A Second Chance at Life » JasonZ0654 Harry Potter, Master of Death, after living centuries of battles and loneliness, he decided he had enough, and was more than ready to see all his loved ones in the afterlife. Death personally greeted him in front of the Veil, and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. Harry/Multi; HP/HG/DG/AG/SB/TD/LL/FD; Super-Harry; Mind Magic; Time-Travel; AD/RW/MW bashing
Harry Potter, M, English, Romance & Family, chapters: 13, words: 66k+, favs: 7k+, follows: 8k+, updated: Aug 7, 2015 published: Feb 15, 2015, [Harry P., Hermione G., Daphne G., Fleur D.]
Chapter 1: Prologue - A Meeting with Death
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, the following story is posted is purely for amusement of the readers and myself.
A/N: I think it's fair to say that many people are unsatisfied with how JK Rowling's story had ended, well this story is my outlet for that. In this story, Harry, Master of Death, had lived a very long time, full of battles and sadness, with everyone he cared about taken away from him, he was ready to accept death, and go meet his loved ones in the afterlife. Before he could jump through the Veil, Death made him an offer he couldn't refuse, armed with his hundreds years of knowledge and power, he jumped back in time to fix all that was wrong with the Magical World.
Please give the story a try, I hope you will enjoy it. And let me know of your thoughts on it. Thank you.
Yay, I finally got a Beta! I would like to thank texan-muggle for doing such a wonderful job proofreading my story.
Legends
"Speech"
Thoughts
"Mind Communication"
§Parseltongue§
[Speech in Foreign Language]
Incantations
Prologue – A Meeting with Death
Ministry for Magic,
2nd May, 2098
A figure wearing a hooded cloak entered the Ministry for Magic, and walked right past the reception/security. The figure seemed to blend into the shadows and glide his way past like a Dementor. There wasn't any sudden movement, and there wasn't any sound of footsteps; he wasn't invisible, but yet he was. The unique brand of notice-me-not runes invented by the man-under-the-hood himself were etched onto the black cloak and were working perfectly. The runes allowed others to see him, but turned their attention away instantly unless he wished for them to notice him. Most would forget they ever saw him; only those of strong will would remember his presence. Even then, all they could remember were two bright emerald green-coloured eyes that seemed to radiate power.
The cloaked figure approached a veil in the Department of Mysteries; the veil was none other than the Veil of Death. For any ordinary man, they would feel disconcerted from just standing near the Veil. The blowing motion of the Veil felt like Death himself was calling for you. But for the man-under-the-hood, who had brushed with Death so many times, he wasn't even slightly concerned.
The man stopped his approach just two meters away from the Veil, and lowered his hood. He then took out a stick. As he carefully inspected the Elder Wand, he muttered, "It's time for you to return to your rightful owner."
The figure took a step towards the Veil, with clear intent to chuck the stick into it; that was when the Veil suddenly stopped moving, another cloaked figure walked out of the Veil, and stopped just a meter in front of the figure holding the Deathstick.
The battle-hardened man almost reacted to the sudden appearance of another cloaked figure, but he instantly recognized the figure in front of him.
"Death, I presume?" he asked politely.
"You have a sharp mind, young master. But of course, you presumed correctly."
"Don't let my youthful look deceive you, for I have lived for more than four hundred years now (A/N: Not a mistake, explanation is within this chapter/scene). But since you addressed me as 'master', I am guessing you know perfectly well why I still have the body of a thirty-year-old young man."
Death smirked under his cloak, "And I stand by my earlier statement, young master."
"Despite how you are referring to me as master, coupled with what the legend says, I never believed anyone could ever truly master Death, could they? I merely gained immortality from uniting the three gifts from you."
"You are of course, correct, young master, but not completely. The Wand, the Stone and the Cloak, they were always meant to be passed down the Peverell bloodline. Any other who united them, but not the rightful owner of the Hallows, would merely gain full use of the three Hallows, but would age and die nonetheless. As you have learned from the Goblins, by stripping Riddle off his body, your mother reunited the three separate Peverell lines in you. When the Elder Wand flew into your hand a hundred years ago, you became the first to truly possess all three Hallows; thus, all three gifts were forever bonded to you and, in the process, granted you your immortality." Death explained.
The cloaked figure paused for a fraction of a moment to consider Death's words, then proceeded to hold out the Elder Wand in both hands, and bowed respectfully. "Thank you for your explanation. Be that as it may, this wand has spilled enough blood throughout its history. Despite bonding to me, people would still seek its power, and more blood would be spilt. It's time for all that to stop; it's time for it to return to its rightful owner."
Death gracefully accepted the Wand, and stowed it away. "Thank you, young master; there has been no other more worthy than you to possess my gifts. Despite the fact that no one could ever truly master me, only you since Antioch Peverell has ever truly wielded the power of the Elder Wand. But, I am sensing this isn't the only reason you have come before my Veil, is it? Young master?"
"No, it's not. I missed my chance, or should I say, chances; there is nothing here for me to live for, not for a long time," the man-under-the-hood answered solemnly.
"No, I suppose not," Death paused for some time pondering, before informing the war hero. "This isn't supposed to be your fate; just like Riddle cheated Death, the manipulative fool, Dumbledore, meddled with Fate," Death spat with anger.
The cloaked man didn't say anything; he knew perfectly well who Death was referring to as 'manipulative fool'; Albus too-many-bloody-names Dumbledore had a lot to answer for. The cloaked man hoped there would be something of the old goat left for him to vent his rage, but he doubted there would be anything left with his parents waiting on the other side.
Flashback
Five years after Voldemort was gone for good, war broke out in Magical Britain again. Another dark lord wannabe decided to have a go at conquering Magical Britain, before moving on to the rest of the world. With most of Voldemort's Death Eaters bribing their way out of prison during 1998, it wasn't hard for the new dark lord wannabe to gather enough followers and start a new war. The Third Wizarding War had raged on for two years when, in 2005, Auror Lieutenant Harry Potter, who had broken Mad-Eye Moody's record for number of Dark Wizards killed or captured, was recruited by the Director of the Department of Mysteries, code name "Croaker", to join the ranks of a recently formed Unspeakable Battle Unit.
The Unspeakable Battle Unit was formed right after Voldemort's demise when Croaker became the Head of the department and saw the need for it. Aurors had too much red tape to be effective during war time, and the Department of Mysteries operated without that said red tape. Nobody outside the Unit knew of its existence, other than Croaker; nobody in the Unit even knew who the other members of the Unit were, except for their codenames, and it would stay that way forever.
After the outing of Augustus Rookwood, Croaker also saw the need to clean house, and made sure all new recruits were properly screened. The screening included a magical oath of loyalty to the Crown and the Department and a mandatory full medical check-up.
There was no word to describe how Harry felt when the Healers discovered what was done to him. He was dosed up with love potions keyed to Ginevra Molly Weasley, as well as loyalty potions keyed to Ronald Billius Weasley and Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.
