This ain't no self-insert fic.
This ain't no slash fic neither.
This is Top Dog.
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--- Wednesday July 31st, 1996 ---
--- Number 4 Privet Drive, Surrey ---
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My real name is Harry James Sirius Logan Fawcett Evans-Potter (mouthful, huh? My parents were nuts) and it is the day of my sixteenth birthday.
It may surprise you to know that I am not sixteen. I am approximately three hundred and twenty; I lost track a while back. Time travel does that.
I am currently walking up the garden path to the house in which I spent fifteen out of the first sixteen years of my life; Number 4 Privet Drive, Little Whingeing, Surrey.
Today is the day when my eldest daughter rescued my past self from the sick bastards who imprisoned me until my sixteenth. I have trained; I have fought, I have earned a hell of a lot of money working for some exceedingly powerful people, I have learned everything I can about my enemy.
I am the man they call Harry Johnson.
I am a mercenary killer, one of the most capable in known space.
And I have something very important to do.
Ahead of us, the front door opens and two people step out. One is a very familiar athletic green-haired beauty; my eldest daughter, Setsuna Meiuu.
The other is equally familiar, but this time from my past. A short, scrawny, hollow-cheeked, sunken-eyed youth with sallow skin, a pallid complexion, bruises of varying levels all over his face and clothes that hang off his skinny frame like a tarpaulin hung on a fence. I used to see that pallid face every time I looked in the mirror; he's me, age sixteen.
A flash of rage rears up in the back of my head as I remember everything those bastards put me through; looking at his malnourished frame and the kink in his right arm is like staring the demons of my past straight in the eye.
Well, they're going to find out Darth Venger isn't scared of demons.
God, the memories…
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Disclaimer: Caution. Scenes of child abuse ahead.
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Top Dog: Enter the Fnords
Book 1: Harry Johnson and the Headmaster's Socks.
A Doghead13 / United Galaxies fanfic
Written & produced by Calum J 'Doghead13' Wallace
Brought to you by Hairy Scottish Git Productions, GMBH
This is not a drill.
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Chapter: May Hell Be Your Home.
(In which Harry finally reveals his origins, and it's not pretty.)
Half an hour (and three Earth centuries) earlier, I had awoken just like any other day; a flash of pain as the boot contacted my head and a voice screaming, "Wake up you lazy little freak!"
I scrambled upright and struggled into my clothes; actually hand-me-downs from my fat bastard cousin Dudley. I'd got it down to a precise science; I could be dressed and upright in less than thirty seconds. This was essential, as if I took more than about 45 seconds I wouldn't get any food that day.
I was out the cupboard twenty-five and a half seconds after Uncle Vernon kicked me, fully dressed and ready to face the day.
"Get your useless behind in the kitchen." Vernon barked, and I hurried that way, carefully not running but not walking. If I was too slow I'd get chilli powder poured in my eyes and on my crotch before today's beating, likewise if I ran.
Aunt Petunia was waiting for me; she carefully watched as I fried up breakfast (bacon, eggs, sausages, beans, chips and hash browns) but Dudley was up unusually early and kept distracting her, so I managed to pocket a few half-cooked chips. Good big breakfast instantly guaranteed; hell, ten chips and I'd have more than some days, and the eleventh and twelfth were just a bonus. Aunt Petunia used to count the chips, but she stopped bothering after six months without me sneaking a chip.
With the cooking done, I served the Dursleys, waited until given permission, and sat down to see if there would be any food today. I really wanted to get back to my cupboard so I could eat my haul, but that would have to wait.
The Dursleys finished their meal, and Aunt Petunia carried the paucity of scraps through to the kitchen. Alarm bells sounded in my head when she put them in a box in the fridge instead of my bowl. It was gonna be one of those days, wasn't it?
Sure enough, Uncle Vernon grabbed my bowl off the floor. It was a cheap tin dog bowl. I wasn't allowed to eat at the table, but they expected me to watch them stuff their faces, I don't know why but I guess they enjoyed seeing me sit there and go hungry.
Vernon walked back to his seat, put my bowl down on the chair, and pulled his trousers down.
Yeah. One of those days.
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Several minutes grunting and straining later, there was a big curly poo in my bowl. I cursed my luck as I realised he hadn't forgotten my birthday after all.
The nasty glint was still there as he presented me the shit-filled bowl.
"Happy birthday you little freak. Here's your birthday cake; eat up."
The way it went was clear in my mind. First I'd be forced to eat Vernon's excrement. Then the ritual beating, which wouldn't stop until something went 'crunch' or I started drooling blood. The last couple of years Vernon had taken to sodomising me once he was satisfied with the beating. Then I'd be flung into my cupboard, pissed on, and left there for a few days.
