Bound through the Ages

Disclaimer; Anything in this that you recognise either belong to J.K.Rowling or Square Enix and definitely not me. Anything plot-wise that you recognise is purely accidental.

Chapter 1; Becoming

The worst punishment known to non-magical people is execution whether by hanging, decapitation, firing squad, stoning or in more modern times the lethal injection. The existence of magic opened up more punishments, especially with the presence of Dementors. The advent of the 'Kiss.' The worst punishment that they could envision.

But the Powers could do one better, eternal banishment to Earth.

That is what they sentenced Harry Potter to after he destroyed the world as we know it.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

Zanarkand

Harry watched in contemplative silence from the open deck of the hover ship as two armies clashed below them. The blasts from bombs echoed through the metal deck as the hover ship swerved sideways to dodge a rocket fired from the Yevon army. Harry reached out with is senses. The army of Zanarkand was losing, it wasn't drastic but it was there. Their Aeons, rampaging through the Yevonites, were doing an immense amount of damage but the technological might of the Yevonites' latest war machines were taking their toll.

Harry's hope slowly dwindled as each of the Aeon's fell to enemy fire and winced as he saw Valefor burst into pyreflies before dissipating. She was one of the eldest of the Aeon's powered by fayths. Harry sighed as the memory flooded him. He remembered the last words that Hermione had spoken to him before they made that fateful decision and cursed themselves for eternity.

"You know this is the only way Harry. We just don't have enough power on our own. If we bind these creatures to us we'll lose our Animagus abilities but we'll be strong enough to fight Voldemort!"

She'd been right and with their forms they had become powerful enough to fight against Voldemort and the monsters he had created from the Ether but they hadn't taken into account the pure thirst for destruction that Harry's form would take. They should have been happy to accept their death as it came to them rather than alter the whole world. Now they were all punished for their actions. Hermione, Ron and Neville had been bound for eternity, only freed by people with the special ability to speak to them in their bound forms. A type of person that had become known as a Summoner and his friends had become known as Aeons.

Harry was different, the power to summon his form had been hidden in a deep nexus of caves beneath the largest ocean on Earth, renamed Spira after the cataclysm. He had been punished the most severely though. He wasn't sleeping through the Ages like Hermione, Ron and Neville and others like them throughout time. He had to live it, always fighting but never happy, his soul bound to Earth so that he could never move into the Ether.

For a thousand years after he had created the Cataclysm he had watched the world regrow. Nothing was the same, the seven continents of Earth had vanished. Oceans had become deserts and landmasses had become great oceans. Magic itself had been fundamentally changed by his form, peoples very lives had ended and been remade. Through it all two major powers had come into being. Zanarkand in the north and Yevon in the south. Over the last two hundred years they had been at war and Zanarkand was slowly losing.

Harry glanced over his shoulder passed the command group watching the battle with saddened faces. He started walking and they instantly split to allow him passage, scared of his presence. They all knew what he was, a trapped human with a sleeping titan bound within him waiting to be released by any summoner. He stopped at the rear of the craft and stared out across the night sky, horribly lit by fires and rising pyreflies from the deceased.

Out across the landscape he could make out the high buildings of Zanarkand. This was the last battle and when they lost it would be the end of Zanarkand. Yevon would win but the Zanarkadians had another plan, a last strike that would destroy them both. Harry had almost pleaded with them to stop but they had ignored him. They would freeze Zanarkand in time for millennia, a living dream controlled by the last survivors of Zanarkand using Harry's form to carve the path in the Ether for it to live in.

He spun back to the front as a Yevon ship crashed into the side of their own. Harry pulled out his sword in an instant and it burst into life. The blade was actually two blades that criss-crossed on one plane as it left the hilt. In the three spaces between the blades lightning crackled as he jumped into the air and brought the sword down on the first Yevonite that jumped onto the platform. Lightning span out and struck two more Yevonites and they were blasted back into their comrades.

Harry swung his sword out to the side in anger as he felt a great power pull at his very essence. The air around him became distorted as what looked like mist rippled through the air. He growled in defeat, knowing that any chance to stop it from happening had been lost to him.

Five of the Yevonites swung their swords at him but the Myst froze their blades into place and before anyone could react they slumped to the ground, their bodies twisted and the pyreflies screaming in pain as they were banished away from him. Harry drew up his own Black magic and focused it on the enemy craft.