His magical core had nineteen layers of bindings, and only one belonged to his parents; the other eighteen layers were all placed by Albus Dumbledore. Dumbledore had placed a layer just before he was delivered to the Dursleys, another layer during each of the subsequent years just before each of his birthdays, and an additional layer each during his fourth year and fifth year at Hogwarts.
Each layer would bind Harry's core by 50% of whatever was available, and Harry was then obliviated of the memory of being bound. This left him with 0.0002% of his magical core to work with. The Healers found out that even his mental capability was stunted magically by Dumbledore.
It didn't take much for the Healers to figure out who was under their care. Luckily, they were under secrecy oaths to never speak of this again.
Harry had enquired of Croaker how he was able to use magic at all. The only explanation Croaker could come up with was that Harry's magical core was much more adaptable compared to other wizards or witches to the situation needed. He had needed his magic to stay alive from the Dursleys' abuse and whatever challenges he'd had to face during his Hogwarts years, so his whole magical core had grown such that whatever available was enough to keep him alive. Obviously, the manipulative old goat thought he knew it all; in trying to keep Harry weak, he had made Harry stronger than what Merlin had been by many times.
Flashback Ends
That was one of the many manipulative old bastard's machinations discovered by him over the years. The cloaked man came out of his thoughts, and said to Death, "There isn't much I could do about that, is there? I used my time turner extensively, and spent three hundred years in the past; oh believe me, I was tempted to change the past, but never once did I dare to interfere with what I already knew had happened." The man then smirked in a way that made Death himself shiver in fear. "I guess I'll have to give him hell in the afterlife, then."
The resolute man made to move towards Death's Veil; however, Death raised his hand and gestured him to stop. The cloaked man looked at Death inquiringly, and wondered what Death had in mind.
"What if you could change the past, would you go back?" Death asked.
If the cloaked man was surprised by Death's question, he didn't show it. He pondered for quite a while. Despite being warned repeatedly that he couldn't change the past whenever he time-travelled back using time turners, he knew Death's offer was completely different in nature; it was very possible the deity in front of him had the ability to back up what he was offering. The question was would he want to? He had left Magical Britain with a much brighter future using his influence; now he just wanted to reunite with his loves and the parents he had never gotten to know.
"I am going to respectively decline your offer; I have waited enough time to meet my parents again."
Death understood the young master, but he had to convince the young master to change the past; the Creator himself had tasked Death this mission. "You should know, your parents didn't truly die until the night of the 24th of June, 1995." As Death predicted, that got the young master's attention.
This time, the cloaked man was surprised, but given how much had he delved into Mind Arts, he wasn't shocked for long. "The night of Voldemort's return. How?"
"Your mother used one of the Ancient Rituals from the Therion Family Grimoire; the ritual anchors the souls of a family of parents and children on the same plane through bonds of familial love. However, the ritual was designed to be used temporarily for the duration of a war, not to grant immortality. Thus, it does not tolerate another ritual of similar nature corroding the familial bonds." Death explained.
Pieces of the puzzle immediately fell into place in the cloaked man's mind. "My blood, Voldemort's use of my blood to gain a body, inadvertently made him my anchor, and destroyed the bonds keeping my family alive."
"Correct," Death replied.
"I remember now, it has been a long time since I have read the Therion Family Grimoire. As long as one of the parents or the children survives, the soul of the victim or victims is anchored to the surviving member or members of the family. The victim or victims can be revived by simple physical contact between the victim and the surviving member, but only if their original physical body is recovered and repaired to be able to sustain life."
It was at this point Death interrupted. "Your parents' bodies were transported to your family manor in Wales by a switching rune the moment they were hit by the killing curse; your family elves put them under stasis until that night when Voldemort returned. Only then did your family elves bury your parents in your family grave site. The bodies buried in Godric's Hollow were transfigured pigs to fool Voldemort; I guess they managed to fool the rest of the world as well. If that old goat hadn't interfered, your godfather would have taken you to raise you in your family manor, and you would have grown up with them."
The cloaked man nodded in understanding.
Death continued, "If you choose to go back, you could save your parents, your godfather, Hermione Granger, Susan Bones and everyone else you cared about. You would get to see all of them again."
The man immediately countered, "I would see them again too if I die now! Why should I go back to deal with it all again?"
"Because, you didn't just anchor two souls that Halloween, you anchored four." Death saw this got the man's attention; he knew this would be the Holy Grail in convincing the young master to go back. He could tell the young man had figured out what he meant. "Yes, your mother was pregnant with your twin sisters at the time; if you choose to die now, you would not get to meet them in the afterlife, as they never lived."
Death knew he had succeeded, but he wanted to drive the nails in. "Plus, do you not wish to spare the memories of all the suffering from all those you loved? Yes, loved, despite how much you have told yourself otherwise. Tracey Davis, Daphne Greengrass, Astoria Greengrass, Fleur Delacour, Susan Bones, Luna Lovegood and finally, Hermione Granger. Not to mention your godson…"
"Enough!" The cloaked man snarled, his emerald eyes glowing, his cloak blowing. Death stopped talking immediately; despite being a deity, Death was intimidated by an angered Harry Potter, who may not have been a deity, but had the power and the skill to defeat most, if not all Demons. The cloaked man calmed down a bit, "Before I accept, may I ask why you want me to go back so much? Surely it means there would be fewer souls for you."
Death knew how much this man hated half-truths, so he answered honestly. "The Creator himself wasn't happy with how things turned out, but he couldn't intervene directly. So he sent me to convince you to go back, as you are the linchpin to everything. You have done good work dragging the Magical World to what it is now, but you could have done so much more with the help of your parents and those seven witches. As for fewer souls for me, you are wrong. Absence of dark lords encourages birth rates; I am not one against more happy lives, as in the end, they all come to meet their maker." Death paused, then added with a growl, "Plus, only I get to decide when someone dies, not some wannabe dark lords."
The man nodded in understanding. "So when are you sending me to?"
"Far enough to save the first life you could, and worth saving. I am sure you will figure it out."
"Anything else you want to tell me?"
Death answered. "Yes, four things for you to know and some advice. One, reunite the Hallows as soon as you can, and I promise not to take those you love away from you, but you will still need to protect them or teach them to protect themselves from others. Two, Dumbledore may be delusional enough to consider himself light and not stupid enough to create a Horcrux, but he did force a connection between himself and Fawkes, and used Fawkes to anchor himself to limbo without passing on. If I hadn't discovered what he was up to and interfered in time, the old goat would have convinced you to pass on to his so called 'next great adventure', and taken possession of your undead body. So, free Fawkes from his clutches; you can use your Royal Phoenix form to force a burning day on Fawkes, which will destroy all foreign magic on him. Three, the Creator has a boon for you, your old friend Hedwig is given the potential to become a White Phoenix; again, use your Royal Phoenix form to jump-start a burning day to complete the transformation. Four, your knowledge of the future can be only shared with the people you trust and can protect your secrets; obliviate anyone else who manages to find out.
