Chapter Text
“Crucio.”
The scream that tore from the Muggle’s throat rang out like a siren in Ominis’s ears. The man writhed on the ground, his body convulsing in fits of agony. Ominis couldn’t see the expression twisted across the man’s face, but he didn’t need to. The sound alone — the raw, cracked voice, the gasping sobs — etched itself into his mind like a curse of its own.
The wand trembled in Ominis’s hand. He held the spell a second too long, a second too far, and then he jerked his arm back, snapping the connection. The magic broke. The scream faded into stuttering gasps and silence fell upon him.
Ominis's chest heaved, and his lungs struggled against a rising tide of nausea. His wand tip still glowed a dull red, sensing the form of the man slumped at his feet.
His breath hitched. What have I done?
“Very good, son. Now you are learning.” His father’s voice came from behind him. It was smooth, composed, and pleased in a way that made Ominis’s stomach twist. A hand settled on his shoulder. Heavy and unshakeable. “I’m sure next time you won’t need our...motivation, right?”
Ominis nodded before he even realized it. “Y-yes, Father,” he murmured, voice cracking with the weight of his shame.
“Don’t you want to have a bit more fun?” Marvolo chimed in with a snicker, his voice far too eager, far too excited. Ominis could feel his brother’s delight radiating like heat from a fire. Marvolo didn’t just tolerate this. He relished it.
Fun. Torture was fun.
Ominis felt bile rise in his throat.
“I... I think I need to sit down,” he muttered, his knees weak beneath him.
He tried to step away, but his father’s hand gripped tighter, fingers digging through the fabric of his robes.
“If you try to run from your duties again, we won’t be so lenient again,” his father said. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
The grip eased. He stumbled away, barely holding his wand upright as it pulsed with directional guidance. A soft hum and the faintest echo of red light helped him avoid the edges of furniture and walls as he moved. His legs didn’t feel like they belonged to him. Every step was detached and hollow.
He heard his mother from the hallway behind him say: “The boy is too soft. He’ll shame us.”
Ominis went into his room and closed the door behind him with trembling fingers. The moment it clicked shut, he collapsed. The floor met him hard. His whole body shook, and he didn’t even try to stop the sob that escaped. Tears spilled from his unseeing eyes, wetting his cheeks as he hunched forward. His wand slipped from his hand, clattering to the floor beside him.
This isn’t fair.
None of it was fair. Not the pain in his chest. Not the screaming echo in his ears. Not the weight of his family’s madness pressing into his skin like chains.
He was eleven. A child. Just a child. And yet here he was: expected to torture, to obey, to become one of them. The Gaunts. A name cloaked in shadow and stitched into every dark corner of wizarding history. Descendants of Salazar Slytherin. Proud of their cursed legacy. Carriers of the so-called “gift”, the ability to speak Parseltongue, to commune with snakes and scorn everyone else.
They saw it as power, prestige and justification. Ominis saw it as a prison.
“I don’t want this,” he whispered into the void. “I don’t want this.”
He wasn’t praying. Not really. He didn’t believe in anything greater. Not after the life he’d been dealt. Born blind. Cursed with a family tree that doubled back on itself like a serpent eating its own tail. If there was a god, it had a sick sense of humour. But still, he repeated the words like a chant, a plea.
“I don’t want to be here. I don’t belong here. Please let me go. Anywhere. Somewhere else. Somewhere that feels like home.”
His body was shaking from more than fear now. Echoes of the Cruciatus Curse still wormed through his nerves. Courtesy of his father’s "motivation." He curled down, let himself lie there on his carpet like discarded rubbish and closed his eyes.
He pictured a different place. One with warmth. With kindness. With people who laughed without cruelty. A place where family didn’t mean fear, where love wasn’t barbed and violent. A place where he could breathe.
Then it happened.
Suddenly, the world tilted and the floor beneath him shuddered. The noise of the house faded into silence, like someone had turned down the volume on reality. His stomach twisted with a strange, weightless sensation. He was falling, spinning. The air around him moved like water, thick and strange.
And then... Stillness. No voices. No footsteps. No father. No Marvolo. Only the creaking of old wood. The chirp of a lone bird outside the window.
