Author's Note:

This is my first fanfiction ever written and an opportunity for me to learn if this is something I can and want to do. I don't have much of the plot planned, writing things as they float inside my head. Updates might be sporadic, but I will try my best to deliver good quality to you as soon as possible. Reviews will surely help with that. Feel free to tell me any feelings or opinions you have towards the story, if you like it or not, and why. I appreciate every comment.

I am also searching for a beta, so if you are interested please send a pm.

With a gasp, Harry's body jolted upright. His eyes frantically looked around, soaking in every bit of his environment: the dusty shelves with the few broken soldiers on it, the spider dangling a few inches above his head, the old filthy mattress he lay on, and the locked door right next to him. The familiar setting, which once had inspired fear and resignation, ignited a spark of hope inside his chest. Still not a hundred percent convinced, he looked at himself. His hands were small, far smaller than they had been just a few seconds ago. His tiny frame did not hold the muscles he had built up over the many hours of training, and he was far shorter than he had been for years. He was looking at the body of a child.

It had worked. He was back.

A small smirk formed on his lips, slowly spreading into a grin, before exploding into a full-blown laughter. It had been more than a gamble. It had been a desperate, foolish idea. It had been the last resort of a broken man. Honestly, he hadn't really expected it to work. He would have embraced death if only to flee from the horrors of reality. But it had actually worked.

His laughter slowly receded, but the grin stayed, as Harry nonchalantly unlocked his "room" with a short wave of his hand. He had a lot of work to do, but first, he needed to know the date. He needed to update his plan, depending on his current age. Waking up in the closet under the stairs meant that he had not yet started his Hogwarts education—he let out a small snort at the words 'Hogwarts' and 'education' together in one sentence—but he hoped that he may have a few years of preparation time left before having to operate from inside Hogwarts.

Noting that it was still dark outside, he made his way into the kitchen. It was a miracle that nobody had heard his manic laughter, but if they had, Vernon would now be standing right in front of him, veins popping out of his head and all that. A second snort escaped his lips—in his younger years that image would have had him shivering and looking for cover, now it only left him amused.

Reaching the calendar next to the fridge his lips curved upward a tiny bit more. Today was the 23rd of June, 2012. He was nine years old and had a bit more than a year before he had to enter Hogwarts. While he had hoped for a bit more time, a year would be enough to get all the basics set up. For once, luck seemed to be on his side. He wondered how long that would last. As he was Harry-freaking-let-bad-shit-happen-to-me-Potter, he gave it around five minutes.

"Well, no use starting the day with an empty stomach," Harry mumbled to himself, taking a frying pan out of the bottom drawer under the stove, craving some scrambled eggs and bacon. It was nearly seven, so this was the time he usually started making breakfast. But today, things would be a bit different from what the Dursleys expected. No breakfast for Dudders and Daddy, and everything for the freak.

He really should work on keeping that manic grin off his face.

After finishing preparing his meal, he wholeheartedly dug in. His body felt extremely hungry. Maybe he had been forced on some sort of fast again for doing something really bad—like existing. He had often wondered how he had been able to do any kind of duelling activity with that malnourished body of his. Heck, even at the age of seventeen he had been far too small and thin. Well, he wouldn't wait until his twenties to start eating right and exercising this time around.

Finishing up the last piece of bacon, Harry put the dirty dishes into the washer and headed towards the front door. Reaching into the pockets of his uncle's huge coat, which could just as easily have belonged to Hagrid, he pulled out his wallet, grabbing the cash card and the corresponding piece of paper with the pin code on it. Silently shaking his head, Harry wondered whoever thought putting these two things together into one place was a good idea. Oh yes, the same man who thought it was totally fine to stuff your nephew into a cupboard with no food for a week.

The nearest cash dispenser wasn't far from Privet Drive. It took Harry around ten minutes of walking to retrieve a thousand pounds and head towards the bus stop. He threw the card into a trashcan and the slip of paper quickly found its way into another one a few blocks apart. No need to rob his cousin of his twelfth birthday present. Or would it be eleven this year? Harry wasn't so sure.

