Pain was the last honest thing I remembered.
Not fear. Not regret. Pain.
The Killing Curse struck me like a verdict spoken by the universe itself, and for a heartbeat, I thought I understood death. I had imagined it often, dissected it in theory, mastered it in practice. I expected annihilation or triumph. Instead, there was agony, sharp and absolute, and then a sudden absence, as if the world had blinked and forgotten to put me back.
I was no longer inside my body.
Below me lay the nursery, or what remained of it. The walls were charred and split, blackened by the backlash of the killing curse. Furniture lay in ruin, reduced to jagged silhouettes. The air still trembled with the aftertaste of magic, faint sparks skittering like dying embers that refused to admit the night had won.
My wand lay near where I had fallen. Broken. Snapped clean through, its core exposed, leaking magic into the floor like blood soaking into earth. A useless thing now. A betrayal in wood and phoenix feather.
And my body—
Gone.
Not fallen. Not lying still. Gone, as though reality itself had rejected the idea of me and swept the remains aside. Dust, perhaps. Less than that. An insult.
I tried to recoil. Tried to breathe. Tried to clench my hands.
There were no hands.
This was not death.
I knew death. I had studied it, bent it, carved pieces from it, and hidden them away like treasures. Death was final, absolute, obedient. This was something else entirely. Incomplete. Unfinished.
I was a wraith. A remnant. A thought that had refused to stop thinking.
No flesh bound me. No heartbeat anchored me. I existed as awareness alone, stretched thin and sharp, held together by habit, by rage, and by an iron refusal to accept an ending I had not chosen.
Then I felt it.
The pull.
A hollow gnawing deep within whatever passed for my core, an ache that was not pain but need. A compulsion born not of instinct but of necessity. I could not remain. Something in me knew that with dreadful certainty.
Leave.
The command was silent yet absolute, echoing through me like a law older than spells. Alongside it came urges I despised, impulses I had never needed before. The desire to flee. To hide. To crawl back to my ancestral refuge, to the shadows of Gaunt Manor, to rest and gather strength like a wounded predator licking its wounds.
To wait.
To return one day and set the wizarding world ablaze correctly.
I drifted backward through the ruined house, passing through scorched beams and shattered stone as though they were fog. I would not remain in that room. I refused to linger where my failure had taken shape.
The child.
Harry Potter.
He still lived.
That truth should have ignited fury bright enough to tear what remained of me apart. The plan had been flawless. The prophecy answered. The world corrected.
Instead, something colder slipped in.
Confusion.
The curse had failed. Avada Kedavra did not fail. It did not glance, did not bend, did not rebound. It blasted through shields, through flesh, through souls. It was final. Obedient.
Yet it had turned on me.
Magic was not supposed to behave that way. Power answered knowledge and will. I had both in abundance. Something had interfered, something ancient and crude and impossibly effective.
I reached for the thought, determined to dissect it, to peel it apart and name the error.
Then the air shifted.
A sharp crack split the silence, the unmistakable sound of Apparition within the house. My awareness snapped toward it instantly, every fragment of me coiling tight. Who would dare come here? Who would arrive so quickly?
The answer stepped out of thin air amid the wreckage.
Albus Dumbledore.
He stood among the ruins as though he belonged there, robes settling, blue eyes already sweeping the devastation with that infuriating calm, that patient intelligence I had despised since boyhood. He could not see me. I knew that at once. His gaze passed through my position without pause, blind to what I had become.
Hatred flared, hot and familiar, a comforting thing in my diminished state.
I drifted closer, instinctively trying to conceal myself, though I realized immediately how futile that was. He could not see me.
I was beneath notice.
"Too late," Dumbledore murmured softly, his voice carrying the tone of a kindly grandfather lamenting a broken toy. "Always too late."
He stepped forward, carefully navigating the rubble, and his gaze fell upon James Potter's broken body slumped against the wall.
Something inside me twisted.
James Potter lived. Bleeding, broken, but alive.
Dumbledore sighed.
"What a tragedy," he said. "Such wasted potential. You always were such a disappointment, Tom."
My fury flared, but I remained frozen, watching.
