Milk_Is_My_Drug
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Chapter 119: When the World Stopped Breathing
🕑 Added 2025-05-21 08:09:40 +0000 UTCOnce Dante was done speaking, he disapparated and the world snapped back to normal.
The sky lost its oppressive darkness. The Tree of Light vanished as if it had never been. The silver radiance that had flooded the land dispersed into nothingness.
Yet the stadium remained silent. Tens of thousands of witches and wizards sat frozen in their seats, unable to move, unable to speak. It was as if Dante’s words had paralyzed reality itself.
Because—how could they react to something like this? None of them, not even in their wildest and most impossible dreams could have imagined what they had just seen, what they had just learned.
The truth of history. The true nature of Hogwarts. The origin of magic itself. Everything they knew, everything they thought they understood… was a lie. And he, Dante, had been the one to shape it all.
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Among those trapped in shock, Severus Snape sat rigid, his fingers clenched so tightly around his robes that his knuckles turned white.
His mind reeled, playing back every interaction he had ever had with Dante.
Potions.
The boy had shown a mastery of the subject that Snape once thought was impossible for someone his age. He had assumed… no, convinced himself that Dante’s knowledge came from old books, that he was simply a prodigy with an unnatural talent for brewing.
But now… To think Dante was older than the books themselves. To think that when Snape arrogantly assumed he was the superior master of potions, he was standing before the very person who first pushed the limits of the craft.
And worst of all— He once thought Dante needed his protection and guidance.
He had stayed close to the boy in his early years, worried that Dante might harm himself, that his obsession with knowledge and power would lead him down a dangerous path.
Now Snape realized he was the fool.
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Minerva McGonagall and Filius Flitwick sat in stunned silence, staring at the empty space where Dante had stood moments ago.
Both had long known he was brilliant, unmatched even among prodigies. But they had assumed he was like Dumbledore, a prodigy that can learn on his own.
Now, they understood. Dante did not learn from books. He did not learn from teachers.
He was the origin. The reason why Transfiguration and Charms had progressed as far as they did. He had not studied magic. He had created it.
And in three years, it would all disappear.
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No one was more shaken than Albus Dumbledore. His entire life, he had believed in one great mystery. The Deathly Hallows. He revered it and feared it at the same time.
He had spent his youth searching for them, believing them to be the key to mastering death. But now, to think they were Horcruxes all along. To think that the legend of the Three Brothers was not a tale about outsmarting Death…
…but about a single man splitting his soul across eternity. It was Dante. It was always Dante. And suddenly, everything made sense. How Dante had known of Harry’s mother’s magic. How he had understood the Horcruxes working better than anyone else. How he had always seemed to know everything.
Because he had lived it all. He was the true source.
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For Harry Potter, the revelation was overwhelming. It all clicked. Dante knew his mother’s magic because he had seen it before, thousands of years ago. Dante knew about Horcruxes not because he had researched them but because he had created the first one.
Dante knew about every field of magic because he had been there at the beginning, learning and developing these fields.
Harry had always assumed that Voldemort was the greatest dark force in history. But compared to Dante… Voldemort was a child playing with scraps of knowledge.
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Ron Weasley sat frozen, his heart pounding in his chest. He had spent years speaking poorly of Dante, calling him arrogant, dangerous, evil.
But now… He finally understood the truth. Dante was not just a powerful wizard. He was something far beyond a Dark Lord. An ancient entity. A being capable of erasing the world itself. And Ron had mocked him.
What if Dante had cared? What if, one day, he had decided that Ron wasn’t worth keeping alive? The fear in Ron’s chest grew like a wildfire.
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For Hermione Granger, the most terrifying revelation was not Dante’s power, It was the elves.
She had believed in their freedom, and had fought for their rights despite opposition last year. But now, after seeing what Dante had witnessed firsthand—the elves as merciless, sadistic murderers—
She finally understood why he opposed their freedom. He had not been cruel to them. He had been merciful if anything.
Because he knew what would happen if they were unleashed. And now, in three years, they would be.
___________
Luna Lovegood sat quietly, staring at the sky. She remembered a time years ago when Dante had once joked "I am the nemesis of Nargles."
She smiled. She had thought it was a strange, silly thing to say.
Now, she understood. She saw the truth. Dante was not just old. He was alone. He had lived through eras, only to see everything he built destroyed over and over again.
