Chapter Text
18th June 1996
Did you know that 3 is just as much a magical number as 7? That it stands for completeness, wholeness and (probably more important and less ironic when one thinks of Horcruxes) the Trinities of Past-Present-Future or Mind-Body-Soul? With the number 3 there always is a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Well, Harry certainly had never thought of the magical properties of numbers before, had never paid much attention to Hermione’s rambles on Arithmancy and the like. That day, though, he wished he had. Maybe it would have prepared him somewhat for what went down the day he brought his friends to the Ministry of Magic in some desperate attempt to save his godfather. Maybe it would have prevented some pain, maybe it would have prevented all that angst and desperation. Then again, if he had known that it would be the last time he would have to confront Voldemort, that it would be the ‘Last Battle’, Harry might have done something crucial differently. Maybe that little something would have changed things a lot around, for the good or for the bad.
Who knows?
All Harry knew when he realised that everything had been a set-up, a trap to lure him to the Department of Mysteries, was that he had led his friends into danger so he would fight to bring them back to safety. He didn’t think of some maniacal dark lord as he was dodging spells left and right, corralling his friends into the fighting stances they had practised in the DA. He didn’t stop to question when Nagini slithered her way into the Death Chamber just as the members of the Order of the Phoenix made their entrance. His world had narrowed down to action and reaction. Spell-weaving, jumping, rolling, running, incapacitating as many Death Eaters as possible, trying in vain to protect those he loved. Surviving.
He didn’t think much at all when he saw Neville and Luna work together and severe the great serpent’s head off cleanly. He didn’t have the time to ponder on the fact that a second Horcrux was now gone, following the diary of his second year near silently. He didn’t even get to be smug. Diary Tom back then had been a lot more talkative about his immortality plans than the Voldemort of the present, or Dumbledore for that matter, seemed to be aware of. No, Harry didn’t even register that Nagini got a bite in on Neville before her anticlimactic end.
Spellfire. Screaming. Sirius at his side, acting way too cheerful for the situation.
And then, from one moment to the next, all Harry could see was Bellatrix Lestrange hitting Sirius with some spell he couldn’t identify. His vision full of his godfather stumbling, eyes going wide, and then falling. Fluttering material, strange murmurs of voices he couldn’t quite understand, a cool sensation that had somehow been drawing him in ever since he had first entered the Death Chamber. Something intangible reaching out for the figure of his godfather as he fell backwards to the Veil.
No.
Stop.
Please.
And Harry had never been more grateful for the underestimated qualities of werewolves than he was the very moment Remus somehow managed to get a grip on Sirius’ old battle robes. Time was still stretching into molasses, Harry was still moving too slowly. Sirius touched the Veil. Remus got hold of him and yanked. They both fell from the dais and onto the chamber floor in one tangled mass of limbs.
Sirius wasn’t moving.
Then Bellatrix was cackling and taunting and red tinged Harry’s vision. He was off running, Remus’ shouts not really registering. He followed her, determined to… to… he had no idea, he was just acting on instinct. Or, in hindsight, maybe something else had been influencing his actions. Leaving his friends behind still fighting for their lives, following Bellatrix of all people even though Sirius was right there. Yes, hindsight always knows better.
Who would have thought that possessing Harry would be Voldemort’s end?
Harry certainly hadn’t and he never told anyone what really happened in those excruciatingly painful moments. Not Dumbledore, not his friends. How was he to put into words how it felt to have Voldemort’s vile presence penetrate his very essence… and then encountering more than just Harry?
It had been a magical triad.
A diary in the beginning.
A snake companion in the middle.
A boy at the end.
How was he to explain that Voldemort failed to reconnect with his own soul piece hiding away inside Harry? A fragment of a shredded soul, the third anchor, unintentional, the last of a torn ritual to secure immortality against all odds. Against nature.
How to tell that 3 souls were just too much for one body to take? He couldn’t really explain it, but that very moment was when Harry realised he himself was a Horcrux, that he was what connected his parents’ murderer to the realm of the living.
The shock, the disgust, the fear, the loathing, and then the repulsion. The pain. No, he was never going to tell anyone about that. He wanted it out. Wanted it gone.
Though, maybe Harry should have tried to tell somebody. Maybe Dumbledore would have been able to explain it better, help him work through it, but to Harry the whole experience felt infinitely personal and vaguely disgusting. It left him feeling somewhat tainted. But the worst was the hollowness in the aftermath. The Horcrux inside his scar had been a part of him for so long that when it was obliterated in the fight with its original soul, it left behind an emptiness that would take a long time to fill. He couldn’t tell anyone what had inhabited his scar, lived alongside his beating heart, and he certainly would not tell how he felt in its absence.
Harry defeated Voldemort in the entrance hall of the Ministry of Magic when the Dark Lord tried to possess him. To the public it would be described as an epic battle, though Harry knew Dumbledore had been the only one that actually fought Voldemort in the literal sense. Harry himself had simply tried to get rid of the pain the fighting souls inside him had created, to hold onto the scarce good he knew to not get lost to the Dark. Not that anyone would listen to him. They never had, they never would, and so things went like this:
Dumbledore duelled Voldemort, Voldemort managed to possess Harry, his own Horcrux, changed forever during its time with Harry as its host, rejected him. The Horcrux-Triad was broken and Harry experienced a pain that would still haunt him years from that day. He just wanted it to stop. All-consuming, that was what it had been and all Harry had been able to do was beg, push, plead, push some more, and hold on tight with every ounce of will… until everything went black.
Anticlimactic, really, at least for those standing and watching, staring at him from the outside while Harry fought for his sanity, the right to his body, his mind, his very soul.
He didn’t wake up until Hermione fluffed up the pillows of his hospital bed on the third day after the battle. The school year was over before Harry got to even leave the infirmary, his friends had all survived though it was still touch and go with Neville. The press hailed Harry a hero, the Saviour, and Dumbledore shielded him from most of it. He was hustled onto the Hogwarts Express, the ride just flying by and…
And maybe Sirius would wake up from the coma he had fallen into some day soon and Harry would finally have the family he always wished for. Or maybe the number 3 had changed things around so thoroughly that one boy would finally take his life into his own hands and get to flourish.
And things would never be the same.