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: Magic In a Flash (Working Title, NOT A CROSSOVER)

Posted Date: February 4th 2020

Tags: Slightly abused Harry, Speedster Harry, Harry not going to Hogwarts, OOTP Period

He was seven years old when his world changed around him.

It started out like any other day as far as he could remember; the boy named Harry Potter woke up to the sounds of his cousin demanding breakfast to be cooked as he jumped on the stairs above his cupboard 'room'. He would then have to reach for the stove that was still too high for him to reach unless he stood on a stool and start cooking what he understood was an unhealthy amount of food for his 'family' with his aunt berating him for the smallest of issues and hitting him with a hot pan. He would then have to settle for some burnt toasts while he watched his uncle and cousin eat their food like pigs at a farm and wasting a fair bit of it. After which he went to school on foot a full fifteen minutes earlier while their 'Dear Duddikins' got a ride there (and still ended up late by five minutes much to the annoyance of the gate sentry, one of the few nice adults to Harry). The boy would then spend the day getting harassed by the teachers who were in Vernon's pockets and ignored Dudley's bullying, or Dudley's gang playing their favorite game "Harry Hunting".

The day then got worse with the appearance of his other 'aunt', Marge Dursley who was Vernon's sister and owned a pit-bull named Ripper. The woman always enjoyed bad-mouthing his supposed 'deadbeat drunken parents who got themselves killed in a car-crash' and how Harry should be grateful that her 'kind-hearted brother and sister-in-law' had the heart to take his 'ungrateful soul into their warming family' (Harry had to resist gagging and rolling his eyes at that description), and she always encouraged Ripper to chase and bite him at every opportunity. On this day, Harry barely had time to throw his bag into the cupboard and run out the back before Ripper chased him out of the house, eventually pushing him to climb an old tree that stood out of the rest in the park. And as it was typical of his luck, a storm was brewing in Surrey, meaning he was now cold, hungry and drenched to the bone while stuck in a tree with a blood-thirsty dog at the bottom waiting to bite a chunk out of him.

As he tried to stay warm in the pouring rain, Harry kept on thinking how he had to keep enduring all of the crap that was heaped on him, how he felt that he could only get away from the Dursleys, the nasty adults and children, and the rumors by running on his two little feet for so long until he got caught and had to undergo the pain. The young boy could only weep with the rain covering his face as he mentally screamed out to the heavens why he was getting this mistreatment and if this day could get worse.

The lightning striking the tree and by extension him certainly answered that. That was the last thought that came to mind before he fell into darkness.

Harry would wake up to a bright room of white, the sounds of the heart monitor beeping softly, the scents of medicine and sterilization, a burning sensation on the entire left side of his body and the odd sensation of prickling heat inside his body going in all directions. His first intake of air came out as a pained gasp that drew the attention of the nurse that was in the room and made her call in the doctor to check on him. Being so young, having information restricted by his 'relatives' and in a lot of pain, much of what the doctor and the nurse said went over his head as they examined his body and told him of his treatment. They did not linger long as he soon fell back into an uncomfortable sleep laden with flashes of green light, cold laughter and the odd sight of electricity appearing before him.

The second time he woke up, it was in the presence of two police officers who had just arrived to check on him. They were gentle with him as the doctor checked him again, a rarity for him and something that they took note based on the scribbling of a third officer who came in afterwards. From what he had gathered, Harry had been in an extremely precarious state for the past three months (and wasn't that a shock for him to hear that?!) and the doctors were honestly baffled that he had managed to survive a direct lightning strike that had killed Ripper. Someone had been in the area when it happened and managed to call the ambulance while the man attempted to keep Harry alive. An investigation was put into place when the Dursleys were notified and their reactions were… not surprising to Harry but evidently bad to the officer to say the least. Marge was very vocal in her threats towards for 'getting her innocent Ripper murdered', while Petunia and Vernon had refused to pay for his medical bill, or to be more precisely quoted, 'waste hard-earned money on a good-for-nothing kid'. It was during that investigation that the police had found out about his 'room' and the obvious blood stains that led to the arrest of the Dursleys.

