Epitaphs in Red [Harry Potter, Voldemort Wins AU]

[Ashenwriter]

Hi! I'm Ash. This was originally posted to AO3 under the UN Ashenwriter, and on FFnet as Ashenwoldwriter. AKA me. I figured I'd use this to dip my toes in on QQ.

This is a highly self-indulgent and experimental style compared to my typical dense political worldbuilding. Could I have done better? Probably! But I stress-wrote it in a day Thanks to Life, so no beta (I know there are mistakes; poke fun at them all you wish??). I have one more chapter that I'll post in a day or so, but after that who knows.

Anyway, most of whom Harry interacts with will be OCs, purely because 350 years into the future so. YOLO! Harry is Fine. Really.

As a note, I am heavily neurodivergent, so my writing style tends to reflect that, even when I attempt new things.

Cedric Diggory Died Here​

---

"I need spray paint."

"Huh?" The brown-haired woman next to him said, as if he'd said something strange again. He probably had, but it wasn't his bloody fault they'd gone and shifted the bloody language when he wasn't looking.

Technically, he guessed he kind of knew it from the books he had There, but also he didn't really talk to many people these days.

He liked the woods. He liked his field. It was a good field because it was next to his woods and he liked those. Maybe. His cabin was in them, at least, and that had a woodfire.

"Spray paint," Harry said again, slower, like she was the dumb one who didn't know language. "You know. Paint in a can."

"Oh. That."

"Yeah. Where can I get it?"

"Why?"

Harry turned his head and looked at her.

She was a Malfoy - Malfey, she said it as now and again he blamed the fact there were too many French in the country now (or something. He was a wizard, not a language expert, thank you very much!). He knew she was a Malfoy because she'd told him, and because she had the pointed chin for it, and because the first time she'd seen him she had gone very still in that particular way people did when confronted with something historical.

Ha ha. He was historical and famous!

He still didn't like it. Yay for him or something.

The brown hair still threw him, too. It wasn't even pale brown, or that weird shade of blond that pretended to have grown a conscience but hadn't because it was blonde. It was a proper, solid brown, tied back in a messy, bushy knot at the nape of her neck, with little wisps curling around her ears that reminded him of Hermione, just a bit. A bit of Ginny, too, in that she had freckles! Weird but it had been 350 years (or so they said and he didn't trust them because there was no way it's been that long. His Last Out had been… Maybe a year ago? Who knew. Time was fake).

Her eyes were gray, though. Very Malfoy grey. Or maybe that was Sirius-gray. Like cold river stones and polished silver gray.

Grave dirt under moonlight gray -

"Because," Harry said with a grin. Was it a grin? It felt like one. Maybe he was happy today. He felt happy? Did it matter? "I need to spray-paint something."

The woman frowned. "That's not an answer."

"It is if you're not being nosy." Was she Hermione come back to life?

"I am your watch."

"You're my guard."

"Woods-watch," she corrected tiredly.

"Guard," Harry said because he liked watching the little muscle jump in her jaw because unlike the rest, he was getting to her.

Her name was Elian Malfoy. Or Elian of House Malfoy, if anyone was being horrible about it. She was twenty-five, which meant she had no business looking at him like he was a child, except everyone did that now for some reason. He was over three hundred and fifty. Not a child, and he was older than her family line by several centuries!

Probably. He didn't actually know, but he knew he'd lived a stupid long time, thanks to - something. He ought to remember what it was, but it probably didn't matter. Probably.

Yet he was still somehow seventeen in all the ways that made people sigh while their hands twitched to wands or tasers, but they only brought those out before they Dropped him. Rude and he still hadn't managed to get his hands on one - wait. He had and then he'd been back in the Doctor's hands for... For far too long after, and most of the time with the Doctors had hurt. Bad idea. Do not pass go.

Damn and bugger it. He wanted his two hundred quid. Galleons. Money. Whatever.

He missed his snake. His snake would have brought him a wand and taser, maybe. She'd been a bit dumb, being a ball python and all, but she'd been his and someone to talk to when the guards didn't, but then He'd taken her.

He took Mr Slithers from him. And he'd never seen her again.

Maybe he should try to get another snake. "I still need spray paint."

Elian glanced toward the town, then back at him and frowned like she was a mother looking at an unruly toddler. Rude! "You're not cleared for civic purchase."

"I'm not buying a wand." He didn't think Little Hangleton had shops for them. Sad. Could he even get near a wand shop? Maybe, if he was sneaky. He was good at that. "It's paint."

"Paint can be used to mark wards."

"I am not going to mark wards." That was an idea, though… Did he even now how to mark wards? Who cared! It sounded like a good idea all the same.

"Paint can also be used to obscure state-sight."

"Good to know."

"Pottr."

"Pott-er," Harry corrected, twitching. Ugh! He hated how the bloodly language had shifted!

"Pottr."

Harry smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes because she was saying his name wrong and he knew she'd been fucking briefed on it. Elian did not smile back, much like the spoilsport reincarnation of Hermione she was, because that's what she was. A spoilsport.

"No," she said, mouth set like Ginny's when she was telling her brothers off.

"You don't even know what I'm doing."

"I know you. The answer is no."

"You don't know me. You know a file."

"I know four files, three family briefings, two state lectures - stop grinning - and one very unfortunate introductory meeting involving a stolen pie-cutter and a municipal shrine."

Harry grinned harder. It was more a rictus smile, but that counted as a grin, right? Right! "It was a statue of Voldemort."

"It was a municipal shrine."

