Kieran was reading through his notes, on the top of the page he saw the most significant one.
Project THP.
He was slowly considering his plans for Hogwarts.
He was of course curious on what house he would end up in, but even if he somehow ended up in Slytherin, he would get the best out of it.
It was September 1990, in exactly one year he would be 11 years old and a Hogwarts student.
He had enjoyed the prank war with Aunt Abi, and the one in April would be the last one, and he planned to make it a big one.
He had however discovered he loved this kind of prank war; he didn’t want the pranks to stop.
The pranks also have had the nice extra benefit of making his mastery of magic into a very entertaining process, so why stop it?
Hence Project THP.
Fred and George Weasley existed; they were famous pranksters.
Who said there could only be two pranksters on Hogwarts?
Yet I am slowly becoming a master of illusions, pranking as myself is just boring isn’t it?
The true challenge would be to become a prankster, and no one knowing who he was for as long as possible.
Project THP.
Project The Hidden Prankster.
He just had to find a solution for the tiny problem called The Marauders Map.
…
The 11th of November Kieran and Aunt Abi was driving by car towards what Aunt Abi has named the last history lesson.
He felt a bit weird, because he could tell based on his aunt, that she was in a very solemn mood.
It seemed this history lesson was going to be very unlike the others.
Finally, after a long drive, they seemed to have arrived at their destination, and when Kieran got out of the car, he saw where they were.
A graveyard.
Kieran grabbed his aunts’ hand and held it, feeling her hand faintly shaking, before she seems to catch herself and takes a deep breath before leading him into the graveyard.
Kieran felt the solemn nature of the walk, and said nothing as he squeezed his aunt’s hand, slowly coming to a realization about where she was bringing him.
A topic she always avoided.
A topic even his parents avoided, saying he was too young.
They stopped walking.
They were standing in front of a shared gravestone covered in a mixture of rainbow coloured flowers.
Several small stones placed all around the big gravestone; squinting, Kieran can see the small stones contained writing, many of them expressing gratitude.
He looked toward the shared gravestone, meeting family he had never met, and would never meet.
Here lies Simon and Lottie Gray, beloved parents.
Heroes.
Taken too soon.
“My parents were brave and caring people. They raised me into the woman I am today. They were not parents that said one thing and did another. They took honour in following their own advice,” Aunt Abi said as she got misty eyes.
Aunt Abi leaned down, brushing some leaves off of the gravestone.
“20 years ago, during the Wizarding War, when I was in my fifth year at Hogwarts, they died saving their entire muggle neighbourhood from Death Eaters seeking to kill the muggles for sport. They fought bravely; they saved so many…” Aunt Abi silently whispered, as tears ran down her cheeks while she looked down at the gravestone of her parents.
Kieran leaned in and hugged his aunt tightly; she got down on her knees and hugged him back, tightly.
He waited for her to recover, patiently, ignoring the cold air.
She waved her wand and transfigured a nearby rock to a blanket, and they sat down in front of the graves of Lottie and Simon Gray, his aunts’ parents that died the way they lived, as heroes.
He had known about the Wizarding War and Voldemort’s rise, how couldn’t he?
He read the books, but reading about something in a past life and discovering his beloved family in his current life lived through it and lost family they loved in the war, was very different.
While looking down at her parent’s grave, she started telling Kieran about the Wizarding War.
A terrible dark lord rose to power, and his followers sought to bring terror and death to their enemies.
Their doctrine was the enslavement of muggles and killing muggles for sport, they saw muggleborn witches and wizards as impure, calling them mudbloods, and barely any better than muggles.
“Muggleborn are not mudbloods. Magic does not belong to the pure blood. Magic can awaken if you have a magical ancestor. Even the purest of blood, likely have a muggle ancestor down the line, that is just the reality of how few there are of us compared to muggles,” Aunt Abi said with full conviction.
“You will eventually meet someone that sees pure blood as the most important quality a wizard can have. Don’t hate them, they are shaped by their upbringing but also do not allow them to make you feel lesser.”
Aunt Abi looked him straight in the eyes, wanting to ensure she had his attention.
“Every day you prove that magic ability is not about blood, it is about the work you put in. NEVER allow someone to convince you that you are lesser because your parents are muggles. Understood?” she said.
He gives her a serious nod.
“I understand Aunt Abi, if I run into some of those types of people. I will give them a chance to be better, as long as it does not cost me anything,” he said, knowing full well that some just could not help their upbringing.
He would however not allow insults.
Maybe he should consider picking up duelling to use as a form of deescalation method?
Aunt Abi continued telling him about the bad side of the war, eventually arriving at the fateful night at Halloween 1981.
“The dark lord was named He Who Must Not Be Named. Because those that said his name received terrible and brutal ends. He was terrifying. We were not hopeless however, we had Albus Dumbledore, but the war still lasted 11 long years,” Aunt Abi said with a hoarse voice.
Aunt Abi finally looked directly at him and cupped his face with her hands.
