13th December, 1941
The Night Before the Duel
Harry & Alphard's Dorm Room
Much to Harry's deep displeasure, sleep was not something he was capable of any longer. So instead of falling into blissful unawareness, he stood staring at his dorm room window while resolutely ignoring the persistent hissing for attention from the serpents that served as its frame.
And what did he do with all the newfound free time? He brooded, of course.
Almost everything that happened to Harry in recent days had been inevitable, including the changes he had to undergo after his last trip to purgatory.
He'd not been naive enough to believe that he'd return from limbo as the same wizard that had wistfully embraced his last restful slumber, but he'd also not anticipated this. His entire being—soul, mind, heart, and everything in between—had been taken over by a disquieting, perpetual calmness shrouded in exhaustive knowledge and ruthless awareness.
Violent charges of uncontainable, rebellious wrath. Flowing streams of unceasing melancholy. Forceful bursts of all-consuming, mind-crippling insanity. Resonating aftershocks of soul-crushing loss and loneliness. Sinful, yet not wholly undeserved pride. Blood-boiling excitement and mind-numbing lust. Uninhibited gluttony. Bittersweet, enduring love.
Those were elements, traits even, that Harry had learned to understand about himself—about life. They were all small, dark, unshakable parts of himself that he'd come to expect and had fought so hard to learn to live with. But he had learned to live with them, mastered control over them even—learned to bury and set them free as he saw fit.
Harry had experienced plenty of extreme highs and soul-breaking lows. Frankly, it was all so very exhausting, but he'd gotten accustomed to the ever-present pang of anguish he felt for every single mistake he'd ever made—for every loss he'd ever experienced—for every one of his spectacular failures. He'd uncovered a long time ago that things like that never really went away, that you simply carry and bear those crosses and learn to live with the wrecking darkness they brought with them, all the while waiting, hoping, praying for a single moment of respite.
That he'd learned to live with—learned to appreciate even.
But this was different—completely broken in all its superficial rightness.
Where there once was anger, now resided a warm and inviting sense of calm and wholeness—a rightness incomparable to everything that's anything at all.
The Harry before his last trip to limbo would have been beyond troubled, avidly angsting over the possibility of hurting someone he wasn't meant to hurt or making some decision that could lead to disasters of the apocalyptic variety.
That anxiety—that panic and anger—had always been what kept him from simply acting on his every impulse. That instinctual terror for someone else's safety and the consequences of his actions had become his moral-compass when he'd grown much too old to give an actual damn about anyone.
Those feelings were what kept him from turning completely into Death. And as much as he loved his other half, Death wasn't exactly suitable for polite company. Turning into Death was...not an option. That simply wouldn't bode well for anyone.
And Death may not be the paragon of virtue these days, but that's hardly anything compared to what he used to be. And once upon a time what he used to be was worse than anything beyond anyone's imagination. And while Death had thankfully tempered down his sadistic tendencies and penchant for destroying entire civilizations and began settling on causing mayhem upon those select few he felt deserving of his wrath, that didn't erase the devastation he'd once caused.
Is that what was going to become of him once these exhausting goals he'd set out to accomplish became too taxing? Would he decide to burn a city to the ground just for kicks?
No one wanted another Pompeii, for which Death was definitely not responsible.
Harry wants nothing more than to leap right into that ocean of calmness lapping invitingly at his toes—wants nothing more than to embrace its endless protection and have it fill every part of him. But then there was his easy acceptance of Tom's inevitable fate. The fact that he even thought of it as inevitable—unflinchingly even....
Where was the temperamental indignation? Where was the devastating angst? And what about the endless hours of pitiful sobs while throwing muffled curses and insults at Death before finally swallowing his pride and accepting that alright, perhaps it did make some sort of sense that Tom had to pass on some two-thousand years from then. And speaking from experience, Tom would probably want to croak way before the two-thousand-year marker. But that's beside the point.
