Unknown Prophecy (Ch. 1) (Patreon)

Unknown Prophecy

Chapter 1

Limping down the decrepit hallway, Harry pushed open an old, oak door that looked to have once been painted white. The color had long since been stained and most of the paint had chipped away, leaving only bare wood showing. As the door opened, an unpleasant squeal of door hinges that needed to be oiled made his skin crawl.

Standing in front of the toilet, he groaned as he relieved himself. Once done, he flushed the toilet and turned to the left. As always, his eyes immediately landed on the dirty mirror situated above the equally dirty sink. He instantly flinched away from what he saw. That had always been the reaction when first laying eyes on his reflection. His parting gift from the Order of the Phoenix was hard to miss after all. Turning his head slightly, he examined the damage. Half of his face was brutally scarred from a massive burn that had taken half a head of hair and his left eye. The scorched skin sank beneath his shirt and he knew that it didn’t end until it reached his hip. His left arm, or rather what was left of it, ended in a stump right above where his elbow should have been.

Upon seeing his reflection, it always brought back memories. He remembered his last encounter with Dumbledore and his band of cronies. He remembered the pain as the flames licked his skin and set his hair and clothing alight. He remembered waking up only to find himself being buried alive, unable to move as his body went into shock while dirt was dropped down on him. After that, he remembered nothing. He wasn’t even sure how long he spent in that shallow grave out in the middle of some unnamed forest. Digging himself out was difficult with only one arm, and the pain was unimaginable. Harry couldn’t remember how long he crawled around that dark forest, surviving on puddle water until his magic healed him enough to be able to Apparate away.

The years following his betrayal were hard. His body was completely wrecked, and Harry knew that he couldn’t let himself be discovered alive. Dumbledore would surely come back to finish the job. All he could do was lay low and fester in the anger and hatred that was brewing within him. Many times he thought back to his and Dumbledore’s last meeting after Harry defeated Voldemort.

“I’m proud of you for fulfilling the prophecy made so long ago, my boy,” Dumbledore said as he stared over the seaside cliffs and out into the endless ocean. “Unfortunately, there was another …” he said over the distant crashing of waves. “It tells of you becoming the next Dark Lord …” Dumbledore said, pulling his wand and turning to face him.

“As you can see, we came to an agreement,” Dumbledore said as Harry stood there shocked. Pops of Apparation cracked through the air as the Order of the Phoenix appeared all around them. He must have seen the look of betrayal on Harry’s face because he went on.

“I’m sorry, Harry, but we cannot risk it,” Dumbledore shook his head.

“How long?” Harry asked, resigned to his fate as Anti-Apparation wards were quickly tossed up while he was still in shock. At Dumbledore’s confused look, Harry asked again. “How long have you all been working against me?”

A look of embarrassment was evident on the old man’s face as he answered. “Since the beginning, I’m afraid.” Harry looked around him and saw some blank faces, but there were others that refused to meet his eyes. The shame they displayed was clear as day, but he wasn’t sure if they actually felt it or if they were just embarrassed at being called out. “As distasteful as I find our behavior, it’s necessary for everyone to live a long and happy life.”

“And my life?” Harry asked, suddenly getting very angry. Dumbledore didn’t respond. No one did. “For the Greater Good?”

The squawking of seagulls was the only sound as they all stood there. Then, as quick as a flash, Harry whipped out his wand and swung it around his head. A whip of fire spun in a circle, and he heard several pained cries before a volley of spells was shot at him. Try as he might, there were too many and from too many different directions for him to fully block. It wasn’t long before he found himself lying in his own grave, barely breathing as dirt covered him.

Over the years, Harry did his best to keep track of his former friends and allies but found it difficult due to his need to stay hidden. From what he knew, none of them lived particularly successful lives … but at least they had lives worth living. Harry’s was taken away from him. When he discovered that Ron and Hermione married, for some reason that really set him off. He wasn’t in love with his former female friend by any means. It was more over the fact that they had bonded over his betrayal and apparent murder. It was then that he swore revenge.

