The Mortal Realms
Hermione Granger had stood looking at the archway with tears in her eyes and feeling empty inside. Her best friend had disappeared with Voldemort and was most likely dead.
Once the two had disappeared, the Death Eaters and the Aurors had gaped with open mouths. The girl had used the moment the Dark Lord was distracted and had tackled him, sending the two trough the mysterious stone construct.
Members of The Order of the Phoenix had aided the authorities. They were a group dating back from the last time Voldemort terrorized Britain. Founded by Dumbledore, most of the original members were dead and some had been parents of Harry's friends.
The woman that had chanted when Dumbledore had been killed had fallen to her knees and had stayed in place cursing the girl with every insult imaginable.
The battle had then been in the favour of the enforcers of the law. Using the momentary reprieve, they had arrested the rest of the evil wizards and witches. Some had cried, others had tried to resist, a few had killed themselves. At the end, all Death Eaters had their mask removed.
The next hour had been used in dragging those criminals to their temporary cells before they were judged for their crimes. The last one, Bellatrix had been knocked unconscious by a scar filled Auror with a prosthetic leg and eye called Alastor Moody.
"You bastards! My lord can't be dead! He is the most powerful wizard in the world! Blood traitors, mudbloods! Scum! A thousand deaths are not enough! I will kill you! All of yo-!".
Crunch!
The next second, the woman had fallen to the floor with a broken nose.
"Alastor!" One auror complained.
"The bitch deserved it. Tell me, how many times this scum had killed good men and women all for their sick pleasures?! Longbottom parents were tortured to insanity! She doesn't deserve less!".
At the mention of his parents, the boy had flinched and clenched his fist. He glared at the woman. He calmed himself and went to reunite with his friends in front of the structure.
Sirius had been inconsolable. He had almost jumped in his goddaughter's footsteps. Moody had to stun him and be dragged out of the chamber. He would be brought to a healer to care for his state while the rest of the men and women in the room sorted everything out.
"Hermione…" Ron put a hand above her shoulder and looked at the structure.
"I can believe it…" She said" Harry had always come back from dangerous situations. To think she is-".
Hermione could not continue talking and hugged Ron. He felt her tears damping his shirt but didn't say anything.
"Harry was the bravest girl I known…" Luna voice had lost the dreamy tone she always used
"I'm sure she is in a better place…" Neville apported.
From what they had told them, the room was called The Death Chamber. It was like the rooms before it, a place used by the Department of Mysteries to study a subject. In this case, death. Nobody knew who had built the archway, but they said it had been created the moment the first living thing in the universe had died.
At the end, they boys and girl were sent back with their families and the place was then closed from the public so the aurors, the members of The Order of the Phoenix and the Department of Mystery could investigate.
XXX
Harry awoke alone.
She felt a splitting headache and when she brought her hand towards her temple, she felt a liquid in his fingers. When she looked to see what it was she found blood.
Her scar was bleeding. She whipped it out and got up from the ground.
The last thing she remembered was of falling through the air. And then it hit her. She had been fighting Voldemort in a room in the Department of Mysteries. Dumbledore had come to aid her, with her godfather too. Voldemort had killed the headmaster and Harry in her anger had tackled him and pushed the two of them through the same archway that had made the falling corpse of her mentor to disappear.
She adjusted her skewered glasses and looked to see where she had landed. Her eyes widened in surprise.
A deserted land greeted her. The ground was black and filled with rocklike formations. In the horizon, a vast valley devoid of life extended from miles away. The sky was distorted and of a pale green and purple colour that wasn't natural.
"Where am I…?" She asked. Nobody answered her.
A wind rose and the smell of rotting meat filled her nostrils. She protected her nose using the sleeve of her shirt and frowned.
The smell of decay and death was almost maddening. Like corpses left to cook in the sun.
Harry began walking with the objective of finding some sign of civilization.
It had been almost an hour walking forwards when Harry had to stop in her tracks.
In front of her, water filled her view. It was a lake that reached far away, and no bridge to cross it. The waters were of a deep blue colour, almost purple.
When she crouched down to look at its surface, she could not find its bottom.
