Author note:
I was told the first chapter was like a textbook chapter. I agree. That's how this chapter will also be. Sorry about that. From the next chapter the actual story starts. Just giving some background.
Enjoy this chapter my dear readers. Any suggestions on ideas you need explained, please let me know. I will try to include them in the forthcoming chapters if I can.
Chapter 2: Genesis
Genesis: The coming into being. I gotta tell you... my coming into being in this world was in no ways normal. Nor am I. I was different. That is what made me special. Abnormal, freak, unholy, a being that should not exist. These were some of the many kinder descriptions that were made of me.
As mentioned earlier, Lily, James and Sirius decided to make me such that I had all the best qualities they had. It was not a small effort. I was to be the heir to two of the very powerful pureblood families. It was an action that they knew would create a major controversy in the future if the truth was ever found out. The idea had tremendous potential for misuse. Hell... they misused it themselves. They stole genetic material from others with abilities they saw was useful. The truth could never come out.
The wards Sirius set up were powerful enough to completely mask and disperse the stray magics leaking from their experiments. The protocols they set up left only the minimum possible residues behind. Their Notes were destroyed as soon as their usefulness was over. They committed to memory most of their work.
From the completed theory and experiments they knew the presence of the magical analogues of genes. They first tested themselves and found that both James and Sirius had a pair of the M1a versions each, whereas Lily had the pair M1aM1b. Unlike the presence of the X and Y chromosomes in the non magical genes, the magical genes have no separate male and female versions.
The magical community had paid less attention to the biological genetic material. Their interests had always been onto the understanding of the rules governing the inheritance of magical capabilities. While most in the medical community understood the significance of DNA and its role in the transference of characters to the progeny (The occurrence of genetic defects and curiosity of some healers necessitated the importing of the data from the muggle world) they did not have a very good understanding of the transfer of the magical genes. Sufficient data had been collected, but an in depth study had not been performed in a scientific manner. A lot of research was funded by purebloods and had only focused on proving pureblood supremacy.
My parents (James, Lily and Sirius) understanding of the M genes was very advanced for their time. Lily had to study a lot about the techniques used by healers to understand the experimental evidence. Also being a muggleborn, she knew a decent amount of knowledge about DNA and other genetic material. Her knowledge of biological genetic material was sufficient that with enough will, they could also use the best biological traits of all three of them. This splicing would probably not (and did not) work as well as that of the magical genes.
Combining all this knowledge the three of them initially experimented on magical rats. They tried and succeeded in combining magical traits of two male and one female rat in a litter borne by the female. Only after this success did they proceed in applying the theory on themselves.
About the affinities... Just like we have some races which have specific traits, magical traits also exits. And these too are transferred to children. However the likelihood of the children displaying the same magical traits as the parents with very similar strengths in the specific field is much higher in magicals than compared to that from DNA. There are hundreds of affinities that have been cataloged. While transfiguration, charms, potions, defensive/offensive magics, affinity to magical creatures, and divination are those that all have to a reasonable degree, there are more exotic types. Most affinities are highly specific combination's of the above mentioned broad classifications. There are some affinities that are characteristic of specific communities.
The basic affinities allow certain specific types of manipulation.
Transfiguration (Changes one material to another or builds a lattice of matter held together with magic)
Charms(A wide array of spells that allow one to change or imbue a material with a specific property)
Potions(The ability to link different magics in a medium into a network that allows the medium to perform a specific task. Its not simple chemistry type cooking on a flame)
Defensive/Offensive magics(the ability to block magics or bypass magics forcefully)
Magical creature affinity(The ability to interact with magical creatures. Parseltongue is the strongest known form. But its highly specific)
Divination(The ability to sense very faint magics and form a picture that is useful)
Some of the more interesting affinities are affinities to
Fire spells (Transfiguration to create the fuel and charms to light it)
Flight spells(subclass of levitation in charms)
Shields(defensive magics, very necessary for warders)
Shield piercers(definitely offensive magics)
Compulsion magics(more of mind magics, but very much charms related)
Ritual magics (Mostly a combination charms, potions defensive/offensive magics)
Dark arts (Offensive and charms. It relates to magics that can be designed specifically to forcibly gain something from someone)
Metal magics (Transfiguration to mold the metal and charms to enchant it)
Wand crafting (Magical creature affinity and divination. Or else how the hell do you expect a wand crafter to have a wand tailored to everyone?)
