Disclaimer: 'We're gonna get you back to Tyson and your cosy tiger bed.'
A/N: I know, somewhat of a gap for this update. I've been closing out the semester with a tall order of six exams, so study took precedence over writing some kickass story. Dry spell over, though, in more ways than one. Heh. Sex jokes. Highbrow hilarity round these parts, folks. This chappie ain't as long as some of the others, as I was trying to set the scene for the penultimate final epic kill-em-all battle.
Oh yeah.
-Joe
Harry Potter and the Wastelands of Time
Chapter 27 – Discarding Revolution
Should the sky start to fall I will keep you safe…
~Five For Fighting
"Can you dig the petal out of my shoulder?"
"Don't you mean the impossible shard of eternity? And no. No I can't."
"Can't or won't?"
Chronos shrugged and rubbed his face. He looked tired, all things considered. "Both. Neither. Does it matter? I can't touch you now, Harry Potter, not for more than a second. The consequences of our coming into physical contact would be…" He shook his head. "This world has grown on me. I'd hate to see it end in fire once more."
"Aye, but that's usually how the dice fall."
I sighed and gained my feet. I looked at Fleur's bloodied and scuffed bed. The same sheets we had made love in some short hours ago – three months for her – ruined. What had happened? She had fled as we had punched back through into the real world, into the sky above London. Apparated away… Had we been through before she had done it? Was she lost to all of time and space? Or was she home with her family? Alive and… sane? No, probably not.
Not if she had seen the truth of me.
"Nothing to be done now." I spoke to myself but Chronos laughed.
"Everything to be done now! Voldemort will follow you back with whatever remnants of his army survived your inferno. "
That he would. "And what's your game in all of this?" I didn't care, actually, but information was power, and I hadn't quite given up yet. Close, very close. Even defiance could have its end. "Why save Fleur? Why aid me at all now that Atlantis is gone?"
"No time for this, Harry Potter, yes, yes."
"Answer me!"
Chronos turned sideways into nothing and disappeared. There was a small clap as air rushed back into the space he had been occupying. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, holding my head in my hands. Fleur. I was really fucking hungry, and there was canned soup nearby. And beer! Oh sweet, sweet Jesus, I was back in the land of milk and honey.
So many things to do, so little time.
And we were adrift in the Thames in full view of Muggle London. The Ministry would only be minutes away, descending with memory charms and plenty of cause to arrest me. I didn't have any patience for arrogant Aurors – not ever again. There was also that whole framed assassination thing from a month ago to worry about.
I put on my best grim and determined look, ignored the pain in my head and in my chest, and resolved to sleep when I was dead.
It's a long, long way back home, hero.
I emerged back on deck, can of cold soup dripping down my hand, to find Tonks still putting out spot fires. There was warm smoke on the air, brushing against my face, as I drank the cold minestrone soup straight from the can.
The Reminiscence was beaten to all hell and back. I guess we had to take the bumps anyway they came, even if it left us listing in the Thames with a crowd of onlookers gawping down over the side of Battersea Bridge overhead.
"Ahoy, there!" I called up to the sea of stunned faces framed against the clouds above. "Don't worry, no one's sinking my battleship! Is it the first of September?"
There were a few nods among the shocked and incredulous audience.
"Harry, the Ministry won't be far away," Tonks said. Her hair was a violent shade of purple, her eyes cautious yet concerned. "Is Fleur…?"
"Fleur's alive." I felt a strange tug of regret in my chest. Either that or the shard of the Infernal Clock was still squirming around in there. "She's left us. Apparated away. Hopefully to her home… but she's alive."
"She left?" Tonks paused. "And Jason and Grace?"
"Stunned. Below deck." Jason was unconscious, a serious blow to the head. "Arnair may need a touch of healing, though."
"Can you fly this thing out of here?"
I smirked. The ship would still fly - barely. "Should I fly it out of here? You're still employed by the Ministry, Tonks. Shouldn't you be detaining me or something? I pretty much just shot down the Statutes of Secrecy in a blaze of bloody flaming glory and pissed on the ashes."
Tonks' smile shone with young, fresh, and near-malevolent fire. "Why would I detain you now? You've got Voldemort on the run, Harry."
I laughed and Tonks disappeared below deck. Her words brought me back to real time, however, out of memory and regret over Fleur and my many badass wounds. I gazed up at the cloudy sky, beyond the crowds of stunned onlookers and the skyscrapers of London. The Dark Lord would be cutting through soon – any moment – with the remnants of his demonic army.
Did I have Voldemort on the run?
Have I ever had Voldemort on the run?
The influx of memory that went shooting through my mind was painful. Despite the lengths I'd gone to, all the games played and all the time travelled, I could never recall my foreknowledge being a significant advantage when it came down to the kill or be killed in the final, epic battle.
That particular battle wasn't fought with much magical skill, garnered from the understanding afforded to us by the Infernal Clock or not. It was a battle of wits and wills – of determination and broken freedom – and was always played out on a field beyond normal understanding.
But that fight wasn't today. It was too soon, far too soon, for anything that ethereal.
