Author's Note: Just a bit of forewarning those of you with weak constitutions to severe plot changes and the likelihood of people being out-of-character to overall canon storyline, there will be DEATHS in this story, minor and major ones alike. A LOT of deaths.

The Hogwarts Express and the New World
Written By: Tellemicus Sundance
Co-Authored By: Fiori75
Chapter 1: The Missing Train

September 1, 1993
Hogwarts

Anyone who said the start of a new school year was a quiet, boring, and simple affair had neither seen Hogwarts in the waning hours and days of summer nor was an educator in general. There were always new things to worry about. Like crucial missing paperwork that needed to be filled out and sent to the Ministry and school board. Current supplies to be counted and catalogued and securely stored away. Old classroom supplies sent for evaluation for further usage or discarded with new replacements purchased and delivered. Inspecting the dormitories, classrooms, hallways, stairs, and passages for any damages, contraband, or 'unpleasant surprises' left over from the previous school year. Yes, most of this work could've been—and frequently was—delegated to the elves in service to the school. But some of those chores required a professor's signature or approval.

Albus himself was certainly quite tidy with his own workload. He'd also had decades of experience, which had taught him well how to anticipate any last-second problems. Which was why he was well placed to sit back and grin at the sometimes near-mad panic some of his younger colleagues could work themselves into as they scrambled to make up for procrastinating on certain things over the summer. He'd occasionally offer his help, but only if the matter truly required urgent attention. Oftentimes he just left them to deal with their problems themselves. A lesson in the importance of staying on top of their workload, utilizing good time-management, and the use of forward-thinking. This is at least what he liked to tell himself rather than admit to feeling amused at their panic.

Still, for as frantically and fast-paced as the bustling professors could be in the last days of the summer vacation. It was with pride he saw that all of them were always ready to put on their best professional faces when the time came to welcome the returning and newly arriving students. Such was their professional pride as the educators at the finest school of Witchcraft and Wizardry in all the British Isles.

Currently, Albus was seated upon his chair within his tower office. According to his timepiece, the Express should be just under half an hour away. After that, should all go well, it'd be maybe another thirty minutes before the students had finished being transported up to the castle. He'd have to be in his seat at the dinner table in about 45 minutes.

Which conveniently left plenty of time for him to finish work on this new ward scheme he was hurriedly putting together and then rush down to enchant it. Albus had been meaning to finish this ward scheme for several years now but had never really had the inclination to do so. It was a simple protection ward meant to envelope the first-year boats in an invisible bubble that would shield them from all manner of bad weather. Such as the surprisingly heavy deluge that was pouring out of the skies at this very moment.

Just as he was beginning to slip the final runic sequence into place, a jolt of magic painfully shot up his spine. Albus flinched badly as the sensation of frozen lightning seared through his nerves, causing his hands to twitch and spasm violently, ruining in seconds the work of hours. But he utterly failed to notice that he turned to look out his window towards the south.

'That was dark magic!' he knew. He'd encountered it frequently throughout his life. Not only had he exercised it to a rather significant degree in his arrogant youth, but he'd spent decades combating, subverting, and cleansing it for decades. Along with his especially powerful magical sensory devices, he had an intimate knowledge of the many branches of dark magic. This allowed him to quickly deduce the most likely type of magic that had just been used. 'This feeling is…bloody and chaotic, yet controlled. A ritual then. But it's, but what kind? It's too focused and measured to be a summoning, but it's reaching for something all the same. Yet despite that it seems to also be…unaimed. Like they were firing the energy out into the void, and that energy was malicious indeed. Death magic? No, it's not quite the right wavelength for that, blood? Yes, blood taken to the point of death, but that is not all, there is something underneath it all, something… elemental? Yes, that seems the closest…But still not right. This is something new!'

Grasping his wand as he stood to his feet, Albus moved over to where Fawkes was suddenly awake upon his perch. Reaching out, he gently stroked a wrinkled old finger along the phoenix's chest, calming the fiery bird from its sudden awakening. As the avian stared up at him with a slightly panicked stare, Albus smiled wanly. "I sense it too my old friend. Please be prepared for an emergency transport. I fear something has gone horribly wrong somewhere."

