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(Enchanting Melodies) Chapter 428: Of Future Pasts
🕑 Added 2025-02-18 14:00:13 +0000 UTCChapter 428: Of Future Pasts
23 May 1995, Hogwarts
Harry simply shrugged, offering them the only answer that mattered. “I handled it. Don’t worry about it too much.” He clapped his hands together, glancing at each of them with an easy grin. “Now, I believe it’s time to send you all home.”
The three time-stranded teenagers didn’t exactly respond to his statement, which made him frown. They just kept gaping at him, for almost a couple of minutes, enough to make Harry uncomfortable. He frowned at their behaviour and spoke up, “Are you alright? Did something happen when I wasn’t here?”
It was Julia Zabini who broke the silence, looking oddly hesitant as she was about to speak, “You fought a god.”
Harry nodded, “I suppose I did. It’s a new one, even for me.”
“You don’t look like you fought a god.”
The young wizard rolled his eyes, “I’m just that good.”
The Marinakis girl seemed to echo her sentiment, “You fought a bloody god, and it was right in front of us.”
“Yes,” Harry replied slowly, worrying if the girl had hit her head or something. Wasn’t the entire matter clear? He didn’t see why they’d have so much trouble understanding it.
Finally, the Zabini girl let out a very loud screech and started to babble, “Oh my god, we just saw Harry Potter fight a god. Oh, Alex, this trip was so worth it. Holy shit, no one is going to believe us. We could sell the memory. I don’t think there are official recordings of Harry Potter fights, just some mentions and whatnot. Oh, this is unbelievable. We’re going to make so much gold.”
Weirdly enough, the girl’s ramble seemed to shock her friends out of their gaping frozen selves, and the Marinakis girl rolled her eyes and slapped her friend in the back of her head, “We can’t sell recordings of the fight, idiot. We’d get arrested in seconds. I don’t think the Department of Mysteries will exactly like the fact that a prototype time-turner ended up in the hands of three teenagers.”
The girl pouted, “Fine, but you’re paying for my next shopping trip for ruining my dreams of fame and fortune.”
Alexander raised his hand and protested, “Are we seriously ignoring the fact that he fought a god and all we know about how it ended is that he handled it?”
Harry sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “What, did you want a full play-by-play? Because unless you’re all secretly publishing an academic paper on 'How to Defeat an Aesir While Preventing a Temporal Catastrophe,' I’d rather not get into it.”
“Look, I understand that you did some very impressive things, but this was a god. Aren’t they supposed to be extremely powerful?”
“Oh, he was very powerful, much more powerful than me, even,” he agreed readily.
“Then how aren’t you hurt? You fought a superior opponent, one that was older and more experienced than you. How did you even win, let alone not end up with any injuries?”
Harry rolled his eyes, “In my life, I’ve fought a lot of things and people that were stronger than me. There comes a time when you’ll realize that raw power isn’t everything when you’ll understand that preparations and tactical thinking could overcome any power gap. In this case, I used the fact that Heimdall wasn’t used to fighting mortals to my advantage, and used his rage against him, to make a trap to defeat him. Never try to overpower a stronger opponent. Instead, you need to find the vulnerabilities, exploit them, and trick them. It’s not exactly glamorous, but it’s, by far, the best plan when you’re outnumbered or fighting a superior opponent.”
The boy nodded before asking hesitatingly, “And Aunt Penelope?”
Ah, Penelope Clearwater. It was obviously a sore subject for the boy, especially given that she killed his own mother, and had betrayed him, and used him. Harry had killed her and looking back, as ruthless as that might have been, and as much as it didn’t really help in directly defeating Heimdall, it was necessary.
Having taken a faint glimpse of her soul when she died, Harry could tell that Heimdall’s influence had broken her completely. She had been lost long before returning to the past—her grief, her anger, and ultimately, her desperation had hollowed her out. Heimdall had simply found a broken vessel and filled it with his purpose. It had only been Heimdall’s betrayal of their supposed shared goal that got her to resist, not the idea of Alexander dying, or even the prospect of shattering the very fabric of time. In the end, she was a woman who only cared about her false purpose, and her death was, in many ways, a mercy. Perhaps, she would find peace in her next life.