Today I fought for London – for beer and chips, for the ignorant masses, for myself, most of all, because killing bad things was what I did. I was good at it, more than anything else. And oh well, but I would make no excuses.
"Are you okay?" some brave soul called from the bridge above.
I looked up, rubbing my chest just over my heart. That sharp, deadly petal was painful, sure, but it was a numbing kind of pain. I didn't think I could extract it, not now. There was also a small part of me wondering what would happen if I left it to do whatever it would. It was a shard of Time, after all, and that fickle bitch had helped me come this far.
So, so far. Eh.
"Never better, mate," I called back up, offering a quick salute.
There was a charge of suspended disbelief hanging in the air, blowing in on the salty breeze, under the guise of magic dressed to impress. It was a warm September's day, the first of the year, and I had to be getting on with all manner of disagreeable behaviour.
I had wars to start. I had a war or two to end.
The polished deck, burnt and crispy now, creaked underfoot as I climbed back up to the command column of the Reminiscence. She would fly again. Everything looked in one piece, if a little fried and frayed, below deck. The starlight core was intact, the fuel lines all in the clear. We had lost power and fallen like a brick punching back through – deadweight – but the cross from Atlantis had merely stalled my awesome battleship.
I lowered myself into the seat before the control column. The panels were dark and scorched. 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 my feet. At my back, the engines began to churn the waters of the Thames into a bubbly froth.
Hot steam rose in my wake as I tilted the ship back to flush against the Battersea Bridge. The entire control column shook as I righted the Reminiscence and we began to rise off the river's bed. The weight of all the riches seized from Atlantis pulled against me, but the runes flared as bright as ever and after a moment's effort fighting with the wheel the ship hovered a foot above the Thames, dripping muddy water back down into the river.
"Very good," I said to myself. There was a reckoning coming, of that I was sure. That tension of unseen magic was almost thick enough to see. There was very little time, maybe less than an hour, before Voldemort made his presence felt and London was plunged into war.
I started gathering my magic. Gathering my new understanding, unleashed upon the remnants of the Infernal Clock. Voldemort wanted a fight, did he? A war upon the righteous and the unworthy…
I gathered my power, resolved my intent into something hard and fierce, cold and detached. Storm clouds began to gather across my mind – there I found power akin to insanity brewing below scarcely understood nightmare.
A slow, careful anarchy spread across my face. The Reminiscence surged forward across the Thames and up into the darkening sky.
Tessa.
Her name was Tessa.
More and more my thoughts return to her. She was someone that mattered. A connection made not through blood and circumstance. A relationship forged not through the cold heat and tragedy of war.
Also, she was cute.
"There's this new Malaysian restaurant in Leederville I want to try, Harry."
"Oh?"
"Word is the best shredded beef in the world."
I nodded. "We'll get some takeaway, head up to Kings Park with a picnic blanket and a bottle of scotch."
Tessa made a face. "How can you drink that stuff? It's too strong. A nice bottle of red wine, if you please."
To tell her I start my day with two fifths of Glenlivet 12 Year Old just to deal with the nightmares would not be fair. It would be cruel – I was a lot of things, none of them truly pure, but I was never cruel to those I loved. Never.
It was one redeeming quality within a miasma of failed and flawed personality.
"Tessa, I'm really glad I met you."
"I could have known you forever."
"I love you."
There was no bullshit in my feelings for the small, dark haired girl with the crystal blue eyes. Dark hair with a streak of soft blonde. Large, kind eyes and a sharp nose. She was only tiny, five feet and change, but beautiful. She never wore make-up, but she didn't need it… Her face was captivating. Plain and friendly, more than enough to inspire desire.
Moments of time – shattered now – lost in lives that only I will ever remember. And that apathy, caught in a web of stolen moments, may just be to the good people out there, the saddest thing in the world.
Thought was real, and the physical nothing save illusion. That ironic sentiment may one day prove to be my undoing.
Either that, or the final death of Time as it ground my essence to dust upon the shattered, wasted gears of the Infernal Clock.
"I love you too, Harry."
I can almost forgive myself for making her love a monster. Almost.
It was all coming to a head now.
All the lives. All the years. All the brief moments between one second and the next. So many brief, unflattering moments… Dust in the wind. That same wraithlike wind that belongs to other worlds – other times and other crimes, if ya follow me.
The Reminiscence shook in the skies above London. The ancient warship was in one piece, for the most part. The main mast had fallen, the white panels along the hull were cracked and the decking was scorched by the inferno of Atlantis, but we were still airworthy. Still soldiering on toward the inevitable destruction just over the horizon.
Life… will go on. It will go on. It will leave me behind. I can annihilate worlds – I just did – I can undo time, and perchance to dream upon the vagrant, valuable fields of the-other-way-around… and life will go on. Voldemort had assumed command over a demonic, skeletal army of intelligent nightmares.
Our exposure to the Infernal Clock had changed us both.
And it was time now to undo past mistakes.
Which meant I needed to be at my best, my most courageous and self-sacrificing. It meant I needed a drink. Several drinks – and a cigar or two. What better place than London to get that around midday?
