A solitary figure, shrouded in a heavy black cloak, tread through the desolate back alleys of Hogsmeade. His eyes glowed with the brilliance of emeralds—a hue inherited from a mother he could not remember, yet held in the deepest reverence and love. It was solely due to her sacrifice that he still drew breath and held the chance to become the man he was today. Despite his youthful countenance, his eyes bore the crushing weight of the years he had endured. Within that gaze, one could discern a wisdom and a weariness far beyond such a young face. This man was none other than Harold Black, the one whispered to be the most formidable wizard born since the days of Merlin. Though, had the magical world known the true extent of his capabilities, they would have reconsidered that claim and deemed a mere comparison to Merlin insufficient.
Harry, as he was known to his kith and kin, had seen his fair share of hardships, triumphs, and ruins. From his early childhood until the age of seven—back when he remained ignorant of magic—his life had been little different from slavery. He owed this misery to his mother's sister, Petunia Dursley, and her loathsome family. Unlike normal families, they tormented him, forcing him to do all the housework and wait upon them as if he were not an innocent child, but a house-elf. It was on his seventh birthday, while his aunt had tasked him with watering the garden flowers, that he met the man who would change his life and rescue him from his so-called family. That man was Arcturus Black, his paternal grandmother's brother. Arcturus took him away and introduced him to the wizarding world, showing him that not all people were like the Dursleys. It was from him that Harry learned the truth: his parents were not the drunks and loafers who died in a car crash, as his aunt had claimed.
Having lived with "Grandfather" Arcturus for several years before departing for Hogwarts, Harry grew to fiercely loathe his future Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, for abandoning him to the Dursleys. It emerged that Lord Black had spent those years attempting to track him down to raise him as his heir. However, the old Headmaster had refused to reveal Harry's location to Arcturus, and thus it took him six long years to find the boy. By the age of eleven, Arcturus had formally named Harry the Heir to the House of Black. There was also Sirius, but he languished in Azkaban for the betrayal of the Potter family. Arcturus had repeatedly tried to aid his grandson, but Sirius had refused to accept help from the Blacks, which infuriated Arcturus to the point that he ceased caring for the family's prodigal son. On the day of his Sorting, Harry was placed into Slytherin, upsetting many—especially a certain old man with a passion for lemon drops and sweets. It was those first years at Hogwarts that became the starting point for the man he was destined to become.
Harry owed his strength, in part, to his greatest gift and simultaneous curse: the Deathly Hallows. Even as a youth, he strove to master every available branch of magic. He had always detested the Ministry of Magic's policy of banning entire fields of sorcery, branding them "Dark Arts," and thereby reducing the magical population to the mediocrity it had become by the start of the Second Wizarding War.
For this reason, he studied everything he could lay his hands on. Given the vastness of the Black family library, he was never bored. By the end of his fourth year, thanks to his eidetic memory, he knew every book in the Black library by heart and even managed to purloin tomes from the Hogwarts Restricted Section. For practice, Harry utilized the Chamber of Secrets, which he had discovered in his second year. Runic magic, necromancy, blood magic, the mind arts—including Legilimency—rituals, and much more that the Ministry would use to imprison a wizard in Azkaban for many years. Had Director Dumbledore known what Harry was doing in his spare time, his hair would have stood on end.
Everything escalated after the return of Voldemort at the end of his fourth year, during the finale of the Triwizard Tournament—a tournament he had been dragged into against his will. The battle they waged was exceedingly brutal and destructive. Harry was forced to utilize his entire then-arsenal of spells, and he did not shy away from answering dark magic with dark magic. Regardless of what others said, he knew it was one of the most effective ways to inflict maximum damage and ruin. Thanks to his training, he managed to escape alive and relatively unscathed after the grueling bout. It was on this day that Voldemort became fully convinced that Harry was the child of the prophecy—the same prophecy that had spurred him to attack the Potters on the day of his disappearance.
After that day, Arcturus Black took Harry's training seriously. Harry would never forget the day he returned to the Black estate. Upon entering 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 told him.
"What do you mean, Grandfather?" Harry did not quite understand what was being said.
"Follow me, and you shall understand," was the only reply.
Together, they ascended the ornate staircase to the third floor, where Arcturus's study was located. Approaching one of the numerous bookshelves that adorned the room, Arcturus Black drew his wand and began to chant a spell unknown to Harry. Seconds later, the bookshelf shifted, and Harry saw a gap between the cases. Arcturus stepped inside without a word, and Harry followed his grandfather in silence. At first, nothing could be seen, but then torches ignited one by one, and Harry was left speechless by the sight. The room was clearly under an Expansion Charm; its size was comparable to a five-story house. But it wasn't the size that thrilled Harry—it was the fact that the entire space was filled with books.
"What is this place, and why didn't I know about this room until today, Grandfather?" Harry asked, unable to hide the excitement in his voice.
"Since the time of Gellert Grindelwald, Ministries in many countries began seizing books and materials on vast areas of magic, subsequently outlawing them and branding them as Dark Magic," Lord Black began to explain. "These books were first brought to the Ministry for registration and then destroyed. With the help of my contacts at the Ministry—for a very handsome reward—they copied these books and folios before passing them to me."