He could lie—tell the boy that Penelope Clearwater had simply been a misguided woman, a victim of circumstance. He could also tell the brutal truth—that she had made terrible choices, had allowed herself to be manipulated, and in the end, had sealed her own fate.
Instead, he settled for something in between.
“Penelope Clearwater is dead. She made her choices,” Harry finally said. “Some were good, some were bad. Some were hers, some weren’t. I don’t know if killing your mother was something she was forced to do or not. No one can tell you but her and she’s dead. In the end, she fought for something she believed in—even if it was extremely misguided and built on her hate for the world around her.” He held the boy’s gaze. “You can mourn her, or you can hate her but don’t let her actions define you, just like her grief defined her. Either way, I will not judge you for it.”
Alexander swallowed hard, nodding stiffly. "I… I get it."
But Harry knew he didn’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But understanding would come with time, and right now, time wasn’t a luxury that Harry had. The paradox of the World Tree’s creation was what maintained the connection between their two timelines and what stopped them from collapsing.
With the Paradox essentially resolved and the World Tree planted, the time-stranded teenagers could seriously cause some damage by just existing. Harry really needed to get them back to their times before they accidentally did something that would cause a lot of damage.
Still, feeling back for the boy, he threw the spherical runic artefact he’d made just a couple of hours before his fight with Heimdall to heal the World Tree from Nidhogg’s corruption, “At least your trip wouldn’t be for nothing.”
“Huh, I forgot about that,” he answered with an embarrassed look on his face.
“Meeting a god would do that, I suppose,” Harry said while humming thoughtfully, “Nevertheless, this should allow you to heal the World Tree. The rest, well, that’s up to you.”
The boy seemed hesitant as he looked at the glowing ball of condensed energy, “Aunt Penelope was the one who pushed me to do this, using it to promote her cause seems wrong.”
The Zabini girl took his hand, making him turn towards her, “Then don’t. Let’s just say that you found something of your mother’s and that she made the sphere before she died.”
“If I tell them that, I’ll get blamed for poisoning the tree in the first place. No one knows what that corruption even was.”
Harry shrugged and just conjured a small pile of parchment out of thin air, “This is my research about the poison. It’s a bit abridged, but it has the properties of the liquid, which I saw in Azkaban, its effect on life, in general, as well as a modified form of the Patronus Charm that destroyed it completely, which I did. Tell them that you found this in Hermione’s things, recognized the symptoms and used my spell to banish the corruption away since it wouldn’t have hurt the tree anyway if it didn’t work. That parchment is more than enough proof that it's my work, and it should be easy enough to replicate the feat.”
“Are you alright giving me all the credit, knowing that I’m responsible for you fighting a god?” Alexander replied.
The young wizard rolled his eyes, “Believe me, you’d know if I’m mad. And why should I care about some kid’s PR stunt that’s two decades away, it’s not like I’ll be there to care.”
The three teenagers flinched as he said that, and that was more than enough for Harry to know that he wasn’t exactly around in the future. He was tempted to press further but decided against doing so. Instead, he said, “Now, why don’t I finish setting up the time-turner for your trip back? Try not to get into trouble in the meantime.”
And so, Harry slowly activated a few runes on the time-turner prototype, making sure that there wouldn’t be any complications since he took out the sapling of the World Tree earlier, and he was right to have done so. It seemed like there was a completely different configuration of runes for the time-turner to work without the World Tree sapling, even if the artefact had absorbed enough energy to send them back to their time. The sapling acted as a buffer, a natural focus, for the energy, and now, he had to make sure that this focus would be done via the runes, which was a bit power-intensive.
Right as he was about to call the kids, only to hear them loudly whispering to each other. He heard Alexander’s voice speaking up, “You can’t be serious. He just saved our asses. It’s the least we can do to help him.”
The Marinakis girl replied heatedly, “The guy threatened to kill us if we messed up with the timeline. Are you really willing to take that risk?”
“We can save him,” the boy replied heatedly.
“How do you even know that he’s dead? They didn't find a body,” the Zabini girl replied cheekily.
