An Unexpected Awakening
Harry woke up on something soft. He opened his eyes wide. Was he dead? A very familiar ceiling met his gaze.
"Why can't Privet Drive leave me alone even in death?" he complained. But wait! Whose voice was that? He was sure he had left that tone behind years ago!
He jumped to his feet. There was no doubt he was in Dudley's second bedroom, the room that had become his sleeping quarters during the summers of his Hogwarts years.
Hold on: why did everything seem taller than usual? He rushed to the wardrobe, barely noticing in his haste that his legs seemed shorter than normal and flung it open.
Looking in the mirror, he flinched. He had not seen the face staring back at him since he was a teenager. How was this possible? Did you return to Privet Drive as a fifteen-year-old after death?
He remembered his last near-death experience well. What he had learned to call limbo. This place didn't seem like that at all. Just to be sure, he would check.
Making sure he had clothes on, he thought about wanting to be naked. Nothing. No limbo. After all, the unequivocal proof was right there on his forehead. The mirror showed him the reflection of a lightning-shaped scar that had been fading for years. Now, it looked practically new!
With a thought, he extended his magical sense and with extreme disgust, he sensed a blot of reprehensible magic. "What the hell!" he muttered. "How do I still have that thing on my forehead? Could it be..." He didn't want to think about it.
He wouldn't even let such thoughts come to the fore in his mind. There was only one way to find out if he was right, and if the answer was affirmative, he needed to take some precautions before acting.
First of all, he opened up to the depths of his being, ensuring he had all his magical power. With a sigh of relief, he confirmed that not only did his power match what he had possessed just moments ago on the tower, but it seemed to have even slightly increased.
He expanded his magical perception in all directions, confirming that yes, he was at Privet Drive and that the Dursleys seemed too close for his liking.
He muttered a curse before deepening his senses. For the first time, he had the chance to examine the complex blood wards placed around his home. They were fascinating indeed, but during his travels, he had seen and studied better.
Instinctively, he searched for any weaknesses or crevices in the magic and unsurprisingly found some. No magical shield was perfect after all. Perhaps the Fidelius Charm? No, although he hadn't yet found a weakness in that one, he would eventually... he felt intimately close.
Anyway, if he wanted to, he could dismantle the protections around number 4 in seconds. He decided not to. It would only attract undue attention.
Before implementing his plans, he needed to get rid of the magical trace he felt lingering around. He reached it with his magic and gently enveloped it.
He quickly channelled his adult magic, much more than adolescent. With an almost imperceptible shiver, it disappeared. He was no longer a child after all.
It was time to proceed. He wouldn't use a wand anyway since he was much better without it.
With a slight twitch of his finger, a ghostly clock appeared before his face, just over a foot away. His blood froze in his veins as his fears were confirmed. "03 August 1995 07:13"
He had travelled back in time! But how was it possible? His body should have shattered into pieces on the grounds of Hogwarts! And yet... this wasn't his body. Though his spirit, his memories, and his magic were the same, this physical shell he was wearing wasn't exactly his body.
If the magic was correct, he would have recently turned fifteen, practically half his mental age.
"Damn it," he thought. The thought of killing himself once again came far too insistently. But his chivalrous spirit immediately took its place. If he had gone back, it meant there was still a living Voldemort.
"What a stroke of luck," he mentally grumbled. "But I just can't let him reign over the wizarding world unchecked."
Yes, there would be Dumbledore and his Order, but the headmaster was old, and the Order wasn't very reassuring with their ideas of not killing.
As a teenager, he thought that killing Death Eaters would only bring him down to their level, but in hindsight, he was no longer so damn noble. Sirius, Moody, Dobby, Dora... they were all dead, partly thanks to these ideas.
Since the death of his beloved, Harry had no more mercy. For a moment, the thought of the Metamorphmagus twisted his heart. The thought of what he could do to Voldemort and his sycophants with the hard-earned powers quickly took its place. He didn't smile after all, he hadn't since Dora's death, but if someone had seen his face at that moment, they would have run away in terror.
"Dora," he mentally whispered. "At this time, she was still alive!" But the thought faded quickly. As much as she was Nymphadora Tonks, this version of the Metamorphmagus would never be his soulmate, the one he had loved so much. He had never betrayed his Dora and he wouldn't do it now.
He would destroy Voldemort, annihilate his Death Eaters, and then kill himself. It wasn't very difficult. He could finally rest and maybe even reunite with the loved ones he had lost.
First of all, he would get rid of the horcrux in his scar. He had read many books about them, including one on human horcruxes with a promising ritual that would transfer the soul fragment into another body, like that of an animal.
With a thought, he opened an access to his personal dimension. Stepping inside, he realized that everything was just as he had left it! After all, this half-plane had an existence that transcended both space and time.
Slipping into the library to retrieve the book he remembered, and then transferring to the room specially designed for rituals, in a few minutes, his skull was free.
