenged me for dominance of the sky.

"Hey, Tonks, have we got any of that minestrone soup left?"

Tonks was gripping the arm of the chair and my arm tightly as we headed down into the city. "Are you kidding? Once the fresh stuff ran out… that soup is all you brought! We've been eating it for the past two months. Remind me to throttle you for that later."

I nodded. "I love that stuff. I haven't eaten anything in days."

"If we don't die in the next five minutes I'll cook it for you myself."

My grin was more of a smirk. "Watch this."

I arced the ship low and we descended between the ruined skyscrapers, diving along the streets and sending dust swirling up behind us in great, roiling clouds. There were dark things in those clouds, with yellow eyes, and they screamed after us with all the fury that had sent Atlantis into decay so long ago.

The city was alive around us. Hideous creations of twisted bone, fused through magic as old as the universe, sought to snuff out the small specks of life that dared to defy them. Overhead the sky was growing dim as Bone-Men borne on heavy leathery wings blocked out the twilight. There were monstrous shapes up there, as twice as large as the Reminiscence. Voldemort had unleashed a force he could never understand. I was about to dent it – severely.

As we flew I kept my bloodied left hand on the steering column and drew my wand with my uninjured right. It wrenched the eternal fragment buried in my shoulder, but the pain was always bearable. I pointed my wand toward the sky, against the encroaching darkness, and sang the song to end the world…

"INCENDIOS…" Flame as hot as the sun travelled up the spine of my wand. "…GRATA!" And exploded on the wings of my new strength, my new understanding, destroyed in the death of the Infernal Clock.

A trail of fire followed in the course of the battleship as we ducked and dived between the skyscrapers, heading up and out of the city with an entire flying army on our backs. The fire was a beacon, in case any were needed, of where I'd been and where I was. I wanted maximum chaos, maximum damage. Voldemort was busy with his gate, but surely he felt the energy I was pouring into this spell…

It was too late to stop me.

I thrust the throttle to the floor and we jerked forward faster than sound. A great sonic boom burst through the wake of fire and blasted all remaining window glass from the buildings around us for several miles. We fled the city; still trailing that fire, back up the range of towering mountains – ten miles high – that had been our crossover point all those weeks ago.

The mountains still awed me in their size and majesty. The most terrific, the most deadly, the most awe-inspiring range of mountains ever conceived. The twisted peaks were covered in electric-blue snow, cast from the sight far below, yet the range extended for miles and miles up toward the heavens.

The peaks brushed the sky, and I wouldn't have been surprised if they pierced the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Great crags of overhanging rock and cliff faces a dozen miles high played tricks with the eye, creating a sense of size so numbing that it couldn't be properly seen.

I was about to blow it all up.

We flew up the mountains, along the length of the ridges, and came upon the vast waterfalls of raw magic we had first seen upon our arrival. It was this raw magic that fuelled the city below, that had kept the lights and the runic magic burning so brightly for so long.

Awe-inspiring.

Deadly.

Majestic.

Ka-boom!

"The odds are long, Tonks!" I roared above the maelstrom. "The odds are long, life's unfair and death's no better! But you know what?"

"What!?"

"FUCK THE ODDS!"

I ignited the river of raw magic. The river that flowed down into a vast, unimaginably deep, reservoir of power beneath the city of Atlantis. A reserve of strength that had kept the city alive and powered for over ten-thousand years.

I set it ablaze! A fireball from my wand straight into the cascading falls!

We had seconds before the entire city exploded, before Atlantis crumbled. I wrenched the controls back and we rose toward the twilit sky – a sky I would never see again – the demonic army still screeching after us, as the first explosions rocked the city.

A wave of impossible energy washed over us and we were knocked off course. Heat. Untamed light. The end of a world, the fall of a lost civilisation. I'd exploded a star beneath the city, and it was deafening, chaotically silent. I could almost feel Chronos grinning below deck. I hoped and prayed to a being I didn't believe in that he had Fleur secured through all of this…

"Harry!" Tonks wasn't laughing or grinning anymore. She was terrified.

So was I.

But in the best way.

"This time counts for all, Tonks! Hold on!"

We were still rising, still shooting up through the sky on an enormous cushion of superheated air. I got a glimpse over my shoulder and saw great swaths of Atlantis sinking into a melting pot of fiery liquid magic. Fires and great bursts of energy punched through the surface of the world, spewed forth into the barren sea… The Bone-Men swarmed toward Voldemort's tower, even as his portal began to open…

Counts for all, counts for all, counts for all—

I twirled my wand between my fingers, slashing ancient runes into the air that burnt with sparkling radiance across the sky. We were travelling so fast that I left them in my wake, but the spell was forming behind me, in the fire and the surging wave of Bone-Men still playing catch-up on our tail.