Magic itself had been warped so much that nothing he had learnt at Hogwarts was possible. All beings had magic now as long as they chose to wield it and with enough training magic became more powerful but it was fixed into certain magicks. White, Black and Green. He summoned his Black magic and cast a power Flare attack in the centre of the craft.

He didn't care that the attack not only blew up the enemy craft but engulfed his own. They spiralled away and towards the ground as they became just one fireball before exploding as they landed within the Yevonite troops. Harry however had become more than mere gravity could handle. He stayed where he was with his sword stretched to the side and an ever growing cloud of Myst around him that killed anything it touched.

If it hadn't been so long since he had cried he might have sobbed at the feeling of death around him as hundreds died. Then the filling sensation as all of those lives and their magic was sucked into him. The Myst cloud collapsed into itself like a dying sun leaveing his form to crash towards the ground.

The being he had become wasn't one that could be described by any other. It was power, unlike anything that had ever been seen, beyond that of the other Aeons yet still an Aeon. He landed on four huge feet as he snapped his jaws at those still alive on the ground who could only watch in horror as more and more succumbed to the Myst that spiralled around him sucking out the very souls of all that it touched. Finally enormous wings burst out from his sides, but they weren't material wings but wings of magic, of Myst, or Power.

A burst of Myst shot from him as his wings expanded sending all of those on the battlefield into an early grave as the ground was ruptured. The Myst changed everything it touched, the ground warped and cracked as mountains began to rise around him. He roared in the desolation but the sound only caused more destruction.

The world would change again and this time it wasn't Harry's fault. The Zanarkand survivors were protected from him by their own summoning and they would sleep on within these mountains for eternity just as Hermione, Ron and Neville did in different places around the world.

There was nobody who could stop this now, he'd rage across Spira, leaving desolation in his wake until it wasn't worth remaining. Even the Powers that had bound him to Earth couldn't stop his fury, only punish him after it was done.

He knees flexed from the summit of a newly created mountain and he leapt into the air and down onto the Yevon staging area. Nobody in Spira was safe now, especially none of the Yevon cities that had destroyed his home for the last five hundred years.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

Besaid Island - Southern Island Chain - 2000 years after Hogwarts

Harry still walked the Earth watching all those around him as they won their rights to be remembered and then passed into history. He, however, how slowly passed through memory and into the forgotten tomes. His deeds as an Aeon had been forgotten, the devastation blamed on fighting nations and then the ensuring belief that their woes were the fault of passed nations' indiscretions.

He had tried to stop the man known as Yu Yevon, then leader of the Yevonites who had survived his destruction. He had spent his life trying to find a way to unite all of the torn Spira under one control and keep them from ever getting to the level where the people could break that control.

Thus Sin was born, something that even Harry's Aeon couldn't defeat in open combat though he hadn't tried it and didn't want to even imagine the devastation that would ensue from the two titans' battle.

Yu Yevon hadn't foreseen that a Summoner would present herself as a Fayth and using the power of her Guardian had summoned a mighty Aeon that had ripped the core of Sin away into the Ether and thereby destroyed it. Harry had seen the catch though as soon as Yunalesca died from the Summoning, the power that Yu Yevon had created had slowly gathered into the husk of the Final Summoning and over a period taken the form of Sin to once again wreak havoc on Spira. That was the way of it now. Sin would reign over Spira while Summoners pilgramaged to each of the known Fayths in the hope that when they reached Yunalesca's Fayth in the ruins of Zanarkand they would be ready to forfeit their own lives to bring a Calm of no more than ten years to Spira before the cycle began over.

Harry knew from experience that all things came to an end. The huge expanse of a world he had been born into had come to an end at his own hand, the technological marvel that followed had fallen to wars and now it was only a matter of time before somebody found a way to counter Yu Yevon's design and conquer Sin.

Only one person didn't fall and that was him, no matter how much he wanted to. He did have one thing going for him though, a separate life. One where he didn't have to worry about petty problems. The Sleepers, as he had called them, the ones that had summoned his Aeon before freezing their memory of Zanarkand into an ever continuing dream, they had given him the chance to come and go from their dream as he wished. He could wander the streets of Zanarkand just as he had a thousand years ago. See the people grow and flourish just like they had wanted to.

