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"Wake up, Lionheart. We've arrived at the place you'll carry out your sentence."
Harry did not open his eyes. He kept them shut, resolutely refusing to acknowledge the oncoming hell that awaited him. Whatever it was, he would not see it, would not look it in the eye. He was better. He was superior.
But his body betrayed him soon enough. He laid there, on the floor, hearing and smelling nothing further, for far, far too long. He could not stand waiting, he had never been good at it. He held out for as long as he could, his teeth gritting, waiting to hear some signal that things would proceed without him (something he had never before hoped in his life) and yet nothing came. Finally, against himself, his eyes opened.
He was standing in another blank white room, featureless but for the pair of shoes and jeans he could see in front of him. A glance up confirmed it was this older, horribly unfeeling Ron Weasley. He was staring down at Harry with an expression of extreme disdain, and Harry hated him for it, imagining a thousand burning and torturous deaths to put him through for that slight alone. But there was no comment from Ron, so eventually he stood up, gnashing his teeth. When he looked around, he saw that the room they were in was very small, and contained only one exit; a white door made of metal. The rest of the room was a curving tube that felt quite claustrophobic.
"Where are we now?" Harry asked. "What have you got in store for me?"
"You know," Ron said. "The marks you left on my world when you invaded and corrupted it run deep. You had me replaced, of course, with a doppelganger for the purposes of easy manipulation. But somewhere out there in the ether, I was still living a life, but without the best friend I'd made on the train that day in 1991. Events still played out. Much differently, of course... I needed you, Harry. Or, that's what I'd say if you were the real Harry."
Harry snarled and hissed, but Ron did not acknowledge it.
"I needed a friend. I had flaws, it's true, but without friends to help me out...without people I cared about, who cared about me in return...? I fell deeper. Despair, depression. Hermione getting petrified and Ginny taken by the basilisk put me through hell, and then I didn't have any of them back when the new year started. I was alone. And when someone gets too deep in their loneliness, a voice calls out."
"And what voice...i̶̤s̶ͅ ̵̫ţ͈ẖ͢à͈t̤́?͏̝" Harry growled through gritted teeth.
"The voice of the One Alone." said a new voice. Harry whirled, and almost stumbled backward into Ron when he found who was standing directly beside him. It was Dumbledore--the same Dumbledore from before, with that terrible, awful emptiness behind his eyes. How had he gotten in here? What was he going to do to Harry?
Dumbledore opened his mouth again and said. "A god of fear, a lot like the one appealed to in the panopticon at the center of Millbank Prison. A being that calls out to those trapped in solitude, in the quiet and slow despair, in the knowledge that others would prefer not to remember them...as you did. They call it the Lonely, and poor Ron here fell into its cold embrace. You made him this, Lionheart." Dumbledore said. "You gave him the power he now wields."
Harry roared, the terrible sounds of his true self escaping him, but pathetically muted with the knowledge that both of the men in the room with him could easily kill him and had prepared some terrible punishment for him. Neither man reacted.
"And I found fellows." Ron said. "Others who had the power of...of distance, and depression. When I was recruited to deal with this mess by Dumbledore, I got them all in one room, and together, we worked out what would be the ultimate punishment for a moronic, sadistic, narcissist like yourself who crashed through my world and raped it and poisoned it the way you did." Ron said, and there was now the faintest hint of anger on his face. Not the irritation from before, actual rage!
"Your punishment was particularly difficult to set up," Dumbledore said from the other side of him, "but we believe it is best suited to you and will grant you the torment you have pleaded for with your aggressive corruptions and desire for attention."
Dumbledore leaned over and turned the knob on the white metal door. It opened, and beyond it was a foggy field, green grass set against a haze of early morning blue. It was cold out, and the breeze blew through into their small room and made Harry shiver.
"After you, gentlemen."
Harry was not given the chance to refuse this time. The door opened, and Ron kicked him out of it, and he landed hard on wet grass. The door closed behind them after Ron strode out, and no sooner had Harry gotten to his feet and looked behind him than it had vanished. Left in its place was an uninterrupted field, which as far as Harry could tell, was farmland. There were bales of hay in the distance, and although there were no crops, much of the ground was well-tilled. But aside from themselves, no one was here.
"Let's get moving."
Harry was made to keep walking forward at wandpoint. Ron walked with him, and they proceeded across the blank landscape. There were woods in the distance, but Harry could not tell why they were walking when Ron could Apparate them wherever they wanted to go. But as they kept walking, Harry started to hear water running, and a structure began to rise from the horizon. It became clear over a period of minutes that they were heading for a river, and quite a large river if the size of the metal-and-wood bridge was any indication. Harry did not want to imagine what the water felt like if the air was already this cold. He stopped short, unsure of himself.
"Keep going."
A memory of the Tale of the Three Brothers came unbidden to him. Would he meet Death on this bridge? He resumed walking, wary of the silence. The bridge grew closer, and the ground sloped onto a riverbank. He was right, the river was wide, and he could see more tilled farmland across on the other side. The bridge itself was made of simple wood, held up over the water with metal supports and capped off by rusty iron portals at either end. Harry was not sure he wanted to cross this bridge, but the sound of the blowing wind and Ron's continued footsteps made him not want to stay, either.
"Step onto the bridge and start walking." came the order from behind them. Harry reluctantly stepped onto the iron portal, and then when nothing happened, stepped forward onto the first board of many.
Harry gasped as, all of a sudden, he was no longer on the bridge. The world around him went white and shifted, the colors vanishing and reappearing, rearranging themselves until he was standing someplace very different. As it happened, he was at...
King's Cross. He was at King's Cross.
