Chapter 1: Black Hole at the End of the Universe
Chapter Text
"Then... I'll be seeing you," he murmured, his pale skin glowing like starlight under the orange street lamps. "In our next great story."
It had been a long time.
Long enough that the Master of Death had forgotten his own face. Trillions of years had passed since Earth was consumed by a supernova sun, the destruction sending his immortal body tumbling into the infinite everything. Without inertia to slow him down, the initial explosion shuttled him through the galaxy for centuries upon millennia. He slept often—dreamed, sometimes, when it was convenient—but mostly, he just floated and watched stars twinkle at him, their illuminosity brighter than anything he’d seen on the smog-ridden Earth.
But he eventually got caught in something's gravity. He spun out, careening through the atmosphere, crashing like an asteroid into sandy red cliffs. It was actually the most fun he'd had since the end of Earth. The hundred billion years that followed saw space exploration that the denizens of Earth could never have imagined. He discovered strange new worlds, from dull, dead rocks to exciting, explosive volcano worlds to lush, tropical forest planets and everything in between. He sometimes encountered new intelligent species, but his alien appearance unnerved them more often than not, and they fled him after some time.
It hardly mattered in the end. Societies came and went; worlds were born, razed, rebuilt, and burned again. All the while, the universe was cooling. Complex life became precariously perched, and then increasingly rare, the stretches between his encounters with them growing longer and longer before societies as he knew them appeared to vanish from the universe entirely.
And so the Master of Death became largely solitary, largely bored, and largely asleep.
Occasionally, he flew through another quiet little solar system and got caught in its gravity for a time. Those were the best years after the initial boom of life. He could careen through gas giants or jump from asteroid to impossibly distant asteroid. His body—his immortal, impenetrable body—withstood it all and more.
Those years were long gone, however. Stars died, and new ones were born in their place, but each generation was fewer in number than the last. Eventually, they stopped being born altogether. At first, not much changed, but the great, mute dying of almost all stars soon came on without warning. They began vanishing faster and faster, flickers of light exploding and then fizzling out, until there was only a handful left. And then, there was one. Death brought him into its orbit so he could watch it slowly dwindle.
And now, at the end of the universe, it was a tiny, cold white dwarf, barely bright enough to see.
The Master of Death orbited the last star with his arms outstretched, pretending to cup the lonely object in his palms. It had no heat left. In just a moment, it would become a black dwarf, and the Master of Death would belong to darkness—to cold, unending darkness—a black beyond time or movement. There would be atoms floating around for a few trillion years more, he knew, but after they inevitably stilled, he would be truly alone. Truly, finally done.
The Master of Death spread his fingers and then interlaced them, enveloping the dim white dwarf just as it faded into the black.
And then it was him. He and eternity. One and everything and nothing. In the endlessness of the dark, the Master of Death floated. He floated, and he wondered. There was something familiar about the darkness, as if he were returning to a home long forgotten. Maybe it was the memory of the womb slowly inching up from the mulch.
He spread his arms, half-expecting to find two walls on either side of him. There was nothing, but he could see it: the water-stained ceiling, peeling paint, dust bunnies, curled spiders. His eyes were playing tricks on him, making it seem as if he were trapped in a small, enclosed space. He reached for the floor, longing to run his fingers across it. This great infinite darkness was what he had needed all along—a quiet, dark, safe place to sleep.
A cupboard.
“Master,” Death spoke. He blinked, and the walls rippled like a mirage. Skeletal fingers passed through them, parting the moldy walls as if they were curtains lifted by a cool breeze. "Master, our job here is almost done.”
“One final catch,” the Master of Death murmured, his hands encircling the entity’s wrists. He tightened his grip until his eyes began hallucinating Death’s visage. He knew there was no light at the end of the universe. He knew, and yet...! “Or, will it be me that you reap, at last?”
“Not quite,” said Death, its pale cheekbones glinting as if it exuded shape itself. Darkness, made visible.
“You’re keeping something from me.”
“I have… found something,” crooned Death. “Hiding, tucked away in the recesses of infinity. The last black hole.”
“The last... black hole,” he echoed. Black holes. Spheres of incredible emptiness full to the brim with astonishing everything. He hadn’t seen a black hole in some time. “Bring me to it.”
Obliging, Death whisked its Master away. The moment they flickered into the black hole's orbit, brightness blinded the Master of Death, making him wince and throw a hand over his eyes.
“How has it survived for so long?” he questioned, staring at the light of great swaths of detritus that were spinning, careening, consumed by the event horizon. Death chittered a disbelieving laugh.
“No entropy,” it replied, “this black hole isn’t shrinking, it… leads somewhere. Somewhere inside. Somewhere beyond. A wormhole to elsewhere.”
“Is that so…?” Death's Master hummed, curious. He turned to look at the infinite darkness behind him before gazing into the brightly burning matter swirling above the black hole’s event horizon. There was truly nothing left here for him. He may be destroyed, but then again, he may not.
“Then... shall we take a peek?” he offered.
“I thought you’d never ask,” purred Death. “After you?”
Laughing, the Master of Death allowed himself to fall forward. The black hole beckoned him, and he stretched out his arms to greet it. Forward, forward, forward. He fell forward into the event horizon, into the horizon, into… into a horizon.
He blinked.
The gravity was… complicated. There was the pull of a star above him and the grasp of a planet beneath him. He turned his head. Colour. Verdant. He reached out a hand and brushed his fingers across it. Damp. Wet. A memory sparked from deep within him.
“Grass,” he murmured, turning onto his side. He sank his fingers below the grass. “And… soil.”
He pulled his hand back to find it coated with mud. Silent, fascinated, he pulled his fingers to his mouth and licked. It tasted earthy.
“Earth,” he murmured. “What...? Earth? There is no Earth.” Memories were darting forward with increasing urgency. He pushed up to sit on his tailbone, jerking his head around hurriedly. “Flowers,” he noticed, fluttering his digits across the petals. “And… a shovel?” he picked up the tool and turned it over in his hands. Shovel. When was the last time humans used shovels?
“Humans.” The Master of Death realised, scrambling to his feet. “Humans!” he shouted, gazing around hurriedly. “Houses!” he exclaimed. He was staring at rows and rows of them, brick and red, side to side to side. “Incredible!”
“Good grief, what on earth are you yowling about now?"
Death's Master turned to see a figure standing above him on the porch. Its pale hands were wet with suds as it wrung out a hot towel, squinting down at him with what amounted to casual disdain.
A human. It was a real, living, breathing human. He stared, eyes bulging. When was the last time he saw a human? It had to have been just before Earth’s destruction. Trillions—no, quintillions—of years had passed since Earth was consumed by the Sun, and yet here was a human, alive and well. A human, standing there before him under a soft, blue sky.
Earth. He was back on Earth.
The Master of Death couldn't help it. He laughed.
“Well?” she questioned, eyebrows raised. He didn’t reply. He just stared at her, laughing, his head tilted in amazement. The dialect she spoke was ancient compared to the English of his memories. It took him a moment to decipher what she meant, but even after sorting that out, he couldn’t quite figure out the proper way to reply. He could barely scramble together much language at all. When was the last time he had spoken? When was the last time he had breathed?
“Honestly, it's always something with you,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Just finish the petunias, Harry. Then you can come in for lunch.”
Chapter 2: Feeble Lamb Reared for the Slaughter
Chapter Text
“Honestly, it's always something with you,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Just finish the petunias, Harry, then you can come in for lunch.”
With that, she turned, shutting the door behind her with a sharp slam. The Master of Death stood there a moment, considering the woman’s words as he stared at the place she had vacated. There was something distinctly familiar about her, about that shrill, sharp voice, but he couldn’t seem to drag that particular memory forward. Most of everything still eluded him, but the more he looked at the world around him, the more he began to remember.
The Master of Death mulled it over, rolling the woman’s face around in his mind until it was smoothed like a pearl. A very beige, unhelpfully normal pearl.
Pulling a blank, he shrugged at himself before turning and walking away from the house.
“Death,” he called, strolling up to the fence and slinging a leg over it. “Are you with me?”
“Master,” replied Death. It stood behind the fence, between him and the forest beyond. “It's quite an interesting world we’ve discovered.”
“Feels familiar,” the Master of Death replied vaguely, walking past the entity and into the woods. “But not quite.”
“Almost the same as our last,” Death agreed, following close behind. “But not quite.”
The Master of Death strolled through the forest, his eyes tracing the high-above canopy with a careful gaze. He wanted to remember it—the fluttering leaves, the twisting wind, and that pale blue sky—it was one of his grand, lost loves, that sky. After Earth’s destruction, he had come upon hundreds of thousands of other habitable worlds, but none of them had Earth’s bright, cerulean hue. He hadn't known it at first, but by the time he began actively searching for inhabited worlds, very few yellow stars were left in the ageing universe. The planets he found were orbiting either red dwarfs or neutron stars, and neither would produce a blue sky. Brown or white skies were most common, leaving blue as rare as his homeland's verdant green flora.
“Death, tell me something,” he questioned idly, plucking a leaf from a bush and rubbing it between his thumb and pointer finger. Ah, green. It wasn't efficient; green leaves absorbed less light than blue leaves, and weren't as radiation-resistant as red leaves. In those old days, trying to find a planet with a blue sky and green plants was like asking an old man to do a backflip one last time. It was a beauty only possible in youth.
“Whose body is this?”
In truth, the Master of Death preferred the simple, pure visage of green leaves swaying under a wide, cerulean sky to any other marvelous sight in the universe. It was hard to shake one’s roots, especially when echoes of those roots were vanishingly rare.
“It was a child named Harry James Potter,” Death supplied. He gazed up at the entity with raised brow. “But now, it is you.”
“You reaped him?” he questioned, tapping his chest curiously. It was a little strange, being in the body of a dead boy. He supposed the black hole's event horizon must have somehow destroyed his physical form; otherwise, he had never taken Death as an entity that reaped others so flippantly. Perhaps new dimensions didn’t like immortal objects intruding from a space beyond.
“It was necessary to make space for your soul.” His servant clicked its false tongue. “There is only so much memory one can fit in a single mind. Your mere occupation of the body would have rendered the child braindead regardless.”
“Interesting,” the Master of Death murmured, flicking the leaf away. “Well… what now?”
Death’s eye sockets gleamed.
“Whatever you desire, Master.” The entity bowed the knee to him. “This universe is young and fresh. Many things are being born, and very little is dying. The End has passed, and we are in a new beginning.”
“Hm.”
