Someone rapped on the door. He would have called it knocking, but knocking implied… some measure of uncertainty, almost? Harry could tell that whoever it was knew that they'd be invited inside.

At the moment Harry and the Dursleys were eating breakfast. Eggs and pancakes weren't a full English layout, but they were still good, and Harry didn't particularly want to abandon the meal.

"Go get the door, Dudley."

"Make Harry do it! He's almost done, anyway."

Harry was not almost done. His portion just happened to be four times smaller than Dudley's, and that was with his cousin's significant change in diet in this lifetime.

"Get the door, Harry."

Harry sighed and got up. The government stepping in may have stopped any actual abuse from taking place, but he was still the unwanted nephew. Dudley was allowed to backchat—not him.

Before opening the door Harry risked a peek through the peephole. He blanched, paused, and moved to pull the door open, before pausing again and pulling up his Bonuses list. This was why he should have thought things through sooner—he'd just have to hope that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon wouldn't notice the difference.

Do you wish to spend 15 POINTS on the METAMORPHAGUS skill?

Yes.

You have now spent 15 POINTS on the METAMORPHAGUS skill. Through an effort of will, you can now change your appearance. While what you are capable of will grow with practice, you are currently restricted to changing your dead skin and epidermis layer.

Harry closed his eyes and willed his scar to disappear. Then he pulled open the door—there was no time for him to check if it had worked.

"May I come in?" Professor McGonagall asked.

"Yes ma'am." Harry stepped aside, letting her in, and reminded himself that he had an 84 in acting. He could do this. "Um… who are you?"

"I am Professor McGonagall, the deputy headmistress of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry," She stated, "and you…" she smiled, here, and Harry suddenly remembered that his parents too had been her students, and that she had been quite fond of them. The smile was nice, and reminded him of the all she had done for him in his past life. "You are Harry Potter, are you not?"

A few minutes later Harry himself, his aunt and uncle, and his future Head of House were all gathered in the living room. Aunt Petunia had served tea.

"So, in effect, Mr. Potter has been told nothing of his heritage?" Professor McGonagall questioned.

Aunt Petunia nodded. "It's not like I tried to remember much. It's… I'm not comfortable with it, not in my house. I won't stop him from learning it—I know that's useless—but I'm… I'm not your kind, and I do not want to be a part of your world."

Professor McGonagall sighed. She seemed resigned—Harry assumed that his relatives weren't the first to turn their backs on magic, and no matter what he did he knew they wouldn't be the last. It was something to think about for his future reform efforts.

"I understand. I will not force you to interact with something you do not feel comfortable with, and as you have neither broken the statute of secrecy nor treated Harry badly over the past decade, I will leave it there. From what I can tell, the wards are still in place, so you should be safe from… the rest of 'our kind'."

What wards? Harry wondered. He still couldn't tell that they were there—if it did exist, it was not considered an advantage by his Gamer gift, which left him wondering what exactly the ward accomplished—he had no real way of testing it, and while he'd never been found while living in Little Whinging, he was also out of the house for hours at a time; it was hard to believe that if anyone was really looking they wouldn't have found him while he was at school or something.

Professor McGonagall thanked Aunt Petunia, who fled the room with Uncle Vernon immediately behind her. Harry had no doubt they were happy to be done with talking to a 'freak', and didn't begrudge them as much as he would've in the past—in this lifetime, at least, they'd shown that they could try if they were given a big enough push.

"Mr. Potter."

"Yes ma'am?"

"If you permit, I could take you to Diagon Alley—that is the 'main street' of Magical Britain—now, to pick up your school supplies and allow you to take in the magical world. I am only willing to do this immediately because it is clear you already have a cursory understanding of what magic is, and I can give you the pamphlets I have for muggleborns—witches or wizards who are born to nonmagical parents, like your mother—when we get back, for you to peruse at your leisure, but I have sufficient time to take you to the Alley now."

"Umm… sure." Harry said. "Just, let me get my backpack." He shifted, about to stand, but before he could Professor McGonagall spoke again.

"First, though… I think I must tell you a bit about yourself and your parents." What followed was a severely whitewashed version of the First Voldemort War (not that she told him that, or called it that) which, while more detailed than Hagrid's had originally been, still left a lot out. It did, however, force her to admit that he was considered a hero.

