Replay

Replay

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Chapter Thirty-Six

Through the Door

Teddy sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed while Harry leaned against the headboard, closing his eyes, telling his son about the day he'd returned to the Department of Mysteries and attempted to enter the forbidden chamber, to fathom the Mystery of Love...

Dumbledore nodded. "The key to defeating Voldemort... Quite possibly. Yes, quite possibly. It is difficult to say. Few wizards have been able to penetrate that door. None of the Unspeakables currently working for the Ministry have ever managed to do so. As you said, when you were there two years ago, you couldn't do it..."

Harry shook his head. "I don't understand that either; the knife opened up all of the other doors..."

Dumbledore gave him a wry, twisted smile. "Do you think that a knife, a weapon, can be used to force love? Of course you couldn't get through that door with a knife. You have to present yourself to that door for judgment; if it had deemed you ready to enter, you would have done. But you weren't, so you didn't."

"So--I wasn't worthy to enter? I thought I had this power that Voldemort doesn't..."

"You do and you did at that time as well. I said that you weren't ready to enter, not that you weren't deemed worthy. You didn't understand love in the way that I think you do now..."

"I didn't--but--but I want to go through the door so that I'll understand it better! Are you saying that I have to understand it in order to be able to get through the door in the first place? What's the point of that?" Harry fumed, standing and pacing, feeling very close, once again, to throwing Dumbledore's silver instruments all over the circular office.

"Temper, temper, Potter," Phineas Nigellus said from his frame. Harry scowled at him.

"It may not seem logical, Harry, but love often defies logic, you know. Who knew that love would prompt Voldemort to offer to spare your mother? And that your mother's love for you would prompt her to offer up her life, even though she could have lived? Who knew that that would give you protection against the Killing Curse?"

"Yeah, but now he has that protection too. He took my blood and then touched me without feeling pain."

Dumbledore smiled and nodded. "And you have some of him in you, some of his power. What has always interested me is the particular power of his that you have shown... It is a uniting power, not a divisive one, which is Voldemort's usual preference and why the Dementors are his natural allies."

"A uniting power? You make it sound like a good thing. Do you know how hated and feared I was in second year as soon as everyone found out that I was a Parselmouth?"

"Being able to speak to the Other is a uniting power. Love is a uniting power. You've received a bit of that type of power from him and he from you. You are linked."

"But how does that make Love the power I have that he doesn't? That's what I still don't understand, and why I need to get through that door..."

"He has the protection of your mother's love but he does not comprehend it. That is your advantage: that the thing that protects him is the very thing he abhors most."

"So you think it's worth a try? Going back to the Department of Mysteries, going through that door?"

"Too bad we don't just have a bloody key for it," Ron grumbled.

"Ah, but we do. If the time is ripe, then Harry is the key," Dumbledore said, nodding in Harry's direction.

"But even if I present myself to the door and it opens, how will I know how to use Love to defeat Voldemort?"

"I cannot tell you that, Harry. That answer very likely lies on the other side of the door."

Harry suddenly realised that Dumbledore had said something odd. "What did you mean when you said that love prompted Voldemort to offer to spare my mother? I thought he couldn't love?"

"I think I know what he meant," Teddy said slowly. "I--I heard Severus talking to my mum about it... They didn't know I could hear them. We were at the cottage on the Isle of Wight. It was late and I got up for some water... He told my mum that he had never expected to be competing with a Potter again for the woman he loved."

"What?" Harry gasped, his jaw dropping. "He--he was competing with my dad for my mum? But--but he called her a Mudblood!"

Teddy shrugged. "He said that when they were in school he and your mum were friends; he wanted to be more but it was hard enough to just do that without other people finding out. They pretended to hate each other when they were in public. He had almost got up the nerve to tell her how he felt when your dad saved his life. After that your mum's attitude toward your dad changed, and soon after they were going out and Severus knew he'd missed his chance. That's why he hated the fact that your dad saved his life. It made your mum look at him differently..."

"Less like a berk, you mean," Harry said, grimacing.

"I suppose. Severus said that he didn't much care what he did after that, which was why he went along when a lot of other Slytherins who were signing on as Death Eaters. But he also said that he'd never felt worse in his life than when he found out that Voldemort was targeting your family. That's why he became a spy. And then the Secret Keeper--"

"Wormtail," Harry hissed.

"--told him where to find you, so all he could do was ask him to spare your mother. He knew he couldn't actually stop Voldemort from trying to kill you, so he decided to do what he could to save your mum."

Harry shook his head in confusion. "But I always thought... Wormtail... Peter Pettigrew hero-worshipped my father. I reckoned that when my parents got together he started doing that with my mother, too, and maybe fell in love with her. I thought that must be why he asked Voldemort to spare her: he had some sick idea that he could 'have' her after my dad and I were dead..."

Teddy gasped. "Did Dumbledore believe that? Is that what he told you?"

"No, no, I just assumed. Dumbledore never gave me an answer to my question; he just said that it wasn't his place to tell me who'd asked for my mother's life to be spared, that I should hear it from the person who'd done it. And then all hell broke loose."

"What do you mean?"

"A Patronus came through the window, a distress call from Tonks. They were ambushed, most of the Order. Death Eaters. And Voldemort too. Dumbledore said that he needed to go; he used Fawkes to transport himself out of the Head's office. Ron and I didn't know what to do. If most of the members of the Order were killed..."

"But I know this part. This is in the books. Dumbledore sent Fawkes back to you with a message."

Harry nodded. "Right. 'We need a distraction.' I knew just what he meant; he'd been teaching me to perform Legilimancy; I had been successful a number of times, but I'd never tried to send a message directly to Voldemort, or tried to fool him the way he'd fooled me about Sirius being tortured at the Ministry. But I had to try; I realised that the easiest thing to do wouldn't be to try to make up something about what I was doing but to actually do it, to really lure him away from the Order, leave his Death Eaters without a leader."

"You went to the Department of Mysteries to open the door," Teddy said in awe. "You used Legilimancy to tell him you were doing it."

"Yes, I used my connection to Voldemort to tell him when I was at the Ministry, to tell him that he could come and get me..."

Teddy gave Harry a small smile. "But Uncle Ron and Uncle Neville wouldn't let you go alone." Harry laughed, remembering. "No, no they wouldn't. I wanted to hex Ron for arguing with me, but then Neville came back into the office--he'd been listening on the other side of the door after he'd left--and he said that he wanted to come too. I needed both of them, they said.

