Partially Kissed Hero
Chapter Seventy-Seven
by Lionheart
I I I
Sybil Trelawney, Professor of Divination at Hogwarts and newly minted (and somewhat girlish) dryad had no sooner disappeared in a cloud of sparkles than Queen Sybil walked into the clearing. One could almost expect them to be completely different, considering the weight of accomplishments behind the one. However, the mischievous nature was the same, and a touch of the girlishness. She was just more adept at concealing her true nature, so did not immediately swarm all over Harry, in spite of thirty years or so of longing to see him.
So instead she merely walked up to him and took his arm, calmly smiling.
"What happened?" Harry demanded urgently, seeing the change.
"It worked," she replied with a casual shrug. Seeing his confusion, she raised her wand to remove the memory blocks on him.
It all came back in a rush. Everything. Suddenly he could simply recall a whole new life where he lived with his parents and many siblings. Sirius was there, as was Remus, along with their own wives and children in one great big extended Marauder community. Years and years of details and experiences once forgotten under magical suppression got recalled in detail as those blocks got removed at last for the final time.
It could have been a worse experience save for the fact that he'd been through all of this before.
In his new past he could recall his mother had doted on him, and his father was always proud of him - not because of his promised future, but because the boy was one of those types parents are often proud of. Harry took after his parents in important ways, which naturally pleased them. He was smart and capable, gifted and intelligent, and loyal, and because of those he was often given extra lessons and more responsibility than his peers.
And he had many peers. The wolf animagus and werewolf impersonator that was Remus Lupin had married a pleasantly plump wife who'd always outshone her neighbors with her kind smiles and generous baking, and between them they'd had more children than any three of their nearby friends. That was hard to do, as Sirius and his wife had five kids, and James and Lily had seven, starting with Harry and his two older sisters.
Then you had to recall these families had been at the heart of a community of exiles, most of whom had had the close brushes with death that tends to make one desperate to connect to life in ways that often result in children.
There had been a population explosion, a boom of baby witches and wizards among those tens of thousands of rescued expatriates, and Harry was among the older children, so somewhat of a position of leadership among his many peers. His parents held important positions and he was a gifted child.
It was a dream life in many ways.
Of course the downside to living an easy life is those that do so tend to be very soft. A person grows by overcoming trials and difficulties, and floating along on easy street tends not to teach or mature one in some important ways. Children are born with selfish tendencies that have to be overcome. In point of fact, there are a rather large amount of flaws people are normally prey to, and overcoming those seemed, more or less, to be the point of existence. But, carnal creatures that most of us are, people are ill-inclined to change until they have a reason, and most often that reason comes only when we can no longer afford the luxury of maintaining our flaws.
Flaws inhibited performance and reduced our abilities. All of them do. But at the same time we are most often comfortable with keeping them around for a variety of reasons. It was only when challenged in difficult circumstances that required all our capabilities to succeed that many of us finally mustered up the gumption to cast aside those comfortable old chains holding us down.
Strange, but people and societies have a marked tendency to grow the most while undergoing experiences of the least pleasant sort. Or, put another way, a tree that has to resist winds grows deeper and better and stronger roots. It was almost, to use a game analogy, like living things gained no experience from having a pleasant life.
No experience, no growth. No growth, no improvement in the basic creature. And unimproved people aren't worth much. Harry, far from being a bad lad, was also not as good as he might have been, either. Given time he could have gone on to become a decent adult, overcome hardships during later years to become a decent, well-adjusted person in time for having his own kids.
But it wasn't like they had a heck of a lot of time to spare. The sad reality was that he'd have to be meeting not one but TWO Dark Lords on more or less equal terms during the first year he could realistically be called a teen.
That called for rapid advancement, far too rapid to be normal. The regular sort of fine, upstanding member of society was insufficient for dealing with the difficulties that might well claim them all. That sort of person made for a great starting point, a foundation on which greater things might be built, but by itself it was not sufficient to meet the tasks they had before them.
So, shortly before the boy's sixth birthday the dryads (who visited regularly) decided that it was time that Harry get the then-current set of memories of his Dursley counterpart.
That had been the shock of his life to the young lad.