A new universe. A second Earth. It was a very romantic idea. Did he dare enjoy it before entropy separated him from his home again? The Master of Death pulled air into his lungs, holding it until his chest burned. He exhaled. The universe was young—thirteen billion years old—a mere baker’s dozen. It was like an infant, its nebula skin smooth and stars boiling away. He would have a long, long time to enjoy it, to savour it, to drink in every second of blue sky he possibly could.
“Well, we can have a little fun,” he teased, gazing out at the sprawling forest. “But I’d like to gather my bearings first. How similar is this Earth to the first one? Something is different, but what?”
“I… do not know much,” admitted Death, a bit of sheepishness stuck to its tone. “My influence over this realm doesn’t extend beyond death. Perhaps—”
A flicker of a memory darted across his eye. The Master of Death laughed.
“I know what we could do,” he mused. “Since there’s so much magic in this young universe, I’d bet there are a few portals to the Faewilde lazing about. I’d bet this new Earth still has the old druids.”
“Hm…” Death ground its jaw up against its pearly teeth. Its master grinned; if Death disliked anything, it was druids. If it hated anything, it was those precious, immortal fae who guarded them. “Do you wish to pay them a visit?”
“Oh, most certainly,” he replied, beckoning the entity to take his arm. “I am long overdue for some Earthly counsel.”
The druids were hiding where they had always gathered: in the hollows of yew trees, stuck between the Faewilde and the human realm. Death brought its master to the entrance of their grove, then stepped back, jittering with displeasure. Displeasure for the ancient fae magicks that forbade Death’s entry into their wood. The Master of Death, however, stepped over the threshold and beelined to the largest of the yew trees. On his approach, the great, gnarled pale trunk groaned and dipped forward. Bursting from the deep crevices like hot springs from the earth, three bright lights swarmed around him, growing in size until they had formed the bodies of three willowly druids.
“Eternal one!” crowed the first, a tall, blind-eyed crone with a mischievous smile. “I am Aibell.”
“You have arisen, and so soon?” said the second, a young woman with golden hair blanketed by a shawl of silver silk. “I am Mab.”
“O’ Master of Death, welcome to our humble grove,” intoned the last, a short, soft-spoken child with dewy eyes. “I am Tam Lin.”
Their voices were layered and incomplete, and their glowing bodies were partially translucent, as if made of coloured glass. They were, after all, standing halfway into the Faewilde.
The Master of Death bowed his head in respect.
“Wise druids,” he greeted stiffly, sitting down on one of the gnarled roots of the yew trees. He could barely recall the last time he spoke to a druid. He gazed around to settle himself into the moment. Trees. Oh, how he missed trees. It was just kilometres and kilometres of beautiful, green trees all around him. “I’ve come for counsel.”
“And we shall grant it,” they intoned in unison, forming a half-moon around them. “If your offering is sufficient.”
“Ah, of course.” He leaned back for a moment, trying to remind himself how long magical beings usually lived. “Will… hm, a century of immortality suffice?”
His barter was offered up as a lowball, as he expected they would ask for more. Instead, the druids chittered at each other excitedly before nodding in enthusiastic agreement.
“We will do our best to be of service, o’ generous Master of Death.”
“Uh… well.” He blinked at them. “Alright. If you’re sure.”
Lifting his hand to his chin, the Master of Death licked the pad of his thumb before reaching out. They crowded forward, exposing their brows. Picking the eldest, he pressed his fingerprint into her wrinkly forehead. It sparked and burned fiercely upon impact before settling into a slightly raised white brand. Repeating the motion for the other two, he then sat back content. The mark would slowly fade over the next hundred years, and once it vanished completely, the druids’ lifecycles would resume from where they had halted.
“Now,” the Master of Death began, clicking his tongue, “tell me about this world.”
Eccentric as they were, the druids were called wisefolk for a reason. Kneeling before his humble seat, they began spinning a long, terrible yarn.
The story went something like this:
“Decades ago, a cruel Dark Lord struck the magical world with great terror, blanketing it in war. Unlike the great magical conflicts of the past, this one was different. The Dark Lord wasn’t interested in simply dominating the world. He wanted to destroy it. Raze the fields and bury the dead in the burnt earth. His followers, the Death Eaters, desired nothing but to fulfill his simple order: kill until none remained but the great terror that was Lord Voldemort.”
“Voldemort,” the Master of Death murmured, brows furrowed. There was something familiar about that moniker. “Theft of Death… and then the Death Eaters…. It's a rather bold branding. Fitting for a Dark Lord, I suppose.”
Aibell swayed side to side, as if caught in a trance. Her eyes were white, her face pale. “Magical folk of every class, creed, and species fought against him hand over fist, and yet there was no one, not even the great sorcerer Albus Dumbledore, who could defeat him.”
“It was then that a prophecy surfaced, one foretelling the Dark Lord’s imminent defeat,” continued Mab, her silk shawl billowing. Aibell bowed her head and began muttering Gaelic under her breath.
“It goes as follows,” intoned the old crone. “The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. And the Dark Lord shall mark him as his equal, but he shall have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives.”
“The child of prophecy was not known at first, but before long, three children who fit the criteria were discovered,” murmured Tam Lin. “Their names were Neville Frank Longbottom, Charles Sirius Potter, and Harry James Potter.”
“That name—he’s the last owner of this body,” the Master of Death hummed, intrigued. “And who became the true child of prophecy?”
“That is where it became tricky, for Charles and Harry Potter were twins,” replied Mab. She placed her hand on Aibell’s slouched back and rubbed it soothingly. “Fearful that magical twins might share a prophetic future, Lord Voldemort decided to kill them himself. On the same night, the Dark Lord’s most trusted servants were sent to put an end to Neville Longbottom in his stead.”
“However, Neville Longbottom had been secreted away by his parents the week prior, and thus the family was spared,” Tam Lin explained. “The Death Eaters left in defeat. Meanwhile, Lord Voldemort, upon finding the twins in an empty house, cast the killing curse at them both.”
“And Charles Potter died,” the Master of Death presumed. To this, Death called out to them from the entrance of the grove.
“The child lives, Master.” All four heads turned to stare at the entity. It huffed. “I can sense it.”
“Oh?” he murmured, brows furrowed. “Curious and curiouser. Then, what occurred that night?” he questioned the druids.
“Well…” Tam Lin raised her small chin. “The curse struck Harry Potter, branding him with the mark of prophecy across his brow. Then, the killing curse rebounded, striking Lord Voldemort. He fell dead, reduced to no more than a wraith.”
“Surely not.” The Master of Death put a finger to his forehead and found a raised patch of skin. “Oh… well, what a funny coincidence that is.”
“When the Potter parents returned, they found both infants alive and well, but Harry Potter marred with lightning across his brow,” Aibell jumped in, though her voice remained shaky and weak. The prophecy, it seemed, had been difficult for her to recite. “And so they took the twins to the great Albus Dumbledore, who implored them to send Harry Potter away for his own safety.”
“Was the Dark Lord’s death not enough to end the war?” The Master of Death interrupted curiously. The druids shook their heads in unison.
“Death Eaters began suicide crusades against the sorcerers after the defeat of their leader,” Mab intoned. “Fearful that they would kidnap the child and somehow twist the prophecy in their favor, a trap was set. Harry Potter’s magic was sealed, and he was placed on his aunt and uncle’s doorstep to live as a Muggle.”
“To keep the Death Eaters off the scent, Charles Potter was branded with a false mark and proclaimed the child of prophecy in his brother’s stead,” Tam Lin concluded. “He remains with his parents in the magical world, training both magic and body to one day assist his twin brother in defeating Lord Voldemort once and for all.”
The Master of Death sat back, humming thoughtfully. There was an itch at the back of his mind that was becoming a particularly uncomfortable mental rash. He kept seeing flashes of an old life, a life so distant he could scarcely recall that it had even occurred. It was there, though, scratching at the thin membrane of forget that coated it.
He had heard something like this story before.
“And how, pray tell, will Harry Potter defeat this Dark Lord without his magic?” he mused, curious about this mighty sorcerer’s grand plan. “Was the ‘power the dark lord knows not’ something nonmagical?”
Aibell grinned a toothless smile.
“And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives,” she recited. “Lord Voldemort exists as a wraith because Harry Potter has survived. With Harry Potter’s destruction, Lord Voldemort too shall gain the ability to perish.”
“Ah,” the Master of Death chuckled, understanding immediately. “Feeble lamb reared for the slaughter, and his brother bred for the axe. Clever man, this Dumbledore. I’d be tempted to meet him if it were not my neck on the chopping block.”
“The Master of Death cannot die,” Death muttered from the entrance, unamused.
“And the boy’s already dead anyhow, so what’s it matter?” he called out to the entity, cajoling his servant. “In fact—Death, go search for my Hallows. I desire my wand.” Nodding once, the entity vanished. Death’s Master turned back to the three sisters, eyes gleaming. “Then, druids, answer me one last thing. Does Albus Dumbledore’s magic still bind this body, or was his meddling magic branded across the poor child's soul?”
“It remains with you,” intoned Mab, “the constraints hold firm on Harry Potter’s bones, o’ Master of Death. They are carved into the ribs, the spine, and the sternum.”
There was a pause.
“Excuse me?” He made a face. “How is that possible? Did that crazy sorcerer carve runes into the poor kid’s bones?”
The druids nodded. The Master of Death whistled lowly, patting his chest with appreciation. “Impressive, very impressive. I had suspected something obstructive, since my magic wasn’t responding well, but runic arrays carved into bone—that is a level of dedication I wasn’t expecting.”
“And so you must be wary, o’ Ancient One,” said Tam Lin, grasping the Master of Death’s large trouser leg. “Albus Dumbledore has wrapped many eyes around the child. It is only the sacred fae magicks in this place that keep your current location unknowable to him.”
“That is… less than ideal,” he grumbled, eyes roaming over the three druids. “What a tenacious sorcerer this Dumbledore is. I don’t suppose any of you could free me of such surveillance?”
They shook their heads.
“Modern rune magicks are beyond our ability to destroy,” Aibell admitted with a wrinkled grin. “Though the goblins may be able to assist, for a high price.”
“Ah, of course. The goblins.” He had forgotten about the goblins. Standing, he bowed his head respectfully to the trio. “Well then, it seems I have goblins to barter with. I bid you well, wise druids. I will return if your wisdom is needed again.”
