Reflections of a King

By Abby Ebon

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Voice of the Ascended

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

His fingers came away bloody. Voldemort was here.

"I've been waiting for you, Harry Potter." It was a familiar voice from his childhood and teens, it had been tangled up in the bulk of his nightmares ever since. Harry turned to face him, he had half expected to see some pale skinned and dead eyed Prior, but no, this man was blond haired and red eyed. There were no distorted and snake like features, only a man whose eyes were like blood.

Harry met those eyes, and taunt pale lips sneered.

"Voldemort, do you never learn any new tricks?" Harry asked softly to goad him, it worked too well as long fingers flexed and raised then straightened. Khthon hissed softly in the background. Harry looked to find that something the much resembled a sliver bubble surrounded them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Khthon's fingers turn to claws as she tried to rip through the barrier and failed. Voldemort did not as much as glance to her.

Voldemort pointed a finger at him, and Harry found himself shoved against the far side of the wall, his chest heavy as he struggled to breathe. His fingers loosened around the Elder Wand, and it clattered to the marble floor, he wanted badly to even things up, yet no words floated to his lips in his pain fogged mind. It had been so long; perhaps he really had forgotten what it was to be a wizard.

"Ah, ah, ah. No magic, don't you remember the rules? One Deathly Hallow does not work against its Master, or it's like nature." Voldemort murmured, and Harry saw the black glint among the gold ring and knew it to be the Resurrection Stone. He shifted his shoulders and back against the stone wall he was held against, hoping to ease his breathing. Atlantis still struggled with the 'Gate, his attention taken up on sending hundreds of molecules of people to a different place without scattering them across the stars like ash.

His toes brushed against the floor, barely.

"Then again, you never knew that rule, did you? I've come around to mastering a few thing wizards have never dreamed of, you would do well to remember your place, boy. After all, this is the body of the Doci." The words were mocking, and his footsteps sharp on the tiled floor. Khthon's unthinking fever of furious attacks against what kept her from Harry faded with those coldly hissed words, she took a step back, met his eyes – and sunk into the floor.

"Good for you, you can teach an old dog new tricks next. My place, however, has always been across the room from you." Harry quibbled; after all, pinned as he was, helpless, he was not without his sense of humor. Voldemort chuckled, not in appreciation, but in eager anticipation. Blood trickled into his eyes from the scar on his forehead, and Harry tried not to see it as a sign of things to come.

"It's time you learnt something new, as well, the Invisibility Cloak – the Elder Wand, to me they act as targets on your back, telling me where to aim. I will always be able to find them, and you. So you might as well give up, I might give you a quick death after all, for old times and the gifts." Very carefully, Harry did not look for Khthon or Atlantis, or reach for the bond that pulsed and fluttered against his own heartbeat in his ears. Atlantis could not afford to be distracted, and Harry did not want Voldemort to go looking for Khthon just yet, though how he had overlooked her, Harry could not guess. Maybe it was only that the Resurrection Stone was forcing Voldemort's attention on the Deathly Hallows, if that was it; it was for the better that Voldemort's attentions remain so fixed.

Voldemort was smiling in Harry's face, mocking him. His breath smelled foul, but Harry knew better then to say so just yet.

"Isn't better to die now, before I get around to killing all the rest of them? I will kill them, Harry; every single person you give a damn about will soon be dead. I promise you. And you want to know why they will die? It's because you can't kill me, Harry." Harry closed his eyes, and tried to breath. He'd seen something in the stone shift at the side of the room. Khthon was coming, circling carefully like a shark scenting for weakness in water filled with blood- Harry wondered bemusedly how much of it would be his, yet all he had to do was keep Voldemort talking and she'd get to him and he'd have something he could use.

"Why? You're hardly a human being anymore, Tom. Or is it because you're afraid, Tom, afraid that while everything is good now, while you're stuck between your soul here and an endless existence doing nothing and maybe – just maybe – I'll change everything?" Harry opened his eyes after the long silence that followed his words, Voldemort had paused, head tilted to regard the younger man before him.

"Haven't you always wanted immortality? It's a fitting punishment; I think I'll send you along." Harry flexed his fingers, they moved – but stiffly and numb, Voldemort wasn't focusing on him so very much (or rather he was but on what Harry was saying), his thoughts were straying.

"A mortal man can not force an immortal to go along. You've got a lot to learn." Voldemort went to pluck the Elder Wand from the floor, and Harry wondered and worried at this – had Voldemort defeated him? No, not yet, he was only without his wand and trapped, not dead.

As Voldemort knelt to fetch what was not his, Khthon's arm arose from the stone, her hand gripped around his wrist. Voldemort tried to pull away struggling and crying out, and Harry smiled to see him trapped, free now Harry slumped to the floor, regarding the sight. It was somewhat comical, if morbidly so.

