Prologue

Death is straightforward.

It is, simply put, a departure from life.

However, there are several anomalous existences scattered across the universe who do not obey this fundamental law of nature. Amongst the ranks of eldritch entities, deific daemons and formless fiends, beholds the most curious creature: a wizard of humble origin.

This particular man had done much since the day he was conceived. In the very first of his countless lives he had defeated a Dark Lord and brought a stop to a hegemony that arose from prejudice and ignorance, bringing stability and peace to a nation that was on the brink of collapse. He was fortunate to live long enough until his lifeforce naturally expired in the unending passage of time, surrounded by friends and family as he drew his terminal breath.

His journey did not stop there however, for he was soon whisked away to countless worlds that were in dire need of liberation and succour, each one providing him with a difference facet of life. The crucible of each experience, a pre-eminent hero, a brave warrior, a venturous merchant, a humble carpenter, a loyal soldier, and many more, undergirded the growth of his spirit.

Though his valorous deeds echoed and rippled throughout time and space, if he could change one event in history, it would be stopping himself from becoming the Master of Death, a title that could only be bequeathed upon rightfully acquiring three of the rarest artifacts the world had to offer. Although he was harshly thrust into a state of infinite existence he was never bored, for he was neither immortal nor invincible, but rather unable to pass onto the afterlife – a lost spirit wandering the hinterlands of reality. This meant that every experience was original and fresh and was without a compelling reason for him to become jaded or to be consumed by boredom.

Harry James Potter found himself once again floating in the vastness of the cosmos, surrounded by a blanket of coruscant stars and spinning planets. Yet, in all their grandeur, they were not as they were, for each individual ball of rock and gas was changing dramatically in a never-ending process, from red giant to white dwarf, from gas cloud to nebula, from supernova to neutron star, and so on, in a sequence of events that had been initiated since the dawn of time and will keep doing so until the very last day.

Did someone poison me? Harry thought curiously as he glided effortlessly through a vortex of godless flames and spinning darkness.

Though the environment mimicked that of outer space, he could breathe just fine despite the lack of oxygen.

He then gave an exasperated sigh.

For shame, I was having so much fun.

His life of an accredited thespian had just come to an end. From the cleft of his mother he had been born a boy in the year 1564, right into an English household of playwrights. Having no shame about hiding his intelligence and talents, he was plunged into the world of art, where he was soon thrust into the limelight as the most promising dramatist to appear in history. He reached the age of fifty-one before a rival decided to loosen up the competition and become a murderer.

Shrugging to no one in particular, he hurtled silently through the void to his next grand adventure. Warm thermals pushed him gently heavenward in a seemingly never-ending spiral. A misty veil began to surround his eyes as a distant speck of light grew ever larger.

A hair-raising amalgamation of noises that sounded like bones cracking and skin tearing suddenly made itself known; his body was undergoing a most peculiar change. He was as of this moment still in the body of his previous world, a middle-aged man with a striking visage, defined by the sharpness of his face and the wrinkles of his brow. As each second passed however, he began to shrink in size, leaving behind his old body and gradually taking on the form of a baby: a process of accelerated metamorphosis. This sudden morphological change did not perturb nor frighten him in the slightest, for he had undergone this transformation many times before.

The dot of light that seemed so far away was now growing in size as he hurtled towards it, travelling at such a speed that time and space itself seemed to distort, bending a knee in submission to his presence.

How magnificent. Harry thought dreamily as he approached the shimmering ball of light. Even if he wanted to describe how it looked like, he couldn't. It somehow humbled him and made him feel as if he was a simple mortal once again, not some time-worn celestial traveller.

He eventually grew closer and closer, and then finally, impact.

Thus, Harry James Potter began his life anew, once again.

Water and darkness.

These were the first two things his mind registered. His eyes opened as his limbs flexed in shock. He felt water instantly entering his gullet, up each nostril and encasing his entire body as he panicked. All rational thought flew out if his mind and without a conscious thought, a choice, the instincts of his body drove him to do what any must to survive: to swim to the surface as fast as possible.

His feet kicked as hard as they could as he wildly swam through viscous water that sought to drag him down and end his life before it even began. His efforts were rewarded for he quickly broke through the water's surface after swimming through what seemed like an endless stretch of water. It was almost pitch black, but he managed to orient himself appropriately, the water curiously no higher than his chest.

What a horrible start. Harry thought in annoyance as he greedily gulped cool air into his lungs.

