Disclaimer:
I solemnly swear that the literature and works of the Harry Potter Verse belong to JK Rowling, Bloomberg and Warner Bros. The only thing I own are the one-shot ideas that popped into my head and whatever OCs I would create for them. This is a work of pure fiction made solely for fun, constructive reviews will be welcomed, flames will be ignored. Any references to characters in real-life or fiction are purely coincidental. If I could make money out of my ideas, it would be nice...
Mischief Managed Damn It!
Title: Headstart (Working Title)
Posted Date: December 8th 2019
Tags: Scientific and Mad Scientist type Harry, Ravenclaw House, Manipulative Dumbledore
For as long as the boy named Harry Potter could remember, he thought of himself as something of an oddity.
Harry was, for a lack of a better word, 'raised' in the house located at Number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey of Britain. 'Raised' by a family of three who were supposedly his relatives from his mother's side and for some reason, hated him for something that he had no idea what it was, to the point of calling him 'Freak' or 'Boy' even after he went to school at the age of six and found out his real name when the teacher called out to him. Whatever information he could get about his parents, after getting a hit at the back of the head or getting thrown into his cupboard under the stairs, was not very comforting. Aunt Petunia seemed to relish telling him that his parents were dead-beat drunks who got killed in a car crash, leaving Harry as the sole survivor with only a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead as the only indicator. On that part, Harry had some doubts, mostly because it was his aunt telling it, but also the fact he kept having dreams of a woman who would sing to him tenderly as she held him in her arms, with the scent of lilies present quite strongly. It was those dreams that helped him at night at times when his loneliness got to him, even if it left him bittersweet in the morning.
More often than not though, he would have nightmares of said woman being attacked by someone with a sinister voice and laugh, telling her to move aside to get to him before a bright flash of green would signal his return to the waking world. Harry would always wake up in the middle of the night shivering from the chill of the night and that of the laughter that rang in his ears until he fell back into an uneasy sleep.
Harry had tried to do whatever his relatives wanted him to do in hopes of gaining their favour, even if it broke his heart that they did not acknowledge his efforts or spread lies about him. It was when he came back from school with the test results of his first semester that made it clear they wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. It had devastated him and he ended up crying his heart out in the darkness of his cupboard when Vernon threw him into it as he accused the boy of cheating.
It was while Harry sat on the swing-set in the park trying to sort his thoughts when he overheard a couple of older students arguing about their own tests and grades. One of them was evidently in a similar situation as Harry with the difference that the older kid did not care about the bully's attempts to stop his work, he was going to do his best to make his sick mother proud and prove that he would succeed where the bully failed. Those words struck a chord inside Harry; why did he keep trying to gain the attention of his relatives when they would always berate him, throw him into his cupboard and blame everything that went wrong in their lives on him? Why did he had to put up with Dudley's childish tantrums and issues while Petunia and Vernon lavished all their attention on to him? Why did he had to keep his head down while they spread lies about him being a troubled child?
Why was he dealing with the Dursleys when the people he should be proving were his own parents, to prove that he was supposedly more than his 'dead-beat drunk parents'?
No more.
He had enough of their unjust punishments and lies.
He was going to do what he wanted and not have to put up with their issues any longer. Let others see their flaws and their mistakes. He would prove to them all that he was not a weakling, and he would fight his way of his home situation.
With that mindset, Harry got off the swing seat he was on and made his way to the town library where the librarian was more than happy to point him to the shelves that contained his interest. From that day onward, Harry kept making visits to that and the school library, devouring whatever information he could lay his hands on in his pursuits for knowledge. Be it simple gardening to complex mathematics, mechanics to civil laws, Harry took them all into his mind even if it was a little hard to understand for one his age. It also helped that much of the laws would help him with his home situation in case Vernon decided to take things too far.
It did not take much time for the teachers and the Dursleys to see that Harry had been making great progress in his studies and looked set to make his mark in the top twenty for the year. Vernon had shown his displeasure for his academic success by hitting him harder and starving him for longer periods, but Harry did not let that deter him. Harry had even started to store food items in the loose board of the cupboard so that he would at least have some sustenance when he had to serve his 'rightful punishments'. Dudley had whined and complained about his grades being better than his, but Harry gave them a look and stated very clearly that he would not be dragged down by someone who did not bother putting in effort in anything but eating and bullying. It did have the benefit of making them back down slightly for a time, might be the manner he delivered his words to them.
It certainly helped his case that the school staff were taking a closer look at him now that he was performing better and noted how different he was compared to Dudley. The school nurse, one of the nicer adults around, had tried to complain about the obvious abuse but people had ignored her in the beginning. Now with Dudley beginning to gain detentions and remedial lessons in conjunction with his immense weight, she was able to make some progress in fixing Harry's issues and she along with a couple of other teachers started to gather evidence in case the Dursley adults decided that Harry was going to be a bigger burden then they needed to tolerate. Harry remembered her demonstrating her colourful vocabulary when she was checking his body condition and appalled at what she found.
