Lucas's eyes snapped open, his body stiffening as he took in the unfamiliar surroundings. The hard surface beneath him and the crisp night air against his face were a stark contrast to the comfort of his apartment. He lay still, bundled tightly in blankets, his mind working to make sense of the situation.
A street lamp cast a dim glow over the doorstep where he found himself. Lucas turned his head, the movement restricted by the swaddling, and noticed a strange crest adorning the blankets - a lion, snake, badger, and eagle encircling a prominent letter 'H'. The symbol tugged at his memory, but he couldn't quite place it.
The creak of an opening door drew his attention. A thin woman with sharp features peered out, her eyes widening as they fell upon the bundle at her feet. "Vernon! Come quickly!" Her voice cut through the quiet night.
Heavy footsteps approached, and a large man appeared beside the woman, his face confused. "What is the meaning of this, Petunia?"
"It's...a child," Petunia said, her hands trembling slightly as she lifted the bundle containing Lucas. "There's a letter -"
She retrieved an envelope from the blankets and began to read, her eyes darting across the parchment. Lucas watched, his body tense with apprehension. A child? The situation grew more perplexing by the moment.
As Petunia finished the letter, her hands shook violently, and tears spilled down her cheeks. "It's...it's Lily's son. Harry Potter. She's...dead."
Vernon's face twisted, his body recoiling. "You mean...your sister and that good-for-nothing husband of hers...they're gone?"
Petunia nodded, clutching the baby - Harry - tighter as she wept. "Murdered...by You-Know-Who."
Vernon's jaw clenched, his eyes narrowing. "Those freakish people and their hocus pocus!"
The words struck a chord within Lucas, the pieces falling into place with a sickening clarity. The blankets, the letter, the talk of magic...it couldn't be. This had to be some bizarre dream.
But as he gazed at his tiny hands and felt the weight of the blankets encasing his diminutive form, a cold realization settled in his gut.
Harry Potter...I've been reborn as Harry bloody Potter.
oo0ooOoo0oo
Petunia held the small bundle, her hands shaking. She looked down at her sister's sleeping baby boy, her nephew, with many conflicting feelings inside her.
Lily. Her bright, pretty, lively little sister who first showed...strange abilities. Odd, unexplainable things always happened around Lily when they were girls. At first, Petunia was happy, thinking they had been blessed with special gifts. But they quickly discovered that Petunia had no such special gifts.
From that day, a gap grew between the sisters, getting wider as Lily went to that weird school. Petunia had dreamed of going too, of seeing the wizarding world herself. But she was only a Muggle, as unimportant as dirt in that world's view.
As years passed, Petunia's jealousy turned to anger, even hatred, towards Lily and her casual power. She had scorned magic, treated it like a bad word, just to spite her sister. And now that hatred stretched to this orphaned boy before her - this magic child who had also lost a mother so cruelly.
A stab of grief hit Petunia's heart as she remembered how different their lives became. While she had grown up, married Vernon, and lived an ordinary life...Lily had been struck down young, hunted like an animal by that murderous freak.
Lily is dead, Petunia thought with a shudder. The finality of it struck her hard, reopening old hurts she thought had healed long ago. The little girl who used to chase her through flower fields, the young woman who had smiled so brightly at her wedding...gone forever.
Without meaning to, hot tears slipped down Petunia's cheeks, splashing onto the blankets below. "Oh Lily..." she rasped in an anguished voice. "What am I to do...?"
In the sitting room, Vernon Dursley paced angrily. That his sweet, ordinary wife should be tainted by this offspring of those freakish people! It was unacceptable, unthinkable. He thought they were free of that world when Petunia cut ties with her wretched sister.
His flushed face burned with rage as he recalled the long-buried memories - the unnatural events, the robed weirdos intruding in their lives, even pigs being inflicted on his poor beloved at the wedding. All because of this...magic.
Vernon grimaced as if the word tasted foul. That Petunia's own flesh and blood could carry this abnormal curse sickened him. Would the boy grow wings next? Spew slugs from his mouth? God forbid! He would not allow it, not under his own roof!
Muttering under his breath, Vernon clenched his fists. "I'll stamp that nonsense out of him from day one. No nephew of mine will be tainted with such strangeness as long as I live..."
As his wife's muffled sobs filtered in from the hall, Vernon felt a twinge of discomfort. He knew how much that freakish sister of hers had once meant to Petunia, long ago before the rift. Perhaps he should try to be...understanding.
No, he thought, mouth setting in a hard line. I'll have no more of this magic poisoning my family. These people did us a favor by sending the boy here. We'll straighten him out right from the start.
After all...he's just a baby.
oo0ooOoo0oo
Lucas was wrapped up tight in the dim nursery, the Dursleys' loud snores coming from down the hall. Even though he was just a tiny baby, his mind stayed sharp and clear. He wiggled his chubby fingers, feeling the weight of being reborn settle on him. The realization disturbed him deeply, yet it felt incredibly meaningful. His consciousness, his soul, had moved from one life into another.
I'm actually in the Harry Potter world, he thought, his bright green eyes scanning the shadowed room with quiet intensity. This is really happening.
