A.N. Hello! Welcome to story!
Not much to say this go round. Hope you like.
PLEASE REVIEW!!!! I need review to eat!!!
Rec at the end.
Tonight… was about vengeance. It was finally time. After a lifetime of getting screwed by one group, he would see that they ALL get what was coming to them.
He didn't want any of them to suffer, though, not really. Oh, he would enjoy it in some cases, but this was more about justice, about paying of debts. Some things were going to hurt, others were going to be fun, but one way or another, it would all end tonight. The Death Eaters would learn that naming death, but not being willing to accept it, costs.
He was also quite glad about the setting. After all, this was the first place he had met Tom 'in the flesh', that was the first time he had to see an innocent die, so here was the place Tom would die, right over the grave of his dick of a father.
--Two Hours of Hell later--
"I'll admit it, Potter, you did well. After all, no-one else could bring me to my knees. But even though you killed ALL my followers, and are about to 'kill' me, you can't win. I am IMMORTAL!"
"Oh, Tom. Let's play a game."
The self-proclaimed 'Dark Lord' and powerhouse of magics blinked, confusion written on his face. Honestly, Harry was impressed that he had anything written on his face besides pain. After all, if HE had had the basilisk-poisoned sword of Gryffindor rammed through his foot/calf and into the ground below it, forcing him into a kneeling position, Harry would have had two thoughts on the subject: "Fuck you." and "AAARRRGGGHHH!!!".
"A game?"
"Yup. Ya see, it is where one or more people, normally two or more, stop doing anything serious and focus on entertainment for a while, normally with some form of interactive component."
"I have heard of games, but no-one has ever asked me to play one before!"
Harry felt like a dick.
"Ah… well… I see. In that case, we will play TWO games before you die. One I will like, one you will like. Then, I will kill you. Fair?"
"Yes, please!!! I have always wanted to play a game, but every time I ask my Death Eaters, they would scream, or faint, or beg not to. That, or they thought I wanted to go and torture villagers or something like that, which wasn't all that fun. It always made me sad, so I would kill them."
"Yeah, they probably thought you were going to kill them in a painful and humiliating manner when you said that. it is kind of a dark lord thing to do."
"Damn it! I knew I chose the wrong career! But I wanted to rule the country and had no interest in politics, and damn if the only way to keep politics down is to kill people."
"I feel that. Politics SUCK! All right, we will play a quick game of Go Fish, then a game called Connected Words, then I will kill you."
"Sounds fun! What is this 'Go Fish'?"
--Two MORE hours later--
"I got a book, and that is the last of them. I WIN. This was SO much more fun than killing people!"
"You have got problems, Tom."
"Whatever. Now, this game 'Connected Words', how does that work? Will it be as fun as Go Fish?"
Harry sighed. Yes, Voldemort had the emotional range of a tea-spoon, but he wasn't that bad of a guy. Ya know, if you ignored the homicidal tendencies. This next game would be not as fun for him.
"Sorry Tom, but no. You are going to hate this game. I am going to give you a series of six words, and you have to tell me what one word they all have in common. Ready?" at the man(?)'s nod, Harry started.
"Diary. Cup. Locket. Diadem. Snake. Ring."
As each word rang out in the clammy air, Voldemort's face grew… paler?... more horrified. When the last word was spoken, however, he smiled.
"Well done, Harry. You win. I really wish life could have been different for the two of us, but that wasn't my choice. I guess trying to run from death has its consequences, but I, for one, am glad to stop running. I never really got why I tried to kill you that night, and I don't know at ALL why I killed your parents. After all, fighting and bantering with them was the most fun I ever got to have."
The hero looked at Tom with confusion written all over his face. "You are… glad?"
"Yes, lad, I am. For more than fifty years I have been running, now I can finally rest. Finish me off, Harry Potter, for my crimes and your parents."
And so, Harry did, but it was with a heavy and confused heart. What had happened to him? Why was he so different? Had Dumbledore been wrong about him all along? That couldn't be could it? Dumbledore had died for him, hadn't he?
