Drafts and Drabbles

If Harry had been in less pain, he might have laughed hysterically. 8 months. That is all the peace that killing Voldemort had bought him, 8 measly months. Now, instead of living his frankly well earned ‘happy ever after’ he was slumped against freezing stone, wondering ideally if the next visit from his jailers would finally kill him.

He had done his bit, killed the Dark Tosser and everyone had celebrated. Too bad that corrupt bigots still ran the Ministry, the Wizarding population as a whole was a bunch of sheep, and everyone knew that Harry Potter’s weakness was his friends. So when the message from the latest Pureblood group came that if he didn’t hand himself over the rest of Ron would be delivered in pieces like his left hand, Harry had marched out and was promptly captured. The following days (weeks? Months?) where a blur of isolation, cold, and starvation. He could feel the last of his strength fading, having barely recovered from the whole of last year.

Harry was going to die. And this time there was no blood-exchange hollow-powered escape on the cards.

Well, Harry thought, might as well go out with a bang.

After the whole comes-back-to-life again, Hermione had helped Harry figure out what the hell had happened. And along the way Harry had gotten a crash course in Dark and Blood magics, with a spattering of Necromancy thrown in. Harry often wondered if Dumbledore had really thought he would survive, but reading about the difficulty, the pure coincidence that had lead to him being able to come back at all was horrifying. Oh sure, old Voldy was Harry’s sort of magic anchor, being made from his blood and all, and Harry was the ‘Master of Death,’ for what ever that had been worth, and lets not forget that he had a soul leech which could be killed in his stead, nice surprise that was at the last minute… Still the whole thing had made him sick, like the jittery feeling you get when you realise the apple you just bit into contains half a worm. Or that could have been the subject matter, which defiantly should not be reviewed on a full stomach.

But all that was irrelevant now. Except of course, that Harry might not have a wand,might have no hope of rescue or escape, might not have any current ability to stand, but what Harry did have was blood and enough co-ordination to drag his fingers along the floor, to draw a half forgotten symbol, and to with his last rattling breath, whisper “I call forth the forsaken.” Harry willed as much magic as he could into that like circle of blood, beyond anything normally possible. If he wasn’t already a dead man, snapping the restrains on his magical core like this would kill him, but Harry felt it was most certainly worth it as the magic that gushed out of his broken body to open a gate way and call forth something truly dark.

And the last thought that crosses Harry’s mind as he watches the blackness ooze from his circle is, take that you bastards.

Malphas had felt the slight tug of a summons, weak due to lack of a name, working only due to the extra blood sacrifice. He could have ignored it, but Malphas had smelt the sweet rich blood carried on the metaphysical wind of the call and had known, before he even saw the boy, exactly what he was. A wizard. And there was something else, a whisper along long forgotten senses…

Malphas mentally shrugged and followed the summons. He slid out of the shadows in a small stone cell. The air was bitingly cold, and held the sweet notes of pain and despair. Magic ripped thickly. There was nothing to disturb the still air. Malphas glanced around for the one who had performed the actual summons, which required a living being. A body was slumped in one corner, a large pool of blood around its already rapidly cooling form. Malphas moved to look down at the crumpled heap of flesh and bone which once was alive. He couldn’t sense any lingering soul, which as he could feel the warmth that had inhabited the body only moments before was highly odd. As was the fact he was clearly still bound in the beginnings of a contract. He knelt beside the shell, briefly taking in the summoning circle drawn in blood beside the boy. Clearly, this boy had summoned him, and died in the act. So why did Malphas still feel the pull? And where was the boys soul? Malphas pushed matted hair away from the boys face, only for his ungloved fingertips to brush the boys skin.

The whispers in the back of his mind howled into being.

Protect, mate, Queen, claim, love!

Malphas hands trembled with the knowledge that rushed into his mind. His eyes dilated, his breathing came in harsh pants, his muscles all tensed.

It wasn’t possible. A Queen. A true barer. No. There had not been a living Queen since the Soul Wars. This boy, this dead boy, could not have been a Queen! Malphas pressed his hand to the still cheek. He could feel the rapidly dimming magics under his skin, the knowledge of what lay dead next him undeniable. How had they not known! His instincts screamed at him find the ones who had done this and destroy them, but his mind tried to sort though consequences. A Queen, here, and only moments ago alive. It was why no soul clung to the corpse, demons had no souls. But the boy couldn’t be dead. He couldn’t have come too late. There must be something he could do… spell, magics, old rituals were remembered and discard. There must be something! Some way to undo this! If only Malpahs had arrived mere minutes earlier. No, but even then, the heavy pervasive magic in the cell meant the boy had committed himself to this before the summon had called out to Malphas. The poorly drawn circle, the lack of name, the small amount of blood, there wouldn’t be a call at all if the boy hadn’t been a Queen, hadn’t pored all of his magic into the ritual. It wasn’t, it couldn’t… A Queen, after all this time, only for Malphas to find him in death. Malphas felt the empty hollowness that had plagued all demons for centuries since the last Queen died in the Soul Wars tear at his sanity. Hope, broken and cold. Malphas gathered up the body, trying to hang onto the warmth, the life that no longer filled the small form. The cheek under his hand was almost as cold as the stone around him.