My birthday 'celebrations' always went like that.
Something snapped inside my head. I'd been through this fourteen times.
At the time, I hoped that if I refused to eat up, Vernon would kill me, or injure me so badly I'd bleed to death or die of internal injuries, or something like that. I'd had enough; I didn't want to have to live through another day of that hell, and the only way out I could see was death.
"No." I said.
"Eat it, you ungrateful little bastard!" Vernon snarled.
"No." I repeated.
Vernon went purple. He did that when he was at his angriest. "Eat it!" he screamed, thrusting the bowl towards my face.
The next thing that happened still ranks as the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
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A slim, long-fingered, brightly-polished chrome hand grabbed the shit-filled bowl and rammed it into Vernon's face with such force he was thrown flat on his back and his chair went flying across the room.
The owner of the hand was a tall, shapely, athletic-looking green-haired woman. She was oddly dressed – a miniscule white tube-top, scuffed-up denim jeans with leather patches on the knees, a black choker marked 'Daddy's Girl', combat boots and an odd glove on her left hand – and her entire right arm was composed of brightly chromed machinery, wired into the two-inch stub that was all that remained of her natural arm.
She was also wearing an expression of ice-cold fury more total than anything I had ever seen; her face was a chalk-white mask, her eyes blazed, and her mouth was drawn into a razor-sharp line of pent-up hatred.
She ducked down, grabbed my bowl, and scooped the turds out with her chrome hand, stuffed them into Vernon's mouth, and pinched his lips together, blood mixing with the filth as her metal fingers tore into his skin. There was a crunch as his teeth shattered.
"Disgusting, isn't it?" she remarked, and then stepped smoothly back as Vernon threw up a mix of blood, shit, puke and tooth fragments.
She gestured; there was a flash of light, and a metal staff appeared in her hands. It was about five feet long, with its entire surface covered in intricate lines that looked like a nightmare tangle of circuit patterns. One end looked almost like an unbelievably complex key head, and the other was a ring with a glittering red gemstone the size of an eyeball in the centre, suspended by crackling lines of blue energy.
She took the staff in a double-handed grip, and brought it down with all her might across Vernon's legs; there was that special crunching noise bones make when they shatter, and Vernon screamed.
I smiled. It felt kinda weird; my face wasn't used to those patterns.
"How do you like being helpless, Vernon?" She asked. "This is how that poor child felt every day of his life."
She whipped the staff round; the end smashed against Vernon's right shoulder with another satisfying crunch of breaking bone.
"Get away from him! I have a gun!" Petunia screeched. She'd run out, grabbed Vernon's rifle, and was now brandishing it.
The green-haired beauty sniffed and shifted her grip on the staff.
"You call that a gun? That's not a gun." There was a buzz and click, and the staff dramatically changed shape, somehow folding itself into a much bulkier multiple-barrelled machine gun of some sort. "This is a gun. What kind of woman are you, letting this lump of disgusting flab torture a child? Don't you have any compassion at all?"
"It's what the little freak deserves!" Petunia squeaked.
The green-haired woman let out a low, feral-sounding snarl, and swung her vulcan cannon across. Fire burst from the suddenly spinning barrels, raking the ceiling and blasting plaster fragments and dust into great clouds with a flat mechanical-sounding staccato roar.
"You're the freak here, Petunia Dursley. You'll find any normal sentient life-form would treat a child of their kin as their own, to cherish and protect, not a slave and punch-bag." The woman stated. "Your behaviour isn't just aberrant either. It's immoral, illegal, and sickening."
Her weapon changed again with another buzz and click, becoming a weird boxy single-barrel shotgun-like thing as Petunia dropped the rifle and started running for the door; the odd weapon coughed, and spat a fist-sized bundle of something that rapidly opened up, forming a net with barbed double-pronged harpoon-like spikes spaced evenly round it's perimeter; the net collected Petunia and pinned her to the wall, its spikes stabbing deeply into the plasterboard and wood. I started eating my pilfered chips, an insane hope against hope screaming through my mind.
Maybe this fiercely beautiful green-haired lady had come to take me away to a better place?
"Don't bother trying to phone the police, Dudley. My father threw a section of railroad track onto the switching gear, the entire area code's out."
There and then, I decided this woman's father had to be one cool dude.
The staff changed back, leaving the ceiling shot to ratshit and Petunia pinned to the wall in the hall, right beside the door to my cupboard.
