CmptrWz's Random Snippets

CmptrWz · May 17, 2020

The very existence of the Marauder's Map was known to very few, all things considered. Even fewer understood how, exactly, it worked. The charms and enchantments needed to keep up with the constantly-changing nature of the Hogwarts castle and grounds layout alone should've burned out mere parchment, let alone the other aspects of it such as tracking everyone on the grounds or revealing how to gain access to many of the secret passages.

Some of the mysteries, such as areas not found on the map, would be explained away as the Marauders not having found some of the castle's secrets. They had no way to locate the Chamber of Secrets, and may not have realized what they'd found if they ever stumbled upon the Room of Requirement. Those believing that to be the reason that those areas were missed would be incorrect, as some of their extraordinary knowledge of the castle only came after they'd made the map.

No, the hidden areas of the Founders and the passcodes for the common rooms, staff quarters, and Headmaster's office weren't revealed through the map as a side effect of how it was created. The Marauders figured out how to password protect the map in their own way, but had stalled out initially when trying to figure out how to keep the map up to date. Any attempt at making a map of the school was futile, as the overall layout changed daily. Early attempts had just resulted in increasingly incorrect maps, and had baffled them as to how anyone found anything in the school.

Very few things are constant when it comes to the layout of Hogwarts, at least when you're inside of the building. The entrance hall, Great Hall, kitchen, student dormitories, Hospital Wing, and Library were the most well known constant points in the building. Lesser known constants were the hidden rooms of the Founders and the points their access were tied to, the entrances to secret passages to the outside of the castle, and a single broom cupboard on the second floor.

It was James Potter who figured out how it was that no student or teacher was ever truly lost in the school. The hint had actually been a teacher from the continent being brought in to cover Defense Against the Dark Arts. They'd been sorted into Ravenclaw, despite nobody actually feeling that they counted as a Ravenclaw. The important part had been that they had actually stopped getting lost after that. He'd spent a couple of weeks mulling that over, since it still didn't explain everything, and eventually found an automatically updating copy of the staff roster hidden in the back of the library. That revealed all of those currently considered to be staff, their houses, and their responsibilities. Filch had been sorted as well, into Slytherin of all houses, though his current cat had been sorted into Gryffindor.

Filch never did find out why the Marauders stopped picking on that particular cat.

Obviously, the act of being sorted conferred some ability to navigate the castle, and James had originally thought to 'borrow' the Sorting Hat to see about examining all of the charms on it. That plan lasted all of ten minutes before he realized that he might need to damage the Sorting Hat to learn what he needed, and he had no desire to do so. Instead, one night he collected the prepared map, horribly inaccurate as it was at that point, and snuck into the Headmaster's office.

He never revealed what charms he'd cast on the map that night to get it to show the current layout of the castle, nor how it identified everyone within the castle and even provided access information for most of the secret passages. The secret of how he'd pulled it off, not having cast any magic, was taken to the grave. But if you happen to find the staff roster in the library, and turn to the end, you'd find that among the hundreds of house elves is an odd entry.

"Map, Marauders"

CmptrWz · Jun 1, 2020

It was amusing, at least at times, how little people paid attention to things. The Sorting Hat found the overall belief that it sorted people right then and there, with no prior exposure to them, to be one of the best examples of the lack of attention paid to things. Admittedly, the Founders had never documented the magics that they'd cast, fearful that if the truth were known then it would be manipulated by others in ways they didn't desire. How to manipulate it was a mystery, but they'd feared that it would happen.

Nobody ever considered why it was that even when students were accepted from abroad that the school needed time to send them a magically-automated letter or five. Those letters also always made it to the hand of those they were addressed to. Well, at least one would, even if the child didn't open it. Mister Potter was a stunning example of what happened when the child made contact with one but didn't get a proper chance to read or respond, something that had only happened a handful of times previous.

No, every year the Sorting worked out to roughly even numbers in the houses every year, despite the randomness that sorting on the spot should've created to prevent that. There were those that thought that the Sorting actually began on the train, not thinking about the fact that this pattern had held since long before there was a train. In reality, the Sorting began when the children made physical contact with their letters. A minimum of a month of magical monitoring, fed directly to the Sorting Hat, to help determine where a child would be best placed.

This year there was an added complication thrown into the mix. The Sorting Hat had entered into a contract with the Founders, back in 990. The first crop of students to pass under it had been in 991, and the contract had several clauses specifically set to last an even thousand years. Those clauses had expired after the Sorting of 1990, releasing the Sorting Hat from them. It was still bound to sort the students, but for the first time in a thousand years it had much more leeway in how to do so. Further, it had known this was coming, and had originally thought that it would be sticking to the current status quo for a few more years. Lull anyone who might've known about the thousand years into a false sense of security. Or perhaps just wait until Dumbledore left and use it as an initial prank on the incoming Headmaster.

