Young Harry just stared at the man who sat there at the kitchen table, drinking coffee as if he owned the place.
He wore James Potter's face. No, wearing his face.
When he saw the man at first, he really did think it was his dad for a moment, but the eye color was wrong, the deep, unsettling emerald of the stranger was far different from his father's gentle hazel that he had seen in pictures and the mirror of desire.
While the man's face was similar to James Potter's, it would be better to say he would have been Harry's twin had they been of the same age. He was Harry, but older, and he didn't seem to have the famous scare he was known for.
Moody growled, wand raised, his magical eye whirling rapidly, as he glared at the stranger. "Who are you? State your purpose here immediately!"
The man didn't flinch. He just smiled, a slight upturn of the lips that lacked any genuine warmth, and took another slow, deliberate sip of his coffee. The blatant disregard for the powerful Auror seemed to be pissing the man off more.
"Who do you think I am?" he replied back, his voice smooth and laced with amusement.
That made the old Auror growl even deeper, tightening his grip on his wand. Everyone seemed to be quiet. The kids had already shifted away from the table the moment the man sat down, creating a wide berth around the stranger.
"Come on," the man moaned out, placing his cup down. "None of you is even going to try to guess? It's not that hard to figure out, I guarantee it," he said, but nobody answered him.
Dumbledore stepped up, his voice soft and kind, yet holding that same firm command that had bent entire Ministries to his will during Harry's trial. "Young man, it would be appreciated if you could inform us of who you are and how you got in here. This is a secure location, and your sudden arrival is understandably alarming."
Harry watched as the man didn't even bother to glance at Dumbledore. He dismissed the Headmaster's imposing figure and commanding voice as if he hadn't even spoken.
He could see that it annoyed a lot of people, and even he, Harry himself, felt a flicker of annoyance at the disrespect the man was showing to the most powerful wizard they knew.
Hermione squinted, studying the man with an intense focus, her mind visibly racing as she tried to guess who this man was. Then she gasped, the pieces clicking into place with a horrifying certainty. "H-Harry."
'Wait, what?' Young Harry thought to himself, and he could see the utter confusion etched on everyone else's face. What the hell did she mean by that? He wasn't him.
The man seemed surprised for a second, then burst out laughing, a deep, rich sound that belied his apparent age. "Oh, how did you guess?" he asked her, genuinely impressed. One can't just guess that kinda guess like that.
She stuttered before answering, running a nervous hand through her bushy hair. "You just... You just look the same and even feel the same, if you understand what I'm saying."
"W-What? Hermione, what are you saying?" Harry demanded. Was she saying this person was him? Was that even possible?
"Time travel?" he asked, while there was the time with the Time-Turner, even then Hermione had said that time travel this far was dangerous and impossible, a one-way ticket to paradox and death.
"That's not possible. Traveling this far back in time should not be possible." Hermione said confidently, shaking her head, rejecting the simpler explanation.
"Ah, but I didn't time travel, little bookworm," the older Harry said, with a teasing, patronizing smile. "Time is a straight line or at least it likes to move in a straight line, but reality, that's another matter entirely."
Okay, if it wasn't time travel, then what? Harry looked at Hermione, but it seemed even she, the cleverest witch of their age, wasn't getting the answer.
"What do you mean, young man?" Dumbledore injected, trying to take control of the conversation. Once again, the older man ignored him, his attention laser-focused on Hermione. This time, Harry couldn't help but feel a little vindictive. Dumbledore had been ignoring Harry since he came back from break, letting the old man understand how it felt.
"Come on, Hermione, I understand why they don't get it," he said, waving his hand lazily toward the people behind the bushy-haired girl, dismissing every adult wizard in the room, "but I thought you'd get it. You were always the one reading those ridiculous Mudane science texts."
Hermione fell silent as her face started cycling through various expressions, doubt, confusion, and more.
"Come onnnn, don't tell me you don't know of the multiversal theory," he said, drawing out the last word in a theatrical whisper, and Hermione bounced out of her chair, her face instantly lit up with the thrilling recognition of an abstract concept made real.
The multi-what now? It seemed he wasn't the only one confused. Ron looked utterly lost, as did Moody and everyone else.