Fawkes cocked his head slightly, then turned his head to glance off into the same direction that the heavy residue of dark magic still lingered in the air. After a long moment, Fawkes looked at his human and bobbed his head in acknowledgement.

Moving over to one of his cabinets, he opened it and hurriedly started rifling through its collection of strange doodads and knickknacks. Eventually, he grasped ahold of a large monocle. Quickly he placed it upon his face in front of his right eye, before pulling out a pair of silvery and jeweled gloves. After slipping the enchanted gloves on, he moved back over to the window and focused his magic into the monocle. Instantly, the world lit up in a dazzling display of multicolored lights, showing the densities and properties of the various magics that filled the area.

Reaching up with the gloves, Albus began making waving and digging motions with his hands. Within the sight of his right eye, he could see magic itself, thanks to the monocle. This is what allowed him to watch as the various magics began to clear away. Until, finally, he came across the magic that he was searching for. Unlike the gentle wisps of color that wavered and cleared like smoke that he'd been peeling away, this magic was dense, dark, and heavy. Frown deepening, he reached out and started 'poking' the dark residue, trying to determine its composition and properties.

The sound of his office door banging open sent another jolt of surprise through the headmaster. 'Was I really that distracted that I didn't notice my own wards going off?!' Nonetheless, he cut off the magic he was feeding into his monocle and gloves as he turned to face his unexpected visitor, and blinked in surprise. "My, my, Sybill. You gave me quite a start just now. What's going—?"

"Destiny has changed!" the woman barked out in a deep, gravelly voice that was a stark difference from her usual light and wispy tone. This was a tone of voice he'd heard only once before and he knew what it meant, so he instantly snapped an intense focus upon her and her words. "A generation lost in fire and lightning. Blood shall spill as vengeance sweeps the lands. Old foes and allies shall fade as new enemies arise. Peace will mourn until what is lost…becomes foundDestinyHasChanged!"

A terrible weight of uncertainty and confusion settled upon Albus as he quickly tried to parse through the cryptic clues. Certain phrases instantly drew his attention and deepened his fear. 'A generation lost, blood and vengeance, peace mourning, and destiny has changed? That's probably the worst!Whose destiny and why?!' Sadly, he was unable to divert too much attention to these mysteries as he watched Sybill cough and sputter, blinking hard as she came back to herself. But he wasn't even able to begin trying to reassure Sybill or answer any of the questions he knew she'd have after coming out of her Seer's Trance.

For it was at that moment that a bright and loud explosion lit up the night sky upon the horizon, just to the south.

XxX

Albania

In an abandoned house that was rapidly decaying away, a smokey essence floated about. It's 'physical' shape was remarkably similar to that of an Obscurial. But unlike those magical parasites, this creature didn't require a body to possess. Instead, it just floated about listlessly. The consciousness within the mass was doing the same thing it had been for the past dozen years since it's defeat and near-death. Namely, it was brooding, contemplating it's fate, puzzling out new schemes to gain a new body, determining petty torments for its many followers' abandonment of it, and most definitely revenge upon the boy who'd lived through his wrath.

As he was happily thinking about skinning Harry alive, he felt a sudden strange sensation in his very being. He felt...tired. Which was strange since he'd not felt any type of exhaustion, sleep deprivation, or any type of physical sensations since he'd been reduced to this state. Sleeping suddenly felt like a very attractive idea, now that he thought of it. Going so many years with no sleep really did do something to a person.

No! He couldn't sleep now. He was Lord Voldemort! He had things he needed to do. Like...Like... Why couldn't he remember what he needed to do...? It was something important. Something in... Hogwarts? Yes, Hogwarts sounded right. He could sleep when he arrived at Hogwarts! Now, which way...did he...have to...goooo...?

And just like that, the specter that was Lord Voldemort faded from existence. Destiny kept moving onwards.

XxX

10 minutes later
Scotland, 20 miles south of Hogwarts

Like smog trapped within a small room, dark magic hung heavy in the air. It was thick and choking, heavy in a way few had ever seen outside of a war zone. A malignant feeling, seeking to corrupt what was pure and exacerbate that which wasn't. For the red cloaked figure of the Auror known as Damien Waybright, it was like a cloying heavy feeling. Like a heavy wet wool towel had been wrapped around him on a hot day. Damien was a naturally large and burly man, a quirk of Norse heritage, though his vibrant red hair was a dead giveaway to his mixed Irish heritage as well. His face was hidden under the shadow of his wizards' cloak hood. On most days, he would've had his hood down and proudly showed himself, as his uncovered face was rather striking in his opinion. Today however, his hood allowed him to somewhat hide how rapidly he was paling in shock.