At this point, he was trying to stumble his way out of the graveyard, confused and broken, the names of the dead playing in a loop in his mind. Sirius, Remus, Dumbledore, Snape, Ron, Hermione, Mrs. Weasley, Mr. Weasley, Charlie, Bill, Fleur, Ginny, Fred, George, Percy, Madame Bones and Susan, Madame Pomphrey back in first year. Flitwick in second year, McGonagall in fifth, Luna, Hannah, Cho, Cedric, Neville, the Flying Foxes, his parents, and now Tom. So many dead. Was this all his fault? Was Harry the Savior, actually Harry the Killer? And what did Tom mean that this was not his choice? He needed Dumbledore now.
That was it! Dumbledore would know what was going on. With this thought in mind, Harry turned and made his way out of the graveyard and toward Hogwarts. Dumbledore might be dead, but there had to be a portrait of him in the Headmaster's Office. As the titular Headmaster of Hogwarts (everyone else who could or would take the position died during the war), he had access to that room, but had never been in it. Now, the headmaster would help him. He had to!!
Harry floated in darkness.
It had been a trap.
Of all the things that he suspected over the course of the war, this wasn't one of them. Truth be told, it was such a massive shift that he couldn't even process it. Even here, after death, he couldn't wrap his mind around the enormity of the betrayal he had suffered.
Or the level of pain he had caused.
So, as many minds do when faced with a truth to massive and painful to face, he shut down. He didn't think, or breathe, or even twitch as he drifted through limbo.
It was nice.
But he still had this one thought in the back of his head, this one little niggling sensation.
It was like he wanted something.
Like he wanted to…
MAKE THEM PAY!!!
… Or something like that.
However, floating in nothing, thinking of nothing except MAKING THEM PAY was boring, so he started thinking about what he knew, about the small amount of sciences and maths he learned back in school, the grammar, the spelling, how to use a computer, all of that. And as he did, each thing he remembered, appeared in front of him, written on a piece of paper.
Most of the time, I wasn't big into study. All I really cared about was what I needed to perform. Knowledge for its own sake was never my biggest concern, but I had nothing else to do right now. Empty blackness, or research?
True, research was also boring, but it sure beat blackness. Harry Potter, after all, was never one to sit around and do nothing. Every stage of my life, whether it was with the Dursleys, working on my schoolwork at Hogwarts, playing quidditch, the Tri-Wizard tournament, or the war, was hectic and focused. Maybe I should be using this quiet blackness to recover from all that, but really, I want to keep moving, so I will.
Perhaps I could learn something new here. All my life, I was… rather mediocre as a student, but now, I will see what I can do, or at least what I could have done. You know, since I have nothing better to do now.
There was something odd with that whole thought process, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what. The start of each sentence seemed so… fixed, somehow, like he was filling some form of requirement. Then he shrugged his shoulders. He didn't care.
Ages passed, and eventually, Harry grew both tired and satisfied with his muggle knowledge. Sure, he couldn't MAKE much of it now, but he at least was as proficient as the average muggle, maybe more-so. As such, he managed to gain a small but of one-up-man-ship over THEM, the wizards of the world. Baring the very rare exception, no self-respecting witch or wizard would consider learning anything the muggles thought important, never mind being willing to PAY for it!!!
Harry blinked. There it was again! The feeling of forced form to his sentences, like he was emphasizing something! It was so weird. But he still didn't care.
Having finished with normal knowledge, he moved on to magical knowledge, and was, in short order, appalled. There were so many useful laws of magic he had never even thought twice about! Like the theory of transmutation. Making abstract kinetic energy transform how every miniscule particle acts you-ward. In short, using the force of your wand's spell to change how the particles act towards the individual. Ironically, this was a large part of charms and runes as well, but transfiguration was about a complete change; charms were about a partial change, or and effect; and runes were more like any form of magic being permanently applied to an object, as long as there was energy to do so.
