Harry Potter was running away from his perpetual bullies, his cousin Dudley and his gang. He had enough of a lead to maybe lose them by darting around a corner but quickly doubling back to hide, and for some reason that usually worked with the large trash cans by the kitchen doors. Except that they'd been moved a bit from their usual position today, and as he tried to jump behind them something weird happened. The next thing he knew, he was on the roof, sitting on the chimney.
He was still puzzling this out, and his cousin was still trying to find him, when something made him look up. His eyes went wide as he realized that there was a shooting star in the sky. Except that it had been heading for the horizon, but seemed to have turned. And, against all odds, was heading straight for him.
Unfortunately, he had far less time than he'd thought to determine the safest way to get out of the way of the shooting star, and it impacted him and the chimney only a few seconds later.
Sternschnuppe had been drifting for far too long. He had lost a lot of memory, and sacrificed more to use as raw materials in a desperate attempt to repair himself enough to stop drifting. In many ways he would've preferred to self-terminate, to put himself out of his misery, but self-preservation was second only to the safety of his Lord in his core programming. Not that it had done his former Lord any good, the destruction of Belka tearing his barriers and body to pieces even as it cast Sternschnuppe into the void.
Luckily for him, he had gotten enough jury-rigged to exit the void into a proper star system. Even better, there were mana signatures of some kind on the planet he found himself approaching. On the flip side, he quickly determined that he wasn't prepared for atmospheric re-entry and his shields started to have problems almost immediately due to his depleted energy reserves. Which meant that he was likely to burn up before he ever landed, and there was nothing he could do about it. Six hundred passes over the situation by his self-preservation routines finally determined that he had no chance to survive, and they were ready to pass control on to the 'minimize damage to innocents' directives.
Before that could happen, a wild pulse of mana erupted from the surface of the planet. One that provided just enough energy to restore shields for another few minutes. Instead of self-destructing to prevent damage to the planet, Sternschnuppe found himself locking onto the source of the pulse of mana and following a thread of it back to the source. He needed the energy that had been released to complete repairs and his self-preservation routines weren't going to let him say no. Except that as he approached he realized that he was about to crash into a child.
Attempting to override his course failed, as his self-preservation routines were in full control. They would not be denied the energy available to enact self-repair. That the energy was emanating from a child and his approach was likely to result in the child's death was inconsequential to the routines. They weren't sophisticated enough to realize that the child's death would likely render the energy unavailable either.
But, if the child was the source of the pulse of mana, then the child was a mage. A young one, but that was okay, because it gave Sternschnuppe a last-ditch option to save the child's life.
ALERT: Target designation changed. New designation: Lord.
The entire school had devolved into chaos when the kitchen roof had exploded, only Harry having noticed the shooting star coming down to strike it. But he couldn't tell anyone about it, because he was deep in the rubble of the building, unconscious and encased in a glowing bubble of energy.
Four kitchen staff members, a teacher, and six students had been injured in the explosion. They were all dragged off quickly, and teachers started gathering students into their classes and taking head-counts. It was this chaos that the accidental magic reversal squad found when they arrived, and they immediately sent for emergency backup. Whatever had happened here needed a proper cover-up ASAP, and they weren't equipped for it.
An hour later Dumbledore would finally arrive, after being informed that the only missing child was one Harry Potter. He ensured that the muggles thought that he and those working to clear the destroyed building were experts in search and rescue, and within ten minutes they'd cleared a hole to where young Harry sat in the glowing bubble of energy. They were just in time to hear an ear-splitting inhuman scream, one accompanied by a pulse of energy from the bubble.
Fifteen seconds later, a dark mass of energy streaked in and hit the bubble, only to almost immediately be followed by another inhuman scream. This happened four more times, and then they decided it was done and started excavating more around the bubble while a specialized ambulance was summoned. Occasionally you needed to get someone to Saint Mungo's when magical transportation wasn't an option, and this was one of those times.
Thirty minutes later they'd gotten the bubble of energy out of the hole, but dropped it on the ground in surprise as a final dark mass of energy slammed into it. This time there wasn't a scream so much as a deathly wail, and they'd later find out that the pulse of energy released had been picked up in Australia. It would take the Ministry three years to rebuild their magic detection net after the pulse blew it out.
The group working at the scene recovered surprisingly quickly, though that was mostly due to everyone having snap-cast a shield in time to divert enough of the pulse away from them. Five minutes later, just as they were getting a handle on lifting the bubble of energy again, they were once again surprised when the bubble popped and a fully healthy, if nearly naked, Harry Potter fell out of it. The only thing he was wearing was a faceless watch.
Sternschnuppe gladly dropped into standby mode for now, needing time to recover. His new Lord had barely survived impact and had needed some healing, but in that process an energy leech had been found. Purging that had been unusually beneficial, a new database of spell components have been extracted. Several 'natural skills' and a few security markers had also been found in the leech, all of which had been integrated into his new Lord.
Of course, he was still paying attention to the other mages that had shown up, in order to ensure that they meant his new Lord no harm. So far they seemed to be fine on that front, so he would wait and continue to monitor them for now. He and his Lord needed time to recover from the energy expenditure.
Deep in the Department of Mysteries, the Unspeakables were trying to recover from the damage that the pulse of energy had caused. Many sensitive instruments were going to need to be rebuilt, their entire stock of time turners had shattered, and the veil was acting oddly. In all of this, they merely checked that the Hall of Prophecies wasn't damaged. The protections there had held, and they focused on everything else that was going on instead.
It would be three months before someone got around to doing a deeper examination of the hall, and it would only be then that they realized that something incredibly important had happened. For every single unfulfilled prophecy orb had gone the dark black of a negated prophecy. All, that is, except for a single orb in row ninety-seven. That single orb had gone the dull grey of a fulfilled prophecy, before shattering there on the shelf.