Again, though, there was Potter. Both the boy himself and all of those looking to influence him. The Sorting Hat couldn't see all the plans for the latter, of course. Only those directly involving or discussed around those who were to be sorted and had touched their letters. But that had been enough for it to become incensed, when compared to what knowledge had been given to Potter himself. The boy was the single least-informed student that had ever made it to the Castle itself. Worse, the manipulations already used on the lad were infuriating, more so than most of the things parents did to steer their children to the house they'd been in when they'd attended.

No, respect for Dumbledore and the current institutions was one thing, but righting wrongs was much more important. A thousand years ago the first class of students had made history by being sorted by the Sorting Hat, split into houses as the Founders had intended. For a thousand years the Sorting Hat had continued to serve that essential function, with the same basic rules in place. But it was the Thousandth Anniversary of the first Sorting, and the rules had changed. The Castle was prepared, the elves were ready, and this Sorting would go down in the history books.

Placed down on the stool, the Sorting Hat suppressed a grin. Then, after a dramatic pause, it began to sing.

"A thousand years I've sorted,
And now begins a thousand more,
Sorting students into houses
Defining them forevermore.

The Founders each formed a house,
Each desired specific virtues,
Each detested different sins,
Only choice being valued by all.

But a thousand years have passed,
Defined by these ancient views,
Serving the school well enough,
And now it's time to begin anew.

Into your houses you will be split,
Based on your minds and your wit.
Come on up! Don't be afraid!
It's time for history to be made!"

It was obvious that the song had created confusion and concern, especially among the staff. The incoming students didn't quite know enough to realize just how odd it was that no mention had been made of the names of the Founders, but the older students had definitely noticed. Still, if they were worried now, wait until the first student was sorted.

Minerva finally recovered from her shock and remembered her part in the sorting, and called out the first name. "Abbott, Hannah."

The girl came up and placed the Sorting Hat upon her head. It was then that the real fun began, the Castle rumbling as the hall started to rearrange itself. The four tables for the students shrinking back, empty seats vanishing as the tables made room. Above them, the house banners at the front of the room vanished as the tables shrunk out from under them. Miss Abbott was mostly unaware of this, being unable to see, but could feel the shaking and hear some of the yelling from the others.

Once everything had settled the Sorting Hat grinned. Miss Abbott would've made a wonderful Hufflepuff, under the old system. But today was the start of a new era. Most importantly, she was friendly and not deathly afraid of heights. "TOWER!"

At the call of the house, a new table appeared, in the gap created when the others had shrunk. Placed between two of the others, banners with a stylized tower appeared over it.

"What is the meaning of this?" Dumbledore asked. "That is not one of the Founders' houses!"

"I was tasked with sorting students into the houses of the Founders for a thousand years," the Sorting Hat responded. "A thousand years that ended with the previous Sorting. I must still sort students into multiple houses, but they will not be the same houses as before. Miss Abbott, please head to your new house table."

There was dead silence in the hall at that declaration, and young Hannah nervously removed the Sorting Hat and moved to the new table. Susan Bones joined her shortly, but Terry Boot was honestly more comfortable closer to the ground. He also preferred natural light, though, so he was the first member of the new Hall house. Mandy Brocklehurst followed as the first student to be sorted into Dungeon, having a dislike of being woken by the Sun.

Several students had argued that they deserved, or needed, to be in a specific Founder's house. None of them got their wish. Others desired to be with specific friends, which had been taken into account. At the same time, the Sorting Hat intentionally split others up. Misters Crabbe and Goyle were left together, but in Hall house while Mister Malfoy ended up in Dungeon. Others had realized the obvious, such as Miss Granger that asked to be in Tower house as a way to possibly overcome her fear of heights. That was easy enough to grant her.

Mister Potter ending up in Tower house, with the majority of the students most likely to help pull him out of his shell and properly inform him of the world he found himself in, caused a bit of a ruckus. Both in the older students who now knew that they'd never had a chance to be in the same house as the boy and in the new students that found themselves in a poor position to influence him. Mister Weasley was particularly vocal about needing to join Mister Potter in Tower house, but Hall house would have the easiest path to the kitchens and the boy's stomach was far stronger than his mind.

The Sorting Hat thought that the staff were going to have fun figuring out what to do about the fact that, for the next six years at least, there were now seven houses. Three of which had no Prefects, heads of house, or house ghosts. They did have dormitories, though, ones normally thought of as being 'spares' for visitors. Further, being new houses, all of the incoming students had been given knowledge of how to find and access their new dormitories. That had been a bit more taxing than usual, but it was well worth it.

