Petunia Unspeakables Adventures India
The Temple of Infinite Doors
The Unspeakables send Petunia to India on a mission unlike any other. Hidden deep within the shifting sands of the Thar Desert, beyond maps and mortal memory, lies The Temple of Infinite Doors—a structure so ancient that even the oldest magical texts barely dare to name it. Legends whisper that its doors do not simply lead to different rooms, but to different existences. One wrong step, one careless turn, and a seeker could find themselves lost in another time, another world—or worse, nowhere at all.
Petunia arrives in Rajasthan under the scorching sun, her Unspeakable robes exchanged for desert gear enchanted against the heat. She is not alone. The Ministry has assigned her a guide—Vaibhav Sharma, a local wizard and an initiate of Aghori magic, a reclusive and controversial branch of wizardry that embraces death, transformation, and the unseen. His dark eyes seem to see too much, and his murmured incantations call forth protective sigils in the sand. He warns her:
“The temple is not a place of stone, but of hunger. It does not wish to be explored—it wishes to consume.”
When they reach the temple, it is unlike anything she imagined. The structure shifts before her very eyes, carved from black stone that seems to drink in the sunlight. Its countless doors ripple in and out of existence, flickering like mirages, appearing and disappearing with the wind. Some doors are carved with runes, some with pictograms, some are simply voids of nothingness. The air hums with whispers—soft, taunting, just beyond the edge of understanding.
As she steps inside, she feels it immediately: she is being watched.
The temple is alive.
Doors rearrange based on her intent, sensing her desires, her fears. Some lead to endless corridors, others to starscapes where gravity no longer applies. In one room, she glimpses herself standing at an altar of bones, crowned in black fire. Another door offers a fleeting vision of Dudley, older, magical, powerful—a world where he, not she, had been the one marked by fate.
But it is a misstep—a single moment of hesitation—that changes everything.
She stumbles through a door that reflects her past—a door that should not have been opened. The world twists around her, and suddenly, she is somewhere else.
A World That Shouldn’t Exist
She lands in a version of reality where Lily Evans never received her Hogwarts letter. Instead, it is Petunia who was born with magic. In this world, she is Petunia Evans, prodigious witch, beloved sister, a hero of the magical world. Lily is just a Muggle, an ordinary girl with no place in magic.
The ache of what could have been settles deep in her bones.
Here, she has everything she ever wanted: power, respect, and a bond with her sister untarnished by resentment. She almost stays.
Almost.
But something lurks in the shadows—something angry. The temple does not appreciate hesitation. The air turns thick and cold, and suddenly, the shadows reach for her. Tendrils of darkness coil around her wrists, whispering secrets of those who have wandered too long and never left. She feels herself being pulled between realities, spiraling toward a void where no time, no world, no existence remains.
She must escape.
Her only clue is a single phrase whispered by the dying embers of a long-forgotten voice:
“The true door is marked by the lotus. And only under moonlight will it reveal itself.”
The chase begins.
Racing through shifting hallways, dodging collapsing floors and illusions meant to entice and trap her, she hunts for the lotus symbol. Doors slam shut behind her, forcing her into paths unknown. Vaibhav’s voice echoes distantly through the void, calling her back—or is it the temple mimicking him?
Finally, in a vast chamber where stars glitter in the walls like trapped galaxies, she sees it—a single door, unassuming, its frame traced with the delicate shape of a lotus. But there is no moonlight. Not yet.
The shadows are closing in.
She reaches deep within herself, summoning her Shafiq-born magic, her gift of vision. She writes the moon into existence. A silver glow blossoms overhead, and the lotus symbol shimmers to life.
The door creaks open.
With a final, desperate leap, she hurls herself through—just as the void snaps shut behind her.
The Temple’s Warning
She emerges back into the desert night, gasping, the temple now silent and unmoving behind her. Vaibhav steadies her, his expression unreadable. The stars above burn brighter than before, as if something—some force—has been realigned.
As they depart, she feels the temple watching her still. The message is clear:
No door opens without a price. And some doors... should never be opened...
As Petunia slips through the lotus-marked door, she is yanked through the very fabric of reality itself, tumbling through the space between worlds. The sensation is indescribable—a crushing weight as if the very air is trying to smother her, followed by an intense pulling and stretching of her essence. She can feel the pull of the void, the hunger of the temple, trying to drag her back into the place between existence. Her limbs are numb, her thoughts fragmented, but then—
A sharp jolt.
The temple is gone.
The void is gone.
Petunia blinks, and suddenly, she is standing in the middle of the Thar Desert, beneath a sky clear and unbroken by storms. The air is still, the sand silent. Her fingers tremble as she brushes her robes, half-expecting them to be torn or shredded from the wild journey. But they are fine. Her skin is unmarked. Nothing feels out of place.
Her heart pounds. Has it all been a dream? Was it only a hallucination brought on by the heat and exhaustion of the desert?
But no.
There, on the sand, is the door.
It lies before her, now reduced to a mere fragment of illusion, barely visible—a shadow in the sands. It flickers for a moment, like a candle flame about to go out, before it vanishes altogether. There is no lotus symbol. There are no whispers of the temple’s hunger. Nothing.
"Vaibhav?" she calls out, her voice echoing through the emptiness. But there is no response.
She turns, her pulse racing. Has it all been a mirage? Was she ever really in that other world, where Lily had no magic and she was the one born to it? The yearning ache of that reality still gnaws at her, but it feels so distant now, as though it happened to someone else.
The sun is still high in the sky, the desert stretching endlessly around her. No sign of the temple. No trace of the strange magic she felt pulsing through her veins. Only the stillness.
The Return to Reality
As she walks back toward the small camp where she and Vaibhav had set up their base, she tells herself that it doesn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. The temple, the other reality—it was never real.
The mission is over. Her task is complete.
When she steps into the camp, she sees nothing out of the ordinary. Her pack, still neatly arranged. Her supplies untouched. There is no trace of her journey into the unknown. She feels a tug in her mind—a whisper, a warning—but it’s fleeting, like a dream slipping away with the morning light. She forces herself to focus on the present.
A few days later, when she reports back to the Department of Mysteries, everything is as it should be. There are no questions about her disappearance, no mention of the strange event. She is simply given her next assignment, the unspoken memories of the Temple of Infinite Doors tucked away deep within her.
Her superiors never ask about her time in the desert. They never mention any abnormalities in her report. It is as if the whole thing never happened.
Even when she lies in bed that night, the memory of the other world—the one where Lily had no magic and Petunia was powerful—is like a half-formed dream, slowly fading as dawn breaks. The longing she felt for that life, the one where everything could have been different, seems to dissolve into nothingness.
She shakes her head. No, it couldn’t have been real.
Yet, deep inside, a part of her knows—something lingers. The temple may have let her go, but it hasn't forgotten her. The whispers are quieter now, but she feels them. Somewhere, in the deep recesses of her mind, there’s a door left slightly ajar.
And it is only a matter of time before it calls her again.