A/N: So, here we are. The rewrite of NGA that changed the story so far I had to make up a new title. To be fair, "The Next Great Adventure" was supposed to be a placeholder title…
I decided I should rewrite it since Act 1 of NGA was a bit of a weak start, and I was basically telling the story of "canon RWBY but Harry is there" instead of a story that really felt like it was mine. I had always planned to diverge like crazy past Act 3, but I figured I may as well start from scratch and fix some problems I'd noticed along the way.
And, of course, that gave me some room to work in some other stuff I'd thought about adding before but didn't have time for. To be entirely honest it's less "rewrite" and more "chaotic reboot" at this point, but whatever.
Anyways, here's the fic!
BRING a WAND to a KNIFE-GUN FIGHT
[ACT 1]: Bucket List
[CHAPTER 1]: Bury Me Shallow
In Which Death Isn't Quite As Permanent As Advertised
In a dark forest clearing, surrounded by silver-masked wizards, Harry stared Voldemort in the eyes.
The Cloak, neatly folded and tucked into his jacket, felt cold against his chest. The Stone lay abandoned on the forest floor, and hopefully would forevermore. The Wand rested in the hands of the once-man who stood before him.
No, the Hallows weren't getting him out of this mess. Nothing was.
The only way forward led six feet under, so he stuffed his hands in his pockets and smirked with the confidence of a man who had nothing left to lose.
"Hullo, Tom."
A dark wand twitched. "Crucio."
A burning agony tore through Harry's body. He grit his teeth and locked his limbs, refusing to grant his foe the satisfaction of seeing him kneel, of hearing him scream. After a moment that felt like forever, the curse let up.
Dark red eyes looked down at him disdainfully. "Harry Potter. Here to bargain for the lives of your allies?"
Harry waved his empty hands vaguely. "More of an ultimatum, to be honest. You kill me, leave everyone else alive."
A smirk. "And if I refuse…?"
Harry shrugged. "Then you're not allowed to kill me."
Voldemort's eyes slowly roamed the solid ring of Death Eaters surrounding them, before fixing back onto Harry. "You are perhaps the most Gryffindor Gryffindor I have had the misfortune to meet," he declared as he lifted his wand.
Harry crossed his arms. "Killing me without my consent is illegal. They'll put you in jail if you do this."
Voldemort blinked. "I control the Ministry."
Harry frowned. "Fine. Hermione will put you in jail if you do this."
"Then I suppose I'll be crossing wands with your little Mudblood next."
Harry gasped. "Tom! You can't just say things like that!"
Voldemort rolled his eyes. "Avada Kedavra."
As the jet of sickly green death magic hurtled towards him, Harry smirked. Operation Get Voldemort To Kill Him was a success. This was his victory.
The curse crashed into his chest, and his world went black.
Harry woke to the sound of leaves rustling lightly in the breeze. Warm spots of sunlight danced across his closed eyelids, and cool blades of grass lay against the bare skin of his arms.
He took a deep breath of earthy forest air, and let it out slowly. He hadn't had much time to relax since his 17th birthday, so this was a welcome reprieve.
Why hadn't he done this sooner, he wondered as he felt a butterfly land on his nose.
Oh, right. Voldemort.
Wait a second-
Harry scrambled up, eyes wide open in alarm. If he was still alive after taking a Killing Curse, then that probably meant the Horcrux in his scar was gone, but he still had to deal with Voldemort himself...
His train of thought was derailed when he noticed how red everything was. The trees, the grass, the bushes- if it was supposed to be green, it was red. Where the hell was he? Some undiscovered section of the Forbidden Forest? Was he even still in England?
He patted himself down and found, to his relief, that he still had the Cloak and his wand. Or rather, a wand. His wand was still broken, in his mokeskin pouch. But… the wand pressed against his thigh didn't feel like Draco's wand, either.
Harry drew the wand from his pocket and stared at it.
The bloody Elder Wand had been in his pocket. The exact same wand Voldemort had used to murder him. How the hell did that work?
Well, at least he didn't have the Resurrection Stone too. That would make him the Master of Death, and that was a whole can of worms he did not want to open.
Of course, at that thought, he finally noticed a small lump in his other pocket.
Merlin fucking damnit.
Alright, alright, so Harry had all 3 Hallows. That was fine. It wasn't like being "Master of Death" actually did anything, did it? It was just some kind of fancy title. He could totally just ignore it and nothing bad would happen. So that's what he did.
