Revivescere (Latin): to be reborn
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AS OF 8/26/17 FIRST 4 CHAPTERS HAVE BEEN UPDATED. Over 4500 words have been added in total. PLEASE reread if you read the story before that!
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The night that Voldemort cast the killing curse at little Harry Potter, things really didn't go to plan. Not for Voldemort, nor for Harry's parents, nor for the spirit of Rose Paterson that just so happened to be floating by. However, for the god of prophecy, for Faunus, things went exactly according to plan.
You see when the killing curse somehow, miraculously rebounded off of Harry and returned to kill Voldemort, it was not Voldemort's spirit that was irreversibly changed, it was Harry's. Lilly Potter was not the first person to die for a loved one, and she would not be the last.
Why then had Harry survived where the others had not? Love did play a role, and so did sacrifice. Lily's choice to save her child, much like any other sacrifice of love, caused the killing curse to backfire and kill the caster, but even still there is no block for that curse, no true protection.
The curse badly damaged little Harry's soul, causing his essence to slowly leak out of his forehead. Compared to the soul being released all at once, the leak was much slower. However, it could and would still kill the victim if the leak was not stopped within an hour. Death was the fate of 99.99% of the people that this happened to.
The reason for this was because, there was really only one way to stop the leak, and no one living new how. To stop the leak another soul had to enter the victim's body and plug the hole. The "helper" soul would have to stay within that body until the victim's soul could create its own block. Then the soul could be removed without the victim dying.
Souls aren't band aids though. You can't just buy a pack at the market and even if you could, souls are active things. They constantly change and affect everything they come into contact with. So even if you could save someone in this fashion, that person would become distinctly different the longer they were in contact with the soul that was helping them. This was the thing that had made Harry Potter different from all previous cases.
In a different universe the last broken piece of Tom Riddle's soul would come too close to the child's essence and be sucked in to stop the leak. Harry's soul would then block off the evil essence of Tom Riddle as best it could, like the immune system sealing off a bit of cancer so that it wouldn't spread. Tom's soul would still affect Harry in different, if moderate ways, but since he was so young and all those that knew him were dead or wouldn't see him again for at least ten years no one would really notice those changes.
Eventually, when the rest of Tom's soul grew near, the little piece inside of Harry would struggle and break the seal around it, causing the mental link between their two minds. When the piece of soul inside of Harry was finally killed, Harry's soul would have already plugged the leak.
However, in this universe things went drastically different in many different ways. The first being that Tom's soul did not stick around to investigate. It left the area as fast as it could, looking for some way back into the living world. It was almost fifty minutes later that the soul of Rose Paterson not so accidentally floated by.
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Rose awakens from a fog to the distinctive wailing of a baby. The sound is radiating out from a small crumbling cottage. For a second she wonders how she has gotten to this place, but the thought is quickly pushed aside as she goes to investigate the sounds.
Sound travels differently on the spirit plane, and for any spirit on this plane it is easy to distinguish between the voice of a spirit and the voice of the living. Spirits sound much like humans do to humans, though the tone and pitch are no longer limited by a physical body and so have a much wider range of possibilities.
For a spirit to hear a living human they must be actively trying to hear them. Like listening for a familiar voice in a crowded airport. It's not impossible, but it can be hard. To Rose the baby's cries are very clearly those of a spirit. She has no way of knowing that the cry she hears is radiating through both worlds.
Though her memories have an odd foggy quality to them that really makes her wonder, she can't seem to focus on them. All she can think about is the baby. Rose has always been a bit of a mother bear, so the fact that all her focus is on a desperately crying baby is not immediately suspicious to her. Even if she has no idea who they are, Rose would always jump up to protect a child.
One day soon though, she will have plenty of time to debate with herself whether the feeling had been her own, or if it had been implanted inside of her. Honestly, she will have more than enough time to debate with herself over many, many things.
As she finally approaches the room that contains the cries of this mystery baby, she feels a rush of anxiety. Suddenly she feels as if time is running out. She ignores the bodies she passes along the way. She ignores the foul feeling of a tainted soul. Her only focus the cries of a baby that are slowly losing strength.
As soon as she sees the small child leaning against the bars of its crib she reached her arms out for him. The crying stops immediately and bright green eyes struggle to focus on her through the tears. A small arm reaches out towards her through the bars of the crib. The arms are visibly shaking, as if the child barely has the strength to reach for her.
She approaches quickly but before she can even touch the child she feels as if she is being sucked through a tube. The world around her twists and distorts, and suddenly everything is different.
Unlike Tom in the other universe, Rose's soul is not evil or malicious. Her soul is caring and motherly. Little Harry's soul is even weaker than it would have been in the other universe, as it has been leaking out his essence for a full fifty-five minutes. All these things combine to create a drastically different outcome. Little Harry's soul reaches out and embraces Rose's with all its strength.
Rose's soul embraces the tremendously weak and trembling soul of little Harry and distinctly feels as its last bits of essences simply melts into hers. Suddenly she can feel her body, a tiny little thing that could most likely only toddle around. She has a vague sense of her bodies memories. A woman with red hair and green eyes that cooed and cuddled her. A man with brown hair and brown eyes that swept her up into the air with a grin.
