Written by: Spoon

WARNING

Given the kinds of stories John has posted, you may be reading this expecting more crack. It is not. This story won't, as far as I plan (though that's not saying much with John involved) come close to causing any sort of gut busting laughter. A few chuckles here and there maybe, but this is not a humor driven fic. It will involve serious PTSD, breakdowns and graphic descriptions of torture, death and injury—of which there will be plenty. There will be reference to things that may trigger some people.

So if you want a story that will make you laugh so hard it hurts, this is not it, unless there's something seriously wrong with you, and I encourage you to wait for the next chapter of whatever crackfic John is writing at the time. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy.

Rebirth of a Snake 1: Scorched Earth

Draco Lucius Malfoy shakily sat up, resting on his heels as he took the towel offered to him. Wiping his throbbing hands free of blood, he sighed and tried to calm his trembling body. "It's done," he croaked out hoarsely, voice cracking as it passed his dry throat. Coughing once, the man swallowed painfully then spoke again, louder this time. "It's done. The circles are done." Talking caused his dried lips to split open, spilling blood down his chin.

A dark, scarred hand wrapped around his elbow and pulled him to his feet. His body protested the movement and he nearly collapsed. He had been bowed over since dawn three days ago, and it was now approaching sunset. His knees were bruised, bloody and barely responsive, his back and neck screaming in unsubtle agony, exposed skin red and cracked from sunburn. His hands were blistered and worn raw from working on the ritual circles non-stop for almost seventy-two hours. Dehydrated, hungry, exhausted and drained, Draco stumbled into the arms of the tall, dark-skinned man beside him.

"Easy there, Draco," the man grunted, using another towel to wipe the blood from Draco's chin. "Can't have you passing out now." His deep voice was faintly accented by his Nigerian homeland.

"We zhould zee eef Julie 'as any more pepper-up," a woman with a clear Parisian accent suggested.

Draco shook his head, ignoring the sharp, throbbing pain the movement brought, looking to the man to speak in his stead. "Absolutely not, Lanie. We can't add anything to the ritual we haven't already factored in."

"Nonsense, Muyiwa! Draco ees going to be using more magic zan 'e 'as ever used in 'is life in a few short hours!" The woman snapped.

"And that magic will be powering a complex and highly volatile, not to mention untested, ritual with no room for any deviation!" The two locked eyes and glared at each other for a few moments. Finally, the man sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "Fine. When Julie and Gelund join us, we'll take another look at the ritual. If they agree it'll be safe, we'll give him the damn potion. Now can I please go get Draco to a seat before he passes out?"

Grumbling about the French, Muyiwa led Draco over to a slab of asphalt in the shade of what remained of the Capital Beltway, where the blond collapsed with a hoarse groan.

"Bring them. We have three hours," he rasped out. The black man nodded and walked off with long, purposeful strides and a slight limp. The woman, meanwhile, began setting up chairs. Draco sighed, leaning against the ruined column, wincing at the feeling of cement against sunburned flesh. "I can't believe we're finally doing this," he thought.

His hand rose to absently finger the shrunken photograph of his wife and son hanging around his neck with a fraying line of string. The edges of the picture were singed slightly but the two of them still waved elegantly up at him. His heart gave a painful throb, the images of That Night trying to force past his occlumency barriers. The hand holding the picture dropped away and he squeezed his eyes shut, taking a steadying breath. It had been a while, but the guilt and grief were still there.

Then again, ever since the Return, everyone grieved. He winced at the accidental reminder of the other That Night. The night Voldemort somehow managed to crawl out of wherever his fractured soul was sent after his defeat at the final battle. Draco scoffed to himself. They had been so sure, recording the Battle at Hogwarts down in the history books as "the Final Battle". They had been so bloody sure it was true. Draco thought of the "Unsinkable Ship". The similarities were painfully plentiful. To be fair, it technically was the final battle of the Blood Wars. When Voldemort came back, it was a massacre, not a war.

That Night, twenty-one years after the battle, October 31st, 2019, Voldemort had risen again, and they weren't even remotely prepared. No one knew how, but when he came back, he was even stronger than before. And the thing was on a war path. The wizarding world was blindsided. The Potters and the Longbottoms were killed before anyone even knew he was back and all of the Weasleys had died the next day. In a matter of weeks, the ministry had been flooded with workers under the control of the Imperius curse. Less than a month after the monster returned, the ministry fell to a coordinated attack from the inside. It was chaos, and it was only the beginning.

