FicWad

A THOUSAND YEARS
Alorkin

Disclaimer: I own my car; a nice little ’94 Taurus. I own my house, and I own this computer, a lathe, power saw, a homemade thicknessing sander for guitar tops, a drill press, a band saw, a couple of hand sanders, quite a few woodworking tools, one eighteen year old daughter and five cats.

Harry Potter? Wait…lemmee check. Harry Potter… Harry Potter… (rummaging through the junk on desk) Harry Potter… Harry Potter…

Nope, not here. (Le Sigh!)



This is dedicated to my late sister Marion, better known as FireLemming, who actually wanted to live to be a thousand years old. Alas, she died nine hundred and fourty eight years too soon.



Note: § Parseltongue §

:: Gobbledygook ::

~Thoughts or mental communications~

₲ Galleons

Ϩ Sickles

κ Knuts


Note 2: This Harry is basically good, but he has lived for a thousand years and realized that magic in itself, is neither light nor dark, it is the user’s intent that makes it so. He is decisive and often ruthless. He is willing to kill when there is a definite need, but not for fun. He shares information willingly, but only with those he trusts, he is scheming and sneaky, and makes no apologies for it.

Note 3: While I have always thought the horcruxes were a last minute and badly written idea, with little or no presaging, in this story, I have used the horcruxes as written, except for Nagini.

Note 3.141592653: I once promised to never use the horribly stupid plot device known as ‘the Deathly Hallows’ in any of my stories, but unfortunately they managed to sneak their way into this one, before I could eradicate the little pests. I’ll mention them en-passant but only that.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

PART ONE: LEAVING IT ALL BEHIND

Today is my birthday. July the thirty first, twenty-nine eighty. We no longer use the Gregorian calendar, but I still remember it. I think I’m the only one on Earth who does. You see; I’m a thousand years old today. I’ve lived for longer than any being in the known galaxy. An unexpected compensation for killing off Voldemort, I suppose. While he lived, he committed atrocities beyond imagination, murdering hundreds of innocents to enhance his magic. Unfortunately for me, when he died, all that released magic had nowhere to go…except into the closest magical being there…yours truly. I’ll never know exactly how many people’s magic took residence in my body on that horrible day, but I instantly went from being a moderately powerful…OK, a very powerful wizard, to being nearly godlike in magical strength.

I spent three weeks and four days lying unconscious in the hospital wing. During my stay, my newly acquired magic repaired the castle. People were more than a little unnerved. From what Hermione told me, walls suddenly reformed themselves, heavy stones moved back into their places, holes sealed themselves up, centuries-old stained glass became whole again and timbers long destroyed were as strong as the day they were hewn. Dust, ashes and blood vanished. Bodies, that under other conditions would have taken weeks to even find, were located and removed for a decent burial.

When I woke I discovered that only one person in the castle, had understood. Hermione had been closest to me, nearly a hundred feet away, standing over the newly dead Bellatrix Lestrange, when I killed that mutated bastard; and so knew precisely what had happened, but she just told them there was a hideous blast, and when she awoke for the first time, they were carrying her off the field. She could have told them the truth, but that would have just labeled me as the next dark lord. ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’, you know. She’s always protected me, my Hermione.

When I woke, she told me of all the devastation. She also chuckled and told me of Ron’s half-arsed attempt at a proposal. The twins had interrupted the gormless prat’s ploy, by hoisting him up by the arms and frog-marching him out the door. She told me she’d never marry anybody but her personal hero. It took me a minute, but I got there. I remember saying: “Hermione, I’ve loved you for years. Will you marry me?” Not the most romantic proposal, but then I was doped to the gills on Madam Pomfrey’s patented pain relief potion. (How’s that for alliteration?)

We had discovered some months after Snape murdered Dumbledore that he’d been tampering with the potions he made for the hospital wing…under Dumbledore’s orders, no less! They had some certain ingredients meant to inspire unwavering loyalty to the twinkling dark lord. Madam Pomfrey showed considerably more intelligence than the average bear…I mean witch, and began to have the seventh year Ravenclaws brew the potions instead. With the exception of my beloved, they were the only ones who could brew them, and not poison the school. I’m sure the Slytherins seventh years could, but there’s that word again…poison. By then all but two of the upper two years in that house had taken the mark, and those two had fled the country.

As a result, the potions used, were more effective, tasted better and most importantly, didn’t compel us to obey the every whim of a demented old sociopath.


