Disclaimer: All characters and locations belongs to J.K Rowling.

Thoughts looks like this 'example'

Speech looks like "example".

Edit: Changed the difficulty adept into journeyman. Adept is still in the system, but lower than before, se next chapter for details. Moved summary to first status page. Added another unknown ward. Other changes were minor and mostly visual.

Chapter 1 – The Tutorial (part 1)

When Harry woke up the next day, he immediately sensed that something was wrong. He laid as still as he could, kept his eyes closed and tried to take stock of the situation. As the minutes went by he got more and more confused as he still couldn't figure out what was wrong. Then suddenly he realised why he could not sense anything in the vicinity that was wrong. It wasn't what was there, it was something he had become so familiar with that it had been a constant unwelcome companion for large parts of his life.

It was pain. And now it was suddenly gone.

The aches he would almost always wake up with from the beatings he got, gone. The pain from cracked bones that he had become so familiar with that he barely even felt it any more, gone. Even the discomfort he usually felt from curling up on his small mattress seemed largely abated.

Confused, he opened his eyes as slowly as possible until he could peek out while still appearing asleep if someone was looking. As he took stock of the situation he noticed something blue in front of him. As he tried to focus on it he recoiled in shock. Right in front of him was shining blue window with clearly discernible text on it.


You have slept on an aged mattress in slight discomfort.

You have recovered 75% HP/MP and minor ailments and status effects has been removed.


To say he that he was confused would have been an understatement, there were so many things that didn't make sense right now. To begin with, why was there a blue window floating in the air in front of him?! And why could he see it so clearly? It should have been at least a bit blurry based on his previous experience with his vision. Confused, he took a quick look around (the window emitted a surprising amount of light). Yep, vision still sucks.

He stared at the screen for another minute with a guarded expression before he slowly lifted his hand towards it. He extended a finger and gave it a quick poke. The window rippled and disappeared from the point he had poked. And with the light from the screen gone, the darkness reclaimed the cupboard.

He stared into the darkness for a minute with a blank expression on his face, before a single thought went through his mind.

'What the hell was that?!'Harry thought.

His subconscious, recognising his request, took it and forwarded it to his magic, and thus triggering it to answer his thought.


[Tutorial]

Do you wish to view the tutorial?

Yes/No


His magic taking stock of the situation, triggered another window that it would use for situations like this.


[Quest!]

The Tutorial

What is going on? Find out what is happening.

Objective: Complete the tutorial

Rewards: Hopefully understanding the situation, 50 XP.

Failure: Remain confused for the foreseeable future.

Accept/Decline


For his part, Harry just stared at the windows, not sure if the windows was real or if he had finally cracked under his relatives tender care. Realising that staring did not seem to solve this situation he read through the windows and quietly processed the information. Deciding that it was unlikely to worsen his situation he decided to take a leap of faith and take the bull by the horn.

'It couldn't possibly be worse than the Dursleys after all' he mused.

He pressed accept on the quest screen and it was replaced with a [Quest accepted!] screen which faded away a few seconds after he read it. Then he pressed yes on the Tutorial screen. It was replaced by a new screen.


Welcome to

Harry Potter: The Game!

Congratulations! Yesterday you gained and accepted the power of The Gamer and all perks and burdens associated with it. The Gamer makes you live out your life as a game with you as the main character. The game consists of many different functions, many of them which will be explained here. The tutorial will hopefully give you a basic understanding of your new role in life and the new possibilities available to you. You can at any time pause the tutorial by either using the command "Pause Tutorial" or the pause symbol in the upper left corner denoted by two straight vertical lines. To resume, use the command "Resume Tutorial".

Now, we will first start with your status. By using the command "Status" combined with the intent to use it (it wouldn't do have menus popping up during regular conversation after all) you will close this window and open up your status page.


Upon a whispered "Status", the window disappeared and was replaced with a new one. The new one resembled an open book, with a picture of him and what he was currently wearing on the left side and several fields of information on the right side.