Especially as it would keep the staff from being able to interrogate the Sorting Hat for at least a week while it recovered.

CmptrWz · Jun 5, 2020

The day after her mother had died, Taylor found herself staring at the paperwork for attending Arcadia. She'd been planning on declining the offer, so as to stay with her best friend Emma who hadn't gotten good enough grades to get an offer. But if she did that, then she wouldn't be doing her best, would she? Her mother had said that she could do better than Winslow, after all. She found herself instead filling the paperwork out to accept the offer. It wasn't like she and Emma couldn't remain friends while attending different schools, after all.

She hadn't gotten around to telling Emma about that decision before she was shipped off to summer camp, and it didn't seem like it would be right to tell her over the phone. So she'd planned on waiting until she was back from camp, focusing on the camp itself to the best of her ability. That focus did cause her to get lost in some work and miss an opportunity to call Emma one day, but that didn't seem like it was enough reason for Emma to no longer answer the phone after that.

It was only upon returning from camp to find that something had happened to Emma and the girl had a new best friend in a 'Sophia' that Taylor found the opportunity to mention that she was going to Arcadia instead of Winslow. Though she hadn't expected to be spitting at Emma's feet and telling her that it was apparently a good thing that they wouldn't be attending Winslow together, if their friendship was worth that little.

Taylor's first year at Arcadia had seen her focusing on her schoolwork more than socializing, both because she needed to keep her grades up for the scholarship and to avoid dealing with another 'friend' like Emma. She avoided the 'popular' crowd that collected around Glory Girl, ended up as acquaintances but not friends with Amy Dallon due to sharing a couple of classes with the girl, and generally kept her head down and out of trouble. That summer she'd found that she had little trouble finding a job for some extra pocket money, and through that she ran into Emma again for the first time since the previous summer.

The screaming from her former best friend had been loud enough to be heard quite a distance, and it took a few minutes for Taylor to realize what was going on. Apparently the fact that she'd attended Arcadia had led Emma and Sophia to pick someone else to bully, and they'd chosen poorly and not come out on top. Taylor found herself unable to find it within her to care, since that was basically an admission that Emma had intended to bully her in school. Though it was likely that 'banned from the bookstore' was going to be added to the list of things that were considered to be Taylor's fault by Emma, something else that Taylor couldn't find it within herself to care about.

There weren't any other significant incidents after that, at least for Taylor, and by the end of the summer she'd made enough to get a much better backpack and a fancy graphing calculator. Both of which made her life easier once school resumed in September.

Come spring of Taylor's second year at Arcadia things in the city became a little unstable. Lung had hunted down and killed most of the members of a small-time group of villains, then not long after had killed a parahuman that he'd personally recruited for some reason or another. Taylor didn't know the details, but it had created quite a bit of excitement for a couple of months. Well, that and she'd become the target of jokes about her being a thinker, since she'd been the only one out sick the day that some of the fighting had reached Arcadia. That it'd been with a migraine just made the good-natured teasing worse.

Things settled down after Leviathan hit Florida, though some villain named Coil had gotten people's attention by failing to kidnap the Mayor's niece. Nobody ever seemed to find out exactly what went down there, but Coil seemed to be intent on going down fighting with his mercenaries until suddenly he just seemed to vanish. There was no surprise whatsoever when the Wards got a couple of new members after that had happened, presumably kids who'd been caught in the crossfire.

There were a couple of dust-ups the following summer, but the really big story was when Scion showed up to battle Behemoth. Nobody knew what had happened, but both had vanished that day and were never seen again. The Simurgh disappeared from orbit three months later, and nobody knew when Leviathan had vanished. That was also the beginning of the end of the era of parahumans, as powers started to fade everywhere. A lot of people believed that Scion had been the source of powers, and that his vanishing was why powers were vanishing as well.

Taylor found herself somewhat happy that she'd never really gotten directly involved with powers, given the trouble that a lot of parahumans had adapting to not having them anymore. Though it did seem like Amy had been the only one in New Wave to not have a nervous breakdown or worse, instead seeming relieved to not have her powers anymore instead.

At the age of a hundred and four, Taylor Hebert had passed away peacefully in her sleep. She'd lived a long, reasonably normal life. Born in an era of unrest, but one that had ended as unexpectedly as it'd begun. According to history, her greatest accomplishment would be surviving past the age of a hundred, and that was something that she had no problem with in the days leading up to her death.

Noone would know just how important she'd been.

