Chapter 1:

The next morning Harry slowly came back to the land of the living. As the darkness slowly drifted away from in front of his eyes, his ears were filled by the unrelenting and increasingly loud banging of his cupboard door. Just as Harry had struggled to his feet and opened the door, his aunt's lovely and melodious voice pierced his sensitive ears.

"GET UP you ungrateful brat! Go upstairs, change out of those filthy clothes and get to the kitchen! You have five minutes. Or I'll let Vernon have his way and lock you in the cupboard for the next three days." Petunia Dursley threatened said as she dragged Harry out of the cupboard and onto his feet, "Dudley wants hotcakes and Vernon needs his tea."

Harry blinked and stared at the floating box above Petunia's head.

"What are you looking at boy? Get to it!" she snapped.

Harry looked at Petunia and then shook his head before shakily replying, "I-I'm sorry Aunt Petunia. I think I must have just hit my head while waking up."

Petunia looked at him with a dirty frown for a second before she squinted into the cupboard. "Well I suppose you are getting a little too big for this thing now," she grumbled before she walked off into the kitchen.

Harry, after that odd encounter, made a beeline straight for the bathroom and stared at his reflection in the mirror, desperately trying to calm himself down from this state of utter terror that he was in. On his way upstairs he had seen Dudley in his room with a floating box above his head just as Aunt Petunia had, and with some trepidation asked him if he'd heard any noises in the night.

"Like a bell," he had specified, "the kind in video games that go, 'ping!'"

Dudley had scratched his chin and looked away from his Sega; one of the many things Harry was jealous of Dudley for; and replied, "Ping? No! Have you hit your head or something? Maybe I should tell Mum and Dad. They'll make sure you end up in some loony bin far away."

With a self-satisfied grin, he had waddled off downstairs, and Harry had shaken his head, wondering why he had even bothered asking.

Pulling his mind back into the moment, he looked back into his reflection's eyes and took a deep breath, pushing down all his fear into the depths of his mind. Bottling up one's emotions wasn't a particularly hard art to master, especially for a pre-teen, and soon a veil of complete calmness fell on his mind.

'Alright, I shouldn't panic. I need to think through this logically,' he thought to himself. One thing was for sure. Last night's dream wasn't a dream. And if it wasn't a dream, it had to have been some sort of hallucination.

It certainly wasn't a bad explanation, Harry decided. It could be some sort of drugs, or even one of those weird mushrooms, causing his hallucinations. Perhaps they had somehow made his way into his food or water, or perhaps they had been airborne. It was possible. Definitely possible.

A strange image of a man wearing a cinema projector on his head suddenly flashed into Harry's mind, and bemusedly, Harry took a moment to consider the strange idea that something could actually be projecting a screen in front of him. But as soon as that thought made it into his mind he immediately dismissed it. Aunt Petunia and Dudley hadn't noticed anything on him, nor any projections.

Another strange thought floated into his mind.

He could see those boxes clearly without his glasses, and that implied only one thing. That he wasn't seeing something real. That whatever was happening, it was happening inside his mind.

An odd, almost insane thought drifted to the front of his mind...one that had occurred to him last night, but that he had discarded in the heat of the moment.

'My life is a game.'

"No . . ." he thought with a rising amount of panic. These strange...weird...out of ordinary ideas that he was thinking of...they were not something that he would have thought of by himself. He was a fairly reasonable kid and this was too far out for him to have thought up on his own. Something was definitely influencing his mind . . .

'Drugs,' he thought with a spike of panic, 'It has to be drugs!'

Thankfully, there was a quick and easy way of testing that. Being Harry in the Dursley house meant you only got to eat and drink the bare minimum needed to survive. That meant he could easily check everything that he had consumed in the last few days. Quickly pulling on fresh clothes, Harry ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he opened the fridge and grabbed the remaining few loaves of bread that were remaining from the package he had stolen from last night. They were the only thing he had eaten in the last 3 days, and if there was anything in his body that had gotten in there with his mouth, it would've been through these.