[Status]

Name: Harry James Potter | | | Age:10

Race: Human | | | Title: Freak

Class: The Gamer

Level: 0 | | | Next level: 0/100

HP: 112,5/112,5 | | | MP: 100/100 (200)

HP/min: 8,63 | | | MP/min: 7,25

Attributes

Strength 3 x 0.75 + 0 = 2,25

Dexterity 5 x 0.6 + 0 = 3

Vitality 3 x 0.75 + 0 = 2,25

Charisma 0 + 1 = 1

Intelligence 4 + 0 = 4

Wisdom 2 + 0 = 2

Status points left: 0

Resistance

Dark Magic: -25%

Disease: -25%

Poison: -25%

Summary

Harry James Potter is the unwanted nephew of Petunia Dursley, former Evans. He was born on the 31st of July, 1985. He was later orphaned at a young age from his loving parents and ended up in the not so loving care of his aunt and uncle. He has little knowledge about his parents other than that their last name was Potter and that they are dead. According to his relatives they were good-for-nothing drunks, but Harry has his doubts. Harry's life has recently taken a turn for the better with him receiving the powers of The Gamer. Other than that Harry knows little of himself. He has a distinct scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt.


After looking at it for a few seconds a new window appeared beside the previous one.


[Tutorial – Status]

Welcome to your status page. To the left is an overview of your current appearance and equipment. The equipment will be explained in a later part of the tutorial so do no concern yourself with that for now. To the right is your current status. It contains information such as your name, age, race, title and more. First up is your attributes. The available attributes to you are Strength (Str), Dexterity (Dex), Vitality(Vit), Charisma (Cha), Intelligence (Int) and Wisdom (Wis). The value without bracket is your base value. The value in the brackets are the effective value after adding merits and demerits. For a detailed explanation of a attribute, press the corresponding name. This window will disappear once you press one of them and a new tutorial window will appear once you have examined each of the attributes.


Doing exactly that, the tutorial window disappeared and a new window containing the information for Strength appeared.


[Strength]

A numerical representation of your muscled based power. Strength governs over your base physical damage. For example it decides how hard you can hit and how heavy a weight you can lift.


After that he went through each attribute in turn.


[Dexterity]

A numerical representation of your coordination, agility and accuracy. Dexterity governs over your precision movements and reaction time. For example it factors in heavily in your ranged weapon accuracy and all weapon masteries since they are based in coordination.


[Vitality]

A numerical representation of your endurance and the resilience of your muscles. Vitality governs how long you can perform physical task and to a lesser degree mental tasks. Vitality can be seen as your physical stamina.

For each point in vitality you gain 50 HP, 2.5 HP/min and 1 MP/min.


[Charisma]

A numerical representation of how charismatic you are. Charisma governs over your social skills and how secure you feel about social interactions. For example, charisma heavily factors into your ability to convince people of the truth of your statements.


[Intelligence]

A numerical representation of how intelligent you are. Intelligence governs over your memorization skills and magical capacity. For example how much information you can retain.

For each point in intelligence you gain 50 MP.


[Wisdom]

A numerical representation of how wise you are. Wisdom governs over your problem solving skills, analytical thinking, magical recharge rate and indirectly your regeneration. Your magical energy is infused through your body and will thus play part of how fast you regain HP. For example wisdom helps with mathematical and strategic skills.

For each point in wisdom you gain 2.5 MP/min and 1 HP/min.


Harry slowly digested the information and tried to make sense of it. There were several unfamiliar terms that he was unused to, but before he could get into details about exactly what this meant for him and the numbers present, the next tutorial window appeared.


[Tutorial – Increasing attributes]

Now that you have a basic understanding of the different attributes (don't worry if you don't understand them in detail yet, you can always revisit the explanation after the tutorial is finished) it is time for you to find out how they can be increased. There are 6 general ways to increase them.

1. When you level up you receive 3 free status points that you can spend however you like. You currently have none so you will have to wait until next level to increase them this way.