Shock that he knew was mirrored in all his fellow Aurors as they busied about the ritual site that had once been a stretch of train tracks. The same tracks that would have brought the Hogwarts Express merrily into the Hogsmeade station.

The ritual was somewhat standard at first glance, Damien noted as he started performing his own examinations. Whomever did this had used the standard three-fold focus method for rituals. Emplacing a geometric runic array within a circle, erecting small runic obelisks at each point. It was even aligned with the cardinal directions to allow more ambient energy to flow through it. Yet anyone could tell that there was something wrong with it after more than just a few seconds of examination.

The obelisks were what stood out first. They were just slightly the wrong color, along with having a visibly incorrect texture for stone. The diagnostic spell should have cleared up his confusion, yet instead the readings left him feeling ill and praying that he had miscast the spell. A prayer that was dashed against the rocks as he began to hear the gagging of one of his less-than-hardy coworkers.

"Merlin! These things are…!" another shouted in horror before trailing off, unwilling to speak the sheer horror that was the truth.

"People. These were people. About four wizards and three witches if my own readings are not inaccurate," a tired voice finished for the slightly panicking Unspeakable, drawing attention to the rather subdued Headmaster of Hogwarts.

Damien hadn't even noticed the august wizard's presence upon the scene. Despite the tall man's rather fetching autumn sky colored robe, and the general presence a man of such power rightly exuded, Dumbledore had blended in seamlessly with the drabber investigators.

"…That's not all, is it?" Damien found himself asking.

He was trying to keep his attention on the task at hand, refusing to give in to the gnawing pit of horror in his stomach. He only had part of the scene, and he needed the whole of it if he was going to solve this. The obelisks weren't the only things that stood out as 'WRONG!' after all.

"No," Dumbledore finally spoke after somehow picking him out of all his identically robed compatriots. "No, if only that had been it. Every bit of this ritual site, from runestones to the paint, to even the dust they used to dry and seal it with. Everything came from human sources." The disgust on the wizen man's face sent ripples through everyone present.

"Death Magic, then?" someone voiced from the crowd. Damien was not the only one to shake their heads at that. Dumbledore was also frowning as he looked to the same thing many of the wiser Aurors were already gazing at in confusion.

"No, a true death ritual would have killed everything in the area. But as you can see, life goes on," the Headmaster finally spoke as he gestured to the greenery that still thrived around the ritual circle.

"But then why this macabre scene?" Damien only realized that he had asked his question aloud when the older wizard met his eye.

"Power," Albus frowned heavily. "Power enough to fuel a great working. A human soul offered to a ritual of this sort could accomplish almost anything. I imagine all seven participants gave their lives to this working willingly."

"But what could they have been trying to do?" Damien asked, somehow speaking for the entire crowd of his fellows.

"That is what I have been attempting to parse out since I arrived. Unfortunately, my findings have been grim and what hypothesis I have formed from them…I would rather not speak of," Albus seemed to almost deflate as he continued to study the ritual site.

"What do you suspect, Dumbledore?" Damien pressed. He almost didn't want to hear the answer as those tired eyes finally looked at something other than the disturbing aftermath. They were tired eyes, so unlike his memories of the man who had simply been delighted by life. It was a bare instant after their eyes had somehow met yet again that Damien became aware that the older man seemed to be tearing up as he gathered his answer.

"… I suspect that this was an attack on our nation's greatest treasure," he finally answered, before turning his gaze toward Hogwarts.

It only took Damien a moment to understand what he could have meant, and the shock drove his next words from him before he could consider them. "Surely, you can't mean they targeted the students?!"

"I unfortunately do," Dumbledore answered morosely. "The Hogwarts Express was scheduled to arrive in Hogsmeade five minutes ago. But it hasn't. It has instead vanished. From this very point, if I were to hazard a guess."