But they had upset that fragile balance ten years ago by giving body to one of their dreams. A man called Jecht, a dream given flesh by the Sleepers to find a solution to Yu Yevon. He had been an arrogant man when he first arrived talking about being a Blitzball Star in Zanarkand. Blitzball was a zero-gravity, water based game similar to the ancient game of water-polo. It was one of the only things that had survived from Zanarkand.

Jecht had quickly learnt that talking about a living Zanarkand wasn't the best way to make friends in Spira. Zanarkand now lay in ruins yet it is a holy place that none may befoul or face justice at the hands of Yevon. Harry found that rather Ironic since it had been them that had driven it to its destruction.

Jecht had been captured by Yevon for his wild tales but a fledgling Summoner and his protecting Guardian had bailed him out in return for his services as a Guardian and they had pilgramaged through Spira as a trio and after a hard six months they had defeated Sin and therefore bound Jecht to be the next, and current, Sin.

Harry had travelled far more in the last ten years then he had in the previous one hundred. He could feel Sin rising from his temporary prison and could almost sense the tension in the air and this time it excited him. A wide gap was opening between his two worlds. Sin was slowly bending his existence into the Sleeper's world and from Harry's home on a small Island in the South he intended to follow.

Time had ensured that his passage to and from the Sleeper's world was an easy and quick one, all he had to do was fall into a Summoner's trance and guide his magic to join with the Sleepers. They welcomed him as they always did and Harry was inside the Dreamworld far before Sin was.

He came into existence standing on the roof of the Zanarkand Blitzball Arena. A huge circle of seating with a large floating ball of water in the centre that two teams were swimming through. He smiled as he watched the Zanarkand Abes trounce their opponents. He had always liked that team especially since their star player was Jecht's own son. Tidus was a fascination to him and had been since Jecht had left the Dreamworld leaving a wife and seven year old son on their own. Ten years had passed and the Sleepers had fed all the power that they could into him but that power wasn't his to control. Harry wished he could talk to them so that he could ask them why they felt the need to give a simple boy so much of their power.

Harry felt a creeping on the back of his neck as he watched the game and turned away to look out across the city. "Ah, Jecht, so this is why you are here?" Harry muttered. "But is it for nostalgia or for another purpose that I cant see?"

Harry spied another person on a building roof far closer to the huge wall of water that Sin had formed in front of him. Instantly, Harry knew that there was something wrong with the man, not only was he standing on a ledge in front of certain doom but he smelt of the dead. "Why are the dead walking the Sleepers' path?" Harry asked in a normal voice and knew that it had carried over the mile distance because he had willed it and as a temporary Summoner of this world it would happen though he made sure that only the man had heard him.

Said man spun around and in an instant Harry had moved and reappeared on the ledge behind where the man had been but now facing him. "So it is Sir Auron that walks beyond his grave. Guardian to High Summoner Braska and companion to our friend here." Harry smirked at him. "Tell me, Sir Auron. Why is Jecht in the Sleepers' world if not for the sake of destroying it?"

"Who are you?" Auron asked him since Harry wasn't ever recognisable as himself here though only because a deep cloud of Myst leaked from his body distorting his features into that of a ghost.

"The beginning and the end of all." Harry chuckled sardonically. "He is here for his son then as they have predicted. Let's see who's story is the more interesting."

XOXOXOXOXOXOX

Harry watched without emotion as Sin's wave of water demolished Zanarkand and with it its population. Harry knew that this wasn't the end. The Sleepers would simply repair the damage and the city would live on again. But as Harry watched from the end of a torn road he knew that something was changing.

Two forms battled their way through a multitude of Sin Spawn, small bug like creatures that clung to Sin like a second armour, towards Sin himself. The larger of the two was easily recognisable as Sir Auron but the other looked strange with a sword in his hand.

"You learn fast, Tidus, but fast enough?" Harry asked aloud again and watched as the two stumbled in their fighting just long enough to force Auron to have to defend himself against two enemies. Tidus was more easily distracted again but as he looked up he couldn't see Harry in his cloud of Myst.

Before Sin was able to exit from the Sleeper's world Harry was already gone back into his prison life.

XOXOXOXOXOXOX

Besaid Island

"Stop trying to set fire to me!" Harry yelled in the midst of their training session. He was facing off with a young woman of the small island village of Besaid as he trained her to use her powers more effectively. He had met her five years ago wandering alone in a region of Spira known as the Calm Lands, where the first Final Summoning had been cast. She had never offered an explanation to why she had been there and Harry hadn't bothered to ask.