I steered the Reminiscence low through the sky over Westminster. If memory served, and it often did – time and time again – there was a quaint little pub along Northumberland Street that opened early. It also stocked scotch and Romeo & Juliet cigars.
The ship was running near silent as I descended through the skies, scanning the smoky streets under the darkening heavens. Storm clouds were brewing, unnatural for this time of year, but then I may have had a hand in that. Strange ideas, strange spells and strange understanding flowed through my mind. I was altering the weather, preparing a battleground.
"Where we headed, Harry?" Tonks asked. She had returned from healing Arnair. Just a bump on the head. Grace was making sure he didn't pass out down below. "The Ministry has a helluva mess to clean up back at Battersea, but they won't be far behind."
I nodded. "I need sustenance for the fight ahead, sweetheart." There was liquid courage in fine, aged scotch. Not that I really needed courage. I was just battered and beaten and bleeding all down my ragged thousand-dollar suit. A shattered shard of eternal-time was burrowing down through my chest toward my heart and the best thing about this world, sweet Fleur, had abandoned me. "Just enough to keep me on my feet."
"The sky… the clouds…" Tonks hesitated. She gazed up from our rather unique vantage point at the roiling storm clouds. Low rumbles of tentative thunder shook the atmosphere. "Is that Voldemort's doing?"
"No, that's mine. Ha, there it is, Northumberland Street. Hang on, we're going in."
The ship was managing quite well, all things considered. At least the vibrations had stopped, which may or may not have been a good sign, and the deck had ceased smouldering. I took us down above the terraced houses, above the road, gaining wide-eyed and awed stares from the pedestrians below. I suppose I was an impressive sight.
I pulled the Reminiscence to a hovering stop thirty feet above the red-brick façade of the Sherlock Holmes. There was a nice, intimate roof garden atop of the place. The engines idled and only a faint draft of warm air disturbed the plants in their hanging baskets alongside the old-fashioned lanterns running parallel to the establishment.
I grinned at Tonks, who returned my look with something akin to befuddled, fearful, disbelief. "A pub, Harry? You're going to the pub?"
"Accio briefcase!" I waited a moment and my worn and bruised briefcase, so kindly given to me by the goblins right back on Day One, shot out of one of the charred holes in the decking and into my hand. It held my fake I.D., my Muggle currency, as well as my hallowed invisibility cloak and one or two other bits and pieces. "Join me for a drink?"
"No." Tonks shook her head. "Harry, no. You can't hang around – the Ministry will only be minutes away."
"I'm counting on it." I made a token effort to brush back my unruly hair and sweep some of the ash and dust from my ruined suit. At least the jacket covered the blood-soaked shirt beneath. A few gestures with my wand and I patched a the holes in the silk. "How do I look?"
"Not well."
I laughed, "You're being too kind", and disapparated from the Reminiscence down onto the crowded street below.
None of the Muggle pedestrians or bystanders saw me appear out of nothing, as all heads were craned toward the sky, toward the scorched and failing hull of my battleship hovering just out of reach above the pub. I straightened my glasses, dug around in my case for fifty quid, and headed inside.
I was greeted immediately by that warm, comforting smell of stale beer and old mahogany furniture. A scent like coming home, a taste of relaxation and forgetful memory, engrained into the carpet and hung upon the very atmosphere of the pub.
It was just after midday, and there were one or two old men near the bar, carrying the look of lifelong bachelors, sipping cool pints of lager and watching an Arsenal match on the TV. I stood there in the doorway for a moment, admiring the place, wishing I could just sit down and sleep, until the bartender cleared his throat and looked at me pointedly.
"Afternoon, son." He was a gruff man, shaven head and simple white shirt over a toned and muscular form. Magic or not, he had a look about him that said he'd kicked a lot of kids out of pubs in his time.
I strolled over to the bar, past an array of Baker Street photos in black and white along the wall. The light was dull, the velvet running along the floor dark green and stained. There was a pool table coated in chalk dust. I was wasting far too much time admiring this place but, by god, it did feel like coming home. Atlantis had been wonderful – Atlantis was always painfully wonderful – but it never felt real, not as real as this.
"How's your day, boss?" I asked, pulling up a stool against the bar. I winced as I lowered myself into it. That shard in my chest was going to be a problem, I decided.
"You know you can't be in here without a parent or guardian, kid."
I felt a brief flare of irrational anger… I'm older than the current millennium, you dolt… that was just so much wild insanity. Instead of anger, I grinned and pulled out the fake Muggle driver's licence the goblins had supplied.
"I'm older than I look." I handed him the card. There was a full suit of armour standing a silent vigil at the corner of the bar. It held a fake axe, decorative only, and atop its head was one of those old fashioned Captain's caps, embroidered with golden feathers and a linked tassel.
Nice.
The bartender shrugged and handed me back my fake I.D. "What can I get for you, Mr. Rafe?"
I almost gave the game away by pausing on the false name, but I was too well practiced at this. My mouth was already working before my brain caught up with it. "Pint of Stella, and two Romeo and Juliet's, if you please."
"Clip and light? Twenty-eight and sixty."
