Harry Potter: Another Chance

Chapter 448: Epilogue: Ends and New Beginnings

Chapter 448: Epilogue: Ends and New Beginnings

Disclaimer:

Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.

I own nothing but the original characters I make.

“Dialogue”

‘Thoughts’

-Author notes-

Chapter 448: Epilogue: Ends and New Beginnings

It was a cloudy morning, as was typical for these grassy plains in the highlands. Two red deer were quietly grazing, their ears twitching as they remained alert to their surroundings.

Suddenly, a cracking sound broke the peaceful silence, sending a wave of panic through the nearby wildlife. Animals scattered, fleeing toward the safety of the trees and undergrowth.

A small black mass emerged from the crack that had formed in the fabric of space-time itself, hovering unnaturally in midair. It remained there, ominous and still, for several minutes.

Then, the object began to change. It grew rapidly, expanding from the size of a tennis ball to a mass twice the height of an average man. Its shape was erratic, shifting as though it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.

The wild animals, now at a safe distance, watched warily from behind the cover of trees and shrubs.

This strange object was not merely black; it was so dark that it seemed to absorb all light around it. The air grew heavy, and the clearing dimmed in its presence.

None of the creatures could comprehend what they were seeing, but their instincts warned them: fear the unknown, for it often brings danger.

The black mass appeared to hover somewhere between solid and liquid, continuously shifting its form.

Almost an hour after its arrival, it descended slowly to the ground. Its shape began to stabilize, eventually taking on the vague outline of a large human figure.

Then came the sound: faint at first, like distant murmurs, until it grew clearer.

“Harry, I can’t breathe!”

“You’re talking, so clearly you can.”

“The space is too small!”

“Hmm… have we stopped moving?”

“We were moving?”

“I think so… wait… hold on, I think that—”

“What?! What’s wrong?”

“Wait a moment… I can see!”

“Me too! We’re in a field!”

“Let me open it, then.”

“Yes, please. I want to breathe fresh air again… or something like that.”

The black robes of Death, which Harry had used to shield their bodies as they crossed through the Veil, unfolded. From within emerged two figures.

Daphne rushed out, gasping. “Air! Fresh air!”

“Ehm… Daphne?” Harry called out, scanning their surroundings cautiously.

“Whoa! This place is beautiful! Is this the afterlife? It looks too familiar, don’t you think?” Daphne’s voice brimmed with excitement. After so much time in darkness, even a cloudy sky and a grassy clearing felt like paradise.

The setting might have been ordinary...cloudy skies, mountains, trees, and grass, but to her, it was heaven.

“Daphne… you might want to…”

“Hm?” She turned to look at Harry. He stood wrapped in his black robes, gesturing toward her.

“What is it?” she asked. Then she glanced down and froze. “I’m naked…”

Harry adjusted his robes slightly. “I don’t have anything on under these, either.”

Though embarrassed, Daphne didn’t panic. After all, there wasn’t anything Harry hadn’t already seen. She reached for her wand to conjure some clothing but quickly realized her holster was empty.

“My wand is gone too,” she muttered.

“Yes. It seems the black robes were the only things allowed through. Well, those, and our bodies,” Harry replied. ‘If these even are our bodies,’ he thought privately.

“Here.” With a wave of his hand, Harry conjured simple white robes. “I can’t manage anything too intricate without a foci, but these should do for now.”

“Thanks.” She quickly donned the robes. “Looks like I’ll need to brush up on my wandless magic.”

The two stood in silence for a moment, taking in their surroundings and organizing their thoughts.

“Harry… are we really dead?” Daphne finally asked.

“I don’t think so.” Harry pinched his arm experimentally. The sharp sting confirmed his theory.

The sensation of grass beneath his feet, the humid air filling his lungs...everything felt too real.

“I can’t say I know what being dead feels like, but I know what being alive feels like. And we are very much alive,” he said firmly.

“But how? We went through the Veil. Nothing survives that.” Daphne struggled to comprehend. She’d resigned herself to death, only to find herself alive and well.

“I don’t know either,” Harry admitted. “I have a lot of questions, too. The first being: where are we?”

Daphne looked around. “The weather, the air… this feels like Scotland. It’s all so familiar.”

Harry nodded in agreement. “Yes, there’s something about this place…”

“But, Harry, if we’re alive…” Daphne’s voice wavered. “Does that mean the world is going to end? Did we fail?”

“That would only be true if we were still in the same world,” Harry replied.

“You mean… how can you be sure?”

“For now, it’s just a feeling. But there’s a way to confirm it.” Harry raised a hand. “Apparition.”

“Of course!” Daphne exclaimed. “If we Apparate to Hogwarts and talk to someone we know, we’ll notice any differences right away.”

“Exactly.”

Daphne gave him a skeptical look. “Are you sure you can Apparate without a wand? I’d rather not lose an arm or a leg in the process.”

“It may not be perfect, but I’m confident I can avoid mutilation.”

“Fine…” She stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Let’s go, then.”

“Right…” Harry closed his eyes and focused on Hogwarts’ back garden, picturing it vividly in his mind.

