The Riddle War

Chapter 6: Natus Iterum Orbis

Reborn Unto the World

Early April, 2003

Throughout history, man has attempted to define pain. Raw, fiery, black, red, burning, searing, sharp, dull, throbbing, constant, nueaseating, stinging, scraping and uncountable other adjectives had been applied to describe the signal the central nervous systems sends to the brain when it feels that something is fundamentally wrong with the way the body is functioning.

But the words were smaller than the thing they described. They could not detail the true face of pain. Pain was not a fire or a blizzard or a knife or even a broken bone.

Pain was emptiness. Pain was a limitless, unending field of nothing. At its core, pain was white.

Harry James Potter, age twenty-three in years and ten times that in experience, hung in the white, thinking and agonizing. The white pushed him. His agony was complete, and in its completion, Harry found emptiness. He thought with the strange logic one usually found in dreams, or perhaps nightmares.

Pain was change, Harry thought as he hung in the white. All change required pain. Brith was pain, death was pain. Human beings were born from pain, spent their entire lives trying to avoid pain, and then died in pain. Training was pain. Racing, more than anything he knew, was pain. It was also real. Winning a race was more than running fast. It was ignoring pain for a purpose. Racing, Harry thought, hurt him beyond all comparison. But it made him free-

Then the white pushed again and Harry knew nothing at all.

* * *

Outside the white, the world waited for Harry. The Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix was abuzz with nervous excitement at Harry's return. Was he alive? Would he wake up? Joy at his return was stained by fear for his future. Where had he been for the last six years?

Madame Poppy Pomfrey, the Order's resident Healer, could offer no assurances on Harry's recovery. When they had brought his body to her, she had done her best to repair his torn, broken body. Her surgery ward had been slick with blood and grime and puss when she had finished. Voldemort's unfocused magical rage had nearly torn Harry asunder. But Harry had never cried out, even though he was unconsciouss. At times, his brow would furrow, as if deep in thought, and twice he had muttered something, but other than that, the Chosen One of the Wizarding world had appeared to be in the deepest, most irreversible coma.

"I told you, Minerva," the aging Healer had told the Acting-Head of the Order. "The mind is not a thing to trifle with. There are magicks and potions I could use that could draw him out-- or turn his brain into mush. He has to come out of this on his own."

Minerva McGonagall sighed, her deeply face wrinkling deeply as newly-etched worry lines formed. "I know, Poppy. It's just so frustrating seeing him lie there."

Pomfrey touched her superior's shoulder with a comforting hand. "Just start the meeting, Minerva. I'll be in in a moment."

McGonagall nodded and went off to the dining room, where the Order awaited her report. She knew Pomfrey's answer would not satisfy them, but it was all she had to give.

* * *

Voldemort sat alone in his private chamber, fuming silently. He had shut a lid on his anger, but it remained, boiling furiously and threatening at any moment to bubble over. He had suffered a setback. His plan had been delayed. How could it be, with all his talent at Divination, that he had not forseen this? He had concluded years ago the Potter boy had gone mad upon learning his destiny. And now he had returned, more powerful than ever.

Could Potter have perhaps embraced the path to power? Few could face up to its truths, Voldemort knew. To willingly alter the human body. . . to improve upon God's plan.

No. Potter was too weak-minded to realize that man was only the beginning. He would never accept the brutal modifications Voldemort had. The boiling, horrible, agony of taking what was supposed to be and bending it to his will.

Speaking of which, Voldemort had some repairs to effect. Potter's shot, however lucky it may have been, still caused considerable damage. He had already determined that too much of his right eye had been disintegrated to save it. The rest of eye would have to come out and his face would have to be knitted back together.

His anger nearly boiled over again as he thought of what Potter had done to his flawless face. He would never again underestimate the boy. He had done so, to his discredit, far too often.

Voldemort stood from his darkly carven throne. He had to attend to his face. And then his Death Eaters. . .

* * *

Back inside the white, Harry hung, wondering if he was dead or alive. Did it even matter? He must be alive. Dead things did not feel pain. Death was a release from pain.