I slid a crisp fifty-pound note across the bar as the man deftly pulled a pint and reached above the bar for the cigars. He knew his trade as the beer, with only a quarter inch of head, sat frosty in front of me and he clipped the cigar, lighting it with a long wooden match.
"What are all those people doing outside?" he asked me as I drained half the pint in the best part of three seconds.
"Hmm? Oh, looks like a storm – and I think the Air Force are doing some training or something. Strange plane flying over the city."
The bartender shrugged and wiped down the spotless mahogany finish with a spotless cloth. I had vague memories of meeting this man before, life before life before life, and I think he was half the reason I chose this place to get my pre-battle drinks on. He was very unassuming, very professional, yet he could break even the hardest motherfucker in half. He was me, in a way, without all the random insanity and crude jokes.
I finished the pint and called for another. The first taste of the cigar against my lips was bliss, utter bliss. It was only supposed to be my soul that was blasted back through time when I failed – what was left of it, anyway – but I guess those remnants were stained with tobacco, because I'd been dying for a sweet, sweet smoke for weeks…
"You're not working today?" the bartender asked me, just making small talk, as he refreshed my beverage.
"I may have to go in this afternoon," I said, checking the mental clock in my head. Cords of impossible magic were strung along and through my mind, creating the storm outside, charging the atmosphere with devastating potential. But not all of that was my doing. Voldemort was on his way, within the hour, and the force of his will and intent were pressing against London, against the whole wide world. Forces were starting to truly clash.
"What is it you do?"
"Self-employed." I blinked and the first flash of lightning lit up the darkening world outside. Thunder followed, rumbling low through the bar. Next would come violence.
"Oh?"
"Rather dull stuff, really. Few benefits, long hours, and the clients I have to deal with are… just evil." I laughed. "Hence the need for a few pints before I—Wait, hang on a minute…" My eyes travelled beyond the bartender to a solid locked cabinet behind him, along the wall covered with various bottles of spirits and whiskeys. "Is that an unopened bottle of fifty-year old Glenfiddich scotch?"
Now I really knew what half-forgotten memories had guided me back to this particular pub.
"Yes it is. And it's been sitting in that cabinet for ten years." The bartender shrugged. "My father won it in a Best British Pub competition back in the eighties. No one has ever been game enough to try it."
"What?" I was outraged. "Why?"
"Because it's twelve-hundred quid for two-fingers worth." He laughed. "Or ten-thousand for the bottle, if you're really in the market, Rafe."
Thunder again – the windows of the pub shook in their frames – and I took a long drag on my cigar, tapping the ash into an ashtray, and thinking about the thousands of pounds in my briefcase. So much of my days were spent dealing with ash and smoke.
"What happened to your hand, if you don't mind me asking? That looks recent."
I shrugged, moving the stumps of the two missing fingers on my left hand as best I could. It took me a moment to remember where I'd lost them, but soon enough I recalled the explosion in the cavern deep beneath the heart of Italy. The Gates of Atlantis. Some Auror or goblin or Orc-Mare had blasted me for six. It was rare for me to stay in one piece throughout this old game.
"Same shit different day, friend." I drained the last of my second pint. I'd been in the pub five minutes. If I were judging things right, I had another seven before the Ministry would be upon the Reminiscence. "Small accident at work."
The bartender nodded. "Another?"
"One more for the road, mate." Her name was Tessa. "One more for the road…"
I wondered on Fleur for a moment as my third beer was drawn and the shard in my chest dug half an inch deeper. It felt like a thin sliver of cool, scorching ice – fuelled with rage and chaos and power. It felt like Time. It didn't like me thinking of Fleur. Five minutes and forty-seven seconds. Something told me that was all the time I had before the Ministry arrived. I didn't doubt it.
"I've travelled through time, you know."
"Is that so?"
"You don't believe me."
"We're all travelling through time, mate, one second at a time."
Truth enough to that, I suppose. I liked this guy. "And her name was Tessa… I find my thoughts returning to her more and more now. I don't know why."
"Girlfriend?"
"Once upon a time."
"You look too young for 'once upon a time'."
I laughed. "Some people live fifty years in five minutes, buddy." And the downside… "Or five minutes in fifty years." I sighed. "It already feels like I'm losing."
The bartender, whatever his name was, took the ten quid I'd left on the bar for my third pint and gave me a fiver and coin in change. "Losing what?"
"I don't know anymore, but I'll tell you one thing…"
"Mike. Name's Mike."
I inclined my head and tipped my glass. "I'll tell you one thing, Mike. You throw in that awesome cap on the armour and we've got a deal on the Glenfiddich."
There were wars – great wars, bloody wars, time wars… I was there, so very long ago. Other lives and other crimes, you see. No… you don't see. You can't see.
It never happened for you.
As soon as I apparated back up onto the Reminiscence I was met against the points of seven wands. The best response I could muster was a yawn – I was, after all, very tired. But I could sleep when I was dead and I'd die before I slept, so I focused my attention on the Aurors.
There were seven of them. Looking rather resplendent in their fine cut identical robes. Auror robes always looked pretty cool. They were tight, slim, and sort of made the eye slide around the wearer's form. Bit of disorientation was always good battle practice.