While he pondered on this very important and existential question, a bus stopped right in front of him. The bus driver did give him a bit of a curious glance but returned to his bagel after Harry gave him the needed money and quickly spouted something about visiting family in London. He was lucky that the dispenser had also given him some rather small notes, he didn't want to start dishing out confundus charms needlessly. Magic did leave traces after all, and he knew for a fact that one long-white-bearded wizard was exceptionally good at trailing those. It was the same wizard that had once taught him how to avoid leaving them, among many other things. Sadly, all that knowledge came far too late. Still, Dumbledore had always done whatever he could under the constraints he was under. Harry's teeth angrily ground against each other at that thought. Magic could do wonderful things, but it could also be truly terrible. Ancient magic, doubly so. Magic once woven to ensure peace between wizards, now used by those same wizards to push the agenda of one of the most powerful Dark Lords in centuries—with most of them not even aware of what they were doing.

A few key players were pulling the strings from the shadows, most of them free of the constraints that held people like Dumbledore, undoubtedly the most powerful wizard of this age, in check—waiting for the return of their Lord and setting the stage for his arrival, making sure to ensnare every possible opponent into powerful bindings and passing law after law that made that job so much easier.

Every potentially powerful witch or wizard was closely monitored and bound as soon as possible. The more powerful the individual, the more drastic the magic woven around them would be. Information leaks were highly controlled and the muggleborns were given almost nothing. They held the highest risk after all. Most magical infants were tagged and monitored from birth when they were only minutes old. With muggleborns, that was just not possible. They could only be detected at eleven when their name would appear in the Hogwarts Book of Names. The Trace was the first of many magics taking a hold of those children, holding far more weight than simple spell detections—not that anyone was told about what they were doing when getting their wand at Ollivanders.

That was the reason it was so incredibly difficult to get a wand without the Trace, or any magical focus for that matter. They were strictly outlawed. Every offense was punished by death. Selling one? Death. Owning one? Death. Even knowing about one and not bringing it up to the proper authorities left you with a dementor's kiss.

Which was exactly why Harry's highest priority right now would be getting himself a proper magical focus. Not getting any kind of binding onto himself was the single most important part of defeating Voldemort. The Dark Lord had shed those bindings with dozens of abhorrent rituals. It had left him a broken shell of the charismatic man he once was, but it had also made him powerful and, more importantly, free.

Dumbledore's answer had been far less dark, but not less unforgiving. Harry's whole body shuddered at that thought. He had nothing but respect for the ancient wizard. What Dumbledore had done to himself to work around the extremely powerful magic holding him was equally brave, cunning, and self-sacrificing—a feat Harry could not even fathom how to accomplish, not that he ever wished to duplicate it.

His arrival at the next bus station brought Harry out of his increasingly depressing thoughts. Central London was bathing in the warm light of the morning sun, the streets busy with people commuting to their workplaces. Nobody spared the run-down looking child even a glance—good.

His destination clear in his mind, Harry began walking ahead. It took him another fifteen minutes or so until he reached a neighbourhood consisting mostly of middle-class families. Some mothers bringing their children to the local kindergarten spared him a sad look, and one even asked him if he had gotten lost. An eager smile and the reassurance that he was on his way to his aunt and uncle, a way he knew very well, got him a small smile in return, and he was left to his own devices again. This was a purely muggle neighbourhood, a fact that really helped the man he would be meeting. After all, if you don't want to get caught by the ministry: go muggle.

Anton Kusznezow was the only man Harry knew of who successfully sold magical focuses illegally—or at least the only one who had survived it for more than a few weeks. He had always boasted about being in the business for more than twelve years, which, if it was true, meant that he had started his trade in Britain about a year ago. The deciding factor of Kusznezow's long lasting success was his paranoia not even matched by one particular one-eyed Auror. He never stayed in one place for more than a week, all magic around him was strictly forbidden and cost you your head if you tried it, and every interaction with him went through middlemen, who subjected you to questioning under Veritaserum and were memory charmed periodically, so even if captured knew nothing of value for the authorities. These middlemen were actually muggle, which made finding them even harder for wizarding authorities.

The only way to initiate contact was through three predetermined hot-spots containing only a computer with periodically updated meeting places. If you wanted to start an interaction, you just had to type a name into one of the scheduled meetings and the time, date, and place would disappear from the system. The available meeting points and times randomly updated every five minutes so that nobody could look at them beforehand or scout all of them. Harry had always liked the clever and quite secure system.