He could see people milling around him, only slightly blurred and the din of voices around him only slightly muffled, as though by water. He was just wondering how he had gotten here when he spotted a familiar crowd of people, all of them bearing red hair.
"Amazing, isn't it? How normal everything seemed in the beginning, before you really took over."
Harry looked over at Ron with a face full of loathing, and then looked at the Ron boarding the Hogwarts Express, youthful and full-faced and ignorant. How he'd dearly love to kill the bastard if he had any powers left.
"Have we gone back in time?" Harry asked.
"Something like that." Ron said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "In a pocket dimension of sorts, in which we replay the events of your sick little adventure. Watch closely, now."
Ron snapped his fingers. All of a sudden, the world around them began moving very fast, as if someone had hit the fast-forward button on a television remote. Everyone began moving at double, maybe triple their usual pace, and the babble merged into an incomprehensible flow of noise. Harry just managed to catch himself and others moving onto the train, with the whole world orienting itself around him so that he could see everything, as though it were sliding underneath him, before things sped up even further.
When they finally slowed down, the train was halted on its tracks. Everything was cold and foggy in the late evening. Harry knew what happened here.
"And look, there's you." Ron said. They were now positioned in the train car's corridor as a door ahead opened and a dementor floated through, its deathly chill flowing through Harry at a muted level. Harry hissed, denying the reality he had hidden this whole time--how had Ron figured it out? "You had been controlling the story before now, of course, but this is where you formally entered it, disguised as a dementor so no one would suspect you. Then you swooped down and infected the hero, infused yourself into him, and split the world around you so you could start rewriting it to your own desires."
Harry opened his mouth and--
"Enough, Lionheart."
He gagged, unable to produce sound. Ron's use of his true name with the solid intention to subdue had stripped him of his voice. Not that he would have done anything with it.
"Things don't play out quite the same this time, do they? Just watch."
Lionheart stumbled to the floor as the dementor passed. It dragged open the compartment door to where his other self was staying, and swooped down on the Boy Who Lived, committing the transfer Ron was talking about. Once it was repelled by Lupin's Patronus, the others gathered around his prone body in concern. But Lionheart moved closer, crawling in a bestial stance, to see what would change. He was not aware until it was too late that Ron, directly behind him, had drawn his wand.
"Avada Kedavra."
The curse was simply stated, with no emotion behind it, yet it struck Harry's unconscious body and crashed it against the compartment window, and screams resounded from inside. Lionheart looked on in shock and disbelief, before whirling on Ron. He lunged, trying to grab the wand from him, only to be blasted backward. When he crashed onto his back, the world was shifting and blurring again, and it had resolved itself into so much blue by the time he had dragged himself back up.
When he looked around, they were back on the bridge. Lionheart himself was splayed across the portal, one foot still touching the first board making up the bridge across the river.
"The deaths of the others are pre-arranged. I wanted the honors of the first kill, though."
Lionheart sprang upward and opened his mouth, only a strangled noise coming out now that he had been gagged, and threw himself at Ron. Ron swept him aside, in all his strength, quite easily with an Impediment Jinx, which left him stopped short and dizzy, stumbling back.
"What's wrong? Does that upset you? Watching your grand re-telling cut off so soon? Or do you not want to comprehend something as glorious as yourself getting killed? I hate to tell you this, but you've got a lot more to watch. You're not escaping, or overpowering me, and while I don't expect you to change, since you never do, you'll make this easier or harder all by yourself."
Lionheart did not comply, trying to strangle Ron again, only for his legs and hands to be bound in ropes from an Incarceration Jinx. He fell to the floor underneath him, hitting the wooden boards with a thud. A gag also flew into his mouth in short order, which he gnashed between his now-sharpened, black teeth.
"Take a look. The Harry you saw in that memory sequence? He's here. Look at the farm behind you."
Burning with hatred, Lionheart did as he was told from his position on the ground, and saw that the farmland behind them was no longer empty. Stilling himself, he could squint and see that there was a figure in the distance that matched the shape of a thirteen-year-old Harry Potter. It was wielding a rake and tilling the earth. Lionheart furiously bit his question into the gag, but Ron seemed to get the gist anyway.
"This one is for those poor murder victims you harvested when you raided Voldemort's Inferius graveyard at the flooded cave." Ron said. I believe instead of respecting the dead and their memory, you decided to put them to work making you money on a farm, didn't you? You'll find fitting punishments for your role in the dryad sex slave plot, not to mention your fiefdoms and the mental damage ward you brainwashed to your bidding, placed throughout the next one hundred and two memory sequences."
Lionheart moaned in horror. He couldn't do it, he wouldn't do it!
"Do you think I'm going to stick around here and oversee you carry out your sentence forever, Lionheart? I've got places to be, things to do. If you won't move of your own accord, the Inferi programmed here are happy to make you move."
Lionheart glanced fearfully at the distant Harry in the field. It stopped tilling, then looked directly at him. It picked up its rake and began to proceed forward menacingly. Lionheart's eyes widened, and he tried to squirm away, past Ron. Maybe if he could make it into the river...
But the Inferius was too quick, and it was upon him, swinging the rake down on him. The weight of the metal hurt, and Lionheart cried out as it left bruises and the claws of the tool dug through his flesh. It raised the rake again and swung, and the pains hit him again. Above him, Ron began to whistle nonchalantly as Lionheart was ruthlessly beaten by an inefficient zombie, until, crying and humiliated, he began to squirm back towards the bridge. The Inferius-Harry did not relent, and it began to follow him, swinging the rake down on him. Lionheart quickly realized it would not leave him alone, and would kill him if this kept up, and there was only one escape...
He rolled, his limbs tied but his body still moving, past the rake-wielding zombie until his tied hands found themselves on the second board of the bridge, and the world was swept away in a flash of color once more.
