Intertwined

Prologue

Harry was never a stranger to loss, nor to people dying around him.

The thing he wasn't used to though was never aging, never growing, never having to watch the world around him slowly die. He learned very early on that even if you throw something away, it tended to come back. He lost count of how many times he snapped that stupid wand, and yet it kept reappearing. It was just supposed to be folklore, a story that parents tell their children to entertain them and their imaginations. However, as the years trickled by and his friend's faces grew heavy with age, their children grew in height and yet he remained.

He endured it as the world's technology spread like a disease and as animals and plants were slaughtered to extinction. The story of the Deathly Hallows turned out to be more than just a fable. This much was apparent from Harry's sorrow as it manifested into anger and sadness he almost couldn't contain. More friends were buried, not from war but natural causes, getting to experience the world's best gift to a living soul- death. A way to end it all, to tie up the present of life that each soul was gifted.

Still, Harry never got his ending. He tried to find a solution, a cure of some sort that would allow him to age. He grew so consumed in his self-proclaimed mission that he neglected his other gifts. The gift of family, love, happiness. Instead, he became cold and distant on his island of self-pity and angst.

As he added yet another friend to the ever-growing list of lost loved ones, his soul seemed to leave the world with them. Draco had tried to help him; he decided to bring Harry out of his head long enough to start a family with him.

But in the end, Harry robbed Draco of his own life and happiness. Draco loved Harry too much to move on from him while Harry was still within reach. He loved Harry until the day that Harry had to bury his last living loved one into the ground. It was on this same day that Harry first attempted to end it all.

He went the muggle route first as he loaded a single bullet into his gun and aimed it at his head. As the trigger was pulled, he felt the unbearable pain consume him until he finally reached the elusive train station he had been yearning for at the end of the tunnel.

Before he could board the train though, a figure appeared before him. He couldn't figure out if it were male or female, didn't even get the chance to try to decide, before the figure moved towards him and spoke in an ethereal voice.

"My Master," the loud and riveting voice spoke, "you wish to end your life, the life Gaia has granted you. Why?" Harry now knew who this voice belonged to, he just never bothered to see if the stories were right before. For this was Death, the one he now ruled. And so his sadness grew in bounds because he now knew for sure he would never reach the other side, not so long as he was to control Death.

"I have nothing left, no one. I am too old and weary for this world, yet my body and mind have never aged, never slowed down. I wish to leave, to be with my family again."

"I am sorry My Master, but I cannot allow you to leave this plane. You are the only one to have united the Hallows, and as such you are my one true Master." With these final parting words, Death pushed him back to earth, and Harry woke up with a gasp and a jolt to his body.

Next came the pain, which caused him to scream as his body slowly healed his wound, the bone and tissue slowing knitting themselves back together. After the shock had faded he cried, cried for so long that when the tears finally stopped coming, everything else seemed to come to a stop as well as Harry lay on the ground, his vacant eyes staring into nothingness.

Of course, that wasn't the last time Harry tried his hand against Death; his stubbornness wouldn't allow him to do anything else. Eventually, Death couldn't stand to see his Master almost every day, for years upon years, and so Death himself sought out help. He brought the Eternal Mother into this fiasco, with the hope that it would all end as well.

Gaia understood both sides- the pain of Harry and the duties of Death- and the shared loneliness of both individuals. But she was dying, and the humans were spreading like a cancerous disease. She couldn't get rid of these humans, yet she was growing too weak to sustain them. So she made a decision.

Gaia knew of the planet that the humans were fleeing to, the one they were destroying in their greed-soaked quest. With her plan, she could save her sister as well as her favored children too. The grief grew too strong as the magical world started to decline at an unprecedented rate. Magical children were so rare now, the most powerful ones not even able to do the simplest of spells, all because Gaia couldn't expend any more energy.

The wizards and witches eventually forgot about their secret, beautiful world. Gaia felt it was kinder to make them forget their beloved world than to have to watch as it faded. She slowly started to take away their magic, storing it up inside of her for her greatest plan. When the magical creatures began to die, she knew it was time.

Her air was turning toxic to even the humans, and they wouldn't last much longer either. She felt herself dying at an alarming rate, and so within her last conscious moments, she put her plan into action. She could at least save her sister and her child. She started feeding all of the stored magic she had taken from the magical world and slowing begun to pour in into Harry, little by little until every last drop of magic that was left in and on her surface was now residing within him.

It would have been an excruciating process if Harry hadn't already been constantly in pain, whether emotional or physical, every second of the day. He didn't feel the extra pain being added each day and for that Gaia was thankful. She put the last of herself inside of him and hoped he had a better future in front of him.

She reserved a little bit of her energy so she could send Harry off safely to a new, young world. With one last look at all that she was, all now inside of a little, tiny life she sent that life off to Pandora. And with that, she closed her eyes one last time and let herself fade, she had held on for so long, and now she would have peace, all while a part of herself lived on.