2. They can be increased by training them. Different attributes requires different ways of training. Generally you can increase them by pushing yourself in the areas which they govern. For example, charisma increases the more often and better you perform in your interactions with others and whether or not you influences them. This way increases in difficulty the higher the attribute rises, I.e. to raise strength from 10 to 11 is more difficult than raising it from 9 to 10.

3. Quests can give you status points as rewards for completing them, both free and assigned.

4. Skills can give a boost to different attributes while active or even give status points as a reward for mastering them.

5. Equipment can give you boosts to different attributes by equipping them.

6. Certain consumables can give you bonuses over time or even permanently. These are known as buffs. Be aware that the permanent boosting ones are generally very rare and should be treated with care.

Press continue to proceed

Continue


Harry made sure to memorize all the different ways to increase the attributes before proceeding.


[Tutorial - Summary]

The one thing remaining on the first status screen is the summary, which gives you a summation of yourself. It might mention defining moments and some personal history, it can vary depending on many different factors.

Press continue to proceed

Continue


As Harry was digesting this information he heard (and felt) someone stomping down the stairs (they seemed to take pleasure in being as loud as possible). Quickly pausing the tutorial to make it go away in fear of what his uncle would do if he saw any of his so called freakishness, he hurriedly tried to make himself appear as innocent as possible. Hearing his uncles laboured breathing from doing something as exhausting as descending the stairs, he waited for him to unlock the cupboard. It didn't take long before he heard the sound of the lock on the cupboard being unlocked and the door thrown open. With the three words "Freak, breakfast, now" he could only stare in horror as a new window appeared in front of him with a, to him, earth shattering ping. He froze in horror as the seconds ticked by and he could only dread what his uncle would do to him. But as the seconds ticked by and nothing happened he looked up, confused, to see what had happened to his uncle since he had not retaliated to the window's sudden appearance.

He found his uncle staring at him and as the seconds ticked by it seemed Vernon was losing what little patience he had.

"I mean now, boy!" he half-shouted, half whispered (it simply wouldn't do to wake Dudley up before he got enough sleep, he was a growing boy after all), which resulted in an odd mess of high and low tones, and grabbed a hold of Harry's arm and violently dragged him out of the cupboard, triggering another couple of windows.

Confused, and with a quiet "Yes, uncle Vernon." Harry went towards the kitchen. Still reeling from the fact that apparently only he could see the glowing blue windows, he automatically went through the motions of assembling the supplies for breakfast. As he was calming down he took the time to actually read the windows that appeared.


[Quest!]

Feeding the animals

Objective 1: Successfully prepare breakfast for your relatives.

Objective 2: Very well prepared meal.

Objective 1 reward: 50 XP, avoid morning punishment

Objective 2 reward: breakfast

Failure: 25 XP, receive severe punishment

Accept/Decline


As he read the title of the quest he mentally chuckled. When he saw what he stood to gain he quickly accepted the quest and moved on to the next window (as he was doing this he still went through the motions for preparing breakfast, so used to it that it barely required thinking for him). It was a small window to the side.


You have taken 12 damage.

HP -12.


As soon as he had acknowledged and read the window it disappeared without action from him. It seems like these kind of windows will disappear as soon as he has read them. Moving on to the next window he found a new type of window.


[Skill Category Unlocked!]

General

The category for general skill which do not fall under specific categories. It is one of the few categories that do not have levels and thus no bonuses.


Confused as to what it meant, he stared at it for a second before closing it and moving on to the last window that opened. To his surprise he found yet another new type of window.


[Skill Acquired!]

Physical Endurance

Passive

Level 100/100, Master

Difficulty: Hard

This skill increases the durability of your body and how much physical damage it can take.

+25% physical damage resistance

+100% wisdom-based HP-regeneration

Mastery bonus:

+5% physical damage resistance

+25% vitality-based HP-regeneration

+5 Vitality


It was safe to say that Harry was quite confused when he reached the end of the window. There were several things he didn't understand from the window. To begin with, how had he mastered the skill as soon as he had acquired it? And what was that about difficulty? He recognised the part about regeneration, but the resistance he only vaguely remembered from the status page. Even as the confusion took a hold of him, he felt a growing excitement inside of him.

