Chapter Text
Harry James Potter
A boy with raven, untamable hair, emerald eyes so like his mother, and the epitome of a Gryffindor. Since a year into his life, this boy has faced obstacle after obstacle. Dangerous situations had become commonplace from the moment he arrived at his relatives house, and never stopped as he grew up. It is a tale repeated countless times after its first iteration, and many more universes will be created in its image.
We all know the story of The Boy Who Lived.
On the dark autumn night of October 31st, 1981, a flash of green light causes a man to fall lifeless. Another man, ruthless and angry, continues his carnage up the stairs of the quaint little home in Godric’s Hallow. A mother comforts her baby boy before begging the cruel man to spare him, to kill her instead. A scream, another flash of green, and an explosion filled with raw magic. The baby boy cries as he looks around his nursery, now in disrepair.
Lily and James Potter are killed by Voldemort. Baby Harry gets a lightning bolt scar. Silence, all but the baby’s cries, and the story is told again.
Halloween, Dursleys, troll, murderous professor, basilisk, fraudulent professor, dementors, Tournament with dragons and mermaids and killer mazes, Death Eater professor.
Trauma after Trauma.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Every universe starts roughly the same with the story of Harry Potter. But the key word here is roughly. No two universes are created equal, and there are discrepancies here and there.
Harry might be sorted into Slytherin in one universe, or Hufflepuff the next. Someone may have gone back in time and are living the story again. Perhaps Harry makes a safe space out of the Chamber of Secrets and finds Slytherin’s hidden study. Or maybe, something as simple as Harry accepting Draco Malfoy’s handshake. Every universe has a slight change that differentiates it from the others.
For instance, this universe, the one you are reading right now, takes place in a different timeline. Still the same story of the murder on Halloween, the Dursleys, and heading off to Hogwarts to experience trial after trial, but this Harry was born July 31st of 2000.
Another difference here is that Tom Riddle is only slightly less smart than his other universe counterparts. This time, he miscalculated how quickly Harry was restrained in the graveyard during the third task of the Triwizard Tournament. This time, Harry got away before his blood was forcefully taken. This time, Voldemort never got his body.
Let’s rewind to the moment Harry and Cedric landed in the graveyard in Little Hangleton.
Harry fell, as his injured leg wouldn’t hold him, with Cedric landing at his side. The Hufflepuff champion helped the Gryffindor one up as Harry asked where they were. The two took in their surroundings before briefly discussing that the cup was a portkey without their knowledge.
The two brandished their wands and Harry had an eerie feeling they were being watched. “Someone’s coming,” he said as they eyed the darkness and watched a dark figure walk closer. The two shared a look as the person drew closer, and without warning, Harry’s scar exploded with a burning, searing pain.
This time, he didn’t drop his wand. This time, he didn’t drop to his knees from the pain.
A high pitched, cold voice called, “kill the spare,” and a replying voice cried, “Avada Kedavra!” A flash of green light shot through the air, hitting Cedric square in the chest.
Harry saw Cedric drop, and in the quickest reflex of fight or flight he has ever experienced in his life, he chose to flee. He dove for his fallen comrade and summoned the cup to himself with a quick Accio. There was barely a moment between the events of Cedric's death and the pair's return to the task. Barely a moment to process what the hell had just happened.
Upon returning, Harry heard instruments playing a joyful tune while he stared down at the body he clung to. The green light—the killing curse—and Cedric dropped…he’s dead. Cedric Diggory is dead. The grief consumed Harry the longer he had to process it, and he retreated into himself.
The sounds evolved into screams, footsteps pounding the ground, and many voices trying to gain his attention. Distantly, he thinks he hears a man cry out, “my boy! That's my son!”
Harry simply stared at the body he still clung to, tears streaming down his face, and didn’t utter a word. He gave no indication he heard anyone, nor did his crying move beyond the endless tears.
Another—rather major—difference in this universe is that Albus Dumbledore has slightly different priorities.
