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PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING

Summery:

If Voldemort couldn't have the world, no wizard would... His defeat by Harry triggers a little gift that he left the wizarding world: a deadly plague that will destroy it.

Disclaimer:

This is intended to fall under 'reasonable use'. It is not for profit. Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling. All mentioned works belong to their respective owners. An attempt will be made to site all of these. If the author of one of these works (providing reasonable proof of their identity) gives me a cease-and-desist letter I will either edit the story or remove it.

On FFN it is impossible to know if someone else already had an idea or if you read it somewhere but don't remember reading it. An attempt will be made to site all instances of such ideas. If you notice such a thing is uncited, please contact me.

Rating:

This fic is rated T for Teen. In the video rating system it would translate into PG 13. Violence may be moderately graphic. Sexual innuendos are improbable but not impossible. This fic may contain advanced math/science/computer science/linguistics. (inspired by XKCD)

Time frame:

To avoid inconsistencies this fic (post-prolouge) will begin in 2008. This should avoid conflicts with reality. It's ending point is unknown.

Notes:

The 'muggle' world will be important seeing as the wizarding world no longer exists.

Science is meant to be realistic in this fic. This means that reversing the polarity or put things in vacuums with anti-friction are not valid solutions to problems.

Ships are unknown. Certainly noslash (one word for accuracy of searches).

This fic may encounter problems where math is involved as FFN's support for .odt does not extend to open math. It would be nice if they supported it. (To staff: Hint-Hint)

Reminder:

This is a work of fiction. This fic has some content that may seem to indicate that it is real. It isn't. I am experimenting with these sort of techniques.

You should be careful when working with electricity. The brief mentions of how it works in this fic are NOT sufficient training for you to rewire your house.

Onwards:

Prologue:

Albus Dumbledore didn't know if he should be relieved or sad. Or perhaps he knew he should be sad and was only questioning it to be optimistic. On the one hand, he was dieing, his students were dieing, his whole world was dieing. But on the other hand, he had found a way to help his world survive. The relief was comparative but it was still relief.

To most of the wizarding world, the day Voldemort fell was a day of rejoicing. For friends of the Potters and Longbottoms, it was a day of mourning. If they hadn't been fools, it would've been a day of cursing.

Voldemort wasn't ready to just let them win. He had engineered a plague that would be released if he died. At first there were no symptoms but it was highly contagious. It spread through the parties and celebrations that followed his death like wildfire. Then the ministry received a letter. Voldemort informed them of their impending deaths.

The ministry had immediately begun researching for a cure. The researchers died just after their preliminary findings.

Dumbledore glanced over his copy of the findings. The most important part was that muggles couldn't get the disease. Dumbledore suspected that this meant that Voldemort believed that he would be able to come back and wanted there to be people to serve him when he did. All the opposition would be gone...

Albus Dumbledore wouldn't allow it.

Hence his current objective: ensure that there would be someone to restore the wizarding world and guide it against Voldemort. Thankfully, Harry Potter lived amongst muggles in Surrey. The problem was that one could easily live through their life and not discover the secrets of magic. Two things would help him: magic and intelligence. He intended to give Harry both.

Many rituals would be illegal if the Ministry of Magic knew about them. Only that they were unknown to most prevented their rampant use. Dumbledore knew one that would be useful.

This particular one would give someone a portion of the casters abilities: some of their intelligence, some of their strength, some of their magic... At the cost of the caster's life.

But Dumbledore didn't have much to loose as it was.

And that was the final thought that went through his head before he completed the ritual and died.

Chapter 1:

"Petunia, I've been thinking... The boy is smart enough to live by himself. We could let him live in the basement and he'd never bother us again. We could lock the door by the kitchen so he can get from the basement to the side door without us seeing him. Just think of it: Never seem him again!" Vernon Dursley was elated at the thought.

Petunia, however, was cautious, "What if the Freaks find out?"

"No different that the cupboard, My Dear. We'll give him a small stipend so he doesn't starve. The freaks can't get angry over that." Vernon explained his reasoning.

"Well I suppose... If we can't get in trouble... It'll do Diddy-Dums good to be away from the Freak." Petunia became more supportive with each syllable.

"I'll tell him at dinner. He'll have till Monday to move into it... Two days should be enough. And after that? We won't have anything to do with him again."

As Petunia went down to tell the boy to make dinner, Vernon considered the down sides. Certainly, there would be more work without the boy doing it for them... But it was worth not having the boy around.

Besides, it would put the basement to use. He'd bought the house with the intention of renovating the basement himself. It didn't take long for him to discover that it took more effort than he'd though. So the basement had been sitting there in its mid-renovation state for the past eight years.

