FicWad

Chapter 9 - Conclusion

Light from two oil lamps set opposite each other at either end of the worktable washed the inked parchment spread out upon the wood surface with a gold hue, while a majority of the rest of the Black Library was, in turn, cast into shadowed darkness. Not that Harry noticed or cared about the dark edges of the room. Awareness of his surroundings was not a priority concern of his at the moment. The array spread out before him, on the other hand...

Harry had put hours into its configuration. He had spent the better part of a day researching its possibility and the better part of the last two days researching and formulating its reality. Every inked line of its construct had been drawn to perfection. Every rune had been masterfully accounted for and placed within the array at the precise location that would optimize its function. Every calculation had been made with potential backlash in mind and countermeasures added to drive the array in its purpose without disruption. Though he would not claim it as his greatest work, as it truly wasn't, it was definitely one of his more impressive derivations. The power the array could intake and direct was phenomenal.

"Curse it all!" Harry growled under his breath, slamming his fist down on the worktable in frustration, while making sure not to disturb the array.

It's my soul, Harry thought fiercely. I can do with it as I please. He has no say in whether I live or die. I've already lived my life, fought my war, and died an honourable death. This will just put things right.

Yet, his alternate self apparently did have a say in the matter. Harry still did not retrieve the ash wand resting a mere inch to the right of his clenched fist.

Harry sighed, hanging his head and leaning heavily into his palm and fist pressed atop the table.

The solution was right in front of him. At this point, it wouldn't take much - a spell, a few drops of blood, and a bit of pain. The whole thing would be over within a matter of seconds. Mission complete, James would have his son back.

But for how long? That had been the essence of question that his counterpart had posed to him two nights ago, when he had informed the boy that he had found a way to extract his soul from the boy. They had argued and he tried to reason with the boy that the boy would finally be able to live a normal life with his family, who loved him dearly just as he was. Yet, just when he had thought that he might have had the boy persuaded, the boy had clammed up and had refused to listen to him, as a haunted look had entered the boy's eyes.

'Just because you'll be dead doesn't mean that I'll be able to live a normal life...o-or even a very long one,' the boy had whispered fearfully, his arms wrapped around his drawn up knees. 'T-The things that have happened in your world are happening here, Porteur. The Philosopher's Stone, the Chamber of Secrets, B-Bertha Jorkins's death - it was in the prophet the other day that she's gone missing. He'll rise within the year. I know he will. He'll use the Triwizard Tournament to get to N-Neville, just as he used it to get to y-you. And all the rest - all the d-death, all the blood and f-fire, and all the pain - it will all just be a matter of time, won't it?'

"Curse it all!" Harry shouted into the silence of the library, as his left hand clenching into a white knuckled fist in mirror of his right hand that was already fisted, his fingernails digging into his palms. This world wasn't his responsibility. He didn't know the people in it, nor did he care to know the people in it. He wasn't their Harry, and they weren't his anything. He didn't actually belong in this world. By all rights, he no longer belonged within the mortal world at all. He should be dead. He should have already moved on to his next great adventure, as Dumbledore had put it.

Harry snorted, briefly considering that maybe this was death and that this was his next great adventure, before derisively dismissing the idea. While he couldn't prove it, he knew damn well how he had come to be adisplaced soul sharing a body that was not his own with an alternate, teenage version of himself. It all had to do with the Time-stream Layering Effect that would sometimes occur during a Dimensional Divide, ancient magic colliding with the Killing Curse, releasing a blast of wild magic, and advanced Soul Magic, as not one, but two living horcruxes were created the fateful night that Voldemort had murdered his parents and had marked him as the child of the Prophecy.

Simple, so obvious. Harry scowled, still irritated that he hadn't figured out what had caused him to traverse dimensions over four days ago, when he had initially read about the Time-stream Layering Effect. What James had described of his counterpart's nightmares had been so very similar to his own experience with slipping into Voldemort's mind, as he had slept at night, back before he had learn how to block the pathway that had existed between his and Voldemort's souls with Occlumency. It shouldn't have taken him reviewing the theories behind exorcisms, the aspects of horcrux creation, and the ritual arrays used in soul transfers to realize that his counterpart had somehow become a horcrux of his soul, just as he had been a horcrux of Voldemort's soul.

