Obligatory Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any character, story element or plot item originally published in the Harry Potter books or movies that I may refer to in this story. I'm merely playing in the sandbox.
Author's note: Welcome back, dear reader, to another of my random ideas that I don't know what else to do with.
So, I think I will hold my thoughts for the end. Except for one: And now for something completely different.
Harry stood and watched the train pull away. His last son boards for a major journey in his life. He turns to look at his wife and pauses. Her hair doesn't seem right. It's static as she moves, the hair seeming to be like a plastic wig on a doll.
Ginny Potter looks at him with concern. "Harry, are you alright?"
The train whistle blows, and he covers his ears, a piercing headache suddenly rendering everything unviewable. There's pounding. Constant pounding drowning everything out.
"Potter, you freak, get out here and cook our breakfast!"
He opens his eyes and he's in his cupboard again. He looks around, feeling the lump on his head. Aunt Petunia had struck him with the pan again, but this time harder than usual. Had they just shoved him in here?
What a strange nightmare. He considered this as he pulled himself out of the cupboard, but it felt so real to him. Real enough that he had to remember not to reach for his wand to cast the spells to set the food cooking. The fact that he could remember them so well was odd, too. Dreams hadn't ever worked like that before. Must be the head injury. Even after all those years, he knew better to say it out loud.
"Stop that, " he whispered, shifting the pan with the bacon in it.
"What was that boy?"
"I…I didn't think I said anything, sir."
Vernon settled as he eyed the boy. "You're being weirder than usual, boy. Go check the mail."
Harry set the pan off the burner, listening as Petunia took it back up again, grumbling that he never did anything right. Harry just rolled his eyes. If I had my wand, you wouldn't be saying that, would you, dear Auntie. The thought bothered him, but this time he caught himself before he chastised himself out loud. As he picked up the stack of mail, a familiar parchment envelope caught his eye.
He dropped it, kicking it under the chair. Bringing the mail back, he walked in just as Vernon was telling Dudley to come check on him. "About time, boy."
"It was stuck in the slot, sir. I'm not hungry, Dudley can have mine. Can I start on my chores? I believe I was to go to Mrs. Figg's today to help her with her cleaning like Aunt Petunia said?"
Petunia frowned, thinking. "I don't' remember saying that."
"But then we can go to the mall. There's a new game I want."
"Send the boy on, then we can get Dudders the game he wants."
Harry knew the fat boy would respond.
"Get to your chores, we'll want you gone before we can leave."
Harry nodded and set off to clean the living room. As he did, when they went upstairs to change for the day, Harry slipped the envelope into his shirt. He carefully slid it in the back after seeing how it looked in the front. His oversized shirt covered it nicely and he smirked. "Phase one."
Later that day, he slipped out the back door, not being allowed to use the front walk. "Goodbye, Aunt Petunia."
He walked around to Figg's house, knocking on the door.
"Harry, What are you doing here?" Figg limped up on her crutches, looking around being him as she stood in the doorway.
"I got a letter. Something in it makes me think that you might know something."
He'd pulled it out as he walked, making sure he was out of sight of the Dursley's, breaking the seal and making it look as though he'd read it. He already knew the contents. He'd never forget them.
"A letter?" Figg sounded confused, but Harry's older senses could tell she was faking.
"It mentions an owl and I remember seeing an owl fly by your house and landing on the window ledge one day. Maybe you know about Hogwarts?"
"come inside, harry, some things you don't talk about in public."
He entered, ignoring the smell of cabbage coming from the stove. He recognized the smell of a potion for the treatment of kneazles, knowing that most of the cats were kneazles themselves. She asked him to sit and offered tea, which he declined.
"So, you got your letter. You know what that means, right?"
"But Magic isn't real?"
"Ah, they didn't tell you anything, then." Figg went on to tell him the story he knew, his parent's being witch and wizard, going to Hogwarts. That she herself wasn't a witch but could do a fair number of potions and did well with magical creatures.
"So, how do I reply?"
"I'll help you write a response, but you have to sign it, then I'll leave it and a treat on my window ledge. One of the post owls looking for replies will come here and get it."
Harry nodded, thinking in his mind that Phase Two was complete. Now he needed to get to Diagon and the goblins.
Sitting on the train, already in uniform, he considered his actions over the last few days. It was funny to him that a baseball cap settled so many things. He bought Hedwig, just to have a companion. Several snuck trips to the Alley on the Knight Bus, which didn't actually require a wand, just his hand and a pulse of magic. He knew enough wandless from the vision to do that, and he had some potion ingredients. The Dursleys were now sleeping well. Draught of the Living Death mixed with a nutrient potion and a house elf to clean them. It was interesting what the Goblins would give you when you could provide information on some of their lost treasures, treasures he had found in his Auror days in the future.
