Harry Potter & The Hand God

Harry is fairly sure he is dead. He’s fairly sure the world has ended. 

His body is not a body. It is a tangled mess of strands of memories, wrapping around one another. He looks around the world and recognizes it for his mind -- and his mind is the world.

He is God. Why does that feel so right and wrong?

Oh. That’s right. He’s a demi-God. His father has become his, has given him his prowess in return for his abandonment. His father is a God and he is his father’s son.

These are hard facts to recall. Why is everything, thinks Harry, so… fickle? His mind, the world, is fickle.

Is he dying? Is he fairly sure he is dead? 

But he’s not dead! He’s a boy and he’s in love and he’s going to change the world one day, just you wait and see. He’s a boy in love and he’s a dismantlist to his core. He is going to do great things. One day.

One day, one day -- but that doesn’t make sense, either. He’s dying. There is no ‘one day,’ there is just this day, his last day, trapped in his small world. 

He looks around and sees grass suddenly below him. Grass with the Hogwarts castle behind him. There are textbooks and quills and scrolls laid out in front of him. 

A memory. He is in a memory, in his mind, in his very world. Holes are burned around the sky, peering into other memories. The first time he met Tom. The moment he decided to stop hating him. Punching Draco Malfoy in the face, making out with Blaise in the common rooms.

He sits down in the memory and flickering into existence around him is Blaise and Neville, Neville sits behind him, running his hands over Harry’s body. Blaise looks at him dremaily, one hand on his thigh. Harry is trying and failing to study.

“I love you,” he says, swallowing thickly. 

And all is well in this world inside his mind, all is well because Harry is surrounded by the ones he loves and the ones he’s known for year -- because he does love Tom, really, he really does, and when he loves, he loves hard… but it is not the same. Neville and Blaise have been with him for more than a few months. He has known Neville and Blaise forever.

But it would be nice for Tom to be here, among the people who genuinely want the best for him. There is a reason he is not.

And among the msit and world and thoughts of dying, death, and God -- there is love. There is love and hate but right now, mostly love. He would kill and die for these people. He might be doing that right now.

“I’m doing all I can to help you, love,” says Blaise. “So is Tom. I will never like him, never trust him

“Is there a reason you don’t trust him?” asks Harry, feeling Nevills’ hands brush his sides. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

“I don’t know,” says Blaise. “I con’t remember.”

That is the truth of his life, every time. He can’t remember. Harry loves and hates his mind. He loves it because he’s petty and he loves it because it’s all he has.

But he is also okay with dying when his time comes. Can all people say the same?

And interrupting this blissful moment, a voice, echoing from the sky:

“They’ve figured it out, Lily.” 

Lily, the voice had said. His mother, isn’t that right? Lily is his mother. Why are they talking to him as if they are talking to his mother? And who is talking to him? Who, what, when, where, why? Does any fo it even matter, if he is dying?

He is okay with dying here, among his favorite people. He is okay with never getting up again.

Harry hums, looking at Blaise, content to let him decide. “Do you think I should go check that voice out?”

“I think,” says Blaise, “there’s little other option.”

“But I love you,” says Harry, meaning it with every fibre of his being. “I want to stay here with you.”

Blaise takes his hands and kisses the back of them. “Oh, love, I would adore that. But you can’t.”

“Whyever not?” begs Harry. Neville’s hands run through his hair from behind him. “We could be happy here.”

“If you stay here, love,” says Tom, appearing in front of him, holding out his hand. “Then you die.”

And then he would never see Tom again.

Harry frowns. He looks at Neville and Blaise, who smiles at him, encouragingly, and he rises, slowly. He takes Tom’s hand in his own. 

“Where are we going?”

“Home,” says Tom. “Home.”

“It’s over, Lily.”

Harry follows the voice, holding hands with Tom. They step through memory after memory. Cigarette like burns break holes into other memories. They step through and past them.

Walking in a memory together where Tom watches as Harry undergoes the War on Purebloods, Harry looks at the burns. “What are those?” he asks.

“They’re what you’re losing, love.”

“What am I losing?” asks Harry, squeezing his hand. 

Tom glances at him, then glances away. “Nothing,” he says, dismissing him.

They are what I’m losing, thinks Harry. My mind. 

“We’re here,” says Tom. They are in a blank, white and empty space. “I love you. Thank you for living for me.”

“I lived because I have so much left to do,” objects Harry. They both know it is a lie. “I lived because you saved me.”

“I saved you because you saved me. You woke me up, do you know that? I was so asleep before you. I was barely a person.”

“You seem pretty whole a person now,” jokes Harry, fondly.

Tom gets a sad look in his eyes. “Yeah,” says Tom. “You, too.”

When Harry turns beside him, Tom is gone. Harry has never felt more alone. Harry is dying. 

“I know you can hear me.” 

A world comes into place slowly. He is in a hospital room, filled with the blaring, screaming white of death and the dying. There are people, nurses, witches, standing in the corner, muttering. All of their faces are scratched out with a white mist. 

In front of him, his bed, his world, is a woman sitting. 