"The multi-what?" Ron asked, looking around for someone else to explain.
"The Multiversal Theory!" Hermione corrected him, her voice ringing with newfound certainty. "It's something Muggles talked about, a concept of other worlds. They theorize that there are countless universes that exist in creation, infinite parallel worlds, a Multiverse, and that the choices we make can create entire new worlds depending on the outcome of a choice." She then turned back to the older Harry, her eyes gleaming with genuine awe. "Are you saying you came from another universe, a parallel world?"
The man just nodded a smile returning. "Took you long enough."
"That's amazing! An infinite number of possibilities! The implications are staggering!" she said in awe, completely forgetting the danger of the stranger.
"Wait, how do we even know all this is true? How do we know you're not just a very powerful, very skilled imposter who Polyjuiced into a mature version of Harry Potter?" Moody again voiced, his hand steady on his wand. The man was a very paranoid man, but Harry had to agree. This person could just be making things up, after all.
The man looked amused for a second before he finished the last drop of his coffee, placing the empty cup down with a soft, distinct clink. Then, he cleared his throat and started speaking in a pitch-high, shrill voice, perfectly mimicking their best friend, "I'm going to bed, before either of you comes up with another clever idea to get us killed, or worse, expelled!"
Harry and Ron immediately burst out laughing, recognizing the exact, panicked inflection Hermione used in their first year, a memory they had never told a soul. Hermione buried her head in her hands, and the others in the room stared in confusion at the trio's sudden hysteria.
"That was... I was... AAHHHH!" Hermione started, her cheeks flushed scarlet with embarrassment, before she gave up and screamed into her hands, making Ron and Harry laugh harder, the laughter providing a momentary, necessary release of tension.
"So, does that prove it, or do you want me to name a few more deeply humiliating secrets from your adolescence, like who cried when they thought their pet rat passed away?" he said smugly, his eyes twinkling.
Hermione waved her hands frantically. "I believe you. I believe you! No need for more, thank you!" she told him. That was something they, the Trio, had never told anyone, and the fact that he knew it and the exact context was enough proof already.
The others around didn't know what the Trio and the man were talking about, but if the Trio, particularly the cautious and logical Hermione, were sure it was true, then they would believe, for now, anyways.
"Anyways, now that we have established that you really are a version of Harry, why are you here?" Hermione asked seriously, her professional curiosity finally winning out over her embarrassment.
"Yeah, Harry," Fred started, before his twin brother continued, "what brings you here to this particularly dreary world of ours?"
Everyone, too, wanted to know the answer. He shrugged, looking utterly bored by the magnitude of the question. "Mistake," he said simply. "It was my first time jumping worlds, and I accidentally landed here instead of my target destination. I figured, why not come here to rest up before leaving."
He said that like jumping worlds was a walk in the park, as casual as deciding to visit a local pub.
"So I'll be here for a while," he finished, taking a sip of his coffee. It seemed it had finished. He called Kreacher, summoning the elf from the darkness, and asked the subservient creature to bring more, completely unfazed by the wands aimed at his back.
"Great, we now have two Potters, one insufferable brat and one impossibly arrogant nuisance," Snape sneered, his voice dripping with venom, unable to resist the opportunity to vent his spite.
And suddenly, the room turned glacial. The older Harry's smile vanished instantly, and his face turned utterly devoid of expression, cold and definitely lethal, as his gaze shifted to look directly at the Potions Professor, who was hiding partially behind Dumbledore.
"You," he said to the professor, his tone devoid of all emotion, flat and terrifying. "Do not speak in my presence, lest you wish to die a slow, agonizing death."
Wands snapped up again, but he didn't care. Snape, fueled by years of bitterness and blind hatred, sneered. "What did you say, you impudent little boy..." Before he finished the word, he was violently launched across the kitchen, but by an invisible, crushing force. He hit the stone wall with a sickening thud and was pinned there as though by an invisible, massive hand.
Everyone jumped at the sudden, and the adults started shooting spells at the older version of Harry. He just waved his hand, his eyes never leaving Snape. A barrier of shimmering, golden light hummed into existence in front of him, absorbing every spell like raindrops hitting a granite slab.