By that definition, Harry was the most alive man on earth. But he could not remain here forever. This limbo, this emptiness, this pain-- it was only temporary. Harry still had work to do.

His sense of purpose gave him strength against the white. This time, when the white tried to engulf him, to wash over him like an ocean wave, Harry resisted. The white pushed.

And Harry pushed back. The white receded, and instead of coming back even more furiously than before, it waited. Harry paused, wondering what was happening.

Then the white invaded. The white was eating him. It chewed his body, causing Harry to spasm and scream into the white. It flooded his mouth, choking him.

The white began to eat Harry.

* * *

Just as Madame Pomfrey was about to leave Harry's bedside and go to the meeting, a rustling in the sheets snapped her attention back to the bed. Was he waking up?

Pomfrey moved a step closer to Harry's bedside, ready to greet him. But Harry did not wake up. Instead, his body suddenly leapt up, as if seized by a giant hand, and gave a horrible, shuddering spasm. His mouth opened and Harry screamed an eerie, primal scream. It was not the sound of a man. It was the scream of an animal being tortured.

Like a brief rush of wind, it was over. Harry's mouth closed and he collapsed back into his coma. It was as if nothing had changed. Pomfrey's eyes widened and she removed her hands from her ears. Without further pause, she ran down the hall to the meeting. She had news to share.

* * *

Harry languished in the white void. He had barely regained a sense of self. The white had stripped him of anything but pain. In the brief moments it had been inside him-- or had it been a year it had been inside him?-- Harry had glimpsed something. He had been missing something. Each time the white attacked, he defended. And each time he defended, the white won. He slowly came to grasp the truth. Against some things, there was no defense. The white would be in him. That was inevitable.

And so Harry became armed with knowledge. Barely aware of anything after the white's latest invasion, Harry had a conscious thought. The white hated conscious thought. It sought always to return everything to itself. It tried to eat Harry.

Harry made no resistance. Instead, he opened his mouth.

And Harry began to eat the white.

* * *

Outside the white, a body stirred. Everyone else was away from Harry's room. They sat in a large meeting room down the hall, discussing his condition. They discussed the battle and his return and what it meant for the Order.

While they discussed, a body began to twitch. Harry's powerful, conditioned heart began to beat just slightly faster, sending more oxygen-bearing blood to his cells. The part of his brain reserved for consciouss though began to spark with tiny amounts of neuromuscular electricity. His lungs opened wide and drew a huge breath of air, extracting nearly twice as much oxygen from it as the average set of lungs could.

The eyes twitched beneath the eyelids. Slowly, the lids opened, revealing to the emerald eyes they no longer covered a completely lucid world. Harry had long ago repaired his eyes. His glasses were enchanted to allow him to see things no normal man could. Even if he had had the oppurtunity, he had no intention of telling anyone. It was another surprise in his arsenal.

Harry looked at the ceiling for a moment, reveling in its dark stone. It was not white. He could feel his body. He had substance again. He had form. Harry had eaten all the white. It was all back inside him now.

Harry lay in the bed for another few heartbeats, allowing his body to regain strength. He had recovered extraordinately quickly from Voldemort's attack, physically. He could feel the traces of foreign magic that had knitted him back together.

Slowly, methodically, Harry's abdominal muscles contracted and he sat up, looking at his surroundings. He was in a room with stone walls, floor, and ceiling. That probably meant underground. He knew was not a prisoner. That meant the Order had probably taken him.

Harry smiled. He was back home, then. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Harry placed his bare feet on the floor, luxuriating in the cold cement beneath his feet. It did not hurt. It did not hurt! Harry was even less afraid of pain than he had been before his ordeal. Now, after spending a lifetime in the white, he was merely weary of it.

