Warnings: possible dark themes, psychologically dark-ish? (apathetic) Harry, no magic, virtual reality gaming AU
Pairing: TMR/HP (Tom Marvolo Riddle/Harry Potter)
Summary: Voldemort was just supposed to be the bored necromancer who had a slightly creepy obsession with the undead. Scarred was just supposed to be a berserker-but things never quite work out that way.
For one, he isn't a berserker. He's a bishop. For two, he isn't just anything-he's the renegade High Priest of Gryffindor. For three, well... let's just say Voldemort's slightly creepy obsession wasn't on the undead anymore.
Glitches were so inconvenient.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling; this story was also inspired by Legendary Moonlight Sculptor by Nam Hee Sung, a korean light novel about a virtual reality game called Royal Road and a main character who wants to conquer it all (for money). You can read it at:
www(period)rainbowturtletranslation(period)com(slash)legendary-moonlight-sculptor-table-of-contents(slash)
Also, 1/2 Prince by Yu Wo inspired this story too! A Chinese VR-MMORPG light novel (adapted as a manga as well) about a girl who plays as a handsome male elven warrior. Read it now at princerevolution(period)org! The manhua can be read at mangahere or mangafox, or probably any of your favorite manga reading sites.
Third shout-out of inspiration to The Gamer by Sung San-young, a manhwa/web comic about a main character who gains the ability to live life as a game character. Read it at mangahere, or probably any of your favorite manga reading websites.
"…It changed."
The sound of the harp came to an abrupt stop, a fact that caused many in the large hall to cease their conversations and actions to see what was wrong.
On one side of the hall, right against the wall, was a raised dais. A woman in a sheer white dress perched on a stool atop of it, her arms draped in white cloth with gold bangles around her wrist. Her pale shoulders and collar bone were completely revealed in her strapless attire, and the various shining ornaments in her braided blonde hair made her resemble a life-sized porcelain doll.
Against her leg was a large golden pedal harp, the strings of which her hands were splayed across in a frozen half-pluck. The woman's blue eyes, once directed toward her instrument, were now directed at some point in the far off distance above a horizon invisible to the other players.
Speaking of which, another female player showing her concern stepped onto the dais. Her lips were tilted downward in the shape of a frown, though it was only visible because her helmet that previously covered it was now held in her hands.
"Sola?"
At the call of her in-game name, Luna jerked back into reality. The harp shifted at the sudden movement, but her leg stopped it from teetering.
"Ah?"
"Is something wrong?"
There was something wrong. Luna righted the harp before pushing away and standing. Now at her full height, it was obvious to see the train of her dress and drapery spilled out onto the marble floor—a swirling river with no direction, as if she stood in the center of a white whirlpool. Daintily, her fingers plucked the skirt of her dress to remove her main impediment before she hurried down the steps of the dais.
"I'll be going now."
"W-Wait! Sola! What about Lady Helena?!"
"Tell her something urgent came up!" Luna shouted without looking back. The other players parted for her as she rushed to the large double doors. "That I'm unable to continue my duties as the church muse! She'll understand!"
"But—"
The doors slammed shut. Luna was gone.
The female knight sagged. "But I don't understand," she whispered. "How am I going to tell the Priestess of Ravenclaw that her favorite musician has run off?"
Luna sighed, disconnecting from her headset. It was the downside to having such a long session of W&W—her body felt numb and ached as if she had overslept. The manual had explicitly stated the importance of breaks between play times, but of course many people ignored the suggestion.
Well, it wasn't like she was unused to this feeling.
Ever since she was a child, her body had been sickly and weak. Her fragility was from her mother; the late Mrs. Lovegood had had a weak constitution and suffered many hospital visits for it. She passed away when Luna was five, too sick to leave her room in her last three months. Luna, though healthier than her mother, still suffered from poor health.
She was seventeen now. Her life was not currently in danger—the bed she lied in was that of her room's rather than the hospital's—but as if she was sick, a pervasive loneliness remained.
Few of her classmates wanted to be friends with "the girl that was always sick," after all.
And that was why she loved virtual reality—there, she wasn't sickly, strange Luna Lovegood; she was Sola, the serene, scintillating muse of the Church of Ravenclaw. Her father had purchased W&W for her as a birthday gift, so that perhaps she wouldn't be so alone when he was off traveling or writing for his blog. Luna thought it was the best gift he had ever given her.
…Though, things weren't exactly going well online either.
Many would consider Luna a very successful player. Though her level was only slightly above the server average, her name was well known and her skill levels were rather high. She spent more time befriending NPCs and amassing knowledge than leveling, which made Ravenclaw Faction a perfect fit for home.
