Welcome to the rewrite of my, shall we say, messy first piece of published fanfiction, The Eye of the Phoenix. First, some ground rules.
This will be a crossover between the Harry Potter universe and a slightly distorted variant of the MCU. My most important sources of lore/inspiration will be the original seven books, a few snippets of Marvel Comics lore, MCU films from Phases 1-3, and the television shows Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., WandaVision, and Hawkeye. Messy worldbuilding, like the whole thing about dreams introduced in Multiverse of Madness, will be ignored or smoothed over as necessary. Similarly, several elements of Harry's life will be adjusted to fix the more troublesome aspects of the Harry Potter series. This story will focus on the Masters of the Mystic Arts, the individual story arcs of the Avengers, the Dark Phoenix saga, and the Infinity Saga. Other storylines will be incorporated where appropriate.
Per my usual style, I will make some minor adjustments to things like the height and age of the characters where I deem it necessary (i.e., to better resemble their comic book counterpart or to smooth out continuity). While sexual orientation and romance are not a primary focus, deviations from canon are a possibility. Some characters simply have vibes that make a queer interpretation plausible, while others are awash in subtext that make it abundantly clear they're supposed to be LGBT+. If you need clarification, you can check my profile for my thoughts on this subject; if my stance bothers you, please take it somewhere else. I welcome constructive criticism, but trolls and childish arguments have no place in my comments section.
One thing I want to make crystal clear is that this rewrite, while telling the same story overall, is going to differ from the original in several ways. For example, one of my biggest mistakes in the original story was power creep, and the whole single-parent plotline wasn't working.
With that out of the way, let's begin.
Harry James Potter of Number Eleven and One Third, Southampton Street, London, was proud to say that he was highly unusual, thank you very much. He was the first person anyone who knew him would expect to be involved in anything strange or abnormal, because weird and dangerous things seemed attracted to him like a moth to a flame. This highly offended his only living relatives, who in their ignorance failed to understand just how extraordinary he was even by the standards of his own kind—his own kind being wizards, who lived in secret under the noses of the much larger muggle population.
He was tall, though not exceptionally so, capping out at exactly six feet. His skin was fair, his perpetually messy hair jet-black, his eyes a distinctively vibrant green, like cut emeralds. He had a thin face with high cheekbones, thick eyebrows, thin lips, a narrow nose, and a slightly crooked smile, which gave him the look of an aristocrat who had turned outlaw. On his forehead, partially obscured by his fringe, was a thin, faded pink scar shaped like a bolt of lightning, souvenir of the night his parents were murdered, and he had lived. Years of Quidditch and combat training had allowed him to build a respectable amount of muscle on his deceptively slim frame, but no one would ever call him a bodybuilder.
As the only person in recorded history to survive the Killing Curse and the vanquisher of Voldemort, the darkest wizard in history, Harry was about as famous as a wizard could be. He was known by many titles, most of which he hated rather passionately: The Boy Who Lived, the Wizard Who Won, the Chosen One, the Second Coming of Merlin, Triwizard Champion, Jewel of the Auror Office's Crown. The only titles he had ever enjoyed holding were Gryffindor Seeker and, most recently, Godfather.
So it was that on the 28th of November 2001, Harry found himself not in his magically concealed flat in the heart of London, but on holiday in the Azores with his infant godson, Teddy Lupin, and Teddy's grandmother, Andromeda Tonks. The island, one of the smallest in the chain, had been privately owned by the Black family for generations and was concealed from Muggles by enchantments. Yet, despite being made Unplottable, its location was known to the Ministry of Magic, which had made it useless to Sirius as a hiding place in the final years of his life. These days, it served as a private getaway for Harry and his patchwork family. Normally, Ron and Hermione would have been here too, but just now they were on their honeymoon.
Having just bade Andromeda goodnight, Harry was sitting on a rock just outside their tent, staring at the waning moon while his thoughts unwound. It had been full the previous night, awakening the lone side effect of Teddy's werewolf heritage; a surge of energy like an adrenaline rush that resulted in a complete inability to sleep while the moon was full. It was such a silly, mundane inconvenience, that he thought Andi had been joking the first time she'd described the phenomenon.
His gaze shifted to the moon's reflection on the waters of the Atlantic, and the rough beach twenty meters away from the tent. Hundreds of kilometers to the northeast lay Great Britain and home. He wondered how the latest generation of first years was adjusting to life at Hogwarts. He had personally advised Professor McGonagall on how to update the obsolete elements of the House system and curriculum that had given him and his generation so much grief, and she had listened to his suggestions with a humility that disconcerted him.
"You have more than proven yourself a natural at teaching," she'd told him with obvious pride. "Your D.A. lessons helped produce the finest fighters of your generation. There will always be a place for you at Hogwarts, should you ever decide you've had enough of the Aurors."
