A Nice ridiclous harry potter fic has some magical transhumanism aspects
Words: 29k+
Link: https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/12910
Exalted - 01
Reincarnation blablabla remember previous life blablabla new world blablabla obsessively practicing magic blabla Hogwarts blabla hailed as a prodigy blablabla informing Dumbledore 'bout plenty of stuff so he fixes all the problems before they happen blablabla graduating with flying colors blablabla taking on several more masteries to further my education blablabla delving into forbidden magic blablabla-
I lift my eagle-feather quill from the page and give my enchanted diary a satisfied smile. "Finally done." I mutter to myself as I shut the black book with a loud thump. A minute twitch of my wand accompanied with a small spark of light makes me raise an eyebrow in surprise. "Over a million words? Huh." It was basically a narrative of my adventures since reincarnating, to the years before Hogwarts, the seven within and the two decades I spent furthering my skills under different masters, be it Healer Wuthfort at St. Mungos, Charms Mistress Acacia or the scant months as Trelawney's apprentice.
That last one had been a waste of time, even though I did have the talent.
Grindelwald's death four years ago had been both a wake-up call and an incentive to get my affairs in order. Wouldn't exactly call the old man's passing a tragedy, but it had taken the Wizarding World by surprise - he should've had close to two centuries left to live before old age became an issue. Most, myself included, judged he'd succumbed because of the atrocious conditions of his cell and the prolonged social isolation he'd suffered for decades on end.
It also halted any hope of completing my life's work; Project Ascension. I needed Gellert's fresh corpus (preferably live) to complete the final steps, so his premature end made me… Desperate. Desperate enough to slink into the Department of Mysteries, assault the Unspeakables in my way and steal centuries of accumulated research pertaining to the nature of Time.
Been over three years since that heist, but I'm still Undesirable #1 in Britain and abroad.
It was the only recourse, really. Dumbledore is hale and hearty, which meant he was far too dangerous a foe to tangle with. Neither have any potent Archmages risen in the 21st century - Voldemort, Grindelwald and Dumbledore were still the most powerful Sorcerer Lords in living memory.
Even if another, true magical polymath arose - how was I supposed to acquire their body and soul unopposed? Only Grindelwald had been a vulnerable shadow of his former self, weakened and ripe for picking. Voldemort is also long gone, so there's no handy horcruxes to sacrifice, except from the grotesque, near-worthless piece stuck in the Head Auror's scar.
Which is why traversing time itself is the most suitable option for me. The Hallows, the Philosopher's Stone, Tom Riddle when he's young, pliable and without a magical education to rely on… It was the solution to everything. Even better, I would be perfectly positioned to plagiarize decades of progress made in a variety of magical branches, be it the Starstreak broomline or innovative potion recipes, such as the newest youth potion on the market. The plan was to utilize alternative timelines to essentially erase any risk of invoking paradox or being chased through time by an enterprising Hero.
Being in an Unplottable, Unknowable safehouse several kilometers underneath the Moon's surface whilst hidden by the Fidelius Charm? I've already won! Even were I to be discovered, the varied, painstakingly crafted protective enchantments were certain to delay or outright destroy whoever sought me out!
As I'm getting ready to leave my reality for good there's a sudden whooshing sound accompanied with a glint of gold from behind. Surprised and somewhat shocked by the noise, I twist around and reflexively cast a stunner at the intruder, whom deflects the spell with contemptuous ease. The redirected beam of power crashes violently into a nearby bookshelf, resulting in a cacophony of noise as paper and wood explode from the impact.
Neither of us move for several seconds. I am waiting for the various conditional curses I'd imbued in the bunker to neutralize the threat and my… Duplicate (he looked like an airbrushed me!) was lifting his hands up, palms facing outward in a show of surrender. In his hand is, shockingly, the familiar sight of a time-turner.
"Peace." He says out loud, in what I recognize to be my own voice. "I'm you from an alternative reality." States my counterpart in a slow, somewhat gentle manner.
He then carefully tucks both his wand and time-machine into his overly large sleeves. This version of me is clearly several years older and seems to be in his mid-thirties, which adds an air of comfortable authority to his demeanor. He has piercing blue eyes, angular facial features, a handsome, well-groomed blonde beard across his jaw and is decked out in stately, voluminous robes of black with deep purple adorning the hem of his clothes. The buttons on his front are thick, rune-inscribed ivory and gently twinkling stars can be seen dancing sedately across the fabric of his wizardly robes. He's even wearing a wide-brimmed, pointed hat atop his head - all in all, he makes quite the dashing figure.
