Rebirth 1

Time slows when you are about to die.

He had heard the thought many times. Lived it more than a dozen times too, ever since he had been subjected to the extra tender mercies of his relatives, and then subsequently Lord Voldemort. Once it had become all too real in the Forbidden Forest, when he had decided to surrender to the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters. Yet, it had nothing on this moment as he stood in the meadows he had been seeing since he had been eleven years old, his hands raised towards the sky as he poured every last bit of his magic into the wards.

Yet, it was all for naught.

Heat blazed across his face as everything around him was atomized down to the last grain of dirt. He felt how each inch of the castle behind him was erased, the screaming of a thousand voices mingling with the sensation of emptiness as he felt them die, their souls forever lost to the void that had descended on their planet. The last vestiges of his life, the ancient bulwark that had stood against countless Muggle and magical battles was destroyed in an eyeblink like a child’s toy, and Harry had been powerless to stop it.

He was the most powerful wizard on the planet, yet that meant nothing in the face of this calamity that had come to prey upon them.

Hogwarts disappeared like it had never been there, even the lingering, ancient magic that flowed through the very land vanishing in the storm of wild, untamed energy and raw destructive force that bore down on th–him.

There was no them now.

His emerald eyes, now lifeless and devoid of the hope and energy that had defined his younger years, stared up at the kaleidoscope of colours bearing down on him, the burnt ground below him disintegrating into chunks—before even that was rendered into nothing but atoms and energy for the entity to feed upon. He felt the energy tug at his wards, destroying the layers of magical protection with just a simple burst of power, and Harry let it.

Contesting with the creature was foolishness, he had come to learn in the last forty minutes. Whatever it was, it was so vastly powerful that they might as well be microbes to it, the entity operating on a level that was wholly incomprehensible to them. And it was not just the wizards who had been extinguished by the Creature.

The muggles too had been totally wiped out by now, their great cities reduced to silent, empty husks as the Creature has sucked away their very atmosphere, feeding upon the geothermal energies of the Earth just as it had drained its magical veins. But considering it had been the muggles themselves who had brought the Creature upon them, Harry found himself at least thankful to the entity above for having killed them off.

The moment passed, and time resumed its pace.

He was blasted back from the concussive force that tore up the world around him, and as he tumbled arse over kettle, Harry caught sight of the Forbidden Forest disappearing into the ether, caught up in the otherworldly storm that had descended upon Earth with whatever Creature the muggles had summoned.

Within an eyeblink, Harry felt all life around him vanish. The trees, the animals, and the spare few humans that had survived the initial slew of attacks. And yet, as he flew up into the storm and felt the air leave his lungs in the vacuum while his skin burnt under the intense radiation, Harry’s mind was fixed on only one thing.

Why was he still alive?

“⩹𝖃𝒽⥆𝕲ⶓ𝖈🝧⧺”

“What the…” he trailed off, pressing his hands against his ears even as he felt something alien speak inside his head and all around him at the same time, a hard, loud voice that echoed upon itself and reverberated in his skull with enough force to make his ears bleed.

“⟁̶₳⩤₥🜃≆̴⫯ꓘⶾ𝔱𝖛⧥✣”

The voice repeated, and Harry saw purple fire light up above him in the swirling vortex of energy and matter, his skin flaking away into nothingness as he felt the pain of his fluids exiting his body finally hit him. Blackness encroached on his vision, and Harry finally felt the last drops of his magic being pulled out of him into the hungering maw above. As he twisted and turned into the celestial storm, Harry felt his limbs disappear, and the pain had reached levels that he couldn’t even feel anymore.

Or that was probably his spine turning to dust.

His torso gone in the next moment, all Harry saw as he felt consciousness leave him was the sight of his planet disappearing into a stream of crackling violet energy inside the storm, the crushing weight of the shearing, unadulterated energy around him making his metaphorical senses scream out in protest, before they too were snuffed out along with the last living wizard and Earth itself.

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Afterlife, it seemed, wasn’t that different from life itself.

That was Harry’s first thought as his mind turned coherent once again and he felt a breath enter his lungs. His eyes still closed, the twenty-eight-year-old wizard just took stock of his situation. An apt thing to do, he thought as the flashes of what he had gone through right before his death went through in front of his eyes.

