Enchanting Melodies (HP SI)

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10 May 1995, Azkaban

And just like that, Harry used all the Hallows at once, using his very soul to activate them, letting his crest take over. The young wizard enjoyed the shocked look on Ekrizdis' face as their surroundings were consumed by a gigantic wave of shadows.

Harry gasped as his attack petered out. He was standing in a crater, everything around him had turned into complete ash. The attack literally atomized everything around him. It was an ultimate expression of material Death, Entropy and Decay. Nothing should have survived this, and yet the familiar form of Azkaban's creator slowly faded back into reality, completely unbothered.

This really wasn't fair. What was it with atomizing people not killing them recently? It literally vaporized people from existence. First Grindelwald did it, and now, this creep.

No, he would whine about it later. Now, he had a rare moment to think, one that he stretched as much as possible to truly analyse the situation he was in. If Ekrizdis were to be believed, his purpose was to kill the Light and Dark, the actual entities, not the champions. The fact that he actually had a plan to achieve that was beyond impressive, if it weren't for the fact that there was a good chance it would doom the world, of course.

He also didn't want word of his return to spread around, so he would need to make sure that Harry wasn't in a position to do so. So, either imprisonment or death. Well, that certainly wasn't a good sign. A fight was almost a certainty.

So, with a fight being ready he needed to understand his opponent. His main advantage is Solomon's magic. He could cast magic that Harry's Arcane Hearing couldn't detect properly. He could generate from literal atoms. The most logical conclusion was some form of subspace, folded similarly to how Solomon's magic works, that actually anchors his soul. Very tricky to deal with.

Now, onto Harry's advantages. He couldn't manipulate space considering how chaotic everything was because of the breach. However, the Deathly Hallows should theoretically work. They shouldn't be restricted to only one form of magic. He could stretch their use to compensate for whatever was coming.

Harry couldn't afford to be thrown back into the cavern. He knew that he wouldn't have the strength to leave again. Whatever nonsense that was happening with Ekrizdis' body didn't mean that soul magic wouldn't hurt him. After all, souls were universal.

A fragment of a plan started to form in Harry's mind, and the entire world returned back to normal. The former Dark Lord still hadn't made a move, even after having completely regenerated. He simply muttered, "How? How did you do it? How are you able to resist?"

Harry gave him a cheeky grin, "Wouldn't you like to know?"

After all, it wouldn't do to tell him his secrets, not when they made a very severe difference. It had been a while since Harry had been completely overwhelmed by skill against someone. Dumbledore and Grindelwald didn't exactly count, and even they relied a lot on the sheer power being a Champion gave them. Don't get him wrong, they were extraordinarily skilled, but they probably haven't needed to exercise that skill in decades. To be completely honest, it was understandable. After all, if one were faced with a dragon, they wouldn't try to trick it if they could just kill it with a single swing of a sword.

Other people didn't have that luxury. To be perfectly honest, Harry hadn't felt this outclassed, but not outpowered, in years. He would need to be clever and calculate things correctly.

The first step to winning against a skilful opponent was to make them lose their focus, and Harry found that anger worked best. It seemed to have done an adequate job as the former Dark Lord snarled at him, "I'll enjoy tearing the secrets out of your screaming body, boy."

Maybe it worked too well.

Step two was analysing his magic and seeing any pattern. That was the troublesome part.

Before he could even try to cast anything, Harry found himself flying back towards a bunch of black spikes. He hadn't even noticed the magic being used. Damn it, that undetectable magic thing was definitely overpowered.

By complete reflex, Harry activated the invisibility cloak and phased through them. As he fell down, he cast his ice age spell, literally freezing everything around him, which was a good thing given the sword that threatened to impale him from above.

His crest without doing anything channelled his magic to the resurrection stone, but it wasn't to manipulate someone else's soul, but his own. Harry's soul pulsed and he got some feedback. It wasn't nearly as exact as his Arcane Hearing, but it was more than enough to craft a basic counterspell. Well, calling it a counterspell would be a stretch. It was just a basic piece of magic that would destabilize it, as Harry couldn't really deal with all the spell's aspects yet.

Without even knowing much, he cast it, causing an explosion that threw Ekrizdis back. The father of the dementors was able to conjure an invisible platform to land on and looked shocked as he barely shielded against a beam of entropic energy that Harry tried to capitulate with.

He sent a trio of spells, which Harry couldn't visibly detect, but that his soul could make up for. It wasn't precise but he could tell that one of them had to have an animated component, one was some form of curse, and the last was a form of elemental magic.

Harry immediately destabilized the first two, before using the Elder Wand to absorb the elemental magic coming his way. He used the resurrection stone to break down its counterparts, like a deep scan, which he stored in his family crest.