The young Harry had never been pampered, thankfully. Being pampered was poison, and fortunately for everyone his parents knew how to tell him 'no'. But there had been nothing in the young Harry's life to prepare him for the experience of reliving the memories of the boy being raised by the Dursleys.
Harry had been turning out depressingly average before the 'raised by the Dursley' experiences had been downloaded to him and gave him the shock of his life. Before that he'd not properly appreciated his family or his many brothers and sisters. They'd fought in the manner children often do, and he'd been proud of himself for his small victories in putting down the competition until suddenly he could recall the life of loneliness that was the Dursleys and done a complete turn-around.
Once more it was strange, but a complete life of hardship and suffering was no better for a child's development than too much ease. One might well say that too much rest without any work didn't accomplish anything, but likewise going the opposite route of all work yet no rest was no better, destroying the one doing the labor as they had no chance to recuperate. It was in the blend of the two that the real development lay.
There was a reason why those who have adventure crave stability, and those who have stability crave adventure and excitement. Those who lead peaceful lives often read horror, while those who lead horrible ones read fluff pieces.
Just like all soil and no water was as bad for plants as the reverse is, people had to have a blend of experiences in order to turn out properly, and having that life of suffering and hardship downloaded into the mind of the Harry who'd been living the pleasant life was enough to mature him rapidly.
Most people don't do things, especially difficult and uncomfortable things like growing up and developing self-discipline, until they have to. Sadly, just about every form of self-improvement was uncomfortable. A life of ease gives no reason to change, while a life of nothing but hardship gives no reserves of strength to do so. People juggling disasters had no time, either.
Harry was a strange boy in that he had an amazing capacity for overcoming adversity. But to grow from it he still needed nurture and support, both of which the Dursley experience was entirely lacking in - A lack that Dumbledore had been counting on.
But having seen horror first-hand was a great incentive to learn how to face it, so that when next you meet you won't be so helpless against it.
The life at the Dursleys was effectively identical to the mainline. Dudley's twin had been put under compulsions to act as though Harry would've in his place, and because of the potion they'd looked the same, so the life among that family had been identical for Harry's stand-in, and thus for Harry himself on receiving those recorded memories.
Once more the boy shuddered under the poignancy of the experiences.
The contrast between the two childhoods could not have been more extreme. The Harry raised among his family had everything he could desire - and not in a Dudley-type way, either. His parents were great people who'd tried their hardest, however it was colored by the fact that everyone among their small community had known Harry was destined for great things, and that had colored their treatment of him, allowing him to get away with more things than a child ought to have.
It was strange how the most effective lies always had a nugget of truth to build themselves around. Dumbledore had always held out in public that being raised among those who knew of his destiny would give Harry a big head, and Snape had propounded at length that Harry was a spoiled little prince. Neither had truly meant them, merely holding those out as excuses for their own blackhearted behavior. However they would not have made effective excuses had the reality of that danger not been there.
It had not been extreme. His parents were better than that, and knew that spoiling Harry would be counter-productive. James had known enough spoiled Purebloods to be horrified at the thought of that happening to any of his own children. Still, looking back on himself from the perspective of the poor little orphan boy raised by Dursleys, Harry had been shocked over how much he'd managed to take for granted.
The Harry raised by his parents had toys and free time and private lessons, friends and siblings and had no particular appreciation for any of it. Then the boy who would've done anything simply to know who his parents were got dropped into his head, and that gave him a decidedly different outlook.
The Harry from that time forth was kind and understanding, tolerant of the faults of his family and friends. He helped his mother in the kitchen, and with the experiences of the Dudley's live-in housekeeper and cook in his head, he was a marvel around the house. His room was always spotless and his sisters begged his mother to let him take over as family cook. But Lily wisely just smiled and added him to the rotation, insisting that his siblings still learn as they would all eventually have homes of their own someday.
Far from struggling against his siblings, (as is far too often the case) this Harry also devoted himself to their service, helping them out where he could and playing with them, reveling in the sensation of having them rather than viewing them as rivals for his parents' affection. Harry had as much of his parents' affection as he could possibly need, just doing those things that pleased them, supporting his mother and helping out his dad. Far from being a momma's boy, he was equally interested in doing anything that pleased his father, not only practicing sports and games to spend time with him, but also reading and studying those things that were of interest to him, following along in his father's footsteps to become more like him. And with each of these successes, he also brought his siblings along (as much as they would allow anyway), forging family unity unheard of by most people.
