In a dark, squalid closet, on a dirty and old mattress, lay an eleven-year-old boy. Almost eleven. It was not long before his birthday. He curled up and cried quietly, cradling his broken arm and whining from the unbearable pain. His ribs hurt just as much. Internal bleeding was making itself felt, but the boy's magic unconsciously tried to dull the pain and heal the internal injuries. There were simply too many of them and old wounds that had never been completely healed were opened.
Magic could do a lot, but without the supervision of a skilled healer, the results were far from ideal. He was sweating heavily, he had a fever, and his consciousness was slipping into oblivion more and more often. There was an increasing chance that one fine day he would never wake up again.
More than anything in the world, Harry wanted this pain to stop. Physical pain and mental pain. His heart and mind burned with resentment for the unfair treatment he received. No matter how hard he tried, no matter what he did, his relatives seemed to be able to notice only the worst. And they also knew how to hate so sincerely that it even took your breath away.
"For what?" Potter wheezed quietly, choking back tears.
But there was no answer. The darkness of his closet was silent, shamefully huddled in the corners. Once again, Harry Potter got it for no reason at all. He allegedly did not dust the mantelpiece well a few days ago, for which he received a reprimand from the sarcastic Petunia today, and when his innate sense of justice played in his heart (or was it the itch in his ass and the spirit of a Gryffindor?) and he tried to prove that he did everything right, that he tried, it was just that over the past couple of days the dust settled again in that place, behind the photo frames. Furious at his disobedience and "rebellion", his uncle grabbed the poker and hit him with a backhand in a fit of rage. Vernon was a big man, and he had a lot of strength. In any case, he was more than enough for the eternally hungry and frail boy.
Potter jumped back, succumbing to his keen intuition, but because he was too weak physically, he simply did not have time to get out of the way of the blow. All he managed to do was put his right hand out, covering his head.
There was a loud crunch, familiar to Harry. The crunch of his bones breaking. The boy fell to the floor and opened his eyes wide, staring in mute horror at the enraged mustachioed boar, who in a fit of mad hatred did not even notice how he hit his nephew. Vernon Dursley was too enthusiastic in nature. He waved the poker in front of him like a conductor before a symphony orchestra. The pain came late, but what pain it was… Bright, intense, all-consuming. It pierced him from the tips of his toes to the very top of his head.
Having rewarded his nephew, who was groaning in pain, with a few preventative kicks to the ribs, Dursley, pleased with himself, grabbed his sore arm, twisting it at an unnatural angle, and threw the boy's body, which had instantly lost consciousness from pain shock, inside, locking the door of the closet behind him from the outside.
Harry woke up a few hours later and regretted that he had survived at all and was able to come to his senses. Now he was suffering, enduring incredible pain, with no hope of help. Where could it have come from? He had no one.
He was delirious, running a fever and constantly losing consciousness from pain. The mattress and pillow were already completely soaked with sweat. He seemed to hear a quiet whisper in the subcortex of his consciousness, like the rustling of thousands of small spider legs sorting through the hair on the back of his head. Like the sound of thousands of candles being blown out by the wind at the same time.
A soft, calm voice, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes an old man, sometimes a child, promised him relief, deliverance from suffering and a new life in another world, where there would be no relatives who hated him, where he could find true friends and start his own family. A world where he would not have to endure this PAIN.
He only had to ask. Make a wish. A wish in exchange for his lifeless body - an empty shell without his soul. What is a body without a soul worth? Maybe for necromancers. And then, at the moment of a particularly strong attack of pain, in despair, Harry made his last Wish in this life.
In Hogwarts, in the headmaster's office, artifacts and devices tuned to his aura and reading life indicators blinked. But there was no one to see it. Fawkes was dozing peacefully, his head tucked under his warm wing, and the owner of the office was at another unscheduled Wizengamot hearing and simply could not know that on this ordinary fine day, all his cunning plans and intrigues had fallen apart due to the intervention of a player much greater than himself. In a few minutes, the malfunctioning devices would return to normal and would show exactly what they had shown before. The measured flow of life in the boy who did not survive.
Arching one last time, Potter's body suddenly went limp, collapsing like a broken doll onto the cold, damp mattress. The boy's soul was carried away upward, to its new life, to its new rebirth.
The terrible rustling Voice did not deceive him, really opening the way for him to where he needed to go. Where the Voice needed to go, of course, and not Harry. Although, Potter would hardly object.
