A/N: This Chapter will show a bit more of what can be expected from Harry power wise and discuss his motivations and future plans. For those of you who might worry about the direction or a similarity between a certain other fic when you come to the end, don't. My take on this will be quite different, that much I assure you.

Chapter 4: A Weapon of Choice

June 5th, 1988

Deep in a clearing of the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night, a small child could be seen carving into something.

Having spent the previous night at the Leaky Cauldron and using the day to not only gather a few missing ingredients but to also get to this point in the forest after flooing to Hogsmeade, Harry was currently working on his first major project in this reality.

His wand.

With his entire body now aching and feeling an occasional muscle spasm traveling through his limbs, it was a clear indicator to him that he was entering dangerous waters, having used too much magic without building up a resistance to it. It was one of the main reasons why children at Hogwarts started with simple things. Not only were their bodies slowly saturated with the natural magic of castle Hogwarts itself while adjusting to it and building a resistance to it, using too much of their own too soon would damage their bodies and could do the same to their cores.

Magic was, after all, still energy, and too much of anything would never be good to you or your body.

Using a focus like a wand made guiding the magic in one's body a lot easier and lessened the excess that would normally flow through one when they used it. It would give the body time to adjust as the person in question starts to cast magic.

Grunting softly, Harry forced his fingers to still as he carved another rune into the handle of the bone. With the waning moon hanging high above him in the sky as his only source of light, the carving was more instinct and muscle memory gathered from other alternate realities than him having any proper view of his work that helped Harry avoid creating a forest fire. He rather doubted that the Centaurs, Aragog's brood or even the friendly Half-Giant himself would appreciate any accidents on his part. Being Harry Potter didn't always mean you had a get-out-of-jail-free card when it came to burning things. Something he still occasionally felt a little miffed at.

Breathing out one last time and letting his fingers run over his completed work to make sure there would be no mistakes, Harry stood with aching knees and walked towards the stone table he had sliced into form with an overpowered wandless cutting curse that really hadn't helped the already existing pain in his body.

The ancient Egyptian pentagram on said stone table and its runes were overlaid with a heptagram that had a few Norse runes at its points. And in the middle of the entire thing that had taken Harry nearly two hours of constant carving, lying innocently without a care, was the sinew of a long since dead Thestral.

"Now then, time to get this show on the road." Harry mumbled as he put the still shrunken and artfully carved bone over the Thestral sinew.

Mentally groaning a little at the odd requirements for this ritual, Harry quickly shed off his clothes and he couldn't help but shudder a little as the warm June air tickled against his bits which were now hanging free.

One more sweep of his eyes over the entire formation confirmed that everything was as it should be before he started the first step.

Bringing his hand to his lips and thanking his foresight in leaving his canines slightly sharp thanks to that vampire dress-up he was still doing for poor old Tom, Harry bit deep into his flesh until his palm was bleeding.

Careful not to spill even a drop on the forest floor below, he moved closer to his work and let his weeping hand hover over the two objects that would form core and wood for his wand.

And then he spoke.

"Like the first brother I give my blood to these objects of import, these objects of personal power."

Immediately Harry felt the sounds of the forest quiet down as the entire surrounding area seemed to hold its collective breath.

"I give of my blood to form a pact between wielder and wand."

A wind started to pick up around him as the carved lines on the stone started to glow with an unearthly power. Whispers, voices too quiet and old, high and low whipped up around Harry as he stood there naked as the day he was born with the first drop of his blood spilling on the bone below.

It began rattling against the stone immediately.

"May neither break before the last dredges of my blood expires, as is true for the blood of the ancestors gifting me with these objects."

The whispers had started to become louder when the second drop spilled on the sinew and louder still when a veritable waterfall of red dripped on the entire rune cluster.

Whispers turned to voices, and they in turn evolved into screams.

The entire forest came alive with noise as hurricane like winds came up and flattened the surrounding trees in a thirty-meter radius, creating a clearing where before there had only been dense forest. Gouges started appearing in the ground, as if cut from invisible blades, while the entire work on the carved stone shone bright enough to light up the surrounding area akin to the rising sun.

"My name is Harry James Potter."

The screams were now loud enough to nearly drown out what Harry was saying as a cacophony of laughter, crying, angry rants and fearful exclamations battered against his ears. He tried to ignore it all as best as he could.

"And the pact is now made."

Immediately, the woods grew silent.

The ground started to rumble when the runes suddenly lit up bright enough to blind Harry for several seconds while he blinked away the spots in his eyes.

When he could see again, the first thing he spotted was the smoking form of a wand lying on top of the stone. A stone that had turned bright red and caved in considerably, like wet clay depressing beneath the foot of a Giant.

