Author's Note: After reading Half-Blood Prince, I took a long hiatus from this story, both because of real life and because of the events of the book. I didn't know whether to continue this story as AU, just leave it incomplete and start over, or try to go back to make the corrections to include HBP. I have continued with this chapter the way I'd intended prior to HBP, so it is now an Alternate Universe story. Please review and tell me whether you would still like for it to be continued as is.
Thank you very much for both your reviews and your patience. A VERY special thank you goes to allyeinstein123 for her corrections of my Latin in the last chapter. I took it as a high compliment that you took your time to give me not only the corrections, but an explanation as well. Thank you very much. The Latin in the last chapter should have read:
Sanctus occulusque sapientia est quae intus per totem tempore iacet.
See Chapter 1 for Disclaimer.
"Sweet Merlin," Hermione whispered.
"Indeed," said a quiet, but unmistakably powerful voice from behind them.
Both quick as lightning and slower than time itself, Harry and Hermione turned about.
He stood before them, straight as a rail and nearly as thin as one. Tall, wispy, but exuding a strength and power unmatched by anyone or anything either of them had ever experienced. His golden robes billowed around him; what appeared to be a solid gold sword encased in a mahogany scabbard hung low on his hip. Long silvery-white hair framed his age-old face and melded into his long beard. He bore a striking resemblance to Albus Dumbledore, with one notable exception. Though his eyes held the same youthful sparkle, while Dumbledore's were sapphires, this man's- if he could even be called a man- were emeralds.
"Good Lord," Hermione breathed as Harry simultaneously cried "Bloody Hell!"
"Though I might appreciate the flattery, Miss Granger, I'm afraid Mr. Potter's utterance is more accurate. It seems more fitting that the son of a daemon would be met with a curse rather than a religious term of endearment."
For one very rare time in their lives, both Harry and Hermione were struck speechless.
"Though I assure you that I possess one of the most lengthy and tedious names of anyone, now or forever, I believe that sort of formality will not prove necessary. I am Merlin, sorcerer and Keeper," he said offhandedly, as if he were simply commenting that he was hungry or old or Irish. He made a sweeping bow, his robes flowing perfectly as he bent as fluidly as someone one-thousandth of his age.
"Harry James Potter and Hermione Jane Granger. I have waited eternities to have your presence, or possibly you have come before I have even known of you. Time is uncertain, you see, its sands are relative."
Harry let out a breath that he didn't know he'd been holding.
"Welcome to the Infinity Room. Here, there is no past that has already occurred, no future waiting to take place. There is no present, and life is merely an illusion. Yet at the same time everything is in the past, and everything is in the future. There is no life, no death, no evolution, no stagnancy. Simply infinity. Time, as life, is fleeting. In this room there is neither power nor weakness, and yet there is no equality. Time, you see, in infinite, though the time of a human may be finite."
"Sir," Hermione began as she had so many times before, "how--"
"Nothing exists in this room that is not infinite, Miss Granger. Life is mortal. Death, contrary to most speculation, is not a final state. Evolution has a beginning and end with the life from which it evolves, and stagnancy is temporary. You see, power and weakness are merely tricks of the mind. Smoke and mirrors. Infinite power cannot exist, and tangentally, neither may infinite weakness. For even the weakest have power, and the most powerful often carry the deepest weaknesses.
He paused.
"Evil exists here. Evil is an infinite parasite, always seeking a new host. But although evil fools the Room into believing its infinity, there exist things stronger, things truly infinite. There are only three true presences in the Room, just three truly infinite energies. Your fight is not truly a fight against evil, Mr. Potter. Your fight is against something much easier to vanquish. Power. Your quest is to find the weakness in a seemingly endless power. This, you must remember. You can not vanquish evil. Evil will continually return. All that you need to do is discover the bounds of the power of the one who you must destroy."
"Three infinite entities, Mr. Potter, Ms. Granger. Find them and your battle will be won. Invoke them and your enemy will be eradicated."
"Triumvirate."
With that one word echoing through his mind, the darkness engulfed him.
His shoulder hurt.
Harry slowly opened his eyes to the blinding golden light of a summer evening. He knew where he was; he was lying on the pristine linoleum floor of the Dursleys' kitchen. He knew these surroundings well, which was a good thing, considering the fact that he simply knew that his glasses were lying in shards beside him. After breaking them so many times, he had developed a sixth sense for knowing when his glasses were broken.
His shoulder hurt, a dull ache that grew into a hot inferno as his awareness returned to him. As the pain radiated from his shoulder to his collarbone through his arm to his fingertips, he became aware of a weight on his burning arm. A human-sized weight with bushy brown hair-
"Hermione?" he asked quickly, his wits returning. He attempted to sit up, but his arm refused to support him. "Hermione!"
Her eyelids fluttered and opened, her eyes unfocused at first. Reality seemed to flow back to her after several moments. "Harry?" she said to no one in particular. It was then that she realized that her head rested on his collarbone, her legs thrown haphazardly across his solar plexus. "Are you alright?"
"I'm not sure," he said.
Squeezing her eyes shut and opening them once more to focus them, she managed to sit upright, sliding her legs off of his chest and kneeling by his side, looking him over. "I'm so sorry! I must have fallen on you, I never meant that, I don't even remember Apparating--"
"You didn't," Harry said. "Apparate, that is."
"Oculis reparo," she sighed, flicking her wand at the shards of glass scattered across the kitchen floor. They swirled together into Harry's old glasses, which she reached across his body to retrieve and give to him. "What hurts?"
He started to sit up, and her hand immediately flew to his back to help him. I'm not an invalid, he thought.
She chose to ignore that. "What hurts, Harry?"
"My..." he hissed as her hand skimmed over the site of his pain, "shoulder."
She raised her hand to his right shoulder. Gently, she touched the junction between his collarbone and his arm. She had intended to ask him if that hurt, but his sharp intake of breath told her. "Evanesco," she murmured, touching his sleeve with her wand.
"Hermione?" he queried, startled as his shirt disappeared.
"I need to see what I'm doing," she said somewhat briskly. His shoulder had bled; there was a jagged cut across the skin, and a bruise was appearing. She wondered in the back of her mind how long they had been unconscious. "Aenesthia," she said, her wand circling the injury. He looked on as she healed his cut and felt his shoulder with her hand to find any possible internal damage. "Desroto," she said finally. He could feel his bones shifting and growing back into position, even through the pain-deadening charm. Something prickled under his skin as she moved behind him and slid both of her hands over his shoulders, attempting to determine whether there was any swelling still.
"You'll have a scar," she said. "I can try to remove it--"
"Don't," he interrupted harshly.
She was silent.
"I need the scar. I need the memory of the hurt and the welts on my skin. My whole damned life revolves around a scar. That scar tells me who I am. I would bloody well like to rid myself of that one. I don't want this job I've got. But I've got it. Ever scar I've got has a purpose and a story. You could erase every damned scar on my body, but the scars on the outside aren't the ones that hurt. I live so that either I can die or I can kill. Or both." He took a breath. "I need the scars. The scars on the outside force me to remember why I'm living this life. The marks on my skin... they take away from the marks inside."
He felt her fingertips skim the tops of his collarbones and shoulder blades. She was humming something, something quiet and beautiful and distant and familiar in a strange sort of way. "What're you humming?" he said before he could decide whether or not he should ask. It almost seemed sacred.
But she stopped when she heard him. There was an audible silence, a void. "I didn't realize... it's just... It's just a song that my mother..." she trailed off. "My mother used to sing me to sleep."
"Mine, too," Harry heard his voice saying somewhere very far away. "I hear her."