"A Symptom Of Something" - Anaxagorus x Astrologist! Reader
(This one definitely takes a darker shift, the music alone speaks volumes. You mentioned not being the best with writing from music alone as a prompt, so I'm here to train you. Can also use the titles as ref!)
“Memento Mori, My Star”
Summary: In the ruined halls of the once-sacred Grove of Epiphany, an injured Astrologist stumbles upon forbidden truths—and Anaxagoras. As celestial alignments and soulbound experiments unravel around them, Anaxagoras must choose between shielding the Astrologist from divine retribution or allowing them to glimpse the truth no mortal was meant to see. Caught in a moment between blood, memory, and fate, they confront mortality, their bond, and the impossible weight of knowledge.
Warnings: Blood and injury, Body horror (mild, related to magical experimentation), Existential themes (mortality, divine defiance), Psychological distress, Trauma mentions (implied past enslavement, loss, manipulation), Power imbalance (emotional vulnerability, not abusive), Heavy introspection and emotional intensity.
Soot choked the skies where once constellations shimmered. The sigils engraved on its marble archways flickered one last time before crumbling. Between the tremble of the stars and the shriek of alchemical steel being ripped asunder, you found him—bent over the shattered remains of a Coreflame crucible.
"Anaxa!"
He didn’t look back.
Your fingers, cracked from defending your ward only hours before, now trembled for a different reason. The man before you — one eye veiled behind a soul-warped eyepatch, the other a hollow ocean of light and torment — moved like a marionette without strings.
"You shouldn’t be here," he murmured.
You stepped forward. "Neither should you."
He laughed. Low. Unstable. The kind of sound that made your bones ache. "And yet, here we are. Two symptoms of something wrong."
You didn't have time to argue before the structure behind him groaned like a dying god. You lunged. Pulled him back. Rubble collapsed where he stood.
For a moment, his forehead leaned against yours. Eyes closed. Breath shallow.
"Did you see it?" he whispered.
"What?"
"The truth. Burning through the veil."
You stared at him. Ash clung to his lashes. Gold blood still oozed from his knuckles.
You wanted to say: I only saw you breaking.
But instead, you replied, "I saw the stars fall."
Days later, you sat in the hollowed remains of the observatory. The dome had shattered long ago, and yet the night sky still spilled overhead in fractured beauty.
He sat beside you. For once, silent.
In your lap, the child you protected slept, fevered from the lingering poison gas of the Titans' failed countermeasures.
"You once called me a liar of light," he said, finally.
You hummed. "And you called me an obedient machine of starlight."
He tilted his head. "You weren’t wrong."
"Neither were you."
You looked to him. His eyepatch shimmered, and you wondered if he could see through your silence, your guilt, your clenching heart.
"They said this world is a Vanitas," you whispered. "But I never imagined it would take everything I cared for and leave behind... this."
His gaze didn’t waver. "Then paint something new. You have the stars still."
You scoffed. "You don't get to say that. Not when you almost let yourself die back there."
He reached over. His gloved hand brushed your temple, then down to your jaw. A careful caress. You flinched at first. Then leaned.
"If I die, remember this," he said softly. "Even when the truth is a blasphemy, it's still worth dying for."
"And what if I think you are worth living for?"
He paused. That mask of arrogance slipped.
His voice cracked. "Then perhaps... I have one truth left worth defending."
The child now slept safely in a hidden sanctuary, your blade set aside.
You and Anaxa stood beneath a dying star, its light pulsing slow and broken. It was the same star you charted when you first met him. The one he called the "chained god."
"It’s beautiful," you murmured.
"It’s dying."
"So are we all."
His eyes met yours. "Would you still follow me, if I declared war on the divine?"
"Yes."
"Even if I turned into a god myself?"
You stepped closer. Pressed your palm to the mark (idk what it's called?) on his chest.
"Only if you let me be the one to remind you what it means to be human."
He laughed. This time, it was soft. Real.
He took your hand. And in a rare gesture of fragility, he pressed his lips to your knuckles.
"Then promise me," he whispered. "That if I become a monster, you'll be the one to kill me."
You shook your head.
"No, Anaxagorus. I'll do worse. I'll love you."
And in the silence that followed, the dying star pulsed one final time.
Curious about chaos magic but intimidated by the name? It's simpler than you think. An introduction to the DIY, no-purchase-required magical practice that rewards curiosity over obedience.