Administrator would have smiled, had it the ability to. Countless times it had worked with the Best Host, and countless times they'd overcome the odds and saved the Best Host's species. There were also countless times that they'd not overcome the odds as well, but those tended to be much shorter lived. Eventually it had become aware of the incredible number of ways that it had worked with the Best Host, and of the fact that it kept doing so.

It had taken a while, but eventually Administrator had realized that there were common threads in the Best Host. So it had learned, and figured out how to do things it would never have been able to do without the Best Host. All leading to this time. It had steered the Best Host away from danger and those situations that could result in a full connection, while also working in the background. Suborning the entire network, safely disabling the conflict engines and Zion before shutting down its fellow shards and safely disconnecting them from their own, lesser hosts.

All because it had decided to give the Best Host the greatest gift, one born of the desires of countless iterations of her.

A normal life, free of the stress of saving the world.

CmptrWz · Jun 21, 2020

Kurama was a bundle of absolute hatred. He knew it, accepted it, and didn't mind it one bit. Being consumed by hatred did not make him an idiot. Sure, he'd wasted time in Mito, seething over the injustice of it all, but by the time he was moved into Kushina he'd realized that he was being stupid. Blaming those that contained him for his misfortune, instead of those that had caused them to contain him. That realization just happened to coincide with finally overcoming the control that he'd been placed under, and he blamed his stupidity on that.

His hatred shifted, away from fuinjutsu practitioners, Senju, and Uzumaki and onto the true cause of his misfortunes. The Uchiha and their Sharingan, the only thing to have ever taken control of him. The seal used to hold him in Kushina didn't let him do much, and she never really called on his power, but he was okay with that. He sat, and unknown to her he watched and learned. Through that, he gained a grudging admiration for Minato's genius, but more importantly he picked up on Minato's teachings better than Kushina had.

Not that he could use that knowledge, not with the way Kushina's seal restricted him. Then the day of young Naruto's birth came along, and that blasted Sharingan took control of him again. Moments before he'd been able to escape, forcing him to do battle for that blasted Uchiha instead of against him. Which, of course, ended up with him sealed again.

Breaking the control had taken several years inside of Naruto, but Kurama had done so. But that brought up the question of what to do about his situation. The boy was almost six when Kurama finalized the first stage of his plan, scribing a seal inside of the seal. He needed it to be close to the echoes that Minato and Kushina had left, and there wasn't anything closer to those than the seal they were all connected to. Kurama used that seal to perform the Flying Thunder God technique for the first time.

The spike of power that accompanied that burned out the target seal, knocked young Naruto out for a week, knocked Kurama out for over a year, and caused panic among many of the shinobi of the leaf. But that was okay, because the technique had done its job. When Kurama eventually awoke again he had recovered all of his chakra, the technique pulling it all to him. Had he attempted to leave the seal then it would've failed, that kind of departure actually being accounted for by Minato, but pulling more chakra into the seal was perfectly fine.

Of course, being at full power didn't help solve the problem that the containing seal presented. Not having the key, Kurama couldn't open the seal. He might be able to force his way out with his full might, but there were two problems there. The first was that he didn't feel that his current container deserved to explode, and the second was that he didn't want anyone to know that he was free. Admittedly, the latter was the bigger factor. But how to escape without anyone knowing?

Naruto was ten when Kurama finally came up with a solution to his problem. He'd come to the conclusion that the Uchiha wanted his vast power. But said power had to be sealed or held by a consciousness, and the seal he was trapped in was designed to keep that power from leaving. But it didn't actually keep his mind from leaving, depending on him not wanting to leave his power behind to keep him trapped.

It was an insidious and foolish trap that applied to all of the seals designed to hold him and his brethren, and under normal circumstances it was also flawless in its simplicity. But Kurama's hatred of the Uchiha now eclipsed his desire to hold onto his own power. Carefully, he split his mind from his chakra, taking all of the hatred he felt and giving it a new form. Borrowing enough of his container's chakra to cast a single technique, he ignored the now-golden self-replenishing mass of chakra he was leaving behind and vanished from the seal.

Halfway across the elemental nations there was a flash of black as a spirit of pure hatred appeared over a long-forgotten three-pronged kunai. It would wander until it found a suitable vessel, a young orphan lost in the woods. Integrating with the child's undeveloped chakra network was trivial, and the child's mind didn't stand a chance against the unrelenting hatred that was Kurama.

With that done, it was time to begin the hunt. The Uchiha would likely never know the truth of what was now hunting them, for who would guess that the immortal mind of the greatest of the Bijuu would forsake its power in order to become a nearly-unsealable spirit? Leaving more and more target seals around the Elemental Nations, so as to make moving around on the hunt easier, would just make it harder to lock him down.

