Harry Potter stared up at the rapidly darkening sky. A harsh coldness gripped him; it squeezed his chest, causing his breath to explode out of his mouth in bursts of white smoke. In the dark recesses of his mind, he heard a woman's screams. Screams, and a voice, which he recognized as his mother's.
He knew that that meant one thing: dementors.
Glancing over, he noticed a look of terror on his cousin's face. Then Dudley glared down at him. "You know you're not supposed to do stuff."
Harry glared at his cousin. "It's not me, but it's not good. Let's get to the house."
As he finished talking, a wind drew up, along with storm clouds. He jumped up off the picnic table he had been sitting on and started running towards the Dursley's house. Behind him he could hear his cousin's labored breathing as he struggled to keep up.
Harry's mind ran through possibilities, and decided to take the shortcut on Wisteria Walk rather than heading all the way over to the closest point where Privet Drive came near the park. That would save at least five minutes on their return trip home. He grabbed his cousin's shoulder and dragged him towards the covered walkway.
"Come on," he yelled. "This way is shorter."
Dudley did not say anything in response, but the heavy breathing did not change behind him.
They entered the covered walkway, and absently Harry noted that it had gotten dark and cloudy enough that the lights in the tunnel had came on.
He rushed into the tunnel, and sighed slightly in relief. Just not being out in the open made the oppressive chill relent at least a little.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed at his shoulder, and twisted him around, and pushed him against the wall. His cousin's enraged face filled his vision.
"What do you think you're doing, Potter? Dad's going to break you for this!"
Harry pushed his cousin backwards. "I'm not doing anything Duds. There are dementors out there, and we need to get to the house now before they try and kiss us. I for one, don't want my soul sucked out today."
Dudley glowered at him for a moment, before pushing him against the wall of the tunnel. Harry's shoulder hit the wall hard, and his wand dropped from his hand, skittering away.
At that moment, the lights in the tunnel flickered out, and a frost raced down the tunnel walls from the opening closest to the Dursley house. Dark shadows filled the far entryway. Harry glanced behind himself, and saw that another dementor was at the other end of the tunnel.
Harry cursed as he dropped to the ground, hunting for his wand. Dudley fell to the ground as well, but instead of looking for Harry's wand, he started crying.
"Lumos," Harry snarled, and his wand tip began shining three feet away.
He scrambled towards it, feeling the chill of the dementors coming ever closer, their vile presence leaching what little warmth and happiness he had from him. It was a coldness which sucked at the marrow of his bones, and made his arms, legs and even his thoughts feel heavy. It pushed at this sense of self and life, stealing them away with every rattling, breath the dementor inhaled.
His hands closed around the his wand, and the lumos spell sputtered out. The tunnel flickered back into darkness, and Dudley moaned in fright.
Harry raised his wand, and screamed out an incantation. He felt his magic flow through him, but nothing happened. He expected a fully formed silver stag to bounce forth from his wand. Instead, there was nothing. Nothing but the coldness and the despair and the total lack of any possibility of happiness. There was not even a sputtering of the incorporeal patronus mist.
Harry closed his eyes, as a vision of a petrified Hermione filled his brain. A horrible knowledge that she was stone, and there was nothing Harry could do for her. That no matter how often he visited her in the hospital wing, she was unmoving and unchanging. Tears leaked out of his eyes, and he squeezed them shut tighter.
Then there was a cracking sound. It was a noise that Harry had never heard before, a noise that defied explanation. It was a noise that he saw as much as felt; one that resonated in his bones and brain and echoed in his ears.
He opened his eyes, and saw something that hung in the air behind the dementors. It appeared as if someone was ripping apart the air. Energy pulsed through the tunnel, and the edges of the tear started to flare in eldritch fire. A second flash of power raced down the tunnel; to Harry it had all the flavor of a patronus, but with none of the emotional overtones.
Harry felt something like an ice storm cross over his chest, and he looked up to see the second dementor floating over him. It passed both him and Dudley without even a glance, and just went towards the rip in the air.
A third pulse of energy, and the rip widened, becoming more of a doorway. Still the energy writhed and hung there, not touching anything; ethereal and solid all at once.
Finally, another pulse whispered down the tunnel, and Harry saw someone stepping out of the portal.
A familiar voice spoke, one that sounded like someone who he had heard, and heard often, but at the same time was nothing like anyone he had ever heard. And with an American accent. "Oh you poor souls, what could have twisted you to be like this?"
Harry could feel a pressure in the air around him. It felt like he was under a dozen of the Hogwarts down comforters. It was heavy and oppressive and warm and protective all at once. It had the taste of hope.
