Marks of the Master

Harry Potter vaguely remembered the many times he had wondered just why there had always been so much death around him. With dead parents, dead grandparents, dead classmate, dead godfather, dead teachers, dead protectors, even dead enemies, Harry thought there could be no doubt there was an abundance of lives that had ended around him and usually because of him. He had seen too much death throughout his life and he was utterly sick of it.

Why wasn’t he allowed to have peace? Why was fate so cruel when it came to him? Why—why was he cursed to always be alone, never wanted by those that survived?

Sometimes, Harry Potter felt like cursing the world, swearing vengeance on whatever force out there stuck him with his life. In spite of everything, he couldn’t ever bring himself to do so. It just wasn’t in him to truly hate anything, no matter how screwed up his life became.

Because Harry had lived his life surviving everything that was thrown at him, and knew all too well the twists and turns it could take even now to bugger it all to hell.

Events that had long been in the making, hidden to him in the background of things that he either didn’t have knowledge of or simply couldn’t get around to investigate with his life being the way it was, finally entered his life during that fateful conversation in the headmaster’s office. Neither of the two wizards had any idea of what entity would soon be knocking on the proverbial door of their lives.

Had they been asked, they might’ve suspected Fate or Destiny, they could possibly have answered Death or Life, and there was a small chance they would’ve thought of War, Chaos or Luck—but the facts of the matter were; there was nobody to pose them the question and, no matter their choice, the response would undoubtedly be wrong—though for reasons neither would understand.

The entity, for that matter, was named Time—and oh how it would twist that what they had always perceived to be straightforward and uninterrupted in loops and knots and loose ends that shouldn’t be possible.

Many years, decades, later Harry would still think himself no closer to unravelling the strands that had tangled in uncountable instances of messy coils.

He would have learnt by that time to let them be—though not without gaining some knowledge on how to read their patterns, and plan ahead for the things they told him to anticipate.

When Albus Dumbledore showed his student the ring the aged headmaster had carelessly picked up—the one that had brought the curse to the same blackened hand the old man wore it on—Harry could finally get a good look at the cracked stone it held, and he was immediately struck by a jumble of peculiar feelings.

He felt elation; as if a weight on his shoulders had been lessened, he felt some giddiness; basically a more complicated version of excitement, but most of all he felt…

Recognition.

And that last part had nothing to do with the memory involving the ring he had viewed not too long before.

It was the same mixture of feelings he’d had that fateful Christmas in first year—specifically the moment when his precious invisibly cloak had fallen out of the Christmas wrappings it had been delivered in—Harry realised several seconds later.

The Gryffindor immediately knew that the name Professor Dumbledore knew it by—the Gaunt Ring—was wrong. Oh, the name itself was no lie; it was a ring, yes, and it was a Gaunt family heirloom…

But, however apt, the name was still wrong.

Harry barely paid attention to the old wizard’s words of farewell as he rushed back to Gryffindor Tower without a care about who saw him this late at night. Ron and Hermione were not in the common room, despite promising to wait up for him. Harry would later hear they had both been unexpectedly called away for prefect duties.

Once back in the dorm room he ran to his trunk, intent to check on his cloak, to verify if the feelings he had come to associate with the cloak were indeed the same as the ones he’d had from the Gaunt Ring moments before.

Harry was still catching his breath from his run when he found the silvery enchanted garment where he’d left it in his trunk and lifted it out with a care he had never shown it before—as if his precious inheritance would break with too rough handling. Then the sixth year sat down heavily on his bed with the cloak draped over his lap and legs, holding up the hood for examination.

The cloth it was made from felt just as smooth and silky as when he had last held it, just like it was that Christmas Dumbledore had returned it—because it was his, a heirloom his father had left him—to Harry. The rush of positive emotions was back in full force and he now recognised them as what he had always assumed to be simple happiness at owning something of his father’s. Harry now knew his delight held so much more than that.

But there seemed to be a tiny flaw in there somewhere, and it made him frown. A minute fault in the fabric of feelings that he wouldn’t have been able to find had he not been scrutinising them so closely.

Something was wrong.

It felt… incomplete, weakened, not as strong as they should be. He had never realised it before.

The nostalgia he was feeling while handling his cloak was ever so slightly tainted.

Harry didn’t know what to make of that.

Awakened as he was to the feelings both his cloak and that ring produced in him, Harry instinctively knew there was one last object somewhere to complete the group—which was apparently a trio. As surely as he knew of its existence, the student also knew that the last piece was sure to be nearby—though for the life of him he wouldn’t know where this knowledge came from.

The confusion constantly niggling at the back of his mind over feeling the presence of the last object, but not knowing what or where it was, lasted until his next session with headmaster Dumbledore.

When the memory version of the old wizard set memory-Riddle’s wardrobe on fire, Harry absently registered that the Professor used a different wand than the one he was used to seeing in the man’s hand.

Being too preoccupied with the things the headmaster had shown him, Harry only noticed on his way out that Professor Dumbledore no longer wore the Gaunt Ring. That last thought then set off another one—now on the subject of the missing ‘piece’—that kept him busy until he was long since settled into bed.

The tangent of thoughts finally led to Harry realising that the incessant hum of power he’d always felt while in the company of the headmaster likely wasn’t, in fact, caused by said wizard’s magic as he had initially assumed and had never seen reason to doubt.

Seeing the memory of Albus Dumbledore without the always prevalent magical presence he’d come to associate with the powerful Transfiguration Master had made it clear to Harry that he had been mistaken on the origin of the power.

With the only notable change between the two versions of the headmaster being the two different wands, Harry could be more than reasonably sure that the current wand was the object he was looking for. Therefore, the next time Harry was called to the headmaster’s office, he paid close attention to the wand briefly taken out to transfer memories from various vials to the pensieve.

His theory was instantly confirmed.

The wand felt even more ancient than the person that wielded it and—now that Harry thought about it—so did both the cloak and the ring. The power that saturated the very air around headmaster Dumbledore was definitely the wand’s magic.

It just felt so alive that Harry had always mistaken it for the Professor’s.

Now Harry was more distracted than ever before, what with the shenanigans of one Malfoy heir, the mystery of one Half-Blood Prince, schoolwork and his duties as Quidditch captain. On top of that, Albus Dumbledore had seen fit to give Harry the task of recovering the true version of Slughorn’s memory—of which he was shown the false version only moments earlier—when he was dismissed from the office.

Ron’s poisoning some two months later threw Harry’s life somewhat off course—though that in itself was nothing new.

After Professor Slughorn had returned with Professor McGonagall and Madame Pomfrey— the people he had gone out to get—Harry himself was in turn sent to Professor Dumbledore. The man was, as usual, in his office and didn’t hesitate to put his work aside for a trip to the hospital wing to check up on Ron, possibly also to prepare for when Molly Weasley would inevitably descend in all her overprotective mother bear glory.

Just as Harry was about to follow the headmaster out, Fawkes called out to him with a strange trill resembling a whistle.

As it was clearly meant to do, it caught Harry’s attention, and he turned around to give the phoenix a questioning look. Fawkes responded by taking off from his perch and flying over to the desk where he started hovering in one spot, singing an upbeat melody all the while. The student translated the firebird’s behaviour as ‘follow me’ and saw no reason to refuse, though he was feeling the pressure in that he soon had to go check up on Ron as well.

Once Harry had joined Fawkes by the desk, the phoenix began clawing at one of the closed drawers mid-hover, interrupting his efforts occasionally to look pointedly at the Gryffindor. He needed to repeat this several times before Harry was convinced that Fawkes, as both a friend of Harry’s and the partner of the headmaster, had the right to ask for assistance in opening the indicated drawer.

Where Harry had expected something of Fawkes’ to occupy the drawer, an item of some sort that the headmaster had probably forgotten to return to the phoenix, it instead held just two things: a piece of parchment and a familiar golden ball.

The parchment held only two words in the headmaster’s distinctive loopy handwriting: ‘Harry’s Snitch’.

Fawkes wasted no time in swooping down and scooping up the little ball with his talons, catching the note it was halfway lying on along more by accident than by design. Harry’s feathery friend then circled the office just once before returning and launching the Snitch along with the note at the student who, being a seeker, couldn’t stop himself from automatically catching the projectile.

“Fawkes?” Harry had asked, confused on why the firebird would go through all the trouble only to hand the Snitch to him.

Fawkes trilled encouragingly, then landed on Harry’s shoulder in order to nudge his human friend’s hands more firmly around the Snitch. Harry translated this to ‘go on, take it’ and knew that the phoenix wouldn’t take no for an answer either way, so he just nodded to show he would go along with this.