"It was ugly." So very ugly. He'd been doing it a favour!

"That is not a legal defence."

"It should be." Harry snorted, and Elian pinched the bridge of her nose, as if she were the one with the headache and not him.

Yet all the same, because maybe she actually had a headache like him, Harry waited, head cocked to the side. The only good thing about spending almost three hundred odd years underground mostly alone outside Tom's rare visits where Harry often found himself tied to a chair like a toddler, a snake who then got taken away and guards that didn't really talk to him outside meal times, the bloody gits, was that it unwillingly taught a person the shape of silence. There was a difference between an empty pause and one someone was trying to use against him. Elian was stubborn, but she was not going to outlast him.

The only one who could outlast him wasn't here.

"I need spray paint," he repeated. It was only paint! He wasn't going to do anything nefarious with it, probably.

"And I need you to remain woods-stable."

Right. Because he liked the woods. Did he? Yes, probably. He could wander into town when he pleased, too. Didn't like the people, though. Blind and brainwashed to what Voldemort really was. "Then help me get spray paint."

"That is not how stability works."

"It is if not having spray paint is what makes me unstable."

She looked at him again, and Harry blithely stared back.

She broke eye contact first, and Harry's smile widened.

He could go pester one of the other three guards. One was somewhere behind the trees, pretending Harry couldn't hear her boots in the damp leaves whenever she shifted. One was near the old lane, where the ward-post hummed beneath its mossy stone cap; probably checking it because Harry knew he'd been poking at it some… two? days ago. Well, two sleeps ago, at least. One was somewhere in town, probably pretending to buy tea while reporting every time Harry scratched his nose.

Or his arse. Did it matter? Eh, probably not.

The point was, he could go bother one of them, but Elian was the one close enough right now, which meant she was either the bravest or the stupidest, or Voldemort had decided Harry liked her enough not to bite.

Insulting, really. Harry had not bitten anyone since that Nott some... he wanted to say months ago, but it could have been years, too.

Time was relative anyway. A bonkers concept that kept happening without his say so.

Maybe he needed to interact with more people and not just random animals in the woods.

Nah. People could be him Down and then he'd be back There and. No.

"Why," Elian said slowly, as if talking to a child, and Harry honestly resented that. He wasn't a child; he was three hundred and sixty-seven or something like that. Like he said, he wasn't sure he trusted their time counts; they sounded fake. "Do you need spray paint?"

Harry looked across the field toward Little Hangleton as he considered telling her. She was a Malfoy and her older sister was a Silver Mask. He knew it was a Hit Wizard in their time, but - but something else too and it slipped his mind right now, like water over a rock.

Or was that water under a bridge?

Didn't matter.

The point was the village had grown over time, and that wasn't fair, somehow. It had been dead and miserable the first time he'd seen it - the first time he'd been allowed Out into his new habitat (Tom called it that, like he was a feral cat of all things). It'd been all grey stone and wet lanes and old money rotting in its own house with no soul or life. Now there were light-rails over the road, thin silver lines that carried little blue sparks of open magic at dusk. Half the houses had what they called 'ward-glass' in the windows, and he still wasn't sure how to feel about that outside 'at least the Muggles are still around?'

Possibly; he knew wizard-kind was known to them, but he didn't like it so he ignored it as best he could. It was stupid and made no sense because what did Voldemort need Muggles for? He hated them. Maybe it was a long game?

He didn't care; it was Voldemort. Tom. He was insane and evil and killed and murdered and lied and hurt far too many people to be anything other than Evil, end of story.

The town was a mix of cottages and big houses, and one, plain, dull house that always had Silver Masks and red-robed Aurors guarding it like it was a tomb or something, so Harry avoided That Area in his wonderings, as curious as he was, he didn't actually want to antagonise Aurors or Silver Masks, though he knew they didn't draw wands unless pressed, or dealing with drunks that were Imperio'd to the local lockup so they'd sober up faster. Weird and odd and it itched in his brain like he'd forgotten something, so he avoided it like he avoided anything that could send him Back. The church was still there, too, and sometimes Harry went there, out of boredom, and came back with food for thought that ended in rants to animals. Or himself. He liked his own company better, these days.

No-one trying to trip him up or waiting to take him Back, for one.

The graveyard had expanded behind the church in terraces, climbing the hill as though the dead had gotten ambitious on reaching heaven.

The Riddle House had vanished somewhere between the first Out and the second, and he'd laughed himself sick when he'd learned that. And then he'd stopped laughing when he'd learned what had been put in its place.

They'd erected a pale, ugly building with too many columns and a serpent crest worked into the doors, and Harry wasn't ashamed to say he'd shouted at it one night. In Parseltongue.

It'd felt good to speak to a snake again, even if it didn't speak back.

He missed Mr Slithers. She'd been a good snake.

The building was the local Continuity Office, they'd claimed, not a Ministry office. The Ministry was gone. Had been gone for centuries, and Harry remembered the first guards of There gloating about it.

Remembered how he'd managed to get his arm though the food flap and almost get a wand before He'd come and -

He'd been Stunned and when he'd woken up they'd changed the food flap so it was smaller on his side.

Rude. He'd only wanted a bloody wand.

At least the word 'Ministry' still existed in history books and Harry's mouth, but it still made people tilt their heads slightly, the way he used to when Ron said something like wireless in exactly the wrong context.

Maybe he should hang out with people again. Find some of Ron's family and -

What? Just. Move in with them like a cat? Maybe. It'd serve Him - Tom. Voldemort. The bastard. - right, trying to give him nice Woods and a town he could wander into as he pleased.

