To live is the rarest thing. Most people exist, that is all. – Oscar Wilde
Chapter 1
Mrs Figg was ill and Harry couldn't be happier. Not because he hated Mrs Figg, because he didn't even if she was a little weird with her cat obsession, and even if her house smelled like cat pee whenever Harry had to spend a day there. No, Harry was happy because for the first time in pretty much his whole life he got to go to a waterpark with his family.
Well, family being a very strong word for Harry's relatives because the people Harry lived with really didn't treat him like he was family. More like he was an unwelcome burden they were forced to put up with. Once, Harry heard a fairy tale about a girl who was forced to clean all day by her wicked stepmother and Harry had felt an unbelievable kinship with this character. Though Harry didn't have any parents, step or otherwise. He only had his Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon and Dudley, his cousin who despite being only a few months older was easily twice Harry's size.
Dudley always used his size to his advantage whenever he decided to beat Harry up, which was at least a few times a week. Harry was fast, though, and about half the time he got away before his cousin could lay a hand on him. The other half of the time…well, Harry had his fair share of bruises and cuts and broken bones to speak for themselves. Dudley was the reason Harry got to go to the waterpark. Dear Dudders almost had to stay behind a grade in their primary school, but Aunt Petunia got him a tutor and after much whining, complaining and a few temper tantrums, Dudley did the minimal amount of work and got barely high enough grades to pass after all. And as a reward, Dudley got to go to this luxury waterpark that had opened just the previous month in Surrey, half an hour away from where they lived in Little Whinging. And because Dudley refused to postpone his trip, and because there was no one who could watch Harry for the day, Harry got to come along for the first time in his life.
And even though Harry wasn't a very strong swimmer he was looking forward to spending a day outdoors while hopefully having a little bit of fun without being beaten up by his cousin. Harry had only had a few swimming lessons as they were provided by their school, to learn the very basics like treading water and being able to swim from one end of the pool to the other end. But that was about it, as parents were expected to pay for further lessons for their children and while Dudley had received such lessons, Harry had been told, like usual, that his aunt and uncle refused to spend their hard-earned money on a waste of space like himself.
The car ride was a loud affair, with Uncle Vernon loudly complaining about pretty much every other driver on the road, and Dudley talking non-stop with his friend Piers about which waterslides they were going to take first and why. Apparently there were many and all had their pros and cons. Harry had no clue but listened quietly and figured he'd be lucky if he could manage to take one slide without Dudley interfering.
Aunt Petunia gave Harry a very pinched look when she had to pay ten pounds for his entry into the park and Harry wisely pretended not to notice. They got changed in some cubicles, and Harry had one all to himself as he pulled off his oversized jeans and shirt to reveal his oversized swimming trunks. All of them were Dudley's hand-me-downs, naturally, and Harry was ever so grateful the string in the waist of his swimming trunks allowed him to pull it tightly so it would at least stay put on his scrawny body.
After Uncle Vernon gave him a few harsh warnings about not causing any trouble and basically leaving them alone for the day, Harry was allowed to roam the waterpark by himself. He was already ten years old, if only just, so hardly a little child who needed constant supervision.
Having no clue how to go about enjoying a waterpark, Harry quietly shadowed Dudley and Piers, making sure to stay out of sight as he observed them climbing the steps to a huge waterslide called the 'Splash Smash'. Harry allowed about a dozen people between himself and his cousin and then took the steps as well. It was slow going, but the slide itself, with many loops and curves and even some covered parts, did look like a lot of fun. Once at the top, Harry inhaled a deep breath, smiled at the attendant who waved him forward and sat down on the slide. One push with his hands behind him and he was off.
It was the best thing Harry had ever felt! Such speeds, the wind whipping in his hair, water spraying in his face, and Harry couldn't hold back his shout of sheer joy as he raced towards the bottom. He landed in the pool with a mighty splash and a startled cry, but it wasn't very deep so he resurfaced almost instantly.