The ropes on his hands and around his ankles as well as the gag in his mouth disappeared, leaving him free. Where was he now? Ron was not here with him...was he? He got up and twisted around, trying to find out where he was.
"Come, one of you, look after him. I've got to talk to the conductor of this train. We've got to get Harry to Hogwarts as soon as possible. He's still very close to death, I'm afraid. I fear we may not have stopped that dementor in time."
They were still on the train...until suddenly they weren't. Things began to fast-forward again, only for the world to go white and color to return in the form of Hogsmeade Station. That was right...he'd been unconscious and near death due to the dementor kiss. It was as if Ron's Killing Curse had never been cast.
Lionheart tried to keep calm. He had no wand, but he could move around, couldn't he? He ran up to Lupin and tried to get his attention, but there was no response to his hurried and pleading cries for someone to remove the unconscious Harry from the scene before something terrible happened. He waved a hand in front of Lupin's face that also went ignored, and tried to grab his arm, but it passed right through. Lionheart held up a hand in front of his face, which didn't look any different. Was he a ghost? This couldn't be as simple as the preserved memory inside Tom Riddle's diary, or its effects wouldn't bleed out into the dimension where the bridge over the river lay.
With no other recourse, Lionheart was forced to try and leave the scene. If he could just get into the Forbidden Forest and find the Fairy Queen's shrine, he could fix this. She would answer him even through dimensions, as she was his puppet who took on the role of his gracious benefactor. He could rely on her aid, he had to be able to contact her. So he fled into the woods.
But he did not get very far. He felt himself slowing down, first as if he were moving against heavy wind, then as if he were moving through deep water. Why was he slowing and stopping? He tried, struggled, to get further, but the push against him turned him back, began dragging him back towards the scene that had played out before. He was being pulled back to it like he was caught on a fishing line that was being reeled in!
"Sͅt̗o̩p̣!̙ S̜t̤o̗p͇!̬ L̜e̫t̼ m̪e͓ g͖o̦!͖" he demanded of the air, only to find himself getting dragged back as though gravity were now centered on his alternate self, the one who was unconscious and being taken to the hospital wing.
Which was exactly where he ended up. Lionheart ended up in the darkened hospital wing, and with no other options, simply stared at the pale body of Harry Potter, which he had taken and used for himself. All he could do now was wait, and damn it, he hated waiting! He hated it almost as much as he hated that foul Ron, or even--
"We're losing him, Albus!"
Lionheart did not realize Dumbledore had even entered. But here he was, attending the bedside vigil all of a sudden, while Madame Pomfrey panicked that her potions and chocolates weren't working. Lionheart was filled with a burning hatred. No matter what happened, at least the next hundred or so memory sequences would allow him to replay the humiliating, violent deaths of his self-created, most wonderfully terrible enemy in stunning detail.
"I think not," the Headmaster calmly replied, raising one arm and calling, "Fawkes!"
Lionheart saw the phoenix arrive in a flash of fire, sitting on the head of Harry's hospital bed. Lionheart looked at the phoenix, and gasped--it was looking back at him! Directly at him, as though it could see him! Lionheart had a moment's silent panic before he lunged, but it was too late!
With a horrible screeching cry, the large bird descended on Harry Potter, talons spread, and attacked. Lionheart's body went through everything he touched as he tried to stop it, only to be helpless to stop the phoenix clawing out the unconsious Harry Potter's throat. He howled, screamed, his world once more torn apart before he could rule it, and as blood splattered the shocked forms of Pomfrey and Dumbledore, and Lionheart raged, trying to grab a wand or something to reverse the damage, the world slowed down. Then it was swept away, all at once again.
When he found himself back on the bridge over the river, he was bound and gagged again. Craning his neck to look at the field behind the river, Lionheart found two Harry Potters advancing towards him, one with a rake and one with a sickle. Sobbing, he wormed his way towards the third of the boards making up the river.
Back in the white void, Ron stood next to Dumbledore, watching Lionheart struggle through the latest memory sequence. They were more than seventy percent in now, and monitoring Lionheart's agony had not made them feel better, but at least made them feel like justice was being done.
It was quite the vindictive setup. Lionheart had not managed to save a single Harry, and over the course of the little re-invented story it had become apparent that doing so was impossible. Each time a new chapter was started, Lionheart was forced to watch increasingly improbable and often very obvious hazards kill off his precious possession and avatar, including on at least one occasion, a massive boulder rolling down a hill from nowhere. Some of Ron's favorites had been one of Lionheart's brainwashed mental damage patients going berserk and firing a curse that killed him, and one of the dragons he'd started raising biting his head off another time.
And the effects were showing. Lionheart himself never changed of course, because he wasn't capable of it. But Harry changed with each memory sequence, becoming both physically and mentally less appealing. Physically, he began to look gaunt and bruised, and his features started to look less glamorized, and then became unflattering, until he looked more ghoul than man. No one in the memory sequences acted any differently, albeit Lionheart had had an amazing meltdown when he realized his avatar was now ugly. The same fate had befallen his dryad slaves--the shrieks of horror and disgust and rage when the criminal had watched with glee as the potion was crafted, only for every woman that came out of it to look closer to a diseased and rotted corpse than a beautiful faerie? It was music to Ron's ears.
Dumbledore was characteristically solemn throughout it all. Ron could tell that everything Lionheart had done in his twisted world was too much for him, and that bearing witness to it all had damaged him. Hopefully, when he saw the final punishment Lionheart was to receive, he might actually smile a bit.
Until then, though, he had a lot of torment to watch. He should conjure up some popcorn....
[MORE MONTHS LATER...]