The golden shield was perfectly passive, an absolute statement that no wizard's magic could touch him. The kids had ran to the side of the kitchen, huddling together and watching the terrifying display from there.
Harry finished his coffee before slowly, casually standing up. He walked up to the wall where Snape was pinned. The man, no doubt, was in breathless pain and wanted to shout, but couldn't.
Harry pressed a single finger on the man's forehead as the man was pushed harder into the wall, his body seemingly flattened and fused between Harry and the cold, unyielding stones. It looked like Harry would kill him then and there. Then, just as the air grew thick with the smell of ozone and the tension reached its breaking point, he stopped. He simply stepped back, and Snape dropped to the ground, coughing and gasping, his face white and distorted with terror and residual pain.
"Don't think I'm the same as your Harry Potter, Snape. I won't hesitate to kill you, and what's worse, I won't feel a thing about it," he told the man coldly, the emerald fire returning to his eyes. He didn't like Snape, that should already be established. It didn't matter what world.
"My boy, I understand your outrage, but we do not use violence in this manner, and attacking a professor—!" Dumbledore came in to the rescue, as always, trying to intercede and restore order, before the man could continue.
'We do not use violence?' Didn't they just attack him.
The older Harry groaned out loud, which seemed to take the old man off guard. "Don't start, old man," he told the Headmaster dismissively, not even raising his voice, yet the command was absolute. He went back to his seat. "Anyways, as I was saying before I was interrupted, I'll be here for a while."
"How did you do that?" Hermione asked, visibly trembling, but her scientific curiosity overrode her fear and decorum. She knew the situation was not good, seeing how the man went off on Professor Snape, but she had been curious since she first saw him do it. Ignoring spells without doing anything, bending the laws of physics. "Is it a spell, or something like that, that allows you to not be affected by magic? Is it a permanent counter-curse?" she really wanted to know.
"Mrs. Granger, wait! Why did you attack Professor Snape, my boy?" Dumbledore said sternly, trying again to force the issue.
Harry ignored him again, simply meeting Hermione's gaze. It looked like the old man was getting profoundly annoyed by the consistent disregard, his blue eyes flashing behind his half-moon spectacles.
"It's not really a spell or anything like that," he told her. "It's just that magic doesn't work on me, not in the way you understand it." He said, shocking everyone in the room, even Dumbledore.
"What?!" Hermione yelled out, the idea being utterly impossible by all known magical standards. "But how is that possible?"
"Perks of being a Campione," he smirked at her, enjoying the academic shock on her face.
"A Campione?" Ginny asked, intrigued. "What's that?" Young Harry asked, trying to keep up.
"Oh, you don't have those here?" The older Harry chuckled. Of course, he knew they didn't.
"What exactly are they?" Tonks asked, her hair shifting to a curious, inquisitive light blue. Harry turned to look at her for a few seconds, making her shift when she noticed the intensity of his attention.
'god, I miss Tonks, ' he thought to himself.
"A Campione is a Godslayer, a human who has killed a god and stolen a portion of their Authority, their divine power," he said, and saw the room freeze at the blasphemous concept.
"A what?" Remus asked, horrified by the word "Godslayer."
"A Godslayer. In my world, there are times when gods, Heretic Gods, we call them, come down from their divine realms and cause havoc on Earth, defying the laws of creation. Campiones are those who manage, by sheer luck and cunning, to slay those gods and take their power, becoming beings of supreme, tyrannical power," he told them, making them slack-jawed.
"How is that even possible?" Tonks said. "Slaying a god? Aren't they immortal?"
"So these Campiones are born to kill gods, like some sort of magical hitman?" Hermione asked, trying to fit the concept into a known category.
He started laughing, genuinely amused. "Campiones aren't born, Hermione, well, not in the traditional sense like you're thinking," he said as he shook his head. "No, a person becomes a Campione after they slay a god."
"But how are you supposed to kill a god in the first place? They're supposed to be well, gods!" Ginny stuttered, unable to comprehend the scale.
"Luck and courage," Harry told her seriously. "They are immortal, but they are not invulnerable. They are bound by their own myths and legends." Luck and courage, that was, after all, the main factor for becoming a Campione.
