For those following along over on "Child of Iron, Goblet of Fire," my mom passed away last month. As an only child, dealing with her estate has been consuming most of the mental energy left over from grieving.
Writing has been very low on my list of priorities recently, but this little short (more like a vignette, really) came to mind and wouldn't let me go.
I've borrowed concepts from Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, and obviously Stephen Strange from Marvel (specifically the MCU). This story takes place before, and in some ways kind of replaces the Doctor Strange movie.
All rights in this story are hereby given to the copyright owners of Harry Potter, Doctor Strange, and the Incarnations.
HP HP HP HP HP HP HP HP
Harry Potter sat in a chair he'd conjured, absorbed in the story of Will Stanton in The Dark Is Rising - just one of many books he'd never had the chance to read in his first childhood, and it was fast becoming one of his favorites this time around. He identified with the young hero of the story, not least because big changes came to his life shortly before his eleventh birthday, just as they had to Harry's life.
The room he sat in was empty save for his chair and, behind him, the Mirror of Erised, which stood otherwise unprotected.
Oh, in theory the Cerberus (named Fluffy, thanks to Hagrid's complete inability to recognize a dangerous creature when he saw one and therefore assume the best of all creatures), Devil's Snare, winged keys, chessboard strategy game, troll, and logic potion puzzle were meant to be protections for what lay within the Mirror - the Mirror itself being enchanted as a last line of defense - but a hundred years and a different timeline ago, Harry and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley had gotten past all those so-called protections as first-year students.
So, really, they weren't protections at all.
This time around, Harry had gotten through them even more easily than the three of them had before - certainly without any injury, as Ron had suffered so long ago. Or should that be, as Ron would not suffer this time? Time travel was so confusing to think and talk about.
So Harry chose not to think about it just now, instead returning his attention to the book.
Will Stanton had just retrieved the Sign of Iron when voices on the far side of the black flames at the entrance to the chamber had Harry standing, pocketing the book, and vanishing the chair he'd conjured.
A moment later, Professor Quirinus Quirrell pushed the door open and came into the room, grumbling about the difficulty of the potions puzzle he'd just come through.
"And the riddle d-d-didn't even say w-whether we c-can pass back through w-w-when we're d-done," he said, breaking off when he saw, "Harry P-Potter."
"Hello, Professor."
"W-what are you doing here? How d-d-did you get here?"
"I got here the same way you did." Harry smiled. "As to what I'm doing here - I'm here to stop you…Voldemort. That is who's possessing you, isn't it?"
Quirrell reared back. "How dare you!"
"Don't like that name?" Harry asked. "How about Tom, then? Tom Riddle."
Quirrell - or maybe Voldemort - snarled and reached for his wand.
Harry hit him with a silent, wandless Incarcerous and then disarmed and summoned Voldemort's - well, Quirrell's – wand.
Ropes bound Quirrell's body, and the quasi-professor fell straight forward, almost as though he'd been hit by a full Body-Bind Curse.
Harry smirked and flicked his fingers toward Quirrell. The purple turban he wore flew off, revealing the second face growing out of the back of his head. Harry took a few steps to position himself so that both faces could see him - not well, granted, as the two faces were exactly opposite each other, but each one could see Harry from one eye, and that would do for now.
With little ceremony, he held Quirrell's wand, not the yew and phoenix feather brother wand to his own, up between his hands and snapped it.
"I'll kill you for that, Potter!" Voldemort shouted.
"No, you really won't," Harry replied. "You know why? It's because you run from death, and I've … well, mastered it, to use the term that's come down through time, however inaccurate it may be."
"W-what are y-y-you talking about, P-potter?" Quirrell asked, confusion evident on his face.
Voldemort's face, however, had flushed with rage. "No!" he shrieked. "That's not possible!"
"Possible, probable, and certain," Harry said with a grin he hoped looked as evil as it felt. He sobered and continued, "I don't really want to monologue, and there's a certain poetic justice in you never knowing the answers to the questions you have, but we still have time, so I will answer three questions."
"From each of us?" Quirrell asked.
Harry shrugged. "Sure, why not? You first, and I'll even be generous and not count that as one of your three."
"Y-you said M-m-master is the wrong word. W-what's the r-r-r-right one?"
"Incarnation," Harry said. "I am the Incarnation of Death."
"How?" Voldemort demanded. "How is that possible?"