Live transfiguration (Transfiguration obviously and charms to subvert the live creatures natural resistance to magics)
Sentience magics ( Magical creature affinities, charms. Fiendfyre is an example of this fire. Its vaguely sentient and absorbs ambient magic to power itself)
The list is practically endless... The ratios of the basic affinities decide what sort of secondary affinity the person has. As people usually have a fixed ratio of the basic affinities, most people can usually only have one strong secondary affinity and weaker affinity to another affinity which requires around the same ratio as what is already present.
Between the three of them, they already had very strong charms, dark arts and transfiguration affinities and from Lily a slightly above average potions affinity. James who had studied the theories after their completion paved the way to have many different affinities in one person with a radical idea. It required a lot of fine tuning. Especially as the first two pregnancies failed due to the volatility of the ability to fluctuate the basic affinities.
They designed the first seven rituals such that the child formed would have the pair of M1a genes with one of them having the capacity to harbor the strong affinities. The second M1a was to have the capacity to fluctuate in the affinities. Remember that a complete soul is one which has a pair of networks. The fluctuating capability caused the anchors also to fluctuate. This caused the soul to break off the anchor. This resulted in the child dying. In the language of mathematics it could be said that the system(in this case the child's magics) would be in a region of unstable equilibrium. Consider a ball just balanced on the tip of a vertically standing pole. A slight perturbation is sufficient to tip it across. The fluctuations provided these perturbations and the soul broke.
The second set of eleven rituals incorporated the fluctuations in both the genes. This simultaneous and equal fluctuation was in a region of a curve that could be called a local minimum. Consider a zigzagging horizontal curve that denotes energy. The most stable region for any system is where the energy is minimum. i.e. where the curve is lowest. They had calculated that this was a region not the lowest, but a dip in the curve closest to the minimum energy possible.
They had calculated that this configuration was for some reason more stable than the earlier version. It was so. But an unborn child or a very young child does not have much control over the magics it wields. There will be spikes in the magic produced. The fluctuations while stable enough for the embryo's soul, caused a tremendous amount of magical energy spikes. The mother is protected by the magical shield that the placenta generates. The child could have survived if these spikes could have been discharged completely. But the placental shield did not allow the needed rate of discharge. Lily's own body fought against the fluctuations. The shields increased in strength. More energy in a body means that temperature increased. The strain increased to a very high point till Lily was struck down by a high fever for five days. She nearly lost her own life. She was two months into the pregnancy when the strain was finally too much for her system. It caused a rejection of the anomaly and she miscarried.
After her recovery James proposed his radical idea. Use a bypass. Let the pair of M1a's remain with the strongest possible affinities for all the basic affinities they could carry. There is no need for them to fluctuate. The problem of fluctuations to the soul anchors will never arise. The child would register as normal to any test of magical signatures that is used now. Then incorporate another magical gene into the child. An M1b. It would use all the remaining magics into making the child's body healthy. It would be designed such that the soul anchor was suppressed. Just a network of very weak connections. No extra soul piece. The gene would also be modified such that it was bridged onto the pair of M1a's, channeling the required level of magics of each affinity.
One M1a carrying the Potter magics, another carrying the Black Magics. Lily's affinity from her own M1a split between those from James and Sirius and her M1b with the capability to fluctuate the basic affinities to any possible levels. The M1a's capable of channeling the sum of these combination's to the outside when necessary.
It was a phenomenal and completely crazy idea. BUT IT WORKED. Calculations showed that all the magical energies could be channeled, minimum energy levels could be maintained when necessary, allow great regenerative capacity, the M1b could use any spike in energy to improve the body to the best of its capacity due to which it would facilitate a longer and healthier life. The extra gene's capacity to fluctuate to any desired value meant that it would provide a level of fineness and control of magic that could equal Dumbledore's and Voldemort's without the need for over fifty years of experience. It was brilliant, absolutely insane but brilliant.
They went ahead with the idea. The rituals the conducted earlier had taken care of most of the groundwork. A set of three rituals involving the three of them completed the preparations. Lily Potter was pregnant with a child that had the potential to become one of the most versatile and powerful mage ever born.