A line of widdle moved down Dudley's trouser leg and began to form a puddle in the floor. The woman smirked and opened her hand; the staff vanished with another flash of white light.
Then she turned and smiled at me.
"Hello, Harry. My name is Setsuna, and you are my father."
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God, the memories…
I snap out of my momentary flashback and smile at my past self. He's carrying the dog bowl, now cleaned of Vernon's excrement, a threadbare once-blue blanket, a badly-burned copy of 'The Hobbit', a dagger made by grinding a spoon handle against a stone then wrapping one end in a rag, and an Action Man with one hand; at the time they were my only possessions. In case you wanted to know, I hadn't finished sharpening the makeshift dagger, and I'm still not sure whether I was planning to kill Vernon or myself.
I grin at him as we draw level.
"It's gonna be cool." I tell him. "Trust me." Poor little bastard.
"I don't trust anyone." He says. I remember saying that.
I wink. "Not even yourself?"
"No." he says.
"You will." I tell him, and step into that prissy house. For a moment I wish I was my younger self again as the apprehension hits me. I'm returning to my personal Hell, he's on his way to Larsa III for a magical week beneath the green sun and triple moons of that beautiful world, and then on to New Australia to have his mind and soul put back together. Lucky little bastard.
Then the condition Setsuna left the house in meets my eyes once more, and I stop worrying. This is going to be as easy as shooting rats in a barrel.
My uncle is laying unconscious on the floor, shit and blood smeared all over his face, his right arm and both legs bent up at funny angles. My aunt is stapled face-first to the wall by a Sentek net-thrower projectile. My fat bastard cousin is stood in the middle of the room, gawping blankly at the mess and his defeated parents.
I notice something I'd never cottoned on to; Vernon Dursley is a remarkably small man. He's only about five seven tall. No wonder Setsuna looked so tall back then – she's five eleven.
It's not surprising really. At age sixteen I was less than five feet tall courtesy of the way those bastards stunted my growth; that's why I spent the next four years mainlining growth hormones. I'm now six foot six, and thanks to a lot of high-intensity martial arts training I'm built like the proverbial brick shithouse.
I weigh about a hundred and twenty kilos. All of that is cybernetically-enhanced bloody-minded muscle and bone; according to my doctor, I have precisely two and a half grams of fat on me. It's nice being fit.
It's even nicer being a physically imposing specimen.
"Oh goody." I say. "Setsuna left an arm for me."
I stomp on Vernon's unbroken arm. It obediently crunches and bends in the wrong place. For a moment I contemplate shooting his dick off, or just blowing him into a field of splattered blood, but I'm here to prove something.
"Who the Hell are you?" Dudley squeaks. Isn't it time his balls dropped?
"Don't you remember me, Diddy darling?" I sneer, placing my hand on my best friend. "Time travel, you fucking moron. Yeah it's really me, Harry Potter, your worst fucking nightmare."
Dudley opens his fat stupid mouth.
"You can't be, the little runt just-"
I pull my best friend out of her holster and shove her massive .60-inch barrel between Dudley's teeth.
"This," I say, "Is the League Navy Small Arms E-Mag in .60 Super Magnum calibre, the known universe's most powerful production slugthrower handgun." My best friend is certainly an impressive sight; nearly fifty centimetres long, ten deep and forty tall, she weighs eight point six three kilos fully loaded with twelve shells, and each of her gigantic bullets is capable of punching clean through the glacis plate of an M1 Abrams tank. "Shut the Hell up or I'll demonstrate it on your empty fucking skull."
Not many people consider a gun their best friend, yet a gun is the most dependable friend you can have; with a good gun by your side, you can topple governments, free the enslaved, conquer worlds, stay alive and most important of all earn an absolute goddamned fortune in the process.
"Glumpsh!" Dudley says, going white as a sheet. I can see it in his eyes; he's wondering who this madman is, and trying to count up how many nanoseconds he has left to live.
Then I wink at him, smirk, withdraw my best friend from his mouth, wipe the drool off her barrel on his T-shirt, and turn my attention to my aunt, who's still yodelling as she hangs off the wall.
I punch her in the kidneys.
"Shut up or I'll blow your fucking head clean off." I say.
"You wouldn't dare!" my aunt croaks. She's still just as ugly, just as stick-like, and she still looks like a horse; its definite comedy material, seeing her pinned face-first to the wall like that. I pinch her arse just for laughs.
"Oh come on Auntie dear, you lot spent fifteen years doing your level best to turn me into an ice-cold sociopathic murderer, and you know what? It worked. I've killed more sentient beings than you've had hot dinners, and I should fucking know how many of those you've had. Now be very quiet, or I'll turn you and your pathetic fucking family into another statistic."