"Leaving such a sloppy job behind," Dumbledore continued, almost conversationally. "How much more do I have to do for you to actually kill those I need dead?"
He lifted his wand.
Elder wood. Thestral hair. I recognized it instantly.
My non-existent breath caught.
"No," I whispered, though no sound left me.
Dumbledore's wand moved with horrifying efficiency. A sharp downward cut, followed by a precise twist of the wrist, the motion is economical and practiced beyond reason.
"Diffindo."
An invisible blade tore through James Potter's throat in a single, brutal arc. Blood sprayed across the wall in a crimson fan, his body jerking once before going utterly still.
Dead.
I stared in disbelief.
"I do hate having to get my own hands dirty," Dumbledore said quietly, lowering his wand, "It is unfortunate. But necessary."
Necessary.
I felt something inside me crack.
He adjusted his sleeves, dusting off a fleck of ash, then began to ascend the stairs.
No hesitation.
No urgency.
As though this were simply another move in a long-planned game.
I followed.
The nursery came into view once more. Lily Potter lay unconscious on the floor, her magic still clinging weakly to her body, instinctively shielding her child.
Dumbledore paused at the doorway.
"Oh, Lily," he said softly. "You were always an inconvenience, if only I had more use for you."
His wand snapped upward.
The motion was cruelly elegant. A tight spiral of movement, drawing magic inward before releasing it in a focused burst.
"Avada Kedavra."
Green light flashed.
Lily Potter had died at the hands of her own Professor.
Dumbledore stepped over her corpse and leaned over the crib. Harry Potter stared up at him, eyes wide, scar faintly visible on his forehead.
"Well," Dumbledore murmured, "you are going to complicate things, though I could always use a new pawn."
He reached down and lifted the child effortlessly, cradling him as one might carry a fragile artifact.
"Come along, my boy," he said gently. "Your destiny awaits."
He turned and left the room.
Rage, unlike anything I had ever known, flooded me. This was not hatred born of rivalry or wounded pride. This was something more profound, purer.
Betrayal.
Manipulation.
I had been a pawn.
The Dark Lord.
The monster.
The distraction.
Dumbledore descended the stairs, pausing only briefly before flicking his wand in a broad, sweeping arc.
"Incendio Maxima."
Fire erupted everywhere at once.
Infernos that tore through the house in seconds. Walls collapsed. Beams exploded. The structure gave way in a roaring detonation that shook the earth itself.
The house vanished in a storm of fire and debris.
I barely registered it.
I followed Dumbledore as he Apparated away, the world twisting violently around us.
Godric's Hollow reformed around us just in time for another crack of Apparition.
Sirius Black.
He arrived wild-eyed, hair disheveled, magic flaring chaotically around him. He took in the ruins, the fire, the absence of life, and let out a sound that was not quite human.
"NO!"
He dropped to his knees, clawing at the ground, screaming James's name, Lily's name. His grief was raw, unfiltered, and dangerous.
"I'll kill him," Sirius snarled. "I'll kill the rat. I'll tear him apart—"
Dumbledore did nothing.
He watched calmly, holding the child, eyes distant.
Sirius vanished in a crack of displaced air, fury propelling him forward.
Then Minerva McGonagall arrived.
Then Hagrid.
Dumbledore spoke softly to them, his voice once more warm, sorrowful, and concerned. He placed the child into Hagrid's arms with a grave nod.
"Take him," Dumbledore said. "I shall give you the address when I have everything ready."
They departed.
And then I was alone.
Alone with the truth.
The wizarding world's great protector.
The kindly headmaster.
The architect.
I wanted to destroy him.
I could feel so much anger at the thought of how long he has been manipulating my life, how long I have been a puppet.
"Do you see now," A female voice spoke in my head, "The true Dark Lord has never worn black robes or called himself such. He hides behind twinkling eyes and gentle words. And he has shaped you from the beginning."
I clutched my head, as if it could not handle the ton
"Who are you?" I demanded, though I knew deep down that I already knew.
"I am the origin of all magic, the one who created the magical races," she said. "And I am here to offer you an accord."