For the actual rituals they needed a place that was nearly unknown to most people, far enough from most ministry monitored sensors so that any stray magics escaping the wards set up by Sirius were undetected, or too weak by the time they reached any device. The Potter and Black ancestral homes had wards that were strong enough to repel most attackers from breaching through. Well, they were actually strong enough that they would unconsciously divert away any and all but the strongest occlumens. It was standard practice followed by most pureblood families with enough money. But these homes were all registered in the ministry and they had an emergency bypass that allowed them to the edge of the wards in case of an emergency. The misuse of these emergency bypass was very strictly monitored, but it was still an unacceptable risk when one was playing without a permit with experimental blood and soul magics. That would get you sent to azkaban for a minimum of forty five years.
So they found a house in a remote region of west country that was close to Godrics Hollow. In the house they built a blood and password activated portkey that was specific to the three of them alone that took you to a region nearby. From there they had to walk a few minutes to reach a new network of caves that they had carved out in the mountains nearby. They heavily warded it and proceeded with the experiments. On their success they closed off their "lab" completely with a blood and magic keyed ward. They wanted the residual magics would slowly dissipate leaving nothing leading back to them.
The pregnancy was quite nerve wracking all the three. It went beautifully. The child developed normally, all scans showed that the embryo had no deformities and there were the minimum possible magical fluctuations that is possible in a magical pregnancy. The scans also showed that the child had the strong Potter magics. It completely covered both the Black and Evans magics as should be. A specific sequence of tests with the proper spell signature(that was only known to Lily, James and Sirius) would shift aside the Potter signature and allow the Black and Evans magics to shine through. They had planned to train me in the signature spell that would allow him to utilize the fluctuation property he had when he showed enough competence in magic. They expected it to be around the age of thirteen.
And so around nine months of pregnancy I was born... yeah... party... The compulsory magical scan on children born in wizarding hospitals recorded one Harry James Potter in the ministry and Hogwarts archive the results my parents expected. My true and complete magical signature would never be known to anyone else. Even Albus Dumbledore never found out though he suspected that I was not normal. My grand parents saw me only one before they mysteriously disappeared a month later.
The specialty in me was probably what made me a candidate for that damned prophecy. Voldemort would not have attacked the Longbottom's. He would have used some divination technique to find out who the real threat was and me being me would have registered as the one with the probability of causing the greatest havoc. So it was not all fun and games in my life. Difficulties arose that had to be faced all the time. I did face them and survive.
The moment my parents heard the prophecy from Dumbledore, they realized that there was only one truly possible candidate. Me. I was special, unique and one with the possibility of having many powers the Dark Lord knows not. They searched for a possible method to hide and finally found out about the fidelius charm. It was a highly complex piece of magic requiring much more than above average power, an in depth understanding of wards, charms and at least an intuitive understanding of the soul. Only Dumbledore had all the requirements even though my parents had a better understanding of the dynamics of a soul. Frank and Alice Longbottom chose the safety of the ancestral manor. They felt that it was enough. It lead to a disaster in the future.
My parents and Dumbledore decided that the small house in Godrics hollow was great for the purpose of the fidelius. While a house was registered in James and Lily's name in the village, we actually stayed in the house that had the portkey to the lab. The house in the village had some very strong wards put on it. But there is no unbreakable ward.
The fidelius causes the ones who know the space to forget it. The more the number of people who knew the place, more the magic that is needed to hide the place is. There is a finite amount of energy that can be put into a spell before it becomes unstable. The casting of the fidelius itself requires enormous magical potential. So very few people had to know the actual region where the house was present. The fidelius charm wraps space itself into a circle around a small region and thus allows the complete and total hiding of the space. The metaphorical sticking of the space into place is done by the secret keeper.
He/she is the loophole into the secret or a way to break a fidelius. Sirius Black was initially used as a Secret keeper. The secret was known by Dumbledore, one house-elf Tabby and Pettigrew in case of emergencies. But a secret keeper cannot stay inside a secret for over two hours. Its just not possible. The magics composing the spell would either forcefully push the secret keeper out or collapse violently. Whenever they wanted to meet they had to use an alternative method of communication or James and Lily had to get them and me out of the house into the one in the others wanted to meet the Potters, they were informed by Dumbledore and then came to the house in the village. The separation from his son proved too much of a strain for Sirius. Also he was the obvious choice for a spell dependent on total trust as far as the Potters were concerned.
So they changed the secret keeper to Peter Pettigrew and provided him with a proper place to hide. Sirius appeared in random places all over Britan and twice in France to give an appearance of him evading the Death Eaters. What a mistake it turned out to be. I will explain the reasons for their trust in him and not Remus Lupin sometime later. Peter was not actually too bad a person.
