AN: Hello Everybody. I wrote this story as a sort of hobby to help me relax after a hard day's work of studying sciences, in particular chemistry, and so it is not a serious project as such, but rather a project that parallels the playfulness of a child building sand castles on the seashore, knowing that ultimately it will prove of little effect as the sea razes the structure. In the same way, the sea will drown my story into obscurity, so my main motivation for writing this story is the same motivation of the child building a sandcastle. It is a mixture of playfulness, of idleness, of wonderment at one's own ability to do something, even if that something is of minuscule importance. But much to my annoyance, I am not a child anymore, and I have one more motivation that I should describe, which is avoiding my studies. Yes, I am procrastination itself, and embody the term like a garment worn to tatters.

Anyways enjoy the first chapter and tell me your thoughts with no inhibitions, for I have a thick skin and if you like it, do feel free to encourage, for sandcastles, though they will sooner or later be washed away by the waves of the sea, are for the most part fun to build.

The Lovegood Ritual

Summary: Harry finds himself caught in a trap laid out by Voldemort's last horcrux, and what should have brought him back in time does nothing more than rip his soul apart as he is thrust into a future of anarchy and violence befitting a scene where Voldemort's victory is supreme and sublime.

Chapter One: Where Harry Converses with a Snake

The day was quite warm, and sweat tingled on Harry's brow as he dug the grave for his mentor, Albus Dumbledore. In his waistband he had his holly and pheonix wand safely tucked, and in his pocket he felt the weight of a few galleons and sickles, the last of the Potter fortune.

In his hands he held a shovel he had conjured, and he dug like a muggle, in the courtyard where Hogwarts used to stand tall and proud not ten miles behind him. But that was a long time ago, a time when the Forbidden Forest hadn't been razed to the ground, when explosives tagged on the walls and portraits of Hogwarts hadn't destroyed the ancient school of magic.

The war with Lord Voldemort had cost Harry quite a lot, but in the end, he had triumphed.

Voldemort was dead.

Harry sighed and stopped digging, he was panting hard, and sweat ran down his face like a river. He stood up, deep in the bowel of the grave he was digging, and looked at the clear sky as he recalled the war, every bit and piece of it. He remembered the bloodshed, the pain, the tears of mourning for the deaths of his closest friends, of allies he had never met who died fighting death eaters, going out in a storm of bravery, of thousands of wizards and witches following his banner, his war cry. Resistance!

They marched under his name. They marched under his insignia, the lightning bolt, and when they saw the blue spark light up the darkness over a mansion that belonged to a blood purist, they rejoiced. When they saw a blue thunderbolt next to the dark mark hovering in the sky, they knew a battle was on.

When people saw him, they bowed.

When Harry looked in the mirror, at his scar torn face, at his hard emerald green eyes, he wished he could just go back and do it all over again, live normally, live like an ordinary man.

He never wanted the burden, never wanted the mantle of the Chosen One, but he wore it like a second skin. He wore it proudly, he wore it with determination and he wore it to please the expectations of the world around him.

He descended in the dark arts, and nobody blamed him.

He used the killing curse almost flippantly, and the Ministry awarded him the Order of Merlin.

He tried to make a horcrux, failed, and Albus Dumbledore comforted him.

In the end, it was really himself that he despised, not Voldemort.

Yes, he wished he could just go back, go back to perhaps his fourth year, when it all began with Voldemort's rebirth. Perhaps go back and play in the tournament again, match wits with death eaters in a time of almost purity, a time of almost innocence.
In the end, it was really himself he hated. Not Voldemort, not death eaters. For his failures, his mistakes. He couldn't save Hermione, or Fleur, or Ron, or Arthur.

He couldn't save the only place that felt like home to him, Hogwarts.

All he seemed to do was murder.

-----

He drank a glass of scotch and watched the rain pour on the grey streets of Paris from a window in his bachelor's apartment. He had very little money, having spent his vast family fortune funding the war effort, but with a little persuasion, he got himself a small ministry stipend for services rendered.

Fudge loved to be in his good books, considering Harry had a lot of political clout. But Harry hated politics, hated to war with words, to be sly like a snake with his tongue and say something yet do the opposite. He hated hypocrisy. Voldemort was the same.

Voldemort chose to become lord and master over all the domain, and never had to bend and bow to those who did not deserve respect. He relied on his own strength. He relied on the darkness.

Harry thought it was like sinking into a warm bath, comfortable, using the dark arts. He got addicted to them, got hooked on the rush of casting a well put "CRUCIO", of casting a blood boiler on some idiot death eater.