His limbs were intact, and he could feel the pain in them once again. A very good thing considering he had died while having his sanity and spine both ripped out of him, so painfully that cruciatus might probably be the right level to quantify it. A harsh wind blew over his face, and Harry felt the smell of the sea and fish invade his nose, along with the soft chatter coming from his right in what sounded like…Old Norse?

He had never really picked up the language of the Norwegians, learning the Elder and Younger Futhark just a couple of years ago on his trip to Hallar Valhallar, the Norwegian school of magic. But still, the little he caught while playing dead—did that idiom stay the same in the afterlife? Or was it playing dead-er?—told him quite a lot, and yet nothing.

Words like All-father, Space, Time and Bifrost were thrown around liberally, and Harry mentally frowned in confusion. The All-Father? Did these women mean Odin? Was he in Valhalla itself, the Norse, and more specifically, the Asgardian version of the afterlife? 

Well, technically…he did go out fighting, now that he thought about it.

“Is he dead?”

“His chest moves,” the second woman commented, and Harry paused his breathing for a moment as he fully understood their words. What did the first woman mean by asking if he was dead? Weren’t they all dead alrea-”Einherjar…Fandral…All-Father”

Words continued to tumble out of her mouth, only a couple making sense to him, but Harry had found far bigger concerns than that. The union of Hollows had given a couple of gifts and curses, chief among them being the ability to sense the living, as well as the dead around him. Able to feel the very souls of a person—the link between the spiritual and the physical. That is why he had tried his best to avoid ghosts after the war, their unnatural presence making him feel as if slime was rubbing against his insides.

But yet, the part of him that tied him to the Resurrection Stone. That let him feel and call upon souls if needed, it was telling him something very wrong.

There was no dead soul around him, like the case had been for the ghosts that had populated his world.

Those two women were very much alive, their souls akin to a miniature sun to his senses, filling their physical shells with warmth as magic too flowed within them. His eyes snapped open, emerald eyes glowing in a way they had not done since three years ago, when all had went to shit. Harry leapt to his feet, laying eyes upon just where he had app-Morgana’s tits!

A large tree rose several miles away from him, its trunk as thick as a mountain and branches so big that the Whomping Willow would have wilted out of embarrassment, hell any tree really. Despite the large distance separating them, Harry could practically taste the tree’s energy, the potent yet controlled flow of magic and something else inside it reminding him of Hogwarts, only on a fundamentally different scale that he had no words for it. 

It disappeared into the sky above, melding with the blues and whites seamlessly as giant leaves grew upon its thin, evenly distributed branches that seemed to reach out towards every corner of the realm he had unexpectedly found himself in.

“Yggdrasil,” he whispered, eyes taking in every inch of the otherworldly view he had been graced with, before his gaze turned towards the large, golden palace at the foot of the tree. Its great spires and simple architecture certainly made it an appealing and grand abode, but yet, against the wild yet orderly beauty of the World Tree, Harry found it lac-

“Show your hands, intruder!” An arrow landed at his feet, and Harry raised his palms, creating half a dozen shields, each meant to stop one form of attack or the other as his eyes snapped up, meeting the surprised ones of the four warriors before him. Dressed in chainmail with runes engraved on their chests, two of them carried halberds, while the other two had longbows pointed at him, “Dispel your magic right now and surrender to the Einherjar! You are a trespasser in the lands of Asgard! Any hostility will be met with the steel of our weapons and the might of our arms!”

“Not English,” he muttered to himself, feeling the magic shift the sounds as they reached his ears to match what he would understand. Quite similar to what the translation magic had been like in his world, at least in the auditory sense. Deciding to think about all that later, Harry calmly raised his hands and locked his eyes with the nearest Einherjar. “I am no trespasser, soldier, at least not of my own will. My planet was being destroyed, and I have thus unwittingly found myself on your lands. Uninvited and unwilling, I have no hostility but I’m still going to defend myself if needed.”

There was quite a lot going on here that he didn’t understand, the biggest thing of all being just why everyone was alive in this afterlife. Because if they were alive, then it meant that he was too, and that didn’t make any sense to his mind—despite the way he could feel his soul being connected to his body. And if he was here, did that mean everyone who had been consumed by that unknown entity’s powers was too?

“No human has ever been able to enter the lands of Asgard unannounced,” the lead soldier growled, and Harry noted the slight different coloring of his armor, the bronze tint more pronounced in his chainmail along with pauldrons on his shoulders as he stomped his halberd into the ground, “ To do so unwiitti-”

“Hersir Brokvar!” a loud voice shouted from behind the soldiers, and Harry looked up to find a tall, lean man standing by the ladies, a longsword at his hip and his golden hair flying in the wind, “The human is to be taken to the All-Father right away. He is not to be harmed in any way or form.”