"Now, my advice, the Creator wants you to make your world a better place, but we are not going to control your life, so you should make your own decisions on how to achieve this. But, don't let it consume you; you have more than enough power and knowledge to deal with any dark wizards or witches, so use this second chance to live the life you wanted, and not worry about preserving the advantage of knowing what was about to happen. Also, you know there are adults like Amelia Bones and Croaker you can trust, so don't be afraid to ask for help. Most people in that bird club had been heavily manipulated by the old goat; slowly chip away his support from them, by showing his true nature. Lastly, don't be afraid to love and ask for advice from those smart witches you surround yourself with."
The cloaked man considered Death's words carefully, and nodded in acceptance. "Thank you, Death, I will not let you or the Creator down. Now, how should we do this?"
Death actually smiled, and pointed towards the Veil. "Just step through the Veil, it will lead you to when you need to be."
The cloaked man nodded, and stepped through the Veil; before he was completely through, he heard Death telling him, "Oh, don't be surprised if one of us decides to visit you."
A/N: Thank you for reading this, this is it for now, please let me know your thoughts. If there are enough people interested, I will carry on writing this story.
This will be a Harry/Multi story, with centuries of hurt and suffering he endured, I felt Harry needed more than one lover to help him heal. Harry's girlfriends will be Hermione, Luna, Daphne, Astoria, Tracey, Susan and Fleur. I will explore how Harry and each of these girls came to care about each other so much, they would join in marriage. They are all unique, so how they each got together with Harry should be different, too.
There will be a lot of AD/RW/MW bashing, I haven't decided about what to do with the rest of the Weasleys yet. As for Dumbledore, I am not sure whether I portrayed him as delusional or just pure evil, I will leave you to decide.
Before jumping back in time, everything happened in the 7 books written by JK Rowling happened, except for epilogue. There are lot of ways to interpret to books without contradicting much to them, so that is what I am going to do. But it had been years since I last read the books, so please let me know if you find something I have written strongly contradicts what the Ms. Rowling's books have wrote.
I don't think I will write much about magical battles, despite how powerful I have made Harry (Which is probably why magical battles with Harry in it will be too one-sided and boring), but I will explore how Harry gained his magical abilities, knowledge etc.
I just corrected two minor mistakes pointed out by D. Page Robin, the 100th anniversary of Battle of Hogwarts should by 2098, instead of 2097; and the sentence regarding to notice-me-not runes, I have also corrected that. Thank you, D. Page Robin, for pointing that out, please don't hesitate to let me know of any more mistakes.
Acknowledgement: The idea of Harry's parents' corpses were transfigured pigs came from Radaslab's Not Normal (7144149).
The idea of having Harry jumping a decade at a time back in time was inspired by rlpj4's Beginning of a New Life (5163465).
The notion of Harry not wanting to go back was inspired by robst's Knowledge is Power (4612714).
Scene 1 – Rebirth
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,
10th May, 1993
Death's last words to him echoed in his mind; he decided not to make much of it. Harry found himself in a black void. Time seemed to be irrelevant here; it could be a millisecond, or it could be an eternity, before he could see again. He found himself to be incorporeal, as a soul without a body, standing next to a four poster bed.
He immediately recognized the room to be a Gryffindor's dormitory; judging by a book lying on the floor, Harry concluded it was the dormitory for second-year boys. And from Neville's and the traitor Weasley's snoring, Harry concluded it was well after curfew. Harry could tell his younger self was in the bed right in front of him, behind the curtain. As he was incorporeal, he walked right past the curtain and saw his younger self. He looked so young and so fragile. He seemed to be troubled even when asleep, and it was time for him to put a stop to that.
The moment the incorporeal Harry Potter contacted his younger self, his older soul was sucked into the younger body.
Centuries of hunting dark wizards led Harry to become very cautious of his surroundings; the first thing he did after returning to his twelve-year-old body was familiarising himself with where he was and checking what was around him and if there were any threats. Harry kept his eyes closed and sent out a pulse of his magic. His magical pulse acted like a sonar, and was reflected back to inform him of his surroundings. The sonar didn't work as well as it used to; despite retaining the vast amount of knowledge he gathered during his four centuries of past life, Harry seemed to need to train his younger body to relearn how to command magic like he used to. Nevertheless, he got enough information to confirm that he was lying in his bed in the Gryffindor's second-year boys' dormitory, and six magical people were sleeping in the room, including himself and the rat form of Peter Pettigrew.
Harry started to check himself over; his eyes remained closed. First, Harry checked his Occlumency; damn, alarms were going off all over the place. All that was left of his Mind World was the shell of his memory palace and a mostly destroyed control centre. All his defences and contingencies were gone; he would have to rebuild all that again.
Harry then found a series of complex charms used to stunt his mental capacity; normally, he would have to see a Healer about it, but with his advanced Mind Magic capabilities, even with a mostly destroyed Mind World, the blocks were already dissolving slowly. Harry decided to deal with the charms later if they were still not fully dissolved; first he needed to check the rest of himself. For now, Harry disillusioned his memory palace, threw a massive invisibility cloak over his mind and added a beater bat for active defence.
Harry dived in further to find his magical core, or should he say, cores. He found both his younger self's very powerful but bound core and his older, even more powerful unbound core. Unlike in physics, where opposites attract, in magic, it was the other way round. Given the two cores were essentially the same core from different time periods, they were in the process of fusing as one. It really didn't make much difference to Harry's older more powerful core, for it was about a hundred times more powerful than his younger core without the bindings.
Once the two magical cores were fused together, Harry found the bindings that used to surround the younger core, now surrounded the much more powerful fused core. Of the thirteen layers of bindings Harry found around his core, only one was placed by his parents; the rest were all placed by the manipulative old bastard. Clearly, he needed to fix that. This time, he would choose carefully how to make use of all that magical backlash; Lady Hogwarts could definitely make good use of some.
Harry carried on checking his magical core; all the different colours represented the seven elements he now could manipulate. An area of grey patch represented his parselmagic, and the bright white remainder showed off his untainted core.
Harry then found the branches leading off from his magical core, draining power from it. With just over 0.012% of his magical core available, a third was draining to keep his parents and unborn sisters alive in stasis, a quarter was draining to power the wards in 4 Privet Drive as well as all the monitoring charms on him and a quarter was draining to sustain the Horcrux in his scar. This left him with only 0.002% of his magical core to use; even then he was still above the average British wizarding population without the boost from his older magical core. Harry was fully aware of how powerful he would become once he dissolved the bindings and shook off all these burdens. Hell, he lived with that much power for nearly four centuries. This was why he desperately needed to get his advanced Mind Magic capabilities back to what they used to be, so he could control his magic.
There were other branches indicating the oaths and contracts he was linked with, including those made by his godfather and godmother, but that was for another day.
However, Harry discovered something else literally made his blood boil. He found some branches indicating the use of blood magic. Upon further exploring, Harry found each of these branches was used to monitor a particular aspect of him: his location, his health, his magical core, his mental state and the Horcrux that was in his scar. It was then Harry made the connection to all the silver trinkets in Dumbledore's office; he would have to find a way to destroy these monitoring devices.