As soon as Harry had realized that particularly crucial fact, however, the rest had all fallen into place. The killing curse striking him, but having no apparent effect on him, other than leaving a jagged scar on his forehead; nearly the entire second story of his parents cottage being blasted off with the rebound of Voldemort's Killing Curse against the ancient magic of his mother's sacrifice, yet he hadn't been hit with so much as asplinter or been effect in the least by the explosion of wild magic, when Voldemort had been obliterated to a pile of ash; both of these things had bothered him significantly over the years, as his knowledge of magic expanded beyond spells and into understanding the very nature of the power that he and every other witch and wizard in the world commanded. Both phenomena were easily explained, he had come to realize, by the existence of alternate time-streams and a Dimensional Divide that had occurred that night, or possibly shortly before that night.

Harry had no clue exactly when the time-stream had fractured into its multiple possibilities, but he did know that the Time-stream Layering Effect had to have occurred during the Divide, as the newly formed time-streams couldn't have been distinctly separated from each other for what he knew had to have occurred to have occurred. As for what had occurred, or rather, what he believed to have occurred: in the moment that Voldemort's Killing Curse had struck him, the newly formed time-stream of his world had momentarily reconnected with the newly formed time-stream of this world, just as a shard of his soul had been ripped away from him by Voldemort's Killing Curse and he had been shunted through the rift between the two newly formed time-streams. As the resulting explosion of wild magic blasted the second story of his parents'cottage and obliterated Voldemort to a pile of ash, the shard of his soul that had been fractured by Voldemort's Killing Curse traveled through the rift as well and attached itself to his counterpart, instead of reattaching to him. As the wild magic began to settle back in his time-stream and the two newly formed time-streams truly began to separate and become individual realties, he had been sucked back through the rift, as it healed, and place back in his cot in his world, where the fractured shard of Voldemort's soul had proceed to attach itself to his own raw and vulnerable soul.

It was just a theory and Harry couldn't prove it, but he was certain that, at the very least, something to a similar effect had to have occurred. However, if there was one part of his theory that he knew without adoubt to be an absolute certainty, it was that his counterpart had been ahorcrux of his soul. It was the only thing that explained the boy's dreams and why he had been pulled from his world and into the boy, instead of dying as he should have. There wasn't a lot of research regarding living horcruxes, and none regarding two souls as compatible and near identical as his and the boy's souls were, but he was sure that it was possible for them to meddle together to become one consciousness, just as he was sure that the array before him would rip out his soul, while leaving the boy's soul wholly intact.

If Neville had survived, would the Neville of this world eventually be faced with a similar choice? Harry wondered, before letting out a dry laugh. The war against Voldemort and the Dark Lord's Dark Regime had already been won in his world. The choice wouldn't have been even remotely similar.

Harry glared at the array, as if daring it to call him acoward for wanting to activate it. He wasn't a coward. He had faced more than his fair share of horrors in his life, but that was just it: his life was over. He had died. He was dead, or should be dead. Though he understood what the boy wanted from him, understood that his abilities and knowledge would be invaluable to this world's future, and understood that the boy was scared and felt powerless to stop what was coming on his own, he just couldn't get past the fact that he had actually died, but had still managed to cheat death. He had lost count of how many times that he had nearly died over the course of his life, as well as how many time that he had actually wanted to die. To die...he had died. This life that he was living, it wasn't his own. It was the boy's life, the boy's existence that he was attached to...like a parasite, just as the shard of Voldemort's soul had been a parasite existing by his continued existence.

Yet, his counterpart wanted to welcome him and fuse their existence in to one true existence.

Perhaps it is different, as I am him, in a way. We were once one and the same, before the time-stream split and life forged us into separate individuals, Harry attempted to reason, pursing his lips and staring down at the array pensively. His and his counterpart's magic had fused already. The only thing keeping their awareness separate and the both of them sane was his constant employment of Occlumency to ensure that the boy's mind remained locked behind his own. Though, he was confident that should he desire to do so, he would be more than capable of integrating the boy into his awareness and, in turn, integrating his awareness into the boy.

"We'd both still exist, but not exist," Harry murmured, his brow furrowing. "We'd know who we had been, remember our lives, but neither one of us will be who we were. We'd be someone new, a blend of the both of us."

