Work Text:
The Deluminator
Chapter 1 -- Pot Luck
Harry was more frightened than he had ever been in his life. The choices were already overwhelming, but they continued unrelenting -- like a slide presentation on automatic -- filling his mind with one reality after another. Each one was a flood of experiences and emotions with full comprehension of an entirely different life lived… his life and what it could be… if he only clicked the Deluminator one more time.
*****
It was a regular end-of-the-month potluck dinner -- this time at the Weasley’s. Harry and Ginny were there with their kids along with the Longbottom’s, Thomas’s, Finnegan’s and the extended Weasley families -- Ron’s, George’s, Percy’s and Bill’s.
The children were all playing outside in the orchard. Penelope and Fleur had drawn supervision duty this time, which did not preclude them from eagerly sharing this month’s gossip.
Molly and Arthur always hosted at the Burrow whenever it was any of the Weasley offspring’s turn, which meant they hosted half the time. The grandkids preferred it because of all the space to play.
It was an anniversary of sorts -- in two days it would be seven years since the Battle of Hogwarts. They would all be at Hogwarts for the annual memorial service. But in the last two years, attendance had dropped. People were forgetting, or as Ginny said, “Moving on.” It upset Harry. How could people forget the tremendous sacrifices? A day never went by when he did not think about them. Harry was particularly subdued today, and everyone stopped trying to engage him in conversation.
The guests were scattered about the living room, kitchen, and garden in groups, laughing and drinking before dinner. Dean and Seamus were arguing about the battle for the FA Cup and their team’s prospects in the final month. Dean had finally turned his best friend into a football fan. Most of the other men were talking about work; the women about their children. Molly wanted detailed updates from them all.
Harry wandered about the house and finally climbed the stairs. He was curious if Molly had done anything yet with Ron’s room -- as she had threatened for years now. He opened the door and looked in… She still had not. Other than being very much cleaner and neater than it had ever been when Ron had inhabited it, the room remained a bright orange shrine to the Chudley Cannons -- still worst in the league. It made Harry smile. He was about to leave when something, a glint of silver, caught his eye. He stopped and stared.
It was Dumbledore’s Deluminator… or rather, Ron’s Deluminator, which their former headmaster had bequeathed to Ron in his will.
It was setting on the window sill. Harry had never noticed it there before.
Why would Ron leave such a precious gift behind? The Deluminator had been critical to Ron being able to find Harry and Hermione when they had been on the run from Voldemort. Harry would have treasured it.
But after thinking a minute, he concluded that for Ron it was probably a reminder of him walking out on them -- something Ron was ashamed of, and which had almost cost him his relationship with Hermione. Yes, definitely something Ron would like to forget.
Harry walked over to the window and picked up the Deluminator. He had never tried using it himself, so he flipped opened the lid and clicked it.
A small red ball of light popped out of it.
Harry remembered Ron telling the story about a blue ball of light that had guided him back to them. The red light just floated in front of his face. After a few seconds, Harry concluded the show was over and had just started to click the Deluminator again when the ball of light streaked straight into his forehead right between the eyes.
Chapter 2 -- Kaleidoscope
Harry reeled backward. He thought his head was going to explode. It felt like his brain was on fire. His life was flashing before his eyes. He thought he must be dying; you were supposed to relive everything in an instant before the end.
But as the shock and pain subsided, he realized something was not right. He was now glimpsing events that had never happened… A flash of his parents with him on Platform 9 and ¾. A flash of him dancing with Hermione at the Yule Ball. A flash of him dueling with Cornelius Fudge… laughing with Draco Malfoy… cursing Molly Weasley… torturing Peter Pettigrew… saving Dumbledore… burying Ron… being kissed by a Dementor!
Harry was terrified. He tried to scream, but no sound came out of his mouth. He tried to close his eyes and wish it away, but it was all happening in his mind. He was both an observer and the actor. The flashes of memory had slowed and now were more coherent, meaningful.
He was Harry who had been raised by the Tonks. He was Harry whose father had lived because he was not home when Voldemort attacked. He was Harry who had never married. He was Harry who was still on the run from Voldemort after seven years…
As each memory filled his mind and was quickly replaced by another, he realized they were not just brief vignettes, but full lifetimes of memories up to this moment in his life -- lifetimes of memories of other Harry Potters. The memories continued to cycle… a few seconds for each one. As he adapted to the effect, he found he could grasp more and more of the entirety of the lifetime he was experiencing.