Though I do not remember my time with them, it was probably the only truly happy, carefree times I experienced in the first twenty years of my life. It was coming to an end.
On a fateful Halloween night over a year after my birth having finally found the secret from Peter, the Dark Lord Voldemort attacked my parents and me. He had found out the secret a week ago and planned well for a proper win. He had his Death Eaters lay ward stones all around the village for certain wards that only he could activate. Having fought the Potters and Black thrice and knowing their nearly unbelievable command of magic, he ordered Peter to visit them the day before and slip into their drinks a very potent but nearly untraceable depressant that would be activated only by his magics. Severus Snape unknowingly did get his revenge on James Potter. He also ordered Peter to give Sirius a strong hallucinogen the day before Halloween. Lily had luckily stopped drinking alcohol a week ago and Peter was not aware of this fact. On the day before the attack Peter snuck out of his hiding place after coating the entire place with a potent hallucinogen. He went with the Lord Voldemort and waited outside the house.
The Potters realized his presence and fled to the house in Godrics Hollow. An anti - apparition and anti- portkey ward had been laid. Else they might have portkeyed to their this time, in London, Sirius Blacks moderate divination skills kicked in and feeling something wrong, he first came to find Peter. On entering the hideout, he noticed no sign of struggle. But Peter was missing. He unfortunately inhaled a moderate amount of the hallucinogen dispersed in the air and was unable to think rationally for the next twenty four hours. He was initially in too much of a panicked state to notice the initial effects and would not realize what happened for the next two days.
In a heavily warded house in Godrics Hollow the most famous wizarding phenomena of this century was about to occur.
On reaching No. 12 Godrics Hollow, they found that the entire village had been covered in anti transport wards. They could not run far. The effects of the potion were visible in James. But he asked her to run and that he would hold the Dark Lord Back. Lily ran upstairs with the child when Voldemort broke into the house and started fighting James.
A desperate plan formed in her mind. A magical protection that Walburga Black had theorized a month before her death that used the human soul of a close relative as a shield came to her. She had studied it a month back and remembered it well. In an act of desperation she focused on the theory and with the intent of a mother willing to die protecting her child to call on to her magics, she drew the necessary runes as she remembered on herself and me with her wand. The runes would channel the magics in the desired fashion. It took her less than two minutes of feverish work to pull off the greatest magical achievement in a hundred years. My mother was truly a brilliant woman. I would definitely miss her touch even if I never would remember it in the future.
My dad died soon enough to a killing curse as my memories in the presence of dementors would show years later. He probably gave very little fight. The depressant Peter used would have sucked out all the confidence and with it the knowledge that could have provided one of the greatest magical duels of this century. A fight between Lord Voldemort and Lord Potter, two magical giants in their own right. One with a nearly unrivaled fineness in magic and another with the new understanding of magic that would have allowed him feats never before seen. But it was not to be. Lord Voldemort beat him with cunning. It was a tribute to James Potter's magical skill that the Dark Lord did not want to face him head on.
Lord Voldemort headed upstairs where he knew Lily Potter would be. He had not detected the depressant in her. It was not a problem. Having a child to protect would mean she would be in no position to truly engage him. But he was still a man of his word. He would give her a chance to step aside as he had informed Snape, in return for providing the extremely tricky and dangerous to create magic activated potion he had got Peter to use on the Potters.
On reaching upstairs, he found mum facing him without a wand, me sitting behind her on the floor, crying. When she refused to move aside, he killed her and sealed our fates. He turned his wand at me and fired off the dreaded killing curse. It hit me and was absorbed by me. Then to his shock, a killing curse came from me... and the rest is history as they say. Peter pettigrew transformed and ran the moment he realized what was wrong.
A lot of people including the famed unspeakable's wonder how I survived. It was pure chance, my unique magical genetics, my mothers sacrifice and Lord Voldemort's soul fragment together. No... Not Lily's love alone. That was Dumbledore's explanation in an effort to stop any true experimentation on me by others into the true cause and his quest to make sure I was as normal and as average as humanely possible. He also tried to mold me to be ready to sacrifice myself for others.
To understand what truly happened to me one has to understand the concept behind the killing curse and a Horcrux.
