Arthur felt his soul leaving his body and began to float above it. Then he started to disintegrate into little specks of light. Strangely, this disintegration didn't feel painful at all, on the contrary, he felt at peace during the entire process, even comforted by a growing warmth toward the end.
Arthur Polaris was completely erased, leaving behind only an empty, electrocuted husk of flesh and blood as the sole reminder of his existence in the world.
########################
The Afterlife
His soul, now a scattering of luminous particles, reappeared in a completely different place—an abstract realm filled with other colorful specks of light. These lights drifted in clouds, flowed in streams, and sometimes condensed into dense, solid shapes suspended in space. The Afterlife stretched out as a warm, white expanse, glowing with color from the shimmering particles that danced throughout—everything floating in an endless void visible at the edges.
In this scattered form, Arthur's consciousness still existed, though it felt fragmented. He was high—mentally, not physically—as if drifting through a dream, acting more on instinct than deliberate thought.
He began to observe the realm around him. The other lights were in constant motion. Sometimes they gathered and fused, becoming gaseous, then liquid, and finally solid. Once solid, they grew so dense they began to sink into the void, vanishing from the Afterlife entirely, no matter how desperately they struggled to stay within it.
Arthur soon realized that these specks of light were souls, each at a different stage of fusion. New arrivals like himself were scattered lights, and the more they fused with each other, the more solid they became.
And he noticed something important : all souls displayed colors. Some had dark colors, some light colors, and a rare few displayed a vibrant and radiant shade of these colors, as if those souls had something more. Something his instincts went wild for. And apparently, it was the same for the others, as the vibrant souls—no matter their color—attracted every soul in the vicinity and were always forced to fuse with others.
Each color seemed to carry meaning, and sometimes—though apparently rare—an individual speck of light within a soul would bear a symbol, engraved as if etched into the light itself. Some souls had none at all, while others bore dozens.
Most souls with darker colors roamed the realm obsessively, seeking to fuse with everything around them, as if they had fully surrendered to an instinct to devour all the souls of the Afterlife, especially the vibrant ones. The lighter souls were far more passive, often getting consumed without resistance. But something strange occurred : when darker souls absorbed lighter ones, they became lighter in color and at the same time less oppressive, less ravenous.
Also any soul fusing with one that displayed vibrant colors would eventually take on a vibrant hue. Just as the symbols of both souls —if they had any—would be in the fused soul, sometimes in several copies if both souls initially had the same symbol.
Noticing that, he turned his attention inward and examined the colors that composed his own soul : silver and royal blue, with a hint of light blue, slightly more vibrant than average, but apparently not enough to drive nearby souls mad with attraction. One of his particles even bore a faint, brain-like symbol etched into the light. All in all, a pretty good soul, if the symbol was something positive, as he supposed. Many instinctively wanted to fuse with him, but he didn't dare attempt fusion. Instead, he fled whenever any soul approached.
Arthur hesitated to act. Fusion, he realized, likely blended the personalities and memories of both souls involved. He didn't want to lose himself, or worse, inherit dangerous traits. So he chose caution, remaining an observer for a long time and evading every soul. He collected data and analyzed patterns, paying a special attention to the souls with colors like his own, and to the vibrant ones.
########################
Arthur thus started exploring every corner of this strange world, time and time again, fighting his instincts to fuse with any soul,searching methodically for souls that seemed compatible.
Along the way, he witnessed monumental souls : massive, near-solid beings so dense and vibrant that their very presence felt unbearable. Their proximity tore at his form, threatening to unravel him. So he kept away from them, puzzled that these souls had not yet sunk into the void like the others.
He had been in the presence of a light red and gold one, another was light yellow and pink and the last one he met was dark silver and green. Arthur had spotted a few others from afar, but they dared not go near them, though one was eerily similar to him in colors, with a more vibrant shade of royal blue and silver colors.
In the end, the most compatible souls turned out—unsurprisingly—to be those whose colors resembled his, and especially the vibrant ones, according to his observations. Still, this matter was way too important to leave to chance or instinct, waiting for so long was a small price to confirm it, his future depends on which souls he decides to fuse with after all.
Once he was absolutely sure to have identified which souls were the best for him, he finally started to hunt them down, which wasn't particularly easy since, like him, the silver and royal blue souls avoided other souls like the plague. Clearly, all the souls of these colors were extremely similar, preferring to remain as observers, not taking any risk.
The first one was a soul with exactly his colors, but a bit brighter and most importantly : more vibrant. He managed to fuse with it because the soul literally appeared in front of him and had no time to adjust to the Afterlife. They fused, the process wasn't painful, but it was overwhelming. Something deep within him shifted. A new set of memories merged with his own, and inside the soul, alongside the brain-symbol appeared a second engraving : an hourglass.