Checking to see that Dudley; who was seated at the table; wasn't looking, he crumbled the bread into dust, dropped it into Dudley's juice, and used a spoon to stir it in. He then took it over and handed it to Dudley. The boy took it, gave it a dainty little sniff, tossed a smirk towards Harry, and downed the entire glass before letting out a loud burp. He then jumped off the chair and waddled off upstairs. Throughout it all, Harry watched him with keen eyes.

Nothing.

No reaction at all.

This, combined with the fact that the rest of the house drank the same water as him, ruled out his little theory of drugs.

Harry stilled, and his mind went into overdrive, completely of his control, making all the connections for him. The Gamer under his name last night, the status screens, the text he'd seen above Aunt Petunia's head, and the lack of anything else that seemed even a close enough probable reason for his...condition...it all left him with only one possible explanation he could cling on to his current situation. It wasn't ideal and he wasn't anywhere near convinced, but it was all he had.

"When you have eliminated the impossible," he muttered to himself, "whatever remains, however improbable...must be the truth."


On his way downstairs, Harry slipped into Dudley's second bedroom. After a good amount of ruffling around in the dust and old toys, he found what he was looking for. A small booklet about the role-playing board game things that Dudley used to play with Piers Polkiss before he first got his computer. He quickly stuffed it into his pocket and rushed downstairs, fearful of his Uncle's wrath.

As he absentmindedly cooked breakfast for his relatives, Harry had some time to give some calm thought to his situation.

Since he had decided to settle on this...Gamer theory, for lack of a better term, for his condition until he had a better idea of what was going on, he had a plethora of questions that he needed to ponder upon.

Had he been like...this...all his life, or had something turned him this way? Strange things had always happened around him, something he had always thought was the reason his relatives liked to call him a 'freak' but turning Mrs. Cole's wig blue had nothing on this full-blown reality reboot thing. Despite that, Harry couldn't help but think that there was a relation between the two.

And perhaps there was, because after all, in most cases the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

For thinking about this new ability in relation with Occam's Razor in mind, you have gained +1 WIS.

Harry blinked.

'Really?' he thought, 'It is that simple? And what in the world is Occam's Razor?'

Just to make sure, Harry intoned once again, "Status," and there it was, on his profile's list of statistics.

WIS-2

"Matter over mind," Harry muttered bemusedly. Reality was shaping his character in the Game, and the game was giving his traits in real life a quantified presence. It was as if someone had put a new operating system on...him. Harry promptly decided to give it a test, and after a quick look at his Uncle to make sure he wasn't looking, tossed and flipped the hotcake he was making.

For performing amateur chef theatrics with a poorly made hotcake, you have gained +1 DEX.

Harry grinned and quickly gave it another go, flipping the hotcake.

Nothing.

Maybe he hadn't done it right. Frowning, he gave the pancake yet another flip.

Nothing again.

It didn't take him much longer to conclude that the stat upgrades must be getting harder and harder to get the more of them he got. Thinking it best to play it safe, he quickly finished up and served breakfast before shoving a piece of toast into his pocket for himself and heading off to the garden to finish up his chores.

"Status" He whispered to himself as he started weeding the rose bushes.

Harry Potter

Health-100/100

Mana-50/50

The Gamer

Title-None

Level-2 Exp-30/400

Race-?

STR-2

VIT-1(+2)=3

DEX-3(+2)=5

INT-1

WIS-2

LUC-3

POINTS-0

MONEY- 0£/0G0S0K

It was all very confusing, but that didn't necessarily mean that it was bad. The positive side effects of this were already quite obvious to him. He could literally measure his skill and strength in numbers and fine-tune himself to focus on necessary aspects of his life. That thought alone bore infinite potential.

Harry grinned at that thought and quickly looked down the sheet at his stats, at which point his grin slipped right off his face and into the manure he was shoveling into the bush bed.

To be entirely fair, he thought, he hadn't ever seen anyone else's numbers, so had nothing to compare it with, but it all just looked a little bit pathetic.