Out. He was finally out. The corpse of the final pseudo-Harry lay at his feet, slain by a cursed goblet retrieved from Dumbledore's stock. This was the last part of the adventure he remembered before Dumbledore had come for him in the forest, and the last board containing a memory sequence. When the world re-aligned itself, he would be on the other side of the bridge. Lionheart would be free.
The flash of white was slow to re-align into color, but when it did, he was not on the bridge. Rather than wood or metal, under his feet was...what was that? Concrete? Lionheart looked down, and looked around. There was no field, and no horde of a hundred Harry corpses armed with scythes and spades. In fact, once his eyes adjusted, he seemed to be on a suburban street. It was darker than he was used to, but he could see a good distance out thanks to the street lights.
This was not part of the memories he remembered from the past year in his improved life of Harry Potter. In fact, he did not remember this very well at all. There had to be some clue....and then, at the very right moment, eyes settled on a street sign reading 'Privet Drive' just as a loud pop! sounded and a street light shone out.
Oh no, he thought to himself. No, this can't be where I am...
Dumbledore clicked the Deluminator several more times, until the streetlights were all out. Cloaked in darkness, Lionheart watched McGonagall shift from cat to human, and have a conversation in which she and Dumbledore discussed the fall of Lord Voldemort and the Boy Who Lived.
No! This is all wrong! Lionheart thought with gnashing teeth, though knowing by now that nothing he did would be able to change whatever twisted vision that Ron was showing him. He heard the roar of the motorcycle engine, saw Hagrid removing baby Harry Potter and handing him to Dumbledore, saw Dumbledore leave the letter with the cradle on the doorstep with the letter. He saw McGonagall Disapparate and Hagrid leave on the flying motorcycle.
And then, curiously, Dumbledore himself did not Disapparate. He stood up, alone in the street, and turned to face Lionheart himself. Lionheart stood up cautiously, realizing that he was being stared at, bored into with those piercing blue eyes. This wasn't what was supposed to happen, was it?
But then Dumbledore started to walk towards him, and Lionheart stood his ground, terribly afraid of what would happen to him, but by now knowing that trying to flee would make it worse. Dumbledore kept walking, crossing the street until he was only a few feet away, face-to-face with his prisoner.
"Well? You've crossed the River of the Dead. Would you like to know what happens next?"
Lionheart felt very cold, very small and helpless. He shook his head, teeth long-since crooked from grinding together so much.
"This is your final punishment, Lionheart." Dumbledore said. "To watch the true story out as it was always meant to. You, Lionheart, are cursed to watch the true life of Harry Potter play out from beginning to end, over and over, from birth until death, with none of the changes effected by you, this nightmarish creature with no resemblance to him whatsoever. Being that you cannot be seen or heard, and cannot touch any physical object, you are for eternity cursed with the one true thing which you have always feared above all else: dismissal. You are to live knowing that nothing you did changed anything, that no one loved you or ever granted you the respect and recognition you thought you deserved, knowing that in the end, you were completely and utterly irrelevant, and as such will be forgotten."
"N͕o͇!͚ N̼o̭,̗ n̞o̮,̖ N͔O̜!̪" Lionheart said, followed by a string of curses and violent threats. "N̪O̦!̹ Y͈O̻U͇ C͔A̺N̻'̼T͓ D͕O͉ T̙H̟ḀT̤!̫ I̗T͕ C͙A̖N͔'̣T̼ B̠E̳!̩ IͅT̖ C̠A͈N̩'͉T͖ B̲E͚ R̠E̩A̙L̜!͍"̰ he bawled. "̩I̟T̝ I̻S̙N͓'͍T̹ R̩E̺A̠L͙,̝ I͎T̞'̯S̰ J͉U̹S͓T̲ A̗ ṬR̖I̯C͉K͔!̪ A͎ V̳I͖S͍I̬O̼N̻ Y̩O͚U̺'̼V̪E̤ F̙O̲R̼C͇E͖D͍ ỌN̝ M̱E͚!̥ I͚ K̹N͚O̝Ẉ H̝O͕W͇ ḬT͈ G͔O̳E͉S͔,̪ A̪N̤D̳ T͎H̰I̺S̩ I̞S̯N͎'̦T̠ I͖Tͅ!̰ A̖L͇L͔ O͍F̺ T̖H̳I̖S̘ I̗S͓ H̠AͅP̰P͚E͓ṆI̖N̼G͕ I̖N̺ṢI̳ḌE̞ M̘Y̥ H̗E̼A̞D͚!̳"
Dumbledore only smiled at him.
"Of course it is happening inside your head. But why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"
And then he was gone. He was gone, and Lionheart roared, howled, and cried. It was over.
Harry did not open his eyes. He kept them shut, resolutely refusing to acknowledge the oncoming hell that awaited him. Whatever it was, he would not see it, would not look it in the eye. He was better. He was superior.
But his body betrayed him soon enough. He laid there, on the floor, hearing and smelling nothing further, for far, far too long. He could not stand waiting, he had never been good at it. He held out for as long as he could, his teeth gritting, waiting to hear some signal that things would proceed without him (something he had never before hoped in his life) and yet nothing came. Finally, against himself, his eyes opened.
He was standing in another blank white room, featureless but for the pair of shoes and jeans he could see in front of him. A glance up confirmed it was this older, horribly unfeeling Ron Weasley. He was staring down at Harry with an expression of extreme disdain, and Harry hated him for it, imagining a thousand burning and torturous deaths to put him through for that slight alone. But there was no comment from Ron, so eventually he stood up, gnashing his teeth. When he looked around, he saw that the room they were in was very small, and contained only one exit; a white door made of metal. The rest of the room was a curving tube that felt quite claustrophobic.