That new Harry also plunged into his private lessons with an enthusiasm that shocked those who'd known the laid-back kid from before.
It was the custom of magicals to tutor their own children in all of the basics before they got sent off to school to finish the rest; and there existed more than enough resources for this to make that easy, trivial really. As with most things in the magical world, their tools for something practically did the job themselves, needing only minor direction.
And for those who failed anyway, there were discrete remedies that could be applied to correct the situation. Language Lozenges taught reading and writing as well as speech, and there was another one for arithmetic, so between them the most ignorant savage could have been prepared for school. Of course that did not prepare them well, leaving out such things as a knowledge of history or current events so they understood the world around them, but it sufficed for lazy parents too busy to do a good job themselves.
However, for a motivated student determined to excel, there were more magical resources available than simply those to correct for a substandard upbringing. And the things that could be done with them were astonishing.
Magical portraits existed for more reasons in the magical world than simply as decorations or door guards (although they had slid into enough ignorance that was most of what they got used for). Possessing the personalities and most of the knowledge of the original, portraits of past individuals could make for surprising tutors, especially on the history and customs of their respective time periods. In truth, they made for a better way of recording knowledge than books, and the old family houses were lousy with them.
Since Dumbledore was using all the old Potter family properties for storage of illegal goods, they couldn't exactly use those paintings as teaching aids for Harry - That was actually a large part of the reason why the ancient wizard stole old family manors, as part of his mania for knowing all things and denying that knowledge in turn to others. The disappearance of those ancient collections of portraits hurt the general knowledge pool as much as his absconding with those ancient family libraries.
Every time he did it, the Master Manipulator held more repositories of the of ancient wisdom, and the world as a whole apart from him knew less. Both of those were ideal changes to make as far as Dumbledore was concerned.
But despite those efforts, there were plenty of other families as part of the refuge villages that had estates that were not so compromised. So Harry ended up learning a great deal from those.
Harry's sixth to eleventh years with his family were quite illustrative of the power of change of the determined human spirit. And, not accidentally, any hole in the knowledge base of what he learned at the Dursleys got paid special attention to. Harry was the only kid he knew who, at seven years of age, passed cooking school. He likewise received tuition on the finer points of home care, mending and tailoring.
Receiving yearly updates on the experiences of his Dursley counterpart kept the boy motivated to excel and appreciate all he had around him. The young Harry unquestionably became a leader among the local youth, and for the most part he succeeded in carrying his siblings along to success with him.
The family and the community were both much stronger for having had him in it, so much so that it was a grief to them to see him go off to Hogwarts where most of those kids could not follow - their whole families supposing to have been dead, and all.
For Harry's part it was a grief not to go to school along with all of his friends and siblings. His two older sisters were already attending the magic academy created to educate the Cubans, and the program there had been improving steadily since the dryads who taught there had sought so much to improve their own educations.
Most of the rescued British nationals had been through there for make-up courses, so all of the adults at least knew how to cast a decent shield charm and stunner (putting them MILES ahead of their countrymen back home). The place was already picking up a good culture and reputation, strictly among those that attended for now.
Albus kept his eye on the field of education, and it wouldn't do to let him know this place existed, as then he might start investigating where it came from and who attended, leading to the exposure of all sorts of secrets.
Still, for Harry this was a whole lot to recall all at once. Suddenly recalling where you left your keys was one thing. Just up and remembering a whole different life that until that moment you'd never lived (except, now because of time travel and manipulation of the past, he had) was another.
It took the boy a few moments to recompose himself after that. When he eventually did so and looked up he saw Hermione and Luna both recalling new lives as well.
He certainly had a good idea what was in them. Hermione's parents had been sought out by the dryads and encouraged to emigrate out of Britain with some lucrative contracts, with the ultimate aim of having their daughter grow up alongside of Harry.