"Two things," Harry said. "First, I possessed each of the Deathly Hallows, once, and second, I'm a direct descendant of the Peverell family."
"D-does th-th-that matter?"
"It certainly does," Harry said. "Simply possessing all three Hallows is not, has never been, enough. The Peverell bloodline matters far more, because the very first Incarnation of Death was a Peverell." He grimaced. "That's not quite right. He was the founder of the line that eventually became the Peverells. Every Incarnation of Death has been from his line. That's two questions for Quirrell, one for Voldemort. Who's next?"
"A-are th-th-there…" Quirrell broke off with a frown.
"How many other Incarnations, as you call them, are there?" Voldemort asked.
"Four more. Time, Magic, Fate, and Nature," Harry said. "Took all five of us working together to bring me back."
Harry winced internally. He'd probably said too much, but time was on his side. The longer he kept them distracted, the better.
"That's two each," he said. "One apiece left. Make them good, yeah?"
"Wh-what a-are you d-d-doing with us?" Quirrell asked finally.
Harry tsked. "So much for good questions. I thought that was obvious. I'm waiting for you to die."
"D-d-die? B-b-but-!"
"But how?" Harry quirked a grin. "Simple. I switched out all the potions in the logic puzzle. Every single one of them contained a poisonous draught that should be taking effect in a minute or two."
"Do you really think you've won, Potter?" Voldemort asked. "I will return!"
"Really?" Harry asked curiously. "How? Considering I've destroyed all your Horcruxes, what's left for you?"
Voldemort summoned strength from somewhere and jerked toward Harry, which meant Quirrell's face now pressed against the stone floor of the chamber. "Impossible!"
"Not with a little help from my friends," Harry said. "Because Horcruxes offend all five Incarnations, they were more than willing to assist. Especially after they saw what happened during my first lifetime."
"F-f-f-first?"
"Ah-ah-ah," Harry wagged a finger at Quirrell. "Your three questions are up. As, coincidentally, your lives are - or near enough to. I'll leave you with a bit of the Bard to consider as your lives slip away. Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come."
Harry watched dispassionately as the symbiotes before him breathed their last. One by one, his fellow Incarnations shimmered into being to join him for his vigil.
"Atropos?" Harry asked, glancing up at the Incarnation of Fate. She could be difficult to look at directly, as her image shifted, depending on which of the three Aspects of Fate was dominant. Now, though, the elderly Atropos seemed fully in control.
"Only minutes left," she said. "Seconds, really."
"You could just cut it," Time suggested.
"No, I couldn't," she said. "I am the Inflexible One, the one who cuts the thread of life at its precise time, neither a second too soon nor a second too late. Patience, young man."
"We need to cut together," Magic said. "You to end his life, and me to end his magic. Forever."
"Another task for all of us," Nature declared. "We have agreed - the abomination that was Tom Marvolo Riddle has no place in Creation. Norton-"
Harry bit back a snicker at the use of Time's true name, and hoped he kept his composure.
"You'll count down the seconds," Nature - Gaia - continued. "Atropos will cut the thread. Death will take all the pieces of his soul and surrender them to Magic for proper destruction. Then I will begin healing the damage his Horcruxes, his very existence, caused."
Silence reigned for a few seconds before Norton - no, Harry corrected himself, Chronos, the Incarnation of Time - spoke in a tone not much above a whisper.
"Ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One."
Snip.
Harry had never before heard the sound of Atropos' shears ending a life. He hoped never to again.
Quirrell's soul rose from the body first. With a glance at Magic, Mageia, Harry allowed it to pass to its final destination unhindered. After all, it wasn't Quirrell who'd corrupted everything he'd touched.
Harry waited a moment, two, three … and still Voldemort's soul remained stubbornly in the body he shared with Quirinus Quirrell.
"I bloody hate it when they do that," Harry muttered. He reached out with his left hand toward the face of Voldemort on the back of Quirrell's head and hooked his fingers as though he were pulling something out of the body.
Harry couldn't conceal his wince at the tattered, dark shreds of soul that emerged. He took some comfort in the fact that his four companions made disapproving noises, or possibly noises full of disgust, as well.
Resisting the urge to fling it away as though it were mud from his Aunt Petunia's garden, Harry passed the shredded soul-bits to the Incarnation of Magic. Then he retrieved five other soul-fragments and combined them before passing them to Magic.
"Five?" Nature asked. "I thought there were six more?"