"What? Why?" Harry said. Honestly, even after over one and a half lifetimes (considering he only lived to 17 in his first, and he was already almost 11 in his second), he still didn't understand why the wizarding world treated him like a celebrity. Every time he'd asked he was just told some version of how people wanted a hero.

"The war was a terrible tragedy, Harry, and when people found that it was over they wanted someone to thank. And that was you." See?

"But why? Why not my mother? My father? I mean, I was one—I don't care how powerful magic is, there's no way that I did anything against a supervillain like Voldemort!"

Professor McGonagall sucked in a breath at Riddle's self-styled name. While she'd said it earlier, she had clearly been reluctant, and she now seemed to regret saying it at all. "Don't say his name like that! Names have power, you know." She sighed, then, and seemed to focus on the rest of his question. "I… the… the reason that it was you, Harry, that people turned to, it is… complicated. When you are a bit older—a bit more mature—I'll… try to explain it to you. But for now, please accept that that is the way things are."

Harry wanted to grimace, but managed to control his expression. One of the things he had grown to loathe in his past life was when he was told to ignore something, to not question it, to just accept it—of course nothing could be done to improve his home life, of course the Philosopher's stone was safe, of course Snape was a good guy, of course, of course, of course.

Harry was sure some of those things were true—he was told in school to just accept that vegetables made him healthier, and sure enough, a bit of research had proved that true—but he always wanted the ability to question, the ability to ask "are you sure?" because while the nonmagical world had peer review to validate findings, and journalists to uncover lies, and innovators to improve upon what's already known, the magical world seemed to lack many of those same resources, and what few they had were more interested in personal fame and gossip-mongering than the truth.

Still, he nodded.

And tacked journalism and science onto his to-do list.

-Journalistic Integrity—Improve magical journalism's truthfulness and reach (1,750 XP)

-Improve, Improve, Improve—Help promote scientific innovation in the magical world (1,750 XP)

"Alright, then. Now, before we go I should give you a brief description of what you should prepare yourself for…"

Diagon Alley was as busy as he remembered it. It was not yet noon, and a Thursday, but the street was packed—they'd skipped the Leaky Cauldron, instead apparating immediately to a small nook of the alley obviously set aside for just that. After he got over his nausea he took a closer look at the alley, trying to see if anything had changed. When he'd gone upstairs to grab his backpack just before they left he'd noticed his blank summer assignment about the current impact of the technological revolution and for the first time realized that he could already see the effects of some of the other time travelers (the much more common computers, for instance, as well as a much larger environmental movement than he remembered and some sort of political debate going on in the middle east that he didn't remember happening at all.) While he hadn't had much time to document the changes—not that he'd spent long in the nonmagical world the first time anyway—he was still curious if any of the differences had carried over to the magical world. Unfortunately, though, no difference was readily apparent.

"Has the nausea subsided, Mr. Potter?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Then let's make our way to the bank, shall we?"

Well, it was large. And looming. And the guards were terrifying. And the message was foreboding. So Gringotts seemed the same too. Harry gulped, and reminded himself that even if a goblin was one of the time travelers they (probably) had no reason to call for his death—yeah, he'd caused a lot of property damage the first go-round, but forgive and forget… right?

The goblin closest to him glared, and Harry flinched.

"Face forward, Mr. Potter. The goblins are an honorable people, and bound by treaty regardless, so so long as you don't try to steal anything you have nothing to worry about."

Yeah, that made him feel much better. It wasn't like he'd already stolen from them or anything. He gulped again and then did as he was told, carefully not looking around until they were finally able to talk to a teller. The good news was that the metamorphagus skill seemed to be working—he'd checked at home and hadn't been able to spot his scar, and while he'd gotten more than a few looks here after they all saw his clear forehead they'd moved on.

"State your business."

"A withdrawal from Vault 687."

"That's the Potter vault."

"Yes, and this is Mr. Potter. Here's his key."

Harry stared at it as it passed from Professor McGonagall to the Goblin—Ironclaw, this time. He turned to Professor McGonagall and quietly asked, "does everyone have access to my vault?"

She glanced at him, surprised, but answered while Ironclaw verified the key. "No, Mr. Potter. I was given the key by your guardian, Albus Dumbledore."

"The headmaster?" Harry asked.