Stopping in front of one of the apartment buildings Harry was ready to ring the bell of flat number six when the name on the doorbell made him pause. 'Brown' was neatly written above the tiny button, and the label was a bit worn out, definitely being older than a year. He let out a string of muttered curses. Hoping for the best, he rang the doorbell nonetheless. Maybe Kusznezow had started out without his actual name on these doorbells or had not yet replaced it.

"Hello?" a female voice echoed through the speaker. Harry's faced turned into a grimace.

"Oh, I'm sorry ma'am, I have pushed the wrong button," he declared, already turning around and walking towards the street, not even listening to the response. There were two possible explanations for this: The first one was that Kusznezow used some other entry points at this point in time. Maybe he had only set up one for now. Or maybe, and Harry bitterly hoped that this was not the case, he had lied and hadn't even started selling magical focuses. Acquiring one without knowledge of the market was more than risky. The last time it had cost him one of his friends and a finger, and right now he had neither the friend nor the finger to spare.

Taking a deep breath, Harry calmed himself. He had to check out the other apartments first, maybe he was being too pessimistic. Thus, Harry began his walk to the next bus station, which took him half across London into another ordinary looking, middle class, and wizard-empty area. The moment his eyes caught the label at the designated building, his dangling hope sunk down into a bottomless pit. Mr. Cleveland sounded nice through the speaker, but Harry might have preferred talking to the Dark Lord himself, at least that would bring some entertainment to this tragedy. Just for completion he also checked the last of Kusznezow's hot-spots, where he found another ordinary English name, with another ordinary English family behind it. His aunt and uncle would surely have liked that fact. Harry did not.

Well, his carefully woven plan had gone to shit real fast. Harry-Potter-ish fast. Angrily muttering curse after curse, he sat down on a wooden bench next to the local playground and started contemplating his misery. What should he do? Try to locate another dealer, with just his wandless abilities? That would be practical suicide right there. Getting a wand at Ollivanders? He might as well just turn up at the ministry and declare his evil plan to overthrow the government and destroy the Dark Lord Voldemort to the minister himself. Well, the minister wouldn't be a problem at all. Fudge had the magical capabilities of a squib and a brain the size of a peanut. The Aurors however would wipe the floor with him in an instant. With luck he would end up in St Mungo's and not inside Azkaban. Damn Kusznezow and his overactive mouth.

Kicking stone after stone across the park did not help Harry's feelings at all. He just couldn't do anything on his agenda without a focus. This left him with only one option: crafting one himself. He roughly knew of a few possible processes, but only one of those would leave him with a high functioning one. A few of them would just naturally produce poor results, only meant to produce something used temporarily, and the rest were far out of Harry's magical expertise. He had never focused on that particular branch of magic. He had however put a lot of work into studying various rituals and had once encountered a way of crafting a very special kind of focus. The ritual was anything but light, blood magic rarely was, but he had stopped judging any aspect of magic a long time ago. He had employed so called 'evil' or 'dark' magic to save countless of lives, and he would never stop using everything at his disposal to continue doing that. He knew he was walking a slippery slope there, but what was the alternative: let Voldemort rule the country, eliminate all muggleborns from the face of the earth, and kick off a war against muggles which would eradicate most of the population of Britain? No, thank you very much. Common wizarding kind even placed talking to snakes as inherently evil magic. Harry chuckled silently. It was funny how far belief systems could push superstition. Magic was far more complex than that, with intent weighing far more on the consequences of certain magic than the inherent magic itself did.

With his newfound course of action firm in his mind, he swung himself back on his feet and made his way to his next destination. He needed a temporary base of operations, somewhere he could sleep and work in peace. He had seen a cheap motel a few miles from this neighbourhood. A small confundus charm should take care of the I'm-a-nine-year-old-child-booking-a-motel-alone problem the owner would have. Whenever someone else asked, he could just say he was traveling with his dad or something. Harry sighed. Being so young made things so much more complicated than they had to be. Employing any kind of magic so soon after his departure from his 'family' held a high risk. After he had crafted his focus, he had to relocate instantly, just to be sure. Channelling his inner Moody had saved his ass far too often to not take the mad Auror's shouts of 'constant vigilance' dead seriously.