As such, this prove that every form of magic was the same at its roots. Curses were negative long- or short-term effects and/or had negative costs; charms had neutral or positive short-term effects; transmutation, transfiguration, and conjuration were all about the changes of shape and form; and rituals were all about forcing a specific, permanent change; but in the end, each and every branch was about using ambient energy to bring about some form of alteration. Heck, even potions were about this, though in the case of potions, it had more to do with the magic already in the ingredients.
And if that was the case, no-one needed a wand to do magic. Why, then, were wands used at all? After all, all children of the magical community performed accidental magic without a wand. As such, while a wand, as a focus, could help, well, focus magic, it was, in fact, a crutch and a limiter. Sure, it boosted your precision, but it did horrible things to your power. The same kind of thing was true for a staff. A staff could boost your power and range, but you lost out on precision, turning most attacks into some kind of AOE. And grimoires? They were a potent powerhouse object, but you had NO adjustability!
Then there were the magicless magics. Runes, potions, arithmancy, and several astronomical-, plant-, and life-based rituals required no magic in the performer at all. As such, squibs, and even muggles, could do magic. As far as he remembered, the Dursleys, minus the dim Dudley, actually were a family of dark druids, who beat him because he was a wizard, and there was an age-old animosity between the sects. They had been trying to make him go obscurial so they could steal his magic through a ceremony. Druids, after all, had the ability to synthesize and steal magic from magical creatures whose magic was there identity, but not wizards, mages, cerberi etc., whose magic was a secondary identity to their humanity, or species, in the case of cerberi and other beastly magicals, as opposed to magical beasts.
Finally, Harry really got into the whys and whyfors of magic. Interestingly, his basis in muggle science helped him immensely. Magic, as it turned out, wasn't really magic. For some reason Harry had yet to determine, some people were born with the ability to manipulate ambient energy. The effects of such manipulation was, in a word, magic. This is why anyone could learn the magicless magics. They were based off of the potions, the runes, or the rituals manipulating the magic, as opposed to the person. This was what made the whole subject interesting and truly eye-opening.
It had rules. It had guidelines. It had structure, and it even had a form of guidance. As such, it was a system. And as it was a system, Harry had to wonder who the system admin was. After all, no computer network functioned without a large series of operators, and as such, magic, a vast system of interconnected energy manipulations connected through various forms of conductors (wands, humans, magical beast, ley lines, etc.) should have some ruling figure, or at least, should have had. At this point, however, things got to meta for him, so he went back to figuring out the weaknesses and strengths of the various forms of immortality he had run across in his life.
Several * later, he realized that he was… done. He had successfully memorized, diced, combined, philosophized, and theorized on EVERY subject he had available in his head. He had, for lack of a better term, maxed out every bit of knowledge he had, taking it as far as it could be taken in a theoretical setting. In the end, it was rather simple. Magic was energy, controlled by the mind, used in a way to bring about any change the caster decided. As such, it wasn't the magic that was the problem for the most part, but the side effects. If, for example, you cast a spell from your hand that caused the human nervous system to implode, you would die, because the spell started IN YOUR HAND. As such, the only thing that limited magic, was the impreciseness, and lack of imagination, of the caster. Of course, as a body, the human body could only channel so much energy at once, making wands an excellent choice as the magic went through them more than it went through you, but with practice, skill, and effort, one could build up one's resistance and reserves, but in doing so you had to be extremely careful to make sure that the methods you used didn't cause you long-term harm. After all, a skilled martial artist builds up his resistance to pain by punching, or kicking, hard things, but in so doing they make it so that they can't feel AT ALL, and cause themselves bone, muscle, and nerve damage, not to mention setting themselves up for long-term ailments like bone spurs, lack of cartilage in their joint, and arthritis.
The only difference was the magical equivalent imploded your veins, fried your heart, destroyed your brain, and caused your nerves to explode.
Eventually, the library of knowledge he had created dissolved and drifted back into his head. After all, the whole world he had created was nothing more than a mental projection on the black screen of Limbo, and there really wasn't anything left for him to do with it, so instead, he meditated in the blackness.
So, he tried fighting. True, he was the only person here, but he had certain practice wielding swords, so he spent a few more ages swinging one around.
After almost… well, he didn't really know, but after a while, that got boring, so he tried something else. He created a video game.