But what kind of revenge could he inflict on them? He was a half-charred, armless cripple. It took him many sleepless nights to come up with even a bare-bones hint of a plan. It wasn’t something that could be put into action right away. It would take many years of studying and planning. Hidden away from the world, the one thing he had plenty of was time, so he got to work. The first step was to leave the country.

Harry moved as far away from England’s magical community as possible. While he could have moved farther away, Harry still wanted to remain in Europe which was the heart of modern magical theory. All the best spell books and such were produced in Europe and knowledge was what he needed. As such he moved to northern Norway so he could be near another magical school … Durmstrang.

That area of the continent was well known for the use of the Dark Arts, and now that Harry had tasted betrayal firsthand, he didn’t mind one bit. He had always taken the high road. Harry had always been the nice guy and what did it get him? Absolutely nothing, that’s what. He had no friends, no money, and a half-destroyed body that was a constant source of aches and pains. Harry didn’t give a damn about anyone using the Dark Arts. In fact, Harry jumped headfirst into the hundreds of tomes that he had been able to get his hands on. He couldn’t exactly be Mister Nice Guy anymore after all. Paying for the knowledge, along with food, clothes, and other supplies cost money … Money he didn’t have. Stealing food, money, and gold from muggles didn’t exactly make him feel great, but he did his best to put it from his mind. He only stole from the rich, and he needed it way more than they did. The food and muggle money kept him fed and clothed. The muggle gold was traded into a nearby bank, which was technically illegal. The bankers were more than happy to look the other way and convert it into the local magical currency … for an extra fee, of course. With his basic needs taken care of, Harry dove straight into learning about everything that he could possibly need for his plan to come to fruition … if it could even be accomplished in the first place.

As several more years passed, Harry rarely left the area, preferring to stay in Norway, Sweden, or Finland which were all well out of sight of Dumbledore and his crew. Harry eventually gained enough magical knowledge and skill that he was able to cast a Fidelius Charm on an old, abandoned house, which he made his. By his early twenties, he had finally gained enough knowledge that he was confident in his opinion that his hair-brained scheme might actually work. All of it depended on time travel … time travel into the past to be specific. His plan, at its core, was simple. Go back in time and make all of them pay. Unfortunately, accomplishing such a feat was easier said than done. The whole “time travel” part of it wasn’t going to be easy. His first thought was obviously Time-Turners. It was no surprise that they wouldn’t be able to go back that far. Harry never expected them to. Besides, the use of Time-Turners was dangerous if not used properly, and Harry intended on creating more than a little chaos. They wouldn’t be good for his plans. Even so, he studied them extensively. He even got a broken one to study. That was a bit of luck on his part because studying the Time Sand within was the true key to making his plan a reality.

For his plan to work, he couldn’t send himself back, not that he wanted to anyway. His body was too far gone and might not even survive the stress of going back that far. No, for it to work, he needed to send his soul back. That was the second difficult part of his whole scheme. Day after day, year after year, Harry studied every piece of literature on soul magic that he could possibly get. During that time, he kept track of what was going on in the magical world, just in case he found something useful. A Dark Lord eventually popped up in Russia. Harry scoffed at the whole mislabeling of the term Dark Lord. Over the years, he came to realize that the term could simply mean a person that rules through the use of dark magic. It was only a handful of maniacs like Grindelwald and Voldemort who changed the definition in other people’s eyes. Harry too once thought as they did. Now he didn’t give a fuck one way or another. Dumbledore tried to kill him, thinking that he was stopping a Dark Lord before he could even begin. Instead, he turned the whole thing into a self-fulfilling prophecy, just as Voldemort had done with Harry so many years ago. Harry would have found the whole thing hilarious … if he hadn’t been fucked over both times. Now Harry was truly on the path to becoming what Dumbledore feared