He was eventually broke out of his giddy line of thought by Petunia screeching "Dinner is ready!"

He descended down the stairs. With each step the stairs creaked under his weight. He stalked over to the dining room and took his seat at the head of the table. On one side was Dudley and on the other Petunia. Beside Dudley was the Boy, Harry. Harry had the smallest portion of Kraft Dinner and Dudley the biggest. Dudley picked up the Ketchup and squirted it on to his dinner until there was more Ketchup than food. As he mixed it, Vernon thought, Good! Energetic boys like him need lots of food to build muscle.

They ate the food in silence. Inwardly he was glowing with excitement. As they got up to leave he spoke, "Boy! Come here. We need to talk about something."

Startled, Harry walked over to him. "What is it, Sir?"

"You are going to live in the basement. We want nothing to do with you. You won't bother us in any way." Vernon iterated and paused obviously looking for him to agree.

Harry swallowed, "Of course, Sir."

"Good. We will give you a small amount of money to spend on food. If you starve it's your own fault. Don't come running to us, don't bother other adults with your problems, don't cause trouble. You have until Monday to move into the basement. After that I don't want to see you unless it's to walk by you in the streets." Vernon stated jubilantly.

"Of course, Sir."

"This is your ticket to life, Boy, don't loose it," He ordered, handing the eight year old a hundred pound note. "Now, scram."

When Harry got up he immediately remembered what had happened. He had spent last night planning what he had to do. His plan was simple: Check the basement, Move his stuff down, Plan More. Should be easy enough, he thought.

He grabbed a banana from the counter and went to the basement. The basement was cold and damp. On one side of the room was a pile of wood with some tools, insulation, and dry wall. On one wall there was a small window looking into a window well. A single plug was in the corner. Near the stairs was a single door leading to the washroom which had a small shower along with a toilet and sink.

None of it was immediately useful to any significant degree. Harry's own possessions, however, were. You see, the Dursleys were rather wasteful and Harry had developed slightly sticky fingers when it came to taking out the trash. As the saying went, one man's junk is another man's treasure. So, alongside the pitiful items they gave him Harry had some other possessions. He didn't have any other clothing as none of theirs would fit but some other things he was able to acquire proved to be more valuable.

The first thing he took from the trash was when they threw out Dudley's sheets and blanket because he no longer found it 'cool'. After that he started paying more attention to what they threw out. His next lucky break was when they threw out a flashlight. It might not sound like much but it changed his life.

In Kindergarten his teachers quickly noticed his intelligence. He easily learnt the letters and the sounds they made. The teachers couldn't devote much time to him in the big class so they lent him books.

Now at first he had little time to read the books as the Dursleys expected him to stay in his cupboard when not doing chores and he couldn't read in the dark. Once he got a flashlight he could read in his cupboard.

When he got home he was expected to do some chores that usually amounted to about an hour after which he ate dinner for about thirty minutes. But then he didn't have anything to do. There were no distraction like television or games. So he read.

His reading improved rapidly and he soon asked other teachers for books. At first they gave him English books. Harry already knew lots of words from hearing people speak. He could sound out the words in the spelling section and memorized then with little effort. On some of the more irregular spellings he asked the teachers what the word meant. Grammatical concepts were also easy and after a month he had finished the highest grade book in English taught at his school, grade six. The teachers tested him a bit and were amazed.

His uncle and aunt weren't happy about it because he was overshadowing their Diddy-Dums but besides his aunt quoting a parenting book saying "Children go through periods of intelligence" they didn't do anything.

He found that math books repeated themselves. The concepts were easy. He quickly memorized the multiplication tables and practised basic arithmetic until he could do simple operations quickly.

Science books were where he had a problem or, more precisely in Harry's opinions, the books had a problem: they didn't do anything but regurgitate common knowledge alongside some pretty pictures. He continued reading books on other topics instead.

One day he banged the wall when he stood up and punctured the dry wall. He noticed that a wire ran behind his wall. He used a kitchen knife the Dursleys threw out to cut a square out and sure enough there was a wire. It seemed to be heading from the fuse box to the kitchen. He wondered why he couldn't tap the wire for power himself.

He went to the library but found that the electricity focused books went over his head so he started on a general physics book. It was very interesting. Quickly velocity and displacement were replaced by current and charge.

He decided to put a socket in parallel with with the other sockets on the wire. There were two problems: he didn't care to get electrically shocked and didn't have a socket. He modified his path to school so that he walked by the electronic shops. They were rather wasteful and soon he found a socket.

