Author's note:
This story is slightly odd and majorly AU. You've been warned, also, there will be no Harry/anyone because I don't do pairings and pairings only lead to people saying 'I've stopped reading because you paired him with 'insert name here' and I hate him/her/it.
On a side note, this is my take on the Wizarding World, its culture and possible deviations from canon power-wise. Things will be different, history will be rewritten and I'll try my best to explain it all to you.
On a side note, being 'Dark' doesn't necessarily mean Slytherin, lurking through hallways, hiding in shadows, murdering people and manipulating everyone in sight. It doesn't even mean siding with Voldemort. Nor does light mean being a weak-minded pacifist, loving muggles and being naïve.
On that matter, enjoy.
Desolation
Necromancy, a skill that can't be taught or even passed down. Is it any wonder that the child prophesized to kill the so-called 'darkest wizard of the 20th century', the boy haunted by Death itself, would be a necromancer?
Necromancer!Harry, no pairings.
Chapter One
Long live the king.
If anyone were to ask 11-year old Harry Potter what he thought of his life he would tell you he loved it very much, thank you, and why bother asking? Harry James Potter of Privet Drive number 4 was a well-known and well-loved member of the community, he was a happy child and could often be found dragging his slightly more introverted cousin and rather pudgy Dudley down the street for one adventure or another. His relatives, who took him in after the tragic death of his parents, kept the boy as happy as a clam and went very far to keep the boy satisfied. So yes, the Dursleys from number 4 Privet Drive were the very epitome of what the neighbourhood deemed 'good, decent people'.
That the real reason Vernon and Petunia Dursley kept their nephew happy was something entirely different than them having the hearts of a saint was, of course, a close-kept secret. Because when one-year old Harry was dumped on their front-step in nothing but a blanket and wearing a soiled nappy with a letter unceremoniously placed next to him they were one step away from letting someone else take care of Lily and James Potter's 'freaky little spawn' when the boy started wailing.
And then Petunia screeched, as she could see a hand, a rotten, decomposed hand, slowly rising from her prized begonias in her backyard. Then followed part of an arm and then a shoulder and then, ever so slowly, a decapitated body rose from in between her precious flowers. Dirt clung to its body and huge chunks of flesh was eaten away and it was slowly inching towards the backdoor and raised a fingerless, bone hand and-
It popped back away when Harry started gurgling a laugh at Vernon's freaked-out face, clapping his pudgy hands and chanting "Mo'e, mo'e!"
Vernon shot Petunia a concerned look as the woman grasped the child from his arms with bony gingers and holding him to her chest, her slightly-brighter mind already having made the connection that, sweet, but oh-so thick, Vernon couldn't unless it was spelled out for him.
"If we keep it, him, happy," she rasped hoarsely, still in shock from seeing something dead rise from her flowerbeds, "it won't ever do that again." Her heart was still beating rapidly in her chest and the mere thought that this thing did that made her want to retch but the very thought of giving it, no him, away was an ever bigger problem.
They'd ask the toddler for his name, which he probably knew, and then search for relatives and find them and then he would do something freaky and the whole world would know and the government would experiment and then those wizards would come and hurt them and then-
No, that just wouldn't do.
So instead of giving the boy an atrocious life and shoving him into some teensy tiny room, a cupboard perhaps, and feeding him irregular, awful meals and beating, mistreating and generally hating him they gave in to the boy's every whim to keep him happy and satisfied. And it worked, Harry did nothing out of the ordinary, ever, even the tiny things Lily did as a child never happened to the boy as he never had a reason for his magic to act out. If he wanted a book, Vernon would get it for him. Did he want chocolate? Petunia would buy it for him. And after three years of no freaky-accidents the Dursleys let out a sigh. The boy was as normal as their precious Dudley, whom they of course treated the very same because precious little Dudders shouldn't feel let out, but the blonde boy knew his place. He knew that if push came to shove, his parents would take Harry's side and he knew better than to ever antagonize his younger cousin lest his father tan his hide. But Dudley had no reason to antagonize his younger cousin, the two grew up as brothers and the blonde boy was vital in keeping Harry happy.