Harry could feel the heat emanating from the gleaming red rock like a physical force, but he tried his best to ignore it as he reached forward and picked up the ivory white fourteen-inch-long wand carefully. It had no real decorations or distinct features except a slight upwards tilt, as if in memory of the bone that it had once come from.

The moment Harry's fingers closed around the handle of his new wand, a cool draft seemed to shoot up into his arm, traveling to his chest and eventually connecting with his core.

The feeling was indescribably comfortable, and he couldn't help but smile as he twirled the newly transformed piece of bone in his fingers experimentally.

The sensation alone was nearly enough to distract him from hearing the stampeding footfalls of a group of Centaurs homing in on his location.

Looking around, Harry couldn't really blame them.

The light show alone would have people all the way from Hogsmeade looking his way, not to mention the absolutely deafening racket and rumble that creating this own personal wand had made.

Giving one last look at the new clearing deep inside the Forbidden Forest, Harry swished his new wand to summon his discarded clothes into his hands, twisted on the spot and disappeared from the area without even a pop.

June 7th, 1988

The air in front of the muggle entrance to the Leaky Cauldron cracked as the world slipped sideways. From out of seemingly nowhere, a leg stepped forward, before the form of a small child with brilliant green eyes that pracitcally glowed in the dark with a mop of unruly black hair on his head appeared where before there had been nothing.

Holding a bag over his shoulder that looked much too big for his small frame, another shift took place and the boy's eyes took on a red hue while his features grew slightly paler.

Without even missing a step, the entire transformation occurred while the boy stepped into the pub proper.

Tom's head shot up from behind the counter at the sound of the door opening and closing, before his face started to sport a rather forced smile when he saw who it was.

"Evening there, Sir. Anything I can help you with?" He said as he pointed at the bulging bag on Harry's back.

"No but thank you. I think I have it all covered." Flashing Tom a toothy smile that made the man's own a touch more forced when the light caught on a pair of fangs, the young boy posing as a vampire stalked past and up the stairs leading to his room.

With a bounce to his step and humming a little song that he had long since forgotten the name of, Harry ignored the small muffled noise coming from his bag as he accidentally bumped it against the wall on his way up.

Only when he had closed the door, whipped out his wand and cast a few of the strongest locking charms, alarm wards and traps that even old Egyptian tombs only rarely ever sported did he feel confident enough to drop the transformation. The sound of re-aligning bone and the burning feeling in his eyes long since something he had grown used to over the days.

Throwing the bag on the bed and absently noting the muffled cry coming from it, Harry cracked his neck once, then twice and interlaced his fingers to stretch his arms out for a few seconds before letting the magic slip from his muscles, no longer reinforcing them. The fatigue was sudden as it was brutal.

His arms and legs, the back and front, yes, even his face felt like one big sore spot.

The feeling of magical poisoning was a good bit weaker than it had been a few days ago thanks to his new wand, but reinforcing one's body like the eastern mages liked to do was tough on even trained individuals, let alone on the body of a 7-year-old boy. It was unfortunate that one had to start early or said magic became pracitcally impossible to master.

Allowing his wand to slip into his hand with a practiced twitch of the wrist, Harry flicked the ivory stick once and the bag dropped away to reveal its contents.

The face of a middle-aged man with greying blond hair and wild eyes met Harry's own impassive gaze. He was struggling against his bound limbs and muffled cries emanated from his stuffed mouth. Such a shame, Harry had quite liked that sock.

"Corban Yaxley. A pleasure." Flicking his wand, the sock left the man's mouth with the force of a homing bludger and he once more cried out in pain.

Sputtering for a moment while regaining his breath, angry eyes stared at the small figure standing before him.

"I don't know who you are, but I will make sure that whoever hired you wil-!" Letting out a short sigh, Harry silenced the man with another twitch of his wand.

"And here I thought talking to you would at least be a little fun, Yaxley. Such a disappointing ending to our little exchange. No witty comebacks, not even snide comments about my malnourished body or odd green eyes and scar." The man's eyes widened significantly once he took that little detail in when Harry helpfully parted his fringe and he stared with a dropped jaw at said lightning bolt scar on the boy's forehead.

"A shame, really. I guess I'll just have to do what I brought you here for then."

Flicking his wand once more and ignoring the now fearful gaze locked on his own, Harry gathered his magic and with a happy smile muttered, "Legilimens."

Backed by his new wand and own magic, the occlumency shields blocking his path crumbled like so much paper.

Not wanting to repeat the earlier performance of leaving the man the same drooling mess that no doubt Dolores Umbridge now was, Harry flitted around in the tumble and ever shifting refractory of light that was the human mind a good bit more carefully.

