If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.
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2 August 1992, Diagon Alley
He learnt one thing for certain and that was the fact that Dumbledore was fucking terrifying. He didn't want anything to do with the man, really, but that was it.
With determination in his eyes, the last Potter proclaimed, "This is not over. I will become powerful, and I will survive. This is a promise."
Today was the day. Harry had woken up in the morning with a huge smile on his face. Living in Diagon Alley, and being able to do magic without anyone saying anything was simply amazing, but after a month of solitude, he was slightly lonely.
The feeling was surprising; in his previous life, he had no one. He took care of his family, of his brother, but they were family. In a way, he relished the time when he could spend on his own, something that made him feel like shit after his brother passed away. Alas, life was cruel and ironic that way.
And yet, here he was, free of any obligation, free of any supervision, and he was feeling lonely. He hadn't expected to be so attached to his friends like this, especially considering the mental age difference. Even if it was more of a technicality. Honestly, looking back to the previous year, he really shouldn't have acted that way. He was impulsive, cowardly, and vindictive. The way he humiliated Malfoy for insulting his parents was proof of that. He had spent years as an educator in his previous life, and he knew he could have handled it better. Although, he only taught to students in high school, who were a lot more mature – if a little rebellious – than his classmates.
Honestly, the way he rebuffed Longbottom's attempt at friendship was due to his fear. Neville Longbottom was the boy who lived. Danger will follow him to the ends of the earth, and Harry wanted nothing to do with it.
But the petty rivalry they had was not something he would have done in his past life. He would have simply shrugged and let the children deal with their own mess. Their opinion shouldn't have mattered, and yet it did.
Harry had to admit that he was different from the man he used to be. He was mature for a child his age, but he didn't really have the maturity of an adult. This dichotomy was confusing. He had the emotional range of a child and the memories of an adult. And in a way, Harry did not want to stay the same man from his past life.
He remembered how empty the man was. He had no purpose, no ambition, no love, no hate, no anger. He had no friends, no rivals, and it was only the act of teaching that brought a spark of passion into his life. He didn't dream of wealth, and yet he craved love but didn't feel like he would ever get to feel it or have someone feel it towards him, even if he didn't understand what love truly was. Harry still didn't understand it, to be completely honest, and yet he was hopeful that he would ever feel it. Harrison Smith was like a meat puppet that was just going through the motions, waiting for something to fill up the endless hole inside of him, and yet he knew deep down that the chances of that happening were slim to none.
The Potter scion liked to distance himself from the man. He liked to think that they were two different people, even if the two of them tended to overlap. Perhaps it was a desperate attempt to not H to share the man's fate, and if it meant having a shard of immaturity left in him, then it was a price he was willing to pay.
Still, this childish cowardly thinking almost got him killed a few months ago. He had done everything right, and yet it didn't matter. Lord Voldemort had tried to kill him, and it was his magic crest, and cloak of invisibility that saved his life. It had nearly killed him, but the cloak's ability had a lot of possibilities. Phasing through magic was a very overpowered ability, one that he was hoping to one day be able to use when his magic has matured enough. Still, Harry wondered what other secrets the cloak held. There was no mention of this ability in anything he had read about the Deathly Hallows. And his frustratingly silent magical crest was annoying.
Other than saving his life in dire situations, the crest didn't really do anything. He was thankful for it, but it still was a mystery. He had a few guesses, of course, the first of which was the fact that it was the Peverell family crest, not the Potter one. The interaction between the crest and the cloak was enough of a hint. But any knowledge about the family was very scarce for some reason, so he was going around blind on that front.
And yet, Harry doubted that his crest would be able to save him from a basilisk. Yeah, staying passive while a dark lord was possessing a professor was one thing. There wasn't really anything he could do about it. He was inexperienced in terms of magic to fight Quirrell, something that he was reminded of in both his encounters with him. And with anyone in a position of authority would ask how he knew that Quirrell was possessed, there was very little thing he could do, but try to stay out of the way. It didn't work as intended, of course, and Harry didn't know which Fate fuckery happened with Longbottom to get him to kill Quirrell.
But a basilisk actively attacking students in a school was where he drew the line. He wasn't going to gamble on the fact that the students would all be lucky enough to only see the reflection of the king of serpents. Basilisks were the stuff of nightmares. They were beings of alchemy and blood magic that are designed to be the magical equivalent of weapons of mass destruction. Their killing stares were enough to make them very dangerous, but their magically impervious skin was immune to practically any damage, and their venom was so corrosive that it destroyed magic, in the same way Fiendfyre did. A drop was enough to destroy wards or protection enchantments. Breeding a basilisk was an immediate death sentence all over the world, and everyone knew it.