Not only that, but Luna's title—the Muse of the Church of Ravenclaw—wasn't just a title. She'd been one of the minorities that had managed to obtain a secret class—the muse class. It could thus be said that that made Luna even more successful, for her status gave her not only fame, but also special quests, rewards, and experience that explained the gap between her skill and player level.
On top of these well known facts was the lesser well known fact that Sola was one of a very select group of people—a group that she, and probably only she player-wise, knew to have a grand total of four, including herself. These were those that possess or would possess the Keys of Mortem. Luna, the first to obtain hers, was the possessor of the Future Key—or the Eyes of Future, as they were also called.
She knew then from her Precognition skill that, once united, the four Keys could break the barrier separating Mortem from the other continents. They were players that had the opportunity to change the very boundaries of Witches and Wizards! But something had gone wrong, and this future as she saw it had changed.
Something…had shifted. When before the Keys had been destined to unite, now the future was murky. Luna no longer knew if she would ever meet the other three players—Past and Future were meant to guide Life and Death, Life and Death were meant to ground Past and Future—and for some reason, that…
That what? Upset her? Frustrated her? It distressed her, Luna knew that much. She had not seen their faces, did not know their player names, but what she did have were emotions—the emotions that the future could've brought, but were no longer fated. She wanted friends, knew those players could be her friends…but now she no longer knew if she would ever meet them.
Well, she didn't know if she could ever meet the Eyes of Space, but she knew how to complete the pair of Time. What had changed had separated their pairs, so she still knew how to meet her counterpart at least, now that their quest paths would no longer cross. It took a bit of investigation, but she knew the Eyes of Past's—well, the player who would come to have the Eyes of Past—location.
Luna wondered which one was it. Life or Death, which one had changed the future?
Duro Kingdom was home to Hufflepuff Faction, with the headquarters for the Church of Hufflepuff located in its capital, Orbis Major. Said capital served as a center of trade for much of the continent of Mortem—merchants of all factions were welcome, and the residential area was highly sought after for its favorable location.
As Hufflepuff Faction didn't hold any sort of grudge or rivalry like that between Slytherin and Gryffindor, Orbis Major was considered neutral territory. Any seeking to enter Orbis Major without malignant intention could safely pass through Hufflepuff territory. This made it a popular hotspot for tourism, further fueling the merchant economy, and also led to many famous players calling it home.
It was so popular that it wasn't odd to see mobs of people standing about, at its epicenter probably a famous player handing out autographs or telling stories. Famous guilds also recruited in Orbis Major's center square, though famous was not necessarily equivalent with elite.
While power did come in numbers, it also came in skill! Many of the elite guilds had level and skill requirements for its members in order to maintain their status. Some even had quotas for dungeons or activities. Other guilds were specialized—usually its players were up for hire and the guild doubled as a union—and others were well-rounded, specifically to form their own hunting parties.
Odic, surprisingly, was in none of those. And it was not for lack of offers, either—many desired to add the growing popularity of the treasure hunter to their reputation. Odic was a player known for clearing treasure dungeons at unparalleled speed—the hunting parties that collaborated with him had high success rates, and anyone who dared to try and backstab him found themselves unceremoniously left behind.
No one knew what class he was, or what skills he had that brought him such success; regardless, Odic was quickly becoming a household name in Hufflepuff territory, and any merchant in Orbis Major looked forward to doing business with him.
That was precisely why Cedric Diggory, the player behind the brave treasure hunter Odic, found himself in the capital today. After all, the urbanized areas of Duro Kingdom were no good for treasure hunting. There were few if any dungeons in the area that hadn't been explored from head to toe already—going to dungeons on the outskirts of town would be pointless save for grinding levels. And, though levels were important, Cedric did not necessarily see them as high priority.
He was a treasure hunter. Levels were only a means to get into a dungeon. They certainly wouldn't get him out of one—not with a class like his.
Many had decided to believe the rumor that Odic had a secret class was true. And it was. All of the guesses pertaining to what it actually was, however, were wrong—and it was to no real surprise. Cedric knew his class was one of the highly specialized, extremely niche hidden classes, and outside of its purpose it was really quite useless.
He was a scavenger, a utility based class focused on finding, identifying, and taking items. It was a variation of the rogue or thief main class—again, no surprise there—though its skill set was narrowed down to trap detections and pickpocket-like skills. Scavenger, a class useless in any and all types of battle! For Cedric, it was not a class anyone who knew him in real life would think he had.