The soul fragment was writhing in an old rat trapped in a magically protected cage. A jet of Fiendfyre and both the cage and the fragment turned into a pile of ashes accompanied by a shrill scream.
"One down," Harry thought, mentally counting Tom's horcruxes. "Or rather, two down since the diary is already gone."
Back in the bedroom, the wizard now in an adolescent body planned the order in which he would destroy the horcruxes. Using his half-plane, he could transfer to any known place; so, it wasn't very difficult to retrieve some of them.
Reaching his trunk, he flung it open and retrieved his Invisibility Cloak. The silver fabric, with a consistency similar to water, exuded the same magic as the Deathly Hallows.
He wondered what would happen if he collected the Hallows of this timeline, telling himself it would be better mainly to preserve them.
If they fell into Tom's hands, it would be a disaster. As for Dumbledore, it was better not to tempt him. The old man had already been through enough. Maybe one day he would make him talk to Ariana? Who knows.
Carefully folding the cloak and putting it back in the trunk, he made a decision.
Moments later, he emerged from his half-plane in the Lestrange family vault. He had masked his magic so much that anyone who had learned to perceive magic would think he was a Muggle. You couldn't mess with goblins, you had to proceed with caution.
The vault looked just like the last time he had entered it. Gold coins and goblets, silver armors, strange creature skins, and much more packed the environment from floor to ceiling.
Looking around, Harry noticed the absence of the Sword of Gryffindor. At this moment, it must have been in a glass case in the headmaster's office at Hogwarts.
While hearing the roar of a dragon outside, probably the Ukrainian Ironbelly, Harry focused on why he had returned to this place. Raising his gaze, his senses and sight were drawn to the golden cup.
The horcrux's magic was revolting. With a snap of his fingers, he removed the Gemino and Flagrante curses, levitated it in midair, and wrapped his fingers around the cup's stem.
Without even bothering to land, he opened a portal to his half-plane and stepped through. Closing it behind him, he allowed a triumphant expression to cross his face. Soon, cursed flames consumed the cup as the thought "Three down" crossed Harry's mind.
He checked and suppressed the cursed fire as soon as he sensed the fragment's defeat to preserve the last remnants of the melted metal that constituted the cup.
Without returning to Privet Drive, much less leaving the meticulous masking of his magic, he opened another access to his dimension directly to Hogwarts' seventh floor.
Cloaking himself in the power of the Invisibility Cloak, he entered the castle he once considered home.
Hiding with the aid of concealment and silencing charms, Harry made his way through the school's corridors. An almost sinister silence hung everywhere. The still dim light of dawn flickered through the windows, barely illuminating the rooms. The portrait characters were almost all asleep or about to wake up. The armours creaked quietly, and there seemed to be no ghosts nearby.
In a few moments, the wizard reached the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and began pacing up and down the empty stretch of wall.
"I need a place to hide things... I need a place to hide things... I need a place to hide things." On the third pass, the door appeared in the wall.
Throwing it open, Harry found himself in the room he had last seen as a fiery hell.
The room was cathedral sized. Piles upon piles of junk and bric-a-brac towered everywhere, forming the image of a grotesque city. Guided by his magic, he walked, turned right, turned left, and wound his way through alleys made of mountains of objects.
At last, he saw it, casually tossed on top of a pile of stuff. The blackened tiara that was Ravenclaw's diadem, encircled by the inscription, "Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure." Riddle's magic flowed from it in waves.
Harry did not flinch. Ensuring no harmful enchantment surrounded it, he grasped it in his fingers and did not linger in the room any longer.
Looking up just before returning to his personal dimension, he glanced at the bubble-covered cabinet. There, he had hidden his old Potions book, and there, unconsciously, he had first laid eyes on a Quintaped.
At the time, he hadn't known what it was, but he would later come to know such creatures much better. Created by the rivalry of two families on the Isle of Drear in Scotland, they were among the most dangerous creatures in the world and extremely resistant to magic.
Their reflexes, strength, and agility were superhuman. Killing one had taken a considerable effort from a Harry just past twenty.
Pushing those thoughts aside, Harry took the diadem to the ritual chamber, ready to dispose of it.
As the soul fragment met the same fate as the previous ones with a wail, the wizard thought that the fourth one was gone.
He gathered the remains of the artifact in the mokeskin pouch Hagrid had given him, where he had also placed the remnants of the cup.
Before embarking on what would be today's most complicated mission, Harry attempted to open a passage from his dimension directly into the Order of the Phoenix's headquarters.
Evidently, though, not even time could transcend the Fidelius Charm, he thought. Cloaking himself in the power of the Invisibility Cloak, he tried to enter the sitting room of the Black family home. The Fidelius was implacable.
The moment he set foot inside, everything seemed grey and blurred. He couldn't sense anything, much less Slytherin's locket.
"It won't be an obstacle for long," Harry thought as he returned to his half-plane. After all, in a few days, the Order's advance guard would arrive specifically to take him to that place. He would use the opportunity to get back in Kreacher's good graces as well.