“Perhaps it’s time to talk,” she says, her voice finally becoming clear and normal. No longer is it dripping with the sharp static of beckoning.“They’ve figured us out.”

Harry sits on the bed criss-cross applesauce style. “What did they figure out?” he says, from somewhere deep inside him, somewhere pink and bold and loving and not at all him. 

“There’s no use in playing dumb. Not anymore. It’s over,” says the woman.

“It’s over?” And it certainly does feel like it’s over, like he’s dying. There are holes burned into his memory, his mind, his world. He is God and he weeps as his creation deteriorates.

“It’s over,” amends the woman. But she’s not just any woman, this is not just any voice. How does Harry know her? “They’ve got me. They know you’re there, Lily. They know what we’ve done to Harry. What you had me do.”

The voice feels alien in his mouth when he speaks, like it is close, close, too close -- “What I had you do?” he laughs. “Let us acknowledge where the fault is shared, Poppy.”

Poppy! That’s right. This is Poppy, his guardian… his guardian, he knows this, but it’s difficult to remember anything else about her.

I am dying, he thinks.

And then: I am being killed. 

“Is this the time for this?”

“You tell me.”

A sigh. “It was Neville who figured it out. With help, of course.”

Harry sighs this time. “Clever kid. Too clever for his own good.”

“For our own good,” she corrects. “He saw that letter you wrote Harry all those years ago.”

“I’d almost forgotten,” says Harry, whimsical. 

“Harry had set them to look through his journal, find answers… Well,” says Poppy. “They found them.”

“So it’s over.”

“It’s over.”

It’s over, thinks Harry. Why is it over? What is over? “What did he figure out, exactly?”

“Using letters your sister sent him, he compared the handwriting. Confirmed, for real, that it was you. And then that gave evidence to prove Tom's theory correct."

“Horrible boy,” says Harry, but this feeling is not his own. It’s… close. It is a close feeling. “Why are you here, Poppy?”

“Because they figured out I was erasing his memories. It is Harry's fault it is so."

“It all comes back to him.”

“So it does.”

“Oddly enough, I am proud of him.”

“Are you?” says Poppy. “Well. I cannot deny that I am as well.”

“Clever boy,” says Harry softly.

“Our boy.”

“Why is Harry here?” Here, thinks Harry. Where is here? Why does he speak with words that aren’t his.

“We went too far,” says Poppy, tilting her head. “He is dying.”

I am dying I am dying I am dying -- Harry clears his throat. “Where is here?”

“Enough with the questions, dear. It’s over.” It’s over. “You have to stop.”

“Stop? I’m not doing anything,”

“You need to let go.”

“You’re the one who erased his memory,” says Harry, returning to accusations. “You’re the one that pushed him too far.”

“And you,” says Poppy, “are the one that’s keeping him there.”

“I cannot reveal myself."

“You should see yourself now,” says Pomfrey. “You should see what you look like -- darling, there is little use trying. They know. They know.”

“I must continue my task.”

“Perhaps your task is too vengeful a one.”

“Perhaps,” agrees Harry. “But when have we ever been against vengeful?”

“I am not vengeful,” says Pomfrey. “I act out of necessity and obligation -- I love Harry. It was never my desire to hurt him.”

“This is where we differ, Poppy.”

“Do you not love him?”

“Like every mother loves her son.”

“But do you love him like your own?”

“I love him,” says Harry. “It is enough.”

“If it is enough,” says Pomfrey, looking at the white walls around them, “then why are we here?”

“So, so.”

“Will you let him go, then?”

“And what?” laughs Harry. “Be faced with the consequences of our actions, actions non-Merliners will never understand?”

“The only other option is for your secret to die with you. And are you willing to do that? Die?”

“Harry is,” says Harry, instantly.

“James would love that, wouldn’t he?”

“He would,” says Harry, quietly. “But he must know I am doing this for his own good.”

“And yours?”

“So, so.”

Pomfrey laughs. “Then I find no good in arguing. You want what I want.”

“Not exactly.”

“Between two options, you cannot take a middle road.”

“I know.” Harry takes a deep breath and feels his lungs unravel. “I will see you soon.”

“Yes,” says Pomfrey. “And you, too, Harry. I love you. It will be hard to remember that in the coming days. I promise you it is true.”

I know, thinks Harry, but he isn’t sure for how long this will be true. His heart is unraveling in his chest. His body, his world, his mind, is falling apart.

But, no. It’s not. His world is not falling apart.

It’s separating.

A version of events viewed through his eyes, a version that is not his but is close, is painted pink, peels off of itself. It strings out out Harry’s chest and eyes and soul and suddenly, the room begins to look normal. He can see the people’s faces once more. Tom is in the crowd of medi-witches. Tom is watching him, here for him.

Tom is smiling.

And when the room returns to normal, Harry feels alive again. When the room returns to normal, a girl with strong red hair and striking green eyes stands in front of him. She has a pulsating aura.

“Hello, Harry,” says the woman. Her eyes glow a bright pink. “My name is Lily Potter. It’s nice to meet you again.”

End of Part One