Having mastered this particular branch of magic quite some time ago, it took barely fifteen minutes to find purchase in the man's mind for his fellow 'comrades' and to see if things were really as they seemed.

Avery Senior? Still alive and kicking. Avery Junior? Still a dick. Carrow twins? Both managed to stay out of Azkaban in this timeline too but ran a little shop in Knockturn Alley. Odd but not too far from the norm.

Harry went through memory after memory with a speed that would have boggled a lesser wizard's understanding as he archived the information carefully in his own mind while he coaxed evermore from the clearly repentant Death Eater that would never again hurt a fly. Harry rather doubted that even Severus Snape would have really regretted anything he did in that war if it hadn't inevitably killed Lilly. Someone like Yaxley? That war had brought the man some of his to date happiest memories, even if they came at the cost of a few raped and brutally murdered Muggles and Mud-bloods.

Still, there was work to be done and no time for distractions.

Rowle? Still a little bitch. Travers? Still likes his Half-bloods a little too much. Wilkes? Still dead. Voldemort? Presumably dead thanks to Potter brat.

Deciding that was good enough, Harry left the man's mind and twisted his magic through his wand in the all too familiar 'Tempus' spell.

Huh. Only 34 minutes. That was a new record time in digging through nearly twenty years' worth of memories.

Doing a little mental happy dance at the accomplishment, Harry pressed his wand against the slightly dazed man's head and mumbled both 'Obliviate' and 'Confundus' one after the other and pumping a little bit extra into the later.

"You will get yourself home. It is late after all. Tomorrow you will feel a need to travel. You will tell your employer that you are taking a few days off because you feel sick. You will then apparate towards Hogsmeade. You will then feel the urge to travel the surrounding forest a bit. You will walk for a few hours and enjoy the scenery. You will sit down and place your wand next to you on the ground. After a time, you will stand up and keep walking deeper into the forest until nightfall."

Ending the spell there, a now glassy eyed Yaxley nodded once before trying to stand despite his bound limbs.

Smacking himself mentally, Harry vanished the conjured rope and unlocked the door for the good man as he stumbled past.

Honestly, if he managed to survive a night in the Forbidden Forest without his wand, unable to apparate out or do more than cast a few weak wandless banishers, then the man deserved to live a little while longer.

Happy to have dealt with this little problem and finally sure that everything important was as it should be, Harry started to plan.

It was true that he had made quite a few plans over the many years trapped as he was in different and sometimes strange worlds, most of those plans however hinged on the simple fact of landing somewhere in the first to fourth year of attending Hogwarts. It was mostly because those were the years he ended up nearly nine out of ten times in.

On a few rare occasions he was even forced to go through the very early years of his life and start there. Honestly, that would have been Harry's favorite point in time to start over, even if it would have left him with little more power than the average witch or wizard being at only a few months of age. Still, it was enough to make sure that his parents and a few other key individuals would live through Voldemort's reign somehow. It honestly wasn't that hard to blast the bastard's body to shreds once you knew what rituals he had gone through. I mean, it did take Voldemort nearly ten years to come back in some aspect the first time he was bodily killed, so that left more than ample time to deal with his little going away presents.

Harry's current situation was a little awkward, he had never really been thrust into this point in time before, so his normally tightly laid plans had been thrown for a bit of a loop.

It was clear however that he couldn't just fly by the seat of his pants any longer and that it was time to establish some key points where Harry wanted to change events.

The first thing that had come to his mind was to keep Luna's mother from dying. It was a small detail in the grand scheme of things, but it would have quite the effect on one little girl, and for the better, that was sure.

If memory served right, she died somewhere around May in the year 1990.

Next on the list was preventing Fudge from ever getting into office. Unlike Muggle equivalents, once you were Minister of Magic there was no timeframe for how long you kept your seat of power. So long as you didn't create some kind of massive public outcry or died, the office was yours until you abdicated.

Since Fudge would be elected on the 1st of November in the same year that Luna's mother died, that would be the next thing to work towards in the coming years.

But those were plans for the future.

Harry thought long and hard about his next step as he contemplated what he knew.

The big kickoff would be the 31st of July 1991, a point in time Harry privately liked to call the Beginning-of-the-End. A bit morbid, but it held true nevertheless.

Putting his hands behind his back, Harry started walking in circles in his small room.

His mind was adrift for a moment, a contemplative mood wrapping around his shoulders as he pondered the future. One step in the wrong direction could change a lot, but there were certain fixtures that would remain the same so long as he didn't start something enormous, like say World War 3.

If things stayed the same, a lot of bad would come swinging towards the innocent part of the population, small as it may seem to be sometimes.

With that in mind, Harry considered what he had already set in motion with his, now that he thought about it a bit more, rather rash actions.