She swallows hard. Odd, I thought it was only men that had Adams apples like third knees. I wonder, is Petunia a post-op transvestite?
Nah, not likely. If a sex change operation resulted in something that foul, the transvestite would be rich from suing the plastic surgeons.
"It's funny, really." I continue. "I'm a mercenary. My rate is what amounts to a hundred and forty thousand pounds a day just to be available, and twenty thousand pounds an hour when I'm actually fighting. If you'd treated me like a human being, you'd now be getting a share of my fortune. But oh no, you had to treat me in a way no decent sentient being would treat a rabid fucking dog; I'd just like you to know, I hate you and I'd love to see you dead. But you know what? I'm better than you, and that's why you're still breathing. Hopefully I'll never see any of you again. Goodbye; I hope you enjoy explaining the mess, the missing nephew and the bloodstains in my cupboard to the cops."
The doorbell rings; I turn and saunter that way, and catch the letter as it falls through the mailbox.
There.
Time to get back to my truck and compose a reply to my Hogwarts letter. I don't want anything to do with the bastards who abandoned me to the Dursleys, but that place is the only way I'm going to get the answers to the question that's plagued me for my entire life.
What actually transpired that night in 1981?
The people who know the answers are out there somewhere, and I have good reasons to suspect one of them is Albus Dumbledore.
I am Harry Potter.
I just exorcised the demons of my past.
And now I am finally ready to face my destiny.
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--- The present ---
--- Room 3o8, Gryffindor dorm, Hogwarts ---
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Harry lapsed into silence.
"Oh." Hermione said, mostly because she didn't know what else to say.
"Yeah. A little boy sat in a puddle of urine, locked in a cupboard, sick as a dog from being forced to eat human faeces, wondering when his butthole will stop bleeding, and wishing someone would either get him out of there or just finish the job; that's my childhood." Harry told her. "You've got to admire Dumbledore, huh? The sheer level of ice-cold cunning it takes to send a little kid to Hell so he'll be forged into the perfect killer… it's pretty fucking impressive, I'm a stone psycho and I wouldn't do that."
"What do you mean?"
"I worked out why Dumbledore left me with the Dursleys a while back; if I'd had a normal childhood I probably wouldn't be able to put a bullet into someone's brainpan without batting an eyelid; every time I pull the trigger its Vernon Dursley's ugly sneering fucking face I'm seeing. You gotta hand it to Dumbledore; he really knows how to turn someone into a weapon. Yeah, I know exactly how you feel right now. Who did it? Ah, nice clear image; Flint. He's a dead man."
Harry walked over to his handgun rack, and lifted out a pair of boxes of 9mm Parabellum hollowpoints. He set them down on the table, then collected a pair of 100-round Calico magazines, and started filling the mags.
"Hermione. Let me teach you to shoot."
"I guess, but why?"
Harry looked at her for a long moment; his hands went still on the ammo.
"Marcus Flint is from a grand old pureblood family, while you are the daughter of a pair of mundanes." He said. "Believe me on this one; the entire legal system is skewed in favour of the purebloods. That's how Old Mouldy was able to get away with so much. It's why people like Lucius Malfoy are still on the street. And its why, if this goes to court, you will end up being given a life sentence for libel. The Ministry of Magic and Offworld Affairs and the UN Department of Planetary Defence are both rotten to the core. The purebloods don't just make up the entire legal system; the own the fucking court buildings and administrate that hellhole they call a jail. However, I am a Talosian master gunner. That means I have certain legal privileges; one of those privileges is the right to defend the honour of my students. Under the Talosian system, Flint just sullied your honour. Accept my offer and it will become my duty to put that bastard six feet under. Don't accept it and I'll just murder the son-of-a-bitch anyway. He was dead the moment he laid hands on you."
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Ben Chaos and S'tarak'hai R'hara'tath were playing darts in the Gryffindor hangout and swapping increasingly outrageous brags with one another and the Weasely Twins. Well, actually, although they were throwing things at a dartboard said things were not darts; they were throwing knives.
When they saw the expression on Harry's face as he came crashing into the hangout from the direction of the dorm proper, they immediately knew something was seriously wrong.
"Fred. Give me the map." Harry snarled, storming over.
"What's happening?" S'tarak'hai asked.
"Marcus Flint just raped Hermione." Harry stated. "I am going to find him and fill him with so much lead it'll take six strong men to carry him out."