Anyway, for some reason she accepted my poor attempt at a proposal, and we married in Australia, just after we located her parents.


She was rendered barren at the age of sixteen, by a curse meant to take her life. Would that it had, for ‘twould have been kinder. Still, we, and later, I, had adopted and fostered more than a hundred children, doing our best to show them how to make a difference.

In the last thousand years, I’ve seen civilizations come and go. I’ve seen utopias rise and fall. I’ve seen environmental disasters destroy whole countries, and I’ve seen the man-made insanity called war, wipe out others. I’ve seen the bodies of millions left to dry in the sun, unmourned, unremarked…forgotten.

On the other hand, I’ve also seen the heroism of individuals, and the fleeting wisdom of governments. I’ve seen advances made to correct the mistakes of history, and the people willing to implement those advances, disregarding the short-term profits for the long-term gains. Unfortunately those people are few. For the most part, mankind is, as mankind has always been…short sighted and greedy.

I’ve seen wizardkind set aside their differences, and accept the other sentient races as equals. I’ve seen the magical folk turn to helping their non-magical brethren eliminate hunger, war and suffering. Population controls have reduced the Earth’s burden to a manageable four point three billion souls. The earth is once again a lush garden, where thousands of species roam.

I’ve seen and helped mankind reach out to the stars, colonize new planets and join with other races into a…mostly…harmonious whole.


And yet, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me. These last eight hundred and sixty four years have been a sham. Hermione died. She died peacefully, and in my arms, but she died nevertheless…and I was left alone to wander this Earth, the parts I’m allowed to see, anyway, like some modern-day Diogenes seeking an honest man.

I’ve had many lovers, but none truly loved, since her. You see, my love died eight hundred and sixty four years ago. She was one hundred and thirty seven.




Now, I am still alone. I’ve been alone ever since. My last child became an adult almost three hundred years ago, and for some reason, Earth Gov refused to allow me to foster or adopt any more unless I was married to a woman of their choice. I refused. My only wife was dead and there would never be another Hermione. Eight hundred and sixty four years.

They even tried to order me to take a wife, so I could continue the magical line. Another eugenics program. I told them to get stuffed…and I wasn’t nearly that polite.

I’ve had enough of Earth. It’s boring. It’s like living in a bloody great plastic bubble. Yes, there are nature preserves all over the place. They’re the talk of the settled worlds in this part of the galaxy, or so I’m told. They’ve even rebuilt the rainforests of North and South America, Africa, Australia and Northern Europe, and Asia, and repopulated extinct species just to show that they could, but it’s stilted. There’s nothing new here! Nothing grows free here…most certainly not me. Even the rainstorms are controlled. Everything is planned and produced for maximum efficiency. That’s what this ancient Earth has become. A poster-child for efficiency.

It’s a sterile existence to me. I grew up in the mud. I want to feel it again. I want to take off my shoes and stomp in puddles. I want to breathe air that smells like free air…with all it’s pollutants and oxidants and stuff that’s bad for you. This is natural air, that’s true, but there’s no flavour to it. It’s got no urgency. No joy. No…life.


About a hundred and some years ago, I volunteered to lead a scientific expedition to examine the massive singularity at the center of the galaxy…one of the few places we hadn’t yet been. Earth’s governing council refused, claiming I was far too valuable to risk in deep space. Even now, a thousand years after I was born, I am still a pawn. They even monitor my on-planet travel, just to make certain I don’t go anywhere they don’t want…for my own good, of course. I’m allowed to go to most of Britain, and Scotland, part of Ireland, a few countries in the European Union, the North American Confederation, of course…but no further. I can’t visit the rain forests, I can’t go see the mid-ocean hatcheries, I can’t even go to new Atlantis…in case someone there wants to do something…some thing horribly unspecified…like say…voice an opinion?

I’m a thousand years old, and I’m still a bloody pawn.


Fortunately, being Harry-the-man-with-too-bloody-many-hyphens-in-his-name-Potter, and having lived and learned for the past thousand years, I’m somewhat smarter than the average bear.

Early on, I bought an interest in all of the companies that I figured would be involved with advanced technology, including space travel. Some of those interests are the controlling type. Just after Earth-Gov refused my request, I began to plan my escape from this prison I call Earth. The end result is a sweet little starship…with no registration, transponder…or record of its construction.