Harry couldn't deny that it was a tempting offer, but he would not accept it any time soon. He, Ron, Neville, Seamus, and Dean had all volunteered for Kingsley's emergency deputization program after the Battle of Hogwarts, and since then had gone through a modified version of the Auror training program. Those who had missed their Seventh Year of schooling had taken correspondence courses and W.O.M.B.A.T. tests in lieu of their N.E.W.T.s, and everyone had done well for themselves since then, but Ron, Neville, and Dean had confided their plans to quit the office now that the last of the Death Eaters had been imprisoned or killed.
Harry wasn't ready, though. He had grown so used to constantly fighting for his life that he couldn't bear the thought of sitting behind a desk in a classroom when he could be out hunting down the scum of the earth and keeping them from hurting anyone else. That was probably not a good sign, but to say that he was "highly reluctant" to trust a therapist with his story was putting it mildly. Hermione, he had to admit, was quite right about his saving-people-thing. Still, he didn't need to be a full-time teacher to—
The evil slammed into his senses like a wave. No, not something so small and humble as a wave; a tsunami. He leaped to his feet, wand slipping into his hand, searching frantically for the source of the malice pressing on him like debris from an avalanche, and flinched when he looked in the direction of home again. It was like trying to look directly into the sun, if the sun was blacker than a night with no moon or stars.
The pressure was growing rapidly. He tried to open his mouth to shout and warn Andi, but he couldn't form the words. The horizon, which had been stained navy blue by the moonlight reflecting off the ocean, was darkening unnaturally. The stars and moon stained themselves violet, and then they vanished. Death or something worse was approaching. He was certain of it. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing he could do about it.
Death, Harry did not fear, but that didn't mean he was ready to let it take him. He certainly didn't want it to take Teddy, Andromeda, or anyone else he cared about.
A voice as dark and vast as space without stars invaded Harry's thoughts, so terrible it made Voldemort's sound angelic by comparison, a voice he felt more than he heard. "Know me," it roared, "for I am Dormammu, he who comes from the outer dark! He who has waited eternities to possess your frail universe! Look upon my visage and know fear! Hear my words in your soul and feel it crumble! I scream blood and murder at your weak stars! And my screams are the armies of Hell!"
A great eye fashioned from scarlet and violet flame replaced the moon. Ripples of power flowed from it into the black night around it, creating a darkness so absolute it swallowed the very memory of light, the eye offering no relief at all.
Please, Harry thought desperately. Not like this. Not after everything we did, everyone we lost. It can't end like this!
The shadow was almost on him now. He could not breathe. His limbs were frozen. His mind was slowing. Damn you, you bastard, he thought, knowing it was pointless. You won't take us!
Dormammu must have heard Harry's defiance. "It's over," he said with a laugh like a continent cracking in half. "Your world is now my world, like all worlds."
With the last of his strength, Harry forced his mouth to open just wide enough to whisper. "As long as I'm breathing, it's not over."
The advance of the darkness slowed, then stopped. Warmth flooded Harry's body, and he gasped, falling to his knees. There was heat at his back, as if he were standing next to a bonfire. Another voice, a voice fashioned from crackling, billowing flame, spoke from over his shoulder, its tone deceptively gentle. "That's the spirit, Harry, but this time it won't be enough."
He whirled, or tried to, scrabbling on hands and knees. When he finally got a look at what had been behind him, his jaw dropped.
The giant figure resembled nothing so much as a woman carved of solid flame. She was four meters tall, and her body was devoid of any real details beyond her hourglass figure and the long fan of fire that hung from her scalp. Her featureless face was almost too bright to look at, and she radiated such heat that Harry could hardly bear it. It was like standing with ice to his back and a volcanic crater to his front.
"Who are you?" Harry croaked, getting to his feet. His throat felt dryer than a desert, and his limbs were shaking.
"I am fire and life incarnate. I am the one who holds the power. I am the beginning, the middle, and the end."
Harry found himself raising a sardonic eyebrow. Time had seemed to have stopped except for the two of them, so he supposed he could get away with it. "Do you have a name?" he asked.
The burning figure's outline flared ever so slightly. "I have been called many things. Balance, Destruction, the Original One, the Spark that Gave Life to the Universe, the One Who Sings the Endsong. But the name I prefer, the one I go by when I walk among mortals is… Phoenix. I sired the magical firebirds that share that name."
Harry almost asked how a woman could 'sire' anyone, given that the word explicitly referred to male parentage, but decided that it didn't matter. He had no way of knowing if Phoenix was truly a woman or was mimicking the form of one. "Why are you here?"
"Because we need each other," Phoenix said. "It is part of what you might call my job description to deal with monsters like that," she waved negligently at Dormammu's frozen eye, leaving a trail of flames in her wake, "but I cannot intervene directly. I need a vessel to act through."
A fresh wave of fear surged through Harry's body. "You're going to possess me?"