They started treating him less like a time-bomb ready to blow, and quite often they found it easy to forget he was the thrice-cursed spawn of Lily and her equally freaky husband and that the boy could do really scary things if not perfectly happy. They, dare they name it as such, liked the boy. To a certain degree, of course, but he wasn't not liked. He grew on them, you could say, quite a bit like a fungus. And, over the years, they found it wasn't at all hard to keep the boy happy, he was a naturally happy child and their spoiling only added to that. There were a few close calls now and then, a teacher or a classmate doing something he didn't like but those little episodes were easily smoothed over with a cookie and a, "oh darling, they're just jealous that you're such a lovely boy." Or a trip to the zoo or an amusement park, really, he was quite easy to make happy.
And so Harry Potter grew, healthy and happy and ever so oblivious to anything even remotely magical that existed. He had friends, got good grades, enjoyed playing soccer and liked walking his dog, Bruno, given to him by his dearly-beloved aunt Marge for his sixth birthday. So imagine his surprise when someone crackpot-nutter tries to tell him he's a wizard.
~.~.~.~.~.~.~
"So," Harry's voice was condensing as he peered at the woman sitting on the chair opposite to his, "what you're trying to tell me is that I'm a magician."
"A wizard," the woman corrected, the slight twitch to her eye giving away her annoyance at Harry's behaviour, "and yes, you are. Like I've told you five times already, did you never experience anything out of the ordinary?"
"Nope," Harry grinned charmingly at her as his eyes twinkled mischievously whilst Vernon, Petunia and Dudley uncomfortably sipped at their beer, tea and lemonade respectively. Petunia repressed the shudder that threatened to rise as she thought back at the zombie from Harry's first, and last, magical mishap.
"No flying objects? Changing the colour of things? Perhaps even breaking some glass or making things appear?" the woman, Minerva McGonagall, professor of Hogwarts asked, voice strained. It had taken some practical usage of flashy spells to get the boy to even accept magic wasn't a hoax, and here he was claiming never to have shown any show of magic. If there was anything she had expected of Harry Potter, son of two relatively powerful parents, it wasn't this.
"None of the above, I can reach my nose with my tongue though, want to see?" Harry said, knowing all too well the woman would refuse his offer, for some reason she wasn't at all like his aunt and uncle, who treated him like a prince. He found he didn't really like her because of it, not because he was spoiled per-se, but because the woman had no sense of humour what so ever and never heard of 'just indulge the child whose world you just turned inside out'.
"No," Minerva said sharply, "I don't. Now, mister Potter, are you sure you never did anything magical, or even unusual or something that you could dismiss as a dream or hallucination?"
"I don't do drugs, madam, and no, nothing comes to mind. Unless I blew up my nappies when I was little, but you would have told me if I did that, right auntie?" Harry questioned nervously as he turned his eyes to Petunia.
The woman in question nodded immediately, "of course Harry, dearest, you did nothing that wasn't common for a perfectly ordinary baby."
"So," Harry said, confidence renewed as he leant back in his chair, "seeing how we've proved my continued normalcy, what will I get by going to your school that I can't at other 'magical' schools?"
Minerva looked affronted as her mind did a one-eighty, "excuse me? Are you insinuating you would go anywhere but Hogwarts? Your name has been down since birth, mister Potter, your parents attended, as did their friends and your father's whole family attended as well."
"I'm also down for Smeltings," Harry interrupted, "and I bet that there are lots of other magical schools wanting a piece of, what did you call me? 'The Boy Who Lived'? Maybe they would pay me instead of charging me for tuition, or I'd get a big room or even a piece of the school named after me. Maybe they'd even make me their headmaster or a teacher, I bet 'living' could be a great class, you know, me being the Boy Who Lived?" Harry snickered at his own lame joke and Dudley guffawed as he high-fived Harry.
"And maybe I'm even more special than that, you know, I bet I'm the long-lost descendant of Merlin and Houdini and I can unlock the secrets to, err, the sunken city of Atlantis. Who knows, maybe Anakin Skywalker is secretly my father!" Harry and Dudley elbowed one another as they fell back, laughing loudly whilst even Vernon cracked a grin. Petunia just snorted, it was a bad idea introducing her family to Star Wars.