While he had felt excitement many times in his life, this were a new kind to him. He had many times felt the adrenaline rush and excitement from being in situations were he might get hurt, for example from his part of the game "Harry Hunting", but this was another kind of excitement. It was excitement based in happiness and enjoying the current situation. He barely stopped himself from resuming the tutorial, he couldn't wait to find out more about his new reality!

He refocused on preparing breakfast. As usual it was an English-style breakfast, the Dursley version. It consisted of scrambled eggs, fried bacon, roasted toast with butter and sausage. It used to contain mushrooms and beans, but after Dudley complained about them it was removed from the menu. To it was a cup of coffee in the case of Vernon, a cup of tea for Petunia and soda for Dudley.

He quietly concentrated on preparing breakfast to make it as good as possible, it was his breakfast that was on the line after all. If he made it well enough he would actually get to eat it. As he finished frying the bacon another window appeared. Not wanting to mess anything he quietly ignored it and continued making the breakfast. As he finished cooking several more windows appeared. Still ignoring the windows he quickly went to serve his uncle breakfast. As he entered the dining room he froze as another aspect of his power became clear to him.

There was another window, but this time it was not in front of him, it was over his uncle's head. And even thought it was so far away, he could still see what it said.


Vernon Dursley

[Director at Grunnings]

Level 23

Director


Trying to keep from staring, he quickly served his uncle breakfast and placed the servings for his aunt and cousin at their usual places. Petunia entered the dining room just as he was about to turn around. She also had a window above her.


Petunia Dursley

[Gossip]

Level 19

Housewife


"Good morning, sweetheart" Vernon called out when he saw her.

*Good morning, darling" she replied while studiously ignoring Harry except for a quick scowl in his direction.

Harry returned to the kitchen to clean up. As Harry was cleaning up yet another window popped up. By now he was really curious but his determination held fast. He would go through the windows when he was in more stellar company, i.e. away from the Dursleys. He finished cleaning up the kitchen and arrived at the dining room just in time for Vernon and Petunia to take the first bite (they had only sipped their coffee and tea before then). If you looked closely you could find that their expression lightened a smidgen before it was quickly hidden away, it wouldn't do for them to actually make him think they were happy with it after all. Sadly for them, Harry had learned their cues a long time ago and even received a game window as evidence this time. Knowing that this window decided whether he would get to eat breakfast or not he quickly read through it.


[Quest Completed!]

Feeding the animals

Objective 1: Successfully prepare breakfast for your relatives.(Complete)

Objective 2: Very well prepared meal. (Complete)

Objective 1 reward: 50 XP, avoid morning punishment

Objective 2 reward: breakfast

You received 50 XP, no punishment and the right to eat breakfast today.


He was overjoyed about his success, Vernon took any opportunity to punish him so being able to avoid it was fortunate. Harry quickly served himself breakfast and after a nervous glance at his relatives (while he did get a frown from them they thankfully stayed quiet) sat down and quickly ate his breakfast. He ignored the conversation between his aunt and uncle and focused on getting done as quickly as possible. As he finished his meal, he once again heard and saw another window popping up. As he was pondering whether to read it or not, Petunia turned towards him.

"You! Listen here, me and Dudders will go shopping with aunt Marge today while Vernon is at work. I want you out of the house by 9 and by then the kitchen better be spotless and all the food packed up. And you better not come back before 4 PM!" she told him.

For his part, Harry didn't know whether to be happy or not. Had it been in the summer he would have been happy, but it was November now. While it was nice to be rid of his relatives, it was still chilly outside. Thankfully it looked like it were gonna be a sunny day, so the temperatures shouldn't fall too low. Either way, there was no other correct response other than an affirmative so with a quiet "Yes, aunt Petunia." Harry scrambled away from the table towards his cupboard.

It was almost 8 right now so he should hopefully have enough time to finish the tutorial. But first, the windows! As he closed the door to the cupboard he focused on the first window that appeared.


[Skill Category Unlocked!]