The graveyard remained, because of course it did, and the scar on his arm itched -

"Pottr," Elian said.

Harry blinked. "What?"

"You went old-eyed."

"I went what?" Fuck language shifts and slang. Maybe he'd buy a dictionary. He had money in a vault that wasn't The Vault. He could probably get it if he tried hard enough.

"Old-eyed. When you look at things that aren't here anymore."

Harry snorted. "That's a stupid phrase."

"It's accurate."

"It's stupid."

"Seen."

"Don't do that."

"What?"

"That. The seen thing."

"It's a normal evidential marker."

"It's a normal way to sound like a prat, is what it is."

Elian's mouth twitched once, and Harry counted it as a win before he opened his mouth. Closed it - and then grinned. "I want to see Draco Malfoy's grave."

"No," she said with a headshake.

Harry shoved his hands into the pockets of the too-large trench coat some Nott - a Sigrid? She'd been cute and probably his age, at least - had given him back on his third Out and rocked back on his heels. "Thought you might say that."

"Then why ask?"

"I didn't. I asked for spray paint."

"To deface a grave."

"Not just any grave."

"That doesn'tt improve it."

"Depends on who you ask."

"You're asking me. A Malfey."

He hated how the bloody language was changing. It was stupid. Next thing he'd know, everyone spoke fucking Norse or something. Or worse, French.

The fuck he was speaking French, thank you very much.

"No, I'm asking you where to get paint. The grave thing is extra." Mostly. Maybe. Or was it the point? Eh. It was Malfoy's grave, so whatever.

Elian stared at him, and he gave her his best innocent look. It had worked better when he was actually eleven and starving. It had worked worse on Hermione. It had never worked on McGonagall. It did, however, sometimes work on people three centuries removed from anyone who knew what his innocent look meant.

Unfortunately, Elian was not one of those people.

"No," she said again, sounding exactly like Hermione but shaking her head like Ginny had.

Harry sighed loudly and started walking.

"Pottr."

"Going to town."

"You're not cleared for town without purpose."

Not that that had stopped him in the past. Walking was purpose after all! "I have a purpose."

"An approved purpose." She sounded exasperated.

"Food?" he tried.

"You ate."

And? He could be hungry again!

"Tea?"

"You hate current tea."

"I hate that you call it tea when it's leaf-scented steam and state obedience."

"That was one café."

"It was an attack."

"Pottr."

"Elian."

"Stop walking."

"No," Harry said and kept walking because he was going to town and that was that.

Behind him, leaves crunched, and Elian caught up in three long strides, which was annoying because she had long legs like Ron'd had legs for days. Most people had long legs compared to him. Or maybe everyone had got taller while he was stuck in There. That would be exactly the sort of thing the world would do to spite him.

"Draik Malfey is in Wiltcher," Elian said.

Harry nodded, unbothered by the butchering of his rival's name in whatever English was becoming. Something awful, he knew that much. "I know where Wiltshire is."

Wiltcher was probably Wiltshire.

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"You aren't cleared past the lower parish road."

"I didn't ask what I was cleared for." He never did, and he was bored. He wanted spray paint. He was going to get spray paint and spray paint a grave because he was bored.

Also because it seemed funny. And poetic, or something.

Because the word cleared settled badly under his ribs like the world had become something made of invisible fences. Polite and reasonable, just waiting to remind him that Outside was something he was permitted by Him - Tom Riddle, Voldemort, the one who'd made the world like this but that didn't make sense because Voldemort was insane -, not something he had.

Cleared for the lower parish road.

Cleared for the south wood.

Cleared for civic conversation.

Cleared for supervised archive access.

Cleared for seasonal clothing.

Not cleared for wands and the last time he'd seen his holly, it'd been as a picture of some museum display piece of all things!

Not cleared for owls and he'd bitten someone over that. It'd been the start of a number of fun times with Doctors he didn't like to think about, all because the bite had gone necrotic.

Not cleared for travel unless with Him. Or Them. The - the Death Eaters - no, Silver Masks, they called them now, and why did he keep forgetting what they once were?

Not cleared, not cleared, not cleared, and under all of it, always, the unspoken word.

There.

The Vault. The one bedroom underground flat he'd been kept in -

His mouth wanted to say something clever. It always did because being clever was easier than shaking, and Harry shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. "Then I'll walk."

"To Wiltcher."

"I've walked places before." He could do it, probably. If he stole a wand he could Apparate!

Maybe. He was probably rusty with magic. Wait. Could you get rusty with magic?

"Not anymore. Things change."

The words landed before she seemed to know she'd thrown them, and Harry stopped.

Elian stopped too.

Somewhere beyond the hedge, a bird made a bright, stupid sound, and Harry wanted to scream at it to shut up. Instead, he turned his head just enough to look at his guard.

Elian had gone pale. "Pottr. I didn't mean—"

"Yes, you did."

"No."

"You did. It's fine."

"It isn't." She knew him better than he thought.

Harry smiled again. It felt wrong on his face now, like his skin was too tight and brittle. "Don't worry. I'll put that in your report. Woods-stable, but tragically aware he can't walk to Wiltshire because Lord Tom Riddle keeps him like a cat."

Or maybe it was a dog, but he liked cat better.

Elian flinched at the name, and wasn't that a riot that 'Riddle' had become the name people were uneasy about now. Voldemort was history, title, and worst of all, terror polished into ceremony. Lord Riddle was state, crown (and Harry wondered how Tom'd achieved that), and continuity; the name children recited in oaths before they understood what oaths were.