(It would be a few years later that Harry got the full medical report about how his heart had stopped a few times that led to the staff being extremely paranoid for his health considering the randomness of the periods, and the full police report which detailed how Vernon had attempted to resist arrest only to be tasered and dog-piled by some of the biggest officers around, how Petunia had to be silenced from all the shrieking involved, and how Marge got arrested for her dog abusing Harry and her illegally run dog breeding of pit-bulls and other fierce breeds. Dudley was sent to a juvenile school in an attempt to fix his behaviour, only that did not work well enough and he would be doing time in prison for assault on a girl. Also noted as an afterthought was how the old lady with the cats who used to babysit him got arrested under suspicion of tax evasion and possible liability to his case, only to turn up dead a few days later from unknown causes.)

As for Harry's health, only one of the doctors was blunt enough to tell him straight up that it would be a long recovery for him considering the extent of his injuries. When given the chance to look at his reflection, Harry admitted that he had fainted from the shock of seeing a multitude of bandages and what could only be described as an overcooked jerky of an arm from where the lightning had made contact from the tree, not to mention parts of his hair having gone white, possibly from the shock and stress of the incident. The only bright spot about his situation was the on-pouring of support, financial or well-wishes, that came in to help with his recovery when news of his situation became known throughout the nation.

That did help to some extent, but little did they know that something else was at work…

~~ooOOoo~

It was a miracle, as least what many of the doctors and nurses claimed when referring to the recovery of Harry Potter one year later. The multitude of scars that made many of them believe would either stay with him for life or in need of skin grafts started to heal within the first 2 months after his waking from the comma state, then by New Year his face, arm and legs were healed completely with only the darkening of skin to show his old injuries, giving people the idea he had uneven tanning along with the white hair portions. It hurt trying to clench his fist or flex his foot, and he kept wanting to scratch that odd itch around his face that prompted the nurses to place a bandage there to avoid damaging the skin more than needed. The one bit of news that had granted some form of relief was the disappearance of the lightning shaped scar from his forehead, now he only had to deal with his uneven darkening of his skin which was remedied with some medical cream and proper time under the sun.

The state of his neck, to say it nicely, 'looked less of a man going through cancer and more of a wrinkled old man going through his years', at least that was how the blunt doctor said it much to the consternation of the nurses. His torso and the hip area were still the most serious but the doctors were hopeful around the fourth month of the new year that the treatments given to him were working well enough to grant him a speedy recovery.

Which was well for Harry, since he did not tell them about the discovery that he had made of himself.

Now Harry was smart enough to understand certain things, he just had to dumb himself down to avoid punishments from the Dursleys for upstaging their son. He knew that they liked to blame him for his 'freakishness' whenever something weird happened around him like that mean teacher's hair turning blue or him getting stuck on a roof after getting chased by Dudley. In this case, he could feel something under his skin seemingly attacking the damaged portions of his body and somehow changing them into new skin, like ants coming together to attack an invader. It gave him a massive itch that he really wanted to deal with but was hindered by the multitude of bandages.

It also gave him a massive appetite that thankfully was no longer hindered by the Dursleys. Considering his physical health, his upbringing and the cocktail of medicine used on him, the doctors chalked it up to his body finally healing from the abuse of the Dursleys.

It seemed that the Dursleys had become the 'go-to' reason for any injuries or irregularities that come from the treatment.

There was another oddity in the form of his senses. During the healing period, Harry started noticing how slowly certain objects were moving about him or how he could hear sounds down the corridor. Then he started feeling odd bouts of static around him when he got near certain appliances, and his reflexes actually became faster at those times. That helped at one point when he was trying to move his fingers and accidentally knocked over a cup. His mind barely registered that when his entire arm lurched forward and grabbed the cup by the handle just an inch of the ground without spilling the contents.

But the biggest indicator came when he was finally cleared to walk around on his own two feet.

It still hurt trying to move especially with the sensation of fire and electricity going down his spine when he attempted to move his legs, but he was just grateful that he was not paralyzed from the lightning strike. For the first few days he was under the supervision of the nurses to ensure he was able to walk without falling over, then he was allowed to be alone for a few moments to give himself some breathing room. It was during the fourth period of being alone when he tried to increase his speed a bit to test his muscles that something did happen. He caught a brief glimpse of electricity from his legs before the world blurred around him and he ended up crashing into his bed and alerting the nurses to his state. He had to give an excuse that he was a little overexcited to move that he tried to jump only to collapse against the bed, letting them make a fuss as they inspected him to make sure he was not injured while the boy considered what had happened.

