Harry Potter and the Red Temple Ch.1 (HP/GoT)

AN: I started to cowrite with another author to bring you all frequent content posts. The previous HP rewrite and this new story are done with the same author (CesareBorgiaWrites.) This will be in addition to fics I write by myself.

Note about this new story: I haven't tagged it as SFW or NSFW due to how I plan to split the chapters. There will be smut (which I will cut out for the SFW tier) but a lot of this story is plot driven. The inspirations behind it are The Havoc Side of the Force by Tsu Do Nimh and The Bloody Wolf of the North by Daemon Belaerys.

291st Year After Aegon’s Conquest

With haste and fear, the Lord of Light’s faithful servant, Melisandre of Asshai, Binder of Shadows and Priestess of R’hllor, returned to the Great Temple in Volantis.

Her mission to the Lands Beyond the Sunset had not been a complete waste of time. Thoros of Myr was a much-reduced figure, more metaphorically than literally, as he was increasingly gone to seed.

Worse, the flame was dimmed by drink and nightmares – perhaps the mission to the last Dragon King had not been a good idea, the once-mighty line reduced to a cackling, incontinent, murderous lunatic with an unhealthy obsession with fire. And that was coming from a Priestess of the god of fire.

Robert Baratheon, the successor to Aerys Targaryen, was an unworthy figure, if perhaps less so than the last Targaryen had been. Wine-sodden and more interested in perceived martial glory and the next bosom to bury his beard in. It was pretty self-evident that there would be no conversion of the heathen sevener king or his court to the True Faith, not under Robert Baratheon, at least.

The elder of his two brothers had potential. Stannis Baratheon was a solemn, dutiful, if bitter man, scorning religion and gods alike. Perhaps he was a godless man, his soul washed on endless bitter tides.

Yet Melisandre’s visions in the flames had shown the second Baratheon brandishing a blazing sword against the darkness, a single burning brand illuminating the path of humanity. The hero who would lead mankind against the Long Night.

There were many names for such a hero. Hyrkoon the Hero, Yin Tar, Neferion, and Eldric Shadowchaser.

Above all, Azor Ahai.

The flames showed R’hllor’s chosen that, clearly, Stannis Baratheon was the second coming of Azor Ahai, reborn amidst bitter salt and smoke, a sword drawn from amidst the flames.

Lightbringer.

Only, there was one little, almost insignificant hiccup in the prophecy of the Prince Who Was Promised, Melisandre’s grand plan to guide Stannis Baratheon to the throne and the kingdom, and the only war that would matter, the great battle where the living would face the forces of death and darkness.

Stannis Baratheon was dead. Very dead. Irrecoverably dead even.

She’d checked.

Even if there had been a hundred Red Priests to breathe fresh fire into his distinctly waterlogged soul, it wasn’t possible for a human to function after that much of their body had been eaten by crabs, followed by the typical evisceration and embalming of the seveners’ Silent Sisters.

He was an ex-hero, salt-stained fish food after being hauled out of the Sunset Sea off Fair Isle with a bolt from a Greyjoy ballista buried up to its black fletchings in his chest. He’d won the great sea battle against the Ironborn, but it didn’t take poking him with a stick to prove that it didn’t matter how much magic she used.

He wasn’t getting up.

Anyway, poking him with a stick proved that Stannis Baratheon was, in fact, dead.

That prompted some panic. What could mere men do in the face of an icy, deathly foe amidst the Long Night without the flames of Lightbringer in the hand of Azor Ahai to lead them?

Melisandre chose to flee Dragonstone and the increasingly unstable, obsessive Lady Selyse on the fastest merchant heading for the Free Cities that she could find.

After settling back into her quarters in the Great Temple, Melisandre had just started on the written report for the office of the High Priest, even if she expected to have to present it verbally as well.

They might be servants of the Lord of Light, but they were in Volantis, the greatest of the daughters of Valyria’s empire. There was no issue that couldn’t be stretched out interminably by applying bureaucracy.

It was as she was penning the report that her door opened, admitting the closest thing she had to an actual friend, her Sister before the Lord of Light, Kinvara, who had arrived bearing a large wine jar under one arm and a pair of goblets clutched in her other hand.

With a sigh of relief, Melisandre found herself able to put aside the drudgery of temple bureaucracy, sinking into a chair by the brazier, the goblet filled, then emptied just as quickly.

