Chapter Text
For years now, one night every month held hours where a stable rhythm of clanging metals would resonate throughout the sub-basement of Grimmauld Place #12, enough so that it could be loudly heard in the kitchen, located a floor above, even when the entire sub-basement had been warded and sound-muffled, by spells and muggle means.
It had been decades now since the lone resident of the house had left the safety of said building. The little interaction he had with other beings were limited to the paintings that he had left alone, specifically the paintings that could understand the dangers of aggravating him.
The painting of the late Lady Walburga had been graciously introduced to a special, highly acidic potion that had taken three years to figure out and perfect, which just so happened to contain paint stripper and a drop or two of basilisk venom. Her screams of pain, even as a painting, had been like music after he had learnt what she had done to her own children. To Sirius.
Dumbledore may have figured out twelve uses for dragon blood in alchemy in conjunction with his master-turned-colleague Flamel, but Harry now had eleven original uses for basilisk venom. He was quite proud of his self-proclaimed title of 'Venomancer', even if his research had never been published.
He had gone from project to project, spending the last four and a half decades constantly learning, challenging himself, improving. None would ever again betray him. None would ever live the attempt.
The clanging of metal kept its steady rhythm, as blood ran from open rune-styled wounds on his hands, covering the hammer in his hand, only remaining in his slippery grasp through the use of sticking charms.
Again and again, tirelessly, he folded the metal over itself again and again, working it out before folding it together again. Throat sore through endless hissing, detailing his life. His adventures. His regrets. The sources of his wrath.
Blood spattering against the metal, more taking its place on the hammer.
The metal had turned a light pink hours ago, which signified a dark crimson when it wasn't searingly hot. No, he needed to go further.
Dedicated to his smithing, he barely paid attention as the almost white-hot metal started to darken dramatically around the edges. Experiment three-hundred-and-ten had gotten to this stage and failed, two months ago.
Soon the dark edges turned a glistening black, appearing almost like a border of liquid obsidian. Switching his hammer for a smaller size without losing the beat, to work out the smaller details yet present in the middle, he could see the black seeping in, overtaking the metal's natural luminescence when it is dangerously close to a liquid state.
It started almost like drops of ink in a goblet of water, spreading out yet never thinning, leaving the claimed surface the darkest black he had ever seen, as if it was a void in reality, with the slightest gleam, as if a thin pane of glass was all that protected the world from this material.
Beating in tempo with his blows, the black would expand and contract, ever so slowly growing larger and larger, working itself inwards.
Soon wisps of black would flow across the metal, as if guiding him as to where he needed to strike next.
A serpent of living fire gracefully flowed across the metal between strikes when the metal required further heating. He had long ago conquered fiendfyre. He had considered using it as his preferred weapon of choice, but even if he had gone further with it than anyone else; had experimented with the base spell arithmancy until his own version made the original appear almost tame, unable to be wielded by mortal men, it wasn't fully his. He had merely expanded upon an appropriated spell.
No. The Master Of Death required something unique. Something wholly his. Something that could never be stolen or replicated.
Finally, after years of learning blacksmithing through extensive legilimency of goblins, and scavenged dwarven tablets, donated graciously, if forcefully by goblins too, those greedy backstabbing oathbreakers, of calculating the exact ratio of basilisk venom to phoenix tears to blood within his body, being 8:3:5614 specifically.
A number that hadn't wavered at all ever since he stopped aging.
From star-charting optimal days to attempt his experiments, which he quickly found out corresponded exactly to the new moon, to etching rune sequences into his own bones just so that his immortal body could actually improve past its frozen state.
That last one had been a real bugger to figure out, but required as pain and muscle strength were still factors of his daily life.
He had had to resort to a blood based tattoo that essentially spelled a prayer to Death itself, in ancient Phoenocian Canaanite.
Thankfully, his literal prayer had been answered as his body, thankfully no longer frozen in time, was given the ability to heal and improve.
Finally being able to get rid of the arthritis that he had developed at the tender age of 17 whilst he had slept in a tent during winter had been a joy. 'Thanks Aunt Petunia for your lovely care.
May the coals of whatever hellscape you currently reside in burn just a few degrees cooler for the day. A special treat, from your lovely nephew.'
The black appeared to have a life of its own now, swallowing the last of the metal, and with a deep resonance in his soul, he knew.
He had done it.
Twenty six years of experiments that could only be done beneath a new moon.
Three-hundred-and-twelve nights of bleeding himself nearly dry.
Nineteen years of work before that just to accumulate the knowledge needed.
