Why am I fighting this never-ending battle?
What am I even clinging to anymore — pride, vengeance, or the ghost of hope?
We are all bound to be discarded the moment she grows bored of us, just like the rest of the forgotten ones. And yet, here I am… still struggling, still reaching for something that's already crumbled to dust.
But to give up now — after twenty years torn between life and death — would make every scar meaningless. I've endured horrors that words can barely capture, suffered through an absurd reality where time bleeds and reason fractures.
Then what is the meaning of endurance? Of pain that never ends?
Perhaps it lies in memory — in the faces that flash before me when I close my eyes:
That red-haired idiot with his everlasting grin, passing me his final spark of hope before the void claimed him.
The mischievous wink of my half-mad ex headmaster, who laughed in the face of eternity.
The final tear of the pointy-eared girl — beautiful and foolish in her belief that we'd make it home.
Their faces are gone, their voices erased by the Abyss, yet the weight of them anchors me still. And in my palm rests my magical conduit, the Evenstar is a silver pendant featuring a white gem- the only light I have left. It kept me sane through centuries of madness, through her games.
I know, even if I win, I'll never see them again — not the versions of them that existed in this fractured hell. Still, I owe them something.
I glance across the burning expanse — the battlefield that has no sky, no ground, just shifting light and ash. My remaining comrades — the supposed Messiahs of this doomed world — stand their ground against her. The Lady Death.
We did it. We finally lured her into the physical plane, where she can bleed.
Where she can lose.
This is the final act — the culmination of our cursed existence.
The white-bearded wizard stands at the front, his staff aglow with radiant symbols that pierce through the void. Light itself bends to his command, forming shifting barriers that hold back Death's black spears. Each impact shakes the world apart, his robes tearing, his body cracking under the strain — yet he doesn't falter. He mutters something under his breath — words in a language older than the stars — and for a fleeting moment, I feel warmth.
To his right, the Ice Queen moves like a blade made flesh — her mismatched eyes glowing blue and crimson, her sword a ribbon of frost and fire. Every swing cleaves through space itself, shattering Death's tendrils into glass-like shards that dissolve in the cold. She screams as she fights, fury masking despair. The frost forms around her feet, spreading into intricate sigils that pulse with grief and defiance.
The Sorcerer, that arrogant genius, stands at the back — his laughter echoing through the chaos. With a flick of his hand, he conjures illusions so vivid they blur reality — a thousand false worlds blooming like smoke, confusing even Lady Death. His body flickers, bleeding light from a wound that refuses to close, yet he keeps smiling — the kind of smile born from someone who knows this is their last spell.
Even together, they are outmatched. She's not a god — she's something far worse. A will that predates endings. This is her playground; we are her amusement.
Still, we fight. Because to stop would mean acknowledging that we never mattered.
Somewhere behind us, the Doctor works — that eccentric man with his impossible blue phone booth humming softly in the void. His coat flutters like torn parchment as he moves, muttering calculations to himself, his hands shimmering with chronal light.
He's bending the cracks of time — stitching a hole so small that even Lady Death cannot sense it. The plan is madness. It shouldn't work. But madness is all we have left.
Our mission is desperate and absolute: To send me back.
Back to the beginning.
Back to Hogwarts.
Back to the day of my Sorting — the moment my soul first touched her game.
We can't kill Lady Death. We can't even wound her. But if we send me back before her contract bound me, maybe… just maybe… we can cheat her.
I don't even remember who first suggested this absurd plan. Probably the old man — he always had a flair for dramatic gambits. I argued, of course. I told them it was idiotic, that I wasn't the one worth saving. There were better candidates — stronger, wiser, older.
They didn't listen.
Their reasoning was cruelly simple:
"What they learned in centuries, you matched in twenty."
"If anyone can break her game, it's you, Cedric."
Maybe they were wrong. Maybe this is just another move she's foreseen.
But if I can do something — anything — to end this cycle, I'll do it.
The Champion of the Sea World has already fallen — his body scattered into particles of light, his final roar fading into silence. Only three remain: the Ice Queen, the Sorcerer, and the Wizard. They know their role — to buy the Doctor the time he needs.
The Ice Queen lunges forward, her sword impaling one of Death's shadow forms. "You'd better make this count, Diggory!" she shouts through the chaos. Her voice trembles with exhaustion, yet it carries the same biting pride she always had.
The Sorcerer smirks, blood on his lips. "Go rewrite your fairytale, Hogwarts boy," he says, flicking his fingers. The battlefield explodes in a thousand clones of himself, each laughing maniacally as Death strikes at phantoms.
The Wizard looks over his shoulder — eyes glowing like twin suns — and whispers, "You carry our hopes, Cedric. Don't let them fade."
And then he slams his staff into the ground, unleashing a torrent of golden fire.
The light blinds me. The Abyss screams.
The Doctor's voice cuts through the roar. "Now, Cedric! Focus on the anchor point — your first memory! The very first spark of the tainted magic when touched your soul ! Find it!"
I close my eyes.