His strength was a 2, his vitality was at a base of 1, but for some reason was a 3 now. His dexterity was similar to vitality, since it was 3 as a base stat, but was now 5. The only thing that was good was his luck which was at a 3 by default. And his intelligence and wisdom were atrocious by and in themselves.

It all made no sense to him. He always thought his strength was his intelligence and that he had the worse luck of anyone he knew.

Deciding not to question it too much, he opened up the booklet he'd nicked and quickly read through it. However, with exception to some things about skills and perks, he couldn't find many things that seemed like they were very useful. He quickly grew frustrated with it and stuffed it back into his pocket. It took a few seconds, but once the frustration had left him, Harry wondered if there were actually any skills or something similar that was a part of the game.

Hoping that the game still had its voice command thing going for it, Harry called out, "Skills."

Just then a box appeared before him, showing three different sections. Harry clicked one and a red box popped out.

A Gamer's Mind(Passive-Dynamic)

Allows the user to calmly and logically think things through. Allows peaceful state of mind, immune to psychological status and effects.

Harry could've yelled with relief. He knew it! There was something influencing his mind. Maybe it wasn't as malicious as some weird drugs, but that didn't change the fact that he was right. It certainly explained why he was being so calm about all this. He wasn't necessarily a person who lacked inner calm, but the way facts and events were easily fitting together in his mind was extremely unnatural and not like him. Before this, he would freak out about the fact that he could always regrow his hair when it was cut, but due to this skill, he felt calm and collected in the face of all this life-changing stuff, which was...quite welcome.

Harry then went back and saw the other two skills he had;

-A Gamer's Body(Passive-Static)

Grants the user a body that allows the user to live the real world like a game.

-Skill: Physical Endurance, Lv.1 (10%)

Your Body's durability increased and you take less damage.

3% less damage from physical attacks.

Harry read and re-read the Gamer's Body skill. If what it was saying was true, then his earlier metaphor of this feeling like a new operating system of himself probably had more weight than he had first imagined.

Pausing to take a look at his levels in the skills, Harry frowned. He wasn't very good in these areas either. He was going to have to find out some stuff about how this all worked and do a lot of leveling up if he wanted to get any-

'NO!' Harry suddenly thought.

He didn't know what this whole thing was, and the fact that it was influencing his mind combined with the fact that his first thought was to jump right into the grind of things in this Game was an incredibly suspicious thing to happen. Perhaps the best thing to do was to not do anything...

Yet somehow, even as he thought it, the thought and its accompanying wariness were fading from his mind, and it vanished the moment a sudden ping rang in his ears.

Ping!

Quest Alert!

Find someone to teach you about video games so you can be good at your life which is now a video game!

Rewards:

50xp

YES/NO?

Harry read it. 50xp! That would take him a real notch up towards a level up!

With a grin, he quickly pressed yes, earlier doubts forgotten.

He suddenly paused as another question popped into his head. Where did the quest come from? Did it come from himself, or was there a game master out there reading his thoughts and making things up for him to do? Harry wondered about that and then decided to try a little experiment of sorts. If it was his own aspirations and thoughts that made his quests, then if he concentrated hard enough, he could make his own quest.

So he took a deep breath and focused on the most absurd thought he could think of. All of a sudden,

'Ping!'

'No bloody way,' he muttered as he read the quest in front of him.

Quest Alert!

Turn the Dursleys into sperm whales.

Rewards:

100xp

YES/NO?

Harry quickly pressed no and sighed to himself. It seemed like he was the one setting the goals and deciding on the quests, although it seemed like someone else determined the rewards for completing his quests. It was all just too confusing.

'Ping!'

For learning about the game mechanics and figuring out how quests work(somewhat) you have gained 1 INT!

Harry blinked before he pulled up his status screen and there it was;

INT-2

He was starting to see a pattern with the stats now. Wise decisions seemed to make him wiser and learning new things made him smarter. If he had to wager, he would put his money on exercise making him stronger and a healthier diet making his vitality go up. He was blanking on ideas for Luck though. It seemed strange that such a random thing could be quantified into a simple number.