He instead chose to focus on his current situation:
He was alone in the middle of some weird red forest and had no idea how he'd gotten there. Considering that there was a not-insignificant number of people who wanted him dead… this was probably really bad.
As that thought crossed his mind, he caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye.
He grimaced and drew the Elder Wand; he didn't want to use it, but the only other wand on him was kind of broken… he could probably fix it, now that he had the Elder Wand, but that was something for later.
And out of the red foliage stepped a… Harry hesitated to call it a creature, but that was the closest thing to what it was. It took the shape of a werewolf, with gleaming white bones jutting out from its dark, shimmering not-flesh. Hungry orange eyes peered out from an exposed skull marked with crimson.
Just looking at it filled him with a sense of unease.
Had Voldemort started summoning demons to hunt him down? Because that was, while totally in character for the guy, really really extra.
Harry's only consolation was that it probably wasn't actually alive, so he didn't have to feel bad about doing this:
"Reducto."
The thing pulled off a clumsy dodge, rolling to the side so Harry's spell only punched through its shoulder instead of making a hole in its chest as intended. Wet chunks of darkness flew up from the wound, evaporating even as they flew through the air. The beast roared angrily and charged.
Ah, shit. Harry jumped to the side, narrowly dodging a one-armed swipe that would probably have disemboweled him had it landed. He straightened up as it tried to recover, and flicked his wand.
"Lacero."
The curse cut a deep gash along the creature's back, revealing its insides to be as dark and featureless as its outsides. Deep black ichor bled from the wound as it screamed with rage.
Hm. It wasn't as tough as Harry had assumed something sent after him would be. Was Voldemort underestimating him? He frowned and jabbed his wand forwards.
"Bombarda."
An explosion rocked the beast, tearing it apart and smashing it into the ground. The not-flesh and red-patterned bone began to dissolve into mist, further cementing Harry's theory that it was some sort of magically summoned creature. Nothing natural did that.
But still, Voldemort had to have known Harry could handle something that weak. What was the Dark Lord playing at?
He glanced around, and noticed dozens of glowing eyes glaring at him from the bushes and shadows.
Ah. So that was what was going on. Quantity over quality. But if Voldemort thought he could scare Harry off with an army of hungry demons… then he was absolutely right.
Harry pulled the Invisibility Cloak on and ran like hell.
It took Harry an entire hour of aimless, invisible wandering to find civilization.
This civilization took the form of an impressively huge wall, with the words "Welcome to Vale!" plastered across a billboard sticking up over it.
It was remarkably unhelpful, considering Harry had never heard of a place called "Vale" in his life. Was he in the States? That might explain the giant gun turrets set up along the top of the wall, barrels fixed on the forest he'd just left.
But then again, they could also be explained by the demon infestation in said forest, so Harry was really still on square one.
He took a moment to assess his options. He could go through one of the many manned gates along the wall, but… considering that last he'd checked he was publicly known as "Undesirable No. 1," it might be the smarter move to leave no traces behind until he knew a little more about what was going on.
So with a silent Ascendio, Harry soared up through the air and landed lightly on the top of the wall. On the other side of it lay a city that stretched from the coastline on one end all the way up to a massive cliff on the other. A tall silver tower stood at the top of that cliff, looking out over the city and the forest surrounding it.
So this was "Vale," huh? It was pretty big for someplace he'd never heard of.
He frowned. As he was… he had no idea where he was or what was going on. He needed to gather information. And information, as Hermione always said, wasn't going to find him.
So with his Cloak pulled tight and a nonverbal Arresto Momentum at the tip of his wand, he stepped off the wall and fell into Vale.
"Ugh, Dust prices are up again! The SDC needs to chill."
"See, this would never happen in the bandit tribes because then I'd be allowed to fight my boss..."
"Hey, did you hear about that new show? I forget what it was called, but it's about this ninja Huntsman who's actually half-Grimm himself-"
Harry frowned. This… did not feel like a city built in the middle of a demon-infested forest. This felt like a completely normal city. Nobody was talking about the fact that they were pretty much under siege by demons. They also weren't talking about Voldemort, so he was still in the dark as to the status of Magical Britain.
His whole "wander around invisible and eavesdrop on random people" plan really wasn't pulling its weight.