Luna's father's frequent field trips now disguised the fact that he no longer lived in the country, spending much of his time out of it with his wife and daughter, publishing half of his papers from abroad. And this had been arranged for the same reason, so Luna and Harry could be childhood friends.
Susan was going through the same thing, as well. In fact, there were a rather large number of Hogwarts children that Harry knew out of his new childhood, many of which he'd never met at Hogwarts; although with some he had a nodding acquaintance, like with Dean Thomas.
Suddenly the boy felt deep and heartfelt gratitude that because of those Dursley experiences downloaded into him, he'd been so nice to his friends while growing up - because three of his most precious people had been among them! It would be embarrassing to look at the girl (or girls) you're going to marry and recall you'd been a beast to them all of your life.
He didn't know how people like Ron would manage it!
It actually surprised Harry how close he was with some of those people he'd never spoken with before. Hannah had also been included, not to disguise the loss of relatives as most others were, but in this case directly because the dryads knew how unfair it would be for his other fiancees to grow up in that close acquaintanceship and not include her as well.
Of course, the girls had all gone through a period when boys were icky, and in fact that rather embarrassing segment came to a very embarrassing end only when Luna declared he was an honorary girl and okay to play with again.
Considering all of his sisters, and the fact that the all of the adults of the village did tend to encourage him to play with certain girls (namely Hermione, Luna, Hannah and Susan), combined with his eagerness to please, that Harry had played house and with dolls more than was probably healthy.
I I I
Albus Dumbledore stood alone in a private ritual chamber, Moody having gone away after giving his report on the state of the magical world. Having his horcrux placed in a simulacrum body was working out just fine, although it did put his precious soul anchor in a bit of an exposed position, Dumbledore did acknowledge his servant's need.
Desperate times called for desperate measures, after all.
Speaking about that, the great wizard Albus Dumbledore did not plan for this horcrux to be exposed to danger for terribly long. That was what underlings were there for, after all.
And he had just the underling for this type of work.
After ensuring for the final time that the protections against escape out of his private laboratory were perfect, Dumbledore activated the rune array and the mighty obelisks regularly placed around the heart of the chamber glowed with internal light.
There were many such standing stone circles in Britain, and Dumbledore had made absolutely certain to monopolize the best for himself.
On the stone altar at the center of the circle, a figure woke and began to rise. As one of the newly risen creature's hands scrambled for a wand, and found one, Albus stepped forward as his most genial self.
"Alas, I could not obtain your original, however you will find a yew wand beside you that is as close a match for your original as Ollivander could make with a feather and wood from the original sources."
Inwardly gloating over the elderly man's stupid sense of fair play, Voldemort snatched up the device and stood. "So, you have come to interrupt my followers bringing me back from the grave?"
Albus gave the other dark lord a tolerant smile. "Oh, it was hardly the full beyond, Tom. You and I both know about your horcruxes. So we should not waste time pretending you were ought but a shade. And I fear I must correct you on a second point. It was not your followers who raised you. It was I."
Voldemort's surprise attack would have dropped many wizards out of sheer surprise. He didn't believe the old man for a moment, but having performed his internal checks and finding himself fully capable, rather than be played like a fool he resolved to end the conflict before it started.
The initial attack was astonishing in its vehemence. The Dark Slytherin had hated and feared this opponent for a long time and began with the intent of hitting so hard, so fast as to overcome his weak-willed foe before he'd had a chance to get his speech out, and therefore before he got his guard up.
Doddering old fool and his reliance upon rules. Patterns set for duels had no place in a real fight. Voldemort had killed enough dueling champions to be able to tell that better than anyone.
Stand and bow indeed!
No, the Dark Slytherin sprang into action. His yew wand wove an intricate dance, spells strung together where the ending point of one curse's wand movement was the starting point of his next spell, casting a fullisade of dark curses that would have scattered a full team of battle hardened aurors.
Dumbledore stopped it all with a single, wordless shield, while commenting dryly, "Ah yes, Tom. I recognize that attack sequence, a spell string you first used in public on May 14th of the first year of your initial rise to power. Frightened a whole auror brigade into retreat, leaving behind two casualties. One of the defining moments in your becoming an acclaimed dark lord. I don't think you ever realized, Tom, just how much play acting I used to contribute to your rise to power. You have been my toy all along, Tom. While I pretended to take you seriously, others would take you seriously. And while all those tiny minds focused on you I could be plundering both sides of their wealth and privileges indiscriminately."