Harry wiped all the boxes away and cleared his head trying to think. Something strange was up with this whole Game, something that he was missing because he knew so little about games in general.

Shaking his head and pushing those thoughts to the back of his mind, Harry patted down the soil around the stem of the bush he was working on and turned to look at the clock through the window. With a sharp jolt of panic, he realized that he was running late for class.

'Crap!' Harry thought as he dashed into the house and into his cupboard. As he was hurriedly putting on his uniform, a sudden ping distracted him, much to his annoyance.

Ping!

Quest Alert!

You're late! Get to class on time!

Reward:

20xp

Failure:

Detention

Less reputation with everyone in class

YES/NO?

Harry frowned as he immediately pressed yes and focused on getting ready. Quickly, he finished his bath, put on his well worn St. Grogory's uniform and rushed out of Number 4 Privet Drive, dashing off in the direction of his school, cursing the game for making him late.

Little did he know, being late had saved his life.


Harry turned the street corner, fully intent on running full speed into the school and slipping into the class, finding one of the other kids who played games and get as much information about Role Playing Games from them as possible, thus completing the Quest and get closer to leveling up. But all those ideas instantly vanished from his mind the moment he took in the sight in front of him.

The entire street was empty...unnaturally so. Not even the usually bustling shops around the end of the pathways had anyone in them, and the always busy sidewalks full of late students and class-bunk-ers were completely devoid of life.

No one was there.

No one except the three figures standing in a circle in front of the school's main gate.

No... not three, Harry realized as he approached quietly, trying not to draw attention to himself. There was a fourth, smaller form lying on the ground...someone familiar. It was too small to be Dudley, and too tall and lanky to be anyone from his gang, but Harry had definitely seen before.

Whoever it was, the rather sickeningly large puddle of red liquid surrounding him; blood, Harry realized with a lurch in his stomach; didn't bode well for him.

'Murderers.'

The word flashed in Harry's mind of his own volition, and instantly his face drained of all color.

'Not now!' he thought to himself. Now wasn't the time for wild theories. Maybe they were just trying to help. But either way, he needed to find out what was going on.

Ping!

Quest Alert!

Find out what is going on.

Reward-

100xp

Failure-

The trio will learn you know about them and will 'take care of it.'

YES/NO?

Not taking long to read the quest and press Yes, Harry swiftly rushed closer to them. As soon as he could, he ducked behind a telephone pole and started listening. Their voices were starting to reach his ears.

"His wounds," a man's gravelly voice asked grimly, "Will they heal?"

"They should," said another man with a much younger voice, "It's not a spell I've seen before, but it looks like a bunch of normal deep wounds. Nothing our expert here can't handle. Isn't that right Em?"

"Yes," came the clipped reply from a woman's voice.

Harry audibly gasped. It wasn't just any woman. Harry knew that voice quite well from countless hours of nonsensical Chemistry lectures. It was Ms. Roemmele. And unfortunately for him, his gasp didn't go unnoticed.

"Did you hear that?" he heard the man ask, and he froze. This had never happened to him before. Sure, he tended to find himself in strange situations quite often, but this was a bit too grim even for me.

"Who is it?! Come out or we will be forced to shoot!" Ms. Roemmele's voice warned, and Harry broke out of his stupor. He knew better than to think she wasn't serious. After a few seconds of hesitating, he finally made up his mind. Taking a deep breath and holding his hands up like he had seen in those old cop movies, he walked out from behind the telephone pole.

All three of the figures were standing around the fallen boy protectively, shielding him as they pointed sticks with glowing tips at Harry.

"Har-Mr. Potter!" Ms. Roemmele said in relief, catching herself halfway through saying his first name. Harry paused. She never called anyone by anything other than their surname. And then he looked up at the floating box above her head.