A deal is a deal, so a new life in another world is guaranteed for him, and the fact that the world chose the Voice for him, pursuing its own interests, is of secondary importance. But for every empty place there will always be someone who wants to fill it. And the Voice just had a suitable candidate for the role of Harry Potter in mind. In the end, this whole long-term intrigue was conceived for this moment. The Voice had long pushed the Dursleys to cruelty, digging into their brains like the razor-sharp dragonfly paws of its admonitions, digging into the twists and turns of the tired brains of stupid and defenseless wineskins with blood, like a teenager playing with a fork with pasta.
The boy's heart began to beat again in his cooling body, his lungs filled with air, and all the wounds, fractures, and old internal injuries disappeared, as if by magic. Although why as if? They disappeared by magic. Someone else's will directed a rather large supply of mana for his age through his body, reviving it. Now it was possible to place a soul there.
The boy's breathing evened out, the fever began to subside. Now he was simply resting, in a deep healing sleep.
His black, long-uncut hair, matted with sweat, was scattered across the pillow and stuck to his forehead, covering a scar that was slightly glowing with a golden light.
Not only did Harry's soul leave his body, but also a fragment of the soul of one unlucky Dark Lord disappeared with it, leaving behind only pure, residual knowledge, not distorted by the perception of his warped consciousness. Lucky.
How lucky Harry was, or rather, the one who occupied Harry Potter's body. Now he had a pretty decent idea of elementary magic, albeit just a pitiful crumb compared to what the Dark Lord himself had, but for someone who only yesterday knew nothing about magic at all, this was more than enough. He had just appeared in this world, and already stumbled upon a lucky chance. Harry didn't need to know that the Voice had taken a payment in the amount of a shard of Voldemort's soul for this procedure.
- Oh, how my head is splitting... I will never drink, smoke and fuck so much again. No, I will not drink at all, yeah. Until the first weekend for sure, heh-heh-heh. Smoke, or what? Ahem. And sex is actually good for your health. I will increase the share of sex, sacrificing booze for a while. Compensating, so to speak. In fact, Nina and I seemed to get along well at this party. "We'll have to build on this success," the teenager, small for his age, muttered quietly under his breath, opening his eyelids that seemed leaden. Emerald eyes the color of a deadly curse stared at the low, slanted ceiling of the closet under the stairs. The guy was going to drink some water and go back to bed, but changed his mind.
He blinked his eyelashes in confusion, shook his head, as if trying to shake off the spell, and rubbed his eyes with his hands. But no, the picture of the world before him had not changed.
— What the hell? Where am I? Didn't I get home? I clearly remember the taxi, the entrance, the stairs, slippery because of the ice, that damn thing... Maybe I just fell asleep in the bar and they decided to let me sleep it off in their closet, and I just dreamed the whole way home? Or did I fall asleep in the taxi? It happens, but this closet looks strangely familiar... A closet under the stairs?! — the guy exclaimed in bewilderment, abruptly sitting up and tucking his legs under himself, resting his head on his sharp, skinny knees and rubbing his buzzing temples.
His own voice also seemed strange, alien to him. Very young, not even starting to break down yet. And he looked at his thin limbs with great interest and bewilderment, trying to gather his thoughts, which were scattered in all directions, into one place. His little hands were too childish. His fingers were thin, like willow branches. He stood up and walked over to a small table where he noticed a shard of a mirror stuck to the wall with tape. Taking it in his hands, freeing it from the sticky bonds, he stared at his reflection in disbelief.
- Oh my, green hedgehogs... This is... I'm... Harry Potter? I have the characteristic scar and glasses, and I'm sure I've seen this closet somewhere! Ahahahaha. No, that's crazy. An idiot's dream has come true! - The boy jumped back from the mirror, sitting down on a bowlegged stool, almost falling onto the floor. After sitting there for a couple of seconds in thought, he got up and walked back to the table, looking into the mirror.
- I fucking dreamed about this when I was a kid, not now! Damn, everything in my life has gotten better. Work, almost got a girlfriend, a car, an apartment... Damn, what a disaster! What kind of fifteen-year-late wish delivery is this?! Are wishes now delivered by state mail, or what? — Continuing to examine himself in the mirror, this time more carefully, the new "hero" of magical Britain was still in a kind of prostration, so when the picture in the mirror changed from his shabby reflection to a real screen with tables and text in English, he was not even too surprised.