Ominis stirred. He reached blindly for his wand, finding it by instinct and habit. The familiar thrum of magic steadied his nerves. He cast the guiding pulse. Red light mapped the contours of the room in stark outlines.
His breath caught. What...?
The carpet was gone. The soft fabric he had lain on was replaced by splintered floorboards beneath his fingers. The wood was cracked and old. Wrong.
Ominis stood slowly, scanning the room. His wand pulsed, tracing jagged edges and broken shapes. His wardrobe: smashed. His desk: caved in. The walls: cracked and warped. His room was in ruins.
His heart thundered in his ears. Ominis bolted for the door, nearly tripping over debris. The hallway outside was worse. The furniture was overturned and the wallpaper peeling from the walls. Every corner of the house lay in ruin.
His family was gone.
“Mother?” he called, voice cracking. “Father? Marvolo?”
Nothing.
Ominis pressed deeper into the house, searching, but only silence met him.
Until he saw it. A glint of magic. On the floor, half-buried in dust and shards of wood, lay a single item untouched: the Gaunt family ring. His father’s ring. Ominis knelt, fingers brushing against its familiar contours. Why would he leave it behind? He pocketed it with trembling hands, and then the thought hit him like a bludger to the ribs. Did I do this?
Was it accidental magic? A child’s outburst gone horribly wrong? That could happen, couldn’t it? Magic lashing out when emotions boiled over?
But this? This was devastation. Total and absolute.
Did he —?
Did I kill them?
His knees gave out again. His head spun. He was gasping now and breathing way too fast. He clawed at the wall, tried to steady himself and threw up. It hit the floor beside him, burning his throat on the way up. His whole body trembled, wracked with dry sobs.
“I didn’t mean to,” he whispered, chest heaving. “I didn’t... I didn’t want to...”
No one answered. There was nothing left for him here. Only the broken house remained, his family ring and him.
He had to leave. Now. Whatever he’d done, he couldn’t stay. Ominis wiped his mouth, steadied his breath, and stood on shaking legs. He turned his wand outward and began to walk.
Minerva McGonagall took a sip of her Earl Grey, savouring the familiar warmth that curled through her. Outside, the sun cast its morning light across the high windows of her office, brushing her shelves and tartan-upholstered chair in muted gold. It was quiet. Blessedly quiet.
The end of August was always this way. Just before the storm. Hogwarts slept. The staircases rested. Peeves lay dormant, plotting his next chaos. And the students... oh, the students would return soon enough with their shrieks, jinxes, and teenage drama.
Minerva flipped through her schedule for the first week of term, quill poised to make a note by Transfiguration revision lectures. A new year loomed, and this one carried more weight than most.
Harry Potter...
She’d repeated his name in her thoughts more times than she could count. The Boy Who Lived. The child she’d watched, tight-lipped and silent, from the corner of Privet Drive on that cold November night. The memory was still bitter, how she and Albus had left him there, on a doorstep like a parcel.
She had not visited since. She should have. But Albus insisted.
“He must grow up away from the spotlight,” he had said. “To live like a normal boy.”
Minerva wasn’t sure Harry Potter would ever know what “normal” meant. Still, she wondered. Did he look like James? Did he have Lily’s fierce little frown when he focused? What sort of student would he be? Brave like a lion, clever like his mother, a menace like his father?
She smiled to herself, a rare, private expression.
And then she felt something. A sharp pulse from her wand, a humming vibration across the polished surface of her desk. The magic prickled her palm as she picked it up.
The Quill.
She was on her feet at once.
Any day the Quill of Acceptance stirred was important. A new magical child had shown signs of their gift. Either a surge of accidental magic or an undeniable incident that confirmed their place in the world of witches and wizards.
It was one of her favourite duties.
She swept through the castle at a brisk pace, tartan robes swishing behind her. Her footsteps echoed off the stone floors. The school was still and echoing, as if it too held its breath at the threshold of the new term.
Quiet now, she thought fondly, but not for long.
The door to the Chamber of Records groaned as she pushed it open, the scent of dust and old parchment greeting her with a musty familiarity. At the far end of the room, on a pedestal of stone, sat the Book of Admittance and the Quill of Acceptance.