She’s fourty five point five meters long, about half that wide, and a quarter high. Perched on the top is a sweet little fourteen meter shuttle, good for mach three in straight and level flight at sea level, and mach twenty three during reentry. What doesn’t show is that her star-drive is incorporated. Most ships that size need a sled. ‘Course, since her star-drive is incorporated, it’s pretty tight inside. Due to the nature of that drive…it’s a technomagery hybrid…I can’t use a bunch of magic, without disrupting the drive’s control and containment, so no expansion charms or the like. Little things are fine, but nothing major. For me, it’s not that important. There’s room to pace. It’s got a kitchenette, parlor, library/study, bedroom and bath. There’s a well equipped medical bay, a place to practice my painting, or play whatever instrument I synthesize, and a nicely equipped gym…treadmill, weight station, hell, she’s even got a little pool. It’s not Olympic size or anything…only three and a half metres by about one point five, but it’s designed to pump water from one end to the other to give some resistance. It’s perfect for swimming in. It’s also my auxiliary water storage.

It’s no mansion, but that’s all right. I don’t need much room, anyway.

I named her ‘My Little Bookworm’ after my favorite little bookworm.

She was built in the Chamber of Secrets. With everyone of my generation long dead, I’m the only one who can get in. There are other parselmouths, but you have to know where it is and well, since Hogwarts is a historical monument now, I’m the only one who lives there these days. Officially, I’m the caretaker. Take that Filch! The ghosts kept me company for a few hundred years, but since magical schooling is done in Australia, now, even they’ve faded away. Yeah, Peeves too. Never thought I’d miss him! Anyway, nobody else knows for certain what’s in the castle, so it was the perfect place to build an illegal starship.

You may insert an evil chuckle here.

I sent her by autopilot under the water, from the castle, through the black lake to the north sea, and from there, twelve hundred miles north to the icecap, where I launched her into space. It was one of the few places where scanners didn’t function that week, due to the intense radiation from a solar storm. From there, she headed north of the ecliptic under heavy shielding, in a long parabola that took her somewhere out beyond the Oort cloud. She came back three months later and landed at the spaceport on the Isle of Man…one of the places I absolutely wasn’t allowed to go. The temporary transponder I placed onboard, told them she was the personal shuttle of the most honored Dak Graswold of the Unified Goblin Hordes.

That the goblins had relocated to Cygnus prime several hundred years before was beside the point. They still had diplomatic privilege.

Not a lot of people knew that…but then, not a lot of people knew about the goblins in the first place. If Graswold hadn’t died in the early twenty second, he would have thought it was funny as hell.

Another evil chuckle here, if you don’t mind.

Carefully manipulating several data-streams on the infonet, I ordered her provisioned for a three year journey…and charged it to Earth-Gov, through their military budget. It’s gonna take them a while to realize who ordered what and why. That was a month ago.

All right, go ahead and laugh.

I’ve been watching her provisioning. A lot of the techie’s and even some of the supply types have been drooling. I have to admit, she’s a pretty bird, but she’s more than just an elegant design. She has it where it counts.

She can go to Hyper-Light Factor 19.6, which, if I went full out, would get me to the Centauri system in about seven and a half minutes, less in-system travel, of course. Most ships can’t do half that. The few military ones we do have can reach HLF 14.9 on a good day. ‘Course, I don’t want to go to Centauri, although I’ve heard a lot about New Vegas. Sounds like a fun place…if you’ve got the money. I have the money…gold from my family’s vaults, several thousand tonnes of it, actually. I removed it from the bank, before the goblins removed the bank, but I won’t be stopping off in New Vegas. I want to go much farther than that….like to the other side of the Magellanic clouds.


I worked out the mathematics for the special drive myself…a few hundred years of studying does wonders for the concentration…and after it was built, I obliviated every single person that had anything to do with it’s conception or development, even if it was only a conversation in a bar, of any knowledge of it, or of research in a similar line…and their families and friends. I spared no one. Men, women and even children were erased. I don’t care. I created specialized tapeworms set to the drive’s general and specific parameters, including any research leading in that direction, and released them through the infonet. Every piece of hard copy ended up a cloud of ash floating in the breeze.

Believe me; that would have brought me more hell than all the rest combined. Luckily, I was smart enough to start a forest fire at the same time. Of course, I was in a rather spirited ‘discussion’ with the Earth-Gov Prime Administrator just then, introducing him to some choice examples of the Anglo-Saxon vernacular, so nobody could pin anything on me.

