A lonely figure wrapped in a black cloak walked through the deserted alleys of Hogsmeade. His eyes gleamed like vivid emeralds - a color he had inherited from a mother he did not remember, yet revered and loved. After all, it was solely thanks to her sacrifice that he was still alive and had been given the chance to become the man he was today. Despite his youthful appearance, the young man's eyes bore the weight of lived years, carrying a wisdom and fatigue uncharacteristic of such a young face. This man was none other than Harold Black - the one considered the most powerful wizard since the time of Merlin. Though had the magical world known what he was truly capable of, wizards would have reconsidered that claim and refrained from comparing him to the legendary sorcerer.
Harry - as his family and friends called him - had seen his share of hardship, triumphs, and falls throughout his life. From early childhood until the age of seven, before he ever knew of magic, his existence was little different from slavery. And he owed it all to his mother's sister, Petunia Dursley, and her family. Unlike normal families, the Dursleys tormented him, forcing him to do all the housework and wait on them as if he were a house-elf rather than an innocent child. On his seventh birthday, while his aunt had tasked him with watering the garden flowers, he met a man who would change his life and save him from his so-called relatives. That man was Arcturus Black, his paternal Great-Uncle. Arcturus took the boy away, introduced him to the wizarding world, and showed him that not all people were like the Dursleys. It was from him that Harry learned his parents were not the drunkards and good-for-nothings who had died in a car crash, as his aunt had claimed.
Having lived with his grandfather Arcturus for several years before entering Hogwarts, he came to genuinely despise Headmaster Dumbledore for sending him to the Dursleys. As it turned out, Lord Black had spent all those years searching for Harry to raise him as his heir. But the old Headmaster had concealed the boy's whereabouts, and it took Arcturus six whole years to track him down. By the time Harry turned eleven, Arcturus officially made him the heir to the House of Black. There was also Sirius, but he was locked away in Azkaban for betraying the Potter family. Arcturus had repeatedly tried to help his grandson, but Sirius refused to accept his aid, infuriating the lord to the point that he ceased caring for the prodigal son of the House of Black. On the day of the Sorting, Harry was placed in Slytherin House, upsetting quite a few people - especially one old man with an unhealthy obsession with lemon drops and sweets. It was those first years at Hogwarts that served as the starting point on his path to his true destiny.
Harry owed part of his power to a greatest gift and curse alike - the Deathly Hallows. Even in his youth, he strived to master every branch of magic available. Harry had always despised the policies of the Ministry of Magic, which outlawed entire fields of sorcery by labeling them the Dark Arts, thereby reducing wizards into the mediocrity they had become by the start of the Second Wizarding War.
That was precisely why he studied everything he could lay his hands on, and given the rich Black family library, he was never left bored. By the end of his fourth year, thanks to his eidetic memory, he knew every book from the family archive by heart and even managed to sneak tomes out of Hogwarts' Restricted Section. For practice, Harry utilized the Chamber of Secrets, which he had discovered in his second year. Rune magic, necromancy, blood magic, mind arts - especially Legilimency - rituals, and much more: everything for which the Ministry could throw a wizard into Azkaban for long years. Had Headmaster Dumbledore known what Harry was up to in his spare time, his hair would have stood on end.
Matters escalated following Voldemort's return at the end of his fourth year, during the final of the Triwizard Tournament - a competition Harry had been dragged into against his will. The battle the two of them waged was exceptionally brutal and destructive. Harry was forced to unleash his entire arsenal of spells at the time, and he did not shy away from meeting dark magic with dark magic. Say what you will, it remains one of the most effective ways to inflict maximum damage. Through grueling training, Harry managed to emerge alive and relatively unscathed from the exhausting fight. It was on that very day that Voldemort became utterly convinced: Harry was indeed the child of the prophecy - the one that had driven the Dark Lord to attack the Potters on the day of his downfall.
After that day, Arcturus Black took Harry's training into his hands in earnest. The youth would never forget the day he returned to the Black estate. As soon as they entered the house, his grandfather got straight to the point:
"I wanted to wait until the end of your fifth year, but the Dark Lord's return changes everything, my grandson," Lord Black said.
"What do you mean, Grandfather?" Harry did not quite understand what he was driving at.
"Follow me, and you will understand," Arcturus answered shortly.
Together, they climbed the ornate staircase to the third floor, into Arcturus's study. Approaching one of the many bookshelves adorning the room, Lord Black drew his wand and began reciting an incantation unfamiliar to Harry. A few seconds later, the shelf shifted aside, revealing a passage between the bookcases. Arcturus silently stepped inside, and Harry followed him. Darkness reigned at first, but then torches flared to life one after another, leaving Harry speechless at the sight. The room was clearly under an Undetectable Extension Charm and rivaled a five-story building in size. Yet it was not this that stunned the youth, but the fact that the entire space was filled with books all the way to the ceiling.
"What is this place, Grandfather? And why didn't I know about it before?" Harry asked, making no effort to hide his excitement.
