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Odysseus Bound	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male Views: 5729 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am making no money from this story.

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Title: Odysseus Bound

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Rating: R

Warnings: Violence, torture, angst, AUs of various kinds, some very OOC and arguably bashing versions of various characters. Other warnings will vary by chapter; I'll announce it in the header for that chapter if it's something unusual.

Pairings: This story, because of the way it works, will feature lots of pairings, both background and main (pairings for Harry). They're likely to be both slash and het, and may include Harry/Draco, Harry/Snape, Harry/Hermione, perhaps some threesomes, and others, as well as sections of the story that are pure gen.

Summary: Dumbledore tells Harry, when they meet in King's Cross, that he cannot return alive to his own world, as there is supposed to be no magic capable of resurrecting the dead. Harry does, however, have the chance to take the trains from King's Cross to other worlds, always appearing near what would be the site of Platform 9 3/4 in that world. And perhaps, somewhere out in the seas of revolution, intrigue, horror, romance, and glory he'll voyage, he has the chance of finding a home.

Author's Notes: This is going to be a very irregularly updated story, basically whenever I finish a new chapter. I expect the chapters (barring this first one) to be very long. Harry, however, will be the only POV character, and he will explore only versions of the Harry Potter world. I don't have any idea yet how many chapters it will be. If this sounds like something you can live with, come right in.

Odysseus Bound

Chapter One--Out From Troy

            "So I can go back and be alive? Voldemort didn't really kill me?" Harry's head was spinning as he stared at the little baby version of Voldemort writhing on the floor of King's Cross, still squealing and waving badly-developed limbs.

            Dumbledore's silence made him look up. The twinkle had dimmed in those blue eyes, and Harry swallowed. "Or am I dead?" he whispered.

            Dumbledore sighed. "You are not dead," he said, looking like he had the night he explained the prophecy to Harry. "But you cannot be alive in our world."

            Harry stood there and thought about Ron and Hermione and Hagrid and Neville and Ginny and Molly and all the rest of them who would be appalled if he was dead, who needed him. He thought about Snape and how he would have died in vain if Harry died. Or was it in vain? He had given Harry the memories of how he knew Harry was being raised and trained as a sacrifice, after all, and it seemed he had expected to die in the war. Maybe this was just the way he'd thought things would work out.

            Harry felt his eyes twitching and blurring. But he was thinking of the shades of his parents and Sirius and Remus that had accompanied him on his walk through the Forest. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, to be with them.

            Then he shook his head, hard. Dumbledore had said he was alive. He focused on Dumbledore again, trying to see him clearly, both the man who had protected him and the man who had known all along what the prophecy probably implied, and demanded, "Why not?"

            "Because no magic exists that can bring back the dead," Dumbledore said quietly. "It is impossible. Either you must be a shade of the kind the Resurrection Stone conjures, not truly there and liable to fading and drawing the one who calls you back into the shadows with you, or you must be an Inferius and under the control of another wizard."

            "There's no way to escape?" Harry's lips were dry. "I mean, I thought maybe it was the Horcrux in me that died, and I could come back..."

            Dumbledore's smile was so sad that Harry thought he would prefer to turn away and look at the bloody Horcrux on the floor. "This is a magical rule," Dumbledore said. "The world you left has no place for one who has died and come back. And do you not remember the end of the story of the Deathly Hallows, Harry? There is no way to escape death. You may evade it for a time, but the wisest of the Peverell Brothers yielded to it at last."

            Harry squeezed his eyes shut and nodded. "So I have to choose to die?"

            "Your world has no place for someone who has escaped death."

            Harry looked up. "But another world might?" he asked, when Dumbledore simply stood watching him and waiting for him to speak.

            Dumbledore twinkled at him. "Exactly, my dear boy! There are thousands of other worlds out there, worlds that are like ours but where someone made a different decision. Perhaps your mother did not succeed in protecting you on the night that Voldemort tried to kill you. Perhaps he decided to go after Neville instead. Perhaps Tom died as a child..." Dumbledore's voice trailed off, and he sighed again.

            "But not every world will permit you entrance," he added, before Harry could ask what he was thinking about. "Only worlds with a gap for you."

            "A gap for me?" Harry echoed.

            Dumbledore nodded. "If there is already a version of yourself in that world, Harry, a version that is recognizably you despite the differences between the worlds, there is no place for you there. It is hard to explain, but--magic is only so flexible. It is the same reason that you cannot return to your world. The magic will not stretch to accommodate you. It can only allow you even into another dimension if the Harry Potter in that place never existed, or died, or is so fundamentally different that you would be adding a new person to the world, not a replica of one that exists."

