chapter 3

It was on October 31st, 2004, that Harry finally succeeded. He had won the Final War. The mighty task of killing the monstrosity known as Lord Voldemort, oops, make that Voldewhore, was complete. In the final battle at what was left of the Ministry for Magic, he had taken Riddle head-on. He had done that many times before, but this time he out-right won — he had killed Riddle with the Sword of Gryffindor. He had finally eliminated that abomination from the face of Earth.

It was a cadmean victory though.

Tom's insanity had dragged the Muggles into the Wizarding U.K.'s Pure-blood Civil War. Tom simply did not understand the power the Muggles had. His last real interaction with the Muggles had been the year before World War II ended, 1944. He had missed entirely the United States dropping the Atom Bombs on Japan in August 1945. If he had realized the damage just one of those could do, he never would have bothered the Muggles.

His failed Death Eater attack on the Prime Minister and Her Majesty the Queen at Buckingham Palace in 2000 had been an unmitigated disaster for the Wizards. Yes, one Wizard can kill dozens, or even hundreds, of Muggles, but even bees can swarm and kill a man. And the ratio of Muggles to Wizards in England was 600-to-one in 2000. Most Muggle-born could do the math, Tom Riddle, A.K.A. Lord Voldewhore, certainly hadn't bothered to do so.

The turning point was when the Muggle death toll from attacks reached 15,000 in one year. The Obliviators simply couldn't keep up, and that Voldewhore and the Death Eater's were in charge of the Ministry and the D.M.L.E.'s didn't help either. The Muggle military, with the help of a few Muggle-borns who had turned to the Muggle government after seeing their families killed at the instigation of the Ministry, started with ordinary tactics. However, the shields and protective enchantments the Wizards used demonstrated the impracticality of that approach in the first month. And few, read none, non-Muggle-born Wizards came to help the Muggles, so the Muggles quickly adopted a policy of annihilation instead of confrontation for all non-Muggle-born.

They started using cannon-fired tactical nukes on Wizard enclaves. No wizarding shield can stand up to the 10-million degree heat of a nuke. And while electronics fail in a magic field, few magic fields extend to the height necessary to affect an exploding nuclear bomb. A bomb capable of creating a crater a 500 yards in diameter when it explodes 300 yards in the air above a target creates a blast wave that goes through protective enchantments like a blow torch through a marshmallow. And unplottable only works if you haven't plotted everywhere else! Their orbital satellites certainly helped the Muggles in that regard. They didn't know what was in the blank spot on their charts that the computers said was there but they couldn't see, but the Queen's Government certainly didn't approve it. That made it fair game.

In a matter of a month, the U.K. Wizarding population plummeted fifty percent.

In desperation, the Wizards turned to the imperius, but the Muggle military was long used to enemy infiltration and quickly adopted measures to mitigate the attacks. And when you have isolated teams that only work via radio, and require two confirming sources for their orders, how do you get close enough to the decision maker to use the imperius? Especially when you have a clue-less Pure-blood whose understanding of passing as a Muggle was zero. A few times they did succeed, though, changing instructions or coordinates, and sent the nukes towards Muggle London or another large city. By the end of a year, the U.K. Wizarding population numbered less than ten thousand, and six million Muggles had perished. Which only hardened the Muggle's resolve to eradicate the Wizards.

By the second year, less than two thousand Wizards remained alive, while the Muggles had suffered another three million deaths.

And the blatant violations of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy brought the world's attention to the magical world. With the typical Wizard response being one of obliviation for the Muggles, the war spread rapidly. Obliviating a local Muggle witness doesn't help when someone kilometres away on the receiving end of a video camera saw what had happened. And that viewer saw the Wizard doing the obliviating as well.

Wizardkind was dead; the survivors just didn't know it. The shopping districts, the business districts, Hogwarts, the Ministry, Wizarding villages, the Quidditch stadiums — all provided gathering areas where Wizards and Witches could congregate and meet potential spouses. Those were now nothing more than smoking ruins.

The Magic gene is a small genetic variation affecting less than two-tenths of one percent of the world's population in the 20th Century. Without the support structure of magical villages, schools, shopping districts and other places Wizards and Witches could congregate, any Wizards or Witches that were born now would be unable to find a spouse to propagate the species. The situation was the same as it had been over a thousand years ago. Wizards and Witches had to wander the world to find others of their kind. Only today's world provided a near infinite number of ways where a Muggle could detect the Wizard or Witch hiding in their midst. And the ratio of Wizards to Muggles now was so much higher. A needle in a haystack was easy by comparison.

