Hadrian Peverel: The Lord Of Haven

Prologue: The War That Should Have Ended

The battlefield reeked of blood and fire.

Harry Potter stood alone amidst the ruins of what had once been London's Ministry District, his breathing steady despite the destruction around him. His robes, once black, were now slashed and scorched, caked in the remnants of a war that had dragged on too long.

The Dark Lord was finally dead.

Voldemort's corpse lay at his feet, face frozen in something between agony and disbelief, as if he still could not comprehend that he had lost.

Harry barely felt anything. No triumph. No relief. No sense of victory.

Around him, the shattered remains of the wizarding world lay exposed. The Ministry had collapsed—both literally and politically. Gringotts stood in ruins, its treasures plundered, its goblins either dead or scattered. The Order of the Phoenix was reduced to a handful of weary survivors. The Death Eaters? The lucky ones had died in battle. The rest, like Lucius Malfoy, had vanished into the shadows, waiting for another chance to spread their poison.

The war was over. But the world was broken beyond repair.

A gust of wind carried the stench of burning flesh through the air. The bodies of the fallen littered the streets, their wands clutched in stiff fingers, their eyes staring at nothing. Civilians who had begged for protection, witches and wizards who had trusted the Ministry to save them, lay sprawled in unnatural positions—collateral damage in a war they had never been prepared for.

Harry clenched his jaw.

This was the cost of their mistakes. The Order had fought bravely, but they had never fought correctly. Dumbledore's ideals, noble as they were, had allowed this to happen. He had preached restraint while their enemies slaughtered innocents. He had insisted on mercy when the Death Eaters had known none.

And now, Harry was the only one left to pick up the pieces.

A soft whisper reached his ears, barely more than a breath of wind. His gaze snapped toward the wreckage of the Department of Mysteries, where a faint, pulsing glow emanated from within. Something ancient. Something powerful.

The Hall of Prophecies had been obliterated in the war, but deeper within the Ministry's ruins, time itself still lingered.

Harry stepped forward, drawn by something he could not name. His boots crunched over broken glass and smoldering wood as he moved past the wreckage of a collapsed archway.

And then he saw it.

The artifact hovered in midair, untouched by the destruction around it. It was old—older than even the Ministry itself—etched with runes that pulsed with slow, deliberate power.

Harry knew better than to trust something he didn't understand. He should have walked away. But something in his blood, something deep and instinctual, whispered to him.

This was not a mistake.

Before he could think better of it, his fingers brushed against the ancient stone.

Magic howled through the air.

The world twisted, reality folding in on itself.

The last thing Harry saw was the ruined remains of his war-ravaged world collapsing into nothingness.

And then—

Darkness.

A Different Time. A Different War.

When Harry awoke, he knew immediately that something was wrong.

The air smelled different—not of smoke and blood, but of parchment and fresh rain. Gone were the ruins of battle. Instead, he found himself lying on cool grass, the distant sounds of an untouched world murmuring around him.

His fingers dug into the earth. His magic, which had been coiled like a predator for years, stretched outward, tasting the air.

He was no longer in his war-torn future.

Slowly, Harry—Hadrian Peverell, he corrected himself—rose to his feet.

He turned his gaze toward the distant outline of Hogwarts, its towers gleaming beneath a sky free of war. A world untouched by destruction.

A world that still had time.

A world he would not allow to fall.

This time, he would not play by Dumbledore's rules.

This time, he would not wait for the world to break before trying to fix it.

This time, he would decide how the war ended.

And it would end before it ever began.