Chapter Text
It was a novel experience, witnessing the attempted looting of one’s own tomb.
Harry Potter was roused from the Slumber of Ages by intruders. It was not the first time he had woken from his eternal rest, having suffered the occasional interruption from wild animals which, through some freak chance, had managed to enter the outer chambers. Each time he had simply directed the beast back the way it came, conjured himself a cup of tea, and promptly returned to his overly gaudy sarcophagus.
This time was different. This time they were people.
It was most irregular. The intruders had not yet penetrated the inner sanctum, where the truly nasty curses were to be found, but even the outer protections should have been impossible to bypass. His curiosity triggered, Harry did something he had not done in untold years. He ventured forth.
Invisibility cloaked him with less than a thought, the familiar magic greeting him like an old friend. Sound muffled, scent repressed, soul occluded, it was a True Invisibility that should render him utterly undetectable to even the most formidable of wizards. Silently he padded through the stone passageways, uninhibited by the darkness, his eyes roving across every inch of the walls. They were covered with runes in a dozen languages, spells of unspeakable complexity carved by his own hand over many years. Everything appeared to be in order. There was no hint of any failure which might have allowed the intruders through.
He could sense them, their presence prickling the edge of his mind. A pair of humans, they were working their way through the outer enfilade, a series of chambers of increasing size and grandeur. The first door, made of bronze, was better protected than a Gringotts vault, and they only became more difficult to overcome. The final door, the one leading to the Grand Atrium, was made entirely of Philosopher’s Gold.
Harry awaited them inside the Grand Atrium. It was a truly cavernous room, flickering shadows cast upon the stone walls by a dozen braziers of ever-burning Gubraithian Fire, the ceiling so high that it remained cloaked in shadow. Towering statues lined the walls, figures from Harry’s past, friends and enemies alike, and at the centre of the floor, inlaid in True Silver, lay the sigil of the Peverells—wand, stone and cloak.
The wait stretched on, but Harry was nothing if not patient. He idly wondered whether the would-be thieves had the capability to break through the final door, or whether he would have to open it himself.
Eventually the door swung open, its massive weight silent as if the mechanism had been oiled the day before.
Impressive.
The intruders did not immediately step through. They were more careful than that, no doubt sensing their way forward, trying to identify any traps. They would not find any—not here, at least. The traps were deeper within, but these two would not get that far.
A woman stepped through first, and a man followed after her. They were an impressive pair, tall and athletic, with tanned skin and enough scars to hint at a life of adventure. Their clothing was strange to Harry’s eye, neither wizarding robes nor the Muggle fashion he was familiar with. The man wore plate armour, the metal dull and undecorated; the woman a leather jerkin and pants. How bizarre.
Their eyes glinted with interest as they surveyed the atrium, pointing to the statues and torches and whispering to each other in a strange language.
Harry had spoken many tongues over the years, but this one was utterly unfamiliar. He supposed it was only natural. He could not be sure of how long he had slept, but it was surely numbered in the centuries. Enough time for languages to change significantly.
It was no matter. Harry waved his hand—he had long since dispensed with any need for a wand—and cast the most advanced Translation Charm he knew. Their words resolved into English.
“…told you I was right,” the woman was saying. “Empty, you said. Looted years ago. But look! The place is pristine. We’ll have the pick of the treasure.”
“Aye, and we’ll have the noose too, if anyone ever figures out where we got it,” the man responded. “The Scarred will hunt us to the ends of the Earth.”
“Further, I wager. But no one will ever know. How would they? The place would’ve been impossible to break without the plans, and even with them it was tough. We’re the only ones who’ve ever been inside.”
“Then how did Lord Zael get the plans, I wonder?”
The woman paused. “He’s Peerless,” she said with a shrug. “Who knows how they do what they do?”
“Still think it smells funny,” the man said. “Why not come himself, if it was so simple?”
“We’re disposable, obviously. Why risk yourself when you can risk someone else? It’s what I’d do. Send someone else to the arse end of the world while you get to lie back feasting and chugging wine in Atalantia.”
The man snorted. “Good to know.”
Bickering done, their conversation shifted towards the professional. The woman was clearly the leader of their party, exploring every nook and cranny of the atrium and dictating an inventory to her partner. They were, it seemed, very meticulous thieves, keen to catalogue every treasure before moving further into the tomb complex.
As they worked, Harry contemplated their presence.
He should be pleased, he supposed, that humanity had survived the Calamity. It had not been certain, back when he had began his slumber. Yet these thieves, for all their uncouth criminality, stood as proof that the plan had worked.
For three hundred years Harry had walked the Earth, his youth never fading, carrying the gift and curse of the Hallows. His friends had grown old around him, passing one by one beyond the veil of death. In time, Harry grew to see them as the lucky ones. They had left the world when it still possessed some semblance of peace. They had never witnessed the Calamity.
