Harry didn't know, then or ever, how long he walked; the light of burning spiderwebs was too dim to read his mechanical watch, and Harry had not thought to look at the time before entering. It felt like they walked for miles, miles beneath the ground.

Rough stone tunnel went by underfoot, Harry's shoes sometimes dipping into moisture or nearly slipping on a curved surface. After many what was at least several miles and many placid, neutral conversations, the stone tunnel ended.

Professor Quirrell climbed up stone steps, and Harry and the five witches followed after. The seven of them came into a dark, dank stone building. Dirty old stone doors swung open without being touched.

Before them lay marble slabs, rising up from bare ground, upon them names and dates. The tombstones were scattered in nothing like neat rows, and the rest of the graveyard ran wild.

The moon above was over three-quarters full, already seeming bright with night not fully fallen. The Professor came into the center of the scattered graveyard. He stopped walking and waved his wand above his head in a small circle. There was a rumbling sound, and smoothly from the ground rose an altar, at least two meters wide and of black stone carved with grey sigils. And then surrounding the altar groaned up six dark-marble obelisks, regularly spaced, gleaming darkly beneath the fading twilight sky.

"This," said the Quirrell, "is a workspace I made for myself, convenient to either Hogwarts or Hogsmeade." He flourished a hand at the altar. "That is where Miss Granger shall revive, and also where I shall be reborn into my new body. I believe this is what you would call being nice." He looked at Fluttershy in particular.

"You see, the rituals themselves are quite similar; identical in theory and differing only in the execution of a few, relatively minor details of rather small interest. The primary of which being that we shall revive Miss Granger into her original body, whereas I have created a new body in which to transplant my spirit, after which I shall abandon this one.

There is the possibility, perhaps not unlikely, that the ritual will not perform as expected. If that eventuality is to occur, I daresay that you all would benefit from the hand of a wizard experienced in some of the more Eldritch arts that some may call 'dark'. Of course, I do wonder how much of this plan you could reasonably attribute to altruism or 'friendship', for despite these noble intentions, there is a not small part of myself that would wish to practice the ritual upon someone that is not myself."

"Professor, if I may say... I think that's the entire point. Sometimes the best way to advance your own aims is to simultaneously advance those of others. Sometimes, well... sometimes friendship is optimal."

"That's what makes it so magical, darling!" Rarity commented.

"Yes, magical and optimal indeed. On that note, it is time we proceed." The Professor removed the toe ring from among his things and laid it delicately upon the altar.

"Are you familiar, Mr. Potter, with the Ritual of Forbearance?"

Harry shook his head.

"No, I wouldn't imagine so. It's an old ritual, ancient, and passed down among the families of pure blood and great superstition. Its premise is quite similar to that of Muggle cryogenics: the body of a fallen Wizard or Witch is preserved via Transfiguration, which is then sustained not only by the original caster, but the combined magic of friends, families, and acquaintances. To what end they expect, I cannot truly say for certain."

Harry looked up. With the witches behind him, he did not notice that they were suddenly paying rapt attention to the Professor's every word. "Maybe, Professor, they're waiting for something like this."

The Professor shrugged. "Perhaps. It seems to me that the families who indulge in such superstition believe that the exodus will be much more grandiose, a rapture of sorts. Much less... mundane than the operation we are about to perform?"

"Mundane? We're about to resurrect someone from the dead using a stone that literally is the primordial embodiment of an abstract class of Magic. How can you say this is 'mundane'?"

"People tend to have the expectation that great effects are accompanied by similarly dramatic rituals and requirements. The enormity of the implications of this particular task is not quite matched by the execution itself."

"Does... does that magic, the Ritual of Forbearance, ever fail, Mr. Quirrell?" Rainbow Dash asked.

The Professor chuckled at the appellation 'Mister' but answered nonetheless. "Yes, on occasion. There appears to be little rhyme or reason behind such failures, but they are known to occur."

"The stars in the heavens..." Pinkie whispered.

The Professor turned his head and asked sharply, more sharply than he intended, "What did you just say?"

"Oh, my lucky stars!" Pinkie lied. "It sounds a lot like that Horcrux ritual I've heard Harry talk about."

"Oh yes, that one," the Professor laughed darkly. "I trust, Mr. Potter, that you understand its folly?"

Harry nodded. "No continuity of consciousness. It's just a saved state. That, and the fact that a ritual that requires the sacrifice of one life to save another is hardly an optimal recipe to save the entire world."