Harry then let himself become one with his magic and looked outwards to find his soul; he had learnt how to do this during one of his travels in North America, where a Native American tribe leader taught him this to help him keep himself in check. As the saying went, 'Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' Harry wanted to make sure he didn't become another Dumbledore. A bonus of this was, Harry could now find all of his animagus forms, as all their spirits lived in his soul, but that was a story for another day.
Harry first found his younger soul; he felt the characteristics of it: innocent, lonely, brave, pure and filled with hope. He then switched his attention to his older soul; again, he felt its loneliness, its bravery. But, its innocence was replaced by experience and cunning; its purity was largely retained, but tainted with a vengeful fire fuelled by his loss; and instead of being filled with hope, his older soul was immersed with lost and sorrow.
As the two souls merged to become a new soul, it recognized the second chance being given, and took the best of both souls. Harry immersed himself in his new soul, its bravery, its cunning, its experience and its purity. The vengeful fire was replaced by a sense of righteous justice, the loneliness was replaced by the potential bonds of love, and lastly, there was the struggle between hope and sorrow; it seemed that his new hope needed some help to completely drive off the centuries of hurt and regret.
Like his magical core, Harry's soul also branched out. The souls of his parents and unborn siblings, frozen but peaceful, were connected to his soul by bonds of love. Harry knew it would be foolish to rush out to the family manor to revive his parents, and he was no longer a foolhardy Gryffindor. Harry wasn't sure when he would get the chance to revive his family, so he decided to ward his soul, especially the part anchoring his family to this plane of existence, and set up an alert ward to warn him about anything that could threaten his family's survival. Harry then moved on to examine the rest of his soul.
To Harry's total surprise, there were seven shoots of new growth, all made out of love, each with its own uniqueness, waiting to be nurtured to become full bonds. This was something Harry was incapable of before his return; there was just too much hurt for his old soul to tether to anything new by love. Recognizing his second chance to live his life to the fullest, Harry made a decision then, to explore and nurture all these seven potential bonds. He already knew who each of these bonds would be connected to.
Harry then looked for the connection for the soul fragment of Tom Marvolo Riddle; he was worried about the possibility of corrupting and destroying the anchors keeping his family alive. Eventually, after thoroughly checking his soul, he concluded the fragment was not connected to his soul at all, at least for now.
Harry was delighted though, to find two new animal spirits, roaming around in his new soul. He would explore his new forms later; re-mastering his Royal Phoenix form was one of his first priorities.
Finally finished with his soul-searching, Harry decided to bite the bullet, and discover how pathetic his physical body was. Harry mentally grimaced. Merlin, his twelve-year-old body was really a pitiful thing. There were improperly healed bones everywhere with barely any muscle attached to said bones, and scars all over his skin, especially on his back. Harry could tell that whatever was left available of his magical core was working overtime to keep him alive, and he was already starting feeling better with the boost to his magical core, but there was simply not enough nutrient at the moment to do any significant repairing. He would have to fix that before he completely dissolved the bindings on his magic; his weak body would disintegrate otherwise.
Harry then focused on the scar on his forehead, and studied it carefully. It seemed that he had underestimated how literal it was, when it was said that his scar was a Horcrux. The soul fragment was literally wedged between the scar and his skull; it had tried and was still trying to reach out to connect his soul, but there was a magical protective barrier keeping it from corrupting his soul.
The only reason Harry and Voldemort were able to look into each other mind was the proximity between the Horcrux and Harry's eyes and brain. A master Legilimens could read people's surface thoughts via passive Legilimency without eye contact, and Voldemort was a master Legilimens. But, neither the Horcrux nor Harry from the previous timeline was master Legilimens, the passage of information was solely achieved through the Horcrux and the top of Harry's eyes.
Harry smiled with pride at his mother's ingenuity. He had recognized the protective barrier from a sacrificial ritual in the Therion Family Grimoire; the same barrier protected him from the killing curse. Using the combination of these two ancient rituals, and some simple switching runes, his mother had ensured the survival of her family, if only the old goat had not meddled.
Harry had wondered why his family left the protection behind the powerful wards of one of his family manors in the first place; he suspected meddling on Dumbledore's part again. Oh how he would draw out the destruction of Albus too-many-bloody-names Dumbledore, and enjoy every single moment of it.
Harry had wanted to exploit the soul fragment in his scar, gain all Voldemort's knowledge from before Tommy's body was destroyed by his mother, and maybe to use it to spy on the primary soul, of which there wasn't much left. It definitely wasn't much too far off to literally call Tommy boy a soulless bastard. However, Harry didn't want to risk corrupting his mother's ritual and losing the chance to revive his family, so he dived back into his magical core, found the branch draining to sustain the Horcrux, and cut off the supply.
Harry then redirected the cut branch, and dragged it to connect it to the magical protective barrier, massively strengthening it. Harry went back to check on the Horcrux; it was already weakened, and had given up reaching out to his soul. Harry doubted it would survive for long, but it might be able to from all the magic given off by him and the ambient magic in the Castle. In addition, the Horcrux might draw magic from other anchors to survive. As long as the fragment would not threaten the survival of his family, Harry would leave it be; he might get some use of it later after he revived his family.
Lastly, Harry checked the magical channels in his body. They didn't look good; in fact, they looked terrible. No wonder his magical sonar didn't work as it used to; the magical channels in his younger body were barely open. However, Harry was hopeful he would be able to dilate these channels to the maximum by the time he finished retraining his magic.
Harry opened his eyes after coming out of his meditation. It looked like he had quite a lot to do; this summer was definitely going to be busy. No longer the foolhardy Gryffindor, Harry needed a plan. First, Harry determined the exact date he came back to, as it would be a major factor during his planning. It was Monday, the 10th of May, 1993, 0245. Harry searched back through his memories, and remembered it was two days after his Hermione's petrification.
"Hermione." Harry whispered out her name.
Scene 2 – Hermione
Hermione, at her name, all other thoughts left Harry, except, Hermione's still alive, my Hermione's alive, petrified, but alive. After nearly four centuries since he last saw her, Harry immediately got out of bed and prepared to see his Hermione in the Hospital Wing; not even the manipulative old bastard was going to stop him. Besides, Harry just remembered Dumbledore's removal from Hogwarts. Good, Harry thought, he would be able to do everything without the manipulative old bastard monitoring his every move; and he had nineteen days to plan before Ginny was taken to the Chamber of Secrets.
Harry put on his Invisibility Cloak, and his glasses; he had nearly forgotten about that, something else to fix. Harry left for the Hospital Wing in a hurry. He didn't want to test whether he could use one of the magical teleportation methods he'd learned or developed yet with his younger body, so he put a silencing charm on his shoes, and raced towards the Hospital Wing.
He immediately found Hermione's bed after sneaking in, and set up some simple privacy and silencing wards around her bed.
Slowly, Harry looked up to meet Hermione's petrified, but still open eyes. Try as he might, Harry couldn't stop the tears from filling his eyes. With his Occlumency shields down, once a single tear dropped out, the floodgate swung open. Harry dropped to his knees next to Hermione's bed, held her stone-like hand, and sobbed his heart out as he relived the day he learnt of Hermione's death in the future, a future he would make sure to never come past again.