So Harry was forced to turn to his last resort: asking Hermione. Sadly, the real Hermione wasn't there, so that meant he had to ask the Hermione in his heart.
And the Hermione in his heart told him to go to the library.
Harry stared down at the map. The map did not stare back up at him, because it was an inanimate object.
It was also very, very wrong.
There were no continents he recognized, no countries he'd ever heard of, and for some reason there was some weird island shaped like a dragon off in the corner? Absolutely nuts.
He looked up at the shelf he'd gotten the atlas from, and frowned when it continued to pretend it was something besides the fiction section.
He pulled out another atlas and opened it, and frowned even deeper when he saw the same completely wrong map.
Was there, perhaps, some sort of library-focused conspiracy to spread misinformation to the uninformed masses? Was their crusade of education simply a ruse to spread their heinous lies? Had he already lost Hermione?
Or perhaps, Hermione was the one behind it all…?
Nah, probably not. If Hermione had wanted to weaponize misinformation, Harry wouldn't have even noticed it. It had to be someone else, someone… stupider.
It had to be the work of Draco Malfoy.
Harry nodded to himself and stroked his chin thoughtfully. Clearly it had been a number of years since the Battle of Hogwarts, and Voldemort had spread his influence across the entire world. Draco Malfoy had been put in charge of placating the Muggle masses, and clearly had done the best he could, which wasn't very good.
And of course, Voldemort had been summoning demons to hunt down Harry and the other members of the resistance (Harry assumed there was a resistance because Hermione was cool like that) ever since.
Yes, that was definitely what was going on here.
Harry looked back up at the shelf labeled "nonfiction" and stroked his chin. Would it be a good idea to just burn down the whole building as an act of defiance? No, probably not, the librarians were also being brainwashed. It wasn't their fault.
No, he had to find the resistance and let them know he had returned. That was the path forward.
Now the question was, where was the resistance? It probably wasn't in the city, since it seemed kind of hard to hide in there.
Well, he hadn't been seen once himself, but most people didn't have The Cloak of Invisibility.
Perhaps there were clues hidden within Malfoy's lies. Areas with warnings, reasons not to go there that the uninformed masses would eat up. Vague reasons for people to stay away, so that the resistance wouldn't have the chance to recruit them. Harry's eyes drifted back down to the book. It seemed he had much more reading to do.
Harry jotted down one last note and closed the book in front of him. He had a few ideas, but nothing concrete. The strongest leads he had were the nondescript "bandit tribes'' that were supposedly roaming the wilderness and robbing/murdering anyone unfortunate enough to run into them, and the suspiciously dragon-shaped island to the north of Vale that was simply labelled "Deep Grimmlands."
The latter could also be a cover for Voldemort's base, though. It seemed like the kind of place he'd decide to live, being an edgelord and all that. So in the interest of caution, Harry would swing by the bandit tribes first, then head on over to that place if he came up empty.
He put the books back up on their shelves (what was he, a barbarian? No, no, he was far too afraid of Hermione to leave them out) and silently slipped out the door.
Apparently night had fallen while Harry had been inside, but the moonlight was bright enough to see by. Now, the closest tribe territory was supposed to be southeast of here, so…
Harry's train of thought trailed off as he looked up.
The moon was… broken. Shattered chunks floated in the gaping hole in its side, as if hoping nobody would notice the missing quarter of the damn thing. What the hell…?
Harry's eyes darted around, taking in other details. The stars were brighter than he'd ever seen them, but more importantly they were all wrong. The constellations he'd spent his first five years at Hogwarts learning… None of them were there. This was not his sky.
His heart dropped as he realized there was no reigning Dark Lord, no resistance, and no Draco Malfoy.
Wherever he was… it was no longer Earth.
Once upon a time, there was a boy.
He had his father's hair, his mother's eyes, and the strangest lightning-bolt scar.
He had magic in his blood, hope in his heart, and a burning fury buried deep in his bones.
He had in his possession a Cloak, a Stone, and a Wand.
And when Death came for him, he met her halfway.
/
Once upon a time, Death met her Master.
He was a man this time, with the most beautiful emerald eyes.
And when he greeted her like she was an old friend, her heart broke a little.
So she did with him what she did with all her little tragedies;
She sent him back, just a world or two over,
And hoped it wouldn't hurt as much when they met again.
A/N: There we go. Much stronger start than last time, don't you think?
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