(ii) Unforgivably, Your Godfather

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. All rights are reserved to JK Rowling and Warner Bros.

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Chapter 2

Unforgivably, Your Godfather

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The past few hours had been one of the utmost surreal moments in Harry's life. But all of it just made one fact very clear to him.

He was definitely not in his own world.

Apparently, there was no uncle Vernon here, instead, aunt Petunia was married to a very calm gentleman named Virtus Reson, and he had been in their care for the entirety of his life since Albus Dumbledore! Of all people killed his parents. Reaching out to Dumbledore was now out of the question, obviously.

Oh, also aunt Petunia was a witch, in the literal sense. Well, at least he was still in Gryffindor if that amounted to anything, seeing as the absolute prat, Malfoy was supposedly his best mate here. Maybe he was different here and did not have his head right up above the clouds. He surely would never be in the mood to listen to the words 'My father will hear about this.' Ever.

A few minutes ago when she was leaving, aunt Petunia had told him that, Gellert was coming to see how he was doing. Gellert Grindelwald was his supposed godfather instead of Sirius here.

Yet another sigh escaped his mouth. He was unsure as to what to feel about his situation. On one hand, his home life was suddenly considerably more pleasing than the life he had back… home? Yeah, as if he ever considered that place his home. Not more than a few minutes in this unknown house, and he could call it more homely than the Dursleys would've ever been.

Back in his original world - assuming that his hypothesis on the whole world travel was correct - Hogwarts was really the only place that he would be comfortable calling home.

He scoffed. Really how pathetic his life had been that he called the school he studied in, home rather than his actual 'home'.

Severing whatever anxiety was creeping over him, Harry looked at himself in the mirror. It seemed that growing in a gentle and nurturing environment, was way more grateful to one's body than growing up in the Dursleys. He still had his familiar glasses, but Harry looked almost 3 inches taller, and his cheeks were also more full. Welcome changes certainly.

Inwardly smiling, he started to explore his room. Quidditch related items, collection of chocolate frog cards, books by numerous authors, ranging from transfiguration, charms, and even history! The variety of items that resided in the room covered a wide spectrum of topics. Seems like he was quite a versatile guy in this world.

Walking towards the photographs that had dominated the left side of the wall, he looked at a photo that he had failed to notice before.

It was he, himself and an old-looking man, probably of Dumbledore's age, wearing a far fashionable suit and overcoat, that was strangely muggle. From what he could gather from looking at other similar photos, he was quite close to him, adding his age, it only seemed probable that this man was Gellert Grindelwald, his godfather who was a dark lord, Dumbledore was famous for defeating. And that was the only information he had about the man.

It was still all too bizarre for him. But it had been only a few hours since he woke up in this world, so that's to be expected.

Hopefully, he'll get used to it eventually. Hopefully.

Knock Knock.

Harry turned towards the door where stood Virtus and along with him surely Gellert.

"Harry? Gellert is here. I'll leave you two to chat. I'll be with your aunt down in our room if you need anything." Virtus said before parting with Gellert, but not before giving Harry a small smile.

That would use some getting used to. The prospect of him having an uncle like Virtus— who from what he had seen was far better than 'uncle' Vernon both for himself and aunt Petunia was very out there, but as other things here in this world, it was a good change.

Gellert soon moved into the room and closed the door behind.

His appearance shared similarities to the ones in the photos, which was to say that it was very muggle. He wore a blue suit underneath a transformed robe. His face despite his age did not show as much of an old-man look that Dumbledore's had predominantly occupied.

"Good morning Harry, how are you doing?" Gellert asked with a small smile that hinted at sorrow.

"I-I'm fine." Harry replied shortly, what was he supposed to say exactly in a situation like this? He did not know the man, well, at all, plus he wasn't the most socially apt person to begin with!

So what happened next was to be expected. A long stretch of awkward silence took hold of the situation. In which the only thing that happened was an intense stare session between the grey and green orbs of the only occupants of the room. At the end of which, Harry just couldn't hold the piercing glare anymore and strayed away his eyes to the bookshelf beside Gellert.

"Hah, so I am assuming you have no memory as to who I am?" Gellert asked before taking a seat on a chair beside Harry's bed.

"Yes. Though Vi- uncle told me that you are my godfather?" He didn't mean to say that as a question but oh well.