If Harry were being entirely honest, the idea of taking on the role of an insignificant teenager and having many people that he would love and care about be, once more, under threat of the Dark Regime scared him just as much, if not more, as the prospects of fighting a bloody and all encompassing war that he had already experience in all its depravity and had fought eight long years, before finally bring about its end in his world. Too many had died - too many that he had cared about and too many that he hadn't even known - which meant that there were far too many innocents to be saved in this world and that many would meet a similar fate to the one that they had met in his world. Bertha Jorkins already had. Really, things would be so much simpler for him -easier and less emotionally taxing - if he just activated the array and departed to the afterlife, as he should have departed from mortal existence five days ago. He had earned his peace, hadn't he?

'What is right isn't always easy. More often than not, it is the most difficult thing in the world, but we must hold onto our morality or we'll have nothing left in the end, my boy. I fear there are still many hard days ahead of you. Do not turn your back on what you know it is right, Harry. Always remember that you are more than what you believe yourself to be. It isn't only your magic that makes you strong; it's your force of will and your sympathetic heart. Do not close your heart to the innocents in need. Do not bow because you fear that not to do so would be to break. You are better than that. Both you and I know it.'

Damn you, Dumbledore, Harry thought, cursing his old mentor to the fiery pits of Hades. Merlin knew how he wanted to walk away from this. One war was one too many for any man's lifetime.

In a fit of frustration, and in resignation of the inevitable, Harry swiped up the ash wand that he had been unable to bring himself to pick up earlier. With a flick and a downward cut, the array spread out before him was ablaze with flames, quickly turning to a blackened pile of ash. While he knew that he could just reconstruct the array from his notes, he knew that he most likely wouldn't be doing so.

"You know, I actually liked that table."

Harry's head snapped up and he raised the ash wand, ready to attack or defend, as his eyes scanned the darkness of the room for the intruder. Looking past the slowly dwindling flames to the door of the library, he saw atall figure leaning lazily in the open doorframe. The man was easy enough to identify, especially in this house. He had seen his godfather stand exactly so many times before within the Grimmauld Place of his world. If the man was anything like his Sirius, he had to wonder just how long the man had actually been standing there, before the man had chosen to make his presence known.

"Where's James?" Harry demanded, eyeing the man warily and forcing himself to put up a mental barrier, so to speak, between the reality of the man before him and his memories of his godfather.

"At work," the man answered, stepping into the room with his hands held up to show that he didn't have his wand in hand.

"How convenient," Harry observed. Upon Sirius coming within a few feet of the table, he angled the ash wand purposefully. "That's close enough."

"He's worried about you," Sirius said, holding Harry's gaze unyieldingly, yet respecting the boundary set and not pushing forward even another half step.

"He'd have known better than to send you to check up on me without him being present as well," Harry said accusingly. James wasn't an idiot. He knew from the way that the man had regarded him that the man knew that he was plenty dangerous. James wouldn't have risked Sirius's safety by sending the man alone.

"Are you going to put that out?" Sirius cast a quick glance at the still smoldering table.

"And take my eyes off you," Harry smirked, "not a chance."

"More than a little paranoid, aren't you?" Sirius asked with his own smirk.

"How'd you find me?" Harry asked, ignoring the obvious answer to the man's question.

"James isn't the only one in the family that Harry has talked to about his dreams," Sirius said meaningfully. "After...well, he told me about being here once. It took me and Remus a while to check several other more likely locations in trying to find you. But going on five days now, I figure that I might as well check here, even if you shouldn't have been able to get past the wards without my knowledge."

"My godfather willed the entire Black Estate to me." Harry gave a one shouldered shrug, while keeping the ash wand trained steadily on Sirius. "It's unfortunate that I never got to thank him. I never would have dared to delve into the Dark Arts without having a whole library of questionable books at my disposal. Hogwarts's restricted section just really doesn't cut it." Only one mention of a horcrux in passing with no actual information pertaining to what a horcrux is or how one is made. "At least, not since Dumbledore took over for Dippet."

"Mind if I ask what you were working on?" Sirius asked, nodding to the blackened surface of the worktable.

"Not that you'll believe any of it, but my notes are over there," Harry inclined his head to the end table between the two armchairs, where the leather bound journal containing his work so far was resting.

