herumtreiber

Title: Unusual ending 30/32
Chapter: In the hall of the ancient mages - part two
Author:

herumtreiber
Genre: Slash, time travel, romance, adventure
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or related characters. Nor do I make any money from the writing of these stories.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: None
Epilogue compliant? No way!
Chapter length: 3,406 this part
Summary: Old meets new. Harry walks all over Draco's heart, and when he realizes his mistakes he does the unforgivable so Draco takes him back. Time travel. During HBP, disregards Deathly Hallows - that means everyone's alive, except Sirius, but...

Table of contents

In the hall of the ancient mages - 1/2

"When are you going to tell Harry about the blow job?" Fred smirked, putting his arm around the Slytherin.

Draco stood beside the window on the Gryffindor dormitory, watching the pouring rain; the pitter-patter of the waterdrops against the windowpane distracted him from the task at hand. "He'll be mad. He'll think I only used him so I could fulfil the Unbreakable Vow I made to aunt Bellatrix."

George looked up from the Quidditch magazine he'd pilfered from Ron's trunk. "Don't worry, if you want we'll tell him the reason you made that Vow was to save our handsome hides."

George whistled softly. "I must say Bellatrix was rather prim, never understanding that her words could be used to fulfil the Vow in a rather lewd way."

"Where in the hell is Sirius?" Draco cast a Tempus spell and glared at the results. "It's been five minutes since he took Weasley and Granger to that Hall of his."

Fred patted Draco's head. "The reason you're nervous is because Harry was first to go there. Admit it, you want to protect the speccy git."

Draco took out his wand and pointed it at Fred. "Don't provoke me! Do you want pink hair?"

George whistled appreciatively from the scarlet-coloured couch where he lay spread-eagled. "Pink is the new black. Can you do mine too?"

Draco huffed. "You two are insufferable! Should've let you rotting in that dungeon!"

Fred leered at the blond, turning to wink at George. "Do not mind ickle Drakkiekins, Forge. He loves us!"

"Like I'd love a bunch of crazed, literature-quoting Jarvies!" snarled Draco.

At that moment there was a bright glow near the couch. Sirius looked up at them, stroking the Ouroboros ring. "You lot are the last ones. Come on!"

"Finally! You took your time, Black; the awful Gryffindor colours were giving me a headache!" grumbled Draco as he sauntered towards George and Sirius, Fred by his side.

The boys grabbed both of Sirius' arms as the Marauder rubbed the silver ring, transporting them to the Hall of Realities.

Sirius told them where to go inside the Hall. Ron and Hermione were together in what Black had dubbed the Eastern wall, nearby the window showing the changing landscape the Hall visited.

Remus and Severus were at the opposite wall, protecting the door; waiting to trap the Death Eaters Voldemort might bring with him.

The twins, Draco and Sirius were in the shadows behind Harry, guarding his back.

The Marauder called softly to Harry, "Look at the crystal spheres over that shelf. The one that's supposed to hold the prime reality will call strongly to you. Just… don't look too closely at it or it will suck you into that universe. Remember, if Voldemort should have control of it, he'll escape there and manipulate it so it affects all others."

"Or else he could break it?" asked Draco, lifting his eyebrow.

Sirius nodded tiredly, "The crystal balls are strong, but if they bump against each other, I don't know what could happen, the realms might mingle with each other. People and beasts would be displaced just like Luna's creatures but much, much worse."

Sirius said softly to his godson, "I'll cast a spell that will protect them, you'll hardly hear us. We won't be able to communicate, but I don't want the Death Eaters to wreak havoc in the hall."

Draco heard a noise, a scuffle near the window that suddenly cleared, showing a breathtaking view. From the distance, Draco could recognize the Swiss Alps. He stared at the outline of the Matterhorn but a movement to his right left him no time to enjoy the scenery.

Draco took out his wand and the battle was joined again, though not before Sirius cast a specialized version of the Protego shield to safeguard the precious spheres.

Draco saw a man crouching near the shelf to his left. He was unknown to him; the bald wizard leered at him, showing crooked, yellowed teeth. The blond threw the first curse he remembered from Moody's teachings. 'Uberrime madesco!'

The Death Eater slipped in the moisture that suddenly appeared everywhere he touched; the water eventually encapsulated him.

Meanwhile, Harry approached the shelf where the glowing ball containing the prime reality was located. He felt drawn to it; as if it was singing in a language only he could understand - like the golden egg that held the clue to the next task in the Triwizard Tournament, the one that could only be understood in the water.

The globe was small compared to the other ones situated nearby. Yet Harry felt sure it was the one Sirius had talked about.

