Chapter Text
There was a world in which Harry did not abandon the Resurrection Stone to the dirt of the Forbidden Forest. In that world, for the briefest of moments after the Battle of Hogwarts had been won, Harry Potter held all three Deathly Hallows in his hands and became the Master of Death. But that did not mean…what everyone thought it did.
One moment, Harry was standing on what remained of the Viaduct, the Resurrection stone in one pocket, his Invisibility cloak in another, and the Elder Wand in his hand. He did not even realize —remember, rather— what it meant, that he held those three objects. And perhaps that was why Death, who would never truly have a Master, chose him.
“If you could change it,” a voice whispered to the boy on the Viaduct. “Would you?”
Harry blinked, jolting in surprise as he suddenly found himself unable to see the castle, the forest, the lake, barely even the bridge he’d been standing on through the dense fog that had rolled in out of nowhere.
“Harry Potter,” the voice called.
Harry’s head whipped around, searching for the owner of that lilting, almost ethereal voice. “Who are you?”
“If you could change it,” the voice asked again, ignoring his question. “Would you?”
Harry spun around again, beginning to shiver at the unseasonable chill as the fog rolling in all the thicker. “Change what?”
“Everything,” the voice answered. “If you could make it so that all who have passed would not have to die, if everything that has happened here might be subverted, would you?”
“Yes,” Harry answered immediately, the faces of the dead still burned all too starkly into his mind’s eye. “Yes, of course, but—“
His voice cut off as a dark, shadowy figure —one that almost resembled a dementor save for the raw power it radiated, never mind the aura of….peace— appeared before him, shrouded in smoke.
“Excellent.”
*
You know, one would think that before transporting someone half a century back in time, one might want to ensure that the person being transported was aware of exactly what they had been agreeing to. Because when Harry stupidly answered ‘yes’ to a voice from the fog asking him if he would ‘change everything’, he hadn’t been expecting this.
September 1st, 1944
Which presented a number of problems. First and foremost was the obvious. Harry was standing at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in September of the year of our Lord 1944.
Not 1998. 1944.
Which brought him to the second problem.
“What the bloody hell am I doing here?”
Death (yes, the Death) stood in front of Harry, who was now apparently a seventeen-year-old boy called Harrison Peverell who had been enrolled at Hogwarts after his guardian —his Godfather— died in an attack by Gellert Grindelwald in mainland Europe. But as to why he was a seventeen-year-old boy called Harrison Peverell?
Well.
“You sent me back here to save him?!”
Death inclined his head. “You wished to change everything, prevent thousands from dying and everything that occurred in your past life from coming to pass.”
“I really thought that was a rhetorical question—“
“If you wish to save your friends, you must save him.”
Harry blinked, looking around wildly, apparently at least still partially suspended in time, as everything around him was frozen in place. “Even…even if I would do that, assuming I even could….it’s 1944. You’ve made a mistake, I’m too late—“
“Death does not make mistakes.”
Harry stared at the figure, remembering then. “Do you…want your Hallows back? Is that it? What, because I have all three…that makes me your master or something?”
Death chuckled, the sound oddly tranquil. “There can be no true master of Death, Harry Potter. The only one who comes close is Time, and you are not Time. Even then, I suspect I will have Time in the end. Beyond that, there are only those who approach me as a friend, and those who are fools. I do not need to see you to be able to find you. You cannot raise those I have taken in any way that matters, and the only thing the Elder Wand has ever done is bring wizards to me all the quicker.”
Harry’s head spun. “I don’t understand,” he bit out, trying to make himself think only for his brain to keep catching on the year 1944 (say nothing of the fact that he was speaking to actual Death). “You want me to stop Tom Riddle from turning into Voldemort, but he already has become Voldemort! He’s already opened the Chamber, killed Myrtle, made his first Horcrux. It’s too late.”
Death’s gaze —palpable from beneath his hood even though his eyes weren’t visible— grew more intense. “Death does not make mistakes,” he repeated.
“What the fuck did you send me back here to fix then if not a mistake?“
“What you must understand, Harry Potter, is that Death is bound by Fate. Fate spins the threads of life, plans the patterns woven from those threads, and I tie the final knot. While the pattern might have been woven perfectly according to plan, neither Fate nor I were happy with the results, so she has unravelled it in order to weave it once more, this time incorporating a new thread.”
“…Me.”
Death nodded once. “Indeed. But Fate was very clear. She has allowed one chance to alter the course of history and seek to prevent Voldemort from ever rising to power, but a successful pattern can still only be woven one of two ways, new thread or not. Either the soul of Tom Riddle is saved, or it is not.”
“I don’t understand, Tom’s soul has already been split in half—”
“He can be saved, Harry Potter. It must be this way.”
Harry grit his teeth. “So let me get this straight. You’ve brought me —unknowingly and largely unwillingly— back in time to stop Tom Riddle from becoming Voldemort when he has already made his plans and ripped his soul in half. And you’ve only given me one year to do it.”
Death regarded him. “The cards Tom Riddle was dealt as a child cannot be changed. Because of the hand he was given to play, ‘immortality’ was always going to call to him. He was always going to seek out a way to achieve it and discover the word ‘Horcrux’ in his searching. It was always going to appeal to him and he was always going to succeed in making his first one. No amount of influence was ever going to change that. But despite that, he can still be saved.”
Harry’s vision tinted red. “To absolute hell with him, what about Myrtle, Hagrid—“
“If I believed sending Tom Riddle to Hell to be a feasible solution, I would not have needed your assistance in doing so. As I said before, Fate has allowed two paths to flow smoothly, and only two: either Tom Riddle’s soul is saved, or it is not. You have already lived the path where it is not.”
Harry’s breathing grew almost a bit frantic as his situation…truly began to sink in. “How…how the fuck am I supposed to save him?”
“If I knew the answer,” Death murmured, the scene around them beginning to unfreeze. “I would tell you.”
*
Once again, Harry stood before the doors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, about to embark on a journey that would alter the course of history.
"Harry Potter," the voice of Death spoke once more. "I believe this belongs to you."
As the great doors opened and Harry stepped properly into the past, he reached into his pocket, fingertips brushing the handle of a wand, following every curve as well as he would the back of his own hand, the shape of it forever burned into his memory. Holly. Eleven inches. The core a phoenix feather. The brother wand to another.
His wand.
*
Why...did the shape of that wand in his pocket...make everything feel so horribly final?