“Okay,” he conceded. “If you’re sure.”

Fawkes sang a few happy notes by way of answer and ruffled his feathers first, then preened Harry’s hair to ruffle it too. The sixth year laughed and started petting the large bird that was still sitting comfortably on his shoulder, reflecting on how he seemed to have nothing but good relations when it came to avians.

Any post owl he had ever met had taken to him either immediately or soon, including Hedwig, Errol, Pig and the school owls, as had the few birds Harry had met that weren’t owls—like one certain fiery bird that was currently enjoying his attentions.

A short time later, when Harry had gotten around to pocket the Snitch (plus note) and close the open drawer, it was time to leave. Fawkes waved a goodbye with his tail when he sent Harry on his way, seemingly completely satisfied with the round of petting he’d gotten.

The Gryffindor couldn’t help but smile indulgently and promise he’d pet the bird again next time before hasting out of the office to the hospital wing. He would find himself unable to enter, made to wait alongside Hermione and Ginny until eight in the evening, then find Ron sleeping peacefully in one of the beds—his red-haired friend would be released in a few days’ time, together with Harry, who would manage to somehow get sent to the hospital wing himself within that same short time span.

Harry was just much too occupied with the strange new instincts that had begun to manifest more often with almost alarming frequency to seriously work on obtaining the memory he was asked to get. Even the obvious disappointment of the headmaster on his lack of both effort and progress by the time the next lesson came along did next to nothing to motivate him on that front.

Instead, he had taken to wandering the castle at night, testing his new sensitivity to the prevalent mix of magic that hung about Hogwarts. Before he first sensed the magic of the ring, Harry hadn’t noticed much of the magic that always saturated the air of the school, hadn’t known just how much there was of it, nor had he realised how many types of magic made up the potent mixture.

But now—now he could feel it, and he marvelled.

With every day that passed, his senses became clearer, more attuned to the magic, and it showed in Harry’s practical work—spells became easier, better and smoother for him to learn or to cast.

It was his many distractions and the ever-building pressure that held him back from noticeably improving, instead keeping his performance at the same level whilst requiring less and less effort on his part.

Although Harry’s newfound sensitivity was primarily based on feeling—he compared it to how people can feel the movements of the air around them and notice the differences when the currents change—the knowledge he gleaned was clear enough that the young wizard sometimes thought he could see the flow of magic rather than only sense it.

The Gryffindor didn’t know whether the beautiful colours he at times saw from the corner of his eye were products of his imagination, or a new development of his mysterious new affinity with magic.

Harry suspected that Luna knew something because she had taken to calling him ‘Little Death’ lately, though nobody, Harry himself included, understood why she would call him that instead of just straight out tell him he needed more rest.

Because that was what she meant, right?

The inner workings of Luna Lovegood’s world, as whacky and fascinating as they were to Harry, had to wait—the sixth-year Gryffindor had simply neither time nor energy to spare for more than a cursory glance each time she did or said something else that echoed with hidden meanings.

What Harry, purely out of necessity, did make time for was keeping an eye on all the other uncanny happenings in his daily life—mainly the little things that he suddenly knew without reason or explanation.

Usually they were not very clear-cut, but they did add more knowledge to the situations Harry encountered and granted just that little bit more insight to matters. The first time had been about a month after his first private lesson with Dumbledore, when during breakfast Harry just knew that a little Hufflepuff second year, who happened to sit near him at her own house table, was about to be sick.

Two days later, as he had predicted, she definitely didn’t look too well when he saw her sit down for lunch. Harry somehow just as accurately predicted when she would get better, and had—just to be sure—inconspicuously confirmed both of his predictions with the girl’s friend, despite seeing the evidence first-hand.

As was natural for him, Harry had informed both Ron and Hermione about the things he kept finding out, though he didn’t give them all the details—the scars from his childhood still ran too deep to trust them with everything he had on this yet another out-of-the-ordinary aspect of his life.

They were Harry’s closest friends and confidants, but that didn’t mean that Harry told them everything, every time, and it had nothing to do with either their reliability or lack thereof—it was all about Harry’s eternal lack of self-confidence.

Hermione, predictably, had reacted by researching everything she could that might be even the slightest bit related, all the while urging Harry to go tell an authority figure—McGonagall and Dumbledore being her most popular choices. Harry had—just as predictably—refused, mostly on the ground of the developments being not a problem and a private matter that was no one else’s business. He was adamant on not allowing the knowledge to spread further than his immediate friends.

Ron had simply listened until Harry was done explaining, and Hermione was done asking questions, then told him that it sounded like some kind of magical inheritance, an innate talent that had laid dormant until now. Some hereditary abilities were like that, apparently—or so Harry gathered from Ron’s description. A bit of jealousy could be seen in Ron’s eyes, but it was mild and Ron was able to keep a lid on it, so Harry graciously pretended not to have seen anything.

Despite Hermione’s familiar attempts to get him to confide in an adult and Ron’s petty jealousy, Harry was reminded exactly why they were friends, why he trusted them, when both of them supported him anyway—in their own ways.

Hermione started keeping a journal—covered in the strictest and most all-compassing scheme of privacy, anti-theft and anti-tampering spells she could find, and even some that Harry was pretty sure she legally shouldn’t know—in which she recorded all the cases where Harry’s new ability had made itself known.

At the same time, entire pages of a notebook—put under the same heavy precautions as the journal—were rapidly being filled with Hermione’s notes on her observations, with even more space taken by her theories about what Harry’s ability was, why it was manifesting now, where it came from and predictions on how it would grow and change from its current state. Just looking at the pages made Harry and Ron’s heads spin. They wouldn’t dare to have a look again after that one time.

Ron seemed to take it all in stride, and calmly took the time to come up with safe and diverse ways in which to test the possibilities—clearly having fun with the process of thinking them up. Whenever Harry was too worn out from everything going on in his life, Ron would be there to distract him with chess, gobstones, exploding snap, flying, or he simply sent Harry to bed early and covered for the resulting absence.

Yes, they were a great team and Harry thought that if he didn’t already love them both dearly, he would’ve started to now.

With their support, he eventually got around to go after Slughorn’s true memory, though it took Harry a tiny dose of the Felix Felicis potion to succeed. The meeting he had with Professor Dumbledore directly afterwards put yet more burdens on Harry’s shoulders, but the young hero-to-be was only partly paying attention to the serious discussion on Voldemort’s horcruxes, the power of love and the prophecy that never stopped screwing with his life.

Harry’s mind was mostly on the wand, the ring and the cloak.

Like many more things he suddenly knew lately, Harry knew that the two items he didn’t yet have were gravitating towards him, and it likely wouldn’t be long before the ring and the wand fell into his hands.

What, exactly, the circumstances would be did not fall under the purview of this knowledge, and neither did Harry know what would happen next, once the three items had been brought together under his ownership.

All the parts and pieces Harry was aware of basically emphasised the inevitability of the entire thing—he was meant to wield the wand, carry the ring and wear the cloak; Harry was meant to own all three—and the most anyone could do was delay the moment Harry would at last hold all of them in his hands.

If there was one thing Harry felt by the end of the lesson, it was relief at finally knowing what he had to do to end Voldemort, how to end the continuing threat on his life—at least from that direction.

As for the supposed ‘power the Dark Lord knows not’, Harry wasn’t sure he agreed with Dumbledore on it being love. As much as love can accomplish, styling it as ‘at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature’ still sounded a tad farfetched to the sixteen-year-old—not to mention that he thought it a much too dramatic description.

He would be the first to admit that love was indeed ‘the most mysterious’, as the headmaster had put it, but somehow Harry felt that love was merely one weapon in his arsenal rather than the most important force to the exclusion of everything else.

His new instincts agreed with that view, but the Professor likely wouldn’t want to hear of it, so Harry said nothing on it and merely left for Gryffindor Tower once again with the one thing on his mind that he did agree on with the aged transfiguration master.

Yes, there is a great deal of difference between being dragged in to face your destruction or walking in with your head held high.

Harry would make sure to remember these words, and live by them.

By the beginning of the next month, a new wind was blowing. It was a wind of change, of turning points, of moments that would decide the path to the future—and it made Harry’s senses go haywire.

