What if Harry Potter Was Reborn With All His Memories And Abilities?

What if Harry Potter was reborn with all his memories? Let's explore the depths of it in the video. >> [snorts] >> The first thing Harry Potter remembers is dying. It comes to him in fragments. Green light, the forest floor beneath his knees, Voldemort's voice high and cold cutting through the silence of the Forbidden Forest, the rush of something leaving his body, then warmth, then nothing, and then everything. He opens his eyes. The ceiling is too close. Rough wood planks splintered at the edges inches from his face. The thin mattress beneath him. The cupboard underneath the stairs at number four Privet Drive. He's an infant. The scream that tries to tear itself from his throat comes out as a gurgle. His tiny hands, tiny and useless, clench against the blanket. His legs kick without purpose. His body betrays him in every direction. A prison of fat fingers and uncoordinated limbs. And beneath his eyes sits the might of a man who had just fought the Dark Lord. The memories arrive in waves. Some are sharp. Hermione's face when Ron left them in the tent. The sound Dobby made when the knife hit. The way Dumbledore's body turned in the air as it fell from the Astronomy Tower. Others are softer, worn smooth by repetition. The smell of treacle tart in the Great Hall. The sound of the Gryffindor common room fire. The particular way Ron said bloody hell when something went properly wrong. He remembers all of it. Seven years of magic. The people he lost. And the desperate furious love. He remembers the Horcruxes. He remembers the prophecy. He remembers who betrayed whom, when and how, and what it cost. And he remembers that he is one of them. The knowledge settles into him like a stone dropped into water. He is a Horcrux. A fragment of Tom Riddle's soul lodged behind his scar, nestled against his own. He has already decided what he's going to do. The years pass in a crawl of helpless waiting. He learns to walk at 13 months. He learns to speak it, too. The Dursleys are exactly as he remembers them. Petunia's pinched mouth, Vernon's meaty fists slamming the table when Harry makes too much noise, Dudley's screaming tantrums that rattle the house. He endures it all with a patience that frightens even him. He has already survived worse than this. He has already survived everything. The hardest part is the waiting. The lying in darkness at three years old, perfectly still, listening to the Dursleys move through the house above him, and knowing that Sirius is in Azkaban right now, tonight, at this very moment, screaming in his sleep while Dementors press their rotting mouths against the bars of his cell, knowing that Peter Pettigrew was curled on a pillow in Percy Weasley's bedroom, warm and safe and breathing, while an innocent man suffers for his crimes, knowing that he could stop it if only his body would cooperate, if only his muscles would obey his commands, if only the world would take a three-year-old seriously. He tries once again at age three. He walks to Mrs. Figg's door, but when he opens his mouth, the words come out tangled and childish. She gives him a biscuit and sends him home. He lies in the cupboard that night and clenches his fists until his fingernails leave marks in his palms. A few more years. He can't wait a few more years. At night, in the cupboard, he catalogs what he knows. The diary is at Malfoy Manor. The ring is in the Gaunt Shack. The locket is at Grimmauld Place, hidden by Creature on the orders of a dead boy named Regulus Black. The cup is in Bellatrix Lestrange's vault at Gringotts. The diadem is in the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts. Nagini is just a snake. She will remain just a snake because Voldemort will never get the chance to make her anything more. And then there's him. He pushes the thought away. There is work to do first. Harry waits until he's five. His body is small but functional. He can walk, run, and speak in full sentences. The Dursleys have long since stopped paying attention to what he does during the day, so long as he stays out of sight. On a gray Tuesday morning in late October, he walks three streets over to the home of Arabella Figg. She opens the door to find a small thin boy with round glasses and a lightning bolt scar on his forehead. He looks up at her with eyes that are too old, too steady for a child his age. Mrs. Figg, I know you are a Squib. I know you work for Albus Dumbledore. I need you to contact him immediately. The color drains from her face. Her cats wind around her ankles, oblivious. She opens her mouth, closes it, and opens it again. How How do you know that? Tell him this exactly. Harry Potter says he knows the future. He knows the full prophecy. Every word. He will be waiting. Please, Mrs. Figg. People are going to die if you wait. She sends the message within the hour. Albus Dumbledore arrives at Privet Drive the following evening. He comes alone, wand beneath his robes, every protective charm he knows humming at the edge of his awareness. He has considered every possibility. Possession by dark entity, an elaborate trap laid by a Death Eater remnant, a Confundus charm on Arabella Figg, Polyjuice, Imperius. The truth is beyond anything he has considered. The boy sits cross-legged on the floor of the cupboard under the stairs, the door open, a bare bulb casting harsh light over his face. He is small enough that the cupboard looks spacious around him. His hands rest on his knees. His green eyes find Dumbledore's blue ones, and something in the old wizard's chest tightens. Harry, Mrs. Figg tells me you have something to say. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies, and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not, and either and either must die at the hands of the other, for neither can live while the other survives. Absolute silence. The air in the hallway seems to thicken. Dumbledore's face goes very still. The twinkling in his eyes extinguishes like a candle flame pinched between two fingers. He stares at the boy, and for the first time in decades, Albus Dumbledore has no idea what to say. No one knows every one of those words. The full prophecy exists in a glass orb in the Department of Mysteries, and in Dumbledore's memory. Nowhere else. You heard Sybill Trelawney speak those words in the Hog's Head Inn. You were interviewing her for the Divination post. Severus Snape was listening at the door. He heard the first half and carried it to Voldemort. That is why my parents are dead. Dumbledore's free hand grips the doorframe. His knuckles are white. Sit down, Professor. I have a great deal more to tell you. And some of it concerns Ariana. The name hits Dumbledore like a physical blow. He takes a step back. His composure, the legendary unshakable calm of the greatest wizard of the age, cracks. For a moment, he looks like a very old man who has been struck across the face. I know about the three-way duel. I know about Grindelwald. I know about the Deathly Hallows. I know what happened to your sister. And I know that you have spent your entire life wondering who cursed her. Dumbledore sinks to the floor. He sits in the hallway of number four Privet Drive across from a five-year-old boy, and his eyes are wet. Who are you? I'm Harry Potter. And I have lived this before. He tells Dumbledore everything. The conversation lasts three hours. The Dursleys sleep upstairs, oblivious. Harry starts with the Horcruxes, what they are, where they are, and how many exist. The diary, the ring, the locket, the cup, the diadem, himself. He explains that Nagini is just a snake, that Voldemort has yet to make her into a seventh anchor, and he remains ignorant that Harry carries a piece of him. Dumbledore listens intently. He asks precise questions. How does Harry know the locket is at Grimmauld Place? Harry tells him about Creature, about Regulus Black's defection, about the cave in the basin of poison, and the desperate mission of a teenage boy who turned against a Dark Lord and died for it. Dumbledore's eyes close briefly at that. Another child sacrificed. Another young life spent like currency. Harry tells Dumbledore about the return, the graveyard, the bone of the father, the flesh of the servant, the blood of the enemy. He tells him about Barty Crouch Jr., about Pettigrew's silver hands, about the night Cedric Diggory died. He describes it plainly, without drama, because the facts are dramatic enough. A 14-year-old boy tied to a gravestone, a cauldron, a wand pointed at his chest. He tells him about the war, the fall of the Ministry, the Muggle-Born Registration Commission, the Snatchers, the taboo on Voldemort's name, Hogwarts under the Carrows, where the children were tortured for sport and the Cruciatus Curse was taught as a classroom exercise, the Battle of Hogwarts, Fred Weasley, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, Colin Creevey, Lavender Brown. He names the dead one by one, and with each name Dumbledore's expression grows more grave, more haunted, more resolved. He tells him about Severus Snape, the double agent, the man who loved Lily Evans until his last breath, who spent 17 years protecting her son while despising his face, who died on the floor of the Shrieking Shack with Harry's mother's eyes as the last thing he asked to see. Dumbledore's face, already drawn with grief, tightens further at this. He recognizes in Snape's story a mirror of his own. The brilliant man who loved unwisely and spent his life paying for it. And then Harry tells him about Peter Pettigrew. Peter Pettigrew is alive. He is an unregistered Animagus, a rat. Right now, at this moment, he is living as a pet in the Weasley household. He belongs to Percy Weasley. His name is Scabbers. He has been hiding there since the night my parents died. Sirius Black is innocent. He was never the Secret Keeper. My parents switched to Pettigrew at the last moment, and Pettigrew betrayed them. Sirius went after