“Aye, Jarl Fandral,” the man nodded, before looking at him with clear dysplasia in his eyes, “Shall we bind his hands?”

“It is standard procedure, Brokvar,” the blond man, Fandral, rolled his eyes dismissively. “Do you want me to come and teach you how to wield your weapons while you are at it?”

“No, Jarl Fandral,” the man gritted out, and yet lowered his head before moving towards him, producing a simple bar of seamless metal from his back. “Hold out your hands. You shall be taken to the All-Father’s halls by us. Do not make any sudden movements or try to run away.”

“Ah, there is a slight change of plans, Hersir,” Fandral’s voice interrupted the helmed soldier, and Harry watched the Asgardian jumped and easily cleared the dozens of feet separating them, landing before him without disturbing a single pebble on the ground, “The All-Father commands that I be the one to produce this human before him, you are to return to your patrols.”

“As you command, Jarl Fandral.”

Looking at the dour Einherjar turn around and walk away from them in clear displeasure, Harry finally met the eyes of Jarl Fandral. The man was taller than him, and better built too, dressed in ornamental armor and a couple of rings on his fingers. A fair hand was laid upon the sword hilt visible at his hip, and the other swept through his hair as the Asgardian gave him a once-over.

“It takes quite a lot of skill to breach past the barriers protecting Asgard, especially from Midgard,” he commented, turning a little and waving a hand towards the beaten path before them, “Your age and species don’t match the power and knowledge needed to do so.”

“I’d rather tell my story once only, if it's agreeable to you, Jarl Fandral,” he answered respectfully as he began to walk along the gestured path, taking in the sights and scenery around him. “Asgard, huh?”

“The strongest and the most prosperous of the Nine Realms,” his chaperone-jailor-gaurd declared with pride. “Established by Buri the Giant and made into what it is today by Odin Allfather. See that palace there, at the base of Yggdrasil? That is where Odin holds his court, and from where he rules over the nine realms. And that is where the Allfather has summoned you, unwilling traveller.”

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Holy fucking Merlin.

He would always cherish Hogwarts for being his first home and giving him the chance to be something other than a freak—even though he was one by magical standards too.

But he could no longer look upon his old home with the wonder and awe with which he had always gazed at it. Built upon an intersection of three ley lines and hundreds of thousands of enchantments over the years seeping into its very stones, Hogwarts had been one of most elaborate and wondrous structures of magic built on Earth.

But this? This castle blew that out of the water with the first step he had taken into its premises. Unfathomable didn’t even begin to describe the amount of magic he felt flowing through the walls before him, and he could just about see the thousands of runes inscribed into them, so tiny yet conducting a vast array of functions over an area thrice as large as Hogwarts’ grounds. Shifting his senses, Harry looked up at the sky, and a golden, interlocking shield filled his vision, Elder Futhark floating in that dome and acting as a shield that could probably tank a hundred Fiendfyres at once from what he could see.

Scary, considering Hogwarts’ wards had fallen with a raw, uncontrolled burst of magic from Voldemort and the Elder Wand acting together.

His hair stood on end, and Harry shuddered at the feel of the refined yet vast amounts of energy in the air and walls around him as he ascended the steps leading to the giant doors. He looked at the art upon it with interest, the panelised wood depicting several scenes from the history of the Norse and the Nine Realms. One showed a man hanging from a noose with two ravens by his side—Odin, along with Huginn and Muninn.

Another showed a giant of a man standing atop an even greater corpse, a crackling hammer at his side, surrounded by mountainous enemies. The last he saw before Fandral escorted him past the doors was of Odin marrying a woman, two opposing forces standing behind them as flowers rained down on the two.

“The joining of the Æsir and the Vanir, which brought peace to the realms and stopped the wars between us,” his guide commented. “The Vanir goddess Freyja took on the name Frigga, and has ruled beside Odin Allfather ever since.”

“Never learned about the name change on Earth,” Harry answered, still swept up in the surrealness of being on a different dimension or planet, walking to meet the god of the Norse, and possibly getting to meet Loki too. The blood brother of Odin, son of Laufey, and the trickster god, whose depictions and deeds had always made Harry admire the deity. Well, except the whole Ragnarok and sex change thing.