Some were good. But many, very many, were bad; some horrifying.
Why was this happening?
As soon as he had though the question, a voice spoke in his mind. It was Dumbledore’s voice.
“If you are hearing this, Harry, my plans have failed. It is my hope and belief that you still will have triumphed. But if not, I want you to have the opportunity to live the life you would wish to because of how I misused you for the greater good. All these lives are open to you, including what you know as your own. You may choose another life by clicking the Deluminator again. You may resume the life you know by closing the Deluminator. The choice is final.”
Chapter 3 -- Bad Lives
Thank God!
Harry was about to close the Deluminator, but then hesitated.
It would not hurt to see what other Harry Potter’s lives had been like, if only to satisfy his curiosity. What would be the harm in that?
For some reason, he could no longer feel the Deluminator in his hand, but knew it was still there.
Now, he was a willing participant. He began reviewing each life memory with interest. Even though he seemed to have only a few seconds for each one, it felt as if he had fully lived the life and could recall everything in sufficient detail to make a decision about it -- good or bad.
He lost track of time. But he was cognizant of reviewing thousands of different lives. It eventually occurred to him that he was no longer seeing lives where he was still on the run from Voldemort or about to die. Those were very bad lives and the Deluminator must have recognized that he wanted no part of such lives. The same thing was true for lives where Voldemort was victorious or when more of his closest friends and loved ones had died or not existed.
He also ultimately noticed that there were no lives when he had died before his present age. He assumed those lives could no longer be accessed -- only lives where he was still alive seven years after the Battle of Hogwarts.
The differences in his many lives were incredible, if not unbelievable and often disturbing. Some of the lives he rejected as bad were where: he was a girl… he had brothers or sisters or was a twin… he was not the Chosen One… he never went to Hogwarts… he was helped by extraterrestrials or people from the future… he had been hoodwinked, often for years, by behavior-altering potions administered by frenemies… he did not respect himself or hated his life for any reason… he was a ghost… he was evil or joined Voldemort… James and Lilly were not his parents… Hogwarts castle was sentient… Dumbledore was evil or incompetent… other friends or loved ones were evil… Voldemort was the good guy -- it was all a colossal frame-up -- and other topsy-turvy scenarios… the magical world tolerated adults having sexual relations with children… the magical world was ruled by “royal” families, pure-blood cults, or vampires… the Ministry of Magic was evil or became evil after Voldemort was defeated… Ministry corruption allowed Death Eaters to escape punishment a second time… Dementors were reinstated as guards of Azkaban… Dolores Umbridge was not severely punished (she remained evil in every single life)… Magic was preposterously fantastical and ridiculous, with no consistent rules or limits… the wizarding world was dying out because there were no more Muggle-born witches or wizards… the Muggle and wizarding worlds were at war… reality was actually just a computer simulation… and many, many others.
Bad lives usually had more than one, often many, of these bad elements.
Harry was about to discard all lives where alternate universes interacted when Dumbledore’s voice spoke again.
“WARNING! Without the multiverse, you will cease to exist!”
Harry backed off. Maybe it was time to focus on good lives.
Chapter 4 -- Good Lives
Were there lives where all his friends and loved ones, including his parents, had lived and Voldemort had been defeated? No. But he not expected to find any.
Were there lives without Voldemort where they had all lived? Yes!
All his life Harry had yearned for such a happy, normal life. But now that he had lived such lives virtually, he was stunned. Though it made him feel extremely guilty, he considered this group of good lives to be… ordinary, even… boring.
They lacked the feeling of accomplishment, overcoming impossible odds, self-sacrifice -- any degree of the meaning and worth that his current life had given him. He admitted to himself that he relished “playing the hero” as others had accused him of.
So, these good lives disappeared like all the bad lives.
Something he could not understand was that his godfather, Sirius Black, always seemed to die tragically except in the good lives Harry was rejecting. But there was nothing for it.
Now, only good lives where Voldemort existed remained.
Harry realized that Voldemort had defined him, made him; given him the identity he cared about, despite the years of loneliness and neglect he had suffered without his parents due to Dumbledore’s misplaced trust in the Aunt Petunia and Mrs Figg.
Finally, the “slide show,” as he thought of it, began repeating.