"You are right on one count, and misguided on another, but no matter. The first iteration of the Horcrux ritual uses the life force of another to power the binding of one's being to an object. A sort of preemptive payment that comes due when the caster's life force returns to a suitable vessel."

"Like a battery for someone's life force..." Harry whispered. "But you mentioned, the 'first iteration'?"

"What you are about to observe is the second iteration," he held the stone up to punctuate his statement.

"Horcrux 2.0..."

"Indeed. With the power of the Philosopher's Stone, no life force is needed to sustain the magic, to bind the spirit to the flesh. What we are about to do is like what the Horcrux ritual is to that of the Ritual of Forbearance."

"What do you mean?"

"Your pink-haired friend is quite observant, the premise of the Ritual of Forbearance is almost identical to that of the Horcrux. In fact, I suspect the latter was derived from, an improvement upon the former. But there is no preemptive payment with the Ritual of Forbearance. No... 'charging of the battery', as you say."

Harry was frowning at this, "But, by that logic, could you not complete the ritual by... You know... Killing someone to replace the person you want to resurrect?"

The Professor grinned wickedly. "Now you're thinking like a proper Dark Wizard. But you think wrong. There are some who say that Magic has a certain wisdom. That to ensure whoever commands it understands its power, it demands a sacrifice. Without the sacrifice, the advance payment of a life for a life, the ritual has no meaning, no value. Indeed, it is precisely because the Ritual of Forbearance is so effortless, requires so little sacrifice, because it is so easy that it is so ubiquitous among Wizarding families, and therefore worthless."

"Do you feel the same way about friendship?" Applejack drawled, somewhat skeptically.

The Professor narrowed his eyes and said nothing for a time. Harry prepared himself for a withering retort that did not come. "Your point is well taken. I confess that I am woefully uneducated as to the value of this 'magic' you call Friendship. I suppose that one could counter my argument by saying, 'Why not?'. That very thought has occurred to me personally, as I confess that I have arranged to have the ritual performed upon myself in the event that my bodily form fails."

Applejack's arms were crossed as if something didn't add up. "Uh-huh."

Anxious to move forward with the resurrection, Harry had subconsciously removed his wand, which the Professor had noticed. "Incidentally, the use of a wand is unnecessary. You learned to sustain a Transfiguration by touch alone, without further use of your wand. You can likewise break your own Transfiguration wandlessly. I, myself, do not have a preference. It seems, however, that you would prefer the faster approach."

Harry nodded and asked, "Are you ready?" to which the Professor returned the nod. He touched the toe-ring with his wand, clearing his mind and whispering the Finite incantation. He turned away as the spell began to become undone, almost like the sped-up reverse of watching something being Transfigured. The toe-ring distorted, flowing together, expanding. Colors changed, textures changed.

Two-thirds of a dead girl lay strewn across the altar, on her side with one arm falling off the altar's edge, the position in which the reversion had chanced to place her. The dead girl was naked, for her clothes were not part of her, and had not been Transfigured.

Out of respect, both Harry and the witches turned away, a gesture that was not lost upon Professor Quirrell. He gestured with his wand, and the naked girl's body lifted into the air, then flared again as dead leaves danced around her and she was clothed in the seeming of a Hogwarts uniform, though the trim was red instead of blue. Hermione Granger's hands folded over her chest, her legs straightened, and her body drifted back down.

The Professor walked forth to the altar once more, orienting the body before him with a wave of his hand to lie straight across the altar. The Dark Lord spoke with high monotone precision, "Flesh, flesh, flesh so wisely hidden."

The obelisks began chanting once more.

Apokatastethi, apokatastethi, apokatastethi to soma hou emoi (emoi).

Apokatastethi, apokatastethi, apokatastethi to soma hou emoi (emoi).

New flesh flowed out of the stumps of the girl's thighs, creeping forward like an ooze and solidifying.

The obelisks ceased chanting. A complete form lay upon the altar, upon which the Professor laid the chunk of red glass, which he allowed to stay there for a time.

Minutes passed.

The chunk of red glass turned, slightly.

Professor Quirrell prodded Hermione Granger's body with his wand. "There is an obstacle," he spoke urgently, with a note of concern that in turn caused Harry more concern than anything else that had occurred that night.

"Obstacle? What obstacle?!" Harry demanded, immediately.

"Her body is restored... the substance is repaired, but not life, or magic. This is the body of a dead Muggle."

"Shocker." Rainbow Dash remarked.