Emmeline Vance Order of the Phoenix

LV-20

Harry stared at it in shock. Ms. Roemmele wasn't who she said she was. Instead of just a cranky old teacher, she was an incredibly high-leveled person. And judging from what he had seen of the Game so far, a high level almost universally meant danger. Which meant that the two men standing behind her were just as dangerous if, not more.

Boris Maghian Order of the Phoenix

LV-22

and

Sullivan Jones Order of the Phoenix

LV-42

and above the injured kid lying on the floor,

Gordon Jack Game Lover

LV-4

Harry could've soiled his pants had he known what level-42 meant in terms of the Game, but since he had nothing to compare it with other than his own age's levels, he could do nothing but feel a healthy dose of fear and respect settle into his mind. Warily, he approached the trio, who were holding up and pointing strange polished sticks at him.

Upon seeing his face, they all lowered their sticks. Harry frowned in confusion. Had he stumbled into some sort of mid-day cult ritual?

"Mr. Potter! are you alright there?" Ms. Roemmele asked, seeming uncharacteristically relieved to see him.

Unable to form words in his confused state, he simply nodded. One of the men; the younger one; walked over to him and waved his stick over Harry's head, muttering inaudibly, before he turned to Ms. Roemmele and nodded.

"Good," the older man said gruffly,"We were about to head out and look for you. Figured the attacker would try and come for you next after he missed you this time."

Harry's eyes widened. "Me!" he half-screamed half-squeaked, "This was supposed to happen to me?!"

"Sully! You are out of line!" Ms. Roemmele angrily snapped at the older man, but Harry was having none of it. He had stayed quiet long enough, and today's bizarre events were starting to wear thin on his patience.

"Now hold on a second. What is going on here? What happened to Gordon? Who are these people? And who is after me?"

"Calm down Harry," the younger man said, "Sully was just kidding. No one is after you. Your friend will be just fine in just a moment. You don't have to worry at all."

"Fine?!" Harry said incredulously, looking at the deep cuts littered across Gordon's still, unmoving body. "From what angle does that look fine to you sickos!"

Ms. Roemmele had had enough. "Mr. Potter! That will be enough out of you. If you want to see your friend live, you will be quiet and let us heal him. If not, then you are free to do whatever you want, but I swear in the name of all that is holy that if you act out while I am trying to save this boy's life, I will have your hide."

That did the trick.

Harry stopped, and hesitantly nodded. With a curt tip of her head, Ms. Roemmele turned around and dropped to her knees, pulling out that strange stick from her pocket and waving it over Gordon's body. Harry watched with wide eyes as the muscle and sinew restitched itself and the skin slowly closed over all the cuts on his body, utterly fascinated and terrified at the exact same time.

Behind them, the two men were having a conversation of their own.

"How in the world did he see us? Didn't your Confundus work right?"

"It worked perfectly. He shouldn't be able to see us right now. I don't know what is happening."

"Must be something related to the protections. Or maybe accidental magic?"

Their murmurings continued, but Harry tuned them out. None of what they were talking about made sense to him anyway.

A few minutes later, with one final wave and flick of the stick, the tears in Gordon's clothes restitched themselves. Ms. Roemmele turned towards Harry and smiled at his gobsmacked look, before turning to Boris, the younger man, and saying, "Get the boys to their class. You know what to do."

Boris nodded, but Harry was having none of it.

"Hold on a minute. I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what happened here and how you are able to do all those things and heal Gordon like that."

Boris sighed, before kneeling down to look Harry in the eyes.

"Harry. I know you are confused and I know you are scared, but I need you to come with me. All you need to know right now is that a bad man attacked your friend, and we will catch him in no time. Your friend will be just fine. He was treated by one of the Auror's best. Soon it will be like none of this ever happened. I promise."

Harry was about ask something, but he hesitated. He was well aware that they were humoring him, and that if they wanted, they could knock him out and make him do what they wanted easily. Knowing the futility of his situation, he nodded. Boris smiled, before getting up to his feet and picking Gordon up onto his shoulder.

