Humanity's Futures.
" You cloned yourself? How many times?" Harry asked.
The old wizard counted on his hands. After a minute of silence, he replied. " I cloned myself 20 times, each clone has the life span of thousands of years, I am nearing the end of this life. This machine has the power to contain my mind whilst my body decays and ages."
Harry wondered how and why anyone would spend all this time cloning and recloning himself, and why they would want to spend eternity living in this place, alone with no to talk to. He voiced his questions. " Why would you do it, live alone?"
Even Harry himself, who enjoyed living alone because no one understood him, liked venturing out into a populated world. It gave him the sense that even though he liked isolating himself that the world was still the way he knew it. That a man like this wizard would live alone for 800,000 years was hard to accept.
The wizard wheezed his answer, " I don't live alone by choice. I stayed alive purely because I wanted to find out if there were any other wizards. The magical world lived isolated for a thousand years, then a series of wars brought about by stupid fools brought the magical world into conflict. We lost. The muggle soldiers were too strong, they slaughtered us in almost incalculable numbers. "
" Maybe you deserved it."
The wizard didn't like that response. " But you're one of us."
" Then why was I raised in an abusive environment? Why did my parents abandon me for a fool with obvious delusions of grandeur? Why couldn't your precious magical world bother with stopping your dark wizards? Don't stand there with your pompous superiority and preach to me." Harry shouted. A thought then occurred to him. " Is that why the Earth's empty, because of your war?"
The wizard sighed and sat down on a stool. " When humanity developed space flight, wizarding kind had been decimated. For centuries Earth was the centre of galactic empires, galactic federations and republics, but Wizards were slaughtered when they were born. We surrendered, but many called for our extermination. Viruses were created to prevent children from developing magical powers, and they were used. Our numbers thinned over the centuries. That's why I stayed when Earth was exacuated when extreme solar flare activity occurred, followed by centuries where Earth was virtually empty. There were people still, evolving over the centuries. When technology was reintroduced, I saw a war on the horizon, and that war was devastating. Humanity's survivors split into two groups. The Eloi, and the Morlocks. The Eloi lived on the surface, making a living on the surface of the earth whilst the Morlocks became subterranean cannibals. The rest of humanity's out there, amongst the stars, but I stayed, I've been cloning myself ever since."
Harry shook his head, pity in his eyes. " What a life."
The old man glared at Harry, " You try it,"
Harry didn't smile, he glared back, " You didn't have to survive, you know. Hang on," he pointed at the bookshelves, " those books, the one I was reading, it did mention I was a time traveller. That's why you stayed alive, isn't it? A predestination paradox, you meet me in a point of time when I have no knowledge of my past, or future as the case may be, but you found out about me as a time traveller, and you figured that since I'd had no prior encounter with the magical world, then I must've met someone who told me."
The wizard didn't reply at once. He looked deep in thought, and Harry could see his face. It was a surprise for him, but yet it wasn't. The wizard nodded, not even bothering to deny it.
" Yes," he grunted, the effort of speaking making it clear how short his lifespan was becoming. " The magical world's view of time travel is that its best avoided, but in nearly every instance, a time traveller appears and that traveller either stops the magical worlds attempts, or he simply lets it happen."
" And you people think that's me?"
The wizard snorted, " I wouldn't have said so if I didn't. Potter, you honestly don't understand. Your destiny is written in those books, and you must fullfill it."
Harry shook his head, " Those books don't explain everything, its not as if they're a script. I'm not gonna spend the rest of my life fighting your dark lords for you, nor am I doing to live my life according to a book."
" Never said you needed to," the wizard agreed reasonably. Harry narrowed his eyes at him, until he was convinced the wizard was telling the truth. " Okay, then I'll be going." He turned to leave and walk out so then he could head towards the sphinx. He had no idea where he was in terms of London geography, and there was always the possibility of him being materialised when he travelled back to the present day wasn't something high on his agenda.
" Wait," the wizard suddenly yelped. Harry glanced back at him. The wizard took out his wand, and pointed it at the cloning machinery. " Destroy it, all of it. I've done what I've needed to."
" How do I destroy-no, don't answer that, I know what to do." Harry said. He closed his eyes, and the clone booth exploded into tiny shards of glass, but they bounced off the protective shields Harry had brought up. He turned to face the wizard, to find he was pointing his wand at the books. " Take them with you, the last magical library in the world. Take them all, take them and learn about yourself. There's a trunk in the cloning chamber."
Harry stacked all the books neatly away in the trunk, occasionally glancing upwards at the wizard, but the old man was looking at Harry like he'd been reborn. Harry wondered what the old man would do now, but he figured that he knew the answer. It was likely that the old wizard would die, but Harry didn't feel anything for him. Nothing whatsoever.
Lugging a heavy trunk to the sphinx wasn't easy with the foliage, but Harry managed it. His mind was on what he should do next. He would return into the past, study the magical texts and practice. The knowledge he already had on his powers weren't sufficient enough, but he intended to study what the books said, and begin experimenting into harnessing them properly.
The more troubling thoughts were on his parents. If there was one thing orphaned children hate its finding out that they've been abandoned, and Harry was certainly wasn't an exception. The Dursleys had never hesitated in pointing out his parents were layabouts, but even they probably didn't know how callous his parents were, and all for an old man with delusions of grandeur.
Dumbledore, Voldemort, and his parents...and this tournament he was supposed to be participating in. Harry had never had plans to participate in things like that, but the tournament was something Harry sneered at, and the most puzzling thing was how he was caught up with it in the first place. He'd skipped that part when he read the book, but there were two possibilities; one, he would be caught by the magical world, and if the wizard was right about that, and there was no reason why he shouldn't be right, then the magical world was looking for him. If that was true though, why had he not had any previous contact with them. Or had he? Harry dropped the trunk and sat down on it, rubbing his eyes as he thought back to all the times when he'd had his hand shaken in the streets by weirdly dressed people, or when like that time when he and aunt Petunia and Dudley had stumbled upon that man who talked in thin air.
Wizards?
Harry's heart turned cold as he thought that the magical world, or a small minority of them at least, had been aware of where he'd lived, but that also meant they'd been aware of the hellish life he'd lead. A hero? Hah, rodents are treated better than he'd been. Maybe I should let them all die, serve them all right, Harry thought in his head, dark and angry thoughts swelling in his head. He got up, and he lugged the trunk and dragged the heavy thing through the woods. By the time Harry arrived at the sphinx it was sunset, and Harry took the time to smell the air. It was a truly fresh smell, no pollution, only the scent of nature, flowers, grass and trees.
If the sphinx had not been there, Harry would've thought there'd been no intelligent life on the planet. Dragging the trunk to the exact spot as the one he'd arrived in, Harry took out his iPhone, and checked the platternite power reserve. There was enough. He set the phone to take him back at night so then no one would see him arrive.