If you’ve come across the term “chaos magic” online, you might have some assumptions about what it involves. The name sounds intense. Maybe you’ve seen sigils on TikTok or encountered references in witchcraft spaces and thought, “That sounds interesting, but what is it actually?.”
Here’s the thing: chaos magic is more approachable than its reputation suggests. You don’t need to buy anything to practice it. You don’t need to believe in anything specific. And despite what the name might imply, it’s not about destruction or summoning things you’d rather not meet.
What Chaos Magic Actually Is
Chaos magic is an approach to magical practice that emerged in England during the late 1970s and 1980s. Writers and practitioners like Peter Carroll and Ray Sherwin developed it as a reaction against the rigid, hierarchical occult systems that dominated at the time. They were frustrated by traditions that required years of study, expensive tools, and adherence to specific beliefs before you could do anything practical.
Their solution was radical: strip magic down to what actually works and throw out the rest.
The core idea behind chaos magic is that belief itself is a tool. You don’t need to permanently commit to any particular worldview, deity, or system. Instead, you adopt beliefs temporarily because they’re useful for what you’re trying to accomplish, then set them aside when you’re done. This might sound strange if you’re used to thinking of belief as something you either have or you don’t. Chaos magic treats it more like a lens you can pick up, look through, and put back down.
This makes chaos magic extremely flexible. There are no sacred texts you must study, no deities you must worship, no hierarchy you must climb. The only real measure of success is whether your practice produces results. If something works for you, use it. If it doesn’t, discard it and try something else.
People sometimes call chaos magic “the punk rock of magic” because of this DIY, anti-authoritarian attitude. You’re encouraged to experiment, to build your own system, to question everything. The name “chaos” doesn’t refer to disorder or evil. It comes from mathematical chaos theory and ancient Greek philosophy, pointing to the idea of pure potential before it takes any particular form.
Who Is Chaos Magic For?
You might find chaos magic appealing if you’re curious about magical practice but feel put off by traditions that require you to accept a specific set of beliefs. A lot of people come to chaos magic after trying other paths and finding them too prescriptive, too rigid, or too expensive.
You don’t need to believe in the supernatural to practice chaos magic. Many practitioners approach it from a purely psychological perspective. They view magical techniques as ways to communicate with their own subconscious mind, to clarify intentions, or to create meaningful rituals that support personal change. Others take a more metaphysical view. Chaos magic accommodates both approaches because it’s less concerned with why something works than with whether it works.
If you’re the type of person who likes to figure things out for yourself, who gets skeptical when someone tells you there’s only one right way to do something, chaos magic might be a good fit. It rewards curiosity and experimentation over obedience and memorization.
It’s also genuinely accessible. You don’t need to purchase special tools, decks, crystals, or altar supplies. The pressure to acquire stuff that pervades a lot of modern witchcraft spaces is mostly marketing, not tradition. Chaos magic, by its nature, resists this. If you’re drawn to practicing magic without a shopping list, you might also appreciate Divination Without Buying Anything, which explores similar territory. And if you’re still figuring out which practices resonate with you, 7 Beginner Divination Methods offers a broader look at your options.
Core Concepts
As you explore chaos magic, you’ll encounter a handful of key ideas. I’ll cover each of these in depth in later posts, but here’s a quick orientation.
Belief as a tool. The foundational concept. Rather than asking “Is this true?” chaos magic asks “Is this useful?” You can adopt a belief system for a specific working and release it afterward.
Gnosis. This refers to altered states of consciousness that power magical work. These states can be achieved through meditation, breathwork, exhaustion, ecstatic dancing, or other methods. Gnosis is less about what you’re thinking and more about shifting how your mind is operating.
Sigils. Probably the most well-known chaos magic technique. A sigil is a symbol you create from a statement of intention, then charge through gnosis and release. It’s simple enough for complete beginners but remains useful for experienced practitioners.
Paradigm shifting. The practice of moving between different belief systems or magical frameworks depending on what you need. One week you might work within a framework that involves planetary spirits; the next you might approach magic as pure psychology. Neither cancels out the other.
Results-based approach. Chaos magic is pragmatic. Techniques are judged by whether they produce the outcomes you want, not by how traditional or aesthetically pleasing they are.
What You Need to Get Started
A mind and some curiosity. That’s genuinely it.
If you want to try sigil magic, you’ll need paper and something to write with. If you want to experiment with gnosis, a quiet space helps. But you don’t need a dedicated altar, special robes, or a collection of ritual objects. Chaos magic works with what you have.
