[DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter and all related characters and places are the work of JK Rowling, with certain rights accruing to various corporate entities including, but not necessarily limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Warner Bros Studios. The Fourth World and all concepts involved in its mythos are the creation of Jack Kirby and the property of his estate and DC Comics, Inc. The Walrus and the Carpenter was written by Lewis Carroll, and the gods alone know who owns that these days. This is a work of amateur fanfiction which makes no challenge to the copyright or other rights of the authors or any legal entities with rights pertaining thereto, and no payment of any sort will be sought or accepted for it.]
There came a time...
...when the Powers that had shaped the world departed. Their work had outgrown Them, as it was meant to, and other Realms needed Them and beckoned to Them, so They left -- but not without leaving something of Themselves behind. They had wrought mightily in their efforts to make the world as it was, and such labours cannot be undertaken without part of the labourer entering into its creation. And so the world was dear to Them, and They took steps to preserve it after Their departure; and each also worked to promote Its own area of responsibility, Its Aspect, that it might prosper and the One who brought it to the world be remembered, by nature if in no other way, in the aeons to come.
The results of Their efforts in those latter days took many forms. Some, mostly those more ethereal Powers, found spaces, and even times, into which they could concentrate some of what They were, giving the world places and eras in which arts, sciences, magicks and, in a very few cases, feelings of all sorts could flourish and be preserved. Others, less abstract and more physical in nature, created objects in which a fraction of Their power could be stored and, if found by a suitable mind in the future, wielded according to the skill and capability of that mind. These objects ranged from simple stones to finely-crafted artefacts, fashioned with remarkable precision into shapes both mundane and fantastic; all, however, were items of great power, for were they not imbued with the essences of the Ones who created them?
One Power in particular, whose Aspect was more closely connected to the world than most -- for It could not fulfil Its role without the world and the creatures thereon -- left behind an extremely potent artefact, as strong or stronger than any other. So strong, in fact, that another Power came to the first and asked to leave something of Itself in the other's creation. It was concerned that, left to itself, the might of the artefact could overpower a future user, which could bring chaos and pain to the world, and It pleaded to be allowed to focus the power into a more positive form.
The first Power considered this, and agreed. It saw that the other's fear was reasonable, and It also saw that what the other wanted to do would enhance one facet of the power of the artefact, and that would give the object's wielder a heightened ability to protect -- protect those beings, places and ideas that were important to it, him or her, and even the entire world if the need was great enough and the wielder capable. That was a welcome addition; the Power had often felt an inner call to use its abilities in that way but, at times, that meant fighting part of Its own nature. Now, Its bequest to this precious world could help another do what the Power itself struggled to achieve.
So be it; a joint legacy was a wonderful notion, and one which the Power was grateful to be asked to make a reality. Besides, the other Power had always been dear to It, and It found it hard to refuse the other anything. They even moved on together, bound for a Realm where what They were could evolve and change in ways unknown and unknowable, even to Them. Behind Them, along with the bequests of the other Powers, lay the artefact, unique in its dual, focussed nature, powerful beyond any other by means of that very nature, and secure in its hiding place until it was time for its power to manifest.
Time passed. The world that the Powers had shaped, and the life upon that world, grew and developed. Humanity and other intelligent species appeared and, for the first time, with the advent of sentience, the legacies of the Powers began to rouse from their long slumbers.
Some of the places imbued with Their essences were discovered or revealed, and were considered sacred -- or diabolic; the first few eras on which the more temporally-oriented Powers had worked Their will dawned and passed, changing the world and the life on it -- especially humans -- according to the designs and the Aspects of their Makers; and a number of the objects created by the other Powers were found or showed themselves... but not the joint artefact. That remained hidden and undreamed of, for the world had neither the need for its power, nor yet a being who could use it as it was meant to be used; and until both were there, the influence of the second Power at its creation kept it silent and unknown.
Finally, a human child was born who could properly cope with the power of the artefact, and who lived at a time of great upheaval, when his world stood on the brink of an abyss into which all that his people had struggled to build, all that was noble and holy, could disappear and be lost for an age. Then, the artefact chose its first wielder -- and the form that it would take, now that it knew the ones with whose lives it would be involved.
Before this time, it was amorphous and indefinite, for it was designed to adapt itself to the kind of being that would wield its power. Now, knowledge of the humanoid body led it to fashion itself into a shape which could protect that vital region wherein mind and awareness were most concentrated -- a helmet. Plain and mostly unadorned, it wasn't much to look at unless the onlooker could appreciate the subtle, silvery sheen of the unique substance from which it was made -- but then, it hadn't been made to be looked at; indeed, most of the time, it wouldn't be seen, and it might even be held that it wasn't really there...