Surprisingly, getting that motel room did not require Harry to use any kind of magic. The man handing him the keys, a bald shabby looking individual, did not bat an eye at his explanation of already booking the room for him and his father. It was clearly either a lie or definite neglect from his 'father', but the man did seem far more concerned with the magazine in his hands (or rather the barely clad girls inside it) than the child in front of him. Harry welcomed it. He had much to prepare, and not needing to use any magic yet left him with one less thing to worry about.

-o-o-

Exactly thirty-eight days later, Harry awoke startled from an uneasy and far too short sleep. He could not remember the last time he had slept peacefully. Dreams haunted him—dreams of the past, of horrors he would like to forget, and since a bit more than a month now, for the first time in years, dreams of the future. But those dreams were just as unpleasant as the ones about the past. Seeing your friends die or suffer in new and imaginative ways was in no way better than the ones you had already experienced. But the sole fact that he was able to dream up those horrible scenarios again was worth all the bad dreams in the world. It meant that there was some hope that these dreams would not come to pass. It meant that there was a chance that they were just fiction inside his head. It meant that the people he cared about were currently still alive and well. Like every morning, that thought turned his depressed mood into one of determination and excitement. He felt meaning again, something to live for and something to die for, or today: something to bleed for.

He exited his bed and made his way over to the runic circle painted on the floor. The ink was made from a mixture of his blood and carbon black in careful measured proportions. Dozens of tiny symbols formed a circle around 3 feet in diameter. Around that even more runes formed patterns around the edge of the circle, flowing into each other and forming a shape that looked a bit like a mandala from afar. It had taken Harry countless hours to write those symbols. Even one tiny mistake might make the whole ritual fail, and a failed ritual was something Harry did not want to experience. The cost might be immeasurable. It might lose him his magic, or his life. There surely was some validity in regulating these kinds of magic.

Inside the circle lay two of the subjects of this ritual: Two small silver rings. They were made out of pure silver—with a quick Legilimency probe on the seller Harry had made sure of that. Pure silver rings were extremely uncommon, at least in the muggle world, because of their easiness to bend and break. Because of that muggles commonly mixed them with stronger metals for jewellery. Silver was an excellent catalyst for magic and mixing it with other metals would just hinder that, but ritual would make the rings more than sturdy enough.

The common wand used parts of magical creatures to give the wand its function as a focus and its 'personality'. The word personality was far more near the truth than most wizards imagined. Magic always carried intent, and the piece of that magical beast held some of the characteristics of that particular being. Upon contact with a wizard, a wand bonded with its carrier if the characteristics of the individual creature matched the ones of the wizard. If not, the wand itself would reject the bond. If the wand core and the wizard matched, the wand would initiate a bond, effectively merging its magic with the magic of the wizard. That clearly explained why using someone else's wand almost always produced poor results, even if its personality was quite similar to your own. Poor Neville never stood a chance with the wand of his father. Harry shook his head; Neville's grandmother should have known better.

In this case, Harry's focus would not use any magical item to bond with him, which was the reason he was able to use such small objects. Harry himself, or more explicitly, his blood would shape the focus, making the rings an even more direct extension of himself. A part of his magical core would be embedded into them. Losing them would cost him a fair amount of his magical power. Their size made them unsuitable for really big and bold magic, but many spells, no matter how complex, could be cast, as long as they did not use a big amount of magic at once. For that he needed a bigger, secondary focus, something he would get himself later. For now, this suited him perfectly.

Harry kneeled down in front of the circle and shut out the desire to once more check the runes. He needed to focus now; he had checked them enough times. Fixing the rings with a stare, he took a deep breath and began speaking ancient Latin phrases, loudly and clearly. Dumbledore could do things of this calibre with simple mutterings, evidence of his vast magical power and expertise. Harry however had to fixate on the words to keep his magic moulding into the right form, at least at this level of enchantment. The runes began to emit a slight glow at two places on the edge of the circle. Harry placed his hands on that location, and the light abruptly intensified tenfold. With it, a piercing pain erupted from his hands. Focusing on his spoken words, Harry continued. At the side of his hands, fresh blood started flowing along the runes, turning the dark red symbol into a shining red. It travelled along a specific winding path, until it reached the centre of the circle, flowing directly into the silver rings. The blood started etching runes into the metal, slowly but gradually. The pain in Harry's hands travelled up into his chest, the place generally associated with the location of a wizard's magical core. With the blood, Harry's innate magic left his system and infused the rings with power and a part of himself.