Cooking

Level 51/100, Journeyman

Difficulty: Hard

The cooking category contains your cooking related skills and shows how accustomed you are to cooking food and preparing meals.

Journeyman bonus:

+50% Dexterity while cooking.

+25% increase in buff duration and strength from food prepared by you.

+25% taste in meals you prepare.

Meals prepared by you are 20% healthier.

25% chance to figure out the recipe of eaten food of intermediate difficulty or lower.


As he read through the skill he couldn't help but think that he really needed to get back to the tutorial so he could understand just what the windows meant. Still, he couldn't help wanting to read through the other windows since he was really curious what they were about. With his priorities set straight, he went right for the next window.


[Skill Acquired!]

Frying

Passive

100/100, Master

Difficulty: Intermediate

A skill under the category Cooking. How skilled you are at frying food. Also shows your skill with the various frying tools that is part of the kitchen equipment.

+25% increase in buffs from recipes containing fried food.

-50% tear on frying equipment.

+50% taste to food you fried.

-20% unhealthy qualities in food you fry.

Mastery bonus:

+100% damage done with frying tools (skillets, frying pan etc.)

+50% time duration to buffs from recipes containing fried food.

+5% fire resistance.


By now he was really wondering how he could have such high levels in so many skills. Did he retain all knowledge and training from earlier and only had to trigger them to find them? It seemed likely. One thing was for certain thought, he was gonna find a skillet to use as a weapon.

Moving on to the next window he found a new type of window.


[Cooking Recipe Learned]

English-style breakfast (Dursley Version)

Level 100/100 Master

Difficulty: Simple

An English-style breakfast prepared as the Dursley household prefers it. Consists of scrambled eggs, fried bacon, toast with butter and sausage.

Buff duration: 1 hour and 45 minutes (1 hour + 75%)

Buff: +37,5% HP and HP-regeneration (25% + (25%*50%))

Mastery bonus

Buff: +3 Strength (2 + 50%)


He stared at the window amazed, if something that simple gave such a boost he could only imagine what a complicated and well prepared meal would give him. He had a good guess what his next window would be.


[Skill acquired!]

Cleaning

Passive

100/100, Master

Difficulty: Easy

A skill under the general category. Shows how skilled you are at cleaning up various types of messes. Concerns everything from dusting to swabbing. Might be useful in the most unlikely of places.

+300% efficiency (i.e. what would normally take 1 hour takes 15 min).

50% less cleaning materials needed.

75% less tear on cleaning equipment.

Mastery bonus:

All broom related skills +25%.

+100% damage done with cleaning tools.

+5% water resistance.


Surprised that it wasn't the buff, he pondered as to why, when he realised that he cleaned before he ate so the next window should be the buff. It was nice that it was another mastered skill, but when he though about it he wasn't really all that surprised considering the amount of time he had spent on them growing up. Moving on to the final window, he found the window he expected.


[Buff gained!]

English-style breakfast (Dursley Version)

+3 strength

+37,5% HP and HP-regeneration

Duration left: 1h 27m


No surprise there. With that, he were done with all the windows and his curiosity abated, so he decided to resume the tutorial. With a quick, whispered "Resume tutorial", the tutorial returned. When it was the same window as earlier that returned (Increasing attributes) he followed the instruction to go to the next stage, i.e. he closed it. With that done, a new window popped up.


[Tutorial – Level]

Now that you know about the attributes, it's time to know about levels. Levels is a simple way of determining the rough power ranking between you and others, but are in no way absolute. Certain low level enemies might still be more dangerous than higher level ones, these will usually carry special marks on them, indicating elite status or other special statuses. Certain skills will allow you to see more information about targets other than the information provided by the enemies status window (the window above them). The status window shows the target's name, title, level and class.

To level up you need to gather something known as experience points (XP). Experience points can be gained in several ways, most commonly by completing quests or slaying enemies.

Every level up provides you with 3 status points to distribute.

Every 10 levels provide you with something called a perk point.

Press continue to proceed

Continue


Nothing really surprised him this time, but he had to admit he was intrigued about the perk points. Not having anything special to think about, he decided to just move on to the next part.