"That was amazing," Harry told himself, determined to spend the whole day taking this slide. He didn't care how long he had to wait on those stairs every time. He could be patient for an experience like this.
"What do you think you're doing," Dudley yelled from behind him as he pushed Harry in the back. "Are you following us? Are you, freak?"
Before Harry could answer, Dudley pushed him again, so hard this time Harry lost his footing and went under. Out of sheer shock, Harry inhaled a startled breath, but of course there was no air, only water that streamed in his mouth. Harry flailed his arms and tried to steady his feet enough to get a grip on the bottom of the pool to push himself up, but Dudley was on top of him, using his huge weight to hold Harry under the water.
Panic gripped Harry as he tried to claw and punch his cousin, desperate to reach the surface and take a deep breath. His mouth was full of water and his ears were ringing and his eyes weren't working as they should because everything became darker and darker until there was nothing left at all.
Harry woke up in an unfamiliar bed, staring up at an unfamiliar ceiling, but he'd spent enough time both working and staying in hospitals to recognize in what type of place he was. He sat up, blinking his eyes against the onslaught of memories that were suddenly available to him.
So Dudley had actually killed him. Fucking hell.
Harry blinked again when the enormity of his situation became clear to him. He was Harry Potter again. After having lived almost two hundred lives he was Harry fucking Potter again. He wasn't sure of the exact number of lives. He never kept track, Tom was the genius with numbers.
Fuck.
Tom.
Harry glanced around the hospital room as if his soulmate was hiding in a shadowy corner. But of course he wasn't. Tom was a wraith at that time. But why hadn't they gotten their memories back when Tom came to kill Harry and his parents back in 1981? Hadn't they looked in each other's eyes? That was how they usually remembered all their lives all the way back to number 1 when they were Harry Potter and Tom Riddle for the first time. That, or one of them died but was resuscitated back to the land of the living. That also gave them back their memories, but only for the one who had died. The other one remained ignorant until they finally met and looked in each other's eyes.
Rubbing his hands across his face, Harry leaned back in his bed, sinking into his pillow. What a fucking mess. His last life, the one that had just ended, had been less than ideal, though Tom would argue it was simply another life to live, no matter what horrible things Harry ended up doing, but the less said about that life the better, at least for what Harry was concerned.
He was Harry Potter again, and Harry wasn't sure how he felt about that. The first time he'd been Harry Potter he'd gotten into this everlasting cycle of reincarnation after all. Not to mention, losing his loved ones the first time around when he was reincarnated into life two and three and four and onwards had messed Harry up pretty badly. He still wasn't proud of all the crap he'd pulled in life number six until he finally got his act together in number seven and started acting like an adult who dealt with his emotions instead of an immature asshole who hid from them in the bottom of a bottle or the tip of a heroin-filled needle.
Yeah, number six had been a bit of a trip, all right.
Not to mention those first ten, fifteen lives had been stressful because he kept running into fucking Voldemort…well, Tom Riddle, really, because from their second life on Tom hadn't tried to randomly kill people for their blood-status or take over the world or some such nonsense. Having a complete soul did wonders for Tom's sanity, as it turned out, and he was a fairly reasonable human being under all the arrogance that seemed to come naturally to him.
And he was Harry's soulmate in every way possible. In all the ways it mattered, and more besides.
The way Harry and Tom figured things were supposed to go, was that the universe didn't like waste. Or rather the multi-verse, because as Harry and Tom knew from personal experience there were basically an infinite number of universes, all with their own earths with their own populations of humans and their own histories and their own types of magic. Or no magic at all, which seemed to be the case for most worlds they'd lived in.
Anyway, the multiverse didn't like waste, so it recycled. This included souls. When one died, one's soul got stuffed into a new body somewhere and sometime in the multiverse. One life one could be a male CEO of a billion dollar company in the USA in the 1990s and the next life one could be a female subsistence farmer in the Gurjara-Pratihara Empire in the year 761 in what one day would be India. There was no rhyme or reason as to how souls were reincarnated, at least none that Harry and Tom had found. And they'd looked.
