Harry Potter: I am the Legend

BOOM!!!

A cataclysmic impact, akin to the Tunguska explosion, shook the heavens.

The meteor struck the ground, sending tremors across the earth like a magnitude-ten earthquake.

A blinding light illuminated the sky, turning night into day.

The shockwave from the explosion shattered every window of Hogwarts Castle in an instant.

Before the shards of glass could even touch the ground, the surging tremors tossed the ancient magical castle into the air as if it were nothing more than a Lego toy.

In the Forbidden Forest, nearly 300,000 trees collapsed outward in a radial pattern, evaporating as they fell. The waters of the Black Lake surged skyward, transforming into a vast cloud of steam.

Voldemort didn't even have time to scream before he was obliterated into dust by the explosion. Nagini and Wormtail were likewise engulfed in flames, leaving no trace behind.

Grindelwald's illusions vanished, leaving only his true self sprawled on the ground, pinned down by the blast's sheer force, unable to move.

Even Miller, the caster of the spell, coughed up blood as his frail body was swept away like a tattered leaf in a hurricane, drifting toward an unknown fate.

Time ticked by, second by second.

As the explosion's brilliance gradually faded, the land within a hundred-kilometer radius was bathed in an eerie orange glow from the lingering flames.

Ashes rained from the sky—ashes that still smoldered with embers, remnants of those who hadn't escaped in time. None who failed to Apparate away survived; every last one was reduced to dust beneath the meteor's wrath.

Smack!

A hand suddenly thrust out from the scorching ashes.

A figure crawled out, rolling onto the ground.

The iron cage that had once encased his head was now twisted and broken beyond recognition, resembling a crumpled pretzel. His once flowing white hair had been completely burned away, along with his skin and clothing.

It was Grindelwald.

Gasping for breath, he stood amidst the ruins. His entire body was charred, as if coated in caramelized soot, wisps of smoke rising from his flesh. Not a single patch of unscathed skin remained.

Before him, where the Quidditch pitch had once been, lay a massive crater nearly a kilometer wide. Beyond it, nothing remained. The view was unnervingly vast—every structure, every person, every trace of Hogwarts had been wiped from existence. The Resurrection Pool had been obliterated, along with the labyrinth, Voldemort, Nagini, and every student and teacher, young and old.

The only thing left... was the girl kneeling by the Resurrection Stone.

Being a soul, she was untouched by the devastation. Frozen in place, she remained unchanged from a minute ago.

She covered her face with her hands, yet no sound of crying came forth.

Only fire remained.

A silence so deep, it felt suffocating.

Grindelwald surveyed the desolation around him before finally tilting his head back and laughing—mad, unrestrained laughter.

"Hahaha… Ahahahaha! Hahahahaha!"

The longer he laughed, the louder his voice became. His face twisted with euphoria.

"I did it! I DID IT! No one can stop me now! This desolate silence… this awakened paradise…! There is no doubt—the Grim Reaper is the supreme ruler of this world! Before death, all things are meaningless! Hahahaha! HAHAHAHAHA—"

His laughter came to an abrupt halt.

His expression froze.

He suddenly found himself unable to move.

Trying to turn his head, he realized with horror that he had completely lost control over his body.

W-what…?

A wave of absolute confusion surged through his mind.

Then—

"Reverse Flow—Stagnation of a Hundred Thousand."

A calm voice echoed from behind him.

Grindelwald's body involuntarily moved backward. His burned flesh and missing hair began to regrow at an unnatural speed. His breath hitched—he was healing, but not by his own will.

All around him, time seemed to rewind. The devastated landscape reassembled itself—shattered ground restored, the castle reconstructed brick by brick, the crater filled, grass sprouting anew, bushes reforming the labyrinth, and the Black Lake refilling with its waters. Even the very dust in the air condensed, reshaping itself into a meteor that ascended back into the sky.

And then—

The impossible happened.

Those who had been reduced to ashes… were reforming.

Bone by bone, flesh knitting back together, people rose from the ground, as though playing a film in reverse.

The silver-haired ghost summoned by the Resurrection Stone no longer wept. Instead, she stared, utterly stunned, her mouth hanging open wide enough to fit an egg.

Click.

Time stopped.

The moment before the meteor touched the earth—paused.

The liquid in the Resurrection Pool continued to boil, its runes glowing, but the bubbling had frozen mid-motion, droplets suspended in the air.

The massive, burning meteor hovered motionless in the sky.

Miller Gorshak's face was locked in a desperate casting expression. The infant Voldemort clung to the pool's edge, his tiny face twisted in terror, staring at the looming catastrophe. Nagini remained frozen mid-hiss. Wormtail stood in a half-crouch, caught in his attempt to flee.

