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Harry woke to cold.
Not the clean frost of winter, nor the biting wind over the castle towers — this was a cold that crawled under his skin and into the marrow, the kind that made the joints ache and the teeth clench. It was the cold of stone floors in unlit dungeons, the cold of blood gone still.
He opened his eyes to a horizonless expanse of pale fog. There was no sky, no ground — only a shifting surface under his boots, glassy and colorless, moving when he moved.
He took a step. The surface rippled, the fog below thinning like pulled skin. Through it, he caught his first glimpse of the world he’d left behind.
London.
But not the London he’d known.
The streets were dim under a bruised sky. Windows were boarded over, doors chained shut. The only color came from banners draped across walls — the Dark Mark in silver and green, big enough to swallow the old Ministry seal. People moved fast, heads down, shoulders hunched, the way animals moved when they knew a predator was near.
A voice in his head — not his own — whispered: This is after.
The weight of it settled hard and deep. He was dead.
And this was what came next.
---
Time didn’t exist here. The fog shifted without warning, peeling back in slow ripples to show the living world.
The first vision came like a blow.
A public square. Winter light, sharp and colorless, spilling over a crowd of silent bodies. A line of robed guards flanked a woman kneeling in the snow, wrists bound so tight the rope had cut deep into the skin.
Before her — Voldemort. Hood thrown back. Wand loose in his hand, like it weighed nothing.
“Your crime?” he asked, voice even.
She lifted her chin. “I spoke the truth. Potter was no saviour. He was a—”
The curse hit her before she finished. Not clean, not quick. The green light punched through her chest, and her body slammed into the cobblestones. Bone cracked — Harry heard it — and blood seeped from her nose and mouth, steaming against the snow.
Her children screamed. High, animal sounds. They ran to her, but masked hands seized them, wrenched their arms back until the joints popped.
Shackles glowed red as they were locked in place. The smell hit a second later — hot iron on flesh — and both children shrieked until their voices broke into hoarse sobbing. The metal fused to skin, burning down to the bone.
The crowd didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
One man looked away, just for a second. A guard noticed. The man’s head snapped forward as a fist smashed into his mouth, teeth clattering to the cobblestones like scattered dice. He stayed on his knees, spitting red.
The children were dragged off, stumbling, chains biting into their raw wrists.
The woman’s body stayed there in the snow, eyes open, blood pooling under her cheek until it froze black.
Harry wanted to look away, to tear his eyes from the ruin of her face, but the fog held him in place, made him watch every second until the scene dissolved.
---
The fog folded in on itself.
Harry tried to step back, but the surface beneath him shifted with the same strange drag — like moving through half-frozen water. The cold bit into his calves, into his spine. Somewhere in the white, he thought he heard footsteps. Slow. Careful. Matching his own.
He turned. Nothing.
Then the fog tore like wet cloth, and the sound of shovels scraping earth punched through.
---
A garden, ringed in frost-burnt hedges.
At its center: a coffin of dark wood. Snow clung to the polished surface, the grain so fine it reflected the pale winter light like oil. A spray of white lilies lay across the lid, petals curling at the edges, brittle with frost. Threaded between them were roses so black they seemed carved from shadow, their thorns glinting like wet glass.
Harry knew both flowers. The lilies were his choice. The roses, Tom’s.
The crowd around the coffin was wrong — too still, too silent. Faces half-hidden in scarves and hoods. A few had pale eyes, wide with something between fear and awe. Others stared blankly, their skin chapped and raw from wind and grief.
Death Eaters stood like statues at the perimeter, masks catching the light in quick, blinding flashes.
Voldemort stood at the head of the coffin. No wand in sight, hands clasped behind his back — until one slipped forward, fingers brushing the wood. Just a touch. A moment too long.
When he spoke, his voice was measured, even. “You see before you the price of defiance.”
Then, lower, softer — like it was meant for the coffin alone — “And the price of love.”
He reached into his robes. Drew something out — a strip of black ribbon, already stiff with dried blood. He tied it around the lilies, hands steady, movements slow enough to make the crowd hold its breath.
And then, without warning, his hand clenched. The stems cracked under his grip, petals breaking away to scatter over the snow.
The air smelled of cut flowers and cold metal, like the scent of a blade left out in winter.
Harry’s chest hurt. He wanted to scream at him to stop — to put them back, to leave it untouched — but no sound came.
---
The fog snapped shut again.
He was back in the white. But something lingered — a smear of red on the glassy ground beneath his feet. He crouched, touched it. Warm.
When he pulled his hand away, the stain was gone.
---
It was winter again, but warmer — the frost outside shut out by the heavy curtains of Riddle Manor. The air smelled faintly of damp wool and the faint spice of the fire.
Harry sat on the edge of the bed, tugging off boots still wet from patrol. The mattress dipped beside him.
