all the devils are here
"Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood."
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
.o.
They say that when Ron Weasley was born, the moon turned red. They say the world shook, that it rained blood, that every general checked their armory, a powerful urge to see that it was fully stocked, to see that they were prepared, overwhelming them.
(they say War has come)
They say when Hermione Granger is born hungry. "She'll be ready to take on the world," they joke about the girl who makes a fuss about waiting– they joke until the girl stares at them, her eyes hungry and dark.
They say if you stare into them for too long you'll start to feel the hunger too. They say she once made a man chew on his own arm and that the man didn't even blink at the taste of his own flesh, that he just kept eating.
(they say Famine has come)
They say things rot around Neville Longbottom, that people get sick for no other reason that their closeness to him, that animals and plants die around the boy if he so wills it.
They say he is weak – his body sick, his magic a mere wisp of a thing, but they also say that he drinks poison like it's milk and feels nothing.
(they say Pestilence has come)
They say Luna Lovegood is mad, that she's not of this world, that when she stares at you with her too big eyes she sees right into your soul.
Thy say she can kill you with a touch, that she sees things that no longer there.
(they say Death is here)
They say the Antichrist walks the Earth in the body of a savior, wearing pale skin like it's a suit, dark hair like it's a crown and eyes as green as emeralds. They say if you speak to him for too long he'll take your soul right down to Hell.
(they say the End is here)
.i(harry).
Harry knows he is different.
He knows it not in the way his parents used to think their son merely a very gifted boy, or in the way the Dursleys seem to be so sure that Harry is unnatural, a burden inflicted upon them by someone they couldn't say no to, but in the way children sometimes just know that nobody else can do what they can.
He thinks he always did. It's in the way he's apart from everyone else, the way every new person he meets edges away from him almost imperceptibly, in the way he can just feel that he is more than all of them, that feeling like a ghostly weight resting at the back of his mind he can't quite ever truly shake.
He sees things, hear things he knows the so-called normal people don't.
He sees light sometimes, where people should be – a beautiful, warm light pulsing in unison with a rhythm that resonates with something deep inside him, some place he can't name yet.
He hears notes in his head, an eery musical constant to his life . They never quite fit with anything he finds on the radio or on the Dursleys' old records, but they sound too perfect to have been made by anything human anyway.
(in his mind, he calls it the music of the universe, and he lets it lull him to sleep every night)
Sometimes though, and more and more often as the years go, he hears discordant sounds. They always happen when he meets the Others.
The Others – that's what he calls the people he see sometimes, those who seem to possess a great, oozing darkness where the shining comforting light usually is. They radiate cold and fear instead of warmth, and Harry is quite sure he should be terrified of them.
He can't be though. They're actually his favorite people. They're nice to him, and never afraid to get close to him the way everyone else seems to be, giving him smiles full of teeth and bringing misery to the family who hates him.
(of course, he can never tracks anything back to them. He just knows that when Dudley chases him until he ends up on the roof and the next day Dudley breaks his arm tripping on trash, Harry sees a stranger smiling at him in the darkness, lifting a finger to lips that are parted just enough to reveal unnaturally sharp teeth)
And then there are the dreams – nightmares, really, full of blood and screams, death and decay surrounding him until he feels like he's choking on it, standing atop a mountain of corpses, minds effervescent in victory, four shadowy figures at his back, the world a grotesque shrine devoted to them.
He always wakes up before he can turn around, before he can see faces, but something in him whispers 'soon' and so he waits.
(and then a letter comes, promising to introduce him to a whole new world, and the voice purrs)
(he smiles, and it looks inhumanly beautiful)
.ii.
Most wizards don't see him, or at least not the way the Muggles always seemed to.
They don't recoil from him, and there is no unexplainable fear in their eyes. In fact, it seems to be the opposite. Here, in this world, Harry is a hero.
Part of him wants to hate it, hate them. Look at them, his mind seems to whisper, those petty little humans, see how worthless they are.
But then another, bigger part of him wants to revel in it. This, it feels like, is how things are meant to be. These people already admire and love him – just thinking about how little it would take to turn them loyal is enough to make him shiver in something awfully close to delight.
They don't feel as right as his Others, or the people from his dreams – in fact, they're not that different from the Muggles they claim to be so distanced from to his eyes – but that's no matter.
He has a feeling that it's not their role in this story.
One wizard seems to notice something different about him though. Ollivander takes one look at him, blanches, and comes back with a wand he says is the brother wand of Voldemort's, the man who killed his parents and terrorized Wizarding Britain a decade ago.