[Tutorial – Resistance]

The next part is the various resistances. Your resistance to different types of damages or status effects decides how much damage will be disregarded. For example if you have 10% fire resistance and is hit by an attack that would cause 100 fire damage you only take 90. Beware of negative resistance, since that means that you will take extra damage from attacks.

Press continue to proceed

Continue


Once again, the information was basic enough that he just went onto the next part.


[Tutorial – Titles]

Titles are something gained through many different, for example actions, reputation or skills. They can both be positive and negative and some are forcefully equipped and locked in certain situations. To find out more information about titles and other parts of your status press the shadowed tab at the top of the right page. The current page is the highlighted one.

Switch tab to continue


Looking at his current title 'Freak', he had a bad feeling about what it did for him. Not one to be deterred by bad news, he soldiered on. Switching tabs, he found even more information.


[Status Effects]

Buffs

Food (English-style Breakfast (Dursley Version):+3 STR, + 37,5% HP/MP regeneration.

Titles

Freak: Effective charisma set to 1, this title is locked in the vicinity of the members of The Dursley household while in Little Whinging.

Perks

?'?'?'?'? ?'?'?'?'?: All ?'?'?'?'? related skills +3 and a +10% learning rate. All ?'?'?'?'? related skills +3 and a +10% learning rate and ?'?'?'?'? (bound).

Remaining perk points:0

Wards

?'?'?'?: Protects you against ?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?. Currently at a very low power due to ?'?'?'?'?, drains the user to stay active (-50% MP) since ?'?'?'?'?. Gives you ?'?'? ?'?'? resistance.

?'?'?'?: ?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?.

Curses

?'?'?: ?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?. ?'?'?'?'?'?'?'?'? -25% dark magic resistance.

Ailments

Malnourished: -25% to Str, Vit and poison/disease resistance, athletic skills cannot rise above novice rank, if not removed before becoming a teenager, this ailment changes to 'Stunted Growth', a disablement.

Disablements

Bad eyesight: -40% to dex, can be removed if you know where to look for a cure.

Summary: Harry James Potter is the unwanted nephew of Petunia Dursley, former Evans. He was born on the 31st of July, 1985. He was later orphaned at a young age from his loving parents and ended up in the not so loving care of his aunt and uncle. He has little knowledge about his parents other than that their last name was Potter and that they are dead. According to his relatives they were good-for-nothing drunks, but Harry has his doubts. Harry's life has recently taken a turn for the better with him receiving the powers of The Gamer. Other than that Harry knows little of himself. He has a distinct scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt.


Harry could do little but stare in shock at all the new information. As he had suspected the title was a really bad one, which he really hoped he would be able to remove (thought he held little hope of actually achieving it). The rest caused more questions to appear than they solved in his opinion. What was with all the question marks everywhere? And why did he have something called a ward on him? And even weirder, why was he cursed? The ailments weren't surprising, but when he read them he decided to do everything he could to remove them. The malnourished ailment in particular seemed likely to cause major problems for him. And honestly, who wants to have bad eyesight.

What really concerned him though was a single word. It was the word 'bound'. When he had initially read the 'Perks' section he had been excited as the word reappeared again, but as he reached the word 'bound' he couldn't help but be concerned. What was it that had been bound, by whom and how. Was it a result of the curse he had on him or did someone have the knowledge of him and his ability and the ability to actually interfere with his abilities without him knowing about it. Either way it didn't sit well with him and he decided to try and find out about it. Discretely, of course.

Just as he had processed enough of the information to have an idea of what was going on the next window appeared...


AN: I initially intended to finish the tutorial this chapter, but there is still a lot left and this chapter is already 5000 words long or 28000 characters. So I felt it was better to split it into several chapters instead of releasing one very long chapter. It also allows me to receive eventual feedback from you, my readers. Thank you for all the follows and favourites (was 31/20) when I uploaded this. I was surprised the response was that high considering the length of the chapter was so short. Anyway, it made me happy. Special thanks to oneoddtodd, sudhush and kronos797 for reviewing.