After five minutes, worry registered through his ritual-induced haze. Two thirds of the rings were still blank; it was taking far too long. He had lost quite a good amount of blood and, more importantly, magic. He had intended to split only a tiny part of his power, only enough to make the rings work as a focus, but at the rate this was happening, he might exhaust all of it, which meant immediate death. The pain in his chest was increasing bit by bit and after ten minutes only magic kept his mouth talking and his body upright. Harry's mind was foggy and coherent thoughts eluded him, but the blood and magic kept flowing. After nearly thirteen minutes, the runes stopped glowing, his mouth fell silent, and his body slumped forward onto the floor.

-o-o-

Harry's eyelids slowly opened, and he could instantly feel that something was very, very wrong. He felt drained, exhausted and incredibly weak. His chest ached as if a giant hole had replaced the place where his heart was supposed to be. Then the memories returned, and with it, panic and fear. Had he lost his magic? He did not want to fathom the consequences of that. His eyes fell on the two rings situated a few centimetres from his head, clear of blood and carved full of runes. Somehow, he knew that he had to put them on rather quickly or he would not like the consequences.

It took enormous effort to even move his hand in the direction of the rings. In what seemed like an eternity, his fingers travelled across the floor towards the first ring. The moment his index finger connected with the metal, Harry sighed in relief. A good amount of strength poured through him. Quickly, he placed the ring firmly on his finger. Before even moving to sit up, his other hand grabbed the second ring and another surge of energy flooded his body.

Harry peeled his face from the floor and lifted his body upright. It seemed like his magic, nearly all of it, had been transferred to the rings. Harry's eyes narrowed in thought. He did not know any of the consequences of his magic resting mostly in his two focuses. It was something he had not yet encountered or read about. It was safe to assume that losing them would be fatal after a certain amount of time, or at least induce unconsciousness, judging from the state he had just been in. It had resembled magical exhaustion quite a bit. For a moment he thought about taking off one of the rings to better see the difference in states, but the thought alone let the hairs on his neck stand up and a shiver travel up his spine.

It seemed like taking them off would not be appreciated by his body. Did that mean he could not use a secondary focus? Most likely, yes. That meant he had just lost access to most really big and powerful magic.

"Shit."

Thinking about it, he didn't even know how well the rings worked at all.

He did a short swish-and-flick motion with his right hand aimed at the flowers on the desk next to him. He knew he didn't need the hand movements for such simple magic, but he wanted to be very sure that he did this flawlessly. He even thought about using the incantation but decided against it. He wasn't that desperate. The flowers slowly and steadily rose from their vase, hovering in mid-air for a few seconds, before they fell back down, when Harry cut the connection of his magic.

Harry let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. This was good. He was now able to move onto the next stage of his pre-Hogwarts preparation. But first, he had to relocate without anyone seeing him and without using his magic. There was a slight chance that Dumbledore would detect his breakout from the Dursley's and follow him here through the minds of the people he had met. Seeing his unusual behaviour and his visit to the jewellery store would ring all kinds of alarm bells inside the headmaster's head. From there, he would be able to sense the traces his magic had left and follow him that way when he found no further clues in surrounding people's minds. Magic woven by an individual had a unique signature, and if there was enough of it present, you could familiarise yourself with it and detect it in other places. In the scenario that Dumbledore was able to follow him here, he had planned to discard his Harry Potter identity for a few years. In that case the important part was that nobody connected his new identity with his old one. Luckily, a simple hovering charm wasn't enough to get a permanent feel for someone's magic unless someone cast it right next to you, and the ritual magic had all been sucked into the rings on his fingers. Nevertheless, Harry hoped that Dumbledore would not detect his departure from his home until the memories of him had left the minds of his encounters. That would enable him to enter Hogwarts under his real name, which made things a lot easier.

The following night Harry left the hostel, being very careful not to be seen by anybody. He had awaited the moment he could leave for this next destination since he had arrived back in his cupboard. While he planned to visit a few special individuals in the months to come, this one needed the least preparation. It was also the one he both anticipated and dreaded the most. It was the only person completely free of ministry bindings that he could trust. He needed to get this right or his chances of success would diminish faster than Dumbledore's supply of lemon drops on an especially stressful day.