"Take a deep breath!" I yelled, laughing and screaming laughing and screaming laughing and scream— "And count back from ten! Don't worry, it'll all be over soon!"

I inscribed the last rune in the air before me, a silvery trail melting away behind us, and felt a doorway open up in my mind, saw a way through the maelstrom. I glanced at Tonks and saw her eyes distant and amazed – she was seeing the same thing. Good. It had worked.

The sky was still diamonds. Azure, twinkling diamonds under an inferno of soft purple menace. I felt uneasy. I felt out of sorts. I felt like death warmed up.

I slammed the brakes on and we come to a slow, aching stop in midair. The ship hung for a moment on nothing, then the bow listed to the left and suddenly we were heading straight down as light burst across the deck – silver sparks of forever, boss – and we plunged back toward the violent end of Atlantis.

We fell fast – straight through the dozen or so flying monstrosities that had been chasing us, knocking them aside like gnats against a windshield – and then that doorway of the mind clicked open.

The Reminiscence hit a wall… of nothing – of archaic ruin and rune.

We flew forward to brush a sparkling curtain of mist that had formed in our wake. And nothing much happened, save the diamond sky began to fade away, the heat and the light became a wash of bruised purple sky, roiling with clouds of devastating potential, and we left Atlantis behind...

Then it began to hurt.

Of course it did.

Nothing this important could ever be gained easily, or without enough blood spilt to dye the Pacific bright red. I remember thinking that before.

I rode that wave of pain across the space between worlds, rode that motherfucker down through the moments between seconds, and over the impossible gap in forever. It was always, always one helluva ride. Only this time there were no memories, no trips into illusion. We weren't in a world of fantasy anymore, no sir, we were heading back.

Darkness everywhere, and the ship's engines groaned as we moved across nothing into everything. It was tough – like breaking through a bubble made of stone, several miles thick. There was no air, no sound. The inferno we had left behind was already lost and forgotten.

A grim smile crossed my face as I imagined Voldemort atop his tower as the city caved in on itself. He had less than no time to get back, let alone bring his demonic army. Your move, dickhead.

The Reminiscence was falling apart at her seams. We surged on, the world growing lighter around us, and I pictured London in the summer, the blue skies and thick heavy cumulus clouds. The heavy masts of the ship cracked and splintered first, falling down across the deck and over the railings into eternity.

We were so close.

Wild sparks burst from the runes across the control panels. My suit was on fire, so were Tonks' robes. She doused us with water from her wand. This wasn't like the journey to Atlantis from our world – this was worse.

The polished planks along the deck were buckling. Great plates of mythril were falling from the hull… the ship was screaming a silent death—

"Come on!" I slammed the throttle down hard, as hard as it would go, and the cord holding us between worlds snapped.

We surged forward into daylight, into a clear blue sky and a bright sun. It felt like coming home. The air was cool and fresh, normal. I felt the timer in my head slip back a few gears toward reality. Time reasserted itself – and a tiny shard burned an inch closer to my heart.

The Reminiscence was aflame.

Below us London stretched toward the horizon – grey and brilliant – and the mighty, unconquerable Thames snaked its way through the heart of the great city. It was as good a place as any to put 'er down, and I was putting 'er down whether I wanted to or not.

The engines were spluttering and dying. Either we were running short on petrol, which was unlikely, or some explosion or other had ruptured the lines. It could be repaired – it could always be repaired – but right now I had bigger concerns. Like not crashing into London and igniting the starlight core of the ship.

Which would make London look a lot like Atlantis did now.

Although destroying two cities in less than five minutes was probably some sort of record.

Not today. Not ever, if I had my way.

The Reminiscence didn't fly through the sky so much as fall. I kept the controls pushed back, keeping the bow of the ship flushed forward and at as high of an angle as we could manage, given the drag and the weight pushing down against us.

I managed to slow our descent, but not much more than that. The main sail was gone, half a dozen spot fires were eating away at the deck, and London was a very big target getting bigger and bigger every second. I could see thousands of cars now, glinting in the sun along the motorways in and out of the city.

I lined us up at the widest part of the Thames I could see – that I guessed we could make, given our airspeed, our rate of descent, and all the luck I had left to me… We were going to hit Chelsea, or Battersea, depending which side of the river—

A bit of quick spellwork slowed our fall. I buffeted the hull with cushions of air, the magic coming to me as quick as thought and as useful as ever. It dug through my headache, shot forth from my wand. Tonks was shooting water over the control panels down to the lower deck, putting out fires.