him. Pettigrew faked his own death, killed 12 Muggles, cut off his own finger, and escaped in rat form. Sirius has been in Azkaban for four years for a crime he never committed. You are asking me to free him. I'm telling you that an innocent man is in Azkaban, and the man who murdered my parents is sleeping in a child's bed miles from where my mother grew up. Yes, Professor, I'm asking you to free him. Dumbledore stands, his face changed. The grief is still there, but beneath it something else has settled into place. Purpose. He goes to the Burrow the following morning. Molly Weasley opens the door to find Albus Dumbledore on her doorstep, and her first thought is that something terrible has happened at Hogwarts. Her second thought, when she sees his expression, is that something terrible has happened elsewhere. Molly, dear, I must ask to see Percy's rat. The confusion on her face is genuine and complete, but she trusts Dumbledore the way the entire Order trusts Dumbledore, which is to say absolutely, and she calls Percy down from his room. Percy comes down the stairs with Scabbers nestled in his hands, the rat's beady eyes darting nervously. Dumbledore raises the Elder Wand. The spell is wordless. Blue-white light engulfs the rat, and the animal begins to twist, to stretch, to grow. Percy drops it with a shriek. Molly screams and pulls her son behind her. Where Scabbers was, Peter Pettigrew now stands. He is small, watery-eyed, balding, trembling. His robes hang off him like rags. His left hand is missing a finger. Pettigrew's eyes find Dumbledore's, and he knows. He knows there's no lie good enough, no excuse sufficient, no escape possible. He falls to his knees. Albus, please, you must understand. He would have killed me. The Dark Lord, he was too powerful. >> You betrayed James and Lily Potter to Lord Voldemort. You murdered 12 Muggles to conceal your escape. You allowed an innocent man to rot in Azkaban for your crimes. >> The warmth is gone from his voice. In its place, something that Molly Weasley has never heard from Albus Dumbledore. Contempt. Pettigrew is bound, silenced, and delivered to the Ministry within the hour. The trial is swift. Veritaserum confirms every detail. Sirius Black's conviction is overturned within the week. When Sirius walks out of Azkaban, he is 26 years old, but looks 50. His hair hangs in matted curtains around his face that has been hollowed out by Dementors. His eyes are sunken, his cheekbones sharp, his hands trembling. He has spent 4 years reliving the worst night of his life on endless loop, and the first breath of free air hits him like a fist. Dumbledore brings him to Privet Drive. Harry is sitting on the front step when they arrive. He sees Sirius, and something in his chest breaks open. A grief so deep and so old that it has become part of his architecture. He last saw this man fall through the veil in the Department of Mysteries, his face frozen in surprise, his body arcing backward into the whispering dark. He screamed Sirius's name. He tried to follow him through the veil. Remus held him back. That was the moment in the other life when Harry stopped being a child. Sirius looks at him and sees James. Every freed prisoner, every broken man, sees what he needs to see in the face of the people who saved him. Harry, you look you look just like Like my father. I know. I know, Sirius. He walks forward and wraps his arms around his godfather's waist. Sirius drops to his knees and holds him, and for a long moment neither of them speaks. The pavement is cold beneath them. A car passes on the road. Somewhere in the house behind them, the Dursleys are watching television, utterly unaware that the most important embrace in the wizarding world is happening on the doorstep. Sirius begins to heal. It is slow, jagged, imperfect. Dumbledore arranges for him to take custody of Harry, and Grimmauld Place becomes their home. Considering Harry's soul is over the age of 17, his mother's protection no longer holds. The blood protection has long been broken. The house is dark and muttering, full of cursed objects and the lingering malice of generations of Blacks. But Sirius attacks it with manic energy that Harry recognizes as the flip side of despair. He tears down curtains, scrubs walls, hurls dark artifacts into bins. Creature watches from the shadows, muttering. Harry lets him work. He knows what Sirius needs. Purpose. And meanwhile, the hunt begins. Dumbledore moves with a decisiveness that Harry has never seen from him. In the previous timeline, the old wizard spent years maneuvering, manipulating, positioning pieces on a board that only he could see. Now that he has the complete picture, he knows where every Horcrux is, how to reach it, and what will destroy it. The chessboard is already solved. All that remains is the execution. The Gaunt ring comes first. Dumbledore goes alone to the shack in Little Hangleton, but this time he knows what awaits him. He recognizes the compulsion charm on the ring for what