(the wand thrums beneath his fingers, and Harry smiles – a quiet, inhuman smile – knowing that no one will ever be able to take this wand from him)
The goblins too, shift uneasily when Harry walks within their walls. They eye him with something close to dread. He spots more than one of them doing what seems to be whatever equivalent of praying to God and crossing themselves goblins have.
Not that it'll do them any good. The Dursleys tried that too at first. They even brought in a holy man once, who was supposed to exorcise him.
The priest did his ritual, probably convinced by the Dursleys that Harry was indeed a devilish child, and maybe he was, but maybe he wasn't.
Whatever he was (not just a wizard, his instincts whispered) he wasn't affected by that exorcism. Harry went along with it though – the priest made him uneasy, and Harry certainly didn't want to see him again.
He laughed a long time, that night.
.iii.
He finds them before they even reach Hogwarts.
Ron, Hermione and Neville, they are called.
Harry sees them, and knows they are like him, that they are something else, that they are more than the humans they walk among.
It feels like waking up, like falling in reverse. Their eyes cross and suddenly all those little instances in their lives that never seemed to quite make sense did.
It's like until then their lives had been a painting where the artist had only had access to half the colors, and now he finally had the full palette.
"It's time, isn't it," Hermione states.
"Yes, it is," Ron answers her as he processes to destroy them at Exploding Snap.
Harry leaves them to it after a couple of games, and settles with his back to the door, smiling at his new (old) friends.
(there is no one here to think his smile unnatural)
The trip is quiet but for one visit from the boy Harry had met while shopping. The blonde kid opens the door, takes one look at the compartments' occupants, shivers, and leaves, still shaken, shutting the door down behind him.
She may think she's being discreet, but even with her face half hidden behind the second book she's devouring, Harry can see Hermione smirk.
"Having fun?" He asks, an eyebrow arched.
"I don't like him," she shrugs. "Though he could be fun to play with I guess," she adds, her tone dispassionate but her eyes glittering with excitement.
"He's a Malfoy, right?" Ron asks, his eyes not moving from the chess board where he's currently engaged in a game against Neville.
"I have no idea," Harry shrugs. "He never said."
"Trust me, with that hair and that attitude, there's no way he's not a Malfoy. This is gonna be fun."
"Do what you want."
The train stops soon after that, and before he knows it, Harry's waiting beside his friends to be Sorted, an old hat singing about unity and home and the Houses they could end up in.
"Which one's the best," he whispers quietly to Ron, who is the closest to him.
Ron looks contemplative for a moment, clearly understanding that Harry is not really asking about the best House, but rather the best House for them.
"Gryffindor," he finally says in a hushed tone.
"The House of the brave," Harry muses aloud, his lips twisted in a slight smirk. "That will do nicely."
(the Hat shivers when it hits Harry's head and Harry can feel its horror, its dread – it almost makes him smile, and not the fake, human-looking one he's been training to master for years now)
("You will Sort me in Gryffindor," Harry says, and the Hat obeys, not even trying to fight it)
.iv.
Gryffindor House is perfect. Its students are blind and petty, and so terribly easily manipulated that it makes Harry wonder how anyone could want to be Sorted elsewhere.
Neville, Ron and he share their dorm with two other boys, while Hermione shares her with two other girls.
To most of the school, Slytherins aside, Harry is some kind of hero for destroying their previous Dark Lord. Cultivating that by showing magical prowess and occasionally helping his fellow students is easy.
Before the year's end, he predicts, he'll have them all persuaded to follow him.
As for those who don't… Well, his Horsemen will need to find people to practice their full gifts on now that they've awakened them, and who better than their enemies?
(by the time anyone realizes what they are, it will be too late for them – too late for the world)
There is only one slight problem, Harry soon realizes when his scar, the place where Voldemort's killing curse supposedly struck, burns him whenever Quirrell looks his way: Voldemort isn't truly dead, and that won't do.
That won't do at all.
It's obvious that Quirrell is possessed – to Harry's sight it's as blatant as if the man had shouted it in the Great Hall at breakfast – and whom other than the disembodied spirit of a Dark Lord could perform the deed?
And well, Harry isn't quite sure what he's about to do with the world yet, but it's his, and he won't let anyone ruin it before he gets the chance.
And so Voldemort has to go.
(besides, Quirrell's turban smells and the headaches are ever so distracting)
(also, the man tried to kill him – and yes, the fall from his broom wouldn't have managed that, but it would have been difficult to explain)
.v.
The presence of a Cerberus has them all missing Death. The dog would have obeyed them more easily than it listened to any of them. Hermione could make it starve until it became too weak to move, yes, and that had allowed them to explore the tunnels underneath, but it had also drove the beast mad with hunger for a little while.