Because in life number one Harry had, quite accidentally, become the Master of Death, and because Tom had, also quite accidentally, turned Harry into his horcrux, they were reincarnated with their memories intact as opposed to everyone else who lost their memories once they died. This was apparently the perk of being the Master of Death, and because Harry's soul was made up of both his own and the sliver of Tom's soul that had attached to him as a baby, Tom got to have this perk as well as long as they met each other and looked into each other's eyes.
Harry believed that they were destined to meet each and every life time. They always did, after all.
Tom argued they simply couldn't be sure they weren't living dozens of lifetimes in between the ones where they met and regained their memories. Harry thought they would have memories of those lifetimes whenever they regained their memories in lives they did meet. Tom figured they might only keep the memories of the lifetimes in which they met.
Needless to say, they'd spent much time debating their fate and even after almost two-hundred lifetimes they still hadn't come to any solid conclusions on what was really going on.
In other words, they were stuck in an unending cycle of reincarnation and all they could do was make the best of each and every life they were given. And they did, usually, though some lives were most certainly better than others.
It had taken ten or so lives before Harry and Tom had been on speaking terms, and then it had taken another life or two before they'd started fucking each other. The first time that happened was when Tom was the Minister for Magic in France, and Harry was the head Auror. Both were male and neither was married at that time so they figured they may as well be friends with benefits. After that, sex had become a regularity but it took another few lifetimes before they married and had children together.
Harry squeezed his eyes shut as he remembered some of their children. They'd had so many in so many lifetimes that it was impossible to remember them all in just a few thoughts. Those were the best lives, as it turned out. When Harry and Tom got to live quiet lives filled with kids and loving family members. Parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. He and Tom had been blessed indeed with having been part of some wonderful families, not to mention having created their own loving families too many times to count.
Those were the lives Harry missed the most whenever they ended, but that was the price they paid for their unique situation. With love came loss, and every life, no matter how amazing, had to come to an end. Something that eventually he and Tom had learned to accept, but that didn't make the pain of losing your friends and family any easier.
Inhaling a deep breath, Harry pulled himself out of his memories of lost loved ones and focused on the here and now.
Harry missed his soulmate like he missed a limb, and Harry had lost a few limbs in a couple of lives, so he knew what he was talking about. But Tom was a wraith, hidden somewhere in Albania, with no memories of who Harry really was to him. Tom as he was currently still wanted to murder Harry more than anything else.
Ah.
There was the answer.
The reason they hadn't gotten their memories back when Tom killed Harry's parents and tried to kill Harry as a baby was because Tom's soul was in tatters. Without a complete soul apparently their little memory trick didn't work.
Well, that meant Harry had to simply gather Tom's horcruxes and start stitching his soulmate back together.
And even though most of their lives they'd lived as Muggles, Harry had still been a wizard or witch enough times to have spent years and years studying soul magic, so he had a few ideas of how to go about fixing his soulmate.
The one thing that made it difficult right now was the fact that he was ten years old and lived with the fucking Dursleys.
Yeah, no, Harry wasn't staying with those assholes. He'd likely murder them in their sleep and feel no regret or remorse, especially considering what he'd gotten up to in the life before this one. He was doing the Dursleys a solid favour by running away from them as soon as possible.
But he was only just ten years old and his Hogwarts letter wouldn't come until next year. Which meant he needed to find magical accommodations where he could spend all his time working on putting his soulmate to rights. Everything else was irrelevant until he had Tom back with him.
It was funny, in a way, that the older they got, the more lives they lived together, the more co-dependent they became. Harry honestly didn't give a flying fuck about anything in the world except for his soulmate. That was, until he remembered in this lifetime Ron and Hermione and Ginny and the rest of the Weasleys and Neville and Luna and Sirius and Remus and Tonks and so many others were still alive.
Harry's breath caught in his throat. All the people he'd spent mourning for lifetimes, whose loss had messed him up for hundreds of years, were still alive in this world. Harry didn't even remember what any of them looked like, but the thought of them made his heart skip a few beats. That was until he remembered that his soulmate needed his help to regain his sanity and his body and that was more important than any lost friends and loved ones.
