Chapter Text
Volume I — Another 1991
Prologue I: The World Changed
Harry had absolutely no idea how things had wound up like this.
If — damn it all — he had not left Teddy at home alone. If he had taken Malfoy’s warning seriously. If he had put a few more advanced protective charms around the house. If—
Harry could go on regretting it forever, but time would not allow him another moment’s hesitation.
Stupefy.
He hadn’t even spoken aloud. He hadn’t even drawn his wand from his robes. But already it was playing out before him as if in slow motion: Yaxley’s twisted sneer froze in place, his grip on Teddy’s collar loosened bit by bit, and then — as if unwilling to let go completely — he gave the boy one last, spiteful shove.
As Teddy fell backwards, that mad stare never left Harry. Even as the spell took hold, Yaxley was still waiting for Harry’s face to break.
After a moment of blank shock, Harry’s Auror training kicked in. He lunged forward in a single stride and caught Teddy in his arms just before the boy could pass through the ragged curtain hanging in the stone archway.
But it was too late. They were too close to the Veil.
Harry felt something pulling him towards the other side, and there was no resisting it.
And just like that, Harry Potter — the Boy Who Lived, the saviour of the wizarding world — vanished beyond the Veil with his godson in his arms.
In the last moment before his body was swallowed completely, Harry thought he saw Yaxley’s malicious grin still lingering, and heard the distant cries of the young Aurors caught in the chaos.
All he could do was hold Teddy as tightly as he could, pressing the small body against his chest. It felt like plunging into icy lake water — the cold slicing straight through him.
When all real sounds had faded, his ears filled with a low, shapeless murmuring, impossible to decipher.
He had heard those tempting whispers before. He knew what lay beyond the curtain. He had watched Sirius fall through this very archway and never come back. Beyond the Veil, they said, lay the world of the dead.
So was he going to die too? Or had he already?
It was almost funny, in a horrible sort of way. The Killing Curse had failed to finish him off time and time again, yet this unexplained Veil sitting idle in the Department of Mysteries had managed it instead.
But the cold clinging to his skin — sticky, persistent, impossible to shake — hinted that he was still alive. Not the most convincing evidence, admittedly. Who was to say the dead didn’t still have senses?
He was a Gryffindor; death had never been the thing that frightened him.
But Teddy was only five.
Guilt pressed in where fear should have been. Harry could feel Teddy clutching fistfuls of his robes, shaking uncontrollably against him. The poor child still hadn’t recovered.
“I’m sorry.”
Harry bent his head and kissed Teddy’s soft red hair, remembering hazily that it had been gold at breakfast that morning.
Then he noticed Teddy’s clear, unclouded grey eyes looking straight up at him. Harry managed a faint, apologetic smile, but his thoughts were already drifting into blankness.
At least this kind of death didn’t hurt.
If he really was dead, perhaps they would be there too…
Then brightness burst across his vision.
The world changed.