Cedric himself didn't think he'd end up with such a class. On first logging in, he'd wanted to be something noble—powerful, capable of chasing after glory and fame while holding honor above all else. If anything, he should've been a warrior and he should've been a Gryffindor—but his interests did not necessarily converge with his desires.
There was nobility in treasure hunting, too. And there was the same adrenaline rush as there would've been in battle, and he certainly got himself a bucket load of fame for it. And really, what more glory could one find than rediscovering an ancient artifact lost to time, entering a monster-infested dungeon and making it out weary, but alive and with loot? Anyone could fight monsters. Treasure hunting had more finesse to it than hacking away with a sword.
Cedric liked the rush, but he didn't live for it. He liked knowing he was the first to find something, liked having stories to tell about things few would ever see. He liked to study the things he found, too—find out why they were important, figure out how they fit into the grand scheme of things.
And because Odic was Cedric, Odic enjoyed those things, too. So really, as pathetic as the scavenger class sounded, he had come a long way in order to appreciate it for what it allowed him to do.
Take for example what he was doing now; maneuvering through the crowds of Orbis Major was not as easy as it might've sounded, but the agile dexterity of his work made it as easy as breathing. Still, just to make sure, Cedric tugged on the hood of his old olive-colored cloak, making sure it was secure and covered his head. It wouldn't due to be recognized now; even though his errands were done, he didn't really want to spend the next hour signing signatures.
Even he needed a break from fame, and he liked talking to people!
Beneath the chattering of the crowd, Cedric heard a soft melody. It was the sound of a string instrument being strummed, rhythmic and pleasing to the ear. He unconsciously began to move toward it, wondering if there was also a voice he could not hear singing accompany.
Those who wander are not lost,
But those who are lost wander;
And with our hearts aloft in the wind,
So too fly our spirits there to the yonder...
"A bard?" Cedric asked aloud. Another player beside him shushed him immediately. However, with Cedric's curiosity now piqued, it was impossible to keep away. He tried to squeeze closer to the voice, moving forward into the mob of players that made up the audience. Finally, when he was in range, Cedric managed to peek between the heads and helmets and hoods of others to see the singer.
She had a full head of beautiful light blonde hair. That shade that transitioned between silver and gold flashed, and Cedric realized—his eyes trained to track anything shiny and expensive—there was ribbon and metal laced into her braid. There was a meadow of soft glossy flowers at the top, placed like a laurel, and he could imagine her in a field making flower crowns as she hummed to nothing particular.
The string instrument he previously heard was a harp. It wasn't one of the large harps that he saw in the orchestral performances he occasionally attended; rather, the miniature instrument was cradled in her arms, a soft gold that many thieves would not think twice to try and steal. It stuck out for more reasons than its material; against the lace and moon glow of her white matching skirt and top, the harp was clearly the main attraction to pair with her voice.
That was to say, the bard's beauty was also a bonus to accent her performance.
Then she looked up, piercing into the crowd, and Cedric realized with a start that she was looking in his direction. No, she was looking at him.
And who would know this more than he,
Who travels wide and far to find:
With eyes alight, in dungeons not yet seen,
A treasure trove piled high for a queen.
She knew. Cedric froze.
Those who wander are not lost,
But those who are lost wander;
Cities fall to dust and sand,
But the eyes see past the mist and thunder.
Odic pushed forward. Some players complained, but they all quieted when they saw the singer lower her harp and step forward as well.
"I've been waiting for you," she said. Her smile was a curious sort of shy. "I was a bit early, I admit, but you would've been late otherwise."
"I'm sorry?" replied Cedric, sounding more like a question than an answer.
"No matter. You're here now! Come on, I'm sure you've got lots of questions. They always do, for me." And without further ado, she grabbed his hand and pulled him through the crowd. They parted like the Red Sea for her, and he could imagine why. If such a woman were to approach him with her bare midriff showing and her eyes intent on something past him, he'd stand aside too. Nothing was more intimidating—or, he admitted, titillating—than a strong woman who knew what she wanted.
They didn't make it very far before Cedric gained back his nerve. "Who are you, exactly?" he asked. He didn't think this was a rude question seeing as she was the one to drag him off in the first place.
"I'm Sola," the player replied. She did not spare one glance to the players ogling them.
"The Muse of the Church of Ravenclaw?"
"Retired, but yes," Sola said. "It was quite the journey from the church to here. I wasn't expecting it to be so tiresome."
Instead of asking a more important question, Cedric was back to baffled and dumb. "Doesn't Ravenclaw have a teleporter?"
