Chapter 1
He woke up in a start
A little confused, and disoriented at first. Where am I? He looked around, it was not his bedroom.
He had been staying in a small apartment on a little side street of diagon alley, near gringos, where he was working. Ever since the end of the war, he didn't know quite what to do with himself, so when he was given the offer by the goblins to become a curse breaker. He thought he might as well do it, as he had no better ideas for his life. He had found that becoming an aurora didn't have the same appeal it had when he was younger, after all of the incidents with the ministry. I must not tell lies
He was a bit confused when he woke up, because he hadn't been on any work trips to tombs or anything of the sort in months, he had been doing more local jobs lately, so he shouldn't be in a hotel or a tent or anything. Looking around, he noticed that it was a small, cramped space, almost like… no. It couldn't be, right? Thats impossible, he hadn't been to Privat Drive in years, not since he was 17, and anyway, even if he did have the sudden urge to return, he would never have fit in the old cupboard under the stairs, he was much to big. He barely fit in it when he was eleven, to be perfectly frank. Yet here he was, in a tiny space remarkably like his cupboard when he was a kid.
All of a sudden, he woke up to loud thumping coming from above him, and a rap on the door.
"Up! Get up! Now! Up!" He sat up in absolute shock. It was Aunt Petunia, waking him up. He looked down on himself in the dim lighting of the small light bulb above him. He was tiny, tinier than one would expect an eleven year old to be, but he had always been small for his age. He was as small as he had been when he was eleven, and he was wearing those ratty old pajamas he had worn back then. He was in disbelief. It couldn't be, it was impossible, but it was the only thing that made sense right now. He was somehow in the past.
He softly said "Coming Aunt Petunia" (even his voice sounded young he noticed to his chagrin) and slowly made his way out of the cupboard. As he slowly made his way to the kitchen, he thought about how he could have possibly gotten himself in this mess, and about what to do. He supposed to himself that it would probably be best to act like everything was normal while he got his bearings.
"There you are boy, finally up, are you?" Yikes, he had forgotten how grating her voice was. "Go cook breakfast, with lots of bacon for my Dudders." He did so, after hesitating a moment. After putting breakfast on the table Uncle Vernon said
"go get the mail boy." His heart sped up a bit. Was it really that day? The day he got his letter? As his heart raced, he quickly went through his options, going to the door for the mail. Should he give the letter to Uncle Vernon, or keep it, sneak it away? Of course, first time around, he had desperately wished he had opened the letter in the hall, and that would be preferable to having to race across the country all the way to that hut on the rock on the sea. At the same time however, would it be okay to start changing things already? He didn't know if he was really stuck here or not. If he was, did he dare change things without knowing the outcome? Or if he did change things and he was able to go back, would he be changing his future? What if he messed up the future? At the same time though, he mused, his future wasn't all that great. Sure, Voldy hadn't won, but he had lost so many in the process, grown apart from his friends, and had been all alone. He'd like to avoid that. And if there was anyway to get Sirius and Remus and Fred back, he would take it. So he decided, he would have to start changing things sooner or later anyway. And he slid the letter under the door of his cupboard.
Back in his cupboard, he wrote a response to professor McGonagall. After some careful thought, he decided it was best to send a reply to her, pretending he knew nothing of wizards, asking if this was some sort of prank letter and how they knew his bedroom was a cupboard. Quite honestly, he didn't know who to trust. How do you say to someone, hey, I'm from the future! Without getting yourself thrown into St. Mungos. Besides, when thinking back on his years at Hogwarts, something just seemed off. Like, why did they send Hagrid to pick him up, when they normally sent one of the head of houses? Hagrid, as much as he loved him, wasn't even a teacher yet. And he couldn't do magic (legally) to prove that wizards are real. And usually, he had learned, the heads of houses came in person with the first letter, instead of breaking down doors after a billion letters. So he thought he would send that letter, pretend to be ignorant, and find some answers along the way.
The next day, to his disapointment, it wasn't all just a bad dream and he really is somehow in the past. He once again made breakfast for the Dursleys, trying to hide his longing for some. He had nothing but a small piece of bread and cheese the night before.. He wasn't quite used to Dursley treatment, as he just arrived the day before. He'd have to get used to it, after all, it wasn't the first time the Dursleys had starved him, and it wouldn't be the last. All of a sudden, the doorbell rang. He looked up in alarm.
"Boy, go get the door" Uncle Vernon said in between huge bites of egg. Who could be at the door? Harry thought. To his surprise, it was Professor McGonagall, wearing a dark green muggle dress.
"Oh, um hi Prof- Ma'am, what can I do for you?" He caught himself, he was so used to calling her professor, that he almost forgot he wouldn't know that in this time.
"Hello, you must be Mr. Potter?" She spoke sternly, but kindly
"Um, yes, I am, I'm sorry, who are you?"
"My name is professor McGonagall, I sent you a letter the other day that I'm here to speak to you and your relatives about. May I come in?"
"Oh, your the person who wrote that prank letter?" He gave her his best scowl. "I don't know who you are, but that's not funny. Besides, you wouldn't want to talk about magic with my relatives, they don't like anything about it, so I'll advise you to leave."