"That's true, I was very close to your grandmother Dorea and through her, of your father. I never really understood his frame of mind when he asked me to be your godfather," He let out a little chuckle, "Seems as though it was not a good decision looking at your state right now."

Harry did not particularly have anything in his mind to say at this very instant. He had only really met his 'real' godfather, Sirius during the absolute disaster of his third year. And at the time of his departure and even during the whole fiasco, Sirius was not in the most peaceful of places in his mind. 12 years of Azkaban with those heinous dementors were certain to take a toll on one's mind.

Throughout their limited interactions, Sirius hadn't had any time to show any sort of familial affection. And he didn't blame him for it for obvious reasons.

But the person in front of him certainly conveyed enough worries with only his gaze. And he didn't know why, but they felt genuine.

"Well then, introductions are anew." He said before pulling out his wand for thin air. That was kinda cool, he'll have to see if he could teach him that.

Gellert's wand reminded him of his own, somewhat. He recognised the wood to be holly, but way more spotted with details, plus the ornamental silvers clearly demarcated it from his wand — speaking of, where was his wand?

His original wand was not with him when he woke up, along with every other of his possessions. He wasn't even in his own body anymore.

Then what about the original Harry of this world? Did they switch bodies or had he taken over his counterpart's body? The whole debate was just another can of worms he had to figure out along with everything else he supposed.

Harry, snapping out of his thoughts, looked in front of him. There was a chair identical to the one Gellert was sitting, in front of him.

"Go ahead, take a seat, I have a feeling we have much to discuss."

He must've conjured it while he was not paying attention.

"Alright, so, I am known as Gellert Grindelwald, master duelist, supreme mugwump of the ICW, headmaster of Durmstrang, and your godfather. You can just call me Gellert," He paused for a second, probably to let the information sink in, then continued, "I'll admit that I have not been as involved in your life as I should be due to my various responsibilities— one indication would be your accident. But I digress, I plan to be your support as I… should have been, so I hope that you forgive me, even if you don't remember why you should."

Harry's mind did sway momentarily to Gellert's title, more specifically the similarities it showed with his Dumbledore's. He wasn't sure what 'Durmstrang' was, but given the title, he assumed it must be a school.

His attention wasn't retained on that topic for long, given the next few lines had grabbed Harry's attention much more than they should have, coming from the mouth of a stranger, at least to him.

"Um, uh—I'm glad to hear that. A-And I forgive you, I suppose. As you said, I don't really remember what I should be forgiving you for though," Gellert was about to say something but Harry interrupted him with a question, "Actually, can you tell me about my uh- 'accident' I am having a hard time remembering a lot of things, the cause included, so if you could?"

Gellert looked at him weird, this was the first time he had done so, since he met him, which was to say for about 15 minuscule minutes. Harry knew what the look meant, he had seen it plenty of times before in his life. One time was the whole parseltongue debacle, the look on the students had shown unsettlement.

Gellert's face was showing exactly that. Unsettlement.

Harry went through his last bout of dialogue to figure out what exactly had he said, that resulted in such an expression. The whole forgiving stuff was probably out of question. Was it because he had interrupted him with his question? He did not get much chance to think as Gellert spoke again.

"You have changed." huh? Changed? What did he mean by that?

"Changed?"

"Yes, You have changed. You see, usually you would have berated me with profanities and shouted at me that whatever words that come out of my mouth are just shallow bickering— but it seems as though the accident has done more than just taking your memories."

That didn't sound like him. He guessed it was probably because it was not actually him. The only thing that he shared with this Harry till now was just their names, faces, and Quidditch. "Well um, that seems terribly rude. Was I really like that?"

"Ja, but I wouldn't blame it entirely on you. Your anger was justified as I truly never really gave you the importance you deserved. I had assumed that Virtus and Petunia would more than make up for my lack of presence, and they did, surely," He crossed his legs and vanished his wand away, "But I forgot that it was my presence that would have made the distinction..."

Harry could feel the regret dripping from Gellert's voice. It had now become very apparent to him that Gellert and Harry - the original of this world - were not close at all due to Gellert being busy with his various responsibilities. And now after the 'accident'— he still didn't know anything about it. But after the accident, Gellert was strongly regretting his past choices.

Harry just felt bad. Even though it was not his actions, still he felt responsible for being a rude prat with Gellert.

"Uh, even though I don't remember much about what happened in the past. I-I just want to say that it's okay. You realised it, and I think that's what matters the most."