"Not until my fourth year," Harry replied. "That's when he made Nagini a Horcrux. Right now, she's just a maledictus, as unfortunate as that is."
"Her fate," the Clotho Aspect of Fate said, "is not yet fulfilled."
"You mean her fate wasn't to be a Horcrux?" Time asked.
"It might have been," Clotho answered, "had we not acted. But we have acted, and so her fate remains unspun."
"She is mine, Moirai," Nature said. "Not yours. Not now that her fate has been changed."
Fate simply inclined her head in acknowledgment. "As you will, Gaia. But I, like our young friend, come for all in the end."
"She is also mine," Magic put in. "A creature of magic. We will watch over her together."
"And that?" Chronos nodded to the lump of black goo in Magic's hand. "What will you do with that?"
"The one thing I can do that the rest of you cannot," Magic replied. "At least, not without dire consequences."
As the others watched, Magic held the tattered remains of the soul of Tom Marvolo Riddle aloft and said softly, "You are not worthy of this world, nor the gifts you were given. Be not."
Those were the words Harry had first learned upon taking up his role as the Incarnation of Death - those words, and the strict injunction never, ever to use them. His role was to reap souls, yes, to take them to their eternal reward, or punishment. Some of those punishments would be quite severe, but it was not his role, never his role, to judge that someone, or something, should simply not be.
That role, he'd been told, belonged to another.
He hadn't known who it belonged to until now.
Beside him, Magic watched impassively as the dark shreds of Riddle's soul crumbled to dust.
"Well," Chronos said. "That's that. Anyone for a beer at mine?"
"You go ahead," Harry said. "But I'm not done yet."
"No," Magic agreed. "There is one more to be dealt with."
The other three Incarnations exchanged glances. Finally, Gaia gave a delicate shrug. "By the sound of it, you don't need us, so we'll leave you to it."
One by one, Nature, Time, and Fate disappeared, leaving Harry with Magic.
"I really miss my adult body," Harry grumbled. "You're way too tall this way."
Magic laughed, a low, rich sound, before regarding Harry with a kind expression. "You chose to return, knowing what it would mean. Do you regret it?"
"No," Harry answered immediately. "I just … I hadn't considered all the ramifications."
"Few people do."
They stood in silence for a moment before Harry shook himself free of his momentary self-pity. "Have you switched the potions back the way they should be?"
"As soon as he came through the flames."
"Thanks." Harry cancelled the Incarcerous Spell he'd wrapped Quirrellmort in. "They'll be here soon. We need to make it look right."
"Not we," Magic said. "Not in this case. They can track your magic, not mine."
Harry bit back a protest. He'd gotten so used to having to do everything himself in his first lifetime that now, even knowing what his fellow Incarnations were capable of as well as that they would stand by him no matter what happened, he found it difficult to accept help from anyone.
"We're with you, Thanatos," Magic said quietly. "We saw what happened, too, remember?"
Harry blew out a breath and nodded. "Make it look good."
HP = HP = HP = HP = HP = HP = HP
He did, in fact, make it look good.
Magic, the man once known as Stephen Strange, stood invisible in the Hogwarts infirmary, watching as Harry Potter - Thanatos - slept. He'd promised to make it look good, and he had.
When Professors Dumbledore, McGonagall, Snape, Sprout, and Flitwick, accompanied by a student witch with bushy brown hair, arrived at the dungeon, they found only bodies - Quirrellmort dead and Harry/Thanatos very much alive - and the remains of the Mirror of Erised.
Stephen had hated destroying such an artifact as the Mirror, but it was necessary to convince the professors that the Philosopher's Stone had been destroyed.
Stephen fingered the Stone in his pocket. It wouldn't be destroyed, but it was too powerful an object to remain in general circulation. When he'd completed his mission, he'd take it to his own residence, place it beside a smaller-than-expected collection of similar, too-powerful objects.
Objects better left in the care and control of Magic itself than in the world of mortals.
Part One of the mission, accomplished. Part two, though…
This was the part of the mission he wasn't looking forward to. His predecessor as the Incarnation of Magic had been inattentive at best, negligent at worst, and now it was Stephen's job to correct the accumulation of errors and mistakes and sheer entropy the woman who preceded him had allowed to happen.
Stephen frowned to himself as he checked the time. Perhaps he'd made it look too good. Harry should have woken by now, shouldn't he?
Dammit. He'd really rather get back to his mission, however much he disliked it, than waste time watching.