Only a few months after the Fall, he jumped borders and began taking over other countries. Even the United States, widely known to be the most militaristic in the wizarding world, was soon under his control. Resistance was squashed before it could even begin. Refugees had no place to go. A year after the fall of the magical world, the muggle world was taken through the same method of Imperiused government. It wasn't nearly as fast, but even muggle weapons and numbers were no match for him.

By the third year of his reign, much of the world had given up hope. Everything had happened so fast; the survivors were still trying to understand it. Cities burned and those who were lucky enough to escape, muggle or wizard, lived side by side in small, hidden pockets of safety. One by one, they were found and raided. Draco's own family had been killed six years ago, during one of the first raids. They had all been so stupid, assuming the rules of the last war applied still, assuming he had some agenda besides mass slaughter. No one was prepared for the large scale massacres, the absolute disregard for blood, status, magic, or age. Anyone hiding was labeled a rebel and dealt with.

Draco had been lucky to find a new settlement, and it was a near miracle they had enough wizards to put up wards. They had no real idea how many settlements were still standing, but generous estimates put the total number of remaining "old wizards" at less than five thousand. There was no point in calling themselves the resistance, or rebels, or even free. They were just the few who clung to the vestiges of life. No one expected salvation. There was no Harry Potter this time.

Three years ago, things changed. During an excursion to get more supplies and try to scavenge any remnants of pre-Return times, someone came across notes created by an expert on Egyptian rituals. In them, they found a fragment of the ritual used to create time turners. Someone suggested trying to find the other parts of it and make their own time turners, arguing that having ways to be in two places at once would be invaluable not just for their lives, but for the occasional rescue missions they undertook against the torture houses. And besides, at least it gave them a goal.

They spent the next year traveling the world, gathering every ritual they could find, but not one of them was a missing piece of the time turner ritual. Eventually someone pointed out that with three dozen or so fragmented rituals they had found they could make a new way to time travel by piecing them together into something that could, if they were extremely lucky, fix their problems. And if it didn't work, what was there to lose? Another half a year of careful work and they had something that looked like it might work as either a ritual or a giant magical disaster—to tell the truth, either was acceptable.

No sooner had they finished the ritual than they looked to Draco. It made sense, of course. He was, as far as everyone was concerned, the last of the Hogwarts students, the last person alive who had known Harry Potter. The last whose presence would go unremarked in England's close nit magical society. So he had agreed, and the process of gathering the required components began. It had taken another year and a half to get everything ready. Much of what was required was near impossible to get now.

With a pang of not-quite sorrow, Draco remembered Demitri Domov, who had returned only a week ago with the last item. He had stumbled through the wards, nearly delirious with dehydration, barely conscious from blood loss, almost completely drained of magic and, had he survived his injuries, he would have been crippled for life due to traveling for miles on mangled legs that barely had enough bone and muscle to support his weight. His hastily made splints and what remained of his magic were the only reasons he remained standing long enough to hand over the vial of Phoenix ash. He had been discovered by some guards while breaking into the reserve where they bred phoenixes, and a combination of curses and splinching meant it was a miracle he had reached the settlement before dying.

Sighing, Draco tried to moisten his dry lips. He was so thirsty, but someone had the genius idea to take a page from Indian rituals, so he was on a strict fast. Julie had barely managed to convince them to let him drink himself bloated minutes before the process began. He looked up as Muyiwa returned with two others.

"Let me haff a look at you, dear," A haggard woman with dark hair offered, her accent indicative of Slavic roots. Before Draco could protest, she snatched his wrists and lifted his hands up to examine them carefully. Tutting, she shook her head. "You are lucky this vill soon be over, Draco. Your hands vould not haff stood up to further abuse. You vould have been unable to hold a vand." Hissing in pain as the woman manually wrapped his mangled hands and knees in bandages, Draco again cursed whoever suggested sacrifice as a part of the ritual. Wait, it was him, wasn't it? He couldn't remember.

"Even if you needed a focus of some sort for the ritual, I wouldn't suggest a wand. You're much more in tune with your other focus," the fourth person said with a familiar, British accent. He was old and slightly more emaciated than could be considered healthy, even in the refugee wards. "It's unfortunate I couldn't make a better wand for you." Draco shrugged. It hurt too much to talk, and he wanted to avoid drying his throat out any further. He began dragging his finger through the dirt, ignoring the Bulgarian witch's huff at him dirtying the bandages she had just wrapped him in.

"Plan," he wrote.