And yet, despite all of that… He had still been kind. She felt true pity for him. Her own suffering—the bullying, the loneliness—it was nothing compared to what he had endured.
And yet, he still kept his kindness.
___________
For Amelia Bones, the terror was unlike anything she had ever known. She was the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and now she is the minister of magic.
She had faced Dark Wizards. She had fought against the worst threats the magical world had known. But now, she understood.
If Dante willed it, the Ministry would cease to exist. And there was nothing they could do to stop him. She finally began to understand how he made Fudge into a squib, he had absolute control over magic.
___________
For Voldemort, the realization was a nightmare. He had spent years searching for immortality. He had convinced himself that he was the greatest dark wizard of all time.
And yet, Dante had mocked him. Dante had called him pathetic. A fool. Voldemort had believed it was arrogance. But now, now he understood.
Dante was not arrogant. Dante had created the very magic he fumbled to use. Compared to him, Voldemort was not a Dark Lord. He was a Dark Joke.
For the first time in his life, Voldemort felt something far worse than fear. He felt small.
___________
The entire world had changed in a single moment. And now, a single question loomed over them all.
What are they going to do when Dante dies?
___________
Dante apparated into his classroom, the familiar surroundings greeting him with an eerie silence. Everything was the same as before. Yet, nothing felt the same.
He walked slowly to his desk, sat down, and sighed. From the shadows of the room, a figure emerged. It was him. A ghostly projection of his Horcrux, the fragment of his soul that had lived through countless ages.
The spectral being stared at him with the weight of millennia in its gaze before speaking.
"I wonder if that was a wise decision."
Dante looked up, his expression unreadable.
“The magical world has no future,” he said simply.
The words carried no bitterness, no anger, only certainty.
“They will be destroyed by Muggles sooner or later. I made a mistake when I helped in the separation. It made wizards weak. Lacking. Arrogant.”
His voice was calm, but behind those words lay the weight of centuries of regret.
He had once believed in a world where wizards could live apart. Where magic could flourish without interference. But instead, it had stagnated. The magical world had forgotten how to adapt, how to evolve, how to grow. And now… their time was running out.
“This will be my last gift to them,” Dante continued.
He leaned back in his chair, his silver eyes staring at the ceiling as if searching for answers in the wood and stone.
“The pressure of the next three years will be their wake-up call. If they still allow themselves to be destroyed, or if they choose to start a conflict, that is on them.”
His gaze darkened slightly.
“I will make sure they have the necessary knowledge and power to choose.”
It was all he could do. A final chance. A final warning. Nothing more.
Dante closed his eyes, exhaustion settling deep into his bones. His mind wandered, drifting through centuries of memories, through success, through regrets, through everything that had brought him to this moment.
When he finally opened his eyes, he exhaled slowly.
"Then we will rest," he murmured.
"We have lived and worked more than our fair share. Frigg was right, our madness and obsession blinded us"
He had created. He had fought. He had endured. And now, after all these lifetimes, after all these struggles… It was finally time to let go.
A small, self-mocking smile formed on Dante’s lips.
"I truly wonder what the world would be like today… if I had just accepted my death as Hogwarts."
Would it have changed for the better? Would it have been worse? Would magic have died? Would something new have been born?
The ghostly Horcrux looked at him with something that could almost be called understanding. And then, with a quiet voice, it simply replied
"That’s how we started this path. Not all questions need to be answered"
Dante smiled.
Comments
Milk_Is_My_Drug
This story was always about obsession, not about an unstoppable MC who wins in the end. It began with how the world viewed his work and achievements in a negative light, alongside his own arrogance, disregard, and apathy. The reader is meant to see him as 'evil' because, in the world of Harry Potter, obsession with the Dark Arts vilifies anyone associated with it. Every good act or kindness he shows is ignored, drowned out by prejudice. Those first 90 chapters were the buildup of his character and obsession; the rest is about his transformation after the shock of failure at what should have been his peak. I’ve never loved stories where the MC gets everything they wanted (and more). Life doesn’t work that way. We fail. We adapt. And sometimes, meaning comes from how we move forward, or from learning to let go.
HugoH
Damn, I don’t know what to think. After everything he has accomplished I really hoped that he would have succeed in the way he wanted. But that last line « That’s how we started this path. Not all questions need to be answered ». It hit hard and it’s an interesting form of character growth for a wizard seemingly at the peak of his world.