“It is forever an honor to serve, o’ Master of Death,” replied Mab, her silver shawl swaying in the wind as she and her sisters crowded to the yew tree’s old trunk. “We will remain at the crossroads of realms to await your call.”
“And if we hear wicked words carried to us by the wind, o’ Master of Death,” Tam Lin continued, resting her temple against the wood. “We will send it to you with the breeze, so that you may know the evil that seeks to reap your flesh’s pure heart from its blessed coil.”
With that, the three druids vanished into the yew tree, returning to the realm between realms where neither fae nor mortal could tread.
“Well,” remarked the Master of Death, glancing to the entrance of the yew grove. “Have you finished?”
Death’s black shawl got caught by the wind, lifting its empty shadows to the pale old trunks. Approaching the entity, its master smiled at the wand and cloak being held out to him with an extended hand. He took them with a pleased hum, clutching his old friends to his chest. The wand melted into his skin, inscribing the Deathly Hallows symbol into his palm. Then, he stretched the fabric of the cloak over his shoulders, allowing the fabric to melt past his shirt and into his flesh. Testing the cloak, he flickered, disappearing into the background like a chameleon before returning to solidity just as quickly. There. He couldn’t use the wand yet, but just the presence of his Hallows made him feel better. He was almost himself again.
The Master of Death grinned at his servant. “And my stone?”
Death let out a discontented noise before hesitantly holding out its skeletal palm. He plucked up the dark stone and raised it to the light, squinting.
A soul.
The thinnest, foulest soul of a dark, red hue was clinging to his stone.
“Interesting,” the Master of Death murmured, as intrigued as he was displeased. He rubbed the surface of the stone with his thumb contemplatively, before shoving it into his pocket. “Well, I’m not sure what to do about that. Perhaps we’ll have some fun with it. Now, let’s go. I need to speak with a goblin saint about getting these runes sanded off.”
“Ah, the Goblin Wars,” Death sighed, ghosting its skeletal hand along its master’s brow. “What busy, exciting years they were.”
Chapter 3: A Saintess Hailing from Holy Melasurej
Chapter Text
“Ah, the Goblin Wars,” Death sighed, ghosting its skeletal hand along its master’s brow. “What busy, exciting years they were.”
They entered the Goblins' Holy City of Melasurej from the caves beneath it.
Emerging like a wisp of smoke from Death’s cape, the young Master of Death strode out of the dark, undeveloped caverns into the bright golden light of Melasurej’s bustling streets. The citizens turned and stared at him as he passed, but didn’t make any move to stop him. They merely stood and watched with narrow eyes, waiting for him to find his mark. From what Death’s Master remembered of the goblins, their saints had probably already received a prophecy of his arrival and warned the citizens he would be approaching.
Good. That would make things much more straightforward.
Down the cobbled underground paths he went, winding through Melasurej on a straight shot to the heart of the Goblin holy land. He could see the holy sanctuary's light glowing like halos over the stout buildings, guiding him through even the tightest side streets and narrowest corridors.
Before long, he was spat out into a wide city square. Flowering mossbeds lined the walk, which had abruptly transitioned from the stone paths—smoothed by many feet over many years—to a gold-brick road gilding him up a glistening staircase to a massive building made of pure marble and gold.
Elcanrebat, the House of God.
He followed the golden bricks through the courtyard and all the way up to the entrance of the Goblins’ holy sanctuary. At its stoop, two saints in white cowls stood muttering to each other in hushed tones. Behind them, guards flanked the giant, circular entrance.
“Do you recognise the Master of Death, o’ saints of Mehsah?” he called out in Gobbledegook, the language’s primordial croon slithering from his throat like an oily serpent. It came off his tongue easier than English, with its grammar and tonality more familiar to him after so many aeons of speaking to Death in Pāli alone. The two saints startled at his voice and whipped around, eyes wide.
“Be calm,” he soothed, slowing to a stop in front of them. “I desire not your soul.”
“So here you are, the Ancient One who hides in young flesh?” the elder of the two questioned, raising a gem-studded finger at him in fearless displeasure. “You, who scattered your treasures to hapless mortal sorcerers so they may play a fool’s game—what business do you have with the Saints of Elcanrebat?”
“This ‘young flesh’ is bound by a most undesired magic, dear saint,” he replied sarcastically, batting his eyelashes. “Release me from this prison, and a century of immortality will be rewarded to you as payment.”
The old goblin chuckled dryly. “I fear not your servant, Ancient One. Find a younger fool to free you from Albus Dumbledore’s chains.”
There was a pause.
“Ah… so you know of this body’s plight?” the Master of Death mused, tilting his head with a curious grin. The old goblin returned the smile with a tight-lipped snarl and said nothing more. Filling the silence, the second goblin saint boldly stepped forward.
“I will do it, Ancient One.” A lilted voice, noticeably younger. When he bent his head to gaze beneath the goblin’s pale cowl, he found a hungry look dripping from her eyes. “Unlike Urlok, I have much to gain from another hundred years of youth.”
“And you are…?” he hummed.
“Dragonclaw.”
“Dragonclaw… interesting.” He considered the name for a moment—it was an uncommon one, maybe a nickname—not that he minded being given a false alias. Death would know the truth. Shrugging, he motioned the younger goblin forward.
“Then, Dragonclaw, I’ll put my trust in your faith.”
She strode towards him and pulled down her cowl to reveal a young face slashed in two by a long, deep scar. He hummed curiously, roaming his gaze from chin to brow and back again. “That's quite impressive. When was your last war with the sorcerers?”
“Centuries have passed,” she replied. “What you see on my skin is not from a battle with wizards, but the strike of a dragon.”
“The source of your name, I assume?”
“No,” she grinned proudly. “That is what I took from it.”
He admired the deep gash, having forgotten the sight of scars after his aeons devoid of companions who had skin. Passing on to another dimension had been the right choice. He had already been reminded of so many incredible memories in such a short time.
Licking his thumb, the Master of Death pressed it into her marred brow, searing his mark into Dragonclaw’s flesh as he had done for the druids. He held the brand there for a moment before pulling away. Acting as if nothing had occurred, she gave thanks with a deep bow.
“Now, for my end of the bargain.”
Straightening, Dragonclaw first bid her mentor to be well before leading the Master of Death into Elcanrebat. They passed through many millions of stacks of coin, exiting on the other side into a broad foyer. It was primarily made of gold and sparkled with many thousands of jewels. He admired the decor as he was guided up a wide marble staircase. Turning a corner, they entered a high-vaulted room with ten shallow pools of opalescent fluid, five on either side of the walkway. Dragonclaw guided him towards one before instructing him to undress. As he did, she pulled back a white silk towel that had been placed beside the pool, revealing a massive flat ruby inlaid in the floor.
“You should know, Master of Death, that your foe is no ordinary sorcerer,” she warned, allowing him to settle himself into the bath. “Albus Dumbledore is a very powerful man, both in magic and influence.”
“Is he a wise man as well?” Death’s Master questioned lazily, submerging all but his face in the opalescent fluid. Stepping back, Dragonclaw sat down atop the large gemstone and pressed her fingers together.
“Tenacious with his knowledge and his secrets,” she replied, eyes slipping shut as her brows furrowed in focus. “Even Urlok, who was twice my age at Dumbledore’s birth, knows little about his true motives. We only know that Harry Potter is the real Boy-Who-Lived because the Potters divulged it to their vault keeper.”
“Interesting title, that is,” he muttered, ignoring the stab of familiarity that surged through him. “The Boy-Who-Lived... and these pesky runes on my ribcage—how did you know of them?” he prodded, flexing his fingers as the fluid around him began to seep into his skin.
“I know not of Urlok's sources, but I became aware of your obstructions when you told us of them not ten minutes ago,” she replied flatly. The Master of Death stuck out his tongue to taste the strange liquid, smacking his lips.
“It's a bit buttery…” he muttered, humming curiously. “You’re rather contemptuous, Dragonclaw. I enjoy this about you.”
She didn’t reply, having slipped into a sudden, deep meditation. Death’s Master took that as his cue to sink deeper, submerging himself completely in the crystalline pool.
Goblin magic was... unique.
Unlike that of other magical beings, it was utterly dependent on their god, Mehsah. Sorcerers drew from magic latent within them to cast spells, as did house elves and many other magical species. Centaurs and lycanthropes, meanwhile, depended on a celestial body—the Moon—for magic. Not goblins. Goblins, unlike any other magical species, had been chosen by a god.
God's chosen people. That was why the two Goblins were saints. Only those knowledgeable in the sacred texts of Mehsah could become paladins in the god's name, and from that group, only the most devout could be christened as saints and gain the right to use Mehsah’s most sought-after magicks: restoration.
Mehsah, the God of Purification, could cure any ailment. Any broken bone, any blood-curse, any jinx, and any cancer. So long as a most devout saint prayed for your recovery, Mehsah would grant it.
The purification did require a bit more than just prayer, though. At least, that's how it seemed to the Master of Death. The goblins must venerate precious metals and gems for a reason, after all. The degree they went to hoard wealth required more logic than mere greed. Soft, malleable gold was probably the best conduit for their god’s gifts, but above that, the Master of Death believed the goblins were harnessing the incredible magnifying power of gemstones. The massive ruby beneath Dragonclaw was surely proof enough of that.
The Master of Death thought it was strange that they were called the Goblin Wars rather than the Goblin Crusades.
The white fluid around him churned and bubbled. While he could not feel it himself, the Master of Death sensed when the runes suddenly burst loose. It was like a giant dam had burst inside his chest, flooding outwards. Magic. He had missed it without even realising. It was a ballooning, vibrant torrent of magic surging through his veins, hot like the centre of a gas giant’s turbulent core.
“Very impressive,” he complimented after surfacing. Dragonclaw peeled her eyes open, swaying uncertainly where she sat on the ruby. The Master of Death laughed, raising his hands to the ceiling as verdant magic rolled off him like the unending hills of the Scottish Highlands. “Now, this is the magic of a prophesied child! What do you think? I had a prophecy of my own once upon a time, you should know—I wish I could remember it—but anyway, have I been freed of all binds, Dragonclaw?”
“Yes… you may roam without worry, Ancient One,” she murmured, carefully stumbling to her feet. She staggered, hand on her head, brows pinched. “But be wary. Your flight from Dumbledore’s cage does not end here.”
“Thank you for your concern, Dragonclaw, but I have fled the orbits of bodies greater than the mortal mind could even dream,” he replied tartly, emerging from the bath. “One tenacious sorcerer can do little to halt my path through this new and exciting world.”