Rather than slacking the pace Voldemort reached more deeply for power and strove still harder, flinging spells all the more quickly. Bludgeoners, cutters, and flame spells of every description played host to even more damaging curses, all intermixed with offhand wandless hexes.
And Unforgivables became something like every third spell.
One of the reasons Voldemort was so feared is because casting the killing curse had become natural for him. He could cast it quickly and repeatedly, unlike most everyone else. And his Crucio was even faster yet (a small part of him privately admitted that a part of that must be the plenty of practice he got using it on his followers).
Dumbledore countered it all easily, effortlessly. No matter what the Dark Slytherin did, the ancient Headmaster countered it or simply sidestepped with as little concern as though he was passing a student in a hall. "I hope you will forgive an old man his weaknesses, but we do have a tendency to ramble along. That string was first used on the Christmas Ball ambush that slaughtered thirty four Light students and their families, wasn't it? Lord Potter, grandfather to our current Harry, fought you then, did he not? All to no avail? You know, the weakness of spell strings is that they only offer any advantage in speed when they also are kept a surprise. When your foe has seen them before he knows your next move before you make it, canceling the benefit. When you leave any witness alive, even your own followers, the memory can be plucked out and studied. Then you're simply advertising what you intend to do and your target has all the time in the world to counter. But you never did pay much attention to History, or you would've known that."
Dumbledore sighed, shaking his head as though he had not just caused a pot of geraniums to leap into the path of a killing curse aimed at his face. "Alas, it was necessary to deceive you too, Tom, as if you didn't believe you and I were near equals you never would have felt confident to try to conquer our world and create the distress I needed. In reality you never had a tenth of my power or skill, even at your best. But it was important that the world feared you, so I acted out a role showcasing you as a true threat. I could have done as much playing opposite a jellyfish, indeed I was discretely helping Lucius groom Fudge for the role, but you were kind enough to present yourself at a convenient moment."
Riddle cast a hail of arrows, summonings, banishings, hostile transfigurations animating the floor around him, jets of acid, killing curses, other Unforgivable curses, and assorted other dark curses at the Headmaster in an unending stream of spellfire out of both hands. The pace was exhausting and the drain on his magic reserves critical.
Nevertheless, Voldemort had trained to where he could keep up a pace like this longer than any other wizard.
Dumbledore tsked, sounding disappointed, and stopped playing around, letting the spells splash harmlessly off his shield while his own transfigurations took care of the rest. He spoke as though scolding a child for wetting the bed. "It is an obscure fact, Tom, but a simple Protego can be fine-tuned to deflect certain spells far more efficiently, at a slight cost to others. However when you know your opponent's spell strings you have advance notice of each and every attack he delivers. Why then it is as simple as humming a tune to get the counters specialized and his attack costs you virtually nothing to defend against. I've seen memories of your strings played out enough times that I know what spells you will deliver, and how long it takes you to cast each one. You have no secrets from me, Tom."
Having seen too many of his Unforgivables blocked by animated monkeys throwing stones to intercept them, monkeys that the Headmaster had cast long ago and that hadn't destroyed themselves blocking, so didn't need replacing, Lord Voldemort paused only briefly before resuming in a completely wild and random attack.
Dumbledore allowed himself to smile as once more he countered it all with the barest traces of effort. "Ah, and now we get to the final weakness of spell strings, in that deeply ingraining reflexes to get the necessary speed that is the whole perceived benefit inevitably teaches you to react in patterns, and overcoming those patterns once they are in place leaves you slower and, yes, more predictable than if you had never learned to chain your spells together into the set forms of attack sequences. Combo attacks fourteen moves long are not an advantage, Tom, they are dull and predictable. Yet learning to do them robs you of creativity and innovation that even novice spellcasters have. Many an accomplished duelist will spend his entire career hoping to avoid giving any clue at all, yet by your second spell I often know what your next twenty will be. As you frequently have favorites even among strings and all unknowing follow one string with the same one you chased it with before often enough they practically become part of the same sequence. Here you are trying to break up and diversify your assault on me, yet I see that was part four through six of a combo you are rather fond of, and that was the shortest of the broken chains you are trying to throw at me. The one before that was almost eight moves long. I can bet on each spell to be followed by the ones you normally would and be right more often than not, Tom."
