-8-

It was interesting; when he was younger, he had loved reading HG Well's classic time travel tales, the Chronic Argonauts and the Time Machine, and on the odd occasion, he had loved watching a few reruns of Doctor Who, but it wasn't until he was 11 years old, that he discovered it was possible to travel through time.

Harry Potter entered the magical world extremely suspicious. When the letters had come for him, he had read the first one quickly, and then he had written a rude response before he sent it quickly off.

The next day, more letters turned up before he began considering the possibility magic really did exist and that he was a wizard, and when he wrote that he had the letter, and would attend, more turned up.

It was insanity.

But then it never stopped, and by the time Hagrid had come for him, the letters had driven Vernon Dursley into a frenzy, and he had driven the family (not counting Harry, of course - by that point, he had grown used to the fact the Dursleys would and could never ever see him as a family), but the letters still followed until Hagrid came for them at that abandoned….shack on that tiny island in the middle of a stormy sea.

This huge, giant, oaf of a man had come in, and Harry had to pretend to be the loveable boy the man expected, but in truth he was nothing but a means to an end for Harry. Hagrid was the worst person to send to the muggle world to collect a child, he was enormous and he drew attention, and Harry even considered it….amazing he could go through the London Underground. Another thing was how disdainful Hagrid was towards non-magical people, and how surprised he seemed by how little Harry knew about the magical world.

It was not Harry's fault he had been left in the non-magical world, now was it?

But the biggest reasons why Hagrid was not someone Harry cared for where; Hagrid had taken Harry to the Dursleys, to be locked up after his parents were murdered by Lord Voldemort, for someone whom Hagrid claimed to care about, he never bothered to visit to make sure he was okay, and lastly Hagrid refused to answer any of Harry's questions.

So, was it any wonder Harry went back?

In truth, he would have gone back regardless of whether or not Hagrid gave him all of the facts, and besides, there was so much he wanted to know about the magical world, so why would he go back to the Dursleys? And it wasn't as if Hagrid bothered to come with him, so going back was straightforward.

Harry went back to the goblins. He told them straight he had never received any statements from them in his life, and he wanted to know more about his family, and if he had any other relatives. All his life, he had hoped there was somebody else out there, another uncle or aunt, or cousins, and one day they would come, and take him away from the abusive hell he had lived in for so long. But he had learnt a lot from being with the Dursleys. They had taught him to suspect everyone, and he had no intention of stopping now.

The goblins were not happy; like the banks in the non-magical world, they sent out periodic statements to their customers, and to find out one of them hadn't received mail was troubling. They investigated and discovered that Albus Dumbledore had meddled, he had not only placed Harry with his muggle relatives, which was not only illegal but unethical because it went against their wills, but he had illegally placed all kinds of monitoring spells on him, but there were traces of memory wiping charms that went back years.

At his command, the goblins removed them, and he remembered all the times he had tried to escape from the Dursleys, only to be taken back by Dumbledore's lackeys and then had his memories erased. Harry was incensed, but he also wanted to have justice served, he wanted to teach Dumbledore and his lackeys a lesson they would and could never, ever forget.

With their help, Harry was able to remove the memories of the attacks and kept them in storage after he got his hands on a dimensional trunk that he kept with him at all times, and he asked the goblins what his options were, before he remembered all of the books on time travel he had read as a child; after HG Wells, time travel had become something of a passion for him, and he had asked the goblins if there were any books relating to time travel in the magical world.

Surprised, the goblins had replied that time travel was possible, yes, but it carried so many restrictions. Yes, it was possible to see the future, but strictly forbidden and time travelling to the past was limited. They told him about Time Turners, devices made every year and then destroyed, to preserve history.

But Harry did not care about those laws. All he cared about was himself, and his own survival. He had learnt survival was a choice, and anyone who refused to even fight for their future, deserved to die. They were weak. And Harry refused to be weak.

Harry stayed in Diagon Alley for weeks, exploring it and visiting the myriad of shops in the magical district, and he met and chatted with dozens of people in order to learn more about the magical world, and all that time he began tracking down the books on time travel.

Eventually, his explorations took him to Knockturn Alley. In the time he had been in Diagon, he had learnt a great deal, and so he had gone down there cautiously.

He found a wand-crafting shop, and he went in, and by the time school started, he had not one wand, but three, with the other two being 12 inches long, made from ceramic, with a chimaera heartstring in both infused with hydra scales and horned serpent venom.

But anyway, he discovered the books on time travel, and while they had cost him a small fortune to buy. The books explained a lot about magical temporal mechanics; if you travelled back in time, you created a new universe, a whole new reality.

But Harry was more interested in the future.