The Headmaster gently removes Harry’s hands from Cedric and escorts him to the Hospital Wing. The boy is shaking, tears continuously flowing, and catatonic the entire walk. The moment they enter, Madam Pomfrey is on them like a Niffler to gold. Gently, Dumbledore leads the boy to a bed at Madam Pomfrey’s behest.
The medi-witch waves her wand in intricate patterns and mutters in quick Latin, casting diagnostic spells to check Harry’s health. Despite the many spells, there is little she can do while he is in this catatonic state. His eyes are vacant, yet filled with tears, so she is unable to properly check his mental faculties. All she is able to do is heal his leg with a couple rounds of Episkey and offer him a Pepper-Up potion.
Hours pass with Harry laying on the hospital wing bed, staring up at the ceiling, shaking as tears slowly begin to dry on his cheeks. In that entire time, Dumbledore stays by his side, holding his hand and hoping the poor boy wakes soon. It isn’t until after his second Pepper-Up potion that Harry begins looking around the room.
Seeing and feeling the boy move, Dumbledore calmly speaks in a nearly quiet voice. “Harry? Harry, my boy, are you with me?”
The boy in question looks at the headmaster and blinks numerous times before slowly nodding his head. Lifting his upper body, Harry scoots back slightly to sit up on the bed. Dumbledore never let go of his hand.
”Good, that's wonderful,” the old man said, still in that soft calm voice. “Harry, are you able to explain to me what happened?” Dumbledore gently squeezed his hand the moment Harry looked off into the distance, dissociating just a tad.
Harry thinks for a moment, his mind moving a mile a minute. Many times, he begins to stare off, unblinking, nearly shutting back down in the process.The only thing keeping him grounded was the gentle ministrations of the Headmaster holding his hand and gently stroking the back of it with his thumb.
Eventually, he managed to whisper, “I…I don’t know.” His voice was mildly scratchy, choked up on so many emotions, it was hard to name a single one. “There was…a graveyard. I was there with Ce-“ he choked on the name, voice cracking before he swallowed thickly and continued. “Then we saw someone walking closer in the dark.”
His eyebrows crashed together as he thought, looking confused and focused. “I couldn't see the person's face, or make out what they were holding. Then…there was a green light, and Ce-…and he dropped.” His eyes grew misty again, and when he continued, his voice was wet, bordering on a sob. “I…I panicked. I dove to him and summoned the cup. Then…” He looked at the Headmaster, eyes wide with a confused expression. “How did I get here?”
Dumbledore looked upon the boy with grief and understanding in equal measure. He took a breath, “Harry, thank you for telling me as much as you could. There is a way for me to learn more than you are able to recall. I would like your permission to extract a copy of your memory to study. May I?”
After thinking for a few moments, running through the question asked, trying to make sense of anything new his brain was taking in, Harry nodded slowly. As the Headmaster extracted the memory from Harry’s head, he explained what he was doing. Harry was confused, but he felt safe enough to allow this all to happen.
After ensuring the boy is well in hand with Madam Pomfrey, making sure the matron had him fed and watered, then put to bed, Dumbledore took the memory to his office to view it.
Over and over, for hours, the Headmaster watched and rewatched those short minutes in the graveyard. He analyzed every nook and cranny of the memory. He studied all he could glean. Harry said he couldn’t see a face or what was being held, but Dumbledore saw Peter Pettigrew carrying a big, ugly, baby-looking person. He saw the makings of a ritual meant to create a body. He saw the snake, Nagini, and the preparations made to somehow use her in the ritual.
It is through this that Dumbledore realized the truth. Of Voldemort being alive, of the horcruxes. Horror flooded through him, realizing Harry was meant to be a part of the ritual as well. He cannot stand for this, and decided to take action.
The summer soon came and Harry was shipped off to number 4 Privet Drive yet again. In Harry's perspective, the story continued as usual. Dementors attack him and his cousin and the farce of a hearing is performed.
Harry’s emotional state was slightly different from the other iterations of him. There was no Voldemort in his head making him angry, so he had a harder time channeling his grief or processing his trauma through anger. Instead, he shrunk inward.
