Chapter Text
23rd June 2367
London, England
It took them over a century to accomplish, but the muggles finally did it. They finally found a way to defeat their long-standing enemy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t only the muggles’ enemies that were about to meet their end.
Due to their profound lack of understanding of how the world truly works, muggles had unwittingly ensured the end of the world—at large.
Que dramatic thunder, indeed.
Yes, the apocalypse was nigh, and there was absolutely nothing anyone could do to stop it.
Except, well, that wasn’t necessarily right. Perhaps, there was a certain individual that could prevent the inevitable from coming to pass. However, his gracious intervention was yet to be determined.
You’re possibly confused and wondering—
Long-standing enemy? Muggles? Apocalypse?
Just who exactly have muggles been at war with?
That would be the mages, of course, whose faction was composed of all magic wielders, creatures and humans alike, along with all magic sympathisers.
It all started one hundred and thirty-eight years ago in 2248. In a string of terribly unfortunate events, Muggles had at long last discovered the existence of the magical world. That disastrous discovery led to worldwide panic and chaos, plunging the world into the most vicious war of all time.
When the Statute of Secrecy shattered, muggles around the whole globe became terrified and untrusting, caging themselves inside their homes for fear of their own skittish shadows.
Well-respected neighbours and work colleagues had suddenly become potential witches and wizards. None were trusted to have no ties to the mages and their ilk. Not even beloved family members were trusted blindly because what if they were hiding muggle-borns within the walls of their homes? What if they were sympathisers? And so forth.
But the frightened and cowed muggles didn’t stay hidden away in their homes and bunkers forever. It didn’t take much time for their paranoia and fear to fester and grow into something much darker and hungrier.
And so, the muggles had decided to unite and strike against the mages and their sympathisers.
The first attack had taken the magical world by surprise, many never having known or realised that the muggles were capable of destruction of that magnitude.
It had been an airstrike attack that had devastated several densely populated magical cities all around the globe.
Less than 20% of their combined population survived the attack.
It had been the largest genocide recorded at the time.
It had been a message that all the mages and creatures in the world had well and truly received.
War .
Unsurprisingly, no amount of diplomacy could make the muggle masses understand that they had been living in coexistence with the mages since the very beginning of time, even if the muggles themselves had been largely unaware of it.
The muggles had been afraid of the unknown and what they couldn’t understand, and they never stopped being afraid. That fear fueling generations of hatred and their agenda to destroy anything magical grew fiercer the longer the war raged.
That is how the war between the two worlds began, and it hasn’t stopped since.
Once the muggle world had officially declared war against the magical world, everything started changing rapidly. Nothing was as it had been, and in a few short months, it became painfully apparent to both sides that the circumstances of their reality would never be restored to the status quo.
The adults had been the first to leave smiles and laughter behind, being old enough to understand just how severely their world had been changing. But it hadn’t taken long for the innocent little children to learn that there was nothing left to laugh about—that fun and games were a thing buried in the past under tonnes of rubble and millions of dead, rotting bodies.
Then, one terrible day, all the children in the world were gone—lost and replaced by young soldiers trained to fight for their very survival.
Disputes between the Dark and Light factions had also become a distant thing of the past as wizards and creatures united on a single front to ensure their continued existence.
Hope was the next to vanish off of the face of the earth. After decades of never-ending battles, bloodshed, and loss, there seemed to be no escaping the nightmare that had become everyone’s life.
There was no peace, not even amongst allies because by then, the hunger took over—that unquenchable and blood-searing hunger to survive. The hunger took over, and nothing was left but the need to devour.
Peace was so far removed from the scope of reality that it had long since become a forgotten concept, one not even whispered to the scared babes at night. No, regrettably, peace hadn’t reigned over the world for far too many years. Instead, the world has become ruled by conflict, hostility, and fear. Creating an age of war, the likes of which had never been seen before.
The world as it once was, ceased to exist and was replaced by a hellish domain that served nothing but misery.
With each advancement the muggles made, they managed to break the world some more. They were incapable of learning to share the world as they were always meant to—never grasping that Magic was the sole reason for their existence.