Cautiously and without turning his back on Harry, Sirius took the few steps over to the reading area and retrieved the journal, before bring it back over to the worktable, where the oil lamps would provide ample light for him to look over what the journal contained. He only paused long enough for Harry to give him approval to approach, as he crossed the previous boundary of approach that Harry had set.

Surprise flitted through Harry, as the man flipped the journal open atop the worktable to its very first page and began reading -reading, not just skimming.

Several minutes of silence passed, as Sirius read page after page and Harry watched him, not quite understanding why the man was even bothering reading over information and theories based upon his existence as an individual separate from his counterpart, when the man had made it more than clear that he believed him to be a symptom of his counterpart's supposed illness and not an actual person. As the man continued read over his notes, not saying anything at all, Harry did not lower the ash wand even a fraction of an inch. Though he did not know or understand Sirius's motivations for actually reading his work, he wasn't about to be lured into a false sense of security. His days of being so easily played were long past. If the man thought that pretending to show an interest in his work would cause him to drop his guard, the man was sorely mistaken.

"James knows you're here, doesn't he?" Sirius asked eventually, not looking up from his reading.

Harry remained silent. James had done right by him. As he had kept his end of their deal and had sent an encrypted message after the first two day had past, the man had sent him back a letter telling him to do what he thought was best for him and Harry and hadn't bothered him since. He wasn't about to implicate the man. He suspected that Lily was already pissed enough at James, as he suspected that the man hadn't listen to him and had pressed the issue of his existence.

"This is some pretty heavy stuff," Sirius commented, seemly satisfied with Harry's non-answer.

Yes, because one traverses space and time by casting lumos followed up by a summoning charm and attempting to apparate, Harry thought snidely. "All in five days' work," he said instead.

Sirius made a noise of disbelief. "You'd have to know your stuff to put all this together in five days. This is hardly the work of an amateur."

"I never said that it was," Harry said in a matter of fact manner, as he grinned like the cat that had caught the canary. The man looked up at him with wary, calculating eyes. "Though, it is interesting that you understand what you're reading and are able to give such an assessment."

"This is my library," Sirius retorted stiffly.

"As it is mine where I come from," Harry said, his grin widening. "And if you understand that," he indicated to the open journal,"you understand just what it means that I passed through the wards here unhindered, don't you? That's why you've not brought up St. Mungo's like you had planned to upon finding me and are instead reading over my research, no?"

"The access permissions can be simulated." Sirius's gaze traveled back down to the journal with uncertainty.

"But not easily," Harry argued back. "It would take years for a warding system this complex."

"He's been exposed to me enough." Sirius shook his head. "It's possible that he did it unconsciously, a little at a time, enough that I didn't notice. It doesn't have to mean anything."

"You have doubts and a reasonable explanation is before you." Harry nodded to the journal. "Is it really so hard to believe that maybe I'm not crazy, you're godson isn't crazy, and James isn't insane for believing us, when we say that we aren't?"

"But dimension travel?" Sirius said, as if the concept was simply inconceivable.

Harry reached across the table and flipped the journal open to the portion that contained his theory on just how he might have done the inconceivable. "Read," he practically growled at Sirius, his face mere inches from the man's face and his eyes hard and commanding. If he could get Sirius to believe the truth, it would make his life just that much easier, especially with what all that needed to be done, if he was going to merge with the boy and attempt to get ahead of the war and stop Voldemort, before the Dark Regime's reign spread any further than Britain. As he had discovered in his world, Voldemort already had European supporters. Everything had been lined up for Voldemort's progressive takeover of Europe, during Voldemort's long years of travel, prior to his return to Britain and application for the Defense Against the Dark Arts post at Hogwarts. All Voldemort had left to do was to establish a firm and indisputable base of control in the British Isles. With the fear created by his first rise to power and the Ministry's stupidity in allowing Death Eaters to buy their way out of Azkaban and return to being influential members of society, the Dark Lord only had one man to kill and one prophecy to try to obtain, before that indisputable base of control would be establish by him and his Death Eaters in a less than a fortnight.