Once she stood up again, she went to retrieve her invisibility cloak and paused. Now frantic, she searched in her pockets and found nothing. She had lost the only heirloom she had of her parents. Harry almost screamed in frustration. She only had her wand and nothing else to use.
Sighing in defeat, Harry began walking by the shore. If this was the afterlife, it left much to be desired.
XXX
Voldemort was furious. The damned girl had decided to take him with her in a last-ditch effort to stop him.
But once he had wakened up, he found himself in a strange place. It was a forest with trees that blocked the sun. The sky could not be seen, and strange plants rested at the base of them.
He had known of the archway in the Death Chamber and the speculations that the Department of Mysteries had about it.
Ages ago, it had been used as an execution tool against criminals and many believed it killed once you touched it. The bodies always disappeared but nobody knew where they went.
Voldemort had been dead before. The night Harry made the killing curse bounce back against him, his spirit had been temporarily in the afterlife. He didn't remember much, but it certainly was not this.
His horcruxes had allowed him to come back from the dead and…
Voldemort's eyes widened. He raised his hand, and a dread filled his mind. The ring… It was not there! He had lost his ring. Belonging to his family, the ring had been transformed into one of his horcrux years ago since it was an important object.
But it was not only this that made the ring so special. It was part of a trio of artefacts called The Deadly Hallows. Rumoured to be creations from Death itself. Once the three were united, it allowed their owner to obtain the title of Master of Death.
Voldemort had spent the remaining time of his reign trying to reunite the objects but without success. The opportunity to become a god had been lost and he didn't know if the object had come with him to this world or not.
He had been walking lost in thought when the sound of some people talking made him pause.
The end of the forest was in front of him and hiding behind one of the threes, he looked to find the source of the voices.
The sight that greeted him was another surprise.
A trio of what could only be described as humanoid rats ate and used knifes to extract pieces of meat from the corpse of a creature he had never seen before.
The corpse belonged to an insectoid monster whose carapace had been peeled off so its predators could access the meat inside it.
The ratmen had beady red eyes and short brown hair, with a tail that swissed from one side to the other behind them. They wore rags as clothes and held knifes whose blade was a piece of rusted metal.
Every once in a while, one of the three would raise its head and look around to see if anyone was approaching them.
Voldemort raised his wand and waited. Then, one of the beasts started talking.
"Aro'sl eru a-sir'rwti vuerto-pa'e…" Its voice was a screech that pierced his ears and made him want to kill it.
"Wopan'fvb eru'al Quri'slit!" Other slapped its companion upside its head and the two hissed at each other.
Before a fight could break between the two, a rumbling sound made all of the humanoid rats stop talking.
Brrrrraaaaaaammmmm! Cruuuuuuujjjjccccchhh!
The land shifted and the ground shook. As if a familiar event was about to take place, the ratmen sheathed their knifes and scurried in all directions.
Voldemort had not time to wonder what the source of the noise and tremors were
One went towards him, and he knew it was a chance to know more of the place. He tried to chant an immobilizing spell, but the effects were not the ones he had been expecting.
"Incarcerous!" He hissed. But his wand didn't react, the spell had not materialized. His voice suddenly made the ratman notice him.
The creature launched itself at him with the knife high above him. The two collided with each other and a struggle ensued.
Voldemort had not expected to lose his magic, and the beast had surprisingly good strength with its feeble arms. The two were sent rolling in the ground. The Dark Wizard tried to pry the weapon from its owner grasp and the beast used its sharp teeth to try and bite his head off.
"Aaarrrgh!" Voldemort grunted and huffed.
"Kyeeeeeh!" The rat screamed.
Rrrrrruuuuuuuuummmmmm! Crraaaaaaaaakkkk! Crooooooouuuuuuuuggggggh!
The ground shook and rumbled, cracks formed at their feet and almost made the two fall inside the forming ravines.
The land sifted and new mountains grew. The world itself fought against its own.
It was a common phenomenon and its habitants had been living with this kind of things their whole lives.
But the man that had arrived there didn't knew this. All his focus was on his opponent.
He punched the humanoid rat in its stomach and made it lose its grip on the knife. Voldemort used that to grab a hold of it and almost lost a finger. His hand bleed but he had obtained the object.
