He wasn't here, he wasn't there, as far as Harry was concerned, in the strange never-never land of the fire portal.
A part of him was afraid how he would be able to get back, but his heart and mind soothed him, reassuring that he would be able to find his way back, and that it was time to think forward, not backward.
He was deposited, upright in a vast chamber with engravings all around. It was lit by flickering torches with the exact same color as the ones that had been scattered throughout the confines of the maze and the antechamber.
However, the main thing that caught his attention was the gigantic beam of light that ran from ceiling to floor. It cast tentrils of green tinged lightning across the makeshift grotto it rested in; staircases from all sides led up to the huge beam of light.
Then...a voice came. It was hissing and whispering, and yet Harry found it strangely relaxing.
"We are the shadow guardians. The flames of fate have deemed you worthy of passage into the Chamber of the Ancients, but we shall assign you one final test to see that you are indeed the one."
Harry chose not to speak, but was startled when everything turned into a shadowy-grey, misty world. He found himself surrounded by a dreary fog out of nowhere. The Chamber of the Ancients had disappeared completely, and here he was now in an entirely new dimension.
Then, they came.
Dozens upon dozens of corpses, all staggering toward Harry, surrounding him. They moaned as if hungry, and Harry swallowed as he saw that many of them were rotting, festered. Their jaws were open and teeth were cracked. Tattered clothing hung off of them.
Harry raised his wand to attack, only to discover that he had no wand. His armour from the Room of Requirement was gone too.
As the undead started to close in, Harry's mind grew numb with dread. Even as he started panicking, something in the back of his head forced the animalistic fear off and replaced it with logic.
Voldemort may use mind images against you, Dumbledore had once said. It is a strange form of Legilimency which even I considered difficult; it is used to put the victim in a state of delirium, to pit his own fears against them. If you are attacked by such a spell, Harry, know that these sounds and images are not real, but thought.
These walking corpses could not be real. The entire environment surrounding him was etherreal, an image only. The shadow guardians were using fear on him.
Of course! Godric Gryffindor prized courage above all else! No wonder he had instructed the guardians of his inheritance to give a simple test whoever was worthy of entrance to his clever fire portal. He would not have wanted to kill anyone who had passed the portal. Harry denied the shambling corpses trying to reach him. They were images. They could not be real.
And just like that, everything simply swirled into a silver haze of nonexistence. He found himself standing exactly where he was before, right near the entrance of the Chamber of the Ancients. His wand was in hand, but the armour was gone.
A hissing sound sounded right in front of him and Harry started, but calmed when he realised that it was the shadow guardian chuckling. It revealed itself.
It was an translucent armoured figure from head to toe, wrapped by a long flowing cloak. It was garbed in the traditional colors of Gryffindor house, gold and red. The helmet was a full one, and in conjunction to the long hood, hid the face quite well. However, two red eyes burned clearly out of the veil and focused upon Harry's visage.
"Very good, young one. You are indeed the heir of Godric Gryffindor, centuries dead. Step into the light, and you shall receive your inheritance.
Harry strode up the steps, and as he neared, the light dimmed. He saw a glorious suit of armour awaiting him; this could only be the legendary Ancient Armour that he had so revered throughout the course of this year. It floated serenely in mid air, as if awaiting him. The green outer plates gleamed as if newly polished, and the black underlayer meshed together. It looked bulky, yet compact. The helmet was topped with a gleaming reflective silver visor. A glimmering green aura strobed around the armour.
Harry felt as if he were born for this moment. In the back of his mind, he registered the irony that he was probably, indeed, born for this moment.
He stepped into the light.
Immediately, the suit broke apart and started swilring from unseen forces. Harry cleared his mind, and felt each and every individual piece as if each had its own prescence. It was becoming a part of him.
One by one, they adhered to him. First, Harry felt his height raised an inch as the greaves and boots came to his form like a second skin. It swirled about Harry's body, tressing him from the feet up. Soon, he was completely covered.
It fit perfectly. As if it were made for him.
Harry could sense the power that resided within the suit and knew it would take his enormous will to not let it consume him. The helmet visor enhanced his vision with an accuracy that eyeglasses could not have hoped to achieve. It focused when he wanted it to, and when he raised his wand experimentally, a tiny glowing green dot in the visor indicated some sort of targeting spell. It seemed to meld into his mind and obey his very thoughts.
He turned back towards the shadow guardian, but he - it - pointed behind Harry. "Not yet, young one," it hissed. "There is still one more."
Harry was confused. He had thought that the Armour was the only inheritance, but vaguely he remembered a conversation with Hermione, Ron, and the Weasley twins about the rumor that something even more powerful was hidden.
His gaze followed the other's ethereal finger, and saw a gap into the wall, a passageway. How had he missed it earlier?
The answer occured to him; of course, only users of the helmet would be able to see it at all.
Dutifully, he trotted to the passageway, which led out into another chamber. The armour shifted to his movements, somehow making them more graceful and fluid.
He saw another column, but it was composed entirely of something that looked awfully like green-tinged water.
With the oddest feeling that the water would not let anything but his armoured glove pass, he reached his non-wand hand in and encountered something hard. With a shaft.
He pulled it out; it was an ordinary torch, crackling green flames blazing merrily despite the swirling water.
As soon as he gripped it with both hands, a peculiar sensation spread through his arms and spread through the rest of his body. It had melded to Harry's very being as well, and Harry felt its own prescence in the back of his head; with it came the knowledge of it even though he had none beforehand.
