After the Storm.

Harry sat up and was tackled to the ground.

He was suddenly fighting, in near darkness, with someone he realised was both bigger and stronger than himself: Tom Riddle, as he had been before his fall. Harry however was quick and agile and well used to giving bigger, stronger people the slip. He twisted free and ran, followed by the other. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears and then a whispering susurration becoming louder. He paused as something sounding like a horde of insects flew around him, closing in on Riddle. He couldn't see anything and, when they had passed, Harry walked until he couldn't hear anything either before he stopped.

'MIRANDA!' It was worth a try. Harry waited.

Harry waited a long time. He pulled his cloak around him and sat down on the sand. Then he lay down and watched the sky which had become neither lighter nor darker. Was it waiting for him to do some something? 'Either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives,' Harry remembered. He needed some sort of weapon. But what? Harry put his hand to his throat but the cord with its blue stone talisman was not there. Pettigrew had taken it from him before he had killed himself.

Now Tom Riddle was dead, at least for the moment. It seemed likely that what happened in this desert would determine who would live and who would die and, however bad Harry thought killing, he knew that he could not allow Riddle to be the one to go back. And anyway it was Harry's body. The thought of what Voldemort would do with it was unacceptable. Which meant that Harry needed a weapon.

It was now lighter than it had been. Could that mean that things were better than before? Harry sat up. He needed a weapon.

'What do you see?' Miranda had asked. Did that mean that his surroundings responded to him?

Harry closed his eyes and thought about the Sword of Godric Gryffindor. He imagined it on the ground in front of him. He imagined Fawkes bringing it to him in the hat. He imagined a knife like the one Wormtail had used.

Nothing at all happened. He stood up and looked around again. 'MIRANDA!'

Still nothing.

Harry pulled his cloak tighter around him and thought about weapons. He hadn't seen even a stone, let alone one big enough to be useful.

Rope.

Harry didn't have rope but he did have the means to make one. Seizing the edge of his cloak he attacked it with his teeth. He managed to rip a piece of cloth about a foot wide off the bottom of it and then he began to rip the torn off piece into strips. He soon discovered that however many bits he pulled off, and despite the growing pile of cloth strips, the fabric in his hands did not seem to diminish. When he thought he had enough strips, Harry began to plait them. He had been shown how to plait one year at the burrow when Mrs. Weasley had been making a rag rug for Ginny. Harry had not been terribly good at it but he seemed to have improved. Under his fingers a thin smooth length of black rope emerged.

When he looked up, it was to find that it had become much lighter. Harry felt sick. The rope looked like what it was: a weapon, a thing to kill with. Determinedly, Harry gathered it into loose coils and then hid his hand under his cloak which, he noticed, was undamaged. He began to retrace his steps.

As Harry followed his footsteps in the sand, he wondered what Voldemort had been doing in the meantime. Or, perhaps, what had been done to him. Whatever had flown past him had not sounded friendly. Harry found the area of disturbed sand where the scuffle had taken place and then followed Riddle's steps away. Many times, Riddle seemed to have fallen. Harry could see hand prints and other marks that suggested that he had fallen full length and crawled on the sand. He noticed something else after a while. The marks were getting smaller. When Harry eventually saw something ahead of him, the footprints were those of a child.

It was a small boy that Harry found, sobbing facedown on the sand. Harry's hand tightened on his rope. He needed to get this over before he had too much time to think about it. He bent to pull the child upright, intending to slip the rope around his neck, but as he touched him the boy twisted around and cowered. 'I'm sorry,' cried Tom. 'I didn't mean to. I won't do it again! Please!'

Harry knelt beside him and restrained the urge to be sick. 'Please,' said the boy, who looked to be about six, 'I was so hungry.'

Hungry thought Harry. 'What did you do he asked.'

'I stole bread.'

From the orphanage thought Harry. 'Is that all?' he asked. Miranda had said that this was a place for letting things go. She had also said that some might call it hell. Harry wondered what had happened to Tom Riddle.

The boy was now wiping his snotty nose on his sleeve. 'I don't know. Don't remember.'

'You remember nothing?' asked Harry.

