A/N: Hey, folks. Thanks for reading – please review. Everything is falling into place for Harry now.

Big thanks to all the reviewers of the previous chapters. You guys rock.

-joe

Harry Potter and the Wastelands of Time

Chapter 13 – We’re Here for Violent Redemption

Part Four – The Warrior

You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money, when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’, when the dealin’s done…

--Kenny Rogers

The madness came easy once I had a chance to sit down and think about it. Rune after rune flowed onto my page (which quickly became pages) as I sat hunched over the writing desk, one hand cupping the wound across my side and the other scribbling down Old World-magic as fast as I could with the blue biro.

Az-reth, I thought, penning a particularly vicious looking rune, all jagged edges and malevolence. Destruction and chaos – blasts of fiendfyre hotter and stronger than what could be conjured these days by a mere wand.

“Az-reth,” I muttered, reminiscing. I’d burned the Ministry to the ground and below once upon a time, using true fiendfyre, summoned through Az-reth. I shuddered at the faux-memory, at the screams of unrealised realities.

After a time, I grew weary of the runes and headed over to the bed, giving a brief glance out of the window at the early afternoon bathing the New York skyline in bright summer light. I fell on the bed with a heavy sigh, wincing at the twinges of pain from my side. The bandages were well and truly bloody, and needed changing – but I was too tired.

How long since I last slept? A day or more? I couldn’t remember. How many times had I been knocked on my head and drifted in and out of unconsciousness since then? How much time-travel? The Time-Turner felt like a lead weight around my neck. Too much time-travel.

The pillows were very inviting, as were the warm heavy sheets. I slipped under them with a long, drawn out yawn, thinking I really should have set up some protective wards and runes, but I was simply too tired, too drained. That attitude could get me killed, however, and had done so more than once.

“Frix…bre…néa-suit,” I whispered, scratching a simple rune into the headboard of the bed with my wand. It cut lines of pure white light into the wood.

I felt my concentration waver on the edge of sleep, and the rune faltered, yet with a burst of focus I made it hold, and the light faded, leaving a burnt rune in the shape of a cross within a circle. A lesser rune, a minor protective ward. It would alert me to any magical being, demonic or whatever, within a hundred feet that held negative intentions.

A lot of magic was about intent. Intent was practically the core of the art.

Content that Fleur was asleep in the next room, and safe for the mean time, I let the fatigue wash over me without resistance.

I’d slept only a handful of hours here and there in the last few days and I was tired. Tired to the bone. I had to pause and remind myself that it had only been three days since I awoke at the Dursley’s fresh from the future. My unforgiving headache was testament to the lack of sleep and tumult to the fiery mistakes of other lives.

Sleep was slow in coming and fraught with burnished memories, with dreams of a future to come, of a future long past…

Tomorrow was my twenty-fourth birthday. I had run out of time, not that it mattered, as the world was in ruins – the sky full of ash, the oceans boiled dry, the masses subjugated to flame and blood. It always ended this way.

“You’ll stay with me tonight?” Tonks asked, her face soft and almost innocent. A look I hadn’t seen on anyone’s face in years.

“Of course.” The road before us was barren – the road behind empty of purpose.

It had been bad today. It had been final.

The last of the old guard had fallen to the legions of the Inner Circle – to the demonic carrion Voldemort had leashed and collared in Atlantis. Remus Lupin and Arthur Weasley, unlikely survivors, had tried to liberate a Muggle labour camp. It hadn’t gone well… at least they had died quick.

Tonks nodded once, her hair mousy brown and eyes indistinct. “Just wanted to make sure,” she mumbled. “You disappear a lot, you know.”

“Not anymore,” I promise. And the promise can only ring with truth, because tomorrow is July 31st, and time and tide wait for no man. I was going back to the start.

“Are we nearly there?”

It was hard to tell – the landscape had changed so much. Great slabs of earth had buckled, mountains had crumbled, and the Forbidden Forest was reduced to ash or less. Yet I felt close, felt it in my bones. “Nearly there…” I nodded.

Tonks and I crested a rise and all became clear. The dust clung to the sweat on our brows and the blood on our clothes, blowing up and off the valley floor that used to be the lake. I could scarcely recall boating across it with Hagrid for my First Year. It happened, I know it did, but in another life. What remained of Hogwarts clung to parched and arid ground cracked from the heat of the burning atmosphere, and knots of thorny briars grew up to claim the ruins, giving what remained of the castle a malevolence that belonged to the whole world.

“So many died here,” Tonks said, grasping for my hand.

“Many,” I agreed.

Tonks glanced at me sideways, her hair flaring briefly auburn-red with scarcely suppressed rage. “Talk to me, Harry Potter,” she said. “Don’t brush me away with one-word replies…”

I squeezed her hand – hard – and let the life in my eyes shine through. “I’m sorry. You deserve better, Nymphadora, and always will…”

Tonks said nothing for a long moment, and then she reached over to brush my matted hair out of my eyes. She sighed softly. “That damn scar is bleeding again.”

“I know.”

“Does it hurt? Is it burning?”

“No,” I lied. It hadn’t ceased paining me for the best part of five years. Constant, endless burning – night and day – that I’d all but grown used to. “Come on.”

The Scottish Highlands, the Hogwarts grounds, had become a desert. Here and there brief patches of twisted weeds and old petrified wood jutted out of the rock and dust, the sand and broken stone. Dumbledore’s tomb had long since been desecrated and claimed by the unforgiving winds of time. Everywhere I looked memory assaulted me like a hammer blow, leaving me numb and breathless.

“There are no bones,” Tonks said, still gripping my hand for all life was worth. “I thought there would be bones everywhere.”

I shrugged. “Buried or worse,” I said. “I never told you it was me… but I gutted the Ministry with fiendfyre after the Battle of Hogwarts, as retaliation for Ron and Hermione. Killed about four hundred Death Eaters. Voldemort replied in kind and raised an inferius army against me… with the dead from Hogwarts. Everyone was scattered by then…” I paused. “Buried or worse.”

Tonks flinched. “Oh…”

“Yeah.”

The heat was stifling and both Tonks and I were breathing heavily as we ascended the faded steps of the old castle and blasted through the barrier of thorny briars. My wand was rough and abrasive, splintered and near to breaking point. It wouldn’t matter much longer, I reminded myself, come midnight…

The Entrance Hall was mostly intact, which is to say it had four supporting walls and a ceiling. It was dark and dusty, piles of heavy ash had buried the floor, and the old grand staircase was caved in under half a castle of stone.