Flashback
It was ten days after his medical check-up upon joining the ranks of Unspeakables. How Harry managed to master Occlumency and Legilimency to control his immensely powerful magic in such a short time was a story for another time; let's just say, it involved a time compression chamber and lots of magical backlash.
The newly dubbed Unspeakable, codenamed "Peril", came out of the time compression chamber and was ready to put this new dark lord wannabe down, but he needed to check on his best friend first. After the revelation about the youngest Weasleys and potions, he was worried about Hermione being Ronald's fiancée. He hoped against hope that Ronald genuinely loved Hermione, and hadn't hurt her, but with his mind thinking so much clearer, he couldn't help but draw the worst conclusion.
Harry Apparated straight out of the Department, to just outside the Burrow. He put on a fake smile and knocked on the door. As soon as Ronald Weasley had opened the door, Harry had sensed something was wrong. Weasley had become nervous the moment he saw Harry, a much taller, and much bulkier version of Harry, without his glasses, his emerald green eyes radiating power.
Ronald had nearly wet himself, trying and failing miserably to put on a fake smile, but to Harry Potter, Weasley was broadcasting his panicking thoughts; the moment Harry picked up the words, 'Hermione' and 'killed', Harry immediately reacted.
His wand was in his hand in a flash. Harry disarmed Weasley before the weasel even blinked; he then 'went muggle' on Weasley, using his newly acquired kickboxing skills to break all of Ronald's limbs. Weasley had just managed to let out a scream before Harry grabbed his neck and squeezed.
Harry wanted to learn everything, and he didn't want to be disturbed, so he let his magic do the work, and Popped. Out of all places, Harry along with the broken Weasley, appeared on an island in the middle of a lake, a lake infested with Inferi. Harry still vividly remembered when he came here years before with Dumbledore, retrieving what they assumed to be one of Voldemort's Horcruxes.
Harry wasted no time; he immediately pinned the weasel down on the ground, and dived into his mind. The more he learned, the angrier he got.
From Ronald's mind, Harry learnt Ronald was never his friend; their first meeting was a set-up. Ronald was paid with his money to spy on him, keeping him from learning his heritage, keeping him isolated from the rest of the student population, as well as using his best friend's status to get away with whatever he wanted.
Ronald had knowingly fed him loyalty potion, mostly brewed by Molly, although some were given by Dumbledore. Ronald had tried desperately and failed to keep Hermione away from him, eventually resolving to feeding her love potions, jealousy potions as well as loyalty potions, and even then, Hermione seemed to be able to fight off most of the effects and remained loyal to Harry.
After Voldemort's demise, Ronald was pissed that Harry had survived. With Dumbledore gone, he was no longer getting paid, and he wouldn't dare go to Gringotts due to his involvement in the break-in. So he decided again to use his best friend's status and ride along using Harry's fame to get what he wanted. In his resentment of Harry's survival, Ronald kept feeding Hermione love potion with Molly's help.
Then there was Hermione's death. Their relationship had never been stable since the Second Wizarding War ended. Hermione caught him cheating multiple times, but kept coming back after breaking up due to effects of love potions; however, despite the love potions, Hermione never did let their relationship go beyond snogging, even after accepting his half-hearted proposal, which was one of the reasons why Ronald had kept cheating on her. Finally, thirteen days before, the weasel lost his patience, and tried to rape her; Hermione broke free from the potions effects and fought back.
During the struggle, Hermione was thrown against a table and hit her head; she would have been healed if Weasley had immediately sent her directly to St Mungo's Hospital, but no, Ronald was busy gloating how he was finally going to have his way with her, and to take away one thing Harry had wanted.
While Ronald was gloating, Hermione had slowly and discreetly got hold of her wand, and cast a castration hex on the weasel, before drawing her last breath, muttering, "I love you, Harry!"
Harry struggled to hold back his tears, and kept on rummaging through Ronald's mind, to find out what happened to Hermione's body. He found the memory of Ronald, Ginevra, Percival and Molly planning how to hide Hermione's body, and came up with the excuse of her disappearance due to the ongoing war. Halfway through their planning, Arthur walked in, and even he reluctantly agreed to not inform Harry of what really happened, not wanting to face his wrath.
When they decided what to do with Hermione's body, they started discussing how the plan of getting the Potter fortune needed to adapt to the situation. It was clear this was new to Arthur, but he couldn't back out now; Ginevra didn't care, as long as she would marry the Boy-Who-Lived/Man-Who-Won; however, Ronald, Percival and Molly were in it from the beginning. Ronald and Percival only knew their parts in the plan from Dumbledore, whereas Molly knew the whole plan from Dumbledore, and had a few of her own. After they finished the new plan, Harry saw Ronald's memory of dumping Hermione's body in some river. Harry learnt every detail around the river and came out of Weasley's mind.
To say Harry was furious was the understatement of the century. Weasley's eyes widened in fear as he now knew Harry had learnt everything from his mind; he could literally see magic pouring out of his body, to the point it had become oppressive.
Harry no longer needed to hold back his tears, as there were none left; all that left was the fire of vengeance dancing behind two glowing emerald orbs.
Harry whispered in a voice so calm, it scared the weasel to soil himself. "You will suffer for all you did and more."
Harry then dived into the weasel's mind again, planted his memory of suffering under Voldemort's Cruciatus Curse, and trapped the weasel in that memory. Harry put in a safeguard to prevent the weasel from going insane before coming back out again.
Harry then conjured some metal chains with his wand to lock the weasel in place, so he could only reach the basin, but not the Inferi-infested lake. Without focusing on how, Harry waved his hand and parted the water in the lake, and lit all Inferi present on fire with the other hand, except for one. He then used his wand to put a timed activating charm on the single Inferius left, causing it to attack whatever was left on the island in a month's time. Only then did he allow the lake to refill, burying the single Inferius underneath the lake.
Harry turned to look at the screaming weasel and silenced him; he told the weasel in a chilling voice that would send shivers down Voldemort's spine, "Now you will know pain. You will scream until you are too thirsty to continue, then you will drink the potion in the basin brewed by Voldemort himself; it will force you to relive all your worst memories. You will do this for a month, and then the single Inferius I left under the lake will slowly and surely dismember you in the most painful way possible.
"See you in hell, weasel." With that Harry disappeared.
Harry immediately Popped to the river in the weasel's memory. He put on a Bubble-Head Charm on himself and dived in. Harry swam for three miles downstream before finding Hermione's body; he then took her back to her parents. Together, they mourned for Hermione Jean Granger, Smartest Witch of her Age, beloved daughter, and faithful friend.
Kneeling in front of her headstone, Harry swore vengeance on all those who had wronged her, and stole their chance of happiness. Before he stood up, Harry muttered, "I love you too, Hermione. I will make you proud before we meet again."
Flashback Ends
It took an hour for Harry to get his sobbing under control, knowing she could hear him from his future knowledge, he whispered to her.
"Hermione, I know you can hear me. Know that I will always love you, you don't have to hide behind books and authorities anymore, because you are mine to protect, forever. Also, thank you for figuring out about the basilisk; don't worry about me, I will not rush in without a plan. Trust me on this, love.