The stranger's left eye glowed brightly as it appeared to leak fire; he reached out and touched the first dementor, and the fire flared even brighter.
The dementor's black and dirty robes fell away.
Before Hogwarts, Harry had seen a video in school about erosion. There was an animation about how water would remove sediment from stone, to reveal things beneath the dirt; there was even a dirt covered, jade statue that they used to show this effect.
That's what the dementor's robes falling away reminded Harry of. It was not so much a physical dropping, as a washing away of dirt and corruption and filth. It was a warming of their very presence; one which Harry could instantly feel in the lessening of that dark chill from the air.
Absently, Harry noticed that the man did the same thing to the second dementor.
Finally, all that stood before the man were two glowing sparks, which had the outlines of a ghost surrounding them. The man stared at the sparks for a moment, and he then laid hands over each of them.
"You have both been on this plane for too long. Your souls hungered for the next adventure, but you had tied yourself here, and were unable to go further. Thus you had become corrupted and lost to the night; you only felt hunger and coldness and became a desecration to life itself in order to feel the warmth and to sate that hunger. But even then, that was only temporary and there was no true warmth to be found. I will help you along to the next beyond, but know that there will be penance awaiting for you; one should never deny the cycle of life."
With those words said, his eye flared; after a second, he appeared to be on fire, as the energies he was pulling up caused his aura to become visible as a giant phoenix. There was another rush of power, and then an implosion of awareness. Something which tugged at his sense of self, yet there was no wind to so much as muse his already messy hair.
The sparks were gone, and the lights were flickering back to life.
This gave Harry the first good glimpse of the person who had saved his cousin and himself. He was about a year or two older than Harry, yet around the same height. His clothes were black pants and a long sleeved button-down shirt that was also black, and unbuttoned. This revealed a well-defined chest, in addition to a tattoo on his right pectoral. It was appeared to be a reverse-image x, but to Harry it had the feel of certain activated runes he had come across during his studies. The stranger had reddish-brown hair, with a chunk of white over his left eye. What amused Harry was that the stranger's hair was a messy as his own. It appeared uncontrolled and uncontrollable.
Harry stood, as the stranger came closer to him; a smile on his lips. Once they were just a few feet apart, Harry began to frown. He could see the stranger's face clearly now, and though the eye color itself was blue, Harry recognized the face as his own from the mirror.
"You... you're me!" he exclaimed, shock pouring through him.
His doppelganger laughed slightly. "I guess that's true, at least from a certain point of view. I'm you from another universe; another set of possibilities. Someone from somewhere a little left-wise on the spiral of worlds. Tell me, what's our parent's name in this universe?"
Harry blinked, and spoke without thinking. "James Potter and Lily Potter nee Evans."
The doppelganger nodded his head slowly, as amusement seemed to twist his lips the slightest bit. "Not even a Grey this time. Anyways, my name is Nate Grey."
"Harry," Harry replied. He was staring at this other him, and could feel his brain trying its best to just shut down and stop working. A tug at his consciousness that actually scared him slightly.
Nate's smile widened a bit. "Well, it's good to meet you then, Harry. Here's a bit of a secret, but I'm the Shaman for my universe's earth as well as the earth of a dozen others up and down the spiral that seem to lack me for some reason."
"Other universes?"
Nate nodded. "Yes, other universes. There is a spiral of universes, twisting around and around and around. There is no start and no end to this spiral. Each node of the spiral is another universe. The ones right next to your universe are all but mirror images. But the further you go left or right, the more differences in the actions of those you know. When you go up or down, then you get where evolution has taken a different course. There may be places where snakes are the predominant life form rather than a form of ape. Or somewhere where viruses never evolved, leading to no sickness and less strife. The point is that across the spiral there could be any possibility waiting out there; any life; and yet, we share a commonality. Though our names are different, we share a genetic heritage. If I had to guess, I'd say that our parents have the same almost-ness which we share."
Harry shook his head. He would have to ask Hermione about some of this. It did not make sense to him. "So, what do you mean about shaman?"
"I deal with the spiritual plane and how it interacts with the physical. Judgment and the soul, and how they interact with a person's health and life and death. I have been a guide and a teacher and an avenging angel all at the same time. I felt something calling me to this plane of the spiral, and could not understand it, but now I think I do. You're on the cusp of emergence. Your powers are about to be released, and if you don't have the framework in place to deal with them..."
Nate's stare shifted beyond Harry, though Harry suspected the older boy was not looking at anything physical, but watching his own memories. "Let's just say that I've seen a few worlds that we've ended up... well destroying is probably the best description."