Ron and Hermione did what they could to soothe him—separately when they were fighting with each other—but it didn’t seem to help much. Neville, Dean and Seamus too tried to help with what they perceived as an unusually severe case of restlessness, but had just as little luck in making a positive difference. All of Harry’s other friends, like Ginny, soon pitched in, again without success. Luna seemed to be the only one not noticing, though Harry thought it was more likely she saw the futility of trying to do what the others were already trying—and failing—all the time.

All that their well-meant efforts did was driving Harry to wander ever more through Hogwarts’ halls after curfew—and increasingly during the daytime as well.

Less than a week later, Harry was in the middle of his longest walk yet, with half his mind on the upcoming Gryffindor vs. Ravenclaw Quidditch match, when his senses told him to turn into a nearby corridor that he originally hadn’t planned to take.

The young wizard, being a creature of instinct by nature, had easily taken to his new ability because it fit so well with his preferences, and by this time he was used to the unexpected insights, following them without worrying on their meaning or origin.

Harry went where his instinct guided him, up and down stairs or down halls as directed, until his awareness told him that the journeying was about to come to an end—for now.

His destination was close, just behind the door in front of him, a door the Gryffindor recognised.

It was the door of the first floor girls’ lavatory—the bathroom of Moaning Myrtle.

The sixth year had his invisibility cloak at hand in that moment—he had taken to carrying it along with him wherever he went since the beginning of the school year—thus, he took the cloak out from his pocket to cover himself with it, all the while relishing the familiar feelings of belonging, nostalgia and happiness, for now heedless of the uncomfortable fragment of wrongness.

A soft nudge of his subconscious was all Harry needed to enter the bathroom then, in the frame of mind that meant he could take anything thrown at him, accept them, work with them, and survive in spite of it all. In this state, he could encounter the most outlandish or outrageous things and wouldn’t so much as bat an eyelid.

Harry had raised survival to an art form and—needless to say—he was alive today because of this.

Harry would wonder later how events would have unfolded if he hadn’t had the added instincts of his then-unknown inheritance, and though he understood that the outcome couldn’t have been anything but bad, he would never realise exactly what would have been if that single moment in the timeline eight months earlier had gone as originally intended.

The sight that met him was peculiar, to say the least—if Harry hadn’t been in full-on survival mode, he would’ve been bewildered and much more prone to making mistakes.

Draco Malfoy, resident Slytherin Ice Prince and all-round spoiled brat, was miserably hung over the sink in front of him, sobbing his heart out to the unresponsive, grimy, bathroom mirror. The blond had been too distraught to notice the opening of the door behind him and didn’t seem quite finished with his emotional breakdown for some time yet.

Harry remained standing in the doorway of the bathroom for a moment, unsure of what to do—and part of him couldn’t help wondering where Moaning Myrtle was, if not here in her usual haunt.

She had found out about Harry’s nightly promenades about halfway through the year and had since then regularly joined him on his walks. Myrtle had even said he’d inspired her, and proceeded to frequently take walks—or whatever they should be called in her case—of her own, more or less abandoning this very bathroom she used to reside in nearly all the time.

Wherever she was at that moment, it was not here.

Harry closed the door behind him when he fully stepped inside the bathroom, but didn’t move beyond that, watching his school rival in complete silence from under his invisibility cloak.

Malfoy didn’t hear the soft thump of the door hitting its frame, but still seemed to have sensed something, because a few moments later he turned and looked warily around the bathroom, searching for whatever was amiss.

The grey eyes swept once, twice over Harry’s position without registering his presence, but the third time Malfoy reacted as if he saw that there was somebody standing there—the Slytherin then turned completely towards the invisible visitor, looking even paler than the Gryffindor had ever seen him.

Harry wouldn’t find out until later, but the event happened to coincide with the first surge of his still-equalising magic—yet to fully adjust to his newly awakening powers—which caused it to hang about him like a veil of otherworldly power, and Malfoy apparently could see or feel that, somewhat, even if he couldn’t spot its owner.

Like the tides, this part of Harry was heavily influenced by the phases of the sun and moon, but that stuff too Harry would only come to know much later, when he would think back on everything that had happened and work out why and how it had come together like this.

Draco Malfoy knew, without a doubt, that whatever it was that had deigned to come see him was old and powerful, as was confirmed by the very nature of its magic that could be felt leaking into the air.

As a member of an old wizarding family, Draco was taught about the old magics and the ancient Gods—because his parents would not have allowed him to step foot in Hogwarts without a thorough understanding of the power they hold—and how to deal with them, should he ever come upon one.

The pure-blood didn’t know which of the many ancient forces had come to the bathroom, but he didn’t care much beyond the fact that there was one right there and it might deign to speak with him if Draco approached it in just the right way.

He relished the incredible chance he was given to escape the nightmare he had found himself in since last summer.

Now it fell to Draco to drive a good enough bargain to win its interest and protection, for the right price—one he hoped would not be too steep.

So, instead of attacking, as Draco would have done if another student had found him here in his moment of weakness, he fully faced the being—or where he thought it was, based on where the magic was originating from—and sank to his knees in reverence, greeting the unknown visitor with the customary deep bow reserved for welcoming any of the old forces.

He did not speak to it and refrained from making eye contact—regardless of the fact that the being was still invisible—as was protocol. He hands were laid on top of his thighs, palms up, to signify his approach was peaceful.

Sat like that, Draco waited to be addressed first.

The God approached him at last, Draco sensed, and came to a stop right before him, but with enough distance between them that it could not be reached by the wizard’s hand or wand, unable to be stopped in time should it decide to leave prematurely.

Another few moments passed before it spoke, and as Draco had hoped, it addressed him personally.

“Name your request.”

Its voice was deep, weighted by eons of magic, its shroud of magic seemingly growing bigger until it resembled the drawn curtains of a stage, fluttering in a non-existing wind.

“I ask for a boon, oh Great One,” Draco spoke solemnly, pausing a moment to gather his words and courage to express what he wanted in clear yet respectful sentences.

“I, Draco Malfoy, ask protection for myself and three others.

I ask for the safety of Lucius Malfoy; who sired me, and Narcissa Malfoy née Black; who birthed me.

I ask guidance, shielding and deliverance for Severus Snape; my mentor, teacher and protector, kin not in blood but in thought and deed.

I plead with you, o Great One, to grant me this one boon.”

Gods do not care for human reasons or excuses and Draco wisely did not try to give any. Instead, he tensely waited for the being’s verdict, silently hoping and praying for success.

Harry didn’t have room for shock when Malfoy had fallen to his knees before him, and he had closed the distance between them almost on autopilot—a part of him wanting to see what would happen next.

The entire procedure was uncannily familiar to him, uncomfortably different from the usual knowledge, though Harry was quite sure no one had ever treated him like this before.

For several moments he had many vague impressions of other people sitting in that exact same way superimposed on his vision of the kneeling Malfoy—down to the position of the hands and the bowed head. Harry had no idea where the many images came from, and they luckily didn’t last long enough to disorient him or he’d be screwed in more ways than one.

But despite his misgivings, Harry had always very much lived his life on the edge and was also a firm believer of ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’—perhaps when it came to this part of his life, he was indeed as much of typical foolhardy Gryffindor as Professor Snape had always accused him of being—so his hesitation lasted only moments before he took the plunge.

The unknown memories took over to guide Harry’s behaviour, matched them with what Malfoy surely expected of him. Their influence made his magic flare and grow heavier, infused even his words with power.

And then Harry barely held onto his calm mind when the other young man spoke of protection he wished for on behalf of himself and his family—the Gryffindor too absorbed by the desperation of the words and the sudden insights they brought, the depressing conclusions he was forced to draw.

The Slytherin was clearly at his wit’s end, Harry hadn’t even needed to see the earlier breakdown to spot the signs in Malfoy’s face—it could be seen in the way the pure-blood stood before and kneeled now. The blond’s very stance spoke of his endless fatigue from constantly working, of some unmovable weigh on his shoulders, of death threats that just wouldn’t go away, more than likely not even on completion of whatever it was he was ordered to do, of nights full of nightmares that wouldn’t even stop when daybreak came.

All in all, Malfoy had no more hope left beyond the bit he pinned on whatever he thought Harry to be.

A new section of Harry’s psyche awakened right then, a somewhat coldly detached part that knew exactly what needed to be done.

Harry let it lead.

“All things come with a price,” he intoned in warning, but didn’t ask the Slytherin aloud whether he was prepared to pay that price, certain that the message would be received.

“Yes. I will pay the price required,” answered Malfoy decisively, going even as far as lifting his head and giving a firm nod, liquid fire now blazing in his grey eyes.