"Mister Potter, I can assure you that you are not the long-lost descendant of anyone," Minerva McGonagall stressed, "and Hogwarts is one of the best magical schools in Europe and has a history of very successful graduates. We cannot offer you a position as a member of the faculty as you are but a child, mister Potter, you go to school to learn, not to teach. It is preposterous to believe such nonsense."
Then Harry frowned, which immediately drove Vernon to grumble.
"I'm sure we can find a school for your hocus-pocus that'll let you do whatever you want," he said slowly as he peered at Harry's slowly darkening face.
"And auntie and uncle will take care of it all," Petunia ventured carefully as she patted his shoulder reassuringly from behind Dudley, "if you really want that, darling, we'll make it happen."
Minerva McGonagall meanwhile was watching the scene with growing curiosity, how could she be so wrong about the Dursleys? She had judged them once and found them to be lacking, both from her own observations and stories told by Lily Potter, yet here the woman was. Ten years older and a loving, if not slightly too loving, mother to 'the freaky Potter'. If it weren't for their clear eyes she would have guessed someone had imperio'ed them, but maybe it was polyjuice? Would someone, no, Minerva quickly dismissed the idea. Perhaps Albus had been right, they were good people when it mattered most.
But their offers didn't soothe Harry like they normally would, instead the frown grew on the boy's usually smiling face and Petunia was slowly freaking out from behind her calm façade.
"Harry, we can even send that headmaster that Hogwarts has a letter if you want to go there specifically," she tried frantically as she handed him a cookie from the jar on the salon table, "I bet they'd let you bring Bruno and Commander Fluffballs and maybe even your TV, I'm sure they'll make special arrangements for you."
The bulldog in questions raised his head slowly when he heard his name and wagged his tail once before going back to chewing on his bone.
"As if I'd go without Bruno, he's as bad as his dad, you know how poor little Ripper gets when aunt Marge leaves him alone," Harry said softly as he bent down to pet his dog once on his side before accepting the cookie, "you do accept dogs, don't you?" He directed his pleading eyes to Minerva as he swallowed his bite.
"Well," Minerva began carefully as she shifted in her seat and put down her own cup of tea, "we don't usually allow non-regulation pets, which are cats, owls and toads, but exceptions have been made. Several students own reptilians and one girl brought a goat, but those are relatively easy to take care of. The reptilians are kept in their exhibits and the goat is taken care of by our groundskeeper when the girl is unable to. But I fear a dog will be more work, it needs walks, exercise and supervision. I fear it will rip up people's work or soil the sheets, so I am afraid that you won't be able to bring your … Bruno to Hogwarts."
If anything this seemed to turn Harry's frown into a scowl and Petunia's heartbeat sped up even further as she felt panic start to rise, the words ohgodnotagain echoing through her head like a mantra as she gripped her own teacup a bit tighter, her knuckles blending in with the stark-white bone china of her cup.
"Well, err, professor, I'm very happy you would come all the way here to explain this to Harry but we'll take some time to sleep on it and let him make up his mind," Petunia said hastily as she stood up, almost ready to shove the woman out of the door if it meant stabilising Harry and saving her from a heart-attack.
"Well, okay then," Minerva said awkwardly, quite affronted that she was being ushered out of the residence is such a blatantly obvious manner by some muggles, "if you have any questions, Harry, don't hesitate to send another letter. Just ask the owl to wait like your aunt did for you last time."
With that said Minerva stood up, nodded curtly to the elder Dursleys and then popped away.
"Wicked," Dudley said as he stared wide-eyed at the place the woman once occupied, "hey Harry, you reckon you can do that to?"
Harry just shrugged, "'dunno, Dudley, never tried. Don't think I can, really, I never did anything like that before, so why try now?"
Dudley shrugged too, "muah, never mind then. Would've been cool though, teleporting like that, then you could take us to see China or the States! Anyway, up for a game of Defender?"
"Sure!" Harry said, brightening considerably, "I'll beat your ass, commander 'D'!"
Dudley snorted and the two then raced out of the room, charging up the stairs in a race to get to the game console first.