I, naturally, still have my wand pointed at him. "Prove yourself." It was odd looking directly at my supposed clone, but I'd actually considered this turn of events when I first started practicing with time-magic. "Or… No. You don't actually need to. My enchantments, they recognize you as me. You'd be dead otherwise."
He gives me a nod of acknowledgement. "That's right. As for why the Fidelius isn't hiding the existence of you from me? Well, I too have the exact same Secret hidden in my soul."
"Why are you here?" I query with a frown.
"To warn you about the Guardians of Time."
"Not… Giving me loads of magical lore before sending me on a mission to help out my younger counterparts?"
My clone gives a small chuckle at that. "Gifts, yes. Adventure? No. Not yet. The Guardians takes precedence."
"Who are they?"
"Time Aurors, basically." He sighs. "Let's go and take a seat… You still got some of Marvin's Firewhisky around?"
"Never heard of that brand." I reply as a twitch of my wand conjures two ornate and eminently comfortable armchairs. Another jab and we've got a simpler round table of oak with two liquor glasses atop of it. "I've got Ogden's Old and Blishen's if that interests you?"
"Ogden would do me some good." Says my older self as he learns back into his chair with a groan of relief. "Ah man, these seats are making me nostalgic. Replaced them with a more comfortable muggle-equivalent a decade or so after I started traveling."
I subtly flick my wand, summoning a full flask of Ogden's that immediately starts serving us. Half a minute later and the two of us are sipping firewhisky whilst relaxing, though there's an undercurrent of tension in the air.
"So… The Guardians of Time." I lead on.
"Bunch of meddlesome cunts." Grimaces my counterpart. "Their Headquarters exist outside this sub-section of reality, in an ever-expanding pocket-dimension. Quite the magical paradise, let me tell you. Size of their location varies depending on where we are in the time-stream, but this early… A small town. A century from now and their base will be the equivalent of a city."
"What did you all do to piss them off?"
"We broke the law." He informs me grimly. "It's not about us having the know-how on how to destabilize time, applicable knowledge on how to create reality-shattering paradoxes or any of that nonsense… But we plagiarized the work of someone from the future, which meant we broke the law. That's why they're after us. Me, in this case."
"… Seriously?"
"Yes." He says. "That's all there is to it."
"Merlin."
He chuckles dryly in agreement. "Chin up. It's not all bad! For one, if you play your cards right, you're not gonna end up on their hit list and two…" He snaps his fingers and a thick, voluminous book appears on the table I conjured. A mere glance reveals to me that it's steeped in power and expertly Enchanted - most likely a Masterwork. "This is a Grimoire."
"What? Really!?"
"Yes." He confirms with a somewhat smug grin. "It has everything you're after! Step-to-step guide on how to rebuild the Wizarding World from scratch, secret knowledge on The Hallows, the Philosopher's Stone and other powerful artifacts. Don't have a reagent for a potion? There's literally tens of thousands of recipes in here on how to craft an alchemical substitute."
"Well, uh, thank you!" I carefully reach out to grab the heavy tome, gratified and a little intimidated by the fact that I now held what might be one of the greatest repositories of mystic lore known to man. "How?"
"Successive generations of time-travelers. The first of us just stole the artifacts and then spent decades researching them, with plenty of hired help, of course! He passed on that knowledge and so it went on and on and on."
"If what you're saying is true, then it'll hold far more than a singular mind can know." I note with a small hint of scepticism. "And I'm not willing to make an Everlasting Elixir out of the Wit-Sharpening Potion; people have gone mad by its effects when it is permanent." A slight exaggeration, but the deleterious reaction long-term use could have on a mind was quite grave.
He gives me an amused smile in return. "You've got a soul, don't you? You're still thinking of yourself as the equivalent of a Muggle in that regard. You're not." He points at the book in my hand. "Velmont there will be better than any living teacher and accelerate your rate of learning by a great deal, but if you truly want to prosper you'll need to acquire training from a proper Mindsmith, or Master the Arts by yourself - a slow process, I can assure you."
"I'm one of the best Occlumens on the planet." I point out irritably.
"At this point in time, yes." He nods agreeably. "But there are far more to the Mind Arts than you know. The next step is to deliberately bridge the gap between thought and soul - it's the keystone for our general success as time-travelers."
"… Alright. I'll trust you."
He pauses and thoughtfully scratches his chin. "A few suggestions; either leave this Time-period within the next ten hours or don't touch Time for the next century or so. Just… Go to Mars and hide there. Or leap to another reality, one beyond the Guardian's scope. Most of us do that after acquiring an Inheritance like the one I just gave you."