Minerva approached slowly, opening the accompanying register she kept herself. The Book often took its sweet time to accept a name, and she liked to write down everything the moment it emerged. Sometimes the name appeared right at birth, like Harry Potter’s had, blazing across the page barely hours after he’d drawn breath. Others were delayed. Hidden until the right burst of magic finally revealed them. She’d seen a few pop up at age seven, one even at nine.
But this… Her eyes narrowed. A fresh line shimmered into view.
Ominis Gaunt (born 11th January 1875, Hogwarts starting year: 1991)
She stared at it, blinked once, then looked again.
It didn’t change.
“Oh... no,” she breathed, a rare crack of disbelief in her usually composed voice. “That can’t be right.”
She checked again. And again. As if willing the letters to rearrange themselves into something more sensible.
The Book of Admittance was never wrong. That was the maddening thing about it. One could argue with prophecies, misinterpret oracles, even ignore Albus Dumbledore. But the Book? The Book did not make mistakes.
Still, she checked again. She even cleaned her glasses on the sleeve of her robe, just to be sure her eyes weren’t betraying her. She recited the name silently, then aloud: “Ominis Gaunt. Born 1875.”
She pressed her lips into a line. “Either someone is playing an elaborate joke on me,” Minerva muttered dryly, “or the universe is very bored.” She sighed, rubbed her temples, and muttered, “I haven’t even had my second cup of tea.”
Her wand tapped against the Book. It shimmered, revealing no error. No anomalies. No magical interference. Everything about the entry was... correct.
And yet nothing about it was. He’s alive. Somehow. Somewhere.
Minerva closed the book, her heart ticking just a bit faster.
“Albus is going to love this,” she said grimly, already turning on her heel.
Merlin only knew what mad business this was. A child from the 1800s appearing in the registry in 1991? The implications made her head spin. Still, she couldn’t help the quiet flicker of curiosity in her chest.
Ominis Gaunt, she thought, eyes narrowing behind her spectacles. Just who in Godric's name are you and how did you find your way here?
Ominis stumbled out of the crumbling house in a daze. His wand hung limply from his hand, fingers barely curled around its grip. He pushed open the front door and stepped out. Sunlight kissed his face. It might’ve been pleasant if the entire day hadn’t fallen apart like a house of cards.
His wand trembled in his grasp, pulsing gently as it scanned the world around him. Shapes flickered into being in his mind’s eye. Solid outlines, soft vibrations and flickers of movement. It was enough to tell where the ground ended and the street began, enough to avoid walking into a lamppost.
He felt his feet hit the pavement, one after the other, and tried to focus on the rhythm of walking. Tried to forget the echo of his family’s silence behind him.
Gone.
He didn’t know how. He didn’t know why. Only that they were gone, and he was not.
If the Ministry of Magic discovered what had happened, if they knew he’d flattened the house, maybe even killed his family, they’d come for him. And if the Auror’s didn’t, the other pureblood families would. The Gaunts were monsters, yes, but they were ancient ones. Respected and feared. Pureblood society didn’t take well to scandal, and they certainly didn’t take well to one of their own turning on them. They wouldn’t let this go, not quietly.
This was exactly the kind of thing that would lead to whispered meetings and sudden disappearances. The kind where an eleven-year-old boy could vanish and no one would blink twice.
But he had one advantage. His wand. Most magical children didn’t get one until Hogwarts. But Ominis had been born blind, and that changed things. His family had arranged it early. His wand wasn’t just for casting, it showed him the world. Guided him. Let him read books, move through rooms and understand space the way others could not.
And more than that, he didn’t have the Trace on him anymore. The Ministry had cleared that up ages ago, tired of getting magical interference reports every time he so much as walked somewhere. If only he knew where to go now.
His wand pulsed, sudden and sharp. Too late.
“Hey, you! Boy! Are you alright?”
The voice was loud, too loud. Nearby. Ominis tensed as footsteps pounded against the ground. Someone was running fast. No wand. No magical aura. Muggle.
Ominis stiffened, pocketing his wand quickly just before the stranger reached him.
“You alright, lad?” the man said, voice breathless. “What were you doing in there? That old house is haunted, you shouldn’t be anywhere near it!”
Ominis’s brows drew together.
Haunted house? What in Merlin’s name was this man on about?
“I-I'm fine,” he said quickly, straightening his spine and trying not to sound like someone who’d just potentially murdered their family by accident. “I just... got a little turned around.”