"Well, we have a little less than three hours for you to rest as much as possible. You'll need to be able to speak, lift things, and, you know, stay standing during the actual ritual. So keep quiet. We have everything set up at the middle circle. You'll need to place everything. We can review the ritual a few times after we implant the memories, but first you get a bit of energy back."

"I think we should start gathering everyone up an hour before," the older man suggested.

"Do not worry, Gelund; Julie and I will take care of zat," Elaine assured.

"Everyone knows the magic ban starts a half hour from the start of the ritual, right?" Muyiwa looked to Elaine and Julie, who nodded.

"Ve vill let them know ven we are bringing them to the circle," said Julie.

"Right. I have a group of people double checking the outer circle for any tampering, but it's very unlikely."

"It better be, we probably won't be alive long enough to try again in another 7 years," Gelund scoffed.

That sobered the group for a moment. Draco winced at the reminder that this was almost certainly their only chance. If anything went wrong, it was over. He hummed mentally as he realized he'd probably just do the ritual anyway. It would cause enough damage even if it failed, in theory, and there would be no real point in staying alive with their last hope gone. And after what they did in preparation, he wasn't sure anyone would want to.

The ragged blond flinched violently when a hand was placed on his head. He looked up at Muyiwa, blinking in tired confusion. He had probably zoned out again; Occlumency was pretty much the only thing keeping him consistently lucid. Losing his family had been a serious blow and the months in that torture house had done nothing beneficial for his sanity. To be fair, that could be said for almost anyone. It had taken him over two years to get over panicking at physical contact; the smell of burning meat still made him tremble, and he had a tendency to get lost in his mind, sitting for hours that seemed to pass in a blink. One second he'd have a thought and the next his joints would ache and the sun had set. So far he hadn't drifted in battle, but it was really only a matter of time.

"Draco, you alright? The lights were off in that crazy head of yours for a minute," the dark skinned man teased.

Smiling (though it was more of an awkward grimace nowadays), the last Malfoy shrugged and gestured with a bandaged hand for the conversation to continue.

"We have two and a half hours. I think it's time to implant," Muyiwa announced. The three others stepped back, allowing the tall African to kneel before Draco. who pulled Astoria and Scorpius's picture from around his neck and held it out to Muyiwa. Guessing what he wanted, the man unshrunk it, Draco nodding his thanks. He was on a strict magic ban until the actual ritual. He hugged the picture to his chest and sat back, leaning against the asphalt now.

Julie set her bag down and reached in, pulling out a large box that shouldn't have been able to fit inside. In the box were dozens—hundreds—of tiny glass vials, each containing a shimmering memory. She arranged a few handfuls of them before her, pushing them into the dirt so they stood on their own. Then she uncorked them all. "Okay, I am ready," she said, wand posed over the first vial.

Draco watched as Muyiwa settled down in front of him, blinking tiredly. Then . . .

"Legillimens"

X|X

Ten years ago, Draco's mindscape was a beautiful open field, complete with scattered trees, a lake and a gigantic manor carefully designed to not look like his family home. His memories were dispersed through the manor and grounds, his worst locked away in the dungeons and his best dancing around the magnificent ballroom in the shape of people. After that monster came back and life became a fight for survival, his mindscape morphed into the same open field with a massive, elaborate maze of a fortress. Of course, his memories weren't even in there. They were in an "underground" complex reflecting a muggle nuclear installation, almost impossible to get to. His mental self-representation was waiting for Muyiwa before the doors of the fortress, looking very much like he did before the Return.

"Finally," Draco snickered. "You cannot believe how good it is to talk again. Merlin! Anyway, this way, c'mon. I have the box all set up." Leading Muyiwa into the teleporter hidden in a tree, bringing the pair into the complex surrounded by yards of "thoughtcrete" and down a narrow hall filled with sudden corners, he casually disarmed a dozen pain traps—memories of absolute agony that any intruder would experience if they stumbled into them.

"Draco, have I ever mentioned how I think you're just a little bit insane?"

"Yup! This girl, from Before, she'd probably say I had an infestation of bargles or crumpled something or others. I'd show you some memories of her but we don't have time and all the ones I have are rather unpleasant."

"Why?" Muyiwa asked, stepping over what he suspected was a trap that would tear his mind apart. Draco was too busy talking and gesturing to notice it.

"I was a complete and utter asshole to her when we knew each other. I didn't have any redeeming qualities 'til I was 17. 'Course, then Potter saved my life—twice—and I thought, 'what the bloody hell am I doing with my life?' And after about ten minutes of careful introspection, I realized that we were in the middle of a battle and I sort of owed Potter a life debt so I figured, 'why the hell not?' and changed sides. And then-"

"Draco, I think we're here." Muyiwa pointed out.