Tom — no cloak, no mask — slid under the covers. His hair was damp, his shirt half-unbuttoned, storm shadows under his eyes.
“You weren’t in your rooms,” Tom murmured.
“I was here,” Harry said, quieter than he meant to. “Waiting.”
Tom’s hand found his, fingers lacing slow, deliberate. His thumb pressed over the pulse point at Harry’s wrist and stayed there, like he was counting.
“You belong to me,” Tom said.
Harry’s pulse stumbled. “I know.”
Tom smiled — almost. His grip tightened, just a fraction too much, the bones in Harry’s hand pressing together.
“You forget,” he said softly. “But I don’t.”
---
The fog moved fast this time — tearing away before Harry could brace himself.
He landed in sound first. Chains clinking, boots on marble, the low, steady hum of fear.
A high-ceilinged chamber of black stone. Fire in the sconces burned cold blue, casting light that made skin look bloodless. Banners with the Dark Mark hung down like executioner’s hoods.
Rows of prisoners knelt in chains. Some kept their heads down. Others stared ahead with that dead, flat look Harry had seen in people who’d stopped hoping for rescue.
A guard dragged a man to the front — middle-aged, bleeding from one eye, his jaw set tight despite the limp in his gait.
Voldemort sat on a raised dais, motionless, watching.
The man looked up at him and spat, voice raw: “Potter was a liar. A coward—”
The crack of bone was sharp enough to make the nearest prisoner flinch. His jaw hung loose, teeth slick with blood. He choked, tried to speak again, but the sound came out wet and wrong.
Voldemort rose. Descended the dais with deliberate steps, his wand held loosely at his side.
The man tried to pull back when Voldemort crouched in front of him. Couldn’t. Chains rattled hard against stone.
“You will wear him,” Voldemort said, his voice carrying in the silence, “on your skin until you die.”
The wand pressed to the man’s forearm.
The smell came first — burning hair, then burning meat, thick and greasy, clinging to the back of Harry’s throat. Flesh hissed as it blackened and split. The man’s scream tore through the chamber and kept tearing, jagged, until it broke into animal sobs.
The crowd of prisoners shifted, but no one looked away. No one dared.
When the mark was done, the skin bubbled and wept. Voldemort stood, raising the man’s arm high so all could see the raw, smoking brand.
“This is what becomes of those who speak his name without reverence,” he said, and for one heartbeat his voice lifted, as if addressing not just the room but the world.
Then he let the man drop. A sharp flick of the wand — the Killing Curse snapped him backward, skull cracking against stone. Blood spread like black oil on marble, thin and slick.
Harry’s stomach heaved, but the fog didn’t pull him away. Not yet. He had to watch as guards dragged the body aside, leaving a red smear in its wake.
---
The fog swallowed it whole.
Harry was back in the white. Only now it smelled faintly of cooked flesh, and the stink didn’t fade.
---
They were in the study.
Only one lamp lit. The rest of the room lay in shadow. Rain hit the windows in a steady, low hiss.
Tom sat behind the desk, parchment spread in front of him, quill still in his hand.
“If you die,” he said suddenly, not looking up, “the world will end.”
Harry blinked. “That’s—” he started, but stopped when Tom’s gaze lifted.
“That’s not a threat,” Tom said, setting the quill down. “It’s a promise.”
Harry tried to laugh it off, but Tom was already on his feet, moving around the desk with that deliberate slowness that made the air feel heavier.
“I would burn it to ash,” Tom murmured, stopping close enough that Harry could feel the heat of him, “and build something worthy of you.”
When Harry didn’t answer, Tom reached out and smoothed a hand over his hair, almost gentle — almost — before gripping the back of his neck, thumb pressed over the tendon, holding him still.
“I mean it,” Tom said. “I will end it.”
---
The fog didn’t part this time — it peeled, like skin from a burn.
The first thing that hit him was the air.
Heavy with coal dust, piss, and something sweet-sick underneath — rot, deep in the lungs. Every breath scraped.
He stood on a ridge of black rock, looking down over the Welsh mines. Snow lay in patches, filthy with ash. Men and women moved below, their shackles glowing faintly with runes that bled magic from their bodies in slow, silvery drips.
The sound was constant: picks striking stone, chains clinking, coughs that ended in wet splatters on the ground. Every few minutes, a whip cracked, and someone screamed.
A man stumbled near the mouth of a tunnel. His hands shook too much to lift the pickaxe again. A guard stepped forward, wand up. The curse hit him in the stomach — he folded with a noise that was almost a burp, vomit and blood spilling down his front. The guard hit him again, and again, until the body went slack.
Two others dragged the corpse aside, tossing it onto a heap of frozen limbs.
---
The fog shifted sideways, dragging Harry with it.