He was down to a hundred or so lives now. He became more selective.
He rejected other good lives where: he had amazing magical powers and intellect far superior to Voldemort and easily defeated him well before seventh year… his future mind had traveled back in time into his own mind and given him perfect foreknowledge, which made Voldemort’s defeat trivial… he was “soul mated” to a girl, usually Hermione, before puberty… he was sorted into Hufflepuff (for some reason he found it completely unacceptable)… he had a career other than as an Auror… he was an irresistible sexual dynamo (these lives were very tempting, but ended up being too exhausting)… and others.
Now he had only a handful of lives remaining to consider. And there was something completely unexpected about them.
In each one he was with Hermione -- had married Hermione -- instead of Ginny. It was something he had not even thought about, though the soul-mated lives should have tipped him off. He had just assumed it would always be Ginny.
He wanted to go back and reevaluate some of the good lives he had already rejected where he was still with Ginny, but he could not find a way to make it happen. His rejections seemed to have permanently locked them out.
Harry became anxious. He loved Ginny. They had two beautiful children together. How could he give that up?
Yet in these last alternate lives available to him, it was Hermione he had fallen in love with and married.
Harry pondered this.
Had he ever considered Hermione more than just a good friend? He had to admit that, deep down, he had. The first time was leading up to the Yule Ball. Ron had been an idiot, but Harry did not want to lose his friendship by stepping up. And when Ron had started going with Lavender, Harry had thought there was a chance with Hermione, but he did not want to hurt Cho’s feelings. The last instance was when he had been alone with Hermione for weeks when they were on the run, but she seemed to be pining for Ron. Yes, he had let the opportunities to test his chances with Hermione slip away. It could have been different.
Was this whole exercise designed to make him aware of where his true happiness, his true love, could be found?
Had Dumbledore enchanted the Deluminator for both Ron and Harry -- to help them find what they needed most at a critical moment in their lives?
The thought of it overwhelmed him. Dumbledore was reaching out to him from the grave a second time to help him make a life altering decision.
Harry resumed looking at the last five lives. Three were very similar to his present life -- except that he and Hermione had fallen in love in the tent. Ron had feared it might happen when he walked out and had begrudgingly accepted it, but Harry and Ron were never best friends again. In the fourth life, Cedric did not get to the Triwizard Cup with Harry, so he and Cho were never separated, leaving Harry and Hermione to get together when Lavender beguiled Ron.
Harry liked the fourth life better than the other three, because Cedric had lived. However, because Hermione became well known as the Chosen One’s girlfriend, she was seriously injured in a failed kidnapping attempt by Death Eaters the year before the Ministry Fell. She was in St Mungo’s for months, but recovered in time for Bill and Fleur’s wedding and what happened after.
But it was the fifth and final life that intrigued Harry.
It was the only life of the thousands he reviewed where he had been sorted into Slytherin. The longer he studied it -- felt it; lived it -- the more it seemed to be pulling him in. This, despite the fact that Draco’s and Ron’s roles were completely reversed -- Draco became his best friend, and Ron became an enemy. Did Harry have that kind of influence over people he was close to or rivaled? It appeared to be so. Could he abandon Ron? Well, Ron had abandoned him twice under life threatening situations. Their friendship had never been quite the same afterwards. Draco never abandoned him. And there was so much more…
Yes, he could live with it.
He took the longest time with the fifth life, much more so than the other four combined, and when he finally emerged, the other four were gone.
It was now either his current life or this one remaining alternative life.
Had he been subtly manipulated to this point by the enchanted Deluminator? Was this the life Dumbledore had intended for him?
He had to sure. He dived into it again.
After how long he could not say, he finally resurfaced. He could neither find nor feel anything objectionable about it.
He did not know how long he had to make a decision. But he felt that if he did not choose soon, the last life would disappear like the others.
Perhaps that would be for the best… for Ginny and the children.
Still, it was agonizing. He was overwhelmed with uncertainty, guilt, anticipation… Then he thought of ‘The Road Not Taken’…and regret.
“CHOOSE!” echoed in his head. Dumbledore again.
For the first time since he had started purposefully reviewing the lives, Harry could feel the Deluminator in his hand.
Click the Deluminator or close the lid?
New life or current life?
Which one?
Which one?
Which…
“God, forgive me…”
Click.
The End