Chapter 1: A Different Kind of Accidental Magic
"How do you feel?", she had asked him with usual look of fear in her eyes, the one he had known all his childhood. Sometimes, when she would turn her head, there were also elements of anger and hate, but never when she would look directly at him.
"I will be fine Aunt Petunia, probably some sort of wizard flu.", he answered trying to downplay the seriousness of his situation. Since his return from Hogwarts his temperature had been rising and now was off the scale. Tomorrow he was going to contact St. Mungo's.
One last look of helpless concern on her face, and she had turned and left to put finishing touches on the preparation for the arrival of Uncle Vernon's sister – Uncle Vernon was in good mood as Harry's sickness meant he would remain in his room, and thus could be avoided completely as subject of dinner conversation.
That had been two hours ago and now his entire body was hurting as if every cell was growing back itself with skele-gro. He wanted to scream his lungs out from the pain, but he was unable to move to even open his lips.
Whatever was happening to him was also making his senses sharper. He could see every skin pore on his forearm, and he could hear Uncle Vernon offering some after dinner brandy to his sister. This meant he still had at least half an hour before someone would come to check on him. He wasn't sure he had that long to live anyway.
With morbid fascination he watched the basilisk mark on his forearm, thinking of all moments he was close to dying and that now, it seemed was the good one.
The vision of the details on his skin gave way to the vision of blood vessels. His blood stream was full of miniature philosopher's stones which were multiplying like living organisms, killing and recreating his body one cell at the time.
What was even weirder, he was able to "hear" the stones communicating – they were following orders of "killing" and "healing" magic which were now part of his blood after the Chamber of Secrets incident, and had activated tiny stone shards in his blood, which his body had absorbed when the Philosopher's stone had self-destruct in that particular incident – the orders were to transform Harry so he could burn.
Suddenly some electricity sparkles appeared and his body got engulfed in bright bluish flames, and those flames dissolved all of Harry Potter's existence.
The moment later light erupted through windows of Harry's room as if a star appeared inside, and a powerful electromagnetic pulse spread around causing blackout in entire South England.
Albus Dumbledore believed in "wild magic", unpredictable living force which permeated all and everything, to the deepest essence. And he believed he was good enough wizard to surf the waves of its ocean. He wasn't pretentious to believe he could clearly understand magic and its flows, just that through his previous games he had played and won, he had earned himself some little intuition.
This faith in magic often exasperated his younger collaborators who were of the opinion he was taking too much liberties with the things he shouldn't have with his blind fanaticism in this matter, like for example Minerva McGonagall who had never forgiven him for leaving Harry Potter on the doorstep in November night.
However, when that particular alarm in his office started ringing, all his certitudes were instantly eradicated.
"Minerva! Hagrid! Filius! Severus! Meet me at our emergency meeting point! The defences around Harry's home had been breached!", he screamed his urgent call through his patronus.
"Minerva, call the Weasleys, Kingsley and Nymphadora, I will call Alastor and Aberforth!", he added with haste, and instant later was picked up by Fawkes and disappeared in flames. "Please Merlin, don't let it be too late..."
30 minutes later, thirteen witches and wizards appeared in gigantic ball of fire, transported by Fawkes, on the lawn of 4 Privet Drive.
When the flames receded, Harry could see he was no longer in his room and no longer lying sick. He was standing naked in white emptiness in front of large stone doors with complex pattern of magic runes engraved on them. Beside him was a decaying baby.
There was an ominous presence behind the doors Harry could sense, and it said words directly into the deepest of Harry's soul: "You brought fugitive... you will have reward..."
The doors opened and tide of black blood came flooding the white emptiness, washing over Harry and the baby, and taking away Harry's consciousness.
Their worst case scenario was that Harry was dead and it justified flashy arrival. However, upon their arrival they could see only dark, empty streets. All houses were also in the dark and all doors were wide open. Homenum Revelio spell showed all inhabitants of Little Whinging had disappeared.
Bill Weasley approached one of hydrangea bushes beside the main door, and pulled a sizeable stone from inside the bush. It was the central stone of the wards. He cast diagnostic spell and informed others of the gloomy results: the wards had fallen because the stone had lost energy and was empty, and it had lost energy because it had lost purpose – for the central stone Harry Potter was dead. Given the stone capacitance and leakage, it had happened a week ago. Inside check showed the Dursleys' TV had exploded and everything inside Harry's room was calcined as if exposed to very high temperature.
They could hear the noise of a vehicle, a bus, arriving and stopping few streets away, people getting off, and then the bus leaving. Among the people was Arabella Figg.
A week ago there was a large black out. The muggle authorities had managed to identify something called an EMP as the source and the Dursleys' residence as the starting point. They had even detected slight radiation there. All population of Little Whinging had been evacuated and quarantined for a week, and the Dursleys were still now in custody under investigation to determine their role in what was now qualified as the greatest terrorist attack in the United Kingdom of all times. There were no clues as what had happened to Harry Potter. From the condition of his room, he was presumed dead.
He woke up on carbonised remains of a bed. Everything else in the room was equally carbonised. His location was 51,5N and 0,5W, Surrey, UK – Little Whinging. Who he was – he had no idea. His various senses indicated there were no other human beings in at least one mile radius. He went out of the carbonised room and into the bathroom of the house. He satisfied his physiological needs and washed himself. He was a teen male in perfect health. He had no memory of anything prior to his waking up.
He had managed to find some clothes his size in the attic.
He got out of the house on the side road. He lifted his arm and snapped his fingers producing an energy spark. The moments later a triple-decker appeared out of nowhere.
He was greeted by the conductor: "Welcome to the Knight Bus. I am your conductor for this evening, Stan Shunpike. Please get on."