He learnt of a spell which could, if successfully cast, show the future at least 3-4 years ahead, and show dozens of divergence points. Harry took the spell to the goblins, and it took them a while for him to persuade them to help. He needed it, he was out of his depth and this was complicated magic, and he had never done anything like this before. He also sweetened the deal by revealing if they helped, he could discover and pass on financial information. After that, they agreed.

The goblins helped him cast the spell. Harry had decided to use a mirror he had bought since it would act like a TV screen. Once the spell had taken hold, and it worked, Harry saw the future.

He saw several possibilities; he saw how he was sorted into one of the Hogwarts houses, having to put up with the repetitive invasions of privacy just because he was famous and nobody had any sense of privacy or decency, fighting a troll, himself going after something called the Philosopher's Stone from Lord Voldemort.

But during that year, Harry watched as the two kids he had made friends with supposedly since he had been suspicious of Ron Weasley from the start, and hadn't liked his attitude or demeanour one little bit, which only became worse as time passed; Ron was a surly person, who loved people being miserable, and he was a jealous little prick.

Hermione Granger was the type of girl Harry would have moved heaven and Earth to avoid a year ago. A teachers' pet, she was the type of kid who sucked up to teachers and told tales too.

She had such a blind faith in authority it was painful, and she never realised those actions had consequences. After the troll incident, she would hang around him, pretending to be his friend….but seeing the time she spent with Dumbledore and McGonagall, as they told him how dark Harry was like they knew anything about his personality to gauge that, and being promised lots of rare books…it made him want to see her pummelled into paste by the troll, rather than befriend her.

And as for Weasley…

Well, he was only in it for the cash.

Harry discovered the Weasleys, 200 years ago, had committed line theft against fleeing refugees from France. They had stolen books and knowledge, spells from families, and some of the more ruthless members of the families even forcibly took brides, and they carefully arranged deaths of family members, so then the Weasleys inherited the lot. The Potters had led the charge against the Weasleys, and they had been declared blood traitors as a result.

The Weasleys, seeing a chance for revenge had conspired with Dumbledore to steal his estate by making him marry their youngest daughter, and then he would die, and they'd get the lot. Dumbledore himself would help himself to the Potter Library.

Forcing himself to keep watching, Harry watched as the mirror showed time a year later, he was being shunned because he could speak to snakes (the goblins had to explain parseltongue to him and what it meant historically), and then he found himself was fighting against a massive snake the goblins named a basilisk. And how he very nearly got killed.

After seeing the way he reacted whenever his scar hurt, a sensation he had never felt personally, Harry made a mental note to ask the goblins if they could examine it.

And the mirror showed more. It didn't show Voldemort this year, but instead, the plot line showed an escaped prisoner - Sirius Black - being hunted down by demonic guards from Azkaban prison. The mirror showed him and the watching goblins how Sirius Black, his so-called godfather, was innocent, and that Peter Pettigrew, the one who had truly betrayed the Potters and murdered muggles by blowing up a street framed him and had masqueraded as a rat for a decade.

Harry was ambivalent about having a godfather, but then he watched as one of the men who had wiped his memories turned up as a DADA professor, and had the gall to teach him the spell for stopping the Dementors.

One night, Black burst into the castle, forcing the whole search of the castle and the students to be forced into the Great Hall, when a few of the Hufflepuffs loudly shouted if Black was after him, then they should just hand him over, and like a horrifying mob, they had nearly done just that before the teachers, for once, stopped it.

Watching moments like this made Harry more certain Hogwarts was not the school for him, and Harry began making plans to not attend the school. Harry watched the final confrontation with Black and Pettigrew, and the use of the time turner, and he inwardly shook his head. Seriously? You just use time travel for attending classes?

If Harry had such a time-turner, he would be using it to learn amazing new spells, maybe even discover what was going to happen, make a small fortune and have enough time to make a fortune, and have fun with cinemas and arcades. But Hermione Granger was such a boring goody-goody, who was slowly becoming corrupted by Dumbledore's ideas, and now she wanted a chunk of the Potter fortune and the library herself. She saw nothing wrong with what she was doing.

-8-

The final straw came with his so-called Fourth year at Hogwarts. After watching how he was supposedly clueless he was supposed to be, after that mess at the Quidditch World Cup, Harry saw himself being entered in a dangerous tournament. Everyone turned on him, but as he watched the badges appear and saw teenagers older than him wearing them, it showed how worryingly quick to accuse wizards were, seeing the tournament unfold, Harry could safely say he didn't want to be near a dragon, or dive down beneath the lake, or be an unwitting part of Voldemort's resurrection.

Harry shut off the mirror, deciding enough was enough. He turned to the goblins. "Well?" He asked them.

"We will need to investigate your scar; there's something suspicious about it," one of the goblins replied.