Finally, three days after the incident in the dungeons, Albus Dumbledore strolled into the infirmary and took a seat beside Harry. Stephen scowled and moved to a position where he could observe both Dumbledore and Harry.
After a few minutes, Harry's eyelids fluttered, and Dumbledore sat forward, all but leaning over the younger man. Harry blinked once, twice.
"Good afternoon, Harry," said Dumbledore with a smile.
"P-Professor?"
Apparently Harry had decided to go for completely innocent and clueless teenager. Magic smiled to himself. He could work with that.
Harry blinked and looked around as though he wasn't entirely sure where he was, and was only partly surprised to see a bedside table piled with what seemed to be half the candy shop.
"Tokens from your friends and admirers," Dumbledore said, still beaming a smile. "What happened down in the dungeons between you and Professor Quirrell is a complete secret, so naturally the whole school knows about it."
Stephen chuckled aloud at that. One of the truisms of the multiverse was that nothing traveled faster than gossip in an enclosed environment.
"How long have I been here?" Harry asked, and Stephen had to admire the man's acting ability. If he hadn't known better, he would've sword it was an eleven-year-old boy talking, not a man who'd passed the century mark not that long ago.
"Three days," Dumbledore answered.
"What happened?" Harry asked.
"I was hoping you could tell me," Dumbledore replied. "When I arrived, you and Professor Quirrell were both lying on the chamber floor."
"Is the professor all right?" Harry made a show of looking around the infirmary, as though searching for the other man.
Dumbledore's smile finally slipped and his expression turned grave. "Professor Quirrell is dead, Harry."
"Did - did I kill him, Professor?"
"I'm afraid so, Harry," Dumbledore replied, his expression infinitely sad. "Oh, I don't believe you did so deliberately - far from it, in fact. But yes, you did."
Manipulative old bastard, Stephen thought as Harry asked, "What about - what about Voldemort? Is he dead, too?"
"Alas, no," Dumbledore said. "He's still out there somewhere, perhaps looking for another body to possess…not being truly alive, he cannot be killed."
And that was Stephen's cue. Willing himself to be visible, he asked, "And how, precisely, do you know that?"
Dumbledore leapt to his feet and drew his wand with all the grace and speed of a man a quarter his age.
"Who are you and how did you get past the wards?" Dumbledore demanded.
"I am the Incarnation of Magic. Magikos, if you want to be formal about it," Stephen added. "Which also answers your second question. There are no wards that can keep me out. There now - I've answered your questions. Time for you to answer mine."
Dumbledore scoffed. His wand never wavered. "Magic is a force of nature, not a person."
Stephen smiled. "So certain in your ignorance. Tell me, when was the last time you actually learned something new?"
Fury flashed across Dumbledore's expression, and he jabbed his wand silently in Stephen's direction. A bolt of red light streaked from it, directly toward Stephen.
Stephen allowed it to hit him…and be absorbed into his own magic.
"Rude," he said mildly. Then he focused a glare on Dumbledore. "Very well. To the point. Voldemort is gone. Death himself came for him."
Dumbledore's expression turned smug. "There you are wrong, dear boy. He is not truly dead."
Stephen simply raised an eyebrow. "Your arrogance knows no limit. Death knows better than you who is and is not dead."
"I suspect Voldemort made…" he trailed off to glance at Harry and clear his throat before beginning again. "Voldemort has anchored his soul to the mortal plane. He cannot die unless the anchors, too, are destroyed. And he must die by Harry's hand. There is a prophecy."
"Death took care of those anchors." Stephen allowed the objects that had held Horcruxes to appear before them, briefly, before returning them to his residence. Dumbledore could only stare at first them, and then the air where they'd floated.
"As to the prophecy…Fate asked me to tell you she doesn't need help to do her job." Stephen smiled. "That's a paraphrase. She actually said bugger off."
He'd treasure Dumbledore's expression forever. Thanatos would, too, as soon as he could share the memory with him.
"I'm not given to making threats," Stephen continued, "so I'll simply say that making Fate angry is…unwise. Don't you agree?"
Dumbledore still seemed unable to form a coherent thought, and Stephen gave a mental shrug before focusing on Harry.
"I understand you have a most unusual cloak," he said.
Harry - Thanatos - was struggling to hold in his laughter, but managed a credible, "Yes, sir."
"My cloak," he gave it a mental nudge, causing it to become visible and float off his shoulders, "wants to know if it can come out and play."