"Best not to Levitate him while I'm maintaining the Confundus eh?" he said, and Harry nodded, despite having no idea what he was talking about.

As they walked towards the school building, snippets of conversation floated towards them from behind.

"It will be like nothing happened," the older man scoffed, "Except that it won't. Potter will forget, sure, but this wasn't a message to him. It's a message to us. Someone managed to nearly kill him. Despite all of us and Dumbledore's protections, someone managed to get close enough for this to happen. Do you need more reason to realize that we should take the child back to our World? Screw the old man and his plans."

"It's not our choice to make," Harry heard Ms. Roemmele say just as they walked out of earshot.

Boris helped Harry up the stairs, down the long corridor, and into his classroom. Much to Harry's shock, when they walked into the fully in-swing class, none of the children or even the teacher seemed to even notice them. It was as if the three of them were invisible to the rest of the class. Boris took him and sat him down in his usual seat, which Harry realized with a chill that this stranger already knew, then sat Gordon down at his desk and positioned him as if he was sleeping before walking over to Harry and kneeling down next to him, strange stick in hand.

"Harry. I am going to do a simple little trick. It'll make you forget all of this. It'll be like all of this never happened. Would you like that?"

Not knowing what to say to the strange man with extraordinary and dangerous abilities that terrified him, Harry simply nodded. With a smile, the man pointed his stick at him and intoned, "Obliviate."

A blinding flash of light filled Harry's vision and simultaneously his head filled with pain, and when he regained his bearings, the man was gone.

He sat there, wide-eyed until a ping sounded in his ears.

Ping!

Quest Success!

You're late dunghead! Get to class on time!

Reward:

20xp

Ping!

Quest Completed!

Find out what is going on.

Reward:

100xp

Harry almost scoffed out loud. He didn't have a shred of an idea about what was going on. The only thing he knew was that Gamer's Mind had probably just saved him from whatever this man had planned to do to his memories, and for that, he was grateful.


Harry then spent the rest of the day trying, and failing to pay attention in class. He could only think about all the strange things that had happened since this morning. His life was a game and his teacher was a cult psycho...it was a wild time. He had even pinched himself quite painfully a few times just to make sure he wasn't dreaming. By lunchtime, Harry was fed up with himself for overthinking the thing too much. So, he instead decided to focus on his next quest, intent on finding someone who knew a lot about video games.

A memory of that morning floated into his mind once again, and this time for once, it was a useful bit of information.

The Title of the boy that had been hurt was Game Lover.

If there ever was a more obvious clue as to who he was supposed to talk to, Harry had never seen it. Hence, he quickly looked around the class and found Gordon, who had been ranting to his friends about the teacher punishing him for sleeping in class. Harry knew that the punishment was the fault of that Boris person, but he wasn't stupid enough to open his mouth, especially when one of those three people was one of his teachers.

Gordon Jack Game Lover

LV-3

Harry got up from his seat and walked over to the brown haired boy, absently noticing that he was a level lower than he had been before.

"Excuse me, Gordon," Harry said, tapping him on the shoulder. Gordon turned and looked at him in surprise, "Harry? What do you want?"

Harry fiddled with his sleeve nervously, "Well I...um...Gordon I was thinking...you're pretty into Role Playing Games right?"

Gordon looked at Harry with a frown, almost as if he was suspicious that Harry was here to make fun of him, before slowly nodding, "Yeah...I DM from time to time."

"Well," Harry asked, "I was wondering whether you could help me out with a game I started playing."

"Really? What kind of game?" Gordon asked, interest piqued and all traces of suspicion gone from his eyes.

"Well...it's kind of like an adventure game. The hero wakes up and has to do quests and all, he finds himself in...let's call it the magic world. I was wondering whether you could help me do better by giving me clues and such."

Ping!

Skill Created!

Lying, Lv-1 (20%)

This is your ability to lie to people, the higher the level the better the lie and less chance of discovery!

2% chance of success, less based on how extreme the lie is.