Now he dealt with withdrawal symptoms. The war was over, and all that was left to do was wait, wait for death to come and take him into her arms.

Patience, a cloak he wore as well as his family heirloom.

He had learnt it through his mistakes in the war. He made good use of it.

Patience was a boat that would carry him over the lake of misfortune, a famous Persian poet had once said.

Harry wondered why he did this to himself, why he wasted away, watching the rain when he could be out changing the world for the better.

The answer came to him like an epiphany: he didn't care about the world. He only cared about himself.

And Harry was fine with that, Harry was okay with his selfishness. It had saved his hide thousands of times in the war.

He just wished his friends were still alive, that's all.

Harry drank himself to oblivion and woke up with a headache that rivalled the very best of
Goyle's bone breakers.

He looked up at the downcast sky, and tried to go back to bed, the Ron's face kept swarming in his eyes. Young, innocent. Harry had sacrificed Ron, his best friend, to save himself.

He had to, he was the Chosen One, and he couldn't allow himself to be captured by Voldemort. Ron willingly took the pain, and it lasted forever. Harry couldn't allow his heart to melt like water, instead he held it like iron in fists of tightly held strings, manipulating his friends and loved ones like puppets, like soldiers.

Sometimes he heard their voices in his dreams.

But today he felt refreshed, as if everything that happened was a mark on a parchment, that was soon, slowly but surely, being erased.

He decided to visit a place that had been recently opened, and as such acquired a portkey for himself under the alias, Evans Harrison from the French Ministry. After a nausiating trip through the vortex and subdimensions of portkey magic that defied understanding to the average ordinary wizard, Harry landed on a tropical island hidden in the Pacific ocean. He got up to his feet, and gaped at the sight that was almost as inspiring as Hogwarts.

It was a library.

He entered the library of Alzan with a sigh, wondering what he was looking for here in the first ever magical library open to the public. Most of the books had come from Hogwarts, and some of them had been pillaged from mansions of blood purists and death eaters. Rows of shelves stacked the room, and books aged and half burnt littered the shelves in a disorganized fashion. The library was empty, but there was a table, whereupon seated on it there was a snake, a hissing snake with emerald scales that matched the colour of Harry's eyes.

Harry strode toward it fearlessly, and looked deeply into the serpent's gaze, and said, "What is your name, little one?"

"They call me Alzan, and I am the keeper of the library," the snake said, "The wizard who summoned me intends to gift me toward a great wizard by the name of Harry Potter."

"Who was it that summoned you?" asked Harry, curious. "Was it the founder of this library, Zabini? Or was it one of the death eater scum that escaped the law?"

"The latter I think. He goes by Malfoy."

"Ah Draco," said Harry, "It is a good present, I shall tell him so when I meet him."

"He does not like you very much, yet he puts on airs as if he does. His behavior marks me as strange," said the serpent, "I do not like him. He smells of weakness, of scavengery, like a jackal. But you, I like you, you smell like me. Indeed you speak my tongue, so you must be like me. Do you have serpent's blood in your genesis?"

"No, this magical trait I stole from a wizard, a great wizard, who did terrible things," Harry said. "Well not stole exactly, but I certainly didn't receive it from him by his will."

"How cunning of you, to acquire powers as such," Azlan said, "Take me with you, let me be your servent."
"I thought you wanted to be with Harry Potter?" Harry said, "Why choose me?"

"Draco wants me to be with Harry, but I make my own descisions. I choose you, wizard. Accept me into your fold and I shall show you great books, because I have known them all. I am a keeper of books, I am Azlan the librarian of the library Azlan. I know these books, I can help you!"

The snake had turned furious by the last sentence and Harry knew if he declined the snake's offer, the snake would bite him in hurt pride. But Harry wouldn't decline. Harry liked the snake. "Very well, I shall keep you. Just so you know, my name is Harry Potter and I am the wizard you have been gifted to."

The snake bowed its head. "Indeed you are a great one then, perhaps as great as my previous master, Lord Voldemort."

Harry's neck turned sharply, from perusing the books on the rundown looking bookshelves to regard the thin, weak looking snake with his fullest intensity. "You have met Lord Voldemort?"

"Yes, I have," the snake said, rearing his head proudly upward to meet Harry's gaze. "He was a great wizard, and his smell... it is like your smell. But he is dead now. I can feel it in my scales, his death was an explosive event for serpents all over the world."

"How so? He has a bond with snakes, yes, but how could you feel his death?"