Applejack gave her an elbow to the ribs to quiet her friend. Her previously casual pose had now stiffened, her eyes narrowing slightly as if in anticipation of some threat. The air in the clearing had changed, imperceptibly. The implication was clear; if Harry's friend wasn't getting resurrected, neither was Twilight.

"What, what do you mean the body of a dead Muggle? Are you saying that all the Stone was able to do was just repair her leg?"

The Professor was not listening. He was hurriedly checking her vital signs and otherwise examining her. "Mr. Potter, I think it would be best if you restored the Transfiguration until we can consider this problem further."

"Wait!" Harry blurted, feeling hope return. She needs a spark of life and magic, just a spark to get her started... "I think I have something that might work."

"This," Professor Quirrell spoke softly, "I desire to see."

Harry stood before the reformed body of Hermione Granger on the twilight-lit stone altar and looked at her.

She looks like she is sleeping, not dead. It took a conscious effort to look for breathing, fail to see it and make the deduction. So far as naked perception was concerned... Hermione might as well be alive, right now.

That Hermione Granger would not approve of this situation, taken as a whole, seemed beyond question. But it didn't mean that she would rather stay dead than be alive, other things being equal, though they might not be.

Because you wish to live because my best guess is that you would wish to live...

Harry reached out his shaking left hand and touched Hermione's forehead. It was warm now, not the chill of five degrees Celsius, which meant that Hermione's brain was currently warm and without oxygen, come to think.

That did it, the sense of urgency rising in him.

Harry's feet assumed the stance, his wand swung up to point at Hermione Granger's dead body. The only thing wrong with Hermione's body was that it was dead; everything else about that body was right, only one thing needed changing.

You don't belong here, death.

"Expecto," Harry shouted, feeling the magic and the life rise up into the Patronus Charm that was fueled by both, "PATRONUM!"

The girl in the Hogwarts uniform was surrounded by a blazing aura of silver fire, as the Patronus was born inside her.

Harry staggered, as he felt a dip, a bite. Intuition told Harry that the life and magic that had just flowed into Hermione would never return to him, either one. It hadn't been all his life or all his magic, not by a long shot, there hadn't been time to expend that much, but whatever he'd just expended was gone forever.

And Hermione Granger was breathing, just like she was sleeping, rhythmic inhalations and exhalations. The twilight sky had dimmed further, and Harry could not see if color was returning to her, but it should have been, it certainly should have been. She looked to be sleeping peacefully, and it wasn't because being dead looked like sleeping, it was because she was asleep and her body was fine and nothing was hurting her while she slept.

"Interesting," said the Professor. "Your Patronus draws upon your life as well as your magic... I guessed that much, for it was too powerful for a first-year to fuel with magic alone. And yet there must be more to the puzzle since not just any life-fueled spell would have done... No matter, we must proceed to the next step, the one which our curiously-accented friend suspected that I intended to shirk." He inclined his head towards Applejack.

Another obelisk turned, lay flat upon the ground. "I warn you though, this ritual is Darker than the last. There is an old, lost ritual to sacrifice a magical creature and transfer its magical nature to a subject. The limitations are great; the transfer is temporary, only a few hours, and the subject sometimes dies when the transfer wears off. But the Stone will make it permanent."

"Uh, what do you mean, sacrifice?" Rainbow Dash demanded.

"Stay well back," Quirrell spoke, dismissively. "She comes from a world different than this one, that much I deduced. As do you. If I were to bind her life force to some bodily form on this world using the Stone, I strongly suspect she would be bound to this world permanently, which I assume is not an ideal outcome?"

Rainbow Dash looked down, somewhat abashed. "No."

The Professor nodded at this. "It will seem grim, yes, but your friend's life force will be reborn inside Miss Granger. There are other, much simpler, much more well-known rituals by which one can expel a foreign spirit from one's body. We can deal with that problem when it is time for you to take your leave of this world. Now, I recommend turning around."

The pony-turned-witches nodded, following his logic. Harry, on the other hand, felt like he was free-falling through a tumbling world of new rules that seemed to change at a moment's notice as if he was standing on a massive pile of rugs that kept getting yanked out from under his feet. The Professor removed the violet stone, and an instant later, a unicorn collapsed.

The Professor began a new chant, softer syllables that seemed to seethe through the air like living things; and Harry, feeling a new surge of apprehension, stepped backwards.

Then Harry cried aloud, as pain flared again within his scar. The unicorn crumbled in on itself, becoming ashes hanging in the air, then dust, and then the dust seemed to blow away without going anywhere; it was gone.

