Origin of Spirits
Haltia's prompt: Harry as a shape-shifting guardian "spirit", perhaps in the form of a dragon, a phoenix, or a more mundane animal (maybe a raven). After achieving the status of Master of Death, Harry was betrayed and bound to an item to be called forth and used as a weapon at Dumbledore's/Ministry's discretion. After Muggles (now mundanes?) found out about the magical world and destroyed it (in a war?) the item holding Harry disappeared. Years later, someone finds it and manages to call the "spirit" forth. First, Harry would be sad to hear his kin gone, maybe still feel betrayal of their actions, maybe be angry, but ultimately forced to protect his summoner. After a time, Harry slowly heals and becomes a treasured companion, teaching and giving advice, until at the death of his latest owner, he is released by the said owner.
(Seeing as I've read all the Dresden Files until Cold Days, spoilers!)
*~o~*~o~*~o~*
He hasn't got a name until Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden gives him one. Or rather, being what he is, a spirit – he doesn't remember a name, only a function. A basic set of rules to survive by, serve and obey. Bob is what Harry names him, and with a name comes personality, identity, history.
Who and what he is – and who and what he was is joined in a name. Amazing things, names. Names have power, but an unseen kind of power; a power that can be heard and felt. So Bob remembers when he wasn't merely a spirit of intellect (oh, how Hermione would find that amusing) when, in fact, he was Harry James Potter.
If Harry Dresden ever really realized what he did in naming him – a spirit, well, Bob doesn't like to think about it. As it is he gets away with inhabiting a skull and looking about at the world with glowing orange eyes, orange the color of fall harvest, of life and death, beginnings and endings; the perfect color for the Master of Death.
Harry Potter remembers dying; he'd felled 'I am Lord Voldemort' and seen Albus Dumbledore buried, and after Augustus Rookwood, a former Death Eater and former Unspeakable had caught up to Harry and using a sharpened arm bone of a Dementor and a holding vessel of Thestral skull, he'd stole Harry's soul and killed his body – putting the soul of Harry Potter into the Thestral skull. A soul without a body becomes a spirit, and Harry Potter was the most powerful wizard of his generation, and the spirit of such a wizard is not gotten rid of lightly – and almost never put to rest.
Rookwood had done what he had to have a bargaining chip with the Ministry of Magic, and it had worked – the Ministry had Harry Potter's spirit, and for a long while Harry had felt the part of a genie. Rub skull and get a wish, or three, or whatever. Remember this, remember that, over time it had been easy to loose his name, and with the name was lost his identity, his personality, his history. Who he was and why he was.
Age upon age passed, Merlin was remembered – but little else was – the thing about humans is that they think small, recorded history is a matter of a handful of a few million years, but the age of humanity is bigger. Thirty thousand years, perhaps fifty, the way a spirit of intellect could reason it out. Harry had seen the whole world change in his lifetime, science, math and technology had seemed to grow and shape the whole world.
It was thought that humanity would reach the stars – and maybe – maybe when Harry wasn't paying attention and didn't notice it, they did, and it might have been magnificent. Yet the thing was that technology couldn't expand so much without finding magic, the and people don't really change - that's so of magic and non-magical peoples. So they had fought and battled and warred and bled each other, a waste that sent them into a dark age (what they thought of as the Dark Age, just as others had in Harry Potter's timeline).
Humanity; magical and mundane, had crawled out of it, an age without electricity, without technology and they were doing it all over again. Bob didn't later have the heart to ask how often this had happened of someone who would know – an old god or goddess, or one of the Fey. As a spirit of intellect Bob – Harry Potter – he could guess there were some things that people weren't meant to know, and that he did know it ate at him with worry.
It isn't until Harry Potter's spirit had been transferred from a shard of Thestral skull and put into a human one (in the Dark Age, by a wizard named Etienne) that he realized shape didn't matter, not really, and he could take any shape he wanted, possess any body. Etienne called him 'Aire Spirit' which Harry supposes is both the element and a corrupted form of his own name passed down though history.
Karma is sort of a bitch and Harry found himself in the possession of Dark Wizards that would have given Lord Voldemort a run for his money. It goes on for almost a hundred years and Harry develops his most annoying habit he can think of – reflecting the personality of his "master", to do it effectively Harry sort of had to forget himself. (It is, in the end, the only way he can forgive himself.)
And then, Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden comes along and gives Harry Potter's spirit a name – Bob – which is enough to remind an 'air spirit' that he has a name – had a name – and what a name means.
*~o~*~o~*~o~*
Harry Dresden crafts a mural of stones found all over Earth, and gives it to Bob. It's his requested "better housing", but its Waldo Butters that carries it carefully into his basement and sets it into the wet cement floor. And for the first time the spirit of Harry Potter manifests; with his spirit so encased he has a permanent place (alike a body) for his spirit and enough energy to manifest anywhere and at any time.
That Bob does, almost at once.
"Well, what do you think?" Waldo Butters finally has to ask, nervously pushing his glasses up higher on his nose. Dresden hadn't told him what to expect but this youth with black hair, a slender body and green eyes isn't it. Waldo doesn't know what to think of Bob's body – it looks a lot like his own.
He's heard of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery but this…this is a bit odd. Waldo has to wonder if Bob was in someone else's basement (possession?) if his manifested body would be like theirs.
"Oh, I'm loving this – what do you think?" It's almost flirty, and Waldo looks to Bob with wide eyes and sees that teasing smile and half-lidded eyes and thinks 'oh', because it is.
Bob's always been a sexual spirit, but lately less so and Waldo thought it was because he's in his mid-thirties and Harry found and named Bob as a teenager – but it's clear to him with Bob standing there and leering at Waldo that if Bob's any less sexual it's not because he's a monk – but because he's focusing it – on Waldo Butters.
And Waldo thinks he's okay – more than okay – with that.
He only wonders what Dresden will think – but as Bob sways toward him, Waldo doesn't waste time worrying about anything else.
*~o~*~o~*~o~*
There is an empty grave that has Harry Dresden's name on it. Only he knows it's not empty, there are pieces of an empty mural in it. He chiseled Bob under 'He died doing the right thing.' It's what Bob had begged him to do after Butters had died.
Harry Dresden visits it whenever he wants to talk, and sometimes he imagines there is a whisper of answer in the wind.