"Because I am his last horcrux," the snake said, and a red pinprick of light entered the snake's eyes. "I am the last, I am Tom Riddle, and I am Lord Voldemort, and I have sought you out, Harry."

Harry took a deep breath, and grabbed his wand. The snake regarded it with caution. "What are you going to do, Harry, kill me all over again? In truth I am already dead, I am just a small spark of what was once a blazing fire. Do not kill me, but let me aid you throughout your life."

"Aid me? You mean to use me to gain human form do you not?" Harry asked lightly, but he let his mind's senses extend over the serpent and used legilimency to try to detect lies from the weak looking horcrux.

"I am an ambitious serpent," Azlan said, looking amused, "And although I hold the soul of Tom Riddle within me, I am still myself, I have not succumbed to his persuasion, to his possession. We co-exist in harmony, and as such you cannot regard me as your enemy. Why don't you let me be your friend instead?"

"And how can you aid me exactly?" asked Harry, "You are the string that binds my enemy to this mortal plane. You cannot aid me in defeating him, because your existence itself defies my goal to defeat Voldemort once and for all."

"Are you without friends Harry, that you have so fully focused yourself on eradicating the presence of a mere man? A mere mortal who could not stand up to your magical prowess, your strength?" Azlan said, and slithered toward Harry's arm. Harry let it slither up his arm, and around his neck without moving, and let the snake hiss its words in his ears, because it had captivated Harry like nothing else could.

"My friends are dead. You killed them. Do you feel any regret, in taking their lives?" Harry asked, "When were you made? I figure recently, because you have a way with words that lets wisdom shine through it, a certain air of manipulation and confidence acquired only through experience."

"Yes, very recently, I was made - or rather, the soul infested me like a worm the day before Voldemort's death," Azlan said, "Your enemy is my enemy. I hold him at bay from my mind, yet he seeps through anyway like poison, and infects me with his powers."

"You don't fight him," Harry said, "You let him infect you because you want power. You cannot stand to remain Azlan, a mere snake with a love of books, and this partnership you have with Voldemort makes you not my friend, but my enemy."

"I can offer you aid-"

"Can you bring my friends back to life?" Harry asked, "Can you remove the effects of your actions? No you cannot and therefore you are no use to me. I will kill you." Harry raised his wand to strike but he paused when the snake said in a sibilant yet utterly certain hiss.

"Yes, I can!"

It was no lie. The snake had said it with such certainty, Harry had no choice but to believe. Yet he still had doubts. "How? Explain yourself, you vile beast."

"There are rituals and there are spells, there are potions and there are lullabies and songs, and all these things are mere expressions of something that cannot be defined yet exists without limit."

"You say famous words," Harry said, "Yes I have read the classics on the theory of magic, yet you do not convince me. Instead you strike me as an annoying weakling, who is hanging on his last thread to survive, instead of thrive like a great one."

The snake swore angrily, and tightened its grip on Harry's neck. Harry smirked. "You think you can kill me? Your poison, if you have any, will not harm me in the slightest. Your muscular tonature of the serpent body you inhabit will not make me pause in my mission."

"You are right," Azlan said, "Against you words are my only weapon, and knowledge, of which I have a lot of, something that might interest you."

"Then speak, quickly and consicely, lest I lose my patience," Harry said. "State your case, and I shall judge what worth your life is to me."

"Then listen with open ears, my friend," Azlan said, "For if we do this we shall become allies, and brothers, indeed we shall become like one. I speak of a ritual so dark, so vastly obscure, that it has been submerged in the vortex of shadows."
"Your riddles won't save you, Tom Riddle," Harry smirked at the small pun he made, "Tell me what you can offer me, now."

"I can take you back in time," the serpent said, "Imagine a world ripe for the plucking, imagine a world where you have foreknowledge, where you know the future, where you have power beyond their dreams. Imagine a world set in the past, where what has occured has not yet occured. You will have power to shape your world the way you wish it."

"I have read of similar rituals," Harry said, laughing, "In stories and novels. Rituals where loved ones throw themselves in the past to prevent the deaths of their lovers. I think Luna Lovegood has quite the imagination, and I wonder if you have read her books for you to be spouting such bullshit."

"It is not lies!" Protested the serpent, "This ritual I do have knowledge of and it is not a fake, it is the real deal. Let me pull you out of your misery, out of your hollow victory. Give me your hands in friendship, give me your soul in affection, and I can make your dreams come true."

Harry pried the serpent off his neck and threw it to the floor. "You vile beast indeed, it is so pathetic to see how low Tom Riddle has fallen. You should not have revealed your true nature to me."