He laid the Stone upon Hermione's form once more, clasping her hands around it, and held it there for several minutes. When he was satisfied that the ritual is complete, he looked up.

"She is in there. However, before we wake Miss Granger and your friend, I think it would be prudent to revive my own body. There are a few key enchantments necessary to ensure a, how shall we say, smooth transition, and those enchantments would be much more efficacious with a functioning, healthy body"

"You may want to summon another Patronus, in the event that I, myself, need the same treatment as Miss Granger..." The Professor whispered, and Harry, acknowledging the possibility, dutifully called forth another.

The Professor had moved forward to the altar. He knelt there and seemed to reach deep into the stone of the altar itself, drawing forth a vial of liquid that looked black in the fading twilight. When he spoke again his voice was clipped and precise. "Blood, blood, blood so wisely hidden,"

And the obelisks surrounding the altar began to speak, voices like a chanting chorus coming from the motionless stones, cadences older than Latin, the same chant as before:

Apokatastethi, apokatastethi, apokatastethi to soma mou emoi.

Apokatastethi, apokatastethi, apokatastethi to soma mou emoi.

The obelisks' chant echoed after the end of each line as if they were speaking out of synchrony with each other. The blood was poured from the vial, and it seemed to catch and hang over the altar, slowly expanding through the air, taking on a shape.

Apokatastethi, apokatastethi, apokatastethi to soma mou emoi (emoi).

Apokatastethi, apokatastethi, apokatastethi to soma mou emoi (emoi).

A tall form rested upon the altar, and even in the dimming twilight, it looked too pale.

The Defense Professor placed the Stone upon the tall pale body. It stayed there for a time, minutes at least. The irregular chunk of red glass did not glow, or flash, or give any other indication of power. Then the Stone moved, just a little, turning slightly upon the body.

The Defense Professor took back the Stone into his robes and prodded the tall form that lay motionless upon the altar, touching the eyes with his fingers, poking the chest with his wand.

He placed his hands, both of them, over the body's forehead.

The Dark Lord spoke. "Fal. Tor. Pan."

Suddenly, Harry's scar exploded, a super-nova of hot, white, intense, seemingly infinite pain.

But what was more frightening than that, more frightening than the prospect of an eternity of this, was the fact that the Defense Professors looked scared.

"He... He is here. The Dark Lord, his spirit, it lurks, it waits!" Quirrell's eyes were fully panicked, and the witches looked all around, prepared and ready for a fight, although what they planned to do was a mystery to Harry.

"Professor, what... what do I..." Harry stammered through the pain.

"Harry, RUN!" the Professor wheezed. "The Dark Lord is here, he is free, he is-"

The Professor wavered, ready to collapse. His eyes rolled backwards in his head, and in a voice that Harry could barely hear, Quirinus Quirrell gasped, "Free - oh, free -"

Without any warning, there was a flash like lightning that lit up the entire graveyard, and Harry staggered back a step, his hands involuntarily going to his forehead. The pain, though stinging, had now subsided.

And the too-tall figure sat up upon the altar.

It swung around smoothly, and stood tall upon the ground, at least a head higher than a normal man. The form's limbs were lean and pale, little-muscled but giving an impression of terrible strength.

Harry took another staggering step back, his hands still clasped to his scar. Though the distance between them was wide, Harry felt a sense of terrifying apprehension in the air, as though the sense of doom had always been out of focus and had now clarified, concentrated into a physical pain in the scar on Harry's forehead.

Was that what the Professor's new body was supposed to look like? The nose looked like, it looked like it had malfunctioned during the resurrection process -

The too-tall figure threw back his head and laughed, raising his hands and wand to look at them. The left hand opened wide and it was like a pale half-spider with four over-long legs, fingers caressing the wand held in the other hand. Leaves stirred up from the graveyard, approaching to dance around the too-tall figure, surrounding him and clothing him, reforming into a high-necked shirt and flowing robes; and Lord Voldemort was laughing. Exactly the mirthless laughter that Harry remembered coming from his own throat inside the Dementor's nightmare, precise in tone and timbre.

Red eyes gleamed beneath the fading twilight, their pupils slit like a cat's. The Defense Professor raised himself, quivering, from the ground, and without a second thought, Lord Voldemort pointed his wand and shrieked in a cold, high voice.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

So this is the way the world ends, not with a bang - with a whimper.