"You finally figured out how?"
He flashes me a grin at the question. "Takes weeks to build a functional portal, but yeah. We can. Do it a few hundred times and you'll get a sense of it, to the point you can just… Leap."
I sigh. "Alright, Velmont here-" I pat the tome once for emphasis "contains most of everything I wanted out of this reality anyhow, if what you're saying is true."
"Oh it is, believe me. Better than that, really." He takes a deep sip of his glass, coughs once and smiles at me, a glimmer of smugness easily seen in his eyes. "Most importantly, utilize what I've given you to grow yourself a new body; Project Ascension is all well and good, but it's rather antiquated in comparison to the specialized Alchemical Templates we've invented." My duplicate drains his glass dry, applies a refilling charm with the tap of a finger and then empties it once more. "Well, this was nice and all, but I've got to get going. The Guardians ought to be back on my trail by now - meeting alternatives of myself is always risky. It's also one of the best ways to slow them down."
"That's where I come in." I intuit with a chuckle. "I'll be the equivalent of a false trail for them to chase."
"Somewhat, but your protective enchantments make it a 'tad harder for them." He says with an apologetic nod. "Only three will get a Grimoire of their own, of which you were the last. The True Inheritors as it were. Fifty or so others were just given a memory stick with loads of vital lore."
"So, am I safe or should I skedaddle?"
"You're in no danger, for now." Replies my counterpart. "They'll be scouring this timestream for slip-ups or interference for a long time, but as I said, you've got a prime opportunity to leave whilst my presence muddles yours. If you don't take this chance, well, a century or two of shut-eye should be all that's needed to circumvent their Field Agents… And that's all the attention I can spare on you. Doubt we'll meet again, so ta-ta!" A rush of wind and glint of gold dust later and he's gone, leaving me to stare blankly ahead.
Could I trust myself? Maybe. He circumvented my Fidelius, which meant others could too. Should I just run through time and hope for the best instead? No, I'll follow parts of his advice; either leap to another reality, continue with a lesser version of my plan or put myself in magical stasis for a few centuries. Depends on how effective and comprehensive Velmont's education turns out to be, though. First test; does the Grimoire have blueprints for better Voidships than the one I utilized to get to the moon?
Summoning my ever-full eagle-feather quill, I open up the Grimoire and write 'Voidships' on a blank page. A few seconds later the ink sinks into the parchment and a long list of Book Titles appear. 'Space and You', 'Wizardkin's next frontier!', 'How to Build Your Own Spaceship!' and 'Growing Crops in Vacuum!' are only a few of the titles I skim through.
"This… This can work."
It would have been dramatic to flee this plane of existence after a vicious and heart-throbbing encounter with the Guardians… But honestly? I had no desire to meet an ignoble end at what was basically an eldritch force from beyond reality. I'd already been prepared to leave on a one-way trip through time, so it was no skin off my nose to adapt those plans after the Grimoire turned out to be the genuine article.
Was incredibly relieving to realize the Living Tome hadn't been some insidious trap meant to ensnare my mind, irrevocably curse my soul or a similarly heinous evil. In fact, spending an hour inspecting Velmont made me weep tears of joy and gratitude. Instead of labouring for decades, I could now skip literal centuries of magical development by relying on other people's intellectual labor.
Best of all? All of it was made available to me, with none of the knowledge made illegal by a hidebound government or hidden away and forgotten in some ancient library of some irrelevant pureblood. Even better, becoming a multidisciplinary polymath was no longer a distant dream, nor did I need to pilfer perfection from the corpus of Voldemort, Dumbledore or Grindelwald. I now had the means to create my own, flawless vessel to inhabit by following several step-to-step guides provided by my Grimoire.
In the future, the muggles created technologies to craft affordable 'WùnderBabies™', which quickly became a fad amongst the rich and decades later an unquestionable human right. Evolution's crude inefficiency borne from countless millennia of chance mutation could now be replaced with a streamlined, idealized design that made one equivalent, if not blatantly superior to figures of fiction, like Captain America or Miranda Lawson. Naturally, Wizards and Witches replicated and then improved upon the entire process, as magic had an infinitely easier time manipulating the human genome.
The result of this was that nearly every single magical turned into geniuses with the potential to become Archmages - most of them were, in fact. It was a terrifying prospect, one that I decided to skip by jumping ship. Might return in a few centuries to experience the new spacefaring magical race, but chances are I won't.
… Time to go on a treasure hunt.