But after willing his body away, this one refused to move.

“Mmm?... This is strange…” Harry said.

“What’s wrong?” Daphne had never seen Harry fail a spell.

“I can’t make a connection to Hogwarts' inner gardens…”

“Could the wards be keeping you out? I mean, if we are in a different world, then you wouldn’t have access to them.”

“Right, I know what you mean, but no, this is different. I can tell when there’s some ward preventing me from Apparating. Now… it’s just like the place I’m trying to go doesn’t exist, so I cannot connect to it.” Harry frowned. This was the first time this had happened to him.

“Try a different one, then.” Daphne suggested.

“Okay…” He was now thinking of the clearing next to Hagrid’s house, at the entrance of the Forbidden Forest.

“It’s working!” He said with a bit of trepidation. And then… the two of them disappeared from the spot.

They reappeared before a thick forest.

“This is?...” Daphne had no idea where they were supposed to be appearing, but this just looked like the same location they were just in.

Harry looked around. There was indeed a forest ahead of him, but it was different from the Forbidden Forest, and Hagrid’s house was not there either.

“Hold on…” He looked around and realized something else.

“Harry, we are in the same place!” Daphne pointed ahead. “See those rocks over there? That’s where we were before. This is the same clearing.”

Harry frowned. “That’s not possible. We should be inside Hogwarts grounds at least…”

“Did you get the location wrong?”

“Of course not… I never miss a spell…” Harry glanced into the distance at a particular mountain range. “Wait a moment… something occurred to me.” He knelt down and placed his hand on the dirt.

The ground shook as Harry poured magic into it, and soon, a stone platform began to form beneath his feet.

“Harry? What are you planning on doing now?” Daphne observed the platform with curiosity.

“We don’t have flying brooms, so this will have to do. Hop on.” Harry pointed at the platform.

“You want to fly?” It was then that Daphne realized. As Harry did the same thing, she looked into the distance toward that particular mountain range.

Without saying another word, she jumped onto the platform, and Harry used his magic to make it levitate into the air.

With the two of them standing on it, the stone structure continued to rise upwards until the trees beneath them looked like tiny points. They now had a fantastic view of the whole clearing.

“This is…” Harry had seen this landscape a lot more than Daphne, since he liked to take flights around the castle on his broom.

But even for her, it became very obvious, once she got a complete view of the place they had been standing in. “This is Hogwarts… but there is no castle.”

“Hogwarts was only built a thousand years before our era.” Harry said while moving the platform toward the mount where he remembered the castle being.

“You mean we traveled in time? A thousand years into the past?” Daphne said.

“I think we’re much further back than that.” Harry observed the grounds very carefully.

“What makes you say that?” Daphne asked.

He made the platform descend once more, but this time it rested on the flat part of the mount where the castle was supposed to have been built.

“There was something else built here before Hogwarts existed. The foundations on which the castle was resting, and it's not here yet...”

“You mean the chamber with the golems? Right… you did mention that it was older than the castle.” Daphne realized.

“Much older. The chamber, the Arkstone, and the golems were created by someone else, and it was done long before the four founders existed… I can feel the flow of magic rushing beneath us… this is no doubt the place where the foundation was created, but there is nothing yet.”

“So we are in the distant past, but is it still the same world?” Daphne wondered. It would be terrible if, after all of this, their sacrifice was for naught.

Harry shook his head. “You could say yes and no at the same time. We are before all of that.”

“Before all of that?” She wasn’t sure what he was referring to.

“In 1899, the first time travel experiment was conducted by the Department of Mysteries. A woman named Eloise Mintumble traveled to the year 1402, where she remained for five years, and then died upon her return.”

“She died?”

“She went back five hundred years, and when she returned, all those years were added to her age… it all happened very quickly, and her body wasn’t able to take it. This had been one of the issues that people had encountered with time travel. If you go back too far, you will age on your return the same amount of years that you traveled.”

“I never heard any of this,” Daphne said.

“It’s a bit of obscure knowledge that I gained from my research. But that’s not the important part. Because of this discovery, time travel became more restricted and only allowed for very short amounts of time. At first, it was one year, then months, and finally… days. The current time turners can only travel a maximum of twelve days back in time. They cannot go further than that.”

“Yes, I do know about that. But I still don’t see where you’re getting at.” Daphne said.

“All of the alternate worlds and different timelines were created because people traveled back in time and changed things. These paradoxes gave birth to different worlds where events changed. The differences could be small or big, but they were all related to some time travel someone had done.”

Daphne gasped, finally understanding what he was trying to say. “So you mean that we are in a time before time travel existed, so…”

“So there cannot be multiple worlds. We are currently in the original world, likely many thousands of years into the past. The one and only in existence, before everything splits apart.” Harry explained.

“So… we did it then…”

Harry nodded. “The world that we came from should be stable now, without me in it.”

Daphne went to his side and hugged him tightly. “We did it!” She felt like celebrating. “And we’re alive!”

“We are. Although, without knowing which year we’re in… I don’t even know if there are people around. We could be in the caveman era, or even before that.”