Even those who had successfully Apparated away moments before were suddenly back in their previous spots, their bodies rigid, yet their wide eyes betrayed the shock of experiencing the impossible.

It was an eerie, incomprehensible sight.

Grindelwald was beyond speech.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Calm footsteps echoed.

A young man slowly walked past Grindelwald, stepping into view.

He was utterly ordinary—dressed in a simple blue wizard's robe. He looked strikingly similar to Hoffa in his youth, though his hair and eyes were both jet-black.

He glanced at Grindelwald once but did not linger.

Instead, he strolled effortlessly through the frozen scene, brushing aside scattered stones and fallen leaves until he reached the motionless figure of Nicolas Flamel.

The old alchemist lay on the ground, gazing up at the young man. He managed one final, knowing smile before his eyes drifted shut.

"Only ten seconds of reversal?"

The black-haired youth murmured, lightly closing Flamel's eyes. With a sigh, he muttered, "That should be enough."

He rose to his feet and surveyed the world before him.

But it was no longer the same world.

Countless intricate lines connected every minuscule point in space, weaving together to form page after page—stacked thick like an endless book.

Through this book ran the great, unbroken river of time.

Suspended upside-down, it flowed endlessly from the past into the future.

Each droplet of time was a pale, silvery hue. But as they collided, spiraled, and intertwined, they erupted into dazzling bursts of light.

He saw infinite versions of himself—mirrors of his own existence, turning to face him.

The past no longer existed. Only the endless future lay ahead.

The cold, wordless clarity of this moment told him one thing.

He had transcended time.

He had become the law itself.

And then, in the blink of an eye, the realization was gone.

He saw the world as it truly was once again.

The meteor was still falling—less than ten meters from the ground.

He raised his hand.

A surge of overwhelming mental energy enveloped the meteor—Transfiguration.

Drip.

Time resumed its flow.

Screams continued. Voldemort and Wormtail fled. The ground trembled on the brink of annihilation.

BOOM!!!

But instead of a catastrophic explosion—

The meteor burst into an endless shower of flowers, vibrant and dazzling, as if it had been nothing more than an oversized Halloween balloon.

A sea of blossoms blanketed Hogwarts, breathtakingly beautiful—just like a certain night, many years ago.

Hoffa stretched out a slender hand, catching a single falling petal.

He turned to the silver-haired ghost projected by the Resurrection Stone and smiled gently.

In that moment, lost amidst the ocean of flowers—

She was utterly, hopelessly enchanted.

"Who are you!!?"

As flower petals drifted to the ground, Grindelwald asked in shock. He knew the answer, yet he couldn't bring himself to believe it.

There was no response.

"Who are you?"

He repeated the question, his eyes widening like bronze bells.

"Don't recognize me, Professor?"

Hoffa said calmly, "I thought you'd figure it out a little sooner."

"You... you are Hoffa?"

Voldemort recognized him, lying on the ground and screaming, "The one from fifty years ago? No… no, that's not right—your hair, your eyes!?"

"Ah, this is how I would naturally look if I had grown up without interference." Hoffa spoke, his youthful appearance laced with an unmistakable weariness.

"No, impossible!!"

Grindelwald's gaze flickered toward the Resurrection Pool, remembering how he had recklessly thrown himself into it earlier. He screamed in disbelief, his mind unraveling. "Impossible! You don't have my blood!"

"That's right."

Hoffa chuckled. "But why settle for that when I had a better option?"

Yes, Grindelwald was right in front of him, but Hoffa had no intention of using him. He couldn't take his blood, nor was he strong enough to defeat him. But he had another, superior choice.

Nicolas Flamel had originally prepared an enemy's blood for reviving Chloé—blood that came from Mance, Chloé's mortal foe. And, of course, Mance had been his enemy as well. Years ago, Mance had pierced Hoffa's heart with a single blade, forcing him to crawl into the blood pool just to cling to life. The price? He could never again function normally in daylight.

However, because Mance's blood also carried the power of time, Hoffa had been able to reverse it.

"Impossible… impossible… no, this can't be happening…"

Grindelwald stared at him in terror, shaking his head violently as if trying to cast the scene out of his mind. "I know you—you never even had a father! How could you possibly—!?"

Hoffa simply smiled.

A father?

Of course, he had none.

From beginning to end, he had never had a father.

But after crossing time, before old Hoffa took his own life, he had made Hoffa call him "father." Was it premeditated? A coincidence? Hoffa had no way of knowing. But at that moment, he had no other choice but to gamble everything.

And judging by the outcome—he had won.

He saw no need to explain any of this to Grindelwald. Watching him teeter on the edge of a breakdown filled Hoffa with quiet satisfaction.