Just as Harry tried to decide whether to leave the hospital immediately or spend the night to get some rest and some food before taking off, the door to his room opened and a nurse wearing a bright blue uniform entered. Her name tag read 'Fiona'.
"Awake, I see," Fiona the nurse said cheerfully. "How are you feeling, Harry?"
"Alive," Harry said quietly, which was true enough.
"You were lucky indeed that your cousin found you after you hit your head coming out of that slide. You'd stopped breathing and the lifeguard had to perform CPR but he got you going again," Fiona the nurse babbled as she held a thermometer to his forehead and shone a light in his eyes to check his pupils.
Harry stared at her. "That's not what happened," he said bluntly, because he was too old to pretend child abuse in any way, shape or form was okay and could be ignored. "My cousin is a bully who likes to beat me up. This time he did it in a pool and accidentally drowned me. As far as I'm concerned he should face charges for second degree manslaughter, or whatever we're calling it in Britain, haven't been a copper here in a while. But I doubt dear Dudders will get so much as a slap on his wrist for his criminal behaviour."
Fiona gaped at him, clearly very confused about what Harry had just said. "Well…how about I see about getting you some dinner, all right?" And with that she all but fled from the room.
Harry sighed. He should really tone down his adult attitude when he was officially only ten. He couldn't express how grateful he was that in most lives he and Tom didn't get their memories back until they were young adults or late teens at the earliest. The times they did meet as children and were suddenly stuck with adult memories and ideas were difficult to say the least. More than once they'd pretended to be geniuses just to get away from the children around them because being an adult stuck with nothing but small children to socialize with for years got old quickly.
Fiona returned with a plate of mashed potatoes, mushy peas and piece of deep-fried, battered fish, which Harry tucked into at once. He'd actually faced real starvation in several life-times. He'd never turn his nose up at a mediocre meal because calories were calories after all. After he finished his plate, Harry made use of the bathroom and opened the wardrobe. There he found a set of Dudley's best hand-me-downs, probably delivered by Petunia so he'd have something to wear once they released him from the hospital, most likely the next day.
But Harry wasn't waiting around that long. After he was dressed and got his shoes on, he inspected the room and looked for any useful items to take with him. He stuffed a towel down the waistband of his jeans. It could function as a blanket for the time being, or a makeshift pillow. Harry opened the door to the hospital room and peeked out into the hallway. It was evening and the nurses seemed busy. Harry waited until the hallway was clear before slipping out of his room and down the hall. He made a brief stop at the nurse's station where he scored two vests and a handful of small bills and loose change from a charity collection box that he cracked open with a pair of scissors. He kept the scissors as well, since they could easily function as a weapon and since he was a kid alone on the streets from now on he might need something to defend himself with.
Harry left the children's floor quietly and took the elevator down where he strolled across the entrance hall and out the door as if he didn't have a care in the world. He realized he was in the hospital in Dorking after reading some signs and that there would still be trains going to London. It was easier to hide in a city as big as London and Harry had business in Diagon Alley the following day. For now he was counting on the Dursleys' disinterest in his well-being to keep his disappearance from Mrs Figg for at least a day so that would give him twenty-four hours to get his shit together until Dumbledore unleashed the Order of the Phoenix to search for him. Not to mention what the Ministry would do should they learn he'd disappeared.
Harry walked towards the train station after getting directions from a friendly cabbie. It only took him half an hour to get there and on the way there he pickpocketed at least five people. He didn't even have to use wandless magic for that, since both he and Tom had perfected their pickpocketing skills many, many lifetimes ago. One never knew when such skills came in handy, as Harry's current situation proved. Once Harry removed all the cash from the wallets he got, he had just over three-hundred pounds and change. At the train station he bought a one-way ticket for the last train to London and pickpocketed another four people, netting him another two hundred pounds or so, before treating himself to a glass of orange juice and a slice of apple pie at a little café while he waited for the train to arrive.
