FicWad

"Mum? Dad?"

Harry almost went into full-blown panic and rage when he heard Bellatrix's voice snap back at Malfoy. He immediately stopped his friends behind him and motioned for them to go back. As soon as they were in Ginny's room he warded the door, but knew that wouldn't hold for long.
Turning around he told them, "We have to run. Get outside the apparition wards and get help. No way in hell we survive facing that many alone. At least Voldemort isn't with them. Gin, how high up are we? Can we go out the window?"
"Yes, but Harry I can't apparate!"
"You can side-along with me, but first we have to get out of here!" He had to keep them safe, keep her safe. They'd been in this kind of trouble before and had always gotten away. They would now too. They had to...
"Harry," Ron's voice interrupted his thoughts. "A dozen or so Order members, coming over the hill"
"Meet up with them. I think then we'll out number the Death Eaters below."
Ron helped Hermione out the window then climbed out himself, Ginny right behind him. Just as Ginny eased out the window the door to her room was blown from its hinges. Harry spun in place to face 5 Death Eaters in regalia, but none wearing masks. Malfoy, Bellatrix and Dolohov were the only ones he knew.
"Time to die, little baby Potter" Bella taunted him.
Harry raised his wand, pointed it at her chest and shouted the first thing he could think, "Avada Kedavra" and was shocked and scared when a jet of green flew from his wand to her chest before she crumpled to the floor at the foot of the bed. A man Harry recognized, but couldn't place screamed her name. He raised his wand to Harry and screamed the same curse. Just as the man in the doorway did this, Dolohov stepped toward the fallen woman. Harry's luck held, for as the jet of green erupted from the wand of the angry man Dolohov accidentally stepped in the way. He too crumpled, falling towards the man who had just killed him.
"Rodolphus, you idiot, watch your aim or you'll kill us all." snapped Malfoy. "Good bye, Potter. AVADA KEDAVRA."
Harry was shocked for a moment, a thousand thoughts running through his head, before he felt a warm rush of wind and simply fell asleep.

**

Harry stretched scrunching his eye tightly and rolled over. He really didn't want to wake up. He'd been having a vary nice dream about Ginny. GINNY! The Death Eaters! Ron and Hermione? Had they gotten out? Had he gotten out? Harry bolted straight up, looking around him. He was laying in a comfortable room, all white and light blue. He knew this place, and yet didn't. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. Eyes? Wait where were his glasses? He reached toward the bedside table before he realized that he could see. Really see. Well, and without his glasses.
That was when it hit him. He reached his hand slowly towards his forehead, then scrambled as quickly as he could out of the bed to the mirror on the other side of the room. He stared in amazement at his reflection. No scar. A smile tickled at the corner of his mouth. He was in a room he remembered from a dream, could see perfectly without his glasses and his scar was gone. He knew where was. The smile hinting at his lips spread to cover his whole face, and he turned for the mirror and ran to the door, yanked it open and burst out of the room.
"MUM? DAD?" Harry hurried through the hallway then bounded down the stairs, yelling as he went. He was so sure they would answer, but when his mum stepped out of the kitchen he still wasn't prepared for it. He froze on the stairs and gazed at her. She was everything he had dreamed about, safety, peace, love... her hair was a dark red with hints of brown and flowed down past her shoulders. Emerald eyes, his eyes, stared back at him. she seemed to be having the same problem he was. They both just stood there staring at each other for a moment.
"Harry?"
"Mum?"
Harry jumped the rest of the stairs and hurried across the room to her. She met him in the middle and threw her arms around him. He caught her and spun her around, breathing in her scent as he did, cookies and wildflowers. She pulled away from him and looked up into his face. "Oh, Harry!" she sobbed and pulled him back into her embrace.
"Lils?"
"Lily?! If you don't get in here and control your husband were gonna find out if there is a place beyond the... Beyond." Harry didn't even bother to look up. He knew that voice, Sirius. That meant his dad would be there when he turned around. He squeezed his mum tight and laughed.

**

James and Sirius joked around walking towards the house. Behind them Albus Dumbledore shook his head. Those two would never stop being clowns.
"But seriously Sirius..." James jumped away knowing what was coming. Sure enough Sirius took a swing at him. He had always hated jokes about his name.
When Sirius missed him, James lunged for the door, yelling for his wife. "Lils?"
"Lily?! If you don't get in here and control your husband were gonna find out if there is a place beyond the... Beyond." The last word died on Sirius' lips. Lily was standing in the middle of the kitchen doorway crying, clinging desperately to some man. It took a moment for any of the three new arrivals to process that information. Before they could, the man started laughing. He let go of Lily with some difficulty, as she seem determined to never let go of him again, and sped towards the them.
"DAD! SIRIUS!" Harry laughed harder at seeing their faces. Sirius recovered first, but James just stood there in shock.
"Well I'll be damned, Harry!" Sirius met him half way across the kitchen. "I missed you, kid!"
"I missed you, too" Harry replied, throwing his arms around his godfather. Harry hugged him tightly for a moment then pulled away heading for his father.
James was still in shock when Harry pulled him into a hug. "Harry? How? When? Oh, Merlin I've missed you." When his father wrapped his arms around him, for the first time ever, Harry felt like he was home.