            Harry placed a hand to his whirling head. "Can I at least try going back to my world?" he asked abruptly. It wasn't that he distrusted Dumbledore, not really, but he didn't understand the magical theory he was talking about, either, not the way Hermione would have. So he thought a demonstration was the best way to convince himself.

            Dumbledore nodded.

            Harry looked around. The far end of King's Cross Station was seething with a lot more mist than the one Dumbledore had come out of. So he turned and walked that way, even though it brought him closer to the slick, screaming fetus that had been the Horcrux.

            He'd walked about six meters when the air began to tighten and solidify around him. Harry reached out. It was like he was following a tunnel that had inexplicably become smaller, and no matter how he pushed, the air didn't yield any more than stone would have.

            But it hadn't closed yet. Harry slogged forwards, trying to ignore the bright white glare of the light here, and the wails of the Horcrux behind him, and the sensation that Dumbledore's eyes were watching his naked arse. He tried to think of nothing but the sensations around him, the narrowing of perfectly invisible walls.

            It didn't matter. The walls were there, as solid as his Invisibility Cloak. Harry pushed and pushed and pushed, and still they crowded in, until he knew he was in danger of getting stuck; he could feel the pressure on his shoulders and binding around his waist. With a growl, he stepped back and stared ahead. Now he thought he could see a distant door, heavy and blue, bolted with white, but he couldn't reach it.

            "That is the door back to your world," Dumbledore whispered. "I am so sorry, my dear boy."

            "Is there a spell that could break the way open?" Harry asked, not turning to face Dumbledore yet. He didn't blame him for this--how could he, when Dumbledore was dead?--but he had to focus, or he might lose the chance. "Some way that I could go back like a ghost?"

            "If you wish to die, then you can," Dumbledore said gently. "You only need remain here until your body and spirit both weaken, and then your spirit will be able to break free and travel."

            Harry clenched his hands. He wanted to say that was preferable, with one part of him, the part that had dreamed about living in peace with Ron and Hermione and making a family with Ginny. He wanted to die rather than go to a different world, or live without his friends. At least, if he was a ghost, he could still see them.

            But the rest of him...

            He had walked to his death, but he had thought that would be death, not a choice between worlds. He shook his head and turned back to face Dumbledore. "Do you think that I'm really going to find a world where I fit?"

            Dumbledore examined him carefully, more gently than Harry thought he ever had when they were both alive. Then Dumbledore whispered, "Yes, I believe so. There is a home out there for everyone, a way of forgiving every mistake. I have to believe that."

            Noting the wistful look on Dumbledore's face, Harry waited a little before he said, "But how likely is it that I can find it?"

            Dumbledore shook his head. "I don't know," he admitted quietly. "It could be years; it could be months. Perhaps you might find a world that does not fit you perfectly but fits you, and live there for a while."

            Harry folded his arms and shivered. "I could be wandering forever," he muttered. "Maybe I'll never find a place that fits me."

            "That is, alas, true," Dumbledore said. He opened his mouth as though to say something else, maybe to reassure Harry that he hadn't condemned him to this on purpose, and then shut it again and sighed.

            "I don't understand," Harry said. His voice cracked, which he hated. He took a few seconds before he started talking again, and to his relief, his voice was firmer when he did that. "Why did this happen to me?"

            Dumbledore bowed his head. "I thought you would either die," he whispered, "or return from the dead separated from the Horcrux, never having gone through death itself. Then you would still be able to take your place in your world because you would be alive. But this..." He waved his hand around the misty King's Cross Station. "This counts as a Gate of Death. You have changed," he added, running his eyes over Harry. "Your aura has. Your magical core has. You have passed through the Gates of Death, and cannot simply walk back. It seems the Horcrux was more deeply embedded in your soul than I knew. The Killing Curse slew it, but it also partially slew you."

            "Partially," Harry said flatly.

            "It pushed you through the Gates." Dumbledore stretched out a hand to him. "I would do anything to change it back, Harry."

            Harry bit his lip savagely and turned his back on the misty gate to his own world, which it seemed that he wasn't going to be able to use. He looked ahead into the mist on the other side of the station, and heard a low, thrumming sound coming from it. He blinked.

            "What's that?"

            "Your means of transportation, if you choose to take it," Dumbledore said, and turned around himself to face the mist expectantly.

            The train purred straight up to Harry, as though it was following a lead. It was smaller than the Hogwarts Express, sleek and silver, the color of the mist. Harry reached out and put a hand on the side of it, and flinched a little. The metal seemed to be covered in alternating strips of intense heat and intense cold.

            "Why is it like that?" he whispered without taking his eyes from the train.

            "Because it, too, has come through the Gates of Death," Dumbledore said. His voice was distant, even though when Harry glanced towards him, he was right there. "It bears the cold of what lies beyond and the warmth of mortality."