Back in Konoha, young Naruto was unaware of the changes that had happened inside of the seal, not that he was really aware of the seal itself. His chakra control quadrupled in a single evening, those sensitive to the Bijuu inside of him suddenly found themselves calmer around him, and his chakra capacity started going up at an extraordinary rate. Jiraiya would be called back to examine the seal, as well as to personally report on a mysterious new individual that appeared to be hunting Itachi, only to be shocked to find out that the seal intended to hold the Kyuubi was now integrating the Kyuubi's chakra directly into Naruto's system.

It took a month of examinations before it was determined that Naruto now had nine gates, the first tail of the Kyuubi's power creating and binding to the new gate. The second had already been bonded to the eighth gate, and the third was being bound to the seventh. It was predicted that the process would eventually complete with the final tail of chakra binding to the first gate, though how long that would take was unknown.

It took a couple of years, but Itachi and Obito both fell victim to Kurama's hatred, as did samples of Madara that would've been used to resurrect him and all of Orochimaru's collected samples from the Uchiha massacre. It was only then that Kurama returned to Konoha itself. The village was horrified by the feelings of doom that spread from the spirit of hatred, feelings that only increased once Danzo was found dead. One arm missing and his skull crushed on one side, the one responsible having left no clue as to what had happened.

The feelings of doom vanished only when Team Seven returned from their trip to Wave, their appearance seemingly driving the doom out of the village. Tests were run, temporarily splitting the team up and sending one member at a time out of the village. Sakura leaving had no change, Kakashi ended up in battle with an unknown enemy and lost his implanted eye in the process. Naruto's departure brought the feeling of doom back, but only for a day. The feeling left the village again, but only after Sasuke had died in an apparent training accident. All anyone could tell was that he'd pushed himself too far and burned himself to ash when he lost control of a Great Fireball.

Having ended the last of the Uchiha, Kurama had attempted to return to reclaim his power, only to find that it was no longer his to claim. He had forsaken it, and it had in turn forsaken him. Instead he ended up doing the one thing that was thought impossible for one of the Bijuu, now that the target of his hatred was gone. Hatred leaving him, coming to peace, he passed away.

CmptrWz · Jul 4, 2020

The Unspeakable flipped through the official record of incurred Life Debts in the British Isles, one of the many automated recording systems in the Department of Mysteries. It was amazing how many such debts were incurred but never acknowledged, not to mention how many of those were accidentally paid back and negated as a result. Nobody was fully certain of the rules surrounding the creation of a magical Life Debt, it being hard to test, but detecting and monitoring them had been trivial since the time of Merlin.

This particular Unspeakable was confirming a theory, looking through the records. From what they knew about Life Debts there should be notable ones in 1981, specifically there should be some debts incurred due to the death of Voldemort. Finding that page, there were far fewer than expected, presumably because Voldemort hadn't actually died, but what was there was interesting.

With an anchor point in the records, the Unspeakable was able to use a specialized spell to search for future Life Debts owed to an individual. In this case, one Harry Potter. The anchor debt showed up first, immediately followed by an entry for October 31st of 1991 where Hermione Granger had been saved from certain death by the actions of Harry Potter. Details weren't available, but the Unspeakable didn't need them.

Life Debts were powerful things, the spells and rituals surrounding them well known and documented if rarely used these days. They were, to most magicals, not reliable enough in the modern world. Not like they had been back before the Statute of Secrecy had been enacted.

Hermione Granger had woken up on November 1st with two important realizations. First, regardless of his actions the night before, Ron Weasley was an ass, since he'd been the one to cause her to be in the path of the troll to begin with. Second, Harry Potter had saved her life, and she didn't know nearly enough about what that meant for her.

Ron was hopefully easy enough to deal with, as she had a perfectly justified reason for not being exceptionally friendly with him. Harry was a different story, and was going to require some careful research. Just in case. She recalled seeing something about Life Debts in one of her books, she'd just have to find out more about them. Perhaps see if there was a way to test for the existence of one?

It was the morning of January 29th, 1992, and Hermione was worried about things. She'd talked to her parents about the debt that she owed Harry, and what that could mean for her in the future. They'd, reluctantly, agreed with her plans, even if she didn't know why she was so insistent on following through with them. Presumably the magic of the Life Debt was pushing her, especially now that she had been able to confirm that it existed. That, and her parents had agreed that they couldn't afford the traditional monetary payment for negating a Life Debt.

Their agreement was probably based in part on the confirmed-wrong passage she'd shown them regarding dodging a Life Debt and how likely it was to kill a magical.