“When I met you for the first time, the war was ongoing. I was in a dark place. I had friends who died. I never felt safe. I never felt happy. I was afraid of visiting Hector and Victoria, afraid of bringing the darkness home to my muggle family.” She gave him a beautiful smile.
“Your first word was calling me pretty. That evening is the memory I use when I conjure a Patronus.”
Hearing the significance of his first memory of his aunt, he felt himself getting teary eyes and hugged her, he felt her rub his back and hug him back.
While hugging him, she spoke of the end of the war.
“A baby, younger than you. Defeated He Who Must Not Be Named. No one knows how, but most of us didn’t care. That baby, Harry Potter, saved us all from a terrible evil,” she said while he relaxed in her embrace.
Kieran felt a bit conflicted at this point.
Knowing that Harry Potter who his aunt owed so much to, was likely currently suffering from abuse from his uncle and aunt who hated his magical heritage.
You just need to last another seven months; you can do it Harry.
Aunt Abi continued telling Kieran about the small details, the people that fought back, the Order of the Phoenix led by Albus Dumbledore.
The Aurors authorized to use lethal means, not knowing if they would survive the missions they went on.
The normal witches and wizards, like Aunt Abi, who tried to live their lives with the dark sky hanging above them.
“I coped by developing a network of clients through my work. Some of the muggles my parents saved were squibs, others had magical relatives and knew about the war. Whenever something positive happened in the Wizarding War, I ensured it was spread throughout the entire network. I never had the combat ability of my parents, but I could do this,” she said with a small smile.
Kieran looks up at his aunt.
“Aww, Kieran, thank you…”
Kieran listened attentively as Aunt Abi described the ways normal witches and wizards lived under the war.
He learned there were several networks like hers that kept muggles safe.
If any network discovered rumours about muggle areas about to be hit by Death Eaters, all networks spread the information, allowing nearby wizards and witches to secretly get the muggles away through various excuses.
Aunt Abi’s parents were not outliers; they were part of whole that stepped up because the muggles were helpless against Death Eaters.
The unsung heroes.
“When He Who Must Not Be Named fell, and his followers scattered, some went down fighting, others were captured, some even managed to convince the Ministry of Magic that they were under imperium,” she said with a scoff.
She told him about families such as the Malfoys and the Rosier.
Families she personally considered far from innocent.
“The Death Eaters that were captured by Aurors were sent to Azkaban,” she said and went quiet.
When Kieran looked up, seeing her hesitating, he wanted patiently for her to continue; understanding that she was entering a tough topic.
“I looked into the Death Eaters that killed my parents. Out of the four of them, three of them went down fighting. The last, was sent to Azkaban.”
Kieran saw the look of hatred appear in his aunt’s eyes, a look he had never seen on her before, he didn’t like seeing it.
It didn’t fit her.
“Hadrian Morslake, Death Eater, my parents’ murderer. A cruel man who kills the innocent for sport. I hope he rots in that terrible prison forever,” she spit out.
Kieran filed the name away, intending to remember that name.
It took some effort, but he managed to direct his aunt to a better topic, where she described what the Order of the Phoenix was, as well as details on the famous people from the Ministry of Magic who stood up against He Who Must Not Be Named.
“Aunt Abi, do you know what happened to Harry Potter?” he asked, wondering if the everyday witch was aware of the truth.
He saw his aunt tap her chin before she replied.
“According to rumours, to prevent the baby from being hunted down by the followers of He Who Must Not Be Named, the baby was put into hiding; Albus Dumbledore leading this action. I imagine that is where he is today, growing up, hearing about what a difference he made in the wizarding world. Likely surrounded by competent wizards, ready to protect the child that saved us all.”
Kieran didn’t have the heart to bring up the possibility that Harry Potter was growing up as a muggle unaware of his heritage, living in secret due to Albus Dumbledore was correct enough, but the rest really wasn’t.
The Hero, Harry Potter, that to Kieran’s aunt was a hero that brought an end to the terrible darkness that was threatening to swallow the entirety of the British Isles, which included his entire family.
Harry Potter was a real person somewhere, and based on Kieran’s own age, would be the same year as Kieran.
It would be a surreal experience when the Harry Potter he knew from his last life, and the Harry Potter he knew from his aunts’ descriptions, culminated into the same person, and he was unsure how he would react to meeting The Boy Who Lived.
Not the character from a book series, but the real person, that would bring an end to Voldemort, once and for all.
Near the end of the lesson, Aunt Abi summoned the flowers she brought with her, giving half of them to Kieran.
They both placed the flowers in front of the grave, and as Aunt Abi started heading back towards the car.
Kieran turned around, looking down at the grave, at family members he would never get to meet and bowed to the grave.
Thank you for your sacrifice, your daughter is doing fine.
You can rest easy.
Voldemort and his people will never reach her, I promise.
Step into the Restricted Section
You-know-where/Murtageyra
The first volume which I called Pre-Hogwarts, is finished in there ^^