Those are now her memories and this is now her body, but she doesn't forget that they weren't hers first. She is a bit disorientated, but she knows she had been someone else before. An older woman going to college and working part time.
She doesn't remember how she had died, but she remembers what came afterwards. She knows she has been given a second chance to live, but she mourns the child that has now merged with her. He is not dead, he is a part of her, but he will no longer have the freedom to learn and grow and become someone else, unaffected by who she is and what she knows.
They are one, but once they had been two. In a way it is beautiful. A part of her feels comforted and safe in the knowledge that she will never again be truly alone. She thinks that is the part of her that had cried for over fifty minutes staring at the one who had raised her lying motionless on the floor.
Another part of her feels so extremely guilty that she is alive, when everyone she has ever known or loved is gone. Either dead or in a different world entirely. This part feels guilty that she can remember and mourn the woman lying dead on the ground better then she can remember the other people who had once raised her so many years ago.
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She stared around at her loved ones as they mourned her. Her family and friends all heartbroken to see her gone, but still coming together at her funeral. She knows she should feel something. Disappointed that she cannot continue her life. Sad that she will never be able to embrace her family again. Lonely now that she can no longer talk to her friends.
She doesn't feel any of those things. She feels disconnected from all of them. She knows she will always love them, but now her love feels different. It is there and warm, but not binding and the thought of leaving no longer causes pain. She is free of all of the selfish attachments her love had once contained.
Her family and friends will always exist, weather dead or alive, and she no longer feels a need to be around them. Feels no need to watch as they live their lives without her. So, she leaves. She soon learns it is different for many of the other spirits. She sees them on her travels, even stops and talks to a few.
Some spirits are stuck to a certain place. Either the place they died or a place that was important to them in life. Some follow those they loved in life doing everything they can to help. Others follow around their decedents to see everything they had brought into the world.
It is a very old Native American spirit that finally explains to her what exactly is going on. She has not passed on to the true spirit realm. Her soul was missing something. Whether there was some realization she still needed to have, or some purpose one of the Gods wanted her to fulfill he did not know.
All the spirits she can see are in the same boat as her. They are in an in-between place. This place still has some connection to the living world, and that is why they can still see the people living in it. None of them can reach the true spirit realm until they have found what they are missing.
The Native American man's name is Takoda. His mission is to help others find their way. To guide them through the in-between place. He is guided by the goddess Abone, the goddess of journeys. Takoda teaches Rose many things about the realm they reside in.
The most important thing Takoda teaches Rose is to listen for her guide. All beings, whether alive or dead, have a God or Goddess that resonates with them. Though the connection can be stronger or weaker depending on the person, everyone has a god to guide them. So many simply don't want to listen for them.
Rose continues to wander and listen. Soon she hears it. The voice is deep and masculine. When she listens very closely she can hear things within the voice. The sound of wild beasts playing, trees swaying in the breeze, and crickets chirping in the night. It is the sound of nature.
He does not need to introduce himself. She just knows that he is the God that will guide her. Knows that he is the voice she has felt in her heart her whole life. She has never heard his voice with her ears before, but he had been singing to her soul since the day she was born.
So, when he tells her where to go she follows. There are no words needed, just a feeling, a knowing. She follows the path he sets for her across hills and valleys, straight across the ocean into the heart of London. He guides her through streets, and parks, through buildings and people. He leads her all the way to a transparent veil that sits in the middle of a large office building filled with cubicles.
When he nudges her to step though the veil she does so with no hesitation. On the inside of the veil she can feel him pulling her along, guiding her to the correct exit. Finally, after a long while, she steps out on the other side.
On this side the veil is not transparent. Clearly, from the surrounding chamber, it can be seen and interacted with. Something about this is very familiar, but there is no time to think of how as the presence nudges her forward again.
The voice guides her all the way to the street where she hears the crying and then simply vanished. Her head is finally clear to think strait but all she can focus on is the cry of a young child clearly coming from down the road.
The cry reminds her of her nieces and nephews, reminds her that she has never had children of her own, but has always been so protective of those around her. So, she follows the cry in the hopes of being able to help the child.
Now she is that child. Its memories are her memories and its body is her body. She doesn't know why this has happened, but she knows that the child can never come back on its own, because he is a part of her now. Their souls have mixed and become one, and though she can distinguish whose memories are whose simply by what they contain, they all feel like hers.
There is no part of her essence that feels different, they have blended seamlessly. Like a bit of green paint mixed with an entire bottle of blue paint. Her essence has taken over because it is so much more than his, but his did not go away. They are an entire bottle of turquoise paint. They are one and the same now.
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The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...
Born to those who have thrice defied him,
Born as the seventh month dies...
And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal,
But they will have power the Dark Lord knows not...
Guided by the god of prophecy,
Guided by the love of family...
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be reborn as the tenth month dies...
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515 Words added as of 8/26/17