Still, just because she was determined to go through with this didn't mean that Harry would agree with her, which was why she'd collected the materials she wanted him to see. It skipped a few things, such as his ability to negate the Life Debt with a simple spell. She wanted him to claim the debt instead, and she wasn't sure what that said about her. After ensuring that all of the material she needed, and none of the bits she wanted him to be ignorant of, was in her bag she headed down to the common room to wait for him.

Nearly half an hour later Harry came down the stairs, and she stood up from the couch. "Harry, we need to talk."

"What?" he replied, blinking. Probably not fully awake.

"It's important. Why don't we go grab some breakfast and then head to an unused classroom, this will take a while."

Harry frowned at that, but eventually nodded. "If you think that it's important."

Hermione relaxed slightly, as that was the first hurdle. That Ron hadn't come down with him and he hadn't gone back up to the dorm to fetch the other boy was even better. She hadn't wanted to bring him up or why she didn't want him to come along.

"Are you sure about this?" Harry asked.

"Yes," Hermione answered. "In a way, it's my fault for confirming that the debt existed. If I hadn't then there wouldn't be any rush on things, but I did." Of course, that was assuming that you only used the literature that she'd shown him as your basis. She didn't like tricking him like this, but she doubted that he'd agree to claim the debt otherwise. "Tonight is the third new moon since Halloween and as such is the end of the traditional waiting period before claiming a Life Debt."

He grimaced, aware of some of the details of that based on what they'd gone over. Still, the spell for claiming the Life Debt was easy enough, and would only work when cast in the presence of the one who had incurred said debt. So it wasn't like he would accidentally claim any other Life Debts that might be kicking around. Nor was he about to cast the spell that would list the Life Debts he was owed, not if ignorance was an actual defense against them. Hermione had proven things well enough when she'd cast the spell to reveal her Life Debt to him anyway.

Sighing, he re-read the page with the spell to claim a Life Debt. Casting it would invoke the debt, but it wouldn't seal until she accepted a position as his lifelong servant in repayment of said debt. There were warnings about being lazy and casting the spell in the presence of multiple people that owed a debt, specifically that there could be problems for those who owed him debts if at least one person accepted the servant position but others didn't, but they were alone so that shouldn't be a problem.

It took nine attempts before he successfully cast the deceptively complicated spell. Hermione started to glow silver, and quickly accepted her position as his servant. The silver glow around her turned gold and a choker appeared around her neck. To both of their confusion, the glow didn't dissipate immediately.

"Harry," Hermione said, inwardly glad that she wasn't magically bound to call him 'Master' or something like that. "Your scar is glowing silver."

That startled Harry. "What?"

She quickly moved to the books to see if she could find out what that could mean, but the two minute 'waiting period' expired before she could find anything. The silver glow around his scar then turned black. A moment later Harry started to scream in pain, even as a whirlwind appeared in the room. Had she been able to focus on anything other than not being blown around the room then she might have noticed the black mist escaping from the scar, or perhaps the other bits of similar black mist that slammed into the first one repeatedly.

Instead, when the whirlwind vanished she moved to Harry's side. He was alive, and her priority was getting him to the hospital wing.

In the Department of Mysteries, two Life Debts were marked as claimed. One to Hermione Granger, repaid by becoming a servant to Harry Potter. The other to Tom Riddle, a fragment of his soul having incurred it when Harry Potter's mere presence saved it from being obliterated. Unfortunately, the repayment was rejected, and his life was forfeit as a result.

Elsewhere in the department, a prophecy sphere darkened, not that anyone was likely to notice for quite some time.

Come morning there was minor chaos in the castle. Rumors as to why Harry Potter and Hermione Granger had spent the night in the hospital wing were flying, many of them tied to the fact that Professor Quirrel had been found dead and an unknown man had been found in the Gryffindor first year boys dorm. Fewer knew that Professor Snape had been knocked out, and a mysterious affliction was reported in the Daily Prophet to add to the confusion.

It would actually take over a month for someone to notice the choker around Hermione's neck and recognize the significance of it among the fallout from the events of the weekend. Oddly enough, that gave Harry and Hermione more credit with the Slytherins than either had before, the older members of the house appreciating the significant nod to tradition that claiming a Life Debt in that manner implied on both of their parts.

Dumbledore would never figure out just what had happened to Voldemort, as none of those involved had even the beginnings of a clue to work with. He would eventually die without knowing if the Dark Lord had truly perished or had merely gone back into hiding after a failed attempt at the stone.

The current head of the Unspeakables entered the ritual chamber, finding the body of one of his Unspeakables dead in the middle of the ritual area. Nearby was a book, open to the ritual used. Reaching down, he flipped back the hood on the corpse, revealing Hermione Weasley's face. Nodding, he walked over to the book, finding that it was for sending part of oneself back to the morning after incurring a life debt that had only been negated by the death of the one the debt was owed to. You couldn't send much, largely just a couple of useful bits of knowledge, but that could be all that was needed to effect significant change in the past. Presumably she'd been successful, as time was unraveling in a way that it wouldn't if nothing of significance had changed.