it is, the Resurrection Stone calling to him, promising Ariana, promising redemption, promising everything his broken heart has ever wanted. He feels the pull of it like a physical ache in his chest. In the other timeline, he failed this test. He put the ring on his finger, and the curse consumed his hand, and it killed him within the year. Harry told him so. Harry described the blackened, withered flesh, the slow creep of dark magic through his veins, the bargain with snake to end his life before the curse did. Dumbledore stands in the ruined shack and stares at the ring on his bed of the rotting floorboards. And for one terrible moment, Ariana's face swims before his eyes, her laugh, the way she used to tug at his sleeve when she wanted his attention. The question he has carried for 90 years, who cursed killed her? He could put it on. He could ask her. He burns the ring with fiend fire without touching it. The flames roar through the shack like a living thing, orange and white, hungry. The ring screams. There is no other word for it. The fragment of his soul trapped inside shrieks as the cursed fire consumes it, a sound like tearing metal, and then it is gone. The ring is a blackened ruin on the floor. The Resurrection Stone, cracked but intact, rolls free from the setting. Dumbledore stares at it for a long time. His hand twitches at his side. Then he pockets it and walks away. The locket is simpler. Dumbledore asks Creature to bring it, and the old elf does, trembling, weeping, pressing the locket to his chest before surrendering it. Harry kneels in front of Creature, his age and height allowing him to look at the house-elf directly in the eyes. Creature, Regulus died a hero. He turned against Voldemort and gave his life trying to destroy this locket. You carried out his final wish. You were braver than anyone knew. Creature stares at him. His enormous eyes fill with tears. No one has ever spoken to him about Regulus like this. No one has ever spoken to him like this at all. Master Regulus was a good master. He was. And you were worthy of him. The locket is destroyed that evening. Fiend fire, again. Another scream, another fragment of Tom Riddle's soul unmade. The diadem is next. Harry describes the Room of Requirement to Dumbledore in exact detail, the corridor on the seventh floor, the method of opening it, the towering cathedral of lost objects inside. Dumbledore enters Hogwarts quietly after hours and navigates the maze of forgotten things until he finds it, a tarnished tiara resting on a bust of a warlock, exactly where Harry said it would be. Fiend fire, scream, silence. Three down. The diary requires a visit to Malfoy Manor. This is more delicate. Lucius Malfoy is a prominent figure in wizarding society, a Ministry donor, a man of influence and carefully maintained deniability. The diary is hidden somewhere in his home, a weapon he only half understands, given to him by a master he believes is gone forever. Dumbledore handles this with subtlety. A quiet word to the right people in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, a search warrant carefully justified. The diary is found in a concealed compartment in Lucius's study, alongside a collection of dark artifacts that Lucius has spent years pretending he never possessed. The diary is destroyed. Lucius Malfoy faces questions he finds very difficult to answer. The political landscape of the wizarding world shifts subtly but permanently as one of Voldemort's most powerful supporters is exposed and diminished. Four down. Gringotts is the challenge. The cup sits in Bellatrix Lestrange's vault, deep in the tunnels beneath London, protected by Goblin wards, dragon fire, Geminio and Flagrant Curses, and the general institutional hostility of a bank that considers itself sovereign territory. Dumbledore goes alone at night, wearing the Invisibility Cloak. He enters through the front doors during the graveyard shift, when the lobby holds only a skeleton crew of Goblin clerks hunched over their ledgers. The Elder Wand parts the entrance wards like a hand parting water, and he passes through without a whisper. The cart tunnels descend steeply. Dumbledore forgoes the cart entirely, drifting downward through the shafts with a Levitation Charm so delicate it produces no magical signature for the Goblin detection spells to latch onto. The air grows colder. The walls change from dressed stone to raw rock. He is deep now, deeper than most wizards ever go, in the ancient tunnels where the oldest families keep their treasures. The Thief's Downfall appears ahead, a curtain of enchanted water cascading across the tunnel, designed to strip all magical concealment, cancel enchantments, and dissolve Polyjuice Potion on contact. It is the Goblin's most formidable security measure, and it has defeated every thief who ever attempted the deep vaults. Dumbledore walks through it. The water washes over him, and the cloak holds. It is, after all, a Deathly Hallow. It was made to hide its