27 Wizarding Works, a Harry Potter SI

Synopsis: A male self insert into the Harry Potter world as a metamorphomagus. The time period is during the seven years with the golden trio.

Author: Charlezany

Site: Sufficient velocity

Chapter 1:

Melton-Mowbray, England. Sometime in June 1991

Have you ever gone from taking a nice, relaxing afternoon nap to falling face-first into the wet pavement?

I have, it sucks ass, and leave little explanation as to why it happened.

"What the heck..?" I pushed myself up off of the… cobblestone floor, sidewalk, it was a sidewalk. "How did I get here?"

The thought occurred that I might be dreaming, lucid dreaming perhaps, but pinching my arm did nothing, and… 'these aren't my clothes.'

I was dressed up in a long-sleeve dress shirt, where before it had been a tee, and as I checked my pants I realized something else was seriously wrong.

Especially comparing myself to the curb, and to the streetlights, and the doors.

'Oh, God, I just body jacked some poor kid spontaneously…' I looked around, checking my pants pockets, but no luck, there wasn't a wallet or an ID or anything, nor was there a backpack. I was just alone, out in a light rain, in what might be a different timezone.

'Did I get freaky Friday ed across the world?' I wondered, crossing my tiny little arms awkwardly. 'Is some kid now in my body? I hope he doesn't find my porn.'

The town itself was odd, full of a mix of old and new architecture, and the signage was in English at least.

The traffic light a block away was on the wrong side of the road though, and that gave me a pretty good idea where I was.

'England then? Cripes…'

And here I was complaining about the rain like a little wanker. It could be so much worse than England. At least I knew the language.

As I moved for shelter, I felt something shifting below my foot in my right boot. It felt like a sheet of paper.

I didn't want to pull out my only lead to get ruined by the rain, so I waited until I was safely under a bus stop to withdraw it. Though it only read three words.

Cromwell Orphanage, Rupert.

Well, I could guess what that meant pretty easy, it probably meant I should go to the Cromwell Orphanage, and that my name was Rupert.

I peeped my head past the advertisement on the bus stop, looking up and down the street, and wouldn't you know it, one of the buildings was clearly labeled the Thomas Cromwell home for Orphaned Children.

Convenient.

A little too convenient. There was bullshit here, I was sure of it, but, I was a lone child with no ID whatsoever, and it was dark, and I was not particularly confident in my odds surviving alone, even in England.

So, like a good little victim of circumstance, I made my way to the orphanage door, rapping on it with my Itty-bitty child hand.

The woman who came to the door had a stern look to her, with long blond hair done up in a bun.

She glowed down at me, though I think that was just her natural state of being.

"Are you Rupert?"

"Ye-yes, I am."

"We were expecting you hours ago. Come in."

The waiting area was bland and grey, with opaque windows facing the clouds outside. "Well, it looks like you'll be up in the attic room, the rain will be a little loud, but you'll get used to it." She said, reading a sheet of paper off the front desk. "Breakfast will be at 6 am sharp, but you may sleep through it if you wish, seeing as it is near midnight now. Climb the ladder by the back door, and you'll be in your room. We can go over your schedule in the morning."

I nodded, shyly, trying not to give myself away, who knew what the hell was happening, it was best to play along for now.

The attic room was lit by a single hanging glass bulb and was a tight space pressed up just below the roof at the back of the building. I could barely stand up in it without hurting my head, and the rain was loud, but it was dry at least.

I stripped off my damp clothing and boots and climbed into the twin-sized bed pressed against the back wall of the building, drawing the blankets over me like a shield. I was still unsure of just what was going on.

When I put my head down on the pillow though, I heard a crinkling of paper beneath it, curious, I reached around, and drew out a sealed envelope.

The seal came off like nothing, and I very quickly came to realize just what and where I was. Indeed, I had to rub my eyes a little bit to make sure that they did not deceive me.

"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry..." the very idea of it was utterly preposterous, and yet here I was, reading a fantasy acceptance letter, a letter directed towards one, Rupert Irving.

In short, me.

"Hoo boy," I mumbled, trying to wrap my head around all that entailed, and around the fact that some cosmic force had decided to dump me here in the body of a kid no less.

Still, it was the body of a tired kid, and I wasn't able to think that long.

'Whatever, I'll deal with this nonsense in the morning.'