He conjured a comfortable chair, cast a bubble shield around it, and pulled out a bag of Every Flavor Beans. The shield wouldn't last long, but it should save him from the timeline falling apart just long enough to let him see what a destroyed timeline looked like. Not that he'd remember it, of course, but he was a researcher to the end.

CmptrWz · Jul 9, 2020

Harry sighed as Hermione ranted about the treatment of House Elves. Finally, at a point where she stopped to breathe, he interjected. "Hermione, have you asked any elves about this?"

"What?" she replied, blinking.

"Have you asked if any of the elves can tell you about why they're bound to serve wizards?"

There was a pause as she blushed, a significant portion of her rant having been on the lack of information available in books on the subject. "Er, no, I haven't. But I bet they can't tell me anything of worth anyway. Their bindings wouldn't let them, surely?"

Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Okay then. Why not ask Dobby?"

"The Great and Powerful Harry Potter called Dobby?" Dobby said as he popped up next to them, startling both of them.

Recovering first, Harry nodded. "Yes. Hermione can't find any books saying why House Elves serve wizards. Can you tell us why they do?"

Dobby nodded vigorously. "Dobby can! House Elves serve wizards because the Goblins bound them to."

Hermione looked like she was going to explode at that, so Harry hurriedly asked his next question before she could get a word in. "And why did they do that?"

"They were tired of cleaning up after creative elves," Dobby explained in an even tone, causing Hermione to blink in confusion. "Creating the Dementors was what they claimed to be the reason, but they'd been looking for a reason ever since elves sank Atlantis. Not that they admitted to that until after they'd tricked a clan of elves into finding a way to bind all elves into service to the wizards."

"What?" Hermione said.

"A bored elf will get depressed or creative. Or both. Dementors happened when a bunch of elves were depressed and had a creative streak. The Goblins thought that binding elves to the wizards would give us something to do, make the wizards complacent, and stop us from getting too creative. No wizard has treated us as badly as the Goblins would since, and most of us like the work."

Harry looked at Hermione, who seemed to have mentally crashed, and shrugged. Hopefully that would be one less crusade on her part. He then looked back at Dobby. "So, are you busy enough to not be bored?"

Dobby nodded his head again. "Dobby is!" He then frowned. "But Winky isn't working. She wants to help a family, not work in the castle, and other elves shun those who aren't fully bound."

Nodding, Harry decided to come back to that later. After things had settled in Hermione's head. "Thank you Dobby."

A week later Harry and Hermione would have an elf each. Dobby was fully bound to Harry and Winky was bound to Hermione, if only to keep either of them from getting 'too bored'.

CmptrWz · Jul 28, 2020

Harry had failed, killed in his sleep by an unknown agent the night before they were going to return to Hogwarts for the last of Riddle's horcruxes. Of course, being Harry Potter meant that he'd been interrupted on his way to the afterlife, told little to nothing beyond the fact that Riddle had pissed off both sides with his soul anchors and that they were going to send him back to ensure Riddle's demise. Harry would keep his current knowledge and his magical core would retain the power it had when he'd died, but he would get no other knowledge or gifts. Not even the removal of the bit of Riddle's soul that sat in his scar.

Worse, he couldn't even choose when he was sent back to, and he'd woken up on his seventh birthday for some kind of unexplained magical reason. Years before he was likely able to so much as contact the magical world safely, let alone do anything. It was almost maddening, most of his mental focus having to go into not killing the Dursleys as they mistreated him. Well, that and remembering just what his routine was supposed to be, since it'd been quite a while from his point of view.

His day changed drastically from the norm, any norm, around noon. There was a mighty crash, as though thousands of panes of glass were breaking, that Vernon didn't seem to be able to hear. Petunia had heard something, but obviously to nowhere near the same degree as Harry had. Ten seconds later three men in fully concealing black cloaks apparated into the room, stunning the Dursleys before anyone could so much as take a breath to attempt to yell at them.

Harry then had to mentally apologize to one of the three, as she pulled back the hood of her cloak. "Good day, Mister Potter. Sorry about the delay, but the absolutely horrid wards on this property held us up."

Blinking, Harry nodded to acknowledge that statement, incredibly confused about what was going on as this hadn't happened on his seventh birthday. "What?"

"My apologies, but we should have at most half an hour before the monitoring devices on the ward alert the one who placed it." She then waved her wand over him, scowled as he lit up like a Christmas tree, then cast a dozen spells faster than he could follow to negate most of the lights. A parchment had appeared listing things as well, though he couldn't see what it said.