Sola side-eyed him. It was nothing but innocent, but even that seemed ephemeral—if her lips twitched even a centimeter higher, or her eyelids dropped a centimeter lower—
"Would you use a teleporter to travel to another region?"
"Well, no," he admitted. "But I don't see how that's relevant, considering that most people wou—"
She smiled. Her eyes he had never seen anything quite like before, and once again he was stuck. It was easy for the muse to do those types of things—definitely part of her class; how high was her charisma? Charm? Cedric had questions, but it was as if she didn't care. He questioned the fact because she was his captor and he her unsuspecting prey.
He swallowed his spit. It went down like a boulder. "Please stop doing that."
Sola laughed. "Ah, but it isn't quite as much of me as much as it is you. The past is always that way in the face of the future, you know? Quite literally in your case. And I admit I pulled a few strings to get here."
"Was that a—was that a pun?" Again with the useless questions. Cedric wanted to sigh. He was never so tongue-tied in front of a girl before; why did it have to be now? When this could be important? This was important, actually; he should be worrying and flipping out over the fact that she made a comment about his very secret, very special ability.
"A double pun, actually."
"A double—oh, strings of fate."
"You catch on fast," she praised.
"All in the job," Cedric blurted out. He regretted it right after; it sounded so stupid and what was he even doing?
"You're cute," she remarked, as free as a comment about the weather. He balked in the face of her confidence—no, it wasn't even confidence; Sola just didn't care about having a filter, and that sounded like confidence, and Cedric just regretted finding out that confident was his type of woman. It took dating the captain of the girl's football team to figure that out, and now he couldn't forget it.
Cho would laugh at him.
Sola, in fact, did. Again. This was a mess.
"I have questions," he said, trying to ground himself.
"Oh, excellent! I have answers. We'll make a good pair," Sola said.
"You know about my—" By this time they had reached a more secluded spot on the outskirts of the city. Cedric saw slimes hopping about, just waiting for beginners to kill them.
Still, Sola shushed him. "Shh, it's a secret, isn't it?"
"A secret's only a secret if no one knows!"
"Then I'll just be part of the secret."
Cedric stiffened. "That's—I don't think that's how it works."
"Well, I suppose you would know," Sola agreed. "You see secrets on a daily basis. I don't—quite the opposite, actually."
"How do you—" and then he realized what she said. "You're the same as me?"
"Not the same," she corrected gently. Her hand came to pluck a single string of her harp, and an arrow of light shot forth to kill a slime in one blow. "Only sometimes the same. History does often repeat itself, you know."
He might be dumbstruck, but he wasn't stupid. "The future, then," he breathed, and then was immediately shushed by Sola yet again.
"That's a secret, too," she said, and then followed up with, "You can be part of my secret though. I'd really appreciate it if you were."
"Uh. Sure, okay." Never mind, he was stupid.
Sola smiled. "Great! Thanks."
Cedric gulped. "On the condition that you stop doing that."
"I told you, it's more of you than me. Besides, it's 'all in the job'—ah, fancy that, a muse and a scavenger! We'll have ever so much fun. Oh, but seeing's believing after all—ah, wait, we're the wrong pair to demonstrate..."
Non sequitur after non sequitur was throwing him off. He took a moment to unravel her words before he replied (finally thinking, for once). "Want to go train together?"
Then he thought about their classes. A muse and a scavenger. Never mind, he wasn't thinking after all—how are they going to train if they couldn't kill anything?
Sola beamed. "I was waiting for you to ask! The best way to know someone is to fight with them. But I imagine you don't do much fighting, do you?"
"Not at all."
"Oh, neither do I! See, we're getting along already. Well, this is the way of things—we're not supposed to be the fighters—that's the other pair's job—but you know what, I think we'll manage just fine. We supports have our own way of doing things, don't we?"
"An unconventional way of doing things," Cedric agreed. He admitted he was starting to like Sola and her strange way of speaking.
"Unconventional is good. That means we don't need to invent new things. And, while I'm all for creativity, it does take quite a bit of time and—excuse me for the pun—a muse to get the imagination really rolling."
…And he was lost again. "Doesn't it mean quite the opposite? We can't do things normally."
Sola shook her head, and her braid swished with the movement. His eyes followed it for a moment before he refocused on her face. "Unconventional means we're making use of what we already have. Reuse, recycle and all that. It's a financially sound way of doing things our way!"
"Sans potion expense," Cedric added. Neither of them were tank classes.
"My, you really haven't trained with a muse before, have you?" Sola mused.
"I'm afraid I've never met one before you."