No one paid much attention to this new Dark Lord at first until the mass killings began. It was then that they began to take him seriously. Harry gathered as much knowledge about the man as he could, but stayed clear. He didn’t care what the man did, as long as it didn’t affect him. Instead, Harry remained in his hidey-hole, studying up and practicing his magic. For ten more years Harry hid away from the world as the Dark Lord grew in power. It wasn’t until Harry began seeing the same signs in this new Dark Lord as he did in Voldemort that his attention was truly captured. His research into soul magic had gone as far as he could take it. Harry couldn’t find any more books or people willing to teach him anything, but as he saw this Dark Lord slip into insanity, Harry began to think that he may have made himself a Horcrux. If this was true, then Harry desperately wanted to pick his brain. Harry quickly made plans to visit Russia.

As it turned out, it was almost laughable that anyone would call this man a Dark Lord. He certainly would never hold a candle to someone like Voldemort. While this new guy was definitely a formidable fighter and had a natural talent for casting, he wasn’t the genius that Tom Riddle had been. In fact, in that regard, he was almost the exact opposite of Voldemort. While Voldemort made contingencies and had been very paranoid when it came to his security, the new guy strutted around, basking in the feeling of superiority. There were even times when he walked around without any of his followers guarding his back. It was on one of these occasions that Harry hit him fast and hard from behind, knocking him out, and Portkeying away with his unconscious body in tow.

Harry brought him back to Norway to a small house that he had prepared for the occasion. He quickly locked him away in a cell with Anti-Apparation and Anti-Portkey wards laced all around the room. With the added Fidelius Charm, none of his followers would be finding the man any time soon. As an added precaution, Harry kept him unconscious when he wasn’t needed.

He was just as cocky as Harry expected him to be, but after a few Cruciatus Curses, the man’s will completely crumbled. Shaking his head at the sorry state of Dark Lord culture, he forced the man to spill the beans about everything. As it turned out, the man did make a Horcrux. After finding out where it was hidden, Harry brought it back home and began studying it. While he was out, he ransacked all of the Dark Lord’s secret stashes of books and valuables.

With the vast amount of treasures that Harry took from the Dark Lord, he finally decided to go out into the broader world to learn from a few masters. Needless to say, their lessons didn’t come cheap. Most of his lessons were focused on rituals and runes, as they would play a huge role in his future plans. It was during this time that he discovered more about what his former friends had been doing. Over the years, they had been singing his praises to the media as everyone wondered what had happened to him. They, of course, never said a word about what they did to him. It was a shame. Harry had so many questions that hadn’t been answered. When exactly did Dumbledore turn Ron and Hermione? Why didn’t they make sure that he was dead when they started to bury him? Harry had a guess about that one. He assumed that they actually did check, but during his studies into medical magic, Harry learned that his magic most likely jump-started his heart and began slowly healing him. He was just lucky that the one burying him never noticed his very shallow breathing.

His dear friends went on to have children and somewhat happy lives. He even discovered that Ron was the one to get his Invisibility Cloak, broom, and map which he eventually passed down to his son as a “Weasley family heirloom”. His Gringotts vault, which wasn’t a vast wealth by any means, was “donated” to the Order of the Phoenix. What happened to it after that was anyone’s guess. It did make Harry smile when he saw a picture of Bill and Fleur Weasley in a copy of the Daily Prophet which he had subscribed to on mail order. Fleur’s lovely face had a serious scar from the fire whip that he had swung right before his attack. While not nearly as bad as his burn, it did severely detract from her beauty. He promised that she would suffer far more once he got his hands on her. With every piece of good news regarding any of his betrayers, Harry’s hatred grew even more until he was absolutely certain that he would be able and willing to strangle any one of them with his bare hands.

