lomonaaeren

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Chapter One.

Title: Kairos Amid the Ruins (30/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Orion Black, Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, mentions of various canon pairings
Content Notes: Time travel, heavy angst, Harry mentoring Severus, violence, gore, minor character deaths, AU
Rating: R
Summary: Harry’s attempt to time travel and fix the past went badly awry. Time shattered, and the various pieces of the universe clung to each other as best they could. Harry finds himself in 1961, with Albus Dumbledore the Minister for Magic, Gellert Grindelwald his loving husband, Voldemort newly defeated…and Severus Snape being proclaimed the Boy-Who-Lived
Author’s Note: This is going to be a long story, focusing on Harry mentoring Severus as the Boy-Who-Lived, with flashbacks to an alternate World War II. The Harry-Severus mentorship will remain gen. However, the romantic pairings are a prominent part of the story. The word “Kairos” comes from the Greek, meaning a lucky moment, or the right moment, to act.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty—Splintered Mirrors

“Do you know what you did to me? Do you know what it does to a man’s soul, to find himself dead and then suddenly alive again?”

Harry blinked dazedly up at the man who really did seem to be Severus Snape, who was bending over and checking the intricate pattern of iron bars fastened into the floor around Harry. They were in a circular stone room that Harry wouldn’t have been surprised to find in Hogwarts, although he was also sure that Snape wouldn’t have dared to take him there. The walls and floor were made of stone, there didn’t seem to be any windows, if there was a door Harry couldn’t see it from where he lay, and his head and hands and feet were lashed to iron bars, with more taking part in some pattern that he couldn’t see, either.

“It really is you,” Harry finally whispered.

Snape paused to give him a look of deep and abiding hate that made Harry feel as if all the similar looks he’d got during his time in Hogwarts in his own world were just practice for this one. “Limited. Intellect,” he breathed, and then touched one of the bars Harry could only see from the corner of his eye with his wand. It glowed silver as Snape swept his wand slowly back and forth above it.

“Do you know what it does to a man’s soul?” Snape repeated, as he stepped back from checking on the bar.

He seemed to want an answer, as strange as that was, and so Harry licked his lips and gave him one. “No.”

“It ruins you.” Snape’s eyes flared with a blackness that reminded Harry of the way that Voldemort’s eyes would turn red. “It warps and twists you into someone you were never meant to be or become.” Abruptly, he lashed out with a foot and kicked Harry in the side. Harry felt the pain spread through his ribs, up through what had to be fractures in them, and the world roared and turned red.

“I hope you haven’t made him into damaged goods, Severus.”

That voice was Grindelwald’s, and Harry found himself glancing at the door, fearing Dumbledore would appear in it, too. But it was just Grindelwald, taking his hood off and frowning at Snape as if he were a naughty Crup puppy.

“We’re going to break his body apart in any case,” Snape said in a voice as soft as snowfall. “What would it matter?”

“Bones that we don’t break will give us a more intact version of your world.”

“The world you want, too, old man.”

Harry lay still and worked his way through the pain, listening as intently as he could. They wanted to bring back his original timeline? And it was imprinted in his bones and flesh somehow, and they needed to break him apart to attain that. He shivered even though he could barely move, bound as he was to the bars.

“Yes, I’m aware of that.” Grindelwald sounded more than a little disgruntled. He glanced at Harry and cleared his throat. “You aren’t too badly hurt?”

Knowing the motivation behind the question let Harry roll his eyes without any sense of guilt. “Fractures in the ribs.”

“Oh, dear.” Grindelwald turned to frown at Snape again, but his back was turned while he dug through what looked like a mound of empty potions vials in the corner of the room. Harry could only see them in his peripheral vision and couldn’t turn his head to look more closely, so for all he knew, they were full. “I—forgive my associate. I am sorry it had to come to this.”

Harry just stared at him, and after a moment, Grindelwald flushed and turned away. “Are you nearly ready, Severus?”

“Call me Snape.” Snape took a step forwards and Harry could see that he did have a potions vial in his hand, although it wasn’t empty. It looked as though it was filled with heavy, stirring crystal smoke, which sometimes extended tendrils as though hoping to escape beyond the boundaries of the vial. “Severus belongs to the child who lives here, at least until we remake the world.”

“Quite.” Grindelwald licked his lips. “All right. We should begin the ritual.”

Snape took a step behind Harry, where Harry couldn’t see him anymore, and uncorked the vial. There was a long, hissing sound, and the crystal smoke crept forwards around the iron bars and to the edges of Harry’s vision. He tipped his head back, and cursed as he did nothing but bump the nape of his neck against the iron.