"Mr. Potter, I assure you that this is not a prank. I have to admit, I am rather surprised that you did not already know about Hogwarts and Magic, surely your relatives would have told you?" She gave him a questioning look.
"Goodbye Ma'am" he started to close the door, playing his part.
"I can prove it"
"Ok." He crossed his arms. "Prove it." At that moment, Professor McGonagall changed into a tabby cat. He made his best astonished face.
"May i come in now? I have a lot to explain."
"Um sure. I will warn you, my relatives are not very polite." He was a little curious to how Professor McGonagall would react to his less than ideal relatives.
"Very well." Professor McGonagall came inside
"I'll go get my relatives." Harry quickly ran for the Dursleys. "Uncle Vernon?"
"What is it boy?" He said through bits of toast.
"Theres this lady at the door who says she needs to talk to us." At these words Uncle Vernon looked up at Harry angrily.
"No, I'm not talking to some woman who didn't even bother to call ahead if she was coming for a visit, and comes during breakfast time!"
"Well, she already inside, sooo…"
"Boy, you let her in?!" Uncle Vernon furiously got up and raged to the door, Aunt Petunia and Dudley following after him. "Who are you, and why are you intruding on our home?"
"Excuse me sir, I am Professor McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." At this Aunt Petunia gave a gasp of shock and horror, and Uncle Vernon went purple in the face. "I am coming about your nephew, Harry."
"Get out of my home!" Uncle Vernon yelled. "I will not be having a magic using freak in my home. This boy will not be going to your crackpot school if I have anything to say about it."
"I'm sorry sir, but you don't have any say in the matter. His parents, just after he was born, paid in full his future Hogwarts tuition, and he is required to go to Hogwarts or alternate magical schooling as is required for young witches and wizards under the ministry of magic underage wizardry division. As of right now, he is down for Hogwarts. He is more than welcome to get alternate education, but that would have to funded out of pocket. Now, if we could perhaps go to the sitting room to get everything explained and sorted, that would be excellent." She said all of this sternly and stiffly, but the way she said it indicated that she had had to give this speech before. It made sense really, he supposed, because of course many muggleborn parents wouldn't want their children going to a random magical school at first.
Petunia stiffly led them all to the sitting room, where Professor McGonagall conjured a pot of tea and some teacups for all of them. The Dursleys all jumped at this small bit of magic before them.
"Dudley, go to your room."
"What! But Muuuum," he whined.
"No buts!" She said to him sternly, for the first time in his life. He looked at her, aghast. "Go!" At this Dudley turned and fled, making sure to stomp up the stairs as he went and slammed the door.
"Well, then, where were we, oh yes. I'm honestly shocked that you had not told him about all this Mr and Mrs Dursley." She looked over her glasses at them.
"Of course not! We swore when we took him in we would stomp all this magical rubbish out of him!"
"Wait, you knew?" Harry said, trying to pretend this was all new information to him.
"Knew? Of course we knew, Lily being who she was. Always coming home with toadstools in her pockets and turning teacups into mice. I was the only one who saw her for who she really was. A freak! But oh no, to mother and father it was Lily this, and Lily that, they were proud to have a witch in the family. I always knew she and that no-good husband of hers would go to a sticky end, and they got themselves blown up!"
"Blown up? I thought you said they died drunk in a car crash?"
"You mean to tell me, that you muggles refused to tell him anything about Hogwarts, or magic, you speak badly about his parents, in front of the boy mind, and you told the boy that his parents were drunks who died in a car crash?" Professor McGonagall, who he had seen keep her calm in the most dire situations, he was shocked to see was furious.
"So thats not true Professor?"
"No Mr Potter, your parents were the best kind of wizard folk. They had been fighting a war, against a dark evil wizard, a wizard so evil most never say his name, preferring to say 'You Know Who'. His name was, uh, Voldemort. He grew very powerful shortly before you were born, and gained many followers called the Death Eaters. For many years, the Wizarding world lived in fear. Of course, fighting him were the ministry of magic, and groups such as The Order of the Phoenix, led by Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster at Hogwarts. Your parents were part of this group. A year after you were born, on Halloween night, he set his sights on your parents, and i'm sorry to say, killed them. However, he tried to kill you as well, with the killing curse, from which no one has ever survived, except you. You are famous for that in the wizarding world, called 'The Boy Who Lived'. When he tried to kill you, the curse rebounded and killed him instead. On that day, you got your scar. As these people are your closest living relatives, Albus Dumbledore thought it fitting to put you in their care.
"woah"
"I told you, we will not be sending this boy anywhere to learn some magic tricks!" Uncle Vernon pounded his fist on the sitting room table.
"You will, or go to prison for breaking the law i mentioned earlier. Take your pick Mr Dursley." Uncle Vernon stayed silent. "I am perfectly willing to take Mr Potter to Diagon Alley to fetch his school supplies and get everything he needs for school. On September 1st, he will go to Kings Cross Station at eleven o'clock. All that is required of you is that you get him there. Are we in agreement?" Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were still silent. "Good. Mr Potter, come with me, I will get you your school things and I will explain everything else on the way." She strode briskly out the door, Harry stumbling to catch up. Curse these new tiny eleven year old legs! He still wasn't used to being in the past, after all.