Prologue
Harry woke up gasping, hungry for air, as if he had just emerged from the deepest of waters, a second away from drowning.
Panic clutched his throat, making it hard to breathe.
He tried to calm down, closing his eyes and focusing on breathing, forcing it to recede, slowly but surely.
Like a retreating tidal wave.
With consciousness came many sensations, crashing over him.
His whole body was freezing, aching as if covered in frostbite. Arms and legs felt impossibly weak, almost numb, and his head, already foggy, began spinning.
Slowly, heat washed over him, starting from his chest and expanding through the whole body, as if his heart had just started pumping and was still filling him with blood. With each wave, a bit of strength and lucidity returned.
A few minutes passed like that. He waited, as still as he possibly could, for his heart to fill him, for his body to stabilize, to remake him.
Feeling better, Harry clenched and relaxed his fists repeatedly, testing his regained faculties, and was relieved to find himself as reliable as ever.
Then, he took another deep breath, just as a precaution, to keep the panic at bay.
Because even with his eyes closed, something was missing.
Magic.
He couldn't sense it.
Not the gentle caress present in every wizarding community, nor the subtle but unmistakable breeze he had noticed lingered even in muggle cities, after his first summer back from Hogwarts.
It was just gone. Completely vanished.
Fearing the worst, he braced for the terrible emptiness he had expected to feel, dreading the thought of being as hollow as the world around him.
Only after a few seconds of blissful nothingness did he gather the courage to loosen the grip on his emotions and actively search for his core.
And was flooded with unimaginable relief upon finding it still intact and functioning.
Grasping as tightly as he could to the magic still present within himself, he slowly opened his eyes.
Something had gone wrong.
Very, very wrong.
He wasn't supposed to be there.
What had happened?
The memories of the last few hours finally crushed him, as if waiting for him to calm down before returning, knocking the breath out of his lungs.
The proximity of the final confrontation.
The weight of what was expected of him had finally settled in.
To kill his own soulmate. A part of himself.
Harry had told himself countless times that defeating Voldemort was the right thing to do.
He had berated himself over and over for his own selfishness. For still wanting to give a chance to his mortal enemy, the one who probably didn’t even know about their bond.
After years of loneliness, he had waited for his birthday with trepidation, longing to know who his person truly was; the one who would make him feel again.
Seeing those wretched words on his wrist that night had simultaneously shattered his world and confirmed his deepest suspicions.
After all, wasn't Harry the first to notice their parallels, their similarities?
Ron himself had said that no one else could understand Tom as well as he could.
And honestly, who else could it have been?
His whole life had revolved around this single person.
How could fate, how could magic, choose anyone else, when their destinies were so tightly bound together?
He had accepted it. Or at least, he had thought so.
But when the final moment came... when he had learned that he not only had to fight his own soulmate, but to die as well, to sever their bond and send to death the one person who was supposed to be HIS.
Harry couldn’t take it.
He had never admitted it to anyone but himself, but at times, even before knowing anything about soulmates or Horcruxes, he had been glad for the connection they had shared.
Despite the pain it brought, it had also been comfortable. Like home.
It had felt like being part of something, being important, special... wanted.
To sever it.
To die for a world that didn’t deserve him, that had repeatedly shun him.
To kill his own soulmate for them.
They didn’t deserve it.
He didn’t deserve it.
He had refused.
What had happened after had hurt him to the point that his recalling of that moment was little more than a chaotic mix of fragmented memories.
A swirl made of his friends faces, at first confused, then heartbroken.
The feeling that something had been wrong.
Words, so many words he couldn't remember, only one phrase repeating in an infinite loop, "I'm Sorry, I'm sorry, i'm sorry".
Usless excuses.
Then a spell, as green as his eyes, aimed right at his heart.
And in that moment all he had thought about was how right it was for his last memory to be such a parallel of his first one.
After that, everything went out of focus, gaining the oneiric aspect of a melancholic dream.
Looking back, it had almost reminded him of the effects of the fumes in Divination class.
An undefined figure surged from the impossible whiteness around him, countless faces fusing together, all sharing a look of pity and admiration.
How he had hated that look, and how he had said so.
The impossible creature then immediately amended, changing its expression and regarding him as an old friend.
The fantastic tale had been told in an impossible multitude of voices: old, young, male, female, human, alien, and everything in between.
He barely remembered a few bits of it, but it all came down to a single concept.
The tale of the Three Brothers had been real. He was the Master of Death.
The entity whom he had refused to call Death, probably more out of shock than disrespect, had asked him about his greatest wish.
It had been an easy answer.
To have a chance at a happy life with his soulmate.
After all he had been through, what else could Harry have wished for?
Because yes, he had wanted an easy life, but he had also loved the thrill that Tom had brought into it.
At twelve, he had liked the boy in the diary, patient and charming.
At sixteen, he had been fascinated by the young man glimpsed through the Headmaster’s memories.
And at eighteen, he had ached for his sworn enemy, for the painful touch he knew too well, for those fleeting, terrible moments in which he had actually felt alive.
He had loved Tom, in every form, in every way.
He had yearned for him.
So how could he ever live happily without him by his side?
The wish had been simple.
He had not expected Death to smile upon him.
To pity him for the cruelty of Fate.