For over a century, absolute destruction and incomprehensible mayhem plagued the world, with no cure for the deeply rooted disease that brought the world to its shattered knees.
One hundred thirty-eight years of war, and it was all coming to a painful and fatal end because the muggles found a way to destroy her—the mother of all that walks the earth. They managed to create an abomination that, unbeknown to them, was going to destroy everything in its path, and Britain was the first to feel its wrath.
Two hours ago, London was incurably struck, leaving it to bleed out and drive the whole country into decay. No witch, wizard, muggle, or creature that had stayed was left alive. Ashes and a pungent smell of death and toxins were all that remained.
A thick cloud of smoke and dirt covered the city’s ruins, and it was still growing larger, fed by every last building that was collapsing and burning.
Among the chaos and rubble, miraculously, there remained a single surviving tower atop which a raven-haired man silently appeared out of thin air. He stood completely still while his wary and saddened eyes roamed over the debris, his dark emerald cloak billowing wildly behind him in the wind.
To the raven-haired man’s left, another figure appeared. This figure wore a long, black robe with a hood that concealed their entire face. As they appeared, this dark-hooded figure stumbled and almost collapsed to their knees, but the raven-haired man was quick to grab and steady them by their shoulder.
“Too ma-many souls,” rasped the deep voice of the black-robed figure before he bent over at the waist and started clawing at his chest, the pain he was in almost unbearable.
The raven-haired man winced sympathetically and waited for his longtime companion to push through the pain and regain his bearings.
“This is the end, isn’t it?” questioned the raven-haired man once his companion’s harsh breathing had evened out.
It couldn’t be.
Was this really how it would all end? Was this to be the conclusion of their journey?
He’d always thought he’d feel more at peace should that moment finally ever come to pass. He’d certainly wanted it for long enough.
But not like this.
The dark-hooded man groaned and straightened his back, ignoring the agony resonating within his very being.
“They have chosen,” he confirmed breathlessly, not bothering to feign the same surprise and incredulity his companion evidently felt.
“I didn’t think…” the raven-haired man trailed off, truly at a loss for words. “I honestly thought—” he started again but choked and shook his head disappointedly. “I thought it would get better,” he finally whispered, sounding nothing less than defeated. “I never imagined that they could be so….”
“Unreasonable? Spiteful? Ignorant? Blind?” supplied his companion rather testily through gritted teeth as he curiously peeked at the fiery pits below them.
“Yes,” he agreed with a slight frown. “And so unbelievably cruel,” he added as he felt another agonised magical pulse vibrating up his limbs.
“How could they do this to her?” he mumbled distraughtly, desperate to understand how it could have all gone so wrong. “Mother Magic is dying—poisoned by these ungrateful non-magicals. How dare they?” he hissed venomously into the raging storm.
Fed by his anger, the fires burning around them blazed higher—dancing ferociously to the beat of his unsettled heart. Then, the raven-haired man’s green eyes took on a dangerous shine to them, glowing unnaturally bright amidst the darkness around him, and suddenly, his all-consuming fury caused the earth beneath them to shake violently—precariously so.
“Calm yourself,” snapped the dark-hooded man commandingly while warily eyeing the destruction he was causing. “It would do no good for you to exhaust or injure yourself right now.”
The raven-haired man huffed but took in a deep breath to compose himself. With his Occlumency shield fortified, the flames receded, but his eyes didn’t lose any of their unnatural brightness.
“I could’ve prevented this, couldn’t I?” he asked him in a barely-there whisper, his previous rage extinguished by the wave of guilt that suddenly came crashing over him with the weight of an entire ocean.
The dark-hooded man looked away from him and out towards the sea of fire that reached as far as the eye could see and further still. “It wasn’t your responsibility to prevent this from happening,” he answered evasively.
“That’s not what I asked,” the raven-haired man shot back sharply, momentarily incapable of seeing past the haze of guilt that clouded his mind.