**

Albus shut the door and watch the scene before him unfold. This was much sooner that he had hoped to see Harry here. He had followed the trio's progress with the horcruxes. They had acquitted themselves wonderfully, and together had accomplished in a year what he had not been able to do in a decade. He was so proud of them. But Harry being in this house now did not bode well for those left behind.
"Hello Harry." He said quietly when Harry leaned back to look at his father.
"Professor?" Harry had not expected to see Dumbledore this soon. He let go of this father and turned to pull his mentor in to a hug, but stopped when he saw him. This was not the Dumbledore he remembered. It had not fazed Harry to see his parents young, they had barely been 21 when they were killed, he looked back at Sirius. His godfather had been mid-thirties when he was killed but he looked not a day over twenty. Harry looked back at Dumbledore and simply stared. A moment later he started to laugh and reached to hug his old headmaster. "I'd forgotten you were a red head too."
"By the time you knew me, Harry, I had not been one for a good many years." He replied, and Harry saw that familiar twinkle in this young man's eyes.
Harry let go of him and turned to face the others. Sirius beamed at him, his mother was where he had left her in the doorway still crying and his dad had walked over to her.
"Well Harry," Albus said behind him. "I expect you have many questions right now, and I for one am hungry. So why don't we all sit and get caught up." He motioned to the table in the corner, before heading that way.
The five of them sat and they talked easily for hours. They talked about everything, except Harry's arrival and the implications of it. James and Sirius joked around reminding Harry forcibly of him and Ron. A part of Harry had never been happier. He was home, safe and loved, for the first time there was a peace inside him. Another part missed what he had left behind. It was surreal sitting at a table with his mum and dad, Sirius and Dumbledore, all of which looked about 20. Harry thought back to when he had first looked in the mirror after he woke up here. No glasses, no scar, and come to think of it he looked about 20... 'well' he thought to himself, 'how different really does 20 look from 18?' The weirdest part was that while they all remembered who they had been to each other in life, they behaved more as if they were his long lost friends rather than his parents and authority figures. Harry figured that had something to do with them all looking the same age.
"Mum? Did you know that by dying for me way back when you would save me?" after they had eaten and chatted awhile about nothing at all, this was the first serious question Harry had asked.
"At the time? Yes and No. I had been studying ancient blood magics. You know, like soul-bonds and life-debts, that kind of thing. I had come across references in ancient Mesopotamian texts about soul-exchanges. At least I think that's what it was, I was never very good at Sanskrit. Anyway, the basic idea is for one person to willingly trade their life for another's. I had just found it earlier that week, and when faced with the choice it popped into my mind. I had hoped it would do exactly what it did, but I wasn't sure that it would."
"So you got lucky and guessed right?"
"Pretty much."
"So what are the other two? How do they work?"
"Soul-bonds and Life-debts?" Harry nodded. "Well a soul-bond is usually romantic, though it doesn't have to be, and the point is for the two involved to die together. It irreversibly links two souls. They must exist on the same plane. If one passes the other must as well. This is also one of the magics that muggles can invoke. Occasionally, powerful muggle kings would invoke a soul-bond before riding into battle. There's a time between life and death when a soul can be brought back, depending on what kind of condition the body is in. The hope of these kings was to be able to use the soul-bond to escape death."
"Did that ever work?" Sirius ask, flabbergasted at the concept.
"It's hard to say. The few that did come back were not wounded that badly, so they might have been able to return anyway."
"Fascinating." Dumbledore said, "I was unaware that a muggle could invoke that kind of magic."
"Wow, so what about the life-debt?" Harry asked.
"Life-debts are established when one person saves the life of another. The more danger the person willingly puts themselves in to save that life the stronger the debt. It can be used for many different things, but what it boils down to is that if someone owes you a life-debt and you directly invoke it while asking a favor, that person can't refuse you. No matter how much they don't want to do what you asked of them, they must, because they owe you their life."
"I wish I'd known that fourth year in that damned graveyard. I'd have called in that life-debt Wormtail owed me." At the mention of Wormtail, James and Sirius both scowled.
"Yes, how is the rat?" James asked.
"No clue, he's not exactly on my Christmas list." Harry quipped.
"Yeah, James, he's your son alright." Sirius laughed.
"That reminds me, I managed to take out your cousin Bella as I went. Figured you'd appreciate knowing that I got the bad guy that got you." Harry said, smiling at Sirius.
"Really? Way to go, Harry." He replied smiling back.
"Yes, good show. Now Sirius, I've been meaning to ask you. Did you ever get around to talking to the Fates?" Dumbledore asked.
"The Fates?" Harry wondered allowed.
"The Higher Powers that control when and how you die. And yes I did." Sirius replied.
"Huh? What are you two talking about?" Harry looked from Albus to Sirius and back again.
"Harry, do you remember me telling you that no one really knew what the purpose of the arch that Sirius fell through was?" Harry nodded and Dumbledore continued. "I asked Sirius to speak to the Fates about it to appease my curiosity since they will only speak to a person about their own death, and will not answer questions about another's demise."
"Oh, so what is the arch Sirius?" Harry asked
"The Renewal Doorway for the gods. You've heard of Ra, Zeus, Thor, all those guys, yes? Well they were the Voldemorts of the past. Powerful wizards who liked to play god. Anyway a whole group of them got together to figure out a way to stay young and never die. They came up with the arch."
"I don't get it, why didn't they just make horcruxes?"
"Many of them did, but the body still ages. Using the arch they could stay young forever."
"Intriguing, how?"
"Wishing you'd known about this a few years ago, Albus?"
"Not at all, I simply thought that the proverbial fountain-of-youth was a myth."
"It is. The arch is a bit more sinister than that. It's a life for a life kinda thing. Just before death, or soon thereafter, a young priest would pass through the arch with whatever demigod they served and the two would exchange places. The priest would die and the god would live, young and healthy."
"If it was a muggle priest how did the wizard keep his powers in the new body?" Harry asked.
"They didn't switch bodies, just states of being. Like dead/alive or sick/healthy, young/old. And it didn't have to be a muggle, just a willing victim. Most were told that they would be rewarded in the afterlife for their sacrifice or some such nonsense."
"So why did you die when you fell through?" Harry asked.
"Well I went through alone, and also not by choice. Personally I think I'm damned lucky to have died instead of simply ceasing to exist." Sirius replied.
"Seriously Sirius, you always were the lucky one." James taunted.
"You had better run cause I'm just going to let him pummel you." Lily laughed.
As soon as James had spoken Sirius had pushed back from the table, pissed off and came towards him. James had tried to hide behind Lily, but she was having none of it. The two men played cat-and-mouse around the table until Harry, Albus and Lily were laughing so hard they were in tears.
"Now Sirius calm down, I was only joking." James pleaded as he tried desperately to keep the table between him and his best friend.
"I think he's serious Sirius, seriously." Both men stopped and looked had Harry like he had lost mind. "Oh, shit."
Sirius forgot complete about James and lunged at Harry, who had pushed away form the table and took off toward the living room. James was delighted. Lily rarely played this game with them, and it was so much more fun with two. James could tell from the light in his eyes that Harry had decided this was definitely a game worth playing.
"Don't hurt him Sirius, I'm serious" James yelled at their retreating backs. This brought Sirius to a halt trying to decide who to knock the stuffing out of first.
"I wish I had know about this 3 or 4 years ago Sirius, seriously." Harry called, drawing Sirius' attention away form his father again.
"Give up, Sirius. You'll never beat them if they double team you like this," Lily said. "Seriously."
"That does it," Sirius fumed and plopped down on the couch, shooting Lily a dirty look, "from here on out I will only answer to Padfoot."
Harry sat on the couch next to him and said, "I'm sorry Sirius, from now on we'll behave." Harry caught his dad's eye and smiled before he continued. "Seriously."

