Chapter 1

David Gaunt was a bitter man.

He flinched whenever he heard loud noises. His response was to jerk as if he were about to make a wild, unconscious movement before stopping himself. He had loud, sudden images of bullet-filled carcasses, the phantom taste of gunpowder on his tongue and the frantic sense to always stay alert. His hand twitched at times, remembering the feeling of cold metal.

His parents had noticed at once that something had changed when he returned home. He was absentminded, his mind drifting at inopportune times. It took a couple of times for him to respond to whatever question they were asking. They questioned his behavior. "When they tell you to give up your life for your country, eventually you become numb," he told them dully. "I stop thinking so I can forget faster. They tell you to keep moving. I've been trained for this, they tell me. Keep moving, keep going forward, and we push at the front lines for days, but then they suddenly tell you to pull out and we find that all our progress was wasted for nothing."

And then he laughed. It was a bitter, broken sound, and his mother had to leave the room afterward. "I was hoping to die myself at that point."

At night, his hands moved by themselves. Muscle memory cradled his hand to a phantom gun, and autopilot response woke the house with his bloodcurdling screams. When his eyes closed, he could see flashes of bright lights and the bodies of the men beside him. He dreamt only in nightmares.

Nobody comes from a war unchanged, after all.

"Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a simple yet complex game, and the weapons are definitely not like other first-person shooters. With most weapons, you can't aim down the sights. You need to learn about crosshair placement and spray control before you can polish your skills. Each weapon has its own..."

The sound of gunshots scared him. He put on headphones whenever his brother started to watch playthroughs on the television, and when his mother tried to help David told her to drop it. It was fine, he said, and she turned her eyes to him with such pity that he felt his veins turn to ice. "You'll be fine," she murmured to him. "It's alright."

David Gaunt returned to the battlefield without much issue. He swore his nervous parents to secrecy and left quickly. Weeks later, when his mother finally told them that her son was suffering from trauma and should return home, it was too late. He died by the hand of his own squadron, one trigger-happy member aiming too fast. He remembered the final breath he emits before his eyes closed, and his last prayer was to finally be granted respite.

When he opened his eyes again, it was dark and he could not see.

His hands were trembling, still in aftershock when the bullet had made contact and the split second of agony. He blinked once. Twice. He moved a hand to his face. His hand then roamed down to pinch his arm. "Am I dead?" He asked aloud, but nothing answered him. Then he squinted. There was something on his face.

He slowly reached up and plucked the glasses from the bridge of his nose.

"What the fuck," he said, before the room he was laying in exploded.

Petunia Dursley was in the kitchen when the cupboard door blasted open. She shrieked and dropped a dish, and the pieces shattered all over the tiled floor.

Harry crawled out, disheveled and covered in dust. His glasses were askew, his hair wild and untamed, though he ignored his foggy lenses and took them off instead. His eyes locked with hers and narrowed.

"Who the fuck are you?" He asked. Petunia felt the blood drain from her face.

"Have you gone stupid, boy?" She screeched furiously. "Get back in the cupboard!" He continued to stare at her strangely.

"Alright then," he replied, much calmer than her own outburst. He walked over to the table and picked up one of the envelopes conveniently laying there, scanning the back. His eyes widened a fraction and he paused. "...You're joking."

He ran past her to look at his reflection in the window. He made a startled noise and peered closer, blinking. "Holy shit." He grabbed his hair and shook the remaining dust off, littering the floor and furthering the mess he'd made with the dirt he'd tracked into the kitchen. "Holy shit."

Petunia felt that surge of irritation return and she snapped her fingers. Harry jumped three feet and turned to her, shattered glasses impairing his sight. "Look at this mess! Go! Get out! Clean yourself off, the hose is outside!"

He flexed his fingers, oblivious to her words. He cautiously wiped his broken glasses on his shirt, leaving a black stain on his oversized clothes. "Okay," he replied absentmindedly, and he walked out of the kitchen without looking back. Petunia stared at the shards of plate on the floor, entirely perplexed.

Harry soon walked back in, holding half of the broken door. "Uh...I didn't tell you earlier, but-"

"Get out," she said, having the strong urge to sit down and put her head in her hands. He left the kitchen.

