I Open at the Close

Author: Dreamwind

Fandom: Harry Potter/Temeraire

Rating: NC-17/Explicit

Series: N/A

Pairing: Harry Potter/William Laurence, Harry Potter/Temeraire

Additional Pairing: Temeraire/Iskierka, Tenzing Tharkay/Severus Snape, William Laurence/Jane Roland

Characters: Harry Potter, Hedwig (Harry Potter), Temeraire, William Laurence, Admiral Jane Roland, Emily Roland, Captain Berkley, Maximus, Captain Catherine Harcourt, Lily, Captain Langford James, Volatilus (Volly), Captain John Granby, Iskierka, Tenzing Tharkay, Demane, Kulingile, Arkady, Prince Yongxing, Lung Tien Lien,

Warnings: Violence, Crossover, Crossover Pairing, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dragons, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Author's Note: In this AU Snape is smart enough to plan for the Dark Lord's inevitable betrayal, and survives Nagini's attack. So she is alive through all of The Deathly Hallows. Also, large parts of the prologue are taken word-for-word (or close to) from HP book 7. But if you've read the books you'll recognize where my portions comes in.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is owned by J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Books, Bloomsbury Books, and Warner Brothers. The Temeraire series and characters are owned by Naomi Novik, Del Ray Books. This is a work of fiction not authorized, or in conjunction with, the official books and movies. I make no money from this work of fiction.

Summary: The final battle goes a little differently and Harry finds himself with new options on moving forward.

Prologue: The Beginning At The End

1997; The Forbidden Forest, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Scotland

A swarm of demeanors was gliding amongst the trees; he could feel their chill, and he was not sure he would be able to pass safely through. He had no strength left for a Patronus. He could no longer control his trembling. It was not, after all, so easy to die. Every second he breathed, the smell of grass, the cool air on his face, was so precious: To think that people had years and years, time to waste, so much time it dragged, and he was clinging to each second. At the same time he thought that he would not be able to go on, and knew that he must. The long game was ended, the Snitch had been caught, it was time to leave the air…

The Snitch. His nerveless fingers fumbled for a moment with the pouch at his neck and he pulled it out.

I open at the close.

Breathing fast and hard, he stared down at it. Now that he wanted time to move as slowly as possible, it seemed to have sped up, and understanding was coming so fast it seemed to have bypassed thought. This was the close. This was the moment.

He pressed the golden metal to his lips and whispered, "I am about to die."

The metal shell broke open. He lowered his shaking hand, raised Draco's wand beneath the Cloak, and murmured, "Lumos."

The black stone with a jagged crack running down the center sat in the two halves of the Snitch. The Resurrection Stone had cracked down the vertical line representing the Elder Wand. The triangle and circle representing the Cloak and the stone were still discernible.

And again Harry understood without having to think. It did not matter about bringing them back, for he was about to join them. He was not really fetching them: They were fetching him.

He closed his eyes and turned the stone over in his hand three times.

He knew it had happened, because he heard slight movements around I'm that suggested frail bodies shifting their footing on the earthy, twig-strewn ground that marked the outer edge of the forest. He opened his eyes and looked around.

They were neither ghost nor truly flesh, he could see that. They resembled most closely the Riddle that had escaped from the diary so long ago, and he had been memory made nearly solid. Less substantial than living bodies, but much more than ghosts, they moved toward him, and on each face, there was the same loving smile.

James was exactly the same height as Harry. He was wearing the clothes in which he had died, and his hair was untidy and ruffled, and his glasses were a little lopsided, like Mr. Weasley's.

Sirius was tall and handsome, and younger by far than Harry had seen him in life. He loped with easy grace, his hands in his pockets and a grin on his face.

Lupin was younger too, and much less shabby, and his hair was thicker and darker. He looked happy to be back in this familiar place, scene of so many adolescent wanderings.

Lily's smile was widest of all. She pushed her long hair back as she drew close to him, and her green eyes, so like his, searched his face hungrily, as though she would never be able to look at him enough.

"You've been so brave."

He could not speak. His eyes feasted on her, and he thought that he would like to stand and look at her forever, and that would be enough.

"You are nearly there," said James. "Very close. We are…so proud of you."

"Does it hurt?"