The teachers themselves took a good look at him and Dudley, taking note of how his cousin always had issues with even the simplest of questions and bullied those he deemed weaker than him, while Harry kept mostly to himself but stayed polite to those around him and to them while keeping track with his work, a far cry from what the Dursleys had told them about Harry being a trouble maker. From what Harry could tell, a few were troubled by how easily they fell for the Dursleys' lies and sought to make up for their actions or inactions by intervening on Dudley's bullying attempts on him or others, and making sure that Harry was being challenged intellectually. One of them had even got into blows with one of the nastier teachers who was apparently friends with Vernon and had tried to dump punishments on Harry for 'taking away Dudley's intelligence'. Something that honestly dumbfounded Harry at the reaction.
It was around the start of his second year of school when Harry would make a discovery on the supposed 'freakishness' Vernon and Petunia kept blaming him for. Dudley did not appreciate Harry's placement in the school's rankings or the praises he would get from the teachers, and how Dudley would keep getting detentions for actions his parents had ignored or downright encouraged (much to the horror of the teachers who had to write out his detention form many times to the point they had created a new standard for his level of bullying) or the fact that Vernon was now getting stricter with him to try and get him into his old Smelting Academy. He and his motley crew of bullies would start a tradition of 'Harry Hunting' whereby they would go after Harry just so they could feel better after 'teaching the Teacher's Pet a lesson'. Harry had to run away quite often before, but at the time it was perhaps the most hectic chase he had to outrun. The boys kept cutting off his escape routes and it was only due to his size and reflexes that Harry managed to escape at the last second, but just as he was getting boxed in, Harry wished at the bottom of his heart that he could be somewhere safe from Dudley.
Then it happened.
One moment, he was ducking around the corner that led to the playground, the next moment he would find himself on the roof of the small shack at the school. Harry barely had time to stop at the edge before he swung his arms backwards to throw himself to the floor, the wind taken out of him by the suddenness of the action. It took a few minutes to get his bearings but once he calmed down, Harry felt an odd excitement bubbling inside him as he looked at his hands as though to see if he was dreaming.
He had some inkling as to what was going on, after all there was no way to explain him gaining back a full mane of hair after Petunia cruelly shaved portions of his head bald the night before, or the nasty teacher getting his hair colour changed after insulting Harry and a couple of others wrongly. There was also that time towards the end of his first year when Vernon got heavy-handed and slammed him hard against the door, breaking a couple of his ribs in the process, only to somehow be healed the next morning or at most two days time. He recalled in all those periods how angry he was for the former two, and how much in pain he was at the last, and how he wished for something to happen. In all those times, he got something that came without warning but definitely most appreciated.
On a whim, he looked to where the school library was situated, focused hard on the image and the previous emotion he had experienced before taking a step forward. A good thing he did just one step as he almost smacked his face against the door, but that did not dampen his excitement as new possibilities and ideas started to erupt from this discovery. He had actual powers at his fingertips, if he could heal from injuries and teleport from Dudley, that meant he could do other stuff that he had read from those comics he pilfered from Dudley when he was bored of them. And if he had powers, he could also protect himself from Vernon, Petunia and Dudley when they try to punish him.
He could practically do anything!
Harry managed to stop himself from getting too excited at the idea, he needed to understand more about the powers he had. He needed to know their capabilities, limitations, his overall control over them and then he needed to master them so that he could call them out easily.
At the back of his mind though, he had to wonder...
Was he the only one, or were there others?
~ooOOoo~
Harry would like to say that his first foray into understanding his powers were adventurous, outstanding or even earth-shattering, but truthfully it was a more of a hassle.
Harry first went around to finding a quiet spot to try out some basic ideas he got from comics, not an easy thing to do as Dudley kept trying to chase him with his gang, leaving very few spots that were available for him. He figured that it had to be in an area that was not too visited by the locals and a place that he could afford to experiment openly which could double as a possible hideaway if the Dursleys decided to get more creative with their punishments without the other adults catching them in the act as it had happened a couple of times. He would find the ideal spot by accident when he was running again from Dudley's gang and accidentally tripped over a rock that sent him careening through a thick bush and through an old pipeline that evidently led to the old wood factory near the waterfront. It was not really a big factory since Privet Drive was a small town, roughly four stories high and about twenty units wide. It had been stripped bare of whatever equipment there used to be with only a few odds and bits left behind and what appeared to be empty offices, but it was still standing with no obvious damage, it was dry and more importantly, it was not used by any squatters or anyone since it had been fenced off after the factory shut down for a better one.
Add in the small storage unit abandoned next to it, and it was perfect for Harry to make it his own secret hideout. Once he cleared out one of the rooms, it was time for him to try out his powers.
