Updated 3/5/2023

Prologue

Clearing in the Forbidden Forest, 2020

Harry could feel his wand against his chest, but he made no attempt to draw it. He knew that the snake was too well protected, knew that if he managed to point the wand at Nagini, fifty curses would hit him first. And still, Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and now Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side, considering the boy standing before him, and a singularly mirthless smile curled the lipless mouth.

"Harry Potter," he said very softly. His voice might have been part of the spitting fire. "The Boy Who Lived."

None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: Everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his- Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear-

He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.

-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Time passed as Harry gradually adjusted to continued consciousness. He was content. There was no pain, no anxiety, responsibility, or tension. The more he thought about it, the more Harry realized he was comfortable, floating there. The temperature was pleasantly warm, and his mind felt clearer than he could ever recall, as though he had pierced through a haze that had obscured his thoughts all his life.

Harry wondered what the afterlife looked like, and no sooner had the thought crossed his mind than his eyes opened and he became aware of a great open white space, perfectly clean, yet not sterile, with pleasant warm white wood below his body.

A gasp came from behind him. It sounded like it belonged to a woman, and in the back of his brain, a familiar feeling stirred, a voice he would never forget, even though it had been nearly sixteen years since he heard it from the source. In that moment, the wonderful realization that the laugh belonged to his mother, his mother who was actually present, and everything that might have gone wrong in the world, every sorrow and loss, any residual worry about his friends was banished from his mind as happiness, love and joy powerful enough to cast a patronus brighter than the sun swept through his mind and body, he spun and ran to Lily Evans Potter, his mother, in the flesh.

Harry threw his arms around his mother, buried his face in her dark red hair, and wept with joy. Their emotions threatened to overwhelm them as they both experienced a love sixteen long, hard years in waiting. He inhaled the scent a baby never forgets, the scent of his mother, and the tears of joy just came harder and faster. When he pulled back, he gazed into her emerald green eyes–'my eyes!' Harry thought happily– filled with a depth of love and caring kindness that made his heart ache, damp from tears as his no doubt were as well, (though he didn't care in the slightest.) They both had smiles so wide they threatened to split their faces, and a joy so pervasive it felt as though the very air was charged with emotion.

They both collapsed into a fit of laughter and joy. Harry felt the simple thrill of pleasure at the use of 'mum' and in that moment, he knew he had never been happier.

"I am so proud of you, my son," Lily whispered to him, with an enormous smile.

"You have no idea how long I've waited to hear that," Harry whispered back.

"How is it possible that James is your father? Your ego is the exact opposite of his."

"Where is he?" Harry wondered. "Vernon would never let me be like him."

Lily's eyes grew fiery, nearly incandescent with rage. Harry shuddered and suddenly understood why Voldemort would treat her as a greater threat than Alice Longbottom. "Yes, I imagine once dear Vernon ends up dead, the two of us shall be having words."

Harry tried to protest but the murderous look in her eyes stayed his tongue. To placate her, he extremely skillfully and subtly changed the subject of the conversation. "Is dad here?"

"I thought he'd be," she frowned. "This is different. I have only seen through your eyes since my death."

"Probably because you weren't dead," A new voice observed. The white fog ahead gave way to a modest house, the speaker sitting on a rocking chair holding a pair of knitting needles. Hanging off of those implements was a breathtaking quilt the figure seemed to be knitting almost absentmindedly. Glorious colors, crimson reds, blues so beautiful the word 'blue' hardly seemed to do it justice, and verdant greens mere nature seemed incapable of matching, all mixed together so skillfully to tell a story. And at the very top corner was an open seam. Her needles were frozen in place, right after a picture of a boy facing a wash of verdant green light.

Behind the wicker chair an old rusty sword was propped against the wall. The woman on the chair was hands down the most beautiful person Harry had ever seen. Everything about her glowed with an inner light, as if her body alone couldn't contain her power. Eyes like a kaleidoscope of color, dark lashes, silky black hair, and a kind smile.

She set aside her knitting needles and introduced herself. "Hello, Harry and Lily. I'm God."

Harry did not notice consciously rejecting the truth of the statement. It was simply impossible. No one would accept the actual voice of God speaking to them conversationally. Before he even factored in the environment of the afterlife, certainty that the claim was false had reflexively formed the decision in his mind.

Yet as soon as he actually considered it, he realized it was undeniably true. Just looking at her, he felt overloaded, like his brain was trying to accept more information at once than it could possibly manage. She didn't radiate power like an angry Dumbledore, she merely had a presence about her so powerful it could belong only to something above all else. He glanced at his mum to confirm that he was not alone in his conclusion. Her expression reassured him.

