Pain, I had learned, was relative.
There was the sharp, immediate agony of curse-fire ripping through flesh, the distant, echoing agony of soul-severance, and then there was this. Clinical. Precise. Almost reverent.
Goblin medicine did not treat pain as an enemy to be banished, nor as something to be endured for the sake of virtue. Pain, to them, was information. A symptom. A ledger entry written in nerves and magic alike.
We moved through corridors beneath Gringotts' public floors, where glowing runes and layered spells created a world rich with magic, inviting awe in the audience.
"This way, Lord Morningstar," Matron Ironvein said, her voice rough as worked iron.
The name still felt… new. Heavy. Like a crown set gently on a child's head, waiting for the spine to strengthen, hinting at its weight in my identity and future.
The treatment chamber was not a room so much as a sanctum, a sacred space where magic and biology intertwined, emphasizing its importance in my healing process.
A folded robe lay upon a stone bench near the entrance.
"Change," Dr. Scalecleft said curtly. "No metal. No charms. No rings."
I complied, slipping out of my borrowed clothes and into the robe. The fabric was thin, pale grey, warm against the skin despite its lightness. Goblin-made, I realized distantly. Everything they crafted was deliberate.
When I lay back upon the central table, the stone adjusted itself automatically, curving to support my spine and neck. Runes brightened beneath me, responding to my magic.
Matron Ironvein produced a crystal monocle from within her sleeve and fitted it over her left eye. The crystal flared softly, casting faint, multicolored reflections across my skin.
"Oh," she murmured. "Oh, that's a mess."
Dr. Scalecleft snorted. "Humans."
She leaned closer, peering through skin, muscle, bone, and into the lattice of magic beneath. I felt no invasion, no probing pressure. Only awareness, as though my own magic were being observed by something that understood its language fluently.
"Compulsion threads wrapped around the prefrontal arc," she said. "Anchored deep. Love potion residue crystallized along the endocrine pathways. Growth suppression charms are layered, not woven. Sloppy."
"Dumbledore always preferred quantity over elegance," I said flatly.
They did not comment. Goblins rarely did when the truth was self-evident.
The first needle, guided with the precision of a master jeweler, demonstrated the meticulous care taken, reassuring the audience of the procedure's skillfulness.
"Observe the binding points," Scalecleft murmured, adjusting a bronze loupe that magnified the spellwork beneath my skin. "Notice how the compulsions latch onto the limbic system like parasitic vines. Crude, but effective for emotional manipulation."
A second tool joined the first—a silver filament thinner than spider silk, threaded through my magic to isolate each foreign influence. I felt the whisper of its passage as it severed neural connections to implanted memories, cauterizing the pathways with runic heat.
"Potion extraction protocol," Ironvein announced. Her assistant brought forth a vial of mercury-like liquid that rippled with sentience. When poured over my chest, it seeped through my pores, seeking out the crystallized love potion residue. The mercury darkened as it absorbed the contamination, then was drawn back into the vial with a whispered incantation.
"Growth suppression next," Scalecleft ordered. He selected a blade of black diamond that glowed violet when activated. "These charms were cast during developmental stages—we must excise them layer by layer."
The blade moved in precise arcs, separating magic from biology with surgical exactness. Where Dumbledore's spells had stunted bone growth, Scalecleft injected a phosphorescent serum that stimulated osteoblasts with goblin precision.
When they reached the loyalty geas, their tools changed again—twin adamantine hooks that vibrated at frequencies tuned to break mental bondage. Ironvein worked them in counter-rotation, unraveling the geas strand by strand while Scalecleft monitored my vitals through a floating orb of enchanted glass.
"Neurological recalibration required," Ironvein noted when the last thread snapped. She produced a tuning fork that resonated with my magic's natural frequency, held it to my temple until my aura pulsed in harmony.
Two hours later, Ironvein stepped back and removed her monocle.
"Done," she said, wiping her instruments with a cloth that dissolved residual magic. "Your biology is now 97.3% free of foreign interference. The remaining 2.7% represents natural magical imprinting from your parents and family bloodline."
Dr. Scalecleft handed me a mirror. The face staring back felt different, even though my face looked the same; I knew that as I grew, I would look less like my father.
I sagged as the restraints released, caught instantly by Scalecleft's steady grip. They helped me dress again, though I noticed they had taken my oversized clothes and brought in some better-fitting clothes that were definitely far more expensive than what I was wearing before.
Delicate fabric, deep forest green, edged with silver embroidery. The cut was clean, elegant, and what a normal pureblood child would wear.
I looked… healthier. Taller. My reflection in the polished stone showed fuller cheeks and brighter eyes.
A goblin entered, bowing deeply.
"Lord Morningstar," he said, presenting a folder and a coin purse.