(Hermione had laughed when the beast tore out of his chains, hunting down the castle's students like they were preys, a sound like bells ringing)
(the dog, or Fluffy as they later learned it was called, killed two second years Hufflepuff and injured permanently five students from all Houses before it was put down)
They find nothing at the end of the ridiculously easy obstacle course, but Hermione remembers that the Daily Prophet reported an attempted theft at Gringott's – a theft that happened the day Harry saw Hagrid take something out of a vault while 'on Hogwarts' business'.
From there, it's easy to deduce that the prize they're looking for is the Philosopher's Stone.
They all laugh when they learn what it does – immortality and riches. One they already have, the other they have no need of.
"We should steal it," Ron suggests idly. "Imagine the chaos I could create with endless supplies of gold."
Harry can picture it quite well, and it's enough to send a shiver down his spine. Pleasure or fear – even he isn't sure.
"Unlimited funding? Count me in on that," Neville adds, no doubt thinking about new horrors he could unleash on the world.
Hermione stays silent for a long time – long enough, in fact, that they all turn to her in order to wait for what she has to say.
"It could destroy the world's economic system," she finally says, closing one of her ever-present books with a snap. "You all know what I say to that."
She smirks, opens up her book again, and starts reading. The three boys smile, three eerily beautiful smiles, and go back to their plotting.
.vi.
In the end, Harry faces Voldemort alone. His Horsemen could have accompanied him – a pesky magical fire is hardly going to hold them back – but this, Harry feels, he needs to do alone.
Facing Quirrell, the spirit of his parents' killer stirring oddly inside the man as he rants in front of a mirror that only ever showed Harry images seemingly straight from his dreams about getting the Stone for his master, feels like a first taste of victory.
Allowing himself to be manhandled until he gets the Stone (after all, he never meant to use it) grates on his nerves, but burning Quirrell with his bare hands more than makes up for it.
The spirit escapes though, but not before Harry gets a glimpse of his soul, its light tarnished and almost gone, only a tiny whip of a thing left
(Quirrell's last words are 'What are you?', and they're whispered to the boy standing over him, killing him with dispassionate eyes and a cold, beautiful smirk on his lips)
(Harry never answers, simply wipes his hands against his robe and moves to leave)
The sound of footsteps surprises him. They sound urgent, and everyone who knows about his trip there should know that he can't take care of himself.
A glimpse of outrageously colored robes through the flames is enough for him to understood just who is about to stumble on the very literal scene of the crime, and it takes Harry less than a second to hide the Stone, bending space as is his right in this world that is his, and fall in a dead faint.
Later, after Hermione relates how Dumbledore found her, out of breath and horrified, and questioned her about his whereabouts.
"He just said 'He's gone after him, hasn't he?', and I barely had time to react before he left as quickly as he had arrived," she grumbles, clearly annoyed.
"We should do something about him," Ron adds. "We're already taking on Voldemort, getting rid of the opposite side's leader makes sense."
Harry hums in agreement, happy to let them plot.
"Voldemort split his soul," he states after a while, interrupting what seems like a heated debate on whether a public execution would be better than an accidental death.
Hermione, Neville and Ron turn to him at once, their face horrified. "He what?"
"Yeah," Harry nods. "I saw it. It's not pretty."
"I didn't know wizards could split their souls," Hermione says, a familiar hungry glint in her eyes. "Nothing of my readings ever suggested such a thing," she pouts, sounding revolted at the idea that such knowledge was hidden from her.
"They wouldn't," Neville admits after sharing a look with Ron. "It's not something that's, uhm, discussed in public settings, and I imagine that any mention of it would have been carefully erased from any books here at Hogwarts."
"Then how do you know about it?" She accuses.
"There are mentions of undying Dark wizard throughout History," Ron states. "They're easy to spot if you know where to look," he finishes, a dark smirk on his lips that suggests that he knows exactly where to look.
"We'll help you research," Harry quickly adds, feeling the by-now familiar tug at his feelings coming from Hermione's hunger reaching out around her.
That seems to calm her.
Harry knows something else that will please her though. It takes but a moment to summon the Stone from where he hid it, and present the red jewel-like rock to his friends.
"Is that?" Neville breathes out, carefully taking the Stone in his hands, turning it over and over again before passing it on to the others.
Harry simply smiles, and winks.
.vii.
They don't meet Death until they witness the Sorting of a small blonde girl named Luna Lovegood. Luna walks softly, almost like a ghost, to the Hat, and the Hat shivers, shouting out Ravenclaw as fast as it can.