The next period he made sure to get the extra pillows laying around and placed them by the wall, before attempting it again, this time crashing into them hard, but otherwise not hurt and not attracting attention to his activity. He then attempted to go down the corridor without any cameras or people seeing him, this time being able to stop in time from introducing his face to the wall. He stopped at that point, mostly because he was feeling extremely tired after doing that, but he was also excited at the prospect of moving faster than the human eye can see. It reminded him a lot of those comic book superheroes from Dudley's comics, but it also made him wonder what else he could do.

In the privacy of his room and with some notebooks given by one of the nurses to deal with the boredom, Harry ended up making some discoveries on his newly acquired speed and what appeared to be the other features of his 'freakishness' as his relatives put it: his senses were enhanced to the point he could pin-point a spider at the corner of the room or smell food two rooms away down the corridor; his body could be 'recharged' by being near a power socket or something with electricity for him to drain; he could point at an object and levitate it into the air, bringing it closer or further away from him; his body could also vibrate at high speeds, though it made him feel weird from the vibrations going through his head, not to mention his voice sounding like it came out of a tube.

It was around the ninth month when the remaining of the bandages were gone to reveal mostly healed skin and he was granted limited status to leave the hospital provided he returned for weekly check-ups, that Harry really started to move.

It was quite exhilarating to actually run for longer distances without having to worry about anyone seeing him, because he was running too fast for them to see him, only appearing as a blur with the odd electricity (he should know since he had done it by accident past a camera shop, and when he went to check on it, it only appeared as such). He first ran from one end of the town to the other end, then tried going a bit further and around the district. He dared not to go any further as he tired very easily due in part to his recovery but at the same time did not want to risk getting caught by others. He had read from comics and heard horror stories of governments detaining the 'freaks' with the excuse of them being menaces to society or to replicate their powers, and did not want that to happen to him.

He did however make more progress regarding the other aspect of his powers, which now included limited form of flight and enhanced durability. He was able to heal fast in the past, but now he was evidently getting faster in that department considering the weekly check-ups that had the doctors wondering how he was healing so quickly even with the treatments.

That was fine and all, but the arrival of the police officers from before was a sign that he would have issues in the future.

Due to his current status, the police had to ask if he wished to be adopted and to have his name changed in light of the situation that had news reporters trying to milk his case for all they could get. Harry admitted to himself that he was unsure about his choices, a small part of him was thinking that changing his name would mean losing the last connection to his supposed dead-beat parents that he knew nothing of. Then again, the name he had did not bring him much positivity, what with the Dursleys making sure he was synonymous with delinquency and mentally unstable, not to mention the whole media coverage in the country and abroad over his abuse and miraculous survival. He would never be able to lead a quiet life if he held on to it.

And then there was the nice nurse who had offered to take him in and back to the United States where she came from. She was brought in to help with his treatment and they had gotten close enough for Harry to actually talk a bit about his upbringing, which helped a lot when dealing with the police as he was still a bit unused to adults helping 'freaks like him'.

Harry was introduced early on to the colourful vocabulary of adults, courtesy of both the nurse and the police officer taking his statement.

One more factor did come into helping him with his decision, something he did not expect from said nurse: she was apparently a witch. And no, he was referring to one who had powers, not saying she was a bad person.

It was an eye-opener seeing her wave an honest-to-god wand at a chair and see it turn into a Labrador puppy that slobbered all over him before getting changed back. That, and the fact that she apparently knew a little of the truth about his parents and about the powers the both of them possessed, although she did wonder about the speed aspect as she had never heard of such a thing. It was those factors that Harry decided to accept the offer given to him, thinking that at the least someone was looking out for him and to help him with understanding his abilities.

And so, a year and a half after the lightning struck him in the tree, one Samuel Astra Winchester boarded the plane with his adoptive mother, leaving Britain for the first time and heading to his new home. All without realizing the mess he would leave behind when a certain old wizard tried to find him and failed due to the loss of contact, nor realizing how his new-found abilities would affect Britain in the future.