Draco stumbled to a halt and looked around in surprise. "Oh, we are."

They stood in a study of sorts, the walls and floor a deep, reddish wood. A beautiful mahogany desk sat against one wall, and the walls were lined with empty bookshelves. In the center of the room was a massive black safe with intricate golden floral swirls decorating its surface. Growing out of the floor and wrapping around the safe's handle was a tangled black tree root.

"You know, as crazy as you are, your mindscape is pretty damn beautiful."

"Of course it is," Draco started, only to pause at the look on Muyiwa's face. "Uh, I mean thank you." He grimaced as a safe became visible in the floor, opening at Draco's apparently random series of touches. "Let's just do this."

Muyiwa sighed, shaking his head. "Get ready, we'll need to be fast." The dark skinned man warned. A second later, a golden mist began materializing out of nowhere, hovering in a loose ball-shaped cloud between the two of them. Draco scooped the cloud up in the glass jar that had appeared in his hand, then placed the jar in the safe as a blue cloud formed. The process was repeated by Muyiwa. They soon fell into a rhythm, alternating who caught the latest memory cloud. It was nice, mind numbing work and Muyiwa didn't miss the fact that Draco's mindscape gradually became less and less frayed as he relaxed.

Finally, they finished and Draco closed the safe after reluctantly adding copies of all his own memories. Muyiwa performed a Voodoo mind ritual that would cement the memories into Draco's very soul. The blond's mindscape shuddered as his body in the real world was wracked with agony, and Draco glared at the man, who just shrugged unapologetically. He placed a quick alarm on the safe, so the next time Draco woke from REM sleep, he'd be unable to ignore the presence of the safe until he opened it.

"Alright, Draco, I'm breaking contact," Muyiwa said.

"Right. See you outside."

X|X

Coming back to reality, Draco hissed and groaned hoarsely. His body hurt even more now. Weakly he glared at Muyiwa again, who chuckled and rose to his feet. Draco got a perverse pleasure at seeing him wince as his legs straightened out.

"How long do we have now?" The dark man asked. Julie looked at her watch.

"That took a little over two hours. Ve miscalculated. Elaine and Gelund vere needing to go gather everyone, so they haff left already. I had to get help from Uma. She has left to join the others."

Muyiwa made a face. "Damn. We won't have time to go over the ritual. Alright, let's get you to the inner circle, Draco."

Julie helped pull Draco to his feet and the two led him to the center of the ritual space, passing the second circle. In the center was a jumble of various ingredients, some common and some they only got by some miracle. Draco carefully checked that everything was in place and in order as more and more people surrounded the main ritual circle, crying and hugging each other and saying goodbyes. Some held mementos of their children, who were missing from the group. Others cradled reminders of non-magical friends and relative. Then Muyiwa nodded to their time traveler and shouted, "Ready!" for all the magicals to hear as Draco picked up a dagger and slipped the picture of Astoria and Scorpius into his pocket.

Draco blinked dry eyes and held the anathame up, arm level with his shoulder, blade horizontal and pointed ninety degrees clockwise from his right hand. It was just the beginning of the days-long ritual's final phase. This was the last of it before the ritual itself commenced. His hand shook as he turned the blade around and began to cut into his own chest. The sun had baked him for three days in this ruin and his skin was drier than it had been even during these years of terror and flight.

The first was the eye of Wadjet over his heart. The dagger bit deep and blood began to run down his torso. He carved more runes around it, luck, health, power, protection, cunning. Those were then linked each to the ones beside it by strings of seven Celtic runes overlapping into a strand of symbols. He made eight cuts across the back of his left arm. After each one, he muttered one of the lost names of Ba'al.

He knelt. In front of him was a bowl, four inches deep, ten inches wide, and thirty inches around. Draco picked up a pinch from the pile of Phoenix ash beside the bowl and sprinkled in. A long strand of Re'em skin, an inch wide and thirty-five long was wrapped around his left arm, going on either side of each of the cuts. The blood from the skin oozed into the wounds and he held back a hiss of pain as it set his own blood on fire.

"Great Mother Isis," he murmured as he set down the anathame and sprinkled another pinch of ash over his left arm. The Re'em blood hissed as the ash came in contact with the skin. "Who wrapped her husband's corpse," the ash began to fade, leaving behind a series of marks shaped like runes for power. "Lady of Magic," another pinch of ash was rubbed into his still bleeding wounds on his chest. "With your kin did you break the bonds of death. Bring me your skill, that I too, may sever bonds."