Voldemort twisted the weapon and pointed its tip against the beast. Before his enemy could do anything, he stabbed it in its chest. The black blood that flowed from the open wound was oily and smelled like rotten eggs.
Once the creature exhaled its last breath, Voldemort got up from his position. It had been some time since he had to use physical force to kill anything.
He noticed the tremors had stopped and with the corpse in tow searched for a place to hide and use as his temporal base.
He found a cave that had formed a couple of years ago and entered inside.
The light from its entrance was enough to made him start working. He left the knife in the ground and began to study the giant rat.
The trail of blood it had left made him almost certain other predators could come to the cave, but it was a problem to tackle later. He searched the creature clothes to see if it had anything else but found nothing.
He brought the knife and used it to open the creature insides. It had a skeletal structure similar to a human, with a thoracic cage and ribs. Its hands and feet ended in fingers with sharp nails. Its teeth were pointed and crooked.
The knife was a piece of sharpened metal with a wood handle. It looked like the beast had just ripped a piece of steel from scrap and had stuck it to the handle.
Once he had studied the creature in depth, Voldemort decided to try and use his magic again. If he could not use magic in here, he was in big trouble the moment some other predator or a bigger monster tried to eat him.
XXX
The land had no end, and Harry was starting to get tired. No sign of civilization was found anywhere, and it was becoming more and more clear she was in the afterlife.
She was going to scream in frustration when a series of sounds reached her ears. The sound of people speaking made her feel relieved. This meant she was not alone and maybe she could ask where she was. She walked forward reinvigorated.
At the other side of a ravine, a town greeted her. It looked deserted and Harry approached it through a bridge of black stone that crossed the cliff.
She entered the deserted town and walked a couple of feet inside. It was a medieval town, with buildings of wood and stone. At the end of a long main street, a church stood with a symbol atop its lonely tower she could not identify. It seemed like the place had been abandoned ages ago, and dust accumulated in the cracks between the bricks of its houses.
The whispers of voices whose words she could not identify made her stop in her tracks. Harry drew her wand from its holster and made turns looking for the source of the sounds.
Harry paled when she saw the origin. What could only be described as a spectre rose from its hidden place behind a house. It looked like a skeleton draped in a white cloth, but Harry found she could look through it like it was not even there. It reminded her of a dementor and the typical aspect a ghost would be represented in a film.
But it was not alone. More and more ghost surrounded Harry and she paled further. They floated without touching the ground and extended their arms towards her, their bodies covered with weapons sticking out of them. Cursing softly, Harry screamed a spell with her wand.
"Depulso!".
But her wand didn't comply.
"What?!" She panicked.
"Difindo! Serpensortia! Explodio! Confringo!..." Harry tried to use every spell she knew but didn't obtain the expected results. She then tried to use the three forbidden spells as a last resort.
"Imperio! Crucio! Avada Kedavra!".
Nothing happened.
"Aaaaarrrrrgh!" She screamed in pain. One of the ghost had attacked her and used its bony fingers to hurt her.
Her left sleeve was ripped, and a nasty bruise started to form atop her arm.
Harry had no time to lick her wounds. Another spectre grabbed her by the arm and snatched her wand. With the object in its grip, it snapped it in two.
The girl was starting to fear being cornered by the phantoms and sprinted towards the church. Once at the door, she used her elbow to open the door and fell to the ground.
"Ouch! Damn it!" Harry complained" I'm clearly not dead! There's no way that they could hurt me if I was!".
Closing the door, the girl exhaled the air she didn't knew she had contained. Harry was not sure if the doors could hold them outside, since they were ghost it was possible they could just phase through the walls, but she had to try anyway.
Her worst fears became a reality when a series of skeletal arms suddenly emerged from the walls around her.
"No! No!Nonononononono!" She wanted to cry. Harry didn't want to die. She was only sixteen years old and most of her life had been trying to not get herself killed. The fact her parents where dead for a stupid prophecy, her fault, had almost broke her when she had time to digest it.
The spectres were almost touching her…
BRRRRRRROOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM!RAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUM!
The sound of thunder filled her ears. A storm was coming.
Crrrrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccck!
The noise of a lightning bolt hitting the ground startled her.
BRRRRRRROOOOOOOOMMM!RAAAAAAAAAAAABBBUUUUUUUMMMMM!
Crrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaoooouuuuuuuccccccccck!
BRRRRRRROOOOOOOOMMM!RAAAAAAAAAAAABBBUUUUUUUMMMMM!
Crrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaoooouuuuuuuccccccccck!
RRRRRROOOOOOOOMMM!RAAAAAAAAAAAABBBUUUUUUMMM!
Crrrrrrrraaaaaaaaaooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccck!
More and more sounds of thunder and lightning filled the ghost town people and Harry's ears. And then silence. At least ten or twenty lightning bolts had hit the ground outside the church and Harry didn't know why so many had occurred.
She then realized that the ghost had stopped in their tracks.
The spirits left Harry and went back outside. Then the sound of clashing weapons and screams filled the air, a pair of explosions almost turned her deaf. And as suddenly as they have started, they stopped.
Harry had no time to ponder why because the gates of the church opened almost instantly.
"Whoooaaa! What the-?!" She lost her voice.
An armoured figure stood in front of her without entering the building.
It was a human clad in golden armour. Its shoulder-pads meanwhile had painted symbols of a stylized lightning bolt. It wielded a shield with a bearded face and a spear in its left hand. The clanking sounds of his boots resounded in the church and Harry saw it approach her. Its helmet was sculped to resemble an emotionless face.
"Ah! Wait, wait, wait…!" She scrambled backwards fearing the armoured person would attack her.
The person stopped. Then, a man by the tone of voice, spoke in a language Harry didn't understand.
"Sigmar aglu-tiar merboi'lae cour-pot salt-ea's…".
"I-I'm sorry I don't understand…".
Realizing the girl didn't speak his language, it rested the spear in the wall and raised his hand. He made a waving motion to indicate Harry he wanted her to go outside. Reluctantly she obeyed.
Once outside, Harry discovered that the man was not alone. Other people with armour and weapons similar to him stood in the streets of the town. Harry observed them and the places where they were standing picked her attention. It looked like the ground had been burnt, surrounding their feet marks of blackened stone and ash made her have a dubious realization. The sounds of lightning striking moments prior probably signified the arrival of these golden warriors but that was very doubtful.
A pair of the warriors had bows and arrows with metallic arrowheads. Their armour also had loincloths of blue thread and like their fellows a chainmail covering the places without armour.
"Roua beoar'gtu... Valerion cart'se!" One of the warriors with bow said to the man beside Harry, the voice belonged to a woman.
"Torlp cji'a Beltan! Turnod Sigmar vit" The man that had entered the church objected.
Harry sighed in relief. It seemed these people were not spectres, zombies, or any other kind of undead. She could almost consider herself safe but didn't know the intentions of these people.
She didn't know how they had gotten rid of the undead but maybe sticking with them Harry could find a way to go back to Britain.
The man grabbed her by the arm and began dragging her. The rest of the armoured men and women walked, and the group left the town.
Harry didn't look back, and after being released from the man's grip once he saw she was going to follow them, she began to make plans on how to finally be able to talk and comprehend their language.
XXX
While Harry and Voldemort digested the new horrors and wonders of the places they had landed on, three very important objects rained down in the realm Harry was currently in and dispersed throughout it.
The Cloak, the Stone and the Wand had ended up crashing like meteors. Their presence would not go unnoticed for long.
XXX
After a long walk with Harry not knowing where they were going, the group finally stopped, and the girl could not do anything but open her mouth in awe and a little bit of horror.
In front of them, a gate made of bone, stone and magic stood. From its archway, a swirling vortex of magic spun in place. The gate was the size of an elephant and wide enough for a car to go through it. Glowing symbols and glyphs were engraved on its surface. Atop its tallest point, a strange symbol like a scythe greeted the group and glowed an amethyst colour.
One member of the group of golden warriors walked towards the aforementioned archway, touched the vortex of magic, and crossed to the other side. Harry feared they would end a melting puddle of meat, bone, and metal but nothing happened.
One by one, the group crossed the portal and Harry sighed in defeat.
"I swear… If this is something like the one on the Department of Mysteries and end up in another horrible place…".
Resigning herself, Harry closed her eyes and entered the portal.
The group left the world of death not knowing powerful forces had taken notice of their presence.