Harry let go of the sides of the invisibility cloak, and with him no longer holding it in place the fabric immediately began sliding down, held back finally by the clasp of the collar that had somehow closed itself snugly around his throat. In the end, Harry wore the cloak like he would any other, draped over his back and shoulders, the hood by this time fallen off his head—revealing to the kneeling wizard just who had been with him in the bathroom al this time.

Said student didn’t react to this unveil beyond the tightening of his face and a sharp intake of breath, but the combination of shock and hope apparently didn’t stop him from intently watching his classmate’s face—looking as if he would bolt out the door given half the chance and enough incentive.

The Gryffindor slowly extended a hand and laid it on Malfoy’s chest, right where the heart was located—even through the clothing Harry felt it pumping away, pace quickened by emotions, fatigue and stress, the strong rhythm nevertheless indicative of an excellent health.

Harry didn’t spare the entire situation much more thought, and instead started calling upon his new magic, the part that was heavy and old and dark—yet not tainted like the magic of members of Voldemort’s club had a strong tendency to be. This went along with manipulating the almost endless energy of his surroundings—Hogwarts’ mix of ambivalent magic, so potent it could nearly be called alive.

The magic of the two sources gathered in his free hand to be prepared for the next step, and Harry kept careful attention on the blend of magic, ready to bring it over to his other hand once it had the right consistency.

Potter’s face was a blank slate, completely, utterly unreadable for once. For Draco it was a very inconvenient timing, as normally Potter wore most of his emotions on his face and if there had ever been a time he had need of it, it was now.

Still, for all that he hadn’t known it was Potter, Draco wasn’t all that surprised, really. Potter had always been a great mystery, and had somehow made it a speciality to survive what shouldn’t be survivable. It truly didn’t sound all that weird that he was secretly a being of old power that therefore couldn’t be killed by ordinary means in the first place.

Either Potter’s supposed magnanimity was no lie, or he had much more snake in him than anyone could’ve known and needed Draco for his own plans, but in either case Draco was in no position to complain—because he had gotten just what he’d asked for.

Potter’s hand resting over his heart and the momentary biting cold that followed was proof of it.

Draco would find a mark there later that day, sharp black lines over pale skin, the shape resembling some sort of plume or a stylised flame, with many overlapping parts, in the style that the muggles referred to as tribal. He would run his fingers over it and not feel any difference between the marked skin and the unadorned parts of his body—if he closed his eyes, Draco could not tell where the lines ran or where they stopped—unlike the Dark Mark, which always burned, and felt like raised skin under his fingers.

It was a mark of a deal made and sealed, a visible proof of the exchange between the mortal carrying it and the being to whom it belonged—such marks tended to be unique, each used solely by a single Being to identify itself with. The symbols went by many alternative names, a few variations of which were glyph, seal, sigil, veve, stave, crest, brand, emblem and insignia.

“You shall not go before your time. Neither shall your kin,” the Gryffindor spoke up in that same, ancient voice he had used so far throughout the entire exchange.

Draco snapped to attention at the words and found Potter retracting his hand and giving the Slytherin a single slow, deep, regal nod. Then the intensity of the magic lessened for a moment, softening his face and voice to something more human when he spoke again.

“Take care, for this protection is not absolute. It has flaws—and you should be wary of them.”

The recipient hurried to give a formal bow in thanks for the unexpected advice that the giver was never under any obligation to give, then rose to his feet. Potter had turned his back to Draco and was already gripping the sides of his invisibility cloak again to draw it back over himself when the blond found his voice back and called after his classmate, the question coming out tinged with an edge of desperation.

“Wait, Potter! Just—what are you?”

Harry carefully took note of the ‘what’ Malfoy used, instead of the ‘who’ Harry had been expecting on some unconscious level. It denoted that Malfoy didn’t think that Harry had lied about his name or otherwise falsified his identity—a fact that the Gryffindor had to give his school rival credit for—which left only the puzzle of what Harry was.

Unfortunately, Harry did not have an answer to give, as of yet.

The magic around him had dispersed at this point, returning his inner state to normal, making him feel human again. Less… otherworldly. Harry threw the other wizard a part teasing, part melancholic smile over his shoulder.

“I’m not sure yet, Malfoy,” he said, the serious tone of the words belying the expression he wore. “I’ll let you know when I find out, alright?”

Before Malfoy could stop him Harry went out the door, pulling his cloak back on to disappear from view.

It was not too much later that one certain potions professor decided to show himself to his star student, having witnessed much of the puzzling exchange between his most hated student and his most favoured student—both of whom he had incidentally, for entirely different reasons and in two sets of completely different circumstances, vowed to protect.

Never had he thought that a run-in between the two of them could end in anything but violence—which had been mostly verbal for now, but steadily shifting towards the physical variety since last summer—and with tensions running high, Severus had been on edge the entire year, waiting for the inevitable moment that pandemonium would descend.

Now the moment had been there—and events hadn’t even gone near the predicted route. In hindsight, Severus should have expected it; Potter never did things by halves, and in addition to that he had this utter inability to conform to any kind of rules in general, laws of nature in specific.

Although Severus Snape was insanely curious about the whole thing, he wouldn’t find an opportunity to find out more for a long time to come—duty called, after all, and right now taking care of young Mr. Malfoy was more important than prying the non-school related dealings out of either of his students’ minds.

Outside the door that Professor Snape had ‘forgotten’ to fully close, still invisible, Harry gave a tiny satisfied smile at the confirmation that Malfoy was in good hands, before leaving that floor altogether in order to continue with his walk for whatever stretch of time he had left to do so.

With the Malfoy-issue now dealt with, Harry was able to somewhat calm down, though not completely—never completely, what with most of not all of the problems in his life being of the life-threatening kind—because at the very least he had now one problem less. Sure, with this Harry also had a responsibility more, but between the myriad threats on his well-being and the equally numerous responsibilities on his shoulders, he knew to which side he’d rather add.

Now with the urgency gone, it had left the anticipation that had been mixed in to continue riling Harry up by itself, but the itching that felt like something was crawling under his skin had stopped, making things moderately better. He was still full of nervous energy, but it was clear to all that Harry was no longer as jumpy as before, and he could concentrate better now.

The insomnia had also lessened significantly, though Harry instead began having strange dreams (again) that were more… neutral in nature compared to what he was used to.

His usual dreams had a tendency to come in three flavours:

Happy ones—the rarest type of all dreams in the life of Harry Potter—the sort that surrounded him in a bubble of happiness for an entire day upon waking, and gave him the kind of joy that could power his strongest patronus.

Nightmares—those were either a collection of his worst memories or a kind of eldritch mash-up made from his deepest fears.

Visions—starring Voldemort, torture, Nagini or any combination thereof, which always had him wake in agony in one way or another.

These new dreams were not happy ones, they were definitely not nightmares and neither were they visions—though Harry still had to say that his current dreams resembled visions most of all.

No, Harry dreamt of a dark place that felt like home, of a throne room that often got visitors, of a maze—bigger than anything he had ever seen, or even heard of—that was his ground, his domain.

His world.

With every night that passed, Harry’s understanding of that world grew, until he knew it like the back of his hand and, in spite of never having set foot there physically, he would’ve been able sketch the complete lay-out blindfolded had anyone convinced him to.

When the dreams had just started their contents had still been vague, and that hadn’t made Harry feel at ease about this development, to the point that he considered following Hermione’s default advice this once. In the end, he had tentatively submitted to what his instincts had told him, namely, that it was both nothing dangerous and something that was necessary—which was soon confirmed, when the dreams began showing more substance.

He couldn’t even say he had been disappointed on their usefulness, because frankly, aside from the insight into that semi-dark, now-familiar realm, he was also beginning to understand the purpose of everything abnormal that had happened in his life.

Harry was still barely scratching the surface, and already he felt overwhelmed by the knowledge.

But, as was his style, he shouldered it and moved on regardless.

By the end of the month, Malfoy had secretly met with Harry one more time to explain what Voldemort had tasked him to do and how the unwilling student-turned-Death Eater had gone about making it possible. The Malfoy heir had been submissive, fidgeting uncharacteristically throughout the entire meeting, but his snobbish pure-blood upbringing turned out to be an advantage in this case—despite the pressure of facing someone that had once been an enemy, a fellow human, but had turned out to be something powerful of unknown origin that now ensured his safety, the Slytherin had refused to shrink back and cower under Harry’s power.

Harry liked that.

He really liked this new side of Malfoy, especially the unexpected courage he displayed.