"Listen, something isn't right about Ronald, I want you to learn potion detection charms over the summer, and start to check all of your food and drinks in the coming year, especially those touched by any of the Weasleys.
"In the meantime, being aware but not able to do anything must be driving you crazy, so I want you to start learning Occlumency. I will start teaching you now. Occlumency is a branch of magic called Mind Arts, the opposite is called Legilimency. Occlumency protects your mind from being read by Legilimens, which is a person capable of performing Legilimency. Master Legilimens could read your mind without using a wand, and yes there are two professors I will not name for now that are master Legilimens, and I will now teach you how to protect yourself from them.
"There are many levels of Occlumency. The basic level will only alert you from being read by inexperienced Legilimens, but a master will still be able to read your mind without detection. At the next level, you will have a much stronger and thorough shield, and it would be much harder for anyone to read your mind without being detected, but a Legilimens could still brute-force through and pull out your memories. At advanced level, you will be able to suppress your memories, emotions, thoughts on top of your shields, so that even if a Legilimens broke through your shield, they would still have trouble pulling out your memories. In addition, you will have more resistance to mind-altering curses, potions and charms, such as the Imperius Curse, love potions, and compulsion charms.
"And at Master's level, you will love this, Hermione. A Master Occlumens has a fully formed mindscape; the mindscape serves to organise your memories and thoughts, and you can then add shields, tripwires, traps and anything else you could think of to protect your memories. With a fully-formed mindscape, you will find yourself better at remembering details, to the point of having perfect recall. Imagine how many more books you will be able to read, Hermione. I know I said you don't have to hide behind your books, but I also know how much you value knowledge, and I would never want you to change a part of yourself. But please remember, not everything written on books is true.
"Now that the introduction is over, do you want to learn this? I don't need you to answer to know that you do. Knowing how your beautiful mind works, I'll bet it's already very much organised, most likely to a library-like mindscape. But regardless I will start at the beginning…"
Harry then spent 2 hours teaching Hermione how to meditate, even without breathing exercises, given her petrified state. He taught her how to find her mind, how to start building her mindscape, and gave her examples of different people's mindscapes. He then let her know the benefits of having a memory palace built within her mindscape. Lastly, he taught her about the different kinds of defences she could put in her mindscape, and how it's better to build her walls brick by brick instead just setting a huge slab of stone.
"Now I am sure that was quite a lot of information to process, and you have got a lot of work to do to build your mindscape, so I will leave you to it. Remember, it's worse to have an organised mind without adequate defences, as it would be even easier for the Legilimens to pull the correct memory out. So I am going to set you your homework, I know how much you love doing homework, hehe. You should wake up in about twenty days; in these twenty days, I want you to organise your memories, thoughts and emotions into your memory palace, and next, I want you to build a mindscape around your memory palace. I want you to build an impenetrable defence with passive shields, as well as active defence systems with dragons, cannons, et cetera. When you wake up, I will test you, Ok?
"If you have any naughty memories you want to protect, make sure your defence is impenetrable. Remember, it's your mindscape, therefore everything in it should and will follow your laws; you need to know every inch of your mindscape, only then you will be able to will everything to follow your laws. So be patient, and build your mindscape one bit at a time.
"Goodbye for now, I will come back to talk to you later; remember, I will always need you and I will always be there for you. You are my best friend, and hopefully one day, something more."
Scene 3 – Mind Arts
Black Lake, Hogwarts Castle's grounds
10th May, 1993
After visiting Hermione, Harry felt much lighter; he had held that in for nearly four centuries. Despite how much his later lovers had tried, Harry could never talk about her, until today. He could feel hope in his soul again.
Taking down the wards, Harry snuck out of the Hospital Wing, and pondered his next step. Repairing his own Occlumency was definitely the top priority, especially since with Dumbledore's charm in place stunting his mind, he couldn't think properly. It was seven o'clock already, so once-again-growing boy decided to take a trip to the kitchen to get some food, and find a secluded place outside the Castle to work on his Mind Magic for a couple of hours, before heading to potions. He was too paranoid right then to go to the Room of Requirement; it was one room he didn't want the manipulative old bastard know about.
Twenty minutes later, he was alone facing the lake, a tree blocking him from prying eyes from the Castle. To say Harry Potter was a master at Mind Arts was like saying Dumbledore knew magic; true, but grossly understating.
Flashback
Upon receiving the results of his medical check-up, Croaker immediately ordered the Healers to remove his mind blocks and administer the strongest flushing potion to remove any residual potions. Croaker then told him that he couldn't risk removing the bindings on his magical core, without having him master Occlumency first. With the ongoing war, there wasn't much time to teach him, and the time compression chamber in the department was still recharging.
Harry nodded, glad someone was upfront to him, and then an idea came to him. He asked Croaker if they could remove the bindings a layer at a time, and use the magical backlash to charge the time compression chamber.
Croaker was very agreeable, and told him they even had crystals that acted like magical batteries; they were usually placed close to the ley lines to collect magic for emergency use, but they had used up all of them. So Croaker took him to a sealed ritual room with twenty crystals in it; each could power the time compression chamber for a day.
After dissolving three layers of bindings, all twenty of the crystals were fully charged. They decided to go into the chamber for ten days; each real day outside was a year inside.
Given the state of war, Croaker brought five other new recruits of the Battle Unit to train and a Healer for Harry and the team in the time compression chamber. During those ten years, the Healer worked extensively on Harry, and at the same time, Harry and the team trained under a foreign Battle Mage who had been retired for decades before being called in as a trainer for the newly formed Unit. During his spare time, the Head of the Department of Mysteries taught Harry one-on-one on mastering Mind Arts.
Flashback Ends
Croaker had taught him all he knew about Mind Arts, which was as good as, if not better than Dumbledore's capability in Mind Magic, but that was only the start of Harry's journey of learning Mind Arts.
Over his decades to centuries of travelling, other than a small number of very well hidden magical communities, Harry had visited almost all other magical communities in every corner of the Earth. He had studied with all magical beings: humans from all culture backgrounds, Veelas, Goblins, House-Elves, Centaurs, Vampires, Merpeople, he even found the rumoured-to-be-extinct High-Elves, and that was not to mention the Great Dragons.
Harry didn't consider Werewolves as a separate group, as he thought of them as magical humans with a disease, a disease with a cure Harry had a major role in developing.
The studious wizard had learned all types of magic from each of these groups, but he had always focused more on Mind Magic and Battle Magic. Magic is magic; however, each species or culture had a different way of using magic, including their use of Mind Arts.
For instance, Goblins would always protect their client's privacy as well as protecting their ward schemes; thus they all had almost impenetrable defences, whereas House-Elves were more adapted at reading minds to anticipate their master's wishes. Veelas on the other hand, were much better at misdirection; you would never know what you glimpsed from their minds was real or not.
For Harry, he had took the best from everything he had learned, mixed with what muggles had understood about the brain and computers, which by 2098, were quite advanced, and he built his Mind World from all these together.