He placed the tongue of a Sphinx beaten at riddles three times each year for eight years into the bowl. "Lord Ptah," he took the powdered horns of a white bullock with two tails and sprinkled the powder into the bowl. "I offer a bull to you for your aid. I undo your creation with this act."

Power began to thrum in the air as he poured the blood of a Yuki-Onna who'd been burned to death into the small basin. The air started to freeze. "Athena's wisdom guide my hand." He started reciting the first names of the ten ascended mortals of the ancient world. With each name, he passed his hand over the freezing bowl. "By your father," he went on. "With a shield of hideous power, guard me."

He took from the ground a small vessel. He pointed the top at the basin and plucked the stopper from its end. Dragonfire laced with Fiendfyre blazed from its mouth, setting the air steaming. The blood of the snow maiden boiled and then swirled and began to hiss as the demon fire and the breath of a dragon met the cold of the deadly winter.

Draco dropped into the roiling mix a piece of meat. It stank and oozed with festering rot. It had been stripped from one of the last Zarlak'non. The creatures were walking monsters of necrotic flesh that could strip others of their meat to repair their failing bodies. They devoured bodies of living creatures refilling the ever-growing gaps.

The bowl began to hiss and sparks the color of the daytime sky began to leap about above it. A smell not unlike a charnel house filled Draco's nostrils. "Nergal of the Dead, your creature's power I take for myself to guard from your sight." He closed his eyes and ran his fingers across his eyelids, leaving behind the remaining ooze from the Zarlak'non. "Your great palace will not touch me."

He picked up the anathame and drew it across his left palm. When blood welled up, he set the blade down again and poured the saliva of an Innsmouth toad into the wound and then held his arm up, letting the mix of ichors run down it to his shoulder. Then he did it again and used the blood of a Death Eater who had been ambushed and had his family murdered before his eyes. "Terror and monstrosity is my foe and I take their blood as my blood." He repeated the action twice more, with the blood of a legged serpent—"I seek to be what was not what is" —and the spit of a mummy.

He passed his bleeding hand over the bowl thirteen times. After each, he repeated the sixteen names of the first wizards.

Draco poured a vial of water in a circle around himself and the basin and collection of ingredients. "With water from Styx I shield myself. I have no coin to pay for passage and must remain on this side." He emptied the identical vial. "My foe may not pass my river Styx without paying his toll. So shall he remain barred."

He dropped the throat of the eldest Chimera into the basin and watched it flame. A pillar of fire ten feet tall raced skywards in a gout of green. Then he added the tongue of a Hungarian Horntail and the eyes of a Tsuchigumo. He poured over his left arm the blood of nine foxes with nine tails. His arm felt like it was melting off of his body.

He picked up one final bottle and emptied it into the basin. "With water from Lethe, I undo the past. The world forgets the present with my offering and I unwind time."

He paused a moment and took a deep breath. Then he shoved his left hand into the basin up to the wrist. He didn't make a sound as the mix roared. When he withdrew his hand, it was picked clean of flesh, held together by the power residing in the mixture of power.

With his ruined left hand, he traced the runes on his chest. His flesh instantly began to vanish to the horrifying qualities of the brew. Then Draco rose on shaking legs and centered himself. He scooped up the basin and poured the rest of the fluid on the ground.

"With this offering, I torment the world
Lines underground heed my call and rise
I summon you from your peaceful beds
By the power of Lethe, I compel you: forget
Leave your routes and come to me"

The ground shook and a mountain in the distance tore itself to pieces as six Leylines were ripped from their harbors and slammed into place for the ritual. Five of them were now crossing each other, forming a miles-wide pentacle while the final one speared upwards through the circle Draco had formed with the water from the Styx.

He bit through his lip as raw power coursed through his body from the circle. As the center of the ritual, the power was being run through him and he felt his skin start to blister as heat built up inside him. He pointed a finger at the circle and green-black flames shot up, wreathing the protective circle in fire.

"Drink of Lethe, O Lines of Power
Sip deep from her forgetful waters

Spread the loss through the world
With my offerings do I make this demand
Undo your ancient memories"

The ground was sizzling where the basin had been overturned and acrid smoke rose into the sky. Clouds spiraled around the circle, dark and full of rain. There was a rumbling as the ground began to shift with the lines underfoot. The whole of the blasted ruin that had been Washington D.C. screamed as a new mountain tore itself up from the wreckage under Draco and lifted him into the sky, the mystic circles rising with it.