Now a factory. Narrow, damp. The air stank of acid and boiled herbs.
Children sat at long tables, stirring cauldrons that steamed and hissed. Their fingers were raw and peeling, nails split to the quick. A boy’s hand slipped — the potion inside bubbled over, splashing his skin. He screamed, jerking back, flesh already blistering and curling.
A guard grabbed him by the collar and slammed his face into the table. “Waste it again,” the man growled, “and I’ll take the hand.”
The boy didn’t move after that.
---
The fog ripped again.
Ron.
Hair dull, clothes stiff with grime, face gaunter than Harry had ever seen it. Shackles cut into his wrists, the skin underneath black with bruises. He carried crates across a frozen yard, snow turning to mud under his boots. His breath steamed in short bursts, each one ragged.
A guard shoved him toward a stack. Ron’s hands slipped — the crate hit the ground, the wood splintering. For one heartbeat, Harry thought maybe the guard would just shout.
The man drew his wand instead.
The curse picked Ron up and slammed him against the wall. He slid down, leaving a smear of blood where his head had struck stone.
But Ron got up. Picked up what was left of the crate. Kept moving.
---
Another pull of fog.
Hermione.
She sat in a dim office, stacks of parchment in front of her, a single candle burning low. The iron band around her throat caught the light, runes glinting with each shallow breath she took.
Her hand shook as she stamped a decree. Another. Another.
Harry moved closer — the text was blurred, but he knew the kind of orders she was signing. Deportations. Death sentences.
The door slammed open. A masked man strode in, dropped a fresh pile of parchment in front of her. She flinched, then reached for the stamp.
“Faster,” the man barked.
Her jaw tightened. She stamped faster. The candle guttered in the draft, and for a second her shadow on the wall looked bent, broken.
When the man left, Hermione didn’t stop. The stamp rose and fell, over and over, until the wax seal was smeared across the page.
She didn’t look up. Not once.
---
The fog dragged him back.
Harry’s knees hit the glassy ground hard. His palms burned from the impact, but there was nothing under them but cold. The stink of coal and sickness clung to him like smoke.
Somewhere in the white, he thought he heard chains dragging. Getting closer.
---
The fog didn’t part so much as explode, shoving Harry forward into noise and light.
Snow fell thick, but the ground beneath was churned into mud by boots and blood. The air stank of ozone from curses, mixed with the iron tang of fresh wounds and the sour reek of burned flesh.
Spells split the night — streaks of green, red, and gold cutting through the snow like cracks of lightning. Shouts rose and fell in waves, punctuated by the solid, meaty thud of bodies hitting earth. Somewhere, someone was screaming for a medic. Somewhere else, someone was screaming just to scream.
Harry ran, lungs burning, the cold air slicing down his throat with every breath. His boots sank into the mud, sucking at his steps.
And then he saw him.
Voldemort stood in the middle of it all, still and deliberate while the battle ripped itself apart around him. Cloak whipping in the wind, eyes fixed on Harry like there was nothing else on the field.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Harry panted as he closed the distance, mud splashing up his legs.
“You think,” Voldemort said, voice almost lost under the roar of battle, “that I would let you die without me?”
The first curse from Voldemort’s wand hissed past Harry’s ear, the heat of it slicing through the air close enough to burn. Harry threw himself sideways, firing back — the clash of magic cracked loud enough to rattle his teeth.
The duel was vicious from the first breath. No measured steps, no formal spacing. They slipped in mud, stumbled over bodies — Harry saw one man’s eyes, glassy and wide, as he fell against him before Voldemort’s next curse forced him to move.
A jet of purple light grazed Harry’s side — agony flared, hot and blinding, as fabric and flesh split open. He staggered, grit grinding into the wound as he caught himself.
Voldemort pressed forward, spell after spell, the force of them throwing up sprays of slush and shards of stone where they struck. Harry blocked one, two — the third slammed into his wand arm, sending pain lancing up to his shoulder. His fingers went numb for half a second, but he held on.
He ducked low, sent a curse that carved a shallow gash along Voldemort’s arm. For a heartbeat, hope cracked through — a real injury, blood welling bright against pale skin.
Then green light bloomed.
It hit him square in the chest. Cold shot through his veins, so fast and so deep it was like being plunged into freezing water. His legs buckled. The world tilted.
Voldemort was already moving, catching him before he hit the mud.
The noise of battle dimmed, like someone had thrown a blanket over the world. But Harry could still feel the vibrations in the ground — the weight of giants falling, the shockwaves of detonated spells.
“You were mine,” Voldemort whispered, and his voice cracked like glass under strain. His grip on Harry’s coat was too tight, pulling fabric against bone.