“I doubt we’re that far back. I mean, I saw some red deer back in the plains. But still, the important part is that we have each other.” Daphne leaned forward, and the two kissed.

“Always,” Harry told her.

They remained in each other’s embrace for several minutes, thinking about everything that had happened and everything they could do now.

“So… what now?” Daphne asked.

“How about living here?” Harry suggested.

“Here?”

“Yes, we could build a house right here on this mount,” Harry said. “Maybe a cozy cabin for the two of us.”

Daphne smiled warmly. “That sounds like a lovely idea.”

<><><><><><><><><><><><>

Time passed for the two of them, but they would soon realize that their aging process had been affected after their journey. Decades after their arrival in this ancient era, Harry and Daphne still looked to be in their late teens.

It was unknown to them if this was a side effect of their trip, or something related to Harry being the Master of Death and Daphne having tied her soul to his, thus inheriting some of his abilities.

They explored the world, but humanity was still in its infancy, and they had little interest in them. So, they eventually returned to their home and began a large project.

It had become clear to them at this point that they were the only ones who had the skills and knowledge to create the foundations for what would one day be Hogwarts.

It took centuries of work to create the massive chamber, carve the gigantic Arkstone that was linked to the river of magic flowing beneath it, which would go on to power the entire castle, and construct the one hundred and one golems that would serve as protectors for future generations.

After finishing it, Harry and Daphne’s little wooden cabin was sitting on top of this massive underground structure.

Unfortunately, the concentration of magic from the Arkstone would attract the attention of a magical race that populated the island… the elves.

At first, Harry tried to reason with them. As long as they left this place alone, neither he nor Daphne cared if the elves took the rest of the British Isles. But the elves got too greedy and tried to attack them.

That did not go well for the elves. Daphne ended up cursing the few survivors to become what wizards would know as house-elves.

A bit later, they received the visit of some vampires, who were also quickly exterminated. Harry didn't know it at the time, but a young Vampire Lord called Enkara was one of the few who survived to tell the tale.

It was hard to tell how long it had passed after that, but it was a very long time before they finally received the visit of a wizard named Godric Gryffindor, who was looking for a location to build a school, where all wizardkind could study magic without fearing being hunted by Muggles.

Soon, the other three founders would arrive. Harry and Daphne gifted them the land and even helped with the construction of the castle but did not remain there.

Their aging process had slowed down tremendously, but it did not stop.

By the time Hogwarts was complete, Harry and Daphne had the appearance of an elderly couple.

Knowing that they had little time left, the two of them decided to travel the world once more to see how much it had changed since their last trip.

Almost three centuries later… they died in each other's arms while watching the sunset from a small wooden cabin.

They died satisfied and happy after living much longer than anyone thought possible. They had done everything they had wanted to do and knew that the future would be in good hands after their departure.

Now it was time for their next adventure… still together, as always.

THE END.

A.N. - This is it! I hope you all enjoyed the fic.

If you want to stick around a bit longer, I have some fun facts about the writing of this story.

When I began writing this, the original planned pairing was Ginny. In fact, I only started this story because I wanted to write a Harry/Ginny story that also contained a lot of action.

But as the story progressed and I began to develop the characters, I slowly came to realize that it wasn't going to work, and instead, the character of Daphne was much better suited for Harry.

In case you were wondering why the whole thing about Harry's demonic brand went nowhere, well… that’s because that was supposed to become relevant in an arc that I never wrote.

Before the grand finale of Harry vs. Voldemort, there was supposed to be an extra arc where Holly would have been kidnapped by a demon who came looking to capture Harry, as he owed a debt to one of the Demon Lords, the one who branded him.

During this arc, Harry would have used a method to open a gate to the Netherworld and travel into it. This arc would have covered the entire story of Harry's demonic brand.

It was going to be something like this: Near the end of the demon war in his previous life, Neville was killed by a mid-rank demon who then went back into the Netherworld. Being the last friend Harry had, he went completely crazy and obsessed with revenge. So, Harry went into the Netherworld to kill this particular demon.

At the time, Harry had no idea how difficult that was going to be or how vast the demon world was. He also didn’t know that time passed at a different rate compared to the human world, and in just a few seconds it could feel like centuries had passed.

Harry would spend thousands of years trapped inside the Netherworld and only be able to escape when he made a pact with the Demon Lord of that layer of hell (there were nine layers in total).

This brand is also the reason why holy magic hurts Harry when he uses it—he’s basically part demon at this point. (a small part)

Also, at the end of this arc, Holly was supposed to return as an adult and an expert in golemancy, who would then join the fight against Voldemort.

I had a ton of lore about the Netherworld and all its layers that I won’t get into here. But the reason I decided to skip it is that it would have broken the pace of the story too much. It would have been hundreds of chapters that had nothing to do with Voldemort or the Convergences, and we already had enough plotlines to cover. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll write that story on its own.

I think that’s all I wanted to say for now. If you have any questions, I’ll try to answer them.

I will be posting my next Harry Potter fic very soon, called The Invincible Stag. That one takes place in the Marauders Era, and it will have Bellatrix Lestrange as the main pairing.

That is all. See you in the next fic! -