She, and all those of the village, had also never queried the fact that in five years he had not aged. He was still a twenty year old young man to their eyes though it wasn't too strange for them since it wasn't like it was an unnatural immortality or so they thought.

"What!?" She cried exhausted as Harry continued to dodge all of her spells.

"I told you to stop trying to set fire to me." Harry said without emotion. "You try to control everything too much. It is not just with magic." She glared at him but he continued regardless. "Call fire into existence and allow it to target what threatens you. Magic protects its user."

She concentrated for a brief moment before Harry felt the magic fly at him. He didn't react as it was absorbed by his anti-flame spell which dwindled out of existence as it was expended.

"Better!" He told her with a small smile. He noticed a young woman walking towards them but after recognising her as one of the three summoners-in-training from the Besaid Temple that the village had grown up around he ignored her. "Now let's fight. First to score a hit wins."

Instantly Harry cast a one time all element protection on them both so that the first elemental hit wouldn't count before he took a half step backwards and raised his hands in an open gesture for her to start. He watched out of the corner of his eye as the summoner-in-training, Yuna he thought she was called, took a seat with two young friends of hers and a couple of other villagers.

Lulu, his trainee, a black mage and an already tested Guardian, took the bait as she closed off her senses to the rest of the surroundings. She lifted her hand and brought it down in a harsh cutting motion and along with it a lightning bolt hit the ground where Harry had just been standing. Harry on the other hand wasn't so easily hit. He threw a water spell at her which she dodged easily and quickly followed it with his own Fire spell which honed in on her as she dodged. The spell was absorbed by her immunity even as she tried to roll out of the way.

She surprised him by sending three rapid fire spells, a fire which forced him to bring up a water spell to counter and then a lightning spell which would have fried him even through the immunity spell if he hadn't cancelled the water spell and then another fire spell which he couldn't prevent from striking and nullifying his immunity. Harry smiled at her in compliment, it had been a well thought out attack.

Before his smile was over he sent a Blizzard spell at her which fired small shards of ice at her which when she dodged landed around her feet. His next fire spell missed completely as she used as Shell shield to protect herself rather than lose her immunity. She countered with her own Blizzard spell which he took a leaf out of her own book to dodge with his own Shell spell. Now they had to destroy the other's Shell spell.

Lulu cast a Dispel at him which he didn't bother to dodge as he fired a lightning spell at her. The onlookers frowned as the spell flew knowing that it was pointless at these training levels to use a spell like that against a Shell shield which would stop it in its tracks. The spell however didn't strike at the shield straight away but rather at the ground at her feet. The melted ice from his Blizzard and then Fire spells conducted the electricity and it shattered her Shell shield as it struck up at her nullifying her own Immunity.

By this point Harry was short his Fire Immunity whereas Lulu was missing her Fire and Lightning immunity. Harry grinned at her in a rare show of enjoyment and called up a water spell and lazily sent it at her. She cast a lightning spell in the hope of using the water to amplify the spell as she sent it through the water and into Harry and with the extra power hopefully shocking him regardless of his immunity. The water spell was obliterated by its opposite element and the lightning lanced out from the cloud of steam at Harry. The crowd cheered in that split second thinking that for once someone had bettered him but Harry just raised his hand and a blue shimmering bubbled formed over him. The lightning stuck with a clang and ricocheted off of it and straight back into Lulu who stood helpless to defend herself.

Harry walked over to her slightly tingling body and helped her rise. "Good work, Lulu. You are getting stronger at this every time."

"Thanks to you." She admitted modestly.

"I do what I can to pay for my board here." Harry told her with a shrug before turning to walk back into the town. "Have the Summoner-in-training deal with any burns that you may have."

He walked passed the crowd as he walked away. It was true that they accepted him into this community but that wasn't to say that they weren't afraid of him. He hadn't cast any spells above the level one Black and Green magic but he did so with such an ease that it made them nervous. He was glad because Besaid and Kilika were the only two safe places he could hide long term. He was a wanted man after all and had been since he had found Lulu five years ago.

"But," he muttered to himself as he walked towards the small cluster of huts that made up the town, "Things are changing. Perhaps I will go and explore this world once again."

XOXOXOXOXOXOX

End Chapter