The ride to London was uneventful, except that Harry liberated a few more wallets from their owners. He really couldn't care less at this point in his very, very long existence. Once, he would have been appalled at the idea of stealing from innocent people. Nowadays he merely thought people should look after their shit better if they didn't want it stolen. By the time he arrived in London he had about 800 pounds, which was a decent amount to get him started.
At King's Cross station, Harry used a wandless unlocking charm on a door to the maintenance section, deserted that time of evening, and slipped inside the first supply closet he found. It had taken lots of practise during a few lifetimes but Harry had become quite proficient at wandless magic. Though there were limits to what could be done without a wand and Harry's young physical age also worked against him, something as simple as an unlocking charm wasn't a problem.
Harry used the towel as a pillow and the two vests as blankets while he curled up in a corner of the supply closet for some much needed sleep. Tomorrow he'd go to Gringotts to exchange most of his Muggle money for galleons. He couldn't yet access his vault without a guardian present until he was eleven, he knew, so he'd have to make do with what he had.
What he needed most was a wand, but he couldn't go to Ollivander's for that. Thankfully Harry knew there were plenty of places in Knockturn Alley that sold second-hand wands and the match didn't have to be perfect for what Harry needed a wand for.
Then he needed to decide where to live for the next year until he could go to Hogwarts. If he went to Hogwarts, because that all depended on how he was doing with saving his soulmate from his own poor life-choices. Harry's best bet was probably just to find an abandoned cottage somewhere in the countryside and put it under a Fidelius. It didn't have to be perfect, since Harry could fix anything with magic.
Yes, he was planning on stealing a house from some unsuspecting muggle. Harry hadn't been lying when he said he didn't give a flying fuck about anyone other than Tom in worlds where they didn't have a family. Not anymore. Once upon a time he'd been naïve enough to think he should care about complete strangers, but that was before he'd lived almost two-hundred lifetimes and lived through some absolutely horrible times in history. Harry had seen first-hand what humanity was really capable of doing to their fellow man, everything from the transatlantic slave-trade to the holocaust. After that, Harry couldn't give two fucks about humanity anymore.
Harry fell asleep eventually and woke up again early the next morning from the sounds of the maintenance crew arriving. He slipped out of the hallway unseen and on his way out of the station he helped himself to some more wallets from some early morning travellers. Now he had well over 1200 pounds so that should hold him over for a few days. Once you knew how to pickpocket it really was like taking candy from a very small, completely defenceless child.
The walk towards Diagon Alley was uneventful and very few people paid Harry any attention. Harry bought a croissant and a small bottle of chocolate milk for breakfast from a corner store but that was the only distraction he allowed himself. He wanted to be in an out of there before he was reported missing in the wizarding world.
He marched through the Leaky Cauldron and used wandless magic to tap against the bricks in the correct places to open the gateway. Once inside the alley, Harry rushed towards the bank and got in line to have most of his money exchanged into Galleons. The goblin behind the counter barely looked at Harry, or mentioned his young age, while he gave Harry a money bag filled with gold coins. Once outside, Harry slipped inside Occasion Alley where one could usually find second-hand clothing shops. Harry found some items in his size and the clerk allowed him to change out of his oversized clothes. Harry also purchased a bag to stuff all his possessions into, including Dudley's hand-me-downs. One never knew what some extra fabric might come in handy for. But what Harry really needed was a black cloak, one with a hood he could pull over his eyes and hide his features as he walked down Knockturn Alley. He found it a few sizes too big in the second clothing store he visited, but the clerk shrunk it for him, no questions asked.
And thus Harry was ready to venture into Knockturn Alley. His first stop there was an apothecary, where he picked up all the ingredients for a huge batch of aging potion, plus a few other things that might prove to be useful. The owner didn't say a word as she rang him up and accepted his gold. That's what Harry loved about Knockturn Alley. Everybody minded their own business and didn't ask questions.