“The fight really is over, isn’t it?” Tonks whispered, as if somehow seeing the destruction one last time made it real. “We’ve lost and there’s nothing left to fight for…”

My grip on her hand slackened and slid up to her forearm, pulling her close. “I have not yet begun to fight,” I said, almost growled. I imagined flames burned deep within my emerald eyes, making me look quite insane.

The Great Hall was peppered with shafts of orangey-red light from outside. Two of the four house tables were recognizable, one broken right down the middle, and the tattered house colours on the walls were tangled in the lifeless torch brackets. The Headmaster’s chair had toppled into dust. Only five years had passed – the world had moved on.

“I had my first kiss in here,” Tonks said, all of a sudden. She turned to look at me, leaning against the edge of one of the remaining two elongated tables. It held with a weary old sigh. “After hours, Gordon Freedman and I snuck out in fourth-year, searching for the kitchens. I remember there was a storm outside, so we came to watch it in the enchanted ceiling…”

We both looked up into the broken cathedral-like caverns overhead. There was no magic there – just gaping holes, crumbling stone, and above that the tortured sky.

“And then what happened?” I took a step closer, standing just shy of Tonks. I watched a bead of sweat trickle down her throat and below her collar.

“He surprised me,” Tonks said, with a wistful grin. “As I was looking up, he moved in close, and when I looked down…” She pursed her lips, meeting my eyes. “Mwah!”

I chuckled. “Mwah?”

“Mwah is the sound a kiss makes.” She leaned forward and kissed my cheek, pressing her lips down hard and wet. 

A rush ran through me, her body was so warm. I turned my head before she pulled away, resting my bloody forehead against her fringe. I nudged her nose with my own. Whether her lips caught mine or mine caught hers didn’t matter as much as her legs coming up underneath me, wrapping around my waist, as I pushed her down against the table.

“Harry…” Tonks gasped.

It was hard, forceful, almost a battle, as our lips met again and again – wet, warm – and our tongues danced. Tonks ran her hands through my hair. My hand cupped her outer thigh, pulling her as close as I could in our fit of blind, yet not completely unexpected, passion. We were the last two alive in the echoing ruins of a place once called home… our guttural, animalistic sounds reverberated up and loud through the cavernous hall.

I pulled away, stoically silent, and reached for my wand. With a silent flick Tonks’ dirty once-white shirt fell away, revealing slightly brown, creamy skin and two mounds of promise concealed within a simple black bra.

“Brave, aren’t you?” she whispered throatily, grasping my thin shirt – already much tattered – and pulling it apart at the seams. My chest was heavily scarred, burned, marked with defeat and death. “Oh… Harry.”

“Hush now,” I whispered, and leaned back down to kiss her neck.

The table creaked ominously beneath us, yet it held. Her skin tasted salty and sweet, hot and dirty. I relished it as a man dying of thirst would an oasis. I was worked up past caring now, of the life and times of Hogwarts and its ultimate demise. I pushed my waist against Tonks, and she responded in kind, opening her legs and pushing right back through the denim and fabric we still wore, intensifying the heat.

The moment stretched on, our efforts became rougher… “I want you. Take me,” Tonks whispered. Words I’d heard before – words I prayed to hear again.  

I summoned one of the large and faded Hufflepuff banners from the wall. It was thick and heavy cloth, dusty and dry, yet it would do and I draped it across the house table in a bunch. We both climbed atop of the table proper, stealing kisses and pushing one another with our tongues. Before she fell back onto the drapes, her hair a passionate purple, Tonks had managed to loosen my belt buckle and the top two buttons of my jeans.

Magic hands.

An urgency of need overwhelmed me and I pushed her back, looming above her body breathless and sweaty. Dispensing with magical means, I unlaced her boots and pulled them off. Her socks came next, followed by her jeans. Her panties matched her bra, and I spent the next few minutes simply tracing her body with my mouth, every curve from her neck to the arches of her feet, making her laugh and groan all at once.

My jeans disappeared somewhere in the space between one moment and the next.

“Need you…” I said, low and steady.

Tonks took control, forcing me against the table, and the last of our clothes disappeared. She tore the last piece of clothing I would wear in this life from me with her teeth, and straddled me with a deep, rasping moan that would’ve shook the windows in their frames if they hadn’t shattered years and years ago.

I entered her warm and willing, the strain near-maddening, and my hands found her gorgeous breasts, the nipples hard – the grinding up and down, back and forth, ever harder – and gritty with sweat.

All we were, at that moment, was desire.

“Harry…” Tonks said, clamping her thighs hard against my sides.

The way she said my name, the way she moved, elicited a moan from me that very nearly ended in a whimper. I pulled myself up, thrusting hard, and bit Tonks’ bottom lip, forcing her to retaliate with a groan and an even tighter clamp against me. The pressure was building, the madness was coming…

We rolled on the table, trading places back and forth, all sweaty limbs and low, deep moans of pleasure. I took control back, fighting the inevitable onslaught of guilt and failure that would wrack me in a few hours and eight years ago, and thrust into the woman beneath me again and again.

Every little sound Tonks made, small panting sounds and breathless moans, drove me one notch higher. I could feel the end coming – too soon, far too soon – yet not soon enough. She shuddered beneath me, her breath hitching and strained, and a rush of warmth between us sent me spiralling right over the edge.

I grasped for my wand and, through half-breaths managed to gasp, “Tempus Innoxia!” An envelope of pale green light surrounded our waists, and the greatest spell ever invented (ever) slowed the biological reactions, the physical pleasure – the breaking orgasm – of our act.

We both lost utter control at the same moment and my thrusts came so fast that the entire table shuddered and cracked. The waves of pleasure hit me, hot and sweaty, as they did Tonks, only it wasn’t over in mere seconds… the spell I’d cast prolonged the explosion, eclipsed the mind in sensation, and extended those precious few seconds at the end of love-making into precious few minutes…

Time.

It always comes back to time.

Time is a measure of happiness abound – of happiness only real when shared.