It wasn't anywhere near as good as the real thing, as it was just what he REMEMBERED of a video game, but it worked. And, as it turns out, video games are VERY good for wasting time.
After another age or so, a knock was heard, and, through a door that certainly hadn't been there before, a strange figure stepped. As to what made him strange, however… well, that would be like explaining the scent of the color green to a deaf man. Not only could it not be defined, nor explained, the whole appearance of the… person… was literally indescribable! Less logical than a fever dream, more confusing than a labyrinth, and as undefined as dark matter, the person merely… was. It also happened to be polite.
"Sorry for your delay, Mr. Potter, Limbo is a waiting room for the various sub-eternity death spots, and your case has taken some time to figure out. If you will come with me, we will now take you to a meeting room, where your case file, and all attached documents are awaiting your, and your case handler's, perusal. Several large stacks of files will be present, but you needn't worry about them. They are just there for the extreme difficulty of this case. You will, of course, have a representative, and the person in question is rather good at their job, so don't worry about that, either. Snacks, drinks, and even a full lunch will not be provided, as you don't technically need it, and, in your current form, won't be able to eat it. If you have any questions, please save them for the meeting, as I have 987,142,352,124 cases after you that need handled as fast as possible. Right this way please."
After a few blinks, several head shakes, and more than a few of what would have been aneurisms if he had been alive, Harry followed the… being out the door. Yah know, the random door in the middle of no-where. The one that just appeared. Yeah, that door.
It turned out, that compared to its realm, the… thing made a lot of sense. Harry knew he was walking, but he didn't seem to be moving in time with his own steps. If he were to describe it (which he never did, as that would mean thinking about it, and he never would want to do that), he would have said that it would be like going forwards by walking backwards while falling up on the ceiling of a kaleidoscope that was left-oriented while drunk, high, and decapitated. If this confuses you, it isn't dramatic enough. The very space seemed like time, the time seemed like pudding, and the pudding… Oh, PUDDING!
After a few more… something of walking through this something else, and pudding, they finally… ended up somehow in an office building. A sea of cubicles greeted him, all empty, but every single phone was ringing off the hook.
Yeah, Harry didn't get it either, especially since his guide turned into a man with three dog's heads. Still, he was dead, so it really didn't matter to him all that much. If he was asked, he would comment, not before.
After a few more halls, they made it to what, in real life, would have been…
The janitor's closet.
Yeah, Harry didn't get that either, but that was where Hound Dog, as he was now calling his guide in his head, lead him to. And, as this clearly wasn't Kansas anymore, Harry didn't let it bug him.
His guide knocked, then led him into a meeting room that definitely WASN'T the janitor's closet. It was also FULL of files. Like, millions of them. Seriously, it was a fifty-foot-long, twenty-foot-wide, and eleven-foot-tall room, and there was a ten-foot-long conference table, a two-foot path around the table, and the chairs that were empty. And, actually, of the twelve chairs around the table, only the one at its head and the one at its foot could actually be sat in! The rest had stacks of files that LITTERALLY reached the ceiling.
Well, technically, only the one at the foot of the table was empty. The one at the head, was filled by a demon.
Like, big scaly wings, horns, the works. Harry knew he should probably care; he just couldn't bring himself to. Three-headed dog-vortex-people, dimensional doors, Limbo, and now a demon. Why not?
"Actually, I am a human Arc-Demon, first class bureaucrat of English non-Norse, Christian mimic, unenlightened Hell, to be technical, but most people just call me 'Bob', or occasionally some variant of 'Richard'. Welcome, Mr. Potter. I HATE you!"
Harry blinked, thought for a moment… and still didn't care. He was dead, so what else was going to happen. Honestly, compared to his life, hell might just be comfortable.
"Oh, no it isn't. Believe me, you might have had a shitty life, for sure, but it does NOT compare to Hell. Less treachery and usury down there, in your case, but one-hour-a-weak massive pain is NOTHING on twenty-four-hours-a-day MIND-BREAKING pain, so don't think for a moment that any Hell of Punishment is better than your life. However, that is not your fate.