Harry stared at the swirling surface of the sphere; in its depths he saw himself sitting forlornly in a swing, his trainers barely touching the yellowed grass as he looked at what he desired the most. In front of that Harry there was a happy child with an older sibling and a mother; what Harry never had. His childhood robbed of any loving relative due to the machinations of Voldemort - and as he had come to realize, because of Dumbledore's schemes.

If he'd been put for adoption with a wizard family that had children like the Weasleys, he would have had siblings and parents, like the image of the child within the orb of majesty that held the prime reality.

Harry picked up the crystal sphere, throwing a glance behind him. He could see the dim shapes of his friends fighting Death Eaters.

He was tempted to join them and vanquish the dark wizards, but his sojourn in the present had taught him that his friends could take care of themselves. He didn't have to be the one who always got them out of trouble. Sometimes they rescued him; a relief for the boy whom the Wizarding World always depended upon, like a crutch.

He hefted the ball, gazing at the whirling interior that so wanted to suck him into that realm in which Harry saw:

Colin's slim hand, lifeless in the Great Hall in Hogwarts, surrounded by rubble, the detritus of battle.

Harry grabbing Voldemort's shoulders and jumping into the abyss; the ruins of the castle visible in the distance.

Remus and Tonks laying side by side, their hands almost touching as if they wanted to keep their connection alive - even in death.

Draco walking next to his mother, their white heads bobbing slightly as they walked upon a bridge that would take them out of Hogwarts and Harry's life for long years.

Steam pouring out of the Hogwarts Express as it moved smoothly out of platform 9 ¾; a black-haired child barely visible through the moving window. The vision expanded and Harry saw he was next to Ginny, Ron and Hermione. But Draco wasn't there.

Harry shivered. Were these true visions of what would be, or what might be?

He felt the inexorable pull to enter the crystal sphere and shape that reality so that it would fit his needs. So that Draco and him would be together, forever. That universe called up something in his blood - it was his to mould, to shape as he wanted.

Harry was about to utter the words that would permit him to enter the glowing sphere, having acquired the knowledge how to do so. It was as if the orb possessed sentience and weaved a spell upon Harry's mind, whispering words, enchanting him so the protagonist of its story would join and would irrefutably cement its position amongst its crystal companions as the unassailable prime reality. The one upon which the others depended.

It was a heady feeling, holding in the palm of his left hand the means with which he could shape the world to his liking. But Harry resisted the siren's call to enter; knowing that here was where he wanted to be, with Draco and his friends, where Remus and Tonks were alive, where he was reunited with his godfather at long last.

Harry heard Tom Riddle's voice just behind him when he was lowering the orb. "Remember my words when I first met you, Harry?"

Harry turned, still holding the ball in his hand. He took out his wand, pointing it directly at Tom's heart. The Dark Lord, wearing the visage of a youthful student, appeared not to notice.

Harry growled, "You mean when you killed my parents? Sorry, Tom, I was a baby!"

Riddle waved his hand, as if killing Harry's parents and inadvertently implanting a Horcrux in him were just everyday occurrences. "No, when I wanted the Philosopher's Stone. I told you that there is only power, that some fools were too weak to seek it. Have you learned your lesson?"

"So? Speak your piece, Tom. I grow weary of listening to you."

"In your hands you hold the key to our future, Harry. Join me in that world. We will begin anew." Tom smiled craftily at the Gryffindor. "Just like you did with Draco, forging a friendship with him. We'll modify the conditions of that world so that there's no imbalance. No need to fight between the Dark and the Light. No more deaths, Harry!"

"What would you do to ensure that, Tom?" said Harry, trying to distract the youthful-looking Dark Lord. The Gryffindor snorted, backing towards the shelf. Brandishing his wand at Voldemort, he lowered his hand and gently put the ball on the lowest shelf, upon an ornate cup made of glittering adamantine threads.

Rising slowly, Harry waved his hand, prepared to cast a spell that would blast apart Tom Riddle, after watching him take one of the crystal spheres, a small one.

Before he could do it, Tom ran towards the Gryffindor, whirling madly like a dervish - doing his trick of transforming into black smoke and escaping with Harry.

Only this time, Tom didn't watch his back.

Observing the Dark Lord about to kidnap Harry, Draco jumped on the swirling dark cloud. Together, the three disappeared from the Hall of Realities.

Draco fell with a thud, knocking his head on a rock. He knelt down as he glanced at the landscape. There were rocks all around them; baked by the inclement sun they had a burnt orange hue. Apparently they were in a desert.