Gellert looked at him softly, his lips curled into a smile, "Thank you, and to answer your question, the 'accident' that you speak of is as much of an accident as I am Dumbledore— that is to say, none. Tell me, has Virtus or Petunia told you anything about it yet?" He asked.

"No. I just woke up about 2 hours ago? I think. So, they haven't told me anything or, I guess they just haven't got any chance yet to explain anything."

"Well I am quite certain they won't tell you the whole truth if they are telling you it was an accident," Gellert uncrossed his legs, "They presumably would not like me telling you about it too, but mother forbid if anything like this ever will occur again, you need to be aware of your past to be warier."

"So firstly, are you aware of what the unforgivables are?" He asked.

"N-No, what are they?"

"Hm, the Hogwarts curriculum is as lacking as ever, I see. It's almost the fourth year and they have not bothered to teach you about one of the most important group of forbidden curses, they are too conservative in my opinion. Anyways, Let me teach you about them then."

Seems as though he doesn't have the greatest opinion of Hogwarts. Although even Harry had to admit, Hogwarts, as far as his experiences went, was lacking in several places on numerous occasions.

Cough Quirrel Cough Basilisk Cough Lockhart Cough Dementors.

Anyways, he was getting distracted.

"So the unforgivables are a group of three curses that various ministries around the globe have deemed to be too immoral and unforgiving to use, mainly because they can cause mortal peril or strip away freedom from a person—"

Harry had a sudden epiphany and was about to ask Gellert a question but then, "Although you might think that there are a plentiful amount of curses or even just spells and charms that can do the aforementioned, so why are they not categorised 'Unforgivable'?"

Harry was quite speechless. He supposed being a headmaster of a large teaching institute came with plenty of experience with curious students.

"To answer your unasked question, it is due to the intent and purpose of the curse that's responsible for the said categorization. You have to have the intent of killing or harming the person to even just cast the curses."

This was quite fascinating and all to Harry but, "What does the unforgivables have to do with my incident? Did somebody cast one of them on me?"

Harry hoped that that was not what Gellert was going to get at. Though he very much knew how improbable that thought was considering his life.

"Fortunately, no. It was actually the perpetrator of the actual spell that hit you, who was under one of the curses. Does that answer your question?" Harry nodded, "Alright, don't interrupt me while I'm explaining the curses, you must understand what they are. It's very likely that whoever attempted to cause you harm, might attempt to do so, in the future too."

"OK."

"Hm, so the first one is the cruciatus curse, the second is the imperious curse and the last one is the killing curse. I won't go into too much detail on all of them as I have been told that I often derail too far from the topic, and considering the nature of the topic, I will only be talking with further detail about the points that you should be considered with."

Harry's mood immediately became sour on the mention of the killing curse. There were only grim memories he could associate with this particular combination of words. He only assumed that Dumbledore must've killed his parents the same as Voldemort had in his own world.

He still had to research that, actually. Why had the roles reversed for Gellert and Dumbledore in this world? What could be responsible for such a drastic change? Harry did not know but certainly had enough drive to research for that.

"So, firstly there is the imperius curse, which gives the caster total control of the victim of the curse. In essence, it takes their free will and makes them nothing but a mere puppet to the will of the caster. Although there are cases when a person with enough natural or built up mental resistance can resist the curse. Those cases are a rare occurrence though. Magicals today have grown complacent enough that most don't bother learning something like occlumancy— which is just a whole 'nother topic, but I believe we don't have enough time, so I will refrain from speaking further about it." Gellert's face had shown a number of expressions throughout the talk, ranging from disgust to sympathy.

Harry was certainly shocked after hearing about the existence of such a curse. No wonder it was grouped with the abhoringly vile killing curse. Having one's free will taken away was one of the most disturbing things Harry could think of.

This train of thought led him to think about one thing though.

Had somebody used the imperius on him too? Was it also the reason for his so-called 'accident'.

It would be quite interesting if the original Harry of this world was put under the imperius to do something life threatening or illegal.

Actually, no. Why would that be interesting? What was wrong with him?! He literally was the Harry of this world now. Being slapped with charges of murder or something illegal wouldn't do him any favours.

Why did he even think of something like that? Must be the stress of world-hopping getting to him.

Harry shook his head from his musings and focused on what Gellert was saying.