Volantene red, a relief after months of whatever brew the ships she traveled on had, and before that, Westeros’s choice of two wines or various more-or-less horrid ales.

“How did you know?” the Shadowbinder asked, slumping in her chair, staring at the brazier.

“I knew.” Kinvara spared her an enigmatic smile as she refilled the goblet.

“The signs, the portents in the flames, the visions our lord gave me all pointed to Stannis Baratheon being the Prince Who Was Promised.” Melisandre knew she sounded utterly exhausted, but in all fairness, who wouldn’t be after the collapse of their mission?

With it came the disdain of the temple-bound priests who were more interested in political power and sneered down at those who measured their worth in their faith in the Lord of Light and their talents in the arcane arts.

“Cut down by some illiterate pirate from a salt-scoured, scum-infested island beyond the Sunset Lands and left for crabs and fishes,” she finished bitterly.

“Perhaps, sister, we have faced our vanity, tested by the Lord of Light, as steel faces flame and oil before it can become the blade of a sword.” Kinvara offered eventually, looking faintly surprised at how quickly her friend had downed the first, second, and third goblets of wine.

It was, at least, good Volantene stock from the sunny, fertile soil of the vineyards up the Chroyne, not the awful ale that most Westerosi drank.

“We strove to see answers in the flames. Did we come too close to demanding of the Lord of Light, demanding that we be shown his chosen hero? We have been humbled, sister, and now He can send forth his hero to us.”

Melisandre slowly nodded, then suddenly sprang from her chair, the goblet cast aside uncaringly, clattering on the small table as she crossed the room in a couple of long strides, the door slamming open at the merest touch.

“What—” Kinvara’s usual imperturbable nature, the mask she had practiced until it reached perfection, vanished momentarily before she gathered herself and swept after her sister-priestess. She followed her through the long torch-lit halls of the Red Temple until they came to the great flame.

The Great Flame stood at the heart of the temple, a hearth the size of a hall lying beneath the smoke-blackened vaults that stood far above, stoked without pause with enormous balks of wood that could only be borne by four men at a time, tended day and night by acolytes and watched over by the temple priests.

It was before this enormous pyre that Kinvara found herself watching as her friend strode towards it, uncaring as the hems of her robes began to smoke. The threads glowed and curled as she fell to her knees before the flames, crying out prayers to the Lord of Light in High Valyrian.

Melisandre prayed for forgiveness, promised fealty and obeisance to the Lord of Light, her words full of sorrow and humility. Then, more and more of their fellow priests joined their sister’s intercessions, praying for His light to be cast upon them, to send them His chosen hero, the Prince Who Was Promised, the champion whom they swore they would follow and serve.

The chanted prayers continued for what felt like a lifetime of men until the flames roared to the very vaults above them, licking at the stones.

Then, a wind picked up within the chamber, tugging at the garments of the priests and acolytes, growing in ferocity until it shrieked and howled between the pillars of the hearth, nearly drowning out the prayers of the faithful.

The unnatural wind tore at the flames, ripping them into two distinct columns, growing into an arch, a gateway.

A great echoing, ripping roar came through this gateway, almost as if some great beast tore at the gate.

Those who dared look beheld a great mount, a beast flanked in gleaming steel and saddled in gloss black, a single great eye blazing pale and shod with a pair of wheels, set one ahead and one behind. Upon it rode their champion, who was the darkness of death and the blazing brand of life.

The Lord of Light had accepted the remorse, the devotion, the worship, and submission of his priests and priestesses. At long last, he had reached out and given them his hero.

Azor Ahai, the Prince Who Was Promised.

The light who would lead humanity against the darkness.

The sword of mankind.

It was a shame he hadn’t paused to consult with or warn the aforementioned hero.

***

A magically hidden manor house in the English countryside, some years after the Battle of Hogwarts.

The old manor, nearly four hundred years old, built right as the Statute of Secrecy was being drawn up, was unlikely to see out the evening, let alone the year.

Spellfire screamed and crashed through the building, blasting huge chunks out its walls and setting alight to tapestry and timber alike. Thick walls of carved stone shuddered as if under the blows of siege engines and the artifice of an army at war, yet this was the work of just a single man.