“Maybe you could have stopped this. Or perhaps you couldn’t,” he shrugged, immediately regretting the action as his tender limbs started shaking even harder. “You, beyond anyone else traipsing the mortal realm, should know this,” he told him calmly, unbothered by his friend’s temper.
“I swore to myself, long ago, that I would never meddle with the affairs of mortals again,” the green-eyed man mumbled, trying to block out the sudden onslaught of nightmarish memories.
His friend sighed. “I remember,” he hissed as he bit back another scream that fought to tear out of him.
The muggles’ contraption had reached beyond the British Isles and started seeping into the rest of Europe, taking with it every last soul in its path.
“You and I both know what happened the last time I tried to change things,” the green-eyed man pointed out somewhat defensively.
His dark-hooded companion inwardly sighed at the reminder.
The last time his friend had tried to make some significant changes to the timeline, it had turned into an absolute fiasco that had left the wizarding world in a worse state than it had been before. And as a slightly lesser consequence, his friend’s heart had been reduced to shambles.
That particular experience was the reason his friend had decided to never time-jump again, preferring not to meddle with time or the human population in general.
“But I can’t just stand here and watch the world burn,” he heard his raven-haired friend whisper to himself, causing the dark-hooded man to barely refrain from rolling his eyes.
The world they were both bound to was about to be destroyed. So yes, they most definitely couldn’t just stand there and watch the world burn.
“We’re going to have to go back,” the raven-haired man concluded, voice flat and devoid of any emotion.
At that moment, a fresh wave of pain washed over the dark-hooded man. “What do you have in mind?” he grunted through a clenched jaw.
“We’re going to save the bloody world. What else?” came his glib reply.
Right. Of course. What else?
“When exactly would you like to go?” he clarified dryly while doing his best to ignore the tortured screams of the recently deceased.
The raven-haired man deliberated for a moment and shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Couldn’t you pinpoint a time in history when we could have prevented this mess?” he asked him while gesturing towards the burning and crumbling buildings around them.
“I can only guess,” his companion replied, but a plan was already forming in his mind.
They could go back to about a few hundred possible time periods, but there is one specific decade his friend would preferably not revisit. Thinking about it, he’d probably want to skip that whole century altogether, which made it the absolute perfect time for them to jump back to.
You see, one hundred and sixty-seven years ago, his green-eyed companion had played a prank on him, one he hadn’t found particularly amusing, and he’d been biding his time for a very long while to execute the perfect revenge. The apocalypse seemed like the ideal opportunity to retaliate.
While it might seem a bit harsh of him, in the end, after his friend has sufficiently suffered, he might finally get to have the happiness that he deserved.
During the heartwarming process of that happily ever after, this whole mess they were living in could be prevented, and the world and Mother Magic would be saved.
Indeed a win-win scenario.
Hopefully, his friend had learned something over their centuries together, and everything would work out as it should. If it didn’t…. Well, if it didn’t, then at least he would have gotten his revenge for that prank. Besides, they could always go back again, maybe a bit further this time, far enough to prevent the existence of humans altogether. Magical and non-magical alike.
“Then give it your best guess. Anywhere is going to be better than here,” the green-eyed man told him, completely unaware of the mischief his companion was planning.
“I’ll give it my best guess,” he promised, pushing back his glee.
“I’ll see you at the veil,” was all the green-eyed man said before he vanished into thin air.
As soon as he was gone, a wicked smirk appeared on the dark-hooded man’s handsome face.
They were heading into a fascinating couple of decades. He almost felt something akin to excitement stirring in his dead heart.
23rd June, 1941Ministry of Magic
London, England
Harry Potter stumbled out of the other side of the veil, just barely able to avoid his face from ungracefully greeting the floor.
“There was no need for you to push me,” he grumbled as he straightened out his black shirt and emerald cloak. “I wouldn’t have hesitated if you had just told me when exactly it was that you were sending us through.”
As he said this, Harry was taking in his new but also very familiar surroundings, and for some reason, a deep sense of foreboding started settling over him.
He subtly sniffed the air and frowned.