They resumed their search, fusing with a few other vibrant and compatible souls, mostly newly spawned ones, and some dim souls with similar colors. Their form thickened, nearing liquidity.
########################
Over time, they noticed an odd pattern. Each fusion added memories and personalities. Dozens now lived inside their shared soul, each subtly influencing decisions and movement of the shared soul. Some were agreeable, others argumentative but all were pretty similar : researchers with insatiable curiosity, loners with absolutely poor social skills but full of cunning, along with a healthy dose of selfishness and possessiveness.
The existence of multiple personalities was also how they discovered that vibrant souls were very likely to be souls capable of harnessing magic. Apparently, all the personalities that emerged after fusing with souls displaying vibrant colors had been able to use magic while they were still alive, though now they couldn't use it in the Afterlife for some reason.
MAGIC !
A whole world had been hiding under the Muggles' nose all these years. The story of Harry Potter was real, Hogwarts, wands, brooms and dragons were real. Apparently J.K.Rowling was a Squib that used a story from the magical side to earn money as a novelist on the muggle side !
As for how she got the details ? Apparently she had a wizard child in the same year as Harry, giving her all the information she needed for her story, purely from the mouth of the Savior himself ! She was not a journalist, she only needed a juicy magical story, not the truth. So everything Harry said was put in the story, whether he lied or exaggerated, especially since the winner is always right, and Harry did win this war.
J.K.Rowling only published the first book after the dark lord's defeat in late 1998, after being sure that publishing the Savior's adventures wouldn't get her killed in a very gruesome way by a very unhappy dark lord.
(The first book was published in 1997 IRL, but it's a fanfiction, so here the publication of each Harry Potter book is pushed back by one year).
As for the fans of the saga, who tried to visit platform 9 and ¾, since the wizards have magic, they didn't need to do much more in King's Cross or Diagon Alley than they usually did, thanks to the memory spells and muggle repelling charms. The Obliviators, responsible for removing memories from Muggles were simply overworked for some time because of the Squib fans who accidentally wandered where they shouldn't have.
That's how Arthur realised he was a Squib, his soul was a bit vibrant but not enough to attract other souls, and he had mistakenly wandered in Diagon Alley when he was a kid which couldn't have happened if he was a Muggle. Indeed, Muggle-Repelling Charms only work against Muggles and not Squibs or Wizards since the latter two both have magic—even if not enough to cast spells—according to the wizard souls in their shared mind.
And apparently the Obliviators had not done their work correctly because he remembered the visit in his dreams and he had started to develop a failing memory because of that incident.
The wizard souls also warned the others that not everything said in the books was true, since as any novelist, the author had skipped some details, embellished some others and outright fabricated a few. Also, as a Squib she lacked any magical education, which could explain a lot of things like the fact that duels were often degraded to just a dozen spells, and especially Expeliarmus, Stupefix, Protego and the Unforgivables.
J.K.Rowling had, after all, only the point of view of Hogwarts students, both poorly prepared against the dark forces because of their various experiences with incompetent DADA (Defense Against the Dark Arts) professors, and both were indoctrinated to view Dumbledore as a god of the light.
The oldest witch soul added that magic was clearly waning for two reasons : because the Muggleborns were stealing it from purebloods. And because Dumbledore, as the Supreme Mugwump, had been restricting access to lots of magical knowledge worldwide for years, something that was even more noticeable in Hogwarts where he was the Headmaster. All that while arguing with the younger wizards' souls about which generation was the best.
So maybe it was both the circumstances of the students and the general decline of the magical world, for political, social, and magical reasons. Or maybe the old hag was simply senile and biased.
########################
They continued to fuse with compatible souls. The more souls they fused with the more divided the control of the soul was. And having dozens of selfish souls share the same construct was asking for trouble. Until now they couldn't do anything. They could only try to seize power and authority, each in their own way.
But after becoming solid, everything changed.
The realization came slowly : the more soul they fused with the more solid they became and the more they could perceive what was in the void. And when they became able to perceive it, it opened the gates of the pandemonium.
What did they see ? They couldn't remember, and that's precisely what changed everything.
That's when they realized : if every solid soul that sinks into the void is reincarnated, and if all of them are in the same—or worse—condition, with countless personalities...Then how come people are born innocent, without memories and most importantly without split personalities ?
Simple. The memories and personalities are erased before that.
It theoretically happens in the void surrounding the Afterlife, as the solid souls—unable to remain—sink into it. Now, even before sinking, simply perceiving what existed in the void was enough to begin erasing memories... and likely the personalities too, once all their memories were gone.