"Hello." he tried.

God smiled kindly at him. It was the sort of smile he had seen on Lily and Sirius, and in the Mirror of Erised, the sort with immeasurable and infinite love and compassion, like he was the only thing that mattered to her in the whole world, and she would do absolutely anything for him. "It's good to see you face to face. Both of you."

"Could you explain how I wasn't dead?" Lily asked tentatively. Addressing the concept of speaking to The God was too huge to contemplate.

"When you cast your ritual, you intended to give everything for your son to have a lasting, impenetrable protection, but you wanted to be there for him, to see him grow. You didn't quite accept it was possible to guide him, but you were reasonably confident there was something after death."

"So, what? It just happened?"

God shrugged. "More or less." She smiled mysteriously. "I'm sure you've heard; that is when magic is at its most powerful, and most mysterious. Magic is firstly a tool of desire. All those rules and strictures and tools you place upon it cannot change the truest form of magic. When you want something enough, your power serves you."

"You said weren't," Harry spoke up suddenly. Was he dead now?

She nodded. "I did."

"And now?"

"Well, now you have a choice to make."

"A choice," he repeated dully.

He barely even considered the notion of ghosthood before rejecting it. The place he was in stretched endlessly, but he reckoned it grew brighter behind God and her tapestry. There were no walls or features visible, just a white, pure glow that seemed to intensify.

"In the end, it's always your choice," God reminded him gently. "But you have more options than most."

The idea dawned on him. "You mean- I could go back?"

"I suppose, the simplest way to say it is that you are the Master of Death, Harry. Of course you can go back."

"But I dropped the stone," he objected. "And I've never even touched the wand."

"True," she agreed. "But you mastered them. You do not cower fearfully beneath the cloak, and so you mastered it. You do not crave power, even when you undeniably need it, and so you mastered the wand. And you do not seek to claw the dead from their rest, but ask them to visit to give you the courage to join them, and so you mastered the stone. And I did say it was the simplest way to put it. Your mother and your mentor worked together to give you…a second chance, if you will."

Harry might have protested, but the way God spoke left no room for error. Her words just were the truth. He considered that choice. Nagini still lived. Voldemort still lived. But…if he had done it correctly, they would have no trouble fixing that. A fleeting thought tugged at the corner of his lips. How he would love to see Voldemort rage when he found that not just Harry, but everyone was untouchable, protected by the same sacrifice that his mother had given him. After consideration, he was surprised to realize that he didn't need to go back. The deed was done. Even should the rest of Hogwarts fail to kill Voldemort, he was incapable of threatening anyone ever again. Any living person on Earth would reflect Lord Voldemort's curses and burn him with their touch. He could go on with Lily to wherever the white light led and the world would move on.

"Things will work out, won't they?"

God eyed the empty space after the green panel in the quilt, knitting needles poised to fill it in. "It does seem that way, doesn't it?"

"That's not an answer," he said shrewdly.

God shrugged. "I don't know for certain. Who will choose to put Tom Riddle out of his misery? Maybe nobody will. Their choices haven't been made yet. It's very tempting sometimes, to give little nudges and pokes here and there, just to make the world a better place. But in the end, it's not my place. It's your place to make the world the way you want to see it. Earth is your birthright, but it's also your responsibility. If I never let people choose wrong, they aren't choosing at all.

She beamed at Harry and Lily with naked pride. "I am never more proud of you when you make the right choice, the hard choice, just because you should. At the end of the road, there is no hidden tally of goodness and badness which decides your eternal damnation or salvation. You did good deeds for no other reason than it was right, and that makes all the difference."

Harry came to a realization which made him rather cross with God. "If free will is so important, why do prophecies exist? Why did you or some other higher power decide to corral me into a path before I was even born?"

The divine being in the rocking chair in front of him smiled sadly. "You were the best candidate. You bore the weight of destiny the best out of any who could. Prophecies do not violate free will because contrary to popular belief, they do not force you to do anything. If Tom Riddle never came to your house intent on murder, nothing would have happened. You could choose to simply leave Britain, you could choose to ignore my words entirely."

Harry ran his fingers through his hair frustratedly. "They would never have stopped hunting me! Voldemort and Dumbledore forced me to fulfill the prophecy." He glanced back to find that Lily was glaring, too.

"That's their prerogative. Free will is a double-edged sword. Voldemort can choose to hunt you down even after you make it clear you have no intention of trying to kill him, just as Dumbledore could have chosen to groom Neville for the prophecy instead."

