Hogwarts Legacy: The Dark Veins In Time

Alvira Gaunt, Queen of Snakes (Part I)

Y/N

I understood what was happening the moment I fell inwards on myself, passing through the formative years of a teenage Alvira Gaunt that had been imposed upon the entity I could feel traipsing through my mind as if it were a garden waiting to be cultivated. Alvira's likes and dislikes, laughter and tears, fears and confidence were being planted in the narrow spaces between my own traits and even more tightly squeezed between that, each cherished memory she held dear as she blossomed into womanhood, and the dark secrets she kept as the most powerful witch of her generation - just as I am endeared to in my own time.

Be still. Listen. Feel. Become. The ritual Corvinus had locked me into with the false soul of his wife was well underway, though I had no idea how long it would actually take to reach completion. All I knew was that I had to find the moment where Alvira learned how to create the strange blood-based potion that granted them their heightened magical power, as he believed it was the key to waking up Ominis from his curse induced coma.

How long has it been?

Amit Thakkar once shared with me a theory about how time passes out in the universe, beyond our tiny bubble on Earth. He said that out there, time must surely pass slower than it does for us rooted here on the ground, but perhaps time would pass at different paces individually depending on how deep into the stars you were. Something about gravity and the pull of the sun and the tides and time dilation and all that. It was a conversation that was deeply intellectual, theoretical and very... Amit. I admittedly hadn't been able to wrap myself around everything he was saying at the time, however now, as I lie suspended in this pitch black abyss that is devoid of sound or feeling I am starting to consider what my dear friend was trying to say.

Was time passing differently for me, trapped in this endless space? How long have I been here? Has anyone found where Corvinus Gaunt left me?

"You must find the means of making the potion, Y/N." Corvinus' voice resonates between my ears, "Alvira's 'nectar of the Gods'..."

Is this what it would feel like to float among the stars beyond our little Earth? Breathless, lifeless, aimless?

"Come back to me, beloved." Ominis pleads sadly in one ear.

"I need you, my darling." Sebastian whispers seductively in the other.

"I'll always be here for you, starlight." Garreth's voice warms the center of my chest. Starlight?

Still, there is nothing but the dark around me. Has the ritual gone wrong? Am I doomed? Damned? Lost forever?

It feels as though it's been so long since I was in Alvira's world. Too much darkness between her memories of Hogwarts and her growing love for her betrothed and her best friend, and the journey that led her to be crowned "Queen of Snakes." I wanted to panic and cry for help. I could hear myself doing so though I did not feel anything at all around me, and as far as I could tell, I was just... here. In the nothing. Just being.. nothing.

Please, Alvira.  

And just like that there is a tug at my shoulders from beneath me, pulling me harshly down into whatever awaited below. My head rolled back from shoulder to shoulder in search of any change in scenery, something, anything that would give me the sense of where I was going.

Please, please be the memory I need. Ominis is waiting... he's been waiting so long for someone to help him, please.

The darkness begins to thin and somewhere there is... singing? Light and airy at first, the sound of hymnal voices is coming closer as I'm falling. The abyss slowly comes to an end, giving way to bleached stone walls lined with two-hundred year old stained glass windows casting multicolored light down onto a chapel filled with pews of people singing along with a boys choir perched next to the priest's pulpit. Still suspended in the air I am now able to twist my body around to look down on the achingly familiar sight of St. Mary's Church that sat on the grounds of my old all-girls' Catholic school in London. There's a young boy walking down the center aisle lined with soft red carpet towards the entrance of the church, swinging a large thurible billowing fragrant clouds of smoke in front of him - one of my neighbor's sons who had just been named deacon, Collin, I think his name is. As he passes the final pew just left of the massive mahogany doors of the entrance I spot another painfully familiar sight.