The purse was beautiful, black leather worked with gold thread, the drawstrings ending in tiny sun-and-crown charms. It felt heavy, reassuring.
"Twenty thousand Galleons," he continued. "And documents. Prepared by order of King Kharzug."
I flipped through them.
Foster families. Pages and pages of names-Muggle and wizard families seeking to foster, each representing a new life, a new story, and perhaps, my own future.
Then I saw it.
Granger.
Richard and Emily Granger. Doctor. Dentist. One daughter. Denied repeatedly.
Hermione.
Interesting.
I smiled slowly and turned the folder toward the goblin. "This one."
His eyes gleamed. "As you wish. I shall have the documents signed and notify the Grangers. More information shall be given once we have everything sorted."
The dagger's hilt pressed cold against my palm as I finished strapping it to my thigh. That's when the air shifted—a pressure change, like the moment before lightning strikes. The door creaked open, revealing a goblin whose hunched posture did nothing to diminish the reverence with which he carried his burden.
The grimoire was a monstrosity. Three inches thick, bound in black dragonhide so dark it seemed to drink the torchlight. Gold filigree traced the edges, forming intricate patterns that writhed when you blinked. But it was the crest that stole my breath: the Morningstar sigil, raised in blood-red enamel. A twelve-pointed sunburst crowned by obsidian spikes, bisected by a downward-thrust sword wreathed in flames. Seven stars burned at its base—one for each of the original Houses they'd devoured to forge their empire. The whole design pulsed faintly, as though the cover contained a living heartbeat.
I knew this book. My bones knew it.
"This belongs to the Dark Lord Sanguis," the goblin rasped, his knobbly fingers stroking the cover like a lover. "Your true grandfather. Every spell his bloodline ever crafted sleeps here." His jagged teeth gleamed in the firelight. "Including the ones that made the Wizarding World piss itself in 45 A.D."
The laugh tore from my throat before I could stop it—harsh, guttural, exactly like his. Of course, they'd preserved the good stuff. The forbidden geometries. The soul-stitching.
My fingers hovered over the cover. The leather seared my fingerprints the second I touched it. Good. It reminded me.
"The homunculus rites," I said. Not a question.
The goblin's grin widened. "Kharzug anticipated you'd ask. The vats are prepared." He gestured toward a wrought-iron door where three more goblins stood at attention, their eyes glittering with something between awe and terror.
The laboratory stank of copper and burnt hair. Alchemical symbols glowed along the walls—some so old they predated Latin. My designated workstation held a silver basin the size of a cauldron, already filled with a swirling black liquid that reflected no light.
The grimoire was set down as I looked at it, and I snapped my finger.
"I need information about the Humunculus."
Pages blurred past in a storm of handwritten glyphs until—THUNK. It stopped dead at a spread drenched in brownish stains. The diagrams showed a faceless figure formed from what appeared to be risen dough, its chest split open to reveal a gaping cavity. Ingredients crowded the margins:
-1 oz of Powdered basilisk bone
-3 drops of mercury
-The heart of a raven
-50 grams of ashwood
-2 cups of riverbed clay
-blood of the user (freely given)
And then, at the bottom, circled in what looked like dried blood:
A philosopher's stone or equivalent life-matrix.
I stared. The last intact stone had been destroyed decades ago. Unless...
A goblin coughed. "The Goblin King's private collection contains a... facsimile." His clawed hands trembled as he said it. Forged during the Crusades. It will suffice."
The materials appeared with military precision. I worked swiftly—grinding bones with a mortar that wailed when struck, distilling the mercury until it sang middle C. The raven's heart went in last, still twitching as I plunged it into the mixture. The potion turned the color of a fresh bruise.
Then came the messy part. My dagger bit deep into my palm. Blood dripped onto the lump of enchanted clay waiting beside the basin. The stuff writhed like a living thing as I kneaded my essence into it, shaping the crude beginnings of a humanoid form.
Kharzug himself arrived, a blood-red stone clutched in both hands. Smaller than I expected—no larger than a goose egg—but the way it pulsed with inner fire made my teeth ache.
"Six hours," he hissed. "No more."
I pressed the stone into the homunculus's chest cavity just as the clay began to swell. The incantation rolled off my tongue in perfect High Latin, each syllable dragging power from my marrow.
The explosion of crimson lightning left afterimages burned into my retinas. Smoke coiled upward, taking the shape of screaming faces. And in the center of the maelstrom, the figure grew—stretching, solidifying.
The face that emerged from the haze was mine. Or rather, his. Tom Riddle's sharp cheekbones and aristocratic nose. But the hair was slightly different than what I ever worn — this raven black hair that had been braided over one shoulder in this elegant and clean manner. When those red eyes snapped open, I saw my own reflection swimming in their depths.
He knelt without prompting, his voice smooth as poisoned honey. "Milord."