Harry frowned. The 2% thing was a rip-off. Harry knew he was a better liar than that. He lied successfully to the Dursleys all the time.'This game is rigged!' he thought angrily.

Luckily though, it seemed that Gordon had bought the lie. He nodded and thought about it for a minute before saying, "Okay so what are the Hero's stats?"

Harry recalled them from memory and then told them out loud to Gordon.

"Well there is a plus point to the low stats," Gordon said leaving Harry surprised, "This means you can choose to improve whatever stat you want. Meaning you can make your own character."

"What do you mean?"

"Well usually in games there are classes. You improve the stat that helps you for each class. For example, a warrior will require an improvement on Str, Dex and Vit while ignoring the rest."

Harry nodded, understanding that clearly, "But what about Int, Wis, and Luck? Isn't that a disadvantage?"

Gordon shrugged, "True, but most players don't care."

"So what are the best ways to improve stats?"

"Well, that would be to do things that would improve them, like say for Str you should make the character lift heavy stuff, for Vit you should make him run a lot. Things like that."

Harry then connected the dots, "So let's say character thought a lot about ideas and such, would that increase his Wis?"

"Well, theoretically yes. I suppose. But that's not possible since game characters can't think. The best way to improve Wis would be to solve puzzles. Reading books would improve Int, but other than that I don't really know of any other ways."

"What about stat points? How do I get those?"

"You get those as you evolve Harry, but you've got to be careful so that you never use them."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" he asked, wondering what the point of them was.

"Save them for a later date, since for now, it is easier to train each stat by doing some work. For example, since your game character has an Int of 2, if he simply reads a book or two he should automatically gain a stat point if Int."

Harry's eyes widened, "Seriously?!"

"Yeah. But if Int was higher, let's say 30 or something, he would have to read a hundred books just for one extra stat points. You see where I'm going with this?"

Harry nodded, grateful, "Yes I do. You're are saying that it will be difficult later on to obtain stat points and to do so now by doing menial tasks."

"Yup."

"Thank you so much, Gordon. This helped me a lot."

Ping!

Quest completed!

Find someone to teach you about video games so you can be good at your life which is now a video game!

Rewards:

50xp

Exp-200/400

Gordon nodded at his thanks as Harry waved the window away and added, "Just don't forget to always save and have plenty of health potions in your inventory."

"Inventory?" Harry asked out loud, and suddenly a brown box appeared in front of him, causing Harry to jump in surprise. Quickly regaining his composure, he looked around to check whether anyone was looking at him. Finding no one, Harry studied the new box carefully.

It was labeled Inventory, and it had several empty boxes. Harry slowly walked to his desk and sat down with the inventory box in front of him. He took out an eraser and then pressed it against the box, pushing it forward. Golden ripples spread across the box, and the eraser disappeared from Harry's hands and reappeared in the inventory, labeled Eraser.

Harry smiled. The ideas were already starting to churn in his head.


That night Harry could hardly stop himself from looking over his stats time and again, agonizingly staring at his lackluster numbers and atrocious levels, bitterly noting that he would need to improve on them all. The game was reflecting reality, and the reality was that Harry was in atrocious condition for his age.

The inventory was pretty amazing though. So far, he had put several things inside it for safe keeping. Whatever little sum of cash that he had stolen from Uncle Vernon's pocket through the years now appeared on his status page as a number.

Money-50£/0G0S0K

Curious about how the game would identify currency, he tried asking for Francs and to his utmost surprise, he pulled out a note from the French Currency. Curious about the G, S, and K in his money stats, he asked for Gs and waited. The minutes passed and nothing seemed to drop out of thin air. Shrugging at this, Harry marveled at this nifty little thing he had discovered.

Dozens of times he had heard Uncle Vernon moan about the atrocious conversion fees they had to pay every time they took a trip abroad, and while Harry didn't quite understand the economic implications of free cross-currency conversion, he knew that he had found free access to something that cost a fair amount of money. And that was enough to put a smile on his face.