Voldemort succeeded in getting away, but the Resurrection Stone was cradled in the palm of Khthon's hand. Harry could see though her skin as the ring and its stone crackled and burnt in flares of lighting. With it, the link between Voldemort's soul and mortality was finally broken; Voldemort was burning with light and crying out in pain, but still standing there, immovable.

"I accept the bargain, Morgan le Fay." Harry told her, knowing she was helping him and forcing Voldemort to stillness but unable to move him away alone, he knew now that somewhere in the room Morgan le Fay was listening and watching. He felt heat tickle his skin, and he looked to see it glowing, giving off heat and light as if he were some sun or far away star. It didn't hurt.

"No, Harry!" Atlantis cried, and Harry felt their half of bond wrap tightly around him, cushioning and protective, at near the same time, Khthon emerged from the earth, her hands wrapped around his own, solid and real, her brown eyes shined in his sight and tears dripped unheeded down her face. Harry realized what he had done; half-Ascended meant half-dead.

"He's cold and burning!" Khthon cried out to Atlantis who was suddenly there, in front of him and kneeling. He felt torn in two, still there with them, hearing them and feeling them, but unseeing and distant, he was aware of Morgan le Fay and let her use whatever he could offer her, and saw Voldemort swept away into darkness and Morgan le Fay had chosen to fade – to die – with him. Then he was gone, elsewhere – yet still alive, not Ascended or dead, because Khthon and Atlantis were struggling to keep him that way.

He didn't know if even they could undo what he had done to himself.

"You have broken our law, and you will be punished." Harry looked up, and found himself in a coffee shop, there were people around, some cared about what was going on looking between Harry and the woman who addressed him while sipping coffee in a business suit, and some were reading the paper, and some just looked out the window uncaring and unconcerned.

"Here I was, expecting something else." Harry murmured, though he knew he shouldn't have. Her lips pressed into a thin line, serious as she peered at him from behind her glasses. Harry had the feeling that here, she was his judge, jury, and executioner. Being half-Ascended was clearly a vulnerable state, and he was being judged by their standards of behavior, though he wasn't Ascended or dead, yet.

"I am Gwenhwyfar, do you understand?" She asked him, and Harry got the sense that she didn't like him and wasn't patient with anyone who broke laws. Harry looked around himself, and felt disgust – this is what they were, the Ascended? Alterans had tried to escape their own extension, worked to save worlds and rebuild a people, and they lived like this forever after…? Watching and waiting, for what?

Harry had nothing else to do; he might as well rile them up enough to get an answer. If he was already so poorly judged, there was no more harm he could do to their low opinion of him.

"Yes. You were great once, with your Alliance, and your technology – but now no more, you shut yourselves in a bubble of your own making, keeping out all others who might disagree with your ways, and you see only your ruins and your guilt. You're pathetic, sitting here, letting something like him run amuck." Harry let his disgust show, sneering at the whole of the room, some stirred, and some only flipped a page in something like a newspaper.

"We have one rule, one law, do not interfere. You will obey this or suffer the consequences." Gwenhwyfar hissed with her eyes narrowed upon him, she did not like to be ignored, Harry noticed. So he did just that, stepping away from her and addressing the others who were quietly listening.

"And look where it's gotten you? Lazing about, listening and looking, doing nothing even as the Ori pleaded, no begged, for your help – right outside your little bubble you've hid your heads in! They were your people, have you no humanity?" Harry knew at this point he was raging at them, a listeners coffee mug shattered to the floor, and whispered buzzed in the corners of the room. Harry was suddenly aware that what he was seeing wasn't all that was there.

"You are not welcome here, you will be silent." Gwenhwyfar moved so quickly all Harry saw was a blur; he was pinned to the wall by a furious Ascended whose golden hair had a life of its own. Still, he was unaware that cups rattled and the windows shook, what he was - a wizard with a bond to both Atlantis and Khthon, had never been allowed to Ascended before.

Harry could see it in her eyes that she was afraid of what would happen. Harry changed the things around him, if they were likened to immoveable objects he was the likeness of a catalyst of an irresistible force.

"No, I will not, you will listen. Does this make you feel better about it all, what you let happen? One golden law, and do you know why you have it? You're still part of what you deny, human or Alterans. When you were Alterans, you seeded this galaxy and others like it. You are responsible for all the people who have suffered under thing like the Wraith, the Replicators, the Goa'uld, and you've done nothing all this time but feel guilty and upheld your law among each other. You forget what it means to live!" He spoke softly, urging her to hear him and listen and not just shut him out because of her fear.