I recognised Kingsley Shacklebolt, John Dawlish and one of the younger women with a severe ponytail and sharp brow. The rest were just a blur of time gone by, faceless grunts of a Ministry too far gone to recover… without revolution.
A cool, wet wind blew across the bow of my battleship. I had appeared in between the seven Aurors and my own lone deserter, Nymphadora Tonks. It was really dark now, day to night, and the growing potential in the storm overhead had charged the air with static nitrogen.
We could all taste the energy of the oncoming madness.
"So this is your doing, Harry Potter?" Kingsley asked in his broad, calm baritone of a voice. "This ship… your use of underage magic. Do you have any idea just how many laws you have broken today?"
"I stopped counting at thirty two. How have you been, Kingsley? I hear your lot has been looking to speak with me." I gestured at the groups of three standing either side of the large man. "Some rubbish about an assassination, or something."
Near silent drops of cool rainwater drummed against the deck of the Reminiscence. I looked up to the sky, to the bulging, bruised clouds, and licked my lips. There was very little time. Work to be done, lives to be saved, enemies to be crushed.
"Harry, just come with us and we'll speak to Dumbledore—"
"You can't change the weather," I said softly. What had been a warm summer's day was now darkness in the heart of faux-winter. My doing. My storm. My weather. I was never innocent in all of this, foolish to even think so… "You Aurors have something I need."
I drew my wand and tossed my briefcase aside. My new bottle of scotch was safely wrapped inside the invisibility cloak. My awesome Captain's cap, sitting firmly atop my head, fit like a glove. I looked pretty badass against London in the throes of power unseen.
"Have the goblins demanded my head on a platter yet?" I asked Kingsley.
"Harry," Tonks warned, whispering in my ear. "Don't raise your wand unless you mean to use it."
"That's another matter the Ministry wants to talk to you about," Kingsley said. "They claim you stole from their vaults and killed some of their kinsman in Italy."
"Deceitful little fuckers." I laughed up at the sky and lightning cracked, thunder roared. The world was inches away from tearing itself apart! The real fireworks had yet to be ignited. "Voldemort will be joining us in a moment."
One or two of the Aurors visibly paled. Here I was, the Chosen One, invoking the Dark Lord's name as if over drinks. Madness, chaos, insanity – this tale wouldn't be worth living without them.
"Come now, Potter," John Dawlish said, brandishing his wand. "You need to get this ship out of here and surrender your wand—"
There was a blazing flash of warm orange light and Fawkes, Dumbledore's loyal and familiar phoenix, appeared in the air before me, wreathed in flame. His twin-beaded eyes reflected the forks of sizzling lightning leaping through the clouds far overhead. Gripped in the majestic bird's talons was a scrap of old parchment.
I reached out and grabbed the letter and Fawkes disappeared once more into flame.
Harry,
Surrender nothing. We are prepared.
-AD
Well, at least the old man still had some faith in me. We are prepared. I had to take that to mean he had followed the instructions in the letter I had sent him before Atlantis. Neville Longbottom should have done the same and completed the task I set him upon our chance meeting at PORTUS nearly a month ago now.
Sharp lances of pain accompanied the memory. I was back in the real world, into the plans I had set in motion before Atlantis, and my memories were burning through my mind, trying to make some kind of linear sense out of pure chaos. I had met Neville, of that I was sure, with Fleur.
My head throbbed as I tried to recall the last time I'd seen him. Fifth-year, the Hogwarts Express, barely a month or two ago, but then… it had been years. Years after he'd taken a Killing Curse to protect Hannah Abbott and Susan Bones from death… just one way Neville had gone out over the aching lifetimes in my head.
He always died in style. That was something, I suppose. Some people aren't meant to do anything less.
Some people aren't meant to grow old either.
Dumbledore and Longbottom, upon which spun the whole foundation of my plan to best the Dark Lord today. I could have done far, far worse.
I scrunched Dumbledore's note in my fist and let the wind carry it away. "Very well," I said. "Surrender nothing." The moment I raised my wand the Aurors wouldn't falter. Kingsley would probably concede a stunning spell to keep up appearances, even though he was more Dumbledore's man than the Ministry's.
"Harry…" Tonks whispered. She sensed my intent. "Please don't hurt them."
Was I that far gone that Tonks thought I would? Maybe that wild insanity was a lot more visible than I thought. Oh well.
I raised my wand against Dawlish, because that guy was a dick.
As predicted, the seven Aurors did not hesitate. They fanned out, widening in a half-circle around me on the other side of the ship's splintered mast. Wands appeared as if by thought, bright red light surging forth on the wings of their intent.
"Stupefy!" Dawlish cried.
The rest of the Ministry's finest cast non-verbal magic.
Kingsley fell back, summoning a wide shield charm against any spells I managed to sling. The woman who looked familiar cut a deep slash through the air, blue light tinged silver – confusion hex – and the others moved to surround me, a few training their wands against Tonks.
