Chapter 1
"And it wasn't a dream again," I let out in a strained breath, staring at the low ceiling, which probably could not even fully be called a ceiling. It was merely the underside of a wooden staircase, sanded and painted white long ago, though over the years part of that paint had already cracked and flaked away.
Bits of debris still kept falling in a fairly steady stream from the "ceiling" onto my small bed, which sat so neatly in the cupboard under the stairs leading to the second floor of a solid private house in one of London's suburbs... Yes, this was no dream. I really had ended up here, in the world-famous cupboard under the stairs at Number Four, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey.
More precisely, in my old world this cupboard had been famous, just like the boy living in it, as well as his story and everything else connected to it... Here, hardly anyone had even heard of Harry Potter. Even the neighbors barely paid any attention to the scrawny, unremarkable orphan taken in by the respectable Dursley family.
Then again, forget the neighbors. The Dursleys themselves, aside from that little brat Dudley, acted as though they hardly noticed the young wizard at all. They loaded me up with "preventive" chores, meaning whatever a seven-year-old boy could manage, and more and more often tried to send their nephew into the cupboard specially assigned to him.
I suppose that made these respectable British citizens feel as though no extra person lived in their house at all... Or maybe not. I had no intention of digging around in the heads of my newly acquired relatives, and I still do not. Harry had sometimes been driven to tears by this sort of treatment, but that was because he was a child who needed the attention of adults.
For me, though, the situation was... well, in some ways it was actually convenient. At least for the first ten days of my new life, almost nobody bothered me. I could lie in my own bed in peace or wander around outside, completely ignoring the nasty drizzling rain so typical of early summer in the British Isles.
I had been given a little time to process what had happened to me and the fact of my death in my previous world. I had almost come to terms with it by now, though every morning, when I woke up, I still could not quite believe what was happening... Maybe some part of me still hoped that I would wake up any second and find myself back in my own home with my beloved girlfriend, my ginger cat, and my forever-snorting pug.
But no miracle happened. Every morning while brushing my teeth, I looked into the mirror and saw the same little boy with a mop of perpetually uncombed hair sticking out in every direction.
"It's about time I accepted it... But there's still some kind of dissonance in my head whenever I look at the child's reflection copying all my movements," I grimaced, with a touch of irritation and, perhaps, sadness in my eyes. A new life after death was, of course, very cool. But honestly, I would have preferred never to die at all. It was infuriating to lose in an instant everything you had worked for your entire previous life. Thoughts about the fragility of existence came rolling in immediately.
"Harry, you unbearable boy! Are you wasting my water again? Get out of there this instant!" Vernon Dursley's grumbling shout suddenly reached me through the door. I flinched and was yanked out of my thoughts at once, hurriedly trying to finish brushing my teeth.
"Sorry, Uncle! Aunt Petunia said she'd scold me if I didn't brush my teeth," I said, opening the bathroom door and quickly slipping past the stout, not especially tall man... He merely waved a hand in response, continuing to mutter curses under his breath.
I did not sense any real malice or hatred from Vernon toward me. In the films I knew, the Dursleys had looked almost like stereotypical villains tormenting their innocent nephew. And perhaps, through a child's eyes, the treatment I had seen really did look that way. Especially compared to how gently Petunia and Vernon treated their own son.
But honestly, from the perspective of my own experience, I saw nothing truly criminal in how the Dursleys treated me. They were definitely not good guardians, though... Vernon did not want to see another man's child in his house, even if that child happened to be his wife's relative. Petunia simply disliked me, probably because of some serious conflict with her sister, and that attitude had partly carried over onto me.
...Not the healthiest environment for a child to grow up in. Still, there were no extreme forms of punishment or discipline aimed at their unwanted nephew. My biggest problem was that, instead of having a proper room, I had a whole little cupboard under the stairs where the small wizard was banished after any misbehavior. Otherwise, Harry had only been whipped with a belt a few dozen times, and always after some "strange" incident in the house.
My relatives were afraid of magic as if it were fire itself. And I was in no hurry to blame them for that. If the real Harry Potter's memory was not deceiving me, this little rascal had managed to set Aunt Petunia's curtains on fire when he was only three, which made the comparison especially fitting.
At the same time, I was a little afraid of my own magic. What if someone startled me by sneaking up behind me while I was lost in thought, and in a flash of fear I blasted the poor offender with some lethal spell... I still had no control over the process. I could not even truly feel my magic, even though over the past few days I had tried several times to reach it.
It was not as if there was much else to do in my cupboard. There were hardly any books, only last year's school textbooks, which could hardly be called entertaining reading... That was another joke, by the way. In Britain, it turned out, school started at age five.
Before ending up in this body, I had not known details like that. I was a little surprised to realize that seven-year-old Harry Potter could already read and write English, however clumsily. Useful and convenient, since my own English in my previous life had been very... everyday-level. I had studied German in school, only starting to switch over to English at university. And not very successfully at that.
