In the beginning
The wind howled through the hollowed remains of the castle, carrying the scent of dust, ash, and memories long since burned away. Stone walls, once towering with unshakable majesty, lay in crumbling ruin, half-swallowed by time and war. The great towers that had once reached for the heavens stood shattered, their jagged remains silhouetted against the ever-darkening sky. Roots of ivy and creeping moss had begun their slow reclamation of the fallen stone, as if the land itself sought to bury the past.
Among the wreckage, a lone figure walked, silent, deliberate, a ghost moving through the bones of a battlefield. Their steps were slow but unhesitating, boots crunching over shattered glass and fragments of forgotten lives. They did not look down, did not pause to take in the remnants of banners long faded, the broken staircases leading to nowhere, the melted remnants of what had once been doors. To stop now meant acknowledging the weight of it all, and they had long since learned that some burdens could not be shouldered twice.
A heavy black cloak, worn and scarred like the land itself, billowed faintly at their steps, its surface catching the dim light in a way that whispered of something more than mere fabric. Beneath it, another layer of darkness clung to their form, barely visible, as if it wished to remain unseen. They moved with the quiet grace of someone long accustomed to danger, their lithe frame shadowed by the weight of experience rather than the burden of armour.
In one hand, they held a wand of bone-white wood, stark against the dark fabric of their sleeve. In the other, a second wand, etched with markings too sacred to be mere decoration, humming with a presence too holy for comfort. Around their neck, a stone hung by a simple string, precariously placed as if daring to slip from its fragile tether. Another string held a small Mokeskin pouch, its contents a secret only they knew.
They did not flinch at the surrounding ruins, nor did they marvel at the silence that had replaced the echoes of war. This was not a place for wonder, it was a graveyard, a monument to the past. And they had seen too much of the past already.
And yet, they remembered.
They remembered rebuilding these walls after the last war, how they had stood among the survivors, watching stone rise upon stone, watching children return to halls scrubbed clean of blood and fire. They had told themselves then that it was over, that this place, this sacred place, would never fall again. That it would stand as it always had, a beacon for those who needed it. A promise of safety. Of home.
And yet here it lay, broken again.
Harry Potter did not sigh. He did not weep. He had long since lost the luxury of such things.
Instead, he stared at the ruin before him and thought of how he had not aged since the day he killed Voldemort. How, despite the years that had passed, his face had never changed, his body had never grown, the hollowness carved into his bones by childhood starvation never filled.
Time had moved on without him.
He had spent years trying to fix it. Years seeking an answer to the impossible. Potions, spells, and rituals failed to reverse what had been done to him that night. The final stroke of the war exacted a terrible price. His hair never greyed, his hands never trembled, his heart never quickened with age. He had watched his friends grow older, had stood at their funerals, even so, he remained. A relic. A ghost.
A shadow walking through the ruins of a world that refused to keep him.
The wind howled again, catching the edges of his cloak, whispering secrets in a language he no longer wished to understand.
And Harry walked on.
Harry remembered.
He remembered returning from the war, weary beyond words, carrying the weight of too many ghosts. He had thought, hoped, that it was over. That after Voldemort, after the blood and fire and battle cries, there would be peace. That he could rest.
But the Ministry had other plans.
The Death Eaters had scattered like rats into the shadows, some slipping into obscurity, others continuing their twisted work. And so, they sent him back into the field, not as a hero, not as a man, but as a weapon. The Boy Who Lived. The Man Who Won. Hell Hound of the Ministry. He had fought and bled and killed, hunting down remnants of a war that refused to die. He told himself it was necessary. That this was the price of peace.
Then, one day, it happened.
A duel in a ruined manor, the air thick with spells and screams. A stray Avada Kedavra, green light flashing across his vision. The momentary sting, the snap of something unseen.
And then,
Nothing.
He had collapsed. Felt himself slipping into the void.
And then he woke.
Gasping, cold, but very much alive.
At first, he thought it was a mistake. A fluke. Some unfinished business keeping him tethered.
But then it happened again. And again.
Again.
Each time, the world was swallowed by darkness, and each time, he clawed his way back. No wounds remained, only scars, carved deep and unyielding. Even the oldest ones, the ones time should have stolen, lingered like ghosts beneath his skin. He was shattered. Marked. Cursed.
Unkillable.
The realization sank into him like a stone in deep water. It should have been a relief. It should have been a blessing.
But Harry had never been lucky.
The years stretched on, and history repeated itself. Peace was fleeting, fragile as spun glass. He had tried, desperately, to carve out something for himself. A different path. A different purpose.
He became a healer.
It had felt right. After so much death, after so much destruction, he wanted to save lives instead of taking them. And for a time, it worked. He learned, he mended, he poured himself into his work, into his patients. Into something that wasn’t war.
But war found him anyway.
The Muggles learned.
It started with whispers, rumours of the impossible. Then fear turned to suspicion, suspicion to hatred. They called them abominations, monsters, unnatural creatures pretending to be human. Laws were made. Restrictions tightened. Then, unable to contain their fear, they launched a war.
The Wixen fought, but the Muggles had numbers. Resources. Weapons that did not need magic to burn cities to the ground.
And Harry, Harry was their fallback.
They threw him into battle again, this time against enemies who did not fight with wands, who did not speak in spells and incantations but in missiles and firestorms and things that should never have existed. He was their last resort, their unstoppable soldier, sent into the heart of devastation because they knew, knew, that no matter how many times he fell, he would rise again.
He was promised peace. Again.
And again, it was a lie.
He fought. Blood flowed from him. He watched as the ones he loved, Ron, Hermione, Teddy, everyone, fell one by one. Some in battle, others in mass executions, their magic snuffed out like candles in a storm. Even so, he was made to fight.