"I gave in; I didn't have time to argue. As soon as I gave in, Fawkes flew to the glass case in Dumbledore's office where Gryffindor's sword was kept, the one I'd used to kill the basilisk. I didn't see how using a sword would be defeating Voldemort with Love, but having another weapon didn't seem like a bad idea, so I took it. Then we all grabbed Fawkes and he took us to the Department of Mysteries in a flash. When we arrived, I tried to create a connection to Voldemort, to tell him where I was. Once Voldemort was gone Dumbledore could save the others, he could handle the Death Eaters. And maybe if I could get through that one door I could force Voldemort to go through with me." Harry gave a soft laugh. "I thought--maybe if he was surrounded by love, in that room or wherever it led, his head would explode or something. Not much of a plan."

"But you didn't get through the door..."

"Not at first. We ended up being chased all through the Department of Mysteries again by Voldemort and some Death Eaters he'd brought with him. And during the chase Voldemort tried to put the spell on me that Zabini put on you."

"But Neville blocked it."

"Right," Harry said, not wanting to elaborate on how he'd accomplished this; what had gone on between one of his best friends and her husband while they were still in school wasn't the business of his thirteen-year-old son.

"But if he hadn't--it would have been the same, it turns out. After all, I was already a year old, right? You--you wouldn't have received his power..."

Harry swallowed and didn't disagree, even though it wasn't true that he had fathered a child at seventeen. "You know the rest of what's in the books, of course. Going through the Veil with Ron and Voldemort."

"But not what happened there."

"No..."

Harry looked around; he, Ron and Voldemort were no longer entwined after going through the Veil. Each of them stood on a flat, grassy plane under a grey sky. The grass appeared to be grey as well. Harry looked down at his hands; his wand was gone but he still held Gryffindor's sword. He looked at Ron, standing about ten feet away, also without his wand, his arms swinging uselessly by his sides, a strangely blank expression on his usually-animated face. Voldemort was about ten feet to his left; the sword that his wand had become was gone; he too seemed oddly blank and unanimated. It appeared to Harry that he'd become a large Voldemort-like puppet, but the puppeteer was on a tea-break.

Then, even though he didn't think he had blinked, it was as though he had; suddenly, silently, a figure had appeared before each of them. Harry was looking toward Ron, who was facing an older wizard with hair that might have been red if everything about the wizard, from his skin to his clothes, weren't as monotonously grey as the sky and landscape. His face seemed to be made from bits and pieces of Arthur Weasley's face, stretched or compressed here and there.

"Uncle Bilius," Ron said stonily; it wasn't a question. His voice was flat, atonal. For the first time Harry noticed that while Ron wasn't grey, the light made all of his usual colours look muted, as though he was covered by a layer of fine grey dust. His hair was greyish-orange, his skin greyish-pink, his jeans greyish-blue, his shirt greyish-green. Harry looked down at his own hands, his legs in their jeans, his shirt; he appeared to have a layer of granite dust all over as well, although when he tried brushing his hands together there was no change. When he looked at Voldemort he saw that he was the same. The figure standing before Voldemort was a woman, small of stature, bearing a passing resemblance to Moaning Myrtle but looking even more morose.

"His mother," Harry whispered. Finally, Harry turned to the figure before him, the figure he'd discerned out of the corner of his eye when he'd looked at Ron. He'd thought he knew who he would see but it wasn't his father after all.

"Sirius," he breathed, wishing he could run toward him, throw his arms around him. He had a feeling that he could if he were only able to get his feet to move; but his greyish trainers remained rooted to the ground.

"Hello, Harry," Sirius said as though he were speaking from the bottom of a deep well. Voldemort's mother and Ron's uncle were also speaking to them; the air was filled with the echo of their voices, a soft shush-shushing that swirled around Harry's head, making him feel as if it were swathed in cotton batting. He couldn't make out what the woman and Ron's uncle were saying because of the overlapping, shushing echoes. Harry turned to Sirius.

"Are you--are you really dead? When you fell through the Veil I wasn't certain..."

Sirius nodded. "I was already dead. I went down fighting. I'm not sorry. You came to save me. If I hadn't tried to return the favor..." Sirius's voice shushed around them.

"I understand," Harry said, his own voice sounding very distant to him. "Are you here because--why are you here?"

"I'm your guide. Everyone gets one when they first arrive. To help you to adjust. Mine was James."

"But I'm--" Harry paused, unsure suddenly. Were they dead, the three of them? What did it mean that they'd gone through the Veil without dying first? Was it fatal to go through the Veil?

"I'm still alive, aren't I?" he asked.

Sirius inclined his head. "Your body isn't dead. I'm not sure why. Maybe..." He glanced down at the sword in Harry's hand. This alone, amongst the few things visible in the grey world beyond the Veil, still had the full glory of its colours. The rubies on the sword still glittered a deep blood-red, the colour blindingly bright amidst all the grey.

"The sword?" Harry asked, lifting it and running his hand over the rubies and etchings on the flat of the blade.

"You still have some life in you--all three of you. You could still go back, if--"

"If?"

"If you do it quickly enough. Since I've been here, I've heard of others who've come through the Veil before their bodies had died. They came with some life still in them but after they'd been here long enough, the life seeped out of them little by little, until they were as grey as the rest of us."

"Why didn't they leave?"

"They couldn't. Most of them didn't come through with a talisman, as you did. Without a talisman you cannot go back."

Harry held up the sword again, examining it. "Talisman?"

"A talisman helps you to retain your life-force longer and allows you to pass safely from one world to the next. I only know that that sword qualifies because you still have it; if it weren't a talisman you wouldn't have it now. Wands don't do it, evidently. They don't work here--magic doesn't work here at all--so when a witch or wizard comes through, the wand disappears. There is no magic in this place. At least not as we knew it in life."

"What about Ron?" he asked, more disturbed than he could say by seeing Ron's grey cast, the listless way he stood before his uncle, speaking to the older man in a monotone in which Harry could not discern individual words.

"He came in with more of his life-force than most because he was touching either you or the sword. Even most people who are still living are far more grey than you three are after first coming through the Veil. If Ron is also touching you or the talisman on the way back he can pass back through the Veil. Him too," he added, gesturing toward Voldemort.