“Not everything about us is known to mankind, and it has been hundreds of years since the Æsir have last visited Midgard.”

The rest of the walk passed in silence, and Harry looked around at every detail, every painting that he passed by. Murals depicting the whole history of Asgard and the rest of the eight realms covered the corridors, giant, detailed depictions of ancient civilisations, brutal wards, brokered deals, and the peace that came with them. Midgard’s depictions interested him the most, Odin and the Asgardians standing against and victorious over what appeared to be Frost Giants, something that had never happened in his world.

“Any word of advice?” he asked Fandral as he suddenly felt a massive, yet deceptively hidden presence appear at the edge of his senses, who could be none other than the One-Eyed Whisperer. A different energy than what he was used to, yet now that he had felt it, Harry could suddenly recognise it in every corner of the giant castle he was in.

His question went ignored, and Harry watched the blond Æsir just chuckle at his query as they turned, and a set of giant open doors appeared before them. “The Allfather awaits,” Fandral turned and waved his hand flamboyantly in the direction of the hall, his head bowed. “I hope you meet a prettier end than the last visitor.”

With that morbid warning echoing in his thoughts—along with the trepidation that he was going to meet an actual god, which frankly speaking, still sounded absurd to his own head—Harry walked forwards. A great, scaled rug lined the path from the gates to the throne at the end, and he balked at the width of the snake skin at his feet. 

‘It is four times the size of that Basilisk’ 

“Your name?” Odin asked before he even got close to the throne, his heavy, bold voice echoing in the otherwise empty hall. Almost jumping in his place at the sudden words, Harry finally laid his eyes on the strongest Æsir, the god of the Norse Pantheon. Gungnir, his legendary spear, was standing at his side, and long grey hair fell beyond his shoulders. A stony eye stared at him, power swimming in those shifting hues of blue, and Harry swallowed as his gaze lowered of its own accord. 

Odin was powerful, so powerful that even Dumbledore and Voldemort felt like ants before the presence the god commanded, his powerful, muscled frame clad in a chainmail much like the soldiers outside, only adorned with much more royal paraphernalia that befitted the ruler of the Nine Realms.

“Harry,” he answered, bending at the waist in a crude approximation of a bow Narcissa had taught him, “Harry Potter…Allfather. Or Jamesson, if you prefer your naming conventions.”

“Long has it been that someone has breached through the barriers that protect Asgard,” the mighty being before him proclaimed, his voice grand yet condemning in a way that made Harry regret opening his eyes. Fandral’s warning certainly didn’t help matters. “Longer still, that it was a Midgardian who did so. I can sense the power you possess, human, as well as the trials you have faced. A rare sight for a human to grow this much before seeing their third decade, but yet, it should not be possible for you to enter Asgard without getting mine or Heimdall’s approval. Who assisted you in this endeavour, Son of James? Speak truly, and I might show some leniency.”

“I-I don’t…I don’t know how to answer that,” he stammered, alarm rising through him as he felt just a trickle of power rage out from Odin’s presence, and visions of what had befallen his planet went through his head, the feeling of everyone just disappearing into that storm sending shivers down his spine. “I did not come to Asgard willingly, Milord, and neither did someone assist me in doing this. Not to my knowledge at least. Last I remember, I was dying, getting disintegrated by some weird creature that had descended on my planet, turning everything to just dust and energ-”

“Lies,” Odin thundered, lifting Gungnir and stomping the ground with its butt, and Harry stumbled in his place as the whole hall shook from the force of that just one tap. Expression not changing in the slightest despite the beginnings of rage in his voice, Odin tightened his grip on Gungnir and pointed it at hi., “Midgard stands still, lively and prosperous as it has for centuries! No storm as the one you describe has attacked any of the realms, for we would know if it had happened!”

“Earth is fine?!” he gasped, shaking his head wildly the next moment as he looked the god in the eyes, pleading with his gaze the way he had pleaded Dumbledore once upon a time, “Please, Allfather! I am not lying to you about anything! If there is a pensie—a way of checking my memories for yourself, I would gladly submit to any examination! And if Midgard is unharmed, if no such disaster has come to humanity, then I humbly beg for your help in returning to my planet. My friends, my remaining family need me!”

