He wielded the brush like a wand, ink flowing in thick, dark-blue rivers across the canvas.
Roars and explosions thundered in his ears. The ground shuddered beneath him as though the earth itself were trying to flee. Gravel whizzed past, kissing his skin before it fell. Blood sprayed; smoke coiled; the wind whipped his black hair into a storm of its own.
Yet none of it touched the sapphire focus in Ethan Vincent's eyes.
A true battlefield artist.
Under his hand, a night sky was being born—cold, endless, merciless.
Then the brush stopped.
Ethan frowned, the realization hitting him like a Bludger to the temple.
He was missing the right transcendent pigments.
"Shattered star-ice… a sky that burns…" he muttered, digging through the worn dragon-hide pouch at his hip. "Octopus spawn? No… Sage's Ear? Wrong mood… Fermented graphorn eyeballs—next time, darling…"
[Grumble.] The eyeball sulked, rolling back inside with a wet, disappointed plop.
Ethan scratched his impeccably handsome cheek. "Do I really have to compromise? Me? A man of principle?"
A Weasley prank-bomb sailed toward him—courtesy of Fred and George's latest friendly-fire incident.
With a lazy flick of his wand he sent it spinning back. "Thanks, lads!"
"Anytime, mate!" the twins chorused, before ramming the bomb down a passing flesh-abomination's gullet. Beautiful teamwork.
Ethan stared at the half-finished canvas, genuinely stumped for once.
Then—three hands appeared under his nose at almost the exact same moment.
Luna Lovegood's pale fingers offered a jagged stone pulsing faint cerulean light. "I found this on the site of an old Goblin rebellion," she said airily. "Grind it up and it makes a lovely pigment. Probably."
Ariana, the Rose Queen, leaned over his shoulder and let a shower of crimson petals drift from her sleeve. Her voice was tiny, mortified. [I-It's just trash I didn't need… n-not like I picked them for you, Big Brother!]
Ethan blinked. …Did becoming an Obscurial and then un-becoming one rewrite her entire personality? He made a mental note to ignore whatever face Dumbledore made when he saw this later.
The third hand belonged to Hermione Granger.
She had nothing to give—only words, cheeks scarlet.
"Er… according to Muggle cosmology, the universe began as a super-hot, super-dense singularity roughly 13.8 billion years ago, and then—"
She was vibrating with second-hand embarrassment, yet still reciting.
Ethan looked at the three of them, took the glowing goblin stone from Luna, plucked a single crimson petal from where it had settled in his hair, and gave Hermione the warmest, most dazzling smile in his arsenal.
"You're all such good people," he said earnestly. "Thank you."
Hermione made a strangled noise that might have been a dying kettle.
Even the most stoic Ravenclaws nearby recoiled. Nobody—no one—said "you're a good person" like that. It was the verbal equivalent of "drink more hot water."
Luna tilted her head, silver eyes wide and dreamy. "Would you prefer water burial, cremation, or sky burial, then?"
"I," Ethan replied politely, "have always wanted to ascend bodily into the heavens."
Luna's smile was soft as moonlit mist. She reached up and flicked him gently—definitely not gently—on the forehead.
Ariana, meanwhile, turned the color of her own roses. Big Brother had accepted her gift. That was enough. She would guard him with every thorn she had.
Materials acquired. Cosmic theory acquired. The final barrier fell.
Ethan rolled his shoulders, feeling—for the first time—the real weight of everyone standing with him.
"In my old life," he said cheerfully, "the moment I picked up a paintbrush people screamed and ran. Some even had the audacity to demand I 'paint something that looks human.' Can you imagine?"
He laughed, bright and terrible. "Who knew all I had to do was switch worlds?"
The brush flew.
Soon—sooner than anyone thought possible—the painting blazed with its own cold starlight.
Ethan's eyes sharpened to icy knives.
Across the battlefield, Lord Voldemort roared, a sound of pure animal hatred.
[You miserable ants!]
Tentacles lashed out, sending Aurors tumbling like broken dolls.
His colossal body—once human, now something far worse—was scorched black in patches, leaking green smoke. Holes gaped through him like worm-eaten cheese. The stench of burnt hide and singed hair hung thick in the air.
He had never, in all his years of stolen power, imagined he could be hurt this badly.
When did Hogwarts become a bloody fortress?
Was this still a school?
Fear—thin, treacherous—curled inside what remained of his heart.
If he hadn't taken this power, Ethan would have killed him. Now that he had it, Ethan was still going to kill him.
All that suffering, all that preparation—wasted?
[No… I will not fail! Today the Savior dies, and the wizarding world kneels!]
With a bellow of fury he surged forward, smashing through the last of the thorn-wall maze.
The guillotine blades clanged uselessly behind him.
He turned, triumphant—only to see broken Aurors, Mad-Eye Moody on one knee, wand trembling as he shielded the students.
Two seconds of silence.
Then Lord Voldemort smiled, slow and venomous.
[Heh… hehehe… HAHAHA!]
He had won.
[Ethan Vincent! Hiding like the coward you are—you cannot stop me!]
Hogwarts Castle loomed ahead, windows glowing gold against the night. Hunger—ancient, insatiable—clawed inside him.
The castle would fall. Then Britain. Then the world.
His gaze dropped.
Two figures stood between him and victory.
He dragged the words out like poison.
[…Well, well. If it isn't my most loyal servant… Severus Snape.]
Snape's lip curled. "Perhaps some of us realized the losing side lacked… prospects."
The Dark Mark on his forearm burned white-hot.
He and Dumbledore exchanged one grim look.
They had prepared for the worst.
They had not prepared for this.
Dumbledore's voice was calm as winter starlight. "This is as far as you go, Tom Riddle."
[DO NOT CALL ME THAT!]
Tentacles smashed against the layered shields, sending ripples of silver and gold across the air.
Dumbledore gazed up at the monstrosity that had once been a boy.
"You and Ethan," he said quietly, "could not be more different."
"You threw away every scrap of humanity for power, and became a beast."
"Ethan never wanted dominion. That child only ever wanted to climb the highest peak of art."
(He had merely built a world along the way.)
"Oh, and one more thing," Dumbledore added, almost as an afterthought, smiling behind his half-moon spectacles. "Next term I intend to offer Ethan the Defense Against the Dark Arts post."
Lord Voldemort and Snape both froze.
[You would give that lunatic a professorship—but you denied ME?!] Voldemort shrieked, flesh-mountain body quivering with rage.
[Does my presence here not prove who the stronger—]
He never finished.
Golden rings—vast, intricate, impossibly complex—blossomed across his body like halos forged in a dying star.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
Circle upon circle climbed upward, tier upon tier, painting a ladder of light into the night itself.
Even Snape—stone-faced, unflappable Snape—stared in open horror.
"What in Merlin's name…" he whispered. "Is that… his doing?"
Dumbledore's ancient eyes widened behind cracked spectacles.
The runes spinning on those golden wheels were so beautiful they hurt to look at directly—an exquisite symphony of magic.
And the song it promised was annihilation.
The pressure alone nearly drove the old headmaster to his knees.
So this was the power Voldemort had bargained everything for…
Dumbledore's voice came out hoarse. "Severus. Get to the castle. Take the children. Go."
Snape's whole body went rigid.
Then he nodded once, sharp as a blade.
But as he turned, something caught his eye—raw, undiluted shock on the Dark Lord's distorted face.
Snape paused.
And then—a voice, perfectly clear, perfectly amused, perfectly Ethan—rang out from the heavens themselves.
"Super-Tier Magic…"
The sky cracked open with cold, impossible starlight.
"Skyfall."
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