“Are you this desperate to go to Nurmengard?” he asked Grindelwald, doing his best to keep his voice calm and soft. “That is what happened to you in the timeline that you’re trying to resurrect.”

“You’re lying about that. You must be lying.”

Well, Harry wouldn’t get anywhere with him. He fixed his eye on Snape as he came back around the side of the iron bars. “And you? Are you that eager to go back to being dead?”

“Yes, I am.” Snape leaned towards him, his lips parted and his yellow teeth gleaming. “You do not understand. It was peace. I did not have to think, did not have to act. And I did not have to watch, as I have since I have been here, the reckless actions you took.”

Harry felt for a moment as though someone had hammered a punch into his chest. “So you’re doing this because you don’t want to be alive again? And—”

“Because I hate you,” Snape said, precisely. “There is no reason for you to have happiness, or for some other version of myself to care for you, when I am not happy.”

Harry was still staring at him when there was a crack of Apparition, and Seneca Prince appeared in the corner of the room. Harry numbly noted that he was right, or thought he was right, about this place not having doors; you had to reach it by Apparating into it, apparently. Prince dusted his hands up and down his robes and looked at the crystal smoke. “Are we ready?”

“Yes. Give me your blood.” Snape turned towards Prince and held out a hand that waited, hanging in the air, as Prince looked at it calmly.

“You did not say my blood would be needed. Why not use yours? You are both from the original world we want to resurrect and the one who is the center of this ritual once we destroy Potter.”

Harry watched, hoping he would find a way to escape if he watched long enough. From the way Snape’s face twitched, he was annoyed. Harry had reasons to be intimately familiar with that expression.

“I will not be able to aid you with my blood if we make me the center of the ritual,” Snape finally said.

“Why not?”

Snape looked as if he’d like to hiss in Parseltongue, but he sighed and adopted a martyred expression that Harry also knew a lot about. “It is integral to the nature of the ritual.”

He can’t help them because he’ll be dead, Harry translated to himself. This is what it’s really all about. He’s furious to be alive again, and he wants to resume the first world so that he can go back to his peace.

Harry did feel bad about dragging Snape out of his rest, but all his remorse faded in the face of the relentless stupidity the man was engaging in. And his thoughts lingered on the Severus of this universe, who, of course, liked existing and wanted to go on existing.

“We will each contribute a vial of blood,” Prince said finally. “You will excuse me if I do not contribute more than that.”

From the bored, annoyed expression on Snape’s face, Harry reckoned that would be enough. He wouldn’t convince Prince to give more, but he probably didn’t need to.

“Did anyone tell you that Snape isn’t the Boy-Who-Lived in that universe?” Harry called out.

Prince glanced at him, his eyes sharp. “Why should I trust a thing you say? Snape here has assured me I am powerful and respected there, and that my wife did not rebel against me.”

“I would be surprised if he knows anything more than I do. In that world—”

A spell that felt like a strip of tape gripped Harry’s lips and sealed them shut. He stared at Snape. Snape stared back, and lifted another vial to his own lips. Then he turned and drew a small spike from what looked like a cabinet with wooden drawers.

Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t think Prince would have listened to him anyway, since he saw Harry as an enemy, but it was an option, and it had been taken away. He had no idea what he was going to do now, as he listened to his three enemies move around him and anticipated no sort of rescue.

Except die. Except be dismembered.

*

Orion stared in silence at the building of stone in front of him. It looked as if someone had conjured it like a bubble out of the air, and he had no idea what sort of spell it had taken. There were no windows, and the door, if it existed, blended flawlessly with the grey granite that made it up. But these were the right Apparition coordinates, of that he was certain.

He couldn’t just burst into the place and kill the people waiting there, which would stand a chance of killing Harry. But he could give them something else to think about and disrupt whatever probably delicate magic they had happening at the moment.

He had just drawn his wand when he heard the sound of someone Apparating in close to him. Orion spun and crouched, ready to retreat or Disillusion himself, but found the wand that had done the Apparating already pointing at him.

“Mr. Black.” The Minister stared at him intently. “This is a surprise.”

“I don’t know why it would be,” Orion said evenly. “This land used to belong to my family, and I know that they are doing something at the moment to the man I intend to marry.” He tipped his head at the stone bubble, having made his decision. He was better off if he worked with the Minister and they took down their enemies together.

“Oh?”

“Yes. Harry Potter is in there, and I assume that he’s part of the reason you are here, too.”

Dumbledore turned to the stone bubble and closed his eyes. “I know that my husband is in there.”

“Is he?” Orion didn’t care for those odds. He had been willing to do whatever he had to do to rescue Harry, of course, but an immensely powerful former Dark Lord, plus Seneca Prince and whatever other allies they might have, was not his idea of an easy fight.

