The silver surface of the Pensieve rippled.
Harry did not hesitate this time. He stepped forward, his friends close behind him, the Heads of House and Dumbledore following in solemn silence. The office dissolved, not into mist, but into heat.
Ash fell like snow.
Pandora burned.
The memory opened not with peace, but with grief that clung like smoke. Harry stood on the reef beside Jake, Neytiri, and the Metkayina, the ocean dark and restless beneath a sky bruised by volcanic clouds. Neteyam's absence was a wound that refused to close. It lived in the way Jake's shoulders remained tense, in the sharpness of Neytiri's gaze whenever human aircraft crossed the horizon.
Harry felt it in himself too, quiet, heavy, settled deep.
Neytiri's hatred for the Sky People had sharpened into something dangerous. Harry sensed it every time she passed him, every time her hand brushed the hilt of her knife. He understood it. He feared where it might lead.
When the merchant fleet appeared, flying leviathans of steel and fire, Harry knew this was not coincidence.
Jake made the call. Spider would return to the scientists. The family would escort him.
Harry argued. Briefly. Softly.
But he agreed.
The ambush came without warning.
From the volcanoes rose the Mangkwan, ash-skinned, eyes burning, their war cries echoing like broken thunder. Fire rained down. Ships burned. Screams vanished into smoke.
Varang stood at their head, tall, scarred, her presence violent and commanding. She rejected Eywa openly. Spat her name like a curse.
The convoy shattered.
Harry was torn from the others in the chaos. Flames licked his skin as he shifted forms instinctively, forest to sea to ash-adapted Na'vi, his magic bending around him to survive heat that would have killed others.
Jake.
Spider.
He found them again only to find Quaritch and Wainfleet standing beside them, enemies forced into uneasy alignment.
Spider collapsed.
Harry felt the panic spike sharp and immediate. His magic flared as he tried to stabilize the boy, but it was Kiri who knelt, queue pressed to the ground. Eywa surged. Mycelial light flooded Spider's body.
He breathed.
Later, much later, they learned what had changed.
The Mangkwan captured them.
Varang learned to love guns.
Harry watched Quaritch barter fire for loyalty, watched something dark and intimate bloom between the Colonel and the Mangkwan matriarch. It felt wrong in ways Harry struggled to articulate, a union of domination and rejection of balance.
Spider changed.
He breathed Pandora now. He grew a queue. He connected.
Kiri learned the truth of her birth, and the wall Eywa had placed between them.
War returned.
When Quaritch invaded the Metkayina village, Harry and Jake surrendered without hesitation. Harry remembered the look on Neytiri's face, pure fury held back by love.
Bridgehead City loomed like a wound.
Execution orders were signed.
Ian Garvin stole salvation on treads of metal. Neytiri struck like death itself. Spider became a shield, not because he was told to, but because he chose to be.
Jake nearly killed him.
Harry stopped him.
A silent stunner, wandless, wordless, cut through the moment like a blade of mercy. Neytiri broke then, something in her finally cracking open, and she claimed Spider as hers.
The Tulkun gathered.
Payakan returned.
Toruk answered Jake's call again, and Harry stood beside him as clans rallied, ash and sea and forest united.
The battle tore the sky apart.
Ronal died giving life.
Neytiri was taken.
Kiri prayed.
Eywa answered.
Pandora rose.
The magnetic flux shattered the flagship. Harry fought Quaritch one final time, magic and teeth and fury colliding in a storm of gravity and light. Spider fell. All three men saved him.
Quaritch vanished into the clouds.
And then
Silence.
At the underwater spirit trees, Spider met the dead. Harry saw Neteyam again, not in pain, not lost, but whole.
Jake and Neytiri broke.
Harry stepped away.
Eywa waited.
She spoke without voice, without form.
One more night.
She gifted him something new, command over elements without incantation, magic shaped by will and balance rather than dominance.
Then Death arrived.
Not cold.
Not cruel.
Harry spoke to his parents.
James laughed. Lily cried. Both held him like they never had the chance to.
Death removed the shard in Harry's scar, cleanly, gently, but left the connection. Sight without influence. Knowledge without corruption.
A tool, Death said. If you choose wisdom over fear.
Other worlds waited.
Then goodbye.
The last goodbye.
Jake's family held him as the night closed in.
The Pensieve stilled.
No one spoke.
McGonagall's face was wet with tears she did not hide. Flitwick sat trembling, awe and grief tangled together. Sprout pressed a hand to her heart.
Snape stared at Harry as though seeing him for the first time.
Hermione's hands shook. Ron's eyes were red. Ginny looked furious, at the world, at fate, at anything that dared hurt him again. Neville sat very still, reverent.
Dumbledore broke the silence at last.
"You have walked with gods," he said softly. "And returned human."
Harry looked down at his hands.
"I don't feel human," he admitted.
Dumbledore smiled, not sadly, but proudly.
"Then perhaps," he said, "it is time the world learned what humanity truly means."