Somewhere close, Ron roared. The sound was ragged, almost unhuman. Harry turned his head just enough to see him — face twisted, wand arm swinging wild. He fought like a man who wanted to die standing, until three curses struck him in quick succession. He dropped to his knees, blood pouring from his mouth, breath puffing red into the cold air.
Hermione’s scream tore through the chaos. She was crawling through the mud toward Harry, hands bloodied, hair plastered to her face with sleet.
“Harry! Harry, get up!” Her voice cracked, splintering into sobs even as she kept moving. Her knees hit stone, tearing skin, but she didn’t stop. “Please—please, you can’t—”
Masked hands grabbed her by the hair, yanking her back hard enough to arch her spine. She twisted, kicked, nails raking down her captor’s mask with a screech of metal on metal.
They hit her. Once, twice. The sound was a dull thud of knuckles on bone, followed by the wet crack of her lip splitting. Blood smeared her chin, her teeth. She still screamed his name, voice shaking apart into jagged pieces.
“Harry—Harry, please—don’t take him from me—” She was looking at Voldemort now, her voice breaking on the last word. “Please, I’ll do anything—please, just let me—”
The guards dragged her back, her boots gouging deep furrows in the mud. She kicked, clawed, twisting against their grip, her hands reaching for Harry even as they pulled her farther away.
“I’ll take his place! Do you hear me? Just—please—don’t—”
The last thing Harry saw was her mouth still shaping his name, over and over, as she disappeared into the chaos.
---
The fog was silent for a long time. Too long.
Harry thought maybe it was over, that whatever force dragged him through these visions had finally finished.
Then the white thinned, and snow came into view.
A grave.
White lilies and black roses bowed under frost, the petals stiff and rimmed in ice. The air smelled faintly of earth and cut stems, overlaid with the sharper scent of something metallic — blood, though he couldn’t see it yet.
Voldemort stood alone before the headstone, back to the crowd. The Death Eaters were ringed far behind him, silent, their masks dull in the weak light.
In his hands was a glass case. Inside: Harry’s wand.
He set it at the base of the headstone, fingers lingering on the glass. His shoulders rose and fell once — slow, deliberate — before he spoke.
“I burned the world,” he said, voice steady, “and still, it was not enough.”
Silence. Even the wind seemed to hold.
Then he turned.
His gaze swept the crowd, and for a moment there was nothing in his face but absence. Then the corner of his mouth twitched, and something changed.
The first curse was silent. The man it struck crumpled without a sound, blood blooming out into the snow in a sharp, red star.
The second was faster — a woman’s scream cut short as her throat opened under invisible claws. Blood sprayed hot across the snow, steaming in the cold.
The crowd broke, but not far. The Death Eaters didn’t move to help them; they stood frozen, watching.
Voldemort walked into the mass, his wand moving with mechanical precision. Bones shattered under curses, ribs caved in with the sound of breaking branches. A man’s arm was severed at the elbow, the stump spurting hot and fast before he collapsed.
Harry could smell it now — iron, piss, the faint sour reek of fear-sweat. Steam rose from the bodies where hot blood met frozen ground.
A woman fell to her knees, hands clasped. “My Lord—please—”
Her head hit the snow before the rest of her body did.
By the time it ended, the grave was ringed in bodies. Snow was pink and gray with trampled flesh and ash from the spells that had burned too hot.
Voldemort stood in the center of it, breathing hard, wand still in his hand. His eyes came back to the headstone. For a moment, Harry thought he saw something crack there — something human — before Voldemort’s face went still again.
He turned away from the dead without looking at them. Walked back to the grave.
One gloved hand brushed the frost from the carved name.
“You were mine,” he murmured. “And now you’re everything else as well.”
He stood there for a long moment. The wind tugged at his cloak, the cold burning white along the edges of the world.
Then — just barely — a tear tracked down his cheek. It caught in the hollow under his eye before falling, vanishing into the snow over Harry’s name.
Harry froze. A tear. From him.
It was so wrong, so impossible, that for a heartbeat the rest of the grave — the bodies, the blood, the silence — seemed to vanish under the weight of that single drop.
The mask of control slid back into place immediately after, as if nothing had happened. Voldemort turned, walking away from the grave without looking at the bodies he’d left behind.
A faint rush of wings cut through the stillness. White feathers, sharp against the gray sky, spiraled down. Hedwig landed at the foot of the grave, talons crunching into frost.
She didn’t look at the bodies. She didn’t look at the Death Eaters. Her amber eyes fixed only on Voldemort.
He paused. For a moment, his gaze met hers — and something in his face shifted, a flicker of recognition, of memory. Then he lifted a hand, and she flew to his shoulder without a sound.
The white of her feathers was blinding against his black cloak as he walked away, the glass case still cradled in his other hand.
Harry reached for him, but there was nothing to touch. Only the cold. Only the distance.