After an unknown amount of time, Harry woke from his unconsciousness.
He was lying sprawled on the attic floor.
The dust on the floor had mangled on to his face and as he opened his eyes, he found himself a few puffs of the dust.
It was dark and the house was draped in the silence of late night.
Harry blinked several times, taking a moment to register where he was and what had happened.
Finally, recalling the incredible events in his mindscape, he gathered his strength, pushed himself off the floor, and stood up.
He wiped the dust on his face from the sleeve of his shirt and as he rubbed his hand against his face he noticed something.
It was rough and Harry felt as if a scab of dried blood had formed near his forehead and cheek.
He moved toward the window and tried using the dark glass as a makeshift mirror.
As he gazed at his reflection, he gasped in surprise.
The lightning-bolt scar on his forehead was almost entirely gone.
In its place remained only a very faint, light bruise.
The blood had clearly seeped from the wound during the ordeal of vanquishing the latched soul and dried against his skin.
Harry concluded that the scar had been a physical manifestation of Voldemort’s presence, and with the soul fragment destroyed, the mark had finally begun to heal.
He sat down on his second-hand, broken bed and tried to peer back into his mindscape to understand what had caused the violent upheaval before he collapsed.
The moment he focused and tried to access his mindscape, he was assaulted by a staggering influx of disorganized, alien memories.
The sheer volume of information left him dizzy and nauseous within seconds.
It was as if he was going to lose his consciousness once again.
Acting on pure instinct, he willed his mind to close, slamming the door on the overload of the memories.
He took several deep breaths and tried to calm his racing heart.
Though he did not feel like himself yet, he assumed his loss of consciousness was related to the absorption of the Peverell inheritance.
The sudden influx of their lifetimes of knowledge had left him unconscious and all these memories were now anchored within him, waiting to be sorted.
Thinking of the brothers, a sad smile formed on his lips.
He knew there was a great deal of work ahead of him, but the day’s toll had already been too much.
He was exhausted and tired and what he needed was a good sleep.
And without even changing his clothes, Harry almost dramatically limped on his bed and within moments fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
The next morning for Harry began with the usual, grueling routine in the Dursley Household. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
He woke early, prepared breakfast for the Dursleys, endured their sharp taunts and mindless scolding, and finally ate what few scraps were left over.
Once the chores were finished, he retreated to the attic, sealing the door with a makeshift barricade using his old chair.
No one really arrived in his room but he was not willing to take any risk.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small butter knife he had managed to sneak from the kitchen.
He sat cross legged on the floor and focused intensely.
He began to etch runes into the floorboards using the knife exactly as the Peverell brothers had instructed.
At first, he had been skeptical of his own memory, but he found he could recall every stroke with startling clarity.
It was more than just a vivid memory.
As he worked, he could almost feel the brothers’ own understanding of each rune.
He could understand the implication entirely.
Everything about them, their purpose, and the specific way they anchored magic to the physical world.
It was as if they did not explain things to him but had imprinted it in his mind.
And now that he thought clearly, this only seemed to be the case.
It took several minutes to complete the rune.
It was a complex hexagonal design, which was filled with smaller, intricate runic components.
He hesitated for a moment, doubting if his magic would respond without a wand, but he was relieved to find no resistance.
His magic felt like a steady, powerful current flowing directly from his body to his fingertips.
With the carving of the rune done, he gritted his teeth and using the butter knife, he made a quick slit across his palm.
His blood was needed to activate the rune.
But to his utter astonishment, the wound closed and vanished before a single drop of blood could fall.
Harry stared at his unblemished skin in shock.
He knew he had always healed quickly from the Dursleys’ ‘punishments,’ but never like this.
He wondered if his recently unbound magic had amplified his body’s natural resilience to such an extreme degree.
He could not fathom any other reason.
He shook off the surprise for the moment and pressed the knife into his palm again and slit it once again.
This time, he tried and consciously willed his magic away from the injury, forcing the healing process to stall.
Fortunately, it worked. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Harry carefully allowed eleven drops of blood to fall onto the runes.
The wood seemed to absorb the offering, the blood disappearing into the etchings until the entire hexagonal rune began to pulse with a faint, crimson light.
As soon as the eleventh drop of blood was absorbed by the rune, a brilliant golden light erupted, enveloping Harry, the runic circle, and the entire structure of Number 4 Privet Drive.
The flare lasted less than a second before the light and the runes vanished into the floorboards.
In that instant, Harry felt a strange, heavy tugging sensation leave his body, and his internal magical flow immediately became denser and more vibrant.
He could feel everything that had changed inside him very clearly.
His body had grown light and his magic had become smoother.
It was as if a heavy burden had been lifted from his chest.
Harry had successfully dismantled the blood wards.
By using the ritual, he had shifted the anchor of the ancient magic from his own living essence to those eleven drops of blood.
Now, since the ward lacked a continuous magical supply, Harry himself, the ward was nothing more than a hollow and empty shell.
It existed in name only, a decorative boundary without an ounce of actual protective power.
It existed only for people to know that it existed.
He realized with a smirk that whatever monitoring instruments Dumbledore kept in his office would continue to report happily, showing the blood wards were still perfectly tied to Harry’s blood.
Even if the Headmaster were to check the house through standard magical detection, he would sense the resonance of the ward and suspect nothing.
Unless he personally decided to launch an attack against the house to test its strength, which was highly unlikely, almost impossible, the deception was perfect.
With this the first major hurdle, the blood ward, had been cleared.
Harry turned his attention to the next task which was to claim the Lordship of the Peverell family.
He was not entirely sure what Lordship signified in the modern wizarding world, but if the brothers had insisted on it, it had to be vital.
As he recalled the brothers’ parting words, he felt a spark of genuine excitement and thrill.
It was time to find out exactly what little surprise the creators of the Hallows had left behind for their true heir.
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