"Are you joking!? This isn't your fate!"

Grindelwald roared in madness, suddenly raising the Elder Wand. "This isn't your fate—Avada Kedavra!!"

A streak of sickly green light shot toward Hoffa like lightning.

"My fate is mine to decide."

Hoffa said indifferently, "Tenfold Stasis."

The deadly curse halted midair right in front of Hoffa, its speed dropping to a snail's crawl. Apart from casting a ghastly green glow on his face, it did nothing.

He casually sidestepped the Killing Curse and traced its trajectory, slowly approaching Grindelwald. With effortless ease, he plucked the Elder Wand from his hand and tossed it away like a discarded twig.

Then, he grabbed Grindelwald's left arm. Crack. He twisted it backward until the bone snapped in two.

Stepping around to his other side, he did the same to his right arm. Another crisp crack.

Finally, he knelt down and repeated the process with Grindelwald's legs. The once-mighty dark wizard now hung limply in the air, his legs twisted outward.

With everything set in place, Hoffa stood beside Grindelwald and muttered, "Flow."

Time resumed its normal course.

Grindelwald plummeted to the ground. The searing pain took two full seconds to reach his brain, but when it did, he let out a muffled groan and collapsed, drenched in cold sweat.

"I should have killed you back then!"

Grindelwald gritted his teeth, glaring at Hoffa with pure hatred. "I should have ended you!"

"And whose fault is that?" Hoffa shrugged. "Don't worry, though. I won't regret a thing."

"Hah…" Grindelwald's face was deathly pale as he let out a weak, eerie laugh. "You think you've won?"

His eyes flashed with madness. He snapped his fingers. "Open!!"

Beyond the Quidditch pitch, thousands of his followers pressed their hands against the ground. A pale light rose from beneath them. In an instant, their faces withered and aged as their life force was drained away.

Using the sacrifice of countless devoted followers, a chilling wind surged forth from the white glow.

The gate between the realm of the dead and the living was flung wide open.

A carriage once again rumbled through the sky. The Reaper lifted his scythe. The frigid winds of Helheim swept across the land, consuming every living thing in sight. Countless souls shrieked in agony, struggling helplessly as they were dragged into the underworld.

But this time, Hoffa was no longer powerless. He raised a finger.

"Not now. Reverse."

The Reaper sheathed his scythe and retreated. Souls streamed out of the underworld, rushing back into their forsaken bodies. Grindelwald's thousands of followers lifted their hands from the ground, returning to the moment ten seconds before.

Grindelwald once again fell from the air. Once again, the pain took two seconds to reach his brain. Once again, he collapsed in a cold sweat.

"I should have killed you back then!"

Grindelwald snarled through clenched teeth. "I should have ended you!"

"You do love tormenting people, don't you?"

Hoffa smiled. "A hundred-thousandfold Stasis."

Grindelwald froze once more, locked in place just as he had been before snapping his fingers—his mouth open, eyes wide, unable to move.

"Even a fool could figure out how to break the Puppet Curse now," Hoffa remarked.

With unhurried precision, he picked up a small rock, transformed it into a tiny saw, and walked over to Grindelwald. He grabbed the cage around Grindelwald's head and began sawing at the iron bars.

Scrape. Scrape.

The sound was slow, deliberate.

Grindelwald remained in stasis. Even with Hoffa sawing away at his headpiece, he could do nothing. Only the faint tremble in his eyes betrayed his growing unease.

"I could do this all day," Hoffa chuckled.

Grindelwald couldn't answer.

The noise echoed in his ears like a cat toying with a mouse. Scrape. Scrape.

After half an hour, with only half the bars sawed through, Hoffa sighed and tossed the saw aside. "Forget it, too inefficient. I'm done playing."

With one hand, he wrenched open the cage on Grindelwald's head. Then, in a blink, he Apparated outside Hogwarts, appearing above the cloaked figures still trying to open the gates of Helheim.

One by one, he ripped the cages off their heads, leaving no one behind.

By the time he returned to Grindelwald's side, the dark wizard still lay frozen in his twisted, stunned posture.

"Flow."

Hoffa folded his arms.

"You think you've won?" Grindelwald's eyes flashed with insanity. "Open!!"

"Open!"

"Open!"

No matter how many times he snapped his fingers, nothing happened.

Time had been stopped. He had no idea what Hoffa had done. His consciousness couldn't even keep up with the time shifts.

"Without this amplifier," Hoffa said, holding up the cage, "I doubt you can precisely control that many people, can you?"

At that moment, Grindelwald was lifted off the ground.

A man stood silently behind him—Miller, now freed from mental control.

"It's over," Miller said, his voice filled with pure, seething hatred.

(End of Chapter)

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