Tom was something else. Something private, he knew, yet it was also a knife Harry had.

"You shouldn't say that name like that," Elian said with a hard frown that reminded him far too much of Professor McGonagall.

"I knew him before he got all 'respectable'."

"That is also not a legal defence."

"It keeps coming up."

Elian's wand hand twitched.

Harry saw it, of course, and had to bite down on the instinct to twitch towards it.

That was a good way to end up at wand point, or Down. Down meant There.

He liked his woods, maybe. Probably. They were good woods.

He hated that he knew exactly how far away she was, where the other watchers would be, how many steps to the hedgerow, how little chance he had without a wand, and how long it would take them to get him Down if the order came.

Not There, something in him whispered; small and old and raw and fearful like a child afraid of the dark but the dark was - There. Not today.

Harry turned away before she could see too much and kept walking.

"Pottr," Elian called.

"Coming?"

She swore under her breath and hurried after him.

He found he didn't mind it this time, as he crossed the field like he owned it.

Maybe he did? Did it matter? Not really, but it was his. Potter's Field. Or Harry's Field. He should make a sign for it. And a scarecrow. Maybe a dinosaur. They'd found so many new ones in the last three? Centuries.

This was his field, and it needed a dinosaur. And a Grim. Definitely a Grim. And a Stag. And a Wolf. A Doe and an Otter and a Jack Russel, too. They'd love it.

But also, outside that, Harry thought as his eyes tracked the town that was closing in on them, the thing about being watched was that people forgot watching went both ways.

Harry knew the routes children took around the ward-posts. He knew where the old stone wall dipped low enough to climb and where the town's state-sight went fuzzy in the rain because Silver Masks or Aurors were deployed to it. He knew which shopkeepers stared at him and which ones pretended not to. He knew the groups of local teenagers gathered under the broken arch at the edge of the old church path, sometimes smoking something that smelled like mint and battery acid, and sometimes in summer, others dared each other to charm sparks into rude shapes.

Teenagers always existed, and that was oddly comforting.

Empires rose. Language rotted and changed. Voldemort became His Continuance, Lord Riddle, Founder of the Eternal Peace or whatever nonsense title was fashionable this decade, but teenagers still found walls to loiter against.

"Pottr," Elian hissed. "Do not involve civic minors in a breach."

"I haven't breached anything."

Elian sighed-groaned. "You're intending to."

"Thought crimes now?" Wasn't there a book about that? 1894 or something?

"Yes."

Harry stopped and looked at her with a wide, unblinking stare.

Elian grimaced. "I mean—"

"No, you don't. You mean yes."

She said nothing, and Harry gave her a cheerful little salute and ducked through the gap in the hedge and crossed the road that was more gravel than bitumen now.

Huh. You'd think they'd have fixed that in three centuries and whatever change.

The teenagers went silent when they saw him, and Harry counted four of them: two girls, one boy, and one person with cropped blue-black hair and a jacket covered in little moving patches. One patch showed a snake eating the word obey. Harry liked that one immediately.

They all stared, and Harry stared back. Unblinking because blinking was boring. Or just annoying. He hadn't decided which it was, yet.

Then the blue-haired one whispered. "Shit. That's Pottr."

The boy elbowed them. "Don't call him that."

"What do I call him? Sir?"

"Don't call me sir," Harry said with a startled blink and boo he'd lost his not blinking streak. "That's worse."

The smallest girl, who had a shaved head and silver glitter over one eyebrow, leaned forward. "Are you really him?"

"No."

All four blinked, and Harry grinned again.

Huh, no wonder his face hurt. He was doing a lot of that today. Oh well. He liked it. It was fun.

Elian caught up behind him, breathing hard. "He is."

"Traitor," Harry told her, but there was no heat in the words. She was just doing her job of guarding him. Or something.

"You're not allowed to lie to minors."

He wasn't 'allowed' to do a lot of things; he did them anyway.

"I'm allowed to lie to everyone. It's called free will. You should try it sometime."

The teenagers looked between them with all the fascinated horror of people watching a wild animal bother a tired zookeeper.

Harry pointed at the blue-haired person. "You."

They stiffened. "Me?"

"Yeah. Do you know where to get spray paint?"

Elian made a strangled noise, and the blue-haired teenager's eyes went very wide. "What colour?"

Harry considered. "Red."

"No." Elian said

"Green," Harry retorted. Green wasn't as good as red, but it was better than black.

"No."

"Both?" he tried hopefully.

"Pottr."

The shaved-head girl started laughing while the boy looked terrified. The other girl, who had been quiet so far, gave Harry a long, assessing look. "What are you painting?"

Harry smiled. With teeth. "A family memorial."

Elian put both hands over her face with a muffled groan.

"Brilliant," the blue-haired teenager said, with all the deep reverence of the young and doomed, and Harry thought he liked them.

"It's not brilliant," Elian said through her fingers. "It's criminal desecration of old-family."

"Old-family criminal desecration," the shaved-head girl said with a smirk that reminded Harry of Fred. "That's basically heritage work."

Harry pointed at her. "I like you."

"You should not," Elian said.

"Too late."

The quiet girl tilted her head. "We don't use cans much. There are sprayers, though."

"Sprayers?"

"Charm-fed paint. Same idea, but messier if you don't know how to hold it."

"Does it stick?"

"For a while."

Elian lowered her hands with the resigned sigh of someone watching her future unfold into chaos. "Absolutely not."

Harry looked at the quiet girl. "How long is a while?"