No. No no no no no. Malphas refused to let this Queen die. If he could just go back… the bond of the summons was fraying into nothing again as the magic dissipated.

If he could just go back! Wait, maybe…maybe, he could just go back… He had a bond, and there was one race who could travel through time relatively easily if they could anchor themselves. He just needed a reaper. One right now.

Malphas briefly debated if this was possible. He was loosing time, but exposing one of the greatest secrets of demonkind to one who had caused it in the first place? But this was a Queen. The chance for a barer after centuries of dwindling away, knowing that there would be no more demons, living without hope. Malphas had to do everything possible to save the boy, and if that meant telling a reaper why, then he would.

Demons didn’t have magic like many would think of magic. They had strength, speed, physically capability beyond the possible. They were highly sensitive to souls and magical energies, but they had none of the showy magics that wizards could boast of, in fact they tended to negate such magics, but they did have some power. Demon magic relied heavy on Names. With a true Name (and not just of a person, but of an item or place), a demon could have utter control over the object. Malphas didn’t have a True Name of a reaper which would allow him to command the reaper to aid him, but he did have a Name of one which he could use to summon, very much like a demon, to his side. Doing so, would of course, alert the reaper that Malphas knew a Name of his with enough power over him to force a summons, which the reaper could immediately server, making the Name useful only once. But he only needed once to save the Queen, and he would gladly give it up to do so.

Course set, Malphas bit deeply into his own wrist, his arm still around the now stiff body. Once blood spilt from the open wound, Malphas started to chant, the Name and the demand to appear by his side.

It took only seconds for the tall thin figure to appear in the cell. His pallor of his skin was almost sickly pale. Tall, white, with numerous scars crossing his face and body, the Undertaker’s anger crackled in the air.

“The demon thinks it can command me!” The growl was raspy with rage.

Malphas’ hands clenched around the body instinctively, to protect, despite the lack of need for it. “I offer a Deal.” The scythe, which had slid out of nothing into the Undertakers hand stilled mid-swing.

“What?”

“I offer you, Undertaker, a Deal.”

The Undertaker, silly mask gone, regarded the demon on the floor intensely. A Deal was not enacted between a reaper and a demon lightly. It was on par with a truce in the middle of a War, a declaration of family in a blood feud, a promise of alliance unbreakable. To a demon, it was more binding then a contact to a Master. For the crow demon to offer one was desperate. The Undertaker glanced down at the body the demon clutched possessively close. The boy, for that what it was, despite the first hints of adulthood in his jaw and shoulders, had clearly been tortured, and rigour mortis had started to set in. Undertaker could feel the heavy taste of human magic in the air, and as no other bodies lay in sight, it had to be the boys. So a summon which had killed him, but why would the demon care enough to try and command a reaper to him, to offer a Deal?

“What is the Deal?”

“Send me back in time with the boys magic as an anchor.”

The Undertaker watched the demon carefully. “Such an act could kill us both.”

“If it does, so be it.”

Normally, the Undertaker would tease around the edges of the next question, drag out the game. But he could feel the magic weakening, and without the magic as a bond, the Deal would no doubt be withdrawn. “Why?”

The crow demon stilled, his voice whispered “He could be a Queen.”

The Undertaker’s eyes jumped to the still body. The scythe disappear, and his hand trembled as he reached out to touch the boy. The demon started to turn slightly, as if to shield him from the Reaper, but forced his action to stop, allow the Reaper to caress the now cold arm closest to him.

The reapers gasp was loud in the silence. “It is not…” A Queen was important, yes, but the demons, unlike the Reapers, had others. It was not worth the crow demons possible death and a Deal on top to save a young man who could become a Queen. Unless the whispers in deep corners were true, whispers that the plague that decimated the ranks of Queens during the end of the Soul Wars had not just weakened the demons Queens, but had killed them, just as it had the reaper’s.

Malphas watched the Undertaker, “There is not much time.”