The childish question had fallen from Harry's lips before he could stop it.

"Dying? Not at all," said Sirius. "Quicker and easier than falling asleep."

"And he will want it to be quick. He wants it over," said Lupin.

"I didn't want you to die," Harry said. These words came without his violation. "Any of you. I'm sorry-"

"I am sorry too," said Lupin. "Sorry I will never know him…but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life."

A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Harry's brow. He knew that they would not tell him to go, that it would have to be his decision.

"You'll stay with me?"

"Until the very end," said James.

"They won't be able to see you," asked Harry.

"We are part of you," said Sirius. "Invisible to anyone else."

Harry looked at his mother.

"Stay close to me," he said quietly.

And he set off. The dementor's chill did not overcome him; he passed through it with his companions, and they acted like Patronuses to him, and together they marched through the old trees that grew close together, their branches tangled, their roots gnarled and twisted underfoot. Harry clutched the Cloak tightly around him in the darkness, traveling deeper and deeper into the forest, with no idea where exactly Voldemort was, but sure that he would find him. Beside him, making scarcely a sound, walked James, Sirius, Lupin, and Lily, and their presence was his courage, and the reason he was able to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

His body and mind felt oddly disconnected now, his limbs working without conscious instruction, as if he were passenger, not driver, in the body he was about to leave. The dead who walked beside him through the forest were much more real to him now than the living back at the castle: Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and all the others were the ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled and slipped towards the end of his life, toward Voldemort….

A thud and a whisper: Some other living creature had stirred close by. Harry stopped under the Cloak, peering around, listening, and his mother and father, Lupin and Sirius stopped too.

"Someone there," came a rough whisper close at hand. "He's got an Invisibility Cloak. Could it be-?"

Two figures emerged from behind a nearby tree: Their wands flared, and Harry saw Yaxley and Dolohov peering into the darkness, directly at the place Harry, his mother and father and Sirius and Lupin stood. Apparently they could not see anything.

"Definitely heard something," said Yaxley. "Animal, d'you reckon?"

"That head case Hagrid kept a whole bunch of stuff in here," said Dolohov, glancing over his shoulder when further behind Harry the trees creaked and groaned, leaves rustling and twigs crunching under the weight of a moving body. Soon enough the sounds stopped, fading off into the forest, further from where they all stood waiting.

Yaxley looked down at his watch.

"Time's nearly up. Potter's had his hour. He's not coming."

"And he was sure he'd come! He won't be happy."

"Bette go back," said Yaxley. "Find out what the plan his now."

He and Dolohov turned and walked deeper into the forest, Dolohov pausing only once to look in the direction the sounds had faded off into. Harry followed them, wondering only vaguely about the sounds, knowing that the two Death Eaters would lead him exactly where he anted to go. He glanced sideways, and his mother smiled at him, and his father nodded encouragement.

They had traveled on mere minutes when Harry saw light ahead, and Yaxley and Dolohov stepped out into a clearing that Harry knew had been the place where the monstrous Aragog had once lived. The remnants of his vast web were still there, thinned so greatly that they weaved like ghosts on the wind, revealing great swaths of trees and tall stones, but the swarm of descendants he had spawned had been driven out by the Death Eaters, to fight for their cause.

A fire burned in the middle of the clearing, and it's flickering light fell over a crowd of completely silent, watchful Death Eaters. Some of them were still masked and hooded; others showed their faces. Two giants sat on the outskirts of the group, the hulking forms barely reaching above the massive stones still trapped with the tattered remnants of Aragog's web. They cast massive shadows over the scene, their faces cruel, rough-hewn like the rock pillars beside them. Harry saw Fenrir, skulking, chewing his long nails; the great blond Rowle was dabbing as his bleeding lip. Lucius Malfoy, who looked defeated and terrified, and Narcissi, whose eyes were sunken and full of apprehension.

Every eye was fixed upon Voldemort, who stood with his head bowed, and his white hands folded over the Elder Wand in front of him. He might have been praying, or else counting silently in his mind, and Harry, standing still on the edge of the scene, thought absurdly of a child counting in a game of hide-and-seek. Behind his head, still swirling and coiling, the great snake Nagini floated in her glittering, charmed cage, like a monstrous halo.