            Harry looked back at the train. A door swung open in the side as he watched, a sleek ramp that came down towards him like the ramp of a flying saucer from a Muggle movie. A light shone from inside the train, warm and golden and making Harry swallow a lump of homesickness. The windows of the Burrow looked like that, seen from a distance.

            Harry folded his arms and did his best to stand there looking calm and unaffected, although both he and Dumbledore knew it was pure show. If he got on this train, he was giving up any chance to go back to his own world.

            Before he could stop himself, before he could ask Dumbledore or give this world in limbo a chance to react, he turned and flung himself again at the misty tunnel that led home.

            The mist closed in around him at once, so constricting that Harry put a hand to his throat and gasped. Then the mist bound his hand to his throat and held him there, and Harry knew he wasn't getting past, not without a lot more practice and willpower and magic.

            And he didn't have that right now. He was still just seventeen, someone who had expected to die and hadn't, someone bound to a Horcrux that had gone deeper behind his scar than Dumbledore had expected.

            Harry closed his eyes and fell back, his throat aching, his heart aching, his chest setting up a sympathetic, thudding pain. He heard Dumbledore trying to say something, and ignored it. He wasn't interested in yet another explanation for why he couldn't go home.

            Another thing occurred to Harry as he turned to face the train. It didn't seem as though he had any wand.

            Bitterly, Harry clenched his lips down and laid a hand on the railing that led up the side of the train's lowered ramp. "Can you give me any other advice, sir?" he asked, without turning to face Dumbledore.

            He heard Dumbledore sigh behind him. "I know that wherever you come out, it will be in the place in that world that corresponds to Platform 9 3/4. I'm afraid I can tell you no more."

            "My wand?"

            "I don't believe that will be a problem, Harry."

            There was a sound at the end of those words that resembled a chuckle, and Harry turned around and stared at Dumbledore. But silver mist had swept in and engulfed that portion of King's Cross, and Harry knew the chance was gone, that he probably had all the information he was going to get.

            He shot one more glance at the far, misty portion of the tunnel, out of which the train had come. What would happen if he walked into it without the protection of the train? Would he die? That was probably the Gate of Death. Maybe that way, he could see his friends again.

            But maybe not. It had never seemed to have any rhyme or reason to Harry, the way that some people came back as ghosts and other people didn't.

            His hands closed down on the railings, and he grunted once. Then he climbed.

*

            The ramp came up behind him with a hissing sound that resembled Nagini's. Harry stood still long enough to control the instinctive fear reaction, looking around.

            The interior of the train resembled a spaceship more than a train, too, although here and there were the doors of compartments. The front of the engine, which Harry had stepped into, was almost completely empty, save for a few chairs that stood rooted on slender, springy columns in the metallic floor. Harry shuddered a little. They didn't look very safe. He wondered if they would stand up to the train's speed as it rushed through various dimensions.

            He hurried to the nearest one, anyway, and sat down with his hands gripping the edge of the cushion, because he thought the train might start any second.

            But nothing happened, and finally Harry looked up and noticed the enormous stone wheel in the very front of the engine. He got up and approached it slowly. He didn't understand how he hadn't seen it before.

            The wheel was a central hub with an elegantly carved rim around that, rim and hub connected by long, slender spokes. Harry touched one of the spokes and winced back. The magic there wasn't painful or Dark, but it was so much that it stung his palm.

            When he began to pay more attention to the carvings, he realized they were all different. There was a towered castle that reminded him of Hogwarts, a rearing cobra, a dragon in flight, a winged stag, a house that resembled a cross between the Burrow and Privet Drive, a rising sun, a crescent moon, and so many other symbols that Harry gave up on examining them all.

            He trailed his fingers along the rim, and the symbols began to light up.

            Harry stared. This light wasn't yellow, the way it looked from outside the train, but pale and crackling, like lightning. When he let his hand rest above the symbol of the dragon, it blazed as if it was made of ice. He moved onto the winged stag, and the light followed him.

            When he left his hand on the stag for a few seconds, the train shuddered, and the wheel began to creak and turn.

            Harry snatched his hand back, his heart pounding. Obviously, the wheel was the way to steer the train, although he had no idea what the symbols actually represented. Some of them seemed to be good luck, since the stag resembled the one his own Patronus made so much, except for the pointed wings arched delicately over its spine. But the house unnerved him, and so did the cobra. Would that particular symbol take him to a world where Voldemort had won?

            There's no way to tell, Harry realized, with a dim and dull ache in the center of his chest that replaced the pain the mist had caused him. The only thing he had to go on was Dumbledore's vague promise that he would find some home in the distance. That presumably meant that any world he went to could become his home, and any world might also turn against him. But at least he probably wouldn't die the minute he set foot in it.