I reached out, tracing the jagged scar that ran from his collarbone to sternum—the only imperfection in an otherwise flawless recreation.
"You'll need a name," I mused. The grimoire's pages fluttered in agreement. "From this day on, you shall take the name-"
<------>
The air smelled of diesel and old stone, a living thing that clung to the back of the throat. King's Cross breathed in crowds and exhaled noise. Shoes slapped against stone. Train brakes screamed. Voices overlapped into a restless chant of departures and delays. I stood a little apart from it all, a boy-shaped island with a battered suitcase and far too many secrets.
Hadrian Potter waited.
Xernus was gone.
The goblins had claimed him the moment we crossed into Diagon Alley, their smiles sharp and ceremonial, promises of remaking etched into every nod. They would sand Tom Riddle down to something refined. Teach him posture, cadence, silence. How to let a pause wound deeper than a curse. The mask with gold-veined vines had not been about hiding a face. It had been about erasing a history.
I sat on an empty bench near Platform Nine and drew the grimoire from my bag.
The book responded like a living thing. Leather warmed beneath my fingers, the sigil of House Morningstar faintly pulsing, a stylized star crowned by a ring of thorns and flame. When I opened it, the parchment inside shifted, ink crawling into new shapes as if waking from a long sleep.
The text did not read so much as speak.
I am Aurelian Morningstar, Sixth Imperial Lord of the House,
and if you read this, then the world has either survived us…
or failed to deserve us.
The script flowed in deliberate strokes, each line confident, amused, faintly disdainful.
Aurelian Morningstar.
Duelist. Philosopher. Tyrant, depending on who had survived him.
He wrote of an age before Ministries and committees, before magic was chained to parchment and vote. The Morningstars had ruled then, not as kings but as architects. They owned Hogwarts not as a school, but as a sanctuary and forge. Gringotts had been theirs as well, not a bank, but a vault-city, a place where contracts were carved into stone and reality obeyed.
We trusted fools, Aurelian wrote.
They wished to build a Ministry. We allowed it, thinking them harmless.
Should that mistake still exist, correct it.
Power is not meant to be shared with the incompetent.
If they refuse to kneel, burn the structure and salt the idea.
No hesitation. No apology.
The pages turned on their own.
The grimoire shifted tone, becoming almost reverent as it chronicled the family.
Merlin Emyrs-Morningstar, the Starborn Sage, who had trained Arthur Pendragon not to rule, but to endure.
Morgana le Fay, accepted into the House by rite and blood, whose darkness was so refined it bent prophecy around her.
Cassian Morningstar, who rejected wands entirely and perfected muscle magic, wrestling a nesting clutch of dragons into submission with sigils carved into his own skin.
Valerius Morningstar, Light Wizard and inventor of the homunculus, who proved creation itself was not sinful when guided by will and compassion.
Branches split from the trunk like constellations. Names flickered past, familiar even now. Families founded, wars ended, spells seeded into the world like landmines waiting for the right blood to wake them.
To access what we have made, the book instructed,
Command the book's access to what it holds.
Feed the grimoire your magic and name your need.
We will answer.
Then the tone changed again.
The ink softened. Slowed.
A letter.
To the Next Lord of Morningstar,
Whom we do not know, but already trust,
Welcome.
You carry a crown that devoured us all.
You own Hogwarts. You own Gringotts.
You own the debt this world owes our name.
The ring will shield you from hostile intent.
Not curses. Not blades. Intent.
Those who mean you harm will falter before they understand why.
Restore what was taken.
Take back the power and the glory.
And if the Ministry exists…
do what we lacked the courage to finish.
We envy you.
—The House of Morningstar
My breath came out slowly.
The ring.
I froze, memory snapping into place, and reached into my pocket. The box was heavier than it had any right to be. When I opened it, ten rings rested within, each on black velvet like planets awaiting orbit. They were pretty beautiful, though I knew that if I put the rings on now, I would only be rejected.
I closed the box as I moved the grimoire and slid it back into my bag, so that I could read it later. I leaned back against the bench and waited.
About half an hour later, I saw a man and woman enter the station and look around, their eyes landing on me, and whisper to each other before the man nodded as they approached. The man adjusted his glasses. The woman clutched her purse as if it were a lifeline.
"Excuse me, are you Harry Potter?" the man asked.
I looked up and nodded. I see that Kharzug kept his promise, as my papers had my previous name, well, a name that I will be using as an alias.
Relief softened them instantly.
"Richard Granger," he said, offering a hand. "This is my wife, Emily."
Emily smiled, warm and uncertain. "We're delighted to meet you finally."
Richard lifted my suitcase with a slight grunt. "Hermione's finishing school. She's a little excited to meet you. I hope that the two of you can be close friends."
Emily laughed. "You know, she really loves books. Always trying to learn something new."
I smiled faintly.
So did I.