In the distance there was a massive rock formation that jutted out of the plain, it was red-coloured, its hue almost as intense as the tapestries in the Gryffindor Common Room.

Draco couldn't study the landscape more because Tom Riddle was facing Harry. With a lazy swish of the Elder wand, Tom easily repulsed Harry's spell and disarmed him. The brunet tumbled to the ground, a rock nicking his wrist.

Harry was effectively at Tom Riddle's inexistent mercy.

"Prepare to die, Harry! Ava…"

Draco quickly shot a spell at Voldemort. The surprised Dark Lord turned and beheld Draco, whose silver hair shined brightly in the sun.

The Slytherin's robe was slightly torn, his tie was askew. His smirk firmly in place, Draco drawled, "You'll have to finish me first, Voldemort! Harry is not alone!"

Harry knelt down and shouted despairingly to his boyfriend. "Don't! Draco, he'll kill you!"

The Gryffindor put his palms together as if in prayer, saying hoarsely, "Go away, Draco! Escape while you can!"

Tom Riddle swayed his arm towards Harry but Draco hastily cast a shield whilst he taunted the Dark Lord. "What's the matter, Voldemort? Too coward to take on a pureblood?"

Draco sneered, the corner of his lip curling as if he was facing a cowed Jarvey in front of him. "You, nothing but a lowly, impostor mongrel; you would deign teach magic to your betters by blood and breeding?"

"HOW DARE YOU, YOU COWARD? I'LL KILL YOU!" roared the Dark Lord.

Draco waved his wand as he smirked infuriatingly, a gesture Harry was intimately acquainted with, further enraging the fuming Dark Lord. "I dare because I know something you don't. Because unlike you I was born in a magical family. I grew up learning magic lore."

"Lucius is a spineless coward. You just got your father killed, Draco! I promise I will torture him before I kill him, because of you, unspeakable brat!"

"But my father has a great library, Tom. Pity you never read the books there, like the tales of Beedle the bard."

"What do I care for such stupid nonsense?" Tom's handsome face scrunched up in distaste whilst Draco directed his gaze to Harry, indicating with a slight movement of his hand that he should take cover. The brunet made his way to a brush, his muscles flexing as he debated whether to rush towards the Dark Lord to keep him from killing his lover.

Harry started moving slowly towards the boulders that lay behind Tom Riddle whilst Draco continued talking, effectively distracting the Dark Lord. "There's a myth in there which you might find instructive, Voldemort. The tale of the most powerful wand of all times."

Draco motioned with his wand towards Tom's hand which held the Elder wand. "The one you're wielding, Voldemort. In all your plotting I reckon you never ever took into consideration that a pureblood might find out how powerful the wand is. Bet Dumbledore never thought of it either. Both of you wasted your time using people like pawns!"

"It doesn´t matter, Draco. I gained rightful use of the wand when I disarmed the stupid crippled Auror, McGonagall and the pureblood traitors Weasleys." Tom laughed cruelly, swishing his wand elegantly and casting a spell that destroyed a rock just behind Draco. Shards rained upon the blond, who shrugged carelessly.

"Do tell me how you found out they might be the wand's rightful owners." Draco drawled, cocking his eyebrows as the corner of his lips tugged upward in a gesture Harry knew well. It meant the blond had something up his sleeve.

"Horace stole the memory vials of my captured Death Eaters who agreed to give testimony of that battle to the Aurors." Tom sneered, an ugly gesture in his otherwise handsome face. "After giving them deathly potions, of course."

Voldemort shot a spell at Draco; it was a violet beam that the blond parried with one of his own.

Breathing heavily, his silver hair dishevelled by the burst of magic needed to contain the powerful Dark Lord, Draco concluded with a triumphant sneer, "I was interested in Dumbledore's wand ever since I read the Beedle tale. I've been studying the Headmaster for years, at first because I was angry he always favoured his Gryffindorks."

"Indeed the old coot did, always." Tom Riddle frowned angrily when he recalled the memories of his days at Hogwarts. Numerous Gryffindors were amongst the students who bullied him before his grasp of Dark Magic made them recoil in fear from him.

"My father's contacts in the Ministry have proven useful, you know?" said Draco, holding his smooth hawthorn wand delicately, poised to defend himself if the Dark Lord attacked him.

In the midst of his confrontation with Riddle, Draco started visualizing his childhood room at the Manor. Narcissa consoling him after he'd fell from his broom. Especially the lullaby his mother used to sing when he was stressed.

"How?"

"For example, by tampering with the memory vials of prisoners, erasing the final portions of their recollections. The part that showed that I and Fred disarmed McGonagall during the battle, after she did the same with my teacher, Moody!"