Sometimes it’s good to be a wizard.

To the best of my knowledge, My Little doesn’t exist.

******

They found me at the spaceport, just about to walk up the My Little’s ramp. It seems I forgot about Dumbledore’s trackers. Shite!


It turns out that when I was fifteen, shortly after my little melt-down in his office, Dumbledore had, in his infinite stupidity, placed trackers on my magical signature in case I decided to take an impromptu holiday and leave the wizarding world to their own, in my considered opinion, justly deserved reward. Some of the little trinkets in his office could track me anywhere on Earth. After he died, the Ministry of Magic took them, and I suppose they became a part of the British government’s ‘assets’ after the magical world was exposed, and when the countries were amalgamated into one whole world government, they went along for the ride. Somebody found them. Nine hundred and eighty four years after that miserable son of a bitch died, they’re still being used to control me.


The peacekeepers ordered me to return or be taken by force. I assume to whatever psychiatric facility they’ve built to hold nearly immortal, hideously powerful wizards, who wanted nothing to do with them.

Hey! It could happen!

Instead, I showed them two fingers and headed up the ramp. None of them understood the gesture, of course, as it’s been out of use for several hundred years, but they all knew exactly what my turning away and stomping up the ramp meant. They opened fire.

I have to give them this. They were trying to capture me, not hurt me. On the other hand, I wasn’t particularly fussed about hurting them. I shielded and threw some raw magic at them.

There was a hospital nearby. I had seen it as the shuttle I was in, approached the spaceport. I reckon there’ll be some new patients at that hospital, today. With the wonders of modern medicine, they’d live…I’m pretty sure.

Seeing as how they were all down, I figured I’d worn out my welcome. I went inside the My Little and sealed up.

They even tried to prevent my lifting off, by rushing the ship. I suppose they figured that if I knew my thrusters would hurt them when I lifted, I wouldn’t fire ‘em up. Couldn’t tell you why, but even after my little display, they thought I would want to avoid any…unpleasantries. To paraphrase Bugs: “They don’t know me very well, do they?” Problem was two fold. First, they’d never experienced the joys of Teflon, which was very much how the skin of the My Little felt. Frictionless. And second, they’d never heard of magi-gravimetrics. I suppose I could blame myself for that, given as how I’d invented that particular bit of Scientia Arcanum myself. Believe it or not, I’d designed the My Little to be as uninvasive, ecologically speaking, as possible.

I popped my inner course of shields out to five meters and lifted. I reckon they got quite the shock when they flew arse over teakettle across the field, and an even bigger one, to see the ‘My Little’ lifting with a quiet hum and just a breath of inrushing air to mark the spot where she’d been.

I recorded it in case I needed a laugh.


So, I left Earth amidst pleas, orders, and even threats to return. No chance. My time on that planet is done. I want to be somewhere far, far away, where I can forget all that I’ve lost.


I set up a low energy parabola to the Roche’s limit, you know it as the asteroid belt…what’s left of it, that is, where I could safely pop into transluminal drive. Even a ship as advanced as the My Little has to be outside that line.


Stupid me. Just like Dumbledore, I’d been alive for so long, I forgot that there were people as smart as I was. They found me. My proximity sensors went off, just as I was passing Mars retrograde. There were three of the fuckers. Ninety thousand miles ahead of me to my starboard, and closing. The Jovian system was too far away, so they must have been at the station on Ceres, or maybe Vesta. I asked ‘Mione. She concurred. Vesta was close enough that if the warships had launched when I was arguing with the pols on Earth, they would have had the time to arrive when I did.

I’ve throttled up on the in-system drive, and I’m, heading out as fast as I can, but I’m still twenty minutes from Roche’s limit, so I can’t go to hyper-light. Well, I could, but not without creating some major problems. Y’know, solar flares, disrupted communications, melted satellites, roasted planets, that sort of thing.

Somehow, I don’t think they’d be very happy if I did that.

******

“Attention, unidentified spacecraft! Attention, unidentified spacecraft! This is the Earth-Gov ship, Albus Dumbledore. Shut down your engines, and heave to! Prepare to be boarded.” The comm-unit blared.

Yeah, like that’s gonna happen!