"Where are we now?" Harry asked. "What have you got in store for me?"
"You know," Ron said. "The marks you left on my world when you invaded and corrupted it run deep. You had me replaced, of course, with a doppelganger for the purposes of easy manipulation. But somewhere out there in the ether, I was still living a life, but without the best friend I'd made on the train that day in 1991. Events still played out. Much differently, of course... I needed you, Harry. Or, that's what I'd say if you were the real Harry."
Harry snarled and hissed, but Ron did not acknowledge it.
"I needed a friend. I had flaws, it's true, but without friends to help me out...without people I cared about, who cared about me in return...? I fell deeper. Despair, depression. Hermione getting petrified and Ginny taken by the basilisk put me through hell, and then I didn't have any of them back when the new year started. I was alone. And when someone gets too deep in their loneliness, a voice calls out."
"And what voice...i̶̤s̶ͅ ̵̫ţ͈ẖ͢à͈t̤́?͏̝" Harry growled through gritted teeth.
"The voice of the One Alone." said a new voice. Harry whirled, and almost stumbled backward into Ron when he found who was standing directly beside him. It was Dumbledore--the same Dumbledore from before, with that terrible, awful emptiness behind his eyes. How had he gotten in here? What was he going to do to Harry?
Dumbledore opened his mouth again and said. "A god of fear, a lot like the one appealed to in the panopticon at the center of Millbank Prison. A being that calls out to those trapped in solitude, in the quiet and slow despair, in the knowledge that others would prefer not to remember them...as you did. They call it the Lonely, and poor Ron here fell into its cold embrace. You made him this, Lionheart." Dumbledore said. "You gave him the power he now wields."
Harry roared, the terrible sounds of his true self escaping him, but pathetically muted with the knowledge that both of the men in the room with him could easily kill him and had prepared some terrible punishment for him. Neither man reacted.
"And I found fellows." Ron said. "Others who had the power of...of distance, and depression. When I was recruited to deal with this mess by Dumbledore, I got them all in one room, and together, we worked out what would be the ultimate punishment for a moronic, sadistic, narcissist like yourself who crashed through my world and raped it and poisoned it the way you did." Ron said, and there was now the faintest hint of anger on his face. Not the irritation from before, actual rage!
"Your punishment was particularly difficult to set up," Dumbledore said from the other side of him, "but we believe it is best suited to you and will grant you the torment you have pleaded for with your aggressive corruptions and desire for attention."
Dumbledore leaned over and turned the knob on the white metal door. It opened, and beyond it was a foggy field, green grass set against a haze of early morning blue. It was cold out, and the breeze blew through into their small room and made Harry shiver.
"After you, gentlemen."
Harry was not given the chance to refuse this time. The door opened, and Ron kicked him out of it, and he landed hard on wet grass. The door closed behind them after Ron strode out, and no sooner had Harry gotten to his feet and looked behind him than it had vanished. Left in its place was an uninterrupted field, which as far as Harry could tell, was farmland. There were bales of hay in the distance, and although there were no crops, much of the ground was well-tilled. But aside from themselves, no one was here.
"Let's get moving."
Harry was made to keep walking forward at wandpoint. Ron walked with him, and they proceeded across the blank landscape. There were woods in the distance, but Harry could not tell why they were walking when Ron could Apparate them wherever they wanted to go. But as they kept walking, Harry started to hear water running, and a structure began to rise from the horizon. It became clear over a period of minutes that they were heading for a river, and quite a large river if the size of the metal-and-wood bridge was any indication. Harry did not want to imagine what the water felt like if the air was already this cold. He stopped short, unsure of himself.
"Keep going."
A memory of the Tale of the Three Brothers came unbidden to him. Would he meet Death on this bridge? He resumed walking, wary of the silence. The bridge grew closer, and the ground sloped onto a riverbank. He was right, the river was wide, and he could see more tilled farmland across on the other side. The bridge itself was made of simple wood, held up over the water with metal supports and capped off by rusty iron portals at either end. Harry was not sure he wanted to cross this bridge, but the sound of the blowing wind and Ron's continued footsteps made him not want to stay, either.
"Step onto the bridge and start walking." came the order from behind them. Harry reluctantly stepped onto the iron portal, and then when nothing happened, stepped forward onto the first board of many.
Harry gasped as, all of a sudden, he was no longer on the bridge. The world around him went white and shifted, the colors vanishing and reappearing, rearranging themselves until he was standing someplace very different. As it happened, he was at...
King's Cross. He was at King's Cross.
He could see people milling around him, only slightly blurred and the din of voices around him only slightly muffled, as though by water. He was just wondering how he had gotten here when he spotted a familiar crowd of people, all of them bearing red hair.
"Amazing, isn't it? How normal everything seemed in the beginning, before you really took over."
Harry looked over at Ron with a face full of loathing, and then looked at the Ron boarding the Hogwarts Express, youthful and full-faced and ignorant. How he'd dearly love to kill the bastard if he had any powers left.
"Have we gone back in time?" Harry asked.
"Something like that." Ron said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "In a pocket dimension of sorts, in which we replay the events of your sick little adventure. Watch closely, now."
Ron snapped his fingers. All of a sudden, the world around them began moving very fast, as if someone had hit the fast-forward button on a television remote. Everyone began moving at double, maybe triple their usual pace, and the babble merged into an incomprehensible flow of noise. Harry just managed to catch himself and others moving onto the train, with the whole world orienting itself around him so that he could see everything, as though it were sliding underneath him, before things sped up even further.
When they finally slowed down, the train was halted on its tracks. Everything was cold and foggy in the late evening. Harry knew what happened here.