"Why would I want to--" Harry started to say, turning to look at Voldemort and his mother. He stopped short as he finally heard what they were saying.

"Why did you leave me, Mummy?" Voldemort said in a strangely plaintive hiss, on his knees before the small, grey woman. She lifted her hand and touched the pale, sunken face as though he were a rosy-cheeked little boy.

"My heart was broken, Tom," she hissed back at him, and then Harry realised that they were speaking Parseltongue. He looked at Sirius, who was regarding the mother and son impassively. He half-expected Sirius to ask what they were saying, but then he wondered whether Sirius could understand them, being dead. Or maybe he simply couldn't be curious any longer.

Being dead.

"I left you with good people, Tom," his mother told him.

"A broken heart!" Voldemort hissed scornfully. "That's what love does," he sneered, standing and glaring at his mother, his voice like a thousand vipers in Harry's head. "It means growing up without a mother..."

Suddenly Harry remembered, very vividly, being six years old and looking up at his Aunt Petunia in tears, asking, "Why do you hate me?"

She'd stared at him, perplexed; he remembered the confusion in her voice. "I don't hate you." He believed her, but he saw something else in her face: fear.

He asked a new question. "Why are you afraid of me?"

His Aunt Petunia had looked surprised for a moment before her face became a mask of scorn again. "Don't be stupid! Why should anyone be afraid of you? Make yourself useful!" she snapped, handing him a broom. "Sweep the garden path!"

But when his uncle came home from work and found him pushing leaves and grass clippings into a neat pile in the centre of the red-brick path, he went livid, his moustache quivering in rage as he grabbed Harry by the collar of the enormous old shirt of Dudley's that he was wearing. He took the broom from him, painfully ripping it from his grasp, storming down the path to the house and kicking at the front door, leaving a footprint on the paint that Harry knew he'd have to clean off later. His wife opened the door at his 'knock' and he dragged Harry into the front hall, thrusting the broom into her hands as he entered.

"You gave him a broom. A broom! What were you thinking?" he bellowed, dropping Harry onto the bottom steps of the staircase, where he sprawled ungracefully.

His aunt's face was pale and terrified. "Oh, Vernon," she said in horror. "I--I didn't think..."

"Get to your cupboard, boy!" Vernon growled at him. Harry scuttled down the hall, his aunt's terrified face the last thing he saw before slamming the door.

"You've got to be careful, Petunia!" he heard his uncle shout as he stormed past Harry's cupboard and into the kitchen, making the floorboards shake under Harry's feet.

What was supposed to be the problem with his having a broom? Harry wondered. He tried to believe, for a moment, that Aunt Petunia was really afraid of Uncle Vernon, but he remembered that she'd had that look of fear earlier, before his uncle had come home. Why was she afraid of a little boy? A little boy with a broom?

Later, well after the rest of them had eaten what had sounded to Harry like an excellent meal (a joint of some sort of meat, jacket potatoes, boiled carrots, apple tart for pudding), his aunt had opened the door to his cupboard and handed him a mug of weak tea with some milk and a plate with cold toast, a token smear of butter on it.

"Here's your tea," she'd said tersely. "Mind you don't get crumbs in your bed," she added, compulsively smoothing the blanket next to him.

There was something about her expression that seemed different to him; he said to her, "I'm sorry, Aunt Petunia. I'm sorry Uncle Vernon shouted at you."

He wasn't sorry that he'd been using a broom, as he couldn't work out why that should be a problem, but he could be sorry for this and be perfectly sincere about it. His aunt was clearly startled by his apology; he'd never offered one before, either for the things he'd actually done or things he was accused of doing but had no idea how they'd happened. She didn't acknowledge what he'd said but gave him a strange look that almost seemed like pity.

"Bring your mug and plate to the kitchen afterward," she said quickly, without the familiar edge in her voice to which he was accustomed. Her eyes seemed very bright when she turned away; she didn't close his cupboard door before returning to the kitchen, so he didn't have to try to eat in the dark. When he later brought his dishes to the kitchen she was standing at the sink, still doing the washing-up; she took the mug and plate from him and put them in the soapy water, saying, "I'll wash them. You never get anything clean enough when you do it." He looked up at her, surprised; she usually made him do all of the washing-up. It was almost as if she was afraid of admitting that she was doing something nice for him.

The need to have her treat him as she usually treated Dudley was almost a physical ache; he'd seen her, many times, pick up and hold Dudley or pull him onto her lap, hugging and kissing him, crying with him, comforting him. He swallowed, feeling like a heavy stone was sitting in his stomach as he imagined what it would be like for her to put her arms around him, to kiss him on top of the head, to tuck him into a real bed in a real bedroom.

"A mother," he whispered to himself as he continued to watch Voldemort with his own mother. "A mother's love," he added, feeling as if he was very close to something, a realisation, an epiphany...

"You have to be given love to understand it," Harry said quietly. "My mother gave me her love, her life, her protection, and so did my aunt, in her way. She could have refused to take me in, to let me be protected by her blood, by my mother's blood. That was enough for me to be safe."

Voldemort stood. "What are you saying?"

He wasn't sure that he could put his thoughts into words adequately. Voldemort was still staring at him. "What are you saying?" he asked again. Only now he appeared to Harry as a little boy. A six-year-old boy with messy black hair, vivid green eyes, round NHS glasses that had been mended with Sellotape across the bridge and--

And a lighting-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead.

"You're only alive if you can die," Harry said to the boy who looked just as he'd been remembering himself, as a six-year-old. "You can only love if you risk being loved--or risk not being loved."

Now the little boy looked different; his hair was curly and neatly brushed; his eyes were dark and calculating; he no longer bore a lightning-bolt scar on his brow. Unlike Harry, this little boy was handsome and tall for his age. Harry could see that he would later become the Tom Riddle he'd met in the diary, and in the Chamber.

"I could have left," the boy said suddenly. "I went to live with them for a while. A family in London. They wanted to adopt me." His face grew stony; he looked into the grey distance as he continued to speak. "They said that they wanted me to be a part of their family, to be their son... they called me a fine boy, a handsome boy, a clever boy... but I knew that when they learned about some of the things I could do they would change their minds, send me back. So I rejected them first... I was not going to go off to live with unworthy Muggles…"

Harry nodded. "When you agree to risk being loved, you agree to risk being rejected. You have to take the risk first, though. You have to take a chance."

