RPG Announcement
This is basically an RPG pimp so feel free to ignore, but it starts out with a fic I wrote to set up the backstory, so maybe have a gander anyway. DH SPOILERS.
Title: Twenty Years Later Rating: PG
On the twentieth anniversary of Voldemort's downfall, a lone Death Eater, one of the last of a dying breed, using Muggle implements that his predecessors would have turned their noses up at, managed to bring about what Voldemort never had: Harry Potter's death.
And not only his. In the rubble of where once stood the Ministry, hundreds lay dead. Hundreds who had gathered for the Memorial, to hear the war heroes speak. Along with Harry's body, there was his wife's and their young daughter's. Ron and Hermione Weasley. Bill and Fleur Weasley. Andromeda Tonks. And many, many others.
Not in that list of names was Teddy Lupin, who was despite all protests of entitlement, was not given leave from his module of Auror training in Romania to attend the memorial. There is no way of describing how he felt when he heard the news, nor how he even managed to get through the next couple of days and make it back to England. And when he got there, he found that not only was he suddenly one of the few remaining living in his adopted family, but one of the few remaining Aurors.
No one knew exactly what had happened at the Ministry. The method of destruction was determined as probably a suicide bomber, using a real bomb, of the Muggle variety. But whoever the bomber was, he'd managed to escape by magic, or had been blown to unrecognizable bits. Everyone close enough to him to have seen his face was dead, and no one had any idea if this was an isolated incident, or worse... an omen that Dark Wizards were building forces again.
And Teddy, for one, had no idea what to do. He found himself with a handful of owls from the now orphaned James and Albus, still at Hogwarts, and from their cousins, Rose and Hugo. One from Victoire, begging him to tell her it wasn't true. And another from the Ministry, the official word of his grandmother's death, as if he didn't already know. And with orders from his superiors to look into anyone who might possibly have seen anything, any clue as to the identity of the bomber.
Teddy's thoughts, meanwhile, kept coming back to, If only I could speak to them again, I could ask them who did this, and I could ask them what I do now... Was he supposed to take care of James and Albus now? Could someone take them away since they weren't related? He was terrified of losing what little remained of the only family he'd ever known.
And when he asked those questions, he kept coming back to a conversation he'd had with Harry after his first year at Hogwarts. Being around all of the other children who had stories about their parents. Despite the fame that he had for knowing the Potters, he still found himself for the first time crying over how unfair it all was. Why had they had to leave him? Why had they both left? Why did they both have to fight that night? Wasn't he important? Couldn't they have stayed with him instead of going out to face their deaths?
And Harry had sat him down and told him something that he made him swear he could never repeat to anyone. Harry said he'd never told anyone this, not even his wife, and he never planned to. He told Teddy about the Resurrection Stone. And he told him about what Remus' ghost had said, about how he only wanted a better life for Teddy. And how he knew that Teddy's mother had felt the same way, how she was one of the bravest witches he'd known, what a great Auror she was, how they'd both died fighting for what was good and what was right, and how they had made a better world.
Teddy had begged Harry to let him use the Resurrection Stone to talk to them, but Harry was resolute. He told him that he'd dropped it in the Forbidden Forest without a marker, and that it was now long overgrown and would be impossible for anyone to find. Which was for the best, he'd promised Teddy. Obsessing over death keeps you from living your life.
Oh, but now! If Harry had only known what would happen... he would agree that this was different. He'd have to.
Teddy knew that Harry was right about one thing, that there would be no way to find the Stone now, not after 20 years in the forest. But he did know a time when it would not have been so difficult to find.
He stole one of the few Time Turners available at the Ministry. They had all been destroyed years ago, before he was born, and they took some time and painstaking care to make that there were still very few. But he would bring it back. He wasn't going to change the future at all, he was just going to mark the place of one little stone so that he could find it later...
He went directly to Hogwarts grounds and had no trouble using the Time Turner. When he found himself in the Forbidden Forest, somehow he just knew it was the right time. It was quiet, but the clearing was still there. The one that Harry had described to him when telling him of the final confrontation with Voldemort. Where Harry had dropped the Stone. There was no one there, but the embers were just dying in the fire. Teddy thought it was probably the next morning. The sun was just starting to rise.
He pictured his parents' bodies lying dead in the castle and shuddered.
It took him nearly a half hour to find it, but when he did, he was sure that it was what he was looking for. He picked it up, and had no idea what to do. His plan had been to bury it somewhere and mark the place clearly, something that would show up in twenty years. So that he wouldn't mess with time somehow by having two Resurrection Stones in the same timeline. But now he was wondering, how would he even know how to use it? When he got it in his time, how did he get it to work?
Curiously, he turned it over in his hands, and again his mind wandered to his parents. And he thought, idly, as if a child missing his family, If only I could just bring back all those who died on these grounds here tonight...
And then suddenly there was... an explosion. Not like the one at the Ministry, but an explosion of magic, out from the stone in Teddy's hands, like white hot fire, burning his hands but he couldn't seem to drop it. The force seemed to send shockwaves through the entire forest, and it was enough to knock Teddy to the ground, unconscious. The stone fell from his limp hand.
... and elsewhere, on Hogwarts grounds, bodies began to stir.
And that's how the story begins, for a new post-DH RPG:
Still casting, lots of characters left. Some GREAT writers already on board. I managed to round up a bunch of my old RP buddies from The Leaky and Unholy Trinity and the like. This is my baby, and maeglinyedi and mediasavant are helping mod.
So. Excited. And I know it's a cracked out idea, but enough people told me they liked it that we just ran with it. If it hadn't turned into an RPG I was going to write an epic novel-length fic. The game starts on Monday, and if you're one of those who just likes to lurk, everything takes place in the_eighth_day so just friending that comm would set you up.