"Agreed. Many in the magical world who have a grain of intellect, questioned how you had survived that night, a few checkups will clear up the mystery, and it might lead to that upstart's final end. But one thing is certain, he split his soul." Briskly and briefly Harry was treated to a grim lecture from the goblins of Horcruxes, how they were created and how much a failure they were.

"Could it be possible for a piece of his soul to be in my scar?" Harry asked, wondering if that was the prime reason behind the plans of Dumbledore.

"No. Soul magic doesn't work like that. It's possible for a Horcrux to be imbued in animals and plants, but not in something like a human or goblin."

"So, what's in my scar?" Harry asked.

-8-

In the end, it turned out the thing in his scar was just a slither of Voldemort's magic. As they removed it, they used it to track down the Horcrux made by Lord Voldemort. But it turned out there were many Horcruxes, which enraged the goblins to because of the desecration of the soul, and more than once Harry heard curses against wizards in general, and he couldn't blame them for their views.

The goblins were even more enraged when they discovered a Horcrux in their own bank! They tore through the Lestrange family vault, which claimed fourteen goblins because of the wards, and the even more furious goblins tore the spells apart and they found the Horcrux, and without any delay they drained it of its magic, summoning the magic of the other Horcruxes and the Death Eaters.

Harry felt no sympathy for any of them; the goblins had not coddled him in the slightest by telling him what they had done, and besides after seeing what Malfoy senior would try to do in the future, and how they had laughed when Voldemort tortured him in that now averted timeline, he hoped they had made whatever peace with their gods they could.

"So, Mr Potter, have you considered which school you wish to attend?" Harry's account manager asked one day.

"Uagadou," Harry said promptly. "I've been looking through the prospectuses and reports for weeks, now. Many of the subjects look fascinating, more so than anything at Hogwarts, and since I'll change my name in the next few days I can throw off the scent in case anyone wants to try what Dumbledore did, and just in case he gets off and then tries to find a way to get me back in this country, I can have a fresh start at life."

"Yes, we can arrange that," the account manager promised. "However, with the evidence we have of the fake contracts and the way we questioned the Weasleys, the DMLE will have no choice but to prosecute."

Harry smirked. While the Weasleys had presented themselves as the kindest family in the world, exposing them as cruel thieves was so satisfying. The goblins had taken many memories from him, but the fake marriage contracts would be used as evidence. Under the treaties with the ministry, the goblins had the right to detain anyone who got on the wrong side of them, and if they suspected a crime like line theft.

While Dumbledore reeled under the strain of the scandals breaking out concerning Harry and the abuse he had gone through, the goblins had gotten cracking. They had stormed Hogwarts, and they had brutally banished his phoenix and they had even more brutally flogged the old man as a warning to anyone who dared commit thefts. They did this in Hogsmeade, in Diagon Alley, and in the Ministry before they cut one of his hands off, and showed memories of him personally wiping little Harry Potter's memories.

And not just him.

One of Dumbledore's favourite MOs was to have old families wiped out, save for one or two members. He would then have them raised in abusive homes, or left to die in the muggle world where nobody could find them. But those who came into the magical world were married to daughters of his lackeys, and they had a claim on the family name so that it would continue without raising suspicion…and they would grant their wonderful Dumbledore access to their libraries, pillaging the family's secrets.

The revelations were horrifying for the magical world, especially as the goblins brutally ripped Dumbledore's evil mind to pieces to expose the truth. But even if Albus Dumbledore was no more, Harry had not taken any chances. He was changing his name to prevent anyone from coming for him, and included Sirius Black because he couldn't trust the man because he had chosen Pettigrew and revenge over his godson. Why should he let the man into his life?

At the same time, Harry was genuinely looking forward to being in Africa. For the first time in his life, he would be seeing more of the world. Sure, he would need to put himself under the care of the African wizarding community, but to his relief, they did not seem concerned or bothered about the so-called legend of Harry Potter, and since he was changing his last name, and only a few would know of his original identity, then it would be okay in his world.

Perhaps in time, Harry would forgive Sirius, but not yet.

-8-

Later, things were as good as they could be for him. As he looked around his new home in Africa, admiring the artworks and the ornate statues, Harry reminded himself he had to do some sightseeing before he went to Uagadou.

As he unpacked his belongings, Harry came across the Time Mirror (basic but simple name, but good), and he smiled. So many good things came from meddling with the future thanks to his little discovery, and his use of time travel. He didn't care about the laws governing it, the Mirror had saved him from a life where he would be doused with potions, forced into a loveless marriage, and then murdered…all because of a filthy family and one dirty old man.

Absently he wondered what was going to happen to Hermione Granger and Remus Lupin, but he didn't care if Lupin found himself dead after the revelations about him, and he didn't care if the troll got in and turned her to strawberry jam.