"So all these books..." Harry began, smirking with enthusiasm.
"...Were stolen from under the Ministry's nose and handed to our family," Arcturus finished for his grandson, then continued. "Starting tomorrow, two very powerful wizards will arrive at our manor to oversee your preparation. And this library will serve to sharpen your skills. Only fools like Ministry officials, who wish to rule weak mages like a herd, would discard such extensive knowledge."
"I won't let you down, Grandfather. I will make you proud," Harry declared with confidence.
"I am already proud of you, my boy," the elderly Lord Black thought, looking at his grandson. Who could have known that on this very day began the forging of a wizard who would be feared unto death by all Death Eaters, and of whom even Voldemort himself would be wary.
His teachers became Isamu Fujiwara and Sajira Sharaf. Isamu was a Japanese man of about eighty, and Sajira was a witch from Egypt who looked no older than fifty. In Britain, almost all wizards believed that Dumbledore and Voldemort were the strongest mages of the century. Years of training under Isamu and Sajira showed Harry that this was far from the truth. There were many mages of similar caliber in the world, but they preferred to stay in the shadows and hone their craft away from prying eyes. His teachers were exactly such wizards. Their knowledge of poorly studied and ancient magic was vast. It was they who discovered the fragment of Voldemort's soul within Harry, also known as a Horcrux. Previously, there had been no known cases where the host of a Horcrux was a living person. Therefore, Sajira created a very complex ritual tailored specifically for Harry to extract the soul fragment and then destroy it. The ritual was incredibly difficult for Harry, as the Horcrux had been in his body for fourteen years, clinging to his magical core like a parasite. Harry remained unconscious for a full week after the ritual, but the main thing was that he was rid of that filth.
For the next two years, Harry dedicated himself to developing his magical abilities. Under the guidance of two wizards who were no less powerful than Dumbledore, the results were not long in coming. By the age of eighteen, he could fight on equal terms with titans like the Dark Lord. But those two years of relative calm were merely the lull before the storm. It all began on the night of October 22, 1998. Thanks to the political protection of Arcturus Black, Voldemort could not reach Harry, so he decided to eliminate the steadfast veteran of the First Wizarding War who shielded the grandson from the Dark Lord's lackeys. He managed to discover that Arcturus visited his late wife's grave every year on October 22 and decided to set an ambush. To do this, he selected fifteen Death Eaters from the Inner Circle and ten acolytes.
Arcturus realized something was wrong the moment he arrived at his wife's side, but it was too late. The Death Eaters lying in wait activated Anti-Apparition charms; flight was no longer an option. Arcturus began to defend himself, and after deciphering the enemy's tactics and skills, he went on the offensive. His attacks were brutal and merciless. The fight lasted five minutes, and Arcturus managed to send ten opponents to the afterlife, but his age took its toll, and the remaining enemies managed to wound him. Just when he thought it was his end, a cutting curse pierced and killed two Death Eaters looming over him. The man who saved him was his grandson, Harry Black, whose eyes burned like wildfire with rage. The Death Eaters had miscalculated; they did not know that Harry had come to visit his grandmother with Arcturus that day. What followed could only be described by one word: a massacre. Harry spared none of those bastards, and in response, he hung the bodies of the slain in front of Malfoy Manor. It was in this manor that Voldemort resided and hid after his return to life.
After Voldemort's attempt to kill his only surviving family member, Harry's patience snapped. He realized that the problem of the Death Eaters and the Dark faction could not be solved with half-measures. He could not trust the safety of his family to a soft-hearted Dumbledore with his "greater good" and universal forgiveness, nor to a corrupt government.
From that day on, Harry went on a rampage. He killed the Marked and other followers wherever he could, constantly perfecting his mastery. Within six months, he had sent almost everyone from the snake-faced one's Inner Circle to the grave. Through Legilimency, Harry learned many names of those who sympathized with the Death Eater cause. Let's just say, Harry certainly didn't deal in second chances. After his bloody demarche, funerals lasted for an entire month. By the end of the year, Harry managed to find and destroy all the Horcruxes, except for the snake, which was always near Voldemort.
To destroy it, Harry had to resort to the cunning so valued in Slytherin. He tracked down and placed under the Imperius Curse the only person who could get close to the Dark Lord without raising suspicion. That man was Lucius Malfoy. It cost Lucius nothing to appear at a meeting with his master and cast a Fiendfyre curse at the snake. Voldemort survived, of course, but he was incensed by the fact that someone knew his secret. The next day, Harry challenged him to a duel via the Daily Prophet, and an unstable Voldemort agreed.
The battle between Harry Black and Voldemort in the Ministry Atrium, witnessed by many, would be remembered by the wizarding world for centuries, for after their fight, the man who had terrorized the entire magical population for the past three decades was finally dead.