The first occasion on which the power of the helmet was used was truly the stuff of epics, and those who witnessed it and survived to tell the tale swore that it would never be forgotten. It was, of course, for the memory of Man is short and Time is longer than the human mind can appreciate, but the tale was not entirely lost. As such things do, remnants of the truth survived and were incorporated into myths and legends, often being distorted out of all recognition as the fables into which they were woven were revised again and again by a myriad of authors and story-tellers. By the time some of these myths were written down, preserving their then-current forms from further change -- or at least partly so -- only two small fragments of the happenings of so long ago had come down through the years: the names of the first wielder of the helmet's power and some of those who had been dear to him; and the role for which the helmet had empowered him, and would all the others who would follow down the ages.
The Powers who created it had no names as humans know them, for They knew one another in ways that transcended mere animal senses, so the artefact came to be known, by the few who knew or learned of it in the long intervals between its appearances, by the name of that first wearer. When not needed, it hid from the world so that greedy -- or well-intentioned -- men and women could not try to subvert its power for their own purposes, however base or noble; but it was never quite forgotten, either. When none were left who had seen its power in action, or had heard of its use even at second- and third-hand, there were always a few dusty, neglected, elderly (if not positively ancient) tablets, scrolls or books, confined to the oldest, mustiest, most obscure and least-used sections of certain libraries, wherein a determined, patient searcher could find mention of the Helm of Orion...
Somewhere away from the sights and sounds of the world, in a place where no human had or ever would come, the Helm lay, waiting... until, one fateful night, a wizard died, murdered as he tried to defend a young man who was the closest thing to a son that he would ever know. His sacrifice was a tragedy, but not a waste. Old and dear friends joyously and sorrowfully welcomed his soul into its new Realm, and he learned that he had fulfilled his destiny, a destiny that had been shaped by what was to follow from his death; even his name reflected this, though no-one had known it, and only two people then alive would ever find out.
Nor did anyone, then or for some time after, know of the forces that his death had set into motion; for, even as the man fell, a voice spoke in the resting-place of the Helm.
"IT IS TIME…THE DARKNESS GROWS AGAIN. THE HOUND HAS FALLEN. THE HUNTER IS NEEDED."
Silence fell, stretching out into the evening for long minutes until a final pronouncement might have been made out, had there been anyone there to do so, but only if the listener was close enough and had keen enough ears to hear the voice utter, softly, but with a passion running through the words like a streak of fire...
"THE HUNT MUST BEGIN AGAIN…"
Something more than a year passed, during which time the voice remained silent and the Helm stayed hidden; however, the power that had spoken those few words was not inactive. Its resolve made, it used the unearthly senses at its command to seek out the young man who might be the next Helm-Wearer, and his friends and foes, and it watched them. And there was much to watch: there was a war taking place, and fighting raged up and down more than one land; most of the battles were hidden from public knowledge, but not from this extraordinary observer, which saw the strategies and tactics of both sides and followed the clashes from their inception to the awful aftermath. It watched, and it prepared to deal with the combatants, whom it studied closely.
Some, it spent little time on, for they were sufficiently similar to many others that it had seen before for it to be convinced that it knew what to expect from them; others, especially those closest to the young man, now or in the past, took longer to scrutinise to its satisfaction. The focus of the Darkness that it had seen, the powerful wizard who would be the young man's ultimate enemy, required more time and effort than anyone else, save only the potential Wearer himself.
However, most of the period between its waking and a certain auspicious date was spent examining this young man, probing his mind and soul, and attuning itself to what it found; for it had become obvious, very early on, that the young man was both worthy and capable, and the power of the Helm felt a familiar thrill, perhaps stronger than usual, as it readied itself -- and the world -- for what was to come.
[A/N: This story began as a ‘what if' idea in a moment of idle musing, and then grew from that -- so, nothing unusual there, then <g>. What is less usual is that the what-if came to involve the incorporation of certain ideas, and even a couple of phrases, from another work of fiction of which I am inordinately fond -- Jack Kirby's masterwork, the Fourth World "tetralogy," and Walt Simonson's recent excellent development of it. This is not to say that this is a crossover, any more than, say, Forbidden Planet is a work of Shakespeare, but some of the King's fantastic (literally) ideas have been used as a basis for what follows, and a reader who knows the works of Kirby, Simonson and JKR may recognise the references -- which are intended purely in tribute to one of the 20th century's great myth-makers and the best of those who have tried to follow him, and for the sheer fun of mixing some of the products of their incredible imaginations with the world of HP.]