Churned-up mud squelched under the soles of dragonskin boots as Harry advanced, his old Phoenix wand, reborn from destruction, singing a song of righteous wrath as he poured a torrent of flames in a billowing jet a hundred feet long, lashing at the walls of the house.

A fire that cleansed and purified. Yet he was swathed in a different sort of power. A cloak of shimmering silver hung around his shoulders, fastened at the throat with a clasp bearing a black stone, black enough to seem like a singularity sucking out every drop of light around it, but for the graven image that was cut into it.

A circle within a triangle, bisected by a line.

Bit by bit, every window of the manor grew bright as the fire took hold within the manor, smoke beginning to seethe out through the gaps between the tiles of the roof.

At last, Harry drew back his magic from the Phoenix-feather wand, its song growing quiet as the other wand grew louder, never quite satisfied with the blood it had shed, not even after eight hundred years of battle, and as the iron-bound oak of the manor house’s front door swung open, the Elder Wand’s war-song thundered through his mind and his magic, the semi-sentient weapon surging from his belt to his hand with a half-thought.

With his teeth bared in a vicious grin, Harry let loose.

Antonin Dolohov, the utter bastard whose curse scar still pained Hermione these years on, was not the first through the door—of course not.

Why would the veteran Death Eater face a foe he was barely a match for when he could throw the mix of angry Pureblood cannon fodder and professionally hired wands, mercenaries, mostly Russian and Serbian, at him instead?

Harry wouldn’t have been surprised if Dolohov was diving through some tunnel or hiding like a rat, intent on escape.

Magic surged through his veins, pure and untainted. Voldemort was half-right; there was power, but weakness or strength didn’t make a wizard. It was will.

Good and evil did exist, whether the slain Dark Lord had wanted to admit it or not. Harry’s power was harnessed to doing things that most well-adjusted people would cringe away from, and that was why he fought.

So that children, unlike those of his generation, never had to pick up a wand and fight for their lives against evil.

The first spell lashed out, a scything cutter that unfurled like a ribbon as it flashed, pale and bright, across the singed lawn, crashing into the ranks of these neo-Death Eaters at chest height, cleaving down the first rank.

The second spell came so swiftly that only a handful of shields had been cast when the flaming ball of a horrendously overpowered blasting curse crashed into the flagstones in front of the door, blowing shards of stone in every direction, the blast shattering every window in the front of the manor house.

By the time Harry had cast his third and fourth spells, there were enough interlocking shield charms to make blowing through the phalanx difficult, but this was far from unexpected.

Instead, he lifted his open, empty left hand. He cast with it, levitating the shattered stones and glass shards, and with the Elder Wand’s warlike thirst and delight ringing in every spell it cast, raised a tempest, the wind blowing, whipping around his foes, a blender in the making that only needed the final ingredient.

Harry summoned his ‘blades,’ the shrapnel left by the blasting curse, right into the tempest. By the time his spellwork had done its job, the cannon fodder was dead, dying, or maimed.

Amidst the chaos, none had seen him touch his hand to the deathly black stone cloak clasp and vanish in a ripple of silver.

The dozen professional mercenaries spilled out of the manor, now well-ablaze, forming a perimeter with the speed of long practice, harsh orders barked in their native languages as they surveyed the slaughter and looked for its perpetrator.

A few moments later, they realized their mistake, looking outwards rather than up.

The metallic snarl of Harry’s heavily enchanted Black Shadow motorbike ripped through the night, drowning out the crackling inferno that had seized hold of the manor house.

Gunning the bike from his perch atop the portico over the doorway, Harry rode the bike along the ridge line of its roof, a grin of exhilaration painted across his face as the motorbike’s tire left stone and found oblivion.

The wet crunch of a human being beneath six hundred pounds of classic bike and the vengeful wizard was enough to focus the mercenaries on Harry, now eleven in number, for as long as it took him to spin the bike around, thumb pressed down on the button for the Dragonfire injection, the exhausts glowing hot as he bathed the courtyard in fire.

"Yes," Harry admitted to himself.

It had become something of a theme. He wasn’t a pyromaniac, but when a forest grew too wild, fire reduced it back to ashes for fresh shoots to grow tall.

It was fire that cauterized a wound that had grown infected. Perhaps it was a philosophical point, but part of him felt that this was his fate since the wand containing Fawkes’s feather had chosen him.

