Chapter 6: Uncertainties
The headmaster smiled as two of his favourite students sat down facing him. "Now that seems to be taken care of perhaps you wouldn't mind telling us where you have been for the past seven years Harry."
Harry sighed and leaned back in the chair resting his head back letting his eyes close as he tried to figure out the best way to put this to them both. "I was...home." He let out another sigh and sat forward his eyes still closed as if he didn't want to face them. "Its the only way to describe the feeling, it felt like I had come home."
He scrubbed his face tiredly. "After Rons betrayal I just lost it, I literally just stood there laughing my head off while all around me the temple was collapsing when I heard a groan of pain and I looked around." He looked at them both, a disgusted look on his face. "Voldemort had somehow survived the magic discharge, I swear that old bastard has move lives than a damn cat, but his wand was ruined and in a fit of rage he attacked me with his bare hands." He looked down at his hands as if remember what had happened to him was mere moments ago. "I guess it must have seemed amusing to someone as we stood there one trying to throttle the other whilst all around us the roof caved in above us and thats the last I remember of being in the temple." He smiled slightly. "Then it all went white."
"H-How did you survive?" Hermione asked him her voice quivering slightly in fear of his answer.
Harry gave her his lop sided grin and caused her heart to thump a little harder and he laughed. "Thats just it Mione, I don't think I did survive. It's weird because thre was no pain what I felt wasn't like I had a physical form, it was all feelings, and I felt loved, I felt like I was home and I was happy..."
Hermione sat there her eyes bright with tears whilst Dumbledore sat back in his leather chair and steepled his fingers in thought. "You say Mr Weasely betrayed you? And what of Voldemort?"
Harry frowned more at Rons name than of that of his arch nemesis. "Yeah, he's the reason I found myself trapped in the main altar room with Voldemort, he cast a reductor charm and blocked the only way out. As for Voldemort he's rotting in his own personal hell, Gaia doesn't take kindly to people trying to abuse her gift's."
Dumbledore sat forward at the mention of Gaia while Hermione frowned. "Gaia is just a myth Harry, a folk tale."
"No Hermione, she isn't, but like a lot of legends it's misinterpreted. Gaia is the conscienousness behind the very source of magic, kind of like the power behind the elements. I learned this while I was...In the white place. Magic is nothing more than using a focus to alter the elements of reality, the stronger a wizards link to Gaia the more adept he is at manipulating the elements involved in casting magic."
"Forgive me for interupting Harry but this does not explain why you are here now, alive as it were when even you yourself said you were dead."
Harry nodded at Dumbledore. "My apollogies, when I say dead I don't mean it in the strictest sense of the word. My soul if you want to call it that was absorbed by the well of life. And it stayed that way till almost a year ago."
Hermione reached forward wrapping her small hand around his squeezing it gently. "What happened a year ago Harry?"
Harry sighed. "A year ago some of the Red Dragons located the Temple and breached the alter room looking for the Well of life. It's kind of hard to explain but it was like Gaia knew that someday someone would come back to do what Voldemort tried to do, I think it's why she saved me, because when the Dragons tried to draw power from the well, I was expelled back into the altar room."
By now tears were slowly running down his cheeks. "I had finally felt at peace, after 18 years of fighting I had found peace and they had taken it from me, I lay there naked and shiver in a state of shock, I had physical form again and after so long without it all I could do was just lie there and cry. That the Red Dragons were shocked was an understatement, they used their wands and bound me hand and foot, you should have seen the looks on their faces when they realised that it was the famous Harry Bloody Potter, lying there in his birthday suit." He dragged an arm across his face to wipe his eyes and sniffed.
"They went back to trying to force the well to respond to them, but it was different somehow. I could feel what they were doing and it was like a drill in my skull I could here Gaia crying out and I lost my temper, not really sure what I did, but the ropes I was bound with exploded into flames and burned away, I have the scars across my wrists and ankles still. I grabbed one of the Dragons and I-I I froze his body, god He just turned blue in my hands, I let him fall Professor and-and he smashed on the floor. God Professor I killed eight people that day and when it was over I blacked out. I woke up later the bodies were gone but I wasn't alone, there was a woman, etheral made up of the white light I was talking about, she looked just like my mum, she held me in her arms and I could feel the love she was giving me."
He squeezed Hermiones hand when he saw the tears slowly running down her face, even Dumbledores eyes had lost their remarkable sparkle. "She never said anything to me, but I felt like I knew what she wanted, she was asking me to protect her, and I couldn't say no to her." He stared at the floor unsure of how to continue.
"Was this why you were at the Meeting the other day?" Hermione watched him feeling her heart break for him as he seemed to lose something precious again. "And how could you do all those spells without a wand?"
Harry frowned. "I was kind of hoping no one had noticed that fact."
Dumbledore looked stunned. "Harry you can do wandless elemental magic?"
Hermione looked at Dumbledore. "Sorry Professor but how the hell do you know what kind of spells Harry was throwing around."
Dumbledore flashed that mysterious smile of his and leaned back in his seat to peer at both of them over his finger tips. "Alastor Moody contacted me shortly after you had left his office. Voldemort may be gone but I like to keep my finger on the pulse of the fight against the Dark forces."
Nodding at Dumbledores explanation Harry started on his own. "Something happened to me in the white space, I can't seem to use magic in the normal sense anymore. When I use a wand now nothing happens, incantations, curses, I just can't do them anymore."
"But-but I saw you, fireballs, lightning, If you cant do magic anymore how do you explain what you did to Professor Mcgonnagal."
"That stuff is nothing, it's just manipulation of the elements, it's instinctual, something Gaia did to me while I was in her embrace I think." He grins slightly ashamed at what he did to Professor McGonnagal. "As for the Professor, well what your eyes see is interpretated by electrical impulses in your brain, its easy enough to alter those signals if you know how."
Dumbledore sighed. "Whilst all this is very relevant Harry and I like Miss Granger am extremely pleased to see you alive why after a year have you now decided to reveal your presence to us?"
Harry nodded slightly. "The man behind the Red Dragons is trying to do what Voldemort attempted, thats why his acolytes where at Gaia's temple in Tibet. Their problem was that Voldemorts battle with myself destroyed the flow of the Well of Life rendering it useless."
Hermione nodded slightly. "So if they can't use the well they are screwed right?"
Harry shook his head. "No not quite. You see there were three sites that Temples were originally built on, the one in Tibet, another on Atlantis which as it has sank beneathe the waves we can assume wont be the target and the third is here at Hogwarts."
TBC....