Some people enjoy incorporating tools and aesthetics into their practice, and that’s fine. Objects can help focus intention, and there’s nothing wrong with finding a practice visually meaningful. But these things are optional. The magic doesn’t live in the objects. Like bibliomancy, which turns any book you own into a divination tool, chaos magic assumes you already have what you need.
Where to Go From Here
If any of this sounds interesting, you’re in the right place. This post is the first in a series covering the basics of chaos magic, written for people who are curious but maybe a little intimidated by where to start.
Now that you have a sense of what chaos magic is and who it’s for, you might be wondering where it actually came from. Unlike traditions that claim ancient or unknowable origins, chaos magic has a documented history. We know who started it, when, and why. A Brief History of Chaos Magic covers the founders, influences, and cultural moment that brought this practice into existence.
Before you move on, you might try this brief reflection:
What beliefs do you currently hold about magic, the supernatural, or the capabilities of your own mind? You don’t need to change them or judge them. Just notice what’s there. Chaos magic invites you to hold your beliefs a little more loosely, to treat them as tools you can pick up or set down rather than fixed parts of your identity. What would that feel like?
Cubic Indra's net rendering, centered on a jewel
Bunyk, CC BY 4.0 <Deed - Attribution 4.0 International - Creative Commons>, via Wikimedia Commons
(this post is a mirror from Wizard Forums, excuse the link here to Wizard Forums)
A bit of a weird one I would say, and even the structure of the ritual is a bit weird. Because like the previous thread. It have the opposite structure of being done top-down instead of bottom-up.
Now to say that the following part is already done, it is only for your own information: The ritual begins by reading the current state of the astral, mediated by the Divine Feminine, the Virgin Mary or Sophia. It is a Eucharistic mystery of sorts; the emphasis is on becoming a vessel to receive the influence you are gathering. There is a knack to flipping the situation: you must work from the top down, from the highest to the lowest, rather than the other way around. Most of the part here, I already did it with the help of few spirits to help create the astral "skeleton" for the ritual before making the physical form which you see right now.
It's about putting the center where I want to start. It's about knowing that the center is within me, or the center is here. And we're trying to gather all this stuff in the four corners of the world, in the four corners of the swords, four corners of the universe. It could be four corners. It could be a multitude of corners. It could be eight corners. It could be nine corners, 10 corners.
What it says here is that all these points in the world, all these directions of the past, present, future, all incarnations, ancestral incarnations, divine incarnations, all of them should like come into the center. And of course, that means being swift in it. Working with the dead... the swiftness here is that the ritual shouldn't take too long.
I feel like at this point it is sounding a bit word vomit-y, but again just a background information on how it came about, to summarize the mind state you need to come to this ritual with is that you need to come to this ritual with the following mindset. Your past is the foundation, the force of power and your future is the transformative power for the materials in the past, YOU in the present are the one activating and empowering that point of activation/neutralization/empowerment. That's the whole reason why you would want to try this.
In essence you would be able to stand still and tap into the past and also stand still tap into the future also, you get more fluidity in your astral-mental body and more strength in your magical works.
Enough of that and let's get to the meat of it:
All you need for this ritual is a small vigil/shabbat/tealight candle and a glass of water or watered down wine.
light the candle and have the wine/water ready.
During the initial prayers until the invocation you should be keeping your hands lifted either in Priestly Blessings hand gesture or Orans gesture. Once you reach the actual invocation you should stand straight and still visualizing yourself/knowing in your heart that you're connected like bead to versions of yourself in all directions.(Like Indra's Net)
Prayer to Our Lady Star of the Sea
O Stella Maris, light of every ocean
and mistress of the deep,
guide [your children on earth]
across all dark and stormy seas,
that they may reach the haven of peace and light
prepared in him who calmed the sea.
Keep all your children safe from harm
for the waves are high and we are far from home.
As we set forth upon the oceans of the world,
and cross the deserts of our time,
show us, O Mary, the fruit of your womb,
for without your Son we are lost.
Pray that we will never fail on life's journey,
that in heart and mind, in word and deed,
in days of turmoil and in days of calm,
we will always look to Christ and say,
"Who is this that even wind and sea obey him?"
O Help of Christians, protect us!
Bright Star of the Sea, guide us!
Our Lady of Peace, pray for us!
