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Every night in his dreams, Harry returned to that place. Sickly lighting, the splash of water, the sound of pages whirling in the air.
It used to frighten him, the strange place and the monsters there. They tried to hurt him, but could not touch him and in the end left him be. Even when there was no one around, there was the feeling that someone was watching. He crawled over the strange platforms and called for help – for his ma, his da, his pafoot, but no one answered. He sniffled and curled up on the lacey platform, cold and scared. He fell asleep. He woke up in his cupboard to the screaming of aunt Petunia, and returned to that strange place the following night.
He explored the place. It was slow since he was so small, and he couldn’t climb everywhere, but he found many books. Strange lights which moved and made him feel better when the darkness hurt. He looked into the dark water and saw something move. There were large tentacles curling in the depths; sometimes they broke the surface and slapped on the ground, sometimes almost hitting him. They were frightening and he tried to avoid the water, but one time he fell in – he breathed in the dark water, his lungs filling, and he choked – but something large, wet and slimy curled around him, pulled him up from the water and let him fall on the platform, then slapped him on the back making him throw up too-large amounts of black, viscous liquid. He was careful with the water after that, but in a different way – he had respect for the danger, but also faith that the large tentacles would help him again.
When Harry learned letters in school he was excited – he wanted to learn to read. He wanted to know what all those books in his dreams had to say. He cried in disappointment when he realized that many of the books were in languages he didn’t understand, written with letters he had never seen before. He fell asleep tear-stained and tired and woke to more screaming. During his chores, he fell asleep in the flower bushes and had enough time to see that there was a book he could understand in front of him – he reached out to touch it, but was pulled out of the dream by Dudley’s foot connecting with his stomach. That night in his dreams he held the book – a fairytale – and looked at the many pictures in it, trying to read as many words as he could.
As Harry grew up, he learned that his dreams were not normal. Most people dreamed about ice cream and scary clowns and losing their teeth – Harry dreamed of shrinking and extending corridors, moving platforms, of floating shapes with many tentacles and sometimes many eyes. He always returned to the same place in his dreams, though the actual location changed by day. He learned to read more of the books and even learned some of the strange languages – it felt that the longer he looked at the books, the clearer his understanding became. As if the books wanted to be read – wanted to be explored and understood.
That was ok with Harry. He wanted to be understood as well. But no one believed him – Dudley was always right and he was always a liar, even when he told the truth. The books never called him a liar. They may mislead, they may argue with each other, but they always took him seriously.
As time had passed and the creatures of the realm had gotten used to him, they had started to teach him – show him things. They brought him to books he might enjoy – they showed him wonders of the realm. Always, the comforting stare was on him, the large tentacles ready to catch him if he fell. In return, he brought them knowledge – new research published in the news, stealthily torn page of an article covering up a new medical procedure, a preview of an upcoming children’s book series about a baby dragon and his teddy bear. It was never discussed, but he knew that they appreciated it.
The night before Harry started Hogwarts, Hermaeus Mora spoke to him.
Harry had realized way before that that was what the large shape was – the Daedric Prince of Knowledge, the ruler of the realm Apocrypha, which Harry had visited since he was a babe. The books had had detailed descriptions and drawings of the Daedric Prince and there were only so many beings with that amount of eyes. The creatures lurking in the hallways and browsing the shelves were Seekers, guardians of the realm and seekers of knowledge; and the big, scary monsters were Lurkers – there to keep unwanted guests from destroying the place and from stealing its knowledge and books. Harry had been accepted as one of their own and was no longer considered a threat to the books, so he was allowed to browse as he wished.
Hermaeus Mora – or Hermamora, as the Skald, a clan of Nordic people, apparently called him – explained to Harry that for the last few years, the Prince had researched the child’s strange connection to his realm and come to a realization of a sort:
Harry was the child of Lily Potter nee Evans, a bright witch who had made a pact with him to discover rituals which would allow her child to live once their enemy came for him. He was also the Horcrux of Lord Voldemort nee Tom Riddle, the man who tried to kill him when he was a babe and was devoured by Harry’s mother’s dark rituals, drawing their power from Apocrypha – and whom also had made a pact with Hermamora to gain forbidden knowledge.
Harry’s “ticket” or “library card” access to the place came from that combination – Riddle’s Horcrux giving him access to the forbidden knowledge and his mother’s protections drawing him closer to Apocrypha; the rituals still lingering to his skin and sensing the Horcrux in him but unable to remove it brought him to the source of their power to better fulfill their purpose and to keep the Horcrux from overwhelming him. This was, strictly speaking, not alright, as Harry had not earned his access himself nor made a pact with the Prince. However, he had paid for his advatage by acquiring more recent knowledge for Hermamora, and as such the Prince was not displeased.
Hermaeus Mora suggested a new pact to him – endless access to the library even once the Horcrux was removed – and Hermamora believed that eventually it would be – and in return Harry would help him acquire obscure knowledge from the wizarding world, which tended to guard its secrets well. Harry of course agreed. He didn’t know what he would do, if his access to his sanctuary was revoked – the only place in the world where he could be himself; he didn’t have to pretend to be stupid so Dudley and his aunt and uncle wouldn’t be angry, and could just focus on learning anything and everything he wanted.