"Ever since the days of Gellert Grindelwald, the Ministries of many nations began seizing books and materials on deep branches of magic, subsequently outlawing them under the label of 'Dark Arts,'" Lord Black began to explain. "Those books were brought to the Ministry for registration and then destroyed. Through my connections and for a rather handsome reward, officials copied the tomes and passed them to me."
"So all these books..." Harry smirked, glowing with enthusiasm.
"Stolen from right under the Ministry's nose and handed over to our family," Arcturus finished for his grandson and continued. "Starting tomorrow, two of the most powerful wizards will arrive at the manor to handle your training. And this library will help you develop your skills. Only the fools at the Ministry, who wish to rule over weak mages like a flock of sheep, could throw away such vast knowledge."
"I won't let you down, Grandfather, and I'll make you proud of me," Harry stated with confidence.
'I am already proud of you, my boy,' the elderly Lord Black thought, looking at his grandson. Who could have known that this very day marked the beginning of the rise of a wizard who would be feared unto death by Death Eaters, and with whom Voldemort himself would come to reckon.
His mentors were Isamu Fujiwara and Sajira Sharaf. Isamu was a Japanese man of about eighty, while Sajira was a witch from Egypt who looked no older than fifty. In Britain, nearly everyone believed that Dumbledore and Voldemort were the strongest mages of the century. Years of training under Isamu and Sajira proved to Harry that this was far from the truth. There were plenty of mages of similar caliber in the world, yet they preferred to keep a low profile and hone their mastery away from prying eyes. Such were his teachers. Their knowledge of ancient and little-explored magic was astonishingly profound. It was they who discovered the fragment of Voldemort's soul within Harry, known as a Horcrux. There had never been a recorded case of a living human serving as a Horcrux vessel, so Sajira developed an extraordinarily complex ritual tailored specifically to Harry to extract and destroy the soul shard. The ritual took a heavy toll on the youth: the Horcrux had lodged in his body for fourteen years, latching onto his magical core like a parasite. Following the ritual, Harry lay unconscious for a whole week, but most importantly - he was rid of that filth forever.
Harry dedicated the next two years to refining his magical abilities under the guidance of the two masters - neither of whom was inferior in power to Dumbledore - and the results were not long in coming. By the time he reached eighteen, he could fight on equal terms with powerhouses like the Dark Lord. Yet those two years of relative peace were merely the calm before the storm.
It all began on the night of October 22, 1998. Thanks to Arcturus Black's political protection, Voldemort could not reach Harry, so he decided to eliminate the steadfast veteran of the First Wizarding War who was shielding his grandson. Learning that Arcturus visited his late wife's grave every year on October 22, the Dark Lord laid an ambush for him, sending fifteen Death Eaters from his Inner Circle and ten acolytes.
Arriving at his wife's grave, Arcturus immediately sensed something amiss, but it was too late. The lurking Death Eaters activated Anti-Disapparation Jinxes, cutting off any avenue of escape. Arcturus stood his ground and, after sizing up his opponents' tactics, went on the offensive. His attacks were fierce and ruthless. Within five minutes of combat, Lord Black managed to send ten enemies to their graves, but age took its toll, and the remaining foes wounded him. Just as he was saying his farewells to life, a Severing Curse impaled two Death Eaters looming over him. His savior turned out to be his grandson, Harry Black, whose eyes blazed with fury like wildfire. The attackers had miscalculated: they did not know Harry had come to visit his grandmother alongside Arcturus that day. What followed can be described in a single word - slaughter. Harry spared none of the bastards, and in retaliation, he hung the corpses of the slain from the trees before Malfoy Manor - precisely where Voldemort had been hiding since his return.
After the attempt on the life of the last remaining member of his family, Harry's patience ran out completely. He realized that solving the issue with the Death Eaters and the Dark faction through half-measures was impossible. He could not entrust his family's safety to either a soft-hearted Dumbledore with his ideology of universal forgiveness or a corrupt government.
From that day on, Harry went on a rampage. He eradicated the Marked ones and their followers wherever he could, incessantly honing his skill. Within half a year, he had sent nearly the entire Inner Circle of the snake-faced monster to the grave. Through Legilimency, Harry extracted the names of scores of those who sympathized with the Death Eaters. Safe to say, he did not waste time on second chances: following his bloody crusade, funerals in magical Britain lasted an entire month. By the end of the year, Harry had found and destroyed all the Horcruxes except for the snake, which remained ever at Voldemort's side.
To destroy it, Harry resorted to Slytherin cunning. He tracked down and placed under the Imperius Curse the sole individual capable of approaching the Dark Lord without raising suspicion - Lucius Malfoy. Unhindered, Lucius appeared at a meeting with his master and unleashed Fiendfyre upon the serpent. Voldemort survived, but was beside himself with rage that someone had uncovered his secret. The following day, Harry challenged him to a duel via The Daily Prophet, and the unhinged Dark Lord accepted.
The duel between Harry Black and Voldemort in the Ministry Atrium before the eyes of countless wizards would be remembered by the magical world for centuries: the man who had terrorized the wizarding population for three decades was finally dead.
It became cause for widespread jubilation, yet it also brought to light those who feared the young mage possessed of such immense power. Albus Dumbledore shared those misgivings: he believed Harry might become a new Dark Lord, and Black's lore in the Dark Arts and necromancy only reinforced the Headmaster in that thought.