'No, nothing,' the boy hiccoughed.

'No killing people?'

The boy stared at Harry. 'In my dreams,' he said. 'I try. But I can't stop him. I try so hard and it keeps happening. Always the same. He kills them and there's nothing, nothing I can do. All the people. All dead. It's my fault and I can't stop him. But they're not real, there's years of them. I'm only . . . I'm not . . . just dreams.'

'They're not dreams,' said Harry and watched with compassion as Tom struggled to breathe, tried to deal with what he had been told.

Finally the boy looked up. 'You're Harry Potter,' he whispered. 'You're here to kill me.' He blinked away tears.

His mind frozen, from somewhere, Harry found the will to unwind the rope. As he passed it around Tom Riddle, the boy leant in to his shoulder and Harry went rigid. Then he put his arms around the child. Too long in the cupboard thought Harry. It was impossible for him not to care about an abused child, even one that would grow up to become "Lord Voldemort". Tom hadn't done that without help. He could hear the susurration approaching and looked up to see a swarm of angry spinning grey, like the screen of an untuned television set. Pulling Tom closer, he tried to wrap his cloak around him and then things, like fast moving grey snowflakes, were tunnelling though his flesh. He could see no damage but they hurt. They hurt a lot. Harry felt Tom tense within his arms and then a small pair of arms fastened around his waist. He closed his eyes and brought his chin down onto Tom's head. He wondered if strangulation might not be better than this. A few minutes and Tom would be free of this. Forever. He could feel tears running down his own face and then the snowstorm stopped.

Harry opened his eyes to absolute darkness. He could see himself and the child in his arms but nothing else at all.

Tom had relaxed and he too was looking around. 'Oh,' he said. 'You've got wings.' Harry twisted his head around and saw, not wings, but lines of light - many, many shining threads of light, stretching up behind his shoulders towards the web of souls. He could feel their gentle tugging. There was an expression of such awe on Tom's face that Harry smiled. Then he realised that Tom was becoming heavy.

It took only moments for Harry to make the calculation that, before they reached the web, Tom would be too heavy to hold. He pulled him up. 'Hold onto my neck,' he said and Tom did, half choking Harry, clinging as though his life depended upon it.

Nothing so trivial thought Harry as he wrapped the rope that he had made around them. The rope helped. Slithering like a snake, it knotted itself round and round them. Elongating and twisting, it bound them and Harry was grateful. Tom had become incredibly heavy. The rope was cutting into Harry's back, hurting. Tom stifled a sob and Harry brought his knees up, wrapping himself around the younger boy, trying to reduce the weight on the rope. He closed his eyes, thought about the cupboard under the stairs, and hung on. After a long time the weight began to ease.

When Harry opened his eyes it was to find that he was being pulled into the web of souls. 'Tom, are you ok?'

Tom's eyes were wide with wonder. 'Yes,' he whispered. The boy weighed nothing. Harry smiled at him. Finding that the rope had gone from around them, Harry set Tom down on the soft darkness beneath his feet but he did not let go of his hand.

'Harry.' a woman with red hair and green eyes.

'Mum?' Her arms were around him. Still Harry did not let go of Tom.

'It's ok,' said Lily. 'He's safe now.'

Harry turned to see that a dark haired woman had Tom's other head and was pulling him gently into her arms. Tom's mother, thought Harry. He let go and both mother and child flared into images of light and slipped away.

'Thank you.' It seemed to reach him through all his senses. He heard it, saw it written in letters of fire, smelt cinnamon and roses, tasted honey and felt the warmth of an embrace but there were other communications he could not even begin to describe and a feeling of limitless joy.

'Hello Harry.' His father. Another embrace.

'Am I dead then?'

'No,' said Lily. 'Now you are alive. But you are alive on earth too. If you stop now your life will be like the first two chapters of a wonderful but unfinished book. There will be no more adventures. No possibility of children.'

'You want me to go back,' said Harry, disappointed.

'Your friends would miss you,' said James. 'For us you are already here.'

'Then why have I not been sucked in?' asked Harry remembering what Miranda had said.

'Because balance has been restored,' said Lily. She turned to James.