"Then that is your punishment, Harry Potter. You will teach us how to live with the humanity we have forgotten." Gwenhwyfar let him go, and Harry gave her a confused look as he felt something in him that had been stretching like a rubber band suddenly start moving in the opposite way. What was torn in him would not allow him to be farther away then what he was, he felt suddenly as if his feet were yanked out from under him, and he was flung backwards into the dark (or light?) where Atlantis and Khthon were waiting to catch him.

Harry woke up, and knew two things from experience, the first that he wasn't alone, and the second was that he was in a place that smelled like a hospital. Harry stretched his neck to see who was there and felt sore all over, Daniel sat at his bedside – asleep. Harry nudged him with a hand that was numb and he was grateful not to feel.

"Hey," Harry greeted sleepy blue eyes; guiltily Daniel flushed and looked quickly around to see if he had been caught by anyone else napping, "what happened?" Harry asked, because obviously something had happened, one didn't normally wake up on one side of the galaxy after nearly killing themselves in another.

"I should be asking you that, really. You're at Stargate Command, bed rest while Jack's grounding you. You just…appeared here. It was the Ascended, we think." Harry felt around inside his head, and the bond that linked him to Atlantis and Khthon greeted him, warm and welcoming. He didn't feel torn in two, didn't feel half-dead or half-Ascended, but was, because what Daniel wasn't saying was that Harry's skin really was a golden glow.

"It was. I've got a lot to tell you, I guess." Harry was feeling a little bit guilty, and Daniel was being nice enough about not taking advantage.

"No need, I filled them in about all of it." Reese piped up, having skipped into the room. Harry wondered if the medical machines had told her he was awake, and decided the answer was probably something he didn't need to know.

"All of it?" Harry asked, raising an eyebrow. There was a lot to tell, after all, and if he didn't have to explain it, so much the better.

"All of it." Reese confirmed with a nod, sitting at the edge of Harry's bed and flicking hair out of his face, the gesture wasn't awkward for her. "There was more time then you think. It's been two weeks, I had to say something, and Elizabeth gave me the okay." Reese defended herself, and then sulked a little bit before perking up and looking to Daniel.

"Now that he's awake and everything…when are we going back to Atlantis?" She asked Daniel, who then glanced to Harry as if to measure his reaction. They hadn't parted in the best of ways, and Harry had left both Reese and Daniel behind, and they weren't forgetting it.

"We?" Harry mused softly, and Reese stiffened up her nose curling as if she heard a argument beginning in his words.

"Yes, Daniel is coming with us, or do you know another person who has been an Ascended, then Descended, and died a few times more then you have?" Reese asked, poking him in the side insistently. Harry laughed and shook his head, giving up the point to her.

"Well, Voldemort." Harry answered, and then had to wonder if that really counted now.

"Oh, Harry, why do you always get yourself into such…messes?" Reese asked, apparently satisfied that Harry really was awake for good and intended to stay that way, at least for a little while.

"So what did they ask of you?" why did they let you go? Is what Harry supposed Daniel's question really was, and he grimaced a little and wondered if he really should tell them... Daniel looked aside, and Reese had tensed up, so it was too late to lie when they were excepting it.

"I'm to teach them, you know, how to be …human, to live." Harry answered with the truth, and Reese laughed, swinging her feet delightedly from where they hung off his bed.

"Oh, no….just imagine it, Daniel! In a few years all the Ascended will have hero complexes!" Reese crowed teasingly, she patted his leg and hopped off, then looked over her shoulder at him.

"Better hurry up and get to walking out of here soon, when Atlantis diverted an entire fighting force of wizards and witches to its own world…. you can't imagine how worried over you they get. Especially this one boy, Teddy - he keeps trying to get messages through the 'Gate - we think the Alterans are helping him now, as a subtle sort of revenge at us for letting you get hurt." Reese was gone, probably sprinting and skipping through the halls, singing out about Harry waking up. Daniel laughed as Harry covered his head with a pillow, pretending sleep.

O.o.O.o.O.o.O

Note; Congratulations are in order for calileane, whose prompt is;

Harry Potter/Angel, Harry/Angel (slash), Harry is sentenced to go through the Veil of Death, he walks in from the side of the Wizarding World, and walks on the other side..... It happens just as Holtz runs through a portal with baby Connor. When Holtz arrive where he wanted to be, baby Connor isn't in his arms anymore. When Harry senses the portal closing behind him, he has a baby in his arms and many people in front of him, one of which is Angel.

Now, this time, whoever hits review two-hundred-and-forty (240), and then two-hundred-and-fifty (250) is going to get a prompt written by me! I won't promise any certain length, but I'll contact you in due time after the review about what sort of prompt you want.