Time seemed to creep slowly, while at other times, it flew by at a rapid pace. Before he knew it, another decade had passed him by. The good news was that by then, he was skilled enough to finally put his plans into action. He had created multiple complicated rituals and memorized every detail of them. The bad news was that he needed to complete his journey soon. His severe injuries had sapped him of his strength and his life was beginning to fade. As sad as that sounded, it was actually a blessing. The ritual would work even better if he was weak and close to death.

Turning away from the mirror, he sighed and waved his wand. A silvery mist ejected from the tip and formed a glowing silver arm that attached to the stump. He left the room and went downstairs into the basement where everything was waiting. The room had been stripped clean down to bare concrete on the ground. In a seven by seven foot square, a complicated and intricate ritual circle had been drawn using something that he himself had created. Instead of chalk, Harry had used special potions to make dragon bone chalky enough to use in its place. The results were far superior when using bone. Harry just had to make sure to adjust any ritual where he used the chalk instead.

Laying in the middle of the circle was the nude body of a certain Dark Lord. The ritual, while the results weren’t dark, the execution certainly was. It required a blood sacrifice and not just any blood, but living blood that was deeply enriched with magic. There were very few creatures that would work. A dragon was too large and there was no way he’d kill a unicorn. Besides, he had a perfectly good Dark Lord just sitting there doing nothing.

Harry grabbed a medium-sized glass flask and held it up to the light. Inside were the creamy brown granules of Time Sand that would ultimately act as the ritual's catalyst. Pulling the glass stopper from the top, he slowly and carefully poured the sand in all the right places. When that was all set, he put the bottle aside and went back to work. Harry was careful not to damage the circle in any way. The entire thing was crisscrossed with hundreds of runes that had been painstakingly drawn by hand. The circle had taken him almost three full days just to get it right.

With nothing left to do, Harry stripped down completely. With a wave of his wand, his glowing ghost of an arm disappeared into vapor. Tossing everything, including his wand out of the room, Harry stalked back into the circle with a ritual knife in hand. Standing in the correct spot, he began chanting.

“Hoc sanguine rursus incipio,” he called out loudly and clearly. Then with a quick movement, he slit the Dark Lord’s throat. He didn’t even move as his neck opened up and began to leak blood into the circle. Almost instantly, the bone chalk started absorbing the blood, turning from white to pink, then to a deep red. When the lines began glowing bright, Harry watched as the corpse of the former Dark Lord withered and turned to dust as his body and blood were used to power the ritual. With his Horcrux destroyed, there was nothing left that was tethering him to life. It was time to continue.

What very few would ever guess was that the murder of this man also served another purpose. Just as Voldemort and this new Dark Lord had done, Harry used the Horcrux ritual as part of his own. It was extremely difficult or potentially impossible to send his entire soul back in time, but thankfully, it wasn’t needed. In the past, Harry’s soul was perfect and whole. All future Harry needed was to send back a sliver that contained his memories and experiences of the future. The first part of the Horcrux ritual would take care of that, which was why he incorporated it into the main ritual. As his soul fractured, the broken piece would be sent back in time and immediately be melded into that of his younger self. If everything worked as planned, it wouldn’t be the only soul being melded into young Harry’s. Why waste a perfectly good soul shard with all that knowledge after all?

“Hoc sacrificium fiat, ut incipiat confractus. Et facti sunt in praeteritum praesens,” Harry finished his chant and waited. It was only a few seconds until Harry screamed and grabbed his chest. The pain was unimaginable. It felt as though the hottest fire had ripped through his chest. Collapsing to his knees while clutching his chest with his only remaining hand, Harry’s vision became blurred as the entire circle turned into a pillar of light. The runes on the floor began to burn red and suddenly levitated. Harry was barely conscious as the runes began to swirl around him as though they were all trapped in a tornado made of pure energy. It was only for a split second that he thought that he may have gone too far with his revenge plot. That thought ended when he opened his eyes and saw the spider-filled ceiling of his cupboard before his forehead felt as though it had split open.