I watched all this happen in a detached, weary manner. The moves were so predictable, so goddamn familiar. I had been here before, at the end of all these wands. Already I had a rune of ancient Atlantis sketched before me, ready to deflect and destroy…
Only this time something felt different. Something felt… new. The shard in my chest flared raw agony through my body and all at once it was as if I were viewing the world slowed down. My perception of reality shook, my head spun, and I watched the crimson, unconscious malice in Dawlish's stunner ache towards me in slow motion.
Time had skewed. I knew and understood it instinctively. After all, if I knew anything, it was Time.
Kingsley was still backing away, but so very slowly. His shield flared to life in mere fractions of a second, yet the long cone of protective light took close to ten seconds to materialize. The other Aurors moved as if underwater, caught in quicksand, against a fierce wind. Their expressions were clear – determined attack and defence, but I had all the time in the world.
The Infernal Clock was at work inside of me.
My heart was beating a thousand miles a second but I was calm despite the pain. My perception of time had become hypersensitive. Each passing millisecond was a moment I could analyse, assess, and react against accordingly.
This was fucking brilliant.
I took a step back and to the left, out of the path of Dawlish's stunner and the female Auror's confusion hex. I could have danced amongst them if I had the desire. I did not. Shacklebolt looked downright furious that I'd forced the Aurors into confrontation. His grim expression and swift shield charm suggested my name had been added to yet another Shit List.
Life flared into my rune, quickly scratched into the air along the tip of my wand. It was only a small thing, the size of a galleon, but it shone with pure silver radiance against the encroaching darkness. We were all aglow in the haze of spellfire. My magic had not been slowed – it was merely, rather amazingly, my perception of time, my ability to process one instant to the next, that had changed.
To the Aurors, I would've been a near-invisible blur.
My rune gained depth, dimension, spinning on the air as fast as sound. Indeed, a small shockwave blasted out from the rune, near deafening, and arcs of crystal light burst forth in clear, chaotic domes. The rune beget magic, and became a wave of intent.
I took a step to the side and time, Time, time, snapped back into place like an elastic band pulled taut and released. Sound rushed back into my ears, more than a dull buzzing, but alive with the storm, the magic, the high-pitched mockery of my own laughter!
"GET OFF MY LAWN!" I roared.
My magic, the rune, surged out across the air, cutting through and annihilating Dawlish's stunner and the confusion hex. The Aurors had less than a second to react. Even Kingsley, the best of them, was caught unawares…
The light past through his shield, shattering it into a waterfall of blue sparks, and then cut through the entire wedge of Aurors like a hot knife through butter. They all froze, paled, and then crumpled as one against the unconquerable deck of the Reminiscence.
Lightning flashed, drops of cold rainwater splashed, and I had clashed, feeling not at all abashed that I had thrashed, the elite of the Wizarding World.
Seven wands clattered to the decking as the Aurors lay in a slump on top of one another. I spun my wand in a cool circle and shoved it back into my jacket pocket.
Tonks dashed forward from behind me. "Harry, what did you—?"
"Atlantean stunner – the way it should be done, Tonks. Don't worry, they're just knocked out."
Tonks moved between her fallen colleagues, using her wand to shift them off of each other. "I've never seen anyone move as fast as you just did."
I tentatively rubbed the gash in my shoulder, the ever-deepening wound through which the linchpin of all Time had buried itself. "Kingsley is going to be so pissed off when he wakes up."
Tonks nodded, trying to fight a small smile. "Let's not be here when he does then. This is my job, you know, Harry. I'll be sacked for this. Then arrested."
"Or arrested then sacked. Heh. Either way, you can work with me, remember." I moved between the Aurors, collecting their wands, until I had all seven. "Together we'll end a war."
"What are you taking their wands for?"
"Because eight wands are better than one."
"Okay…"
Small hailstones began to dash against the deck of my battleship. Tiny things, just little flecks of ice. My will and intent were turning this storm into something truly fierce. Soon there would be snow, localised over London, a blizzard at the end of summer. The Muggles would be starting to worry.
Tonks' hair flickered between bubblegum-pink, luscious-blonde, fiery-red, and deceptive-green. I loved the way it did that. I could watch her for hours. Hours I never had to spare. It was getting cold now, and almost deathly quiet. There were a thousand things that needed doing, least of all was figuring out what the shard of the Infernal Clock was doing to my insides. Despite the pain, it had been suspiciously beneficial so far…
My thoughts turned briefly back to Fleur, but I shook them away… sifted them down through the headache… and kept my focus on the moments ahead.
"What are we going to do with this lot?" Tonks asked.
"Let's drop them off in the beer garden in the pub below. They're gonna want a drink when they wake up and see what's eaten its way through the sky."
And what's left to say then, when nothing ever changes… when every roll of the dice comes up snake eyes. Fuckin' crimson snake eyes.
"You're making a mistake, Harry."
"Tessa isn't a mistake. I lost Fleur, I lost Tonks… so many times." I shook my head to clear the chaos. "I love her."
"You only love her because of who she reminds you of."
My anger flared. "Perhaps I love her despite who she reminds me of!"
There are only so many chances I can take.
And I had pretty much run out of all of them.