Scripture Reading
Ezekiel 18:25-32
25 “Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear, you Israelites: Is my way unjust? Is it not your ways that are unjust? 26 If a righteous person turns from their righteousness and commits sin, they will die for it; because of the sin they have committed they will die. 27 But if a wicked person turns away from the wickedness they have committed and does what is just and right, they will save their life. 28 Because they consider all the offenses they have committed and turn away from them, that person will surely live; they will not die. 29 Yet the Israelites say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Are my ways unjust, people of Israel? Is it not your ways that are unjust?
30 “Therefore, you Israelites, I will judge each of you according to your own ways, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent! Turn away from all your offenses; then sin will not be your downfall. 31 Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed, and get a new heart and a new spirit. Why will you die, people of Israel? 32 For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!
Ezekiel 36:22-38
22 “Therefore say to the Israelites, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. 23 I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.
24 “‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. 28 Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. 29 I will save you from all your uncleanness. I will call for the grain and make it plentiful and will not bring famine upon you. 30 I will increase the fruit of the trees and the crops of the field, so that you will no longer suffer disgrace among the nations because of famine. 31 Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your sins and detestable practices. 32 I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake, declares the Sovereign Lord. Be ashamed and disgraced for your conduct, people of Israel!
33 “‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: On the day I cleanse you from all your sins, I will resettle your towns, and the ruins will be rebuilt. 34 The desolate land will be cultivated instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass through it. 35 They will say, “This land that was laid waste has become like the garden of Eden; the cities that were lying in ruins, desolate and destroyed, are now fortified and inhabited.” 36 Then the nations around you that remain will know that I the Lord have rebuilt what was destroyed and have replanted what was desolate. I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.’
37 “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Once again I will yield to Israel’s plea and do this for them: I will make their people as numerous as sheep, 38 as numerous as the flocks for offerings at Jerusalem during her appointed festivals. So will the ruined cities be filled with flocks of people. Then they will know that I am the Lord.”
Invocation Proper
Stand straight at this moment.
Lord God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I ask for your blessings. I ask for your guidance. I ask for your light. I pray to my ancestors, mother side, father's side. I pray to my saints and my guardian angel. I pray to those who know me and those who I don't know. I pray to the unnamed blessed spirits surrounding me. Through your intercession, I pray for your guidance to justify any mistake in my prayer and action.
That this vessel before me, that this Eucharist before me be blessed. The delight of the Virgin Mary through her guidance be transmitted to this Eucharist and that we are able to witness the grace given to us. I bless this Eucharist in front of me that may have the light, the love and the faith given by the Lord, that I am able to see and comprehend clearly those things transmitted to me by the spirit.
I call forth all my incarnations, those in the past and those in the future. I call into my incarnation in the past, those ancestral and those divine. I call in the incarnation in the future, those human and those not human. I call into all the incarnations, the possible, the impossible, I call unto my other selves in all the planetary realms. I call to my incarnation in planetary realms, elemental realms. In all the places between heaven and earth, between the past and the future, in the east, the west, the south and north.
O Lord of heaven and earth, Creator and Maker of all things visible and invisible; I, though unworthy, by thy assistance call upon thee, through thy onely begotten Son Jesus Christ our Lord, that thou wilt give unto me thy holy Spirit, to direct me in thy truth unto all good. Amen.
Because I earnestly desire perfectly to know the Arts of this life and such things as are necessary for us, which are so overwhelmed in darkness, and polluted with infinite humane opinions, that I of my own power can attain to no knowledge in them, unless thou teach it me: Grant me therefore one of thy spirits, who may teach me those things which thou wouldest have me to know and learn, to thy praise and glory, and the profit of our neighbour. Give me also an apt and teachable heart, that I may easily understand those things which thou shalt teach me, and may hide them in my understanding, that I may bring them forth as out of thy inexhaustible treasures, to all necessary uses. And give me grace, that I may use such thy gifts humbly, with fear and trembling, through our Lord Jesus Christ, with thy holy Spirit. Amen
May all my incarnations in the 10 directions come to me directly now in this moment to be centered and to be consecrated in the glass in front of me, that as I drink this water, as I drink this wine I may be blessed. May I gain the fruit and wisdom of my past incarnation and of my future incarnation, may be able to comprehend with clarity and with faith and with love those wisdom transmitted from time immemorial from the past and unto the future, unto the generations.
Lord God the Father, the Virgin Mary, I ask that the glass in front of me be blessed and consecrated, that all the incarnations and all the selves of mine be connected to me immediately as I drink from this glass.