As a person accustomed to smartphones in his world, he reflexively took the mirror in his hands for a modern mobile phone. A couple of seconds later, it dawned on him that in his hands he was not holding a brand new ultra-thin new-generation iPhone, but still the most ordinary shard of a mirror, with uneven, sharp edges. His clenched fingers burned with pain and he had to loosen his grip so as not to cut his palms.
Warily looking at the text on the screen, he immersed himself in reading. Everything seemed intuitively clear, and he was familiar with English from his previous life. In any case, he knew it no worse than an eleven-year-old boy.
"Welcome to the new world, hero! For your many good deeds, you were given a chance to fulfill your childhood dream. After your sudden death, you were reincarnated in a new world, well known to you!"
"I wonder, for what kind of good deeds did I get such good fortune?" the newly arrived traveler scratched his head. "Did I do a good deed before my death, or what? But I don't remember that at all. And I don't remember my death either. Could the slippery stairs and drunkenness have been the cause? So people don't remember the moment of their death? A traumatic experience?
"Well, okay, since they say that I did something good, I won't argue. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Otherwise, I'll start asking questions, and then, oops, a mistake has crept in, come on, my friend, back to the exit, and we'll put this guy in your place. Oh, well, why would they take away my golden chance and send me to hang out in the void or stew in hell, and do I need that? Since they gave me a chance to become a magician, I'll take advantage of it. Knowledge of the canon will help me." - the guy thought to himself.
"The system will help you adapt to the new world, so over the next week you will be able to receive initial data about your condition directly from the system itself, presented in a form that is understandable and accessible to you, in the so-called classic "status bar" style.
In other words, using any mirror surface in your line of sight, you will be able to directly access your stats and ability descriptions by simply clearly saying or thinking "Status" to yourself. Other people will not be able to access your data, as only the user has access to it and can see the "pop-ups".
Attention! In a week, the trial period of the system will end and the user will no longer be able to directly contact the system. Almost all system functions will be removed, except for the karmic luck counter, which will always be available to you. You will also be able to see the karmic luck numerical value of other people by touching them and saying "status".
You can find out what the karmic luck counter is and how it works in the status menu while the trial period is in effect, simply by clicking on the golden clover in the upper right corner of your status screen.
However, keep in mind that after a week, the user should already be able to adapt to this world and feel their characteristics and parameters on an intuitive level, without any hints from the system, like any other decent wizard in this world.
The stronger and more experienced the wizard, the better they understand their own capabilities and characteristics. The status of your karmic luck will still be available to you at any time, since this parameter cannot be tracked in any other way without the support of the system. Karmic luck is considered a divine class parameter, and in a normal situation, no mortal should have access to data on their karmic luck. Appreciate it.
End of the short user guide.
"Have a good reincarnation and all the best."
- Wow. What a twist. Some kind of cut-down system I have. Clearly made by a noob god, not a god of games. And where is the store, where is the ability to invest points of characteristics or talents?! Where are all the other cool perks? Or am I just spoiled? - After hesitating a bit, Harry, and that's what he decided to call himself from now on, even in his head, in order to avoid incidents with mentalists, decided to rewrite the entire text of the system notification on a piece of paper just in case, in order to reread it again if he needed to clarify some details. He would need to think about it with a cool head, when the excitement wore off and logic pushed the feelings deeper into his heart. While he was rewriting everything on a piece of paper, he did not take his eyes off the mirror, afraid to even blink. He did not want to lose such an important thread because of such stupidity as the need to blink from time to time.
When the deed was done, he wished for the system notification to disappear and for the mirror to become just a mirror again. But nothing happened. The notification screen was still there and showed no signs of disappearing, even when Harry blinked hard. Wincing, he admitted that he had been overly cautious.
Then Harry simply placed the glass on the table, "screen" down, and walked away. After waiting a little while, he returned to the old table and turned the mirror over. Bright green eyes looked at him searchingly. The mirror became an ordinary mirror again, revealing his reflection.
"Interesting. Now let's try something else. Status!" the hero exclaimed enthusiastically.
~ Status ~
Name: Harry Potter (Gabriel Archambeau)
Class: Wizard
Blood status:
Heir of the Noble and pure-blooded House of Potter.
Heir??? *************???