"Harry, you're late again! Watch the frying pan while I chop the salad," my aunt put me to work the moment I stepped into the kitchen, where she was making breakfast... My role was mostly symbolic, though. I was barely distracted from my thoughts as I watched the eggs frying with bacon and tomatoes, just to make sure they did not burn.
For the moment, however, the breakfast was still nearly liquid, which let me continue waking up slowly while sinking back into my far from cheerful thoughts. Most of them boiled down to one thing: how I was supposed to control or at least feel my magic. It would be inconvenient if I set something on fire again or flooded the place because of a burst of strong emotion.
"I wonder, do I even have magic at all? Harry Potter definitely did, his memories make that perfectly clear... But ever since I woke up, I haven't felt anything even remotely like magic in myself. And I haven't noticed any magical outbursts either, not even the smallest ones..." I suddenly found myself wondering, only now thinking about whether I was actually magical.
After dying and being so suddenly reborn, thoughts of magic had been very slow to reach me. I had been far more occupied trying to accept the absurdity of the situation around me. I still had not fully come to terms with what had happened... But some dreams and hopes that I might one day become the coolest wizard in this local swamp had already crossed my mind.
"It would be a shame if all the magic vanished along with the original Harry Potter... Though he did not really go anywhere. At some point he just dissolved into my memories and my more mature personality, if that even makes sense," I continued turning over thoughts that were not simple for me, only belatedly noticing that Uncle Vernon's breakfast had already started to burn.
That damned omelet had cooked too fast. Or rather, Petunia had turned the heat under the frying pan into a blazing inferno, and I had not noticed right away... I had to save the breakfast in a hurry, lunging for the wooden spatula... and accidentally knocking over the bottle of sunflower oil with my elbow.
The stupid thing toppled over at once, its open neck landing directly toward the lit burner, and almost instantly burst into a wave of scorching flame. It all happened so fast and so suddenly that I did not even have time to react properly. I only saw the flash of fire right in front of my face... Then instinctive fear and terror at the searing flames froze me in place.
"That's it, I'm done for!" the absurd but painfully vivid thought flashed through my head, backed by a dreadful awareness that in one more second the fire would reach my face, almost certainly burning off my eyebrows, scorching my skin, and quite possibly even damaging my eyes...
But none of that happened. Something deep in my chest suddenly twitched and... swelled? I cannot describe the feeling exactly. But the effect was visible almost immediately. The stove that had erupted in flames was encased in a half-meter block of ice, which not only extinguished the fire and wrapped around the gas range, but also coated part of the surrounding furniture in a thin layer of frost.
One moment I was knocking vegetable oil into the fire, the next there was a burst of flame nearly touching my face, and the next half the kitchen had been turned into a small branch of Antarctica. I had not even fully processed the beginning of the fire before it was already over... Over in a very bizarre and blatantly magical way.
"Harry Potter! You unbearable boy!" Petunia Dursley shrieked, nearly going ultrasonic as she instantly grabbed my left ear and almost tore it off with a vicious yank. "What in the devil did you do here!? Get in the cupboard! Now! Get out of my sight!"
"Yes, Aunt..." I choked out hoarsely, nearly tumbling across the floor before bolting straight for my now almost beloved little closet. The shock, terror, and fear from that sudden attack... Ahem, it seemed I had just barely stopped myself from freezing my "beloved" aunt in ice as well.
I did not even understand how I held back what was surging outward again... desire? Intent? Energy? No, there were no words for that feeling. But one thing I could say for certain: I really did have magic! Real, actual magic!..
For which I was thoroughly thanked later that day with Uncle Vernon's belt, instantly destroying any trace of sympathy I might have had... After all, for me, as an adult with a mature mind, being whipped by another man was a deeply humiliating experience. Painful and helpless, because as practice showed, a child's body was hardly capable of resisting the heavy hand of an overgrown hog.
It was unpleasant and shameful. And painful too, though I paid less attention to the physical discomfort than I might have otherwise. My rage at the whole situation was much stronger... And the magic seemed to dull the pain somewhat. Though that might have been because of my adult perception, or something else I did not fully understand.
But the fact remained: I had been whipped with a belt and drowned in verbal filth. Those were the unpleasant downsides, the kind that pushed a person toward open hatred. On the other hand... there was magic. And the ability to sense it to some degree and perhaps even direct it. At the very least, despite all my anger and fury at Vernon, I still had not let my magic roast him alive.
Later, though, while cursing foully in my cupboard in my native tongue, I somehow managed to get rid of the discomfort in my backside completely... After that it even seemed to heal without a trace, letting me feel fairly decent by lunchtime. I was hungry, of course, since no one was eager to feed me until dinner... But those abilities were still useful. And they warmed my soul nicely.
I was a wizard, damn it! A real, actual little wizard who, at the pitiful age of seven, could freeze an entire kitchen solid and heal some of his own injuries... For now, true, it all seemed to happen on its own. But I thought that if I put in a little effort, I would find a way to tame my own power... I had no choice. I had no desire whatsoever to go through another whipping. I was afraid I might not hold back next time!