The killing curse is one of the most powerful curses available, capable of passing through any and all shields because of one simple reason. It is not technically a curse, in other words it's not a piece of regular magic. It is in very simple terms, a piece of the soul of the caster, typically averaging about seven percent of the original. No magical shield is designed to stop a fragment of soul. The soul is the conduit for magic. The killing curse striking at any living being, on any part of the body will simply rip out that soul.
The killing curse being a part of ones soul network that is ripped out and cast into another being, operates by severing all connections of the recipient's soul to the body in an attempt to fix itself to that body. The time taken for this has been measured to be in the range of a few microseconds. Once all connections are severed, the network quickly starts to disintegrate leaving behind only a faint echo of itself in the magics of the surrounding atmosphere.
The soul fragment comprising the killing curse, after attempting to affix itself to the body and completely failing to do so due to the incompatibility of the body will return to the caster and start reintegrating itself slowly. The killing curse is a very short range curse. It will not travel beyond a distance of a hundred and fifty meters before the soul fragment is pulled back.
A killing curse that does connect and kill a person will, during the attempt to connect itself to the body of the cursed, achieve an intimate understanding of that soul's connection. This memory is not held on by the soul fragment. It on returning to the source through the wand that cast it will deposit the memory in the wand of the caster. This memory can be called back by using the reverse spell effect. In an attempt to recreate the echo of the magic previously cast, it uses the memory of the soul to attempt a reconstruction of the connections solely composed of magic.
Once the connection to the body is broken, the soul disintegrates almost completely. This is the sole reason why a person once dead cannot be brought to life. The echo of a once complete soul is what necromancers try to call back and is less than a ghost which is a conscious imprint that the soul creates before disintegrating in an attempt to hold on to life. A ghost contains all the memories of the soul and part of the original being.
The resurrection stone, one of the famed deathly hallows is the greatest creation of any necromancer. Using the wearer's ties to that person, it calls to this echo. The echo is NOT the exact soul of the person called back. It varies depending on the caller's connection to the dead person. This is the reason why calling back a soul by necromancy to prove the innocence or guilt of a person accused of murder is not a valid legal option. The echo's response will most likely vary depending on its caller.
Breaking up a soul to power the killing curse is no simple task. To do so requires an intimate understanding of the soul or a very powerful emotive force. In simpler terms, emotion strong enough to overcome and rip apart a piece of the very fabric of ones being. True hate of another is the only emotion that one can harness in an effort to do such a deed.
Once cast out, the piece of soul will immediately return to the caster. This ripping of the soul is what causes nausea, fatigue and the feeling of loss that every first time user of the kiliing curse experiences. It has been well documented that they feel they have changed something that made them what they are.
This feeling of change will persist for varying lengths of time depending on the person. The soul, given a sufficiently long enough time, anything varying from two to five years starting immediately from the moment of return, will reintegrate with the rest of it.
This variation in time is due to the individual's acceptance of the deed. Someone who feels repulsed by his actions will take longer to accept back the fragment. But repeated use of the killing curse before this recuperating duration will cast out this same piece. In this case repenting the crime is not the way to heal. One needs to accept what was done.
This is the reason why the avada kedavra becomes easier with repeated casting. Research has shown that after casting the curse more than seven times within one year, the fragment takes an exponential increase in time to reintegrate. In other words, it's easier to cast again.
Of course there are methods available to truly skilled wizards to destroy a soul in ways that even the echo is completely dismantled and disintegrated to pure magic leaving behind in this world no evidence of the existence of that person. To an ordinary wizard the killing curse is the surest way to end a life with no possibility of recovery.
The Killing curse being a part of the castes soul has been theorized before. With no method to prove it these theories were mostly forgotten. But there have been some who realized the potential of this information. In the approximately 15 seconds that the fragment would survive before completely loosing connection to the main piece, one could use a well prepared container to store it creating what has come to be called, a horcrux.
As the connection between the Horcrux and the original piece still persists, even if the body is destroyed the soul is capable of retaining its existence without the possibility of naturally disintegrating. This wraith like being that it will become will probably be in agony most of the time. Consider its situation. No true sensory input at all. No sight, hearing, smell or touch to inform it of what is going on around it. But a soul absorbs magic and everything around it will be emitting magic. It is most probably possible for it to use these magics as a sort of RADAR and feel its way around. The condition this soul must remain is probably worse than that of a person who is conscious but unable to fell anything. Such a torturous existence must be unfathomably horrid. But there is still one very important fact. This fragment is still alive. That is the trade.