Before his mind could process any more information, he suddenly realized something very wrong with the situation. In nearly all of his previous experiences upon arriving onto other worlds, he would begin life as an unblemished baby, free from the harshness and afflictions of life. This time however, there was neither a midwife to pass him over to his mother to tenderly hold him, nor a father to crow in jubilation and raise him high into the air.

There was just him. And the dark pit.

His mouth felt weird, his tongue, even more so. Confused, he readied his mouth to speak, summoning whatever willpower he still possessed to make heads or tails of the situation. He tilted his head backwards and looked up – what he perceived was upwards – and whispered just a single word.

"Hello?"

He gave a violent start of surprise from the sound of his voice. Whenever he would try to communicate during the neonatal period of his lives, his words would be semi-unintelligible babbling until a few months had passed from his birth. He had always suspected it was the lack of control of the muscles in his mouth at that early of an age. This time however, the noise he produced was something unlike he had ever heard before. It was scratchy, rough and sounded as if something had just torn his oesophagus out and replaced it with layers of worn sandpaper.

Something was up.

As he blinked his eyes, the blurriness faded, and his surroundings grew crisper. At that very moment a foul stench hit his nose, one so pungent that he gagged and was jolted into acutely assessing his environment. He reached out in the darkness and ran a hand carefully over the top of the fluid he had been submerged in and quickly came to a disturbing conclusion.

This isn't water.

The coldness of the air was more apparent, stealing the warmth given to him by the foul concoction that he was bathing in. He wanted to use all his senses, to get a feel for what this was, but the noisome odour dominated the air and the chill froze his skin and what little brain power he could muster.

I'm in some sort of chamber. He realized in astonishment after a few seconds of blind exploration, realizing this fact when the sloshing of the fluid echoed and resonated rather hair-raisingly around a hollow sounding chamber.

A dim light suddenly flickered into existence above him in the distance, one so far off that it seemed as if it was an eternity away. Like a moth drawn inexorably to flame, it invited him to begin crawling up the sides of the chamber to this faint source of illumination, his brain only now noting that the walled surfaces were not shear, but rather were craggy and convex.

His continued climbing was rudely interrupted when a dark silhouette suddenly loomed over him akin to a side that of an imposing edifice as it blotted out the distant spot of light. He then gave a squeak of panic when a set of large appendages reached out towards him, noting that that were easily bigger than his body as they grabbed him whole and wrenched him out of the gooey pit and into, arguably, an even darker room.

Even after leaving the area from where he once came, he still could not fully comprehend what was happening, for his wide eyes were seeing the world through a strangely blurred view, as if there were never ending sheets of water cascading over his waking eyes.

His body felt weirdly elongated; his arms and his legs felt disproportionate and awkward, but it soon did not matter in the slightest, for he was soon wrapped in something soft and carried high and far into the room to the fuzzy outlines of whom he assumed were his family members.

What's happening? Harry thought faintly, his senses too overloaded to form a coherent thought as murky figures towered over his tiny form.

He was then passed from figure to figure, each shadowy outline performing strange snakelike motions with their bodies and growling words of an unintelligible nature under their breaths, using a language so harsh and bizarre that it grated and stabbed at his heart.

The event transpired for a few more minutes, overstimulating his senses with chaotic murmurings that oddly resembled the hisses of snakes and growls of lions. Even though he couldn't understand a single word that was said, that was one word that was repeated over and over again while he was being passed around, the peculiar nuance of its utterance cementing itself into his brain.

He realized what it was: his name.

He mustered up all the strength he possessed and smiled contentedly, oddly noting that his gums were stretching way farther back than humanly possible. The name felt powerful, majestic and solemn, and was one he wholeheartedly approved of when mentally tested the enunciation of the strange word in his mind. With a tired sigh, he finally lost the battle against fatigue and drifted off to his first sleep in this strange new world as he repeated his name in his brain just one more time.

Smaug.

My name is Smaug.

A/N: This story will be Harry-centric and will be dealing with his interactions with the denizens of Middle-earth after being reborn as a rather familiar dragon named Smaug, and how his simple presence would change and shape the events that are to come. This saga will be more focused on mature themes, specifically encapsulating the realities of hardship, loss, war, violence and death, with a focus on the middle-to-late stages of the Third Age in Middle-earth.

As always, I'd be more than delighted if you shared your thoughts on this with me!