**

Many hours later, after the two Potter men had teased Sirius so badly that he had left, James and Harry sat on the porch talking quietly. When Harry asked, "What time is it? I've been here for hours and it looks like the middle of the day."
"Time is only an illusion really. You'll find that many things are the same here as they were before, but many things are different as well. Time being one of them, age is another." James laughed. "I had about the same reaction to Albus as you did."
"Yeah, seeing him so young was odd."
They lapsed into silence. Harry was having a hard time dealing with two conflicting feelings. Hugging his mother, playing with his dad and godfather, feeling at peace for the first time; and knowing deep down what his death really meant for his friend and the Order.
"Dad?"
"Hmm?"
"Me being here...being dead...it means Voldemort won, doesn't it? It means my friends, the Order..."
"Could you have done anything differently?" James asked him.
"No"
"Then don't worry about it, you did what you could. The rest is to the Fates." Harry nodded. "I'm proud of you, by the way. Your mum and me would have had heart attacks if it were still possible when that snake told you she wanted to switch sides." James was laughing before he finished, and Harry was staring at him aghast.
"You... saw that? You can watch? Can I see my friends? Can they see me? How does that work." Harry's mind was reeling.
"You can watch those that want you to, when they want you to, if you choose. But Harry you shouldn't watch them now. You still have to many ties to that world, you miss them and they're still grieving for you... to watch now can only hurt you. Believe the voice of experience, Harry. Wait. Give them time to recover."
"You watched Sirius confront Peter, didn't you?"
"Yes."
Harry thought about what his father had said. It made sense. If he watched them now, he would see their pain and not be able to comfort them. If he watched them now, he might see them die. If he watched them now... he didn't care.
"Dad?"
James looked at his son. Harry really was just like him. He knew that look, and he knew that it was no use to argue. So he didn't. "I hope you don't regret this, son. Come on. I'll take you the Styx."