He was simply taking this Tom ordeal much too maturely. And, yes, he was acutely aware of how thoroughly absurd that sounded given his age. But he'd never been rational when it came to Tom. For Merlin's sake, loving the wizard—pining over him for several lifetimes—was irrational in and of itself. But it was as if he was numbed to the grief and misery he'd typically be swimming in. No, numbed wasn't exactly correct either. The grief was still very much existent and just as intense, but it was overshadowed by a knowledge and understanding that went beyond what he could put to words.
Harry simply didn't belong to himself. He'd become a smaller part of the larger, much more important whole. And he was uncomfortably comfortable with that.
Because what was Harry and Tom's love really in the face of The Balance?
And yet Harry knew how he was feeling wasn't- it wasn't normal. Seemingly endless decades of devotion didn't suddenly vanish into thin air or get muted.
He simply didn't like that. Or maybe he thought he didn't like it because that's how he knew he would normally feel.
It was all just very...confusing.
Was it his soul? Or, technically, his lack of one? But it wasn't exactly gone either...
But Harry had other, more immediate concerns that he had to deal with.
Her, for one. An old friend that would soon re-enter his life in exactly the worst possible time. But who cared that his romantic life was about to implode before it had a chance to even start? Par for course, really.
And the battle. The pointless battle that would be taking place in a few, short hours.
He could technically clean that whole mess by morning. He could. But he won't.
Scalpel, Harry, he reminded himself. Scalpel.
But before he could drive himself into madness by circling back through all those thoughts again, his moment of quiet was disturbed.
Connected as they have become, Harry would never be surprised by his sudden appearance ever again. A plus, Harry supposed.
Death appeared silently behind Harry in all his golden-haired and black-robed glory sporting his ever-present aura of superiority, obviously intent on vexing Harry.
Without a single word of greeting, he promptly started eyeing Harry's reflection in the window, cold azure eyes raking over his face.
Death couldn't help but groan at what he saw, clear as day—and what he saw was a fool.
"You're pouting. Why is it that you're pouting, Harry?"
Harry found Death's gaze in his imposing reflection and arched his brow. "You know how I abhor change, dearest. Forgive me if I need more than a few hours to adjust to my new...circumstances," he drawled as he clasped his hands behind his back, portraying the picture of ease.
Death narrowed his eyes into a calculating glare, suspicious eyes searching Harry's for answers he already knew to be true.
Once he found what he was looking for, Death shook his head and broke eye contact. But despite his efforts, Harry still caught the sharp maliciousness that sparked in those blue eyes before his trademark icy emptiness could cover his rage.
"You make me sick," Death stated factually as he looked back up, his smirk back in place.
Harry grinned, unshaken. "Ditto," he said, causing Death to snort.
"Your recklessness knows no bounds," he mumbled entirely too calmly. "If you're in need of feeding your masochistic urges, I'll be entirely too happy to serve you a trashing just short of a smiting, lover mine. It won't be one you'll forget so soon," he vowed.
Harry rolled his eyes, the empty threat rolling right off him. "You make such sweet promises, Death," was his drab reply.
Death shook his head, his curly blond hair falling in front of his face. "If you think that this entirely misguided internal struggle to keep your humanity will somehow keep you from committing some unthinkable horror, please, be my guest."
"Thanks ever so for your blessing," Harry muttered sarcastically.
Death scoffed but thankfully decided to let the matter drop.
After that, they lapsed into silence, but only for a short while because Death was himself, and he simply wasn't the sort to let such an opportunity pass him by.
"She'll be there tomorrow," Death said in that mild, conversational tone he uses to hide his sadistic glee at Harry's misfortune.
Harry knew, and Death knew that Harry knew, so there was really no need for him to dignify that with a reply.
But Death wasn't deterred by Harry's silence.
"It might put a slight wrench to your dinner plans," Death went on, ignoring Harry's obvious lack of enthusiasm to share his opinions on the matter. "I'd almost forgotten about her," he said, not sounding the least bit apologetic about it. "But then I glimpsed her exquisite face in Grindelwald's mind, and it was as if our acquaintance with her all came rushing back. But you know what that's like, don't you, Harry dear?" he asked as he gestured to the rose Harry had unconsciously conjured.