When Dlohov and Yaxley rejoined the circle, Voldemort looked up.

"No sign of him, my Lord," said Dolohov.

Voldemort's expression did not change. The red eyes seemed to burn in the firelight. Slowly he drew the Elder Wand between long fingers.

"My Lord-"

Bellatrix had spoken: She sat closest to Voldemort, disheveled, her face a little bloody but otherwise unharmed.

Voldemort raised his hand to silence her, and she did not speak another word, but eyed him in worshipful fascination.

"I thought he would come," said Voldemort in his high, clear voice, his eyes on the leaping fames. "I expected him to come."

Nobody spoke. They seemed as scared as Harry, whose heart was now throwing itself against his ribs as though determined to escape the body he was about to cast aside. His hands were sweating as he pulled off the Invisibility Cloak and stuffed it beneath his robes, with his wand. He did not want to be tempted to fight.

"I was, it seems…mistaken," said Voldemort.

The forest rustled behind him as if to push Harry forward to face the man who had been named his death before he had even had life, at the edges he could the forest whispering to him, footsteps in the dark rushing closer. His vision tunneled in, everything feeling vaguely more dream-like than before. It would be easier than falling asleep.

"You weren't."

Harry said it as loudly as he could, with all the force he could muster: He did not want to sound afraid. The Resurrection Stone slipped from between numb fingers, he saw not where it landed, and out of the corner of his eyes he saw his parents, Sirius, and Lupin vanish as he stepped forward into the firelight. At that moment he felt that nobody mattered but Voldemort. It was just the two of them.

The Illusion was gone as soon as it had come. The giants roared as the Death Eaters rose together, and there were many cries, gasps, even laughter. Voldemort had frozen where he stood, but his red eyes had found Harry, and he stared as Harry moved towards him, with nothing but the fire between them.

Then a voice yelled: "HARRY! NO!"

He turned: Hagird was bound and trussed, tied to one of the stones nearby. His massive body shook the stone and the nearby tree branches overhead as he struggled, desperate.

"NO! NO! HARRY, WHAT'RE YEH-?"

"QUIET," shouted Rowle, and with a flick of his wand Hagrid was silenced.

Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from Voldemort to Harry, her breast heaving. The only things that move were the flames and the snake, coiling and uncoiling in the glittering cage behind Voldemort's head.

Harry could feel his wand against his chest, but he made no attempt to draw it. He knew that the snake was too well protected, knew that if he managed to point the wand at Nagini, fifty curses would hit him first. And still, Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and now Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side, considering the boy standing before him, and a singularly mirthless smile curved the lipless mouth.

"Harry Potter," he said very softly. His voice might have been part of the spitting fire. "The Boy Who Lived."

None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: Everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and how he wished he had told her the truth when they parted ways, wished that someone had know the truth of him-

Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear-

His eyes widened momentarily as the black shadow behind Voldemort moved, a strangely glowing green liquid arching through the air to land over Nagini's golden cage, melting through the bars to ooze down over the snake's coiling body, bursting into violent blue flames that shrieked in the night, lighting the snake up like a firework until there was nothing but a coil of black ash were she had once been. Voldemort roared, spinning to face the dark shape, one hand clenched in his robes over his heart, the other raised still, but trembling as the figure lurched out of the darkness, his normal grace lost along with all the blood that stained the front of his normally pristine robes.

"YOU! YOU SHOULD BE DEAD," Voldemort yelled.

The world rushed back in on Harry in a wave of sound, frightened, angry yelling, the roaring of the giants thrumming up through his feet like the tremors of an earthquake. Everything seemed to suddenly be moving too fast for him to track as he watched Snape still into the clearing, over the smoldering corpse of Nagini. Snape's dark eyes met his briefly before flicking back to Voldemort, a sneer spreading over his features, the too pale color of his skin glowing eerily in the firelight, his throat stained red from his blood which had poured from Nagini's bite, and his dark clothes were doing their best to blend into the deep shadows of the ancient trees and stones that encircled them.

"I have a promise to keep."

