Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter series.

A/N: This story deviates from canon at exactly the same point as my other HP pic, About A Boy, but will evolve into something quite different.

Note on title: Elba is the name of the island where Napoleon Bonaparte went on his 300-day exile after losing the French throne in 1814. You'll see how this connects to the story soon :)

Enjoy and please leave a review to let me know how you think! And now onto the Final Battle ...

For the second time that day, Harry Potter wakes up to an all-encompassing, almost suffocating whiteness. As expected, he looks down and finds himself in his birthday suit. Think of clothes. Done. Dignity managed. He gets up and surveys the now familiar surroundings. King's Cross but not quite King's Cross. Eerie silence. Bench. Ugly, wailing infant under the bench. Great.

Just fuckin' great.

"What do you think this all means, sir?" Harry asks his twinkly-eyed headmaster, who's just appeared out of seemingly nowhere, same as s last time. Except that the old man's sky blue eyes aren't really twinkling at the moment. If anything, Harry would go so far as to say that Albus Dumbledore looks right shocked. Flabbergasted, even.

"Professor?"

"Harry… this is, well, not unexpected." Dumbledore starts, a little hesitantly. "I'm sorry if I led you to arrive at premature conclusions. I guess, it was … wishful thinking on my part."

At that reply, Harry feels something in him suddenly snap. "Wishful – so you knew all along? That I'm still – that he – God!" Harry knows he should probably calm down and get as many answers as possible, but he's now vaguely aware of a tugging sensation – it's most unsettling. "And you think this – " He gestures towards the depressing whiteness all around them. " – this would happen every time he or I –"

"Harry…"

"I won, professor." Harry presses on, now relatively level-headed. "I… Voldemort should by all means be dead right now; his own killing curse rebounded because I'm the true master of the Elder Wand. And his piece of soul in me was supposed to have bloody died, wasn't it? That's all that I was supposed to figure out – on my own, I might add – right?"

"Soul magic, Harry, works in mysterious ways. No one has truly mastered it, and despite what Tom might claim, he has only scratched the surface, leading only to his own downfall."

"He's made a fool out of himself, isn't that it? Him destroying his own last horcrux unknowingly?" Harry can't help but raise his voice again. "I thought it was supposed to be ironic – freaking poetic justice or whatnot. I made that whole speech on how it was just him and me with no horcruxes left too! But of course Avada Cadevra is not the same as a basilisk's fang! Should've know, shouldn't I? And now that jokes on me!"

"No, it's not a joke, and certainly not a joke on you, Harry. All is not how it seems, but everything may take a turn for the better yet."

Harry stops his pacing and stares at the old man. What does that even mean? Afterlife must be grating on one's ability to communicate clearly with us mortals, Harry thinks wryly. "Professor, last time, you said that I had a choice. And I made my choice, although … well." The tugging is getting stronger by the second, as if something's trying to drag him out of here. Probably back to the land of the living. A living hell.

When he speaks again, his voice is calm and steady. "If I choose to pass on now, sir, will Voldemort perish with me?"

Dumbledore looks at him for a long moment. "Harry, my dear boy…"

"But I don't really have a choice this time, do I?" Harry cuts his old headmaster off yet again. The tugging is nearly unbearable now; his own voice sounds oddly far away. Harry gathers he doesn't have much time.

"If I did have a choice though, I'd still make the same one, this time and the next. I have too much to lose, even now; I've too much I haven't done. Does that make me a terrible person, I wonder? For being too selfish to rid the world of such evil?" Dumbledore begins to say something but Harry doesn't give him the chance. No time to lose.

"Say hello to my parents and Sirius for me, will you, Headmaster? You do see them, right?" Harry can hardly make out Dumbledore's face anymore, with the white haze closing in. The painful cries of the infant have faded into nothingness at some point along the way. "And Remus and Fred and Tonks and ... and everyone else. But now I have to go back…"

And goes back he does. Even through the thick fogginess Harry swears he could see Dumbledore smile reassuringly, his blue eyes twinkling again. But that could just be a trick of the mind; Merlin knows that he's had plenty of those recently. Harry closes his eyes and lets the whiteness engulf him, taking him far, far away.

Then he opens his eyes to skull splitting plain originating from his scar. Did his scar hurt before, when he and Voldemort were circling each other like two rabid alpha wolves? He can't recall. It could have hurt, but he was so pumped up on adrenaline that he couldn't feel anything other than his magic and nervous energy coursing through his veins. But now his head is exploding. Hot tears streak down his cheeks and he doesn't even attempt to hold them in. it's darn hard to see through the tears and the pain, but the sight before him is incredible.