"And look, there's you." Ron said. They were now positioned in the train car's corridor as a door ahead opened and a dementor floated through, its deathly chill flowing through Harry at a muted level. Harry hissed, denying the reality he had hidden this whole time--how had Ron figured it out? "You had been controlling the story before now, of course, but this is where you formally entered it, disguised as a dementor so no one would suspect you. Then you swooped down and infected the hero, infused yourself into him, and split the world around you so you could start rewriting it to your own desires."
Harry opened his mouth and--
"Enough, Lionheart."
He gagged, unable to produce sound. Ron's use of his true name with the solid intention to subdue had stripped him of his voice. Not that he would have done anything with it.
"Things don't play out quite the same this time, do they? Just watch."
Lionheart stumbled to the floor as the dementor passed. It dragged open the compartment door to where his other self was staying, and swooped down on the Boy Who Lived, committing the transfer Ron was talking about. Once it was repelled by Lupin's Patronus, the others gathered around his prone body in concern. But Lionheart moved closer, crawling in a bestial stance, to see what would change. He was not aware until it was too late that Ron, directly behind him, had drawn his wand.
"Avada Kedavra."
The curse was simply stated, with no emotion behind it, yet it struck Harry's unconscious body and crashed it against the compartment window, and screams resounded from inside. Lionheart looked on in shock and disbelief, before whirling on Ron. He lunged, trying to grab the wand from him, only to be blasted backward. When he crashed onto his back, the world was shifting and blurring again, and it had resolved itself into so much blue by the time he had dragged himself back up.
When he looked around, they were back on the bridge. Lionheart himself was splayed across the portal, one foot still touching the first board making up the bridge across the river.
"The deaths of the others are pre-arranged. I wanted the honors of the first kill, though."
Lionheart sprang upward and opened his mouth, only a strangled noise coming out now that he had been gagged, and threw himself at Ron. Ron swept him aside, in all his strength, quite easily with an Impediment Jinx, which left him stopped short and dizzy, stumbling back.
"What's wrong? Does that upset you? Watching your grand re-telling cut off so soon? Or do you not want to comprehend something as glorious as yourself getting killed? I hate to tell you this, but you've got a lot more to watch. You're not escaping, or overpowering me, and while I don't expect you to change, since you never do, you'll make this easier or harder all by yourself."
Lionheart did not comply, trying to strangle Ron again, only for his legs and hands to be bound in ropes from an Incarceration Jinx. He fell to the floor underneath him, hitting the wooden boards with a thud. A gag also flew into his mouth in short order, which he gnashed between his now-sharpened, black teeth.
"Take a look. The Harry you saw in that memory sequence? He's here. Look at the farm behind you."
Burning with hatred, Lionheart did as he was told from his position on the ground, and saw that the farmland behind them was no longer empty. Stilling himself, he could squint and see that there was a figure in the distance that matched the shape of a thirteen-year-old Harry Potter. It was wielding a rake and tilling the earth. Lionheart furiously bit his question into the gag, but Ron seemed to get the gist anyway.
"This one is for those poor murder victims you harvested when you raided Voldemort's Inferius graveyard at the flooded cave." Ron said. I believe instead of respecting the dead and their memory, you decided to put them to work making you money on a farm, didn't you? You'll find fitting punishments for your role in the dryad sex slave plot, not to mention your fiefdoms and the mental damage ward you brainwashed to your bidding, placed throughout the next one hundred and two memory sequences."
Lionheart moaned in horror. He couldn't do it, he wouldn't do it!
"Do you think I'm going to stick around here and oversee you carry out your sentence forever, Lionheart? I've got places to be, things to do. If you won't move of your own accord, the Inferi programmed here are happy to make you move."
Lionheart glanced fearfully at the distant Harry in the field. It stopped tilling, then looked directly at him. It picked up its rake and began to proceed forward menacingly. Lionheart's eyes widened, and he tried to squirm away, past Ron. Maybe if he could make it into the river...
But the Inferius was too quick, and it was upon him, swinging the rake down on him. The weight of the metal hurt, and Lionheart cried out as it left bruises and the claws of the tool dug through his flesh. It raised the rake again and swung, and the pains hit him again. Above him, Ron began to whistle nonchalantly as Lionheart was ruthlessly beaten by an inefficient zombie, until, crying and humiliated, he began to squirm back towards the bridge. The Inferius-Harry did not relent, and it began to follow him, swinging the rake down on him. Lionheart quickly realized it would not leave him alone, and would kill him if this kept up, and there was only one escape...
He rolled, his limbs tied but his body still moving, past the rake-wielding zombie until his tied hands found themselves on the second board of the bridge, and the world was swept away in a flash of color once more.
The ropes on his hands and around his ankles as well as the gag in his mouth disappeared, leaving him free. Where was he now? Ron was not here with him...was he? He got up and twisted around, trying to find out where he was.
"Come, one of you, look after him. I've got to talk to the conductor of this train. We've got to get Harry to Hogwarts as soon as possible. He's still very close to death, I'm afraid. I fear we may not have stopped that dementor in time."
They were still on the train...until suddenly they weren't. Things began to fast-forward again, only for the world to go white and color to return in the form of Hogsmeade Station. That was right...he'd been unconscious and near death due to the dementor kiss. It was as if Ron's Killing Curse had never been cast.
Lionheart tried to keep calm. He had no wand, but he could move around, couldn't he? He ran up to Lupin and tried to get his attention, but there was no response to his hurried and pleading cries for someone to remove the unconscious Harry from the scene before something terrible happened. He waved a hand in front of Lupin's face that also went ignored, and tried to grab his arm, but it passed right through. Lionheart held up a hand in front of his face, which didn't look any different. Was he a ghost? This couldn't be as simple as the preserved memory inside Tom Riddle's diary, or its effects wouldn't bleed out into the dimension where the bridge over the river lay.