Voldemort snarled, a fiery whip snapping out from his wand, ensnaring the potions master and through him through the air to crash to the ground at Harry's feet, trapping him between Voldemort, the Death Eaters, the giants, the fire, and the circle of stones. Snape winced slightly as he pushed himself to his knees, Harry reached out, placing his hands on Snape's arm to help him up to his feet. Together they stood facing Voldemort, Snape standing just in front of Harry as he had so long ago on a night flood with the light of a full moon.

He saw that lipless mouth move and a flash of green light, raising one arm in front of his face Harry waited for the world to drop away, as easier than falling asleep like Sirius had said.

"My Lord…my Lord…"

It was Bellatrix's voice, and she spoke as if to a lover. Harry stalled thickly, not wanting to open his eyes, but needing to know. He could feel his wand beneath his robes, burning against his chest as if to force him to take it in hand.

"My Lord," cooed Bellatrix.

"That will do," said Voldemort in a commanding tone.

Harry force his eyes open, wondering why he wasn't dead yet, but slowly feeling a growing horror in his chest deepen as what he didn't want to think had happened, proved true. At his feet lay the crumpled body of Severus Snape.

Harry dropped to his knees, his vision blurring from rising tears. He didn't want anymore people to die because of him, he didn't want this. He didn't want to feel this guilt anymore, he didn't want to see anymore soulless eyes staring back at him.

Fist clenching on Snape's robes, Harry snatched his wand from where it was pressed against his chest, aiming it at Voldemort, who watched him with a pleased expression on his inhuman face, Bellatrix laughing wildly at his side.

"Poor little Potter-wotter, did you lose another? Boo hoo hoo," she cackled madly.

"Bellatrix," snapped Voldemort, pushing her back into the circle of watching Death Eaters. "It is just you and I now, Potter. Give up this fight. You've already lost."

A cold fire burned at the back of his throat, as kneeled there, wand arm raised and trembling, Snape's head resting in his lap. As if in slow motion, Harry met Voldemort's murderous red eyes one last time.

"You won't be killing anyone else tonight," said Harry in a strangely calm voice. "You won't be able to kill any of them ever again. Don't you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting the people in that castle-"

"But you did not!"

"- I meant to, and that's what counts. I'll defeat you because I have to, because there is no other option but to defeat you. I won't let their deaths be in vain."

"Love again," Voldemort sneered. "Dumbledore's favorite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death, thoughlove did not stop him falling from the tower and breaking like an old waxwork? Love, which did not prevent me stamping out your Mudblood mother like a cockroach, Potter - and no one seems to love you enough to stop you from coming to me. Snape, the traitor, is dead. Your only hope lost. So what will stop you dying now when I strike? Your Gryffindor bravery? Hardly."

"Just one thing," said Harry, his hand still resting on the shoulder of the man who had fallen to the dark because of his father and returned to the light for his mother, who had spent ten years back into the shadows because of his own guilt, and who had willingly stepped between Harry and Voldemort even knowing it was Harry's duty to die here to save them all.

"If it is not love that will save you this time," said Voldemort as he stepped closer. "You must believe that you have magic that I do not, or else a weapon more powerful than mine?"

"I believe both," said Harry, feeling the warmth of the Cloak under his robe, the cold burn of the stone near his feet, and the electric pulse of the wand pointing towards him in Voldemort's own hand. Shock flashed across the snake-like face, though it was instantly dispelled; Voldemort began to laugh, and the sound was more frightening than his screams; humorless and insane, it echoed around the silent grove.

"You think you know more magic than I do," he said. "Than I, than Lord Voldemort, who has performed magic that Dumbledore himself never dreamed of?"

"Oh, he dreamed of it," said Harry, watching lines of glowing teal come to life on the stones, "but he knew more than you, knew enough not to do what you've done."

"You mean he was weak," screamed Voldemort. "Too weak to dare, too weak to take what might have been his, what will be mine!"

"No, he was cleverer than you," said Harry, the lines in the stone glowing brighter, forming runes where they met, "a better wizard, a better man."

"I brought about the death of Albus Dumbledore!"

"You thought you did," said Harry, "but you were wrong."

For the first time, the watching crowd stirred an drew breath as one, waiting to see the inevitable climax.

"Dumbledore is dead!" Voldemort hurled the words at Harry as though they would cause him unendurable pain. "His body decays in the marble tomb in the grounds of this castle, I have seen it, Potter, and he will not return!"