Fourty five years since he had locked himself away in Grimmauld Place. Since Teddy…
No. He'd change it.
The block of… he had never actually given his theoretical-turned-applied metallurgy project a name. Stygian… Stygianite? No, Apotartaric Obsidian? Too fancy.
Tartaric Steel? No, the image of Vernon binging on fish and chips with tartar sauce crossed his mind and filled him with rage, accompanied by a loud screeching sound as the head of one of his hammers seemingly turned liquid, spikes forming and extending until it looked like a morning star, gouging the floor where he had dropped it.
He stared into the ingot shaped block that he had made, that held no visible contrast along any edge, appearing as a cuboid hole in reality.
He knew though, that it wasn't empty.
That darkness was a tunneled connection from Death itself, to a tool that Harry would shape into his own.
Like the Peverell brothers, Harry had created a masterpiece linked to one of the foundational cornerstones of the universe itself.
However, unlike the brothers, Harry was already connected to that cornerstone, and not merely handed power that he wasn't meant for.
It was with that thought that the metal in his hand seemed to lose its shape, which was hard enough to notice, but he certainly felt it as the cool metal seeped over his left hand, solidifying into a gauntlet, sharp onyx claws adorning the tips of the fingers, and the look of the empty void changed to appear as proper, dark metal with onyx black filigrees.
He could barely feel the weight of it, as he closed his fist, as far as he could anyway with the clawed fingers, and reared back before diving down, putting all his power into swinging his gauntlet-clad left arm down on the magic-imbued anvil he had spent years hammering atop.
His hand cleaved the anvil in two as if he was merely pushing down on snow.
Hadalite, he settled on. A small homage to his name, that he would soon abandon, so that at least something would yet tie him to his name, so that he may never forget how it all started.
Hadal, the deepest zone of the seas, near exclusively the trenches that dive beneath the abyssal plains of the ocean, named after Hades, and home only to the most resourceful of survivors, capable of surviving where the pressure would normally destroy the very cells themselves of most living beings, breaking apart the very strands of DNA that begat life.
Life yet remaining where Death and darkness reigns.
The serpentine fiendfyre wisps that had been the sole source of light in the home-made smithy started to dim, before flickering out of existence, hissing as they disappeared.
Harry turned around in the darkness, and with steady and sure steps, walked to the door that would lead to a hallway, with the staircase up to the house proper.
The door opened as he neared, and the candle-lit hallway greeted him. His steps echoed in the silent house, alerting the paintings of his arrival, the Blacks within who hid behind chairs and tapestries within their frames, their never ending ennui bringing them to comically peer around their hiding spots, in manners never deemed appropriate for people of their standing, even though they all feared Harry and his temper as he, like clockwork, had stormed up from the smithy for decades now, literal storm clouds and he'll fire trailing behind him.
But each painting gasped and froze, as they saw their lord pass by with steady feet, a wicked smile grazing his face.
The whispers began once one of the paintings noticed the gleam coming off of the dark gauntlet, shock and surprise boggling all of them, who had all thought Harry's experiments were doomed from the start.
The painted lords, ladies and scions of House Black since the family's inception, all started to stream after Harry, flowing from painting to painting as their latest, and presumably last lord rounded the staircase, coming up to the ground floor.
Harry smiled as he glanced at the blackened wall where Walburga had had her painting once.
He then looked at the troll's foot umbrella stand. How many times had Tonks tripped over that thing? He'd never been able to throw it out, due to that question alone, no matter how much he hated the object itself.
Thinking of Nymphadora, of course, made him think of Remus and Teddy.
Rage blossomed in his veins, knuckles turning white as he tightened his fists, sparks flying as the gauntlet reacted to his emotions instantly and bathed itself in lightning.
Taking a deep breath, Harry collected himself, ignoring the irritating whispers from the paintings who by now all knew the risks of pissing him off.
Nymphadora, Remus and Teddy had deserved so much more than they had been given.
They had deserved to live.
Now, he had what he needed to ensure that.
It was with that thought that he continued up, footsteps seemingly thundering in the quiet house, in the last moments of night before one could state 'early morning'.
He passed the first floor, and then the second, and then the third.
On the fourth floor, he stopped for a moment, staring at his own bedroom, which technically was the Heir's bedroom, not the Lord's, but Harry had craved the fleeting connection to Sirius, and raised his hand to feel the silver initials that yet remained on the door, spelling 'S.O.B.'
With a hiss, the letters made of actual silver started to vibrate, as they slowly started to protrude from the wood, before falling out of their sockets.