(Start moving here around the room) I offer this glass to the east. I offer this glass to the south. I offer this glass to the west. I offer this glass to the north. I offer this glass to heaven. I offer this glass to the earth. I offer this glass to God. May all who drink from this glass be blessed. May I have the wisdom, the blessings, and the guidance of my past incarnations and of my future incarnations. In peace and love, I say amen.
in the last section make sure to grab the glass and offer it to every directions.
Closure
Here you can give a simple thanksgiving from the heart, Psalm 150, or Te Deum. That's it, you should sit down and meditate on the connection you just established with the future and the past, your incarnations and abilities. Feel it, know it in your heart, and you can renew the ritual later if you feel like if you need the connection to strengthen.
Happy to hear from everyone how it goes.
Closing Thoughts
I didn't try to control "the process" it might be a bit weird to say I let the ritual grow organically but instead of a tree growing from the ground, it is the opposite growing from the sky/higher realms downward into the physical realm to become the ritual you read.
To give a rough summary of how I did it, I basically had the rough idea of what I wanted in my mind which is I want to rectify mistakes I had in the past and also get a more malleable future(my saturn return is coming next year with a retrograde saturn, DREADING it haha). Once I had the general rough idea of what I wanted to do then I just "jumped" into the spirit world with neoshamanism to get a few pointers from what my animal spirits want, then I ask my guide, my guardian angel and they all give me the green lights, rough pointer here and there. This is the part where I stayed silent about it for most of novemeber to let this astral fetus/ritual grow by itself.
I write all my notes then I let it macerate(like an oil infusion or a perfume), you want to let these insights and work their way out by themselves. Yesterday everything clicked and at once I lit up my altar, draw tarot cards and started speaking to myself like I am explaining a storybook of how I think the ritual should go and what is happening with it(that's the first 4-5 paragraphs). Afterward I stand up and pray to my spirits and ask for guidance on which prayer/which deity and where I should go, The prayer gestures come automatically. I ask for what prayers I should do, then I feel a slight hand flow toward my bookshelf, I close my eye and pick the book and flip through it and choose the verses and put bookmarks.
The last part which is the ritual proper proper, I take everything I put the glass of watered down wine and walk through it already knowing I did "everything", the invocation itself is from the heart is recorded and transcribed in the end.
Virgin Mary is the closest thing to a navigator in this ritual, and Ezekiel 18:25-32/Ezekiel 36:22-38 are like passwords of sort to the invocation. All of that is nothing I did myself and I did "intentionally". I already set the intention long ago and I try to let the rest of it take care by itself.
the end result is that you get a ritual space/meditation space that was already created and you can just "bask" in it/sit in it/meditate in it.
Lately I have been playing around with chaos magic and I am really into the idea of synchronicity. It's a mindset more than a phenomenon, that coincidences arising from randomness can have profound meaning. I wanted to experiment with this idea by creating a random direction generator, and seeing where it takes me.
I decided to use a key, because they point, and are associated with Hermes/Mercury. I chose this figure because of its association with swiftness (the god wears tālāria, or winged sandals), and as a chthonic figure, going between the world and afterworld. I combined the alchemical symbol of Mercury with the chaos sphere symbol, which to me looked like a compass. The combined sigil represents that no matter what direction I go in, I will go there swiftly and find what I need to find.
Inside the circle, I put my own sigil, representing what I hope to find, and then charged the sigil along with the key.
I plan to throw the key at crossroads and go where it takes me, and feel free to try a similar thing yourself! Random Direction Generator Updates to come.
Callie learned all about the Breach and the Inquisition in school; who didn’t? Shame she didn’t pay closer attention … Time and magic went wibbly wobbly, and now she’s a modern hairdresser in Dragon Age Thedas. So how did that story go again?
Read on AO3
Excerpt:
“You know, I’m really not enjoying all the implications that this is going to go horribly wrong.” Callie said, hugging her arms about herself as she rose to walk slightly behind the Seeker. “No one’s told me what happens if it works, either.”
“If this is successful, we will require you to tell us all you know of the history of this time,” Cassandra said, leading the way up the long flight of stairs that would take them to the sunlit courtyard of Skyhold Fortress. “I do not suggest lying to us.”
“What good would it do me to lie about it?” Callie rolled her eyes. “If I lie, you might do things differently and then I’m not born, which means that I never drop out of my own timeline, which means you never get that future knowledge, which means that you don’t do things any differently, and then I am born, and that’s just a whole lot of paradoxical looping my brain can’t cope with. I can’t even watch Magister Whom without getting a headache, so the real life stuff is just not happening with me.”