He waited till the Dursleys were all watching TV. Then he snuck to the fuse box and pulled out the fuse labelled kitchen. To be safe he also wore some rubber cleaning gloves. Then he cut, attached the plug and stuffed it back into the wall. Then he hurried back to the fuse box and reinserted the fuse.

The first electronic device to use the plug was a lamp. It threw off more light than the flashlight and made for more enjoyable reading.

On a whim, he had taken some items that would be useful to him now: a hotplate and a small carpet. More recently he had hit the jackpot: Vernon had thrown out his old laptop. He couldn't figure out the password. Harry didn't know much about computers so he had taken a book out of the library on them.

He had also made quite a bit of money by bringing the beer bottles his uncles alcoholic tendencies produced to the beer store.

He moved his stuff down quickly so that the Dursleys wouldn't see it.

There was one thing he still wanted to do: get access to the internet. When the Dursleys had high-speed internet installed, Harry was careful to watch. It was simple enough. The cable went to the first box that turned it into a usable internet connection which went to another box where it was split into several different cables which went to the different computers.

He grabbed his money and left the house. Surrey didn't have a very big commercial center. There was a market, a grocery store, and some specialized shops. Thankfully, the Dursleys were close to it. He stopped first at the market where he bought some food for a couple pounds and then went to the computer shop where he purchased a long ethernet cable.

He cut whole in the basement ceiling approximately beneath the wall that Vernon's desk was against. Then he waited for the Dursleys to watch TV. Once they were, he snuck into the office with his ehternet cable and a knife. He plugged the cable into the box and cut a small whole in the wall. He fed the cable in and left. The cable didn't go straight into the whole but it was close enough that Harry could pull it through with his hand.

That night he slept in the basement.

The Dursleys enjoyed Sunday night. They waited up till midnight and when the clock struck twelve. Then they shoved a note under the door and started driving nails through it. After a few minutes they had throughly sealed the door. Then Petunia spoke, "Now that the Boy is gone and can't damage the house, I think we should replace that junk in the kitchen..." In fact it turned out that most of the things in the house were junk that they only kept around so that he couldn't damage the good stuff. Wasn't it nice to have an excuse to replace everything?

The Dursleys made sure to make a show of putting all their kitchen appliances, some computers, and some furniture out for garbage. As soon as they left Harry took what he wanted. He couldn't move the stove but he was able to get the desk, bar fridge, microwave, and several desktop computers.

And so it came to pass that Harry lived rather comfortably in the basement.

The computers were an interesting problem. He still didn't know the passwords but he had been reading and thought he knew a way to get around the problem. The part of the computer that turned it on was the BIOS, standing for basic input and output system. It normally booted from the hard drive but could also boot from the CD ROM drive and then reinstall the operating system. The only problem was that he didn't have a bootable disk with an operating system on it.

The solution presented itself when he went to the computer store. He was looking at the prices of operating systems when he heard a rather loud conversation where a employee strongly asserted the superiority of Linux, the free operating system. The man he was trying to persuade not to buy a copy of Windows Vista ignored him and Harry couldn't help but wonder why his boss didn't mind him trying to not make sales. He listened as the man nervously informed him that he didn't have any use for the CD the employee was trying to force on him. Harry made up a story on the spot, "I'd like one. I've got an old computer that I want to try Linux on but I don't have a CD burner..."

"Fear no more! I'll lead you to GNU! Old computer you say..." He picked up an impossibly big pile of CDs and started started shuffling through them, "Debian... Fedora... Open Suse... Gentoo... Ubuntu 6.10... 7.04 ... 7.10... Kubuntu alternate install 7.10! Yous see I can't give you a Ubuntu CD because GNOME has betrayed us... Stupid, OOXML loving, idiots! So use this. Just configure the BIOS and use this. Install over whatever stupid propitiatory OS is on it. Squish it like a bug." To emphasize his point his started stomping on an imaginary bug. Apparently, this particular employee was a little bit off his rocker. Just a little.

The man smiled thanks at him and made his escape. Harry looked at the avid employee, "Yes. Well I better go. I want to install Linux right away! Yes. I better go."

"Of course. I'm so glad to see that some younger children are avid to use proper operating systems! Here, take a few CDs for your friends." Harry left the computer store loaded down with many different Linux CDs.

He got home and found that installing them was quite easy. He just followed the instructions. The interface was intuitive and the main barrier was his difficulties typing and using a mouse. Those would pass with time. Cleaning the Dursley grease off the keyboards would help. And the internet opened up a whole new library to him: books on the internet.