What of the vacuum created in the original? It cannot remain. The echo of the soul once there will try to fill itself somehow. This will be filled by the energy that is completely comprised of magic. The capacity of the individual, whose soul is missing a piece, to channel magic thus increases. The more pieces cut out the more the metaphysical area for contact with magic increases. A simpler way to understand this process can be got by imagining a solid sphere. It has a specific surface are. Now slice it by half and separate the pieces by some distance. The cut area is exposed. This implies an extra surface area equal to the areas of the two cut sides.
The optimum number of pieces that can be removed from the soul is six. Once the first seven percent is removed, ninety three percent remains. The next soul fragment would contain only six point five one of the original. In this way removing six fragments would remove 35.5 percent of the original leaving 64.5 percent intact. According to magical theorists this would mean an increase of Magical Channeling Capacity (MCC) by nearly 49 percent. The MCC of the strongest to the weakest magic user does not vary more than 21 percent. If a person in the upper range creates six horcruxes he would most definitely be magically stronger by half than the average magical Joe.
By the time Lord Voldemort had cast the killing curse on me Lily's soul had unraveled completely. She destroyed her very essence in an attempt to save me. Just this by itself would not have stopped the killing curse if I had been a normal child. The changes they made in me were the true cause. This mangled protection had then, following the paths set by the runes begun integrating as much as possible into the regions of the two M1a's that had her signatures and also with the M1b. It was a very weak integration. The soul fragment in the Dark Lord's curse had already begun ripping out my soul when the protection completely activated. Except for a few minor connections that remained to the bigger piece, this fragment of mine had no anchors. It sought to protect itself and the only way that it could was to take out the source of its pain. It did. This piece of me that was ripped out got loose and that my friends, is what destroyed the Dark Lord. I am the youngest ever to successfully cast the killing curse.
Now lets slow down time and see what exactly occurred during this time. During the milliseconds in which my own unintentional killing curse was ripping out the dark lord soul form his body, changes were occurring at a very fast pace in me. My M1b had the capacity to adapt. My mother's protection slowed down the killing curse which gave my M1b enough time to sample it and adapt sufficiently to it. The dark lords soul fragment in me was very confused. Parts of my soul anchors were for some unknown reason recognizable to it whereas the rest was not. At the same time the Dark Lord had been ripped from his body. It had nowhere nearby to return to. There was no pull, but there existed a recently activated soul anchor in me that had activated due to its presence everywhere around it. Mum's protection was also holding it from going anywhere easily. It chose me as a refuge.
My soul fragment that had been cast out returned and started integrating itself back into me. This very complex network of three very mangled and tattered souls is something I have not yet understood completely. I have too much soul. The amount of connections a soul has depends on the number of cells in a body. My own soul along with my mother's and Lord Voldemort's was almost too much. It was practically overflowing off me. The parts of the two foreign souls that could not be accommodated inside me were disintegrated. But by some good luck it stuck for long enough till a solution was provided. The curse had stuck my forehead. The rune of protection there that mum had drawn had slightly overloaded after as it completed its work. The rune had been in the shape of a lightning bolt and so was my scar.
Everyone knows what happened next. I was taken to No. 4, Privet Drive. Dumbledore had met Hagrid outside the damaged house in Godrics hollow. Now a soul that is disintegrating due to death will give out a lot of magics. To most it feels just like a spike in magic. But a sensitive enough practitioner of magic will understand what is happening. He will feel the emotions attached to the magics that are associated with the shadows of experiences in a soul as they burst out of the decaying soul. He had felt the overflowing magics in me and recognized three signatures.
Mine was relatively unknown to him considering the limited contact he had with me due to all the hiding, but still familiar enough to his very perceptive senses to recognize. He had fought Voldemort all out thrice and recognized that signature coming from me very well. A killing curse leaves a faint scent. This scent was strong still. Lily's soul, though very mangled, was recognizable enough. He theorized that the killing curse had been cast on me, but my survival and Lily's magical signature from me indicated some involvement of hers that had protected me from the most dreaded curse of magic. He also performed the Prior Incantatem spell on the Dark Lord's wand that he found lying on the floor and confirmed it. The Aurors would later repeate the test and realized the same. He felt the magics that one now associated with the disintegrating souls and concluded that I might be in danger.