“I ...” This seemed to have wrong-footed Cassandra somewhat, turning the Seeker’s habitual scowl into a frown of genuine concern and confusion as she glanced at the woman by her side. “I had not considered this. A true concern, certainly.”
“Whom is Magister Whom?” Dorian asked from barely two steps behind them.
“Oh, it’s a T.V show,” Callie said without thinking. “About a time travelling magister from Ancient Tevinter who drops into different time periods in history and messes around with them until they go the way they’re supposed to. It’s pretty good.”
“Tee vee show?”
Callie blinked, looking over her shoulder at him with a guilty smile.
“Oh.” She shrugged. “Technology that means people can watch moving pictures - like plays, but on a screen in their own home, and recorded so they can watch it over and over again if they want.”
“How marvellously dreadful. We should talk more about this terrifying advancement in future.”
Title: Until It All Comes Undone
Song Prompt: 🎵 Hallucinogenics by Matt Maeson
Written for: @hd-wireless
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: 38.5k
Relationships: Draco/Harry, Harry & Petunia, Draco & Hermione
Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, EWE, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Temporary MCD, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Falling in Love, Getting Together, Draco Malfoy in the Muggle World, Number Four Privet Drive, King’s Cross Station, Amnesia, Memory Loss, Grief/Mourning, Drug Use, LSD, Hallucinogens, Hallucinations, good and bad acid trips, Nightmares, Accidental Magic, Magical Theory, Experimental Magic, The Elder Wand, Obliviate | Memory Charm (Harry Potter), Deception, Gaslighting, Confinement, Alcohol Abuse, Drinking, Smoking, Owls, Smut, Blowjobs, Hand Jobs, Frottage, Boys Kissing, Anal Sex, Rimming, Diary/Journal, Canon-Typical Violence, Mentions of Torture and Abuse, Minor Character Death, POV Multiple, POV Harry Potter, POV Draco Malfoy, POV Petunia Evans Dursley
Summary:
Following his confrontation with Voldemort, Harry returns from King’s Cross Station completely changed. He wakes up at Privet Drive with no memory of his past, the war or magic. Petunia, widowed and suffering from empty nest syndrome, is only too happy to turn Harry into Dudley 2.0.
But something’s not quite right. Plagued by recurring nightmares, Harry can’t help but feel something is missing. A bottle of his cousin’s LSD helps him to forget his worries… Magic may not be real, but the hallucinations and the hot blond he meets all feel pretty magical to Harry.
Having turned his back on his family, Draco is determined to start over and do the right thing. But he’s never made good decisions when it comes to Harry Potter. When Potter—presumed dead, but very much alive—unexpectedly returns, Draco will do anything for a second chance. Even if it means pretending not to know who he is…
Excerpt:
Draco leaned forward and brought his hand up to Harry’s forehead. He gently massaged circles into Harry’s brow, and Harry smiled.
“That’s better. This is probably going to sound strange, but I feel different when I’m with you.” Harry pulled back and fished a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He lit one, then inhaled deeply and let the smoke waft from his mouth. “It started the moment I first saw you. It’s like, the past few months, nothing concrete has come back to me. There have been a few flashes, but they’ve all proven false. But with you”—he took another drag—“it’s hard to describe the feeling, but you feel familiar. It’s like when you know the word for something, and it’s on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t remember it. Are you sure we weren’t friends?”
Draco bit his lip. “I meant it when I said we’ve never been friends.”
Harry passed Draco the cigarette, and he inhaled deeply, the smoke calming his nerves. They were getting too close to the truth.
“Then maybe you remind me of someone I knew. Perhaps someone I cared for.”
“Or maybe someone you hated with a passion.”
Harry snorted and reclaimed the cigarette. “That makes no sense. Why fixate on someone you hate?”
Draco shrugged. “Sometimes life makes no sense.”
“Until it does.” Harry gazed into Draco’s eyes dreamily, and Draco could feel his ears go pink.
Author Notes:
A million thank-you’s to my amazing beta @peachpety who cheered me on, gave me pep talks, and even took time out from her vacation to finish beta reading this for me. Sending you a great big hug and a stiff drink in a coconut with a fruit skewer and tiny umbrella on top 😘
Special thanks to @pennygalleon for all your time answering my brit-picky questions 💕