'Tom's mother also died for her child,' said James. 'Sympathetic magic tied her sacrifice to Lily's and you to Tom. Tom had severed all his ties to heaven and so Tom could not die. But, when he tried to kill you, neither did you.' He shook his head. 'This is such a simplification as to take it far from the truth. Tom had managed to bend a lot of rules, but very simple magic is tough.'

'It's the best explanation we can give you,' said Lily. 'Now that Tom's mother has taken him home, he's not going back. He has died and you can live.'

'Is that what you want?' asked Harry and then smiled as he realised how foolish the question was. 'I love you,' he said and it was as like the thank you that Tom and his mother had given him as the sun is like a candle.

When he opened his eyes he was standing on sand with dawn in the sky overhead and a warm wind, that smelt that of the sea, playing with his hair. Facing the wind, Harry began to walk over bare sand and then through tufts of maram grass. He climbed through pale sand trails between dunes, onward through the beautiful morning, until the scream of a gull startled him. This place was no longer a desert. When he looked down it was to find a small brown creature perched on a tussock. 'Pettigrew,' breathed Harry and the rat fled.

Without thinking Harry chased after it through the dunes and he was becoming breathless before he realised that the rat was not trying to elude him He stopped. 'Ok, Pettigrew, what do you want?' The rat appeared and pulled at his cloak with its teeth. Harry permitted himself to be led among the dunes.

Finally they had reached their objective: a warped wooden frame, propped at an angle against a dune, with a sparkling web-like cloth across it and in front of it someone sleeping on the sand. Harry knelt and turned the man onto his back He wasn't at all surprised to recognise Sirius Black. The rat set its teeth into Sirius's sleeve and made as if to pull him through the doorway. Something remained of his contact with the web, some brief echo of certainty, and Harry understood. He kissed Sirius's sleeping face before struggling to lift him. He discovered that he could not pass through the doorway and instead managed to balance his godfather in front of the door and then to push him through it. He hoped that Sirius would be alive when he emerged into the Department of Mysteries but, if he had gone to join Lily and James, Harry didn't mind. At least he would no longer be caught between.

The rat twitched its tail and scampered off. There had been no trace of silver about the creature. When he looked up, Harry could see the sea.

As he ambled down towards the water he discovered that the landscape had changed. High, stone cliffs now rose behind him and great rocks lay in pools of water in the sand around his feet. Somewhere, Harry thought, this place is real. He paused to consider his reflection in one of the pools and when he stood it was to observe an old, purple with gold stars clad, bearded gentleman throwing stones into the calm sea.

'Professor Dumbledore?'

'Hello Harry. Have you come to take me home?'

'You're dead?' asked Harry bewildered.

'Oh, I'm afraid so,' replied Dumbledore. 'I was getting old, you know. Just couldn't take the excitement.' His eyes twinkled as he made himself comfortable on a rock. 'What happened?'

Harry sat down on the sand and told him. 'So what are you doing?' he asked when he had finished.

'Letting go,' said Dumbledore. 'This one, for example, he showed Harry a small flat, black stone, 'is never having as many sweets as I would have liked as a child.' He bent to skim the stone expertly over the water. 'And this one,' he pointed at the rock on which he had been sitting, 'is leaving you with the Dursleys.' Dumbledore bent and began to excavate the sand from in front of it with his hands.

After a while Harry took off his cloak and helped Dumbledore to roll the heavy, slippery, sandy mass into the ocean.

'Am I forgiven?' asked Dumbledore.

'I'm still angry with you, but I know you meant well,' said Harry.

'Growing up with the Dursleys is part of who you are,' said Dumbledore. 'Growing up in our world you might have become as arrogant as . . .'

'My father?' suggested Harry.

'I was going to say Draco Malfoy, but yes. If your father had been more like you things would have been very different. Although perhaps not better. But still, I'm sorry Harry.'

'It's ok. Although it's not ok how much I'm going to miss you.' Dumbledore reached out to run his hand through Harry's hair. Despite the effort of moving the rock, the professor looked younger than he had when they had started. 'Have you any idea how I'm to get back?' Harry asked.

