HP/LOTM: Visionary - 433

Chapter 433: Birth of the Saviour, Sirius’ Broken Heart, Promotion

"Stupefy!"

Voldemort burst into the room and slammed Lily to the floor with a single curse. His favourite had begged for this woman, after all. So long as he had room to spare, he was willing to grant Snape that much.

Tom’s mind had been eaten away by Dark magic, but before Chaos soaked him completely, he had only been reckless, not stupid. A fool could never have gathered so many followers.

“Ah. Clever Lily,” Voldemort said, pushing the door the rest of the way open and gliding toward the woman the prophecy had marked.

“If you were not a filthy Muggle-born, I might almost have regretted wasting you,” he murmured, that old hunger for useful talent stirring in his cold eyes.

“But it is far too late for that. Curse the prophecy.”

He raised his wand and levelled it at the baby in the cot.

"Avada Kedavra."

"No!"

Lily’s magic flared, full and fierce.

As Eleanor’s closest friend, she knew the rooms of the Department of Mysteries well. Under Eleanor’s guidance, she had once brushed against a power almost no one understood.

Love.

A new magic born from reversing the Deep Realm King Resentment’s power, love still carried a faint echo of resentment within it.

Before the bolt of green lightning could strike Harry, Lily used that strange magic to weave a shield around him. It should have been perfect. It was not yet finished.

"So be it. Burn my life to ash," she whispered.

Her weak but unshaken voice passed the border between dream and waking and plunged into the Sea of Collective Subconscious. The whole ocean rang. Prophecies rejoiced, offering their blessings to the saviour’s birth.

Silver light filled Lily’s eyes.

Love crossed time and space. Golden spell-light reached Harry’s body just ahead of the Killing Curse.

The green lightning hit the golden motes and bounced.

Chaos rose to defend its master, but Lily’s last breath of power stamped a mark on Voldemort. Love swept the Chaos away.

At such close range, Voldemort had no time to raise a defence. His own Killing Curse struck him.

The unbeatable Dark Lord fell.

Outside the Potters’ cottage, Sirius arrived late on his flying motorbike. He blew the door in and rushed inside, only to find James Potter lying lifeless on the floor.

"No."

Memories crashed over him: leaving home, being taken in by the elder Potters, James treating him like a true brother.

Sirius’ eyes went red. His hands shook as they gripped James’ arm.

In the chaos of grief, one small, cringing figure stood out in his mind. Every piece slotted into place.

Peter had betrayed James.

Sirius staggered to his feet, ran back out the door, and roared away toward the Order’s base in Hogsmeade. The beds where he and Peter should have been resting were empty. The rat was already gone.

"Hey, Sirius," Hagrid called.

Sirius barely heard him. Something inside him was already breaking apart. He started to put his life in order, as if for the end.

"Hagrid, the bike is yours," he said, clapping the giant on the shoulder.

He drew his wand. Black family magic thrummed through the air as he tracked the signature of an Apparition from the room and plunged into the night.

Following the magical trail, Sirius finally found a rat about to vanish into a sewer on a London street.

"Accio rat."

He did not bother to hide. He cast in full view of the Muggles around him. Cold killing intent bled into his magic.

The fat rat had just squeezed into the drain when the spell ripped him back out and dragged him through the air to Sirius’s hand.

Peter chose to shed the disguise.

"Oh my God."

"The rat turned into a man. Am I seeing things?"

“That’s got to be street magic.”

Muggles muttered all around them, not knowing that some spectacles should never be watched.

"Die, you traitor," Sirius said, raising his wand.

Peter lifted his own.

"Confringo!" they both cried.

The twin curses met. The collision of their magic tore the street apart.

When Sirius clawed his way out of the rubble, the world spun. A shrill whine screamed in his ears.

He forced himself upright and stumbled to where Peter had stood.

Two severed fingers lay in the debris.

It looked very much as if Peter had died at his hand.

Sirius dropped to his knees and began to laugh, wild and broken, until the Aurors arrived and dragged him away.

At Hogwarts, Dumbledore had already crushed the Death Eaters assault. Then Snape’s message reached him: the Potters were dead.

He stood at the top of the tower for a long time, staring into nothing. Then he sat down and wrote a letter for Fawkes to carry to the Daily Prophet.

In less than an hour, an emergency edition flew out across wizarding Britain with a single blazing headline:

The End of the Dark Lord – The Wizarding World’s Saviour, Harry Potter

In a small box at the bottom of the page, the Prophet printed Dumbledore’s suggestion that the Dark Lord might not be truly dead. No one cared. Joy drowned it out.

Wands drew bright trails of fireworks across the sky. Crowds flooded into the Leaky Cauldron to drink until they could not stand.

Behind it all stood two demigods of the Visionary Pathway, two Sequence 4 Manipulators who had stirred up a storm in the Sea of Consciousness to bring the prophecy and the collective will of wizardkind into alignment.

No one stopped to ask how a baby barely past his first birthday had defeated Voldemort. A wave of hot, blind exultation rolled through them and carried them straight into celebration.

The dream was complete.

The two Manipulators stood on the top of Big Ben, watching the beautiful lie they had woven around the wizarding world.

"To weave a dream for an entire age," Arthursi said, taking out a vial.

Inside, a grey, unreal dream floated in the potion, like a brain carved from mist.

"Cheers," Lada said.

She clinked her vial against Arthursi’s and downed the brew in one swallow.

They felt their minds and bodies fusing, becoming strands of smoke that the wind blew down into the Sea of Collective Subconscious.

The saviour’s dream they had crafted solidified under the weight of the ritual and became their anchor, circling them and keeping them from being torn apart by the ocean’s storms.

Their thoughts dissolved, thread by thread, and slipped into the dream.

The two weavers finally returned from the Sea.

When they opened their eyes again, dragon might burned in both their gazes. Flocks of birds scattered from the rooftops in panic.

"Easy. Soften it. There are millions of people in London. You planning on a mass exposure event?" a rough, half-amused voice said behind them.

Arthursi and Lada turned together and saw a man who looked like a withered stick.