The spells to find these new Wizards were lost with the destruction of the governmental buildings and schools. So now there was no way to reach those new Wizards and Witches to tell them about the Magic community and to show them how to use their magic. Any infants born now were sports, one-off flukes whose accidental magic would end up killing them when it finally revealed them to the now-virulently anti-magic Muggle governments. And any who did survive would marry a non-magical spouse and eventually the gene that allowed for magic would disappear from the gene pool.

The magical species — centaurs, giants, trolls, and so forth — had simply been wiped out. They usually inhabited isolated locations with no shielding whatsoever. Tactical nukes finished them off handily. Not even the Goblins and Dwarves could survive a nuke driven deep into their tunnels by a Muggle-born suicide squad intent on revenge against all things magical for destroying their families.

The Muggle world was licking its wounds. The Magic War had done something nothing else had — united the various warring Muggle tribes into a cohesive whole. That cooperation, of course, would soon break apart into disagreeing factions. But the war had shown they could work together against a common enemy, no matter their individual differences. That experience would temper future disagreements, and help keep them focused on finding and eliminating any new Wizards or Witches. Mitigating the environmental damage of the war, ironically, were the few surviving Muggle-born Wizards and Witches who were using their magic to clean up the radioactive bombing sites and restoring them to usefulness.

And to think, it all began to unravel because of one selfish "pig-stupid" Weasley: Ronald the Jealous Git.

His brother, Bill, had taken him in after he had left Harry and Hermione in the Forest of Dean during what should have been their seventh year at Hogwarts. He had watched the boy mope around his apartment for weeks. Misunderstanding the boy's inherent laziness as guilt, Bill had taken him to dinner at the Leaky Cauldron. He had planned to console Ron with his favourite activity — eating. When Bill tried to persuade him to "let out his guilt," Ron had angrily shouted the details of their secret horcrux-hunting mission in the crowded pub.

Harry blamed Dumbledore for that situation. If the man hadn't been so close-mouthed about his secrets, if he had spoken plainly to Harry instead of in riddles and questions, if he hadn't wasted months and years doing nothing, the original search wouldn't have taken so long. And Ron wouldn't have been able to betray them. Instead, after the bumbling Wizard's death, they had wasted valuable time wandering in the wilderness looking for things he should have been searching for and destroying before Harry had ever heard of Hogwarts!

And just what had the Headmaster been planning? Either he was senile, incompetent, or a sociopathic master manipulator who enjoyed playing with other's lives, never really understanding or caring about the pain and heartache he created. Or how much he risked in not sharing what he knew. And why hadn't he taught Harry any valuable fighting skills? That lapse alone had added years to his fighting with Voldewhore.

Naturally, a Death Eater, or a sympathizer, had overheard Ron's wobbler at the Leaky Cauldron.

Lord Voldewhore immediately retrieved and re-hid his remaining horcruxes – Hufflepuff's Cup and Ravenclaw's Diadem – behind fidelius charms. In typical Voldewhore fashion, he left taunting messages and traps in place of the former horcruxes. It had been spirit-crushing to break into the Lestrange Vault and discover that it was all for nothing. Going after the Diadem at Hogwarts was where Hermione had been cursed. The Withering Curse was unstoppable, just as it had been when it killed the Headmaster. Harry's quick reaction in cutting off her arm an instant later had saved her life, but only temporarily. It took her five long pain-filled years to die.

Riddle moving those last two Horcruxes cast the Wizarding World into the abyss with Magical and Muggle world suffering alike. It had taken Harry seven more years to destroy the horcruxes, with friends and allies dying at his side, while he killed Voldewhores's followers whenever and wherever he found them.

Voldewhore didn't care whom else died — he was immortal! But with tremendous determination and tenacity, Harry had fought on, watching his friends and allies die one-by-one. He reluctantly became the Master of Death and used Death's help to locate and destroy the final horcrux — himself. And then killed Tom with Gryffindor's Sword while the git was celebrating his "victory" over Harry.

Death had enjoyed the feast provided by the war. Not even Joseph Stalin's and Mao Zedong's Communist purges had yielded such a bonus of Wizardly deaths. It gladly helped Harry Potter to his victory, and gained the long-awaited soul of Tom Marvolo Riddle. Why would it not enjoy this? Both the boy and his nemesis had provided it with a plethora of souls and activity. But it had lost its freedom to Harry Potter. And was looking at being terminally bored for thousands of millennia to come. The second was annoying, but the first was intolerable. No one was allowed to escape DEATH!

Now all Death had to do was trick Harry into giving up his Mastery. Harry Potter was a master of many arts, but no one is more cunning than Death.