The Green Flame Torch.
It was a bringer of life to the just, and an agent of retribution to the tainted. Its flames would heal whomever he wished to heal, and would burn whomever he wished to destroy. The flames would shift in form when necessary; Harry tested this out by making it into another sword akin to Marathia.
Finally, a confidence that he had never felt before filled his chest with a grim determination that this would be the turning point in the war.
The Emerald Knight had returned.
The trip back through the sacred halls open only to him seemed to take no time at all, instead passing in a barely recallable tinge of color.
"Where do I leave?" the fully armoured knight had asked.
"The way you came here, young one." The ethereal figure of the guardian hissed. It turned to watch him depart. "And I shall be awaiting...once you return it, to await your next sucessor..."
The thought made Harry's insides clench uncomfortably.
Kids with Hermione, eh? he had thought, inclined to chuckle.
He took one last look at the guardian, who nodded.
And Harry stepped back into the raging flame.
***
He was wondering at what his companion's reactions would be. Would they attack him? Would they run away?
Of course they wouldn't run away, but there was no guarantee whether they would mark him as a hostile. The armour was powerful, but so was Dumbledore. Harry found himself hoping that Dumbledore would recognize the knight, but nearly everyone else might be inclined to attack.
And it was so that he emerged from the fire portal completely on guard that he might be attacked.
The dancing spotlights in his eyes made nearly everything blurrey, and he knew it was not by fault of the helmet visor. He blinked several times and raised his hands; one clutching the torch, and one gripping his own wand. Everyone pointed their wands with him.
"Whoa!" Harry said quickly, making his voice loud and clear. "It's me."
But they did not lower their wands.
"We know it's you, Potter." an unpleasantly familiar voice said.
As his vision cleared, Harry saw that the figures surrounding him wore dark garments, and were masked.
Oh, no. he thought, mind already panicking. Where was everyone else? Where had they gone? Harry's eyes immediately looked around him, and the Armor immediately obeyed, showing him every detail, every surface. Nowhere could he see any bodies. Harry was not at all reassured; it wouldn't have been exactly non-uniformal of Death Eaters to hurl the corpses of their enemies in a possibly endless chasm.
Shoving that particularly nasty thought down, he finally spoke.
"What'd you do to them?" His voice radiated deadly anger.
Harry would have been pleased with himself for that if he had not been so consumed with anxiousness and fear. They can't be dead... Harry thought desperately.
"Wouldn't you like to know, Potter?" an gravelly, rasping voice said mockingly. Antonine Dolohov.
"I'm serious." Harry said. "We can stay here and chat, or...."
He formed a thought, and the flames of the torch sprang to life, forming a broad-bladed great axe.
"...you can stay here. Forever."
A wave of satisfaction swept over him as every single one of the Death Eaters shifted uneasily.
"You'll find out about them in good time, Potter." Lucius Malfoy's slow, drawling voice said. Harry noticed that some of its usual confidence had left. "But for now..."
He snapped his fingers and two Death Eaters dragged someone out. Harry had to bite back a gasp.
It was Ron; he was badly jinxed and bruised, but still conscious and defiant. He clearly struggled to speak, but someone had put a Lip-Locker Hex on him.
"You're going to give us some information, Potter." Malfoy said. "And if you refuse..."
His wand jabbed Ron hard in the back of the neck.
"...your blood traitor of a friend shall meet his fatefully early demise."
Harry looked around wildly.
I need help...something, anything.... but nothing came. He was on his own.
"What do you want to know?"
Ron shook his head, eyes burning into Harry's.
"Foolishness..." Malfoy chuckled. "The true sign of a hero. Now, Potter...what do you know about the Prophecy?"
It occured to Harry that Voldemort, failing last year to retrieve the Lost Prophecy referring to either his or Harry's demise, might have still wanted to know.
"It smashed on the steps to the Death Room." Harry told him truthfully. "Voldemort knows."
There was an uncomfortable shuffling at his name.
"True that may be, Potter." Malfoy said loftily. "But we know that you were told afterwards."
Harry seethed inwardly and glanced at Ron, still struggling. Someone kicked him.
All in all, Harry saw no other choice. But still, he could play for time.
"The prophecy...." he began. "It said that the boy with the power to destroy your lord would be born at the end of July, with parents that had escaped him three times."
"We know that, Potter." Dolohov snarled. "Get on with it."
Harry sighed resignatedly. "And that either - "
"Either what?" Dolohov said impatiently.
But Harry did not answer. In the distance, far off in the maze, he could see tiny jets of wand light waving around frantically.
He glanced at Ron, who stopped struggling for some reason.
There was something not right about this. Where was Voldemort, anyways? Didn't he know that he had failed to prevent him from taking his inheritance and was more powerful than ever before? Would he send only a few Death Eaters to confront the Emerald Knight?
A few yells sounded faintly through Harry's enhanced hearing system, boosted by the armour.
"Hermione, watch it! You almost made me fall!"
"Sorry! Budge over for Hagrid, will you?"
Ron was over there? And he was standing in front of Harry right now, his own life in danger?
He walked up to the Ron crouching in front of him. "Nice try."
"Ron", in question, snarled and the Lip-Lock Curse lifted. "Damn you and your instincts, Potter."
Harry smiled, half out of relief and half out of satisfaction.
Two blades flashed to life in his hands. One of pure gold light, and one of searing lime fire.