“Did you just sniff the air?” his intimidating companion asked him flatly, appearing behind him with his dark hood still in place, as always.
Harry ignored him as he stepped off the dais and away from the veil, further into the chamber. He sniffed the air again, and his frown twisted into a repulsed grimace.
The air smelled like ashes, dirt, pollution, and death.
It stank like the war they had just escaped from—only less toxic.
“You took me away from one war zone only to drop me into another? Why would you do that?” he asked him, his tone bordering on a whine.
“You never specified that it was a time of peace you wanted to go back to,” Death shrugged nonchalantly, successfully hiding his devious glee.
“I would assume that since we were fleeing Doomsday, it was bloody well implied that we wanted some damn peace! Tell me we didn’t land in the middle of Riddle’s uprising or something as ridiculous as that,” he pleaded, suspicion and panic already rising in his chest.
“We didn’t,” Death said, but before Harry could release a relieved breath, he added, “Not exactly.”
Harry groaned and ran his fingers through his wind-swept hair. “And what’s that supposed to mean?” he snapped.
“We’re not technically during his uprising in the way that you mean,” came another cryptic reply.
Instead of asking Death to clarify and risk getting another one of those cryptic replies, he mulled over his words a bit. After all, no one reaches his ancient age without learning how to crack a few riddles.
‘Not in the way that you mean’, he said, and however he turned that around, the implication was there, but he couldn’t possibly….
Death was his friend, comrade, and best mate forever—literally.
He wouldn’t do this to him, not after the last time they went back to that decade.
Harry scoffed at his naivety. Who exactly was he trying to fool?
As soon as he finished that last thought, he blinked and was gone from sight.
The next second, Harry silently appeared in an alley a few blocks away from the Ministry of Magic.
Harry quickly took in his surroundings and immediately felt like crying.
So maybe Death was more of a treacherous bastard than he’d thought.
He saw a newspaper flying his way and quickly reached out to snatch it. As he flipped it around, he noticed it was a relatively clean copy, so it had to be recent.
He searched the corner for a date and cursed.
23rd June 1941.
Bugger.
“This is retaliation for that prank I pulled on you some hundred and fifty years ago, isn’t it?”
Death was standing next to him a second later, practically buzzing with excitement.
“It was one hundred sixty-seven years ago, to be precise, but who’s counting?” smirked a very smug Death. At least it sounded like he was smirking. Wretched hood. Bastard.
“We’ve been here before, Death. I’ve already tried this route and failed, or do you not recall?” Harry asked him in a dangerously calm tone.
Harry’s body became rigid as he tried to contain the rage and fear that started to bubble up inside him. Still, his emerald eyes gave him away, unable to hide the multitude of different emotions that were wreaking havoc inside him.
“You’re older now, Harry. You will not repeat the same mistakes you made before,” Death tried to reassure his friend.
“Older does not necessarily mean wiser, Death!” he exclaimed with a dramatic wave of his hand. “Especially not when it comes to him,” he spat, imploring his friend to understand.
This couldn’t possibly end in anything but a disaster.
“He’s younger this time,” Death pointed out, but Harry just shook his head.
“He’s fourteen! He’s already been through every horror imaginable, and he’s already committed atrocities that no child his age should be capable of. He’s already him,” Harry insisted.
“He’s yet to spill any blood,” Death reminded him, but Harry just glared at him.
“You forget that I value each life, however insignificant they may be to you. Creatures have already bled and died under his hands, minds were tortured, and souls seduced,” he said, trying to make his friend see what a horrible mistake this was.
“You know that he’s not yet the devil you paint him out to be,” Death persisted, growing increasingly irate with his friend. Why did he choose someone so stubborn to be his companion?
“Then why didn’t you send me back to when he was a babe? Why not let me try and raise him to be better? Instead, you chose to torture me,” he snapped accusingly.
The air around them chilled as Death tried and failed to contain his displeasure.
“And what of the balance?” he growled. “He might not have committed those crimes just yet, but the heinous act of its defiling taints his soul. Tearing your soul in such a grotesque manner—” he paused and released a disgusted chortle. “No, such Magic isn’t simply reversed and ignored, as you very well know, Harry. He felt no remorse for his actions, so he must suffer the consequences. Magic demands balance.”