Local Blood Purity Rating: 0.75 out of 1.0
(Your mother was a Muggle-born witch, which is why you lose 0.25 blood purity and your status in the eyes of true purebloods becomes very shaky. You seem to be one of them, but not everything is so clear with you. Prove to them that you are equal by birthright or by right of strength, then all questions will disappear by themselves. Or find your own path and renounce your status, pedigree and privileges.)
Innate talents and predispositions:
Light magic.
Mental magic.
Elemental magic. (Water, air.)
Spatial magic.
Artificialism.
Proficiency with cold weapons.
Hero's charisma.
Aristocrat's charisma.
Magic vision. (Weakly developed.)
Magic sense. (Weakly developed.)
True sorcery. (The ability to perform magic without a concentrator. Weakly developed.)
Acquired magical abilities and talents:
High pain threshold. (The previous owner of the body learned to endure and bequeathed it to you.)
Ultimate concentration. (The ability to speed up one's own thinking for a short time. It helped the previous owner avoid fatal injuries. Developed thanks to an innate talent in mental magic. Weakly developed.)
Intuition.
(Living/surviving side by side with danger since childhood, your intuition has become much more acute. Now you feel the hostile intentions of people directed at you and sense trouble in advance. Weakly developed.)
Residual knowledge of the Dark Lord (You have a good understanding of the basics of magical art. Approximate level of knowledge is the average third-year student at Hogwarts at the moment. You also have access to some specific knowledge about dark magic and the simplest rituals that any self-respecting pure-blood heir of the family should understand.)
Body characteristics:
Strength: 0.2 out of 1.0
(1.0 is the standard strength of an adult who moderately plays sports. The limit of human capabilities by British standards without the use of magical doping: 4.46)
Dexterity: 0.4 out of 1.0
Speed: 0.35 out of 1.0
Vitality: 1.2 out of 1.0
(Wizards, even young ones like you, are much tougher and more resilient than normal people. You were starved and beaten from an early age, but even so, magic was always there to help and save you.)
Magic Reserve: 8.0 out of 2.0
(2.0 is the average result for an eleven-year-old pureblood wizard. 1.0 is the average result for an eleven-year-old Muggle-born wizard.)
Magic Power: 10.5 out of 2.0
(2.0 is the average result for an eleven-year-old pureblood wizard. 1.0 is the average result for an eleven-year-old Muggle-born wizard.)
Karmic Luck. Gold:
50,034.6
(Golden Karmic Luck is a special replenishable and expendable resource granted to you in an especially large amount by the divine blessing of an unknown god, for your past deeds. As long as your luck does not drop to 100 units or lower, your death will be impossible. The universe itself will play along with you, and death will pass you by no matter what happens. Irreversible damage to the body, soul, and mind is also impossible as long as you have more than 100 units of luck.
Deaths, however, will consume your karmic luck to compensate for the world law. The more dangerous and hopeless the situation, the more karmic luck will be spent to counteract the world law in order to avoid a fatal outcome for the user.
The user's luck can also be indirectly or directly damaged in the event of a decrease in their status in society, a deterioration in reputation, "death", "injuries" etc.
Karmic luck can be restored over time if the user can skillfully take advantage of the "lucky chances" that come their way, increase their status in society, make useful and necessary acquaintances or friendships with important characters influencing world history, improve their reputation and influence in the world.
The more luck you have, the more chances you have to stumble upon a lucky break, but it's up to you whether you'll be able to use it or miss it for some reason. Your luck can't affect this, it can only give you the opportunity to get benefits. Missed opportunities will also use up your karmic luck.)
Harry began to walk in circles, small ones, in his tiny closet. It was worth thinking about. Although the system itself didn't seem surprising to him at first glance, excluding perhaps Karmic Luck, which made him very happy, but the data that his status showed him... His body donor was just some kind of utter imbecile, if you don't count the physical characteristics of the body. How could he be such a useless wimp in canon, having a whole bunch of innate talents and abilities on his balance sheet? Was it all because of laziness and that red-haired idiot, dragging him down like a concrete block tied to the feet of a mafia victim? No way, the new Harry wasn't going to feed crabs at the bottom of the English Channel.
Everything about his status was intuitively clear, even his understated physical characteristics could be easily explained. He was just a kid, skinny, hungry, and didn't know the word "gym"... No wonder his body characteristics were so "let down". But everything else... Mmmm. How juicy.