"Destroying?" Harry asked, surprise making his voice weak.
"Yup," Nate replied, with a popping sound on the p. "Anyways, I'm here to give you a bit of a download, and a framework upon which your powers can rest. Has your first mutation event occurred?"
"Mutation?" Harry asked, the world rolling around in his head, making him feel stupider and slow. He knew the word from his primary school education, but this stranger was using it in an odd context that made it seem alien and unfamiliar. Made it seem like the word 'wizard' the first time Hagrid had said that word to him.
Nate nodded his head. "Yes. The first time your powers exposed themselves? It was probably something you couldn't really control, and in response to emotional stress."
That sounded like accidental magic to Harry so he simply nodded his head.
"Good, then that means I don't have to give you pointers on the basics of energy field manipulations."
Before Harry could say anything, Nate's held up his hand, and his left eye once again flared into fire. Harry's shirt disappeared, and Nate pressed his hand up against Harry's chest. Energy poured through them both, and the phoenix aura reappeared; it twirled around them, purging and purifying, eating away at the blocks that had been placed around his essence; some by his own subconscious, others by those less trustworthy. Energies pulsed through the malnourished routes of power; the arteries of magic, crumpled by the abuse and malnutrition and blocks flared to life. Magic raced through them, filling him, and expanding him in ways he had never experienced before. It felt like the moment that he had first touched a wand; a wash, an explosion, of energy; but this was hundreds, if not thousands, of times more.
Then just as suddenly as the fire appeared, it was gone. Harry dropped to the ground, his nose bleeding slightly, as he groaned. His body ached; every muscle and bone felt battered and bruised. He had a throbbing awareness of his head, a staccato drum beat, that pounded in time with his heart rate.
"Merlin," he muttered. "That gave me a headache and a half."
"I can understand," Nate replied with chuckle. "When I got my totem it felt like someone had taken a bat to my head. Of course, my power was slowly killing me at the time, and it felt like I was being stabbed in the eye every time I moved something."
Harry settled back, sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall of the tunnel. He glanced down at his chest and noticed that he now sported a runic tattoo as well. There was a five-pointed star, with the top point, pointing towards his right shoulder. In the center was a phoenix, and on the phoenix appeared the sowilo rune, looking like a much less inflamed version of his scar. Each arm of the star also held a different rune: ansuz, kenaz, perthro, hagalaz and tiwaz. Two circles surrounded the star, and in the space between them those five runes were repeated over and over again.
Vague memories of their meanings tickled at the edge of his awareness. He knew that Hermione had told him in their third year, but he could not fully remember what each of them were. Still, even without the knowledge of what they meant, he could feel them there under his skin; he could feel the magic of them pulsing and flickering, and it reminded him so much of the pulses of energy from the portal from which Nate had appeared.
He gave a slight shake as his shirt suddenly reappeared on him. Looking up, he found Nate to be smiling at him.
"I'm sorry," Nate said softly.
"Why?"
"Because this is going to hurt even more."
Then the eye flared again, and Harry felt like someone was driving spikes into his brain. Nearly unbearable agony raced through his head; a head which felt like it was going to explode from the pressure. His hands found their way to his temples as he screamed out the pain.
Then as suddenly as it appeared, the pain was gone; all that was left was an after ache, the memory of pain in his tensed and trembling muscles. A ghostly reminder that the pain had existed, and that it awaited out there somewhere once again.
His body curled around itself, trying to protect itself from the pain that it knew was still out there; that was waiting for him, waiting to consume and conquer him. Harry coughed out bile and blood onto the pavement of the tunnel, as spots danced in his vision.
He went to speak, and instead coughed out blood twice more. Finally, the fire in his throat died enough where he could actually form words, though his voice was low and gravelly.
"When I'm able to stand, I think I'm going to kill you."
Nate chuckled darkly. "I'm sure you'd like to. But that was the easiest way to give you my knowledge. You'll need it to control your powers when they awaken fully."
"What do you mean?"
"When the memories finish unpacking the next time you're asleep you'll understand."
Harry twisted his neck slightly, feeling the tendons there creak with the movement; a slight lessening of the ghost memory of that pain. He shifted his weight up onto his arms and knees; that memory of pain flickering across his bones.
"Ah," Nate said, a grind on his face and his voice slightly haughty. "I see you're recovering. That's good, but I think it also means that I need to take my leave of you now. Wouldn't want us to come to any... unfortunate blows."
Harry knelt back onto his haunches. A move that prepared him to stand and got his back going up and down again. Unfortunately, it also allowed vertigo to slam into him.
