Harry opened his eyes to see sheer white. White space. And that blur in the distance… Harry blinked. His eyes cleared a bit, but his glasses were gone, and he could see nothing more than vague shapes. The shape of a person, turned away…

"Hullo," Harry said.

The man—for Harry was sure it was a man now—spun around. He walked closer, his grey coat billowing behind him in some unfelt breeze, and something Harry was quite certain was a grin crept onto his face. "Hello to you too." His accent was American.

"Erm—where is this? Exactly?" Harry asked.

"You want the simple version or the complicated version?"

"Either," Harry shrugged.

The man looked up at the infinite white. "Simple version is we're in limbo."

Feeling that this had answered nothing, Harry tried again. "What's the long version then?"

"We're in an impossible dimension, made for impossibly impossible people like me. A home away from home, so that the universe can reset and I can start my next impossible life. Right now, back in my regular dimension, my body's reforming." He then muttered, "I hate explosions."

Unsure how to respond, Harry simply mumbled, "Ah."

"So then," the man said, looking back at Harry, "why are you here? I don't usually get many visitors or I'd have tidied the place up a bit."

Harry paused. Telling the man what happened would mean revealing he was a wizard. The man would think he was mad, though, as Harry came to think of it, that would just make their feelings mutual. "I got hit with a killing curse," he finally said.

The man laughed. "A killing curse? You mean the siwang moshu?" He laughed again, his voice filled with a strange sense of nostalgia. "I ran into some guys from Coscos—that's the Andromeda galaxy—back in 2168 who loved using that. Mind you, it takes quite a bit of psychic energy. On Earth it would probably have to be channeled through some sort of conductor, most likely some sort of wood, but-…wait." He turned back to Harry. "I've never heard of someone surviving it."

"Yeah, well. I'm Harry Potter. The boy who lived." There was a bit of bitterness in his voice. If he was stuck in limbo—or an impossible dimension, or whatever—was he still living?

The man clapped his hands together with another laugh. "The boy who lived. I like that."

"Who might you be, then?" Galaxies, the future, impossible dimensions—the man sounded like he was from some muggle science fiction story. And did the man say that he had exploded?

"No one's used my real name for a long time. Or—no one will use my name for a long time. That always gets me— my friends call me Jack. Captain Jack. My enemies call me 'you stupid sonuhva—'"

"So then what should I call you?" Harry interrupted.

And then there was that blurry grin again. "Well, Harry Potter, I guess you should call me 'the man who lived.'"