“Very well,” Odin intoned after a brief moment of silence, his singular eyes staring down at him with judgement, as Gungnir rose again, and a series of runes formed before him, too fast and too numerous for him to discern anything. “Speak your tale Harry, son of James. Know that you shall be judged in the name of my father, and his father before him. Should your words turn out to be a lie, you shall be imprisoned under Asgardian law, and never return to Midgard. However, should you speak true, then I shall see just why the destruction of Midgard has missed Heimdall and mine senses.”

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It was not always that Odin granted audience to someone who was not an Asgardian.

Even then, he preferred to interact with matters that strictly required his attention or intervention, leaving the rest of the rabble to the different offices and Æsir that helped in the governance of Asgard and the Nine Realms.

Yet, today something had demanded his oversight in a way nothing had done over the last several years—centuries even, by mortal standards. Someone had appeared on Asgard.

Not breached through its wards.

Not entered through the several rifts of Yggdrasil that continuously formed and disappeared.

One moment, there had been only Æsir and Vanir and Dwarves in his realm. The next, he had felt a human appear with the kind of energy he had hoped to never feel again in his life. Instantly, he had disbanded the court, warning the Æsir in question not to test his patience again as he sent Fandral to personally bring in the human. However, the alarm and the curiosity that had risen within him had still not been sated, so he had used Huginn and Muninn to watch the human more closely as he walked through the streets towards his hall, studying the magic that existed within him, as well as a peculiar, but familiar energy that dwelt deep within his soul.

Whatever he was, he wasn’t a regular human sorcerer.

And then, the human had finally walked into his physical sight. He had seen the way the young male had looked around in wonder, and Odin was impressed by the recognition that shone in those eyes as the boy had seen the snakeskin on the floor, one of the many children of Níðhöggr that plagued the realms. However, it was when the conversation started that Odin truly felt agitated for the first time ever since he had seen the boy.

The lies about dying, the destruction of Midgard, it all screamed out Loki to him—especially with that midnight black hair and those emerald eyes. 

And of course, the magic.

It was much more refined than what he was used to working with or even seeing across the realms. It was a melting pot of several flavors, yet, nothing that the humans had developed on their own, especially with all of them using dimensional energies for their sorcery.

But yet, all of that paled in front of the sights that he was seeing now, projected in front of him by his runes as the human child sat in the circle he had created. He knew of the horror that had befallen the young mortal before him, as sure as he knew the names of his brothers and father, and his father before him. The veracity of his words confirmed, Odin just stared at the human as he contemplated on what to do now. 

Unknown to the Son of James, Odin had experienced those moments himself, transferring the sensory information of the body through magic to his own mind, in order to better grasp the situation and check any fallacies or magic that may be involved. Loki was known to manipulate others, after all. 

Yet, the boy had spoken true, for Odin recognised the particular sight of a storm descending on a planet, sucking it dry of all energy as true as he recognised Yggdrasil.

The universe was a big place.

The Multiverse was bigger still.

And somehow, the Devourer had preyed on this mortal’s Midgard, draining it dry of life and energy in an instant, drawn to them by the war that had been going on between their people.

He knew of the World-Eater, an entity that predated most of the things in this Universe, a conceptual being that existed throughout the multiverse and preyed upon entire planets, suckign them dry of energy and leaving them as dust and dry husks in his wake. By Bor’s grace, he had never seen the abomination up close, and neither did he wish to. 

Fighting Surtur once had been enough to sate his desire to battle giant planet destroyers. He had no wish to tangle with someone who could make the Fire Giant look like a bilgesnipe.

And yet, even that was probably a smaller issue in the face of just how the World Eater dining on that Midgard had resulted in the human being transported across Universes to land here. And more specifically, in Asgard.

Odin didn’t believe in coincidences, yet he couldn’t make head or tails of just what had happened here, his infinite wisdom and ability to grasp the information about anything from a glance falling short of deciphering this mystery. What sign was there, in the boy appearing before him after surviving the Devourer’s non-existent mercies?

Was it something heraldi-

A whisper reached him, one that he heard only once before in his long life, and Odin’s eye widened at the meaning behind the indecipherable voices. His gaze returned to the child, fingers tightening on Gungnir as he re-evaluated his next action, the presences fading away from his mind. With a flick of his finger, the shackles binding the boy disappeared, and Odin rejoiced a little at the surprise on the human’s face.

Old he may be, but he still rejoiced in showing off to the Midgardians.

“Welcome to Asgard,” he intoned, standing up and climbing down the steps of his throne, reaching the kneeling human and offering him an arm, staring into the emerald eyes filled with relief and wonder, “Harry, Son of James.”