When his friends didn’t write as much, he didn’t make any effort to ask why. When Dudley was being particularly evil toward him with his friends, he didn't react the way he used to. He kept quiet, let it happen, and simply ceased his emotions, detaching from whatever he was experiencing.
He only produced the patronus to save Dudley because while he was detaching and distancing himself from his life to cope, he didn't want his cousin to die. When he saw Dumbledore at the “hearing,” he started feeling a bit of hope to connect again. However, when the Headmaster rushed out of there faster than light, a pang of hurt erupted in his chest.
“He’s abandoned me,” he thinks, but it is quickly followed by, “maybe he was just busy today.” This mollifies him for a while, even as he doesn’t see the Headmaster anywhere in Grimmauld Place for the remainder of the summer. It doesn’t continue when he realizes the Headmaster is nearly continuously absent from the school as a whole throughout the school year.
The man who was a comfort immediately after watching Cedric die was avoiding him. It stung deeper in his heart than he ever thought possible. It didn’t help that Umbridge was slowly taking over the school.
The events of Umbridge happen almost as normal throughout the year. Harry gets roped into running the DA, and the pink bitch is the source of his anger throughout the year. The difference here is that Harry isn't affected as much by the horcrux in his head, since Voldemort isn’t back. His anger at the toad professor is at the same intensity as it has been his entire life with no evil megalomaniac in his head.
It took longer than normal for Harry to agree to teach the DA. He enjoyed teaching, but everyone keeps trying to talk to him about what happened. He shuts down instantly every time, and he can tell the students' reactions go beyond disappointment.
Getting targeted by Umbridge made him feel more hollowed out, more alone. Sometimes, his depressed mind even entertained the ideas that the negative things Umbridge and his peers were saying might be right. He, logically, knew they weren’t, but in his lowest moments, he thought they might be.
Not once did anyone—not even those he considers friends—try to sympathize, empathize, or connect with him in any way. Not a single soul offered comfort or expressed that they understood how deeply he was scarred by the experience he went through.
All they wanted was a story from him. They hoped to hear that either he or Cedric were a hero. That the Hufflepuff died with honor in a fight and that Harry righteously fought alongside him, only to retreat once the fight was won. They wanted a hero, a fantasy they could look up to. They wanted a symbol of strength.
They wanted Harry to be what he simply wasn’t. To be what he couldn’t ever be.
The Headmaster avoiding him only made him spiral worse, feeling more abandoned and alone than he has ever felt in his life. However, Dumbledore, this time, is not avoiding Harry because of a fear he is possessed, but because he has organized his Order to aggressively hunt the horcruxes. He is simply busy.
In secret, the Order of the Phoenix began studying and hunting what Voldemort’s horcruxes could be, and found them. Harry was kept uninvolved, but the Order’s actions were reported here and there. Sometimes there were fights that could have cost lives, while other times there was nothing to report. One by one, each horcrux was destroyed, and Harry didn’t hear a peep about it.
By the end of that school year, all of the horcruxes are gone. All save for one: Harry himself. But Dumbledore took care of that too. You see, since working with the goblins on retrieving and destroying Hufflepuffs Cup, he enlisted their help in finding a way to extract a horcrux while preserving the object it resides in. This caused the creation of a ritual to extract the soul fragment from Harry safely…safely for Harry that is.
On the day Harry would have gone to the ministry to save Sirius, he is found in a ritual circle with Dumbledore, his Order, and a few goblins. He was instructed to sit in the center of the circle before they began, not explaining a single thing before all those in the room began chanting in unison.
The ritual made no sense to Harry, but when he asked after the fact, it was explained very rudimentarily. The runes within the circle, apparently, helped guide the magic into extracting the fragmented soul, ignoring the whole soul within the vessel.
Then, the fragment was to go into a new vessel as similar to the old one as possible. For instance, if the old one was metal, the new one must be metal. If the old one was wood, the new one must be wood. If the old one was living, so too should the new one be. The new vessel of choice? Albus Dumbledore.
Throughout the experience, Harry was in pain, confused, and frustrated beyond belief. He didn’t understand why he was in this ritual, despite Sirius trying to explain moments before it happened. He was in pain because his scar split open. He was frustrated because why did nobody tell him anything throughout the entire year, and now he was in some ritual?
