NOTE: As of 17 July, I rewrote the chapter; still the same content but improved.
I will keep doing the same with old chapters whenever I have the time.
Harry stared at the state of his room with a weary sort of disbelief.
During the months he had spent at Hogwarts, Dudley had apparently decided that the smallest bedroom in Privet Drive made a perfectly acceptable rubbish dump.
Broken toys littered the floor alongside crumpled sweet wrappers, discarded clothes, and half-finished school assignments.
Old textbooks leaned precariously against piles of newer books whose spines remained uncreased, probably presents Dudley had never bothered opening.
One collection in particular caught Harry’s attention: a complete set of The Chronicles of Narnia, its covers still pristine beneath a thin layer of dust.
Scattered among the rest of the mess were several snapped toys—no, action figures, Harry’s mind automatically corrected, drawing upon the foreign memories now lodged inside his head.
He recognized He-Man and several comic-book characters Dudley had once been obsessed with, but most of them meant nothing to him.
Glass crunched beneath Harry’s shoe.
He looked down, then raised his eyes toward the shattered remains of the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling.
Beyond the window, Privet Drive lay smothered in darkness.
Not a single streetlamp remained lit, and every house stood black and silent beneath the night sky.
The aftermath of the battle for his body had not stayed confined to his mind.
Harry rubbed a hand over his face.
He had arrived home only a few hours earlier, far too exhausted to confront the Dursleys or even properly consider what had happened to him.
After everything in the Chamber—the basilisk, the diary, Ginny nearly dying—he had staggered into the room, collapsed onto the bed fully clothed, and fallen asleep almost immediately.
The Dursleys must have gone out for the evening.
Otherwise, Uncle Vernon would already have stormed upstairs, demanding to know why every light on the street had suddenly exploded and why his nephew had spent several minutes laughing like a lunatic.
Harry did not even want to imagine how he might explain that the laughter had not truly been his.
He carefully crossed the cluttered room and pushed open the window.
Cool night air drifted inside, carrying away some of the stale smell of dust, old clothes, and Dudley’s abandoned rubbish.
Harry closed his eyes and breathed deeply, allowing the chill to settle against his face.
When the Dursleys returned, there would be consequences.
There was always a consequence whenever anything unusual happened near Harry, regardless of whether he had caused it.
Uncle Vernon would shout, Aunt Petunia would blame him for attracting more freakishness to their perfectly normal street, and there would almost certainly be some kind of punishment.
Perhaps they would even put another lock on his door, as they had the previous summer.
Before Harry could dwell any further on that particularly unpleasant possibility, glowing blue words appeared directly in front of his eyes.
[Synchronization complete.]
[Welcome, Host.]
Harry froze.
The words hovered motionlessly before him, glowing against the darkness of the room.
Slowly, cautiously, Harry raised one hand and passed it through them.
His fingers met no resistance, and the letters neither moved nor flickered as his hand swept through their pale blue glow.
The message was not truly floating in the air, he realized.
It was somehow being projected directly into his vision.
“Bloody hell,” Harry whispered.
The foreign memories crowded inside his head stirred in answer: anime, manga, web novels, and countless stories from a world where magic existed only in fiction.
Harry had never encountered any of those things before tonight, yet he remembered entire stories as clearly as if he had spent years reading them himself.
And he recognized this.
“A system…”
His eyes widened as understanding struck him.
“The lunatic.”
Of course.
The thing—no, the man—that had tried to steal his body must have possessed it already.
Then, when Harry had fought back and somehow destroyed him, he had absorbed everything the intruder had brought into his mind: his memories, his knowledge—and apparently the System itself.
A cold shiver crept down Harry’s spine.
The intruder had been painfully ordinary.
Worse than ordinary, if Harry was being honest.
He had failed at school, failed at nearly everything he attempted afterward, and spent most of his adult life unemployed, leeching off his relatives while wasting his days staring at one screen or another.
Nothing within the man’s memories suggested that he had possessed any unusual power of his own.
He certainly had not known enough about magic to tear his soul free from his body, carry it across the boundaries between worlds, and force it into Harry’s.
Someone like that could never have reached Harry’s world without help.
Which meant someone else had sent him.
Or something else.
Harry swallowed as the implications settled over him.
No wizard could accomplish such a thing.
Not Dumbledore, not Voldemort, probably not even Merlin himself.
Ripping a soul from one reality and casting it into another sounded like power beyond anything wizardkind could command.
