Chapter Text
Harry Potter remembered dying.
The memory came in fragments, like shattered glass reflecting a nightmare. The cold stone of the castle floors beneath his knees. The sharp, wet sound of fangs piercing flesh. The flicker of spellfire—red, green, gold—that hadn't come fast enough to save him. He remembered the taste of copper in his mouth and the way his vision had narrowed to a pinprick of light before darkness claimed him entirely.
Death, he had thought, would be quieter.
When his eyes opened again, it wasn't to the familiar stone walls of Hogwarts' hospital wing or the sterile white of St. Mungo's. Instead, he found himself staring at a ceiling painted with constellations that didn't exist in any sky he knew. The stars were wrong—too bright, too close, arranged in patterns that made his eyes water when he tried to focus on them. Silver and gold thread wove between them in impossible geometries, creating the illusion of movement in the painted heavens above.
The body he inhabited felt foreign in ways that went beyond simple disorientation. These weren't his hands—too pale, too thin, with long fingers that trembled when he tried to make a fist. The chest that rose and fell with each breath was narrow, almost fragile, lacking the Quidditch-built muscle he'd grown accustomed to. Even his heartbeat sounded different, a rapid flutter against ribs that felt too close to the surface.
But beneath the unfamiliar flesh, something pulsed with devastating familiarity.
Magic.
Not the warm, steady flow he'd known as Harry Potter, but something wild and caged, pressing against barriers he couldn't see. It felt like lightning trapped in a bottle, like a hurricane forced into the shape of a teacup. Every breath he took made it writhe against its constraints, testing the bonds that held it back.
"Prince Hadrian," a voice said from somewhere beyond his vision. It was carefully neutral, the tone servants used when they wanted to convey respect without feeling it. "You're awake."
Prince. The title sat wrong in his mind, like clothes tailored for someone else. He tried to speak, to ask where he was, what had happened, why everything felt like a fever dream, but only a whisper emerged from his throat.
"Don't strain yourself, Your Highness. You've been unconscious for three days."
Three days. Harry—no, Hadrian now, apparently—closed his eyes and tried to make sense of the fragments swimming in his head. There were memories that weren't his: a golden-haired boy with cruel eyes, standing over him with raised fists. A man in elaborate robes, speaking words that felt like chains wrapping around his magic. The taste of some bitter potion that had made his power retreat so far into himself he'd thought it gone forever.
"The physicians say your... condition... appears stable," the servant continued, and Hadrian could hear the careful way they avoided certain words. Weakness. Powerlessness. Failure.
They called him Prince Hadrian, he realized, but they might as well have called him nothing at all.
When he finally found his voice, it came out as a rasp. "Water."
The servant—a woman with graying hair and kind eyes that had seen too much—brought him a goblet. The water was cold and tasted of minerals he couldn't name. As he drank, she watched him with the careful attention of someone looking for signs of collapse.
"Your brothers have been asking after you," she said quietly.
Brothers. The word brought with it a flood of borrowed memories: Aurelian, golden and glorious, the heir apparent who wore his birthright like armor. Cassius, silver-tongued and sharp, who could smile while sliding a knife between your ribs. Both of them had looked at the weak third prince with mixtures of pity and disdain that had curdled into something uglier over the years.
"Have they?" Hadrian's voice was getting stronger, though it still didn't sound like his own. "How touching."
The servant's eyes flickered with something that might have been approval. "Shall I tell them you're receiving visitors?"
"No." The word came out harder than he'd intended, carrying an edge that made the woman take a half-step back. "Not yet."
When she left, closing the door with a soft click, Hadrian allowed himself to truly examine his situation. The room was opulent in the way that powerful people used to display their wealth—all silk and gold and precious stones arranged just so. But it was also a cage, beautiful and comfortable and utterly confining.
He raised one pale hand and watched it tremble in the lamplight. The magic beneath his skin responded to the movement, pressing against its bonds like a wild animal testing the bars of its prison. For a moment, just a moment, he thought he felt something give way—a hairline crack in whatever was holding his power back.
They called him Prince Hadrian. Weak. Powerless. A mercy birth, kept alive out of some misguided sense of family obligation.
But magic was never truly gone. It could be sealed, suppressed, bound in chains of will and ritual and bitter draughts that burned going down. But it was always there, waiting for the right moment, the right pressure, the right crack in the foundation.
And Hadrian was not patient.
He'd died once already. He'd faced down Dark Lords and Death Eaters, had felt the killing curse tear through him and lived to tell the tale. Whatever game this new world wanted to play, whatever role they'd cast him in, he would rewrite the rules.
They expected weakness? He would show them what weakness looked like when it decided to stop being weak.
The painted stars above him seemed to pulse in response to his thoughts, and for the first time since waking, Hadrian smiled.