Harry caught the letters, blocks of metal hammered into the doors instead of just painted on.
Because it was obviously below their standing to use 'mere' paint when their children obviously 'required' wealth practically trailing off of them, between their rounds of cruciatus for uncouth mannerisms, of course.
The letters were placed in his left hand, and seemingly sank into the gauntlet, absorbed like a magnet surrounded by ferrous liquids.
He'd make use of that silver later. There were a few werewolves that had had their deaths reserved by Harry, for quite some time now.
There was nothing else that he required on the fourth floor, so he continued up.
Past the fifth floor with the library and studies belonging to heir and lord Black respectively, and further up, into the top floor, where the sun room was.
Harry made sure that his footsteps were even louder, as he entered the darkened sun room, with two opposite walls and the ceiling made completely out of glass.
Looking out into the distance, Harry could see how the horizon was starting to brighten, dawn a mere minute away.
Dust had overtaken this grand room, which he had locked several decades ago, and he trailed visible footsteps behind himself as he moved into the room, where two sofas sat opposite of each other, with a victorian coffee table between them.
He smiled as he stood behind one of the sofas, and saw the brown hair splayed out.
He smiled as he reached down and grabbed hold of the porcelain doll that he had left here, so so long ago.
He smiled at it, helpless and unmoving, except for the eyes, eyes that honed in on him in fear, unable to cry or even close its eyelids.
"The year is now 2043. 46 years since the day I didn't die for the second time. 34 years since you disappeared, not that anyone really looked for you. I take it you've had enough time to think on your actions, no? The view should have been more than enough to reflect on." Harry goaded, as the sun peeked over the horizon, striking the doll in its brown eyes.
Harry turned around, moving his hold to grab the doll by its hair, forcing it to look out as dawn lit up London.
Or rather, the remains of London.
There was nothing but destroyed buildings and the greens of shrubbery and grass overtaking the remains, amongst which broken glass glittered as the morning sun greeted the earth, helped along with the morning dew.
"You really hated the magical community so much that you thought you had to purge it and start over anew, that nothing could be done whilst the corruption yet remained." Harry began, almost sounding sympathetic as he started his dialogue.
"It was true, corruption was evident in every level of the community, from the unfortunate second class citizens, to the commoners, to the nobles, to the magistry, and not just here but across the globe. Why else did they refuse to act when Magical Britain was so obviously unable to maintain the Statute of Secrecy, which is the one and only universal law across the magical governments, required for our continued survival?"
"Heh, you really did play them all for fools, even the ICW. We thought you a lion or a raven, but you were truly the deadliest viper in the history of magic. Congratulations Hermione Jean Granger. The few surviving magicals know how you orchestrated the magical apocalypse. If only you hadn't marked everything as your property. You'll go down as the deadliest witch of all ages. Amazing isn't it?!" Harry spoke, letting the doll see the destruction she had wrought, and he made sure to add a note of pride as he spoke, seemingly happy over her feat.
"Lowly little mudblood Granger, no house nor title of her own, no money of her own, no special gifts of her own, except for her brains. You studied every slytherin tactic, you even made false personas whilst still in school! How many slytherins fell for your doctored letters and signatures? But no matter how you tried, you had to rely on the fame and fortune of others to get anywhere in life, cause you were still. just. a. mudblood. Life was sooo unfair to you, wasn't it?"
"Then you found out about her. Nymphadora Tonks. A half-blood, but no one cared about that, cause she had a gift. Did that light up a light bulb in that noggin of yours? 'If only I had a family gift too, then no one would care about my blood status' huh?" Harry stated, venom creeping into his words until he nearly spat the words out.
"You potioned her to fall in love with a werewolf. You might've gone for something even worse, but you were still young and tied up when it came to resources. So Remus John Lupin became your second test-subject. The man who taught you for an entire year, who preached your skill and studiousness. He nearly left her and Teddy, you know, back at Bill's wedding, wanting to run away and join us, so afraid that he had 'tainted' Nymphadora and cursed his yet unborn child to be a 'monster' like himself. But I practically tore him a new one and made sure that he would be there for his wife and child."
"Andromeda and I had Teddy for what, three months after Voldemort's, and his parent's demise, before you kidnapped him. He wasn't even six months old.
But you didn't see him as a child, a mere babe, did you? Cause no one performs experiments on a baby. The very baby your so-called best friend had promised to keep safe."