For once the mini aristocrat had been perfectly polite, always careful not to anger Harry—whom Malfoy apparently thought was some kind of God. Harry had an inkling that his classmate might be onto something with that theory, but he couldn’t tell for sure yet how close the Slytherin had gotten to the truth.

Just a few more weeks of dreams left until he had the answer, Harry knew, and until then he could only speculate or guess, not knowing for sure.

At the mention of Snape’s unbreakable vow and an anxious look of grey eyes filled with bitter resignation Harry was able to honestly tell the other student that there was no need to worry. The Gryffindor had already known about the vow for quite some time, and with accepting Malfoy’s deal had come responsibility for protecting the Malfoy family and the double spy—which meant that he couldn’t allow Snape to be killed by that vow or anything else—so Harry had dealt with that at his earliest opportunity, which had happened to be the very next time he had Defence Against the Dark Arts since the meeting in Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

Although Snape had been watching Harry warily throughout the entire lesson, the student had been able to mess with the bindings of the vow without the teacher noticing, significantly weakening the web of magic that enforced the terms.

Professor Snape would find out at some point that creating and exploiting loopholes was much easier than he’d ever thought with such a strict vow. Harry trusted that the master of everything underhanded would be able to save himself with this, because this was all he could do about the vow in his current state.

As a side effect of Harry’s developing sense for magic and his new instincts, Snape was unable to sneak up on him any longer. The man was covered with too much magic to escape Harry’s notice, and it made the professor the equivalent of a beacon among fireflies in comparison with the rest of Hogwarts’ population.

It was a testament to Severus Snape’s skills that he was a master of stealth and espionage while carrying that magical mass of sizable proportions that Harry had yet to find something as a proper comparison to.

Even more interesting was the make-up of the many-faced wizard’s load—in addition to the man’s own magic, professor Snape also had the taint of the Dark Mark, a variety of oaths that had likely to do with his membership of the Order, several more bindings that were connected to whatever he did when spying, vestiges of magical torture, remnants of both the dark magic he practiced and the lighter varieties he also used, numerous breaks in the general flow of the magic that indicated hidden talents powerful enough to impact his magic, traces of the more powerful ingredients he handled, a distinct tinge of the mind magic he had mastered, imprints belonging to his most extreme experiences among which were many magical equivalents of scars that signified near-death experiences, and to top it all off he carried the strands of quite a few unbreakable vows tangled together in one big web.

All the types of invading outside magic plus the influences of the Potions Master’s choices and activities had turned the magic into a blend of almost everything at once. Harry had actually needed a few minutes to process that overload of information when his senses had first allowed him to observe the magic of the dour man, because everyone else’s magic he’d sensed up until that point had been more or less homogeneous to varying degrees. He’d more than once mentally compared Snape’s magic to an irregular kaleidoscope pattern, careful not to ever mention any of his observations out loud for fear of sounding like a maniac high on pixie dust.

All interesting properties of the magic aside, the tangled vows had posed Harry quite a challenge in loosening the hold of the most recent—or so Harry assumed—vow that the wizard had made to Narcissa in protection of her son. To get around the problem Harry had ended up plucking at the entire web instead of fruitlessly trying to affect just that one vow he might not even correctly identify. The rest of the vows had therefore also been forcibly pulled from their holds in the process, but whether Snape would notice the difference was a question on its own.

With the details Malfoy gave him, Harry made plans to counter Voldemort’s plans and prepared the members of the DA for when ol’ Tom would arrange their annual end-of-year get-together. The young wizard didn’t look forward to that, because he knew that this time was not yet the moment he would be able to send snake-face off to the afterlife—which meant that the most he could do was hold the bastard off and hopefully limit the casualties as much as possible.

Dumbledore was discreetly informed by Harry of the nearing confrontation—so that he too could make preparations—with the knowledge passed off as information obtained through more visions.

All that was left at that point, was to wait.

Then, on the last day of the school year, a large-scale fight suddenly broke out on Hogwarts’ ground floor involving several groups of higher years of all houses. Harry and his friends happened to be quite near the disturbance, but they still needed some time to get there to help, even at a run.

The mass of fighting students had by that time swallowed up nearby people, expanding to a multitude of smaller fights in one widespread area, even up the stairs and out the doors to the grounds—like a miniature battlefield. In the still-spreading chaos, a party of Death Eaters invaded via the pair of vanishing cabinets and dove straight into the fray, turning it into a full pandemonium.

That triggered the members of the DA into action, closely followed by the teachers, and it rose the chaos to another impossibly higher level.

Albus Dumbledore was among the professors that had reacted to the appearance of the Death Eaters and he refused to let the pesky little problem of his cursed wand hand hold him back from protecting the students under his care. The veritable old headmaster had hoped to be on the trail of one of Tom’s horcruxes around this time, but the disappearance of one particular trinket from one of the drawers of his office desk had derailed his plans by quite a bit. Fawkes strangely didn’t seem concerned at all about whoever had possibly made off with it, so Albus had wondered if he shouldn’t let things be for now.

Still, he hoped that the fighting would soon be over—dare he say it—one way or another, because he was truly getting too old for this romping about with Tom and his playmates.

Headmaster Dumbledore was long since ready for the Next Great Adventure, had even planned on dying when his death would do most good, but looking at the present situation, he supposed that it would likely take a while longer before he would leave this earth.

Severus was being a dear lately and seemed to have set his sights on creating a true cure for the flesh-eating curse that had so unfortunately blacked Albus’ hand. With all the considerable genius of this particular Potions Master focussed on this task, Albus had no doubt that his chances of dying from the curse were rapidly dropping from slim to none with every day that passed.

Although Albus was glad to see Harry take up the mantle of prophesized saviour seriously, he worried that the dear boy was still not ready—in fact, the boy seemed to be rather preoccupied with more than just the hard road ahead, if Albus was not mistaken.

On the other hand, boys will always be boys, and he couldn’t begrudge Harry his teenage adventures. The sweet boy had missed out on a lot of life after all, and would possibly never quite get another opportunity to experience normal life once the next war truly started up again. Of all the people that Albus had known, dear Harry was perhaps the one whose continued life lighted Albus’ heart most, yet it pained him greatly to know that the odds of the child surviving the coming war in its entirety were quite small, and there was almost nothing Albus could do to raise Harry’s chances without dramatically decreasing many others’ chances of survival at the same time.

The best Albus could do was prepare the boy for his gruelling task, bit by bit, so as not to overwhelm him or torment him longer than necessary with the terrible knowledge—and pray that it would be enough, that the dear child would overcome the iniquity of his young life and live on to attain happiness.

To this day, the headmaster considered it one of his greatest failures that he couldn’t protect Harry properly from having to sacrifice so much. It ranked right among failing his sweet sister Adriana, taking far too long before finally setting out to stop Gellert, the many mistakes he made when it came to dealing with Tom, and the way he neglected to intervene in young Severus life until it was far too late.

Preoccupied with his thoughts, the headmaster was a split-second too slow in reacting to his next attacker and it was only thanks to his battle reflexes that the old wizard was still able to soften the blow of the curse he was hit with though it wasn’t enough to completely keep his equilibrium.

In the moment he needed to regain his balance another opponent struck from behind with a volley of curses—of which the only ones to hit their target were an arm-snapper that doubled as a disarming curse, a bone-breaker and an expulso curse—that ended with the now injured Transfiguration Master being sent flying into the nearest wall hard enough to lose consciousness, despite already being halfway there due to the pain of his accumulated wounds.

His attackers were just standing there, doing nothing but stare at the downed professor, apparently disbelieving of the fact that they had just succeeded in dealing some serious damage to their master’s greatest enemy.

Well, it was not for long, because it was right then that Harry pounced on the hapless Death Eaters, disarming, stunning and binding them in quick succession.

Seeing as the Defeater of Grindelwald was out of commission for the time being, Harry cast a protective shield with a long duration over the downed professor and picked up the man’s dropped wand for safekeeping—ignoring the senses screaming at him to keep the wand and not give it back.

The sixth-year Gryffindor put the extra wand safely away in the wand holster he wore on his arm—he figured that it was the best place to store it for now because wouldn’t need the holster for his own wand until the battle was over.

And so the miniature war continued, between DA, student sympathisers of Voldemort, regular students, teachers, Order members, Death Eaters, a werewolf (Fenrir Greyback to be precise, since Remus Lupin hadn’t been able to join in), and—when they finally got around to arriving—the aurors. It was only thanks to knowing beforehand when, why and how the party of Voldemort’s lackeys would attack—though nobody had foreseen the Death Eaters-in-training among the students to act before the main force struck—that the fighting was put down so relatively soon.