Harry Potter had gone missing from Privet Drive for a few days now and Dumbledore was aware of that fact, thanks to little old Arabella Figg no doubt. A problem to be sure, but not an immediate one. The old goat wouldn't dare tell the wizarding public that their favorite savior/punching bag had gone missing after all. The pile of dragon dung that little revelation would shovel towards Dumbledore's feet was much too big, even for a revered figure like himself.

So, a little story would have to be created. A plot that would explain why meek little Harry blasted his Uncle a good thirty feet while simultaneously rocking the house's foundations to its core.

Some imaginary figure coming to check on Harry? A long since thought dead relative taking him away from an abusive home and implanting false memories in the Uncle? Something like that would lead the Headmaster on quite a merry chase. Possibly even long enough until Hogwarts finally rolled around. Something for later to think more about at least.

Next on the list was the -kind of- murder of Dolores Umbridge. That would have some interesting implications for the future. Would maybe a more just or honest person whisper in the Minister's ear? Time would te-

Hold up.

Harry stopped dead in his tracks in the room.

Dolores Jane Umbridge was Senior Undersecretary to the Minister, that much was true.

But she was in that position under Fudge and not Bagnold. Thanks in part by a certain blond ponce of a Death Eater no doubt.

Furious at himself for not seeing an obvious clue like that, Harry started pacing aggressively in his room once more and went through the memories of the woman he mind-broke not too long ago with a little more eye for certain details this time. What he found was irritating as it was interesting.

She had apparently only been promoted recently, thanks to a rather cunning tactic involving both Fudge and Lucius Malfoy chipping in before the Wizengamot when the previous Undersecretary died of a rather dubious case of Dragon Pox. Harry had his own hunch as to who was responsible for that one.

The reason as to why she was promoted so early in this universe was found soon enough in a memory of a hushed discussion between Fudge, Malfoy and her.

It was simple as it was deviant.

In her new position, one that Bagnold didn't seem to feel too threatened by for whatever reason as she didn't protest the vote, Umbridge would have a far easier time not only to keep an eye on the dear Minister but also to set her up for the inevitable fall that was needed for Fudge to become a viable candidate.

Honestly, Harry wasn't too sure now if the same hadn't happened in his own timeline in some way, shape or form, even if he would have remembered Umbridge having the same position that he was sure she would normally only gain in five years' time.

The point was, both Fudge and Malfoy were now in a rather awkward position with their own plans for the future.

She had been in her new position for barely two weeks and before she could dig up any substantial dirt she was now forever out of commission. It put a little smile on Harry's face when he thought about Lucius and how much gold the man had probably wasted in this endeavor for more power. A stray memory of the peacocks the man supposedly owned on his property and if they would now be served as dinner by Dobby had the incredibly old soul in a child's body snickering in cruel delight.

Enjoying the thought for a moment longer, Harry decided to get back on track.

His next step was already starting to crystalize for him in his mind.

With both Fudge and Malfoy off balance, the Ministry itself in an uproar about one of their own getting attacked like that deep in the bowels of the underground building and with one more person soon to disappear too on sick leave, well Harry knew he would have to capitalize a good bit to make sure that the Pure-blood block wouldn't be much of a faction anymore once he started at Hogwarts.

The idea of assassinating everyone who had once been a Death Eater was a pleasant thought but was quickly dismissed.

There was an inherent problem with that kind of plan, it either happened nearly all at once, or not at all. Considering there was only one Harry but dozens of targets, taking them all out in one fell swoop without anyone noticing was but a pipedream.

Counter to what movies tried to tell the population, a group of people that was getting picked off one by one did not stay in the same place and fought to the last man. They rather tended to scatter and took all their belongings and business with them.

Considering that a few of said Death Eaters had a strong grasp on Magical Britain's economy, well the disaster that would create for the population at large or the panic it would spread went unsaid.

It wouldn't do much for Harry if he sent all those Death Munchers running out of the country only for said country to tear itself apart in a civil war shortly after.

Something like the Confundus was only ever good for one order that didn't last longer than a week and the Imperius was rather obvious once you crossed more than a single target, even for a skilled wizard. Not to mention that Confunding four or five dozen people weekly would consume more time than it was worth too if Harry wanted to remain unknown and still go to Hogwarts.

Doing one circle after the other in the room given to him by good old Tom, Harry slowly decided on a course of action.

He needed some kind of influence on the political stage and at the same time he had to make sure that Dumbledore wouldn't find him and thus drag him back to the Dursleys.

So, if he needed a parent figure for little Harry and a public figure for influencing opinions and shake things up a bit, well why not combine both?

A slow smile started to spread over Harry's face as he absently twirled his wand in his fingers.

Yes. He could work with this.

Oh, this would be so much fun.