I came and the waves of heated raw pleasure washed over me again and again, and Tonks as well, until the euphoria became indistinct from pure agony and pushed against the fragile bounds of what sanity I had left. Oh, but what a sweet way to lose my mind, caught in the warm, tight grip of the woman beneath me…

I don’t know how long it took to recover from the sheer intensity of our act, yet some time later I came back to myself, lying next to Tonks as naked as the day I was born, one of her legs draped over me and her breasts a soft weight against me side. She was breathing heavily, her nose was whistling with soft snores.

I genuinely smiled. There were still half a dozen hours before midnight and the past, and I could think of no better use than to spend them right here, in the grip of one of the two women that could break me.

The end of the world, and the broken promises, was almost worth moment’s like these….

I awoke not with a start but with the tired regret of a man who once knew the difference between right and wrong, and honestly couldn’t find the strength to care anymore. I slipped back into consciousness and back into my headache, which pounded my head with renewed vigour, perhaps annoyed that I’d managed to pull a happy, sex-filled, memory from the maelstrom.

The orange glare of sunset filtered in through the large windows across the hotel room, so I guessed I’d been asleep for about three or four hours. I wanted the dream back; I wanted the dream to be a reality… for the most part.

The cascading memories in my head made for the most vivid of dreams.

Sometimes, that worked in my favour (like just now). Most times, my kinder dreams were of things most people can’t even imagine into their nightmares.

Either way, I needed to go take a cool shower – and fast. Where was I just now? Right – waking up and stumbling to the en suite bathroom.

I regretted all at once not taking off my bandages and cleaning the fresh blood away from my stab wound when it was still wet. There was a fair amount of blood, and it had dried hard against my stitches. As I peeled off the bandages it felt as if I were peeling out my fine needlework, too.

The white porcelain in the shower’s basin soon ran red with chips of my dried blood, and muddy-brown with all the sweat and grime of the last day spent in France. I indulged longer than necessary under the powerful jets of the showerhead, yet the water felt clean – cleaner than I had felt in going on four days now – and my thoughts slipped back into my awesome dream, my once-upon-a-time future…

Nymphadora Tonks… Fleur Delacour – both of them my one weakness and my greatest strength. Forget old magic or new magic or sheer-dogged resolve, those two women hardened my will into something not even Time could break, although that temperamental bitch sure was trying…

The fight wouldn’t be worth it without Fleur and Tonks – and the grim satisfaction I got from slaughtering Death Eaters and demons.

After the shower, I gave my stab wound a cursory examination, decided that the stitches would hold, and stole the roll of bandages in the first-aid kit beneath the sink. Modern hotels didn’t want guests bleeding all over the place. My one and only pair of clothes – that expensive Armani suit – needed freshening up again. I doubted it would ever return to its original glory, but I’d remedy my lack of luggage soon enough.

It was 18:28 and two seconds – nearly half-six – when I slipped on my wristwatch and pocketed my wand within the folds of my inner-jacket pocket. I wanted to go check on Fleur next, but first my many pages of notes needed to be stored away in the all-too-special briefcase. That took some doing – the briefcase was fit to burst – and I ended up folding the pages in half and stuffing them in behind a stack of fifty pound notes. It wouldn’t do for anyone to see those runes – not at all.

The hallway was deserted when I knocked on Fleur’s door. I was confident she was okay, as my solitary protection rune hadn’t alerted me to any danger, yet it was still a relief to see her open the door, her feet bare and a towel wrapped around her body and hair in that way that only girls can manage.

“’Arry.” Fleur smiled, her eyes wary. “Tell me we don’t ‘ave to run – zat there iz not a monster lurking behind ze flower vase over there.”

“Just checking to see if you’re okay,” I said. “I slept the whole afternoon away.”

“Oui – I took a light rest, as well.”

I worked hard to keep my eyes on Fleur’s and not on the half an inch of cleavage peeking out of the top of her fluffy white bath towel. I’d won harder battles, and lost easier…

“This hotel has a really good oriental restaurant if you feel like dinner?” I asked, offering her my gentlest smile. “A half hour?”

Fleur took a moment before nodding. “Oui, but we will talk, ‘Arry, over dinner. Trust has brought me zis far with you – no further until you explain yourself.”

Those words had the cool ring of an ultimatum. I had expected as much, and sooner than this. It was a minor miracle that Fleur had thrown in her lot with me back at her family’s château, when the French Aurors wanted to arrest me for the crime of the decade. What to tell her though? The truth? The truth was a terrible thing – maybe just pieces of it. Enough to see her trust renewed, or her distrust distanced.

“You might not like what I’ve got to say.” I settled upon subtle manipulation. If anything, Fleur would push me all the harder now. That was good. I didn’t want her to see the forest for the trees.

“That iz my choice, non?” Her expression softened.

“Aye, I suppose it is.” I gave her a lopsided grin. “We’re about halfway there, you know. To Atlantis, I mean.”

“You would know, ‘Arry.” She was taking that on faith.

I nodded. “Today is July Sixteenth – we’ll be there before the month is out. Wait till you see it.” I chuckled. “It’s wonderful.”

“You will tell me how you know zat over dinner.”

“Well, I suppose I will…”

My last glimpse of Fleur was of tanned, creamy ankles spinning on the spot as she gently closed the door against me. I wandered back down to my room, spinning the access card between my fingers, with a goofy smile on my face at the prospect of another dinner with the stunning Fleur Delacour.

The access card unlocked my room door with a gentle beep, and I stepped back into the decadent suite. All at once I knew I wasn’t alone, as a wave of some fancy… perfume, or cologne, wafted into my nostrils. There was someone standing in the light of the window, his hands folded behind his back and a mischievous glint in his familiar eyes.

It took my mind a painful second to make sense of what I was seeing, to twist my thoughts around common sense, and then I sighed.

Suddenly I knew this day was going to drag on just a little longer.

“Harry,” I said to the newcomer. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I was gazing at myself, complete with scruffy hair and wire-framed glasses. The infamous scar glared out at me from between the untamed, majestic locks of my fringe. A reflection right down to the creases in the tarnished Armani suit. Stacked next to this mirror-image were a few bags and one single trunk. Harry twirled an identical access card to the one I held between his fingers.

“The pleasure’s all mine, Harry,” he said. “You’re behind schedule – time to make up a few more hours.”

I nodded. He was making sense. “You smell pretty,” I replied. “What is that?”