In the end, a lot of damage was dealt to the castle and the grounds, and there were many people with grievous injuries, but no deaths at all, thankfully—though there were only a few minor Death Eaters caught since the rest had escaped or had been taken away by their colleagues.

Curiously, Voldemort himself had not shown up at all.

Harry thought the entire thing was a tad too anti-climax for his tastes, then had a moment of internal hysterics because this thought had had an undercurrent of indifference for the people involved, which was a development that alarmed him greatly. It was a clear sign that Harry’s mental health was slipping—if it wasn’t already utterly shot, of course.

What was worse, the thought had felt entirely natural, as if it was expected of him to feel this way, and for the duration of it Harry had had the mindset of seeing humanity as a whole as tiny beings far beneath him that had no other purpose than to provide him with entertainment.

Youthful and skilled at fighting he was, Harry was a pacifist at heart which made his sudden apathy to death, destruction and mayhem in general a worrying notion, even if the likely origin—a life filled with defying death on a regular basis was not in any way conducive to a peaceful mind—was entirely natural.

Had his unconventional childhood and near-lethal school years finally succeeded in corrupting him to think like that?

Was it his acclimatisation to the rollercoaster of danger, also known as Harry Potter’s daily life, speaking?

Harry had no idea—and could only hope his mental state wouldn’t degenerate further.

Despite the insistent resistance of his instincts, Harry had still gone to see the headmaster the day after.

There had still been many people recovering in the hospital wing—even with the majority of the injured from the battle having been sent over to St. Mungo’s—and among the patients who had been left in Madame Pomfrey’s care was Dumbledore himself.

The Gryffindor student had thought it would be a simple thing; hand the wand over and be done, but as he should have expected even such a little thing became far more complicated when it was him it happen to.

“Keep the wand,” Dumbledore had said, with a somewhat morose shake of his head that shook his white beard along with it.

“Why?” Harry had asked. “Isn’t this wand yours?”

“This wand has no true owner in the same sense that all other wands do. I have won its allegiance in battle, several decades ago—and I have now lost its loyalty in the battle yesterday. It will no longer work for me.”

“Then why give it to me?”

“Because I suspect you are its owner now, through your victory over the individuals that have forcibly retired me from battle for some time to come.” Dumbledore had given Harry a small soft smile then, although his famous eye twinkle had still been absent.

“Try it,” he had urged the student on. “If you are still in doubt, try using this wand to cast magic. I guarantee that you’ll know right away whether it has accepted you or not.”

Despite his words and actions, Harry had already been aware of the wand preferring him as its wielder and he had never had any doubts as to whether it would work for him—it was only his code of honour that had demanded of the young man that he return what didn’t belong to him.

But with the permission of headmaster Dumbledore received, he had no more scruples about taking the wand for himself.

Harry had eventually tried using the wand, spurred on by the older wizard’s encouragements, and found himself simultaneously unsurprised that it obediently did as bid and startled about how well it seemed to fit his magic.

In fact, the wand had responded just like his holly wand—the wand that had exclusively chosen Harry—its magic flowing in ways that Harry had likened to the eagerness of an excited child. The familiar hum had been no longer something he felt whenever the wand was nearby, but had become a constant, almost physically audible sound in the back of his mind.

Dumbledore’s eyes had been twinkling when he had seen the evidence of Harry’s mastery over the famed Wand of Destiny first-hand and the professor had asked the younger Gryffindor if the student had heard the story of the unbeatable wand before.

Naturally, Harry had not.

Professor Dumbledore had smiled at that, and had then proceeded to tell the legend of the Elder Wand—the very wand lying innocently in Harry’s lap—in a manner reminiscent of how a grandfather would entertain his young grandson with historic tales before bed.

Harry had had a marvellous time listening to the story and though neither the ring nor the cloak had been mentioned at all, it had still been quite informative. All in all, the student left the hospital wing feeling more at rest than he had in a long while.

And so one Harry Potter took the much-coveted Elder Wand with him to Privet Drive when what was to be his very last summer there began.

Initially, everything went just like any other summer; all of Harry’s belongings—magical or not, though the vast majority was, of course, magical—were locked in the cupboard under the stairs, while Harry was sent upstairs and locked into the room he had never stopped thinking of as Dudley’s second bedroom.

Hedwig wasn’t very happy at being forced to stay in her cage again, but when Harry had tried to have her spend the summer at Ron’s or Hermione’s she had adamantly refused by pecking her human’s hand open until he had conceded.

Apparently, between flying free for the summer or looking after her human, she preferred the latter.

It was a lucky thing that Harry was able to let her out at night without riling his relatives up.

That normalcy, detested yet preferred as it was, didn’t last, because a few days into the summer Kingsley Shacklebolt and Arthur Weasley suddenly made an unannounced visit to Privet Drive. They tried their hardest to impress upon the Dursleys that come Harry’s seventeenth birthday, the wards on the house would come down—which meant that they would no longer offer any protection—and that Voldemort was likely to attack the house the second it became possible to do so.

The Dursleys, on top of being muggles, were Harry Potter’s relatives, which made them especially desirable vulnerable targets—increasing the risks exponentially.

Somehow, both adult wizards were able to convince the muggle family to go along with the Order’s plan to hide them away at a safe house for the time being, unexpectedly aided by Dudley’s remarks of going alone if his parents wouldn’t come.

Despite the explanation of the risk they ran and would run when Harry’s minority status would end, and the variation of witness protection they would be put in before the end of summer, the elder Dursleys didn’t seem all that worried, all things considered.

What the elder Dursleys did experience was unsettlement, which made their behaviour volatile—Vernon kept changing his mind on whether to pack or not after all—but the dark-haired teen knew it could’ve been much worse. He supposed that things could’ve been different—with a lot of verbal blow-ups courtesy of his uncle and constant shrill sessions of swear-at-my-freak-nephew favoured by his aunt, for example—had the battle of some week earlier turned out much more crippling to the wizarding population than it had been.

No, Harry would not protest—it could always be worse. He would take everything as it came.

Harry had been dumbfounded when the day after the visit of the wizards, Vernon had suddenly thundered up the stairs, yanked the door to Harry’s bedroom open and hurled his nephew’s school trunk into the room with all the force he could muster, then slammed the door closed before stomping off—all without a word.

Not bothering with keeping up with his uncle’s temper, Harry hadn’t wasted a moment to make the most of the unexpected opportunity, which meant that during the first few days of having his stuff within arm’s reach, he had cleaned his trunk properly for the first time ever; sifting through all his possessions and ordering all the things he owned into piles of usable, unusable and necessary.

The next couple of days, Harry then had done all his assignments from Hogwarts—just so he wouldn’t have to fend off Hermione when he saw her again.

By that time his aunt and uncle had gotten used to the idea of being in danger, of having to hide under magical protection before the school year would start again, and threat or no threat, they eventually insisted on having Harry ‘pull his own weight’—as they had always liked to call it—by starting to set chores again.

It was nothing new, Harry was completely used to this treatment. He had endured worse during the past summers and the ten full years of life in this house before that, though the current situation couldn’t compare to any period of his life at the Dursleys’ before.

When the lockdown on his room had come to an end, Harry got called downstairs for only the second time that summer, and then got sent off immediately with a list of chores.

As usual, the many tasks he had to complete before the day’s end would take him about all day to do, even with nearly uninterrupted work. The activities of cleaning, gardening, painting and cooking were done with the ease of long familiarity, and allowed Harry’s thoughts to drift while his body worked on autopilot.

That was why it took Harry until his fourth job of the day was finished before he noticed that something was off.

On the kitchen table the full lunch that Harry had cooked to perfection had just been laid out by the resident wizard and he’d also just finished cleaning up the cooking implements that he’d used. It was when he turned back to the table to check that he hadn’t forgotten anything, which happened to be the same moment that both male Dursleys chose to perform their usual meal stampede into the kitchen, that they saw the unexpected additions to the settings.

A dark silvery shroud hung over the back of one chair, eerily blowing in a breeze that none of the residents could feel.

Next to a dish of steaming potatoes a small golden ball laid innocently on the tablecloth, almost as if posing as decoration for the meal.

Finally, at the head of the table, a stick of darkish old wood had taken the place of the knife next to the plate, which had banished that particular utensil to the other side of the plate to join the fork.

The invisibility cloak, the Snitch and the wand of elder.