"Then, there is the cruciatus curse. A deadly spell, considered by the recipients of the said curse to be the worst of all three unforgivables. It's used to torture people— often to the brink of insanity. To give the working of the curse, or as muggles put it, the science behind it, when hit with the curse, it stimulates every nerve in the body and gives the victim immense pain akin to thousands of hot needles piercing through one's body. Ja, so painful."

"And as I said, it can drive victims insane for life or worse, force them to be in a vegetative condition for the rest of their lives." Gellert took a glance at Harry's face to see his reaction. It was strangely stoic considering the current discussion, but he forgo it, attributing it to the fact that he had just woken up a few hours ago from an apparent coma.

"That brings us to the last unforgivable, the killing curse," Gellert paused, once again looking at Harry at the mention of the curse that, he was sure it would bring some sort of reaction considering his association with it in the past.

And it in fact did. He was not certain what his reaction had been when he previously mentioned it but right now his face showed sorrow and regret.

That was good. Not the sorrow and regret part very obviously, but the fact that he was showing emotions meant that the spell-aftermath did not affect his emotions and morals.

"I am going to apologise in advance if you feel uncomfortable with the inclusion of this particular curse. Trust me, it has taken a lot of people dear to me too, James and Lily included. So, if you want me to stop, I will." Gellert continued.

Harry was impressed by Gellert's consideration for him regarding the killing curse. Very few adults ever showed him that throughout his life.

Although the irony wasn't lost on Harry that he had shown the said consideration literally after giving him enough nightmare fuel to last him several weeks.

"I-I would like that, yes. I think I already know as much as I should about it." he replied, timidly.

"Fair enough. I suppose we should move to the actual topic of interest now. I have already consumed much of our time without even answering your question. But I think it was educational too, yes?"

"Yeah, it was.. very educational."

"Hm, let's continue then. First things first, do you remember who Draco Malfoy is?" Gellert asked.

Harry thought for a second and then answered, "From what aunt Petunia told me, he has been my best friend since I was child. Though I don't remember even that, so I don't know beyond that."

"That is certainly true, you two share one of the most genuine bonds of friendship that I have seen. It's truly unfortunate that you do not remember him either. He is a brilliant child really, I am quite certain that you two will become friends once you get to know him again," Gellert paused for a second and then spoke again, "I just want you to bear in mind that whatever I am about to tell you was completely out of the control of Draco, please do not let this incident mull things between you two."

The last part drew Harry's attention. Was this Gellert indicating that Malfoy was somehow responsible for his accident?

"The cause of your condition right now is a very obscure spell that kills all mental functions of the victim, essentially making them brain-dead. It was quite a miracle that you even woke up, truly goes to tell you that sometimes miracles do exist. All bless the mother for that. But anyway, the person who casted the spell was actually Draco—"

Ha! I knew it! How can Malfoy be ever good in any world whatsoever. That fucking greesy bastard wouldn't change even if world fell apart.

I fucking knew i–

"—who was under an imperius curse by an unknown party. Although there is no sure way to go about it, we are still trying."

What? Oh.. now that he thought about it, Gellert had earlier said that the perpetrator was under one of the spells. Why hadn't that clicked in his mind?

Not very mysteriously, it was probably because of Malfoy's hate that he did not consider even the possibility of him being under an imprius to cause harm to him.

Harry was still unconvinced somewhat because why wouldn't he be? Malfoy's father also dodged Azkaban by the same excuse, why couldn't his son do it?

"Harry?"

"Huh? Yes?"

"I was asking how are you feeling? I am aware that it has been a long day for you, and I have given you plenty to think about, but don't let it all burden you much. I along with the aurors and some ICW agents are looking into the matter. You need not indulge in stress over this matter, ja?" Gellert said, giving Harry a small smile.

"Y-Yes, I won't."

"Brilliant! Now I shall take my leave. I assume I will have much to discuss with your uncle and aunt," Gellert stood up from his chair and Harry soon followed. They both walked to the door, "Take care Harry. I will be visiting often."

"Alright, you take care too, uh, Gellert." Harry replied.

Seeing Gellert walking, Harry was about to close the door when Gellert turned around, "Oh also, the chair I conjured will approximately fade away in 8-9 hours. So don't put anything fragile on it."

"U-Understood." Harry said as he hurriedly closed the door.

He walked to the comfortable bed, his bed that he woke upon. Laying with a thud on the bed, there was only one thing on Harry's mind out of all the nauseatingly enormous amount of sudden information he was subjected to today.

He had a family. A loving family as far as he could tell till now.