Once Harry washed off and re-entered his soot-stained cupboard, he set to work cleaning off the walls with a towel he found in the bathroom. Still in slight shock, he began to make repetitive, monotonous swipes, cleaning the dirty floor and the walls dusted in black. He wondered if it would get into any of the condiments stored on the shelves.

As soon as he had read the name "Vernon Dursley, 4 Privet Drive" on one of the envelopes, he almost snorted in disbelief. However, when he went to check the glass window, he could see himself clearly: the pair of taped-up glasses, the shirt that was several sizes too large, and the body that was not his. He understood little, and he had yet to understand why he was even alive in the first place.

What had happened when he died? He remembered the short, sudden feeling of agony along his temples and at the center of his forehead. It was a clean shot, just as David had turned his head and met the front of a gun for that split second. (He couldn't blame that guy: he had been pulled out as well. Apparently, his own squadron had died just days ago, and he had to be transferred to another.) He rubbed the place where the bullet had marked him and paused when he felt something there.

He traced the mark. It fell in a zigzag, and David knew what it was at once. His eyes closed, feeling the maniacal urge to laugh. He was a boy from a fictional series. He was in a goddamn book about magic.

He continued to wipe at the floor until it was clean and the towel was dark with ash. He passed by a traumatized Petunia, who seemed to be questioning her existence as much as he did his own.

"I'll make dinner tonight," she said dazedly. Harry stopped, shrugged, and went to clean the towel out.

Later that day, Vernon returned home from work. He harrumphed as he sat down in the living room, picked up his coffee, and glanced toward the still-broken cupboard door, hanging off its hinges. He choked.

"WHERE ARE YOU, BOY!"

When he went to check the kitchen, Petunia glanced over to the hallway. "Leave him alone," she waved at him. She was still in shock, it seemed. "We'll buy a new door."

Vernon made as if to argue, but something on Petunia's face must have deterred him. "Well? Where is he, anyway?" He snapped.

Harry was sitting on the couch facing away from the door, the one facing directly towards the television. The fact that Vernon hadn't seen him when he walked in, coupled with the fact that Vernon usually sat there, angered him immensely. He was asleep. "Get up," he barked. The boy didn't move.

He clamped one hand down hard on the boy's shoulder. "Get up, I said, you stupid-"

Harry jerked violently, eyes wide open and terrified. It was so strong that Harry very nearly fell off the couch, his hands trembling. "Get away from me!" He screamed. Vernon took a step back, alarmed.

Harry was shivering so hard that he seemed as if he were spasming. His breathing was irregular, his eyes blown wide in horror, but they stared right through Vernon. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he repeated under his breath, incredibly tense. The cup in Vernon's hand broke.

Petunia came to the living room. The table was floating off the ground, and the coats by the door were swirling by Harry's figure. Her eyes locked with Vernon's, and with a sudden heave she tugged him toward the stairs.

They huddled upstairs by Dudley's room as the entire house trembled on its supports. Neither of them could say it aloud, but they could feel a buzzing in the air, unadulterated magic running amok in the mind of the boy in the living room. There were a couple more minutes of crashing glass and the knocking of furniture: then, silence.

After another minute of waiting for precautionary measure, Petunia took the first step back downstairs. The living room was a mess: dents covered the walls from where the chairs crashed into it, the coffee table was knocked askew, and the coats lay all over the floor. The television was impaled completely by a floor lamp without its lightbulb. The only thing that lay unharmed was Vernon's couch, which remained in the same spot that it had before. Harry was standing right next to it, and his head turned to her as soon as she stepped foot into the vicinity.

He seemed completely lucid now, but he seemed out of sorts. "I-" He swallowed hard. Holding a hand up, the room immediately straightened itself to its previous form and the furniture reassembled themselves. Petunia could do nothing but hold her breath. "I'm sorry."

He stumbled to the cupboard, fixed the door with a wave of his hand, and closed it shut behind him.

This is partly for stress relief, partly for finally writing this out because Harry Potter is important to me and I needed this. I don't know how often I'll be updating this because I'm working on my other story, but I know that I'll come back to it. It's rather short, but the next chapter definitely won't be. Thank you for reading, and I'll hopefully update during the break.

Have a good day, and see you in the next chapter!