wearer from death itself. Goblin water is a trivial obstacle. The deeper vaults are guarded by a dragon, a Ukrainian Ironbelly, chained and half blind and miserable. The beast has been underground so long that its scales have turned a sickly pale, and it flinches at the clatter of a distant cart, conditioned by years of pain to associate noise with punishment. It senses Dumbledore's approach by smell or vibration, and it rears up, jaws opening, a gout of flame building in its throat. Dumbledore quiets the creature with a spell so gentle it almost sounds like a lullaby, a thread of magic that speaks to the animal's exhaustion and pain and says, simply, "Rest." The fire dies in the dragon's throat. Its great head sinks to the stone floor. Its clouded eyes close, and for the first time in perhaps a decade, the creature sleeps without fear. The vault door stands sealed, keyed to Bellatrix's palm and goblin blood magic. Dumbledore presses the tip of the Elder Wand to the iron surface and speaks a single word. The lock resists for a heartbeat, then too, then surrenders. The door swings inward with a groan of ancient metal, and the Wand of Destiny proves once again that it was forged to overcome every barrier wizardkind ever devised. The curses in Bellatrix's vaults are more troublesome. Everything he touches multiplies and burns. The first duplicate sears his hand before he adjusts, and within seconds the vault is filling with white-hot copies of goblets, armor, jeweled necklaces, all of them scalding, all of them spawning more copies with every contact. The cascade accelerates geometrically, but this is Albus Dumbledore, and panic is a luxury he shed decades ago. He navigates the cascade with a series of precise, almost surgical charms, vanishing the duplicates as they form, cooling the metal as it heats, creating a corridor of clear space through the multiplying treasure. He locates the cup on a high shelf surrounded by gold coins that are already beginning to replicate. With a single, perfectly aimed levitation charm, he lifts Hufflepuff's cup free from the pile without touching anything else. The cup floats through the air toward his outstretched hand, and he catches it in a conjured silk cloth. He emerges from Gringotts an hour after he entered, the cup secured, and the goblins will remain oblivious to the breach for weeks. The cup is destroyed in the Room of Requirement where the diadem died. Fiendfire. Scream. Silence. Five down. Somewhere in the forest of Albania, a wraith stirs. It lacks a body. It has lacked a body for years. It exists as a shadow of a shadow, clinging to the world through anchors it created in moments of murder, fragments of itself hiding in objects of power scattered across Britain. Each one a thread connecting it to the life it refused to relinquish. The threads are snapping. The wraith that was once Tom Marvolo Riddle begins to fade. The darkness around it grows darker still. The forest ignores it. An owl calls from a distant tree. A fox moves through the underbrush, pausing briefly at the spot where something that was almost a presence has become nothing at all. The weeks that follow are the quietest of Harry's two lives. He lives at Grimmauld Place with Sirius. They eat breakfast together. Sirius teaches him to play Exploding Snap badly, because Sirius is still relearning how to be a person and Harry is pretending to be a child. They walk through Muggle London, Sirius marveling at how much has changed in four years, Harry marveling at how much has stayed the same. They visit the zoo, and Harry watches Sirius laugh at the penguins, a real laugh, free and loud and startled out of him. And it is the best sound Harry has heard in either of his lives. Some evenings, Sirius sits in the drawing room and stares at the far wall, seeing something only he can see. The Dementors left marks on him that no spell can reach. He wakes screaming some nights, and Harry goes to him and sits on the edge of the bed until the shaking stops. Sirius never asks why a five-year-old is so steady in the presence of someone else's pain. Perhaps he already knows. Dumbledore visits often. He brings books. He brings theories. He brings desperate, relentless energy trying to solve a problem that may have no solution. The problem is simple. Harry Potter is a Horcrux, and the Horcrux must be destroyed. Dumbledore has spent weeks researching. He has consulted texts so dark that merely reading them leaves a residue on his soul. He has explored every avenue of magical theory, soul magic, sacrificial magic, exorcism, purification rituals, alchemical transmutation. He has spoken in carefully coded terms with experts at St. Mungo's and the Department of Mysteries. He has examined the Unspeakables' research of the natural soul, the ancient Egyptian rites of spiritual separation, the goblin blood-severing rituals that predate wand magic entirely. Each path leads to the same wall. The fragment is fused. It arrived when Harry was 15 months old, blasted