"Depends what it's on. Stone takes it badly, glass takes it worse, and rain smears it unless you seal the top layer."

"Can it be cleaned?"

"Everything can be cleaned."

Elian seized on that. "Yes. Exactly. Which is why no one is giving him any."

Harry grinned again, and Elian looked genuinely alarmed.

"Does it come in red?" he asked.

"Yes," said the quiet girl.

"No."

"Green?"

"Yes."

"No."

"Can it write rude words?"

The blue-haired teenager snorted. "It's paint."

"I don't know what anything means anymore." Which was true! Maybe he should hang around with these teenagers in the future. Maybe.

They were still brainwashed into thinking Tom was good, though. He didn't think he could handle that, but at the same time... Maybe he could get a wand off them?

"It means yes."

"Excellent," Harry said with a clap of his hands.

Elian, having seemingly found herself, or simply having remembered she was an adult (boring), stepped between Harry and the teenagers. "None of you are selling him contraband."

"It's not contraband."

"It is if used in commission of a breach." Merlin, she really was like Hermione, which was both deeply satisfying and deeply repugnant, given Hermione wasn't supposed to be in the Malfoy family tree at all.

"That's not how object classification works," the quiet girl said.

Elian slowly turned her head to stare down at her.

The quiet girl lifted her chin, and for a second, Harry was reminded of Susan Bones. "My aunt's in civic law."

Harry had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop from grinning while Elian looked like she was personally discovering why adults hated teenagers.

"Listen," Elian said, hands on hips, and Harry decided then and there that she really was Hermione come back to life, just to stop him from getting a spray can. Or sprayer thing. "All of you. This is not a game."

"No," Harry said with a shrug. "It's a grave."

The laughter died like a record scratch on a CD.

Good, Harry thought. Good. Let it be ugly. Let it be uncomfortable. Let the children of this polished, warded, well-fed little town remember that there were bones under their roads.

The quiet girl looked at him differently now. "Whose grave?"

Elian said, "That is not—"

"Draco Malfoy's," Harry said.

Silence.

Then the blue-haired one said, "Oh."

The boy whispered, "Ancestorai Draik?"

Harry's stomach turned as he looked at the boy. Oh. He could see it now; the boy was probably a Malfoy, or related to them. "Ancestorai?"

Elian looked pained. "Some branches style him that way."

"Do they?"

"Not mine."

Huh. Well, she was still a Malfoy. "Congratulations."

The shaved-head girl looked from Harry to Elian. "Why?"

Harry's mouth opened, but nothing came out.

For one stupid second, he was twelve again, watching Hermione raise her hand in a classroom. Fourteen, seeing her teeth too large and her hair wild around her furious face. Fifteen, listening to her say his name like she could drag him back from anything if she just sounded bossy enough. Seventeen, leaving her behind at Shell Cottage because everything had become war, and war ate choices.

Then - so many years of nothing until a book with her name in the wrong family as a 'cherished' consort to Lord Draco and Lady Astoria Malfoy and -

Harry swallowed down the wrongness of it all. Hermione would never have been with Draco, never. Not willingly. Not ever. "Because he had something that wasn't his."

The teenagers were quiet.

Elian was quiet too.

After a moment, the quiet teenage girl reached into her bag.

"Mara," Elian said.

So that was her name.

Mara paused, then looked at Elian, eyes hard. "It's paint."

"It is evidence."

"It washes."

"Eventually."

Harry held out his hand and Mara placed the sprayer in his palm. It was slimmer than a can, warm to the touch, made of dull black metal with a little glass chamber showing the colour inside: deep, vicious red. When Harry tilted it, the paint slid too slowly, as if it were deciding whether gravity deserved obedience.

He liked it.

"How do I use it?"

Mara showed him. Thumb here. Twist here. Don't press too hard unless he wanted it to spit. Don't breathe too close when the charm woke.

"Does it need a word?"

"No. It's red paint, not a vow," she said, like he was dumb.

Harry shrugged. He was dumb here, he guessed. It was a magical spray can, some three centuries and change past anything he knew. "Good."

Elian looked at the sky like she was hoping Voldemort would descend from it and personally relieve her of duty.

Harry tucked the sprayer into his coat with a true grin. "Thanks."

Mara nodded once, and then the blue-haired teenager spoke up, both worried and not. "Are you really going to do it?"

Harry looked towards the road. It didn't go to Wiltshire. Well, it might, but it wasn't for him, not yet, but one day it would.

"Yeah," he said.

"They're going to Vault you," the boy whispered, and Harry stiffened, fingers numb around the sprayer.

For a heartbeat there was no hedge, no teenagers, no Elian. Only a flat underground, tidy and warm and sealed so completely that screaming only ever came back as his own voice. A bedroom, a kitchenette with a table and chairs, a small living room with a couch and a bookshelf full of histories written by people who had won. Meals through a flap on a guarded door with guards that barely spoke to him. No windows.

No sky or wind or flight and he couldn't recall the last time he'd flown -

His mouth moved before the rest of him remembered how.

"They can try," Harry said in a too thin voice, and he knew that Elian heard it; that everyone had heard because everyone always heard the worst things.

Elian's face changed, and Harry hated her for it. Pity was a hand around his throat to control instead of choke. Pity was a door closing while magical ropes held him in place, only to vanish once the door was locked. Pity was Tom saying, 'Harry, you have done this to yourself.'

Harry turned away before anyone could say anything stupid.

Before he could lunge for a wand, because if they wanted him There, he was going to fight because he liked his Woods and his field and his town and he liked Outside, not Inside There -

"Draik Malfey is in Wiltcher," Elian said again.