“I defeated him once before,” Dumbledore said, with his eyes stirring and filling with an odd silver gleam. Orion had the feeling that he was seeing the man call up power from within himself, maybe the same sort of power that had conjured that stone bubble. “I can do it again if necessary.”

“I have no idea what sort of ritual they’re conducting. I don’t want to enter the place only to find out that we’ve endangered Harry.”

“I know what it will be.” Dumbledore braced himself and held his wand balanced on the palm of his hand. A slight glow was spiraling up it in a pattern like a fluid unicorn’s horn. “And I know how to figure out what will be the best place to disrupt it.”

Orion wanted to say that there was no best place to disrupt a ritual, but it wasn’t like he had any better idea himself. He watched, and Dumbledore stood watching and waiting in silence, while the glow around him brightened and churned like a Draught of Peace in the last stages.

Then Dumbledore’s eyes opened, and Orion stumbled back a step. There was the glow in them that he had seen before, and something more, spreading out around the Minister like a pool of light and water. Dumbledore murmured a few words and flung out a hand, and the wand came with it, and—

The world tore.

Orion was sure that, for a second, he was staring down into a black void unilluminated by a single star, and then the void swept forwards and past him, as if he was standing on a vast swing that kept him safe. He watched as the edges of the fleeting black thing, spread like a bat, tore into the stone bubble, and the walls began to dissolve.

From the center of it came the Killing Curse. Orion dodged to the side, uncaring at the moment of where the Minister had gone, or if he had survived the blast. He had seen Harry, attached to a floor in the middle of a series if iron bars that trembled but remained still, as if they had greater magic than the rest of the room and could resist the urge to dissolve into the void with the other parts.

Orion had seen enough.

He ran forwards.

*

Harry didn’t think that any of them had suspected the room would begin to dissolve, although a moment before it began, Snape had lifted his head as if he had heard something. And he had been the one to fling the Killing Curse at whoever it was when the dissolving began to happen.

But there was no sign that the Killing Curse had struck whoever it had been aimed at, and a second later, Orion Black was there, springing lightly over the shards of stone that turned into darkness beneath him.

Harry couldn’t help but smile, and he would have reached towards him if his arms hadn’t been bound. For a moment, Orion’s eyes met his, and Harry saw a sparking, fierce gladness in them.

Then Orion turned and began to duel with Snape.

Harry found himself wrenching harder at the bonds that held him. For one thing, Seneca Prince was in the room, and he wasn’t sure Orion knew that someone might strike at his unprotected back. For another, Harry remembered how many spells Snape had known and invented, and he wasn’t sure that Orion would win the duel, no matter how extensively he had trained.

But he saw quickly that at least the second part of that wasn’t a problem. Spells were sparking back and forth between Snape and Orion, but they were evenly matched, or at least in skill and speed. Snape’s face was twisting in frustration. Harry wondered for a second what he thought about someone who was so obviously a Black fighting him, and holding his own.

And as for the first part, Seneca Prince was standing back, twirling his wand between his fingers and letting his eyes dart between the duelists as if he was evaluating which one of them he wanted to take home and hang on the wall like a decorative plate.

Harry turned his head to check on Grindelwald’s position, and blinked. The man had gone outside the ruins of the stone bubble altogether, and was aiming his wand at someone who, from the swirl of bright robes, had to be Dumbledore.

Harry grimaced, and went back to trying to pull his arms free.

*

“Why did you do it, Gellert?”

Albus thought that the question was probably useless, but he had to ask it. And Gellert flinched a little as if he had anticipated it and yet still felt the pain of having to answer.

But then he straightened his shoulders and said, “I don’t trust that Potter was telling the truth. I don’t think that I’m in prison and you’re the Headmaster of Hogwarts in his world. I think that we have something better.”

“Better than being married to each other and having peace?”

Gellert closed his eyes. Albus watched his face, and thought of all the times he had seen it soft and still beside him in sleep, and intently bent over a book, and laughing at the way Albus had recounted the politics of his days, and wondered if all those had only been masks for the expression Gellert wore now.

The expression he had worn the day Albus ended his war.

“You,” Gellert whispered at last. “By my side.”

“I am by your side.”

“Not on it, though.” Gellert opened his eyes, and his features had grown stamped with a resolve that Albus knew very well. “I know that as well as you do, Albus. There’s no way that you would come to my side and do as I want you to, joining me in my fight for supremacy. Not here. But maybe there.”

“For a maybe, you’re willing to destroy this timeline?”

Gellert brought his wand up in the duelist’s salute.

Feeling as if his chest was filled with broken shards, Albus returned it, and they began.