It sounded like the work of a god.
What Harry remembered of mythology from primary school—and what he now knew from the intruder’s far more extensive memories—did little to reassure him.
Gods were rarely gentle or benevolent beings.
Zeus, Poseidon, Loki, and countless others had lied to mortals, cursed them, killed them, or destroyed their lives over insults and amusements that seemed trivial to anyone who was not immortal.
To beings with that much power, an ordinary person’s entire existence might be little more than a game.
How was Harry supposed to defend himself against something like that?
A soft weight suddenly settled upon his shoulder.
Harry flinched before recognizing Hedwig’s familiar talons through the fabric of his shirt.
She gave a quiet, questioning hoot and rubbed the side of her head against his cheek, as though she could sense the fear tightening around his chest.
He released a shaky breath and gently stroked her feathers.
The familiar motion eased his panic enough for reason to reassert itself.
No.
He needed to think.
If whoever had sent the intruder were truly all-powerful, Harry would already be gone.
His soul would have been crushed or erased the moment the man entered his body, leaving nothing behind to resist.
Instead, Harry had fought back.
Somehow, against every expectation, he had won.
The intruder had been destroyed.
His memories had become Harry’s.
And now the System belonged to Harry as well.
Whatever had happened and whoever might be responsible for it, Harry was not completely helpless.
That thought steadied him considerably.
Harry turned his attention back to the glowing text, curiosity gradually overcoming what remained of his fear.
The intruder’s memories contained hundreds—perhaps thousands—of stories involving systems like this one, and although their exact rules differed, nearly all of them shared one certainty.
System users became powerful.
Not merely talented or formidable, but absurdly, impossibly powerful.
They shattered limits that should have been absolute, acquired abilities no one else could learn, and eventually defeated enemies who had once seemed untouchable.
Powerful enough to kill Voldemort, Harry thought immediately.
Powerful enough to ensure that nobody he cared about would ever have to stand between him and danger again.
Excitement began to swell inside his chest, only to falter once Harry examined the System more closely.
Compared with the extravagant interfaces buried within the intruder’s memories, his own was rather…
disappointing.
There were no enormous blue windows filled with hundreds of statistics, no sprawling skill trees promising godlike abilities, and no immediate offer of reality-breaking powers like the ridiculous Gamer Systems he remembered the lunatic reading about.
There were only three simple options.
[User Data]
[Status]
[Quest Log]
“Well,” Harry muttered, “I suppose it’s better than nothing.”
He focused on the first option, wondering whether he needed to touch it, speak aloud, or issue some sort of command.
The moment he thought User Data, however, the original menu vanished and a much larger window unfolded before his eyes.
[User Data]
Name: Harry James Potter
Alias: The Boy-Who-Lived
Age: 12
Sex: Male
Race: Human (Dormant Traits Detected)
Occupation: Student / Wizard
Wand: Holly, eleven inches, phoenix-feather core
Affiliation: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
House: Gryffindor
Known Languages:
English
Parseltongue
Biography:
Born on July 31, 1980, to James and Lily Potter.
Survived the Killing Curse cast by Lord Voldemort at the age of one, resulting in the Dark Lord’s first defeat and the creation of the title The Boy-Who-Lived.
Raised by his maternal relatives, Petunia and Vernon Dursley, following the deaths of his parents.
Subjected to prolonged neglect and emotional abuse throughout his childhood.
Entered Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1991 and was Sorted into Gryffindor House.
Notable Accomplishments:
Prevented the theft of the Philosopher’s Stone
Destroyed a hostile memory construct of Tom Marvolo Riddle
Slayed the Basilisk within the Chamber of Secrets
Special Notes:
Soul anomaly detected
Foreign memory fragments integrated
System synchronization successful
Harry stared at the final lines for several long seconds.
“Soul anomaly,” he repeated quietly.
That sounded more than mildly horrifying.
He had no idea what qualified as a soul anomaly, whether the System was referring to the intruder’s attempted possession, the scar Voldemort had left behind, or something else entirely.
Given Harry’s luck, it was probably all three.
Even so, he could not suppress the strange thrill that ran through him as he read the rest of the profile again.
Seeing his entire life reduced to a collection of names, dates, and accomplishments was deeply peculiar.
It made him feel less like a person and more like one of the characters from the intruder’s stories.
Yet there was also something oddly satisfying about it.
The cupboard beneath the stairs was not mentioned.
