-"I'm dead?" - A young man asked.
-"Yes, Harry Potter, you are dead!" - a visibly agitated hooded figure with a scythe answered. - "You have asked this god damn question ten times already!"
-"I'm… dead?"
A hooded figure fell to its knees and howled in frustration.
-"YES! YES! YOU ARE DEAD!"
-"Soo… am I dead?" - The young man tilted his head.
The kneeling figure developed a visible tick. It drilled the young man with a hateful gaze before breaking down and exhaling.
-"You know what… No. You are not dead. I'll send you back to earth."
-"Ah! Thank you!" - the young man, apparently named Harry Potter, answered. -"I knew that I could not be dead!"
The hooded figure looked as if it was about to cry.
/IFWDKEOWAI/
-"What do you mean you won't send me back to the time which you abducted me from?"
-"I'm too lazy to fast forward the cassette of life, and right now it's stuck right when you are around 8 years old."
Harry Potter deeply resonated with the figures sentiment, and decided not to interfere with its laziness.
-"Oh, yea, I forgot to mention. Do you still remember the prophecy around you and the other schmuck that I brought into the world?" - Death questioned.
-"If you don't kill each other you are immortal?"
The hooded figure blanched.
-"No! I mean… Shit, I hadn't thought of that…"
/IFWDKEOWAI/
Harry woke up. His first instinct, before even opening his eyes, was to immediately hop of the bed and prepare for any chance encounter. However, as soon as he made the initial jump to get off the bed, he heard a loud *bang!* and felt a sharp pain in his forehead. He prepared to jump again, this time in a different direction in order to evade whatever attacker that had managed to blindside him like that. This jump was met with a similar *bang!* and similar forehead pain.
This time, Harry had lost all his fighting spirit, and opened his eyes to accept his defeat from an overwhelmingly powerful opponent. However, there was no one there. He lay in a very small cupboard that was making him feel slightly claustrophobic. Glad that there was no attacker, he attempted to stand up fully, smashed his head into the ceiling, and was greeted by another *bang!* and another round of pain.
Harry managed to get out of the cupboard, incredibly frustrated and irritated at everything but his own inadequacy.
By now, he realized when he was - in his eighth year alive. This left him with quite a few opportunities - opportunities that he would be glad to divulge in. Firstly, he would leave for Gringotts. Secondly, he would begin working on the fun stuff. Thirdly, profit. He didn't know what this profit would look like, but he knew that it would be magnificent. He thought about asking the Dursleys for a ride into the middle of London, but Vernon would probably just ignore him completely.
Harry simply walked out into the hall and kicked open the front door. The lock broke, and immediately as the door flew open, Harry had a fleeting thought. What if he didn't knock it open, and simply turned the handle? The boy shrugged and walked out onto the driveway. It was dark. How unlucky of him to have woken up in the middle of the night, when it is too dark and dangerous to go into the middle of London alone, and with him having no transport to get there. It is not as if, suddenly, a blue triple decker bus would barge through the neighborhood, and stop just for him.
Suddenly, a blue triple decker bus barged through the neighborhood, and stopped just for him.
-"Huh…" - Harry shrugged - "That solves that problem."
The doors to the bus opened, and the driver looked at him in mild curiosity.
-"Aren't you a little young to be calling the knight bus?" - Inquired the driver.
-"Why yes, yes I am"- Happily answered the boy.
-"Alright then," - Shrugged the man - "Hop in!"
/IFWDKEOWAI/
Harry jumped right out of the bus. He waved goodbye and began walking to the leaky cauldron. The pub was similar to what he had remembered - beat up, dirty and still relatively inviting. The inside was similarly appealing, with plenty of smelly old men to liven up the place.
-"Hey Tom!" - Harry yelled immediately after entering the bar.
The barkeep turned to face the boy.
-"Do I know you, kiddo?"
-"No."
-"..."
-"My parents forgot me outside of the barrier. Could you help me get in?"
The barkeep did a double take. -"They… forgot you?"
-"Yes, that is what I said. Unfortunately, I do not have a wand, so I can not go after them, so could you open the barrier for me, please?"
Tom, one of the only non-essential people whose names Harry remembered, was silent. He eyed Harry with incredulity and slight suspicion. Upon finding nothing after a thorough non-verbal investigation, Tom sighed and wordlessly led him out into the backyard.
/IFWDKEOWAI/
The Diagon alley held a special place in his heart. This was the street that allowed him to be set free from the Dursleys, and he was infinitely grateful to it for that. Now, however, it was a place of mild, but slowly bubbling irritation. None of the shops, at least those that seemed interesting, were open.
The only thing that relatively made up for it was the fact that Gringotts was open 365 days a year,(On leap years it vanished out of existence, obviously) and was currently open for business, exactly what he came to the diagon Alley for.
The building was just as he remembered: marble with a hint of pretentiousness. This was the entrance to Gringotts, and it lead into a small entrance hall with another set of doors. Engraved on these silver doors are the words:
Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn.
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned, beware
Of finding more than treasure there.
Yea, pretentiousness is a rather correct term.