Where Voldemort fell, there is now a huge swirl of dark smoke hovering about a feet above the ground, twisting, changing, slowly morphing into a human-like shape. It looks like, Harry suddenly realizes, it looks exactly like the ritual he witnessed that fateful night in the Little Hangleton graveyard, when his greatest enemy rose again using his own blood. But this time, there is no fire, no cauldron, no snivelling rat cutting off his hand for his master. So what on earth is going on?

Along with all those present to bear witness to the Final Battle, Harry is rooted to the spot and watches, with equal parts dread and fascination, the smoke gradually settle on the ground, revealing a skeletal figure crouched in a foetal position, pale as death. Harry is overrun with the most unpleasant sense of déjà vu until he realizes, with a start, that this figure has … hair on its skull. Medium length, dark brown hair, wet and all messy. And instead of drawing up to its full menacing height like what happened in the graveyard, the figure simply slumps to the ground, unmoving.

And his scar doesn't hurt anymore.

Harry blinks hard, wiping at his eyes absent-mindedly. The world is in focus again. Very carefully, he takes two steps towards the figure on the ground, then two more. The thin frame still doesn't move. Is Voldemort dead after all? That would be ... ideal, but … Harry can now make out a very minute rise and fall of the bony chest, but he hasn't been able to trust his eyes lately. Oh hell, only one way to be sure.

The crowd around them remains stock still and dead silent. Harry kneels beside the figure and takes a good look at it. The face is unnaturally gaunt and pale, but still unmistakably belongs to one Tom Marvolo Riddle, from the diary, from the memories in Dumbledore's pensieve. In fact, the pathetic creature before him looks almost exactly like the troubled man who came into Dumbledore's office and applied for the post of DADA professor for the second time; already consumed by the darkness, but still sporting his muggle father's good looks. Still more charming than frightening.

Still human.

Sodding brilliant, innit? Horcruxes now serve as timestamps too?

Harry reaches out and places one hand on the side of Riddle's neck. The skin is clammy and way too cold to the touch and Harry's trying his best not to get sick. The crowd gasps and starts murmuring amongst themselves, but Harry pays them no mind. Pressing harder, he can feel a very faint pulse, slow and weak but surely there.

"Still alive, eh? Bastard …" And Harry can't help it anymore. He throws his head back and laughs. Uncontrollably, like a mad man, Harry laughs and laughs and laughs, at Voldemort's egoistic stupidity, at Dumbledore's secretiveness and good-willed manipulations, at Irony, but mostly at himself and that hopeless fool of a jokester called Fate – until tears flow freely down his cheeks once more. The soft murmur around them has risen tenfold into loud and anxious chatter. Let them have their fun – they think the Boy-Who-Lived has finally lost it! Harry couldn't care less.

"Harry! Harry, what's going on?" Ron calls out frantically. "We all saw him struck down by the killing curse, and I thought, finally, it was over. But then – then he just up and disappeared, turned into dust, as if, and there was this strange smoke and you were kind of zoning out there …" The red-headed young man trailed off mid-ramble, staring at his still manically gleeful friend, more than a little concerned. Ron and Hermione are the only ones with the audacity to come closer, although they're still standing a safe distance away from the body on the ground. With a flick of his want, Harry summons a school blanket to cover his fallen nemesis – not that he gives a damn about Riddle's dignity, but if the bastard does freeze to death, Harry will be subjected to another round trip to Not-King's-Cross and one hell of a headache, and that doesn't sound inviting, ever. Harry's friends seem to relax a little.

"What's going on? Well, horcruxes! Isn't it obvious?" Harry exclaims, most likely still looking and sounding pretty deranged. Horrified realization starts to dawn on Hermione's face, but she looks like she'd happily eat her wand just so her conjecture wouldn't be true. At his still confused best mate, Harry patiently prompts.

"Ron, what're the only ways to destroy a horcrux?"

"Huh? Oh, well, Godric's sword, a basilisk's fang, Fiend … Oh. Blimey…"

"Yes, yes, the little green curse didn't stand a chance …" Harry says dismissively. Should he feel tainted again? Dirty? He has in him a piece of a mass murderer's soul, a sad little thing that knows nothing but pain, and, Merlin forbid, will never know anything other than pain. And Harry will carry it around with him as long as he values life. Perhaps he should feel more disgusted at that prospect.

"So you and him … Oh Merlin …" Ron now sports a very similar expression to Hermione's.

"He and I, yes – I do believe we're supposed to live happily ever after." Harry remarks flippantly, still wearing a rather unhinged grin. Take that, Trelawney! Take that, thrice-cursed prophecy! Neither can live my arse …

"So, what now?" Hermione asks quietly, having finally found her voice.

What now, indeed? Harry glances down at Riddle's still form, and sighs. "Well … I've made a decision. I guess I'd better learn to live with it."