In a second hand shop that specialized in housewares and other practical items, Harry found a used potions set, cauldron included, that would serve him well enough. He picked up a few more items, some cookware, furniture and a bedframe, and some used linens that would see him through the first few weeks. The owner shrunk everything for him without much prompting, used to such requests.
Finally Harry made it to a curiosity shop he knew sold second-hand wands. The proprietor gave him a once over before offering Harry a sizable box filled with worn and chipped wands. Harry took his time holding each one until he found an ash wand with what he thought was a phoenix feather core that had seen better days but that felt near perfect in his hand. Harry levitated a nearby vase and gave the proprietor a genuine smile. Three galleons later, Harry had his wand.
His last stop was a second-hand bookstore to pick up some history books. Harry wasn't sure if this world was the same one in which he'd lived before as Harry Potter. He didn't think so, because in his first life he was sure there wasn't a waterpark in Surrey, or at least the Dursleys had never gone there, with or without Harry. So this most likely was a whole new world, which meant that there were always events that happened differently and Harry didn't want to get caught unaware. Thus, he needed to research recent events to find any differences that he needed to be aware of.
As Harry strolled out of Knockturn Alley he considered where to go next. Where to find an abandoned cottage? And how was he going to find all the horcruxes once he got settled in somewhere?
At once two things connected in his mind and Harry knew exactly where he was going to set up camp, at least for the foreseeable future. After all, it was far more efficient to kill two garden gnomes with one spell.
Right outside the Leaky Cauldron there was a quiet side alley where he could apparate. Having a wand greatly helped Harry in gathering enough magic in his young body to apparate without splinching himself and a moment later he found himself standing in a familiar cemetery overlooking an old, abandoned manor house. For a moment Harry was tempted to move into Tom's father's old house until he remembered there was still a caretaker living on that property and Harry didn't want to deal with an old man and draw unnecessary attention to himself.
Nope, Harry was moving into Tom's mother's ancestral home.
It took a while to even find the Gaunt shack and by then Harry was tired and hungry and cursing himself for not picking up any lunch or dinner. But food would have to wait for a while because there was a very dangerous object Harry had to deal with first as he approached the overgrown cottage that had definitely seen better days. The slate roof looked like it was caving in on the south side and the window sills were rotten, not to mention the weather-beaten doors which completely lacked any kind of paint. The walls had once been white, but were now so overgrown with ivy Harry could barely see them.
Harry took a moment to study the wards, but they were fairly simple for a parselmouth. Tom had been arrogant enough to think he was the only one able to speak parseltongue left in the world. Harry was about to prove him wrong.
"I speak your tongue," Harry hissed in parseltongue to the charmed snake nailed to the door. The snake moved in place, staring at him with dead eyes before the door swung open. Harry cast a few more diagnostic charms, but there were no more surprises waiting for him.
Except for the very dark magic radiating from the ring hidden beneath the floorboards, of course.
Tom had told him ages and ages ago about what kind of magic exactly he'd used to make his horcruxes and what kind of curse he'd put on the ring. It was a nasty piece of work, as Dumbledore had once found out personally, but it was a singular curse, meaning that once it was spent the item was safe to handle with the curse gone unless reapplied. So all Harry had to do was trigger the curse. He aimed his wand at the open door and summoned the nearest rabbit. The poor thing came flying into the cottage, squeaking and thrashing in its invisible hold. Harry ignored it while he briefly stuck it to the wall. He summoned the ring after levitating the floorboards out of the way and used his wand to direct the cursed thing towards the rabbit. The moment it made contact, the rabbit released a high-pitched scream Harry didn't even know rabbits could make while its fur withered away at once and its exposed skin turned black and started to peel off. The ring dropped to the floor, curse spent, and Harry cast a quick bludgeoning hex at the rabbit's head to put it out of its misery. He levitated the small corpse outside the door and set it on fire, the only way to safely deal with cursed remains like that.
The ring gleamed in the little bit of sunlight that managed to filter through the dirt-stained windows.