Now forced to rest a bit longer than he would have normally allowed, the Dark Lord Voldemort decided he'd had enough of letting this pompous windbag get all the good insults in. If the old fool wanted to banter he could make use of that opportunity to conceal a bit of momentary recovery. "You go on about the perfection of duelists, yet how many have I killed? Sixty?"
There went on that grandfatherly smile. "Ah, Tom. Once upon a time that would have been worth twenty points to Slytherin. Sad how those times have changed. No, I made no claim dueling experts are perfect. They merely have one tool, practicing a completely unpredictable fighting style. However their weakness is rather large in its own way, in that they are totally unprepared to meet several skilled opponents at once - an environment your attacks all too often fostered. Even if you did not mean to, the distraction of combat going on all around them often unnerved those used to fighting alone."
Then, without any indication he was going to cast, the old man sent a silent spell that came completely without any warning telltales and smashed Tom Riddle's body up against the far wall with the force of a wrecking ball.
Half the bones in his body were broken and he'd never seen it coming. No chance to block, counter or dodge, it was just THERE! Voldemort's first idea something was wrong, it had already hit him.
And it was agony.
"Of course," the Headmaster said smugly, walking forward calmly as though he was teaching a class instead of in a life or death struggle. "It is possible to train for both advantages without the associated weaknesses."
He gazed down fondly on his downed enemy while Voldemort struggled simply to lift his wand and point it towards his genial foe as Dumbledore came to loom over him. "You see, Tom, ultimately the reason you are here is that it was important for my schemes that there be a crisis, an emergency to use as an excuse to gather wealth and power. Contented, happy people have no reasons to enter into bad deals. But scared, frightened people in need of protection? Oh, they will give up anything in return for a little, temporary safety. So I merely fought you to draws instead of beating you like an unwanted stepchild, as I could've. Instead I went on pretending that you were a much greater threat than you ever were. Now, however, it is important that you understand your place - which is below me! You are less than the worms under my feet, Tom. I could destroy you at my pleasure. Currently, it pleases me to leave you alive to serve me. What do you say?"
Panting, the Dark Lord Voldemort opened his hand, dropping his wand. Then, as he saw the old fool beam him a smile he shot off from his other hand, still poised, a quick unforgivable killing curse at point blank range.
This time Dumbledore made no pretense of defense. He didn't even try to dodge, taking it full on, and it did nothing to him, not even shut him up. "Ah, yes, the much vaunted killing curse. Since you stopped training them your followers would have been nothing without it. Unblockable and instant death. They needed no other spell to duel with. However, a protection against it was discovered - a boy who not only survived the curse, he reflected it back on you."
Dumbledore laughed, pulling out of his robes a necklace, revealing a silver amulet marked with a lightning bolt rune glowing from within with an emerald light, which he dangled teasingly before his victim. "I have been draining magic out of Harry Potter for more than a decade, Tom; using it, as you might surmise, to create amulets like this one - perfect protection against the killing curse. You may as well scream insults. They are more likely to hurt me. Sadly, I have not yet developed one that can reflect that curse instead of merely block it. However, blocking it is perfectly useful. Perhaps, if you serve me well, you might be gifted with one of these yourself, eventually."
He was hit by an Imperio before he could even finish speaking.
Dumbledore tsked again, body flinching at contact with a Crucio before he teased the Dark Slytherin about them in order. "Oh, Tom. The Imperous Curse is only of use on the weak minded, which sadly includes most wizards, but not myself. You should have known better than to try it. Also the Crucio has its own weaknesses, and there are defenses against it. Perhaps, if you serve me well enough, I may even describe them to you."
Lord Voldemort lay panting on the ground, body broken, staring in horrified disbelief at the man who'd taken all three of his unforgivables, only to prove they were all perfectly useless on him. He'd taken them all, smiling.
It was at that point Tom realized he was beaten, just as the old man said.
I I I