As he dived into his Mind World, dropping into his control room, the time-traveller found himself to be in his older form again. He first checked on his Memory Palace, which took the shape of Ravenclaw's Castle. No living beings other than him had seen it in more than eight centuries.
Harry then Shifted to the location where he stored a backup of his Mind World, and unlocked the security vault using a Parseltongue password. Once inside he had to find the correct locker, unlocking it using a conjured key; he then took out a copy of the disk, locked up everything again, and Shifted back to the control room.
The disk contained the schematics of the latest version of his Mind World before he returned to the past. Using a biometric palm scanner to activate the master control, he loaded the disk, and using a 256-bit encryption key he had memorised, Harry started the decryption process. As there were three layers of encryption, it took two hours in his mind to finish the decryption process; however, due to his magical power, and years of practicing Mind Arts, in reality, only ten minutes had passed. It would only get faster when his magical core was unbound.
He then tasked the master control to rebuild his Mind World using the schematics on the disk, and to run diagnostics to find out what destroyed his Mind World during his rebirth. Lastly, Harry activated the heads-up display (HUD), so he would be able to watch the rebuilding process as well as access his Mind World when he came out of his meditation.
The rest of the processes were all automatic, but Harry knew time barely passed on the outside, as the newly rebuilt world clock displays just came online in his control room. Harry had the expression of a kid at Christmas, as his control room looked more and more like a control centre, and one by one, his Artificial Intelligence (AIs) came back online. Finally, the Control Centre had finished rebuilding, and all his AIs went through diagnostics and started working furiously to rebuild the rest of his Mind World.
Immediately, one of the AIs detected the stunt placed by the MOB, a term Harry started to refer the manipulative old bastard Dumbledore as; the stunt was disintegrated very quickly, and due to this, everything else happened even faster than before.
Starting from the entrance of his Mind World, the master Occlumens had a replica of Hogwarts Castle as well as its surrounding grounds, including the Forbidden Forest and Hogsmeade. This castle was designed to lure and trap enemies; it looked just like the welcoming Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to put intruders into a false sense of security, as well as letting the intruder assume the Castle was protecting his memories. Where in fact, all memories contained in Hogwarts Castle were either fake or very painful.
The intruder would always arrive at the Hogsmeade station; as soon as the intruder walked past an invisible ward line, all previously inactive and disillusioned defences would become visible and start attacking the intruder. The defences included many dangerous species of magical beasts, including basilisks. From above, there were also Apache attack helicopters. The intruder would be forced into the castle, if he managed to stay alive that long, and locked in. Harry would then be able to control the castle to direct wherever he wanted the intruder to go, experience whichever memory he wished the enemy to experience, and only Harry could personally escort the intruder out. Of course, Harry would be able to memory-charm the intruder before he left, or he could lock the intruder's memory so as to not be able to tell anyone else of the incident.
Harry would often exploit the intruder's state of panic, and sneak a Trojan horse into their minds, which would slowly compile information in the intruder's mind in small data packs, without being noticed. The data pack would then be placed on the surface thoughts of the intruder's mind as random numbers, allowing Harry to download information slowly even after the intruder was escorted out of his Mind World, just by scanning their surface thoughts. Once all information was downloaded, the Trojan horse would constantly build update packs for any new information.
Perhaps, what was even more ingenious or sinister, depending on how you looked at it, was the Trojan horse within the Trojan horse; the second Trojan horse serving to corrode one's mind, but dormant unless an activation phrase was whispered by Harry, and heard by the intruder. Of course, this Trojan horse would more likely be discovered by skilled Occlumens and thus destroyed, but the damage would have already been done. Harry was going to make one each specifically for Dumbledore and Snape, making sure they suffered as much as possible.
His false memories also served another purpose; with a full set of fake memories in Hogwarts Castle, Harry could overcome the most potent truth potion, by simply temporarily setting his mind to recognize the memories in Hogwarts Castle as real memories. The AIs would also be able to create detailed memories to put in Hogwarts on-the-go as he was being questioned.
His real memories, though, were all placed in the replica of Ravenclaw Castle; it also contained all the valuable knowledge he'd gathered during his four centuries of life in the other timeline. Ravenclaw Castle also served as his central command, and was placed on the far side of the moon, where no one would ever look. The castle itself was disillusioned, with an invisibility cloak covering it; it had many active defences: machine guns, grenade launchers, land mines, and twelve Hungarian Horntails patrolling around the structure. The moon itself had multiple disillusioned drones circling it, ready to attack anything getting close.
Although Harry himself could drop straight into the central command, for everyone else there was only one viable safe entrance, through a paired, upgraded version of the Vanishing Cabinets, redesigned by himself during the 2060s for the Department of Mysteries, commercially called Potter's Portals. The pair in his Mind World had top-of-the-line biometric security measures, top-of-the-line for 2098: voice recognition, again, a Parseltongue password; biometric palm scanner, keyed to his left hand; and retinal scanner, keyed to both of his eyes, with a blinking pattern in Morse code as the last security measure.
One portal was placed just outside the entrance hallway of the Ravenclaw Castle, with a team of eight AIs armed with assault rifles guarding it; its sister portal was placed in the deepest part of Hogwarts Castle, in Salazar Slytherin's library located in the Chamber of Secrets. Tommy-boy had never found the library, as he had been deemed unworthy of the knowledge in it. The Chamber had a King and a Queen Basilisk; both would only answer to Harry's command, instead of any Parseltongue.
Lastly, a copy of all the information stored in Ravenclaw Castle was placed in a replica of Potter Manor in Wales, which was placed in one of the thousands of stars in the sky. Only Harry knew which star it was on; however, he designed it so even he couldn't access that star. Once built, everything in Potter Manor would run remotely by a pair of AIs; one AI was to collect every piece of new data in Ravenclaw Castle, authenticate the data and copy it in its encrypted state to be placed behind layers of security in Potter Manor, while the other AI was designated with a single job to look for discrepancies in Ravenclaw Castle, by checking the data in it against those stored in Potter Manor; this would counter any form of memory charms. The defence system around Potter Manor was similar to that around Ravenclaw Castle, except the use of battle spaceships instead of drones.
A lot of Mind Arts is about will, and one's will could be strengthened by practicing Mind Magic; of course Harry Potter had one of the strongest wills naturally, being able to fight off an Imperius Curse on his first try when he was 14 showed that. However he had kept on strengthening it; he had security measures that would immediately alert him if someone was to try to control him in any way, Imperius Curse, Compulsion Charms, mind altering potions and repelling wards or notice-me-not Charms.
Harry now had the strength to fight all these off the moment he was made aware of any attempt, and he could decide the manner in which he fought off the attempts. It didn't really matter most of the times, but if someone was casting Compulsion Charms or Imperius Curses on him, they would be in a world of pain. If the master Occlumens chose to, the offender's will would be directed to a long, thin room. The room used an upgraded version of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, but instead of aircraft, the system would launch a block of metal, weighing two tonnes, accelerated for two miles, straight at the offender's mind. Whoever tried it would most likely spend months in St. Mungo's with the Mind Healers.