"Yes—" The professor started, but before she could continue Ironclaw ordered them to follow him (or her—Harry had only ever assumed that the goblins he met were male, but as he'd never met one he'd categorized as female it was entirely possible that they just looked the same to him regardless of gender.) Instead Professor McGonagall began to explain the denominations of magical currency.

The cart ride was… Harry didn't like uncontrolled transportation, okay? It was literally one of his disadvantages. Still, it was far better than apparition, portkeys, or the flue, and he certainly enjoyed it more than Hagrid had, so he had little to complain about.

It was when he came to his vault that he spotted the first difference. Well, not really. On the surface nothing had changed: stacks upon stacks of gold, silver, and bronze in a chamber more spacious than even Dudley's bedroom. But unlike the first time he had gone into the vault, or any of the others, this time he actually took stock of what that meant.

He was rich.

This was not a new revelation in and of itself, but its consequences were hitting Harry for the first time. There were precious few things in the world which were considered equivalent in metaphors with power: knowledge, yes, but also money. Thanks to "management" he had one and a half lifetimes of the first, and now it turned out that he had always had plenty of the second.

"How much… how much is this?" Harry asked, looking as star struck as he felt.

"This, Mr. Potter, is quite enough to live with into your hundreds… if you are careful. If you spend wastefully, however, you will find that it will quickly disappear." McGonagall responded, before muttering under her breath, "there's a reason your grandfather kept your dad's hands off the account for as long as he could."

Harry caught the comment, but ignored it for now. He was obviously not meant to have heard it.

"How much do you think I should take out now? Not just for school supplies, I mean! But if I could get some other magical things, well… I'm going to work when I'm grown up anyway, right? I don't have to save everything?"

Professor McGonagall opened her mouth, frowning, before pausing. "I… suppose a bit of a spending spree wouldn't be out of the question. Merlin knows your father would have spoiled you rotten anyhow. Take… 400 Galleons, I think. And a few Sickles and Knuts. Your school supplies should be about 200 Galleons, all told—it's always more expensive the first year, because of costs such as your wand—and you can spend the rest as you wish."

As Harry piled the Galleons into a bag that had been handed into him. While it didn't have an extension charm placed on it, it definitely had a featherweight one, so in the end he had no trouble holding the entire amount. As he loaded the bag, though, he decided that he wouldn't get a better time to ask some questions.

"My dad would've spoiled me?"

Professor McGonagall gave a sigh which began exasperated and ended wistful. "Yes. Your father—James Potter—was a... a good man, who had many good qualities. But he was also quite a wealthy man, and while your mother would have tried to keep you more grounded I'm sure he would've slipped you presents and gifts at every opportunity." Clearly without meaning to, she laughed, then continued, "Your mother was a different charm altogether. She was a headstrong woman, you know. From her first year she knew what she wanted and she knew how to get there. She would have made sure that you were an upstanding citizen, while your father, well, he would—" she laughed again. "He would make sure you knew how to have fun."

Without seemingly meaning to she began to describe her former student in more and more detail, at first in abstract terms that Harry had heard before, but then with more and more actual memories.

"Oh! And I remember when James—oh, he must've just been a second year then, so small—I remember when he and his friends—the 'marauders' they called themselves, as if they were the first to pull pranks at Hogwarts—well, they got it into their heads that if they flooded—flooded!—my classroom, then I wouldn't be able to teach. Ha! Let me tell you, they were surprised as hell when we just moved two classrooms down. It didn't even take more than 10 minutes for the classroom to be completely dried—I just moved the class to try to deter them from doing it again. Not that that worked, mind you—ahem." Professor McGonagall paused, finally realizing who she was describing things to. Harry was more than a little disappointed—the past five minutes were the most he'd ever heard about his father—but he was sure that with a little time and effort he could get her off on a tangent again. It hadn't exactly taken much the first time.

Professor McGonagall clapped her hands twice, taking in the full bag. "Time to see the rest of Diagon Alley, I believe. We'll start with Madam Malkins." She turned smartly to the door, acting for all the world as if she had not just begun to reminisce in such detail that she'd literally forgotten her surroundings. But as they left the vault she did make sure to get one last comment in. "If I ever see you do anything like what your father did… I'll know you're your father's son. The first time. Don't try for a second."