Harry dropped his gaze towards the blue rose hovering in mid-air, eying it dolefully as he noted its particularly distinct shade of blue. It was the shade of the deepest blue ocean under the heavens, specifically its glittering shade when the winds above it slumber and the sun is at its peak and the light catches it just so.
It's her favourite shade.
Harry tried to gently extract himself from Lu's hold, hoping to not disturb her sleep, but her quiet groan quickly proved his efforts in vain.
He turned and tucked a stray, raven lock behind her ear and leaned down to place a soft kiss on her forehead.
"Go back to sleep, Lu," he whispered tenderly. "I'll be right back. I'm just going to fetch myself something to eat."
As he turned away from her and sat up, Lu followed him and kneeled behind him, draping herself across his naked back and wrapping her arms loosely around his torso, trying her best to prevent him from leaving their bed.
He tried to tug away from her, but she moaned dejectedly and pressed her face between his shoulder blades.
"Don't leave yet, lover," she pouted. "You haven't even presented me with my daily pretty flower."
Harry chuckled and leaned back against her, his eyes closed and his smile fond.
"Unlike some in this bed, I haven't eaten for quite a while," he complained with a pout.
Lucinda hummed against him but didn't loosen her grip on him.
"Tell me, handsome, what sinful pleasures would you like to indulge in today?" she whispered whimsically. "What will you teach me?" she wondered with a gentle sigh as she nuzzled into him. "Or mayhaps it'll be I that teaches you something new," she teased as she lifted her head to nip his shoulder.
Harry tangled their fingers together, allowing himself to enjoy the moment.
"Would a soothing swim beneath the moonlight suit you? Or perhaps something more adventurous would be more to your taste," he teased in turn. "A hunt for beautiful, evil men? Maybe play with him a bit before the wine runs dry in his veins and we send his soul to the seventh circle?" he suggested, relishing in her quiet moan of approval. "But you and I both know that you have other duties to tend to," he added with a knowing smirk.
She groaned and buried her face deeper into the hollow of his neck.
"Don't mention that horrid word," she whimpered. "It's to be explicitly kept out of our bed-chamber."
Harry twisted in her hold to face her with a newly conjured rose the shade of her favourite colour. "Forgive me, Countess," he pleaded with wide, innocent eyes as he caressed her cheek with the velvety petals.
As Harry shook the image of her from his mind he couldn't help but think to himself that, yes, he knew all too well what that was like—had been experiencing it all too often lately.
"Bitter isn't your colour, Death," Harry murmured, eyes fixed on his newest creation.
"I'm not bitter," Death scoffed.
Harry sighed, unimpressed. "Could have fooled me."
"Alright, maybe I am," Death admitted shamelessly, lifting his shoulder in a half shrug. "Doesn't really change the fact that everything's coming together as we planned."
Harry allowed his lips to twist into a small, indulgent smile.
"Just as you planned, you mean," Harry corrected, locking eyes with Death through the foggy, glass window. "Tell me, friend, did you arrange mine and Lu's charming little meet-cute all those years ago as well?"
Death tilted his head to the side as he held Harry's gaze with unapologetic eyes.
"Don't be ridiculous, Harry," he rebuked. "You know that I did. And you know why I did it. There's really no point in bickering about it now."
Harry held his gaze for a moment longer before dropping his eyes back to the rose, watching as its petals fell to the ground and vanished into beautiful, violet smoke.
"I suppose there isn't," he agreed.
"Will you honour the oath?" Death wondered, genuinely curious about his friend's next course of action.
Harry had been asking himself that since he'd realised that she'd been placed on the chessboard.
"There's nothing to say that she'd even want me to. And besides, we were never bound before the eyes of our Lady. I'm not obliged to uphold any oaths," Harry decided to settle on. "Not that it would have mattered if we had, what with my recent... developments."
"That's never really mattered to you before," Death said, always playing the Devil's bloody advocate. "Magically binding or not, an oath has always been an oath to you."
Harry didn't want to think about it, and he wanted to discuss it with Death even less, so he decided to change the subject.
"My soul. Is it...?"