Harry Potter knew he had the best defended mind in history, but he wasn't arrogant enough to assume no one else would ever delve into Mind Arts as much as he did, so he prepared contingencies for when the opponent had better strategies, trying to sneak into his Mind World. Everything in his Mind World was constantly scanned for malicious objects; if something was found and couldn't be dealt with, a master reset could be used to destroy and rebuild his Mind World with all his memories intact.
Of course, defending his mind was only one of the many functions of his Mind World; he had built an ecosystem to allow all his animagus spirits to live in freedom. The multi-animagus also benefited from their roaming freely in their natural habitat, as he could learn how they moved; granted, Harry still needed to train in those forms in the physical world, but it was better than nothing.
The library in Ravenclaw Castle, as well as Potter Manor contained thousands of tomes. The well-travelled mage had used his perfect recall developed from his Mind Magic and read every single book he could get his hands on; he reasoned that he felt closer to Hermione that way. But he had not processed everything he read; there were many books Harry had simply copied to his mind by speed-reading through them. Therefore, he or his AIs could use the study room attached to the library to do research.
However, despite how much greater control Mind Arts had helped with his magic, as a security measure, Harry could not practice magic unknown in his Mind World, so he had to practice new spells and playing around with runes in the real world. However, the duelling room in his Mind World was a great place to develop spell chains, and duelling strategies nonetheless.
Harry watched as the last piece of his Mind World finally fell into place, and discovered he had twenty minutes to get to Potions. So, he came out of his meditation, and smiled as he saw his HUD up and running, reporting the diagnostic scans and displaying any information he had on everything he set his eyes on.
Potions Classroom, Hogwarts Castle
10th May, 1993
To keep up with appearances, Harry ran back to Gryffindor Tower, showered and changed quickly, got his books and arrived for Potions class with a minute to spare. Harry was giddy with anticipation, hoping Snivellus would perform Legilimency on him.
Harry was still not sure where Snape's allegiance lay, so he was not sure what he would do to Snape yet. Oh well, he would find out soon, when he finished downloading every scrap of Snape's memories. Harry had an inkling that Snape only cared about Snape; in the meanwhile, he would suffer for intentionally driving the existing wedge between Slytherin and the rest of the school, weakening Magical Britain by being the worst Potions professor in history and allowing Slytherin girls to be raped in their common room when the Dark Lord had returned.
Once sat down, Harry had another problem; he had to use all his Occlumency training to not obliterate the red-headed weasel, as even his usually green-tinted HUD was flashing red. Quickly, he decided to send a Legilimency probe to direct the weasel to sit somewhere else far away from him, preferably next to the albino git.
The weasel did just that, drawing any lingering attention on Harry away from him. The anticipation of the upcoming stupidity posturing contest finally managed to calm the angry wizard down enough to allow him to plan what to do about the weasel. Ronald may not have killed Hermione yet, but he had hurt her, insulted her, not to mention knowingly set her up to die on his first year's Halloween; that satisfied Harry's new sense of justice, allowing him to plan the weasel's punishment.
Meanwhile, the rest of the class watched the weasel like he had grown two heads. Malfoy, the person who nearly started the Fourth Wizarding War in the future, if it were not for Astoria's warning, was seething and managed a sneer at Weasley. "What are you doing here, Weasel? Did Scarhead finally drop you like a piece of filth? I can't say I am surprised, but these seats are reserved for the elites, and you, weasel, are definitely not one of the elites."
Harry was quite impressed by the ferret for once; he actually managed to insult both of them. Weasley's face went as red as his hair, but more than anything, he was confused as to why he came to sit here in the first place, but he just knew he had to sit here.
Not knowing how to counter Malfoy's insults, Ronald took a swing at him. And that was when chaos broke out. Malfoy's two bookends immediately went to help their leader; Seamus and Dean, being the hormonal Gryffindor males they were, didn't need much more persuasion. Neville, seeing Harry didn't move to help Weasley, was surprised by Harry's lack of reaction, but stayed put.
Unfortunately for the Gryffindors, Theodore Nott joined the fight, not wanting to waste a chance to have a shot at the weasel badmouthing Slytherins at every turn; Blaise Zabini thought it might be fun and also joined the fight. Even Millicent Bulstrode was revelling in the opportunity to make some use of her bulkier build.
At the side, both Pansy and Lavender were cheering on their respective houses, while Parvati was watching everything with fascination so she could gossip to others. Most other girls just got as far away from the fight as possible, not wanting to get involved in the fight, especially in Snape's classroom.
Other than Neville and Harry, only Tracey Davis and Daphne Greengrass stayed put, not moving an inch. Tracey watched everything with unveiled interest, wondering how this would affect her and Daphne in the house of snakes; Daphne kept up her Ice Queen persona, but her icy blue eyes absorbed everything, especially the tiny smirk shining through Potter's emerald-green eyes.
It was this scene the dungeon bat had found in his classroom. He was very surprised Potter was not moving to help the red-headed weasel, but masked his reaction. Five minutes later, with a few curses, Snape finally managed to break up the fight. Weasley was hurt the worst, while Malfoy wasn't much better off due to Weasley's size; both of them were sent to the Hospital Wing. The rest of the 'fighters' got away with a couple of bruises; Seamus and Dean both had muggle backgrounds, and were fitter and quicker than the Slytherin pure-bloods, so weren't hurt much from being outnumbered.
Once the class had settled down, Snape, as always, jumped to the conclusion that everything was Potter's fault, and he would be right this time.
"POTTER!"
"Yes, Professor," replied Harry calmly.
Seeing Potter didn't react, only pissed Snape off more. "A hundred points for starting a fight!"
Potter just looked back at Snape in the eyes, and said innocently. "But I was nowhere near the fight, Professor."
Snape was ecstatic inside when Potter looked him in the eye; he barely heard what Potter said, and immediately dived into the brat's mind. What he found was not what he expected, how did the brat develop a fully formed mindscape? Snape, in his infinite arrogance, decided the brat couldn't possibly build any adequate defences to stop him. So he quickly got out of Hogsmeade train station, and headed towards the castle, where he assumed all the brat's memories resided. He only realised his mistake when he crossed the invisible ward line; too little, too late.
Harry watched in fascination as Snape ran as fast as possible with a dozen Acromantulas chasing him; that was when his helicopters started to open fire. He made sure none of the bullets actually hit, but landed close enough to make Snivellus wet himself, and in the real world, he did.
In that moment of panic, the master Occlumens planted his Trojan horse, obliviated him and roughly threw the intruder out of his Mind World. Harry didn't want to do too much to draw Dumbledore's attention yet, plus he needed Snape functional to brew the Restorative Draught to revive Hermione.
In the outside world, only seconds had passed; the class was startled when Snape fell back on the ground without warning. It was then someone noticed that the potions master had wet himself. Snape, seething with rage and embarrassment, yet, not sure what had happened, except that it was Potter's fault, immediately dismissed the class. The news of Snape wetting himself during Potions had spread throughout the castle before the end of lunch that day.