“New and exciting…?” she echoed, appearing slightly unnerved by his tone. He ignored the quizical look on her face and stood. The opalescent fluid within the bath slipped from his skin like water on oil, leaving him dry. Donning his oversized clothes once more, he turned back to her and smiled faintly.
“Enjoy your temporary immortality, Dragonclaw,” the Master of Death advised soberly. “But when the time comes to age, find pleasure in the experience of living and dying. The greatest mercy this life grants is the promise of future rest.”
Chapter 4: Death Slumbers in the Gardens We Keep
Chapter Text
“Enjoy your immortality, Dragonclaw,” the Master of Death advised soberly. “But when the time comes to age, find pleasure in the experience of living and dying. The greatest mercy this life grants is the promise of future rest.”
Albus Dumbledore felt the vibrations before they happened.
Shooting up in his seat, his eyes met the bookcases on the far wall just as Harry Potter’s runestone began shaking. It was a mere rocking at first, but the vibrations quickly grew faster and more violent. It jumped, bobbled, and jittered before leaping sideways and careening off the shelf. It was airborne for one beat, then two, before it hit the ground with a resounding crack.
For a moment, everything was still.
Setting aside his quill, Albus cautiously sat forward, gazing down at the runestone. It lay on the floor, split cleanly in two, straight down the binding rune carved into its centre. He waited with stalling breath for some sign of error, some acknowledgement of fault, but there was nothing.
A cold, hollow sphere, like a snowball packed with stones, settled in his stomach.
So, that was it.
Harry Potter was dead.
Kicking his chair away, Albus apparated out of his office and straight to Surrey. It was a rainy day in the quiet subdivision; all the cookie-cutter houses had shuttered their windows as their owners waited out the downpour. The Headmaster of Hogwarts barely felt the drizzle as he swept to the front door of 4 Privet Drive and rapped sharply against the wood.
Moments later, the door flew open. Petunia Dursley stood behind it, gaping at the wizard. Her mouth was moving, but no sound came out. Albus’s eye twitched.
“Where is Harry, Petunia?” he questioned, his tone gentle but vicious, his eyes imploring. Behind her, in the kitchen, silverware was rattling in the drawers. The fine china was quivering, clacking against each other.
“G-gardening,” she murmured, ghostlike and pale as she pointed a shaking finger at the backyard. Albus strode by her into the hallway, old fingers chancing across the cupboard under the stairs as he passed. Petunia followed behind him, wringing her hands fearfully. The tablecloth anxiously folded and unfolded itself over and over. The clock began spinning backwards. The throw pillows on the couch floated up to the ceiling.
Reaching the back door, Albus grabbed the knob and ripped the door open, gazing out into the empty yard.
A shovel, a flowerbed, and silence.
Albus Dumbledore turned and bore the full weight of his gaze into Petunia Dursley’s wide eyes. In the garden, the flowers were oscillating wildly between every colour of the rainbow.
“And how long, exactly, has he been gardening?” he interrogated sharply. Albus’s harsh tone slapped Petunia’s face free of colour as she stared past him at the horrible nothing in her garden. Across the street, the neighbour’s car had turned itself into a miniature pony, and then a turtle, and then a different brand of car.
“I… I was just lying down for a nap at half past two,” Petunia murmured, glancing up at the clock before quickly looking back down again in horror. “Oh, God.”
“So, a respectable… five hours?” he surmised, eyebrow raised. The same neighbour’s shingles had become fish scales. The pebbles on the sidewalk were lemon drops.
Petunia pressed her fingers to her mouth and was silent.
“Is he hurt?” she breathed, her voice so quiet the wind could have stolen it.
“Worse, Petunia. He’s gone,” Albus replied calmly. The road outside was hot, bubbling tar. “Harry Potter is dead.”
Chapter 5: Spider Lilies and the Edelweiss Flower
Chapter Text
“Worse, Petunia. He’s gone,” Albus replied calmly. The road was hot, bubbling tar. “Harry Potter is dead.”
“It's a neat trick,” the Master of Death acquiesced, taking the pair of dice from the boy’s hands. “But I have a better one.”
He clasped one die in his left hand and one in his right, before passing the right over the left, and opening them again. Both dice had disappeared. The young child gasped, grabbing the Master of Death’s fingers and lifting them.
“Where did they go?” the child exclaimed.
“Check behind your ear."
Brows furrowed in confusion, the boy reached up and pulled two caramel sweets encased in glimmering gold wrapping from his ear. Laughing with delight, the boy unwrapped the first, his eyes bulging when he found one of the dice encased inside.
"Brilliant!"
“Hey, you’re quite good at that,” the boy’s mother intruded, gazing down at them from her train seat.
“Why, thank you.” The Master of Death flashed the lady a broad smile. As he did, the train they were seated in began to slow to a stop. Looking up, he patted the young boy on the head and stood. “Apologies, but this is where I leave you.”
With that, he walked away from the pair without another word. Strolling through the throngs of people, he exited the Tube and entered the cold London air.
The Master of Death breathed in deeply before sighing with contentment. It had been a quick twenty-minute train ride from Surrey to London, and it would be an even speedier floo from there to Paris. Unknowable amounts of time had passed since he last took a train, and now he had the incredible delight of floo travel! It was enough to make his heart flutter like a bird.
Smiling widely, the Master of Death gazed around the bustling city with gleeful abandon. So many sights! So many smells. Above him, the Earth’s humble star tugged at his gravity curiously. In the corner of the sky, he could even see a pale moon.
“Marvellous,” he decided, before glancing away from the sky to analyze the small square he was standing in. Most people milling about were Muggles, but he caught sight of a few sorcerers traipsing about the place. Following a particularly large crowd of them, he melted into their group and let them carry him away. It wasn't long before they had arrived at Whitehall and were all funnelling into a narrow red telephone box, which fit the twenty-odd magicals with ease. Squeezing in with them, the Master of Death hummed a mirthful tune as the box descended into the earth, eventually depositing them in a vast hall. Leaving the box, he beelined to the closest help desk he could find.
“Excuse me.” He rested his forearms on the counter and raised his head, smiling at the woman behind the counter. She glanced up at him in boredom before doing a double-take, eyes widening. "Could I bother you for—"
“Charles Potter?” she interrupted, her voice first filled with shock, and then with worry as she leaned forward to get a better look at him. “Merlin, you look so thin. What’s happened? Are you alright?”
“Ah…?” He blinked at her, momentarily taken aback that she had recognised him so quickly, but he quickly recovered. "Oh, this? It’s just a silly jinx. It’ll run its course,” he soothed, waving off her concern. It was interesting that he and Charles Potter looked so similar. Perhaps it would be a good idea to find a mirror after all. “But, as I was saying, could you show me to the floos, please?”
“Oh, of course—of course!” She stumbled to her feet and quickly rounded the desk, taking up his hand in her own as if he'd offered it. “Are you lost? Where are your parents?”
The Master of Death raised an eyebrow at their conjoined hands before glancing up at her with pursed lips.
“They’re handling some business. I’d just like to return home,” he cajolled dryly, allowing her to guide him out into a more expansive atrium and into an adjacent corridor, where rows and rows of floos lay.
"Good, good. The Ministry is no place for a child," she fussed. "Are you sure you don't need any help getting through?"
"Hm? Oh, no, not at all." He peered around as he spoke, searching for a free floo. Spotting one, he began to dart away before realizing the woman was still holding his hand tightly. He looked at their conjoined fingers, looked up at her, and smiled tightly. “Thank you very much, miss. I’ll be off now.”
“Oh… yes, do take care,” she cautioned, looking hesitant to allow him to leave on his own. He didn’t let her mull it over for much longer, though, as he tugged his hand free of her grip and disappeared into the throngs.
Whistling a merry tune, he picked a floo randomly, borrowed some floo powder from a rushed-looking businessman, and threw it onto the flames. Calling out the address for Paris’ British Embassy, he hopped into the inferno and flew up into the sky, spinning and tumbling like a rag doll before being deposited into a small directory area.
“Ah, Paris,” he crowed, strolling out of the floo. “A shame it isn’t Strasbourg.”
“Oi, kid,” the man behind the magical embassy desk stood with a start. “You can’t just—”
“Forget I was here,” the Master of Death ordered in a blasé fashion. Immediately, the man sat back down in his chair and returned to his work, allowing the young boy to walk out into the streets of Paris as if nothing had happened.
“Now, Death,” he called, glancing from right to left. “Lead me to our dear alchemist.”
With his servant as a guide, the Master of Death strolled through the winding walkways and charming brick roads until he came upon a quiet little house on 51 Rue de Montmorency. Knocking on the door, he stepped back and waited patiently with his hands behind his back, gazing around at the pleasant old street with a smile. It was a rather charming neighbourhood. Perhaps there was more to Paris than good food and wine.
"There's probably a lesson in that somewhere," he muttered to himself. Death's teeth clattered in confusion, but the entity didn't question him.
Finally, after a few long moments, there came a shuffling within the home before the door was cracked open just enough for an eye to peer out at him from within.
“Yo-ho, Nicolas,” the Master of Death greeted, waving pleasantly. The door pulled open fully to reveal Nicolas Flamel with his eyebrows pinched tight across his brow.
“Charles Potter…? No, that can’t be right,” the old man murmured to himself, his eyes searching for answers in the young boy's face before his gaze drifted ever-so-slightly higher, to the entity floating behind him.
Flamel went stark white.
“Perhaps you should let us inside, Nicolas,” the Master of Death advised kindly, smiling with lazy, lidded eyes. The alchemist nodded silently and held the door open, his eyes unblinking as he watched Death like a man living on borrowed time.
Which, if one were to really think about his position, he was.
And so the Master of Death strolled inside, Death trailing close behind.
Absentmindedly bobbing his head to a tune he'd heard on the bus ride from Surrey, the small boy gazed around curiously. It was a humble little French home. There was nothing particularly notable about it, save for the alchemical machinery lined up along every wall that wasn't already covered in bookshelves.
“I don’t believe we have met,” Nicolas murmured nervously, shutting the door and latching it with shaking hands. The Master of Death hummed, settling down at the cluttered dining table.
“Yes, well, I suppose it was quite a shock to see Harry Potter darkening your stoop. My apologies for the intrusion, but I wanted to meet you before I went out exploring,” he explained with a chipper tone. In front of him, there was an ornate vase resting atop the table liner. Spider lilies were painted across its surface, and Flamel had made the odd decision to fill it near bursting with Edelweiss flowers. “How curious,” he murmured, bruising a finger along the fluffy petals. “The flower of immortality encased in the flower of death. Do you usually involve such dire metaphors in your home decor, dear alchemist?”