A few hours later, having read and re-read every screen he could pull up in his Game, Harry laid down on his bed and as he often did to lull himself to sleep, started counting grains of wood on his roof.

Ping!

By observing your surroundings you have created a skill!

Observe Lv-1 (10%)

By Observing a target one will get information about said object

Lv-1-Max HP, MP and info.

Harry paused a second to read the box before closing it with a wave. He'd gained a new skill, and it was clear that what he needed to do now was to figure out how in the world was he supposed to go about using it.

Observe...maybe it worked if he stared at something for a long time, Harry thought and proceeded to stare intently at the roof of his cupboard. It took him five whole minutes of looking like an utter buffoon to decide that perhaps that wasn't the best way to go about it.

'It listened to my voice before,' Harry mused, 'Maybe it'll do it again.'

"Observe," he slowly whispered, having decided that the voice-thing made sense. Much to his pleasant surprise, a box popped open in front of him.

The Cupboard Under The Stairs

This is the room of Harry Potter, where the Dursleys keep him to make sure he doesn't spread his ? to them.

Harry's smile disappeared.

There it was again. That question mark. There sure seemed to be a lot of question marks in his life...things that he didn't know...things that even the Game didn't seem to want to reveal to him.

He wiped the box away with a frown.

What could he possibly have that made the Dursleys hate him? Some disease? Maybe he was haunted? Was it something related to his Gamer abilities? Something related to that magic cult thing Ms. Roemmele did? Even this new skill, 'Observe', refused to tell him what that reason was. It was almost as if it wanted him to find out himself.

Harry paused. Perhaps that was it.

He was the hero of his own Game and this was his quest. To discover who he was and where he belonged...to grow stronger...to find out who his parents were. Maybe that was his mission. And just as the thought passed through his mind, something interesting happened.

Ping!

Quest Alert!

Find where you belong!

Reward:

Find out about all your abilities.

1000 Exp

Failure:

Death.

YES/NO?

Harry froze. It was almost as if a stone had stuck itself in his throat. In his young age, it took a minute for him to realize what it was.

Fear.

He was scared of dying. Especially now, when he was on the brink of knowing so much more about himself, the word 'death' at this moment scared him more than anything he had ever thought would scare him before.

And it was at that moment he realized another thing. He didn't want his life to end like this. He didn't want to die as Harry Potter, the boy that everyone hated and did just so-so in his class. He wanted to be something more. Something beyond his pathetic beginnings. Something great. And to achieve that, he needed to get over his fear, risk his life, and find out who he was.

A strange little phrase that Ms. Roemmele had read out in class a few weeks ago made his way to the front of his mind, sounding oddly appropriate at the moment.

Sic Parvis Magna.

Greatness from small beginnings.

And gulping down that stone in his throat, Harry took a deep breath and pressed yes.


The next morning was Sunday, and as soon as Harry woke up, he quickly started weeding the garden, intent on finishing up his chores as fast as possible and finding new ways of leveling up a few of his stats. As he moved on towards the edge of the garden, engrossed in his thoughts as he was, he didn't notice as his hand brushed against a small smooth rock with some strange marks on it.

What he did notice very clearly, was when his eyesight started flashing red and a red box popped up showing his mana bar as it started falling rapidly.

...5...4...3...2...1...0

Before he could even pull together the mental strength to formulate an actual thought, Harry promptly fell down to his knees and blacked out.


Having fun with these rewrites and edits while I refamiliarize myself with the story. Added a lot of doubt and wariness coming from Harry towards the game. I think that's a lot more appropriate than going, 'ma laife's a game now boi!' and going boom boom shaka laka. Anyway, hope you've enjoyed the chapter.

P.S. Gordon losing a level is very much an intentional thing. You'll see in Chapter 4. Something caused him to gain a level and that Obliviate took away all the experiences that caused him to level up. We'll follow Carrow almost exculsively that chapter, and his journey will explain a lot. It is one I'm excited to tell.