“You look turned around,” the man muttered. “You look like you’ve just walked out of a horror film set... What are you wearing? Some kind of school play costume?”
Ominis clutched at his robes instinctively. “I beg your pardon—”
“Poor kid,” the man said, ignoring him completely. “I’m Jimmy. What’s your name, lad? Where’re your parents?”
“…Ominis,” he said hesitantly, struggling to keep the tremble from his voice. “And I don’t know. It’s… complicated.”
“‘Complicated’,” the man echoed, shaking his head with a low whistle. “Well, that’s not ominous at all.” A pause. “No pun intended.”
Ominis might have laughed if his stomach weren’t still threatening to climb out of his throat.
“Bit of an odd name, but I’m not one to judge. Don’t worry, son. We’ll sort this out. Come on, we’ll get you to the police station, yeah? They can help you find your parents.”
“No-wait-really, I’m fine. I don’t need any help.” Ominis tried to take a step back, but Jimmy’s hand had already found his arm, guiding him gently but firmly forward.
“Can’t just leave a kid like you alone on the street,” Jimmy said, shaking his head and muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Ominis to catch: “Leaving a poor blind child dressed like it’s the bloody Victorian carnival near a haunted house… some people shouldn't be allowed to have children, I swear…”
Victorian.
Carnival.
Ominis’s brow furrowed.
“I appreciate your offer to help,” Ominis said, trying to sound calm, confident, anything but terrified, “but I’m really quite fine. I can manage on my own.”
But Jimmy wasn’t having it. “Polite and well-spoken. You sound like a little Duke or something,” he said. “Still not leaving you on the street. You’re clearly shaken. We’ll pop into the police station. They’ll help you find your parents, or a nice social worker if nothing else. No arguing.”
Jimmy held firm, leading him with the air of someone who had already decided what was best. Perfect. Just perfect. Hexing the man was out of the question, not that he didn’t briefly consider it. But Ominis had done enough damage for a lifetime. And this Muggle... he meant well. He was kind. Besides, his head was spinning again. Something was wrong. More than just the accident. More than the destruction.
So Ominis let himself be led. His legs moved on autopilot. His mind throbbed with fear again. Quiet panic, lurking beneath his ribs like a living thing. It whispered all the terrible possibilities: The Aurors will find you. They’ll arrest you. You’ll be sent to Azkaban before you ever see Hogwarts. You’re a murderer.
And still, Jimmy hummed beside him. Completely unaware of the storm walking at his side.
“This is impossible,” Albus said simply.
Minerva was pacing in front of his desk. “I told you it’s what the Quill wrote! I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. But it’s there, Albus.”
Albus steepled his fingers, watching her over the rim of his half-moon spectacles. He believed her, of course. Minerva didn’t exaggerate, and she certainly didn’t invent problems out of thin air. But even she had to admit this was... unprecedented.
Before he could respond, the door to his office swung open with a dramatic flourish. A familiar figure stormed inside.
“Would someone care to explain the meaning of this?” Severus Snape growled, eyes narrowing. “I have potions to finish before the dunderheads descend upon us for the new term.”
“We have an incident,” Albus said mildly, folding his hands.
“An incident?” Minerva’s voice rose an octave. “It’s more than a simple incident, Albus! Severus, you won’t believe this. The Quill of Acceptance wrote down a child born in 1875, and he’s meant to start school this year!”
Severus froze. He stared at her, then at Albus, then back again, as though trying to determine which of them had been confunded.
“This is a prank,” he said flatly. “A very elaborate, deeply unfunny prank. And I assure you, I do not have the patience—”
“It’s not a prank!” Minerva snapped. “If you don’t believe me, go and look for yourself! The name’s written in the Book, plain as day.”
Albus held out his ever-reliable tin of lemon drops, offering it to Minerva with a gentle smile. “Calm yourself, Minerva. We believe you.”
She huffed, still visibly vibrating with a mix of nerves and excitement, but plucked a sweet from the tin nonetheless. “Well,” she muttered, biting into it, “I hope you both appreciate the gravity of the situation.”
“We do,” Albus said, inclining his head. “It’s just... quite unprecedented. What is the name of our new student?”
“Ominis Gaunt.”
There was a beat of silence.
Albus’s smile faltered. Just for a moment.