Harry made his way inside, and shuffled directly to one of the goblin tellers. The goblin ignored him, and continued doing goblin things. Harry simply stood in front of him, staring at the creature. The goblin slightly lifted his eyebrow, and looked at the boy.
-"What do you want, child?"
-"I'd like to claim my inheritance."
The goblins eyebrow rose even higher.
-"Do you have any money to pay for the inheritance test?"
-"No."
The goblin smiled a feral smile.
-"I hope that you realize that if you have no money to pay for the test afterwards, you are going into debt. And a debt to Gringotts is a debt that could land you into slavery."
-"Oh yea, I'm aware."
The other eyebrow of the teller shot up, and the goblin stared at the nonchalant boy who just claimed that he would be alright with something that could potentially land him into slavery. He continued staring for a couple of moments before motioning Harry to follow him.
The duo shuffled along the numerous corridors. To be honest, Harry was not certain what his inheritance entailed - in his time, he was never able to claim it, as he simply put no thoughts towards it.
-"I will administer you an inheritance test to check on whether you have any inheritance to claim."
-"Hello, Griphook!"
The goblin narrowed his eyes.
-"Do I know you, child?"
-"No."
The goblin didn't comment on the situation further, handing Harry a big bowl and a dagger.
-"Now, I will need you to make a cut…" - The goblin just began speaking, but suddenly stopped, as Harry already had cut his arm and had his blood in the bowl. - "...on your finger."
He sighed before continuing his speech.
-"Just… Give the bowl some time. It should spit out your heritage and inheritances."
The bowl began shaking. The red blood swirled, twisting and turning into a myriad of colors. The colors clashed one with the other, recreating marvelous battlefields befitting the medieval combat of old. Suddenly, it all stopped. The blood came back to the original crimson red color, and became still like a mirror.
-"A Potter, huh? Harry Potter, to be precise?"
-"Yes."
-"I am the keeper of vaults for the Potter account. However, since it was temporarily closed, until you came along, I was given a job as an inheritance clerk."
-"Cool!" - Harry smiled. - "I came here to ask for a small favour: could Gringotts detain a spirit indefinitely? For a price, of course."
/IFWDKEOWAI/
The forests in Albania where beautiful. The trees stretched as far as the eye could see and the magic was nonexistent, meaning that there would be nobody who could find him out.
He didn't know what to do next, as he was rather weak. Quirrell promised to arrive into the forest in a couple of years, but in the meanwhile, the spirit of Lord Voldemort could do nothing but lie around all day in order to preserve energy. He received just enough magical energy through the ground to stay connected to the living world, but he wasn't able to move too much for the fear of getting too tired to do anything in the moment when it mattered. He was already regretting his decision to move so far away from civilization. Suddenly, Voldemort felt a magical presence. This presence was small, likely exuded by a child; a child who was not yet developed enough to go to school, meaning that a possession of him would be impossible. The presence kept walking in his direction. Voldemort flew up and hid in the branches of the tree. This was just in time, as a young boy dressed in camping clothing walked into the meadow. He had a backpack and a small unlidded jar with him. As the kid reached the meadow, he sat down right underneath the tree on which Voldemort hid, and decided to rest. The jar that the child was holding now sat unwatched right next to the resting kid. The spirit of a once powerful man had decided to sneak out of the forest by using the child's jar. He mustered the last of his strength to quietly disillusion himself before slipping into the open jar.
Immediately after Lord Voldemort, He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, the terror of great Britain, climbed into the little child's jar, the boy produced a lid and immediately shut the jar closed. Immediately Voldemort realized his mistake, and his eyes widened; however, it was too late. His energy was all lost on the disillusion charm and the extra movements that he made to get into the trap, so as a result, he couldn't even attempt to get out.
/IFWDKEOWAI/
-"I see you have captured a spirit. Would you mind telling me what spirit you have requested us to confine?"
-"Its Voldemort."
The goblin didn't even blink.
-"I will ask the question again. Whose spirit is it?"
-"Mine."
-"That is not what I meant..." - the goblin groaned. - "Just… give it to me, and I will shove it in a magic resistant vault."
Harry smiled. Life was good.
/IFWDKEOWAI/
His newfound immortality deserved a test. He couldn't risk directly killing himself, as the horcrux inside his head could be considered by magic as Voldemort murdering him; however, as long as Harry didn't directly 'Avada Kedavra' himself, he should not be able to die. So, he came up with a solution.
He stood on the top of Gringotts bank, his hair getting more and more messed up from the wind. He steeped himself, and jumped. The fall was longer than he anticipated. The ground seemingly approached him at a snail's pace.
*Bang* Harry splattered all over the ground. His head was all around the sidewalk, with his brains casually lying around the shards of this skull. His jaw cracked in two, and some of his teeth even managed to lodge themselves deep into his jaw. His stomach ripped, and his intestines were splattered all over the sidewalk.
Eventually, the shapeless mass began to move. The mass began regenerating, drawing from the mass's magical core. Soon the mass became a recognizable silhouette. The silhouette grinned.
-"Goodie!"