Yeah, no. Harry was not having it with these adults around him.
After the ritual, the old man created quite the spectacle. He practically announced to the world that Harry has managed to defeat Voldemort once and for all. Despite the fact that was not what happened. Harry wonders why Dumbledore would say that, until he says even more.
He reveals the knowledge of the horcruxes and that now, he is one as well. This horrifies Harry when he remembers the ritual and his scar feeling like it was being ripped apart before Dumbledore screamed the same as him. This clicked into his mind that Harry himself used to be a horcrux. A piece of Voldemort, his parents' murderer, Cedric’s murderer, used to live in his head.
Due to Dumbledore’s new status as a horcrux of Voldemort, he valiantly commits suicide so all may know the Dark Lord is no more. His final, crippled vessel will soon die without his soul's assistance through the other horcruxes, and the world will now be free of him forever.
This devastates Harry. He blames himself for the man's death, and even with Sirius and his friends telling him otherwise, he can’t help but feel accountable. It didn’t help any that due to his declaration of Harry defeating the Dark Lord, the boy is now more than just a symbol, he’s a hero. And he didn't even do anything to earn that title…again.
The Daily Prophet ran story after story, the most fantastical ones being from the one and only Rita Skeeter. There were stories from what happened in the final fight—that never happened—to Dumbledore’s death and funeral. Harry was willed not only a stone, but also Dumbledore’s wand, which was highly unusual, but was done nonetheless.
Because of the final fall of Voldemort, Death Eaters spawn out of the woodwork and the ones who weren't already in Azkaban are caught. Barty Crouch Jr, Thaddeus Nott, Lucius Malfoy and more. But most importantly, Peter Pettigrew.
Sirius was overjoyed when he showed up. It kickstarted an investigation into his trial and what actually happened that Halloween night. It filled him with hope for any type of future. A future he had given up on long ago.
Harry watched the proceedings with detached hope. He hoped Sirius became a freed man, but beyond that, it was as if his ambition to live with his godfather ceased to exist. It was strange for him to read how things were going in the paper and feel apathetic about it all.
It was all reported in disturbing detail. The slimy rat went ballistic the moment he wasn't being guided by his master. He went around to every known Death Eater, not already in Azkaban, looking for guidance. Unfortunately, the ministry caught his trail and not only got Pettigrew caught, but every Death Eater he went to.
This tirade of arrests following Pettigrew's wake resulted in strong evidence against the man. When he was finally arrested and set on trial, he was declared guilty, and Sirius declared innocent, thus being exonerated. The following week, Sirius got legal custody of Harry. By the boy's 16th birthday, they were living together in Grimmauld Place.
It had all happened so fast. Harry was happy, of course, but it didn’t feel real for a long time after. Sirius was free. Harry was free…
Was he free?
The aftermath of this series of events resulted in Harry becoming internationally famous. Everyone in—and some out of—the wizarding world knows his face, his name, and his status as their savior. His fame skyrocketed to be comparable to Merlin himself. Many in the muggle world have seen his name as a celebrity, though they are unsure as to why.
Due to this explosion of fame, Harry isn't left alone by anyone.
The press wanted any story they could get from him. His schoolmates made a bigger deal of it than usual by sending him letters and gifts, trying to build a previously nonexistent rapport. His friends and those he considered family constantly checked in to make sure he was ok.
And the truth of it? He was not ok. Not in the slightest. This new level of fame started feeling like a weight too heavy to carry. So, a week into August, he pulled Sirius into the living room and sat him down on the couch.
Sirius was clearly confused, but he made no effort to lead whatever conversation was starting and allowed Harry the time to organize his thoughts. With a deep breath, Harry collected himself and met Sirius in the eyes. “I want to leave the wizarding world,” he bluntly said. “All of this attention…it’s suffocating, Padfoot.”
Instantly, Sirius smiled, a look of nearly manic glee sparkling behind his eyes before he hugged the boy. When he pulled back, he said a single statement. “I'll do you one better; let's leave the UK.”