His eye twitched.
“Isn’t the Gaunt line extinct?” Severus asked.
“It is,” Minerva answered. “But this boy... he was born when they were still very much alive. January 11th, 1875. So unless there’s some long-lost descendant in hiding or someone playing with time itself...”
Albus closed his eyes briefly.
There were so many things Minerva and Severus didn’t know. So many things he hadn’t said.
“You are both correct,” he said carefully, opening his eyes again. “The Gaunts were a pureblood family. Isolated, proud and dangerously unstable. What nowadays mostly only some of the pureblood families remember is that they were also descendants of Salazar Slytherin himself.”
Minerva’s jaw dropped open. Severus blinked, then blinked again. His usual mask of irritation cracking with genuine surprise.
Albus couldn’t help the faint twinkle that entered his eye. It wasn’t often he got to out-dramatic Severus and shock Minerva in the same conversation.
“Wait,” Severus recovered first, his expression twisting. “Slytherin’s line? Like the Dark Lord?”
“Quite so,” Albus said. “Lord Voldemort has long claimed descent from Salazar Slytherin. Even if that knowledge was never widely spread.”
“But is it true?” Minerva asked, frowning. “Is this boy, Ominis, related to him?”
Albus hesitated.
A rare thing.
He could lie. Or rather... bend the truth. He’d done it before. For the Greater Good.
“If this child is truly Ominis Gaunt, then yes, he is a descendant of Slytherin. Whether Lord Voldemort shares that bloodline… is uncertain. He claimed it. To his inner circle, at least. He spoke Parseltongue. But beyond that, there is little proof. He never even made it official. And not all Parselmouths are Slytherin’s heirs. This talent runs in more than just the one bloodline. So, no, I do not believe them to be related to each other. Voldemort thrived on illusion, on inflating his importance. We should not worry the child with baseless theories.”
Severus squinted at him, as if weighing each word for deception. He said nothing, but the frown on his face deepened. Eventually, he shook himself out of it and gave a short nod.
Minerva, however, was still chewing her lemon drop with more violence than necessary.
“This is a very big deal, Albus,” she said. “We have to find this child before the Ministry does. Or the press. Or Merlin forbid, Lucius Malfoy.”
“Indeed,” Albus agreed. “Which is why we must act quickly. Whatever circumstances brought this boy to the present, we cannot allow him to fall into the wrong hands. Protecting him must be our priority.”
Severus raised a sceptical brow. “And how exactly do we find a child who’s skipped over a century and whose family no longer exists?”
Albus’s eyes twinkled. “Oh, Severus. You wound me. Have you never wondered how Hogwarts letters know where to find their recipients?”
Ominis sat in the stiff-backed chair of the Muggle police station’s waiting room, hands folded tightly in his lap, knuckles white. The air smelled sterile like too much cleaning spray. Someone had offered him water earlier, but he hadn’t touched it.
Jimmy, the man who had brought him here, was gone now. Vanished after a few sympathetic claps on the shoulder and muttered complaints about “child services” and “damn irresponsible parents.” The police officers had tried to ask questions: Where do you live? What happened? Are you hurt? But Ominis hadn’t responded. Not really. Just sat there.
Blank. Staring at nothing, which was easier for him than most.
He’d heard one officer mention a psychologist. Another said something about “presumed trauma,” as if he were some case study in a textbook.
Whatever, Ominis thought. Let them talk. Let them guess.
His life was over anyway. He chuckled bitterly to himself. He remembered the moment on his bedroom floor, the broken boy sobbing into the boards, wishing for escape, for a new life.
He hadn’t meant this. He hadn’t wished for ruins and vanished corpses. He hadn’t asked to be alone in a strange place, sick with fear, unable to see anything beyond the echo of destruction and the awful, lingering question: Did I kill them?
He was lost in that thought, swallowed whole by it, when voices filtered through the door.
“Of course, Mr. Dumbledore, we’ve been expecting you. He’s right in here,” said the soft-spoken officer who’d guided him into the room.
Footsteps. One pair growing distant. Another approaching.
A different voice now. Lower, older, threaded with quiet authority.
“If you would be so kind as to ensure we are not disturbed.”
“Of course, Albus.”