"It wouldn't have mattered. You can sense me through the scar can you not?" Azlan said, "That is what tells in memories of Lord Voldemort, that you can sense his presence and that of his horcruxes when in close proximity."

Harry frowned, "No I couldn't sense Voldemort's presence." He sighed, "I suppose there is some truth in your words then, you are Azlan and you are indeed keeping Tom at bay, yet you are far from trustworthy."

"I will show you, I will take you to the book, to the ancient scroll that describes this ritual," the snake said, "It is here in this very library. Previously it was located in the restricted section of the restricted section in Hogwarts, and before that it was -"

"Wait, the restricted section of the restricted section?" Harry said, eyes widening. "I have never heard of such a thing, and I know Hogwarts like the back of my hand."

"Nobody knows the secrets of Hogwarts in totallity, Harry," Azlan said, "Except for me. I know all. I am Azlan, and I am a powerful serpent, a serpent with immense dexterity in the arts of magic, in all arts. I can help you, train you to be the greatest wizard of all time. Indeed I helped Merlin-"

"I can tell you are lying," Harry said, sneering at the snake. "Your boasts make me feel little confidence in your words. But show me the scroll, and if you cannot, then I will kill you right away. Show me this ancient text that describes the ritual you have been so amandantly trying to convince me of, and I will consider your fate in a kind light if you have been speaking truth."

The snake nodded its head solemnly and led Harry past a maze of shelves deep into the back room of the Azlan Library, which had once been a castle. Harry paused when the snake paused in front of a rock wall, and there was a window where Harry glanced out of. He could see vast stretches of forests, and the wavy sea that surrounded the island Azlan was built on. He could feel the heat of the sun on his neck where the light shined. He wondered why he had decided to visit the library instead of lounging about the streets of Paris like a vagabound and the answer was simple. He wanted to do something to remind himself of Hermione. He wanted to remember her, because he missed her, like he missed Ron. It was a hole in his heart that would never go away.

That's why he let the snake live, where he should have simply struck it down. He had a faint hope that perhaps there was such a ritual as described in Luna's books. True, he had read them all, at least two or three times, it was such a popular series.

But to Harry, it was his ultimate fantasy, his dream. It brought a thrill in his heart when he thought about Luna's stories, and he had oft wished the stories were based on some semblence of reality, for he would make deals with devils and demons to go back in time and save his friends in an instant, without consideration of his own wellfare.

Azlan looked up toward Harry, and then said, "Your wand, my lord, my master, use your wand to blast this barrier, for it is a seal that hides the darkest of scrolls within its walls."

Harry did so, using a simple reducto. But the red light got absorbed into the grey rock and Harry was forced to use a much more powerful, darker explosive hex. He cast a thin shield to save himself from shrapnel and grinned when the snake cried in pain as small shards pierced its body.

The snake hissed angrily in words Harry did not understand, but beckoned Harry to follow him down a set of stair cases that was situated behind the wall Harry had blown apart. Harry did so warily, watching for any signs of traps. He was playing with fire, and a horcrux was quite cunning, especially when it was one made by the fiercest of dark lords.

"Tell me, Azlan, what do you gain from this," Harry asked as they descended the steps. "You send me back in time, but what then?"

"Not send you, but come with you," corrected Azlan, "We shall go together, master and servent, and change the world to your liking. As for what I gain, why serving you is all I want, all I seek, all I need."

"You terrible liar," Harry said, "Voldemort does not serve. The truth, little serpent, or your life, right here and now."

The snake stopped, and in the pale light of Harry's wand it seemed to consider his words carefully. "If the ritual works, my soul will not have been destroyed. I will have a chance to save my other brothers in need from your cruelty."

"I see," Harry said, "As expected really, you go back in time, using me as a sacrifice, and take over the world."
"You, a sacrifice? Never!" Azlan said, but Harry could tell the serpent was lying. However he was curious, and he let himself follow the untrustworthy beast into the dungeons of Azlan library, wondering, with his heart hammering in his chest, whether a ritual of such type truly existed, or whether this was a cunning trap laid out by the last of Voldemort's horcruxes.

It explained the occasional twinges in his scar, Harry thought, it explained how Harry always had thhe feeling that Voldemort had slipped his grasp somehow.

Azlan's existence explained everything, and Harry determined to himself that before the day was through, that existence would be extinguished, that spark would burn out, and what was once a blaze that defined the greatness of Voldemort's wizardry would be nothing more than ruins and a burnt body of a lying serpent .