Now, he was listening to Ron nattering on about houses, but he knew what he was going to do. The boats didn't matter. He greeted Hagrid warmly when the man met them at the boats, enjoying the man's saying that he'd known his parents. He was glad people had liked them, not that he'd ever known them.
Soon, they were in the Great Hall, being ready to Sort. Draco had tried to engage him several times, but Harry had politely rebuffed him. He didn't want the distraction.
"Harry Potter!" McGonagall had called his name out and he walked forward, pausing before the stool.
"It's just a hat, it's a simple thing."
"I'm not doing it." Harry said simply He looked up at the head table.
"I came to say I'm not playing this game, Albus Dumbledore."
There was a hush over the room. "Mind your manners, Mr. Potter."
"I'm surprised Snape isn't saying it. He hates my father, doesn't he. Hates everyone really, but especially my father for saving him from a werewolf under the Shrieking Shack."
"I…how do you know that."
Snape was sneering but didn't say a word. "Don't worry professor, I guarantee you will like this."
He shoved the stool back and stood on it. "Let me tell the class a story. It begins with a little baby boy who meets a warped mutant named Tom Marvalo Riddle," he says the last, drawing letters in the air. "Dark magic does so much to the skin, it's really bad for you."
"Mr. Potter, I don't think this is the place," Quirrel stutters out, but Harry whips around, silencing, binding and, calling out the last with a twist of his wand to spin him in the air, "Levicorpus."
"You shouldn't interrupt, Professor, this is my show now." Satisfied that the man's back was to him, he continued, despite the outcry of the others at the table.
He goes on to lay out the next six years in brief. He points to students, naming names of actions. When he gets to third year, he smirks, and reaches into his pocket. "Here you go, Minerva. Cast a detection charm on this. Just don't wake him. I want my godfather to have a trial."
She begins to speak, then casts a spell and frowns. "This is an animagius."
"Draught of the Living Death. Put my relatives under it before I left. I know Snape can cure it, so I figured why not? He murdered my parents just as surely as Riddle did."
"The Dark Lord killed your parents."
"Did I forget that?" Harry looked over at the flaming letters. "Guess I did. Must have been the number of times my lovely Aunt hit me on the head with a frying pan when I didn't do what she wanted. Any Ravenclaws want to take up the challenge before I do the big reveal?"
"No." Flitwick's voice comes from behind him.
"Your head of house just figured it out." He hummed a game show theme out loud, then made a buzzer sound. "Time's up." He waved his wand and the letter shifted themselves into the new position of "I am Lord Voldemort."
"Well, now with that out of the way, fourth year. The Triwizard Cup is a stupid idea. Especially when you have four competitors." He glossed over the details, mentioning a dragon and swimming when he didn't know how and then the tragedy of the graveyard. "I am deeply sorry, Cedric. I can honestly say that your death is one of the reasons I've decided to change things." It was the most serious he had sounded since he had started this circus.
He moved on to the Fifth and then finished at the end of the Sixth Year, then waited. "Now, I actually finished school, married, became Head Auror, had kids….but there were a lot of things that went wrong that could have been avoided if I had just known all this."
He turned from the students and faced Dumbledore. "How about we mix things up. Tippy, can you bring me that box?"
A Hogwarts elf brought a box into the room. "Thank you, Tippy." He lifted the crate up and set it on the Head Table. "You know, Goblins aren't so bad if you don't treat them like idiots." He lifted out a cup, setting it before Madame Sprout. "The Cup of Hufflepuff, stolen and lost in the last century. Here you go."
Next, he went to Snape. "Don't touch this one without gloves," he said, lifting a pendant out by the chain, hooking it with his wand. "This thing has the essence of a boggart attached to it, but what do you expect with a pendant that Salazar Slytherin enchanted."
Next, he moved to Filius. "You may wish to let the Gray Lady know that her mother's treasure is purified. The Goblins were very helpful with that." He set the Ravenclaw Diadem in front of the man. "These three should go in a case."
"How did you find these?"
"Well, I didn't tell you about seventh year, because that was an exercise in insanity. The whole thing was ridiculous, to be frank." Harry paused for a moment. "Sorry, Professor McGonagall, I don't have anything for Gryffindor, but if you ask the Hat nicely, he might give you the sword of Gryffindor."
"That is a secret, Harry Potter," the Hat protested.
"Secrets go people killed, you ridiculous piece of cloth." Harry's tone grew colder, the manic note gone from it. "I watched people die because the bearded wonder behind me kept secrets. Like who killed Ariana."
"How…"
Harry was surprised that the staff hadn't stunned him outright by now for attacking a professor or why they were still shocked that he was giving revelation after revelation. Harry had just decided that the wizarding world was fully off its nut, and it was time to shake things up a bit.