The other girl answered, and Harry could practically hear her eyes rolling, “Stop it with the conspiracy theories. There is no mystery of Ragnarök. Harry Potter didn’t ascend to godhood, didn’t go back in time to become Merlin or anything that ridiculous. He’s dead and has been dead for a long time.”
“But mum said that…”
Marinakis didn’t let her continue, “Your parents were his friends. Daphne Greengrass was your mother’s best friend. Is it any wonder that she refuses to believe that they died? Nothing could have survived what happened, not even Harry Potter.”
For the first time since he heard their conversation, Harry froze completely. What the hell was going to happen to Daphne? He was about to reveal himself and press them for more details, but he felt the familiar warning in the back of his mind, telling him not to try to press the kids further. Seriously? This was dangerous for the timeline but fighting a fucking god who literally almost broke reality was completely fine?
Alexander spoke up, “It’s hard to imagine him dying to anything. I thought the stories were overblown, but did you see him fight that God? It was absolutely insane.”
Harry felt angry as he felt the whispers urge him to reveal himself and interrupt the conversation. Was it really that dangerous to know what happened to his girlfriend? Would the very fabric of time break because of that small nugget of information?
Harry’s breath was heavy, his fingers twitching at his sides.
No.
He wasn’t letting this go.
Whatever force was warning him—be it time, fate, or something else entirely—he didn’t care. This was Daphne.
His Daphne.
She wasn’t some cosmic variable to be balanced or an event to be accounted for. He had defied fate before, and he would do it again. If something was going to happen to her, he would know. He would stop it.
Harry refused to walk away from this.
His lips parted, his mind set on demanding answers. But before he could even speak—reality broke.
The world around him fractured.
The castle shook violently, the stones beneath his feet shuddering as if Hogwarts itself was resisting his choice. Magic, deep and ancient, screamed through the air, unseen forces pressing down on him with enough weight to steal his breath.
The very fabric of reality rippled.
The torches lining the walls flickered wildly, their flames twisting and stretching as if being pulled into the vortex of instability. The walls of the castle groaned, their very structure bending, warping. The air itself cracked like glass, threads of golden energy splitting apart, fraying at the edges of existence.
Time itself was breaking.
Harry fell to his knees, clutching his head as waves of nausea rolled over him. His crest burned—searing, branding pain ripping through his very magic, his very being.
Harry gritted his teeth, his entire body shaking from the sheer force of existence being rewritten around him. He could feel it unravelling, time and space buckling under his defiance.
If he took even a single step forward—the timeline would shatter.
Everything would shatter.
He had fought gods. He had rewritten history. He had walked through the ruins of time itself and come out unscathed.
But this?
This wasn’t something he could fix.
Not without losing everything.
His fists clenched, his nails digging into his palms hard enough to draw blood.
Then—he let go.
He forced himself to unclench his jaw, to release the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
"I understand," he whispered hoarsely.
The second the words left his lips, everything stopped.
The shaking ceased. The torches stilled. The golden fractures in the air stitched themselves back together as if the entire fabric of reality had been holding its breath, waiting for him to make the right decision.
The weight pressing down on him lifted.
The whispers faded.
And Hogwarts stood whole once more.
Harry exhaled shakily, still kneeling on the cold stone floor. He didn’t move for a long moment, his heartbeat thundering in his ears.
His own body felt like it had been through a war. His magic ached, raw and exposed from the backlash.
Slowly, he pushed himself to his feet and spoke up with a fake casual tone, “I’m done on my side. The time-turner is ready. Let’s go back to the forest and send you back to your timeline.”
The three teenagers stiffened immediately, and Marinakis spoke up, “Good, let’s get going already.”
The trip to the forbidden forest was very quiet. Harry’s mind was completely occupied with thoughts of Daphne, feeling warnings appear with every possible question he could think of that could help him know what happened to her.
When they arrived at the place of their entrance to this time, Harry put down the time-turner and spoke up, “Alright, I want you three to touch the time-turner like it was a Portkey, and don’t let go. Do you understand?”
They all nodded, and he continued, “Good,”
They all knelt and touched the time-turner, but Alexander turned towards him and gave him a sad look. It seemed like he wanted to say something, only to smile and say, “Thank you.”