Until there was no one left to fight for.
The war did not end with victory. It ended with silence.
The Muggles had won, had wiped magic from the earth. But in their desperation, in their violence, they had sown their own destruction.
The land was poisoned. The air, thick with death. Their weapons that they had wielded so carelessly turned against them in the end, staining the world with an invisible sickness.
They died.
All of them.
And Harry remained.
He tried, once, to join them. Took a blade to his throat, a wand to his skull, potions down his throat. He walked into fire, into ice, into the depths of the ocean where light could not reach.
And each time, each damn time, he woke again.
Alone.
The last man on earth.
Harry closed his eyes.
The wind whispered through the ruins of Hogwarts, stirring the ashes at his feet. The ghosts of the past pressed close, murmuring, reminding, refusing to let him forget.
But he had never been allowed to forget.
And so, he walked on.
Harry walked through the hollowed streets of London, the soles of his boots crunching over debris, dirt, and the remnants of a world long abandoned. The air smelled stale, thick with dust and the ghost of old smoke. The city was quiet, too quiet. No honking cars, no murmuring crowds, no distant hum of life. Just silence.
It had been months. Months of searching. Months of hoping. Months of wandering through the ruins, checking every hidden place, every last sanctuary of magic. He had scoured the forests, the mountains, the valleys where old magic once thrived. But he had found no one.
No witches. No wizards. No Muggles.
No one.
Just him.
And so, when there was nothing left to search, he had done the only thing he could.
He built a home.
12 Grimmauld Place had been reduced to rubble like everything else, but Harry had spent weeks piecing it back together. Brick by brick, charm by charm. It had been slow, gruelling work, but it kept his hands busy, his mind from falling into the abyss of nothingness.
Now, as he approached its familiar doorstep, he let out a quiet breath. The house responded to his presence, its dark walls shimmering with recognition before solidifying once more. The enchantments held. The protections stood strong.
He stepped inside, closing the door behind him.
Warmth enveloped him, but it was a hollow warmth, a ghost of what once was. The house felt too big for just one person. It echoed with the memories of voices long gone, Sirius laughing in the kitchen, Hermione pacing in the study, Ron complaining about the dust. He had kept the rooms exactly as they were, unable to bring himself to strip away the past.
Harry made his way upstairs, his footsteps slow, deliberate. He wasn’t tired. He never was. His body didn’t feel fatigue the way it used to. It was as if even that had been taken from him.
He reached his room and pushed open the door. The space was simple, unremarkable, his bed, a desk covered in scattered parchment, a few books stacked in uneven piles. A single framed photo sat by his bedside: the last picture taken of them all together. Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Luna, Neville, Teddy. They were smiling. Laughing. Unaware of what was coming.
He turned away.
Crossing the room, he reached the old wooden dresser and pulled open the top drawer. His fingers brushed against aged parchment, trinkets, a few stray Galleons. And then, at the very back, he found it.
A small charm.
It was round, delicate, made of crystal-clear glass filled with fine golden sand. It shimmered faintly in the dim light, the grains shifting lazily as he turned it over in his palm.
Luna had given it to him after the Battle of Hogwarts, pressing it into his hand with that dreamy, knowing look of hers.
“Break this when you need to leave, Harry.”
He hadn’t understood what she meant at the time. Hadn’t questioned it either. It was Luna, after all. And Luna always knew things she shouldn’t.
He exhaled, staring at the charm.
Now, after everything, he had theories.
He had spent countless nights turning it over, examining it, wondering.
The most likely possibility? A Time-Turner. It reminded him of Hermione’s from third year, the way the sand moved, the faint magical hum that pulsed from within, the strange weight of it in his palm. But it wasn’t just a Time-Turner. He could feel that in his bones.
It was something more.
Something different.
Luna had said leave. Not go back.
And besides, the last time he had tried that, tried to turn back time, to undo it all, he had failed.
During the war against the Muggles, before the final collapse, before the world had burned, before Grimmauld Place had been reduced to nothing but memory and ruin, he had searched for a way out. Spent over a year buried in research, scavenging every lost, forbidden scrap of magic he could find. The Black Library had been his greatest treasure trove, sealed-away knowledge hoarded by a family that had prided itself on knowing everything about bending magic to their will.
He had found it there: a ritual so ancient, so dangerous, that even the darkest of wizards had considered it a last resort.
Time required blood to shift. That was the first rule. The second was far worse, equivalent exchange. The greater the change, the greater the price.
He had prepared meticulously. Gathered the materials. Chosen the moment to rewind.
And when he had spilled his own blood upon the runes, chanting the incantation with the precise intonations described in the brittle, yellowed pages,
Nothing.
The magic had consumed the offering greedily, crackling with power, then it had simply died. The runes had burned out, the parchment had crumbled to ash, and Harry had been left kneeling in a pool of his own blood, panting, trembling, and utterly, utterly trapped.
That had been the moment it truly sank in.
There was no fixing it.
No changing what had happened.
No escaping what he had become.
After that, he had stopped trying.
He had only focused on surviving. Saving what he could, shrinking down Grimmauld’s library, securing every tome that held knowledge of the magical world, even managing to preserve several petrified magical creature eggs and young within the safety of an enchanted trunk. He had held on to the past, because that was all he could do.
But this charm…
Harry stared down at the delicate glass in his palm, the fine golden sand shifting softly as if it knew what was coming.
Luna’s voice echoed in his mind.
“Break this when you need to leave, Harry.”
Not go back.
Leave.
His grip tightened.
If it was what he thought, it was… if it did what he suspected…
Then maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t the end.
Maybe there was still a way out.
His fingers trembled.
And then, with a deep breath, Harry crushed the charm in his hand.
The world shattered.