Not some whipping boy of a prophecy given by a drunken fool so sodden with sherry that she would probably combust if you held a lit match to her.

No, he was the burning sword, a cleansing fire that would excise Riddle’s ilk from Britain and the wider world.

Dripping burning Dragonfire Concentrate, there was little the mercenaries could do, no matter how experienced or talented they were as Harry cut them down, one after another, keeping a tight rein on the semi-sentient magical weapon in his hand as he sent out two dozen curses in half-as-many seconds, until he stood alone, atop the rumbling motorbike, surrounded by corpses.

Then, his eyes fell upon the inferno beyond the crumbling doorway.

With a twist of his hand, Harry gunned the Black Shadow at the doorway, leaning back to ride it up the handful of steps and into the flames. A bellowed challenge ripped from his throat as he plunged into the blazing manor house, uncaring of the inferno. Fire was his to wield, and these flames came from his wand and his magic.

“DOLOHOV!”

The last Inner Circle Death Eater at large, Dolohov was so close that Harry could feel his magic within the building, a feeling that he let guide him, one hand on the bike’s throttle, the other, his off-hand, wielding the Phoenix feather wand, lent extra potency as they plunged deeper and deeper into the very inferno that the wand had set.

Harry knew the bastard’s plan. He’d hide under potent flame-freezing charms until the wardstone, the rune-graven lump of granite that anchored the enchantments protecting the manor, cracked under the inferno.

Those enchantments stopped Dolohov from simply apparating out of using a Portkey.

Harry had no intention of letting the bastard escape again. Spells flashed from his wand, smashing aside blazing timbers, embers brushed off the ancient Peverell cloak like molten glass, his magic unleashed.

Dolohov would know where he was, every bit as much as he knew where Dolohov was. He knew the bastard, even if he knew the old Death Eater would escape a battle lost, as he had done time and again. Dolohov was no coward. Pragmatism was not cowardice.

With the two of them alone in the blazing ruins, he could not, would not, resist the opportunity to take a shot at Harry.

And, so it was. With burning carpet under the motorbike’s wheels, curtains, and tapestry blowing embers across a long hallway, Dolohov abruptly appeared, swinging out of the overhang of a great Jacobean fireplace, his wand already alight with a purple flame.

The flame-cutter.

How familiar. How ironic. How unoriginal. The same spell he’d used on Hermione and tried to use on him those years ago.

The closing speed was such that Dolohov only got one spell off before Harry was upon him. It was well-cast, precise, and powerful. It was water to Death’s own cloak and the dragonskin greatcoat beneath.

Harry, in turn, had seized up a burning timber, and with nothing but magic and will, it took the form of a blazing spear, which he drove clean through his enemy’s chest with such force that Dolohov was driven to the floor, one wheel thumping over his body as the lance nailed him through the floorboards.

Yet, as Harry approached the end wall at a rate of knots, the bike’s back wheel riding over the dying Death Eater, before he could hit the brakes, the cracked, blackened stones vanished in a curtain of flames, timber beneath his wheels and plaster above his head evaporating into an inferno that surrounded him, as if he was riding through nothing but a tunnel of fire, long after he should have struck stone.

Flames rushed past him as he plunged into oblivion for a lifetime, until, without warning, the curtain of fire parted and deposited him and the bike somewhere that probably wasn’t Kansas.

Harry had not much more than a heartbeat to take in the enormous hearth into which he was plunging, the hall around it, and the dozens of red-robed supplicants kneeling around it.

That was when the bike hit the ground, the tires squealing and sending ash everywhere until Harry and the Black Shadow finally parted ways.

They tumbled down the broad, shallow steps that elevated the hearth above the hall. Harry was thrown clear, the bike skidding across the polished floor, even as he hit one of the pillars surrounding the hearth and tumbled down the steps.

The last thing he saw before the encroaching darkness seized him was that he had come to rest in front of a woman, her skin pale even in the firelight, her hair the red of freshly spilled blood, and her face set in an expression of abject confusion.

***

“The Lord of Light has cast his light upon us. Apparently.” Kinvara offered as her friend looked from her to the young man at her feet and then to the presence of Benerro, the High Priest himself, on an overlooking balcony.

“He works in mysterious ways,” Melisandre replied, her voice shaky.

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