I flicked my eyes to the screen to see a tall, olive-skinned man of Nordic and Italian ancestry. That must’a been a helluva party. Commandant Øgvaldur D’Marco! Worthless apparatchik, he is, but he’s one of the few people alive, who understands, and can speak what they call ‘ancient languages’, read: English. Since he sent his warning in that language, I can assume they knew exactly who they were dealing with.


I pass my hand over the comm-system control.

“Lieutenant DeeMarco!” I greeted the officious prick in an over-the-top voice, intentionally mangling his name and dropping him a few steps in rank. I don’t like him. He’s like a modern day Perky Weatherby. I just have to hack him off every chance I get. He’s got no love for me either, so we’re even, I guess.

“What a pleasure it ain’t to see you. What can I do for you?”

“Stop with the foolies, Potter. You’re going back home.”

“Why?”

“The World Council has decided you’re a danger to yourself.”

“So what? I’m just one individual. You got four point three billion others to play with. What makes me so important?”

“The government is concerned for all citizens.” He pontificated. I could almost see him on the telly wearing a white linen jacket, and telling me my soul was in jeopardy unless I sent him all my money. We don’t use money anymore. The pile of gold I have in the hold is little more than ballast here…and starships don’t need ballast.

“Yeah right! And the check’s in the mail and I gave at the office and I promise I won’t come in your mouth! The fact is, D’Marco, the World Council wants to keep the ‘artifact’ under their control.”

“I am not going to wordplay with you, Potter. You will return to your launch point or you will be fired upon. We won’t destroy your ship, but we won’t allow you to leave. You are too valuable a personage to the planet. Now heave to!”

“Ahh, well, when you put it so politely, erm…how about…mmmmm…No!”

“Gunnery Officer, target that ship’s engines and disable it.”

Shite! I was afraid he was going to say that! I brought the shields to full power and angled them to deflect the incoming energy away instead of reflecting it back. Too bad nobody had thought of a system where the incoming energy can be absorbed and used to reinforce the shields.

Hey! There’s an idea!

And then the pounding began. It’s funny, for some strange reason I’m reminded of Dudley and his gang playing their game of ‘Harry Hunting.’

My Little’s shields are better than military standard, and I have more courses than the average dreadnaught, but each of those three ships masses like a thousand times what she does…and has enough firepower to wear ‘em down.

******

I decided. The bludgeoning that My Little was taking was devastating. My shields were failing, one course at a time. Soon I’d lose them entirely and they’d have me. Return me to Earth, and stuff me into their little gold-plated prison. Drug me up, I suppose. No thanks, sez I! As an ancestor of mine once said: “Better to die on the thrust of a sword, than to linger on, whilst rotting away inside!”

I open the cover of my ‘emergency escape’. The ‘T’ handle rotates up. I twist it, and it comes free, arming the programme that would crash the isolation fields between the mass and contramass in the power core, effectively creating a thirty-five-gigatonne burst of energy. I lifted the cover. Underneath, is a little red button. Rather cliché, but there it is. The entire thing is already programmed. All that’s left is to activate it. It should be painless…not that I really care.

The alarm goes off. They’ve broken through the shields. I wonder if any of them are going to die with me. I hope not.


I pushed the button. Happy birthday, Harry.


******

“Superluminal!!” A junior officer cried out, as the screen is filled with the actinic glare of a matter-antimatter explosion.

“Belay that!” Came the order from the commanding officer. “He knew what he was doing. Tell the truth, ‘f I were in his position, I think I’d have done the same.”

D’Marco scowled in disapproval, and decided he’d inform his superiors of the officer’s words. Such independent viewpoints were…unwise.


PART 2: MEETING SOME PEOPLE

“Harry Potter!” The voice called in the wind. “Stand and be judged!”

I looked up from where I lay. All around me were verdant hills and blue skies. Birds flew overhead, and I could hear the gentle thrum of various insects nearby. I hadn’t seen such a proliferation of nature outside a preserve for nearly five hundred years. I rolled to my knees, trying my best to avoid damaging the fragile blades under me.

“Don’t worry, Harry. You don’t have to be careful with the grass here.” Came a familiar voice. Not only familiar, but the voice I’d dreamed of hearing for eight hundred and sixty four years.

“Hermione?” He whispered in anguished hope.

“Yes, baby. It’s me.”

“Hermione!” I flung myself at my wife and gave her the kind of welcoming kiss she’d always loved. She gave as good as she got, and soon we were both gasping for breath. Somehow our clothing had fallen off. She was ready and I pushed into her body, with one swift thrust.

