Enchanting Melodies (HP SI)

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20 May 1995, Hogwarts, Scotland

He was all out of mercy, after all. The young wizard felt some form of vindictive amusement when he saw her wide eyes as she realized what he had done. He didn't do anything else but close the breach behind him and Daphne. He had a lot to think about, after all.

Harry stepped out of the portal, near the Black Lake. It hadn't even been a conscious decision. It was just his favourite spot when he needed to clear his head. Hogwarts looked hauntingly beautiful at night. He very rarely got to see it at that time. The moon illuminated the night sky, which was also reflected in the calm surface of the lake, making it look like a second sky. The castle stood tall on its hill, with its turrets and towers glowing faintly under the moonlight. A few windows still had lights on, probably from students cramming for exams or sneaking around after hours. The soft hooting of owls and the faint rustle of the trees in the Forbidden Forest made the whole place feel alive like it was watching and waiting.

He stared at the sight for around five minutes until a voice interrupted his musings, "Are you alright, Harry?"

Ah, it was Daphne. He had almost forgotten that she was there. The blonde had remained silent from the moment they left the Otherworld, something that he appreciated immensely. And so, he plastered a smile on his face and answered, "Of course, I'm alright."

He was lying, of course. As much as Harry wanted to deny it, Nimue's last words still rang in his head. They unsettled him. The plan seemed foolproof, for the lack of a better world. He had two sources of the Light and Dark, their essence, in a way, and he'd planned on using them as some sort of virus, infecting each of the entity's energy. The energies of the Light and Dark would combat them as a threat, trying to purge it away, while also destroying themselves.

He had gotten the idea from auto-immune diseases. After all, he couldn't possibly fight against them directly. They were more like forces of nature than physical entities. It would be like a muggle fighting a volcano or something as preposterous. He wouldn't even know where to begin, but getting them to destroy themselves… That was a far easier task.

It would have been his masterpiece, his greatest achievement, but the mere idea that Grindelwald already knew of it terrified Harry to his core. Harry hadn't even finished planning yet, and yet according to Nimue, he was already destined to lose.

The blonde didn't seem convinced by his lie, "For some reason, I don't believe you."

Harry didn't respond, not wanting to show how on-edge, he really was. Daphne obviously noticed that and changed the subject a bit, "Why didn't you agree to her deal? You could have used an army and a seer of Nimue's calibre."

"I could use an army of fae, but not as much as you'd think. The final battle will not be decided between two armies, but between me, Dumbledore, and Grindelwald. Having an army is more like a safeguard than an actual fighting force, and I already have one in the form of the Lycans, the Department of Mysteries, and Arcturus' forces. Anything more is overkill and definitely wouldn't be worth the consequences of breaking the laws of Death."

"The laws of death?" she asked.

"Everything ends, Daph. The fae were dead. They made the Otherworld because the material world doesn't really handle their souls properly. They were never meant to be here, and that made their afterlife worse, but they were still dead on a fundamental level. Things could have ended horribly. They could have turned mad and wished for nothing more than to cause senseless slaughter, losing bits of their souls over time. Or I could have been the one to take the brunt of the consequences, which is what I think was what Nimue was planning. The fae are naturally cunning, and she would have wanted to stack the deck in her favour. I could even see her having something prepared to benefit her people in the long run. I didn't want to trade one war for another, not on the word of a woman that made us fight Fenrir for no reason, and that tried to attack you the moment I refused her."

She hesitated for a second, "I understand, really. But you were still cruel."

"No, what they were going through was cruel. They were dead. I just helped them move on. Believe me, that's a far kinder fate than me performing some abominable form of soul magic, binding them to foreign bodies, no matter what Nimue said. Death isn't always cruel. Sometimes, it's far more merciful than the alternative."

"And Nimue? What's going to happen to her?"

Harry shrugged, "I suppose when the Otherworld inevitably collapses, she'll still be bound to not leave the lake. The enchantments there are strong enough to hold for a few centuries, more than enough for her to pass on without my interference. And without the stone, she barely has any energy left to cast any magic. She's just a soul, a powerful one, but a soul nonetheless."

"But why did she just give you the stone? She had to have known that it would have made her weaker and more vulnerable."

"Hope, I think. It's a very dangerous thing. Solomon gave her hope, and for centuries, she followed his orders, even as a dead man. It is funny that she, a fae, never entertained the idea that she was being tricked. She probably had a way of knowing that he was telling the truth – I have no idea how her people's magic worked; she had to have had to verify the information somehow given how blindsided she was, when I refused her offer. Solomon tricked her into serving him for centuries and telling her to give me the stone shouldn't have been that hard to accomplish after that long. If I had to guess, that would be why she gave it to me. Hopefully, she'll let go, move on, and accept her death."

"And her last words?" the blonde asked, "Was her plan correct? Was that what you wanted to do?"

Harry flinched at her statement. There was no doubt in his mind that Nimue knew exactly how his plan worked, down to things that he still hadn't figured out. He still hadn't found a way to properly get the essences to infect the Light and Dark and propagate properly. Each piece of essence was attached with a realm's worth of energy; the Philosopher's stone had the life force of hundreds of thousands of people sucked into it, and Harry could very easily take whatever remained of Jörmungandr's dimension and seal it within the beast's fang, but that would barely be enough to do anything to the Light or the Dark, not really. He needed a way for the essence to self-replicate, and that had been something that he still hadn't figured out.

His thoughts were interrupted once more when his girlfriend poked his shoulder, "It's rude not to answer my question."

The young wizard rolled his eyes, "Sorry. I was lost in a thought for a bit. But yeah, her prediction was pretty in line with what I was planning to do."