"Yes, Dumbledore is dead," said Harry calmly, "but you didn't have him killed. He chose his own manner of dying, chose it months before he died, arranged the whole thing with the man you thought was your servant."

"What childish dream is this," Voldemort snarled, but still he did not strike, and his red eyes did not wavier from Harry's.

"Severus Snape wasn't your," said Harry, "Snape was Dumbledore's, Dumbledore's from the moment you started hunting down my mother. And you never realized it, because of the thing you can't understand. You never saw Snape cast a Patronus, did you, Riddle?"

Voldemort did not answer, just glanced quickly down at the pale body clutched in Potter's arms.

"Snape's Patronus was a doe," said Harry, "the same as my mother's, because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from the moment they met as children. You should have realized," he said as he saw Voldemort's nostrils flare, "he asked you to spare her life, didn't he?"

"He desired her, that was all," sneered Voldemort, unwilling even after watching Snape kill Nagini and defend Potter, to believe that his most trusted follower was a traitor, "but when she had gone, he agreed that there were other women, and of purer blood, worthier of him-"

"Of course he told you that," said Harry, pride and courage welling up inside, "but he was Dumbledore's spy from the moment you threatened her, and he's been working against you ever since! Dumbledore was already dying when Snape killed him!"

"It matters not," shrieked Voldemort, who had followed every word with rapt attention, but now let out a cake of mad laughter. "It matters not whether Snape was mine or Dumbledore's, or what petty obstacles they tried to put in my path! I crushed them as I crushed your mother, Snape's supposed great love! Oh, but it all makes sense, Potter, and in ways that you do not understand!"

Voldemort paced in front of him, his manic grin growing ever wider, his red eyes locked solely on Harry, ignoring everyone and everything around him. His Death Eaters doing much the same, not willing to miss seeing Harry Potter finally defeated, and a new reign, a pureblood reign, being born.

"Dumbledore was trying to keep the Elder Wand from me! He intended that Snape should have be the true master of the wand! But I got there ahead of you, little boy - I reached the wand before you could get your hands on it, I understood the truth before you caught up. I killed him Severus Snape three hours ago, and killed him again just now, and the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny is truly mine! Dumbledore's plan went wrong, Harry Potter!"

"Yeah, it did," said Harry. "You're right. But before you try to kill me, I'd advise you to think about what you've done…Think, and try for remorse because Dumbledore's last plan hasn't backfired for me yet. But it's backfired for you, Riddle."

"You dare!" Voldemort's hand was trembling on the Elder Wand, and Harry gripped Draco's wand tightly, steadily. The moment was seconds away. All he had to do was cast his spell just after Voldemort cast his, Harry would die, and Voldemort would follow him.

"Aren't you listening? Snape never beat Dumbledore! Dumbledore's death was planned between them! Dumbledore intended to die undefeated, the wand's last true master! If all had gone as planned, the wand's power would have died with him, because it had never been won from him!"

"But then, Potter, Dumbledore as good as gave me the wand!" Voldemort's voice shook with malicious pleasure. "I stole the wand from it's last master's tomb! I removed it against it's last masters wishes! It's power is mine!"

"You still don't get get, Riddle, do you," said Harry. He shook his head, feeling a little sad that the older wizard just didn't get it. Harry understood it all too well now, and he could feel the triangle of power formed by the three Hallows echoing through him, he could feel the power building and dancing between the stones around them, and even the nervous flux of the power in the watching Death Eaters. "Possessing the wand isn't enough! Holding it, using it, doesn't make it really yours. Didn't you listen to Olivander? The wand chooses the wizard…. The Elder Wand recognized a new master before Dumbledore died, someone who never even laid a hand on it. The new master removed the wand from Dumbledore against his will, never realizing exactly what he had done, or that the world's most dangerous wand had given him it's allegiance…"

Voldemort's chest rose and fell rapidly, and Harry could feel the curse coming, feel it building inside the wand pointed at his face.

"The true master of the Elder Wand was Draco Malfoy."

Blank shock showed in Voldemort's face for a moment, but then it was gone. A rising whisper of noise echoed around the clearing at the declaration.