XxX

Flashes of terrible pain. Snapshots of lightning and electricity filling the air. Sounds were silenced or muted down. Gravity became seemingly optional. There was mind-rendering agony, followed by complete but horrible numbness as they gasped laboriously for just one tiny breath of air. Everything tasted like the color green, but smelled like an echo in time.

The world spinning uncontrollably around them, throwing them about mercilessly, yet remaining utterly motionless as if frozen in time and space. Glass from shattered windows shining in deadly beauty as the innumerable and dangerous shards danced through or hung immobile through the air. Trunks getting knocked over, allowing their contents to be added to the mess.

These brief glimpses were all that any of them would ever truly be able to remember about what had happened in those eternally long and yet infinitesimally tiny spans of time when the world had suddenly lit up outside the train. Finally, with one final flash of red-hot lightning that blinded everyone present, the world returned to seeming normalcy.

XxX

It started instantaneously with a deafening noise as the train cars lurched to the sides in various different ways.

It was the Express's engine that made the first noticeable change. With the sudden disappearance of tracks beneath its wheels, the nose of the behemoth dipped as it lost a great deal of speed and gained a tremendous amount of resistance. Its tail end was still connected and pushed along by the fifteen passenger cars it was towing behind. They were all still traveling at the same previous speeds and jabbed mightily into the rapidly decelerating engine, causing its backend to get roughly lifted into the air as its front took an even more severe nosedive.

Unexpected resistance in the form of a massive rock outcropping sprung up just in front of the engine. The entire front of the beautiful steam engine crumpled and twisted as metal slammed face first into granite. Momentum and angles caused the following passenger cars to come to a crashing halt behind the engine. The first two cars directly behind the engine were nearly crushed to unrecognizable shapes from all of the following cars' momentum crashing into them. It was only by virtue of the magically reinforced supports and protective wards that saved them and the passengers within from being squashed into bloody paste.

The following cars proceeded to be twisted and turned in haphazard manners thanks to having no track underneath them to keep them in a relatively straight line. The noise of the crash was positively deafening as metal screamed in protest, wood cracked and splintered, the glass of the large windows all shattered at some point during the tumbling and rolling crash the cars endured. The screech of metal on rock was particularly ear-wrenching as two cars were rolled completely over upon their roofs, before suddenly being silenced as they left the bedrock beneath. A loud splash of spraying water was followed as three of those cars came to an early halt, swaying slightly in the wind and surf as they hung suspended in the air. It was only by the grace of magic and luck that those three cars remained connected to the overall train. Had the clamps been any bit weaker, those passenger cars would've fallen completely free and sunk fully beneath the waves they were all partially submerged in now.

As would be expected, the rearmost passenger cars suffered far less damage and few of the passengers within them were badly injured at all. The only real pain they had felt was during the electrical anomaly itself, as well as some of them being knocked off their feet as the train went out of control.

From where he sat, Harry was clinging as best he could to the armrest of the train seat he was in with one arm as his other clutched tightly around Hedwig's cage. The owl was flapping her wings wildly and screeching as she too fought to find and maintain some semblance of balance. Beside him, Ron was in much the same condition, but was actually in a slightly more stable position since he was able to use his legs to brace himself against the seat across from them, thanks to him having been in a slouching position when the whatever it was had started. Somewhat ironically, it was also thanks to him being in this position that Hermione had been able to regain some of her own bearings and brace herself in her seat like Harry, leaning slightly against Ron's legs for support.

Sadly, the only one of them who hadn't been able to brace himself was the sleeping professor. The man, R. J. Lupin as the nametag on his luggage labeled him as, had been violently thrown out of his seat and slammed into the adjacent wall, startling the man awake just in time for him to feel the force of his own body landing upon his leg the wrong way and something audibly snapping within. The man's cries of pain were only partially drowned out as all three students were likewise screaming at the tops of their lungs as they rode out the wild shaking and convulsions the train was going through.

After what felt like hours but was closer to only about two minutes' worth of time, the shaking finally came to a stop. The passenger car they were in had just begun leaning partially onto its side as the momentum of the crash bled off. Thus, when the rest of the train came to a halt, the car tilted and landed back upon its iron wheels in proper form. Following this last violent jostle, everything finally stopped. For just a moment, all was quiet within and without the train as all of the passengers breathed in mighty sighs of relief that the experience was finally over.