There was less warning in it now. More plea. For him? Or just so her job was easier? He didn't know, didn't care.

"I know."

"You will not get there."

"Maybe not."

"You'll be stopped before the parish line."

"Maybe."

"You'll be reported."

"I'm always reported." It was a bitter truth, but a truth all the same. He thought he remembered Tom putting a tracker on him, at some point. Magic? Muggle? He didn't remember much, only that it hurt and sat in that one spot between his shoulder blades he couldn't reach.

"Pottr—"

One of the teenagers made a small, strangled sound and Harry looked back to them to find the blue-haired teenager had gone pale in the excited way people went pale when they were too young to understand that danger was not the same thing as drama.

Harry cocked his head. "What?"

"Nothing."

"Don't do that. What?"

The shaved-head girl elbowed them. "Don't."

The blue-haired teenager swallowed. "It's just, if you're wanting to mark old-dead things, there's the Return stone."

"The what?"

"No," Elian said sharply.

Harry turned slowly, eyes alit with interest. He'd been in the woods-town for what, a season now, and he'd never heard of this before. Because he didn't hang out with other people was ignored in his mind. This was his town. He knew it by heart. Really, he did.

Probably. Maybe. Definitely he did. "The what, Elian?"

"It's not relevant."

She was hiding something. He didn't like that. "Then it'll be easy to explain."

"It is a memorial marker."

"To what?"

No one answered, and Harry scowled as he looked from Elian to the teenagers, hand twitching. He wished he'd a wand.

Mara was the one who finally said it. "The Lord's return. In the old graveyard here."

Harry's breath hitched, and for a moment, he wasn't standing by a hedge on the side of a gravel road with a sprayer in hand in his pocket.

He was fourteen and cold and wandless with rope biting his arms and Cedric's body in the grass.

His voice, when it came, sounded too far away for his own liking.

"What does it say?"

Elian closed her eyes, and that was answer enough for Harry to start walking towards the church. Elian called his name behind him, sharp and frightened, but he ignored her because the sprayer was warm in his hand. Red, Mara had said. Charm-fed. Temporary. Removable. Messy.

Good, Harry thought, and for the first time? The most recent time? He felt focused, like he could think again. Like the world made sense at last. The gravestone was there, but he knew what he'd find when he visited. Something wrong.

Something Voldemort was trying to erase and pretend hadn't happened, that he hadn't murdered Cedric and tortured a child with the intent to murder the child.

Him. He'd been that child. (Was that child.)

Draco Malfoy could wait a bit longer.

This could not.

The graveyard sat above the village, exactly where it had always been and not at all how it had been. There were new paths now, pale stone and smooth enough for old people and prams. Ward-lamps sat in the ground and Harry wondered if they were really faintly breathing, or if that were a trick of the graveyard. Plaques with writing on them were attached to the headstones, all polished dark metal and official lettering.

The yew tree was still there, and that was somehow worse because it'd grown into this huge, twisted thing bent over the path with patient malice, its branches held back from the old stones by careful charmwork instead of pruning. Someone had preserved it. Someone had looked at this place and thought yes, keep that, shape it, make it part of the story.

Voldemort was that someone, and Harry wanted a wand so he could tear the tree down, but all he had was a sprayer and -

He left the stupid tree coloured red; red like blood, red like the sins of the monster that ruled a brainwashed Britain who didn't know the truth of the past, who thought the man was 'good' and 'just' and 'fair'. He wasn't any of those, and Harry couldn't understand - didn't want to understand - why people thought him that. He was a tyrant.

He was a murderer. He was insane.

Harry's feet knew where to go from the tree.

Somehow.

It was stupid. He'd come here via portkey, and it'd been three hundred years later, and the paths had changed. Graves had shifted or sunk or been moved or tidied into terraces or any number of other things and the old church wall was repaired with stone too clean to be honest. The air had wards in it now, soft and observant, sliding over his skin like invisible fingers.

He hated it.

Still, his feet knew.

Elian followed behind him, not too close, and there were others too. Harry could feel them now that he knew to look: one near the gate, one by the church door, one behind the defaced yew pretending to study a memorial plaque while trying not to look offended at the state of a stupid tree.

Harry's grip tightened around the sprayer.

He hated them and he wanted a wand but that was the fasted way Down and back to There and -

No. Not today.

A low stone border ringed the oldest part of the graveyard and beyond it, the ground dipped and rose again around a cluster of graves left mostly untouched. The Riddle stone stood in the centre.

Tom Riddle.

Mary Riddle.

Thomas Riddle.

The names were still there because of course they were.

Harry stopped, breaths coming shallow as he stared at it like it held the answers to everything. Was the cause of everything, and in a way it was.

The grave was cleaner than it had any right to be. No moss. No lichen. No cracked edges where time had got its teeth in because Someone had restored the stone and left it old at the same time, preserving the shape of decay without allowing decay to continue. A museum rot.

A curated ruin.

Beside it stood the Return stone, and it was taller than the grave marker and made of pale marble veined with green. A serpent coiled up one side, its mouth open around a stonewand, and Harry hated it because it was a wand. At the top, in formal letters, was carved:

SITE OF RETURN

Below that, smaller words.

Here, in the final year of disorder, the Lord Riddle returned to embodied continuity and began the restoration of lawful magical governance. From rupture came peace. From concealment came order. From death came the state that endures.

At the bottom, there was one more line.

Several witnesses and hostile parties were neutralised during the event.

Harry read it once and then again, gaze narrowing as the meaning sunk in.

