Harry’s Wars: Episode  1 -  Chapter 1

Summer 1993, England, Little Whinging, Privet Drive number 4

Harry Potter lied on the floor, not because he liked the coolness on his skin, contrasting the heat of the summer, but because he couldn't muster the willpower to get up after getting beaten up by his fat, stupid, round and fat walrus of an uncle.

One might think he did something to deserve this kind of "loving" attention, maybe it was a punishment gone too far. The neighbours would attest to that, his reputation was as bad as his cousin was stupid. His horse-faced aunt saw to that. A convenient excuse, if someone saw a bruise not covered by the tents he called clothes. No one would care or be surprised if the criminal, the delinquent, bully and all around hoodlum Potter got into a fight he lost.

He was more or less used to some rough treatment by Vernon, beatings from Dudley and some insults from Petunia Dursley. The zoo of the street. At least he called them that in his mind.

But today's beating was different. There was some real intent to harm him in the blows he got. Viciousness, too. He was caught off guard, Dudley had teamed up with Vernon while Petunia was yelling at him for no reason whatsoever. And to top it all off, they left him there on the floor while they left for an extended weekend vacation. The total disregard for his well being was at least in line with his last year.

The whole Heir of Slytherin affair, the bullying, the theft, the accusations and isolation. The betrayal from the house. What was it McGonagall said before the sorting? The house is your family in Hogwarts. His supposed Hogwarts family had achieved the same level as his relatives. He stopped caring. It didn't matter anymore what they did, or didn't do. He was done with them.

And the Hogwarts staff, too for that matter. All his pleas for help or support had been downplayed as "kids being kids" and "that he should not disturb the staff with small arguments between students". He learned his lesson, his retaliation had been viscous.

It didn't help, but at least he had done something.

At least he got revenge for Mimi. And he saved Ginny. "Hehe, *cough, cough* Hermione hates her nickname." he said out loud.

And now, here he was. Lying on the floor, again, all alone, again and in pain, again. But he didn't think a phoenix would be so nice as to heal him up with some tears. The library said they were incredibly rare, as in not quantifiable in history rare. And that anyone getting blessed by a phoenix - getting tears cried into a fatal wound by a phoenix, not bound to them in order to save their life apparently counts as a phoenix's blessing - is supposed to have a lot of luck in their future. Apparently Fawks blessing is faulty. "I want a refund…" he whispered to himself, as his vision darkened and he fell unconscious.

~~ ~~ ~~

"Ugh, what happened?" said a muffled and tired voice. "Huh, where am i? And for that matter, what the hell happened to my voice? And why is it so bright?"

The voice sounded a bit weird, with some kind of echo. The voice continued to mutter to himself softly about "damned funky discount meat", how "he should have just ordered some good old pizza" and "annoying obvious meat induced hallucinations", he wandered along the road, walking slowly in case he lost his equilibrium. Only to come to an abrupt stop. "Where the fuck did the road come from? This hallucination is getting ridiculous. I can't make out anything with this weird, multicoloured fog hanging around all over the place. *Hmph*. It doesn't matter. As soon as I get home, I am going to get some nice drinks and all will be forgotten. This crap just screams to me for a tumbler of my nice irish whiskey. At least I bought a new bottle the other week."

He continued walking down the mystery road, this time with more assurance in his step. He did his best to ignore all the weird things around him, the wafts of colourful fog floating around, the shining globes and wisps flashing their lights.

As he continued walking, he finally saw where the road led to. A massive, dome covered shiny crystal hidden inside this dense fog. But now, there were some black wisps inside of the fog, radiating darkness. Like some kind of intruder, the fog shied away from it. And, as he slowly realised, the fog was closing in on his position, avoiding the black wisps in the process, leaving clear, big patches in the otherwise thick wall of mist.

So far, he had done his best to avoid touching it. Who knows what that stuff was, outside of the hallucination that is. But now, it seemed he didn't have another choice but to come into contact with it.

"Ugh, I just hope I don't get into trouble for this. 'I'm sorry officer, I was tripping' doesn't seem to be an adequate excuse."

As he touched a yellow wisp floating at his side, it got absorbed into his hand and the world around him came to a halt.

Before him, he saw an incredible scene. A scrawny boy with an angry red lightning bolt scar on his forehead was wielding a stick in his hand, and in front of him was a piece of paper, no parchment, constantly changing colours, into ever more elaborate designs and finishing with a pretty accurate painting of a lion curled up in front of a fireplace.

As he came to his senses, the fog had already crossed the distance and the last thing he saw was a rainbow of colours crashing into his chest.

After he opened his eyes, he was shocked. He just saw the incredible life of one Harry James Potter. The man-who-conquered, the chosen one, the fucking boy-who-lived. And he apparently had taken over. Transmigration, it seemed. Fucking Dursleys. He needed a way to deal with them. It really is incredible that no one has intervened so far. Well, not anymore. He might just try his hand at mind magic.

But that's for later. A much more pressing matter were the black wisps he saw before the whole memory flash. Now, that he was synced up, he felt the strangeness, the clearly foreign feeling he got from them was alarming. He had an idea what it was, but he hoped to be wrong.

As he sat up, apparently he crashed onto the ground - again - he looked around for the wisps.

What he saw astounded him. On the horizon was a huge black cloud, crashing repeatedly against a struggling golden shield. The constant flickering did not calm him down one bit. At least he now knew how the black wisps entered the mindscape, Lili Potter's protection was failing. Or at least close to do so. But how could he reinforce the shield around what appeared to be his mind and magic, and how did he get these black wisps out of it?

As he absent-mindedly tried to fan one pretty close one away, the wisp suddenly attacked him and crashed into his hand, similar to the colourful memory-mist before, but this time accompanied with some stinging pain.

