The Fortune Teller.
By TimeTraveller-1900.
When he was 7 years old, Harry Potter learnt about the existence of the magical world, but even then he had learnt about it solely by blind luck more than by design. Harry had been on the point of finally running away from his muggle family. The Dursleys had become increasingly abusive towards him as he grew older; as a toddler he was slapped around and yelled at, which only made them shout and scream louder when he'd cried, but when he was older they made him garden, cook, and clean while Dudley lazed around the house.
When he was 5 and 6, the beatings got worse and worse, as he neared his 7th birthday, Harry had begun truly fearing for his life. At the time the Dursleys planned to go on holiday, leaving him behind. Harry was delighted, knowing he'd be left with old Mrs Figg, the mad cat lady. He planned his escape for months, knowing that Mrs Figg never locked the doors and left a window open for her innumerable cats to come in and out. Harry had learnt about this little quirk when he'd been with her on a similar occasion, but he'd been too scared and small to take advantage of it.
Once he'd been left with them, Harry had planned to wait for over 4 days. He would use the time to watch Mrs Figg and to steal money and food to tide him over. But he didn't leave, because he discovered Mrs Figg had written letters to Dumbledore about his well-being. From those letters, he learnt about the magical world, bits and pieces about his past, and, more chillingly, Dumbledore's spells on him which allowed him to be tracked, and the number of times he had tried to escape only for his memories to be erased.
But as Harry now stood in the Room of Requirement, he felt the last few years made it all worth it. He had learnt about the Room thanks to the goblins after his second trip to the bank - Hagrid had rushed the whole visit, and he had barely seen much of the alley enough to make a mental map of the place, and all Hagrid had done was make vague remarks. He had only gotten away because Hagrid had left him on the train, he'd just had to get off and go back. And he was pleased he had. He had stayed the rest of the summer in Diagon Alley, learning more about magic. And it was thanks to the goblins he knew about his relatives in America, and how they'd been trying to get custody over him, and the other communities of magic around the world.
Plus, they'd told him about the Room of Requirement. It was the only consolation prize he had from discovering just how deeply the claws of Dumbledore were embedded into his life, but they had told him what the room was and how it worked, how it could summon anything and even give him a reprieve from the old man and his minions. They had told him the Room of Requirement was outside of time itself, and there were legends it could even allow a form of time travel. Harry hadn't been entirely sure he believed it, but the fact magic existed was a shock and he'd had years to get used to the notion potions and ogres existed.
Trouble was, the goblins hadn't known where the Room of Requirement was in the school, but they did know where the kitchens were; they simply told Harry to find the House Elves, and ask them, and ask them to keep it quiet. And so Harry had done what the goblins suggested, and he had visited the House Elves, and here he was.
But what did he want first? Harry decided just to look around the room first before he did anything else. The Room of Requirement had a weird feel to it, he decided, the walls, the floor, and the ceiling were almost like glass like he had walked into a chamber hewn out of pure crystal, but there was a strange…warping, as if his eyes refused to see the Room itself.
"I wish to experience a class from Ilvermorny, in charms," Harry said out loud, "I want to see how other wizards and witches are taught."
The Room transformed so fast he barely saw the transformation. Finally, he was in a large, long classroom with row upon row of seats built on levels surrounding a central podium with a huge blackboard. Harry wasn't alone; he was surrounded by people his age, wearing dark blue robes tied by a golden belt, trimmed in red.
"Take a seat, please Mr Potter," a smiling blonde woman said, "and we will begin the lesson."
Amazed the woman just accepted him like that, Harry sat down and they began. For two hours, Harry learnt more about charms from a - was she a projection? - in two hours than he'd ever done with Flitwick. Harry soon changed the lesson, switching it to Transfiguration. Same thing. Then he had a potions lesson.
To his delight, he enjoyed a very informative potions lesson without the teacher being an absolute jerk. Until he had come to Hogwarts, Harry had actually been fascinated with potions; he had been amazed and intrigued by the properties of the different brews. Cooking was one of his passions, although the Dursleys never knew that; they would have prevented him from doing it, and he'd hoped that potions would lead to a talent he hadn't known he possessed. And then he'd met Snape, who'd ruined it.
Remembering the various magical schools he had read about, Harry decided to experiment.
"I wish to experience a potions class in…Castelbruxo, and I wish to understand the language," Harry said.
The classroom changed, this time it appeared as if he were in a large room made from blocks of gold.
"Ah, Mr Potter," the teacher said, while dozens of students wearing green and yellow robes smiled at him, "let's begin this class."