Harry – myself – smirked. “The new cologne from Calvin Klein. CK BE, a unisex fragrance marked by its refreshing, oriental, and woody scent. Only sixty dollars a bottle.”

I snorted. “You’re a pansy.”

“Get going – I’ve got to get ready for dinner with Fleur.”

“Back off, pretty boy, she’s mine.”

Harry laughed. “Ha, you couldn’t handle her, kid.” He tapped his chest. “Five hours should be more than enough.”

I unbuttoned my collar so I could reach the Time-Turner on its chain. The dreaded little hourglass sparkled in the last few rays of the bulging orange sun filtering in from the west. “Keep it up with Fleur and I’ll push you out of that window, sunshine.”

“Stop playing with yourself and get going, you dirty bastard,” Harry said, waving me away. He raised a hand to his forehead, gently rubbing our scar. “Oh and mind your head when landing – this jump is going to hurt like all hell.”

I picked up my briefcase from beside the bed, noting that Harry carried an identical one just next to him. “Any trouble I should know of?”

Harry shrugged, his grin enigmatic. I was a cruel bastard, sometimes. “Oh yeah, there’s this dude who calls himself Voldemort—”

“Fuck you.”

“No one else will…”

I spun the hourglass back with a flick of my finger and braced myself for the pain as the room dissolved in a plethora of spinning colours and a howling, vicious wind. I once more forced time back, back five hours. There was work to be done – supplies to be purchased – and plans to be set into motion.

So the world dissolved and my constant, unwavering headache tore its way out of my skull and ripped my mind asunder. I clenched my jaw and a low, helpless groan whistled between my teeth as the pain set in. Warm blood trickled from my nostrils, from my tear ducts – hot and coppery across my lips.

The world thumped back into place with an archaic snap that sent me to my knees, and toppling forward. I hit my head on the bedside table, right across my lightning-bolt scar, and cursed the intricacies of time-travel as I rode a wave of pain through spasms and general twitching on the floor of my now-empty hotel room.

Some time passed – possibly forever, possibly two minutes – and I sat up, forcing back a few dry retches and a dizzy spell. I felt my forehead to see if it was bleeding where I’d struck the small bedside table and cursed the poorly-worded warning I’d given myself.

“Handsome bastard,” I muttered, pulling myself up onto the bed.

I used the bathroom sink to clean myself up, wash away the blood from my face. Time-travel was becoming impossible, of that I was growing sure. The mere possibility presented unforseen problems and may just serve to undo me on my latest attempt to save the world. I’d have to keep going as long as I could, keep the time-turner’s use to a minimum, and pray to bumbling old Merlin that I could break through to Atlantis in this condition.

Not that prayer had ever done much good. If there was a God then He wasn’t listening – or mayhap batting for the other team – and I was the only being capable of salvation here.

*~*~*~*

The world is not ready for the nightmares I’ve seen.

So my eyes are on you, baby, to keep me honest.

And I can’t promise anything, certainly not the future. Yet all I know is that nothing endures… save change.

*~*~*~*

I Apparated out of the hotel room and down onto the street only moments before Fleur and my other self checked into the hotel. Time would not allow me to meet my younger self if it hadn’t already happened, and it hadn’t when I was checking-in to the hotel, and although that particular boundary can be pushed, the chaos that would ensue had to be accounted for.

Best to just avoid it.

Stepping off the apparation pad in Times Square, the sights and sounds of the city swirling around me and the heavy smell of traffic and greasy food weighty in the air, I felt a rush of raw anticipation.

This city was alive.

I felt it sure and true, as if it were my own heart beating beneath my feet along the sidewalk.

I’d been to Rome in the last few days, and I’d been to London – both huge cities swirling with life and soul. Yet they were old cities – millennia old – and New York was, on the scale of human history, brand new. There was an atmosphere of youth, of time willing to be spent and spent well, and not a trace of the ancient winding down that had crept into the archaic joints of cities such as London and Rome.

I felt young again – I was young again – and the world was there to be saved. Begging to be saved.

Onward I fared.

I ran through what I knew of the city – its Wizarding and Muggle worlds, the contacts I could start to contact, places where I could get the gold I would need – and decided that the next few hours were going to be painfully busy. First things first, however, and I stopped at the first red and white umbrella I found, the sound of meat sizzling in my ears like the singing of the angels themselves.

“Two dogs, buddy,” I told the vendor. “Grease, onions, and drenched in mustard, if you please.”

There are three great pleasures in life. Good food, good sex, and good sleep – in that order, and never in moderation.

It was a warm afternoon, and the massive steel constructs rose above me on all sides, holding true to their namesakes and seeming to scrape the very sky. I danced and ducked through the crowds on Fifth Avenue, soaking in the light and life around me in a vacuum of good intentions.

There was war all around me. Enemies on all sides, and an impending sense that I was out of my depth and way, way out of my time. Well… yeah. I was – I was lives and years out of my time. What I’d done to be here, to return to the past, would haunt me beyond the grave, of that I was sure. I wonder what the ghosts of my true past would think of me now? Sirius? My parents, James and Lily Potter? Their little boy – to all three of them – little Harry Potter, a demon in his own right.

Oh well.

We do what we can to survive, we pay the devil his due, and we all fall screaming blind defiance into the abyss. Such is life, may it not break ya too soon.

Damn it all.

I had enough Muggle cash – more than enough American currency – to get the easy part of the day out of the way first. And what a long day it had been so far. Before I was through, this day would end up at least forty hours long. That is, if there weren’t anymore jumps back with the Time-Turner. As it stood, there were three of me occupying the same time. There was the me at Fleur’s, helping to cook dinner, there was the me with Fleur now back at the hotel, having just checked in, and there was the current me.

All this temporal confusion wasn’t doing a damn thing to ease my headache.

There were some high-end clothes shops just off Fifth Avenue. The kind of places where it was unthinkable to step through the doorway in anything less than a suit of the same (if not greater) calibre than those available for purchase within the shop. I spent the better part of an hour and a half picking up a few new suits, cut to my size, three or four pairs of leather shoes, and some socks and boxers. A total of some five thousand five hundred dollars by the time I was through.

What can I say? If I’m gonna be saving the world and battling dark wizards and demons, then I’m going to look fucking good doing it. Plus being all suave and meaning it gave me a certain air of confidence – and the women loved that.