His first few attempts to understand his power could be described in two words, embarrassing and frustrating.
Harry would find much of his inspiration to focus his powers from the Star Wars film, specifically the idea of equating his powers to the 'Force' as it seemed to define his powers quite nicely. He had to think very clearly what had happened in the few times something odd happened around him before trying to focus on the memories and the general feelings he would have at those times. It was rather nerve wrecking when he actually felt something react inside him and travelled down his arms to his fingers before something actually happen. He likened the feeling to a small dog eager to please its master, and had to snort at the image of said puppy with its tail wagging and tongue out. It took a while to remember the sensation before he could call upon it at will.
Once he got the feeling going, Harry started to test with the teleporting ability he had the better understanding of. His first test with distance quickly showed that he could get to wherever he wanted in the factory provided he had a clear image of what he wanted without obstructions. Then he tried going to the locations he had been to his entire life, to which he found it quite easy as long as he associated the location with either a person or a feeling of the place. Harry found the latter by accident when he was thinking about the animals at the zoo and found himself near the entrance of said zoo, thankfully with no one witnessing his sudden appearance. He also found that depending on the conditions he could potentially be burnt out from the teleporting, and he needed to be certain that he wanted to move to a spot. Without it, Harry would find his face intimately introduced to the wall or the ground.
Not a nice feeling to have.
Once he got that part down, Harry started trying to emulate the common powers he read from fantasy books and comics, at least those he figured would be the easiest and safest to replicate like creating a ball of light. After all it would be useful to have a source of light when he was in his cupboard, and there was no way it could not be that bad or dangerous right?
Harry found himself rethinking that statement when his third attempt to create a viable light source succeeded in a ball of light the size of a football blinding him by accident, causing him to stumble like a blind man and accidentally hitting his head into the old pipe scaffolding.
After a few minutes Harry would have found most of his sight with a few dark spots obstructing his view and himself reassessing the amount of power he needed to use for the light. With squinted eyes and an image, he tried to make the source smaller with a lower intensity. It would take the better part of the hour and additional blinding to finally get the glowing globe to be the size of a golf ball with enough light to help him read comfortably in the dark. That session also left him drained enough to stop for the day, but that did not diminish the sense of accomplishment he had gotten from the test.
Another power he tried to emulate was the ability to conjure fireballs, admittedly an idea that came from his childish desire to act out like the wizards from the fantasy books. Harry chose the old incinerator left in the factory with the reasoning that if he accidentally did it too aggressively, he could contain it without it burning the place down. His first few attempts were quite pathetic, merely creating enough sparks to perhaps set dried tinder on fire but not an actual fireball. Around the second hour mark and after the thirty-first attempt, Harry was annoyed enough from his lack of progress that he basically threw both hands at the incinerator and just yelled in frustration. That frustrated yell became a surprised yelp as the incinerator practically exploded into flames, the heat from the flames forcing him back a few feet instinctively to avoid getting burnt.
Once he got his wits together and his heart at a normal rate, Harry tried to understand how that happened. It took him another ten minutes with a few quick pen notes for him to associate his intent and emotions to get the desired effect, at which point Harry may have discovered his inner pyromania as he targeted small objects to set on fire. At the same time, he learned how to manipulate the flames enough to either move them to another spot or to snuff them out completely. It did not take long for Harry to apply some physics into the equation and he ended up creating different variants of fire based on his understanding of hydrogen and oxygen ratio alongside other gases.
At least he now had a fire source should he find himself locked out of the house again.
Using Obi-wan's teachings and his own testing, Harry was able to summon and repel objects of reasonable mass, stimulate his own healing and even create illusions to get Dudley off his back when he was chasing him with his hunting. He was just waiting for the time that he could fly with these powers!
It would be glorious!
~ooOOoo~
Harry tried out whatever ideas he could get and got pretty far with them. By the time he hit his eighth birthday, Harry would have seven notebooks loaded with ideas, quick sketches and even rejected ideas set aside with the possibility of revisiting and tweaking. Harry felt like his mind was wanting to explode from all the ideas in his mind, but he also wanted to make sure he did not get too out of control with it. A quote from a certain comic book hero rang true to him when he had contemplated what he wanted to do with his powers. 'With great power comes great responsibility.' That was the phrase that stopped Harry from going crazy on the Dursleys and those who had picked on him. It was certainly tempting to give them a taste of what he had to endure, but he resisted it hard, reasoning with himself that he would fall into temptation to the darker aspects of life like Obi-wan spoke of.