Thankfully, Basilisks were hunted down to extinction centuries ago, when the statute of secrecy was put in place, and any record of their creation was destroyed on a global scale using an extremely powerful secrecy spell. That was how dangerous these things were.
Having children die on his watch because he chose to be passive was too much of a chance. He needed to intercept the diary, and the most convenient place to do it was in Diagon Alley, where Malfoy puts it in Ginny Weasley's cauldron.
Which according to the books, would be today. It was the day of Gilderoy Lockhart coming to Flourish and Blotts to sign his autobiography. He had gone practically every day to the library in case he was mistaken. He wasn't going to take any chances with the diary.
The only complication was that Harry's friends were coming that day as well. They were all back from their trips, and Tracy had insisted that they go buy their books on that day – probably because of Lockhart being there. That meant that Harry had to nab the diary in his normal body – aka in the body of a twelve-year-old.
It was nice that they wanted to hang out with him near his birthday. All of them coming back to London by the end of July wasn't really a coincidence, and the gifts they had given him were thoughtful. Daphne had gotten him a very nice portable perch for Hedwig, that way she could stay in the dormitory. Tracy had gotten him a Sneakoscope that her Auror grandfather used to have, and Blaise had bought him some official looking green silk dress robes that he could use on any official occasion.
It was a touching moment. He hadn't had a birthday gift for years. He really had picked some great friends. Harry looked at the watch in his room and saw that it was almost ten, meaning that his friends were going to arrive soon. Harry wanted to have some breakfast before the inevitably hectic trip throughout the Alley would start.
He stepped out in his adult form and greeted Tom and ate his usual breakfast. Afterwards, he simply went to the bathroom, took a potion that would reverse his age, and changed his clothes. When he got out, he was just a normal second year Hogwarts student here to do his shopping.
Deciding to treat himself to some ice cream, he went to Florian Fortescue's ice cream parlour, and sat down to eat. It was the place they had all agreed to meet. Of course, barely five minutes before he started eating, he was immediately enveloped by a hug from behind. He stiffened slightly before noticing that it was just Daphne.
"Hey, Daphne, I missed you," Harry started.
The girl just hugged him harder, "I missed you too."
"Hey, lovebirds, don't forget about us," another voice spoke up.
Harry looked around and saw Tracy and Blaise looking amused at them. Harry rolled his eyes, and Daphne blushed. He stood up and enveloped his two other friends with a hug of his own, "I really did miss you all. Happy now?"
Tracy was grinning brightly, "Alright, I'm good. How was your summer, by the way?"
"Not really interesting," Harry answered while shrugging, "I visited the alley a few times out of boredom, other than that I just stayed home."
"That really does sound boring, mate," Blaise commented, "Although Italy wasn't that much better. I kept getting dragged around by my mother, for some meeting or another. And then the shopping," Blaise shuddered, "Oh Merlin, I still have nightmares about it."
Tracy playfully punched him in the shoulder, "At least it's better than camping. Dad was insistent that we cook our own food in the wilderness without any magic. We almost starved trying to hunt anything. Mum ended up stunning a deer so that we could eat. Even then it was so bad and so disgusting."
They all looked to Daphne, "What? Greece was amazing. We went to this resort that was on the beach. We had a house elf assigned to just us, and we went swimming a bit. We even visited a few historical sites where the Olympians lived in. Although Astoria was a bit annoying, I had fun."
The girl ignored the dirty looks coming her way and just huffed, "So, where are we going first?"
"To Flourish and Blotts," Tracy immediately answered.
"You just want to see that Lockhart fellow," Blaise complained.
"Of course not," the girl denied with suspiciously red cheeks, "I just wanted to get our books before they're sold out."
"They would only be sold out because the defence professor practically put all of Lockhart's books on the list," Harry dryly replied.
"To the bookstore," Tracy yelled out, ignoring his response entirely.
All three of them shook their heads at their friend's antics and followed her out of the ice cream parlour. By the time he arrived, Harry could tell that the store was by far the most crowded in the alley. There were wizards and witches pressing everywhere, in fact, a lot were middle-aged witches. As they came near the doors of the books shop, the reason for this gathering became clear. Across the upper windows of the building, a large banner stretched.
GILDEROY LOCKHART
will be signing copies of his autobiography
MAGICAL ME
today 10.30 – 4.30 pm
Harry ignored Tracy's gasp when she first saw the famous wizard, he ignored the giant camera that was constantly flashing. He was only focused on what he picked up using his Arcane Hearing. It was a disgustingly familiar song, a shard of a whole, an abomination created using death. The unnaturalness of it made Harry clench his fist. The diary was there and with it, was his chance to finally steal it.
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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.