Neither were Dudley’s beatings, Uncle Vernon’s shouting, or every night Harry had gone to bed hungry because the Dursleys had decided he needed punishing.
Those things were acknowledged, but they did not define him.
The System had listed what Harry had survived.
More importantly, it had listed what he had accomplished.
The note beside his race drew Harry’s attention next.
Dormant Traits Detected.
That was interesting.
Magical abilities sometimes passed through bloodlines.
Parseltongue was famously associated with Salazar Slytherin and his descendants, while the rare ability to transform one’s appearance at will occasionally appeared within the Black family.
Neither gift belonged exclusively to those families, of course.
Similar abilities had manifested among witches and wizards across the world, but magical bloodlines had mixed so thoroughly over the centuries that determining where any particular gift had originated was probably impossible.
Pure-blood families might loudly insist upon keeping their lineages separate, but they had spent centuries marrying one another.
That was why nearly every old magical family in Britain was related to every other old magical family, however distantly.
Harry’s own ancestry could contain traces of dozens of bloodlines.
Whatever the System had detected might have come from the Potters, the Evanses (there was a theory that said Muggleborn are actually descendants of squibs, something about recessive genes blooming after many generations), or some distant ancestor whose name Harry would never know.
Harry was intensely curious to discover what sort of magical ability lay dormant inside him, but the System offered no further explanation, no matter how firmly he focused upon the words.
“Fine,” he muttered.
“Keep your secrets.”
He moved on to the next menu before he could spend the entire night wondering whether he might one day change his appearance, speak to another sort of magical creature, or suddenly sprout wings.
[Status]
Name: Harry James Potter
Level: 1
EXP: 0/100
HP: 80/80
MP: 110/110
AGI — Rank E (14)
END — Rank F (8)
MNA — Rank E (11)
Skills:
[Wizarding World Magic] — Epic Skill
Description:
The ability to perceive, channel, and manipulate the magical forces native to the Wizarding World.
Permits the use of spells, rituals, enchantments, potions, magical flight, runic magic, ward construction, and other supernatural disciplines practised by wizardkind.
Skill potency scales with:
Mana
Knowledge
Intent
Emotional state
Wand compatibility
Special Effects:
Grants magical perception
Allows magical energy to be channelled through external catalysts
Enables the construction and manipulation of spell models
Increases affinity with magical environments and artefacts
Harry stared at the name of his sole skill.
Unlike the rest of the System’s pale blue writing, [Wizarding World Magic] shone in a deep, vivid purple.
The moment he wondered why, another window appeared beside it.
[Skill Ranks]
Common — Grey
Rare — Blue
Epic — Purple
Legendary — Gold
Mythic — Red
Divine — White
Harry read the list twice.
Even without fully understanding how the System classified abilities, Epic sounded distinctly impressive.
It was the third-highest rank available, surpassed only by Legendary, Mythic, and Divine.
Apparently, the ability shared by almost every witch and wizard was far more extraordinary than magical people realised.
Then again, Harry supposed that made sense.
Magic could bend space, alter memories, transform living creatures, animate the dead, predict the future, and accomplish hundreds of other things that should have been impossible.
The fact that wizardkind considered it ordinary did not make it any less miraculous.
Yet if the entirety of Wizarding World magic amounted to only an Epic Skill…
Harry’s eyes slowly returned to the final, gleaming rank.
What in Merlin’s name could possibly qualify as Divine?
Harry’s eyes moved to his attributes, and his brow furrowed thoughtfully.
There was no Strength stat, which seemed peculiar.
Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma were absent as well, despite appearing in almost every role-playing game the intruder had ever played.
Perhaps the System did not consider something as complicated as intelligence reducible to a single number, or perhaps those qualities simply could not be increased in the same way as his physical and magical abilities.
There was no Luck stat either, for which Harry was profoundly grateful.
The intruder’s memories had taught him that systems involving Luck inevitably resulted in increasingly absurd coincidences until the protagonist stumbled across ancient treasures while taking a walk or accidentally befriended a disguised immortal.
Harry already attracted more than enough improbable nonsense without supernatural assistance.
When he examined the numbers more closely, however, his mouth twisted into a slight pout.
They were rather lower than he had expected.
In most of the stories he remembered, the protagonist received some absurd advantage almost immediately and was throwing mountains at people by the third chapter.
Harry, by comparison, had fourteen points in Agility, eight in Endurance, and eleven in Mana.
