Enchanting Melodies (HP SI)

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23 May 1995, Hogwarts, Scotland

Seeing the neutrality in his expression, the woman released a bitter chuckle, "That's just typical, isn't it? I don't know what I expected from you, Potter. I have to admit that I'm impressed that you managed to track me down, but you are too late."

Harry gave the woman an incredulous look as he watched her essentially cackle proudly. Seriously, did she hit her head or something before going back to the past? No one did that. Instead, he decided to humour her, "Late for what exactly?"

That made her freeze, before bursting into laughter once more, "Is the infamous Harry Potter confused?"

"Well, I think I understand enough. You and Hermione were probably friends, enough for her to tell you about the time-turner. After she died, you decided to poison the World Tree for some righteous reason. What I don't understand is why you even wanted to get to the past. You obviously altered Hermione's note, made sure that her son would find it, and arranged for you to be present, probably under an invisibility spell when he performed the ritual. You made sure that he would activate it with a ritual because you wouldn't have to get so close, and you altered the calculations to make him come here, and bring you with him without even realizing it. It was why you wanted the ritual to be outside so that you'd be able to escape more easily when the invisibility spell failed," Harry stated with a neutral expression, "What I'm confused about is why? Why would you poison the World Tree if your plan was to go back in time and destroy it anyway, which is a very stupid idea, by the way? And I don't understand why you even needed the kid."

The woman growled, "I wasn't planning on travelling through time. I wished to kill the World Tree because it was the right thing to do, because of the injustice and oppression it represented. It's wrong. It's an artificial separation of the human race and it needs to stop. But the world didn't relish my accomplishment. They didn't try to move on or make peace with our non-magical counterparts. Instead, they captured my kind and were ready to kill them all for the sin of just existing. I had to do something."

"You do realize that this outcome would have likely caused a war and maybe even the extinction of wizards and witches, maybe even anything magical. And you seriously thought that it would have been a good idea?"

Penelope's eyes glowed in madness, "At least, the world would have been true. At least, it would have been free."

Harry gave her a sad look, "Who did you lose, Penelope?"

Yeah, he recognized that madness in her eyes, the desperation that she was obviously feeling. It was grief, and she never moved past it. He was right as she was obviously caught off-guard and murmured, sounding coherent for the first time since their interaction began, "How?"

"People don't dismiss the idea of genocide unless someone they love is in danger, or they are so consumed with loss, so broken by it, that they wish to see the world burn, for everyone to experience the loss they have."

"I didn't just lose someone. I lost everyone. After Hogwarts, I was lost. I couldn't find a job anywhere. I'm not talking about the ministry. I'm talking about jobs, in general. The magical economy was bad enough, and that's without the fact that I'm a muggleborn with no support or connections. Percy had abandoned me completely. I was completely alone. And so, I went home. I studied, went to university, and gave up completely on magic. I fell in love with a wonderful man. I started to heal. My Jean. But then the World Tree happened, then they slowly started to forget me. It wasn't just someone. It was everyone. My family couldn't see me, couldn't even recognize me, my husband. I thought I was imagining things at first, but I quickly realized that they were forgetting all about me and it didn't take long until I was so alone. I went to the ministry, trying to understand what happened. Hermione was there. She helped me find a job, barely more than a trainee under her as an Unspeakable. I was kind to her back when we were still in school, and she remember that. But it wasn't the same. Nothing was the same. I lost my life, and I deserve to have it back."

Harry truly pitied the woman before him. She was a sad broken thing who simply couldn't move on from her loss, even if that loss was beyond what most people ever experienced, "And that's how you worked on the time turner."

"Yes. It was a project of hers. There were a lot of artefacts you created in the department. They're still trying to decipher half of them. Hermione and I got it working and documented the whole thing, but we had no inclination to use it. Messing with time was a bad idea. Instead, I tried to find something to destroy the cursed tree. I tried thousands of corrupting substances from the Department of Mysteries and Hermione caught me when I was stealing the toxic substances in the department and knew what I was doing. She was going to rat me out, the bitch. Her own kind. She never understood what I lost. After all, it was the Unspeakables that wiped out her family's memories of her, not the World Tree. She was going to tell the Aurors. I had to stop her."

"You killed her," Harry stated.