"Hi, babe," Harry said as he picked up the ring, smiling now that he'd found at least one part of his soulmate. The ring felt warm in his hand and Harry liked to imagine this little piece of Tom's soul was happy to be found by his soulmate instead of sitting idly under some floorboards in a run-down shack.
Speaking of a shack, Harry slipped the ring around his thumb, which proved too big even for that digit, so instead he picked up a twig from the floor, transfigured it into a simple chain and hung the ring from it while he put on the necklace. Then he looked around the room with what he had to work with.
There was definitely a lot of work to be done to make the Gaunt cottage liveable. There were mushrooms growing out of the floorboards in one corner of the main room, for fuck's sake. Still, it wasn't the worst place Harry had ever lived in and he knew more than enough transfiguration and household charms to make the place into a cosy little cottage.
So Harry got to work. He scrubbed every surface inside the cottage clean with just about every cleaning charm he knew. He fixed broken windows, broken floorboards, broken doors and the broken roof. He stripped old, blistered paint away and polished the exposed wood. He transfigured a rock into a huge bottle of furniture oil and treated all that wood until it shone. All the many layers of dust were vanished and the old-fashioned enamelled sinks in the kitchen and small bathroom were scrubbed vigorously. Crooked kitchen cabinet doors were straightened and moss and vines were removed where they'd grown through a broken window.
A few hours later a very dirty and sweaty Harry stood in the middle of the cottage and took in all the work he'd managed so far. The cottage was unrecognizable. It smelled like furniture oil and fresh air instead of mould and rotten wood. Everything was clean and fixed and while it would never look completely new again, it now looked lived in instead of dilapidated. All in all, it was a place Harry was happy to call home for the foreseeable future.
The cottage had a main living room with a huge fireplace which also held the small open kitchen, a small adjacent bathroom with toilet, sink and basic shower stall, one bedroom on the ground floor that was the biggest one, and two more bedrooms on the second floor which both had slanted ceilings and weren't very big, but they would do fine for storage, which is what Harry planned to use them for.
By then Harry was starving and he cast a few quick cleaning charms on himself before walking into Little Hangleton. He'd been there before, at least in a different world, and where he knew there was a pizza restaurant was now a fish and chips shop. Harry didn't mind since he liked both, and he had an early dinner of greasy food. Afterwards he found a small Tesco and he stocked up on all sorts of food items he'd need to make it through the next couple of weeks. He'd have to charm one of his kitchen cabinets into a cold storage, but that shouldn't be a problem and this way he could keep milk and meat and eggs fresh.
By the time he made it back to the cottage and he got all his purchases put away, Harry was more than tired. He unshrunk all the furniture he'd bought and he barely managed to lay down on the couch before he fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.
He dreamed.
Tom bought him from the auction block, whip marks still oozing blood down his back.
Tom told him those cigarettes he liked smoking would kill him, and when he was dying of lung cancer at the age of 49, Tom stepped into his hospital room, said 'I told you so' and walked out again.
Tom smiled at him and squeezed his hand with her smaller one when their son won Olympic gold with the British rowing team.
Tom told him they would get through this when Yellowstone blew and the super-volcanic eruption ruined crops all over the world and made it snow in July on the Croatian coast where they lived.
Tom was crying while giving Harry a huge smile as Harry clutched their child to her tired breast after she just gave birth.
Tom offered Harry a charred tarantula with a grin, knowing that eating those still freaked Harry out, even though it was perfectly good food for the native tribe they belonged to somewhere deep inside the Amazonian rainforest.
Tom slammed his fists down on the desk of the startled police officer after their teen daughter had been missing for a month and the police refused to take it seriously.
Tom had rarely looked so proud when they announced Harry's name as the winner of the Oscar for best original screenplay.
Tom held the camera and kept telling Harry to hold still while Harry bottle-fed two squirming orphaned baby grizzly bears that had been handed over to their wildlife sanctuary by the US Fish & Wildlife division.
Tom looked about as handsome as Harry had ever seen him as he stood on the bow of the longboat while they sailed from their homes in Sweden with their kin across the sea to find riches and spoils in mainland Europe.