In December 1999, Albus Dumbledore attempted to apprehend Harry and place him under arrest, but failed and lost the Elder Wand. The Heir of Black chose not to kill him so as not to invite unnecessary complications. Instead, Harry and Arcturus did everything in their power to strip Dumbledore of his remaining influence, both in Britain and on the international stage.
Years passed. Harry married his classmate Daphne Greengrass. She became the meaning of his life and bore him four wonderful sons and three daughters, all of whom he doted on unconditionally. After fifteen years of marriage, he began to notice that he was not aging. Delving into the issue, Harry understood: the Deathly Hallows were to blame for everything. Following his battle with Dumbledore, he had obtained the last of them - the Elder Wand. Though Harry did not use any of these artifacts, they had recognized him as their master. Upon realizing this, he tried repeatedly to rid himself of the Deathly Hallows, but they invariably returned to him the very next day.
Watching his loved ones age and die was heartbreaking. He managed to prepare himself mentally for Daphne's death, but watching his children - whom he had held in his arms since the very first day of their lives - wither and follow their mother was unbearable. It was as though every time, they carried away a piece of his soul with them.
Harry had to live with it and adapt. He decided to travel and expand his magical abilities. Once every five years, he returned to Britain to visit his family and descendants. The once sparse House of Black had now expanded so vast that it boasted numerous cadet branches.
In the year 2180, Muggles discovered the existence of magic and began hunting wizards. Harry had always known it was merely a matter of time. Well in advance, he had devised a grand ritual that erased everything related to magic from Muggle memory and compelled them to ignore any manifestations of wizardry. Due to the sheer scale of the enchantment, completing the ritual took nearly two years, but the result was worth it: magical society was safe once more.
Having completed the ritual, Harry managed to contact the culprit behind his curse - Death itself. Death explained that it was impossible to rid himself of the Hallows and, consequently, immortality in this world. However, an alternative existed: he could find peace in another world. To do so, he needed to step through the Veil of Death, after which his soul would be reborn in another world alongside the Hallows, with the price for rebirth being the loss of his immortality. Death itself yearned to be rid of the artifacts that granted a mortal the ability to trick it, and thus willingly shared its knowledge with Black. Harry feared the Hallows would render him immortal in the new world as well, but Death assured him that they would lose that power there. Harry was satisfied with the arrangement and resolved to take the leap.
Before stepping through the Veil, Harry prepared for his new life. He completed the creation of a soul vault - an artifact inextricably bound to his soul that could never be stolen. Into it, he placed copies of all the books and grimoires of the House of Black, magical and non-magical plants along with their seeds, magical creatures, as well as Muggle scientific works and much more. Death had warned him that the world he was headed to resembled a medieval one and that magic there was poorly developed, thus Harry intended to build a civilized society, and this knowledge was meant to aid him: he had no intention of living without basic modern comforts. Lastly, Harry performed two more actions: he purchased over a hundred house-elves and placed them into stasis, while the second action stemmed from personal motives.
Anyone who knew Harry well enough remembered his vindictive nature. Before leaving, Harry Black drained every gold reserve he could reach from those nations that had hunted wizards prior to his intervention. No one forbade combining business with pleasure, and ten thousand tons of gold were hardly superfluous.
Following these preparations and a final stroll through Hogsmeade - a place where Daphne had so loved to walk with her husband - Harry arrived in the circular chamber housing the Veil of Death. It was Samhain - the day when the boundary between the world of the living and the dead wears thinnest. Gathering his courage, he stepped into the unknown. On the night of October 31, 2183, Harry Black ceased to exist in this world, only to be reborn in an entirely different one whose destiny he was destined to reshape.
65 AC. Driftmark
Corwyn Velaryon ran swiftly through the ornate halls of Driftmark. Deep anxiety was etched upon his face: a servant had just informed him that his wife's water had broken and she was about to give birth to their firstborn.
He could hear Alice's groans and cries, which made his heart clench with pain and fear. Picking up his pace, Corwyn rushed toward the door of the chambers, when suddenly a different sound rang out - an infant's cry. For a moment he froze, realizing: there, behind that door, his child was crying. Pushing the door open, Corwyn stopped dead in his tracks.
His wife had never seemed so beautiful to him: sweaty, exhausted, yet impossibly happy, she pressed a small bundle to her chest. Noticing her husband, Alice looked up:
"Our son," she whispered proudly, showing the newborn's face.
Corwyn looked at the boy and was awestruck: the infant had remarkably vivid purple eyes that seemed to glow from within, and his head was covered in a down of silver hair inherited from his father. The little one's gaze intelligently studied his father and the surroundings of the room. Alice handed the bundle to Corwyn, who took his son as gently as he could.
"What shall we name him?" his wife asked.
Corwyn hesitated for a few seconds and declared:
"Corlys... His name is Corlys Velaryon, heir to Driftmark."
The young parents had no idea that the child in his father's arms was no ordinary infant. It was Harry Black reborn - a man destined to alter the history of Westeros and elevate the House of Velaryon to unprecedented heights.