I see a young boy — me — standing in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, heart pounding as the Sorting Hat slides over his head. The ceiling glows with starlight, candles hovering above, faces watching, waiting. I remember the smell of wax, the murmur of students, the warmth of the moment before destiny struck.
That's my anchor. That's where it all began.
I clutch the pendant tight. It burns against my palm.
Behind me, Lady Death shrieks — a sound like galaxies collapsing. The battlefield twists, folding in on itself. Her form fractures into countless versions — skeletal, divine, monstrous — may be she realizes what we've done.
"Run, boy!" the Doctor yells. "Before she seals it!"
The last thing I see is my comrades — their bodies turning to light as the void consumes them.
"Live," the Wizard says, voice like embers. "This time… WIN."
Silence swallows the sword-and-light and the Doctor's booth. The Abyss folds, hungry as ever. Pain rips out of me and then — nothing.
Air cracks into me. Cold, blessed air. Stone under my palms. The smell of wood polish and candle wax. Voices — hundreds of them, alive and warm and foolish.
I open my eyes.
The Great Hall of Hogwarts blooms above me: stars painted on the ceiling, a thousand candles bobbing like a safe sky. The long tables are crowded with students; laughter and the clatter of plates weave together like a spell of ordinary life. Dumbledore sits at the staff table, his beard catching the light, eyes like old moons. Professor McGonagall stands solemnly with the Sorting Hat in her hands.
Relief strikes me like a blade and then something colder — a realization so sharp it steadies my breath. I am back. It worked.
But I am not the same boy who once stood beneath this ceiling. Twenty years in a place where the sun never rose have remade me. I carry war in my bones, and the memory of billions of stolen lives courses through me like a second pulse.
The Hat is raised. Gasps ripple through the hall as the next student steps forward, small, thrilled, unknowing. The Hat is old, wise… and, now, deliberately blind.
The Doctor's stitch — the tiny miracle sewn into the fabric of my return — had to do more than fling me through time. I had to make sure the Sorting Hat would not see what it had once marked. So I had woven my own defenses before leaving the Abyss: a subtle combination of occlumency, honed in the void of endless torment, and the faint threads of sorcery my comrades helped me anchor into my soul.
The result: a protective lattice that masks my essence from the Hat, negating its power to mark me on Death's behalf. If the Hat perceived the touch of the Abyss upon me, if it smelled the pattern of death sewn into my soul, then Lady Death might learn I had returned. She would pivot, mark me as hers, and unravel everything we had stolen back from her.
So the Hat was made blind.
Not physically — the Hat still speaks, still whispers, still tests. But there is a quiet charm woven into the weave of my arrival: a blindfold of sorts laid over the Hat's sight on the things that belonged to her. The Hat will not smell the ash on my skin. It will not remember the taste of death. It will sit upon my head and hum and say whatever it always does. It will place me where I am deemed to belong by sound and soul, unaware of the deeper signature the Abyss left.
No one must know.
Not my schoolmates. Not the professors. Not even the Hat, by design. The knowledge would be a beacon. If Lady Death marks me again, she will not merely claim me — she will use me as a signal, a flare to gather the attention of every creature she has ever toyed with. A single revealed truth could unravel the fragile web my comrades bled to weave. The billions of lives whose hope clings to me would burn like tinder.
I touch the pendant beneath my robes and feel its tiny, steady warmth. It is the last ember of everything I left behind. It is also a reminder: brilliance will not be enough alone. I must be clever. I must be cautious. I must win without showing my hand.
The Hat settles over my head. For a heartbeat — the world narrows to the felt pressed to my temples. Then, in that scratchy voice that has decided fates for generations, the Hat murmurs into my ear, oblivious, blind to the mark I bear.
"Ah," it says. "Another mind fit to bend. Let us find you a seat where you might grow."
The Hat makes its decision, and I walk again to the table badgers . Faces turn; students clap and grin. Life pours in around me like a tide. I move as if I belong; my heart hammers like a fist against an iron door.
No one knows. That is the most dangerous thing of all. To be unseen, to pass unnoticed through the eye of a storm, is to become its beating heart. I am not to speak of the Abyss. I am not to mention the dead I carry in my blood. I must be brilliant enough to gather voices, to win the trust of peers, to become champion of Hogwarts — all the while keeping every memory, every strategy, every wound shuttered inside.
If I fail to hide, Death will know. If Death knows, the end will not be mine alone. It will swallow the last hopes of billions my comrades sacrificed for. The thought tastes of iron.
So I smile. Not a smile of reunion, but a practiced curve of lips. I take my place among the living and tuck the pendant close. I fold my memories into the small dark room behind my ribs and train my face to be ordinary.
I will learn the language of the school again. I will win friends. I will win glory. I will do it all with a mask of youth and a mind that has known the architecture of endings.
And when the time comes, when I can bend the game without shouting its secrets, I will strike at whatever remains of her. Until then, silence and cunning are my only weapons.
The game has restarted. The rules have changed. The world is bright and alive and ignorant.
This time, I will not merely survive.
This time — I intend to win.