The Marauder's Map came flying out of Fred's pocket as both Weasely twins went red with rage; S'tarak'hai emitted a low snarl, and Ben clenched his fists so hard his knuckles popped.
"I solemnly swear I am up to no good… He's in an old storeroom two corridors down from the Slytherin hangout with a whole load of other Death Munchkins." Fred said, critically examining the Map.
"You'll need backup, Johnson." S'tarak'hai said.
"And we're it, mate." Ben agreed.
"Count us in." George added.
"Those bastards try to mob up on you and they won't know what hit 'em." Fred said. "Mischief managed."
Harry contemplated the two Weaselys for a long moment.
"You realise I am going to shoot Flint, then keep shooting him until he is very thoroughly and messily dead." He said.
Fred snorted.
"Figured that." He said.
"Don't really care." George agreed.
"Bastard deserves it." Fred concluded.
Harry nodded once, and they were off, stalking through the halls of Hogwarts, weapons at the ready, everyone taking one look and getting the Hell out their way as they approached.
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They called it the Serpent's Den.
Years (maybe even centuries) ago, it had been a storeroom. It was now the blood purists private hangout. Some said Voldemort had assembled it; others laid that act at the feet of his predecessor Grindlewold, some said it was Mordred, and others still claimed that Salazar Slytherin created it.
Whoever had made it, it's door was invisible to anyone who hadn't been initiated by a prior user.
Sadly for the wannabe Death Eaters within, that included a set of three sisters by the names of Narcissa, Bellatrix and Andromeda Black, and while Narcissa and Bellatrix would have been welcome therein, Andromeda had defied her parents, fled their home and married a man named Theodore Tonks, who just so happened to be a mundane.
And, as it happened, Andromeda Black had been planning her escape for years. That was why she'd initiated four of her (at the time clandestine) friends, who had happened to be known as Messrs Moony, Padfoot, Prongs and Wormtail, who had included the Serpent's Den on their map.
That was how come, just as Flint was really getting into bragging about the way his victim had squealed, the door exploded off its hinges on the business end of a Size 24 digitigrade-layout combat boot with two hundred and sixty kilograms of pissed-off cybernetically-augmented Kenti behind it.
Invisible the door may have been; invulnerable was another question.
The wannabe Death Eaters all went for their weapons as S'tarak'hai crashed into the room, then froze as Ben Chaos followed him in with lightsabre drawn and lit; the Weasely twins came flanking the crazy Jedi, and then Harry Johnson himself, and he was so very pissed off he made Draco Malfoy very literally crap himself.
"Where the fuck is Marcus Flint?" Harry spat.
There was a rustle of clothing as the group around Flint seemed to evaporate, leaving him somewhat isolated in the middle of the room.
Harry stormed forwards until he was stood about six feet from Flint.
"Hermione Granger is mine, Marcus Talesio Steven Arkwright Winterton-Sidebottom-Flint." He said, and flung his chao at the floor; a bubble of energy erupted out from it, sealing him and Flint off from the rest of the universe. "You touched one of my people. Die, motherfucker."
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McGonagall was in no way expecting what she found when she walked into Albus Dumbledore's office.
It looked almost like a bomb had gone off. Half his (highly expensive) scrying equipment was smashed. Paperwork was strewn everywhere. There was vomit across his desk and onto the floor.
And he was sitting at the desk with his head in his hands, crying like a lost soul, and whispering "What have I done?" over and over again.
End Chapter.
Slight revision prior to posting; removal of lyrics. Original file preserved at my end for possible future posting somewhere else.
AN: This is not intended to turn into a Harry/Hermione romance, their relationship will be more mentor/student. Yes I did intentionally invert a Darth Vaderism with Setsuna's line back there, and yes I do think I'm being clever.
The whole sequence with Harry's memories is written in first person and partly in the present tense because it was originally going to be released as a side-story back when I was working on chapter five. Then, while spellchecking it, I realised it would make a good Harry-finally-explains-his-past flashback, and the net result is this. The listed weekday is correct for the date of Harry's 16th.
The way the Time Key Staff transforms will be explained much further into the story, probably in Biker ½ Book 2, which as it happens has the working title 'Bad Moon Rising'.
You know the whole thing with Dumbledore knowing what Harry went through at Dursley hands? I don't buy it.
As for what happened to Hermione, the reason Flint did it is because he's the most disposable male student on my 'Death Eater Master List', which ought to give you a big hint as to his chances of surviving the next chapter.
Sorry for the somewhat short chapter, I needed it to start and end where it did, and couldn't get it to stretch any further. Thanks to a done-in back I'm going to be posting three chapters at the one go, so that should kinda make up for that.