The Serpent Beguiled Me and Other Stories

The Serpent Beguiled Me

“I will hold them off,” Luna said, her kind blue eyes frosty with determination.

“Luna, no,” Harry said at once, even when Hermione was pulling on his arm to drag him away.

“It’s our only chance,” Luna whispered. Her mouth curved up in a smile that she bravely tried to make anything but sad. “You will see me again.”

Harry knew she was lying. Perhaps Luna wasn’t doing it on purpose, but Harry knew she wasn’t telling the truth. He would never see this Luna again. He’d see a Luna, but not his version, the little gem who was so clever and good at thinking outside of the box that she’d made it to the very end when most magical people around them were already dead.

“We don’t even know if it will work,” Harry whispered, his heart slowly turning into a lump of ice in his chest. He’d lost so many already. Almost all his friends were gone. Every single Weasley, Neville, Draco, Blaise, Susan… the list went on and on.

Magic did nothing to stop these monsters, because they ate magic. They thrived on it. And a witch or wizard was made of magic. The moment they lost it they withered away.

The only person who could stop these monsters was dead for good. Because Harry had killed him.

“Harry, this is our only chance!” Hermione all but screeched in his ear, so far past hysterical Harry didn’t even think there was a word for it.

Luna pressed a quick kiss to Harry’s cheek. “You will see me again. Go.”

His eyes full of tears that he refused to let shed, Harry allowed Hermione to drag him away into the abandoned building off Diagon Alley. It had taken the wizarding world’s sharpest minds weeks to put together the ritual that would send Harry back to his eleven-year-old body, the day after his birthday. Harry would then…do things to change the future. As it turned out, there was a reason parselmouths existed, and that was to keep the real monsters at bay.

Without a parselmouth in the world, the monsters broke free and destroyed all wizarding societies around the world. They ignored muggles since they lacked magic, but feasted on any creature, great and small, that possessed a magical core. Even the dragons were wiped out already. They hadn’t stood a chance against them because the monsters were immortal.

So Harry had to keep Voldemort alive.

Oh, the fucking irony.

Or, he could try to find a way to kill Voldemort while retaining the horcrux in his scar, though Hermione had warned against this since she wasn’t sure if Harry had ever counted as a ‘real’ parselmouth. If only Harry remained the monsters might very well still break free from their eternal prison.

Another option was to encourage Voldemort to procreate. With someone. Anyone. Harry had secretly come up with a plan to douse Voldemort with the Draught of Living Death and then extract what was needed to impregnate multiple woman from Voldemort’s unconscious body.

Anyway, Harry had several options so he could just wing it. Throw a lot of stuff around and see what ultimately stuck. He was a Gryffindor, after all.

Hermione was done with preparing the ritual circle and Harry stepped inside of it, butt naked and not caring one whiff about it. When you’d seen most of the people you’d ever even remotely cared about die in front of you, certain things just ceased to matter.