Meanwhile, downstairs, Petunia and Vernon shared a look and let out a breath they'd been unconsciously holding. Crisis averted. Her precious flowerbeds were still intact, no dead people rising from then anytime now.
~.~.~.~.~.~.~
"Hey, auntie, I've made up my mind!" Harry said enthusiastically the next morning as he and Dudley came down, wearing matching Star Wars pyjamas as he stepped into the living room. "I'll go to that Hogwash school!"
"That's, err, great, Harry-dear," Petunia said, swallowing thickly as she handed him and Dudley their plates, "but why? And what about Bruno?"
"Well," Harry said with a glint in his bright green eyes, "I'll just have to see Bruno during the holidays, I guess, I won't like it but I'll just have to make do. Besides, if I go there, people will be English? Right? That means they know me, which means I'm famous! Then I can get them to do stuff for me, like my homework if I don't feel like it, and then I can run the school!"
Vernon patted Harry on the back with a big grin, "that's my boy, get them to work for you. I like that, don't you, Pet?"
"Of course," Petunia echoed faintly, "it sounds wonderful, Harry-dear."
"And then Dudley can rule Smeltings," Harry continued enthusiastically, his little depression from yesterday completely forgotten as all was right in his world again, "and when we graduate we can rule the world!"
"Yeah!" Dudley chimed in as he beamed up at his mum, "'cause Harry can teleport when he's done and then we just teleport to the prime minister's house and take over the world from there."
Harry gave a sound of agreement as he chewed on his sausage, swallowing the bite before continuing, "and then we'll be King of the World and order everyone to do whatever we want, I call dibs on Hawaii!"
"Why Hawaii?" Dudley whined, bits of toast flying from his mouth as he stabbed his own sausage with gusto before shoving it in as well.
"Hawaii has volcanoes," Harry said matter-of-factly.
Dudley nodded, instantly getting it, Harry liked things that went all fiery once in a while, "I take China, I like Chinese food."
"And we make soccer the sport of the world, and Bruno can get his own town to live in and you guys get a nice warm country too, Spain or something, and then I get aunt Marge a nice big place for her and Ripper to live in and I'll just order everyone to like me, or I force them to watch commercials. Which I'll ban, by the way, no one likes commercials, don't you? Uncle Vernon?"
Vernon just nodded, he loathed commercials.
Breakfast continued in that fashion, happy, calm and normal. Harry was content again, making up his usual extravagant and completely normal boyish-plans again and whatever left-over tension resided in Petunia slowly ebbed away. Her darling nephew and son voiced their plans to go play with some friends and she let them, all was well again in the Dursley Household.
For now.
~.~.~.~.~.~.~
"And this," the giant-man said with a wave of his huge arm as the brick wall in front of them turned into an archway into the oddest street Harry and Dudley had ever seen, " 's Diagon Alley! Home to lotsa shops 'n stores, nuthin' can't be bought here."
Dudley and Harry shared equally awe-struck looks on their face as they hesitantly stepped forward, following Hagrid the giant-man into a world of wonder. Dudley had been the only one to accompany Harry as he was the most vocal about all the 'bloody wicked' magic stuff Harry would be buying and how he wanted to be a part of it.
"Wow," Harry breathed as he let his eyes roam the wide assembly of different sights, seeing people wearing wizard hats and robes and even spotting a man with an owl on his shoulder! This magic stuff was proving to be quite awesome yet, he thought happily as he stared at more sights. Even the fan club back in the Leaky Cauldron, which he thought was an awful name for a restaurant, was interesting, it even had a man wearing a turban!
And so they walked, first towards the bank, with Dudley and Harry pointing out the various incredibly things they saw and Hagrid occasionally piping in with funny little comments about things. Like how wizards did fly on brooms and how love potions were indeed real and how goblins ran the bank, Gringotts, that held Harry's money.
And so they approached the huge, white building with it's heavy, guard-flanked doors. The moment all three of them entered, because no way was he leaving Dudley alone, Harry felt something brush past him, like a breeze, yet it was decidedly uncomfortable and a shiver worked its way down his spine. He looked around, not noticing how the goblins around him suddenly seemed a tad bit more wary.