Even though he only suspected what was happening, from his immense knowledge and experience, he had drawn up a scheme of wards based on first principles relying on the feel of the magics around me. They needed me around a blood relative to settle. He directed Hagrid to deliver me to my relatives as it was not advisable to apparate or portkey with infants on Sirius's bike. What happen once I was brought there was that, Dumbledore placing me with Petunia and Dudley prevented the overflowing network of souls around me from disintegrating completely. Lily's soul remnants latched on weakly to the M1b in Petunia and Dudley Dursley and slowly gained in strength. As I grew up the three souls slowly started integrating. Unfortunately Lily's soul had over the years slowly dumped all the shadows of experiences that are embedded in a person's soul in an effort to maintain its function. That was to protect me.
Over the next few years, I grew up enough to have sufficient cells for enough for the connections to form. Mine and Lily's soul slowly knitted together, but not completely due to the connections that were maintained to my relatives. Tough they never truly understood it, the ministry could never detect most magics I committed due to them dissipating through my relatives. They had to install an ultra-sensitive detector near my home. Dumbledore too had one and a series of regularly renewed tracking charms on me. During the same time a similar situation arose with the Dark Lord's soul and my body, albeit a little weaker. Over the next seven years, the shadows of experiences in Voldemort's shifted to me also through the common M1b we shared. Exactly seven years later on Halloween, the transfer completed and the fragment merged with my soul completely since it could no long make out the difference between itself and me.
Only an echo of the Dark Lords soul remained anchored to me. I had no memories from the two foreign souls. What happen can be understood if one considers what happens when a hard material, pressing on a softer one, leaves an imprint behind. The actual hard material is the original imprint on Voldemort's soul. The soft material is my soul. Voldemort's soul left no actual material. Just imprints of what were there in it. I would benefit immensely from them because there were a lot of experiences that a Dark Lord has. Most of the things I did seemed familiar to me. They seemed like things I had already done a very long time ago. The kicker would be the imprint of the Dark Lords most famous magics. Legilimency and Parseltongue. I could do them too from a very young age. All other magics that needed a focus were familiar to me once I obtained a wand. It was similar to cycling after not touching a cycle in thirty years. The first twenty years of my life, I constantly spent having a feeling of deja vu. It was amazing what magics I commanded at a very young age. The dark Lord's experience left me with the capacity to channel magics with the fineness of a seventy year old had. But the lack of a focus still left me unable to do most of them.
Some other things that the Dark Lord is famous for are his knowledge, independence and refusal to acknowledge anyone as his superior. The transfer of all these imprints to me left me a very bright and highly independent individual who never knew when to quit in the quest for anything. I was patient and would always get what I wanted, or I would get revenge.
Natural order was defied, broken and subverted to create me. So what? There is only one constant in this universe... That is change. Nothing ever remains as it was. My parents understood that. They tinkered with the natural order of the world. Were they wrong? Everyone accepts evolution and survival of the fittest as a fact. Why not use that use the capacity to better oneself or ones progeny if it is possible and within your grasp? Should one let nature decide how you are with the throw of a dice, let chance rule you, probability decide you? Not a damn chance.
The discussion of the meaning of life and ethics associated with it would be never ending. We are, as far as we can see, a collection of elementary particles arranged in a specific order. Each and every particle is following the rules of physics. Just because we have not discovered them all does not mean we are excluded from them. If the human body is just this collection of particles, what is thought? What is the meaning of life? Is there a higher purpose? Disregarding all the possible moral and ethical questions I came to the conclusion that it does not matter.
Most likely there is no meaning to life. But I think, I feel, I live. I will continue to do so to the best of my abilities as long as can be. I will try to be in what we humans call a state of happiness for as long as I can. I will do whatever i want as long as no one else is hurt by my actions. You try to impose on me and you will bee removed from my path. That is all that matters to me. Damn those who would oppose me and tell me that my happiness is dependent on how anyone else describes it or that it is dependent on the happiness of others.
I am Harry James Sirius Potter. As I grew up my life taught me many cruel lessons and from them learned how to be. Never be dependent on anyone. I refuse to be tamed, to be controlled by anyone. Try it if you dare. I do not bend or break. I end, and I will end you with me.*
* - The last two sentences were inspired by a similar sentence from a fiction by Miranda Flairgold and her character Rahkesh Asmodeus.
From the next chapter onwards we fast forward to some years in the future to see Harry's life as he begins to understand that he is special.