It should have been glorious. It should have been dramatic. The Defense Professor should have gone out in a blaze of glory, firing curse after curse in a pitched battle in a desperate defense of Harry and his new friends.

It wasn't supposed to end like this. With a pair of words and a flash of green light. With such... ignominy. So... unceremoniously.

But the world didn't work like that. The world was not "just so". If the world paid fair tribute to the lives lost, the husbands and fathers and wives and mothers and daughters and sons and sisters and brothers, the sky would be an infinite black twilight, a monolith to mourn the ever-present specter of rotting, senseless Death.

But the sun comes up. The world still spins. Life goes on.

Because that was the reality of Harry's world. Sometimes good people die for no good reason. Sometimes life ends with nothing more than a blink, with no time to say goodbye, no time to make peace.

Sometimes, the greatest wizard of a generation is obliterated in less than an instant.

In the cold, crystalline rage that had consumed Harry's being, he vaguely noticed that his Patronus was not dimming. In fact, it grew brighter, hotter, more intense with the fires of Harry's emotion. After all, he had been handed a complete roadmap to resurrection.

Step one: preserve the body.

No wait, step one: defeat this blithering fool that calls himself Lord Voldemort, this opportunistic harlequin, this cheap hack, a sad excuse for a 'dark lord' that couldn't even conquer a tiny island of a few thousand without having a spell backfire in his face and terminate his existence for eleven years.

Step two: preserve the body.

Step three: reverse engineer the chanty-obelisk ritual.

Step four: Render it permanent using the Stone.

Step five: Revive him with Patronus.

"And now," the Dark Lord hissed, "I shall complete the task that I set out to do eleven years ago. You, who has been named by prophecy as the one who dares to resist me, you whose parents have escaped my grasp thrice-fold-"

This idiot was monologuing. If Professor Quirrell had been Lord Voldemort, there would have been none of this nonsense, it would have been a quick Avada Kedavra and the whole affair would have been done with.

No, Harry's mind was not on the incompetent moron, floating in front of him, gesticulating with his wand and speaking great volumes about his plans to murder Harry Potter.

No, Harry's mind was with his Patronus, who was currently a world away.

Azkaban

Meanwhile

"I'm not serious."

"I'm not serious."

"I'm not serious."

"I'm not serious."

"I'm not serious."

"I'm not... serious."

"I'm not..."

"I'm not..."

"I'm not... Sirius."

"I'm not Sirius."

"I am not..."

"I am not Sirius Black..."

Peter Pettigrew opened his eyes for the first time in eleven years and saw the world for what it was.

He was not Sirius Black. He was Peter Pettigrew. And he was not supposed to be here.

"I'm... I'm not Sirius Black! I'm Peter Pettigrew. Help me, help!"

He shouted, over and over, until his voice went hoarse. It was a good pain, though, a pain that reminded him that he was alive, truly alive. That there was something he could do, something he wanted to do. It was a strange sensation.

As it so happened, his cries were simultaneously futile and unnecessary, as the human guards of Azkaban were preoccupied with something far more pressing.

Azkaban Command

Meanwhile

"Yes, Bahry, I realize that's what it looks like. That's because THAT'S WHAT'S BLOODY WELL HAPPENING RIGHT NOW." Amelia Bones shrieked into her mirror, causing the Auror Bahry on the other end to hold his copy back a full meter.

Another of Bones' mirrors began chirping amid the cacophony, "This is Calabasas to Command. What the hell is going on?"

Amelia Bones tried to ignore the individual requests, making an emphatic gesture with her hand and activating all of her outbound mirrors at once. "CQ, CQ, CQ. Bravo Oscar November Echo Sierra calling, verification code Sierra Charlie Papa Two Seven Zero One. All guards and Aurors standing by, implement Lazarus Protocol effective immediately. This is not a drill, I repeat, this is not a drill. Implement Lazarus Protocol, effective immediately. I repeat, implement Lazarus Protocol. Secure, contain, protect."

She shut off all the mirrors except for one, as they had simultaneously erupted into a chorus of cries of confusion, fear, warning, anger. She activated the one remaining mirror, through which a crisp, efficient voice answered immediately.

"M-O-M Command, this is Scrimegour standing by. 'Ullo Bones, what's the hap-"

She cut him off before he could even finish his greeting. "Scrimegour, get me Dumbledore, yesterday. The dementors are fleeing Azkaban!"

"Oh, bloody hell." Rufus Scrimegour muttered as he connected the two mirrors without flinching.