There was an attractive redhead wearing the world’s shortest skirt and steepest high heels by the men’s department, and for a moment she reminded me strongly of the lady-in-red a long day ago that had turned out to be Saturnia. I listened for the tell-tale sign of Hey Jude, the goddesses gentle mocking, and decided I was being overly paranoid.

“The new cologne from Calvin Klein, sir,” the redhead said, her plump lips promising dark and terribly delightful things. “CK BE, a unisex fragrance marked by its refreshing, oriental, and woody scent.”

She was a sales girl (sales woman) and I bought a bottle of the fragrance for my dinner with Fleur, who eclipsed this beauty before me in everyway that mattered.

That was all I needed from this store.

I paid for a courier service to have the packages of clothes and such wrapped up and delivered to my hotel for six o’clock that evening.

I spent a half hour in a few lesser-end clothes shops purchasing pants, jeans, and simple shirts both collared and not, to replace those that Tweedledum and Tweedledee had blasted off the Falls of Tivoli two nights ago. Some slummin’ around clothes that I’d need for the literal shit I’d be crawling through in the days to come.

I used the same courier service to have these bags delivered to the hotel for six, saving me the encumbrance and leaving me toting only my special briefcase.

There – that was the easy part of the day done and dusted. Now came the awkward, important bit.

I stepped back out onto the street and into the sunlight, and turned my eyes downtown and skyward, up toward the great monolith of glass and stone that hid one of the most dangerous and influential wizards in the world in plain sight.

Now was the time for the real reason I’d come to New York, of all the places in the whole wide world.

I was after one of the fragile Keys to the Past.

*~*~*~*

I’ve tasted ash upon my tongue.

I’ve stood in killing fields soaked red with shame.

I’ve battled Nightmare itself before the Gates of Oblivion, lost in the sway of the smoke and the cold mud.

Yet the Wastelands of Time hold no sway over me. No, none whatsoever. The dead are forever young, after all.

And there’s peace to be found in the twilight.

*~*~*~*

Rockefeller Centre, stretching just off Sixth Avenue, is a complex of buildings designed and built during the Great Depression and beyond. There were shops and eateries, as well as apartments, radio towers and everything in between. The whole area was like a mini city within the city.

I headed straight for what was known to the Muggles as the GE Building, through the city-sponsored gardens and past a huge iron-bronze statue of the titan Prometheus. Spanning some seventy-floors and eight hundred and fifty feet, the GE Building supported generous masonry of elaborate design and figural sculpture.

As one of the most famous and recognised skyscrapers in New York, it made perfect sense for the boss of the biggest organised magical crime-ring in the Northern Hemisphere to call the top several floors his office – of course it was completely invisible and undetectable to most, but the signs were there if you knew what you were looking for.

And I did.

On the Muggle side of the things, the GE Building was home to a television network, and there was a bit of security, yet no one challenged me in the foyer of the complex and I reached a row of shiny elevators without raising any alarms. I hit the ‘up’ arrow and didn’t have to wait as the doors sprung open instantly – as if I were expected.

Now the last time I’d been in an elevator, I’d been bleeding and naked and it had been plummeting to the ground floor in a ball of fire. Was that really only a night ago? Yeah, it was. Saturnia had been in it with me, disguised as the lady-in-red, and Hey Jude had been playing through the speaker system.

I listened carefully for any static-strewn Beatles tracks before stepping into the elevator and pushing the button for the seventieth floor.

I stood patiently as the lift rose, my hands folded behind me holding my briefcase as the electronic numbers counted the floors up.

“It’s a long way to the top… if you wanna rock’n’roll…” I mumbled, snatching a verse of some half-remembered melody out of my disjointed mind.

The shiny metal doors parted silently, almost regretfully, and a wave of cool conditioned air washed over me as I stepped onto the fine, dark blue carpet of the seventieth floor. High, high up above the world. The space looked very Muggle. A lot of glass, big windows running parallel to the New York skyline, partitions of frosted white glass, and a coffee table holding a crystal vase of blood-red roses.

In golden cursive letters across the frosted glass in front of me were the words:

Tempus Edax Rerum

Reading those words, I knew now without a doubt that what my mind was telling me to do, that the man I was here to see, knew about the Old World. He knew of Atlantis, of the Fae Magicks.

“Tempus edax rerum…” I muttered the Latin, stepping through the glass partition and entering the so-called waiting room. “Time is the devourer of all things…”

I approached a long, large mahogany counter that created a barrier between the waiting room and elevators, and a single oak door set in what appeared to be a reinforced steel frame. There was a single woman, stunningly beautiful and wearing a sleek silver headset seated behind the long counter, eyeing me with neither warmth nor distrust.

There were perfunctory plush chairs placed around the coffee table with its vase of roses, yet I suspected they had rarely if ever been used – just part of the façade.

“May I help you?” the woman asked. Her dark hair was tied back, exposing her severe brow. Her skin was light, pale brown, and although everything else was very Muggle, she rested her hand on a long, slender white-wood wand. A witch then – my memories confirmed it. She was a trained protector – of secrets, of her employer’s life – and thought me a Muggle at the moment.

“Ethan Rafe to see Mr. Miguel Blue,” I said, adjusting my glasses to draw attention away from the hand that was ready to snatch my wand from my inner jacket pocket in less than a heartbeat.

The woman didn’t flinch. “Mr… Blue?”

I don’t know why the most feared and respected crime lord this side of the equator, who conceivably wielded more influential power than the next two Ministries combined, called himself Blue. I suppose it was actually frightening in a simple, non-syllabic way.

“Miguel Blue.” I nodded.

“I’m sorry, young man, but there is no Mr. Blue here.”

“Are you sure now? He’s a big guy, heavyset, with greyish-white hair and goofy looking ears. Um… his voice is grainy from cigar smoke, porn star moustache, and he controls all of the legitimate criminal activity from here to Nepal.”

“Stupefy!”

Shit – this faux-secretary was fast.

I was faster.

I clicked my fingers and my wand sprang from my pocket and into my rising hand. Wordlessly, a shimmering pale blue shield, about half a metre across, sprang into existence and a wave of energy rippled outwards from where the red jet of stunning magic hit it.

In the same fluid movement that had drawn my wand and raised my effective shield, I took a large step to the left, all pretence of a young innocent child gone, and returned fire.

“Reducto!”