Unbeknownst to him, in the heart of Gringotts where its director had his office, alarms were going off. A goblin came barging through the office holding a single piece of parchment with odd scribbles on it which he hastily offered to the director, bowing low before hurrying out of the spacious room again.
And so Ragnok read the parchment only for his breath to hitch in his throat, for written on the parchment was: necromancer alarms going off.
And so he pulled a lever, one pulled only eighteen times since Gringotts was founded by Gringott himself, as the goblin left his office and dashed up the flights of stairs to get to the main hall.
And deep down in the earth, in the bowels of Gringotts, the security goblins were rousing their dragons, sharpening their axes and waiting for either the signal for a false alarm or for the drums to beat for battle.
And so Harry stood in front of the goblin, a goblin, who told him he had a vault filled with gold! He beamed up at the goblin (Man? Person? Thing?) and it merely sneered back at him, efficiently making Harry's smile disappear.
"You hear that, Dudley, I'm rich!" Harry exclaimed as his previous smile came back the moment they left the goblin's presence when they followed another goblin to what looked like a cart attached to rails, was this some sort of rollercoaster?
"Wicked!" Dudley agreed as he forced his slightly chubby frame into the cart, "you reckon you can buy a castle? Or one of those brooms? Maybe even some cool potions, like a love potion like you said, Hagrid, I bet we can have lots of fun with that!"
Any response Harry wanted to give was effectively cut off when the cart started moving at breakneck speed, whirling past what looked like caves, a waterfall and even passing a few bats on their way.
"Bloody hell," Harry said weakly as he climbed out of the cart with slightly shaking legs once it had stopped, standing in front of a vault with 687 carved into the stone wall next to the door, "that was awesome, I want to go again!"
Dudley and Hagrid though seemed a bit green, neither really capable of saying that they most certainly didn't want to repeat that experience.
The goblin did something with his hand, then with the key Hagrid had given him, and the doors opened to show mountains of gold, silver and bronze scattered through a big cavern. Harry eagerly stepped inside, and when Hagrid and Dudley made to follow the goblin sneered and hissed, "No muggles, Potter-blood only."
Harry shrugged helplessly at Dudley before quickly filling the sack Hagrid had given him in advance, filling it with hands of gold coins though it never seemed to grow full. After a few dozen hands Harry deemed his funds sufficient enough, it was gold not just yellow metal but real gold, and returned to his cousin and guide, eager for another round in the cart.
Once they returned to the surface Hagrid was mumbling about "not wantin' ta do that again next week," and when Harry asked why he had to return the man simply answered with "Hogwarts business, nuffin' ye have to worry yerself 'bout, Harry."
They exited Gringotts decidedly richer than they had entered, in Harry's case anyway but he intended to share with Dudley, and still none of them noticed beneath them goblins were running around in a frenzy, reading supplies and sending off a whole flock of owls with letters to various people. Or how the alarms only stopped blaring through the underground offices when Harry Potter stepped outside Gringotts' perimeters, enabling Ragnok to pull the lever for the alarm that marked false-alarm to resound throughout the armoury. The dragons were ushered back into their exhibits and the axes were laid back down, Gringotts had laid its weapons back down, but the tension was still there.
For a necromancer had walked inside their bank and had walked back out, and everyone knew what necromancers could do.
The fact that the necromancer was positively identified as Harry Potter meant little to the goblins, names were of no importance to them, but they knew wizards would react unfavourably to that particular fact.
And so the goblins went about, hurriedly and decidedly stressed out, while their human colleagues watched with baffled interest, their minds only capable of guessing that was going on.
And even if they did, they'd laugh it off as those odd goblins believing in fairy tales. Because every wizard knew his grain of salt knew that necromancers didn't exist, they were made up, like the three brothers and the Deathly Hallows, stories to read and to then file away as fiction.
And besides, the last wizard to practice necromancy was he-who-must-not-be-named, and he's dead and all he could do was raise Inferi, who probably died along with their evil master.
But impressive and certainly powerful, Voldemort was not a necromancer, and creating Inferi was no necromancy.
Thank you for reading.
~Fluweel