Fearing an oncoming snowstorm, Harry decided not to argue with him.
“So, I’m to go to Hogwarts then.” It wasn’t really a question. Harry could try and avoid Hogwarts and Riddle all he liked. Death would find a way to push them together.
“You think that by saving Riddle, I’ll save the world.” Again, not a question, and he reluctantly agreed.
If Riddle had been slightly less unhinged, he might have led the world into greatness. If Riddle hadn’t been such a psychopathic, treacherous, genocidal, cheating, megalomaniac— Erm, right, anyway, but he was- is all those things and so much more.
“It might be a step in the right direction,” Death agreed, sounding more chipper than he had in decades.
“Right,” Harry sighed and slumped against the wall behind him, unbothered by the dirt and grime that covered every inch of the alley he was hidden in.
“If I have to kill him, it’s over. I want them all gone. Every single undeserving human on this earth. We’ll wipe it clean and start over.”
“Sounds like we have a plan B, my friend,” Death readily agreed, already knowing what their next course of action would have to be if they failed.
“I can’t allow them to hurt her again. She won’t survive it,” Harry said as he knelt and placed his palm on the ground.
“So you feel it?” Death asked him, sounding uncharacteristically concerned and sombre.
Harry gave him a curt nod and sighed. “She’s still in pain. Mother will need to recuperate her energy, and it will take some time. Sending us here in the state she was in took a lot out of her.”
“The echo of that devastation will never fully leave her,” Death agreed. “But fear not, she will thrive again,” he consoled him but refrained from reassuringly patting his shoulder.
“I’m undeserving of being her chosen son. Look what I allowed to happen to her,” he mumbled, voice bitter and brimming with self-loathing.
“It’s not our place to meddle with the choices of mortals, Harry. Every soul must be tested. But we’re here now, and that’s all that matters.”
“And am I not here to meddle with the choices of mortals?” he asked darkly with misdirected venom.
It wasn’t Death’s fault that mortals were such damn fools.
“Yes, you are,” he said naturally, ignoring his friend’s acidity. “Because we’ve clearly seen what leaving them to their own devices will lead to. They need all the help they can get if they are to be saved.”
Harry chuckled humorlessly. “And I’m supposed to start with Riddle?” he asked him dubiously. “He’s obviously the easiest person to turn to our side,” he grumbled.
“Indeed,” Death said, completely ignoring Harry’s sarcasm. “We’re going to have to start small, Harry, and young Riddle is just the perfect place to start.”
Harry decided not to say anything at all and just closed his eyes.
This was all a terrible dream. He would soon wake up in his comfortable bed, located somewhere deep in Africa.
“Don’t fret, young Harry,” Death encouraged, then he pinched him, thus ruining Harry’s last shred of hope that this was all a terrible nightmare.
He groaned and rubbed the spot Death had just pinched. “Not dreaming then,” he sighed and opened his eyes.
“We have two months to get your affairs in order.”
“Priorities, Death. Priorities,” he deadpanned. “I’ll go ahead and assume that you won’t be so kind as to pick another point in history where I can try stopping the world from being burned to ashes. You know, for instance, any point before Riddle’s existence?”
Death didn’t think that he needed to dignify that with an answer. There was a prank. There were female demons involved. And that was all he would add to that.
“Well, if that’s settled,” Harry snapped. “Welcome to the 1940s, Potter.”
“You’re going to have to change your name.”
“Will you please not start acting like this is my first trip jaunt through time! I’ll have you know that I was—”
“—only thirteen when I took my first trip into the past. I know. I was witness to the fiasco that was you attempting to aid your godfather’s escape.”
“It was not a fiasco,” Harry cried, vehemently defending his early adventures in the wizarding world.
“It could have gone smoother,” teased Death.
“I was thirteen,” Harry deadpanned.
“Closer to fourteen, really.”
“You mentioned something about getting my affairs in order?”