_________________________________

Chapter 2:

Waking up in a strange bed five hours ahead of your normal timezone is traditionally reserved for members of the Mile-High club in my estimation, but it only took me a moment and a glance at the letter which I had left on the dresser at the head of my bed (the only other furniture in the room), for me to confirm that no, it had not in fact been a dream.

I really had been shoved into Harry Potter, and if the date on the postage was anything to go by, I would be just in time for all the wonderful child-murdering shenanigans to kick off.

Woohoo?

Well, it wasn't all bad, there were a lot of opportunities there too, things I could use to my advantage, people I could save and plots I could stop dead, just by sharing some knowledge about them in advance.

Well, maybe not, explaining that knowledge would be a big task.

Eh, I'd find an excuse when I got to Hogwarts. Still, this was exciting, I was in a world where I could do anything, be anything. Hell, it was entirely possible to achieve literal immortality here with the right mindset, via the philosophers stone or other methods, and even without that, you could still do most anything at all through magic.

In short, the possibilities were limitless, and I was in a position to grasp them.

Well, actually I wasn't, not yet, but I would be, and that was pretty awesome.

Of course, the wait was a killer, and orphanage life miserable. Well, miserable might be too strong a word for it, perhaps lacking in entertainment.

Melton Mowbray wasn't a particularly large down, despite, to my knowledge, predating the Norman Conquest, and it produced few orphans. I was one of nine, and we were overseen by two women, Gran Olivia, and Mrs. Helen. They were pleasant enough to my more mature sensibilities, but the other kids fussed that they were too strict.

I couldn't blame them, nine children were a hassle, and despite welfare, or rather doll money, they were not exactly living it up themselves.

Yeah sue me, I'm not gonna tell you that the two ladies taking care of our lot were bitter old unloving hags, because they weren't, and anybody seeing then that way was probably a child. Mostly they just seemed to want to keep us alive.

I didn't bond all that well with other children, on that, and on other issues. I just had almost nothing in common with these other orphans, the other boys were more interested in the upcoming Conker fights than anything else, and the three girls were all enraptured by some period pop artist I didn't know existed.

In short, there was something of a lack of common ground between us, in addition to me being a weird new kid.

I can't even really remember their names, I talked to them so little in the week I was there before my… well, before the professor arrived.

It was around 10 am, I think, when Gran shouted up that there was someone there to see me. I had been up in my room, reading over my list of essential supplies once again at the time, and I think I nearly broke my shins wire the fall, rushing as I was towards the front room.

I had been given a week to grow in excitement you understand, a very boring week of waiting until what I presumed must be my eleventh birthday.

I may have been running a bit too fast, however, as I slammed face-first into the man in the hall door, falling down on my bum to stare up at a wall of flowing black robes.

"You are Rupert, then. I take it?"

You know, he didn't really look all that much like his actor, but despite that Professor Snape was still instantly recognizable. From his long hooked nose, the greasy hair, and the fact that nobody else to my knowledge dressed the way he did. His voice also had a certain draw to it, as if he was at all times speaking down a metal pipe.

"Yes, that's me." I nodded. "Are you here to take me to Hogwarts?"

"Not presently no, but muggle-borns cannot be expected to shop for themselves." His eyes turned up towards Gran, who was standing in the front hall. "I will return him in several hours, once we have visited the necessary stores to purchase his school supplies."

At Gran's nod, I was led from the building, though I struggled to keep pace with the bat-like man's long steps as if he was trying to escape me. He led me swiftly into an alleyway adjacent to the orphanage.

"This will be disorienting, please face your head away from me." He reached down and turned me about before I could realize what he was doing.

Then the world cracked and warped, and it felt like I was being tied up into a rope, head to toe, twisted all over in a manner that should be utterly impossible without breaking my skeleton or removing it entirely.

I was glad that I hadn't eaten lunch yet when we got there, as my stomach was doing somersaults when I staggered out onto the cool black bricks of London.

"Hmm, you are a metamorphomagus then? I should have been told."

I turned back towards him, a bit of confusion in my eyes.

"I'm what?"

He withdrew from a bag at his side a tiny hand mirror that seemed to be held together by spider-chitin. In the center, however, I could see that my flesh was indeed as twisted as it felt, half sat up on the side of my face like some sort of deranged mutant, with a bad case of scoliosis, and one shoulder much higher than the other.

