Chapter Text
Harry Potter: Quantum Meddler - The Alternative Harry Potters.
-8-
The Bioweapon.
-8-
"I'd like to see what my counterparts in other universes are like through the mirror," Harry repeated, closing his eyes and walking up and down the Room of Requirement before he opened them again, and he found himself looking at the different versions of himself in the mirror.
Largely, the version of himself he was seeing had the same childhood he had, only this alternative Harry was able to escape from the Dursleys, and spent a few years living on the streets in London, partially out of fear of being found, partly frightened someone would make the Dursleys make some effort into tracking him down…but it never happened. Harry knew only too well the Dursleys didn't care about him, and never would, but this version of him was younger, more naive and more frightened. This Harry was 7 when he'd made his escape. He grew up as a pickpocket, but he was caught and sent to a foster home.
But this Harry thrived in the foster home; he didn't care for potential foster families, even if he clearly wanted some stability, but he was scared any new family would eventually treat him like a slave, like the Dursleys. He thrived at school without Dudley and the gang there to harass him.
And then he received a visit from a Hogwarts teacher, Professor Babbling, who taught Ancient Runes…and discovered a horrible truth. Harry's parents, at least in that universe, were still alive.
Professor Babbling and Harry were stunned when they discovered Lily and James Potter, believing Harry was a squib following the attack on Godric's Hollow, had given him to the Dursleys, all because they believed he was a powerless squib.
The goblins didn't know for sure if his parents in that world had gone through other channels to be sure, but they had told him about his family, how he had a brother who was the Boy Who Lived. Professor Babbling had needed an hour to calm Harry down after flying into a rage at the wasted years, the pain, the grief, everything, and she became a friend who let him stay with her until it was time for him to go to Hogwarts.
His sorting into Ravenclaw was a shock for the Potters when Charlus Potter, his alternative self's brother, told his parents about his counterpart's arrival, and they came to the castle and confronted him, and it was a truly unpleasant meeting which set the tone of his interactions between himself and his so-called parents.
Harry had never thought much of his parents, even before the Dursleys' lies, but when he'd heard what they supposedly were, his hatred for them had cooled into hate and contempt, but now that he knew the truth, he found his thoughts and feelings towards them hadn't changed either. How could they? His feelings were too ingrained, and besides, once he had visited the Room of Requirement and discovered its time-travelling capabilities, Harry had learnt much more about his parents, and he hadn't liked what he'd seen. He hadn't liked how his parents had gotten together, how Lily had let a love triangle form, secretly enjoying the attention before Snape's arrogance and attitude began pissing her off, and resulted in her being injured, but then she retaliated with a nasty chain of hexes, leaving the greasy bastard whose only true talent was acting like a victim to his own devices, and then paraded herself with James. Harry did not like that image of her, an arrogant girl who cared only for herself.
When they left Hogwarts, it got worse when they fought in the war, learnt of the prophecy, and had him. Any normal parents should have done a runner, but the Potters didn't. They stayed.
In this universe, it was much worse. Harry had seen dozens of parallel universes, seeing different versions of himself in the multiverse and hadn't liked many of them. Seeing in this world, he had a twin brother, and then later seeing Lily and James having 3 other children basking in the shadows of Charlus's fame, but Harry commanded the Room of Requirement to show him exactly what this Harry had gone through, and he saw how his counterpart had been labelled as a squib.
It seemed in that world, Voldemort had been escorted by two of his smarter followers, and they engaged Lily and James during the attack. Voldemort had managed to get past Lily and James in the struggle, and while his parents frantically battled the Death Eaters, Voldemort attacked his younger counterpart, and alternative brother.
Harry had studied that whole night, gone through everything, every single thing Lily and James had done to save him, and he knew they had engraved a protection rune based on blood magic to protect him. Okay, its power was augmented by Lily's sacrifice, but even without it, Voldemort would never have won. In truth, the rune used a portkey that moved him into the future by an hour, while the killing curse was reflected for further protection; in this world, it was two. In this world, Voldemort was killed by his own spell, but only his body, and the blast of magical power was enough to shake the Death Eaters, allowing Lily and James to fight back.