"Ores of the ground come to my call
Melted by Gaia's touch
To the surface I conjure thee
Let the sacrifices be touched by your grace"

Spears of iron shot upwards from the torn ground under each of the several hundred people who had been chanting quietly around the circle. Each one stood still, allowing the metal to impale him or her. They were lifted bodily up seven feet from the ground, the spikes emerging from their mouths in a parody of a scream.

"By the Styx, I deny you your passage,

I bind you to me and my cause
To this plane you are held
Until I leave and free you"

Each one shuddered as spines of iron spread from their imprisoning spikes. The metal shot out their sides, lifting each one's arms up to spread wide until their palms were pierced and blood began to finally drip from their dying bodies. Lightning began to leap from cloud to cloud, striking in purple blades of jagged power.

"Sky strike to my allies
Free them from earthly shells
To my soul I bind them
By the power of the earth
I contain their multitudes"

Hundreds of bolts of lightning struck downwards. Each crucified member of the resistance was turned to a smoking wreck instantly. Blood boiled away from their wounds in a single moment and flesh was cooked and then burned to nothing.

Thunder boomed, causing Draco's ears to burst. Blood ran down his cheeks as he stood on the mountain, surrounded by the corpses of friends. He couldn't hear the pop, but he felt the magic in the circle stir as several hundred Wizards apparated into the area. He truly smiled for the first time in years.

"With the power of the Rune of Ag'thrashk I seal my circle
The gates are shut
I close the book
Judgement is rendered"

Voldemort was suddenly in front of him, Yew wand flashing through the movements of the most hated spell in history. Draco couldn't hear the uttered words, but the twisting, sickly green light was telling. It blazed through the protections of the circle and struck him in the stomach.

For a moment, Draco was afraid he had miscalculated. Then he realized he was still alive. His abdomen was screaming in agony and he felt the earth under his feet shuddering as the killing curse was grounded through his flesh into it, but he was alive.

He held up his left hand—what was left of it—wrapped in the intact strip of Re'em skin. His middle finger pointed to the sky as the clouds spiraled into tighter and tighter patterns. Ball-lightning in bright pink and neon blue spat from the sky and caused several of the new Death Eaters to duck in the forest of corpses.

"Lines of the Sky
By your earthly match
I call you from your paths
With the essence of your King
You are summoned"

The clouds suddenly stopped spinning as they instead all rushed towards Washington D.C. from across the world. The tides of the ocean visible from the top of the mountain came in without warning. A wall of water a thousand feet high began to cast a shadow over the land as the mountain under Draco's feet began to glow red.

"The earth hungers
I call it to feed me
My enemies join my comrades
Let the Dark feel its own touch

Suffer"

Voldemort spun around to see why there was screaming and was faced with spikes of iron impaling his followers. Each was forced into a dark parody of a crucifixion as they were bound to rising towers of native metal worked with the heat of the deep earth. He whirled and then blinked in confusion when he found himself still on the mountainside, with a tsunami rising over his head and his men dying around him.

"I bind thee o soul
My most hated foe
I curse thee to my service eternal
Your might I steal
Be doomed forever as my slave"

Voldemort screamed, throwing curses at Draco, each one slamming into the green fires and vanishing. He was glaring at the man who had served him once with a hatred that would have once terrified Draco.
Now he smiled at Voldemort's expression and raised the knife in his hand.

"Time, I undo your touch
The earth forgets and with it you,

Thy strands I unweave
Thy tapestry I tear asunder
Be undone!"

And with a final thought to the picture in his pocket, he drove the anathame into his heart.

(A/N Spoon 1)

So, my first story posted here. Exciting! I've actually been working on this for longer than John has been writing Itachi, but I write slower and have to wait for him to get around to editing my chapters before I can post.

(A/N Spoon 2)

The story came about when I was thinking of time travel fics and who I haven't seen go back in time yet. My first thought was Filch, to be honest, but I went with Draco instead. John got his hands on my ideas early on, only perverting it a little bit, honestly. I was very firm on this not being mainly humorous.

(A/N Spoon 3)

You can also thank John for the ritual. He's very talented with them, and I'll be using his ritual skills in at least one future story.

(A/N Spoon 4)

Do not expect this to update as frequently as Itachi. As mentioned above, I write slower and not as consistently, whereas John writes almost daily. It'll probably be at least a month between updates for Rebirth.

(A/N Spoon 5)

John wanted me to point out that the lost names of Ba'al are no longer lost. Yay.