"But what does it matter," he said softly. "Even if you are right, Potter, it makes no difference to you and me. You no longer have the phoenix wand: We duel on skill alone…and after I have killed you, I can attend to Draco Malfoy…"

Harry heard Narcissi cry out, and caught sight of Lucius Malfoy stumble towards his wife, gripping her shoulders and pulling her out of the circle while the Dark Lord was distracted, their worry for Draco plain on their faces.

"But you're too late," said Harry. "You've missed your chance. I got there first. I overpowered Draco weeks ago. I took his wand from him."

Harry twitched the hawthorn wand, and felt the eyes of everyone on him. "So it all comes down to this, doesn't it," whispered Harry. "Does the wand in your hand know it's last master was Disarmed? Because if it does…Then I am the true master of the Elder Wand."

A bright teal glow burst suddenly across the dark cover of the forest canopy. The light hit both of their faces at the same time, so that Voldemort's was suddenly a blur of blue flames. Harry heard the high voice shriek as he too yelled his best hope to the heavens, pointing Draco's wand as he clutched tightly to Snape's corpse with the other:

"Avada Kedavra," cried Voldemort just a few seconds before Harry.

"Sectumsempra!"

Harry smiled as he saw the flash of green light, and then fell backwards besides Snape, his once vibrant green eyes blank and dull, a small smile on his face. Voldemort had only a second to revel in his enemies defeat before Harry's final spell, the one Snape had made "for enemies," slammed into his chest. Voldemort fell backwards, arms splayed, the slit pupils of his scarlet eyes rolling upwards, as a arch of bright red blood erupted from his chest. Tom Riddle hit the floor with mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snake-like face vacant and unknowing.

He lay facedown, listening to the silence. He was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching, nobody was there. He was not entirely sure that he was there himself in fact.

A long time later, or maybe no time at all, it came to him that he must exist, must be more than a disembodied thought, because he was lying on some surface. Therefore he had a sense of touch, and the thing against which he lay existed too.

Almost as soon as he had reached this conclusion, Harry became conscious that he was naked. Convinced as he was of his total solitude, this did not concern him, but it did intrigue him slightly. He wondered weather, as he could feel, he would be able to see. In opening them, he discovered he had eyes.

He lay in bright mist, though it was not like mist he had ever experienced before. His surroundings were not hidden by cloudy vapor; rather the cloudy vapor had not yet formed into surroundings. The floor on which he lay seemed to be white, neither warm nor cold, but simply there, a flat, blank something on which to be.

He sat up. His body appeared unscathed. He touched his face, surprised not to feel the weight of his glasses pressing down on his sinuses. He was not wearing glasses anymore.

As he was marveling over this, a noise reached him through the unformed nothingness that surrounded him: the small soft thumping of something that flapped flailed, and struggled. It was a pitiful noise, yet also slightly indecent. He had the uncomfortable feeling that he was eavesdropping on something furtive, shameful.

For the first time, he wished he were clothed.

Barely had the wish formed in his head than robes appeared a short distance away. He took them and pulled them on: They were soft, clean, and warm. It was extraordinary how they had appeared, just like that, the moment he wanted them….

He stood up, looking around. Was he somehow in some great Room of Requirement? The longer he looked, the more there was to see. A great doomed glass roof glittered high above him in the sunlight. Perhaps it was a palace. All was hushed and still, except for those odd thumping and whimpering noises coming from somewhere close by in the mist…

Harry slowly turned on the spot, and his surroundings seemed to invent themselves before his eyes. A wide-open space, bright and clean, a hall larger by far than the Great Hall, with that clear, domed glass ceiling. It was quite empty. He was the only person there, except for -

He recoiled. He had spotted the thing that was making the noises. It had the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and rough, flayed-looking, and it lay shuddering under a seat where it had been left, unwanted, stuffed out of sight, struggling for breath.

He was afraid of it. Small and fragile and wounded though it was, he did not want to approach it. Nevertheless he drew slowly nearer, ready to jump back at any moment. Soon he stood near enough to touch it, yet he could not bring himself to do it. He felt like a coward. He ought to comfort it, but it repulsed him.

"You cannot help."

He spun to around. Albus Dumbledore was walking towards him, sprightly and upright, wearing sweeping robes of midnight blue.