"Oh, can it. Grindlewald is alive in his own prison, you did nothing to stop them from sending Hagrid to Azkaban twice, he should have wand rights and you've left that alone. My godfather hasn't had a trial and still sits in Azkaban…and you were the one that cast the Fidelus. You knew that Peter Pettigrew was the Secret Keeper."
"I don't remember casting the spell. That is part of the charm."
"It was his handwriting on the slip. I know. I have one. It was in my parents' vault for safe keeping. I had the Goblins compare it to his signature sheet."
"I just assumed Black forged his writing."
"Fair, the Marauders would have thought that was funny." Harry shrugged. "Well, I'd give you a horcrux that was purged, but Nagini isn't one yet and the other one is just ash." He smirked as Dumbledore stiffened. "Turns out you don't have to have a lot of power to cast Fiendfyre if you don't care about controlling Fiendfyre."
"You burnt my house down!"
"And you just confessed that your father is not only a willing Death Eater but had control of one of the darkest artifacts ever created. Why were you put in Slytherin again?" Harry didn't bother to look at Malfoy at this point.
"He asked for it."
"You shouldn't give spoiled children what they ask for, Hat, it's how you get brat infestations."
The Hat laughed and Harry felt that ragged edge approaching. "So, there we are. I've seen it all before. I dealt with most of the issues so far. You guys have a basilisk to kill, my godfather's trial to deal with and apparently Barty Crouch Senior is Imperioing his son to stay in a bedroom and Winky the house elf is watching him." He rubbed his chin. "Did I miss anything?"
"Why did you attack our Defense professor?"
"To prove he was incompetent?" He asked, sardonically. Then he smiled, a smile he'd seen on a Christmas cartoon about a green man and stealing Christmas. "No, I did forget two things. Dumbledore knows at least one of them."
"Accio Turban." He ignored the screaming as Voldemort's face was revealed to all the students. "Shut up!" He bellowed after a long moment. The room fell silent, and Voldemort writhed impotently. "Guess my Silencer got you too. Good. I'm tired of hearing how you're going to get me or you're going to win and you're the greatest sorcerer in the world and whatever nonsense you come up with. Is there a manual for it? Do you just have a bad writer?"
Harry sat on the stool, watching the face writhe for a moment. "No, I'm flipping the script. I've had enough. I've got two words for you, Tom." Harry put the wand to his forehead and concentrated on the memory of Voldemort and Pettegrew in the graveyard, uttering the words that had haunted him for so many nightmares.
As he spoke, he saw the spirit rip away from Quirrel, the man slump over and had to laugh to himself that the only one who knew him was the man who wanted him dead.
Dumbledore watched in abject horror as his plans were rent to ashes, much like the strange fire that was no longer a mystery but had destroyed the Malfoy home.
He wasn't sure what Potter was doing now until he saw the look of hatred on his face. "No," he whispered, wanting to raise his wand. His professors looked to him for guidance or were stunned in horror, then all to Quirrel as the shade of Tom Riddle ripped from the back of the man's skull. It made it halfway to the stool before the green light of the Avada Kedavra left Potter's wand and traveled the fingertip length to his forehead.
The boy slumped over, and the shade exploded, leaving nothing behind.
Dumbledore stared at the slumped body of the eleven-year-old boy in horror, ignoring the bedlam that had erupted around him.
Author's Note: So, I must give a few bits of credit for this. One is to an unknown source who came up with the horrifying idea that this magical world was the dreams of an abused boy who was seeking a way out. The implication of that idea is that the poor boy was to go on living in the verbal and emotional and physical abuse that occurred there. Some argue the physical aspect, but we must remember that Rowling herself detailed a frying pan incident and I simply repeated it.
The second is to my friend Kaci who insisted that he wouldn't get this far, saying "I had figured he'd go postal on the aunt & uncle." I had honestly decided to leave them out, but here you go, Kaci, I poisoned them for you. Never say I didn't give you anything.
All joking aside, the seed for this idea comes from a purported true story about a guy who, after a head injury, lives an entire life with wife, kids, job, whatever. In his case, he sees a lamp that looks weird. He tries to figure it out and wakes up in the back of a police cruiser, rushing to the hospital. Where he had thought he'd just been in a fight, the kid had had his head bashed in. I just decided to give him a magical vision of the future and he wanted to circumvent it in a cracked kind of way.
Th question is, did he live? And what is going to happen to him? If he's dead, they mourn him, but he's stopped the big bad again. If he lives, he's mentally in his thirties? I'm not even sure how old he is in the epilogue. He would be bored in most classes and would they even take him. He's committed a few crimes. Might be worth exploring. I'd break out the dice and decide his fate.