Harry Potter stands alone.
He’s in the heart of the Forbidden Forest, shadows weaving a tapestry of darkness under the dense canopy. The air is thick with tension and damp with dew. It’s the kind of air that nips at your bones, making you feel as though something isn’t quite right. But Harry hardly feels anything; he is numb to the world around him.
He glances behind, over his shoulder. Hogwarts, once a bastion of strength and beauty, sits high up and for the first time, Harry sees her. Her stones are weathered, her towers are crumbling. She bows under the weight of time and tragedy, a shadow of her former self. All evidence of life—of magic—has been extinguished, put to rest like a blown-out candle, leaving only blackened husks of what were once magnificent spires standing defiantly.
Harry shudders at the sight.
He tears his gaze away from Hogwarts—his home and his sanctuary. The first place he had found warmth, had found comfort, had found joy.
Pain blossoms in his hands. They are balled into fists, fingers clenched tightly around the golden sphere of a Time-Turner. It digs into his skin but Harry pays it no mind, his fingers cold; they ache, almost painfully. His eyes burn, but he refuses to let himself cry. Not when there’s work to be done. He takes a deep breath and steadies himself. He has to do this. There is no other option. His life—and everyone else’s—depends on his next move.
Hogwarts watches him, her stone face staring down at him with a sorrowful eye. A wistful one. One that knows what he will lose in the present. What he will gain in the past.
Harry’s lips part.
A prayer is whispered to Lady Magic (and it sounds more like a plea).
Magic rises from Harry’s core; he feels it, the slow build of electric wisps, arching its back like a languid feline. It travels down his nerves, through his cells, and reaches the tips of his fingers. His magic leaps into the device, and suddenly—
The world around Harry starts to spin.
His stomach lurches, and his mind feels like it is being pulled, twisted and turned inside out. The sensation is unbearable. He gasps, in pain, in shock, in agony. He is folded into pieces, pressed down in places that ache tenderly. He is pushed through a narrow tunnel that blinds him with light—white, some specks of blue; he sees his mother’s eyes, that green colour he, too, harbours, and there is something in the air, something bright and magical. It sounds like a song; it sounds like the sharp caw of an owl, so familiar, hauntingly so.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers into the dead of night, voice cracking, and just like that, Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, the Chosen One, vanishes from his time.
September 1st, 1941.
Hadrian Peverell is sorted into Slytherin.