The boy's face grew even stonier. "I won't. You can't make me."

Harry nodded. "I know. You have to want to. Your father... when he realised that your mother was a witch and abandoned her, she could have used magic to hold onto him. But she didn't."

"That's not love," his mother whispered in a slow hiss.

"You can't take love. You can give it. And you can receive it. It's the epitome of free will," Harry said softly, hissing back at her. "If you try to take it--it's not real love. It's not the same..."

"But look what it did to her!" the boy cried, pointing at his mother.

"That's the risk you take when you love," she said in that shushing, hissing voice.

"The risk you take when you live," Harry said. "If you truly live, with your whole heart, it means that you risk dying."

The boy backed away from him. "No, no..."

Harry stepped toward him, crouched and put his hands on the boy's shoulders. "I know it's scary. Living is scary. Dying is scary. Loving is scary. Not being loved is scary. The first time that I kissed Ginny--I didn't know that she'd actually want me to. But I had to take the chance and try..."

The boy shook him off and stepped back. "No! No no NO!"

Suddenly the boy was gone and Harry was staring at the image of the Voldemort who had gone through the Veil with him. The red eyes were strangely empty and the persistent greyness around them had not dimmed their brightness, like the rubies on the sword in Harry's hand.

"No no no no!" he continued to say, as petulantly as the little boy.

Ron stepped to Harry's side. "But--what about the prophecy? What about 'either must die at the hand of the other'?"

Harry grinned at him. "We did. 'At the hand...' That doesn't have to mean that one of us uses our hands to kill the other. We went through the Veil together. That part of the prophecy was fulfilled." He laughed. "Even that stupid Christmas day prophecy of Trelawney's was fulfilled..."

Ron frowned. "What?"

"Don't you remember? When the two of us got up from the table at the same time and she said that we would die first, of all the people who'd been at the table? Well, it wasn't a mad axe-man in the Hogwarts entrance hall. We also went through the Veil at the same time. So, in her way, she was right. Trelawney. Of all the people there..."

"Hermione was right too, though," Ron said, holding out his hand to his uncle. "Uncle Bilius told me. He didn't see the Grim because he was fated to die soon. He died because he scared himself to death. He'd convinced himself that he needed to be afraid of large black dogs. So when he saw one--he died of fright. Like Hermione said."

"Self-fulfilling prophecy," Harry said, nodding.

Ron let out a sigh of relief. "Well, we can look at it this way: something we no longer have to worry about, right? We've been through the Veil and it's not too bad," he said, shrugging.

Harry grinned at him. "So--are you interested in going back? Sirius says that we can because the sword is a talisman."

Ron looked around him and at his uncle. "I reckon it's not quite the right time for us to be here. I don't think I'll ever be afraid of this again, though."

Harry grinned at him. "Just don't become a daredevil because you're not afraid of dying now."

Ron laughed. "You should talk."

Harry turned to Voldemort, who was somehow looking smaller, diminished. "What about you? Are you still afraid of dying? Now do you understand why Dumbledore says there are things worse than death?"

Voldemort gave him a sour look. "I always knew I would triumph over death," he hissed; Ron looked confused and Harry realised that Voldemort was speaking in Parseltongue again. "I came through the Veil alive and I shall leave here alive."

"If I take you with me," Harry said tonelessly. "If--you accept my mercy."

Voldemort recoiled in disgust. "Accept your--I do what I will because I will it, no one else!"

Harry looked sadly at him. "How you see it is up to you. I'll still be offering you mercy. I could just leave you here. You don't have to thank me. It doesn't feel right to me for it to end this way... We'll go back, have a fair fight. Just you and me. We both know now what to expect if one of us comes back here." He turned to smile at Sirius. "And I'll get to see Sirius again. And my mum and dad. I will have gone down fighting, like my dad. Like my mum. Like you," he said to his godfather, who gave him a small, grey smile. Harry looked back at Voldemort. "I'm ready if you are."

Voldemort looked at Harry with venom in his gaze but Harry felt nothing but pity for him; that ghastly visage could no longer make him afraid. "We all get to leave," he snarled. "And then we fight--man to man."

Harry nodded. "Man to man," he said in English, watching Ron out of the corner of his eye, wondering what he would think.

"What's going on?" Ron asked.

"All three of us will use the sword to go back," Harry said slowly. Ron's eyes widened in shock.

"All three! But--but it's him, Harry! What's to say he won't just kill us as soon as we go back through the Veil?"

"Nothing," Harry said, looking his best friend in the eye. "I thought you weren't afraid of death anymore."

"I'm not. It's just--the principle of it, you know? What's he done to deserve leaving here? I've been your best friend for seven years." He wagged his finger at Harry, reminding him strongly of Molly Weasley. "I could have hexed you over Ginny, too, but I didn't."

"That's true, Ron. You're the best friend anyone could ever have." He turned and looked sadly at Voldemort again. "What's he done to deserve mercy? Absolutely nothing. But he's getting it anyway."

Sirius looked expectantly at Harry. "Are you ready, Harry? To go back through?"

Harry nodded, his eyes growing moist. "I"m so glad to see you again, Sirius."

Sirius smiled at him like the handsome best man at his parents' wedding, in Harry' photo album. "And I"m glad to see you go again, Harry. At least for now. Have you chosen?"

"Chosen?"

"Where you want to go. The talisman not only allows you to leave here, but to go anywhere you like once you pass through the Veil again."

"Anywhere?" Harry repeated, a slow smile creeping across his face. "Anywhere at all? In the entire world?"

"Yes, but not off it, I'm afraid," Sirius said with a smirk. "I can't provide you with a spacesuit and a ship to get back to earth."

Harry laughed. "That hadn't even occurred to me. I'll stick to this planet. I know just the place."

"What about our wands?" Ron asked warily, eyeing Voldemort with extreme distrust.

"I suspect that your wands will be restored to you as soon as you pass through the Veil again."

"Where are you going to take us, to that old fool, Dumbledore? Or do you plan to try to take me to Azkaban?" Voldemort sneered.

"Definitely not Azkaban," Harry said, shuddering at the thought, even though he knew that the Dementors no longer guarded the island prison. "I said I would fight you man to man and I meant it. I don't need you to start opening up the cells, releasing your followers to fight on your side."