With that done, he released the exact same spell at its caster. The whole thing took less than a fraction of a second, almost instantaneous, and was definitely more than a little risky, but it had worked.

Ekrizdis was thrown away by the invisible lightning bolt that broke his shield, and Harry now had a very good copy of the spell stored in the crest, which he could technically cast without fully understanding the mechanics of the magic.

Ekrizdis followed up with a massive spell, something that Harry didn't exactly understand, but was able to cast a counter to. It was funny, as efficient as his magic was, it was like a very delicate machine. It was extremely fragile. As the former Dark Lord was about to unleash the spell, the two collided and the result was a very impressive explosion that Harry phased through with his invisibility cloak.

Suddenly, hundreds of spells appeared out of nowhere and kept actively targeting him. Harry was barely able to activate his cloak and phase away in time. However, he took some pleasure in absorbing and analysing the spells once more. Of course, that was when he noticed a gigantic meteor falling towards him. It had literally come out of nowhere. He destroyed it with a beam of necrotic energy but had to dodge a red blade that threatened to skewer him.

A knight made of some weird energy that rotted everything around it, tried to kill him once more, only for Harry to use the resurrection stone to destabilize the animation spell, making the knight explode into red necrotic energy, faintly similar to his crest's magic.

Had Ekrizdis replicated the magic somehow?

Well, that wouldn't do.

Suppressing a smirk, Harry cast dozens of spells that he had absorbed from Ekrizdis. He didn't fully know what they did, and they definitely took the man off-guard given the fact that a couple of them actually hit the man, punching a gigantic hole through his chest. Not that it mattered, considering that the man regenerated from being atomized.

Still, it gave Harry time to contain the spreading of the energy by freezing the entire area in time.

And so, the duel continued. Ekrizdis' runes were immediately destabilized. Any form of direct magic was immediately absorbed and sent back at its wielder, and slowly but surely, Harry was getting a lot better at sensing Solomon's magic, his crest helping his Arcane Hearing detect the patterns in the spells he absorbed and translating them in a way that Harry could counter more efficiently.

He noticed that the wounds on Ekrizdis' body were not regenerating as quickly as when he was hit with his own magic. His regeneration was probably based on Solomon's magic, and his version of spells probably took more energy somehow.

Harry couldn't help but feel disappointed. In terms of magical knowledge Ekrizdis was by far the superior. He bent space in ways that Harry couldn't even understand and manipulated the world around him with such ease and precision that he couldn't help but be envious.

However, the sad truth was that without the element of surprise, without his undetectable magic, Ekrizdis was weirdly predictable. He didn't really act like a fighter, but more like a scientist that never expected

Yeah, Harry didn't see him beating Dumbledore or Grindelwald in a straight fight. They would probably come up with some bullshit that would allow them to detect the magic, and he would die very quickly afterwards.

Sure, Ekrizdis was good in terms of magical use. He cast some very esoteric attacks, but he had obviously very rarely fought against anyone who could detect his magic.

When Harry destabilized a 'hidden' ritual that Ekrizdis had 'discretely' been casting, the magic release blowing up in his face, the former Dark Lord was sent flying back, with burns on his body, slowly healing thanks to his regeneration.

He limped up and snarled, "How are you doing this?"

"All magic must have a grounding in reality to be able to express itself into the world," he simply stated, "But I do have a question. What exactly are you hoping to achieve with this? Do you seriously think that a couple of dementors would stop two of the strongest Champions to exist since Merlin and Morgana? Is truly all you can do?"

"You want to know what I can do?" Ekrizdis spoke up hysterically, "Who am I to refuse?"

He conjured some weird black dagger out of nowhere and stabbed it into his own heart. Before Harry could even understand what was happening, the entire world screamed.

The air rippled like disturbed water, but colder—bone-chilling cold. The ground under Ekrizdis cracked as if recoiling from him, glowing with an eerie red light that spread like a sinister infection. Then, reality seemed to tear itself open. Shadows poured out, thick and alive, swallowing the light and twisting the space around them into something unrecognizable.

From the void, monsters emerged, things that shouldn't exist, things no one should ever see. The first was a massive, shifting blob of flesh, covered in unblinking eyes that darted in every direction. It dragged itself forward on tentacles tipped with jagged claws, each step leaving behind sizzling pools of black goo similar to Nidhogg's corruption.

Another monstrosity followed, taller and stranger. It looked vaguely human—if a human were stretched like taffy, with arms that bent the wrong way and a mouth that split its face in half. Inside that gaping maw were too many teeth, all jagged and yellow, snapping like a wild animal.

The worst was a slithering shadow with scales that shimmered like liquid, lined with mouths that whispered—no, hissed—making Harry want to claw at his ears.

The world around them wasn't faring any better. The ground pulsed with veins of something alive and wrong. Even the sky dimmed, dark clouds spiralling into a churning void that felt like it was watching.