"But how could you ever foresee that your haphazard, secret laboratory would be right next to an illegal muggle drug laboratory. Hah! At least I know that Teddy didn't suffer when the wall exploded and gas seeped in. Wards torn asunder, the muggle police swarmed your laboratory and picked it apart, and just like that, even with you apparating on site and attempting to subdue more than thirty officers, it was too late. Magic, and magical objects, had been discovered."
"Twelve years, that's how long magic lasted against GPS-aided bomb strikes. That's how long it took until the rest of the world decided to salt the very earth, and just make sure that we, the 'magical savages that torture babies' were gone, no matter the cost. Twelve years until they revealed just 'why' they hated us so much, even though you had done your best to keep your name clean, but the discovery of your abuse of Teddy, along with the years of intentional provocations to pit wix against muggle, and our prestigious first muggleborn minister became the worst minister in Magical Britain's history, and had to hide from not just the muggles who all hated you, but the wix who all hated you just as much.
"You were sneaky, I have to give you that, but as the Master of Death, no one can hide from me lest they use my very own cloak. Still, do you like your new body? I made sure you would never go hungry or thirsty. Weren't I nice? Perhaps you would have liked to move, but I couldn't take that risk. I'm so sorry you had no autonomy at all during all of this time. I know it was quite the wait, but I've finally worked through all of my chores and duties, and now I can finally give you your sentence! As one of the last surviving British Wixen, and your former friend, it's my solemn duty to see you punished." He finished, a playful joyous note finishing his speech.
Harry, still holding the porcelain doll by its hair, used his thumb, making sure that his nail dug into the porcelain scalp, to rotate the doll around, until the miniature Hermione Granger was once more staring at him in abject horror.
He lifted his left hand, gauntlet in clear view, and she must have recognized that it was magical, and extremely so.
She undoubtedly must have heard the clanging every new moon for the last 26 years, in the very least the smoke stemming from the chimney had been an unavoidable, steady sign that he had been working on something.
"My Magnum Opus, a weapon fit for the Master Of Death, far more powerful than the Elder Wand. A weapon that draws on the true nature of Death. For what is death but a change of states. The marked end of one adventure and the beginning of another. Entropy itself."
As he said this, the gauntlet shimmered, before the metal morphed and flowed to the palm of his hand, where it slowly took on a new shape.
Harry's ageless hand closed around the shiny black grip, as a revolver appeared in his hand, barrel pointed and then thrust against the porcelain forehead of his once best female friend, causing a crack to appear, a crude facsimile of Harry's own infamous scar.
"I do want to try this out on you, but I have had this one idea planned for so long now. I've found that I am quite the fan of poetic punishments, so we'll be taking a short trip. Don't worry, it'll be your last."
With a mere thought, the two of them apparated to the outskirts of London, standing in the middle of the street of what was once a upper-middle-class neighbourhood, one which Hermione instantly recognized, even with every building being nothing but charred piles of debris.
"Yes, yes. Your childhood home. It took me a while to find it, limited in resources as I was in the aftermath of the apocalypse. Oh if only I still had an owl, and if only someone had still lived here. Oh well, nothing that could have been done with the latter at least, I suppose. You made sure your parents left and never came back. Hey, how do you think they died? They did make it to Australia at least."
The porcelain doll that was Hermione instantly recognised what Harry had alluded to. Whilst the doll couldn't move, Harry could feel the trapped magic within her coil as Harry revealed that he had found her parents.
"As the Master of Death, I do get some perks. Such as certain information regarding the deaths of people of interest to me." He spoke, as he started walking into the ruins of what had once been the Granger residence.
"They made it to Sydney, and lived relatively well, though I hazard to say quite empty lives, what with the obliviation having removed the joy of their lives. At least they didn't know that their daughter ignited the war that killed most of the population of this planet, that must count for something, right?"
Glass crunched beneath Harry's boots as he stepped into what had once been the living room, where he knew Hermione had celebrated her birthdays and christmases, when not vacationing in other countries.
"Your parents died inside of a bomb shelter, when regular, muggle explosions collapsed it, trapping them inside. Your dad was crushed instantly. Your mum survived for six days trapped beneath a block of cement, drinking rusty water and eating her own bloody, woolen sweater just to fill her stomach with something, waiting for rescue that never came, until she entered septic shock from her infected wounds. That shelter was intentionally bombed, because of a false positive from a primitive muggle-made magic sensor."
Harry put the Hermione doll down on a relatively flat piece of wall that had fallen over, and bent down to look her right in the eyes.