Voldemort nodded; he actually seemed impressed. "Very good, Potter. You thought that through well. But you still haven't answered me about Dumbledore."

"I don't know where Dumbledore is. All I know is that he's helping the members of the Order fight your Death Eaters. Somewhere. I wasn't going to try to take you to Dumbledore and have him fight you for me. I told you--man to man. I know just where we're going. But you have to promise me one thing..."

"I promise nothing!" Voldemort hissed at him.

"You shall promise me this!" Harry barked at him, hefting the sword in his hand, feeling how much a part of him it was, like an extension of his arm. The two of them glared at each other for a long moment but Voldemort looked away first. "You shall not," Harry said in the same commanding voice, "hurt Ron in any way. No matter what happens between us, you let him go. After all, if you kill Harry Potter, won't you want to have a witness who can tell the world?"

"Harry, no!" Ron said, shaking. "Don't trust him."

Voldemort sneered again but answered Harry. "Very well, Potter," he said in the slimiest voice Harry had ever heard him use; even though he was speaking English now his voice slithered as though he were still speaking Parseltongue. "I promise. Your friend shall go free, unaltered and unharmed, to tell the world of your demise."

Ron was clenching and unclenching his fists by his side; Harry was certain that if he'd had a wand he'd be throwing hexes. Harry put his head close to Ron's and whispered, "A promise from you too, Ron. If you see me fall, don't even wait for me to hit the ground; Apparate away as quickly as you can. Don't try to avenge me; I know you're not afraid to die now, but the others will need you. Hermione. And Luna and Neville. And--and Ginny," he added with a choke in his voice. "Ginny most of all, Ron. She'll need you so much... You don't want to do that to her, both of us being killed, do you?"

Even in the dim grey light Harry could see that Ron's eyes were moist. "No," he agreed reluctantly. "Wouldn't want to do that," he said, his voice thick from unshed tears.

"And Hermione. How would she feel if both of her best friends--"

"Yes, Harry, yes, I get it," Ron said, impatient. Then, biting his lip, he said, "Listen, Harry, about Hermione... I have a confession to make. You know when we found Hagrid? And we were in his hut afterward?"

"Stop, Ron," Harry ordered him sternly. "This isn't the time for confessions. You can tell me later."

"But--but what if you don't--"

"You can tell. Me. Later." Harry looked him in the eye and smiled, loving his best friend more than he ever thought possible.

"Right. Later," Ron said, finally agreeing.

"So you'll do it, then? What I asked?"

"Yes. Promise. But--" he lowered his voice to a whisper again. "I thought you trusted him?"

"When did I say that?" Harry whispered back.

'You asked him to promise not to hurt me..."

"Right. But I never said that I trusted him." Harry thought for a moment, then said, "Actually, that's not true. I trust him to do exactly what I expect him to do, no more, no less."

"Right," Ron said again, nodding. "That's what I was afraid of," he added with a sigh of resignation.

Harry turned to Sirius. "So--what do we do?"

"You two put your hands on the sword's blade. Harry holds the hilt. He has to think very hard about the place where he wants to go; then you all just walk through the Veil."

Harry turned around; sitting there in the grey landscape, as if it was the only thing left of a ruined castle, stood the stone arch, and hanging in the archway, moving lightly in a breeze Harry couldn't feel, was the Veil. He turned again to Sirius.

"Thanks, Sirius," he said simply.

"You're quite welcome, Harry. And if you can manage it, please don't show up here again soon." He grinned at him.

"I'll do my best, Sirius," he said, meaning it.

"That goes for you too, Ron," Sirius added.

Ron grimaced and sent a sideways look at Voldemort. "See what I can do," he said noncommittally.

Sirius didn't say anything to the older man but he didn't try to talk Harry out of what he was planning to do, either; Harry looked over his shoulder to see the three of them--Sirius, Uncle Bilius and Tom Riddle's mother--each raising a silent hand in farewell. Then all three turned simultaneously and before they had their backs turned they'd all faded back into the greyness around them and vanished from sight.

Harry faced forward, holding the sword out before him with his right hand, then switching it to his left so that he would have his right hand free for his wand after he went back through the Veil. When they reached it Ron wrapped his hand around the blade just below the hilt, heedless of the sharp edge; Voldemort grasped it farther down, visibly shaking when his hand touched it. Harry wondered only for a moment if that was because he wasn't a Gryffindor; Dumbledore had said that only a true Gryffindor could have pulled the sword from the Sorting Hat.

"Here we go," Harry said with determination.

They were through the Veil, standing in an open doorway, rearmed with their wands. Harry looked over his shoulder; instead of seeing the grey lands going on forever or the Death Chamber in which the arch and Veil stood on the stone dais, he saw the circular room of doors in the Department of Mysteries where he'd been only a little earlier, although now it felt like a lifetime ago.

"The door is open," he said, smiling at Ron. He knew that it was THE door; he had no doubts as he strode forward into a pinkish grey fog. Unlike the greyness of the world beyond the Veil, this didn't make Harry feel flattened out, tamped down, like a mere shadow of his former self. He felt more like himself than he ever had, in a way he couldn't describe. And then he heard it, coming through the fog, the sound surrounding him and becoming him:

Phoenix song.

"Wow," Ron breathed in awe. "I haven't heard that since--is Fawkes here? Is this where he went after bringing us to the Ministry?"

"I dunno," Harry said dreamily; he couldn't help smiling as he pushed through the fog, Ron and Voldemort still grasping the sword.

His enemy had been silent thus far, following along when Harry moved, still holding the sword; Harry looked sideways at him. One of the reddish eyes was twitching noticeably and sweat was pouring down his face, down the back of his head, down the side of his head, past his ears; he appeared to be melting, and every time the phoenix song hit a new crescendo he winced visibly and his eye twitched spasmodically again.

The fog finally parted and Harry could see that they were standing in a country lane leading to a small village in the distance; to his right stood a homely cottage with a pretty garden on either side of the path leading to the front door. Harry smiled.

Ron tentatively removed his right hand from the sword and switched his newly-reappeared wand to that hand. "Where are we, Harry?"

Voldemort had also removed his hand from the sword and held his wand out warily, waiting for the "trick". For the catch. "Yes, Potter, where are we?" Yet he did not attack. Not yet.

Harry didn't know how he knew it, but he said, "That village is Godric's Hollow," and pointed toward it with the sword. "And that's my parents' house. My house."