With no other recourse, Lionheart was forced to try and leave the scene. If he could just get into the Forbidden Forest and find the Fairy Queen's shrine, he could fix this. She would answer him even through dimensions, as she was his puppet who took on the role of his gracious benefactor. He could rely on her aid, he had to be able to contact her. So he fled into the woods.
But he did not get very far. He felt himself slowing down, first as if he were moving against heavy wind, then as if he were moving through deep water. Why was he slowing and stopping? He tried, struggled, to get further, but the push against him turned him back, began dragging him back towards the scene that had played out before. He was being pulled back to it like he was caught on a fishing line that was being reeled in!
"Sͅt̗o̩p̣!̙ S̜t̤o̗p͇!̬ L̜e̫t̼ m̪e͓ g͖o̦!͖" he demanded of the air, only to find himself getting dragged back as though gravity were now centered on his alternate self, the one who was unconscious and being taken to the hospital wing.
Which was exactly where he ended up. Lionheart ended up in the darkened hospital wing, and with no other options, simply stared at the pale body of Harry Potter, which he had taken and used for himself. All he could do now was wait, and damn it, he hated waiting! He hated it almost as much as he hated that foul Ron, or even--
"We're losing him, Albus!"
Lionheart did not realize Dumbledore had even entered. But here he was, attending the bedside vigil all of a sudden, while Madame Pomfrey panicked that her potions and chocolates weren't working. Lionheart was filled with a burning hatred. No matter what happened, at least the next hundred or so memory sequences would allow him to replay the humiliating, violent deaths of his self-created, most wonderfully terrible enemy in stunning detail.
"I think not," the Headmaster calmly replied, raising one arm and calling, "Fawkes!"
Lionheart saw the phoenix arrive in a flash of fire, sitting on the head of Harry's hospital bed. Lionheart looked at the phoenix, and gasped--it was looking back at him! Directly at him, as though it could see him! Lionheart had a moment's silent panic before he lunged, but it was too late!
With a horrible screeching cry, the large bird descended on Harry Potter, talons spread, and attacked. Lionheart's body went through everything he touched as he tried to stop it, only to be helpless to stop the phoenix clawing out the unconsious Harry Potter's throat. He howled, screamed, his world once more torn apart before he could rule it, and as blood splattered the shocked forms of Pomfrey and Dumbledore, and Lionheart raged, trying to grab a wand or something to reverse the damage, the world slowed down. Then it was swept away, all at once again.
When he found himself back on the bridge over the river, he was bound and gagged again. Craning his neck to look at the field behind the river, Lionheart found two Harry Potters advancing towards him, one with a rake and one with a sickle. Sobbing, he wormed his way towards the third of the boards making up the river.
[MONTHS LATER]
Back in the white void, Ron stood next to Dumbledore, watching Lionheart struggle through the latest memory sequence. They were more than seventy percent in now, and monitoring Lionheart's agony had not made them feel better, but at least made them feel like justice was being done.
It was quite the vindictive setup. Lionheart had not managed to save a single Harry, and over the course of the little re-invented story it had become apparent that doing so was impossible. Each time a new chapter was started, Lionheart was forced to watch increasingly improbable and often very obvious hazards kill off his precious possession and avatar, including on at least one occasion, a massive boulder rolling down a hill from nowhere. Some of Ron's favorites had been one of Lionheart's brainwashed mental damage patients going berserk and firing a curse that killed him, and one of the dragons he'd started raising biting his head off another time.
And the effects were showing. Lionheart himself never changed of course, because he wasn't capable of it. But Harry changed with each memory sequence, becoming both physically and mentally less appealing. Physically, he began to look gaunt and bruised, and his features started to look less glamorized, and then became unflattering, until he looked more ghoul than man. No one in the memory sequences acted any differently, albeit Lionheart had had an amazing meltdown when he realized his avatar was now ugly. The same fate had befallen his dryad slaves--the shrieks of horror and disgust and rage when the criminal had watched with glee as the potion was crafted, only for every woman that came out of it to look closer to a diseased and rotted corpse than a beautiful faerie? It was music to Ron's ears.
Dumbledore was characteristically solemn throughout it all. Ron could tell that everything Lionheart had done in his twisted world was too much for him, and that bearing witness to it all had damaged him. Hopefully, when he saw the final punishment Lionheart was to receive, he might actually smile a bit.
Until then, though, he had a lot of torment to watch. He should conjure up some popcorn....
[MORE MONTHS LATER...]
Out. He was finally out. The corpse of the final pseudo-Harry lay at his feet, slain by a cursed goblet retrieved from Dumbledore's stock. This was the last part of the adventure he remembered before Dumbledore had come for him in the forest, and the last board containing a memory sequence. When the world re-aligned itself, he would be on the other side of the bridge. Lionheart would be free.
The flash of white was slow to re-align into color, but when it did, he was not on the bridge. Rather than wood or metal, under his feet was...what was that? Concrete? Lionheart looked down, and looked around. There was no field, and no horde of a hundred Harry corpses armed with scythes and spades. In fact, once his eyes adjusted, he seemed to be on a suburban street. It was darker than he was used to, but he could see a good distance out thanks to the street lights.
This was not part of the memories he remembered from the past year in his improved life of Harry Potter. In fact, he did not remember this very well at all. There had to be some clue....and then, at the very right moment, eyes settled on a street sign reading 'Privet Drive' just as a loud pop! sounded and a street light shone out.
Oh no, he thought to himself. No, this can't be where I am...