from Voldemort's already unstable soul by the rebounding killing curse, and it embedded itself in the only living thing in the room. It has been growing into Harry for years now, intertwining with his magical core, his neural pathways, his very sense of self. It is part of the architecture, indistinguishable from the fountain. There is no known method to remove a soul fragment from a living host without killing the host. Dumbledore tries anyway. He spends three days in the Hogwarts library cross-referencing texts that have gathered dust for centuries. He writes to Nicholas Flamel, who responds with a long, sorrowful letter explaining that the Philosopher's Stone can sustain life, but but is powerless to untangle souls. He visits the Veil in the Department of Mysteries and stands before it for an hour, listening to the whispers, hoping for an answer that the dead are unable to give. He finds nothing. Dumbledore sits in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place surrounded by open books and scrolls of parchment, and the look on his face is one that Harry recognizes, a look of a brilliant man confronting the limits of brilliance. I have exhausted every approach I can, every text, every theory, every precedent. The soul fragment is bound to yours in a way that no magic can reverse. I know. Dumbledore looks at him, and the grief in his eyes is immense. Harry, you must understand. I have been searching for an alternative because the alternative is unthinkable. You are a child. You've already given more than anyone should ever be asked to give. I will keep searching. I will find You already know there is only one way, Professor. I walked into the Forbidden Forest once. I stood in front of him and let him cast the curse. I have already died. I know what it feels like. I know it's quick. Dumbledore's hands are shaking. The greatest wizard of the age, the man who defeated Grindelwald, the man who held the wizarding world together through two wars, sits in a dark kitchen and shakes like a leaf. How can I ask this of you? You are hearing me tell you. This is what I came back to do. There is a sound from the doorway. They both turn. Sirius stands there. He has heard everything. His face is white. His hands grip the doorframe the same way Dumbledore's gripped it weeks ago at Privet Drive, knuckles bloodless, as if the frame is the only thing keeping him upright. His eyes move from Dumbledore to Harry and back again, and in [music] them is a horror so complete that it has yet to find its way to expression. No. Sirius. No. Absolutely not. I just got you back. I spent four years in Azkaban, and the only thing that kept me sane was knowing you were alive, knowing James's son was alive. And you're telling me His voice breaks. He crosses the kitchen in three strides and drops to his knees in front of Harry's chair. The boy takes his hands in his own. His grip is too tight. He's trembling. There has to be another way. Dumbledore, tell him there's another way. Dumbledore says nothing. His gaze drops to the floor. Harry reaches up and puts his hand on Sirius's face. A five-year-old's hands, small and warm, resting against the hollowed cheeks of a man who's already lost everything once. Sirius, listen to me. In the life I lived before, you died. You fell through the Veil in the Department of Mysteries, and I spent the rest of the war carrying that grief like a stone in my chest. Remus died. Tonks died. Fred Weasley died. 50 people died at the Battle of Hogwarts alone. Children, friends, people who trusted me to end it. Harry, please. I came back to stop all of it, and I have. Voldemort is gone. The war will never happen. Everyone I watched to die will live full, whole lives. You will live a full, whole life. But the price is me. It was always going to be me. I knew that the moment I woke up in the cupboard. The kitchen is very quiet. The only sound is Sirius's breathing, ragged and uneven. You are going to be all right. You are going to live in this house and fill it with light and rip down every dark thing that the Blacks ever put on these walls. You are going to be happy, Sirius. I need you to be happy. That is what makes this worth it. Sirius pulls him into his arms and holds him so tight that Harry can feel his godfather's heartbeat against his own chest. The man is crying, great, shuddering sobs that shake his whole body. Harry holds him back, and his own eyes are dry because he's already cried for this. He cried for it in another life, on the night he walked into the forest, and he has no tears left. They chose the following evening. The room in the basement of Grimmauld Place, cleared of everything except a chair and a rug. Sirius insists on being there. Harry insisted on letting him. Dumbledore stands at one end of the room, the Elder Wand in his hands, and he looks like a man walking to his own execution. Harry sits in the chair, his feet dangling above the floor. The silence is absolute. Harry, if there were any other way I