His System apparently expected him to begin his journey toward ultimate power with the physical resilience of a particularly unhealthy twelve-year-old.
Then again, that was precisely what he was.
Harry was short for his age and painfully skinny after years of neglect.
Although fleeing from Dudley and his gang had given him quick reflexes—and two years of Quidditch had sharpened them further—he had never received enough food or exercise to become properly athletic.
His slightly above-average Agility and poor Endurance made an uncomfortable amount of sense.
Mana, however, was another matter.
Harry’s attention lingered on the final attribute.
Mana — MNA: Rank E (11)
Eleven points.
One hundred and ten Mana Points.
After focusing upon the figures, Harry discovered that each point of Mana granted him ten MP, just as every point of Endurance provided ten HP.
That explained why his eight points of Endurance gave him a maximum of eighty Health Points.
It was a remarkably simple system.
Basic, straightforward, and almost disappointingly easy to understand.
Yet a spark of excitement began to grow inside Harry’s chest.
Because those numbers could increase.
That was what truly mattered.
Wizards were generally taught that magical talent was something fixed at birth.
A witch or wizard could improve through study, discipline, and years of practice, certainly, but everyone supposedly possessed natural limits.
Some people were born with tremendous power or an instinctive gift for a particular branch of magic, while others could struggle their entire lives and never rise beyond mediocrity.
At least, that was what Harry had always been told.
In every story contained within the intruder’s memories, System users eventually transcended whatever limits their worlds attempted to impose upon them.
The weakest bodies could be strengthened, the poorest talents refined, and the most ordinary people transformed into beings powerful enough to challenge monsters, immortals, and gods.
Harry had never considered himself extraordinary—not outside the unwanted fame attached to his scar—but even he could admit that his potential as a wizard was above average.
He had survived encounters that should have killed him, mastered spells quickly when sufficiently motivated, and accomplished things that many adult witches and wizards would have considered impossible.
And that had been without a System.
If his attributes could continue rising without limit…
Harry stared at the glowing blue figures as the possibilities unfolded within his mind.
Voldemort was in trouble.
A grin slowly spread across Harry’s face, sharpened by excitement and something darker.
Tom Riddle had murdered his parents, destroyed his family, and condemned him to grow up unwanted in the Dursleys’ house.
Even after losing his body, he had continued reaching into Harry’s life, first through Quirrell and then through the diary, hurting anyone he could use to reach him.
Tom had taken nearly everything from Harry.
It seemed only fair that, one day, Harry would take the thing Voldemort valued above all else in return.
His life.
Still grinning, Harry turned his attention to the final option.
The moment the Quest Log opened, he nearly laughed aloud.
[Quest Log]
Quest Available!
[The Beginning of Change]
Description:
A foreign power has merged with your soul.
The future has diverged from its intended course.
Grow stronger.
Survive.
Change fate.
Objectives:
Reach Level 5
Improve at least one stat to Rank D
Learn 3 new spells
Rewards:
+500 EXP
Basic Skill unlocked
System Feature Expansion
Failure Penalty: None
Harry’s heart began beating faster as he read through the objectives.
There really was more to the System.
New skills, new features, and rewards that would become available as he grew stronger.
The interface might appear simple now, but perhaps it was only incomplete.
If completing the quest expanded the System, there was no telling what it might eventually become capable of doing.
Before Harry could examine the quest more closely, a second window appeared beneath it.
Quest Available!
[Clean Your Room]
Description:
Your current living conditions are unacceptable.
Objectives:
Remove all rubbish
Organise the books
Sweep up the broken glass
Rewards:
+15 EXP
Failure Penalty:
Continue living in a rubbish dump
Harry stared at the screen.
Then he looked around at the broken toys, discarded wrappers, dusty books, and glittering shards of glass covering the floor.
His eyes returned to the Quest Log.
“Cheeky bastard.”
Still, he could not keep the grin from returning.
Even a simple system was still a system.
More importantly, Harry did not live in a world populated by planet-shattering martial artists, immortal cultivators, or comic-book monsters capable of destroying cities with a careless gesture.
Wizards were dangerous, certainly.
Some were terrifyingly so.
But they were still mortal.
Voldemort had already been defeated once in the future the intruder remembered, and that had been by a version of Harry who possessed no System and knew nothing of what awaited him.
Now Harry had knowledge of the future, memories from another world, and a supernatural advantage no one else possessed.
The noseless bastard did not stand a chance.
“I expected better from you.”