“Not a single new true demon since the Wars end. A peace brokered so quickly. All those Queens, secluded to recover from the Plague. Your queens do not just rest, do they?”

The Undertaker straighten. He pulled his eyes from the boy, the could be Queen, with difficulty, and looked at the demon. The demon regarded him levelly. Then inclined his head.

“I will send you back with the boy’s magic as an anchor. You will tell my past self about the boy. He will hold the Deal.”

It was a huge price. The past self could demand anything in compensation, and Maphas, trapped, would be unable to refuse. “What guarantee do I have you will not demand the boys life?”

And the Undertaker admitted a secret as great as which the crow demon had shown, “The demons were not the only ones to lose all their Queens in the plague.”

And with that, the Deal was struck.

To Malphas, landing felt like being ripped apart, cell by cell, and then freezing each cell until it burned. It was, without a doubt, the greatest agony he had ever experienced in his long long life. It takes him minutes of panted breaths and whimpers to calm enough to even begin to catalog the sensation. The light shining down on him hurt his skin, and his eyes were twin stabbing spikes directly into his brain. His tongue was a lump of bitter lead, too large for his month. His teeth ached. Every breath was horrific, each rib screaming in concert. His fingers and toes felt flayed open, nails ripped out. Even for a demon, who could heal most injuries in the blink of an eye, it took a long time for the pain to dim to level where he could start thinking again.

He pushed himself upright with one shuddering exhale and looked around. He was in a large shallow crater, the explosion of magics imprinting itself physically on the ground. The dirt around him was black, small puffs of ash dancing in the air from his slight movement. Beyond the at least 100 meter across crater, large old wood trees ringed thickly. He wondered briefly if he had landed in a clearing, or if the the trees had also been immolated so completely that their was no evidence of their existence. There was a moment of dark amusement as he thought of what would have happened had he landed in the middle of a city such as London, and the chaos that would have resulted. That humour managed to clear the last of the lingering pain haze. With that, Malphas searched for the bond, for the boy who would be Queen.

The binding of blood disappeared off into nothing, the was no metaphysical tug on him towards a summoner. No! He could not believe the boy was still beyond him, that the reapers magic failed. It took a moment for him to realise that despite the lack of tug, a tie was still in place, the boy existed, but something blocked it. But how could he find the boy with nothing to tie to? Before he could panic further, Malphas felt a spike of boredom, so incredulous against his own mood it jolted him out of this spiralling thoughts. The boy! So he had a connection, strong enough to allow the flow of emotion, but for some reason the location was masked. Malphas took one deep steading breath. He would need to find the boy, and fast, without a name, without any idea about location, and far enough in the past the boy may not every look as Malphas had known him.

But he was not a Prince of hell for nothing. He would find the Queen, it was only a matter of time.

There was something in the alleyway apart from themselves, something that was drawing long, hoarse, rattling breaths. Harry felt a horrible jolt of dread as he stood trembling in the freezing air.

“C-cut it out! Stop doing it! I’ll h-hit you, I swear I will!”

“Dudley, shut-”

WHAM !

A fist made contact with the side of Harry’s head, lifting Harry off his feet. Small white lights popped in front of Harry’s eyes; for the second time in an hour he felt as though his head had been cleaved in two; next moment he had landed hard on the ground, and his wand had flown out of his hand.

“You moron, Dudley!” Harry yelled, his eyes watering with pain, as he scrambled to his hands and knees, now feeling around frantically in the blackness. He heard Dudley blundering away, hitting the alley fence, stumbling.

“DUDLEY, COME BACK! YOU’RE RUNNING RIGHT AT IT!”

There was a horrible squealing yell, and Dudley’s footsteps stopped. At the same moment, Harry felt a creeping chill behind him that could mean only one thing. There was more than one.

“DUDLEY, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! WHATEVER YOU DO, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! Wand!” Harry muttered frantically, his hands flying over the ground like spiders. “Where’s- wand- come on- Lumos!”

He said the spell automatically, desperate for light to help him in his search- and to his disbelieving relief, light flared inches from his right hand- the wand tip had ignited. Harry snatched it up, scrambled to his feet, and turned around.

His stomach turned over.

A towering, hooded figure was gliding smoothly toward him, hovering over the ground, no feet or face visible beneath its robes, sucking on the night as it came.

Stumbling backward, Harry raised his wand.

“Expecto Patronum!”