It wasn’t gentle, tender or romantic, even. It was wild, it was harsh, it was passionate, and it was brutal…that’s all. It fulfilled a desperate need we both had, and fulfilled it very well indeed.

As I felt her climax, I let myself go as well. I held her shuddering body then, my arms wrapped tightly around her, and hers as tightly around me.

We lay there, spent for the time being, just looking into each other’s eyes, kissing gently, and reminiscing about the years of precious love that we had shared.


…and of course, some arsehole hadda screw it up!

“Now that you two’ve got that out of your systems…” a snarky voice interrupted our loving reflections. “You have a judgment to attend.”

Looking up, I saw a near reflection of my own face. Except the eyes. The eyes were hazel, not green.

“Dad?” I sat back hard and began to hyperventilate. Hermione conjured a paper bag and held it over my face.

The simple muggle remedy did wonders for what was left of my sanity. The moron standing in front of us just laughed.


“Well, that’s not the greeting I usually get, but I suppose it’s understandable. I’m only glad your mother didn’t get here first.”

“You only got here first, because you stuck me to that bloody chair, James Potter!” A furious voice answered him, and James Potter blanched and swung his head side to side, apparently looking for a place to hide.


“Why’s he afraid?” I asked my blushing bride. Well, blushing was appropriate, considering where I had my hands.

“She knows where he sleeps, Harry.” My lovely and most-curvaceous wife chuckled, doing delectable things to her superstructure.

“Ah.” Having been on the wrong side of Hermione’s temper more than once, I could understand quite well, the anxiety my father was feeling.

******
Meeting with Merlin.

Mum stood there with a teary smile on her face, holding out her arms. I was off the ground and wrapped in her embrace so fast, I wonder if she’d summoned me. Hermione stood slowly, laughing out loud.

“Hush, you!” I ordered, which only made her laugh louder. I didn’t care. I hadn’t been held by my mother for nine hundred ninety eight years and nine months, and I was going to make up for lost time! Dad joined in the embrace, and Hermione, never one to be left out of a hug, did so as well.


Before we could get fully into the hug-fest, a stranger approached. He looked a lot like Dumbledore, though he wasn’t as tall, his beard wasn’t as long, and his clothing was nowhere near as…flamboyant. In fact, he was dressed in a simple tunic over loose pants and boots.

Seeing as how Hermione and I were less than suitably accoutered, Dad went to greet the newcomer. Mum hissed; “Get dressed!”

We did.



“Harry” Dad spoke.

“This is Myrddin Emrys.” He pronounced it ‘Murthin’, as the name was originally Welsh.

“Merlin?” I asked. For as long as I’ve been alive, and as many famous people I’ve known, meeting the greatest wizard ever to have lived was a pure honor. I’m afraid I gushed a bit.

I have to give him this; he took it all in stride. Other than a knowing smile, and the Dumbledoresque twinkle in his cornflower blue eyes, he totally ignored my fan-boyishness.

I could feel Hermione shaking with laughter as she tried to keep from hurting my feelings. She’s like that, you know.


“Harry, a great many things have gone wrong with your life, things that could have been avoided, had someone taken a different road. Your life would have been muchly different, had two persons not presumed to think themselves gods, and waged war to divide the Earth betwixt themselves.


Merlin gave a chuckle, as if he knew what was going to happen before it did, and said; “Speaking of such, there is someone of your acquaintance here, who would have words with you.” He pointed to my left.

And there he stood, in all his twinkling glory. The primary and ultimate cause of all my tribulations. His blue eyes twinkling, his long white beard aching to be yanked and his twice-broken nose, the perfect target for a third try. “Harry, my boy…” was all he got out before I laid him out. Mashing the old bastard’s beak felt so good!

As he hit the ground, I snarled; “Don’t call me ‘your boy’ you miserable, meddling old motherfucker!” ~How’s that for alliteration?~

For some reason, Dumbledore was shocked. Couldn’t tell you why.

“Harry!” Mum scolded. “Did you have to do that?” Merlin helped Albus to his feet. I wonder if he did that on purpose. As I understand it, Merlin was a stickler about courtesy and other such things. ‘Course, he might have been setting him up for me to knock him over again…God knows I wanted to!