"No, I'm not making up any lies or falsifying any information. Why would I, when destroying you with the cold harsh truth of the consequences of your own actions fills me with such twisted joy? Well, was all of this worth it? Was Teddy's puppeteered conception and subsequent kidnapping just so you could study family gifts worth it, oh queen of destruction?" Harry gloated, staring down into those brown eyes that had filled his mind with never ending hatred, distilled over decades into a poison of its own, driving him into researching a way to fix it all.
He could see the pleading in her eyes, that this wasn't what she had wanted, but he just smirked, as he took a deep breath and blew, as tendrils of fire extended out of his mouth, his serpentine dragons of fire that consumed all were carefully guided into scorching complex runic arrays in the ruins of Hermione's childhood home.
It mattered not that the multitude of separate arrays covered the uneven terrain, as long as the runes themselves were correct, even if some of them were made on the very border of two sides of a wall or even just a small rock.
The doll's brown eyes scanned every rune sequence that they could see from their vantage point, and Harry smiled when he felt the fear grip his prisoner once more, as his former friend realized what was going to happen.
"Yes, you'd be correct if you believe this to be a sacrifice-fueled time travel ritual." He said, stressing the 'if', channeling his best impersonation of Snape as he challenged Hermione's intelligence.
"A sacrifice of the one person who sparked the war that stole billions of lives, that had trillions of hours left to live. Never before has such a sacrifice been theorized, never mind attempted. If my calculations are correct, even with the exponential decrease of gain, I should have the power to go anywhere I want in time, this side of the Iron Age at least, but that will be much too far for my plans."
The doll's eyes are shiny, but unable to cry, as Hermione watches Harry stand in the center of the most complex runic array she's ever seen. The fact that it hasn't already exploded gave Harry's words weight, as this was something so delicate that even the smallest grains of dust falling wrong would mimic a near nuclear explosion in eaw force.
She would never have attempted anything like it even in a sanitary underground chamber, nevermind out in the bloody ruins of war.
"I'll go back and change it all. Too far back and I may change what I already know. But I can change everything from that Halloween. I can take my own place in the prophecy, and let little baby me remain free of the shackles of fate."
"This is it Hermione, you're going to die now. One of the first things I'll do once I'm back there will be to put a block on your magic, and several tracking charms. Who knows what muggle you will do?"
Harry gleefully soaked in the feeling of terror from the one who had tortured his Teddy, and stared her once more in the eyes.
"Oh, don't worry about good ol' Dumbles, I know he was your mentor and fueled your jealousy and hatred of the bigotry until you snapped. Did you never realize? The man was tied for first place in his capability of legilimency world-wide. He knew all about your little project before his own greed got the best of him. You were his little project. His little sociopathic protegé that would work to further his own goals of wix-muggle relations, all the whilst thinking you were doing everything for yourself."
"I told you I quite like poetic punishments. Here we are, in the ruins of your childhood home. You will be the fuel to undo all of your hard work, and I'll be making sure that you never experience even the slightest ounce of magic, but in such a volatile location as this, with such delicate runes here, I can't use any magic to kill you. Congratulations, Hermione, you'll be dying a muggle death."
With that, Harry picked up a rock and threw it with all of his might on the ruined remains of the wall behind the doll, making sure to hit the weak point that he had flimsily reinforced quite some time ago when he first found and scouted out the location.
It was with the groaning sounds of the wall creaking behind her that Harry spoke his next words to the doll.
"I've ensured that your soul will be given over to this timeline's Nymphadora and Remus, where you'll be treated just as you deserve, for torturing their son. Pissing off a werewolf is always a bad idea, but don't forget that Tonks still carries Black knowledge, if no longer blood. Have fun."
As he finished his speech, the wall crumbled down, a large chunk falling straight on the porcelain jail that housed Hermione Jean Granger, and in the blink of an eye, her transformed body was crushed beneath the weight, and her soul was immediately sent to the afterlife, where the spirits of a snarling werewolf and an irate witch, willingly given over to the Black madness from her grief, were waiting.
As for Harry, the entire world seemed to speed past him, as white replaced everything as the runes were overloaded with the power of such a symbolic sacrifice.
He held his onyx black gun in his left hand as he focused on the one night that he had longed for so long to set right.
"Lily! Take Harry and run!" echoed in the pure white expanse before the dark night of Halloween of '81 bled through, appearing almost pure black before his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness.
He raised his gun as his right hand erected a shield in front of James Potter, blocking access to the rest of the house.
He'd make sure that Harry James Potter would grow up loved and cared for. He would make sure that Harry's innocence would never be tainted and scarred to become him, a monster consumed by wrath in the skin of a human.
"Hello Tom Marvolo Riddle. I'm Ira. Goodbye."