"And, now what are you going to do?"

Harry looked at the sky for a bit and answered, "I don't know. It seemed foolproof. Nimue could have been lying to get me to drop a viable plan, but even then, if she's seen it, then Grindelwald probably did as well, and he could take measures against it, whatever they could be. I could theoretically use their ritual against them, use the instability during prophecy's destruction that they would create to hide against any sort of divination for just a few moments, but that's a small window and I might be too late to stop them. Either way, I'm still going for it."

The blonde gave him a confused look, "You just told me that Grindelwald will probably see it coming."

"It's a good plan, one that could technically work. Until I find an alternative, it's what I'm going with. And even if Grindelwald sees it, then he'll have to spend a lot of resources to stop it, and that's still a viable distraction."

"I'm not sure, Harry."

Harry didn't doubt that. The thought of wasting time implementing a plan that would most likely fail didn't seem appealing to him either, but this was literally the best he got. Hell, he could even break a prophecy of his own and use that to attack the Light and Dark directly before either of them are ready to prepare. Nimue said that she knew what his plan was, and when he'd implement it. That also meant that he was on a bit of a time crunch.

"This is the first time that I have a workable plan, a true plan that is beyond just messing with Dumbledore's and Grindelwald's plans. This is a chance at actually winning Ragnarök, of not only defeating the Light's and the Dark's Champions but the entities themselves."

Daphne grabbed his hand gently, "I know you're under a lot of pressure, but wouldn't it be better to leave if you don't have a viable plan? We could run away, just the two of us, maybe with our friends and family, and not deal with anything to do with the Light and Dark."

Her words made Harry pause. There was logic in them, logic that he couldn't refute. Nimue's last words meant that the outcome of the fight ahead became a lot less certain. Harry never liked to enter a conflict without stacking the deck in his favour, and if the fae had it right, then he was massively fooling himself.

But there was something that niggled his mind. Nimue was ready to join Harry, and that meant that there was a way to win, a way that was similar, yet different. She had waited centuries for revenge against the two powers and specifically chose this time to make her move. He just needed to find it.

The young wizard turned towards her, "I've been running ever since this thing started, and everyone and everything kept grabbing me back into the conflict. I entered the European tournament to get away from Dumbledore, only for him to have an elaborate plan regarding it. I went with you to Olympus with no intentions of interfering whatsoever, only to end up fighting the Olympians and Grindelwald. And that's just scratching the surface. I'm done running. Not when fate will probably find another way to pull me back."

And wasn't that a bitter pill to swallow? Now that he had a better perception of Fate, enhanced by Solomon's magic, he could feel Destiny's influence on everyone around him. It was more like a tapestry of possibilities. Everyone had small strings surrounding them, but Harry's were more akin to chains than anything else. It didn't mean that he wasn't free to make his choices, only that his choices would always take him to the same destination anyway. It was hard to put into words. It wasn't a prison, but more like a fundamental law of nature. No matter how strong he threw something, it would always find its way back into the ground. It might not land in the same spot, but it would always work, nonetheless.

Seeing the saddened look on the blonde's face, he put a smile of his own and reassured her, "Solomon said that I have a path to victory, a chance at winning, and I don't see any other way. Either I do nothing and keep contemplating, trying to find another plan and implement it in less than a month, or I can spend some figuring out how to adapt an already existing plan into something… more… workable…"

It was like a lightbulb lit up in his head. It could work. The entire thing fit perfectly, like he had found the final piece to the puzzle and Harry couldn't help but burst into laughter. Solomon, you magnificent bastard. This was beyond brilliant.

Daphne gave him a questioning look, "What is it?"

Harry simply grabbed her suddenly and kissed her, leaving her breathless.

Suddenly, he felt a privacy spell trying to impact the world around them and he took over it in less than a second. Harry turned, glaring at whoever tried to interrupt them. It wasn't hard to recognize who they were, and given how their nervousness was obvious to his Arcane Hearing, mixed in with a drop of righteous anger, their intentions were probably not innocent. With a flick of his hand, their wands were thrown from their hands, and they found themselves unable to move. It wasn't a hard decision to make, after all.

Harry rolled his eyes in exasperation, "Longbottom, Granger, I was under the impression that we had nothing to talk about anymore. So, could you kindly fuck off?"

He'd gotten pretty familiar with the songs of the two Gryffindors. He had to admit that Neville's song felt clearer, more stable, ever since Harry removed the Horcrux from his scar. Well, he wasn't a ticking time bomb anymore. Granger's was more like a computer, everything was organized and methodical. It was a pretty sad sight, to be completely honest.

Neville growled at him, "Not before you save Hermione!"

He expected the answer to be something like this. The unnaturally bound soul that Granger was clumsily trying to hide under a warded expanded bag was more than enough to figure out what they wanted. It would have probably been enough to hide the diary from most mages, but not someone like him, who actually had a passive understanding of soul magic.

Were they seriously hoping to force him into giving the girl back her soul? Given the way the young girl was glaring at him, they certainly weren't planning on asking kindly.

All in all, he had a single response to this, "You're both fucking idiots."

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AN: This was not my greatest work, to be honest. The previous chapter took a lot out of me, and this gave me a bit of a breather. I know that some of you are sick of Neville and Hermione, but I wanted to close the chapter on their storyline pretty much. I won't do a chapter with the break-in to the Department of Mysteries since it'll probably be pretty boring. I won't spend more than a chapter or two on this. Anything more would be overkill. Anyway, on the Ragnarök front, Harry finally has a working plan. That's what that last part is about (Sorry not spoiling more than that). As usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.

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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.