Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter.
Chapter One
Beads of sweat slid from the fourteen year old boy's temple to his chin then dripped to parts beyond his notice. Of course, no one would have blamed him. Beads of sweat were quite natural for anyone, no matter their age, when facing a very large dragon.
Whether or not the crowd of onlookers judged him or not did not cross Harry Potter's mind. Only half an hour earlier, when he had waited in the competitor's tent, he had wondered what the others would think of him when he failed against the dragon; after all, he was the youngest competitor in the Triwizard Tournament. Now, he wanted to curl up in a ball and cry so long as someone would come and save him.
Unfortunately for Harry Potter, curling up in a ball and crying was simply not what Harry Potter did.
His fingers tightened around the holly and phoenix feather wand in his hand. Focusing with all his might on his target, he shouted, "Accio Firebolt!"
The crowd grew silent. The dragon stared at him menacingly, smoke seeping from its nostrils and between jaws of massive teeth. Harry swallowed hard. Had the summoning spell worked? He had practiced it time and time again with Hermione but never from this far away. Panic tightened around his heart, and for just a moment, he forgot to breathe.
Then he heard it. A very soft, but growing whizzing of something hurtling towards the Quidditch Pitch.
From over the horizon, in the direction of the castle, a speck appeared that quickly grew into the distinct shape of his broom. A smile crossed Harry's face, marking this small victory. Wasting no time, he broke out into a sprint and met the broom mid-run, leaping over the shaft and taking off into the air just as the Hungarian Horntail let out an earth-shaking roar of irritation.
Harry soared above the stands, the dull, cold air of Scottish autumn whizzing through his hair and robes. Here, he was free. No tournament. No dragon. No Boy-Who-Lived. Leaning forward, he pushed the enhanced broom to its limits. The enchantments powering it pulsed in response to his touch, as if the broom had been made only for him. Suddenly, he knew he could win. He knew he could beat the colossal creature whose wings tore through the air in his wake.
And just like that, the sensation ended. The fleeting sense of euphoria faded, and reality set-in.
Something hard and unrelenting tore into his side with the strength of a freight truck.
The world flashed a blinding white before filling with pain. He heard a scream.
Then there was nothing.
Hermione was up from her seat and rushing down the stands before she realized it, the scream still hanging on her lips as she pushed passed other students frozen in shock. Fear was not something that often rattled her. It rarely immobilized her. The highly logical portion of her brain usually saw through any incapacitation and ordered her to move, to fight.
At that moment, Hermione found herself at a loss for logic. No fact or fragment of truth rose to help her overcome her fear. No. It was determination, determination to get to her friend who she had just watched fall over 200 feet to hit painfully against the ground.
No spell could help her there.
Vaguely, she was aware of Ron calling behind her, trying desperately to keep up with her, but where the masses of shocked students and visitors parted for the torrent that was her fear, they fell closed to block the struggling redhead. She did not have time to stop. She could not wait. Harry needed her.
Only, she didn't know quite what to do once she got there.
Of course, the dragon handlers that had been standing at the edge of the pitch to stop dragons from escaping or overzealous onlookers from trying to get a closer look at the beasts were no longer present, having rushed forward to wrangle the dragon as the Boy-Who-Lived fell. No one stopped her from darting onto the pitch towards the crumpled form of her friend. She was oblivious to everything else as she desperately struggled to see signs of life from him. Her Anglican roots compelled her to offer a quiet prayer to God and whatever saints were listening. As she neared, her heart fell.
She came to stop before him, tears already forming in her eyes, her knees fell along with her heart, and she collapsed against Harry's oddly twisted, broken body. Her best friend was dead.
"Miss Granger!"
She didn't answer. She didn't look up. Didn't they understand? Her rock, her structure, her constant was gone. Harry, who had been there since that first train ride, who had risked life and limb for her more than once, was gone. She didn't care about their rules or orders. As her reality and sanity caved in, she only wanted her friend.
"MISS GRANGER!" the yell came louder, more insistent.
"No!" she snapped in her head. She clutched Harry tighter.