-8-
And so it went on like that, for seven hours. He would wish the Room to transform into a classroom at any school - Ilvermorny, Beauxbatons, Castelbruxo, and Uagadou, and he would pick up on the magic being taught. And he enjoyed it all. At first, he had been surprised that while the same things were taught as they were at Hogwarts, the other schools seemed more rapid. They didn't focus on one specific spell and stuck to it for a week, they performed a variety of spells at a time, and they expanded on the theory more.
Uagadou was the big cheese. Harry had been fascinated when he had learnt there was a school which taught wandless magic, but he was in love with the classes from the off, and once he had learnt the basics which apparently took over a few months for new Uagadou first years to master, so they were patient, it was a doddle, but he planned to keep going back.
"I am so using wandless magic later," Harry breathed with a smile of wonder and joy as he held up his hand, and clicked his fingers, and a small ball of light appeared, and after studying it for a moment he willed the magic away. That was it. Snuffed out. From what he knew of Uagadou, they studied alchemy, potions, ancient runes, and many other subjects, like animagus transformation. He was certainly learning that, the idea sounded both fun and useful.
But wandless magic had another application; the more weapons he had to use against the Dursleys, the better.
Harry was just about to leave the Room of Requirement - it was late at night, and he was getting tired despite his excitement at finally learning more magic that even Hermione Granger would envy…and then he remembered what the goblins said about time travel. Stopping in his tracks, Harry also recalled The Time Machine by HG Wells, and how the Time Traveller ventured into the future; when he had read other time travel stories, most of the time-travelling protagonists in those stories just appeared in their new times in a flash, but The Time Traveller saw the future as it unfolded apparently.
A slow smirk crept over his face as an idea popped into his mind. Closing his eyes again, Harry thought to himself, using his occlumency to banish away the fog creeping gently into his mind as fatigue crept in.
"I want to see the future…I want to peer 10 years ahead…," Harry thought.
After adding a second thought to summon a chair like a cinema seat, he settled down to look on….
-8-
Harry almost fell asleep during the viewing, but he forced himself to stand and walk around the Room as the images came and went as the next decade flashed in front of him. Mentally forcing his tired mind to process the images, Harry made plans. He had just seen the events unfolding from this point onwards, how Dumbledore was using the school to house the Philosopher's Stone for a still-alive Lord Voldemort and how Dumbledore was hopeful that he, Harry, would play the hero and stop the attack and give the older wizard the idea of how far to push the younger one and he would then soon come up with new games to play.
But as Harry watched how Lucius Malfoy, Draco's father, would slip in a Horcrux-infested diary into the castle (discovering just what Voldemort had used to make himself immortal was enough to make him feel physically ill; immortality seemed to be a dodgy subject in the magical world, although he learnt Voldemort only made the one Horcrux, and he had instead anchored himself to the mortal world with his followers instead) which possessed Ginny Weasley into releasing a basilisk, he knew that year would be a nightmare which would result in an unexpected multi victory for Dumbledore; not only would a Horcrux be destroyed, proving their existence, but Harry would once more show himself to be a hero, and Malfoy senior would be humiliated.
Third year would see Sirius Black, his godfather escaping. Harry had known about Sirius and his godmother, Alice Longbottom, for months now, but he hadn't done anything about Black because he coldly believed the man deserved everything he got. What horrified him the most about that year were the Dementors, but he made the mental note to study the patronus charm.
In his fourth year, there were dozens of divergences, but he would be in the Triwizard Tournament, a contest involving dangerous tasks with lethal magical beasts; everyone would turn on him because they assumed he cheated and put his name into the Goblet of Fire. In some of the divergences, he'd die in any of the tasks, either deliberately or through a nasty accident, but at the end after Voldemort's return to power, he would either be locked in St Mungo's hospital and isolated, or he would be locked in prison for murder.
But in his fifth year, the Ministry would interfere with the running of the school in the shape of Dolores Umbridge, a pink-obsessed toad, fanatically dedicated to the Minister and the Ministry. It was a long viewing, but by the end of it, Harry was tired and drained, but he wanted to make plans. When he realised his mind was claying, he decided to simply go to bed.
-8-
Over the course of the year, Harry continued making use of the Room of Requirement; thanks to the facilities there, he began studying the curriculum of the upper years and learnt about the magic in other countries, even being educated in some of the core and elective classes from Ilvermorny, Beauxbatons, Uagadou, and Castelobruxo, while gathering knowledge from all five countries.
Harry was actually tempted to let the mountain troll flatten Hermione Granger, but he decided against it since it might cause problems that threw some of his plans out of sync. In the end, he saved her life, and he had shoved his wand up the creature's nose, and used his advanced knowledge in Uagadou to teach wandless magic and from what he'd picked up, and he vanished the creature's brain. Thanks to the Room's knowledge, Harry had created alternative timelines already; not only had he become a top student, deciding to not give a damn about Ron Weasley, but he'd stolen the Marauder's Map from the Weasley twins, and he had even begun learning how the Marauder's made their prototype map in the 70s.