My simple spell wasn’t aimed at blasting the woman out of her expensive shoes, but at the mahogany counter she was positioned behind. The considerable force of my blasting curse tore the mahogany counter from its fittings and sent it hurtling backwards into the woman. She fell back with a grunt as the heavy wood slammed into her, and I used the brief few seconds of respite before she gathered herself to disarm her-

“Expelliarmus!”

-and stun her.

“Stupefy!”

That was ridiculously easy.

I was good – no question there – and I suppose my age still worked to my advantage at this stage in my life. The woman had been expecting to stun a kid. I was no kid. I didn’t want to leave her slumped over the splintered counter-desk, so I levitated her over and down into one of the comfy plush armchairs. Then set my sights on the single door in the steel frame.

A cursory glance showed it to be nothing more than a solid door, yet with my hand hovering over the brass grip I felt a fizzy vibration in the air, the suppression of barely concealed power. It was warded then – most likely with a mind to torturous intentions.

“To dispel a ward…” I whispered, tapping my wand against the side of my leg. “Or wards.”

There were only scant memories in my mind of being in this situation before. Miguel Blue wasn’t always a man I dealt with – simply because there was gold to be had elsewhere, mainly in my Gringotts vault. Yet the goblins were after my head by now, no doubt there, and what gold remained in my vault would have already ‘disappeared’. Blue was a cautious fellow, and ruthless to those that crossed him. He also coveted all lore and artefacts he could scrounge from the age of Atlantis, a historian and collector, and that made him dangerous beyond measure.

I had to respect any ward system or magical restraint that may be in place here, as it could be linked to Old World magic – whatever drips and drabs the crime lord had been able to decipher over his life could be in play against me.

I placed the tip of my wand against the heavy wood of the door, hesitated for just a moment, and then drew three quick lines in pure white light, cutting across each other and swirling back and forth. A fourth line cut through the centre of the others, and the rune I’d sketched took life – old magic tamed – melting into the wood with the crackling, sizzling sound of charring meat.

The door swung open inwards on silent hinges, and a rush of dispelled power slammed into me, forcing me back a step. It was pitch black beyond the doorway, unnaturally so. The light from the normal-looking waiting room ended in a razor-sharp line directly on the precipice of the doorway.

Not in the mood for drama and suspense, I stepped into the darkness and it swallowed me whole.

A moment of wary disorientation swamped my senses and down was up, left was right. I could have been falling or rising, and it wouldn’t have made a difference because the darkness was endless—

Red runes began to flicker to life on the walls, pulsating with energy. The ancient runes throbbed like heart’s blood and gave me a point of reference in the darkness. I was in a corridor, a narrow corridor, much akin to the pathway in the Magnus Fontis that had been lit with pure white and blue runes of a closer age than the ones here, daring me to proceed.

I proceeded.

“Mr. Blue,” I called ahead of me, following the corridor as best I could. “My name is Ethan Rafe, and I have a proposition for you.”

My voice echoed down the corridor, disappearing into forever. It was a trick of the mind, or maybe a trick of the runes, and it made the dark hallway seem endless.

I would’ve lit my wand and flooded my path with light, yet I recognised some of the runes on the wall, flashing intermittently dark and bright red. They were activated by wand magic, by fresh magic, and from the look of some of the crude designs the runes were set to explode.

Caught in an exploding corridor some seventy floors above the streets of New York - it was one bloody thing after another.

“The runes around me translate into the families Ad’sop and rec’Ix, used for offensive defence, primarily,” I called ahead of me, confident the man I was looking for could hear me – was, in fact, luring me in for some nasty end. “How do I know what only five, maybe six wizards on the planet know? Yourself included, Mr. Blue.”

No answer, onward I fared.

The dank corridor was definitely longer than the length and breadth of the building it was purportedly in. Some special magic was in effect here – I doubted that I was still physically in the GE Building. Impressive magic, coupled with the Old World wards, made perhaps one of the most secure gateways Miguel Blue could have constructed. I suppose if I’d been officially invited in, then I would have bypassed this corridor of traps and runes.

As it was, I got the feeling I was going around in circles, being tempted to use magic and blast myself straight to hell. Enough of this charade.

“Very well, let me be honest with you, as you’ll find me out sooner or later,” I said, coming to a complete stop. “My name is Harry James Potter, you may have heard of me. If you haven’t, then you will very soon – I’m to be framed for the murder of French President for Magic Thomas Laurent, before the day is out. I’m also the man who’s going to raise Atlantis from the murky depths of time.”

I paused, straining my ears.

“Not many people know this about you, but you’re an avid collector of all things Atlantis. Where other people saw myth, you found fact.” This was wasting precious time. I was becoming edgy. “You have in your possession a certain cube, found on the sea floor of the Adriatic twenty years ago. To this day, the purpose of that cube eludes you. And not only have you funded a dozen secret expeditions to dredge the Adriatic for the lost city of Atlantis, you have become convinced that there is more hiding the city than time and seawater.”

I began to laugh, loud and clear.

“You are right, Mr. Blue.”

On my right, a thin beam of white light drew a perfectly straight line up from the base of the wall, cut across and then back down – an outline of a doorway. With a click the door swung open and I stepped through back onto normal blue carpet, into a normal, quite simple office that looked out east upon the New York skyline and beyond.

The office was quaint, ordered. There were three men in the room – one seated in a high-backed leather chair, his girth belittling the massive desk in front of him, and a single meaty finger twirling the loose strands of his long moustache.

Miguel Blue himself.

Behind Blue were two other large men – only where Blue was chunky these men were corded with hard muscle, both gripping their wands tightly and staring at me without blinking. All three pairs of eyes upon me were unreadable, save for a certain amount of curiosity.

“Harry Potter,” Miguel Blue said, his rasping tone a dull chuckle above his white pin-striped suit. “Should you not be at home, protecting us all against the dark wizards that plague Europe?”

I had killed Miguel Blue in more than one life – for his crimes, for his betrayal at the end – yet it was easy to appear as if I were meeting this man for the first time. I stepped forward towards his desk. “You know me?” I asked.

“Just the legend, I’m afraid,” Blue said, shaking his flabby neck. “Just the scar and the rumours. Tell me, you slew a basilisk?”

I nodded. “Some three years ago.”

“Fascinating.”