- Yes, I'll fucking bend this fucking world. He-he-he. If I don't die at the very beginning, and I won't die, thank you, my luck. I'll be so pumped up that even the bearded Dumbledore will tiptoe around me, and the Dark Lord will hide in a corner and cry bloody tears like a little bitch! Oh, yes, with such power, such potential, such fattened luck... I could even gather myself a harem... Oh yeah, that's a good idea. So, then I need to sit down, calm down and write a list of priority tasks! - stopping dead in his tracks, Harry turned on his toes and humming a simple melody under his breath, sat down at the table and took out a pen and a cheap notebook.
He chose French for his notes, just in case. He doubted that anyone in this house even knew it, and he would destroy the notebook a little later anyway. Occlumency. He was going to keep all the important knowledge in his head. All that was left was to develop it, that's all. Well, he still had to figure out how to do it at home and how difficult it was.
- So. So, the first thing I need to do is learn at least the simplest wandless spells. Then try mental magic and magic in general. Find out what I can do without a wand, and what I shouldn't even touch yet... - having marked the point with the number one, he continued scribbling the text on the paper.
The second point he decided to solve the problem with the Dursleys. He got only fragmentary memories of Harry himself, crumbs from the table, but even this was enough to understand the most important thing - he needed to do something. Otherwise, karmic luck would start to be spent like crazy even before entering the school of witchcraft and wizardry.
The "biggest" problem in every sense of the word is Vernon Dursley. He needed to figure out how to deal with him. You can use magic, or you can put pressure on him with the right words... He was still afraid to solve the problem radically. He did not consider himself a killer, so he was not sure that he would be able to hide the murder. But there was also an aunt and a cousin... A triple murder was a bad start to a hero's career. Harry decided to come up with something else, something less radical.
The third point was all the possible and probable gifts and goodies that he knew about thanks to the canon and fan fiction he read in his younger years.
He was going to check them all. He could start with Gringotts, his safe, confirmation of inheritance and checking his pedigree. The asterisks and questions seemed to hint that not everything was so simple. The possibility of getting a couple more rings of the heir of the family warmed his soul, greedy for wealth. There was hope for the Peverells, as his distant ancestors, or maybe the Blacks, who knows. He didn't really believe in kinship with Slytherin or Gryffindor, but his grandmother was definitely from the Blacks, so their blood flows through his veins. And that was already promising.
The fourth and most important point, not for a wizard, but for a transmigrator, he designated the harem.
He even circled it on purpose. A matter of, so to speak, heightened importance.
After thinking for a while, he began to write a whole list of candidates for whom he had very clear plans.
He had to remember not so much the canon as the fanon. All this had yet to be tested in practice, but even without that the list was quite large and promised to expand when Harry could "look at the goods". What if the beauty of some of them had nothing to do with reality, while some secondary characters, on the contrary, would shine?
1) Hermione Granger (underlined twice)
2) Penelope Crystal
3) Daphne and Astoria Greengrass (underlined twice)
4) Pansy Parkinson
5) The Patil twins. Padma and Parvati (underlined twice)
6) Cho Chang
7) Girls from the Gryffindor Quidditch team.
8) Luna Lovegood (depending on the situation)
9) Susan Bones
10) Hannah Abbott
11) Fleur Delacour (underlined twice in especially thick lines)
— That's enough for now. And so I'll have to get a time-turner to be on time everywhere. Oh, what plans... It's a pity that most of them are still too small. But you need to start building your image and reputation in their eyes while you're young. You'll see, I won't have to do anything, they'll fall into my hands like a ripe, ripe fruit. Okay, it's time to start training in magic. Well, hold on, world, the main hero has arrived!
***
Meanwhile, as soon as Harry sat down to write his important list, Amos Sunhide, who was busy in the Forbidden Forest with a new ritual circle for raising another infernal from an acromantula, heard a light "ding" in his head, like from the notifications that came to his smartphone in the past.
His gaze clouded over for a moment and he seemed to stare at one point, seeing something that no one else could see. Although there was still not a single living soul nearby, except for himself and his puppets. A small window with a notification appeared on the retina of his right eye.
"Urgent Notice from World Law. Liquidation Order." - it read.
"Now this is interesting..." A predatory shark grin appeared on Sunhide's face. His teeth sharpened slightly, and bright stars and moonlight were reflected in his black, night-like eyes. A golden moon was shining brightly in the sky.