"YOU LIE!" shouted Tom, taking two steps towards Draco. "I'm the master of the Elder wand!"

"Then prove it!"

Draco heard distinctly in his mind Narcissa's sweet contralto; the voice that bespoke of his golden yesterdays. A time when his parents were unassailably strong, when he dreamt of meeting the boy who vanquished Voldemort as a mere toddler, when Draco imagined he would become Harry's friend and together they would rule Slytherin and the school.

"…after the Snitch flutters away and the game's lost / you'll find me by your side, holding your hand…" sang Narcissa in Draco's crystal-clear recollections of his mother.

Tom Riddle shot the Unforgivable at Draco, the bright green beam of Avada Kedavra arching towards the blond whilst Harry cried, "Draco, noooo!"

The blond Slytherin used the melody and the feelings of warmth and safety it called up on him to power the spell Lupin taught them in DADA.

Wielding the hawthorn wand that inextricably held all the power of the Elder wand, Draco cast 'Adagissimo.'

The two spells met in the middle of the desert. Voldemort's magic, powerful as it was, could not withstand the magical strength of the most powerful wand ever created. The green light began to return to him, slowly, as if it was swimming in honey - the result of Draco's spell that slowed time.

The Elder wand escaped Voldemort's grasp, swirling through the air and passing through the conjoined beams. It sailed towards Draco's outstretched palm. After interacting with the contradictory spells, it had acquired a golden hue.

Just before Avada hit him, Voldemort threw himself to the ground, grabbing the crystal sphere he'd brought with him from the hall of the ancient mages.

Tom Riddle was bathed in a soft glow as he imploded, becoming elongated like a ghost trying to enter through a keyhole, finally disappearing into the sphere and going into another reality.

Draco lifted the golden wand to his face and examined it minutely, fingering the knobs leisurely in the scant seconds before he was tackled by a jubilant Harry and fell to the ground.

The Gryffindor growled, "Don't do it again, Dragon! You almost killed me with fright, I reckoned Tom would prevail."

Harry kissed him hungrily, holding Draco's head between his palms and chastising his lover. "Never do that again, Draco! I thought I'd lost you! I'd rather Voldemort killed me than losing you!"

Draco patted softly Harry's cheek. "The Dark Lord is defeated though he escaped to another realm. I'm getting -"

"Do not worry, boys," said Sirius as he walked toward the entwined pair on the ground, Remus by his side. "Voldemort has travelled to the far past. He won't return, for that sphere was damaged. I put a spell on it that would attract his attention and make him grab it." Sirius fingered his goatee as he smirked. "Actually, the spell is one James and I developed to prank Severus."

Remus thwacked the Marauder on the head. Then he looked around and pointed to the ochre rocks a mile behind them. "I know this place! That's Ayers Rock; we're in Australia!"

"Indeed, Remy, we are. And the crystal sphere will take Voldemort approximately 6,000 years to the past. He'll be stranded there until he dies, bereft of Horcruxes."

Harry frowned, recalling Remus' strange words about discovering a noseless figure depicted in the caverns of this part of Australia. "What if he creates a Horcrux? What if he gets to live forever and we meet him again?"

Sirius smirked in a sinister fashion. "He won't, Harry. He has no wand. Moreover, Riddle will find that the aborigines of Australia practice a different magic than his own, more powerful. To them, he'll become one of the serpent beings that battled around Uluru."

Remus cocked an eyebrow. "Not to sound like Severus; but how do you know this, Siri?"

Sirius shrugged nonchalantly. "I watched a lot of the spheres. Didn't have you or Harry to entertain me."

Remus huffed, glaring at his friend whilst Sirius continued, "The beneficial magic of the spheres that gave him his youthful appearance will wear out in time and he'll end up as disfigured as he was here, lonely and powerless against the ancient myths of this land."

Sirius opened his arms, pointing to the vast Outback around them.

Harry whispered to Draco, "How did you know the wand would obey you and not him? Slytherin cunning?"

"Actually, I wasn't sure, Harry." Draco blushed under Harry, squirming a bit. "I heard Father one time when Severus visited, before he became embroiled in Voldemort's web once more. They talked about wands and Severus mentioned he'd heard they didn't work well once the wizards were defeated by their opponents."

Harry lowered his face and traced with his lips Draco's eyelids. "You were lucky it worked and you're alive. If Voldemort had killed you, I would've used one of Sirius' spheres to bring you back and then I would've killed you myself!"

AN: Next the conclusion.

Epilogue: Unusual ending 1/2