The End Before the Beginning
The graveyard was silent.
Too silent.
The cold, damp earth beneath Harry’s knees felt like ice, his breath ragged and uneven as he struggled against the tight ropes binding his wrists. His scar burned, his vision blurred, and just beyond him—Cedric Diggory lay motionless.
Dead.
Killed by Wormtail.
Killed because he had been in the way.
Harry had barely processed it when the ritual began. A cauldron. A twisted spell. Blood freely given. The air had crackled with dark magic, pulsing like a heartbeat, like something unnatural was forcing its way into the world.
And then—
The unthinkable had happened.
The resurrection had failed.
It had started as a flicker of something wrong.
The potion—meant to restore Voldemort fully—had turned unstable. The magic had twisted, cracked, collapsed in on itself, as if it was being rejected by the very fabric of the world.
Wormtail had screamed, trying to correct the spell, but it had been too late. The moment his master had tried to rise, his body had begun to decay, unraveling like smoke in the wind.
Harry had watched, frozen in horror, as the Dark Lord withered and collapsed into nothing.
Destroyed by his own desperate attempt to return.
The graveyard had erupted into chaos.
The Death Eaters had fled, their leader reduced to less than a shadow. The Dark Mark had faded from the sky, dissolving as if it had never been there.
And Harry?
Harry had somehow survived.
The next thing he knew, Dumbledore was there. Aurors had stormed the graveyard, and before Harry even understood what had happened, he had been pulled back to Hogwarts, back to safety, back to a world where Voldemort was finally, truly gone.
And yet—
It hadn’t felt like victory.
It had felt like relief. Like exhaustion. Like the weight of a war that never even had the chance to begin.
And through it all, one thought had lodged itself into his mind, unshakable.
It’s over.
For the first time in his life, Harry Potter was free.
Now, he just had to figure out what came next.