Death watched his worse half with amused eyes, allowing Harry's little diversion. "If you want answers you might want to try and be a little bit more specific, young grasshopper."
"You know what I'm asking," Harry challenged. But Death didn't bite.
In a blink of an eye, Death closed the distance between them, pressing his chest flush against Harry's back. Harry didn't move away, allowing Death to lean forward and whisper into his ear. "Maybe I want to hear you say it, Harry," he breathed, before abruptly stepping away from him.
Harry shut his eyes and groaned.
"Forget I ever asked," he grumbled, trying to shake the lurch he felt when Death touched him.
It wasn't anything sexual. It was just- It was two halves being close to one another, that's about the simplest way to explain it. It was a heady sensation and there was nothing quite like it.
"Another time then," Death offered, not really bothered. "Just one small piece of advice, Harry," suddenly sounding nothing but deliberate and severe.
"What's that?"
"You're wrong," was what he said. "Your self-destructive need to be human—to be normal—that's the only thing that can harm you now," he cautioned him somberly. "You've already decided, Harry. All this second-guessing isn't going to change anything."
"What if I fall off the rails?" Harry asked him, voice hoarse and uncertain.
"I won't let you," Death vowed.
Harry laughed, the sound cold and empty. "You must know that not even you can stop me now."
"No," Death agreed. "But you can't kill me either. I believe that's what they call an impasse."
Harry snorted, his scepticism clear.
"And I wouldn't worry so much, Harry. Addiction or not, you just don't have it in you to hurt your little pets."
Alphard buried his face in his pillow and groaned as loudly as he possibly could—internally, of course. Blacks couldn't allow such undignified expression of frustration to escape them, it was unbecoming, or so says his mother.
He was exhausted. No, exhausted didn't even start covering how he felt, but at that moment it was the most pressing issue at hand seeing as he had to be in the best possible shape that same morning. But sleep was far from Alphard's reach as he turned restlessly around in his bed.
What was keeping him up at that ungodly hour?
Well, it wasn't the soft mattress or even his disintegrating nerves about that morning's quickly approaching events, that's for sure. His restlessness was caused by none other than the wizard staring expressionlessly out of their dorm room window.
Harry wasn't moving, as such, or disturbing him in any way really, but Alphard could sense that something was off with him—that he was burying himself under too many thoughts and self-doubt.
Why ever did he get that impression?
He couldn't really put his finger on it, but perhaps it had something to do with the glowing, blue rose Harry kept absently twisting in mid-air—which was definitely not creeping him out. Especially seeing as there was nothing at all unusual about the fact that Harry kept wilting it petal by petal, and then bringing the damn thing back to life.
If there was one thing Alphard had learned over the past months it's that Harry spent more time in his head than he did anywhere else, and most of the time no one really wanted to know what was going on in that immortal brain of his.
Why didn't he do the smart thing? Which was to shut his bed hangings, cast a silencing charm on them, and then consume a sleeping potion for good measure. That was the smart thing, not opening his mouth to try and support his loveable yet also very terrifying immortal friend with his internal angst.
"Aren't you even going to try and get some sleep?" Alphard sighed as he turned to face Harry through the gap in his curtains. "Or don't immortal beings need any rest?" he grumbled crankily as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, praying to Merlin that he had some pepper-up in his trunk.
It was hard to say if Harry had heard him seeing as he hadn't even so much as twitched at the address.
"I can hear you brooding from all the way over here, Harry. Might as well just talk to me if you're going to be keeping me up," he informed him matter-of-factly as he pushed himself up to rest his back against the headboard.
Harry's next words were definitely not what he'd been expecting.
"You do have pepper-up in your trunk, but you don't need it," he said without ever turning his gaze away from the darkened, creature infested lake surrounding them, his voice as absent as his searching gaze.
"Excuse me?" Alphard asked him because he hadn't just—
"You humans pray for the darndest things," he went on in the same absent tone as if he hadn't even heard him.
Alphard's eyebrows rose in surprise before drawing together in utter disbelief.