“So, this body is Harry Potter’s?” Nicolas queried instead of replying, settling down across from him. “If you are not him, then who exactly are you?”
“Oh, come on now, you know who I am,” he teased, cheek in his palm as he smiled at the old man. Nicolas seemed slightly less tense now that he didn’t perceive his immortality as being in immediate danger. The Master of Death chuckled to himself. An eternity and one black hole away, and Nicolas Flamel was still the same.
There was a profound sadness in the alchemist's eyes. “Then, Master of Death, are you here to take me before my time?” Nicolas bemoaned, deep lines of regret creasing his cheeks. “Before my work is finished and my mind is put at ease?”
“I fear that that depends on you, my friend,” he admitted, plucking a fluffy white petal from one of the Edelweiss flowers. He turned it over in his hands before closing his fist around it. When he opened it, all that remained was dust.
Flamel swallowed roughly.
“See, I have a task for you,” Death’s Master explained softly, smiling up at the man from behind his dark fringe. “If you succeed, I’ll let you continue with this silly immortality game you’re so intent on playing. How does that sound?”
The alchemist looked stricken, but nodded his assent.
“If any other choice means death,” Nicolas acquiesced, bowing his head, “Then I will do my best to satisfy you.”
“Wonderful!”
Leaning back, the small boy waved his servant over. Death approached the table and set a small black stone down in front of the alchemist, before floating back into the shadowy corner. Once the entity had withdrawn to a safe distance, Nicolas leaned forward and inspected the stone, brows furrowed.
“What’s this? There's soul energy laced into it,” he murmured, picking it up and turning it over in his hand. "It is some kind of... of proto-Philosopher's Stone?"
“Not in the least. It's my Resurrection Stone,” the Master of Death explained. The old man released it as if it were on fire. “Oh, don’t be like that. Look closer. Don’t you see?” he pointed at the stone, and Nicolas did indeed look closer. “It’s got an interesting little soul embedded into it. Do you want to guess whose?”
“I would rather remain ignorant of whatever beast was foolish enough to make your treasure into a horcrux,” the alchemist cringed, staring down at the stone with furrowed brow. “Such a messy manner of immortality, horcruxes. It's inelegant work.”
“Sure, sure. Can you remove it?” Death’s Master questioned. To that, Flamel raised a brow.
“Would you not rather have your... servant take the soul from the stone as it would from a corpse?” he replied cautiously, glancing headlong at the entity sulking in the corner before just as quickly ripping his gaze away. The Master of Death waved a hand flippantly.
“Where’s the fun in that?” he asked, eyes gleaming as he leaned forward and tapped the stone, keeping his gaze level with Nicolas as he did. “See, dear alchemist, I haven’t had the opportunity to do much of anything in aeons. Forgive me, but I think it would be rather exciting to extract such a nasty little soul from its casing and revive it. Don’t you think?”
“Well… we have different definitions of exciting, I’m afraid,” the alchemist supposed, grimacing down at the stone again. The distaste suddenly got tinged with a splash of intrigue as he leaned forward and studied it again.
“My word… say, does this Horcrux have brothers?” Flamel wondered aloud, flipping the stone over with the tip of his nail. “The soul energy is much too minute for this to be the first one they made."
Death’s Master glanced at his servant with a raised brow.
“There are six or so,” concurred the entity.
“That's—!” Flamel sucked in a breath through his teeth. “That’s absurd!”
As the alchemist sputtered, the Master of Death rubbed his forehead, frowning. Again, the itch of familiarity was scratching through his brow. He tsked at the irritating gap in his memory before returning to the task at hand.
“Here is your labour, Nicolas,” he continued, carding his fingers together and setting his chin on them. “Transfer the Horcruxes we bring you to a new vessel, and reunite them. I give you a year at the absolute maximum to sort it out. If you succeed, I will leave your ‘immortality’ alone, at least for a few millennia more.” He released his hands long enough to make air quotes with his fingers when he said the word immortality before carding them together again. “If you fail, then I will ensure your funeral is the grandest France has seen since Louis XVI.”
“How flattering,” Nicolas muttered, before nodding his head. “It will be done. Souls are my speciality.”
“So they are,” the Master of Death drawled, eyes roaming the room in search of the Philosopher’s Stone. “I would love to see how many of them you’ve encased in that little gem of yours.”
“Enough,” the alchemist snapped, suddenly enraged. "Do not speak of them so flippantly. Every soul is precious."
Death’s Master raised his hands in assent.
“There’s no shame in admitting it, Nicolas. Horcrux or Philosopher’s Stone, the power of souls remains the only path humans have to extending their lives,” he reasoned gently, standing from his chair. Nicolas still looked infuriated, but was wise enough to remain complacently silent. The Master of Death winked at the old man. “Then, I will see you in a year, dear alchemist. Try your best not to disappoint me.”
Nicolas was silent until Death’s Master had almost reached the door.
“One last thing,” he asked suddenly. The small boy turned back with a curious hum. In the darkness of his own home, Nicolas looked awfully small. “What am I supposed to call you?”
“Ah… good question.” Death’s Master considered the conundrum for a moment. “To be honest, I don't remember what I used to be named. I suppose... for lack of a better option, you may call me Harry Potter.” He grinned to himself, eyes glimmering with mirth. “It is a rather nice name, as far as names go.”
Chapter 6: It Was An Unromantic Name Anyway
Chapter Text
“Ah… good question.” Death’s Master considered the conundrum for a moment. “To be honest, I don't remember what I used to be named. I suppose... for lack of a better option, you may call me Harry Potter.” He grinned to himself, eyes glimmering with mirth. “It is a rather nice name, as far as names go.”
The Master of Death—or, as he had christened himself before the alchemist, Harry Potter—left Paris within the hour. He wanted to see a beach, and fast. He considered taking another floo to Spain or Portugal, but acting on a whim, he decided to apparate straight from the street outside Flamel’s residence to the breathtaking white sands of Cape Town, South Africa.
“Was there any particular reason you didn’t apparate to Paris to begin with?” Death questioned idly, floating along beside him as the freshly anointed 'Harry Potter' walked along the white sands.
“Death, I haven’t experienced human society in aeons,” the entity's Master deadpanned. “Forgive me if I wanted to enjoy a little public transport before I gave myself over to practicality. In fact, I think I’ll be walking everywhere for now on, just to irritate you.”
Death grumbled something indiscernible as the young boy turned and gazed at where the bright coast met the cold sea, the icy waters rushing up from glacier melt at the South Pole. Out in the distance, the curve of the Earth was obscured by fluffy clouds. Beyond it, the bright yellow sun burned with a golden hue; it was like nothing he’d seen since the universe's great dying of stars.
It was beautiful.
The Master of Death could remember the old Earth, his old Earth, as the glaciers melted and the poles grew hot. He could remember the way those old tectonic plates slowly shifted up and down and into and away. Another Pangaea formed. World wars sprang up in grand display. Humanity perished; few survived. Humanity rebuilt; few survived. France became an ocean, became a mountain, became a sea, became France again, but under a new name, having been recolonised by the NEO Jesuits.
Stopping, Harry Potter bent at the waist to take off his shoes and socks before pulling up his trouser legs and wading into the waves. He stood there, just far enough out to feel the Atlantic Ocean nibble at his toes. Locals and tourists alike passed him with strange gazes, likely wondering what a small boy in too-big trousers was doing holding them bunched at his knees as he stood in the water all on his own, gazing out at the sun. The Master of Death didn’t think about their trivialities. He was watching where the blue ocean met the blue sky and thinking about time: time, and his overwhelming excess of it.
And horizons. Death's Master wondered about the black hole’s event horizon. There was no escaping the event horizon of the strange black hole without entropy. The eternal nothing of his birth universe could never be returned to. The history he remembered had been reduced to atoms slowly cooling in a vacuum, with nothing left to witness them.
“NEO Jesuits was such an unromantic name, anyhow,” he muttered, digging his toes into the sand. “New European Order. It’s nowhere near posh. Almost unprofessional, I would wager. A bit overtly modern. Brutalist. You agree, don’t you?”
He turned, expecting Death and instead finding a Brazilian couple strolling along the pale sands. They spared him a disparaging glance and hurried along. He clicked his tongue at them and turned back to the skyline.
“Well,” Harry Potter grumbled, “it's all ancient history now. Or prophecy. Depends on how similar this world is to the old.” To that thought, a memory sparked. The Master of Death rubbed his cheek and considered himself for a moment. “Hm… Charles Sirius Potter. Sirius… Sirius… now where have I heard that name before? Maybe a star cluster, or… a Greek God?”
He tried to remember, but pulled a blank again. Shrugging the concern away, he let his trouser legs drop into the ocean so he could hold his hands behind his back, shoulders drawn and eyebrows furrowed as he thought to himself and the sea in equal measure.
A good, solid body of water was a great company, the Master of Death believed. It had excellent movement and substantial flow. He recalled finding a small lake of mercury on one of the last remaining planets before the stars began their great dying. The way that water shimmered had felt almost like a kiss. Asteroids and static planets just didn’t have the same personality. Stars were better than nothing in a pinch, but all that light was just… the dramatics irritated him at times, that was all.
“Master,” murmured Death.
“Did you enjoy floating away? Have you found something curious?” the entity's Master muttered glumly, holding out his hand to his servant without moving his gaze from the ocean. Leather struck smartly against his palm. He felt around it clumsily, blind and with one hand, his thumb catching the ripple of parchment.
“Oh, how cute,” he teased, “you’ve started a diary, have you? Took you long enough.”
“Not that,” the entity grumbled, tapping the small boy’s pocket with a bony finger. “It's another shard of that same soul, the one on your stone. I found it back in England. There are many little shards sprinkled about, but that’s the biggest one.”
“Hm…” he pondered, stroking the leather back curiously.
“And… if I may, Master,” Death continued, taking the book from his hands gingerly. “I do believe there is a slight sliver of something inside your skull, as well.”
Harry Potter blinked, turning away from the horizon to look his servant in the eye socket.
“I’ve got a… a stowaway?” he sputtered. “No. Really? Why didn’t Mehsah’s purification get rid of it? What a tricky little bugger this soul is!” He pressed his fingers into the crevices of his brow as if searching for a bug that had landed on him. “Is it on my face? Can you get it?”