It was a cause for celebration, but there were those who feared the young mage possessing such great power. Albus Dumbledore shared the concerns of this group, believing that Harry might become a new Dark Lord in the future. Harry's knowledge of the Dark Arts, alongside necromancy, did nothing to convince the old man of the righteousness of what he intended to do.
In December 1999, Albus Dumbledore attempted to capture Harry to place him in custody but failed, losing the Elder Wand in the process. The Black Heir did not kill him, as it could have brought many problems. Instead, Harry and Arcturus did everything to strip Dumbledore of all power he held in Britain and on the international political stage.
Years passed, and Harry married his classmate, Daphne Greengrass. She became the meaning of his life and gave him four wonderful sons and three daughters, whom he loved dearly. After fifteen years of marriage, he began to notice that he was not aging. Delving into the problem, he realized that the Deathly Hallows were to blame. After the battle with Dumbledore, he had obtained the final hallow, the Elder Wand. Although he did not use any of these items, they recognized him as their master. Upon this realization, he repeatedly tried to rid himself of the Hallows, but they always returned to him the very next day.
Seeing everyone he loved grow old and die was heart-wrenching. He managed to psychologically prepare for Daphne's death, but watching his children, whom he had held in his arms from the day they were born, grow old and then join their mother was unbearable. It was as if each time they took a piece of his soul with them.
Harry had to live with this and adapt. He decided to travel and develop his magical abilities. Once every five years, he returned to Britain to visit his family and descendants. The once-small Black family had now grown so large that it had many members of cadet branches.
In the year 2150, Muggles managed to discover the magical world and began a hunt for mages. Harry knew it was only a matter of time before the whole world knew that magic existed. Therefore, he developed a ritual that would ensure Muggles did not notice magical phenomena and would forget everything associated with them. Due to the scale of the ritual, it took him almost two years to complete, but it was worth it. Now all mages were safe, and nothing threatened them.
After completing the ritual, Harry was able to contact the one responsible for his curse—Death. She explained to him that he could not get rid of the Hallows and, consequently, his immortality. However, there was a way out. He could not shed his immortality in this world, but he could in another. To do this, he had to pass through the Veil of Death, after which his soul would travel to another world along with the Hallows, and the price for rebirth would be his immortality. Death herself wanted to be rid of these artifacts, which gave a mortal the power to evade her, so she shared this knowledge with Black. Harry feared that in the other world, the Hallows would make him immortal again, but she assured him that in the next world, they would have no power to grant a human eternal life. This suited Harry, and he decided to take the step.
Before going to the Veil, Harry decided to prepare for his new life. He finished creating a soul-vault that was part of his essence and could not be taken away. In the vault, he placed copies of all the books and grimoires owned by the Black family, magical and non-magical plants and their seeds, magical creatures, as well as Muggle books of scientific origin and much more. Death told him that the world he was going to was similar to the Middle Ages with undeveloped magic, so he intended to create a civilized society, and these books were to help him. Harry did not intend to live in a world where there were not at least minimum modern conveniences. One of Harry's final two acts was the purchase of over a hundred house-elves and placing them in stasis; the second was more self-serving.
Anyone who knew Harry well enough understood that he was a rather vindictive individual. That is why, before leaving this world, Harry Black cleaned out the gold reserves of those countries that had hunted mages before he stopped them. No one said you couldn't combine business with pleasure, and 30,000 tons of gold is never redundant.
It was after these events and a walk through Hogsmeade—the place where Daphne so loved to walk with her husband—that he came to the circular room where the Veil of Death stood. It was Samhain, the day when the veil between the living and the dead was thinnest. He gathered his courage and stepped forward into the unknown, yet so desired, beginning. And so, on the night of October 31, 2153, Harry Black ceased to exist in this world, being reborn in a completely different one, whose fate he would change forever.
65 AC. Driftmark.
Deyemon Velaryon ran quickly through the ornate halls of Driftmark. His face was worried, and he had a reason for it. Recently, a servant had informed him that his wife's waters had broken, and she was now about to give birth to their first child. He could already hear Alyce's cries of pain, which made his heart ache with anxiety. Deyemon rushed even faster and ran to the door of their shared chambers when another cry was heard—the cry belonging to an infant. For a moment, he could not move from the realization that it was his child crying there in the room. He opened the door and froze at the sight before him.
His wife had never seemed so beautiful to him as she did now, all sweated and holding a small bundle in her arms. She had never looked so happy. Alyce raised her head and looked at her husband as he approached the bed.
"Our son," she said proudly, showing him the face of the newborn boy. Deyemon looked at his son's face and saw startlingly bright violet eyes that almost glowed. His head was adorned with a tuft of silver hair, inherited from himself. The boy's eyes seemed to be exploring his father and the entire room. Alyce handed the bundle to her husband, who tried to hold the infant as gently as possible.
"What shall we name our son?" his wife asked.
Deyemon thought for a few seconds, and then said:
"Corlys... His name is Corlys Velaryon, Heir to Driftmark."
The two new parents had no idea that the child in the father's arms was no ordinary child. He was the reborn Harry Black, the man who would forever change the history of Westeros and elevate the name of Velaryon.