Chapter Text
Chapter 1: The gate of Truth?
I don't remember the exact moment I ceased to exist. I suppose that's how death works: a blink, a sigh, and everything you were dissolves like ink in water.
Thirty-eight years. Not much, is it? Not little either, but definitely not enough. When I think of everything I never did, all the places I never visited, all the versions of myself I never got to be... well, it hurts. Though I shouldn't be able to feel pain anymore.
My achievements in life were modest: paying the rent on time, keeping the balcony plants alive, arriving at work punctually most days. An ordinary life. Simple. But you know what? It wasn't a bad life. The ordinary has its own beauty, its own weight. I wish I'd appreciated it more when I still could.
The end came without warning, as I suppose all tragedies do. A derailed train, a crash of twisted metal, and me in the wrong place at the wrong time. I didn't even have time to feel afraid. Just an impact, and then... this.
When you die, they say your life flashes before your eyes. It's true. I saw fragments: my mother preparing breakfast, my plants in the morning sun, the faces of people I loved and who loved me. But the strange thing is I didn't feel sorry for myself. I felt sorry for them. For my mother, who would have to identify my body. For my plants, which would wither with no one to water them. For everyone left wondering if I'd suffered in my final moments.
If I could, I'd tell them no. That it didn't hurt. That I'm... well, I don't know what I am, but I'm not suffering.
The darkness surrounding me is absolute. Not the black of a lightless room, but the total absence of anything. There's no up or down, no time, nothing except me and my thoughts circling like caged birds.
I do the only thing I can think of: I pray.
"God..." my voice doesn't echo, it simply exists. "If you're listening, if you can hear me from wherever you are... could you tell my family I'm all right? Could you show me where to go now?" I pause, feeling the absurdity of my next question. "Is there any way to go back?"
In response, a light appears.
It's small, barely a golden point in the vastness of nothing. I approach floating (floating? walking? It's difficult to know when you haven't got a physical body) and when I'm close enough, I freeze.
It's a golden snitch. A bloody quidditch snitch.
"It can't be," I whisper, though a part of me, the part that grew up reading about a boy with green eyes and a lightning-bolt scar, desperately wants to believe it can be.
Without giving me time to process, the snitch shoots off to my right. By instinct, I chase it. I run in this non-land, my non-legs moving in a non-race, and suddenly I laugh because this is ridiculous. I'm a ghost chasing a snitch. Aren't I supposed to be able to fly?
The chase ends as abruptly as it began. The snitch returns to my hand, its little wings vibrating gently, and then I see it: a door.
It's not an ordinary door. It's a work of art, a cosmic statement made of ancient wood and metal that glows with its own light. It's covered in symbols I recognise and others I don't: runes that look Norse, constellations tracing maps of distant skies, planets aligned in impossible orbits. It reminds me of the Gate of Truth from Fullmetal Alchemist, but more... real. More present.
I run my fingers over its surface. The wood is warm, alive somehow. The metal hums beneath my touch as if it has its own pulse.
And then I see it: a hollow in the centre. Small, circular, waiting.
"Hey," I tell the snitch, feeling only slightly mad. "There's something missing here, isn't there? Do you know what it is?"
The snitch flutters once around my head and then settles in my open palm. Its wings still. It looks at me (can snitches look?) with what I can only describe as expectation.
And then I understand. Well, I think I understand.
"This is going to sound completely barmy, but... may I kiss you?"
The snitch doesn't move. I take it as a yes.
I bring my lips to the cold golden surface and hear the most satisfying click in the universe. The snitch opens like a mechanical flower, revealing inside a dark stone, smooth, with a crack running through it like a scar.
"I open at the close," I murmur, taking the stone reverently. "Clever."
I recognise it immediately. It's impossible not to. I've read those books dozens of times, watched the films, debated about them with friends until dawn. It's the Resurrection Stone. One of the Deathly Hallows.
Which means JK Rowling is, apparently, some sort of cosmic prophet. Or the universe has a very twisted sense of humour.
I pocket the snitch (do I have pockets? Apparently yes) and examine the door with renewed intensity. If the Stone is here, the other Hallows must be too.
It takes me time, but I find them. The Elder Wand is carved into the door frame, camouflaged amongst the wooden designs, so obvious once you see it but invisible until then. The Invisibility Cloak is more subtle: it's not fabric, but symbols. Interlocking triangles in the four corners of the door, representing the four elements. Earth, water, fire, air. All connected, all invisible until you decide to see it.
I look at the Stone in my hand and feel the weight of the decision. What will happen when I place it? Will I disappear? Will I become part of the door? Will I go somewhere new?
The idea of going somewhere new, alone, terrifies me. The darkness is lonely enough already. I don't know if I can handle something worse.
I grip the snitch in my pocket like a talisman and feel an idea forming. I search for a flat surface on the door and, with my nail, begin to engrave. The letters form slowly: Rocío Leandro.
My name. My mark. Proof that I existed, that I was here, that someone else passed through this before whoever comes next.
When I finish, I take out the snitch and speak to it as if it were an old friend.
"I'm going to place the Stone now," I tell it. "And I need you to promise me something. Don't leave me alone. Stay with me, yes? Because I miss my home, I miss my family, and the darkness frightens even the brave. And I... I'm not that brave."
The snitch vibrates once, twice, and then slides beneath my hair, settling against my neck. Its metal is warm. Comforting.
"Thank you," I whisper.
I place the Stone in the hollow.
The effect is instantaneous. All the symbols on the door come alive, illuminating with a glow that doesn't hurt the eyes but that you can't ignore either. My name glows especially bright, as if the universe were acknowledging my existence. The door opens with a sound that is music and thunder at once.
My last thought before crossing is a silent plea: God, please, don't leave me lost.
Light.
Too much light.
I open my eyes and see nothing, only blurred patches of colour moving. Something enormous surrounds me, holds me. There's warmth, there's pressure, there's a voice saying things my brain can't process yet.
And then I understand.
I'm small. Very small. Everything is gigantic because I am... I'm a baby.
I cry. Not because I want to, but because my body does it automatically, reacting to the cold, to the light, to the overwhelming enormity of existing again. My limbs won't obey me. I can't focus my sight. I can't do anything except cry.
The woman holding me—my mother, I suppose, my new mother—is exhausted but smiling. She says something my ears aren't ready to understand yet.
And in the midst of panic, cold, total confusion, there's only one coherent thought in my newborn mind:
Where's the snitch?