He was certain of it, no doubt in his mind. A bright orange sun was shining in the western sky and a breeze moved the golden leaves on the trees arching over the lane; twilight descended quickly but Harry could still see the autumnal asters blooming in the garden, fragrant in the fading light, and glossy green ivy climbing the cottage walls. Someone had carved a large jack o-lantern and placed it on the step; a candle inside it guttered in the wind but consistently recovered, sending an amber glow over the stone flags of the garden path.

Harry felt filled with a strange surety again. "It's Halloween," he whispered in wonder. He knew he was right. Yet he didn't feel horror at the thought of what was about to happen, what he knew was coming. He felt more peaceful than he ever had before; he knew he was exactly where he ought to be, doing what he ought to be doing. "They're about to have their tea. Come on," he said to them both, still not knowing why he was so positive about this.

Suddenly they were in the house without having opened the door or walking forward; the three of them stood in the kitchen at the rear of the house, where Lily and James Potter were having Halloween tea with their one-year-old son. The kitchen had been decorated for the holiday; jack o'lanterns of all shapes and sizes, some with cheerful, smiling countenances, some with horrible grimaces, sat on almost every horizontal surface.

Harry could feel the love in the room; it felt like it was permeating his body, flowing through his veins. He was love and love was him; he no longer doubted anything that Dumbledore had told him about this. He gazed at his parents and saw the way they looked at each other and at their young son; this was a house built on love.

"Why should you want to be here, of all places?" Voldemort demanded. "You know what you're about to see. What's going to happen soon."

Harry turned to him. "I didn't choose this. I chose to come through the door to this chamber; the chamber chose to show me this, I think. When does it happen? You know what I mean."

"Midnight," Voldemort hissed at him.

Harry nodded. "Of course, of course..."

The chamber seemed to have sped up time. They watched the family finish their tea and clean up, put little Harry to sleep in his cot with a lullaby and a stuffed lion, followed by Lily and James Potter settling down by the fire in their sitting room. Voldemort followed all the while, watching without further comment. It both seemed to move along very quickly and take quite a while.

Suddenly they found themselves outside the house again; in the distance, coming down the road, they could see a tall, thin hooded figure limned by the moonlight. Ron bristled beside him and Harry put his hand on his arm. "We can't stop any of this, Ron. It already happened. We're just seeing it."

"Like a Pensieve?"

"Perhaps... except I don't think this is like anyone's Pensieve. Those are all filtered through a person's perceptions, aren't they? I think the chamber is showing us what happened without anyone else's point of view colouring it..."

"But why, though? Why did it decide to show you something so horrible? It's bad enough you got to hear it whenever Dementors got too close to you..."

And somehow Harry knew again. He knew the answer: "It's love. It's showing me--us--love. That's all. This is what love is. We came through the door and we're getting a demonstration. It can't really be explained in words, so..."

To Harry's surprise, Ron nodded. "That makes sense," he said, scrutinising the approaching figure of Voldemort again.

The tall wizard who was very nearly identical to the one standing beside him walked down the path to the front door of the Potters' cottage. He laughed, a high, cruel laugh that was very familiar to Harry, before he drew a lightning-bolt of fire on the door and then blasted it in two, the jagged pieces of wood flying into the house.

As the invasion continued, Harry simply stood and watched; he'd always thought that if he saw this he'd be incensed, livid; but somehow he felt nothing for Voldemort but pity, pity that his fear of dying should come to this, trying to kill a little baby and killing his mother to get to that baby, even though he'd agreed to spare her. He tried to imagine living with that sort of fear gripping him on a daily basis, imagine being that afraid to die, but he could not, especially now that he'd been through the Veil.

"I'm sorry," Harry said softly to Voldemort as he watched his father battle the fearsome wizard and fall dead, every inch a hero. He tried to think of words to explain what he was sorry for, but he could not.

"Sorry!" Voldemort growled, clearly very agitated. His eye was twitching again, very vigorously. "What are you sorry for? I'm the one over there killing your parents and you're telling me that you're sorry?" he demanded, his voice going up, very high and shrill.

"I'm sorry that the prophecy made you feel threatened. Made you afraid."

"Afraid? I have never been afraid!" Voldemort shot back at him, gripping his wand tightly yet not raising it.

"You were afraid that I would kill you eventually, weren't you? That's why you tried to kill me first, after all. I've never liked feeling afraid, especially when I've acted on it. Makes me feel like I'm going to be sick, usually. It's horrible."

Voldemort was livid but Harry could neither feel satisfaction nor happiness at this; he felt nothing but compassion and would have apologised again for making Voldemort so angry but he felt that that would simply perpetuate the cycle.

The phoenix song they'd heard earlier and that had been audible in the background, like a very quiet musical soundtrack, seemed to have been turned up again; Harry closed his eyes and felt like he could breathe it in, draw it deeply into his lungs and live off it. He opened his eyes to see Voldemort killing his mother and then Voldemort trying to kill the little black-haired baby, still clutched tightly in his mother's arms as she lay on the garden path, her eyes blank and unseeing and yet also somehow filled with love.

This truly is love, he thought. This is what it means, to lay down your life, to think about someone else first, not trying to keep yourself alive for life's own sake.

And to forgive.

That was it; that was the thing he knew he had to do. He looked at Voldemort's eerie profile; the odd red eyes and snake-slit of a nose twitched slightly as he watched the attempted murder that turned into his thirteen-year disembodiment.

They had to forgive each other. Well, Harry thought, it's probably more than a little unlikely that Voldemort will forgive me, but that doesn't mean I can't forgive him. It just felt right, somehow. Being in the Love Chamber had made him feel like he simply knew things from the first moment he'd entered, and he knew now, without an ounce of doubt, that he wasn't wrong about this. Even if Voldemort decided to try to kill him…

Correction, Harry thought, finding Voldemort's wand pointed at him now; when Voldemort decides to try to kill me…

"Harry!" Ron cried in alarm.

"Ron," Harry said calmly to his best friend, never taking his eyes off Voldemort. "Remember what I told you to do. Promise me you'll do it, no matter what." Harry turned to look at him now.

Ron nodded, his eyes moist. "Oh, Harry…" he said mournfully, understanding all too well what was about to happen.

Except that he didn't expect Harry to look calmly at Voldemort, drop his wand to the ground, and say, "It's all right. I forgive you."