Dumbledore clicked the Deluminator several more times, until the streetlights were all out. Cloaked in darkness, Lionheart watched McGonagall shift from cat to human, and have a conversation in which she and Dumbledore discussed the fall of Lord Voldemort and the Boy Who Lived.
No! This is all wrong! Lionheart thought with gnashing teeth, though knowing by now that nothing he did would be able to change whatever twisted vision that Ron was showing him. He heard the roar of the motorcycle engine, saw Hagrid removing baby Harry Potter and handing him to Dumbledore, saw Dumbledore leave the letter with the cradle on the doorstep with the letter. He saw McGonagall Disapparate and Hagrid leave on the flying motorcycle.
And then, curiously, Dumbledore himself did not Disapparate. He stood up, alone in the street, and turned to face Lionheart himself. Lionheart stood up cautiously, realizing that he was being stared at, bored into with those piercing blue eyes. This wasn't what was supposed to happen, was it?
But then Dumbledore started to walk towards him, and Lionheart stood his ground, terribly afraid of what would happen to him, but by now knowing that trying to flee would make it worse. Dumbledore kept walking, crossing the street until he was only a few feet away, face-to-face with his prisoner.
"Well? You've crossed the River of the Dead. Would you like to know what happens next?"
Lionheart felt very cold, very small and helpless. He shook his head, teeth long-since crooked from grinding together so much.
"This is your final punishment, Lionheart." Dumbledore said. "To watch the true story out as it was always meant to. You, Lionheart, are cursed to watch the true life of Harry Potter play out from beginning to end, over and over, from birth until death, with none of the changes effected by you, this nightmarish creature with no resemblance to him whatsoever. Being that you cannot be seen or heard, and cannot touch any physical object, you are for eternity cursed with the one true thing which you have always feared above all else: dismissal. You are to live knowing that nothing you did changed anything, that no one loved you or ever granted you the respect and recognition you thought you deserved, knowing that in the end, you were completely and utterly irrelevant, and as such will be forgotten."
"N͕o͇!͚ N̼o̭,̗ n̞o̮,̖ N͔O̜!̪" Lionheart said, followed by a string of curses and violent threats. "N̪O̦!̹ Y͈O̻U͇ C͔A̺N̻'̼T͓ D͕O͉ T̙H̟ḀT̤!̫ I̗T͕ C͙A̖N͔'̣T̼ B̠E̳!̩ IͅT̖ C̠A͈N̩'͉T͖ B̲E͚ R̠E̩A̙L̜!͍"̰ he bawled. "̩I̟T̝ I̻S̙N͓'͍T̹ R̩E̺A̠L͙,̝ I͎T̞'̯S̰ J͉U̹S͓T̲ A̗ ṬR̖I̯C͉K͔!̪ A͎ V̳I͖S͍I̬O̼N̻ Y̩O͚U̺'̼V̪E̤ F̙O̲R̼C͇E͖D͍ ỌN̝ M̱E͚!̥ I͚ K̹N͚O̝Ẉ H̝O͕W͇ ḬT͈ G͔O̳E͉S͔,̪ A̪N̤D̳ T͎H̰I̺S̩ I̞S̯N͎'̦T̠ I͖Tͅ!̰ A̖L͇L͔ O͍F̺ T̖H̳I̖S̘ I̗S͓ H̠AͅP̰P͚E͓ṆI̖N̼G͕ I̖N̺ṢI̳ḌE̞ M̘Y̥ H̗E̼A̞D͚!̳"
"Of course it is happening inside your head. But why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"
And then he was gone. He was gone, and Lionheart roared, howled, and cried. It was over.
[BACK IN THE WHITE VOID]
"Does he know he can leave?"
"I doubt he would even if he did." Dumbledore said, pouring Ron a glass of firewhisky. "It truly is the most appropriate punishment, is it not?" he asked. "He could go off and explore the rest of the wide world available to him, as he is no longer tied to scenes he did not create. But he won't. His own ego and pride and vanity will compel him to stay at the side of Harry Potter, an invisible, helpless demon who cannot let go of what he cannot have. His hell will truly be self-inflicted."
"Damn right." Ron said, clinking glasses with Dumbledore. "I have to say, Harry's life wasn't perfect, but he made for a pretty good hero."
"An admirable one." Dumbledore agreed. "A part of Lionheart will always realize that, and in conflict with his own desire to be greater than all others, he will deny it forever and hate it. But it is what it is, and he cannot change it."
"And with that, I s'pose it's time to close the book on this awful part of our lives?"
"I quite agree. Let us say farewell to this suffering and move on to more gentle pursuits."
And the two of them left.
__________________________________
"I doubt he would even if he did." Dumbledore said, pouring Ron a glass of firewhisky. "It truly is the most appropriate punishment, is it not?" he asked. "He could go off and explore the rest of the wide world available to him, as he is no longer tied to scenes he did not create. But he won't. His own ego and pride and vanity will compel him to stay at the side of Harry Potter, an invisible, helpless demon who cannot let go of what he cannot have. His hell will truly be self-inflicted."
"Damn right." Ron said, clinking glasses with Dumbledore. "I have to say, Harry's life wasn't perfect, but he made for a pretty good hero."
"An admirable one." Dumbledore agreed. "A part of Lionheart will always realize that, and in conflict with his own desire to be greater than all others, he will deny it forever and hate it. But it is what it is, and he cannot change it."
"And with that, I s'pose it's time to close the book on this awful part of our lives?"
"I quite agree. Let us say farewell to this suffering and move on to more gentle pursuits."
And the two of them left.
__________________________________
So ends the tale of Jared Ornstead, aka Skysaber, aka Perfect Lionheart. The Jester has been sentenced and his punishment carried out.