Tom argued with Harry's parents that the only way they could leave Hungary and make it to the US was to pretend to be Italian because no one was allowing Jews in, no matter what was happening in Germany at that time.
Tom leaned over and whispered in Harry's ear that he loved Ilvermorny just as much as he loved Hogwarts on their last day attending it.
Harry woke with a gasp, sitting upright on the couch as the early morning sun streamed inside through the clean windows. He really needed to get some curtains. And a mattress. Harry rubbed his eyes and slowly got up while his mind whirled with memories of almost two-hundred lives. Harry's dreams were always random moments of his and Tom's many shared lives and it always made him miss Tom even more whenever they were apart. Harry held the ring in his hand while he shuffled to the bathroom and then to the kitchen. He fried some bacon and eggs and made a strong cup of tea, and while he enjoyed his breakfast he mentally made a to-do list for the day.
First things first, he needed to brew the aging potion. He needed to be able to go out as an adult. So far people had ignored Harry as a child doing fairly adult things, but he knew that wouldn't last and sooner or later someone would stick their unwanted nose in his business. Harry was a Potions master so brewing the aging potion wasn't difficult at all. He got the whole thing going and while it simmered for twenty minutes he got dressed. Then he got undressed again while he took a dose of the potion. It was fairly uncomfortable, to grow a foot or more in the span of a minute, but nothing Harry couldn't handle.
Once his body was done growing, Harry released a relieved sigh, glad to be an adult again. The potion worked for up to 30 hours, so as long as Harry took a dose every day he'd stay an adult without any problems. There was nothing in the ingredients of the potion that would cause problems in the long run so Harry could keep using it for the next year at least.
He enlarged his clothes and got dressed again. That was when he realized he didn't have glasses. Harry knew he'd had glasses in his first life, so was that a difference in this one? Harry peered out the window into the overgrown garden. His eyesight seemed a little fuzzy the further away he looked, so perhaps it couldn't hurt to brew an eye-correction potion and take it. He also needed to pick up a few items for the Fidelius charm, which was a priority.
Harry looked at his adult reflection in the bathroom mirror and charmed his green eyes brown and his black hair a dirty blond with a long fringe that covered his scar. He looked nothing like James Potter, and even less like what people expected a ten-year-old Harry Potter to look like so he felt safe to go to Diagon Alley.
He apparated first to Piccadilly Circus to withdraw some money from a few unsuspecting tourists, and then he popped over to Diagon Alley. On his way to Gringotts to exchange more money, Harry noticed quite a few red-robed Aurors stopping people to question them.
"Excuse me, Sir," Robbarts said while he stepped in front of Harry, who remembered working with the man for years during his first life. "Have you seen this child?" Robbarts showed him a very poorly done sketch of what was pretty much a James Potter miniature and actually looked very little like Harry. There was a rudely drawn scar smack dab in the middle of the forehead and a pair of round glasses that this Harry had never worn. It amused Harry to no end that apparently they hadn't been able to find an actual picture of Harry. The Dursleys certainly had never wasted any film on him.
"No, haven't seen him," Harry said honestly as he gave Robbarts an inquisitive look. "Who is he?"
"That's Harry Potter, Sir. He's been missing since yesterday."
"No," Harry said, feigning shock. "Harry Potter is missing? Whatever happened?"
"Can't tell you that, Sir," Robbarts said with a firm look. "Just that he's gone missing from where he lived."
"I'll keep an eye out for him, Auror," Harry said as he took one more look at the ridiculous sketch. "I hope he's all right and that you find him soon." And with that, Harry moved away from the Auror and continued his trek to Gringotts. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mad-Eye Moody and Hestia Jones walking on either side of the alley.
Well then, it looked like Dumbledore had sent out his dogs of war to look for his lost little sacrificial lamb.
Dumbledore could eat shit and die while his minions looked for the Boy Who Lived one too many times.
Harry wasn't about to be caught.