Title: Shards of Merlin
Parings: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy, Ron Weasley/Hermione Granger, Ginny Weasley/Zacharias Smith, Pansy Parkinson/Blaise Zabini, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Malfoy, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley (past).
Warnings: OOC-ness in regards to smart and powerful Harry, violence, sexual content (not very graphic), same sex relationships, cursing, torture.
Full Summary: Andy Tonks has died, Harry Potter, after a decade away, returns to England to assume custody of his godson. Just as he returns, a vengeful and powerful Unspeakable manages reunite an ancient power of Merlin in a bid to conquer the World. When he is tasked to defeat this man, Harry finds himself on another trek to save the world. Can he defeat evil again while dealing with a child and a snarky blonde? SmartandPowerfulHarry! EWE, Post-Hogwarts, slash.
Notes: This whole concept is not new, but this take on it is my version of it. I have tried my best adhere to the HP lexicon, but I might get somethings wrong from time to time, so forgive me that. This also has slash and an OOC-Harry in terms of his power, mentality and brains, so if that's a problem, leave now, alright? Enjoy!
Prologue
Thomas Hall was a tortured genius.
All those years ago, his hopes for the future were bright and he could see the entire world in the palm of his hand. Born to the sweet muggle couple of Mr. Randall Hall and Mrs. Katherine Hall, young Thomas was given all the love, care and encouragement that loving parents could bestow upon their child. Academically gift from the moment he entered school, Thomas excelled. With a ravenous hunger, he assimilated knowledge beyond his age, quickly earning the reputation as the smartest boy in his town, and becoming the target of those, in his opinion, were intellectually inferior. With knowledge as his grounding point, Thomas threw himself into his studies, wanting to leave his cruel bullies and his home town behind, go to university, earn his degrees and never have to suffer any fool again.
However, all of those carefully crafted plans were derailed on the morning of his eleventh birthday. He admitted to himself that he couldn't have possibly accounted for the presence of magic of all things in his blood, but when that owl delivered that letter, he carefully set about to rearrange his entire life. He was not going to deny his newly found culture and birthright – he finally had something above all of the nasty little children that he went to school with. Finally! He would be able to escape and he'd never have to see them again!
That first trip to Diagon Alley – to Flourish and Blotts in particular, had awoken his mind to all of the possibilities of this new world, and suddenly abandoning his plans for his future in the muggle world didn't seem as painful. Werewolves, Centaurs, Giants, Goblins, Elves, potions and charms, there was so much to learn and he knew that his life would only be good after this. He was right about that presumption – he excelled at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In fact, he became the most academically gifted student to walk it's halls in a decade, a fact that he boasted to his parents about every summer and winter.
Being sorted in Ravenclaw House, naturally, his seven years at Hogwarts were peaceful and some of the best years of his life. True, he did not have many friends, but the friends that he did have were his fellow "bookworms" and "nerds" – and he couldn't have been happier.
For the most part, people left him alone and it allowed his genius to bloom.
When he took the O.W.L. exams in his fifth year and his N.E.W.T exams in his seventh year, he scored outstanding marks down the board and became one of the few students in the history of both Hogwarts and the exams themselves to do so. It seemed that even in the Magical World, he was destined for great things – and he was, at least he thought at first.
Almost immediately after the return and certification of his N.E.W.T exams, he was immediately offered a position within the Department of Mysteries. He became the youngest member of the department ever and the youngest inductee of the Unspeakables ever. When he joined one of, if not the, most secretive organization in the Wizarding World, he felt that the sky was the limit, and that he was going to be able to study the secrets of time, of death, of love and of reality itself. But that had been a pipe dream to say the very least.
He was immediately stationed in the archives.
Not that the assignment in itself was awful, the literature it provided was fascinating, but it was the way in which the assignment was given.
It was given to him like the treatment his childhood bullies gave him.
It was given to him like the moniker of "bookworm" was given to him at Hogwarts.
And he found all so… rage inducing.
How dare they? He had risen to heights at a pace that no one had ever had ever gone before! Not Albus Dumbledore! Not Lord Voldemort! Not Gellert Grindelwald! Not Hermione Weasley and certainly not the legendary Harry bloody Potter. He was the smartest mind in the Wizarding World today! He was where he belonged in his opinion, but he was not at the place he wanted to be. He wanted to be studying the Veil, or to care for the Hall of Prophecy or to work with the Time Turners – he did not want to be down in the bowls of the department libraries. But his time would come, he would show them, he'd show all of them.
Tightly grasping his light wand in one hand, and carefully keeping his other hand behind his back, he strolled down to the darkened walkway, being sure to peer down each aisle. Two weeks ago, an accident in the upper levels of the department destroyed a portion of the magical barriers around the archives and it caused a nasty Ghoul problem. He'd been dealing with them ever since then, having killed three of them and incapacitated dozens.
Aiming his wand carefully at the dark center of the next aisle he came upon, he extended his hand and another ball of light slowly separated from his wand and began to drift down the rows of ancient books. When the noise of the exposed Ghoul hit his ear, he smirked.
The only silver lining in the Ghoul problem was that he could vent his rage.
Aiming his wand at the foul creature that stood at the end of the aisle, attempting to intimidate him, he summoned up the rage and anger that he'd been coveting for years now and opened his mouth. The first time he'd ever cast this curse on that first Ghoul last week, he'd been so nervous that he wasn't sure he'd be able to cast it – but the very fact that his supervisors were demanding that him and him alone deal with this had bolstered him.
"Avada Kedavra!" Thomas bellowed as the green jet of light left his wand.
Feeling immense satisfaction as the light struck the creature in the chest and caused him to fall over, irrevocably and completely dead – he stood there and basked in the feeling. He was an Unspeakable! He had power and knowledge that most witches and wizards couldn't fathom and if anyone had the right to use the Unforgivable curses, it was him and his peers.
So what if he pictured his supervisor and the Director of the department when he cast it?
So what?
As he regained his calm and reestablished the light at the tip of his wand, he turned on his heels to leave the aisle. However, his steps and his usually lighting fast thinking came to halt as a soft, faint voice came to his ear. Looking around and brandishing his wand for a fight, he snapped his head back, looked back at the dead Ghoul and paused. It was just a hallucination, he may be needed to take some time off and get out of this horrid dungeon.
And when he lowered his wand from its attack position, he heard the voice again.
"Thomas…"
The whisper chilled him – the voice, a faint, but distinctively terrifying and hoarse, could probably cast a chill over the toughest of Auror. Thomas whipped his hand behind him, completely sure that he had heard the voice from behind him.
"Thomas…"
The voice seemed to grow in intensity as he slowly stepped down the aisle.
And then it happened, his eyes fell upon a book, a book on the third shelf from the floor – a blood red book and all of his thoughts seemed to be bent on it. Lowering the wand as he stepped closer to the book – he noted, with fasciation, that the voice seemed to grow louder and in addition to his name, seemed to compel him to pick up the book.
Lowering his wand completely, he used his freehand to pull the somewhat heavy tome from the shelf and blow the layer of dust off of the cover with the deep breath.
Curious, most curious.
The elaborate title on the cover indicated that book was related to Merlin.
In Old English and Latin, the title roughly said that the book was on the 'Orb of Merlin' – and as he held his wand to the very bottom of the cover, he noticed the inscription in small Latin letters. The book was magically sealed with a blood sacrifice and could only be opened with one.
Looking up to where the deal Ghoul lay in the dark, Thomas smiled.
Interesting.