A bitter pill to swallow, as I steered the Reminiscence high above London. Tonks, Grace and Jason stood at my back. All of them looking a little worse for wear. Jason had a nasty looking bruise spreading down the side of his face, but his grim expression was solid enough to do his resolve justice.
The ship was ensconced within a mantle of protective magic. A shield designed to reflect and deflect the worsening weather, as well as the brutal attack that was only minutes away now.
"You see," I told Jason and Grace. "It's easy. One of you will steer, just like this…" I moved the control column back and forth, tilting the ship down and just under the heavy storm clouds. "The other can control balance, yaw, pitch – just like this, using the crystal platform. Like driving a car, folks, just remember to keep us out of the way of the big stuff."
"The big stuff?" Tonks dared ask.
"Bone-Men, my dear, shambling and writhing across the sky." I chuckled. "And the Dark Lord, of course. Although if I'm right, he won't hang around here for long." Enough to trade a few punches, perhaps, but that wasn't how this game usually played out.
Flashes of other lives, of other storms and the same old headache, had Voldemort leaving the Ministry to deal with the catastrophe that was about to fall on London, while he headed north, commanding his newfound strength and power, against Hogwarts.
We are prepared, Dumbledore's brief missive had said, which meant our slim chance of success had grown a little fatter.
The streetlamps had come on in London far below. Big Ben and the Tower Bridge were lit up for the whole world to see. From our higher vantage point, I could glimpse clear blue sky miles away in the distance – way beyond the outskirts of the city. My storm was centred over the bridge between worlds. The first few flakes of snow had begun to fall.
"What about all the people down there, Harry? The Ministry hasn't had time to do anything but try and stop you."
"I know, Tonks, I know." There would be damage to the city's infrastructure, and more severe damage to its residents, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve to minimise the chaos.
I drew my wand and started sketching runes in the air, one after another, and dispersing them into the wind. Streaks of coloured light, greens and oranges and yellows, whipped between the fresh snowfalls and descended over the city. Tiny sparks of good intentions.
I blanketed the city in suggestion, in a massive focus of magical repellent. There was no way the city could be evacuated, none at all on the timeframe we had, but it would be far safer indoors than out. My charms settled over London at midday, the sky as dark as night, and whispered into the ears of all those who stood gawking at the heavens, to all those who were exposed against the madness.
Head inside… safer inside… get off the street…
Waves of my thoughts were pressed into the minds of the millions of people below, urging them to get inside, out of the cold and the snow, to perhaps call in sick after lunch, to get home and lock the door. Pulses of suggestion, of hints and ideas. It was the best I could do without covering the city in a layer of magic akin to the Imperius Curse. And even I wasn't far gone enough to attempt to fuck with so many minds.
You don't know that, a soft voice whispered. It sounded like Chronos. He wouldn't be far away, if I understood anything of the demigod. "You can't change the weather, maybe yes maybe no, and I don't want anyone doing anything too brave here, okay."
"Brave or stupid?" Jason asked, rubbing the growth of stubble on his cheeks. "Only a few short months ago I was lecturing on the forgotten mythology of Atlantis, and now here we are on a ship made ten-thousand years ago by those very same Atlanteans. Brave and stupid seem to go hand in hand with Harry Potter."
I laughed. "When all this is over later on tonight, you and I need to drink some fifty year old scotch."
"I hope I'm invited to that party," Grace said, placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. "There are many things that need explaining, Harry."
"I'm sure there are – but right now we're going to war. Look…"
Through the exotic, heavy sky, under and across the bulging storm clouds and through the heavy gales of snow and sleet, hail and rain, a small dot of light pierced the darkness. It was a tiny thing, glowing in the sky over London just two miles from where I steered the Reminiscence against the storm, but it was what I had been waiting for.
My stomach lurched at the sight of it. A wave of nausea unrelated to my wounds and fatigue gnawed at my insides. I saw the world through double vision, through the eyes of a madman, and felt the very atmosphere splintering along its unseen panes. Cracks of invisible force rippled outwards across reality.
"You feel that?" I asked. "Of course you do. That's Atlantis burning, ladies and gentleman, mere seconds after we left it. God bless the causality of unnatural timelines."
"It feels wrong, Harry, just like that city did."
"This is where everything changes, Tonks. Where it becomes a war of forces not meant to exist in our world. A contest against nightmare and worse. But we'll solider on, fight the good fight, and keep hoping for the best. Don't pretend you're not a little excited!"
Lightning tore across the clouds and I laughed against the blizzard, even as that distant light dimmed and a shadow darker than the stormy sky, darker than crimson midnight, spread forth from a place between worlds.
I reached into my pocket and removed the second cigar I'd bought only a half hour ago. Mike the bartender had clipped it for me, and now I lit it with a flame from the tip of my wand. A little something to steady my nerves…
"Those things will kill you," Tonks said, but her voice was distant, her eyes on the darkened patch of midnight sky. The wind blew her pale sapphire hair around her young, beautiful face perfectly.
The sea at storm, I thought.