Dumbledore looked rueful. 'Perhaps Hogwarts is not quite as excellent as I had assumed,' he replied. 'How did you leave before?'

'I think the "Star of Grace" helped but I don't have it anymore.'

'What was the "Star of Grace"?'

'It was a blue stone, sir . . .'

'What was it here, Harry?'

'A pentacle of blue fire, but how . . . ?' Dumbledore waited while Harry thought.

Harry thought about the rope that he had made and he thought about what James had said about 'Sympathetic Magic', and then he smiled. Dumbledore handed him a flat stone, as round as a coin, with tiny sparkling fragments of mica in it and Harry began to sketch a pentacle in the sand at his feet. He was just admiring his work when a wave caught him and knocked him off his feet. When he surfaced it was to find Miranda, up to her knees, in the water beside him while Dumbledore stood, just a little further up the beach, with his robes held high to reveal a pair of socks that could perhaps best be described as 'in the worst possible taste'. Both of them were laughing at him. Harry grinned, stood up and then, somehow, tripped over his own feet to fall face first into the water and then strong hands were holding his shoulders, holding him up. Harry pushed the water from his eyes and opened them.

'Legilimens!'

It wasn't Dumbledore but Snape who stood before him. Harry did not resist the Legilimency but allowed Snape to check through his memories, including his most recent ones. Harry thought he detected a response to that of Miranda and Dumbledore but the spell was lifted before he could examine it. 'It's Potter all right,' said Snape. Harry looked up to find that the person holding him was Mad eye Moody, who helped him to his feet. Snape took his own cloak from his shoulders and wrapped it around him. Harry was surprised to discover that he had been naked. Then he saw that he was standing in the glass coffin. It was still part full of cloudy potion and around it were the remains of three thick iron bands. Someone had not wanted it opened.

'Come on,' said Snape, putting his arm around Harry's shoulder and pulling him towards the door of what Harry saw, to his astonishment, was a store-cupboard. Around him were shelves laden with mops, buckets, washing up liquid, tea cups and toilet paper.

'What?' said Harry.

'Harry Potter,' explained Snape 'was something that the Ministry did not want to deal with. Harry Potter's body, even if it wasn't possessed by Voldemort, was something that could be made subject to examination or simply held in storage. Indefinitely.'

The door was opened and Percy Weasley hissed 'All clear, come on!'

Harry was dragged through the door and along a corridor. 'How did you find me?' he asked.

It was Percy who answered. 'The coffin was being kept in the Department of Mysteries. Professor Dumbledore persuaded the Wizengamot to issue an order for the opening of the coffin so the Ministry transfigured and hid it. Dobby managed to persuade some the house-elves at the Ministry to look for you. An individual called 'Slowly' reported overhearing that the coffin was in a storage cupboard. It would have been incredibly difficult to extricate you from the Ministry in London. However I recently discovered that, in order to facilitate housekeeping and to ensure that the Mandarins never run out of toilet paper, all Ministry store cupboards are magically linked. All I had to do was write out a requisition form for a 'Harry Potter, one of" to be issued in Glasgow, and get the Minister to sign it, and there you were - untransfigured in the cupboard.

' They reached an elevator. Percy opened the door and Moody, Snape and Harry entered. 'I'll clear up,' said Percy, heading back down the corridor. The doors shut and the elevator started to rise.

The doors opened to what looked like a sheet of dirty transparent plastic but wasn't. Snape pulled him though it into what was definitely a public convenience. Behind him Harry could see only a dirty wall. 'It's ok. I can walk,' he muttered. Snape strode ahead and Harry followed him past the cubicles, through doors and up a narrow flight of steps and then he was blinking in the early morning sunlight, on the pavement in front of a handsome Victorian building that claimed to belong to Glasgow Tourist Information. Snape's arm was back around his shoulders, hurrying him towards a familiar, old fashioned, maroon motor vehicle. He was bundled into the front passenger seat and the car door was shut. Moody, who had followed them up the steps, had disappeared. Harry fastened his seatbelt as Snape got into the car and drove off and in minutes they were on the motorway. 'Hogwarts?' asked Harry.

'Home first,' replied Snape.