1 Chapter 1

I watched the ground crackle underneath the two witch's feet as they traded spells with increasing intensity. Bellatrix's sneer slowly morphed into a snarl as the Weasley matriarch matched her blow for blow.

"Don't worry mummy, I'll send you on your way to see Freddie soon," Bellatrix said with a mad gleam in her eyes.

Molly let out a cry of rage letting loose a hammer blow that seemed to cause Bellatrix to stumble, but I saw the the mirth in her eyes under the facade of fear. As Molly gathered her strength for the final blow, Bellatrix summoned a piece of broken bench from the debris scattered on the floor of the great hall catching her opponent in the back of the legs. Molly tumbled to the floor just as Bellatrix let loose a chaotic tumble of of blue and purple light I knew to be the blood-freezing hex.

And that was my cue.

I threw off my borrowed invisibility cloak and stepped in between the duelers. I threw up a shrunken cauldron while simultaneously unshrinking it and banishing it at the incoming spell. The spell and cauldron collided, the cauldron tumbling to the side.

At least it didn't hit me in the face this time.

Next I put my hand over the bracelet on my right wrist as if steadying my hand even as I screamed this world's most infamous spell, "Avada kedavra!"

Bellatrix only had time to dodge the bolt sickly green energy headed her way, moving with a dueler's instincts. Her eyes widened in shock as the spell curved to follow her. The spell struck her square in the chest.

Unlike the expectations of gaping bystanders, she didn't drop with rag doll physics. When I touched the bracelet on my wrist, I actually activated a switching spell with the wand holster fastened to my arm that switched my real wand with a fake. A fake with a single enchantment on it. A target-seeking ball of bright green light that just happened to strongly resemble the killing curse.

By the time Bellatrix registered that she was still alive I had already switched my real wand back and steadied my breath for one big spell. I gathered all my magic at a single point, and let it explode as I whispered my next spell.

"Reducio."

The spell caught her left foot even as she watched dumbly as the fake AK caught her in the chest, the light show helpfully dazzingly her eyes with its supposed power. The over-powered shrinking spell struck her no doubt extremely over-priced dragon-hide boot.

Now, dragon-hide is highly spell resistant, but not totally impervious. Otherwise everyone would just wade through battle decked out in dragon-hide without a worry. The power I put into the spell was more than enough to shrink the boot to a size fitting for a newborn. Her foot, however, didn't shrink with it. With a crack, and squelch, a surprising amount of blood burst out making a small splatter on the floor.

Belltrix's screech of pain turned into a gurgle as my almost casual diffindo sliced through her throat.

I didn't have too much time to be smug. Voldemort screamed in outrage at the death of his lieutenant and my world exploded into extreme pain as his crucio caught me from the side.

I'd like to say I was so badass and battle hardened that I didn't cry out in pain. Actually for a few seconds I didn't. It was because the pain was so bad my throat muscles seized up. Then I cried and screamed like a baby and actually started laughing.

That was actually new, for even me. Something might have broken.

Then the wizarding world's savior popped up like a possum and said, "Uh-uh, not dead!"

Well, not really. That's what should have happened, but instead Tom bore down on me with his crimson eyes almost seeming to glow with power. Molly actually tried to come to my defense. How Gryffindor. Voldemort put her down with a disdainful wave of his wand.

"Your savior is dead!" his voiced boomed over the battlefield. "Your resistance merely prolongs what the prophecy already foretold. My victory," he said as I felt my body lifted into the air.

Great. I was about to be made an example of. My throat was so broken the words were actually pretty hard to get out, but I managed, "Cockroach clusters."

I found myself standing in the room of requirement where I promptly fell on my butt.

"Game over," I said.

Directly in front of me stood a stone pedestal in the shape of a column of stone with a snake coiled around it. At the top of the stone rested the snake's head, but strangely enough, its tail seemed to coil around back to its mouth. All along its body, scales as thick as a dragon's twinkled with light, except an area next to the head where four scales were as dull as the stone column.

Another light twinkled out.

"And so my fifth life ended," I said to myself.

My name is William Peabody. I am, and was, a nerd. Nothing special. My name was probably much cooler than Peabody, though. Actually I don't remember.

Anyway, I was just a nerd who spent way too much time energy on things that didn't exist. Until I ended up in Harry Potter.

It wasn't really very dramatic. I blinked. Then I woke up in another body all set to receive my Hogwart's letter. I was a wizard. Great, right? I could finally cast all the spells I only ever dreamed of. Only one problem. I was a near-squib.

Worse even than Longbottom, and I never seemed to magically come into my own. I only every had below average reserves, so I skulked out a lowly existence barely scraping by in all my classes even though I knew the material better than any student in the whole school given that I studied with the passion of a nerd finally brought into to paradise. From the first day of classes, I of course, like any self-respecting Potter-fan went to the Room of Requirement. I abused it to my advantage over the years until one day.

This day, in fact. I asked the room of requirement, "Give me your most powerful artifact."

I got this tail-eating snake. It bit me on the hand. I'm still bleeding in fact.

If I died, I reset. I also found I could set a kind of code-phrase to trigger a reset early. Other than that, I didn't know much other than a scale turned dull after every reset, meaning I seemed to have a finite amount of runs. I also couldn't remove the column from the room.

"Hoo-hoo." I looked at the watch on my wrist where an owl continue to hoot and shake its wings at me. With a sigh, I turned to exit the room. I had a train to catch.