"But why Harry!" Lily exploded, "how could you have known he would be the best for the job? If you look forwards in time or the universe is deterministic, how does that count as free will?"

God patiently explained, "The universe is not deterministic. Time is not linear. It is the fourth dimension, not the first." She looked mischievous for a moment saying "It's really more a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff. If time was linear, you could only go forwards and backwards. Were it planar, you might think of it like an enormous double-sided tree. In three dimensions, time would work like a bizarre interconnected tree. Human minds can't even really comprehend three dimensions of time, much less four. You can experience about three and a half spatial dimensions in total."

She waved her hand dismissively. "The point is you, specifically Harry, would have killed Voldemort. The stubbornness, that sense of justice and indomitable spirit is part of your soul. That morality, that drive which is so quintessentially you, Harry, that is why I chose you for the prophecy. Prophecies are messy business, but a necessary evil. They are my little loophole in free will. A few words, carefully placed, can pull events out from a downward spiral.

"Part of what makes you so special is that you never fail. You, Harry Potter, have never failed to stop Tom Riddle's murderous rampage across all four dimensions of time. In infinite timelines so to speak, your sense of justice and incredible strength triumph the greatest evil of your time."

"Then there's no point in going back?" Harry asked bitterly. "I've fulfilled my purpose, haven't I?"

"Purpose is what you choose for yourself," God corrected. "If you go back and kill Tom Riddle properly, a great purpose you've chosen for yourself will be fulfilled, but your story doesn't have to end there. Choose a new purpose, if you like. Whatever you want, Harry."

He glanced at Lily, conflicted. Could he leave her now that he'd just found her? Meeting his mum had been a desperate wish of his for his entire life.

"No, Harry," Lily said sharply. "Don't stay here for me. You have more to live, and I can wait."

"I didn't say anything-"

"It's written all over your face," she smiled wryly. "A very James thing to consider."

"Fine," Harry snapped frustratedly. "What exactly are my choices?"

"You could go back to the moment you left. Laid in the clearing opposite Riddle. You could stay here as long as you like. Time stands still outside here, and no decision is a sort of decision of its own," she ticked off on her fingers. "You could go on to the realm eternal. You could go back further–to any point in time where you mastered a Hallow. Or you could go elsewhere."

Harry considered. When had he mastered the Hallows? He could end up an hour earlier, golden snitch in hand. That would be torture. He hardly thought he had the courage to walk willingly to his death twice. He could go back to Malfoy Manor, minutes before Dobby's death, when Hermione was being tortured. Or he could go all the way back to his dad's death. Sixteen years ago, before Hogwarts, before even the Dursleys. The idea had a certain appeal to it, a chance to do things over with a clear head and hard-won wisdom. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that: yes, he would like to go back then. But he hesitated. "Elsewhere?"

"There are worlds beyond your own," God explained. "Stories like your own, waiting to be told. Evils to be vanquished, tyranny to be overthrown, crimes to be brought to justice. Often when people die, after a while they choose to move on from heaven, to start a new adventure. Some of them prefer familiar ones they have seen played out in stories, others want entirely blank slates. They go elsewhere."

"I could go somewhere no one knows me?"

"A completely blank slate," God promised. "You can take with you what belongs to you, or perhaps nothing at all, if you wish."

"What happens to mum, then?"

"That's her choice," she nodded at Lily. "You don't have a body or soul anchor, so you can't go with him elsewhere, but if you wait, you can go back to being in his head if he goes back. You could stay here, or you can go on."

"I don't want to make you wait," Harry said quickly. God shook her head.

"This place is outside of time. It will feel as long as you want it to."

"Will I be able to watch over him?" Lily asked quietly.

"Of course."

Harry mulled it over. "I can go elsewhere, return, then go back to when dad died?" An adventure without expectations, where he could rely on his skills alone, and build a new reputation for himself. He would miss Ron and Hermione and Ginny. However imperfect the wizarding world was, it had been his home for seven wonderful years. He would miss it.

God smiled. "You're the Master of Death. The divides between planes of existence will always be yielding for you. Whenever you're ready to return, We'll be waiting."

"I'll do it," Harry decided. The thrill of adventure had always called to him. Giddiness rose in his chest, like the moment before Hermione's Time-Turner spun over and over, or when he stared down the trap door to the philosopher's stone.

"Then go." The last image of the inbetween Harry caught, God had resumed knitting, a choice beyond death.