He squeezed his eyes shut against the dizziness as he replied. "I don't think I'd call them unfortunate."
Nate chuckled. "Be well, Harry Potter."
Harry opened his eyes as the world around Nate twisted. That dark fire flared into existence behind him, and energy pulsed around him and through him. It tugged at his body, and pulled at his soul. The runic tattoo on his chest burned, a hot flare of awareness.
Nate waved absently, as he stepped backwards into the distortion of what Harry suddenly knew was the fabric of space-time.
As Nate moved fully into the hole, reality itself pulsed again. A throb which made everything in front of him seem to pulse and bulge. It seemed like the air itself was going to buckle under the tidal pressures of the tear.
Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the rip disappeared. Harry dropped back to his knees as his breath left him in something akin to an explosion. The faint taint of power teased at his senses. It contained the smell of water before rain as well as the taste of pennies; a taste Harry remembered from that one time that Uncle Vernon had taken a power cord that was plugged into a wall to him.
He felt stronger, almost invincible, as well as drained, all at the same time. It was like that ghost memory of the pain, something that he had only felt after the cruciatus curse. He let a sigh escape his lips as he glanced over at his unconscious cousin.
His eyes closed, as he felt the strength finally leaving him; an awareness of thought that was flowing away. He knew that soon, he would be unable to even stand; much less walk the rest of the way to the Dursley's.
The wand once again fell from his fingers, landing against the ground with a clatter. Harry dropped back against the wall. He could feel the welcome arms of oblivion clutching at him, trying to welcome him.
The he heard a voice. One from his childhood, that was filled with an almost panic and anger.
"That foolish idiot. I told Dumbledore that he couldn't trust that Fletcher, and of course he ups and disappears and just in time for dementors!"
Harry struggled to open his eyes, and snatched up his wand, attempting to quickly hide it into his holster so that Mrs. Figg would not see it.
"Harry! you weren't kissed! No, keep it out you silly boy. We don't know if there are more of them around."
Harry glared at her. She was not fitting into his concept of the world. She was an anomaly at the moment; one he lacked the energy to comprehend. So he kept his wand out.
"You're a witch?" He asked in a slurred voice.
She snorted. "No, I'm a squib, so you're the one that will have to protect us. Now, what happened with the dementors? Did they kiss your cousin?"
"No," Harry began as he shook his head; something inside of him told him it would not be a wise idea to tell her that a Harry from an alternate universe had came and turned them into fireflies. "They didn't kiss either of us, and I'm not sure. They just disappeared. Not that I'm complaining or anything."
Mrs. Figg sighed wearily. "Well, let's get you two home then."
Harry still slightly loopy from exhaustion asked, "So, you're taking us to Hogwarts?"
"No you silly thing. I'm taking you to Privet Drive, not your school."
"Oh," Harry muttered darkly. "There."
"Yes, there. That's your home after all."
Harry shook his head. "No, that's never been my home. I mean, I've never been welcome there after all."
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he felt a tremor run through him. There was a release on his chest, like taking off a compression band. He gasped as he stumbled slightly. Everything turned high contrast in his vision for a moment. There was too much color, too much sound, yet not enough of either, all at once. It was a shift in how he saw and felt, and suddenly he felt a rush of magic sizzle across his skin. The sizzle settled into his skin, and he felt like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and a film had been pulled from his mind. He felt lighter and freer and faster and like his thoughts were moving just that much quicker than normal.
He realized that she was saying something in response to his statement; something that had the tone and flavor of an automatic response. The taste of a compulsion. "Nonsense, they're family. Family always loves and welcomes family."
Harry gave her a dark look, and decided to ignore the whole discussion on families. "So, you knew the entire time who and what I was?"
Mrs. Figg nodded as she glanced around. "Yes, yes. Now, let's hurry."
Harry frowned, as he quietly woke his cousin. "Come on Duds, let's get you home." Then in a louder voice, directed at Mrs. Figg, he asked. "So, why didn't you ever tell me?"
Mrs. Figg sighed. "I wanted to, but Dumbledore said that I wasn't allowed. I couldn't even do anything to let you be happy when you visited, because I knew that those awful people would keep you away from me if I did."
"What does Dumbledore have to do with any of this?"
"He's the one that had me come here and watch over you. Didn't he tell you that?"
He shook his head, as he helped Dudley to stand. "No, he's never mentioned you. Or that he knew what was going on."
"Well, I sent him report after report telling him how bad it was over there. I mean, you were always so little, and the only time someone really saw you outside, you were doing the gardening or painting the shed or something of the likes which Dudley never did."