Testing his strength, Harry stood. Experimentally, he walked across the room to a table, where a pitcher of water and a glass rested. Picking one up in either hand, he poured a glass of water and drank deeply. He was very thirsty. Looking around the room through the bottom of the glass while he drank, he spotted his glasses, his wand, and a folded robe lying neatly on a shelf. Harry dressed himself and, finding the robe too short at them and too long in the arms, altered it with a few flicks of his wand. Never had magic felt so effortless. Securing his glasses firmly on his nose, Harry opened the door and padded down the hall, his bare feet making no noise on the stone.

As walked down the hallway, Harry headed towards a closed door with light escaping from around the cracks. As he neared the door, he noticed the stone was considerably warmer. They must have heated the stones magically near the areas of greatest habitation, Harry thought, surprising himself with the revelation. How he had just thought something like that was beyond him. It was as if his every thought was guided by some omnipresent hand to advance some strange, convoluted plot line. . .

Harry laughed to himself. That was silly.

Harry paused before the door, listening to voices within. He recognized many, but failed to hear a few he once knew. He drew one last breath and opened the door.

"Hi, everybody," he said. "I'm back."

* * *

"We have to follow this up with a counterattack," Ron Weasley insisted, pounding a fist on the kitchen table. "Voldemort's forces are just as scattered and confused as ours. They've just suffered their first major defeat since the War started and Voldemort's been injured to boot. If we can strike now at any of his major centers- one of the dementor dens or a vampire coven loyal to him. We pop in, do as much damage as we can, then pop out before anybody gets hurt."

"Only one problem, Ron," Hermione Granger retorted, standing up. "Our forces are far too scattered and injured ourselves to make any major difference. We need to consolidate our forces, reenforce the defenses at the Ministry--"

"That's all you've been saying the entire War!" Ron interrupted, furious. "You never authorize an attack! It's been defend, defend, defend, the whole bloody time. We just keep defending ourselves- barely- as the attacks against us multiply and multiply. What are you waiting for? Eventually, we're going to screw up and Harry won't be there to swoop in at the last minute! The Ministry would have fallen today if Moody hadn't gotten us together-- without your say-so, I might add!"

"That's ridiculous!" Hermion shot back. "You don't win a war by senselessly killing everyone on the other side! You win a war by keeping them fighting until one side decides it isn't worth it anymore and stops!"

"Except one thing, Hermione," Ron screamed, his face red. "VOLDEMORT IS FUCKING INSANE! HE DOES NOT LISTEN TO RATIONALITY! HE WILL FIGHT UNTIL WE KILL HIM!"

"THAT ISN'T TRUE!" Hermione screamed over him, drying to drown him out. "EVENTUALLY HIS SUPPORTERS WILL LEAVE HIM IF WE JUST MAKE SURE THEY CAN'T GET WHAT THEY WANT!"

"THEY ARE GETTING WHAT THEY WANT- PEOPLE ARE DYING! THEY'RE TERRORISTS, NOT A LOBBYIST GROUP!"

"Ron, Hermione," McGonagall began, addressing her Head of Security and Head of Operations. "Please, calm down-"

"I WILL NOT ALLOW HER TO LOSE US THIS WAR!"

"I WON'T HAVE US WIN AT THE COST OF OUR HUMANITY! WE WILL NOT KILL NEEDLESSLY!"

"I DON'T KNOW IF MUGGLES DO IT DIFFERENTLY, BUT IN WAR, PEOPLE DIE!"

At this point, both of them fell silent, Hermione holding her nose up in moral high-mindedness and Ron glaring in fury at her refusal to allow the Order to make any preemptive strikes. The room was silent, the Order divided into supporters for Ron and Hermione. Mad-Eye Moody coughed and Ginny Weasley put her head on the table, tired with the fighting.

A creak startled everybody. The door swung open, revealing a shockingly familar face.

"Hi, everybody," Harry said to the astonished assembly. "I'm back."

* * *

Immediately, the meeting of the Order disintegrated into shouting and cheering. Harry was surrounded by a mob of people, each wanting to wish Harry their best. It was rather like the first time he had ever found himself in the Leaky Cauldron, years ago.