"Us humans?" And so what if Alphard sounded slightly affronted on his species behalf? The way he'd said it...as if humans were insignificant—a nuisance even. Then there was also the little fact that Harry was dissociating himself from humans, drawing a distinct line between himself and the rest of the world. But that wasn't troubling at all.
"Well, yes. Most other creatures are less prone to pray for trivial things such as Robert noticing their new robes."
"You're not making a lick of sense, Harry" Alphard informed him. "But what else is new?"
Noting his friend's annoyed tone, Harry finally deigned to peer at him.
"It doesn't matter," Harry mumbled with a dismissive wave of his hand before going back to his staring contest with the lake.
Alphard pinched the bridge of his nose and opened his mouth to disagree with him, but decided against it.
Should he have tried digging into the whole prayer and human business? Probably. Most definitely. But he wasn't that much of a fool.
And why did he suddenly not feel tired anymore?
"Did you...?"
"Take away that draining exhaustion?" Harry finished for him as he gazed at him from the corner of his unabashed eyes. "Yes," he replied unconcerned. "You need to be in good form today. Two hours of sleep were not going to do that for you."
Alphard wasn't even sure if he should feel angry or grateful, but he knew that at the very least he would have liked a little bit of a warning before Harry magicked his fatigue away. Personal boundaries and all.
"Thank you?"
Harry sighed, noticing Alphard's less than grateful tone.
For a moment Harry just stood there, tense and unmoving. He sighed and plucked the rose out of the air, closed his eyes, and took a subtle whiff of its sweet fragrance as he rolled it gently between his fingers.
"My apologies, Al. I should have asked you, I know. I'm just...lost in thought."
"Want to share with the class?" Alphard offered.
"Not particularly," Harry replied honestly. "But I suppose you won't stop asking until I tell you."
Alphard grinned. "That sounds about right."
Harry shrugged, not having a single clue as to where to start.
"I'm trying to figure out how much of Harry Potter is left in this vessel or if it even matters."
Alphard blinked confusedly and ran a hand through his tousled bed-hair. "And who are you if not Harry Potter?"
Harry turned around and leaned against the windowsill, blue rose still in hand.
"Harry Potter was a boy burdened by war and hunted down by a soul so lost and broken that its crimes were felt inside the Timeless—the bridge between all realities. That boy was just that, a boy, a scared boy that had wanted nothing more than for the nightmare to end," he said, his tone sardonic. But then his expression went soft and somewhat prideful.
"Harry Potter's soul was so pure and golden, so full of love in spite of all its anguish. It was the perfect ingredient—handpicked out of endless other beautiful souls by our Lady Magic herself. Maybe I'm not so much wondering how much of him is left—maybe I'm finally accepting that I haven't been him since Voldemort's second Killing Curse pierced his chest. That in his place, I was born—Son and Blade of Magic, the keeper of the balance."
Alphard turned those words around in his mind, feeling himself grow slightly cold.
"Something happened to you last night, didn't it?" he wondered aloud.
Harry wanted to scoff at that colossal understatement.
"I've transitioned," Harry shared reluctantly. "Transcended into my final form."
Alphard was almost too afraid to ask. "Final form?" he questioned tentatively as he allowed his eyes to roam over his friend, searching for any obvious changes he'd missed but finding none.
Harry's lips twisted into a smile, yet his eyes held no humour behind them. "Yes," he sighed. "I've become something different—something inhuman."
"Something more god-like?" ventured Alphard cautiously.
Harry shot him a sharp, cowering look before giving him a slight nod.
"And that scares you?"
Harry grit his teeth together and turned to face the window, almost as if he was ashamed to look at him. "No, it doesn't. I'm scared because I'm not scared, Al."
"I see," he mumbled. "You're afraid of losing your humanity."
Harry chuckled darkly at his friend, causing a shiver to rush down Alphard's spine.
"I'm not quite ready to let go of Harry," he confirmed, "and with good cause, even if Death disagrees. He's the only thing holding me back."
"Holding you back from what?"
Harry turned to face the worried wizard, his eyes glowing dangerously bright.
"Power tends to corrupt, Al," Harry murmured, his voice as smooth as the finest of silks, "and absolute power corrupts absolutely."