His voice sounded dim and distant. . . . A tiny wisp of silver smoke, feebler than the Lumos, drifted from the wand- he couldn’t do it anymore, he couldn’t work the spell-

There was laughter inside his own head, shrill, high-pitched laughter… He could smell the dementor’s putrid, death-cold breath, filling his own lungs, drowning him- Think… something happy…

But there was no happiness in him… The dementor’s icy fingers were closing on his throat- the high-pitched laughter was growing louder and louder-

He was never going to see Ron and Hermione again-

Blackness crowded the edge of his vision, before he felt the cold radiate from his scar the the dementor filled his vision and everything went into darkness.

It was a train station. The cleanest, whitest, emptiest train station to ever exist. There were no trains, and everything was very muffled and indistinct only a few feet away from him, like only the spot around him was solid and real, the rest smothered in thick white mist. Harry was wearing clothes from just a moment before, they even felt slightly damp were the frost had melted on his back and behind.

“Well, I have to say, this is somewhat unexpected.”

He spun around. A man was walking toward him, slightly hunched and slow, as if every step was a painstaking chore. It took Harry only a second to realise that the man, under the blood and dirt, was in fact himself, thiner, older, dirtier and much much wearier.

“Harry.” Older-him spread his arms wide, and his hands were both bloody, as if he had dipped them in deep red paint. “Welcome to the end of all things. You’re early. Let us sit down somewhere.”

Stunned, Harry followed as his almost twin shuffled away, leading him to two seats that Harry had not previously noticed, set some distance away under that high, sparkling ceiling.

Older-him sat down in one of them, and Harry fell into the other, staring at his own face.

“Are you me?”

“I am an echo of a possible future you that is now lost. Something big came through here a while ago and I got pulled along in its wake.”

“So your from the future?”

“A future that is now gone, yes. And not really all of me either, just a sliver, a magical artefact.” Harry looked at his scruffy black hair, green eyes set in that same face with strong, stubborn jaw, lighting bolt scar, the little half smile he had when something truly amused him: Everything was as he had remembered it. And yet. . .

“What happened to you? You look like you should be dead.” said Harry.

“Oh yes, well I am,” said Older-him matter-of-factly.

“Then . . . I’m dead too?”

“Ah,” said Older-him, smiling more broadly. “That is the question, isn’t it? On the whole, I think not.” They looked at each other, the older him still beaming.

“Not?” repeated Harry.

“Not,” said older-him.

“But . . .” Harry raised his hand instinctively toward the lightning scar, where he had felt the horrible spreading cold from the Kiss. It did not seem to be there. “But I should have died- I couldn’t even defend myself! I got Kissed!”

“And that,” said older-him, “is, I think, the cause of this difference.”

Happiness seemed to radiate from older-him like light, like fire: Harry had never seen himself so utterly, so palpably content.

“Explain,” said Harry.

“Well, you see, the dementor did in fact eat a soul. It just wasn’t yours.”

“What?”

“The night your parents died, the night you became the Boy-Who-Lived,” there was a lot of bitterness in his voice when he said that loathed title, “Voldemort made a mistake. You heard him in the graveyard, he had gone further then any other in search of his immortality, further than anyone sane should. You see he made something called a Horcrux, a piece of his own soul he cleaved off and left in something, so that even should his body be utterly destroyed, his spirit could never move on. Once would have been enough, both to damn himself and ensure his survival. But he did it again and again, five more times in fact, before he came to Godric’s Hollow that night. His soul was already so unstable, already so mutilated, that when his body was destroyed, his soul shattered yet again, without his knowledge or wish.”

Harry could feel a dull sense of horror sneaking up on him. Something inside him was telling him to stop listening, that what was coming was something he did not want to know, that would change what he thought of himself forever.

“You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never meant to make. He left more than his the shell of his body behind. He left part of himself that latched to you, the would-be victim who had survived, trapped in the mark which the rest of the wizarding world celebrated.” Older-Harry’s eyes flickered up to where the lighting bolt scar had stood.

“My scar.”

“Yes, your scar.”

“Is a piece of Voldemort’s soul?” There was something in Harry’s voice, which he felt was very distant, that was strained to the point of breaking.

“Was, Harry, was a piece of Voldemort’s soul. As I said, the dementor did in fact, eat a soul. It just wasn’t yours to begin with.”

“Then why am I here? Am I dead or not?”

“Well, that little piece was around a long time. Almost 15 years. Removing it was never going to be easy. Then there is the whole time travel business collapsing should-have-beens into never-to-bes…”

“Wait, what time travel? You mean in third year?”