It wasn't long before Hermione became a spy for Dumbledore, he saw her in the old wizard's office. Afterwards, she began pushing him into the events which led to him meeting Norbert, Hagrid's stupid dragon, and that detention in the forest, but Harry was a step ahead. He had disappeared, making sure they couldn't track him down.
In the end, Harry had used the invisibility cloak - after making sure it was cleaned of any charms and other nasties - to get the stone from the Mirror of Erised, resisting the urge to destroy it. He didn't know why he bothered, since the Stone didn't make anyone immortal. The Flamels had spent decades trying, and failing, to use alchemy to become immortal, but it wasn't possible.
Alchemy was an ancient magical art. It was a foundation point of various magical arts - potions, elemental magic, transfiguration, charms, and runes to a degree, and it could transform any object or being in any way the alchemist saw fit. An alchemist could use their knowledge, especially if they were masters recognised by others in the art, to transform metals into any other metal, and chemicals into anything else, but the transformation of animals was seen as disgusting.
But it wasn't a ticket to an elixir of life, and the Flamels proved that after spending years and years trying to perfect the formula, and they failed. In the end, the Flamels used essence transfer to move their souls into clone bodies. Essence transfer was a form of immortality that Harry actually thought was more practical since anything could happen to the body. A master of the art could use it to swap souls and magic into a fresh body, but it was considered a dark art because many dark wizards had used it to steal the bodies of their victims and enemies. They had considered it to be the ultimate insult, really; by taking the bodies of their enemies, they could destroy their lives and the people who had loved them, and even carry on with their reigns of terror.
By the 20th century, only a few had ever heard of it. The Flamels were lucky to live in a time where the knowledge of essence transfer was easy to come by, but while the knowledge was gone, Harry could get it, too. Harry had grown up in fear for his life, and so he had no qualms with taking advantage of a form of immortality now he had it. Granted, he would need to think of a way to make it work for him, but if he had a way out, then Harry would take it.
One thing amazed Harry, ever since he had discovered so many different forms of magic, especially from his Uagadou simulation lessons, he had become increasingly interested in arcane forms of magic. He was already studying the basics of Arabian, Indian, Ancient Greek, Druid, and African magics, with alchemy, time travel (a side effect of his interest in the Room of Requirement), runes, and several other subjects.
-8-
Hermione and Ron were not happy with how uninterested he was in the whole 'Philosopher's Stone hunt, and Harry always had to hide a snicker of glee as he watched them running around like headless chickens as they struggled to get him interested. A part of him wished that he could tell them that even if Voldemort did take the Stone, which he couldn't, it wouldn't give him what he wanted. He had so many better things to do with the Stone since it would help him get wealthy beyond the Potter family fortune and give him an independent revenue stream.
On the night Dumbledore was supposedly going to the Ministry, he breathed a sigh of relief - Dumbledore had forced Harry to go to the Mirror before it was moved and demanded to know what he saw, but Harry gave a glib answer and made sure Dumbledore could not read his mind too in-depth, but he had hidden the smirk threatening to erupt over his face at the old man's dismay. But Granger and Weasley had gone after the stone, but he knew nothing would come out of it, and he had already taken care of Quirrell….
-8-
Flashback
-8-
"Professor, do you mind if I have a few minutes of your time?" Harry had said to Quirrell.
Catching a look of annoyance flashing briefly over Quirrell's face, the man's facade quickly reasserted itself. "O-Of course, P-Potter," the man said, ushering him into the classroom. Harry followed, glancing over his shoulder. The portraits were frozen, immobilised and soon their memories would be erased so they would not notice him being here.
"W-what can I do for you?" Quirrell asked, but he screamed when Harry, after finishing putting up the silencing wards, grabbed his face and the protective love Lily Potter put into the protective rune carved into his forehead, burnt his skin. Harry used his wandless magic to rip off the turban and break the professor's arms and keep him still and paralysed, and he reached around, sticking his fingers into Voldemort's eyes. He didn't let go until the Dark Lord was ejected, and he made sure to put up the strongest shield he could, stopping Voldemort from knocking him unconscious.
-8-
At the end of the year, Dumbledore didn't give Gryffindor house any extra points although you could tell he desperately wished he could have done so. Utterly indifferent to the fact the Slytherins cheered as to their win, Harry could see Dumbledore's put-out expression.
Author's Note - My apologies; I'd already posted a story with this name up but I wasn't happy about it. I've taken it down as a result, but this short story should be many times better.