Hogwarts, the Headmaster's Office

Meanwhile

In Albus Dumbledore's empty office, a mirror crackled and a voice began desperately shrieking through into the empty space, receiving no response except for echoing silence.

Between Hogsmeade and Hogwarts

Meanwhile

The entirety of the Dementor corps of Azkaban had dutifully followed the rage-fuelled Patronus, who threatened (with full intention of seeing the threat through) and commanded them to abandon their post. The Patronus hurtled through the air at a speed an order of magnitude faster than even the most advanced of muggle jets. The Dementors had no trouble keeping up, for they were not truly physical beings. The Patronus expected, demanded that they follow, and so they did.

The night sky darkened behind the gloating Voldemort, who was spending a great deal of time describing his own power and plans for domination, before moving on to meticulously enumerating the various weaknesses of the young Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres.

It was not that Harry didn't hear what Lord Voldemort was saying. He found that he simply did not care. When the Dark Lord commanded Harry to respond, to speak for himself and answer the challenge, Harry did not reply. There were no words, no rejoinders, nothing but the all-consuming expectation of Death, an expectation which was about to swiftly be realized.

Voldemort looked upward as he sensed the Dementors' presence, a massive cloud following the pinprick of blinding light. He cackled gratuitously, gesturing above. "You intend to end me, truly? You intend to destroy my immortal soul with these creatures you seem to command?'

Once again, Harry had no response for Lord Voldemort. He spoke simply one word, through his Patronus, to the gathered darkness that hovered in the sky above.

"FEED."

Lord Voldemort closed his eyes with a smile, and shuddered. "Thank you, boy," he spoke with crisp, efficient diction as he began walking towards Harry.

Harry stiffened, slightly. Voldemort's body language and mannerisms had changed in an instant. No longer was he gesticulating wildly and engaging in overdramatic, unnecessary monologues. He moved with a swift sense of purpose, a confidence that flew in the face of the fact that over a hundred specters of Death floated above, ready to feast upon his immortal soul and put a permanent end to his very brief rise to power.

This was not the comic-book villain from moments earlier. This was something altogether different. Something frightening. Something that reminded him, inexplicably, of...

No.

"Do you remember, boy?" He spoke as he moved closer, his wand still at his side, "When I told you that ssssnakess can't lie?"

What was this?

"Or perhaps, when I implored you that 'there are gatessss you do not open, there are ssssealsss you do not breach'?"

No.

"Yes, boy. You tried to end my true life jusst then, sstupid child. Now cursse iss lifted, and I may kill you any time I wissh."

Curse? What. Is. This?

"Behold, for I am Quirinusss Quirrell, your mentor, your friend, your teacher, your preccciousss Defenssse Professssor."

Tom Riddle.

The words seemed to echo inside Harry's head, sparking resonances that as quickly died away, broken patterns trying to complete themselves and failing.

Tom Riddle is a

Tom Riddle was the

Riddle

No.

Harry desperately tried to shove aside the only conclusion he could come to. He discarded all of his training as a rationalist and prayed for something other than the truth to be true. He would live a lifetime in shameful ignorance and darkness if only this weren't the truth.

He hasn't told you anything that is 100% confirmation. Maybe, what if - Yes, that's it. Lord Voldemort, upon taking over the intended body of the man I knew as the Defense Professor, was also able to assume his memories. And now he's using those to mess with me. To convince me that... To convince me...

No.

A voice in Harry's head would not allow this harlequinade to persist. That same voice asked, demanded, to what end? Why? Why a deception, instead of the truth? And Harry found he had no good answers.

Occam's Razor slashed mercilessly through the desperate webs of narrative that Harry tried to spin, the lifelines he tried to hold on to in order to prevent himself from being dragged down by the inexorable conclusions that he just...

knew...

was...

true.

The full weight of the realization dawned on him, the sickening magnitude of the betrayal and the colossal depths of his own stupidity and blindness and wishful thinking and irrationality and mistakes. He had seen and ignored a thousand red flags and failed to see a thousand more. He had handed Lord Voldemort one of the most powerful artifacts in existence on a silver platter, and aided in the banishment of the only Wizard possibly capable of defeating him.

Harry had ushered in an era of darkness, and it was entirely his fault.

His fault.

At this, the blinding light of his Patronus flickered and blinked out of existence, leaving him naked to the wraiths above who now conformed to the expectations and commands of their new master, Quirinius Quirrell, David Monroe, Jeremy Jaffe, Tom Marvolo Riddle, he who went by a thousand names: the Dark Lord Voldemort.