Silence settled around them, as they walked towards the Dursley's house. A frown marred Harry's features as he considered the last thing that Mrs. Figg had said. He had never thought that Dumbledore knew what was happening. He had always assumed that it was some form of automatic enchantment which addressed the letters; that no one had ever known that his first bedroom was the cupboard under the stairs. Even as he thought that, he wondered if McGonagall knew what his home life was like. If Pomfrey had. How many of the teachers and staff were in on it? And why? Was there some other reason besides him being 'safe' which had the staff sending him back here every year.
He continued to walk through the rapidly darkening streets; as he struggled with his cousin over his shoulder, his thoughts were dark and disturbing even to himself. They flashed to an article that had caught his attention in the library earlier in the summer. It was a description of brain-washing techniques and other psychological abuses. Some of the ways to do this was to emotionally and/or physically abuse the person, make them feel beaten down and worthless and then right as they were reaching the breaking point, give them a little acknowledgment or leniency.
In that moment, Harry had a flash of insight.
It was not just a small act of leniency that would help in this situation. Taking him from the higher abusive environment of 4 Privet Drive to the slightly lesser abusive environment of Hogwarts could also be seen as an leniency. Harry would be thankful for being placed in the slightly lesser abusive environment. He would be happy, and see Dumbledore as a savior. The Weasley's. The Magical World as a whole, in fact. Like a puppy that had been kicked too many times, he would happily be smacked across the nose, provided he wasn't being kicked.
Other aspects of the article flashed through his mind, and one of them was the fact how a repeated mantra in this situations would often be "I am doing this for your own good."
How often had Dumbledore said something similar. That this action was for the 'greater good' or something was for Harry's safety. He was letting Harry know that Dumbledore knew best. That he had all the answers, and that those answers were right.
Regardless of what Harry thought, or felt or could even want.
Anger and hate burned through his veins.
Who was Albus Dumbledore to decide what was best? For who was it best for? Being abused and tortured by his relatives was not the best for Harry Potter. It was not for Harry Potter's greater good. There had to be something somewhere else; some other factor that he was not aware of.
That thought set off another tangent in his mind. Something his uncle had said once while discussing an audit of one of the other managers at Grunnings; that he just had to 'follow the money' in order to figure out the reasons and players involved. Harry knew he had money; Ron reminded him of it every chance he got after all. Yet, here he was, stuck in this hellhole that was called Privet Drive wearing his cousins hand-me-downs. Something was wrong with that as well.
With an effort, Harry pushed the rage to the back of his mind, as he kicked the front door to Privet Drive.
In a castle in Scotland, in a high-tower overlooking the Black Lake, there was an office. Inside this office were a number of portraits, a phoenix and a dozen shiny gadgets. Gadgets which whirled and twisted and puffed little balls of smoke.
This was the office of the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Normally, one could find an eccentric old man, one with a fondness for gaudy, outlandish robes, lemon drops, and an interest in ensuring that certain young males remained weak and open to manipulations, inside this particular office. Yet, on this day, said old man was in Paris, actually attending a meeting of the International Confederation of Wizards. This was a rare event, but necessary for the old man, as someone within that august body had recently brought up the thought that the old man was not at enough meetings to be considered the Supreme Mugwump.
Of course, the little fact that this was true, mattered not to the old man. He wanted that office, and the title that went with it.
Unfortunately for the old man, he was unaware that even as he argued that he should be keeping his position as Supreme Mugwump, the current sitting Minister of Magic was at that moment drafting a decree that would remove him as ambassador at large to the ICW.
Though for our purposes, that bit of intelligence was neither here nor there. Our concerns today was that said office was empty; save for the autonomous portraits and a somewhat cranky phoenix.
This could also be considered unfortunate for the old man as he was unavailable to muster any forces to go intervene at Privet Drive when one of the many flashing, squawking, popping and puffing gizmos burped.
The device in question flared slightly, bulging as it attempted to contain information about what it was reading. After all, it had never been designed to handle the energies involved in the sudden collapse of highly illegal and highly dangerous wards that were based upon a misread set of blood-runes.
Thus, as Harry Potter was finished telling a certain Arabella Figg that he had never considered 4 Privet Drive a home, said device transmuted itself. In one of those highly unusual and highly surprising events which seemed to infect the Wizarding World on an almost daily basis, the end result of the transmutation of the device, was that it had turned into a niffler.
A niffler who was quite, ecstatically happy to be in a room filled to the brim with shiny, shimmering, moving doodads. A surprising number of which were metal