"You do not appear to be splinched, so I would suggest you revert back to a more standard appearance before you inevitably embarrass yourself further."

"I…" I reached up to my face, trying to pry at it with my hands, to little effect.

"I don't quite know how."

Chapter 3:

Severus pressed his lips together tightly as he glanced down at the boy desperately trying to reshape his face in front of him as if it were putty.

He did not previously think it was possible for a metamorphomagus to lack such control, but then, the boy was a muggle-born and an orphan at that. He supposed it was mildly possible that the boy had never even realized his capabilities.

Unfortunately, there wasn't altogether much he could do for the boy as he tried to realign his face to little success. Metamorphomagi generally were quite rare as deviant Wizarding bloodlines went, and as such, it was not exactly common knowledge in regards to how they molded themselves.

Most seemed to just get used to the process over time.

'Ah well.' He flicked his wand in a silent casting of the Homorphus charm. He knew that it forced Animagi back into their natural state, and some theorized that the same would be true of other shapeshifters.

The boy cried in shock as his shape immediately began to reform into a far more standard one, similar to the appearance he had held in the orphanage, save that his hair was blonde for a moment, before quickly changing to brown.

'Not a conscious decision then.' Snape returned his want to his holster. "There, now I believe the first thing that should be dealt with is your robes. Hogwarts will be covering your basic school supplies under the orphan's act of nineteen-forty-seven, however, there will be no frippery, no excessive focus on quality, and no pets. Do I make myself clear?"

The boy nodded, seeming to have gotten his wits back about him quickly. Good, that would take him farther than most muggle-borns who couldn't stop gaping at anything with a trace of magic to it.

He began making his way towards Madame Malkins, confident that the boy would follow if nothing else to avoid being alone in a strange new place. Children were triflingly predictable after his years of teaching, and the pitter-patter of footsteps running to catch up with him let him know that the boy was continuing to be sensible, for now at least.

Madame Malkin looked up as he entered. "Oh, my, Severus, I haven't seen you in years, still wearing that drab old thing, have you finally come to replace it?"

"No, I will not be replacing my Robes today. I am here escorting a new student."

"Ah, I see, I take it that would be you then." Her eyes moved over to the boy that had followed him in. Who nodded deferentially.

"Yes, I'm Rupert, it's nice to meet you."

"And you as well, come here, and let me get a look at you…"

Severs ignored the ongoing conversation, turning his eyes to the street instead, watching as he always did, for the general mood of the place, and if any of the former death-eaters were up and about.

'None today, seems Lucius might have more to do than strut around. Perhaps he's at the Ministry.'

He stepped back out onto the street, the fitting for uniform robes and clothing would take an hour as Minerva told it, and it would be sensible to go retrieve the boy's equipment and reading materials before he took him to Ollivanders to finish the trip. He had six different cauldrons boiling in his laboratory, and he needed to ensure that he did not have to waste even more time rebrewing Felix Felicis.

He entered the Madame Potage's shop warily, he was willing to buy second hand for the boy, but not substandard, and his students had been melting their cauldrons a tad too easily in recent years, likely because of the thinner rim on American Import Cauldrons, even those which claimed to be the standard size 2 Pewter.

Ignoring the greeting from Clerk at the counter, he immediately set to checking the Brands.

'Smiths… Smiths… ah, yes, this is the American Brand, I'll have to bring it up to Albus.' He turned towards the clerk. "Do you have any Harding made Cauldrons?"

"You hear shopping for a student, professor? Normally it's Mrs. McGonagall who does that, and yeah I think we have some in the back, not as pretty as the Smiths though. Want I should go get them?" Snape belatedly realized that the clerk at the counter had been a former student, a Hufflepuff whose name he couldn't quite place.

"Indeed."

"I'll have at it then. One moment."

The young man flicked his wand, pulling several of the uglier grey cauldrons out of the back. Still, despite appearances, the Harding company made sturdy beginner cauldrons, suitable for first years. He studied them carefully, ensuring that there were no cracks or obvious damages.

"This third one here will be suitable. I presume you have the rest of the first year measuring supplies around as well?"

"Reckon we do."

"Good, I will want to check their quality as well."

He grimaced as the young man drew out several pairs of dinged up bronze scales.

'First years are bad enough without tools of inferior quality. Perhaps Albus could write a strongly worded note to the minister.'

_______________________________