know, Professor. And someday, I hope you will forgive yourself for this. You are doing what I'm asking you to do. That matters. Remember that. You are five years old. I'm 21. I have fought in a war, watched people I love die, destroyed Horcruxes, broken into Gringotts, and walked willingly to my own death once already. I am five years old the same way you are merely a school teacher. Something between a laugh and a sob escapes Dumbledore. He looks at Sirius, who stands against the wall with his arms wrapped around himself, his face a mask of anguish. Tell everyone about me. Tell them I was brave and tell Hagrid His voice catches for the first time. The composure cracks just for a moment. He thinks of Hagrid carrying his body out of the forest. He thinks of the enormous man weeping over him. He thinks of the first birthday cake he ever received, lopsided and misspelled and perfect. Tell Hagrid I said thank you for everything. For being the first person to tell me I was a wizard. Sirius nods. His voice fails him. Harry looks at his godfather one last time and the mask of the veteran, the war-hardened soldier in a child's skin, slips just enough to show the boy underneath, the boy who wanted a family, the boy who found one briefly in another life and gave it up to save the people he found it with. I love you. I loved you in the other life and I love you in this one. That is real. Remember that it was real. Sirius presses his fist against his mouth and nods. Harry turns back to Dumbledore. He straightens in the chair. His green eyes, Lily's eyes, are clear and steady and unafraid. I'm ready. Dumbledore raises the Elder Wand. His arm trembles. The tip of the wand wavers in the air. Behind his half-moon spectacles, tears streamed openly down his face catching in his beard. The Killing Curse requires intent, true intent. The caster must genuinely will the death of the target. There is no halfway, no partial commitment, no room for doubt. The magic reads the soul and if it finds hesitation, the curse fails. Dumbledore must, in this moment, truly intend to kill a five-year-old boy. He thinks of the names Harry spoke, Fred Weasley, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, Colin Creevey, 50 dead at the Battle of Hogwarts alone. He thinks of a world where those people live, where those deaths are prevented, where the war [music] that would have consumed a generation is snuffed out before it begins. He thinks of the terrible arithmetic of sacrifice that he has carried his entire life, the greater good, the many over the one, the calculus that he has always believed in and always hated believing in. And he thinks of Ariana. He thinks of the sister he failed to save. He thinks of the guilt that has defined him for 90 years and he understands with a clarity that is almost unbearable that Harry is choosing what Ariana was never given the chance to choose. Harry is choosing to be the sacrifice. Harry is choosing freely, with full knowledge, with open eyes. That is what makes this possible. That is what makes this bearable. Barely. It is all right, Professor. You are saving everyone. Dumbledore closes his eyes. When he opens them, something has settled. The grief remains, but the hesitation is gone. He speaks the words. Green light fills the room. It is vast. Harry was right about that. There is a flash, a rushing sound, and then the light finds him and he feels it. A great exhalation, as if the universe has breathed out. The fragment behind his scar screams just as the other screamed, a high, thin, terrible sound that exists only for a fraction of a second before it is swallowed by silence. Harry Potter slumps in the chair. His eyes are still open. His glasses are slightly askew. His expression is peaceful. He looks like he's sleeping. Sirius catches him before he can fall. He gathers the boy's body into his arms and sinks to the floor, cradling him against his chest, and the sound he makes is a sound that no one who hears it will ever forget. Dumbledore drops the Elder Wand. It clatters on the stone floor and rolls away from him and he lets it go. He stands motionless, staring at his empty hand, and the silence in the room is the silence of something that can never be undone. The morning after, Albus Dumbledore sits alone in his office at Hogwarts and writes a letter. It is addressed to no one in particular. It is a record of what happened, the rebirth, the Horcruxes, the hunt, the sacrifice. He writes it in his careful, [music] looping script. When he is finished, he seals it with a charm that will break only upon his own death. He leaves out the green light. He leaves out the sound Sirius made. Some things exist beyond the reach of words. Sirius Black buries his godson in Godric's Hollow beside James and Lily. The headstone is simple white marble and the inscription reads, "Harry James Potter, 31st July 1980 to 4 November 1985. He saved everyone." The wizarding world learns in time what happened. The details are incomplete because