Just thinking about all that needed to be done had Harry stepping away from the worktable and pacing. The first step, of course, would be to successfully merge with the boy. But after that he would need to shut down the Kill Wards that had already been laid in Britain, or alter them somehow - the massive, all encompassing wards had cost more lives and caused more ambushes than opened battle, covert infiltrations, and narks had. He couldn't risk Voldemort activating them early. He just couldn't. All would be lost, if the wards went active, while they were still under Voldemort's control.

There were also the horcruxes to deal with - three of which Harry didn't know the location of, an additional two that needed to be confirmed, and two more in know locations that would be somewhat easy to access (or so he believed that they were). The Diary of Tom Riddle and the Locket of Salazar Slytherin, those were two horcruxes in his world that he should have known the location of had the events in this world not transpired differently from the events in his world. The Chalice of Helga Hufflepuff was the one horcrux that he had never learned the original location of in his world, having finally gotten his hands on the blasted thing in Slovakia. Where it was located in Britain was a complete mystery to him. As for the two that need to be confirmed, both were living horcruxes and would take delicate handling. The last two, on the other hand, he could probably obtain both in a day, if they were where he knew them to have been in his world. Though, the Ring of Peverell was a bit iffy at the moment, even if it was in the Gaunt's hovel. If Voldemort was using Riddle Manor, as the Dark Lord had in his world during his forth year, it might end up being wiser to leave the Ring alone for the time being, as to not risk tipping off Voldemort, while he still had at least five other horcruxes of questionable accessibility.

Then there was the matter of him needing galleons, lots of galleons, lots of galleons preferably stored outside of Gringotts and in asecure, base location. An economic collapse due to the goblins being aself-preserving race of complete and utter bastards had been widely devastating to not only the Resistance, but to -

"No way in hell! Absolutely not!"

Harry halted in his pacing and looked to Sirius, only to find Sirius staring back at him with wide, startled eyes.

"You were going to try to exorcise yourself?" Sirius demanded fiercely, his eyes flashing dangerously.

Glancing to the journal quickly, Harry saw that Sirius had moved past his theory on his dimension travel and on to his plans on how he could to separate himself from Harry. "A controlled exorcism, combining areverse soul transfer and -"

"No." The word was firm and not open to any form of rebuttal.

"What?" Harry asked, his brow furrowing with a combination of shock and confusion.

"You do this," Sirius jabbed his finger angrily at the journal pages, "you die."

"You know, you lot really need to get over that," Harry said exasperatedly. He had already argued hours on end with his counterpart and, after arguing hours on end with his counterpart, he felt like he had also argued hours on end with James, as his counterpart had never failed to bring 'their father', as the boy had begun to refer to James, into the conversation."It's my soul -"

"No," Sirius said once more in clear refusal, his eyes fierce and determined. "I don't give two shits what you consider to be your rights regarding your soul. I won't let you do it. If I'm reading all this right, you're my godson, truly my godson! I held you right after you were born. Do you understand?"

Harry drew a sharp breath and his heart tripped over itself in his chest, as the man's words hit him and comprehension quickly followed. "I burned the array," he managed to get past his suddenly parched throat in a whisper. He had lost his chance with his godfather. His godfather had died seven years ago. No, no, no, his mind chanted, refusing to allow the man before him to be the same man who held him after he was born, as long buried emotion threaten his control. He couldn't accept it. He just couldn't. He had already dealt with the man's death: the guilt, the pain, the remorse. Yet, the man was that man. According to his theory, the man was truly one and the same. The man was his godfather, who had held him, and was now standing before him, alive and vibrant with indignation at what he had planned to do. They had been separated, when the time-stream split, but now...

"And after I show this to James," Sirius looked down at the journal with disgust, before looking back up with a dare in his eyes that challenged Harry to try and counter his decision, "I'm burning it."

"If I don't use that array, Sirius..." Harry choked out, still finding the ramifications of the man's words hard to deal with, but needing Sirius to understand that things weren't so simple. He and his counterpart would be forever changed. The array would be the only way that James and Sirius would ever get his counterpart back.

"You and Harry won't exist, but you will," Sirius said confidently, his face earnest and filled with understanding. "You'd know who you were. You'd just be a version of the both of you, affected by both of your memories, yet still Harry Potter, my godson."

"So, you believe us?" Harry couldn't help but asked, as the man stared at him in a way that no one had in a very long time. People had gotten over the need to protect him years ago.

"Yes, Harry," Sirius said softly. "I believe you."