That did not stop Harry from implementing a type of field around him or his 'room' that would make the Dursleys ignore him provided he did not get in their way. It certainly made things easier for him since they could not bother him that much, and it was a little amusing seeing how they tried to do things in the house without his help, thus showing how much they have loaded onto him and how much they had depended on the 'freak' to make their own lives better. It had the side benefit of letting the staff see that they were neglecting Harry and spoiling Dudley a lot to the point that Petunia was receiving fewer invitations to tea at other people's homes, Vernon was getting fewer contacts and Dudley was almost being watched the whole day at school for his issues. One of the nicer teachers had even offered to let Harry stay overnight at his place so that he could help to take care of his needs, which Harry was still considering.
It was not out of malice, it was just Harry was used to being alone for so long that he felt some pride in handling his situation, and there was the fact that Harry started feeling eyes on him after he started his training on the 'Force Sensing', by which he used his powers to sense his surroundings as a way to pick up on Dudley if he was around. At first Harry thought it was a side effect as he had used a fair bit of power, but then he started noticing a few seemingly stray cats moving around the area and following him at a distance. On a whim, Harry turned around the corner at the local bakery and moved to the roof, looking down as cats appeared at the alley and looked around. With a jolt, he recognized four of the cats as those belonging to Mrs Arabella Fig, the neighbour who had too many cats for his liking and often babysit him when the Dursleys did not want him on their trips. At a thought, he pulsed his powers at them and was shocked to find something resonating inside them. He barely drew his head back to avoid being seen as his thoughts went to overdrive at the possibility that his neighbour might know something about him and that her pets could be spies to check on him.
The idea got enhanced a few days later when he returned to Privet Drive and blinked at the odd dome of energy around it. It had a sickly look to it with threads of crimson red and sickly green moving around the surface and with notable cracks on certain spots, but what worried him was how no one else seemed to notice it with a few passing through without ill effects. He had seen some facet of it a few months into his training, but this was the first time he could see it without even focusing his powers, and it made him sick in his stomach from the general feel of it. It did not feel natural or pleasant at all, and he could not help but wonder if this was related to his life in some odd manner.
As he drew closer to the Dursleys, Harry could see the red threads pulsing brighter while the green threads extended off it and reached for him in a menacing manner. Harry felt something very wrong with them as they came closer and instinctively let loose a portion of his powers to fend them off, but evidently it was too much as the dome seemed to cave under the pressure with more cracks appearing before it completely collapsed with a loud crash reminiscent of glass windows shattering. Harry had to blink at that reaction before a sense of foreboding came upon him and he ran to the back just as the sounds of air popping filled the area.
Hidden behind the bushes, Harry saw a weird old man with a long beard dressed in robes of ridiculous colors appeared with what looked to be an actual wand and a huge frown on his face, followed shortly by two others dressed in robes as well. Harry had the bad feeling that man was there for him and decided to stick around the school area just in case. He waited a few hours in the library before returning only to find the same barrier installed again and what felt like some people waiting in the area around him without him seeing anything visible.
Harry pretended to look around in confusion as he checked their positions before moving forward to the house, creating a thin layer around his body to protect himself from the threads trying to connect to him. With another ill ease, Harry pretended to stumble to the left to avoid a ray of light hitting him from the back before using a hand to support himself and to disguise the pulse of power to push away all of the watchers at once. That resulted in another collapse of the dome and more importantly scaring the people away without knowing what it was that made them do it. Harry did however see the old man in the odd robes disappearing with a loud pop and a frown on his face as he looked at Harry with eyes that unsettled him.
Harry considered the ramifications as he laid inside the cupboard with a small globe of light hovering above and a small pipe he procured from the factory locking the door in place from the inside. It was clear that the old man had to be related to that odd barrier set up around the Durlsey's home, and considering how he was getting attacked, it meant that the people wanted him to be stuck there. This would explain why despite the efforts of the teachers and even a few of the neighbors to get the Dursleys charged with abuse, they somehow got away on an odd technicality or evidence happened to disappear with a few people suddenly forgetting. The most unsettling example was when one of his teachers tried to go to someone he knew to help, the man suddenly turned up dead in a food diner supposedly from food poisoning, which would be unnoticed by most but his other teachers knew that the man was a vegetarian who was allergic to certain food items and found it suspicious that he was found eating those same things, not to mention the reports he held that day about Harry's abuse went missing. That chilled them gravely, thinking someone was wanting to keep Harry at the Dursleys at all costs to the point of murder. The most they could do for Harry was to ensure that he was safe while slowly collecting evidence without alerting anyone.
But the wand the old man used, and the oddly familiar feeling of the power coming from them… Harry was not certain but considering the Durselys behavior, this meant that the power he had was actually something closer to magic as opposed to ESP or mutant abilities, which would explain a fair number of his creations and testing. That meant that there were people just like him with similar traits, but different in their executions.
Now he knew, or at least have an idea of what his power was.
Now he knew that he had at least one spy on him from his neighbor.
Now he knew the person, or at the least the face of the one keeping him stuck at the Dursleys.
Now… he could plan…