Several witnesses. Hostile parties. Neutralised.

Cedric had been seventeen.

Cedric had been smiling, and then confused, and then dead in the grass before he understood there was a war.

Harry's hand twitched, eyes flicking up to the stupid, useless stone wand as his breaths shortened and his chest tightened -

"Pottr."

Elian's voice. Behind him.

Harry ignored her as his thumb found the sprayer's switch as Mara's words echoed in his skull.

Don't press too hard unless you want it to spit.

The charm woke with a soft, insectile hum.

"Harri," Elian said again and he flinched, not because of her, but because of his name - wrong in her mouth because of course she couldn't say it properly - in this place. For a second it was not Elian's voice but something high and cold and pleased as it stepped out of a cauldron like a wraith out of a nightmare.

Red eyes. New body. His blood on its hands and in its veins and it could touch him and -

Rope around his chest and stone against his back and Cedric in the grass.

Wormtail sobbing as he did the stupid, profane ritual.

Bone of the father. Flesh of the servant. Blood of the enemy.

The thing that entered the cauldron that then rose again -

Harry staggered one step and caught himself on the Riddle grave.

The stone was cold against his hand.

Good. Good. Let it be cold and dead because that's what Cedric was -

"Don't," Elian said again and Harry heard them draw their wands and the tiny shifts of cloth, little intakes of breath. Yet the watchers did not close in.

Not yet. Why? Did it matter? No?

Harry laughed once, sharp and broken and on the verge of screaming at them all. "Don't what?"

"Don't make this worse."

"Worse than what? His death?!"

She did not answer, and Harry looked back at the plaque.

Several witnesses and hostile parties were neutralised during the event.

He pressed the sprayer to the marble and red hissed across white as he started to write with a manic light in his eyes.

CEDRIC

Someone behind him inhaled but Harry kept writing.

DIGGORY

The letters came out crooked, too large and ugly as a wound.

Good.

DIED

His hand shook yet he pressed harder and sprayer spat red across the lower curve of the serpent, flecking its carved jaw and making it look bloodied.

Harry grinned, eyes manic. It suited the stupid thing when it was built on blood and lies and the brainwashing of an entire nation.

HERE

The final line dripped at the edges, but he didn't care.

CEDRIC DIGGORY DIED HERE

For half a second, Harry forgot Draco Malfoy and Wiltshire, and Hermione's name trapped in someone else's family tree. He forgot that Elian was behind him, about the watchers in the dark.

The only thing was the warm little sprayer shaking in his hand.

The graveyard had been cold that night, and the grass wet, and Cedric had been right there.

Then the wards reacted as the ward-lamps flared blue-white, as a chime rang from the Return stone, bright and formal and a horrible sound that made his head hurt. The serpent's marble eyes filled with green light and somewhere near the gate, a watcher swore.

For one second, nobody moved, but then everyone moved at once.

"Pottr!"

Elian's wand snapped up as the watcher by the church door shouted something Harry didn't catch. The one near the gate was already speaking into a charm, voice sharp and too fast.

"Return site marked. Red paint. Charm-fed. Not sealed. No, not contained—"

Harry laughed but it came out wrong, and the blue-haired teenager who reminded him a bit of Tonks bolted. The others scattered after them, all flailing limbs and bright jackets with the terrible survival instincts that only teenagers had. One of the watchers turned as if to go after them -

"Leave them!" Elian snapped, never taking her eyes off Harry.

"They supplied—"

"Leave them!"

Harry looked at the red letters already starting to bead where the marble resisted the charm. It was a shame that rain would ruin them. That a half-decent cleaner would take them off in minutes and the official plaque would be polished smooth again, the serpent's jaw scrubbed clean, and the pretty lie restored before long.

For now, though, Cedric's name was there and made the whole thing ugly and more bearable and Harry lifted the sprayer again.

"Don't let him mark the Riddle stone!" The watcher by the church door shouted in a panic, and Harry scowled, something dark and ugly bubbling to the surface.

The Riddle stone, like it was something sacred and not Tom's father's grave or even a grave for dead people.

No. it was like it was an object in a museum that belonged to them now.

Harry turned toward it and Elian was suddenly between him and the grave, wand out, face white.

"No," she said.

Harry stared at her wand even as his hand shook around the sprayer.

"Move."

"No."

"Move, Elian."

"Do not make me stop you."

"You already are."

"This is still contained."

Contained.

Cleared.

Watched.

Woods-stable.

Vault-risk.

"No," Harry said as he took a half-step back. No. No. No.

Elian's expression flickered. "Pottr—"

"No."

He backed up one step.

"He's spiking," a watcher called, and Harry hated how he didn't know how they knew that, even if it was true, even if his heart was picking up.

He didn't want to go Back.

"I'm not spiking," Harry snapped, voice cracking and somehow that made it worse -

And then the watcher by the gate lowered his hand from the reporting charm. "Recommend stun and carry before escalation."

Harry near stopped breathing as his head shot around to stare at the watcher.

Stun and carry. He knew what that meant. What it always meant.

No.

Elian cursed under her breath. "Stand down."

"He's marked a protected Return site."

"And he is not attacking anyone."

"He's holding contraband."

"It's a sprayer, Rowl."

remembered. Rowle. Fuck fuck fuck he remembered the Rowle from when he'd been on the run with Hermione and Ron and -

He couldn't breathe.

"It's a charm-fed marking implement used in hostile desecration."

"Listen to yourself, Rowl!"