Then again, he now had a teenager who just realized that his mother had been murdered. With a flick of his wrist, Harry froze the boy's hand, stopping him from killing the woman before him, "You bitch!"

The woman's eyes watered, somehow the grief, her horror, made her eyes seem lees crazed, "I didn't mean to. I only meant to stun her and wait for her to see my point. But I overpowered it. I sent her flying into one of her experiments. It destabilized and killed her. It wasn't my fault. I took over her job and kept trying to kill the cursed tree. Finally, one of the poisons worked, and our world would finally be free. But the rest of the world just refused to accept that. They refused to try to move on. They hunted down my people, all the muggleborns all over the world. War was on the horizon. I couldn't accept that. War was on the horizon, and everyone was going to suffer. I realized that I could save everyone by just stopping the tree from being born in the first place."

Harry replied to her with a dry tone, "And your plan was to travel back in time."

The good thing was that it seemed like Nidhogg's corruption was an isolated incident and that no maniac tried to summon that fucking thing back to the material realm. Thank fuck. The bad news was the Department of Mysteries shouldn't have had access to it, and even if it did, it would have corrupted everyone around it. After all, the place was filled with magic. Something just didn't make sense.

It didn't help that the woman was obviously batshit insane that almost destroyed the very fabric of time with her stunt. She also didn't say anything about why the kids were involved in the first place. But there was something wrong, something that niggled in the back of Harry's mind. Grief obviously turned the woman mad, at least that was Harry's theory, but it somehow made her less crazed. Something just didn't add up.

Penelope giggled, more to herself than anything, "Yes. It suddenly hit me. I could just save everyone, make the world a better place, if only that bitch Hermione hadn't bound the artefact to her bloodline. I didn't want to involve Alexander, but I had no other choice. All it took were a few words here and there, for an idea to sprout in his head, and to make sure that he found the time turner, with the notes I planted that would get him to perform the ritual the way I wanted. And now, here I am, with Harry Potter himself, unable to stop me. Soon, the world will be better, my people will not be oppressed, not anymore, not ever."

Harry rolled his eyes, "Time doesn't work like that, you idiot."

These words seemed to stop the crazed look on her face for a fraction of a second and he continued, hoping to see her reaction and have a better idea about what was really going on, "You can't change the past of your own timeline. That's a fact. I can mathematically prove it. You can travel to alternate universes, where things are different, you could be part of a timeline, as part of its events, but then the future wouldn't change. If you somehow change your past, that will result in a paradox, where either time itself will unravel, or you'll erase your very existence the moment you arrive in the past. Your best-case scenario is either you fail, you kill everyone in your future, or you just kill everyone that ever existed in this universe. Anyone who has a fragment of understanding of time should know this, don't you?"

 The woman froze, the madness in her eyes receding for a fraction of a second, as she murmured to herself, "I know that." Suddenly, she shook her head, and the madness came back with a vengeance, "But if my people will suffer, then everyone will suffer with them."

Hmmm, she was obviously being manipulated by someone. Perhaps it could be a form of possession. Harry didn't know for sure, but he didn't like some external entity obviously try to nuke the timeline by manipulating a broken woman.

But that meant that someone from the other side, someone from the future was giving her orders. It was either through a time tunnel of some sort, or a form of active possession. Harry was leaning towards the latter; he would have sensed an active form of time manipulation.

Instead of answering her, he raised his hand and peered through the woman's soul. It was hidden, like a very intricate golden web that Harry had barely noticed, but now that he was looking for it, it was surprisingly easy to find it. It was surprisingly powerful and very different. It was almost alien, in a way.

He tugged on that connection a bit and spoke up, "You're not of this world."

Penelope's previously enraged expression turned into a very neutral one, and her eyes glowed gold, "You are a perceptive one, Peverell."

Harry grinned, "It's a bit of a skill of mine. I was under the impression that outsiders aren't allowed to interact with the material realm. You even bound several of my predecessors as guards and whatnot."

"Perhaps it is, in your time, but the future is a very different place, isn't it?"

"With no Light and Dark, there's nothing really stopping you from interfering. But if there wasn't, you wouldn't have done something as desperate as to possess some human woman and get her to travel through time. I wonder how much energy you're wasting keeping the timeline from snapping, all for a tree. I can't help but wonder why."

"The matters of Asgard are not your concern," the unnatural voice answered.