"Order, order!" Hermione shouted bossily over the din. As Head of Operations, she was second only to McGonagall in the Order's hierarchy. All the Order's missions were organized and approved by her. Her refusual to allow the Order to make any preemptive strikes or wide offensives had alienated many of those who stood in the way of Voldemort. Without Harry's moderating prescence, her sense of self-righteous and always being right had grown even stronger since Hogwarts.

By comparison, Ron had tried to master his flaws with Harry's disappearance. Without a strong, dynamic figure to worship, the public was more apt to panic than ever. Ron knew he could never take his best friend's place, but had tried in the years after Harry's disappearence to be a better wizard. As a result, he was one of the many young wizards who had been elavated quickly during the War, and found himself Head of Security for the Order, and frequently at odd's with Hermiones "victory by attrition" strategy. Despite their heated arguments, they managed to remain close friends.

Finally, Hermione got the room under control. "Harry," she said happily, looking at her long-lost best friend. "It's wonderful that you're better. If you'd like to sit in on the meeting, we can fill you in later, then maybe debrief you on where you've been the last six years--"

"I need to be filled in now," Harry interrupted. Hermione's face fell.

"But, Harry," she protested. "Six years of news is a bit much to fill you in on. We just had a major victory- our first since the outbreak of the War- and we really need to plan our next move."

"Are you Head of the Order?" Harry asked, a little angry.

"Well, no," she answered. "But I am--"

"Who is?" Harry broke in again, irritated by her bossiness. Had she learned anything in six years?

"I am, Mister Potter," McGonagall said, standing up. "And I think you would do well to listen to Hermione."

"I think differently," Harry replied. "I need information and I need it right now. If we have just dealt Voldemort a major blow, we need to follow it up with a counterstrike immediately."

Ron's eyes bulged, shocked that he and Harry had come to the exact same conclusion. Hermione gave an exasperated sigh.

"Harry, we're not going to win anything by just killing Voldemort supporters at random. Then we're just as bad as him. We have to reenforce our position, now that Voldemort will be licking his wounds."

Harry snorted derisively. "Who taught you military strategy? That's no way to win a war. No wonder this is your first victory."

"Actually," Ron butted in. "The reenforcement at the Ministry was unauthorized. Moody got a bunch of us together to attack. Our Head of Operations wanted to debate it a little while longer before voting on it."

Harry stared in disbelief. "Vote?" he asked incredulously. "People were dying! What idiot did you guys put in charge of Operations?"

The room went silent. A furious expression erupted on Hermione's face. It was one Harry was accustomed to seeing when someone had just tried to argue with her back in school. Equal parts rage, indignation, and complete confidence that she was right.

"I am," Hermione said frostily.

"Well you've done a bang up job," Harry told her. Some of the Order erupted into nervous giggles. Hermione looked highly affronted. "How has Voldemort defended himself successfully for so long?"

"He hasn't needed to," Ginny Weasley piped up, blushing a little when she looked at Harry, who couldn't help but grin crookedly at her. "We've never attacked him before."

"Never?" Harry was beyond incredulity now. He was angry. "Why the hell not?"

"Becuase if we can hold him off long enough, his supporters will decide it's not worth it to keep fighting and die and give up," Hermione broke, reciting her reason as if she had rehearsed it a million times. "It's called the Theory of Attrition."

"That's the dumbest theory I've ever heard," Harry snapped. "Why did you allow this, Professor?" he asked, addressing McGongall.

"Well," she answered slowly, gazing at him from behind her square spectacles. "I'm only the Acting Head of the Order. As a temporary Head, it wasn't really my place to intervene with the permenant officers. In effect, Hermione has been running things."

Harry frowned. "Where's the real Head? Didn't Dumbledore appoint a successor?"

"He did, Harry," McGonagall answered. "But he hasn't taken office yet. Technically, he isn't even a member of the Order."

"Well, who is this joker," Harry demanded. "There's a war he needs to be helping with!"

"Harry," McGonagall said seriously. "The Head Dumbledore appointed before his death was. . .you."

Fin.