“It's a tad embedded, I fear,” muttered Death, poking the scar on his forehead with a tsk. “A bit more like a tick than a flea. You should really take a look at yourself, Master.”
“Oh, pish posh,” he opined with the wave of his hand. “Why do things the simple way? I’m sick of simplicity. The universe has it in spades. You float and float till you crash into something, and then you float on some more, but in hotter, smaller chunks.” The Master of Death threw up his hands. “I’m in dire need of some dancing and jibbing, Death! Change my velocity. Spin my axis the other way.”
“…All this excitement is making you peculiar and antsy,” his servant muttered, its jaw clacking as it tucked the diary into its robes. “You should walk to the Chaitya to clear your head. Call upon me if you wish, but this soul intrigues me, so I will be leaving you to hunt for its brothers.”
“Fair winds and following seas, my dear Ahab,” Death’s Master bid, and the entity vanished to tend to its chores again. Breathing in deeply, Harry Potter spread his arms wide to the cerulean sky, exhaling with an utterly blissful smile.
“So, my Chaitya exists on this Earth, too? Marvellous!” he declared with relish. “Then, it's just you and me, my dear land of stories. Let us discover the joys of living once again!”
Chapter 7: Something Very Wrong with Harry Potter
Chapter Text
“So my Chaitya exists on this Earth, too? Marvellous!” he declared with relish. “Then, it's just you and me, my dear land of stories. Let us discover the joys of living once again!”
Albus stupefied Petunia.
Sending her up for another nap, Albus walked out to the garden to search for some clue of what had occurred. At first, he reasonably suspected that the Death Eaters had found the child in some sick play of chance, but he couldn’t detect the magical signature of anyone except himself. It wasn’t until he happened to glance down at the rain-soaked earth that he found a clue.
Footprints. A single pair of small, child’s footprints, beginning from the downed shovel in the garden and walking, in an eerily straight path, to the fence at the property line.
Eyes narrowed, Albus followed the footprints over the fence and into the woods. It wasn’t long until they stopped entirely, vanishing as if an unseen wizard had whisked the boy away. Albus cast another magic-revealing charm: nothing. He cursed, scratching his jaw in puzzlement—one set of footprints, no magical signature, and nowhere to go.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, soothing an encroaching headache. So, the child had run away. Fair enough. It wouldn’t be the first time. That still didn’t explain how the runestone had split, something that was only supposed to happen if he died.
Dead, and yet no body. No body, no blood, nothing but a dead-end trail in the wet mud.
Albus was confused.
Albus didn’t like being confused.
Bending down, he cast a spell on one of the footprints. It, and a circle of dirt the circumference of his palm around it, immediately calcified into stone. He dug the footprint cast out of the ground and brushed the mud off of it before standing.
Walking back into 4 Privet Drive, he strode inside and towards the foyer. Checking to make sure Petunia was in a safe position as she lay stupefied on the couch, he bent down and opened the cupboard under the stairs.
Rifling around, he found a pair of old, beat-up sneakers beneath the boy’s bed. Comparing them to the cast, he was displeased to see that the footprints were of a slightly larger shoe. Was it not Harry Potter, then, who had walked out of the backyard?
“Hm….”
Glancing back into the sitting room, he caught sight of another pair of children’s shoes. Plodding over, he bent again and held the new shoe up to the second pair he had found. Then, he compared it to the cast. They were all different sizes, though, notably the same gaudy, neon-coloured sneaker style.
“Must be cast-offs,” he muttered. “Drat.”
If the shoes were hand-me-downs, then it didn’t matter if they were a different size; the boy would wear what was given. Changing tactics, Albus walked back into the sitting room. Petunia was still there on the couch, sprawled out and snoring quietly. Albus reached down, peeled open one of her eyes, and cast Legilimens.
In an instant, he flew past the memory of their conversation, brushed off the hour she spent pretending to sweep so she could rubberneck the neighbours, ignored her nap, and then—aha!
“Humans.”
Harry Potter’s soft voice was barely audible over the quiet stereo playing Petunia’s favourite tunes. She sang along to the music quietly, scrubbing the plates as she danced back and forth in idle motions.
“Humans!” the boy shouted from outside, his voice loud and gleeful. Petunia paused her ministrations, turning her ear to the door and letting out a confused hum as he exclaimed again, “Houses!”
“What in the world…?” she muttered, setting down the plate she was scrubbing to stomp over to the back door. Throwing it open, she found the small figure of Harry Potter standing in the garden, his hands muddy, his arms outstretched on either side, his head craned up to the sky.
“Incredible!” he cheered.
“Good grief, what on Earth are you yowling about now?”
The boy whipped around in surprise. The moment he saw Petunia, his jaw dropped, his eyes bulging. He looked at her as if she had grown three heads. It was such an absurd expression for the given situation that Petunia didn't even know how to react to it.
And then, he laughed. It was a short, sharp, incredulous laugh.
“Well?” she questioned, sounding more than a little miffed at the boy’s reaction. Was something the matter with her hair? She patted it, but didn’t feel anything out of place. Harry Potter didn’t reply. He just stared at her and laughed again, his head tilted quizzically. Petunia mulled over swatting him for the disrespect before she heard the song on the radio change to an old favourite. She glanced back inside the house in excitement before frowning down at the boy.
“Honestly, it's always something with you,” she muttered, shaking her head. “Just finish the petunias, Harry. Then you can come in for lunch.”
With that, she stepped back inside and shut the door behind her, humming along to the smooth trumpet of a jazz band.
Albus withdrew from Petunia’s mind with furrowed brows. Standing in the Dursleys’ sitting room, silent as a mouse, he carded his hands together in front of him, rubbing his fingers across his knuckles in idle motions.
Something was wrong.
Something was very, very wrong.
Something was terribly, unnervingly wrong with Harry Potter.
He considered the woman sleeping in front of him for a moment before pulling out his wand. He extracted her memory of Harry Potter’s last known moments and placed it into a vial before tucking it into his robes beside the shrunken footprint. Then, he sat down in the armchair and waited. It wasn’t forty minutes later that Dudley and Vernon Dursley returned from their day out. Albus stupefied them, as well, before floating all three family members into the sitting room.
Then, as the Dursleys slept, he entered their minds one by one and altered their memories of the past week. For the time being, the family would believe they had sent Harry Potter to St Brutus's Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys a few days prior. While the Potters and Dursleys rarely communicated, Harry's going missing would be one of the few times the Muggle family would see fit to reach out, and Albus wasn’t going to risk causing chaos if they did before he figured out where the boy had gone and why the runes engraved on his sternum had suddenly failed. After seeing what he had in Petunia’s memory, Albus wasn’t ready to accept that the child had died. No, something else was going on. Something had happened.
Leaving 4 Privet Drive, Albus turned and gazed up at it sourly.
“Humans…” he murmured, echoing the boy’s words from the memory. He looked up and down the street. “Houses….”
Something with Harry Potter had gone very, terribly, horribly wrong. Albus didn’t know what yet, but somehow, some way, something had occurred while Petunia Dursley was washing dishes that made the Boy-Who-Lived stand in the yard of the only home he had ever known and shout with glee that humans and houses surrounded him. That unknown something had then brought the child over his yard fence and into the forest, where he vanished to somewhere so unknowable that Albus’ carefully carved runes had failed to track him.
Oh, yes. Something was very, very wrong, and Albus Dumbledore was going to find out exactly what.
Chapter 8: Humans and Houses in an Exciting New World
Chapter Text
Oh, yes. Something was very, very wrong, and Albus Dumbledore was going to find out exactly what.
Upon analysing the broken runestone, Albus found something curious.
The runestone’s magic was designed to catalogue if Harry Potter strayed from Privet Drive, allowing Albus to tap the stone and receive a parchment detailing where the boy had gone and when. He rarely used the thing, since Harry was constantly moving to and fro between school and home, but it had been a necessary tool in the early years, when Death Eaters were a more pressing threat. However, upon fusing the broken halves, Albus was able to twist the severed magic enough to reveal Potter’s last whereabouts, and what he received was so peculiar that he had to take a moment’s pause.
“Melasurej…?” he muttered, brows furrowed. A bizarre place for the child to be, certainly, but not as strange as what he found on the line beneath it.
A glitch.
A line of words, written down by the runestone, then scratched out by foreign magic. He could still taste the unfamiliar flavour of it in the air. Something, or more likely someone, had interfered with the runic display to alter its memory. Stranger still, they hadn’t bothered covering up Harry Potter’s trip to the Goblins’ capital of Melasurej. No, it appeared that they only sought to erase Albus’ knowledge of the place he had been prior, and nothing more.
Clicking his tongue, Albus set the broken runestone on his mantle before reaching for the floo powder.
“Gringotts Bank!” he shouted, throwing the powder into the blaze before stepping forward.
A whirl, a spin, and a forward flip, and he was stepping out of Gringotts’ large gilded floo. Walking past the many rows of tellers, he fell into place in front of the main desk. Behind it, sorting coins, was an old goblin in a crisp black suit. The creature glanced up at him, displeased, before returning to his counting. Albus coughed pointedly.
“Does your account need tending, sir?” it questioned diligently, beady eyes preoccupied with an abacus.
“Yes, I’d like to request a private council with my account manager,” he replied. Without looking up from its maths, the goblin reached for the opposite side of the desk and pressed a small button on a wall of many small, glass buttons. A buzzer rang somewhere, and the door behind the desk slid open.
“Down the hall. Take two rights. Room 20-7,” the teller muttered, waving him through. Albus nodded and rounded the desk, striding into the bowels of Gringotts. Goblins in tailored suits and monocles turned to glance at him as he passed, but he paid them no heed. He found room 20-7 without delay and went inside, making himself comfortable in the chair that sat in front of the desk. It couldn’t have been more than half a minute later that another goblin entered and sat down behind the desk.
Albus frowned.
“You aren’t my account manager,” he observed calmly. The creature was old, its face partially obscured by a long white cowl. Its hands, the only uncovered part of its body, were riddled with many large, gaudy gold rings.
“You aren’t here to speak about accounts,” replied the goblin, adjusting its position in the chair. Albus could make out nothing but the creature’s hooked nose and bright eyes beneath the gold-trimmed cowl. He hummed, carding his fingers together in his lap.
“Very well, then. Where is Harry Potter?” he questioned genially.
“Not a clue,” replied the goblin, equally as cordial in tone.
“But he was in Melasurej.”
“His body was, yes.”