Then a mighty hissing explosion rocked the air as the steam-engine ruptured and the condensed pressure trapped within escaped. The hissing noise might've only lasted a few short moments, but it also acted as a catalyst. Throughout the wrecked train cars, students began screaming in terror, yelling out for answers, or crying in pain. But none of that really mattered to the quartet at the back of the train. They were all just breathing heavily in relief.

"Everybody okay?" Harry asked, his eyes glancing between his two friends' figures in the darkness. Now that he had a chance to really start examining their surroundings, he was unsurprised to find that the car's lighting had gone out, apparently damaged or destroyed in the crash. So, the train car was almost darkly black inside, except for the bright pale light that was shining in from the shattered windows. Moonlight, if he had to guess.

"I'm okay," Ron acknowledged, sitting up straight as his hands went to his pocket. At his touch, Scabbers poked his little head out with a squeak of discontent and alarm, looking about wildly but otherwise seeming unharmed. "Hermione?"

"Crookshanks!" Hermione yelled out in distress, looking around wildly for her new pet cat. But the strange feline was nowhere to be seen. "Crookshanks!"

As she fretted about the compartment for her cat, Harry had moved off to the side, moving carefully over the many shattered pieces of glass that littered the floor. Their professor was still lying upon the floor, moaning loudly in pain. "Professor Lupin? You okay?"

"N-No, I'm…not okay," the man groaned out, pain obvious in his voice. "I think I…broke my knee and…my wand's missing… What happened?"

"Bloody hell!" Ron cried out suddenly. The Weasley boy was leaning upon the windowsill, looking outwards to try and survey the destruction that had been wrought. At least, that's what Harry had thought he was doing at first. But then he noticed that his friend was actually staring upwards towards the sky. "That's… That's… That's not right! WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?!"

"What is it?!" Harry demanded, looking over towards his friend.

"That's not right," Ron began to mutter, apparently utterly shocked.

With a slight sigh of annoyance, Harry made his way over to his friend and peeked outside. What he saw up in the sky overhead more than answered for him the question of why Ron was acting so shocked. From the relatively small vantage point he had, Harry could see no less than three moons.

"Guys…" Harry said slowly as he sensed Hermione join them at the window to peer outside in confusion. "I…don't think we're in Scotland anymore…"


Author's Note:

You know, there's something rather...familiar about this story, isn't there? Well, if you haven't figured it out by the next chapter, I'll explain it in that Note. For now, suffice to say, I do have some good sized hopes for this story. But unlike most of my more recent stories, I've decided to try something different with this one. Namely, not making any real overall plan besides what you readers can probably guess. My hope is that this open-ended storyline will keep me interested, as well as maintaining some narrative flexibility should I get a sudden inspiration for something somewhere later on.

Since I'm sure that some of you might be confused, I'll explain it here. Voldemort is most definitively and truly dead. The reason for this is a bit of logic I'd applied to the very concept of Horcruxes. Look at how relatively easily old Tommy boy was able to learn about them in canon. All it took was a bit of dedicated reading in the library. So, given the fact that he's far from the first wizard who's sought to escape Death's clutches, it stands to reason that there could've (and most likely were) others who'd have also found and learned the secrets of creating Horcruxes, right? And yet we've not heard once about the several dozens or more dark wizards who've gained immortality. No, it's just old Tommy boy who's boasted about it. Now, yes, that is partially because the storyline is centered around him and Harry. But, realistically speaking, there should've been hordes of immortals running about the wizarding world, right?

So, with that logic, I found two possible explanations for why and how that didn't seem to be the case in canon. The first reason is that Tom did something that most of those others likely didn't and kept purposely shredding his soul and moving the pieces into their new containers. Thus leading into the second reason of him accidentally making Harry into a Horcrux. And, at this point in time, Harry is his only Horcrux that is 1) a living being and 2) has magic of his own. Meaning that it was Harry who was unintentionally keeping Voldemort alive all these years! So, sadly for Voldemort, all of his other Horcruxes are just now really dangerous, almost semi-sentient Dark artifacts, not actual soul anchors keeping him alive.

At least, that's how I'm working it for this story. If you disagree with this logic, that is perfectly fine.

Oh and lastly, as mentioned in my preface note, remember that there WILL be deaths in this story...A LOT of deaths!