Asgard, huh? Harry hadn't really thought about the gods for a while. Apart from their involvement thousands of years ago, he never really thought of them as something other than very vague and detached entities.

So, that meant that the person in front of him was an Aesir. Who could it be? Harry peered towards the supposed god's energy, trying to understand its song. It was rigid, for the lack of a better world. The whole song was dedicated towards discipline, towards the ability to see the unseen, to peer beyond what was possible, like a soldier. No, it was more like a guard, a watcher on a wall that could peer through a fraction of infinity. He could feel a name resonate within him, right at the tip of his tongue, "You're Heimdall, the watchman of the Aesir."

The woman's eyes glowed, "Names have power, Peverell. Remember this."

The young wizard grinned instead, "Fascinating, but I can't help but wonder what Asgard seeks to achieve my meddling like this. The gods left this realm thousands of years ago, I don't think they really have a say on this realm's affairs anymore."

"Midgard is a realm under Asgard's purview," the god replied as if it were a fact.

"So, you want to involve yourself in Midgard's affairs, but you can't, can you? The World Tree is stopping you. Any sort of magical effect is now completely invisible to muggles, and the non-magical world isn't really part of Midgard, is it? The energy of the World Tree protects them, like a gigantic shield. You got your agents to get their hands on Nidhogg's poison, hoping to kill it, but you didn't expect mages to start hunting one another, or the probable war that would happen if the muggles ever found out about magic. You're not here to destroy the World Tree. You're here, when it's weak, to give yourself access to the future, manipulating time in a way that doesn't break it. Oh, that's very sneaky and brilliant. Oh, it's a very scummy thing, but it's brilliant, nonetheless. My question here is why you didn't see this coming. You Asgardians have meddled with this realm's fate for thousands of years. Ragnarok was your kind's little brainchild, after all. You should have been able to see something like this coming a mile away, unless…"

"Your theories are amusing, but are also false," the hidden god spoke up with a faint look of amusement that morphed into irritation with the young wizard's last sentence.

"Maybe you're right," Harry admitted. He was mostly making stuff up, possible theories, and seeing what stuck. It made him look like an idiot at times, but it surprisingly worked a lot, "But I definitely touched a nerve with that last part. It makes sense. This isn't about conquest or influence. This is about information. You don't want to conquer our realm, not when thousands of others exist which are a lot less troublesome. The World Tree is affecting your kind's sight of its future. Humanity is out of your hands, and you can't stand that, the unpredictability of it all. But destroying the World Tree should have been enough to grant you what you wished… Unless you lot didn't like what you saw when you arranged for it to be infected, and this is another way to arrange for you to get access while it's still weak. You need the World Tree to exist, but under your authority, under the Aesir's control."

Oh, that hit a nerve, given the fact that Penelope's golden eyes narrowed and glowed slightly, "Do not speak of things you do not understand, child."

Harry shrugged, "But you didn't say that I'm wrong, did you? And Wow, you possessed an insane woman and urged her to travel through time. Talk about looking desperate."

Golden energy crackled around Penelope's fingers, distorting the air around her like heat rising from a furnace. The glow in her eyes flared dangerously, her lips curling into a sneer as she raised her hand toward Harry, before lowering it, "Leave, mortal. This matter does not concern you or the children behind you. This is your last warning."

The god dismissed him and pointed his golden hand towards the ground, with dozens of golden runes slowly swirling at them. Harry, using Solomon's magic, destabilized the whole thing, making it fizzle into nothing, "We're not done talking, Aesir. I will not have my life's work be undone, with your kind replacing the Light and Dark in manipulating my people's lives."

"Then the consequences of your defiance shall fall on your shoulders, mortal," Heimdall replied, his voice resonating, layered atop Penelope's own, before raising his hand, and conjuring a ball of energy. The air thickened with ancient power, oppressive and suffocating, pressing against his magic like the weight of an entire pantheon bearing down on him.

And yet, beneath the divine fury, beneath the theatrics of power and righteousness—Harry saw it. A flicker of doubt. A hesitation. He hadn't planned for this, not at all.

He smirked. "You're bluffing."

Heimdall's golden eyes flared in outrage, and he released his first attack.

Harry quickly pushed the kids telekinetically behind him and raised a shield, which resisted the god's attack. Well, it looked like he was about to fight a god now. He knew that things would go out of control.

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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.