Albus rubbed the back of his left hand with his right thumb, humming contemplatively. He didn’t suspect the goblins of harming the child, mainly because he could see no viable purpose for them to do so. No, more likely than anything, the boy had been brought there by someone else.
“Who was with him?” he interrogated.
“He came alone.”
Albus blinked. Slowly, austere and cold, he leaned forward. The goblin’s face—what little of it he could see—didn’t waver.
“If you lie…” he warned.
“May Mehsah strike me down,” the old creature returned. Albus bit the inside of his cheek.
“…Fine. What did he ask for?”
“For the chains you carved into his bones to be dispelled.”
Albus’s eye twitched. He decided to ignore that the goblins were aware of his tampering. They had too many fingers in too many pies, anyhow.
“And you did it for him?” He raised an eyebrow. “I’m awfully curious what the child offered to make that such a compelling trade.”
“Nothing worthwhile for me.” The old goblin’s small eyes turned up in the hint of a smile. “But that foolish student of mine found it more than fair.”
Albus worked his jaw.
“And you are certain it was Harry Potter.”
“It was Harry Potter’s body.”
He leaned back in his chair.
For a moment, just a breath, the office was completely silent.
“Possession,” Albus murmured, eyes widening with understanding. He shot forward. “Who was possessing him?”
The goblin shrugged. “It didn’t give a name.”
“And yet…?”
“Quite a good talker, that one,” the old creature crowed. “Enigmatic. A bit funny, even. You’ve got your work cut out for you, son.”
“Don’t patronise me,” Albus warned.
“I do not fear death, child.” The old creature shrugged its shoulders. “I wouldn’t be telling you any of this if I did.”
Albus sighed, rubbing the side of his face. Think. Just think, he told himself. So, the boy is possessed. There was no magical signature, so it wasn’t a ghost or a wraith, but it knew you were tracking it. Not a wraith, but if his scar… it could have… no, surely not. But…?
“Worrisome… very worrisome,” he muttered. The goblin twisted one of its jewelled rings in idle circles. “Your student—I want to speak with them.”
“I’m sure you do,” replied the goblin. “Unfortunately, your runes were quite taxing to remove. She is in repose.”
“You flatter me.” Albus scowled. “Did he say anything? About where he was going? About what he was doing? Did he… did he perhaps say anything about Horcruxes?”
“Horcruxes?" For a moment, the old creature looked genuinely perturbed. "No, not a word, but… hm….”
The goblin sat back and considered his memory for a moment. As it did, long, dark shadows cast themselves across Albus Dumbledore’s cheeks. After all his years, he could recognise wickedness when he saw it, and this… situation—it was wickedness of the foulest sort. Small, sweet Harry Potter, genial and innocent like a lamb, would never stray from his shepherd. Harry Potter wouldn’t, but Tom Riddle—!
“He spoke very little to me after I refused his trade,” the old goblin finally replied, “but my student… he said words to her that were relayed back to me. They were… troubling.”
At the goblin’s pause, Albus hurriedly motioned for it to continue. The creature tapped a single, gnarled nail against the desk in front of it.
“The world,” the goblin murmured. “He told her that the world is very exciting and new.”
The office was silent.
“Humans and houses,” Albus recited softly, watching the gold-strung gems sparkle on the old creature’s wrinkled digits. “A very peculiar thing has happened today. Don’t you agree?”
The goblin observed him.
“I have nothing more to tell you,” it finally said, getting up from the chair. Albus watched as it hobbled to the door and opened it, motioning for him to leave. “Be gone from here, and do not return until I have passed into the arms of my Lord.”
Albus wanted to argue, but he knew it would do nothing. Standing, he bid the old goblin a good day and left. The door swung resoundingly shut behind him.
“Humans and houses,” he murmured again, walking down the hall back the way he came. “Humans and houses, in an exciting new world…. It can’t be Tom Riddle, then. No, most certainly not.”
Chapter 9: From Cape Town to Madhya Pradesh
Chapter Text
“Humans and houses,” he murmured again, walking down the hall back the way he came. “Humans and houses, in an exciting new world…. It can’t be Tom Riddle, then. No, most certainly not.”
The Master of Death stayed true to his word.
Beginning in Cape Town, South Africa, he walked eastward along the coast, watching the sun set and rise and set again. Before long, he had strolled through the Cape of Good Hope, bidding the Atlantic goodbye and giving a warm hello to the Indian Ocean, which spread dark and royal before him in a rich blue hue.
Many days of wandering followed.
He stuck to the beach for the most part, stopping only to make sandcastles or charm a local business into giving him something sweet to eat. The first one gave him a handful of Jelly Tots. The employees watched with slightly uncomfortable expressions as he took a small nibble of one and almost immediately burst into tears.
Sugar. When was the last time? He had missed it so terribly throughout his aeons of life that it felt like Heaven itself to press his tongue against the sweet granules again. As Death's Master, he had no need for food or sleep, but after the Earth had perished, he'd done basically nothing but sleep as he floated through the vacuum of space. Food had been so rare that it was a treat just to chew. He recalled many instances of nibbling on rocks and alien flora just to feel a texture in his mouth. Some of those plants had, indeed, been sweet, and he’d practically grazed entire species into extinction when he discovered them, gorging himself on even the slightest familiar flavour.
After days of strolling along snow-like sands, South Africa bid him well. Mozambique, in turn, greeted him like a cradle, arms outstretched wide with broad smiles. While there, Harry met a fisherman who introduced himself with his English name, David. The old man had warm eyes, dark as burning coal, and a smile crosshatched like broken piano keys. Harry asked to see his work, and David offered to take him out on the water for the day. The ocean was calm, and the fish were plentiful. The Master of Death sat at the stern of the old man’s paddle boat and felt the waves rock him back and forth.
“David,” he told the man, “the Indian Ocean is like a mother. She’ll carry you everywhere.”
“Do you have a mother, boy?” David inquired in response. Harry grinned.
“The Earth is my mother. I mourn her every day.”
They caught Sailfish and Tuna, and when they returned to the shore, David left him with one large, glistening fish as his prize.
“Run back to your mother now, child,” said David. Harry saluted and was off like a shot. On his walk through Maputo that night, he found a food stall willing to gut and grill the fish for him. It was warm and crumbly, flaking off on his tongue. The Master of Death wept openly at his first bite, causing the chef to beam with pride. Nothing... nothing could compare to the joys of a simple, warm meal. The texture, the taste!
Oh, how he had missed this.
The people of Maputo were warm. Joining the stall owners, Harry sat behind the table and managed the money flow for them, taking periodic bites from his fish to savour it as long as possible. Once it was all gone, he thanked them for the company and disappeared into the crowds again.
He snuck onto a freighter once the sun set and enjoyed a quiet night under a sea of stars. Staring up at a fresh infinity, the Master of Death promised himself that he would savour it this time. Not just the sky or the sea, but every single second. He was done sleeping; in fact, he wouldn’t sleep a single second until the Earth was destroyed again. He wouldn’t hide himself away in the Chaitya, either, as he had done in the past, fearful of people and their noise.
“Once it's gone, it's gone,” he told the wind. “Just like the fish. You can catch another, but that doesn’t mean the first one has come back to you.”
He talked to the stars until he was roused from the conversation by the great, shuddering horn of the freighter. It had set off sometime during the night and arrived in Madagascar just as the morning sun rose. He greeted the crew with a wave on his way off the ship, finding himself in the bustling city of Toamasina. The country looked like a wish. Industrial and seaward bent, all the buildings were brick, their roofs a rusted red. Against the blue sky and green trees, the red brick buildings with their red brick roofs looked like miniature iron planets clustered together like pearls. He swam between palm trees as the salty breeze soaked into every little thing. Walking far enough along the beach, he found a bone-white church sitting stark against the red brick city. A golden cross adorned the top of the church steeple. He studied it for a time before carrying on.
By midday, he had found buses shuttling tourists on the six-hour trip from Toamasina to the capital, Antananarivo. He chatted in Malagasy with one of the drivers for a while before asking for a free ride. The man laughed at him but let him sit in the passenger’s seat. On the drive, the car jostled and lurched to the tune of the road. The radio was playing soulful music, and the people were speaking in a cacophony of languages—laughing, singing, complaining, and arguing. The Master of Death sat in the passenger seat and grinned ear to ear the entire way.
Oh, how he had missed this.
Antananarivo was a stunning, sprawling place. He could see the French influence in the architecture, but more than anything, Harry was delighted by the sheer congestion. Not just in the traffic—which was piled with cars and people in equal measure—but also in the buildings, which were practically stacked one atop the other. Everything was moving and shifting like colours in an oil slick. Buildings scaled the hills like ants, people flowed through the roads like water, and the trees. The Master of Death would never be sick of green.
He roamed Antananarivo for a while, eating everything he could get his hands on during the day and spending his nights scaling buildings so he could sit on their rooftops and stare at the night sky with a star map in his hands, picking out constellations and putting names to them.
“Ah, so that’s what Sirius is.” He discovered the Dog Star on one such night as he was mapping Orion across a beautiful, moonless sky. “The brightest star in the night sky… hm, I wonder when it died?”
He glanced at the vibrant blue light, biting the eraser of his pencil contemplatively. Now that he was thinking about it, there had been several supernovas he witnessed on Earth before its destruction. Betelgeuse had definitely been one of them, but there were others. He tapped his chin with the wet eraser and tried to recall, but the memories alluded him.
“The Chaitya will help,” he reasoned with himself. “A quiet, familiar place to meditate will bring it all back.”
He watched the night sky until sunrise, before climbing down from the roof to find a shuttle to Morondava. Morondava was another coastal city like Toamasina, but on the opposite side of Madagascar. Juxtaposed to the tall, thick Baobab trees it was known for was the red sunset, which burned across the trunks and turned everything crimson. Harry walked the Avenue of the Baobabs and twisted himself around the pin-straight trees, bobbing and weaving through the red sky and dreaming of old haunts in a universe far, far away and long, long dead.
After a few nights in Morondava, he felt drunk on life and ready to wander forth again. He snuck onto another freighter and stowed himself away on a straight shot to India. He came off the boat in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra. Melting into the crowd, he hailed a ride to the closest clothing retailer and haggled himself something that actually fit. He was getting sick of the oversized belt and scratchy trousers. Compared to the hand-me-downs, the tan kurta he was given was cool and light, though the churidar he noticed was a little long on him.
“You will grow,” the saleswoman cautioned him in a motherly fashion, tossing the old rags in the trash. Her Marathi accent was sweet in his ears. He thanked her and left.