The door opened with a creak. Ominis tensed. His hand slipped beneath the fold of his robes, fingers brushing his wand, but he didn’t draw it. He felt too exposed without it, too uncertain.
The figure entered. A chair scraped against the floor, then the man sat down across from him.
“How do you do, Ominis?” came the voice, warm and patient. “My name is Professor Dumbledore.”
Ominis tilted his head sharply, frowning. Professor?
“I thought they were sending someone from child services.”
There was a soft chuckle. “Ah, well. I believe that may not be necessary after all.”
“Then why are you here?” Ominis asked, suddenly wary.
“I am here to speak with you,” Dumbledore said, folding his hands in his lap. “To understand what happened to you, Ominis. You see, today has proven to be quite an unusual day, even by magical standards.”
Ominis’s heart stuttered.
He knows.
His palms began to sweat, his breath tightening in his chest. He gripped the edge of the table as if it might stop him from unravelling.
“I-I didn’t do it on purpose!” he blurted, voice cracking. “I swear, I don’t know what happened. Everything was fine — or no, it wasn’t, but it was normal. And then-and then-!”
A sob tore out of him. He curled forward, blond hair falling into his face, tears spilling freely now. His fingers dug into the wood like claws, as if he could ground himself by force.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“What didn’t you do on purpose?” Dumbledore asked gently. “Ominis, I am not here to hurt you. My colleague outside and I simply want to understand. Nothing is going to happen to you.”
Ominis swallowed hard.
“Are you with the Ministry?” he whispered.
Dumbledore leaned back, his voice still calm. “I am not. But I see you know then what you are.”
Ominis gave a broken laugh. “Of course I know,” he muttered bitterly.
With shaking fingers, he pulled his wand from his pocket and held it tightly. The moment he felt the familiar warmth of the wood in his palm, something inside him unclenched. His wand pulsed softly, mapping out the room in lines and shapes. The man across from him was seated calmly, hands folded, beard long. He seemed old. Very old.
Ominis’s breath eased slightly.
“I see you already have a wand,” Dumbledore noted with mild curiosity.
“My wand is how I see,” Ominis murmured, still clutching it. “I’m blind.”
Dumbledore gave a small nod. “Then your family must have ensured you received it early.”
“Of course they did,” Ominis said, his voice flat now. “They couldn’t risk having a blind Gaunt stumbling through the house like an idiot. That would’ve been embarrassing.”
Dumbledore regarded him quietly.
“Tell me what happened, Ominis,” he said. “And I give you my word. I will not let the Ministry get to you.”
Ominis hesitated. He didn’t trust easily. But... what other options did he have?
He took a breath.
“My family... They…,” Ominis stopped and breathed for a second. “Today something happened. It was… a lot. And afterwards... I was crying. I was lying on the floor, and I wished-I wished that I could be anywhere else. That I could have another life. One where they didn’t exist. One where I wasn’t like them. One where I would have a different home.”
His voice broke again, but he pushed on.
“And then... it was like the world tilted. Like I was falling. And when I woke up everything was different. The house was destroyed. My parents, my brother... they were gone. Just gone. And I don’t know what I did.”
He looked up, blindly searching for Dumbledore’s expression. “I think it was accidental magic, but I didn’t mean to! I swear! I didn’t want to kill anyone! You have to believe me!”
The silence that followed was heavy. Ominis’s breathing was shallow, his fingers still clamped around his wand. Every second of silence felt like judgment, like the swing of an invisible gavel.
“Most curious,” Dumbledore said softly.
Ominis blinked. “What?”
“I’ve never heard of a tale quite like yours, my boy,” the old man mused. “Though I have heard many strange things in my time.”
He sighed. His voice grew heavier. “I fear, Ominis, that I must now tell you something else, that might be unsettling to hear.”
Ominis tensed.
Here it comes. The part where I’m arrested. Or worse. Maybe he’ll hex me on the spot.
Dumbledore leaned forward slightly. “Ominis, I can assure you, that you did not kill your family. But… we are currently in the year 1991.”
Ominis blinked again. His wand trembled slightly in his hand.
“What?”
“You arrived here from another time,” Dumbledore said gently. “And that without a Time-Turner, it would seem.”
Ominis didn’t even feel the nausea coming. One moment he was staring in disbelief, and the next, his stomach revolted. He lurched forward and threw up onto the floor.