"Here we go…"

The Thames was upon us. It was going to be a bumpy landing. Both hands on the wheel, my wand between my teeth in a feral grin, I kept the Reminiscence steady and skirted along the top of the river, still travelling way too fast. The air brakes weren't doing much of anything, which is to say nothing, but my cushions of air along the hull were causing some friction and slowing us down.

There was nothing in our way, for which I was eternally grateful, as we hit the water at several hundred miles an hour, skimming across the surface and sending up great gouts of steam from the red-hot hull. Most of the speed was washed off instantly – Tonks and I were thrown around in our restraints – and we began to turn on the water.

I fought against it but the controls tore themselves from my grasp. All that was left was to hold on to Tonks with my bloodied hand and hope for the best. We spun, still mostly skimming the surface of the Thames, and I felt like throwing up.

But we were slowing down – the engines died – the ship listed in the water, but we were coming to a slow stop. The traffic on the Thames was given us a wide emergency berth, and hundreds of people were running along the wharfs and ports along the river, tracking our progress, as we came to a dead stop not a moment too soon.

The Reminiscence floated on the swell for all of three seconds and then settled into the bed of the river, wedged up against Battersea Bridge. The weight of all that gold and mythril was far too much to keep us afloat. Luckily, the depth of the river was only about fifteen feet. The ship was far too large to sink.

Tonks was gripping my arm – that was in turn gripping her leg. Her nails had drawn blood. She offered me a tentative, uncertain grin and loosed her grasp.

We had made it.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Okay…" I took another breath. It was a bright day. Warm for this time of year. "Okay. You get that soup on, I'll go check on the crew."

*~*~*~*

Too late, Potter. It was always too late.

*~*~*~*

"She's gone, Harry." Chronos was wiping the blood from his hands with the linens from Fleur's transfigured bed.

Fleur's blood.

"Gone?" I stepped into the quarters, the tempered fires of misery and beyond burning in my eyes and through my soul. "What do you mean gone?"

The would-be-god before me shrugged. His suit was still immaculately pressed and ironed – not a drop of Fleur's precious blood had stained him. "I healed her, as best I could. Got all the petals out, at least. But…"

I grabbed the son of a bitch by his fine unruffled suit and thrust him up against the not-so-fine wall. His head thumped against the wooden support beams. "I trusted you!"

A glint of anger flared in Chronos' eyes. He pushed me back with very little effort. "And I saved her life! I let you destroy Atlantis! She was mad, Harry James Potter. Delirious and insane. She kept screaming, clawing at me, and as soon as you breached the wall between worlds she Apparated away!"

"She wouldn't do that…" Some of the fire went out of me. "Fleur wouldn't leave me—"

"You changed her as you have changed everything." He cast a hand toward the bloodstained petals near the bed that were just petals now – of a long dead rose. "She saw something, Harry, she saw with the Infernal Clock. It was part of her, as it is part of you…" He pressed a finger to the wound in my shoulder, to the embedded shard of time working its way toward my heart. "And what she saw made her afraid, so very afraid, that she fled into wild ravings, screaming dark and terrible secrets…"

I know I shouldn't have asked. There was work to do – Voldemort was on his miserable way. But I did anyway. "What… what was she saying?"

Damn it all. The farther I went, the farther it hurt. A part of me already knew the answer.

A slow, horrific grin spread across Chronos' face. "The Sleeping God, she screamed, as Hell descended upon the world and brave Harry Potter stood alone before the armies of the Dark Lord and Forget… He is waking!"

Darkness descended like a shroud over my mind. I imagined Fleur desperate and alone, confused and afraid. Naked before the endless fathoms of Time, and seeing me at the heart of it all… truly seeing me… as a stranger, a half-god, ripped sparkling shards of eternity from her stomach.

I bowed my head.

Fleur had abandoned me. My secret was out. She had seen the monster within, the Immortal Mistake…

Oh god… or… Oh God.

Fleur had seen the Wastelands of Time.

*~*~*~*

A/N: Uh-oh, trouble brewin', boss. But we're back in the real world! Atlantis was great and all (until it got blowed up!), but now the fun really begins. I've been waiting to write half of these scenes since about Chapter 11, where I had this vague weird idea of where the story was heading. Oh yeah, whaddayathunk? A few plot points resolved, a few more questions raised – what's happened to Fleur???

Still aiming for 2,000 reviews before the story ends and we begin with the SEQUEL. Oh yeah, there'll be a sequel, if you missed that missive earlier. So thanks for reading, folks, and hopefully reviewing…

-Joe

PS: (2000!)