Ouroboros, a harry potter fanfic

I swear I didn't mean to make this slash. I've never even written slash before. There I was writing an admittedly weird genfic and suddenly the Tom/Harry worms its way in during the editing process. But yeah. Mild slash warning for a pretty tame kiss. I suppose you could also spot some Dumbledore/Grindelwald subtext if you squint.

Contains spoilers for Deathly Hallows. This takes place after chapter thirty-six and doesn't specifically ignore the epilogue, although it does screw around with the happily-ever-after scenario quite a lot.

Disclaimer: I'm not JKR and I don't own Harry Potter or the quote I borrowed from Adrienne Rich (credited at the end) or the line I adapted from Chuck Palahniuk (also credited at the end).

OUROBOROS

(ουροβóρος: "tail-devourer".
an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon swallowing its
own tail and forming a circle;
symbolises cyclicality, unity and infinity.)

After the duel, after Harry has shaken countless hands and smiled a thousand times with exactly the same exhausted insincerity, after he has untangled himself from the crush of bodies and after he has left the company of Ron and Hermione (kissing, laughing, touching), he collapses into his bed in Gryffindor Tower and sleeps for three days.

Meanwhile, the march of history continues inexorably, consigning Voldemort and the damage he did to the annals: events to be discussed and recited but eventually forgotten, all in the pages of Twentieth Century Wizarding History. The unspeakable horrors of Grindelwald's bid for power have faded through the years; complacency taking root once more. It will be the same with this war, too.

But history repeats.

You know I'll always be here, Tom tells him in a voice just louder than a whisper. Harry shouldn't be able to hear him, but sound carries in this place. Perhaps Tom can hear the pounding of Harry's heart and the scrape as he grits his teeth. Harry tries to keep his breathing even and doesn't respond.

Tom has his back to Harry; he is facing the yawning chasm that lies barely three inches from his second-hand shoes. Harry can't see the drop, only the meeting of earth and air, but Tom can and his head is bowed as he gazes down and down and down. Somehow, Harry knows that if Tom falls or jumps, he will have to follow. That's the way it works, that's the way it –

It's always been this way; you know, Tom says, tone mild. We could both fall from here and we'd never really be gone. We'll never be rid of each other, Harry, he continues and his voice has a new, bitter edge. Welcome to eternity.

He turns around, finally, and Harry screams because the boy in front of him has no face, no face at all.

In 1945, Dumbledore leaves after his duel with Grindelwald and travels through the ruined towns of Germany and Austria for a month, to remind himself that this, this is why he had to do it. A part of him (or maybe it's God, or maybe it's Gellert) whispers it was for the greater good, but Albus closes his eyes and swallows it down, ignoring the taste of bile and the sudden nausea.

At Hogwarts, a boy with sharp eyes and a record as bright and gold as his Head Boy badge reads the newspaper, lip curling in disgust. All through Europe, the celebrations have started, but Tom with his Muggle father's blood knows Newton's Laws and continues with his studies like nothing has happened.

"You haven't changed anything," Rodolphus Lestrange says evenly, voice steely and cold, right before the Dementor lowers its hood and sucks his soul out.

History repeats itself, twisting through eras and dynasties, snaking through the same stories and the same cemeteries over and over again. The cells of Azkaban are full but they won't stay that way for long: the Ministry officials think they've learned their lesson this time and are standing, lips pursed, as Death Eater after Death Eater becomes a soulless shell.

"We've already introduced tighter controls," a Ministry spokesman says confidently when asked about the return of the Dementors to Azkaban. "We can guarantee that we won't let this happen again."

In Versailles, 1921, after the war to end all Muggle wars, men in waistcoats sat at mahogany tables and decided the worth of their soldiers' sacrifice: 132 billion gold marks, chunks of earth and German disarmament, sealed with a guarantee that they'd never let anything like it happen again.

Harry reads about the sentences for Death Eaters in an official Ministry letter of gratitude, we're implementing appropriate measures to ensure that justice will be swift and effective, and the only meaning he can find in their words is revenge. I'll always be here, Tom had told him, and as he crumples the letter viciously and throws it into the fire, the memory of Tom's laughter echoes off the walls.

What he knows now is that the Ministry's grand plan for rebuilding the wizarding world is as much about ceremony and figureheads draped in gaudy costume jewellery as real policies. Restoration, Ministry style, involves rhetoric, speeches, recriminations masquerading as justice and the heart-warming feeling the people will get when they see Harry's face smiling uncomfortably from the cover of Witch Weekly, with the massive Order of Merlin medallion pinned to his chest.

History repeats, a record playing an endless set of battle chants, overtures and funeral marches, needle dragging over familiar grooves; always the same outcome: temporary ceasefire before the struggle begins anew.

(In the instant between realisation and impact, the infinite stretch of a single second, the moment when the curse rebounds and jets toward him in an arc of green light, Voldemort understands. A moment of clarity, of perfection, and in his death Voldemort sees a snake close the distance between its fangs and its tail, biting down and linking past and future in an unbreakable circle.

That moment of perfection and then he is lost.)

When Dumbledore returns to Britain, to Hogwarts, finally, nobody remembers the days he and Gellert spent together or, if they do, no one mentions them aloud. But Albus, oh, Albus has the memories burned deep, as though when he dies and his flesh decays, Muggle archaeologists will find the story etched into the inside of his skull. He acquires a Pensieve to dull the pain and soon he finds that he has to add the blank, empty expression on Grindelwald's defeated face to the list of memories that need to be walled away.

His victory silences murmurs of Dark Magic, dampens suspicions and polishes his reputation to a blinding glare.