A heavy silence descended upon the office, and I gazed around at the paintings on the wall – all of them artists’ visions of Atlantis, towering spires and golden roads, and at the pedestals displaying various pieces of what appeared to be broken pottery, twisted metal, and weird dull silver apparatus’. Remnants of a once proud world.

Blue prompted further conversation. “And you duelled a man who rose from the dead not so long ago, in the atrium of the British Ministry itself?”

Voldemort, I thought. My piss poor performance after Sirius’ death couldn’t really be called duelling. Still… “With the aid of Albus Dumbledore, yes I did.”

“Ah, Dumbledore, yes… yes. A great wizard.” Blue’s eyes had zeroed in on my briefcase, no doubt wondering what secrets lay inside. A noble wizard.”

“Although I would not call Voldemort a man – not anymore. A wraith, perhaps, or a demon – and also the first creature to see the city of Atlantis in many thousands of years.”

“Is that so?”

“It is, unfortunately.”

Miguel Blue paused, twisting his dastardly moustache. “How very… truthful your eyes are, Mr. Potter, yet hiding great secrets I think. I do not need to be a legimens to see that.”

If any one tried to invade my mind as it stood now, a jumble of fiery other lives, it would burn away their sanity. I’d seen it happen before – to Dumbledore, even, my memories told me.

“I hope you did nothing to permanently harm Miss Jereau at the front desk,” Blue said. “Such a slight would be unacceptable – I’m afraid you would have to die.”

Blunt¸ I remembered. He was always very, very blunt and honest. I wasn’t afraid, this man was a pissant in the scheme of things, but he was a pissant with something I needed – and I couldn’t risk incurring his wrath before I had the Key to the Past.

“She is merely stunned, and lightly at that. Mr. Blue, I’m sure you have many questions—”

“Just one.” He raised his hand, and the two bodyguards pointed their wands directly between my eyes. “And understand that your life depends upon the answer.”

I could tear apart this office and these men. I could smash the windows and send his fat, flabby arse hurtling to the street so far below. I reined in such thoughts and took a deep breath. “Understood…”

“Good.” The lord of crime’s face broke out in a grin full of sunshine. “Here is the question: There is a road outside my door, it is the same road outside of your door. Tell me, Mr. Potter, where does our road lead?”

I offered a grin of my own. “Not to Rome, I take it?”

“No, not to Rome, young man.”

I nodded. “Our road leads to terra incognita – to the unknown lands of the past.”

Miguel Blue seemed to weigh me in a new light and for a moment I caught true surprise on his sweaty brow. He had not expected that answer, not at all. Oh good. From within his desk he removed a small chest, which he unlocked with a key from a chain around his neck, and showed me the treasure I sought.

“I do not know how you knew of what came into my possession from the Adriatic Sea, yet written upon this cube, in a dialect of Latin as old as Latium itself, are the words terra incognita. There are mysteries upon mysteries surrounding you, Potter. Why are you here?”

I eyed that cube – it had fallen into the Adriatic some five hundred years ago on a 15th century Spanish galleon. From what I had gathered across the years, from what my memories told me, the cube had been discovered in a cave of smoke and sparkling starlight, guarded by a creature of ‘bone and flame’. I had spent more than one lifetime trying to track it down. I had died more than once trying to procure it.

“I thought you only had one question.”

Miguel Blue smirked. “One question for your life – beyond that, this is my house, you have followed my road, and I will not be denied by a boy. Why are you here?”

I shrugged. “I’ve come for that cube, and two thousand galleons.”

Blue seemed to seriously consider my request, affording it the same amount of thought he would any proposition before him. It wasn’t for nothing that he controlled entire smuggling networks, import and export rings, Dark artefact trading and commanded enough gold and influence to run a small country.

“And you offer what in return – say, for the galleons alone?”

“I offer nothing less than Atlantis. For the galleons and the cube.”

“Forgive me, but I would be a fool to take you at your word.” Blue sighed. “So far, I do not see you leaving my offices in good health, Harry Potter.”

I hadn’t exactly arrived in good health. My stitches were killing me, as was my ridiculous headache, but I understood what he was getting at.

“Fuck you,” I said, tired of the formalities being observed. “The majority of your life has been spent in search of nothing more than a myth to the world – you would be a fool to ignore me.”

“Be careful,” Blue said. “Be very careful. And give me a reason to believe you.”

I stepped up to his desk. “May I?” I asked, my hand outstretched towards the cube.

The crime lord hesitated just for a moment before dropping the surprisingly heavy block of scripted metal into my palm. It was warm, and had been for millennia, and the intricate patterns and curvy lettering that covered the cube drew the eye deep into its depths.

“I’ve come into possession of certain information – information that leads me to believe the Dark Lord Voldemort has attained Atlantis, through very dark means, and that through a… unique connection I share with that particular monster, I can follow him there and ensure that the power and wealth of an entire world do not fall into his hands and make my war effort in the United Kingdom impossible.” I stopped to take a breath.

Miguel Blue continued to stroke his moustache. “Are things really so bad on the other side of the Atlantic that children must fight a magical war?”

“Things are bad enough that save for an old man and a few others, children are the only ones fighting against Voldemort in our magical war.”

My fingers were busy as we spoke, feeling along the edges of the cube, and in my mind I saw runes of the Old World, of the Fae and the Twilight Folk. Runes that this small man before me could never have found any trace of in the world as it existed today. I used non-verbal magic, cast through my thoughts, to activate the cube.

Blue’s beady eyes followed my hands and widened as the cube began to glow with a pale yellow light. I paused and held it flat on my hand as the sides fell away on invisible hinges, and a melody filled the tiny office – a tune that had not been heard for over four millenniums.

It filled the air and it was light enshrined in song, a beating rhythm testament to a world long forgotten and never to be again. I saw Blue and his goons were mesmerised by it, so I broke the spell with a twitch of my hand and snapped the music cube closed.

“How… how did you do that?” Blue asked, his voice groggy as if he had just woken up.

“The answers will cost you two thousand galleons – a loan, guaranteed to be returned to you a hundred fold.” I put on my serious face. “Honestly, Miguel, what do you have to lose?”

I had him, I always did. He would need assurances, and undoubtedly I would be tracked, but when push came to shove so long as I got out of here with the cube and the gold then anything that followed could be discussed at the point of a wand.

And would be – it always was.