Harry gasped in and a laugh clawed its way out of his throat. Rowle; Thorfinn. This was like - like back in the café with Ron and Hermione, then. Was there a Dolohov, too, waiting in the wings to be another name, another family, another fucking set of hands ready to make a 'reasonable' argument for putting him back There.

Didn't - couldn't go back There, and the sprayer slipped in his hand.

"Harri," Elian said, too carefully, too calmly. Like she knew something he didn't.

He flinched all the same, eyes flicking from her, to Rowle, to one still by the gate that reminded him of a toad. an Umbridge? Probably and he wanted to - to something. Smash its head in, maybe. He didn't know but - "Don't."

"Put it down."

"No."

"Just put it down."

"So you can stun me?"

"No one is stunning you."

"He's literally recommending it!"

"I said no."

"Do you get to say no?"

Elian opened her mouth yet nothing came out.

Harry smiled, but his face felt number than numb and his chest hurt, like he was back in the ropes. "Right."

"Pottr," she said and he backed up another step.

Get away. Get away. No going back There, to the Vault, No. No. No -

The heel of his shoe caught on the stone border around the oldest graves and Harry windmilled, stupid and graceless, and nearly fell before he caught himself. Yet a wand moved up in the corner of his eye and no. No. No he couldn't -

He bolted towards the yew as someone shouted and a spell cracked against the path behind him, blue-white and too close. A trip-jinx, maybe, but going Down was bad all the same even if they just wanted a soft-catch. Something approved for damaged immortals who were not supposed to break them,the guards dropped them and he wasn't sure what that thought was about, but it didn't matter because he needed Away.

Branches whipped his face. His lungs burned. The old graves blurred past, names and dates and polished lies. He heard Elian yelling something about not casting.

Someone cast anyway, and the spell hit the tree above his head and burst into silver threads.

Harry ducked under them, slipped in the wet grass, slammed one shoulder into the church wall, and kept going as his breath came in ugly little sounds. He was laughing. He was not laughing. He did not know what the sound was, only that it was his.

Behind him, the ward-chime kept ringing, bright and polite and unbearable.

Cedric Diggory died here.

Good.

Let them choke on it.

He hit the low wall at the back of the churchyard and scrambled over it badly, like something feral and ungangly, skinning both palms on old stone. The sprayer clanged against the wall, bounced, and vanished into the nettles.

Harry almost went after it.

Almost.

Then someone shouted "Vault-risk!" and the world dropped out from under him and Harry ran.

He ran until his lungs burned and until he was across his field and his woods - his his his - took him in badly as he crashed through bracken and mud and thorn, slipped twice, hit his knee hard enough to make white sparks go through his vision, and dragged himself up again because Down was worse. Down was hands. Down was spells. Down was being carried.

Not the Vault.

Not the Vault.

Not the Vault.

He did not know when the shouting stopped, and that was probably worst of all. A silence so sharp it tasted like blood and mud and a million other things that probably shouldn't be in his mouth but were all the same.

His scar hurt. Or maybe that was a headache or maybe a thorn had gotten lodged in it; wouldn't be the first time.

At some point, the trees grew thick enough that the town lights mostly disappeared behind him. At some point, the ground rose and his breath tore, and his legs stopped listening properly. At some point, Harry realised no one was close enough to him to catch him.

Of course not.

The thought came cold and horrible through the panic.

Of course not.

He was still inside the range He - Tom had so graciously allowed him, because Tom was a bastard like that and Harry hadn't escaped anything at all. He'd just found his woods and gotten lost in them and slowly, Harry stumbled to a stop and bent over, hands on his knees and retched until there was nothing left.

And then retched some more for good measured because his body fucking hated him, that's why.

For a while, there was only the woods and wet leaves. Mud and the sound of his own breath and spitting as he wished for water to rinse his mouth.

Then, far behind him but still barely visible because he'd somehow started back towards the treeline like an idiot, came a flash of light as the patronus-thing - a 'charm-bird' used for reports they called it, lifted from the direction of the graveyard, silver bright and silent and heading for wherever reports went.

Harry wiped his bloody palms on his coat before leaning against the tree as he swallowed down the sobs and taste of bile. His hands would heal. They always did and left scars, but the red words would not last, and he wanted them to because Cedric deserved to be remembered as more than some nameless static history said he was. Someone would clean them away, or maybe they were already doing it, white cloths and charmwater and some neat little record filed under hostile desecration, minor. By morning the Return stone would be pale again.

But the teenagers had seen.

Elian had seen.

Rowle had said it into a report.

For a little while, the lie had worn Cedric's name across its face.

Harry laughed once before he started to cough because laughing hurt. But it was fine because he'd long ago worked out he couldn't die and that all pain was temporary.

But it still hurt all the same because he was still human. Somehow. Human yet immortal and wasn't that a riot and rot all at once.

He sank down behind the fallen tree, pressed both hands over his mouth, and shook so hard his teeth clicked anyway because life wasn't fucking fair.

Draco Malfoy could wait.

He needed to find a wand. Then a spell that would make it permanent and then he had to carve the words across that stupid stone, because if they wanted to drag him back to the Vault for telling the truth, then he might as well make it worth it. Make them know that Voldemort was a liar and a tyrant and a murderer and -

He didn't want to go back There. But he wanted justice for Cedric and everyone and -

He didn't want to go back There. But he wanted justice, and he -

He… He didn't know what to do outside retreat to his cabin with its wood fire and hide away from the world and people, at least until he had something of a plan.

... Maybe he should just get a snake. Mr Slithers II sounded like a good plan.

Yeah. It was a good plan.