Harry has cast the Cruciatus twice and the Imperius once but the Ministry will never care, will never leech his soul away like they've done to Voldemort's supporters because Harry Potter is untouchable, Harry Potter is gold gold gold.

He dreams every night, dreams of Tom, and when he wakes his mouth is sour with the taste of death or the taste of the future because they're both the same in the end, really.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed and history repeats. This is what he learns from Tom.

The wizarding world teaches history in its most boring class and relies on magic in lieu of common sense. What magic teaches are endless outcomes, bound only by the imagination and existing outside the Muggle laws of physics and rational thought. Magic is manipulation and transfiguration; with enough magic, wizards believe, anything is possible.

Magic does not teach self control, does not teach laws and governing principles and introspection. With magic, the swish and flick of a piece of wood alters reality just that little bit to fit the caster's will.

Magic does not teach how to learn from mistakes because, with magic, anything but death can be undone with finite incantatem, and even then there are always Inferi.

You and I will always be here, Harry, always be here, even after we're dust and ashes, even after you follow me into death, we will remain.

Harry finds his voice and spits, But then again, you hadn't planned on dying at all, had you, and look how that turned out, but Tom only laughs and laughs with his invisible mouth until Harry wakes with the sound of it ringing in his ears.

He leaves Britain for a holiday, for a getaway, and makes his way through Europe using the money he received in a bag with his Order of Merlin. It's so reminiscent of his fourth year and the Triwizard winnings that he laughs bitterly, remembering Fudge's curt face as he dropped the money bag onto Harry's bedside table. Harry would donate this money to Weasley's Wizard Wheezes too, but George closed the store after Fred's funeral and locked the remaining merchandise in Hermione's garage, safe in the Muggle world where he won't have to look at it.

Paris and Brussels and Amsterdam are where he spends the first three weeks before he travels east on a Muggle train. He only manages two nights in Germany with all its unnerving, quiet acceptance of history, but he makes sure he visits Auschwitz in southern Poland before he heads for the Baltic. We could have ended like this, he tells himself as he stares at the massive gates. It could have been worse.

Except Harry's parents are still dead and he's still cast Unforgivables and the Ministry are still sentencing Death Eaters to be Kissed in Azkaban. He hasn't been back to Hogwarts, but Ron told him they haven't changed the Sorting there and that the Slytherins are even more hated than before, living forever in the shadow of their House's most infamous member.

But, Harry tells himself firmly, it could be much, much worse.

You still don't understand, do you? Tom says mockingly as they stand shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the cliff. It will be worse. All of this will happen again and again, Harry. You haven't changed anything.

Harry looks into the emptiness where Tom's face ought to be and for one moment he is Professor Trelawney and he sees a snake writhing on red ground, biting its own tail in a chain of wars and the spaces between them, eternity stretching and stretching until it starts at the beginning again.

Leave me alone, he says when the spell is broken and the snake has vanished. Or are you afraid to? I've seen what your death is like, you know.

Tom doesn't laugh this time. Instead, he strikes lightning-fast, grasping Harry by the shoulders and twisting him until the only things anchoring Harry to the cliff are the soles of his shoes and Tom's hands digging hard into his skin.

You think you're better than me, Harry, is that it? Tom whispers viciously, leaning close. Is this a tally system, do you have to cast ten Unforgivables before it's a crime? Do you really think there's a difference between us now?

I didn't kill you, at least, Harry manages to say, wondering what would happen if Tom were to just let go and watch him fall. You did that to yourself.

I didn't, comes the swift reply. Here, I'm as living as you are, Harry. See for yourself.

Harry feels Tom let go of his left shoulder and he slips just a little, balancing precariously on the edge of oblivion. Tom's hand comes up again and in it is a small mirror, which he holds steady at Harry's eye level.

Harry's reflection is faceless, a perfect imitation of Tom, and when he sees he screams.

Dumbledore knows it will all happen again but he doesn't have the strength to try to stop it, not after returning from Germany and spending five days siphoning memories into his new Pensieve to stop the nightmares and the guilt and the regret from eating him alive. When he looks into Tom's eyes, dark and piercing, on the last day of the boy's seventh year he sees ashes and death and eternity and just knows.

As the years go by, the confectionary company that makes Chocolate Frogs adds him to their card collection and his defeat of Grindelwald becomes afternoon trivia. A war and an ideology and a depressing body count compressed into a sentence on a collector's item. Time heals all wounds, at least until history completes the circle and reaches the scar, slicing it open again. Tom is merely the next reincarnation and though he's not happy about it, he understands it because there's a place for Newton in everything, especially magic.

What happens between us, Harry, has happened for centuries, Tom murmurs as Harry hangs limp like a rag doll in his grip, silent and shocked. He lowers his invisible mouth with its invisible lips until they meet Harry's own and in the kiss Harry tastes death and eternity and the faintest trace of perfection.

The planet spins and spins on its cosmic axis, trapped in never-ending orbit and travelling the same path every moment of every day. Precise and mechanic as clockwork: in 365.25 days, we will be here again, standing in amongst a sea of tombstones: memorials of wars we simply cannot learn from.

He understands it all slowly. Every time he falls asleep, Tom is waiting to show him all the ways he didn't win the war. I'll always be here, Tom breathes against his neck before he kisses Harry again. A meeting of non-existences … a moment of perfection that will happen again and again until Harry joins Tom in death and they step off the cliff together.

The line "what happens between us, Harry, has happened for centuries" is an almost-direct quote from The Burning of Paper Instead of Children, by Adrienne Rich. The concept of the "moment of perfection" is from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. The definition of an ourosboros is from Wikipedia. Apologies if I've mutilated Newton's laws or screwed up with that whole orbit timeframe -- I never pay attention in Science.

Feedback welcome.