“You knew enough to find me – you knew more about me than I you, and that is a rare thing in my trade, Mr. Potter.” Blue sighed. “You know what I’ll do to you, to those you care for, should you cross me.”

It took the best part of an hour to convince this fat little man to trust me enough to loan me the cube and a small trunk with two thousand gold pieces. The gold was simply pocket change to Blue, yet the cube was of vast importance. I did my best to explain my expedition to Atlantis without giving anything of real substance away. The thing that swayed him in the end was the realisation that I was a public figure, and that I couldn’t hide.

He knew I had enemies, and that those enemies were dark wizards – and that I was to be framed for murder before the day was done. These were all assurances that, to the crime lord, assured his trust was not misplaced. If word got out that the boy wanted for high-profile murder was dealing with Miguel Blue, then any hope of proving my innocence in a reasonable manner disappeared.

We bid each other farewell, and he gave me the name of a man to contact by owl within three days, to detail my progress. I took it but had no intention of doing any such thing.

I was escorted out of the office and directly back to the elevators by Miguel himself. Miss Jereau was back in place behind her battered counter, and her eyes narrowed as she beheld me leaving apparently in one piece.

“Remember, Harry Potter,” Blue said, as the elevator doors slid open. “You have a lot to lose – men as young as yourself always do. Take care, for there is no room to err in the world you have just inserted yourself into.”

“Three days you’ll hear from me,” I lied, the small trunk of gold slung under my arm, the cube in my pocket, and my briefcase in my other hand. “Goodbye.”

The doors slid closed and I descended back into the Muggle world. Outside, the sun was setting; it had gone quarter past six. Time to get back and tell myself he had to go back in time and through all of this. Fun, fun, fun.

I found a quiet place to apparate back to Times Square and made sure to pick up the packages of clothes and such I had had delivered by courier from the front concierge desk.

*~*~*~*

There is the real world and there is the fantasy world.

There is sanity and there is madness.

There is life and there is death.

And time is the devourer of all these things…

*~*~*~*

“Stop playing with yourself and get going, you dirty bastard,” I said, waving my other self away. I raised a hand to my forehead, gently rubbing the scar. “Oh and mind your head when landing – this jump is going to hurt like all hell.”

Harry picked up my briefcase from beside the bed. “Any trouble I should know of?”

I shrugged, my grin enigmatic. I was a cruel bastard, sometimes. “Oh yeah, there’s this dude who calls himself Voldemort—”

“Fuck you.”

“No one else will…”

I watched my other self disappear and set about getting ready for dinner with Fleur. It had been a long, long day, but it was almost over. I unpacked one of my new suits, a shiny pair of shoes, and then jumped in the shower.

Afterwards, I placed the Atlantean cube deep within my jacket pocket, alongside my wand, and picked up my briefcase. The clock on my wrist and the clock in my head said it was time for dinner.

I knocked on Fleur’s door at seven o’clock on the dot, straightening my collar and making sure my jacket was buttoned as I waited for her to answer.

Had I been waiting all day for this? Yes, and more so for every extra hour I’d crammed into this day.

The room door swung open and I felt all the air in the world denied to me, as first Fleur’s wonderful scent of white roses and fresh rainfall rushed over me and sent my skin into hot tingles.

Fleur herself looked stunning.

Simply stunning.

A black dress hugged her figure and left only the best of her form to the imagination. The dress cut off about halfway down her thigh, exposing legs wrapped in sheer black nylon stockings that seemed to go on forever. I wanted them to go on forever, yet the strapless high heels she wore on her feet ended all I could see that way. I drew my eyes back up, vaguely forgetting how long I was spending on this, and to her ample cleavage bordered by her platinum-blonde har, the creamy pale skin holding a dull sheen and the promise of curves unknown.

I was drawn and unable to look away. The whole world could end, Voldemort could unleash hell at that moment, and it wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference to where my head and my heart was at that moment.

“You are staring, ‘Arry,” Fleur said, drawing my eyes back to her face, and to her subtle smile. “My, my, you are blushing red.”

I cleared my throat. “You look… unattainable.”

Fleur laughed. “Shall we?”

I remembered myself enough to offer her my arm, and surprise-surprise she took it. We walked side by side in silence down the corridor to the elevators, and I did my best not to stumble.

In the last twenty hours I’d faced down gods and wrestled demons, duelled hot witches and argued with crime lords, and yet here, with Fleur, I felt the age I looked. Fifteen-nearly-sixteen, no experience with women whatsoever, and drowning in my own nerves.

I let out a slow breath, exerting some control over my rampant hormones and raw desire.

“Where did you get zat suit, and ze new shoes, ‘Arry? Have you been out into the city?”

I nodded. “Just to a clothes shop for a few changes of everything – wanted to look my best for dinner, although I doubt anyone will be looking at me.”

Fleur smiled. “You are kind, yet sweet words will not get you out of explaining yourself.”

We headed down in the elevator in relatively high spirits. Fleur and I talked quietly about nothing for now, the conversation a little strained. All eyes were drawn to her on the restaurant floor, and as guests of the hotel we were seated straightaway.

The tablecloth was elegant, the candlelight soft and the cutlery fine silver. There were a few dozen other diners, all with eyes resting for a long time on Fleur. I liked the setting, I was hungry, yet this dinner wasn’t about food. It was about earning the trust that the French witch across from me had already shown.

“Time is up, ‘Arry,” Fleur said, her full lips sipping from a flute of clear mineral water.

Time. I searched for the right words – the truth? No, not the dreadful truth. Perhaps a less dreadful truth, a lie that could be believed.

“There’s a lot to be said,” I said. “And a lot to be believed.” I paused, sipping at my own water. So what to say? A lesser truth would have to do. “To begin with, you have to understand that through my scar my mind is linked to Voldemort’s…”

There, that was as good a beginning as any.

And there was fear in Fleur’s eyes, which would serve to distract her from the things I wasn’t saying.

Damn it all.

I was a terrible person… just paying the devil his due.

Oh well – onward I fared.

*~*~*~*

A/N: Well, there we go. You may recognise a few subtle references to Terence Jay and his song, One Blood, particularly in the second interlude. That was intentional. Thanks for reading, please review, and a new chapter should be up soon. Come mid-November I’m done with uni for the year and should be able to make a big dent in this story, perhaps even finish it with all the time that should free-up.