The last Potter forced a grin into his face and spoke up, “You’re very welcome. Goodbye.”
The moment they all touched the artefact, Harry activated it from a distance, and all three teenagers disappeared in a burst of golden light, leaving the young wizard to his very disturbing thoughts.
He felt the warnings completely disappear, whenever he wanted to speak to Daphne, and he walked further into the Forbidden Forest.
When he felt like he was sufficiently into the forest, he let go of the grief and anxiousness that he felt since he eavesdropped on their conversation. A gigantic pulse of magic obliterated everything around him, plants and magical creatures alike. Thankfully, Harry had stayed near the Acromantula nest, so they would be the only casualty.
After a minute, Harry gasped slightly, taking a deep breath, seeing the crater around him, before opening a portal back to the castle. He felt exhausted and drained, despite the fact that his magic circuits were fine.
With a flick of his wand, he conjured his Patronus and spoke up, “I just finished with my thing early. Are you still up for our date?”
The silver dove shot off into the night, vanishing into the depths of Hogwarts. He wanted to see Daphne, to hold her, to see if she was alright. Perhaps that would only give him a sliver of comfort from what he just heard.
He would not lose Daphne.
He would destroy everything that would be in his way, Dumbledore, Grindelwald, even Fate and Time. That, he swore.
AN: This chapter got away from me a bit. I wrote it in a hurry and didn’t really proofread it, so, I’m not really sure how it came out. As usual, I don’t mind rewriting it depending on your feedback, so, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
Comments
Callum Runchman
Well they said nothing could survive what happened and whilst I'm sure harry could probably sing his way to survival the fate magic involved in the ragnarok prophecy might have other lingering effects and as such could end up costing him is various ways. I've read stories where the main character has been poisoned against their natural world so had to move to a new parallel world to survive. Others scenarios could have it as a fixed point that the light, the dark and the hero of ragnarok are all destined to die in the final battle and as a result if harry ever left his personal realm to re-enter the main world he'd break time as he almost did in this chapter. Just feel like even with magic there has to be some price or cost for the greater acts of power. Like how the light and dark champions are granted immense power but also are continuously influenced and manipulated by their patrons in how they think and live. Or how flamel and dracula achieved immortality but with significant prices both on themselves and in their later bindings to their respective champions. Just feels like their should be a price of significant consequence when dealing with the truely, immensely powerful, world/life altering magics
Kelevra
Indeed. I’m just thinking of the information Harry gets, basically all he knows of the future is people think he and Daphne died/disappeared, which means he theoretically could just go on a long vacation to keep the timeline intact. I’m a bit uncertain what you’re referring to when you say “magic demands the price”
Callum Runchman
I guess. Depends on if they require just their identity to the public erased or if magic demands the price. If second one then I doubt it
Kelevra
Another option would be him and Daphne changing their appearance and live under different names at some point
Callum Runchman
Wouldn't be surprised if he sang a realm into existence during ragnarok as he's is the one true master of everything in his realms and then afterwards tried to leave only for time to fracture again like it did just then which forces him to be imprisoned in his own creation for a time. Daphne would likely refuse to leave him alone so would stay in exile with him until they're able to one day leave their self contained exile
Kelevra
Shouldn’t be to difficult to sing a realm into existence and live in a subspace for x amount of time
Kelevra
Damn, this must be the most original and one of the best HP/ SI stories ever, and I’ve spent the last 10 years reading most of them. Maybe only 3 stories rival this one with one of them being the methods of rationality. I think I’ve spent the last 3/4 days reading the entire story, was so hooked I ended up subscribing just to get some more chapters
Callum Runchman
Well that was shocking. Thought for sure that he'd find a way to bypass the paradox of time travel and alteration to learn about threats of the future. I hope he stil somehow finds a way and simply realises him and daphne must go into hiding until this group return to the future. If they don't interact with anyone then they shouldn't break the timeline and therefore not cause any problems
SweetKat21
I normally read via my email, but I had to comment on this chapter! The fact that I believe Harry is dead in the future because he wouldn't want to live without Daphne's time is unyielding bitch.
Afterdark230
Well at least we know that Time makes fate look like a bitch.