This seemed to incense Voldemort more than seeing himself turning into a whisp of white smoke. "You--you forgive me? Insolent whelp! Forgive this! Crucio!"

Harry felt the pain, there was still nothing that could stop that; but somehow, with the phoenix song louder than ever in his head, it was balanced out; he felt like his senses were stretched to their breaking point, experiencing, simultaneously, equal parts bliss (in the phoenix song) and pain. He was very nearly overwhelmed by the combined extremes when the pain stopped and Voldemort glared at him, waiting for Harry to be able to speak again. Ron had dropped to his knees, sobbing, as Harry was tortured, something Harry had never seen him do; Ron had always hidden his tears from his best friend.

"Listen to the phoenix song, Ron. Just listen," he whispered with what felt like the last bit of breath he possessed.

Ron nodded again, silent tears running down his freckled face, his wand clutched tightly in his hand so that he could Apparate away at a moment's notice.

"Forgive that!" Voldemort sneered as the Potter cottage burned behind them and a Muggle siren blared in the distant village. Harry regarded him with interest.

"I do forgive that. I forgive you for everything. You'll have to kill me to stop me forgiving you. And I forgive you in advance for that, too." Harry smiled at him, feeling very peaceful and calm, while Voldemort seemed to be growing more agitated by the moment; every time Harry said the word "forgive" his eye twitched again.

"You can't forgive me for killing your parents, or for killing you…"

"I can. And for luring me to the Ministry, where Bellatrix killed Sirius. I can forgive her, too. Shall I say it again? I forgive you. I forgive you. I--"

"Silence!" And then: "AVADA KEDAVRA!"

He had evidently decided that the only way to shut up Harry was by killing him. As the green light shot unspeakably quickly toward Harry, he was already whispering, one more time, "I forgive you…"

"And--?" Teddy prodded him, eyes wide.

"And--well, the next thing I remember I'm in a private room in St Mungo's, with a rather cross Healer who'd been trying to wake me for a good half-hour, it turned out…"

"No, I mean--what happened? Why are you alive and why did he die when he was the one cursing you?"

"I never said that he died," Harry explained calmly.

Teddy huffed impatiently. "What happened? How is it he's still alive?"

"Well, actually, he died a few years ago now, in Azkaban, an old and broken man, devoid of magical power, a Squib known as Tom Riddle to the guards, who had no idea they were guarding He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named…

"Evidently, when you are forgiven, sincerely forgiven by someone you are trying to murder with the Killing Curse, this will cause the curse to be null and void and the person doing the cursing will be stripped of his magic forever. They tried to teach us in school--or, at any rate, a Death Eater in disguise tried to tell us--that there's no blocking the Killing Curse, no shield spell or counter-spell that can protect you, but that's not strictly true. Love is the most powerful spell--the most powerful power that there is; it's why my mother's sacrifice, when I was a baby, saved me. Forgiveness is part of love. To forgive your murderer at the moment of death is a powerful magic all its own, and evidently also quite rare, perhaps even unknown. People don't talk about it much, I know that…."

"You've never talked about it," Teddy observed. "Why shouldn't people know that there's a way to protect yourself from the Killing Curse?"

Harry snorted. "Most people would laugh at the idea. It seemed pointless. In fact, there is one other person who knows: Rita Skeeter. It's true! I sat down with her for an interview after all of this, with the promise that she would tell the true story of everything that happened, and she kept making this face. Finally, she told me that I couldn't possibly expect her to print that; it read like a fairy-tale. No one would believe it, even though it was the truth. I'd look like a worse liar than before my fifth year of school, when I was also telling the truth but everyone in the wizarding world thought I was lying through my teeth. She said, 'You know why I print the stories I do, Harry? Because people want them. I give them exactly what they want. And a strong hero who gets rid of the villain through cunning and superior ability is what they want, not a boy who forgives a madman at the moment he is being murdered.'"

Harry sighed. "She was right, of course. I hated that she was right, because it was Rita, but she was still right. So she simply wrote that 'Potter and Weasley refuse to divulge what occurred after they went through The Veil with You-Know-Who and came back without him'--which wasn't strictly true, although in a way it was--and everyone thought Voldemort was dead. A week later some Aurors took a feeble old man who kept complaining any time someone called him 'Riddle' or 'Tom' up to Azkaban, where he lived in a cell all alone, with only the guards for company, claiming until he drew his last breath that he was the greatest Dark Lord who ever existed, which made the guards laugh and call him 'Mouldy Voldy' as a joke, sometimes suggesting to him that he perhaps should have been in St Mungo's instead of Azkaban, except that the Ministry insisted that he was actually quite dangerous, a career criminal who'd been convicted by the Wizengamott. He was, too; I insisted on it. A proper trial. He was tried and convicted of being a Death Eater, technically. It was a rather brief trial as he started off confessing to everything, if you want to call bragging a confession. But it was still a trial. And then they took him off to Azkaban for a life sentence."

Teddy shook his head. "So he also lost his magic and became a Squib, but you didn't get his power instead, did you?"

Harry laughed. "No more than I'd ever had from him, just the Parseltongue still. I still have to concentrate as hard as ever to do a Summoning Charm. Unfortunately, I'm not generally being threatened with death-by-Hungarian-Horntail. That's still the best way to get me to do that spell, I've found. But it's terribly inconvenient to keep an enormous fire-breathing dragon around just for that, and I don't want my children to be kidnapped again just so I can do a really good job of summoning a broom, either. I've usually had to make do with getting off my bum to fetch whatever I want," he said, making his son laugh.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When they entered the Ministry lobby the next morning Harry wished he'd taken a different route, any other route, to get the children there. Reporters gabbled at them and Quick-Quote Quills raced across parchment pads on their own, writing who-knew-what about the son of The Boy Who Lived, who was now, reportedly, the most powerful wizard in Britain (or anywhere), having been given, unwittingly, Blaise Zabini, Senior's power. Zabini had already been taken into custody and the reporters had been repeatedly rebuffed concerning interviews with him.

Draco Malfoy, however, was perfectly willing to give his full story to the press. He revelled in the attention, safe in the knowledge that he had already signed a deal with the Ministry; he told them absolutely everything Zabini--and his own mother--had done, although he omitted the part about Zabini being his father when he was speaking to reporters, and in return all charges against him, past and present, were to be dropped. At long last, Malfoy would be a free man. The Ministry were only too glad to learn that Malfoy's plans for the future included leaving the country; the fewer Malfoys--and Zabinis--they had to deal with, the better, as far as they were concerned, even though he'd been very co-operative.