And then Dumbledore appeared. He examined the two boys, seeing precisely what happened. Dumbledore spun a story and cast spells on his parents; they weren't strong, but more like suggestions, and the Potters took it from there. Some time ago, Harry would have wondered and questioned why Dumbledore would do that, but after this long seeing the different versions of Albus Dumbledore, watching as his ill-thought out plans and ideas came out, Harry realised that Dumbledore had a reason, but whether or not he thought that universe's Harry had been the target, he didn't know.
But his counterpart didn't know about that. Lily and James Potter had spent years moving on from that night, believing leaving him with Petunia and Vernon was a good move, even paying for his upkeep without bothering to get in touch and see if his counterpart was safe and sound.
-8-
Lily and James refused to leave Harry alone once they discovered that he wasn't a squib and that he was in Hogwarts. They would turn up at the school, disturbing lessons until even Dumbledore, frustrated and tired by the dozens of complaints he was dealing with from the teachers, told them to tone it down. But they changed their method by sending letters, gifts, all of which Harry threw away or sent back.
In the meantime, he coldly looked into ways of getting away from the Potters. In his own world, Harry saw his counterpart research ways of getting away from them, but Charlus also tried his own approach, coming up to his brother, telling him, pleading with him to spend time with him, only for his twin to coldly tell him to fuck off, before he walked away, proving truly that he wanted nothing to do with his twin.
As the year passed and Charlus was being roped into finding the clues of the Philosopher's Stone, with his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, Harry noticed that his own counterpart was genuinely suspicious, and he spent a lot of his time spying on his twin and his friends, and slowly began piecing together many of the clues while he conducted his own research, but Harry knew his counterpart, even without the Room of Requirement to use as a resource, believed Granger and Weasley knew more than they were saying, too much for it to be a coincidence, but he truly didn't care, and Harry could see that in his counterparts' attitude. He shared it himself, would have felt the same thing if he were in the same position.
Harry was not surprised when his counterpart discovered the Room of Requirement. It had only been a matter of time, and without hangers on, deliberately holding him back and causing grief, it had only been a matter of time. He was glad his counterpart had the common sense to look ahead.
Like himself, his counterpart explored the Room's capabilities, even discovering it's time-travelling abilities….and he learnt about the Philosopher's Stone and decided to ignore it.
Harry's counterpart began using the Room of Requirement to begin studying many difficult and arcane forms of magic, reading books on wandless magic and using the Room to conjure up people to coach him on it, before he learnt he could use the ambient magic of the atmosphere (Harry was extremely intrigued by that, since he hadn't even known about it, but he made a quick note in his notebook to look into seeing if he could learn about it in this world, but he took more notes of it anyway), and use it, gradually becoming so good at it, he didn't even need to use his wand!
It was….always disappointing that someone so clever fell for something which carried with it so many red flags, but then again, he had gotten that when he discovered how desperate Voldemort was to get his hands on the Philosophers' Stone, but just by looking into this world's history, Harry and his own counterpart, both saw the Stone was a fake, but that didn't mean his counterpart didn't stop studying the basics of alchemy, and discovered how it could manipulate matter.
And then the Potters forced Harry to come home with them, but Harry had refused. That hadn't stopped them from interfering; Harry had used magic to disguise his features and run off into the Muggle world, using what money he had to go to a hotel in Brighton…but the Potters wouldn't leave him alone, leading to a very uncomfortable summer.
His counterpart truly didn't care for his parents' extremely desperate attempts to get him to forgive them, to live with them, but Harry was firm, and Harry could see that his counterpart was becoming increasingly tired and fed up with the never-ending ambushes, something he wasn't surprised about that much.
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His counterpart watched as his twin and his two hangers on (Harry could see his counterpart had noticed Charlus wasn't exactly street wise, but that wasn't a surprise, given how Lily and James didn't see anything wrong with what Dumbledore was doing) go after the Stone, but he stayed out of it because he knew the Stone wouldn't help Voldemort.
Oh, the alternate Harry Potter was more than aware of Voldemort's presence in the castle. But he didn't care. However, that didn't stop the alternate Harry from seeing the entire confrontation in the chamber where the Mirror of Erised was being kept, and when he did, he realised it would change everything, and not for the better, and would make his counterpart do so many things, just to get away from Hogwarts, and from Dumbledore.