It had begun slowly, and the wizarding world was slow to understand it, borne as it was in the Muggle world. Perhaps if they had seen it earlier… but there was no use now dwelling on dreams. They did not see it. Step by step, the Muggles poisoned the Earth, placing it on the course of destruction.
Naturally, it was the Muggles who fell first. Drought, and floods, storm and famine riddled the world, and hundreds of millions fled to safety. War followed, a fight for the shrinking safe havens, but it was a war without victory. The winners just got to starve a little longer. The strain became too much; the social order collapsed into a perpetual civil war. Civilisation was no more. What few Muggles clung to existence were no more than roving bands of scavengers.
Secluded behind spells, the wizards had thought themselves safe in their pockets of magically regulated paradise. They would weather the storm, even if the Muggles were to perish from their own folly. Wizards would inherit the Earth.
They were wrong. The damage went deeper than any had thought. Far from stabilising, the Calamity accelerated, becoming worse year on year. Soon even the wizards could see the inevitable end. Everything green and growing would die. The land would burn, the oceans would boil. There was no spell great enough to prevent it.
No spell but for one. A desperate ritual, a last ditch attempt either no guarantee of success. And there was only one wizard with the strength to hold it.
Harry Potter, the Undying Mage.
Naturally, he had agreed.
And so it was that he became entombed, not to die but to live evergreen, his soul feeding the magic of that place. For his tomb was no mere building, but the focus of a single spell, the greatest spell ever cast. One that sought to calm the very Earth, to reverse the damage done by a century of Muggle foolishness.
And now he knew it had worked. Humanity lived, and apparently thrived enough to once again possess a complex social structure, one capable of producing armour and wine, at the very least.
Harry frowned. His long rest was, it seemed… complete.
“What’s this, then?”
The woman had found the exit. Tall, double doors of oak braced with iron, they bore enough enchantments to see off an army, never mind a pair of thieves. The labyrinth lay beyond, and after that the inner sanctum.
“That door wasn’t on the plans,” the man said. “How’re we meant to get through there?”
Harry dropped his invisibility.
“You aren’t.”
The intruders spun on the spot, weapons appearing out of nowhere—the man brandished an enormous axe; the woman a bow.
Harry quirked an eyebrow. The weapons were clearly enchanted, but why would wizards have them at all?
“Who the fuck are you?” the man demanded.
The woman snorted. “Doesn’t matter. Look at him—he doesn’t even have a level.”
“A Muggle couldn’t get in here,” the man said. “Much less sneak up on us.”
“I assure you, I am no Muggle,” Harry said, and as if to demonstrate that fact, he vanished their weapons in the blink of an eye. The intruders reared back, but the woman was not surprised for long, drawing a knife from a hidden sheath.
“The fuck!” she cried, taking up a fighting stance with the knife. “How can you do magic without a level?”
“I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Harry said. “What, pray tell, is a level?”
They looked at him like he had declared the sky to be pink. And then the man blanched, his face going white in a second.
“Maggie…” he said. “Look… he has the scar…”
The woman’s eyes widened, but only for a moment.
“A trick,” she declared. “The Scarred Man is a myth.”
“The Scarred Man?” Harry mused. He did not like the sound of this. He would need to investigate. But what to do with these interlopers? “The Slumber of Ages you sought to interrupt. To you, in kind, the gift of rest is given.”
The thieves slumped to the floor, instantly enchanted. He would decide what to do with them later. For now, they could sleep as he had done.
It did not take long to deposit their bodies within the inner sanctum, arranging them upon the stone floor next to his sarcophagus. They would not wake, of that he was sure. Once he had made sure they were properly secure, he made his way to the entrance, passing back through the Grand Atrium, then through each of the seven chambers of the outer enfilade, locking each door behind him as he went. Their security was compromised, but they would still keep most interlopers at bay.
The final door of bronze took him out into broad daylight, and for the first time in centuries, Harry felt the sun on his face.
He was precisely where he expected to be: at the entrance of a stone tunnel carved into the side of a mountain, looking down onto a valley below. But much had changed. The valley was now green and fertile, not the dusty chasm of cracked earth he remembered. A river ran along its bottom, and a settlement had grown along its banks, large enough to be considered a town, though it appeared to be of a primitive build. There were no skyscrapers here, no buildings of glass and steel, no concrete motorways full of rushing cars. Everything was built of wood and stone, and the roads were made of brick, with horse-drawn carriages running down them.
But it was not the settlement that caught Harry’s eye. No, his immediate attention was drawn by an enormous figure of a man carved into the opposite side of the valley. It occupied the full height of the mountainside, hewn directly into the stone, shoulders broad, face stern, and its gaze was focused upon the entrance to Harry’s tomb.
It had not been there before.
A lightning bolt scar rested upon his forehead, and his face was Harry’s.
Harry sighed. “Oh dear.”