Arthur's soul cluster, now composed of nearly 40 distinct personalities, was full of possessive loners with sharp minds, trust issues, and a total lack of desire to share. None of them wanted to remain in a shared consciousness. They wanted solitude.
And now, they had discovered a way to erase each other.
Logically, selective memory deletion could be weaponized. Maybe, if done wisely, it could be used to refine the soul : shed weaknesses, optimize traits, create a better self. Unfortunately, even if every personality had the same idea, none of them trusted each other.
Unless, of course, you're the most naive fool in existence, if you're surrounded by schemers, the only question is *When— and not if— will someone try to stab you in the back ?*
Despite knowing that cooperation would yield the best result, distrust bloomed. Secret plots emerged. Psychological warfare began. Each personality deployed all the cunning, manipulation, and deception they'd ever possessed to outwit the others and seize control.
Arthur, chose a different strategy, instead of fighting for control—as he had since fusing with the first soul—he innovated and did the opposite. He sank deep into their shared consciousness, becoming the quietest voice. Of course he was not the only one to do that, but he was the most successful.
While the others tried to force each other's memories to the forefront—so they'd be erased—he selected a fragment of his own soul, stuffed it with useless memories in a shell of sentimental ones about his family, and finally he inflated it like a balloon to mimic a full soul. He had created a decoy to fool the others while the true core of Arthur lay hidden, buried in the deepest part of their collective mind.
After the initial bloodshed, when the first few unprepared souls were erased, Arthur left his decoy in a precarious, vulnerable position—making it struggle visibly, acting with just enough desperation to make it look real. The other souls, eager to eliminate a competitor, pounced like hyenas. With an unspoken truce, they ganged up and targeted the decoy. Finally, when he judged his acting convincing enough, Arthur let the decoy be destroyed, accompanied by the most soul-tearing shriek he could muster.
Now, with the core of Arthur's mind hidden and silent, everyone thought him gone for good, the others returned to their infighting. And Arthur… watched the carnage unfold from his safe little corner, enjoying the chaos with metaphorical popcorn.
########################
It had taken immense effort—and no small amount of luck—but in the end, all the other personalities erased one another. When the final contender, the oldest witch soul, believed she had emerged victorious, Arthur struck from the shadows and erased her.
The cost was not small. Arthur lost fragments of his own memories in the process, and the memories and identities of all the other souls were wiped out completely. He no longer carried the advantage of multiple lifetimes' worth of experience either.
But the countless conversations he'd had with the others while they had been fused—exchanges of ideas, philosophies, secrets—remained fresh in his mind. Their lives may have vanished, but the wisdom of their exchanges lingered. More importantly, he had gained peace and was now whole again.
And though he hadn't noticed it, the brain-shaped symbol on his soul—the one that had once belonged to his original self—dimmed slightly. During the mental war, it had glowed brighter than all the others, pulsing with intensity. Now, it returned to the same soft shimmer as the rest.
########################
Arthur was now a nearly solid soul, just one fusion away from completion. His form glowed in shades of silver, royal blue, light blue, and pale gray. Symbols etched into his particles had grown numerous: a brain, a tongue, a wand, a teacup with a rat tail, an hourglass, a snowflake, a wave, and a wing. Some bigger than others as Arthur had found a way to fuse multiple copies of the same symbol into a bigger one—an easy trick that required only putting the duplicates in contact and waiting for fusion.
At first, he continued to search for one final compatible soul, erasing the ones he fused with using the same tactics. But then two problems arose:
First, he couldn't find any more compatible souls.
Second, even if he did, he needed a way to keep his memories after crossing the void.
He theorized the void served as a buffer—a final cleansing stage before reincarnation, erasing memories to ensure a fresh start. But he wanted more : he wanted to be reborn with an edge, he had fought to be the last one standing in his mind only to be erased in the end.
########################
Time passed as he searched for the last soul and thought about a solution, but nothing changed.
Until fate—or perhaps something else—intervened.
A tiny black hole appeared without warning, pulling him in. It wasn't violent—it was seamless, silent, as if the Afterlife itself had opened a door just for him. No other soul noticed, one second he was there, the next one he was gone.
He didn't resist, for a very simple reason : he couldn't because the pull was natural and literally inevitable. Not like he intended to resist anyway, he hadn't yet found a way to escape the Afterlife with his memories…and this black hole might very well be the answer to all his problems.
The sensation was like being compressed through a tube. He was squeezed, then he felt warmth, and finally sound.
Arthur Polaris had escaped, and certainly not empty-handed though he didn't know how such a thing had happened or where he was !
The first and last thing he heard was blurry voice speaking English :
"...a true miracle !"
And then, darkness.