First, to be clear, you are not dead. Or, to be more accurate, you are not totally dead. Limbo, earth-Hells, earth-Heavens, and alternate time- or dimension- re-lives are all before death. The long and the short of it, is, people figured out how to make alternate dimensions, alter their perception of time, and even circumnavigate body death. The result, of course, was chaos.
Being able to enter a world of your own creation, and do whatever you want to the NOT-humans, or human-alikes, that live there made it so people stopped behaving morally. Who cares if a girl doesn't give a man consent, if it isn't a real girl? The only problem was, people started being BORN in these other worlds, making it so that you actually HAD to be moral. Multiple agencies were built to police this, but over time, it just became out agency, Home Environment Leveling, Limited Corporation, or HELL Corp. for short. Now, HELL Corp. doesn't, and never has, deal with eternal issues. We only deal with the temporary deaths that many creatures, such as yourself, tend to suffer, and the day-to-day lives and punishments that occur in the realms under our remit, which is most of them.
Now, our area of business is three-fold. First, we oversee any world that isn't completely, to a person, aware of us, AND hasn't asked for us to stay out of its business. If a large portion knows about us and asks us to stay away, we don't. It had to be all. If they all know about us, but don't ask, we still police them. That is how it works. Also, when a person dies, they are automatically considered to see if they will be delivered to us, based on how they lived.
Second, we only punish, the Hnau (hu-now), or the humans. Now, at this point many ask about the other sentient races. They are all Hnau. If a person has reason, they descend from humanity. Only one species was granted sentience, and that is us. Talking dogs? Humans turned into dogs. Centaurs? Bionic prosthetics. Goblins? Ugly(er) humans. That is all there is to it. We will go to a world with a rogue AI or some sort of monster if it gets extreme enough, but in the end, that is our vacation, not our job. Also, we don't do souls. You are vaguely corporeal, thus have a vague body. That means, that you are at least partly alive. The dead are in HIS hands.
Finally, we do our best to focus on the truly worthy cases. Most people are on a set path, or have a set purpose in mind. At the very least, they have some sort of regional/social leaning, like you coming to me. My race should explain that. Our job, 99,999 out of 100,000 times, is just to… push you along. No meddling, no trials, nothing like that. We just let you go. Occasionally, a person will appeal directly to us, or will be REALLY good or bad. Them we help, or 'help'. Then, once in a VERY long time, someone like you shows up. Hence the hating.
You did not call us. You are not exceptionally good, nor exceptionally bad. You aren't a hero, really, nor are you odd or unique, or even honorable. But you are important.
You yourself were only a passive player in his plan, and a relatively small one at that, but you did set up for everything else he did. These files, ALL of them, are the outcomes of his actions, and they make EVERY other megalomaniac and madman in pretty much every world I have seen seem tame. He was GOOD at being horrible, and he made your life HELL. That is what brought you to the attention of my boss. And I mean, the Leader of HELL Corp, my boss.
My boss feels that you have been given a REALLY bad hand. He, in short, feels bad for you. As such, he wants you to have a gift. And, in his usual bizarre manner, he has decided to give you three threes. From him, he gives you a redo, access to the veil (which is used to contact us, by the way), and the promise that he will personally look in on EVERY single death around you do ensure that you get a better life. You will lose your parents, I'm afraid, but every one after that will be under him.
I am also required to give you three things. One, I won't destroy you due to the amount of work that you caused me; two, I won't charge you for the work you caused me; and three, I won't curse you for the FREAKING HUGE amount of work you caused me. You are welcome. Don't spend it all in one place, and DO NOT make me go through this again, or I WILL kill you.
Finally, you may choose three things for yourself. Please choose quickly, so we can get you out of here, and get on to our next case."
Harry blinked for the four HUNDRETH time during the… lecture? Rant? … whatever it was, and felt… vastly uncertain. And very steamrolled. That was a LOT of words from one guy. Interesting and informative, sure. But that was a LOT. But he did get a redo, so vengeance was on the list. And he got three wishes. YAY!