Memories of reading the books and watching the movies came flooding back. A magical world, with witches and wizards fighting the evil Voldemort. The story he loved was now his reality. But he wasn't just Harry Potter. He was Lucas - reborn into this body.
My soul must be real. How else could I keep my adult mind, all my memories and experiences intact?
Lucas frowned, his tiny forehead creasing as he considered the deeper meaning. To be reborn - his very existence proved the soul journeys beyond the physical body.
To be reborn changed everything. He didn't know if he'd reincarnate again with his memories after dying. He would do all he could to gain as much magical power as possible and through that power, achieve immortality.
With a determined nod, Lucas closed his eyes and focused inward, his breathing slow and steady.
oo0ooOoo0oo
Lucas sat cross-legged on the living room floor, his green eyes following Vernon and Petunia as they fussed over baby Dudley. Their high-pitched voices and exaggerated expressions seemed almost comical to the reincarnated man trapped in a child's body.
"Who's mummy's good little boy?" Petunia's voice rose as she ruffled Dudley's wispy hair.
Dudley giggled, his chubby hands grabbing at the colorful toys around him. "More! More 'oys!" he demanded, his face scrunching up.
"Now, now, pumpkin," Vernon chuckled, wagging a finger playfully. "Don't be greedy. We've gotten you plenty already."
As the doting parents lavished attention on their son, Lucas's gaze drifted to a forgotten fork on the dinner table, catching the morning light. With a subtle twitch of his fingers, he coaxed the utensil into a lazy loop above the Dursleys' heads, his magic responding easily to his will.
Dudley's eyes widened as he spotted the floating fork. "'Ork! I wan' 'at 'ork!" He pointed a pudgy finger insistently, his voice rising in excitement.
Petunia began to turn, but Lucas was faster. A flick of his wrist sent the fork gliding silently back to the dinner table, as if it had never left its resting place.
His easy command of magic was the result of three devoted months of relentless focus and training. Lucas's mind drifted back to those early days...
Lucas sat cross-legged on the floor, a toy soldier positioned before him. His emerald eyes narrowed as he focused intently on the plastic figure, willing it to move. The soldier remained motionless, its painted features frozen in a stoic expression.
For seven nights, Lucas had attempted to control his magic through sheer willpower, but each effort ended in disappointment. The soldier's stubborn immobility seemed to taunt him, a silent reminder of his limitations. A nagging thought whispered in the back of his mind, insisting that he was approaching this incorrectly. Magic, it seemed, required more than just mental commands.
Despite his past life's knowledge, Lucas's young body was an untrained conduit for the arcane. His raw, untamed magic responded more readily to the turbulent currents of his emotions than the cool logic of his intellect.
With a measured breath, Lucas allowed his eyelids to drift shut, turning inward. He reached for the memories of last week when he first woke up and realized what had happened—the loss, the fear as everything he knew slipped away. He shaped those intense feelings, allowing them to swell within like a rising tide.
'I refuse to be powerless again.' The thought reverberated through him, a silent declaration of defiance.
Lucas's eyes snapped open just as the plastic toy soldier wobbled and rose shakily into the air, its limbs quivering. His intense emotions had unleashed his magic, but he immediately realized he didn't want to rely solely on emotions to wield it. From the stories he had read in his past life, depending on emotions seemed like a path to instability and potential corruption. But since he had no other choice at the moment, he would have to continue experimenting.
Over the following weeks, Lucas experimented with using different emotions as anchors for his developing abilities. Sorrow and melancholy lent themselves well to levitation, as his lingering grief channeled into gracefully lifting toys from the floor. Anger and fury, though more challenging for his calm nature, fueled his banishing spells. The fleeting flashes of rage he managed to summon propelled objects away with startling force.
Each new magical effect began with the same ritual—isolating a specific emotion and fully immersing himself in its depths. Only by being completely consumed by that state would his magic respond. As each 'spell' became second nature through relentless practice, Lucas started to slowly break away from that emotional dependency. It was extremely difficult at first, maintaining the magical manifestation while slowly stripping away the raw emotion that drove it. But with each passing night, he chipped away at the reliance, replacing it with intent and unwavering focus.
It was a gradual transition, using his emotions as a magical catalyst before replacing them entirely with a specific intent. He would start by sinking into profound sadness to levitate an object, then progressively dial back those melancholic undercurrents until only an intent of levitating that object kept it aloft. After months of steady training, he had trained his magic to associate a desire, an intent with the required emotion. Because of this, he no longer needed to feel grief to levitate something, his magic already knew what he wanted to achieve just with the intent to levitate.
Lucas watched the Dursleys fawning over Dudley, his eyes unfocused as a lone coin floated nearby. His mind drifted to the mystery surrounding his reincarnation. What force could orchestrate such an extraordinary event? His rebirth as Harry Potter, in the Wizarding World he once read about, seemed too improbable to be mere chance. A higher power, an entity capable of dimensional travel, must be responsible for this somehow. Not just immortality, then, he thought to himself, I'll add dimensional travel to my ambitions as well. Being immortal in one world would be boring when I can be immortal and travel to various worlds.