            If Voldemort won and I have to go to a world where I don't exist, maybe that would mean I was never born. Then no one would know who I was, or want to bother me.

            Harry licked his lips and glanced back and forth between a few of the symbols. The problem was, he didn't know if he wanted to go to a world like that, where he could start over fresh with Ron and Hermione, or a world where they would know him. And he had no way of telling which was which.

            He hesitated, then let his hand rest on the rising sun. Maybe that would be a symbol of a new hope and new beginning. He didn't think it could really be the symbol of a Dark world, anyway.

            The pale light gathered in the sun, and shone there. Then it began to rise towards the roof of the engine. Harry hurried back towards one of the seats, gripping the edges of the cushion. This time, the springy column it stood on grew stronger, and Harry gasped as the sudden speed of the train pressed his back against the chair.

            He caught one glimpse of mist outside, through the cracks around the lifted ramp and one window, and then they leaped straight into darkness. Harry didn't think he could move. Pressure writhed around his fingers, holding them in place. He was struggling to breathe. Outside, blackness wheeled, and Harry had to fight to hold his eyes open even to see that. The pale light blazing from the wheel and the yellow light from the rest of the train seemed a very fragile beacon in the middle of all that space.

            But he kept on looking, and suddenly the speed lessened and a sight sprang into being that well-merited the struggle he'd had to keep his eyes open. Or at least, he thought so.

            The train was passing through a clustered system of lights, all of them bright gold or bright blue-green, and the web that connected them made the tracks for the train to run on. Harry heard a faint, delicate sound emanating from the lights. When he squinted more closely, he could see that they were turning in the midst of glittering crystalline spheres, each of them studded with stars and enclosing a portion of that darkness, which suddenly seemed less threatening and more like the velvet in a jewelry box, holding priceless treasures.

            Harry thought he could have stayed there forever listening to the music and watching the light. If this had to be his afterlife, it was at least beautiful, and the notes and the shades of color changed from moment to moment.

            But the tracks began to run down, and the speed became hard enough to make Harry close his eyes briefly. During that moment, it seemed, they passed through a soundless explosion of radiance, and when Harry opened his eyes again, the darkness was gone. The train rushed along in silence for a few minutes, or what seemed to be that amount of time, while Harry got his breath back.

            Then it stopped, and the ramp swung open. A grey, ashy light filtered in. Harry stood up and moved over to it, standing for a second so he could hang onto the walls. His legs were shaky, maybe just from the speed.

            What he looked out on was a mound of rubble, mostly stone, some plastic and metal. Harry had to close his eyes when he saw human legs and arms sticking out of it.

            The train's ramp led stubbornly down onto the top of the rubble, and Harry's grip grew whiter and whiter on the edges of the doorway as he considered it.

            He could turn his back, he thought. He could go and touch the wheel again, and it would take him somewhere else.

            But what if this world was almost exactly like his own except the war had been worse? What if Ron and Hermione were waiting for him here, mourning him because he had died, and he was giving up his best chance to find his place? Sure, he could try touching the sun symbol again and coming back later, but who knew if it would look any different.

            He took a shaky breath and stepped down the ramp, walking to what turned out to be the bottom of the pile. It seemed the train had no desire to make him break his neck.

            When he glanced back again, ramp and train and light and tracks were gone, and his body sagged a little; robes had coalesced on him, the same dull grey color as the light here. Harry spread his arms for balance and started to pick his way over the blasted landscape, towards what looked like the edge of a street.

            Someone appeared in front of him before he could do that. No, Apparated in front of him. Harry jerked to a stop, falling into a defensive crouch and raising his right hand before he remembered that he had no wand. Goddamnit.

            The man stood observing him instead of attacking, the way Harry had assumed any denizen of this world would when they were at what was obviously a battle site. Harry observed him back, and stood up and folded his arms. He felt his fringe fall back from his lightning bolt scar, but he doubted it mattered. Things already seemed to be a lot different in this world.

            The man was extremely tall, with dark hair hanging lank to his shoulders, so at first Harry automatically thought, Snape. But there were large grey circles in the wizard's hair over his temples, so regular that they looked like the marks of headphones. And Harry knew the face wasn't Snape's, anyway. The nose wasn't so long, the eyes were darker and narrower, the features were handsomer.

            He looked familiar, in fact. Harry squinted, trying to see him as someone he knew from his own time.

            He seemed to see two things at the same time: the way the man's face would look without those grey circles in his hair, and the long yew wand he clutched.

            But he didn't even have time to move before the man pointed the wand more firmly at him and said in a quiet, resonant voice, "I know you are not the Dark Lord, not with that scar. My name is Tom Riddle, leader of the Light Resistance. Who the hell are you?"
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Odysseus Bound