One day, Death presented itself to its Master. Harry was sitting on a park bench in a bomb-blasted radiation-ruined town destroyed by an errant nuclear shelling, lost in his thoughts of self-loathing at losing everyone and everything he held dear. He berated himself for not doing more sooner, for not preventing the disaster that destroyed Wizardkind. Living held no appeal, and being the Master of Death meant he couldn't die. He couldn't even get rid of the items by throwing them through the Veil of Death in the Ministry — Voldewhore had destroyed it fearing Harry might use it to kill him. And the damn things could withstand a nuclear blast!

Glancing around at the destruction, Death commiserated with him, "It is sad, is it not? You could have avoided all this ruin if only you had known how it was going to be and had the knowledge and power you have now mastered. All your friends would still be alive. You could have been a Lord among them. You could have been King of the World!" Death proclaimed.

Harry laughed, "If it were possible to go back in time, I would gladly do it even if it saved only one person who had died. I don't want to be Lord over all the people, I just want them living and going on with their lives. And I want my friends back."

"Ah, such nobility, you make me proud, young Master. You may not consider it, but you are my Lord and I dislike my Lord putting himself in a right strop, locking himself in his self-constructed prison of desolation, and driving himself potty," Death said in a mock humility.

Harry chuckled weakly at its antics. "You amuse me, using flamboyant words and slang in the same sentence."

"Forgive me, my Lord, but I change with the times, get more innovative in my ways, and this is one such thing." Death replied. "But, my Lord, I have a proposal for averting this destruction . . . ."

"I am listening," Harry said, one eyebrow raised curiously.

"I can send your soul, together with your core and knowledge but not your body, to a time in the past where you can imprint yourself on a younger version of yourself. That would give your younger version the right amount of knowledge and power. You can achieve your destiny without much effort, and prevent much destruction," Death explained. And never get the Elder Wand nor Resurrection Ring, leaving Death in charge of itself, masterless forever.

Harry leaned back, thinking, considering. That was one way around the time-travel restrictions. He'd never have to worry about meeting himself because he was himself. And Eloise Mintumble's problem of changing the past and dying a horrible death when she returned to the present wouldn't matter, as he would never return. That was the flaw in all the time travel theories; they assumed one would return. Or one had to return. The so-called paradox of eliminating one's father, then being not born, and then being unable to eliminate one's father didn't exist in this case. All he had when he arrived in the past would be a Seer's knowledge of a possible and avoidable future.

"What's in it for you?" Harry asked, knowing well that Death doesn't like to make deals.

"My Master, you are very clever for your age, but that can be expected from what you have survived. I am magical. I like to have a regular and timely supply of those magical souls where I can guide them into their next great adventure, but all this destruction has left me nearly jobless. I am no demon, Master. I am just an inevitability, like life itself, the magical embodiment of a course of action that has to take place after a certain amount of time. I enrich the living, prompting them to see how valuable a life they have. I am an entity like all life, but beyond them, for I have a power over them too. One day, I will take them all with me too, but that day is nowhere near," Death said.

"I'll do it." Harry readily replied.

"You have not heard everything, Master. When what you have accepted is done, you will no longer be my Master, but like any other mortal." Death said gravely.

"You don't understand me, do you? I don't care for immortality or riches. I care only for what I can bring back. I am accepting you deal, Death," Harry said quietly.

"Very well, Master." Death silently chuckled. "I will send you back in time, to a time where your current self is most compatible with your younger self. But be warned, my Master, You will imprint upon the first body you meet when you arrive, and the fusion of your current self with the younger self will make a radical change in your personality. You will have to be circumspect in your actions or others around your younger self will notice and wonder why you changed."

"Are you done yet? I am willing to take anything you throw to undo the damage. I have undergone a lot of pain and inner turmoil ever since I was a toddler, and I can surely beat whatever problems this might cause. Even if it is death, I gladly accept because I cannot exist with the guilt of 'if only I had accepted it.' DO IT NOW, DEATH!" Harry yelled angrily at his servant.

"As you wish, my Lord." Death smiled at Harry Potter, who grimly smiled back in return. Death began a long and steady incantation that burned the body of his Master, liberating his soul. With a powerful push, Death forced his Master's soul back in the stream of time.

(◎_⊙)

It was a terrible day for Harry Potter. First, he got lost in some side street to Diagon Alley, only for Hagrid to rescue him ignominiously. Now he was being forced to pose for a picture for The Daily Prophet along with this overly smiling smarmy new Defence Against Dark Arts professor, Gilderoy Lockhart. Just being near the Wizard set his teeth on edge — there was something that made him feel unsafe in the Wizard's presence.

It was then that something strange happened, during the camera's brief bright flash. Something powerful seemed to be coming at him. Harry, with a decade of dodging his cousin Dudley's blind-side attacks, lunged to the right. As his future Professor was holding him tightly around the shoulders, this dragged the buffoon into the incoming thing's path.