"HERMIONE, MOVE!"
The ground shook beneath her and a loud crash echoed in the air, breaking through her grief. Her fear gave way to a much deeper degree of terror as the highly logical portion of her brain once more kicked in and informed her of exactly what had just made that noise.
Slowly, she turned her head.
The Hungarian Horntail stood before her, only a few yards away, smoke pouring from its jaws. She saw the flame as it erupted from the beast's mouth. Running would not have helped her. The wave of flame that exploded towards her would have been impossible to miss. Still, natural human reaction would have been to run from such impossible odds or to freeze in terror. Hermione did neither. Instead, she illogically flung herself over the dead friend the fire would not have harmed anyway.
The flames never touched her.
Albus Dumbledore had seen many things in his several decades of life. Magic had always been a fascination that delighted and surprised. No matter what he saw, something new always snuck up on him. But this was unfathomable.
Only a second earlier, as he watched Harry Potter fall to the earth, he knew that the deatheater impersonating Alastor Moody had been the element by which Voldemort slew the Boy-Who-Lived. The prophecy had been fulfilled, and darkness awaited the world. All his careful plans, his strategic waiting, were for nothing. Of course, that was an assumption based on Harry being dead.
Harry Potter was not dead. The Boy-Who-Lived stood in front of a column of flame, hand held out in front of him, clean, flawless school robes billowing around him like clouds of inky darkness. The dragon breath collided against some invisible wall and curled up and away from the young wizard. Hermione Granger sat huddled behind him, untouched and dazed, staring awestruck at her very much alive friend.
The dragon ceased its flame and roared at the young wizard who dared defied it. It took a step forward, massive leg shaking the ground as it did. Dumbledore's hand tensed on the Elder Wand. He drew it with practiced precision, spell already on his lips.
"Stop."
It was only a word, spoken in clear Queen's English, but he followed it explicitly. His voice failed to utter the spell; his arm lowered the unbeatable wand. Others around the pitch and the stands stopped their shouting, running, or casting. Everything froze.
The dragon, powerful and mighty as it was, struggled only a moment, its jaw just barely flexing in refusal before it too followed the command.
Only Harry still moved. He turned, the world frozen around him, and knelt beside his huddling friend. Dumbledore heard the words Harry spoke as clearly as if they had been spoken to him.
"Hermione, it's OK."
The Boy-Who-Lived did not smile. He wrapped his arms around Hermione's shoulders and helped the girl to her feet, stepping back to look at her once she had risen. Then he smiled.
"Better?"
Hermione said something, but her voice did not echo like Harry's so Dumbledore did not hear what she said. Harry barked out a laugh in response, a strange sight considering the morning's events. Though for the first time, Dumbledore noticed that Harry sported neither a bruise nor a bit of dirt. His appearance, in fact, looked better than it ever had. Clean, lean, strong. Immaculate.
The air around them exploded with sound at Harry's laugh. All at once people started shouting. The dragon wranglers were on top of the still frozen dragon almost immediately. Dumbledore's hand once again tensed around the Elder Wand. However, he had no idea what to do. Harry had just done the impossible, a feat the boy seemed unusually apt at performing. This time, though, Dumbledore did not have an explanation of ancient wild magic to explain the impossible.
"Albus, what just happened?" asked a flabbergasted Minerva McGonagall as she stepped next to him.
He did not immediately answer; for, the answer took quite a bit of effort. It was the only one to which he came, and it spelled out a bad omen for them all, one much worse than Lord Voldemort could ever be. Yet, it was an answer nonetheless.
He swallowed and said in a low, haunted voice that tremoring ever so slightly, "The birth of a god."
"There are moments in the existence of every civilization that historians can point to and classify as pivotal stages of development. Whether those moments represent the fall or rise of a civilization depends largely on several factors. The death of Harry Potter did not depend on any of them. It simply wracked the wizarding world to the core and changed the destiny of every single magic user alive, present and future."
-The New Wizard, by Professor Amos Lancaster, LVO, New Oxford University