Luna walks to the table, her eyes big and slightly unfocused, and sits. It's only once she's there that she turns toward the Gryffindor table, smiles, and waves at Harry, Hermione, Neville and Ron.
"It is good to finally see you," Luna greets them with at the end of the feast.
It truly is too. With Luna around, Harry finally feels complete, the final cog in their machine finally in place.
She catches up in their plans quickly, and is the one who finds their solution to the Voldemort problem.
Of course she is – she is Death, and souls are her business.
"He has anchors," she points out when they inform her of his mutilated soul.
"Anchors?" Hermione frowns, eager for new information.
"Yes," Luna hums. "Quite like that diary your sister writes in, in fact," she continues, pointing at Ron, who blinks, surprised to be addressed.
"My sister has one of the… anchors with her?" He yelps.
"Yes," Luna repeats, her tone still just as matter-of-fact as it was earlier.
"What should we do about it?" Hermione interjects, biting the edge of the quill she had just been using to do her homework.
It takes Harry a moment to come up with the perfect solution.
"Well, Voldemort wants to be immortal, doesn't he?"
They get his meaning instantly. "Oh," Luna gasps, her eyes wide, "this is clever."
"More like devious," Ron mumbles, a smile full of teeth dancing on his teeth. "I love it."
.viii.
Finding and gathering Tom Riddle's Horcrux takes them a week, and that's only because getting out of Hogwarts is annoyingly difficult to do, even for beings such as them.
They manage, of course, but it does leave them slightly grumpy. As a result, they are a little harsher on the sentencing that they had originally planned.
On Halloween that year – the day in which, in another universe, a possessed Ginny Weasley would have unknowingly released a Basilisk in the school – all of Voldemort's soul pieces are sealed inside a portrait.
The portrait is silent and unmoving, and it hangs in an unfrequented corridor on the fifth floor of Hogwarts. Only the eyes, dark and angry as they seem to follow the students around, seem to hint at that painting being more than a failed attempt at a magical portrait.
Less than a week later, Dumbledore takes ill. Mediwizards are called from St Mungo's when Mrs. Pomphrey can't manage to find the cause of the illness, but they too remain stumped.
Dumbledore's magic seems to be eating his own body from the inside out, a slow, painful death unlike anything they've ever seen.
Hogwarts closes, the Ministry and St Mungo's fearing the start of an epidemic of such a violent disease they don't know how to treat.
It only reopens a year later, well after the Headmaster's death and once it has been proven that the illness was, apparently, not contagious after all.
When it does, five students are missing: four now third year Gryffindors, and a now second year Ravenclaw.
["So, what did you give him?" Hermione asks Neville on the train back to London.
"One of my creation," Neville replies, an almost kind smile on his lips. "My personal favorite so far too," he adds, and then, at Hermione's prompting, proceeds to explain the gruesome process of the particular virus as it destroys you.
Besides them, Ron contemplates a chessboard with a heavy look on his eyes, and knocks down the white king.
"So, what now?" Hermione finally asks once her curiosity is momentarily sated. "What should we do next?"
They turn to Harry, but Ron is the one to answer. "I think we should step off the board."
"Already?" Harry questions.
"Yes," Ron replies, looking up, his eyes certain. "It's time."]
.ix.
They take down the Muggle world first.
The Stone comes in handy there. Hermione puts it to good use and destroys the world's economy in a single year. Neville unleashes a plague unlike anything the world has ever seen, Ron sows war wherever he goes, and Luna gathers up the souls for Harry's army.
The world falls in less than a decade – the streets run red with blood, the sky turn grey from smoke and ashes, too many new fires being made each day for all of them to ever be put out.
The clouds rain acid now, and once most of the people of this world are either too cowed to revolt or following Harry, the benevolent leader who offered them a cure for the plague, who promised them safe-havens if only they would pledge their lives and souls to him, they re-enter the Wizarding world.
They re-enter it followed by an army made from Harry's Others, the demons who follow his every commands and wishes – some he's known all his life, others newly formed, their grotesque remains of soul still barely recognizable as the ones Luna reaped not so long ago.
The wizards fall even faster than the Muggles did. Most of them join their Muggles counterparts in Harry's 'havens', some enter Harry's armies by force, and a few escape.
(but then, some always do – handfuls of pockets of resistance, scattered around the world, their numbers dwindling down with every passing year)
(soon, none will remain)
.x.
"He's coming," Luna tells him one day. "Your enemy, the one who can take you down. He's coming."
Harry smiles, inhuman and beautiful, and looks down at his city of corpses.
"Let him come – this world is mine, and I will fight for it."
On the other side of the world, in a dark cave, an infant born of a virgin mother takes his first breath.