Ekrizdis stood there, grinning like a madman, his voice warped and echoing, "Do you like it? This is just a glimpse of what lies beyond the thin curtain of the material world. I based it on the Dark Champion who killed my family. He was a vile thing, travelling the continent, leaving nothing but blood and horror at his tail. I came home, one day, and found my wife and my daughters, cut down like beasts, and for what? For some experiments? When I tracked him down, I found him pretending to be some noble knight. He had fallen in love, you see. He thought that he could just ignore what he had done before, that he could move past the pain he caused me, that he caused everyone. Oh, how I enjoyed watching his maiden burn and writhe in agony, accused of being a witch. I wasn't even that hard to arrange, just a few whispers here and there, while he was away and it was already too late. The agony on his face when he realized what had happened. Grille De Rais broke that day. All that power, and yet he hadn't seen me coming. He died, consumed by madness and grief. I found his laboratory. His research was quite enlightening."

He looked lost in his head for a fraction of a second before his madness returned, "Do you see now what I can do, boy? Tell me, do you still think I still don't have a chance against them?"

Harry stumbled back, his wand trembling in his hand. The creatures didn't just feel wrong. Something primal inside him wanted to squash it down. And so, he let his instincts control everything and started to sing.

To be honest, even to this day, he had no clue how his singing worked properly. All he knew was at certain moments when he felt the more vulnerable, when the stars aligned when he needed it the most, he could sing, and the world would listen.

Even though there were more than enough spacetime anomalies all over the island, even though there were monsters who definitely didn't belong in the material realm, even though there were hundreds of reasons why it shouldn't have worked, reality shifted around him.

Slowly, shades of grey started to surround Harry. It was oddly calming. Everything in his surroundings drowned, as the sky turned grey, the monsters pushed back slowly, unable to enter. He understood now why the Olympians said that he sang a realm into existence. He couldn't deny it, this was, by definition, a realm. It obeyed certain rules, ones that he sang into being, it was separated from the outside world, but it wasn't perfect.

Harry felt the creatures, the wrongness that they inflicted onto the world try to infect his realm as well, but he would not budge. In a way, they existed by bringing shards of their own existence with them, something immaterial to materialize their existence. Quite the paradox, huh?

Still, this is a threat that shouldn't be allowed, which he needed to get rid of. Harry pushed his realm outward, urging it to grow. Death fought against the void as Azkaban slowly cracked and burned.

He was at a stalemate, and he knew it. He needed to do something to break it because even if he matched the damn monstrosities, he couldn't outlast them. He needed to come up with something and he had to do it now.

The portal was definitely the weak point of the spell, and he would need to close it with a single attack. Fortunately for Harry, he was a bit of an expert on the subject. Even when it was completely alien, the principles behind the portal remained the same.

Harry remembered the magic his crest had analysed, trying to understand a bit of the principles behind it. It wasn't perfect, but his crest did an admirable job of breaking it down. He slowly shaped his magic and manipulated space and time in his own realm, specifically targeting the immaterial realm whose energy surrounded those beings, which happened to weirdly align with the magic, and he channelled a bit of the resurrection stone while doing so.

This was the best he could do, with what he had, and with a yell, he waved his wand, and the cutting charm was released. A slash of red energy, one that was folded into itself, strangely similar to his multi-dimensional attack, flew toward his attackers.

Harry dispelled his realm right as it was about to exit, and the attack continued slashing through the creatures as if they were made through butter. It continued on and on until it reached the portal, which exploded in a gigantic burst of energy and light.

When the light came out, there were no signs of the nightmarish creatures, just a crater, and a reforming skeleton, which kneeled to the ground, the growing flesh on his face showing Ekrizdis' absolute shock and despair, "Who are you?"

"I am Harry Potter, the last Peverell, Master of the Deathly Hallows. You, Ekrizdis, have violated the sanctity of this realm. For this, I sentence you to death."

Without saying another word, Harry conjured a scythe made of ice, which he channelled the resurrection stone into, and swung it, decapitating the former Dark Lord.

Harry felt his soul finally fade away, ensuring that he was finally dead. However, a small spark of golden energy flew up from the corpse and slowly shaped itself like Ekrizdis' former disguise, only this time, the eyes were different. They were more detached, and yet more regal somehow. There was wisdom where Ekrizdis' barely contained madness had resided before.

"Solomon?" Harry whispered.

The man nodded slightly before turning back into a golden spark and flying toward Ekrizdis' tomb. Harry followed him instinctively and walked inside. As if it had been waiting for him, the black tar attacked once more, trying to break through the golden shield.

Ekrizdis might be dead, but there was still the mess with Nidhogg, wasn't there? Harry still had to close the breach, didn't he?

For fuck's sake, when will this fucking day end?

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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.