Harry was sorted into Ravenclaw – no surprise there. Except for the people with premade assumptions about him, whom all had expected him to be a brash, rash Gryffindor.
He made casual friends with a few of his yearmates – mostly in Ravenclaw, but also a bushy-haired Gryffindor he often saw in the library, and a studious Slytherin who helped him with his charms.
When his relatives locked his school things away, he didn’t despair – he had all the time in the world and all the access to rare texts he wanted to figure out what to do about them – how to get rid of them. He leaned against a bookshelf in apocrypha, a thick tentacle curled around him to serve as both a bookstand and cushioning, and chatted to a Seeker about his theories, enjoying the higher level of conversation he could not find at Hogwarts – even if their wispy, breathy voices and strange words were difficult to understand sometimes.
In his second year Harry was drawn to a new student – a blond girl with unfocused eyes, whom he could feel was carrying a thin, wispy tendril connected to Apocrypha. She taught him of fantastic creatures no one believed in, and he learned that her mother had died in a magical explosion which opened a portal to Apocrypha and swallowed her. She had become one of the Seekers, the girl believed – and though Hermamora would not confirm it, he also did not deny it, which was good enough for Harry and her both. Through Harry, Luna negotiated a deal with Hermamora, which allowed her to visit Apocrypha in her sleep and to search for her mother. Sometimes, she and Harry spawned in the same area of the vast realm, and they explored it together, Harry showing her what he had learned, and occasionally playing tag with the Seekers.
In the same year, he discovered Tom Riddle’s diary.
A bathroom was flooding into the corridor, so he and Luna went to check it out – she was worried that something might have happened to the ghost whom occupied the loo, Myrtle. Myrtle was in fact upset that someone had thrown a book at her, but otherwise fine – except for continuing to be dead. Harry took the book, felt the connection to Apocrypha and read the name on the cover – and promptly hid it in his trunk under many locking and protection charms.
Hermaeus Mora helped him to come up with a way to bring the physical book into Apocrypha with him, and Harry watched as the Prince of Knowledge absorbed the book and the Horcrux’s knowledge into himself, its faint scream cutting suddenly as it was pulled apart by dark tendrils.
Hermamora shared the knowledge that Voldemort had planned to make many more Horcruxes and advised Harry to find them – and he would help the boy destroy them - as long as he could drain their knowledge, of course. Harry agreed, and proceeded to search Hogwarts for similar wispy connections to Apocrypha. He found one in the come-and-go-room the house-elves had told him about when he tried to find out Hogwarts’ secrets. It was a pretty diadem, once sparkly but now dulled by the taint of the Horcrux. Harry brought it to Apocrypha and watched Hermamora absorb its knowledge. After a moment of hesitation, the Daedric Prince handed the diadem back to him – for him and Luna to use as they studied the towering book piles of Apocrypha. Apparently, the diadem had belonged to and been charmed by Rowena Ravenclaw and it enchanced the mind of the wearer, giving them clarity and allowing them to gain and retain knowledge faster. They promised not to take it out of the realm, but spent many fun nights playing royalty with it – since it did look rather like a crown. Hermaeus Mora’s fond exasperation over their antics didn’t bother them – they were used to his grumpiness.
As years rolled by they became stronger, wiser and much weirder. They could no longer connect to their peers – much more advanced and with such different priorities – but they didn’t appear lost or alone and never failed a test, so the teachers just considered them a pair of bored geniuses and gave them more challenging extra credit work. The only one who clearly suspected something was Snape, and even he did not interfere – his own tendril to Apocrypha was fresh and renewed frequently.
When Harry walked to his death, clutching the Resurrection stone and gathering Hermamora’s wispy tendrils around him, he was not afraid. He knew his tie to Apocrypha was tight enough that he would wake up there, able to forevermore browse the shelves of books in peace. As he died, he sent the full power bestowed upon him at his nemesis and heard him scream as his soul was pulled with Harry’s into the sickly green, yet comfortingly familiar light. Harry watched as his Prince devoured his enemy and was returned to Hogwarts in time for tea – since it turned out that his body had not died after all.
He answered inquiries with vague references to seeing the light and not knowing what had happened, but that he was pretty sure that Voldemort was dead. And that was it – he was done, the Boy-Who-Lived, the Survivor-of-Voldemort, the unofficial Leader of Light with sudden new access to private collections and rare tomes testamented to him.
Each night, he returned to Apocrypha, ready to absorb more knowledge, supported by thick tentacles when he drooped over a book, carrying over books found in abandoned homes, in forgotten vaults, hidden under floorboards. He curled around Hermaeus Mora, sometimes with Luna by his side, and let the stories take him. His skin turned thicker, his hair fleshier, and his voice wispier.
One day, he didn’t wake up. He looked at his tentacles, the vast realm around him, and he laughed. He was home.