Arc One: Death and Rebirth
SCROLL THREE
A ruby sword blessed with the lights of dawn and the moon unleashes Death to the world
Back to the original story setting, near Harī's grave, in which Konoha's Hokage had shortly arrived with his Genin team and met with Uzushio's forces, that staved off the first attack wave
Harry laid under a patch of hastily kicked soil, on the wayside of a trail leading to the coast of the Land of Fire.
His casket was a simple one: unadorned, elegant, rustic. The wood seemed foreign and intriguing, but there was not an opportunity for a carpenter or a forester to examine it thoroughly, because it would soon be packed as an artefact deep within the bowels of Konohagakure no Sato, whereupon one day a rookie from Konoha's Cryptanalysis Team would stumble upon it, and give it a dedicated twelve minutes of investigation—and that would be it.
That is, until the tale of Harī would be revisited, of course.
And particularly that of his birth.
Or of his rebirth, to be more precise …
Or not—it remained a mystery, after all. Even to Harī.
He had struggled, initially; he had attempted to cast a wandless Bubble-Head Charm on himself; he had attempted to do that partial Transfiguration trick Krum had shown him before he was killed by Death Eaters; he had even tried to sing a fairy song that would make him breathe pure magic.
His voice came strange, bumbling, soft, clumsy, childish.
He'd even thought the fairy song had worked—magic like that was always weird, after all.
But perhaps the lack of oxygen was just getting to his brain, after all.
And Harry Potter, not quite understanding what was happening at all, drifted away into a half-magic, half-hypoxia mediated hallucinate dream.
As he slowly began to die once more.
And as he died, he laughed as he remembered some stories of his best friend.
Harry Potter strongly disliked hinkypunks.
Perhaps you would too, were you familiar with their trickery.
They were but impish varmints, festering under the dominion of war and decay; haunts of nasty places, scrunching down into bogs and wetlands, guided only either by hunger or by wickedness. They could be domesticated; at least according to Hagrid—but then, you couldn't really trust that gentle giant with that type of judgement.
They had the appearance of a more solid ghost; or perhaps of a more ethereal ghoul—cloudy, translucent, not quite there.
They were short and stout; and had no eyes, no ears, no nose.
They had a mouth on them, however; and teeth—numerous rows of them, at that.
Hinkypunks wandered around on their only leg, jumping on puddles and marshes, nary a sound on their passing. And on their hands they carried a lantern; a simple design, but altogether sophisticated for such a mindless creature.
They had a taste for pranks, if you would call it that—but Harry always thought that was a bit of a misnomer.
Fred and George Weasley did pranks.
Hinkypunks played with their food.
But they had a great setback—such a devious creature, forced to subsist in cowardice and trickery, was cowed by light, and particularly by the Lumos spell.
Harry remembered once in his third year when Malfoy had locked Neville in with a particularly harmless ghoul. He and Ron had went on to help the boy out of his predicament; but Ron had a problem with a hinkypunk when one had been let loose, for God-knows-why.
Thankfully Ron managed to force him into a corner with the spell.
Harry often wondered what would happen if Ron had not paid attention to Lupin when he'd taught the lesson on them; or Hagrid; or Quirrell.
And Harry's thoughts wandered convalescently away, cherishing the reminiscences of a life that was now over, as he dreamed weird dreams of hinkypunks and strange lights.
The tales of hinkypunks were not particular only to Britain and Continental Europe.
They were native there, of course. But similar phenomena occurred all over the world; and all over the planes.
While in Europe, lights in the dark could spell trouble with the devious creatures to the unwary traveller, in other places they could mean things much more different.
They could mean that a soul was wandering nearby, intent on finishing their tasks on Earth, mindless that they had already died.
Other tales were much more pleasant. Some cultures realised some of those brilliant sparks in the dark were but the souls of children, hastily scurrying around in wonder and delight of being born or conceived, looking for their future bodies.
Other tales were not as pleasant, however.
But this tale should not be one of them.
Guided by the will-o'-the-wisps on her path, that forlorn woman wandered down the trail where Harī was buried.