As soon as the wisp was absorbed completely, he saw Tom Riddle's memory. He got to witness Tom tormenting some of the kids in the orphanage with his magic. The smile of satisfaction on his face was just disturbing.

As he awoke from the memory, he felt the mindscape to be somewhat cleaner. The foreign, dirty feeling in his mind had lessened. "This is going to suck so hard." he lamented. He knew what he had to do. He knew it was inevitable. And he knew it would work, here in his mind he was God, capital g. No limits, no sir.

Bracing himself, he imagined a black hole in his hand, sucking all the black wisps floating around into himself. It was bad. It felt like a burn, constantly increasing in intensity with each new wisp of fog he absorbed. Only to have to watch snippets of Tom "I am going to kill the world" Riddle screwed up life.

"Oh my god! How could he be such a little monster at that age? Tom Riddle should have been shot and buried in a shallow grave. Better try to forget it. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts like… Magic! I have magic now! But how do I get out of here to play with my magic?" Just as he thought about leaving the place, he woke up in his new body.

~~ ~~ ~~

"Ugh" Harry groaned as he woke up, "I had seen the memory, but feeling it is a totally different story. What's the damage? I can't really breathe, so my ribs are probably hurt. What else, my nose hurts, I should not touch that. Let's hope I don't get panda eyes. Can't move my left hand. I have to get to Harry's, well now my, room. I can try to heal myself on my bed and if I pass out again, I am going to be at least comfortable."

He needed a few tries in order to get up without cursing out in pain, apparently Dudley kicked him after he passed out. Vernon was way too lazy to do something like that.

As he slowly made his way into his room, he realised he could feel something coursing through his whole body, with a higher concentration in some of his wounds. After thinking for a bit, he concluded that it had to be his magic healing him on its own.

"In my new memories, neither Harry nor Tommy-boy could feel their magic that clearly. Some warmth flowing through the wand sure, but nothing like this. It doesn't matter how, for now this is helpful. Now I'm sure about my healing. Magic should be all about intent. I don't believe for one second in the importance of incantations and wand movement. It's my magic, in my body. It will do as I say." Just as he finished his thoughts, he arrived at his bed.

*Hoot* *Hoot Hoot hoot* Hoot hoot* Resisting the urge to just fall on it, let sleep take him and ignoring Hedwig, he turned around. Sitting on the windowsill was Hedwig. The beautiful snowy owl Hagrid had gifted him.

"Yes Hedwig, I know I am as multicoloured as a tawny owl. I'm going to work on that. No, I am not trying to compete with your plumage. You are the best and prettiest owl in the world, Hedwig. All other owls should bow to your superiority. After I open the window I am going to lie down and try to heal up a bit. You should take care of your own food today, tomorrow I will get you extra bacon, all right?"

And with an emphasised *hoot hoot* Hedwig flew out of the now open window.

"If her ego gets any bigger, she won't be able to fly any more," Harry mused to himself silently.

Slowly making his way back to the bed, he carefully laid down, grunting in pain all the while.

After finding a comfortable spot, he closed his eyes. Focusing on the warmth in his body, he started to work. First, he needed to find out where he was hurt. Conveniently, his magic was already working on his wounds and served as a beacon for him.

Starting with the many, many small bruises he tried to grab some of his magic and throw it at the bruise, safe to say, it was a complete failure.

Pondering for a short moment, he decided to only accelerate the magical circulation in his body and focus his intent onto the body part he was working on.

As time passed, he slowly but surely made progress with his self made mana circulation.

"Heh, who knew those immortal cultivation novels had it right all along? Maybe I should develop a whole arsenal of… let's call it internal magic for now. Yeah, that works. A whole arsenal of internal magics in the future. That's for later though, now back to healing."

As hours passed by, Harry laid motionless in his bed. If not for the slight rise and fall of his chest, he could have been mistaken for a corpse.

Suddenly, Harry opened his eyes, jumped out of bed and ran like the devil into the bathroom.

"Shit, shit, shit, shit. Oww, this is bad. Bad, bad, bad." Cursing, Harry arrived in front of the bathroom, only to find it closed. "Stupid door open. Why won't you open?" And locked. Desperate, Harry pushed his magic into his hand and then into the lock, demanding his magic to "open the damned door!" To Harry's relief, it worked and he reached the toilet just in time.

After finishing his business, he walked back into his room, visibly relieved, only to come to a stop right before he reached his door. There on the floor, right where he probably had passed out, were some scorch marks outlining a human head. His head. And to top it all off, there were three differently coloured phoenix feathers. One a nice warm orange red, one icy blue and one a deep purple. While he picked them up, he carefully felt the difference between each phoenix feather. Inspecting the magic with his newly discovered magical hypersensitivity, as he decided to call it, he got three distinct impressions. The red one was playful and warm, the blue one was aloof and distant and the purple one felt majestic. Intrigued, he walked back into his room, trying to figure out the connection between the scorch marks, the three phoenix feathers and his apparent transmigration.

"The only thing I can come up with, is that three phoenixes somehow pushed my soul into Harry's body after he passed on and then kind of welded me into it. Hehe, imagine that. A phoenix wearing a welding helmet. Hahaha!" And with that, he laughed out loud, hard enough for his ribs to ache.

"Oh I needed that. But now, I have to focus on a more important issue. Why is there some foreign magic on my glasses? I have to check everything in my possession. I can't have some unknown magic on me, doing who knows what to me."

Yawning, he checked the clock and realised it was already 4 am in the morning.

Deciding to check his belongings after breakfast, he crawled back into bed and into Morpheus realm.