Over the following months the furor in the press died down. Penelope and Percy were able to go out in Diagon Alley, even with Nate and Julian, without being hounded, and when they married just before the New Year most of the press even seemed somewhat jaded and bored with the whole affair. Harry and Ginny were relieved that Ruby and Rory were finally old enough for Hogwarts, although Harry was quickly growing weary of having to take points from Gryffindor for their repeated infractions, many of which, he knew, were inspired by Fred and George. ("Oi! Twins, from our family? You've got to leave your mark on the place!")

Teddy had some difficulty adjusting to his new level of power, but Harry kept an eye on him, discussing the matter often with Severus, over tea. He was finally finding it possible to relate to the older man, and, for his part, Severus seemed to have got over the idea that Harry had, at one point in time, slept with his wife and produced a son, although from Harry's perspective this hadn't occurred yet. Ginny encouraged their almost-friendship, glad at last that the old Snape-Potter rift seemed to be healing. At the end of the summer term plans were even made for Nate, Teddy and Julian to all visit the Isle of Wight with Severus and Tilda, after which the three boys would come to stay at St Clare's for a little while so that Severus and Tilda could go on a holiday to Spain with her brother and his new wife. And so that Percy and Penelope could have some time alone.

As a result, the house would be rather full on Harry's thirty-second birthday; Ginny and the children were planning to throw him a big party in the afternoon, because in the evening Harry was expected at Draco Malfoy's stag party. They'd come back to Britain, briefly, because he and Pansy were finally getting married, and she didn't want to do it in Gibraltar, away from her family. Draco had been unable to convince her not to return, but otherwise he seemed relatively peaceful and happy, especially with the knowledge that his mother and Zabini were safely locked up in Azkaban.

On the eve of his birthday, Harry was alone in the living room of St Clare's reading a book by the fire and listening, with some trepidation, to the squeals and exclamations coming from the children's bedrooms, where they were supposed to be getting ready for bed. Instead they seemed to be playing their favourite game, "Don't Touch the Floor". He was particularly suspicious because one of the twins had just cried out, "Ha! From the bed to the chest! Top that!" He shook his head, laughing as he stood. When he entered their bedroom, they would don expressions of extreme innocence, too, and demand, "What makes you think we're doing anything we shouldn't be?" as if he were dim.

Maybe I should pretend to be dim, he thought. But instead he was rising and walking toward the stairs. He'd just reached them when he stopped short; Mad-Eye Moody's ghost had suddenly come through the wall and stopped directly in front of him, posed as if he was sitting on the lowest steps. Not wanting to walk through the ghost if he could help it, due to the cold, Harry nodded at him, quickly over his initial surprise, and said, "Good evening, Alastor. Erm, do you mind if I pass?"

"I wanted to talk to you, Potter," Moody growled, floating toward the fireplace and settling himself comfortably at the edge of the hearth, where the fire's glow gave him a slightly orange appearance on one side.

Harry grimaced, turning away from the stairs. He nodded at the ghost and sat in his favourite armchair again, saying, "Talk about what?

"It's okay, Potter," Moody said, looking sombrely at him with the ghost of his non-magical eye.

Harry frowned. "What's okay?"

"This. Me. Everything. Being a ghost. It's been okay. Never thought I'd be one, but then, never thought I'd have a reason to stick around after my time had passed. Or after I had passed."

Harry continued to frown. "So why did you stick around? And why've you always been so interested in me?"

Moody turned to gaze at the fire; he held his hand before it and Harry could see the flames through the greyish-white figure. "You'll soon find out, Potter. Very soon." He looked up, then shot up to the ceiling. "I may not see you again, so good-bye, Potter."

"What? Why won't you see me again? Does this mean that you're going to stop haunting me?" he added a little hopefully, but trying not to seem rude.

"I can't really say," Moody said cryptically.

"Why not?" Harry asked, tipping his head back, hoping that Moody wouldn't take his curiosity as an invitation to continue hanging about anyway.

"I can't really say why I can't really say," he said even more cryptically.

"I don't understand. What are you saying?"

"You'll know very soon," Moody said again, shooting through the roof and disappearing.

"What does that mean?" Harry shouted after him, even though he didn't expect to get an answer.

However, at that moment, his mobile rang in his pocket. Moody stuck his head back inside and nodded at him. "It means answer the bloody phone and you'll find out." And with that, he disappeared through the roof of St Clare's again, while Harry's mobile continued to play its festive tune and he checked the small screen; whoever it was didn't want to be identified, which made him feel tempted not to answer, but Moody's instructions finally prompted him to press the small button with the green telephone on it and say, "Hello?"

"Harry? Oh, thank goodness, Harry. It's Parvati."

"Parvati? What on earth? When did you get a mobile?"

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Parvati bit her lip and paused for a moment before answering him. "I, erm... It's borrowed," she finally said. Which was true. "I needed to talk to you and you're not on the Floo Network, so--"

"Why did you need to talk to me so desperately? Listen, tomorrow is my birthday and Malfoy's stag party, and the day after is the wedding itself, so I need my rest..."

"Well, you should make the wedding , but you'll have to skip the stag party. And your birthday," she said, biting her lip again.

She could hear him hesitate. "Why? Not that I was terribly eager to go to Draco Malfoy's stag party, but could you tell me what's going on, Parvati?"

"Please, Harry. You need to come to my shop. Right away."

He sighed noisily into the phone. "Right now? Can't this wait until the morning?"

"No, no!" she said desperately. "The morning is definitely too late. You have to come now. Please, Harry!"

Silence. Finally, he said, "You know I like you, Parvati. But this is strange. Why do you need me to come to your shop right now?"

She lifted her eyes to the owner of the phone, standing next to the round table where her crystal ball and Tarot cards lay. He had the same vivid green eyes as Harry, the same dark brows and round glasses; he had the same messy hair, too, except that it was completely white. He also bore the same lightning-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, peeking through the white fringe. He smiled and nodded kindly at her, his eyes crinkling up at the corners ever so slightly. She turned away from him and closed her eyes, speaking into the phone, answering Harry's question.

"It's time, Harry."

---