To grant such a selfish, sinful wish.
Right, he had been brought back.
He had a second chance.
But, where was he?
Confused yet strangely calm, as if his mind had been wrapped in cotton, Harry slowly took in the room where he had regained consciousness.
Sunlight streamed through the window, flooding the mostly white room in a soft, almost ethereal glow.
The walls, the ceiling, even the plain wooden furniture seemed to shimmer in that divine light; bright, but never harsh, as though the world itself had been blurred at the edges.
There was something unnervingly detached about the place. Everything was arranged with such impersonal precision that it felt more like a dormitory than someone’s personal space.
The air was still, undisturbed, as if no one had ever truly lived there.
Through the window, he could see other buildings, their pale facades reflecting the same golden light. They were arranged in a way that suggested a campus of sort, bordered by a dense line of woods stretching beyond them.
And yet, despite the strangeness of it all, a feeling of familiarity settled deep in his bones. A vague, inexplicable sense that he had seen this place before.
But he hadn’t. He knew he hadn’t.
Determined to find out what had happened, and trying to ignore the uneasy feeling constantly growing in his chest, Harry opened the closet, hoping to find some clue.
Unfortunately, it didn't contain much besides few low quality clothes, better than the rags he had to wear at the Dursleys, but still not the best.
The bookshelf revealed a multitude of well loved books that had obviously been read multiple times, and an apparently casual mix of classics, mystery novels and lighter, more modern English literature.
In particular he had noteiced how the copy of "The Great Gatsby" had obviously been a favorite of the owner. The cover was worn out, and the colors had been almost washed away, due to it having been handled frequently.
Almost without noticing, he flipped through the pages, more out of a sense of familiarity than because he actually wanted to read it, and found an almost equally crumpled brochure being used as a bookmark.
The name on the brochure, elegant print on cream colored paper, struck him like a physical blow, his pulse skipping before hammering in his ears.
Hampden College, Vermont.
He knew that place.
Now he finally understood the nagging sense of familiarity despite never having seen the place.
He didn't need to know how it looked, he had read about it.
Multiple times.
Harry rushed to the window, frantically trying to open it, and looked outside with renewed interest.
Suddenly, what he had previously discarded as normal, almost boring, white buildings had transformed before his eyes, revealing something he hadn’t noticed before.
The mysterious and warm atmosphere he had always associated with his favorite book settled in his mind, completely changing his perception of the place.
The light shone golden, projecting lazy shadows from the leaves slowly falling from the auburn trees.
The sun caressing his face felt like the touch of a loving hand, and the light breeze brushing his hair away from his eyes carried the scent of wood and moss Harry had always associated with happiness.
He stood there, stunned, until his emotions finally settled from the rollercoaster they had just gone through.
After what could have been seconds or hours, he moved back to the little bed in the corner of the room where he had woken up.
Chasing away the light sting behind his eyes, Harry noticed how, exactly in the spot where he had been lying, there was now a very familiar book.
The pages were crumpled and yellowed by time and frequent use, countless sticky tabs sprouting out of them. On the back, there were still remnants of the library sticker he had tried to remove during the summer of his fifth year when, after spending most of his time hiding among books, Harry had fallen in love with the story. Not having had the possibility to buy a copy for himself, he had stolen it and read it again and again.
Unable to contain his tears any longer, and glad beyond belief to have been reunited with his copy of "The Secret History", Harry opened it, only to find a leaf used as a bookmark in the exact spot where he had left it the last time he had read it, still on the run, confirming his suspicion that the book had been plucked directly from Hermione's bottomless purse, where he had asked her to hold it when not in use.
When the shock finally subsided, a terrifying and exciting thought took over his entire mind.
Had he been brought inside the book?
He was supposed to go to the past, to remake his whole life, to finally have a chance with his soulmate.
How had he end up there?
He didn't even know how to feel.
The prospect of entering what he had always considered THE story was exhilarating of course, but was it worth losing magic over?
Was it worth losing Tom?
He decided to put the question aside, to think about it after he had more information.
Instead he did the only thing he could think of.
He called Death.
The being appeared in front of him, just as impossible and incomprehensible as it had looked at the white King's Cross.
It was lazily leaning against a wall, observing him with its ever-changing smirk.
"Hello little master, is this not the place you expected to wake up in?"
Obviously, it knew what had happened.
"You told me I could go to the past, I could change everything... Why am I here?"
"I did, didn't I?" its expression seemed to sour for a bit in that impossible way of its "this... Change of plan has nothing to do with me unfortunately. Fate managed to intercept me and decided to change your destination all on her own."
Harry felt his heart plummet.
Why did Fate continue to torment him? Hadn't he suffered enough?
"Fate?" he managed to ask with a sliver of voice.
"Apparently you remain their favorite chew toy even after your death."
The supposed smirk returned.
"But don't worry little master, they weren't as cruel this time. In fact I suppose you'll quite enjoy your time here.
There is a little surprise for you after all."
Death winked and looked at Harry's wrist intently for a moment, before disappearing into thin air.
Finally feeling a bit hopeful Harry dared to follow Death's gaze.
"Avada Kedavra" he read aloud, voice little more than a whisper, sagging in relief.
The words were still there, he was still Tom's soulmate, he still had a chance.