"So you killed a god?" Ron asked, eyes wide with excited disbelief. He looked enthralled by the concept of a magical hero who literally killed divine beings. Harry nodded.
"Hmm, Fenrir," he told them, the name of the mythological wolf-god echoing softly in the tense kitchen.
"And you have his power? The power of Fenrir?" Hermione asked. He nodded and chuckled a little, it was like he was in front of his Hermione again.
"And you got all his powers?" she asked again, ever the completionist.
"No," he shook his head. "The way it works is that after you kill a god, you receive a portion of their power and their authority, their domains, and such. It's normally one of their primary Authorities, the core concept they embody, but sometimes a person can get more. Fenrir's core concept was the Tearing of bonds, the sundering of the final law."
"What did you get?" Fred and George asked in unison, eyes wide with the promise of mischief and destructive power.
He smiled, a dark, dangerous smile, and raised his right hand. Suddenly, his fingernails elongated and sharpened, turning into razor-thin, pale white claws that started shining with a faint, crystalline light.
"Fenrir was known for being able to rip and cut through anything with his claws and fangs, be it magical bindings, mortal flesh, or even the chains of fate," he told them, moving his hand around so they could see it better. Then he tapped the antique teacup in front of him, and it didn't shatter—it split cleanly, instantaneously, in two, making everyone feel awe at the impossible precision of the cut. Then he slashed the air—and a glowing, shimmering fissure of pure chaotic energy opened up, a tear in the fabric of the room, before it immediately started closing with a sound like tearing silk.
"That," he said, pointing a wicked claw at the residual shimmer, "is Fenrir's Authority. This is how I was able to come through, by tearing a seam between universes. I don't have enough juice to jump again now, so I have to wait for a while to recover my power."
They were all silent, digesting what he just told them, a man who had killed a god and could slice reality. The sheer audacity of his existence was overwhelming.
Then, once again, the old man started speaking to him, his voice strained but insistent. "Let's get back to this matter first, Mr. Potter," he said, trying to re-establish the narrative that he was in control. "Why did you attack Severus? Even if you are... whatever you claim to be, we cannot allow such wanton violence in a safe house."
He raised a brow to the man, his eyes flashing with utter contempt. "I believe I had already informed him not to speak in my presence. His failure to comply was a sign of intentional disrespect, and the consequence of disrespecting a King is punishment. He's lucky he still breathes."
"I don't know the relationship between the Severus of your world and yourself, but I ask that you not attack one of my teachers who has served the Light faithfully for many years," Dumbledore insisted, appealing to the concept of loyalty and service.
"Then he should have no problem keeping his mouth closed in my presence," he told the man, utterly unmoved by the appeal.
As Dumbledore helped the still-shaken Snape stand, Harry added apathetically, his voice carrying just enough weight to pierce the atmosphere, "He's lucky I didn't kill him for all the things he did in his past, and what he would have done in the future. Don't mistake my restraint for mercy, old man."
"Snape is a changed man, having served as a spy for years, and has been forgiven for his past transgressions," Dumbledore started, his voice hardening defensively, but was cut off again, this time permanently.
"And who was it that forgave him?" Harry's voice rose sharply, a sudden, devastating wave of pure, tyrannical Authority pressing down on the room, crushing the air in their lungs and suffocating the atmosphere.
Every person in the room, even Dumbledore, felt an instinctive, primal urge to bow down. "Who was it that said another person's forgiveness was all that he needed after everything he's done? Did the people he tortured forgive him? Did the people he cursed forgive him? Or did you, Dumbledore, simply decide that his services outweighed his crimes, and therefore the world owed him absolution?"
"Changed? What changed? Is he still not a small, petty man who blames others for how his life went wrong and takes his anger out on helpless children just for the sake of his ego? He projects his own pathetic failures onto a child who shares the face of his childhood bully," Harry said, his eyes blazing emerald fire that promised cosmic retribution. "Even if he's changed, so what? Am I supposed to be buddy-buddy with the man who was directly responsible for the death of my mother?"
The moment Harry uttered those words, the room's tone changed utterly.
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