Harry was positive that he hadn’t seen them since he put them away in his trunk a few days ago, so why hadn’t they stayed there?

While Harry was still contemplating the implications of the items showing up in the manner they did, Petunia had joined them in the kitchen and seen the unwelcome magical tools. In response to his wife’s shouts about getting the filth away, Vernon had roughly collected the three objects and shoved them into his nephew’s hands, bodily ejecting the wizard from the room with the follow-up movement.

The teen hadn’t wasted his breath with protesting that he hadn’t eaten yet, and had ascended the stairs to put his armload away in its proper place, hoping that this event had drained the supply of surprises for this summer.

A pointless wish it was, because there was yet more to come.

After having swept the floor he found the items on the living room table, arranged into a circle.

During the mowing of the lawn, the three objects popped up haphazardly across the grass, which Harry didn’t notice until he tripped over the cloak.

Buying groceries meant being handed the wand, cloak and Snitch separately by salesclerks who were apparently unaware that what they gave their customer was not in any way part of the supplies he wanted to buy.

The most memorable occasion was when Harry was painting the fence, ran out of paint and upon opening the next can of paint, found it empty except for the Snitch lying inside. When the lid was put back on after he had taken out the unusual content it clanged like he’d heard vending machines do. Subsequent attempts of re-opening, emptying and re-closing the can produced the cloak, then the wand and at last the paint he’d been looking for in the first place.

When the long day was finally over, Harry returned to his room to find the cloak spread out on his bed with both the Snitch and wand on top of it. The ball laid exactly in the centre of the cloth, and the wand rested just above that, the end of its handle nearly touching the Snitch and the tip pointing towards the hood of the cloak.

The wizard sighed, leant against the doorway for a bit, and was sorely tempted to take a moment to cry.

He went to sleep that night wondering why he wasn’t allowed to even have his last summer at the Dursleys’ in a peaceful manner.

Waking the next morning with the cloak draped over him, the wand snugly pressed between his torso and the bed in a way that was somehow reminiscent of a hug—he noted it was also conveniently positioned close to where his right hand rested—and the Snitch glittering on his pillow proved to Harry that the trouble was not over yet.

He no longer had the energy to protest that the insistent artefacts should stay where he put them, just released a long breath of irritation and packed the three annoying things away before he hurried down to make breakfast.

Over the next few days the objects never failed to magically appear at whatever place Harry was. They followed him through the entire house, at all hours of the day and even beyond the ward boundaries—Harry tried not to venture out too often, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped.

The unsettling part was that they never appeared while someone could see it—they were just there whenever Harry (or anyone else) turned around. His sensitivity to magic didn’t help at all with tracking their movements because of the wards around the property—everything was alight with the magic of the wards, effectively concealing any other magical tracks of individual sources in the house, including Harry himself and any other of his magical belongings that were imbued with magic to function.

If it were possible, the three items were getting ever more energetic with trailing after Harry like kicked puppies. At one point Harry though he caught a undercurrent to their magic that he would’ve interpreted as ‘sulking’ if it had belonged to a living being.

By this time, he didn’t know what to do with all of this and his mind just shut down on all the weird stuff in his life—even for one as used to impossible things happening one after another on a regular basis as Harry Potter this was simply too much to cope with.

He simply grew increasingly desensitised to the mess.

Over time, the three things started popping up in ever crazier places and Harry got the impression that they really didn’t like his aunt and uncle.

For example, the wand seemed to have found a preference for tumbling out of cabinets and from above in general, more often than not hitting Vernon on the way down.

The cloak was more passive-aggressive, which meant that it usually just happened to lay in the way of either Vernon or Petunia and tripped them up. Another favoured tactic was to flutter down right in the face of either of the aforementioned muggles.

The Snitch was actually rather passive in comparison to its fellows, and if it were a person Harry would think of it as rather vain, with the way it always positioned itself in a well-seen spot to be admired.

Add to all of this that Dudley’s behaviour towards Harry was decidedly different than Harry was used to and the madness was complete.

To expand on the previous statement: his cousin was actively trying to treat Harry somewhat decently—a development that bewildered Harry like nothing else ever had before.

In fact, his fat, spoiled cousin was trying to reach out to Harry, if the wizard read the little clumsy gestures correctly.

It wasn’t much in the beginning, just a tiny change in Dudley’s behaviour that made interaction between the cousins just that bit easier on the black-haired teen’s part—it mainly consisted of Dudley stopping to make Harry’s chores harder than they needed to be.

Then, before Harry knew it, the nasty comments and physical hits were somehow gone from their exchanges as if they had never existed, replaced by strained yet oddly peaceful conversations that struggled to last longer than a few stilted sentences.

Harry never ceased to be unbalanced by the whole thing.

For his part, Dudley tried his hardest not to be unnerved by the trio of magical artefacts that followed his cousin around. He jumped with every discovery of the items’ latest appearance, but visibly restrained himself from running.

Over time, the youngest Dursley began to hand Harry the items whenever he found them, carrying them with care the way one would handle delicate pieces made of fragile glass. He seemed to be an odd mixture of scared and excited whenever he touched the wand, Snitch or cloak, but it clearly didn’t faze him enough to stop.

Eventually that kind of interaction sort-of became the new normal for the both of them—it took a while, though—but not long after they had reached that point Dudley, yet again, went a step further.

He began distracting his parents when they started on at Harry.

Vernon had gotten more and more worked up about the ‘freakish, abnormal rubbish’ that kept appearing every time he turned around. He’d at first tried to break the wand, tear the cloak and crush the golden ball before throwing it all out with the garbage, but that proved to be much harder than he’d expected.

The wand had resisted being snapped to such a degree that it took Vernon over two hours to get it done and had wound up hurting himself badly enough that he had needed medical attention for damaged arm tendons. On the other hand, the Snitch absolutely refused to be flattened—or even scratched—with any kind of tool.

The cloak didn’t reject the damage and got torn to shreds, but that didn’t matter in the end because all three still turned up again wherever Harry was—in perfect condition.

Once Vernon had figured out that any attempt at destroying the three objects was doomed to fail he had started to vent his temper on Harry once again, but now that Dudley was prepared to shield his younger cousin, Harry often got away without having to face his uncle blowing up again.

Now Harry just shrugged at the observations, figuring that Dudley must be quite determined to succeed in whatever it was he wanted. At this point, the Hogwarts student left the rest of the events trying to short-circuit his brain alone, and simply watched where Dudley was planning to take this proverbial new route to.

Harry then proceeded to observe in part indifference, part amusement and part bewilderment as his cousin tried hard and slowly got better at his attempts to—dare he say it?—protect the teen wizard.

The young wizard was unable to feel anything resembling happiness from this development, because the fact of the matter was that Dudley was too many years too late with his decision of needing to achieve reconciliation with the cousin he’d relentlessly bullied throughout their ‘shared’ childhood.

That was not to say that Harry didn’t appreciate the gesture—he did.

It was just that the Harry that would have treasured it, welcomed it, would have killed for that kind of regard from his blood family…

Had already died a long time ago.

If the hurried way Dudley went about it was any indication, the blond teen was aiming at getting to where he wanted to be before the summer was over—which was when Harry would leave, never to return again—the deadline was the most likely explanation for the desperation that Harry saw in Dudley’s countenance and the restlessness that had seeped into the former bully’s conduct, both aspects steadily worsening as the weeks passed.

The idea of a Dudley that possibly wanted to keep seeing Harry—not to torment, bully or tease, but because he genuinely wanted to—was a very puzzling one to the Gryffindor.

Henceforth, when it came to interacting with each other, the cousins observed their counterparts more than they spoke.

In between dealing with all the stuff that had been going on—his uncle and aunt’s ever-fickle moods, being stalked by inanimate magical objects that he always had to return to his trunk before resuming his work, Dudley’s rapid changes in behaviour and the previously never-ending chores that he was now able to complete in a much more timely manner—Harry spent all of his free time with Hedwig in his room to study the Snitch.

The wizard theorised that the reason why the stalking hadn’t started until that one morning was because he hadn’t left his room for any period of time longer than a short bathroom break since the beginning of the summer. The only exception to that was when Mr Weasley and Mr Shacklebolt came by, but Harry figured that the fact that no one had noticed anything didn’t mean that they hadn’t followed Harry then too.

Before that, he had had his trunk nearby for most of the time.

And before that, he didn’t have all three of them yet.

Yes, Harry had already noticed that the Snitch contained the ring. It was hard to miss, what with the Snitch acting as if it belonged with the wand and cloak.