“He’s already dead, mum. I can’t think of anything that’s more permanent, so I went with what I had. That miserable old son of a bitch is solely responsible for the rise of Grindelwald, the millions of dead in the second world war, Voldemort, the thousands of lives lost in Britain during the first war, your deaths, my life as a slave, Voldemort’s resurrection, the deaths of far too many more, Hermione’s death, my unfortunate continuation amongst the living for the past thousand - years and…”

“Everything I have done, I have done for the greater good!” the old manipulator intoned piously. I hit him again. He was bleeding on the ground and I began to shout at him.

“The greater good is neither, you jackass! When you forget about all the lesser goods, you become a tyrant. Think on that for a while, you stupid old bastard!”

“Hermione” Lily looked to my wife. “Try to calm him down, huh? A kiss should do the trick.”

“Actually, I’m kind of enjoying the show.” She returned with a malicious smirk.


Dumbledore gaped at her in shock, as he couldn’t conceive of his most fervent supporter in life, to find satisfaction in his ignominy, and then, he faded away.

******

Merlin spoke into the gathering silence. “While not particularly diplomatic, ‘twas an effective tirade.” Then he got serious.

“Harry, things have gone so wrong in your life, that it was decided to give you a chance to make things right. If you agree, we shall send you back to yourself as a child. You will meld with your previous self, becoming that which you should have been before Albus could cinch the noose about your neck.”

“Meld? But what about my previous self’s soul? Won’t that be destroyed or something?”

“Harry, the soul is eternal. It cannot be destroyed. It can be fractured, which is what Riddle did, but the soul is eternal. What will happen, is you and your past self, will, for lack of better words, become one.” He held his hands apart and then joined them clasping them into a ball. “Since your soul is his and his is yours, there is only the matter of life experiences. This time you can alter those life experiences.”

“And Hermione?”

“Hermione will still be there. Mayhaps not precisely as she is now, but that is the result of her living experiences. Have no fear, the Hermione you knew and loved will be there.”

“How am I going to react to her? After all, I’ve been around for a thousand years, and she’s only what…eleven?”

“Five, actually, as that is when he began to actively mould you into his pawn. As for you and your beloved…” He smiled as Hermione and I both flushed. “There will be certain ‘adjustments’ made, so once you meld with your previous form, you will be able to interact comfortably with people your own apparent age.

“And my memories…no, wait. You said life experiences. That means memories as well.”

“Correct. You will retain your memories, but as you change things, those memories will begin to fade.

I made the decision right them, to copy all my memories into My Little’s long-term storage cells…just in case I needed them in the future.

“What about the extra years?”

“You have been cleansed of the overage of magic. You will live the normal span of a wizard of your potential.”

“And how will I merge with my younger self?”

“An old friend of yours.”

On cue, Fawkes appeared in his signature ball of flame, and settled on Merlin’s shoulder, looking rather smug. I wanted to hug the feathers off the smarmy little bastard.

“What do you think, my heart?”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea. You can go back and correct the problems those two idiots caused before they get the chance to cause them.”

“Alright, then. Let’s do it.”

******

Nine hundred ninety five earlier…
(Wednesday, May 1st 1985:)

With a tremendous roar, a miniature starship popped into existence over a small island a few miles west of St. Mary’s, scattering flocks of seagulls, terns, seals, crabs, otters and other animal life. For nearly a thousand years, this island has remained unseen by man. It was strange that even in Harry’s future-time, nobody noticed that the islands were clearly volcanic in nature, and yet, nearly a quarter of the caldera was missing. Magic could be a wonderful thing at times. Following the Norman conquest and subjugation of the Saxon peoples, those living there, decided to leave. They built ships and set out to the west, eventually finding their way to what would, centuries later, be called ‘the new world’.

Without the family magicks to protect it, those few mages remaining on the island, cast the strongest wards they could, shedding their own blood to conceal the island until the heir could return to claim it.

Now the heir had returned. His ship settled to a bumpy landing on the shore, with a faint hiss of compressing fluids. A ramp grew from the lower part of the vessel downward to stop on the sand. A man of about fourty walked slowly down toward the beach. A wave of his hand and a nice little house appeared. He ascended the stairs and sat on the porch to watch the sunset. Breathing deeply of the salty sea air, he smiled. After a thousand years…he was home.


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A/N: I think I got the general idea of Harry becoming nearly immortal through magical release, from Kinsfire’s ‘A Time to Reflect.’ or perhaps from ‘Wizard’s fall’ by Bobmin365. In either case, I thank you.