"Nothing so crude. You would still be yourself, but there would be something extra. You won't become a god who can wave his hand and solve any and every problem that comes your way, but you will have access to a power that can balance the scales."
Suddenly hopeful, Harry asked, "So I can save my world?"
"No. It's already too late to stop Dormammu from absorbing your world, but you can avenge it." Was it his imagination, or did the last few words sound like a joke? "And you will have a chance to save another world from a similar fate."
"What about my godson? Andromeda?" It was bad enough that everyone else was dead. He couldn't bear the thought of failing Teddy.
"This island is out of sync with time," Phoenix said, "but time is passing. They have a chance, as do you, but you must choose now."
Harry glanced back, wincing at the absolute darkness of Dormammu's power staining the sea and sky, an even more painful sight contrasted against Phoenix's light. Slowly, but with growing speed, the shadows were starting to spread again. Moody would have killed him for being so reckless, but what choice did he have? "If this is what it takes, then so be it," he said.
Phoenix extended her right arm. "Take my hand."
He stared at the proffered hand for a long moment, knowing he was probably going to regret this. The lesser of two evils could hardly be a good thing, after all. He grasped the long, fiery fingers.
And something vast and powerful—so unimaginably powerful—invaded his body and swept through his entire being. His mind, his very soul, was fused with a fire so bright that to call it hot was to call an ocean a puddle. It drove all rational thought from his head with the sheer force of its presence. He reacted on instinct, thinking only of Teddy, Andromeda, and safety. The darkness swallowed everything, the fire consumed the darkness, and the world vanished.
The last thing Harry heard was Dormammu howling with impotent rage.
:::::
The impossible geomagnetic event that came to be known, somewhat unimaginatively, as the Golden Storm started with a bang. Crimson and gold auroras exploded into existence at the north and south poles with unusual speed and violence. They spread across the ends of the Earth, defying all known laws of physics to make themselves visible in Scotland and the Cape Horn of South America. Electrical grids worldwide flickered, and airplanes lurched as their delicate avionics systems stuttered.
At the Dark Energy Mission facility in the Mojave Desert, the Tesseract's ever-present blue glow exploded into such brilliance that it would have blinded anyone unfortunate enough to see it, burning through its lead-lined containment vault like a Star Wars lightsaber. When the light finally dimmed, the vault was a slagged ruin, every electronic device within a hundred feet had been fried beyond repair, and the cube itself had melted through the floor into the bedrock below.
Meanwhile, SHIELD's main Helicarrier had been floating on the surface of the ocean rather than in thin air, which was fortunate because, for one terrifying instant, all its systems failed. Nick Fury, recently appointed Director of SHIELD, had been displeased, to say the least. His dismay, and the World Security Council's, had increased when it became clear that there was no discernible explanation for what had caused the malfunction, and no guarantee that it would not happen again. The news about the Tesseract and its power surge didn't help matters.
In Sokovia, a young war orphan who held a deep anger was startled awake by a nightmare of burning wings and birdsong. Her scream of fright awakened her twin brother, who immediately panicked, fearing more bombs were coming. The matrons of their orphanage were unsympathetic and punished them for the disturbance with beatings.
Many light years away from Earth, the last Titan found himself troubled by similar visions. It would take him a long while to find the information necessary to decipher them, and he was most upset when he did. In his anger, he didn't bother trying to halve the population of the next planet in his crosshairs; he bombed it into a lifeless wasteland.
:::::
In the heart of Kamar-Taj, where permanent portals linked it to the three Sanctums Sanctorum, the Ancient One cried out in surprise and anguish as the various alternate futures she had been observing suddenly and violently shifted. With her concentration shattered, her spell fizzled out. The Eye of Agamotto sealed itself, and she stumbled into the wall of the chamber, narrowly avoiding the sealed doors to the Hong Kong Sanctum. She forced herself to shake off her disorientation and looked up at the floating Orb of Agamotto, the artifact primarily used to monitor the integrity of the barrier against extra-dimensional beings created by the Sanctums.
The shield was alternating between surges of unusual strength and flickers of weakness, as if something extraordinarily powerful had forced its way through without causing permanent damage. Such a thing could only have happened if an entity too powerful to pass through directly had taken up a mortal host on Earth. The jagged fragments she retained from her interrupted journey through possible futures told her exactly what the entity was, and the knowledge filled her with a terrible mixture of hope and fear. If time was a river that could potentially lead to different destinations, then the course of the river had been thrown off. Old possibilities had disappeared, and new ones had taken their place.
She would have to act quickly if the world was to survive.
:::::
On Asgard, Heimdall turned away from the Bifrost gateway and strode out of his observatory at a fast clip, heading straight for the Royal Palace. The Allfather had certainly sensed it as well, but it would still be prudent to discuss the matter in private. The Phoenix Force had returned, and it had already chosen a host.
May the Norns have mercy on us, he thought.
Here we go…