Whenever Harry focused on the golden ball he could feel the distinct spike of energy leaking through the engraved pattern of lines it sported. The fact that the ring was inside meant the ball could be opened, but another type of magic held everything shut, the signature of which Harry identified as the headmaster’s.

With his senses, Harry determined that the spell that was used prevented Harry from getting at the ring until some condition was met. He had yet to figure out how to get the ring out of the Snitch—whether by fulfilling the magical requirement of the magic holding it shut or forcing it open some way—and he had spent many an hour holding the Snitch up and staring at it in hopes of working out some solution.

Prodding the arrangement of magic further had led to the teen finding out that a tendril of Dumbledore’s magic was connected to the Snitch’s enchantments—he considered that bit his first lead in solving the puzzle.

He had already verified that it truly was his Snitch from the first game of Quidditch he had ever played, the one he had won by nearly swallowing the ball. Hermione had helped him look up the spells to interact with the enchantments on the Snitch, enabling one to read the impression, the memory, of its first contact with human skin. This function served mainly to identify the person that caught it first in the game, meant to solve cases of disagreement over which seeker had earned the 150 points for their team.

The confirmation was oddly specific; the touch registered was that of Harry’s mouth, not so much his skin—and a careless brush of his lips over the Snitch during one of his moments of thinking confirmed it.

“I open at the close”

The minor spell that accompanied Dumbledore’s main spellwork—specifically, the bit of magic that Harry had sensed clinging to the underlying enchantments—had activated at the touch, etching the words onto the Snitch’s smooth surface for Harry to read.

For days he pondered on the meaning of the message, even as he absently plucked cloak, ball and wand from the most unlikely spots time and again, dodged his uncle when he was in one of his murderous rages, survived his aunt’s glares, did his chores, navigated conversations with the cousin who might as well be a stranger for all that they were blood-related, and prepared for his last year at Hogwarts.

Then, a few nights before his birthday, he had a thought that didn’t let him go until he was back in his room, done with chores for the day.

‘The close’, he wondered, wasn’t that a way of referring to the end of a book?

He knew that the headmaster’s spells were meant for him, that nobody else was allowed to get the ring from the Snitch…

Bring this together, and Harry had an inkling that he needed something that corresponded to ‘the close’, something solely applicable to himself.

And he thought about his life so far, of the last year full with self-discovery, and he thought about the dictionary definitions of ‘close’ that he had looked up in between chores that day.

There had been many of them, but three had stood out:

“To come to an end, terminate.”

“The end or conclusion.”

“To bring to an end; cease.”

An end. Harry needed an end of some sort to fulfil the condition of the spell.

His first idea was death, but that would be too permanent and the entirely wrong order of things, getting the ring only after he would have no more use for it.

What about an end of a different kind?

Harry took the time to mentally go over his life. One aspect stood out in particular; how everything that ever went wrong with his life was directly or indirectly brought about by the biggest bastard of the century that everybody was insisting should be brought down by Harry himself, never mind that the teen was several decades of experience, knowledge and training the man’s junior.

Ending Voldemort’s reign of terror, would that qualify?

Harry thought it might, but there were two problems with that route.

One: it would take too long, would take time he sensed he didn’t have. The mad half-blood was a symptom of the corrupted, fucked-up system of magical Britain, not the root of its innumerable faults—and Harry knew that there was a much bigger crisis hidden behind (or beneath) this one that the Gryffindor inevitably would need to face, the way he was already forced to with the current issue, and it would take everything he had to make that problem go away too.

Two: while it certainly qualified as an end, it wasn’t truly an end for Harry. Sure, the period in his life spent dodging ol’ Tom’s murder attempts and destructive schemes would certainly come to a close, but… It would be more of an end for Tom Marvolo Riddle than it could ever be for Harry James Potter.

He dropped that line of thought, but a stray piece of his previous thoughts caught his attention.

A period of his life… Could that work?

Could the end of a phase of his life be enough?

It would need to be a powerful change between states, come as close to the absolute end—death—as possible in order to carry the necessary power to trigger the spell holding the blasted thing closed.

Harry’s river of thoughts started to flow faster and faster until it more resembled a raging flood wave, throwing his mind in a state of fluid chaos that left him feeling rather light-headed and momentarily filled his vision with illusionary streaks of light.

He thought he might just have found something, several somethings possibly, that would do the trick.

And what was even better, the timing was ideal.

Harry was maturing quickly, and along with that came separating himself from the established order. As much as he liked the headmaster, Harry did not think the man capable of making the right decisions when it came down to a choice between the needs of few versus the needs of many. The ancient wizard’s track record was abysmal where certain individuals where concerned—Tom Riddle came to mind, as did Sirius, even Snape—and sadly, Harry was a frequent victim in these cases.

He didn’t think he could really hate the professor, but Harry did resent the old man a little for choosing to protect the masses over his student for so many times.

At the same time, he had known for most of the year now that the three artefacts combined were a key of sorts, physical omens of the moment his inheritance would fully manifest. The instant that all three came together would kick-start the true awakening of what Harry for now thought of as his magical heritage, which would also—by the look of things—neatly coincide with his seventeenth birthday, when he would reach his official majority. All the signs he’s gotten so far indicated that the transition would at the very least be intense.

That last step in his awakening as something more, it would start as soon as the Snitch opened, the moment the ring joined its fellows, and that put him in the unique situation where he had the option of choosing when to invoke the transition of one blended state to another.

His upcoming seventeenth birthday; the cusp of adulthood in the eyes of the wizarding world.

The maturing that had steadily been taking place since he was but a child, then accelerating all throughout last year and now only a tiny mental push away from completion.

Awakening to his magical inheritance, to be wrapped up as soon as he opened the Snitch he still held in his hand.

All three were changes that somehow ended up coinciding as perfectly as if he had planned it all. The smile that lit Harry’s face was small but blinding and, satisfied with his plan, he put the Snitch down onto the desk before returning to bed—to sleep this time.

As midnight approached on the eve of his birthday, Harry sat down on his bed and took up the Snitch once more.

The shiny golden ball was held high above his head for a couple of moments, before Harry was able to steel himself enough to speak the words that would—should—trigger the spells to open the Snitch.

He brought the little ball right before his face so that he saw himself on the reflective surface, his breath slightly fogging up the image. He breathed the words of his statement onto the surface of the Snitch, almost kissing the thing while he spoke.

"I am about to die."

Harry the child—if only in body. Harry the teen—toyed with by others while he could not stop it. Harry the average wizard—as ordinary as any other teen, no matter what the papers might say.

The death of an era in miniature, of a child in name only, of a boy not enough protected, of a magical but otherwise unremarkable human.

That person would die in a few moments’ time.

Dumbledore’s magic dissolved.

Parts of the golden shell smoothly slit back to reveal a hole that encompassed nearly the full width of the Snitch, its diameter almost equal to that of the ball. Inside that hole, the first thing he saw was something sleek and black that gleamed in the dim light of the room.

Then he took a better look, and gasped.

A heavy silver ring inlaid with a dark stone—looking just like he remembered it.

Slowly, Harry reached out with his free hand, fingers outstretched, to take the ring from its hiding place. Its magic gave a happy swirl when his skin made contact with the stone and that brought a smile to Harry’s face even as he slit the ring onto his finger with one natural-feeling movement.

He didn’t even have to look to know that the cloak and the wand had appeared next to him on the bed and reached out blindly, but somehow unfailingly, to take up the cloak and drape it over his shoulders, to take the wand and hold it before him.

The three gave an excited spark of magic at the same time, as if coordinated for just this moment, before Harry was abruptly hit with a wave of knowledge many times greater in volume, detail and cohesion than he had ever had before.

Had Harry looked in that moment, the old beaten-up wristwatch on his desk would have read midnight on the dot.

Magical maturity set in, as did emotional maturity, brought along with the river of knowledge and memories that seemed would never stop, such force it carried and such depth it had.

As sudden as it had begun, it stopped.

And then harry knew.

Oh, and by Merlin, how he knew!

Harry knew now unspeakably terrible things, as well as unfathomably wonderful things.

He knew his origin and what was to be his end.

He knew his name as well as his name.

He remembered. He knew. He foresaw.

His birthright, his title, lied on his lips—just waiting to be used.

“I am—” he began, wanting to try speaking the honorific he had claim to.

“I am Harry James—” he tried again, licking his lips to moisten the dry skin.

“I am Harry James Potter, Master of Death.”