Finally relaxing his magic, not enough to let it go completely, but containing it sufficiently to show the power of an average fifteen-year-old wizard—practically a drop compared to the raging ocean within—Harry appeared in the dark spot concealing the Gaunt shack in Little Hangleton.
Immediately, a fierce, oppressive magical presence poured over him like a burden. Harry fought it off with ferocity, dispelling it in moments.
He examined the protections around the structure hidden in the tangle of trees until he found a key. He began to whisper in Parseltongue, and the enchantments began to unravel with extreme speed.
"Arrogant of him," the boy muttered, "to think only he could speak this language..."
Taking a few steps forward, he stared at the rickety door and let his magic fling it open.
Once inside the shack, he quickly focused his gaze and magic on the floorboards, searching between the planks.
Finding the repugnant sensation, he pried up the rotting boards, uncovering a box that vomited dark magic. Carefully undoing all the protective spells, Harry threw it open, laying eyes once again on the Resurrection Stone. The stone, too, exuded that familiar magic.
For a moment, the compulsion to wear the ring assailed Harry's mental defences, but it was brutally repelled by the steel fortress guarding his mind.
Without touching it, Harry levitated the artifact into the air, closed the box, and reburied it in the hollow found by the Dark Lord.
After carefully replacing the floorboards, the wizard opened a passage to his personal dimension and levitated the ring inside.
The fifth horcrux was soon destroyed.
Harry saved the remains of the ring, making sure to remove the still-intact stone, placing it carefully in a well-sealed compartment of his half-plane, where, after some further thought, he also stored the cloak.
"Maybe it wasn't so difficult after all," Harry thought as he returned to Privet Drive. "Now only the locket and the snake are left, then Tommy can pack his bags."
A thousand thoughts darted through his mind. Where would he find the snake? Maybe at Malfoy Manor? He couldn't be sure. The only known location of it was just before the Christmas holidays, at the entrance to the Department of Mysteries, when it would attack Mr. Weasley.
The thought of waiting so long disheartened him. He was tired. He let himself fall onto the bed. The thought that, just before taking his life, he had left in his half-plane the pendant Dora had given him comforted him.
He clutched it to his chest, wrapping the chain around his neck and tucking it under his clothes. He would never part with it again, until his death.
It was the last link to his dead girlfriend... well, besides her pillow, on which he had cast a stasis charm to preserve her scent, which was steeped in her magic.
Every night he slept with it, yet he was tortured by terrible nightmares. Not a day went by without him dreaming of her death and wondering about the one just passed. Maybe it was a consequence of being in this body?
Probably it hadn't been a true sleep, or his spirit had ended up in the teenage body at the moment he woke up or a few moments before.
Anyway, he knew that the next night he wouldn't fall asleep without holding that object. The only thing left to do was to wait for the advance guard. Having access to Grimmauld Place was essential. Dumbledore and the Order would soon discover the new Harry.
Break
Shortly afterward, his aunt slid a disgusting broth through the cat flap that Vernon had installed after the incident with the Masons. Harry simply vanished it, then went to a café in a nearby town where he enjoyed a hearty breakfast.
He wouldn't risk being spotted by a member of the Order. He paid with some Muggle money he had in his half-plane and spent the day traveling from place to place, collecting all the books, artifacts, and other things he had accumulated during his travels.
He wouldn't allow them to fall into the wrong hands.
With a complex series of transfigurations, he could turn an ordinary wooden mannequin into an almost perfect simulacrum of himself in moments. The simulacrum could even talk, breathe, and move. To make this possible, Harry just needed to extend a thread of his magic and connect it to the dummy, allowing him to control it from a distance.
He took advantage of this magic to leave a clone of himself in his room to avoid problems if someone checked.
He also created several other simulacra with different appearances and sent them here and there, orchestrating an imminent downfall of the Death Eaters. It was like having a portable team that could gather information, neutralize targets, and do much more.
There was no limit to how many simulacra he could create. Controlling multiple at once became tiring, and Harry could currently manage a maximum of six.
However, as an alternative, he had developed tiny magical capsules, in which he had implanted a kind of artificial intelligence to implant in the clones to make them function autonomously.
The following days were spent more or less the same way until, on the afternoon of August 6, he was satisfied that he had recovered as much as possible. At one point, he had returned to the Room of Requirement, securing everything useful and/or dangerous. The only thing he lacked was the Black family library, but that was already safe, and he would have access to it very soon. That evening, he avoided dinner, as he would eat soon with the Order and prepared for their arrival. He placed light warning spells around the house that would signal their approach, let Vernon's threats wash over him, and dozed off on the bed, clutching his soulmate's pillow.
His life was about to change, and even he couldn't imagine how much.
Author's Note
I had also prepared this chapter, took some time to get it ready, and here it is!
The next one is already in planning. I just need to organize my thoughts on it, write it, and then I'll upload it.
I imagine it will take a few days...
I'll do it as quickly as possible!
Regards from Landar!