There were moving shadows in the sky now. And then all at once a deafening, earth-shattering, bang. The noise of a world ending beyond the abyss flooded into Great Britain, over London, and a maelstrom of ignited raw magic, of fire and blood and bone, spewed forth into existence. Amid all that chaos…
…the Dark Lord Voldemort.
The Shambling Bone-Men burst through into a world unknown to them for ten thousand years. A mere fraction of their true number poured into our reality from Atlantis. The rest had burned in the fires of my wand, as they always did, but still hundreds if not thousands of the creatures had followed Voldemort back across the void.
And other skeletal things, too, of tremendous size and devastating strength.
Together at the control column of the Reminiscence alongside Jason, Tonks and Grace, I stepped forward to the edge of the ship and beheld a mammoth being, a creature of long, yellowed bone, the size of Hogwarts, as it tore into the world amidst the suffering of its fellows.
"So much for the Statutes of Secrecy…" Tonks managed, her voice almost lost against the gigantic size of what we had to face. Dusty bone, ancient and terrible, filled the sky now – a blaze of creatures brought forth from a disturbed, eternal grave.
Great platforms of that same bone, demonic airships of long ago, ripped through the gap, carrying Bone-Men that couldn't fly, that were the last remnants of the army from deep within Forget. It would be upon those floating carcasses I would find Voldemort, but not yet. The big bastard at the forefront of the army needed to be dealt with first, before it decided to crush London.
I whispered a sonorus charm to amplify my voice and then started laughing. A slow, steady laughter, mocking the decimated army I saw before me. Mocking the darkness arising from a lost nation, and drawing the attention of creatures not even close to human upon little old me.
The giant skeletal face turned to behold me, floating in the sky only a half-mile away. Its gaze was alien, its eyes hollow and dead. There was no reasoning with such a monstrosity. Naught but fire would end this.
"YOU!" The voice was distorted – deep and violent. It sounded like a thousand drums scraping across time. A million buzzing horns blown from the depths of perdition.
And it had recognised me.
"Hey there, pretty boy!" I screamed at the horrific demon, at a face that dwarfed the Reminiscence and cast the whole of London within its grim shadow. "Where's your ugly son of a bitch master?"
Voldemort was within the storm. I could feel him. My scar was burning; a slow line of blood dripping from the old wound and down my face. The twisted and impossible bone-ships, surrounded by swarms of airborne demon spawn, hid him and his complement of Death Eaters from sight. I would have to seek them out…
The Lord of the Bone-Men, bound to Voldemort's power, roared a cry of thunderous insolence and surged towards me across the sky. My entire ship shook, great fragments of the deck cracked away, and it was all Jason and Grace could do to keep her steady against the maw of the beast. It was time to face my enemy.
I leapt down from the control column at the aft of the ship, down onto the beaten and broken deck, past the dead cannons and the snapped mast, running for the head of the Reminiscence, to the one and only vanguard against all that had destroyed Atlantis those many millennia ago.
As I ran, I bit down hard on my cigar, digging into my pocket for the wands I had won fair and square, through the ancient rights of wizard combat, from Kinglsey and his Aurors. The giant creature of bone, crawling across the sky, turned its massive, hideous skull to meet me. It was only fifty feet away now, its jaws stretched wide to swallow the Reminiscence whole.
"FUCK YOU!" I growled through my gritted teeth. This monster needed to fear me, like all the rest of them. In a cloud of smoke, in a haze of unchallenged defiance, I reached the bow of the ship and leapt up onto the splintered railing, howling into the defiled heavens!
I tossed the seven wands up into the air, focusing my undeniable intent upon the magic within, and took a deep, steadying breath…
Things back here… they never change at all.
All the demonic forces of Hell and Forget threatened to descend through the storm-ridden sky above London. I stood at the forefront of my battleship, that ol' shitkickin' grin on my face, and regarded the horde - that giant alien face only a few feet away - with weary indifference.
"POTTER! I will swallow your soul!"
Would you now? Would you really? Seven wands spiralled around me, cutting thin tracks of silver light in fierce, patient arcs around my body. Eight better than one… Slowly – ever so slowly – my smile paled into fated, discarded revolution.
And now behold the trembling sky, the wasted promises of futures long past, borne upon the righteous divine fury of Long Ago, and behold the last of Harry Potter, of all that I ever was, bathed in the blood of a thousand lost worlds.
I flicked the stub of my cigar over the edge of the ship into the city far below, tipped my awesome Captain's hat back on my head, and then cocked my wand as if it were a shotgun.
"Come get some."
A/N: And thus the scene is set for what I intend to be my finest ever action scene. Those who have read my other stories across the years will know I enjoy a good action scene. There will be gratuitous, completely uncalled for nudity in the next chapter. Looking forward to that!
And it may very well be the last chapter of Wastelands of Time. Oh yes, oh yes. There shall be an epilogue, though, which will pave the way for the sequel. Keep an eye out for Chapter 28 – Lonely Tonight, Lonely Tomorrow, as soon as its written. Good job on the reviews for the last chapter, too, you folks did great.
Thanks for reading, please review,
-Cap'n Joe
PS: A firm handshake to any movie buffs that picked up the homage in the last few paragraphs to the greatest movie of all time.