"Harry." He spread his arms wide, and his hands were both whole, white, and undamaged. "You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man. Let us walk."

Stunned, Harry followed as Dumbledore strode away, leading him to two seats that Harry had not previously noticed, set some distance away under that high, sparkling ceiling. Dumbledore sat down in one of them, and Harry quickly took the other, staring at his old headmaster's face. Dumbledore's long silver hair and beard, the piercingly blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles, the crooked nose: Everything was as he had remembered, and yet…..

"But you're dead," said Harry.

"Oh yes," he replied matter-of-factly. "So are you, in a sense."

"I don't understand." Harry rubbed at his scar. "But I should have died - I was hit by the Killing Curse. I let him kill me!"

"And that," said Dumbledore, "will, I think, have made all the difference."

Happiness seemed to radiate from Dumbledore like light, like fire: Harry had never seen the man so utterly, so palpably content.

"Explain."

"But you already know," said Dumbledore.

"I let him kill me," said Harry. "I purposely let him cast the spell first so that I would die before he did. Didn't I?"

"You did," said Dumbledore, nodding. "Go on!"

"So the part of his soul that was in me…"

Dumbledore nodded still more enthusiastically, urging Harry onward, a brad smile of encouragement on his face.

"…has it gone, then?"

"Oh yes! Yes, he destroyed it. Your soul is whole, and completely your own, Harry."

Harry glanced over his shoulder to where the small, maimed creature trembled under the chair. "What is that, Professor?"

"Something that is beyond either of our help," said Dumbledore in a small sad voice.

"But if Voldemort used the Killing Curse," Harry started again, "and nobody died for me this time - how can I be alive?"

"I think you know. Think back. Remember what he did, in his ignorance, in his greed , and his cruelty."

Harry thought. He let his gaze drift over his surroundings. If it was indeed a palace in which they sat, it was an odd one, with chairs set in little rows and bits of railing here and there, and still, he and Dumbledore, and the sad creature under the chair, were the only beings there. Then the answer rose to his lips easily, without effort.

"He took my blood."

"Precisely," exclaimed Dumbledore. "He took your blood and rebuilt his living body with it! Your blood in his veins. Harry, Lily's protection inside both of you! He tethered you to life while he lives!"

"But he's dead. I killed him."

"You were the seventh Horcrux, Harry, the Horcrux he never meant to make."

"So when he used the Killing Curse on me, it killed the Horcrux but not me?"

"Yes and no, I am afraid. The Horcrux isn't a full soul, the spell killed it but it hit you as well." Dumbledore smiled at him sadly. "You are dead, but not. You bore all three Hallows at the time of your death, and the Horcrux absorbed most of the spell, and Severus' sacrifice in that sacred space activated some very old, very powerful magic as well."

"I don't understand."

"The Hallows couldn't let their master, the Master of Death, die so easily, and with that combined with the power of the stones, and the fact that Voldemort's soul absorbed the Curse, you have been brought here," said Dumbledore, waving his hand about in a gesture meant to encompass the whole of the strange mist palace.

"Where is here?"

"Well, there are many names for this place, my boy. Where do you think we are?"

Until Dumbledore had asked, Harry had not known. Now, however, he found that he had an answer to give. "King's Cross station! Except a lot cleaner and empty, and there are no trains as far as I can see."

"King's Cross station!" Dumbledore was chuckling immoderately. "Good gracious, really?"

"Well, where do you think we are," asked Harry, a little defensively.

"My dear boy, I have no idea. This is, as they say, your party."

Harry had no idea what this meant; Dumbledore was being infuriating. He glared at him, then remembered a much more pressing concern.

"Professor Snape," he said, glade to see that the words brought a look of seriousness to Dumbledore's expression.

"Professor Snape gave his life to protect you. He gave it willingly in love in a sacred place. He has been offered a chance, like you yourself are being offered, a choice."

"A choice?"

"Oh yes." Dumbledore smiled at him. "We're at King's Cross, you say? I think that if you decided to, you would be able to…let's say…board a train."

"And where would it take me?"

"Who can rightly say." Dumbledore smiled a little wistfully as they watched a train appear from the mist as if it had always been there. "Onward, I expect, to another adventure."