HP/LOTM: Visionary - 438

Chapter 438: Reunion, Into Hell

"Sirius!" Harry all but crashed into him, arms locking around his godfather as if he were afraid to ever let go.

"Harry." Sirius staggered back a step and then squeezed him just as tightly, his voice rough with relief. He pulled Harry far enough away to frame his face in both hands, thumbs brushing the sharp lines of his cheeks. "Merlin, what have they done to you? You look years older."

Harry’s throat tightened. "It… it is a long story," he said, the words shaking into a smile. "But I am really, really glad to see you." For the first time in months, the weight on his chest eased. For a heartbeat he felt like the boy who had first come to Hogwarts again, not the hunted thing he had become.

"Family. What a beautiful thing," someone said softly behind them.

Harry turned. Two elderly men had risen from a corner table, tankards in hand, lamplight catching in one familiar pair of half-moon spectacles.

"Professor Dumbledore!" Harry, Hermione, and Ron shouted together.

"I… you… but…" Harry stared, words tangling uselessly. It was too much. For one wild second he was certain this had to be a trick, another nightmare, an illusion dredged up just to break him.

"Wait. I am not dreaming, am I?" He shook his head hard and took a step back, as if distance might somehow make sense of what he was seeing.

Dumbledore’s blue eyes crinkled exactly as Harry remembered. "Let Sirius explain," he said gently, giving his familiar little wink. "For now, my boy, I think your time is better spent with your family than with an old man like me, do you not agree?"

With that, he laid a light hand on the shoulder of the grey-bearded man beside him and turned toward the stairs, leaving Harry still clutching at Sirius’s sleeve as if afraid that, if he looked away, both of them might vanish.

"Sirius, what is going on?" The moment Dumbledore was gone, Harry, Hermione, and Ron crowded around Sirius.

"Long story," Sirius said, lifting his brows in smug triumph.

"It is basically Aiden’s arrangement," Ethan said from behind the bar, polishing a glass and ruining Sirius’ carefully built mystery.

"You…" Sirius’s grand atmosphere popped like a bubble.

Watching the two of them bicker with the ease of long habit, Harry felt a strange, unreal sort of disbelief. "You two are that close?"

"Who is close with him?" they snapped in unison.

Then Sirius told Harry how Dumbledore had survived, how Sirius had met Ethan, and how the two of them had been wandering around playing vigilante.

Harry, in turn, told Sirius about the Horcruxes they had destroyed and the months of running and hiding.

Godfather and godson sat by the fire and talked. Their friends kept their distance, quietly letting Harry have this. For the first time in far too long, warmth settled in his chest, something that felt like home.

"Right. Aiden said you know where Voldemort’s next Horcrux is?" Harry remembered Aiden’s instructions and asked at once.

"Yes." Sirius’ expression sobered. "When Ethan and I slipped into the Deep Realm, we saw it. That miserable, hateful soul, burning under Fiendfyre on the First Layer."

"What do you mean, we?" Ethan pouted. "I was the one who took you in. Without me, your body and mind would have been corroded to nothing."

"Oi, my godson is right here. Show some respect," Sirius whispered into Ethan’s ear.

"Tch." Ethan set the glass down.

"But why is Voldemort’s soul in the Deep Realm?" Hermione asked, catching the wrongness immediately.

Ethan sighed. "Besides my irresponsible roommate, who else has the ability to send Voldemort into the Deep Realm?"

"Then what are we waiting for? Let us go destroy her," Ron said, eager, the Sword of Gryffindor already in his hands.

"Not so fast. Rest tonight," Sirius said, stopping him. "You have been on the road. You are exhausted."

"All right," Harry agreed without hesitation. He still had too much he wanted to say to Sirius.

The next morning, with Aberforth’s hospitality, the trio ate a breakfast they would never forget.

“Merlin’s beard, how can something this tasty look this bad?” Ron’s face was pale; every bite went down like a dare, and it took real effort not to gag at the sight.

"Please. When we were living rough, we ate rats," Sirius said, utterly unimpressed.

"You ready?" Ethan stood in a patch of open ground, laying down protective charms around them.

"Coming," Harry said, gripping his wand and the Invisibility Cloak. Hermione stepped in behind him.

The five of them gathered together. Ethan pointed his wand down and stabbed it into the earth.

“Outsiders who do not belong to this world, Sea of Consciousness… yeah, I forgot the rest. Aiden, give me a hand here,” Ethan said with a shameless grin up at the sky.

A sigh echoed out of empty air.

An alchemical array flared under their feet.

Ethan poured his power into it. The ground sank away. The five wizards plunged down in a dizzying spiral, dropping into the First Layer of the Deep Realm, the Barren Courtyard.

The Barren Courtyard looked much as it had before: a small, colourless world, bleak and dead. The starlight that had once glimmered around it was gone, and its surface was pitted with craters, as if meteors had struck it again and again.

"Bloody hell, Ethan, what is wrong with you…" Ron blinked at the only light source and startled badly.

"This is where hell’s power is thickest. A little reaction is normal," Ethan said.

His whole body was wreathed in ghostly blue flame. You could barely still make out a human outline. Even his hair had become a wavering tuft of fire.

Ethan pressed his hand to the ground. The flames covering him flowed outward, racing across the little planet until it became a sea of fire. The heat felt fierce enough to melt metal and stone, yet under his control it never touched the other four, and the Deep Realm’s corrosion was held back by the burning barrier.

"Come on. Her remnant soul is up ahead," Ethan warned. "Be ready to fight."

"I came for that," Harry said.

There was only steel in his eyes now. From the moment he started this road, he had already decided. Voldemort would be destroyed, even if it took the rest of his life.

They walked for a while, and then they saw her.

A woman pierced through the chest by a small sword made of blood.

She held a posture like a worshipper in prayer, and the tableau was grotesque, yet energy streamed in from somewhere else without end, keeping the nun-like figure alive.

"Tom Marvolo Riddle," Ethan called her name.

The praying woman opened her eyes and swept her gaze over them. When she did not see the person she wanted, contempt curled at her mouth.

"He did not come? Why is it only you? Or has he grown arrogant enough to think a few lackeys can deal with me?" Her body began to shrink, but the Chaos radiating from her spiked violently upward.

"Is that so? Then let us see what a lackey can do," Harry said.

His pupils flashed gold.

"Sectumsempra!"

The invisible blade cleaved Voldemort in two and severed the blood sword at the same time.

"Ah. Freedom," female Tom murmured, rising to her feet.

With the restraint gone, the Sixth Layer and Chaos fed her even more power.

Black slime swelled out of thin air and wrapped around her. A gorgon nearly three storeys tall clawed its way up from the ground.

Harry lifted his wand.

The battle was about to begin.