Over the next few weeks, Harry would hitchhike his way out of Maharashtra into Madhya Pradesh, continuing to use his magic to subtly influence the Muggles to help him without question. He visited the Gwalior Fort while there, roaming the red brick with its turquoise-blue ceramic tiles and lapis lazuli. There was a time on his own Earth that an atomic bomb had completely razed Gwalior. The fort was rebuilt centuries later from the few photos that remained, but it was never the same. Walking through this old, new version of it, the memories clung to the top of his crown like flowering wisteria. He committed the new Earth’s splendour to his mind.
“The same,” he hummed, “but not quite. Isn’t that right, Death?”
“You have roamed quite a ways since we last met,” the entity murmured, following close behind as its Master strolled through the Man Mandir Palace.
“It's been fun. Found anything interesting?” Harry concurred. Death nodded, presenting him with a small rucksack. He snatched it from the entity, taking inventory of what was inside.
“Your diary, a gaudy necklace, the holy grail, and… some princess’s tiara?” The Master of Death raised an eyebrow at his servant. “I’ve never taken you as a particular lover of antiques.”
“These are the other pieces of that scattered soul, Master,” the weary entity replied with a fatigued tone. “The last, I fear, didn’t want to join me.”
“You gave it a choice?” Harry shook his head, muttering, “That’s very unlike you.”
“Well, I figured you would make your way to Albania at some point,” Death reasoned, accepting the rucksack as its Master held it out. “It also didn’t have a vessel like the others, being a wraith and all. Those half-ghosts are always so irritating to store. Shall I take these to the alchemist, as well?”
“Sure, sure. Now, Albania.” He tasted the country on his tongue. “Such a funny little state, Albania. I do remember adoring the Ionian Sea before it became part of the Mediterranean mountain range. Perhaps I’ll wander my way up there after I’m done in Punjab.”
Chapter 10: The World's Greatest Detective (?)
Chapter Text
“Sure, sure. Now, Albania.” He tasted the country on his tongue. “Such a funny little state, Albania. I do remember adoring the Ionian Sea before it became part of the Mediterranean mountain range. Perhaps I’ll wander my way up there after I’m done in Punjab.”
The Elder Wand was missing.
Albus didn’t know how it managed to slip his attention for so long. He was over half a month into his search for Harry Potter when he looked down at his hand and realised that he had been using his old wand for Merlin knew how long. He stared at it in befuddlement before pulling off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Worrisome,” he muttered—a word he had been repeating more and more often as of late. The oversight troubled him. He rarely missed essential details like that. “Very worrisome.”
More worrisome, however, was the lack of any clues he had found beyond his conversation with the old goblin. After the discussion, he had taken a polyjuice potion imbued with the hair of an old auror friend that he’d been keeping in case of emergency. Donning the proper uniform, he went out to speak with the shopkeepers on Diagon Alley under the guise of “Official Auror Business”. Despite the disguise, none of them admitted to seeing the boy. Part of the problem, he was beginning to find, was that plenty of people had seen Charles Potter, and although Harry was somewhat shorter and willowier than his twin, there weren’t many more differences between them. At a glance, there was really no telling which was which.
Finding nothing at Diagon, Albus had decided to expand his scope. However, visiting other popular locations in the magical world yielded similar results. A few ministry officials had seen Charles, but their descriptions were vague and unhelpful. One young clerk at a ministry helpdesk had admitted to Albus that she had helped Charles find a floo around the same time Harry went missing, which was an exciting possible lead at first. However, after speaking with her for a while, Albus realised it had been just one of James’ many instances of dragging his son to the ministry and forcing him to stay there for hours on end. Albus had hit a wall.
And now the Elder Wand was missing.
Groaning into his palms, he bemoaned the dire situation for a moment before shaking off the hopelessness and shooting to his feet. Not all was lost. There were always more places to search. There were always more ideas to try. There were always more lows to stoop to.
Gripping his wand, Albus apparated to Privet Drive.
Subtly wasn’t working anymore. If Albus hoped to find the child within the century, let alone before Tom returned, he would have to employ some guerrilla tactics.
And so, Albus did something that he could admit to himself was rather distasteful. He went door to door, beginning at 5 Privet Drive and spiralling outward in a circular grid. When someone answered the door, he cast Legilimens and delved deep into their subconscious memories for any hint of the boy. Then, when he found nothing, he obliviated them of the last five minutes and was on to the next house.
It was five hours and nearly the entire neighbourhood before he found his first crucial nugget of knowledge—Harry Potter, waiting at a bus stop. It was mere moments out of the corner of a young girl’s eye, but it was enough. He obliviated her, went to the bus stop, and got on, and immediately cast Legilimens on the bus driver. That memory dive brought him to the train station in Surrey. At last, he was making progress.
It took Albus some time and a bit of finagling to get enough train workers alone to find one who had seen the boy. When he did, he watched from the conductor’s eye as Harry Potter got off the train at Charing Cross Station and strolled up the stairs to the surface. Albus retraced the same steps, emerging from the station into the busy London streets.
Albus stood very still, thinking.
If I were a possessed child, where would I go? He mused to himself, peering around the square. The River Thames was close, and so was a quaint city park. Neither appealed to him. In all the various memories he had plundered, the boy had been walking with a bit too much assurance. Whatever possessed him, it knew where it wanted to go. It wasn’t going to waste time frolicking.
Albus worried his bottom lip. Muggles tramped to and fro, going to work, home, or elsewhere. He even spotted some familiar faces in the crowd, as some small groups of wizards made the walk out from the train station on a beeline to the Ministry of Magic at Whitehall.
Whitehall.
Ministry of Magic.
A thought occurred.
Cursing under his breath, Albus followed the throngs of sorcerers down a familiar path to Whitehall and funnelled into the red phone booth with them. Taking the lift down, he exited into the bowels of the ministry and gazed around, searching for a clue to where Harry Potter could have gone next.
The first thing he saw was the helpdesk, and a familiar young woman sitting behind it.
Albus cursed again.
Approaching, he smiled at the girl as she caught sight of him. “Hello there, dear,” he chimed, causing her to straighten in recognition. “I hate to be a bother, but do you remember our conversation last week, about Charles Potter?”
She blinked at him for a second, confused, before nodding.
“Wonderful,” he articulated slowly. “I apologise, but you’ll need to show me which floo he entered.”
“Well… well, I’m not really sure, Headmaster,” she admitted sheepishly. “He got a bit lost in the crowd. Is the poor dear alright?”
“Of course, of course,” he placiated, before pausing. "…Is there any reason he shouldn’t be alright?”
“I… well, I suppose not,” she disputed nervously, fiddling with her thumbs. Albus breathed out a fatigued sigh and pulled his wand from his robes, tucking it within his long sleeve. Enough of this. He’d had enough of this. “He looked a bit—”
“Pardon me,” he muttered, subtly casting the Legilimency spell from within the cuff of his robe. In an instant, he thumbed through the past fortnight of an agonisingly dull life before finding what he was looking for.
Harry Potter. Smiling, pleasant, cordial. Pretending to be Charles Potter. He ran off into the floo hall before she could chase after him. Smart. Not smart enough. Albus tracked the boy with his eyes for as far as he could, taking note of every familiar face he saw. Surely there was somebody. Yes! There—a head of balding ginger hair—Arthur Weasley, exiting a far-off floo. Perfect.
Withdrawing from the young lady’s mind, he smiled pleasantly as she stuttered through her sentence before tapering off, blinking with some difficulty.
“Sorry, I got a bit sidetracked,” she murmured, pressing a hand to her temple. “As I was saying, he seemed—”
“That’s quite all right, dear,” he soothed, already walking away. “Do remember to rest!”
The genial smile slipped from his face the second he turned the corner and entered the floo room himself. Snatching up a handful of dust from his powder pouch, he tossed it into the flames and calmly called “The Burrow,” before vanishing in a plume of light.
Stepping into the humble sitting room, Albus smiled at a supremely startled Molly.
“Is Arthur home?” he questioned lightly.
“Headmaster!” She was on her feet in an instant, grabbing the curlers in her hair with mortification. “By Merlin’s beard! It isn’t like you to come by unannounced. What have the twins done now?”
“No, no, it's nothing like that.” He waved her concern away, peering around just as Arthur came stumbling down the stairwell. “Ah, there he is. The man of the hour.”
“Headmaster,” the man gasped breathlessly, “we can’t afford to fix it, I'm afraid.”
“The twins aren’t in trouble, dear friend.” He patted Arthur on the back, ushering him towards the front door. “I need to speak to you privately about a concern at the ministry. Do you mind, Molly?”
“What? Oh, Merlin. No, not at all,” she exclaimed, looking more than relieved that nothing had gone awry with the twins that week. Albus smiled at her tightly before pulling Arthur out of the house, slamming the door shut behind them.
Whipping around, Albus lifted his wand before Arthur could even open his mouth. It felt a bit dirty, taking memories from a friend in such a manner, but at that moment, Albus had done it to at least five hundred Muggles and was quite ready to see the fruits of his labour at last.
Diving into Arthur’s mind, he shoved aside the dull, everyday slog of home, work, and home again, taking particular care to closely analyse the man’s trips through the floo. Sure enough, he found what he was searching for.
Harry Potter had gone to the British Embassy in Paris.
“Marvellous,” Albus sighed, withdrawing the spell and casting a quick Confundus.
“What’s marvellous?” the ginger man wondered, looking beyond befuddled.
“The bonus you’ll be getting at the turn of the new year, my friend,” he replied, making a mental note to speak with the minister about inventing such a thing. “I wanted to tell you before the official paperwork came in. A very hearty congratulations to you. You’ve more than earned it.”
Arthur opened and closed his mouth for a moment, looking utterly gobsmacked. Before he could reply, Molly threw open the door and jumped into her husband’s arms.
“Oh, Arthur!” she exclaimed. She looked like Christmas had come early. “Oh, Arthur, this is amazing! Just wonderful!”
Albus made another note to ensure it was a very generous bonus. If anything, it would clear his conscience somewhat. Really, just for being there at the perfect moment to hear Harry Potter call out his destination was more than enough for Arthur to earn the favour.
“Yes, yes, quite marvellous—well, I mustn’t be keeping you.” With a wave, he sauntered back into the house and to the floo. Pinching a bit of powder in his finger, Albus hummed a merry tune as he tossed it into the blaze and called out, “British Embassy, Paris!”
And away he went.
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Anonymous Creator on Chapter 3 Tue 09 Dec 2025 01:15AM UTC
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