Bright hitodama, as was the name for them in their stories, showed the way, as she followed the lights in fascination, wondering—quite literally in the case of this story—what kind of magic she was witnessing.
And just as the moon finally began to gracefully give way to the light of dawn, she saw the sword and the grave.
She did not know how to read or write beyond the basics that a merchant once pitifully had taught her. She only knew the symbols to—as he'd said it—write as she spoke. And when she tried, it was glaringly full of errors, she was sure of it.
She couldn't even begin to grasp the meaning of the elaborate characters inscribed on the simple stone marking the burial place.
The only one that didn't seem to be a character was this weird symbol: a vertical line and a circle, inside a triangle.
It held no meaning to her.
It held all meaning to the plight of Harry Potter—the grave of the famous Boy-Who-Lived, the Wizard-Enduring, the great Master of Death.
Harry Potter's cenotaph was remarkably modest for a hero of war.
The Sword of Gryffindor was pierced through the stone with the inscriptions—a kind of new Excalibur, though none would recognise the reference on this world of shinobi.
Rather, the famous sword of the Founder would, in time, gain its own legendary status: with its original name and story, which Harī would expend great effort to make known; too, by properly being the sword of Rubīken no Harī; and also by begetting the legend of the Sankishitō, in the predominant language of these lands.
I would not translate this last name, for it's already a story on its own—suffice to say: the sword would leave a great mark onto this world, too.
In that gentle morning, it seemed to shine bright as a star and as the new sun, but it was also gentle as the now fading moon. Its silver blade was sharp and luminous; its hilt was filled with rubies that seemed to have preserved the fire in them.
And the woman would have been mesmerised by it for a short while still.
But then she heard a sound that stilled her heart.
She heard a soft cooing, and a giggle.
From the ground.
Perhaps the grief was too much on her heart; perhaps the supernatural overwhelmed her; perhaps there was in her a misplaced hope to save an innocent creature.
She promptly became a grave-digger in her desperation.
"Wait a minute, madam. Please, we are just trying to help. The iryō-nin will soon be available. Sit here, please."
Hiruzen Sarutobi glanced at the commotion, as the distressed Uzushio Genin tried to comfort a crying young woman.
In her arms there was a baby. They didn't look like a newborn, with its long dishevelled black hair; and yet they were so tiny …
He—it was a very cute baby boy—had dreadfully pale skin, and long white clothes that hid his legs and trailed the ground. His hands were dangling lifelessly from his small body, which prompted the Hokage into action.
"Genin, I will handle this. Go find your sensei, please," he said to the little Uzushio Genin who promptly shot the woman a pitying glance before bowing to Hiruzen and jumping away. "Mitokado-san, please reconvene with Tokushima-san and the other Uzushio's commanders. Jiraiya, Tsunade, Orochimaru: help the poor woman," he said, as they promptly obeyed his orders, the Hokage's hands already glowing with the Mystical Palm Jutsu.
Orochimaru looked interestedly at the child, his eyes gleaming with some sort of particular sympathy; Jiraiya had a strange expression on his face, as he looked half-joyed that he managed to finally unseal a tissue from his sealing scrolls without burning the whole thing, and half-panicked as he tried to talk to the woman.
Tsunade was looking in wonder at Hiruzen's hands, and in sorrow at the poor baby in his arms.
The Hokage had half an ear to his Genin getting the story out of the woman. It spoke of the cruelty of the world that they had tried to bury such an innocent creature alive.
She had his attention, however, when she mentioned the strange symbol on the headstone where she'd found him.
He remembered the description of the attacking rōnin-
'They bear a symbol on their hitai-ate, of either a triangle or a circle.'
It seemed kind of ritualistic burial. With the oni masks and this new developed, he would have to investigate it more.
And that sword …
That too merited his full attention.
He tucked the baby's clothes, satisfied that he'd initially stabilised him, and passed him to Tsunade, who was the closest one.
"Please bring me to where you found him."
'Til morns the day fair
Dreams buried, stay there on
Last breath and first death