"Then we're each other's firsts!" she exclaimed, and Cedric nearly choked at the wording. "Well then, now we really have to go training. Oh, but that's such an uninteresting way to refer to it, especially when you're with a muse. That simply won't do if we're going to get creative. We've got to set the mood."
His new party mate was walking toward the proper hunting grounds for their level, so Cedric sped up to sidle up next to her. For someone who was wearing fairly delicate clothing, she was certainly fast. He took a glance at her feet and noted the gladiator sandals, string crisscrossing up her pale leg to stack treasure marks all up in a row. Not, Cedric thought, that he was going to go dig for treasure up her leg—dear lord, this girl turned him into a walking mess. "I thought you said being unconventional means less creativity?"
"Nonsense," Sola said flippantly. "Being unconventional requires twice the creativity."
"…Oh."
"So!" the muse began, clapping her hands as she spun on him. Cedric took note of her lazy grin, teeth peeking out between her lips. "Let's get inspired!"
She was an angel who studied and mastered the art of demonology. He was ninety percent sure of that.
"Wait, you mentioned there was another pair?"
"Oh yes, there's supposed to be four of us. But something changed, you see, so I had to come here early and make sure I met you. I wasn't sure if I could later on, so rather safe than sorry they say."
"Four of us," Cedric repeated to himself. There was nothing else she could possibly be referring to than their shared secret. If he was the past, and she was the future, then what were the other two? As far as he was aware, the saying was 'past, present, and future.' Three. What was the fourth one, possibility? Alternate timeline? "Four…of us? You're sure?"
Sola nodded, proud and wistful. She swung her braid over her shoulder, letting the tangle of vines spill down in its full length along her back. Her hair was like that, light and thin but thick in its bountifulness, and Cedric imagined a chest full of gold, shining in the same shade with a mix of silver coins. The future, he thought, was not always so full of riches and rewards; one could hope in vain that it would be, catch a spark of vanity on the highs of that illusion, but that didn't change the truth. That didn't change the past.
The past was steady. The future, like Sola, was filled with non sequiturs that took becoming the past to reveal their connections. Cedric disliked such deep philosophical thought—what use was there thinking it when there was nothing to do—but he thought it nonetheless. Did she see all those things, try and piece them together to form a picture of prediction?
Odic received the answers. The past was set in stone. Sola, then, received the questions—the murky future needed to be waded through, and even then, out of the swamp one had more questions than they had answers to those questions.
"Four," she confirmed softly, in a whisper without the hiss. "Yes. There are four of us—two pairs, to be precise. Don't you know, Odic? All Eyes come in pairs."
"Well," Cedric said, mulling that over, "What if an eye is lost? Then you'll only have one, and an eyepatch to go along with it."
Sola considered it. "If an Eye is lost…" she repeated, and this time, she was the one mystified and Cedric was the one who did it. He took a moment to bask in the pride of that.
"I don't know," the muse finally replied. "I almost lost you, but I didn't because I…"
"Because you came to meet me."
"…Yes. Because I came to meet you. So maybe that's it—if an Eye is lost, they'll keep on searching for their other pair. Come Hell or high water, one Eye is not meant to be without the other. All Eyes come in pairs."
"Whether or not they go in pairs is still up for debate, then," Cedric remarked, nodding to himself.
Sola hummed. "Quite. We're walking proof of that."
"Wait, what?" One sentence and his mind was a mess again. "I thought we—er, I thought our Eyes were a pair."
"Oh yes, as much as a sock and a glove can be."
She said yes, but Cedric wasn't sure if that yes was actually a no. Still, he tried to blink away his confusion and redirect back to his question.
"Then do we not go?"
"We go, and they go—perhaps—but maybe not. Parallel lines do not intersect, but skewed they are not one or the other. Are we skewed? Are we not? The future is a strange place, with one foot in and the same foot out. You can imagine how terribly hard it is to put on shoes when you can't find the feet they go on."
And there was the non sequitur. Cedric grinned, if only weakly. He was kind of getting the hang of this—talking to Sola, that is.
"You'd have to get creative," he said, agreeing but not quite sure what he was agreeing to.
Sola nodded seriously. "Unconventional."
"Get inspired?"
"Oh, I'd nearly forgotten!" she exclaimed. "I'd love to get inspired with you. To the dungeon we go!"
That one kind of made sense. Sort of. Cedric laughed, and echoed in mirroring excitement, "To the dungeon we go!"
Hi yes I'm alive!
So this is a shorter chapter than y'all are used to, I know, but consider it an interlude before we get back to everyone's favorite berserker ;) Enjoy the fledgling Luna/Cedric!
Sincerely,
R.R.