“What? Oh, no, not your time travel. You see, none of this was meant to happen like this at all. The first time you… I… we! We managed to get the spell off, save ourselves and Dudley, and keep on going, not finding out about Horcruxs, and especially our status as one, until much later. We got a sort of happy ever after I guess. And it all would have continued on like that if the wizarding world had learned a single thing from the whole mess. But they didn’t Harry, and even after we finally killed Voldemort, no chance of return, there was still all those idiots in the Ministry, still all those fools who had supported the Dark Tosser, out there. And we never could stop ourselves from trying to help. If anything, killing Voldemort made it worse, after all, when he was in charge he was so obsessed with killing us that he didn’t really get anything else done, and often he was the biggest threat to his own ranks, and with him out of the way… a well organised Dark fraction was infinitely worse.”

Harry was trembling by now. Older Harry’s voice, so so strained and tried, was heart breaking. It was despair, pure and unbroken.

Older Harry looked at him. “I did something, a last resort sort of thing, which, well, I’m not totally proud of. I was dying, and thought, might as well take as many of them as I could with me. But you know our luck. What happened, it was something completely unexpected.”

Older Harry stared off in the distance for a few moments, remembering or ordering his thoughts, “After everything there was a whole bunch of questions that needed answering, and in the process of doing so I came across a spell, that would call a great evil, a demon, to me, which would exact vengeance. The problem was, that the so called evil was much more interested in us then in any sort of destruction. But I was dead, so it came back in time instead, to find you.”

Harry was gapping at himself. The future sounded horrible. Killing Voldemort made it worse! And he had summoned a demon? What the hell had he be thinking?!

Older Harry seemed to come back from wherever his thoughts had taken him, it was if just thinking was a strain on his bent, broken body. “So, now there is a demon about, and he couldn’t find you, not with the blood wards in place. But he could talk to dementors, and once they knew to look for you, well, when they found you things were different enough that this has all happened.”

“There’s a demon after me!” Harry would deny his voice’s high pitch if anyone asked.

“No, not really. He is after me. And you aren’t me. But he is going make sure you become me, no matter what. You can fight it, I suppose, but you really don’t have a chance, as it will happen anyway. And now you don’t even have the buffer that was Voldemorts soul leech its going to happen much earlier then it did before. Or well, we could both go back together I guess, skip a few heartbreaks and hurdles, me acting as the cork in the bottle for a little while longer.”

Harry shuddered, “Go back together? I don’t particularly want a ghost hanging around, thanks, or, you know, another soul leech. And by the sounds of something horrible is going to happen anyway!”

“I wouldn’t be a ghost. I would be you, and you would be me. You might get a few of my memories and things like magical titles, and I would fade out of existence, as a lost possibility. As for horrible, I’m not really sure. After all, I died before the reveal you know. I’m stuck here, and can only figure out so much with the information I get whispered from passing souls.”

“Wouldn’t getting your memories make me you?” Harry asked suspiciously.

“A little bit, yes, but also not really. My memories happened to me, I have a whole lot of emotional investment in them. To you they would be like dreams, or maybe movies. Watching a movie about a person doesn’t make you that person, even if you remember what happened to them. So, separate. You wouldn’t feel them, and everything would be a little fuzzy, because the same details wouldn’t stand out to you as they did to me.”

Harry and older Harry sat in silence for a few moments. Older Harry just looked happy to be relaxing. Younger Harry was in shock.

“So what would be the point exactly? What was my scar actually buffering?”

“I’m not totally sure. I was becoming something, something the demon wants badly. Badly enough to work some serious magics. I think I always was it, just Voldemort’s little soul leech was sort of sucking it all off, with my magic, keeping me human or whatever.”

“The soul leech was eating my magic?” How was it even possible this kept getting worse? Surely the bad news would end. Right?

“It wasn’t exactly stable itself. It was draining a little of you just by hanging on. I don’t think it was eating as such, just that magic was being lost to you.”

Harry looked in stunned horror at himself. His older self seemed incredibly ok with the idea of a soul leech draining his magic. Harry was staring to think his older self wasn’t exactly all that sane.

Older Harry sighed, “Well, better make your mind up. Time’s running out.”

“What were my options again?”

“Go back alone and take the hard road driven by a demon to become me, or take me back with you and get my memories and maybe some more time. Really, it doesn’t matter to me. Either way I finally get to stop existing.”

“I think I’ll take you back then.”

“Alrighty then. Take my hand, and when you fell the tug, don’t let go.” Older Harry’s hand was much too thin, brittle and coated in cold wetness Harry realised was the blood he had noticed before. Surprisingly, it didn’t gross him out, instead the hand in his felt nice, comforting, like something he had been missing was retuned to him.

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”

Older Harry laughed, big belly laughs that sounded slightly hysterical in Harry’s ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure. Harry clutched his older selfs hand hard as he felt a strange pulling sensation in the pit of his stomach. “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”