"First, I want to keep all of my knowledge from this life."
"No."
Harry blinked. "I thought I got three wishes?"
Bob sighed in disgust at the stupid little boy in front of him. "You don't remember everything NOW, why would we grant you the ability to remember everything THEN. Most people don't really keep all the knowledge they technically have at any given moment. Rather, they develop reactions in their mind, reactions that are based on triggers. The more triggers a given subject has, the more likely they are to remember everything. Now, we can let you keep your triggers, but your brain will need to re-develop your knowledge base, particularly the basic ones like reading, writing, maths, grammar, balance and precision, etc. After all, you don't want to put your late-teens-brain into a two-year-old head. That would be bad. Best case, early dementia. Worst case, BOOM! Splat! Let's not do that. Instead, I will give you what amounts to savantism for everything you already know. In short, you will just sort of… 'get it'. If something you are familiar with shows up, you will re-learn it quickly. You may even be able to extrapolate things you know now, from what you learn then. That's the best I can do. On a plus side, your exposure over here will boost your magic core by about… fifty thousand percent, with a growth boost of 1.25 comparative growth."
"Heh?"
Bob, who Harry now thought of as Richard, sighed again like Harry was stupid. To be fair, Harry was, kind of, but it wasn't his fault! Kind of, anyway. "If you had a core of one hundred at two, you will now have a core of fifty thousand. Your core grew by half per year before at its originally size, it would now grow by sixty-two point five percent. As your new power rating is fifty thousand, your original growth would have been twenty-five thousand. Now it will grow yearly by 31,250. In short, your new magic capacity is five hundred times what you initially had at birth, and you will increase your new magic capacity by thirty times the total amount you had when you died, after one year. The next year will be more, and the year after, even more."
After pouting for a few minutes in confused silence, Harry conceded defeat, then thought about his next wish carefully. After all, he knew what he wanted, but it was… BIG. Still, he wanted it.
"I want revenge, since I am going back. But, since I am going back, I want to wait until the people are guilty before getting it. I also don't want to hate the currently innocent. So, is there some way for me to know who CAN do what, so it doesn't blindside me, but I don't remember who DID do what, so I don't have negative responses to the as-of-yet not guilty?"
Richard gave him another patronizing sigh, coupled with another disappointed look that was starting to get on Harry's nerves. What was it this time, some sort of aneurysm that would prevent it?!?
"Of course, we can do that. it is called sixth sense. Surely, you have heard of it?"
Now, he was downgraded to Rich. Any worse, and Harry was going Full Marauder. After all, he had no need to deal with a condescending ass like him.
After several minutes of Harry imagining kicking Rich in the… 'rich' for the fun of it, he came back to earth realizing that, one, Rich was getting impatient, and two, he still had a wish. But Harry didn't have anything else he wanted. He tried his best to decide what he was going to do. He would smash all the baddies, Voldemort would be dealt with by the system, what else could he ask for. Finally, in a fit of whimsy and some slight guilt to the madman he would have to kill again, he asked a question that would both get him revenge on Rich, and honor the child that was locked in a berserk murderer's body.
"Can you make my life a game?"
--An undefined time period later, and almost two decades earlier--
Harry woke up on the Durley's doorstep with a grin on his eighteen-month-old face. Many things were leaking from his head, but one thing he knew. In the cold of November, lying on the Dursley's doorstep, he hummed to himself, as best he could at this age, the one thing he KNEW.
'Dumbledore's going to get it!'
As soon as he did, something he would grow to regret showed up.
PING!
Cannot Develop Skills at this time
'The h*ll?'
AN: Hey guys, this is my 'Gamer Harry' attempt. Hope you like it. If you have any comment, PM me.
Fic rec for this is Percy Jackson and the Game by I'mjusttryingtofindmyway. Percy Jackson, gamer powers, inspiration for this story. It is really pretty good, and very funny, even if it is unfortunately unfinished. Also has a Supernatural nod or two that makes it pretty fun. Props to this story, and I hope you all like my new idea!
BTW, Harry won't be OP. he will be TRIPLE OP!
Stiltskin out.