Dumbledore guards them carefully, but enough emerges that Voldemort's secret to immortality was discovered and destroyed, that the dark wizard of the age has been permanently eliminated, that a child played a role in it that defies easy explanation. The Daily Prophet runs the story for weeks. The Ministry holds a memorial. Cornelius Fudge makes a speech that is long and says very little. The people who matter know the truth. The Order of the Phoenix reconvened briefly for this purpose, gathered at Grimmauld Place, and Dumbledore tells them everything. Minerva McGonagall sits very straight in her chair and remains silent for a long time. Alastor Moody presses his scarred lips together and nods once, slowly, because he understands sacrifice better than most. Hagrid weeps openly, enormous tears rolling into his beard, and Sirius puts a hand on his shoulder and tells him what Harry asked him to tell him. The Second Wizarding War never occurs. The years pass and they pass gently. Sirius Black fills Grimmauld Place with light exactly as Harry asked. He tears out the dark wallpaper and replaces it with warm colors. He silences the portraits of Walburga Black permanently. He gives Kreacher the locket's chain, empty now, and tells him that Regulus' mission is complete. The old elf wears it around his neck for the rest of his life and something changes in him. He begins to cook. He begins to clean without being asked. He begins, tentatively, to care for the house as if it were worth caring for. Sirius becomes the man he was always meant to be, >> [music] >> the man that Azkaban and war and grief never gave him the chance to become. He is loud and generous and reckless with his affection. He buys a motorbike, a new one, and rides it through the countryside on summer evenings. He takes up his seat at the Wizengamot, the Black family seat that has stood empty for years, and uses it to push for creature rights legislation and Muggle-born protections. He opens his home to the children of the Order. The Weasleys tumble through his flue on weekends. Neville Longbottom visits with his grandmother. And eventually, a young girl named Hermione Granger, Muggle-born and brilliant and utterly bewildered by the world she has stumbled into, arrives at Hogwarts and finds a wizarding world that is whole and safe and waiting for her. Remus Lupin teaches Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts for years. Without Voldemort's return, without the stigma of wartime paranoia, the werewolf finds a place that in the original world never offered him. He is still lonely. He is still scarred, but he is allowed to build a life and he does. He meets a young Auror named Nymphadora Tonks at a Ministry function and she tips over a chair leg while introducing herself and he smiles in a way that he almost forgot how to do. At Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat calls the names in the Great Hall and children sit beneath it without knowing how close they came to a war that would have killed some of them. Fred and George Weasley cause chaos in the corridors and graduate with more detentions than any student in school history. They open a joke shop in Diagon Alley and it is brilliant. And Fred [music] stands behind the counter every morning with his brother and laughs. Cedric Diggory wins the Triwizard Tournament in 1994 and goes on to a career in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. Colin Creevey takes photographs of everything and annoys everyone and lives. They all live. Once a year, on the 4th of November, Sirius goes to Godric's Hollow. He brings flowers, white lilies, because that is what James always brought for Lily, and old habits carry their own kind of loyalty. He sits by the headstone for an hour, sometimes more, and talks to Harry about the years that have passed. He tells him about the Weasley twins' latest invention. He tells him that Dumbledore has gone slightly more eccentric with age, which hardly seemed possible. He tells him that Kreacher has learned to make a passable shepherd's pie and is furious when anyone suggests it is better than passable. He tells him that Hermione Granger is the top of her class in every subject. He tells him she would have been his friend and he thinks Harry would have liked her. He tells him that Ron Weasley is gangly and loyal and terrible at chess and brilliant at it in equal measure and that he would have been his friend, too. He tells him that the world is good, that people are safe, that the darkness Harry gave his life to prevent has stayed prevented. He tells him that he is happy and it is true and it is also a lie because there is a part of Sirius Black that will never be entirely happy again. But that lie is close enough to the truth that Harry would have accepted it and that is enough. And in the quiet of the graveyard, beneath the white marble and autumn leaves, the boy who lived twice rests at last. That's our theory. 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