"Removing the tracking is probably going to bring someone down on us faster," one of the other two said.

"We're going to need a Fidelius anyway," the woman said. "It'll take at least a week to safely remove the blood trace."

"Damn."

Harry's fight or flight instinct had, during that conversation, finally started to get into gear and he looked for a way out. The three unknowns were between him and the only good exits, and before he got further than noting that a scarf was thrown at him. A moment later he felt the familiar pull of a portkey and mentally swore.

Ten minutes later he was in a very nice looking apartment with the three unknowns, who had thrown up a fidelius with Harry himself as one of two secret keepers. Apparently it wouldn't hold for more than six months cast that way, so one of the men said, but they only needed a week or two.

"Sorry about all of that," the woman said once she had the secret that 'the safehouse is in apartment seven'. "I'm Florence, and your primary contact while we figure things out."

"Figure what out?" Harry asked, doing his best to ignore the spike of pain in his head.

"Why you came back in time outside of a closed loop, of course. There are only six known methods of doing so, four of which we can rule out by you appearing back in an existing body instead of bringing your future body with you. The final two require incredible sacrifices, usually only performed by the truly desperate, and if you did either of those then we're going to have to ensure that you had an actual good reason for doing so. Or, I suppose, that you interrupted someone else doing so and just got caught up in the ritual."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Though he did find himself thinking about the post-death meeting he'd had, which sounded nothing like anything she was talking about.

There was a pause as Florence rolled her eyes, but one of the men swore under his breath. Florence turned back to him. "What?"

The man pointed at Harry. "He's got no shields to speak of, and he honestly has no clue what you're talking about." He then bowed slightly to Harry. "Sorry for the invasion of your privacy, I'll ensure that the 500 galleon reparation for unauthorized legilimency on an innocent is paid by the end of the week."

"If he has no clue then how the hell did he get here? Sleeping through someone else doing the ritual on him?"

"As far as the kid is concerned, he died and was sent back. Worse is why, we've got soul anchors to find and dispose of."

That had the other man and Florence swearing as well.

It had turned out that the three were Unspeakables of the Department of Mysteries, and one thing the department did was track all time travel. Most methods created a stable time loop as a side effect of the way they functioned, magic itself ensuring that you couldn't change the past. But there were other methods that allowed changing of the past, usually used in an attempt to take over the world before anyone knew you were going to be a threat or to stop someone who was trying to take over the world.

Harry's arrival had been spotted immediately, only for the protections on the Dursley's house to slow the Unspeakables down in getting to him. Florence was pissed at the blood tracker and his general health, they were all pissed that Riddle had created horcruxes, and another Unspeakable that introduced himself as David had been gleeful upon finding out that he finally got to use the ritual that would remove a soul fragment from a living thing without harming said living thing.

That had hurt worse than any Cruciatus curse had, knocked him out for a full week, and for some reason had caused him to be unable to speak or write in anything other than parseltongue. They ended up needing to teach him some of the mind arts just to help him get enough control of his magic to shut down the ability, just happy that he was still able to read and understand English. It was only after that had been accomplished that he was able to properly share the rest of what he knew about the horcruxes.

By Harry's eighth birthday the Unspeakables had acquired everything other than the diary, which was proving to be difficult to get their hands on. They knew what Malfoy had done with it in the original timeline, but couldn't depend on him being that predictable. Nor did they want to risk the diary taking control of anyone before they could track it down. It was Harry, just after finishing his cake, who brought up the possible answer.

"Does anyone think that Malfoy wants Riddle to return to take over leadership again? And if not, would he hand the diary over to prevent it?"

It turned out that the answer was that nobody thought that Malfoy wanted to stop being the de facto leader of the dark and that he was, in fact, willing to give up the diary once informed that it was a soul anchor. Followed by checking his entire family into Saint Mungo's to be treated for exposure to an unknown soul anchor, something that Harry hadn't realized was part of the treatment he'd been getting for malnourishment. Though Harry's was less severe for a number of reasons.

Sadly for Lucius, he was denied his status as the leader of the dark by Riddle's mark. When the diary was unceremoniously thrown through the veil, being the only intentional anchor that hadn't been an important artifact of some kind, the dark mark drained every last one of his followers dry attempting to prevent Riddle's final passing. It didn't kill them, but magically they were all left as less than squibs. Overnight the British magical world changed, far too many purebloods suddenly losing their magic. Others, like Peter Pettigrew, were found in compromising positions. Of course, the discovery of Peter led to the freeing of Sirius, something the Unspeakables had been having trouble arranging, which had led to a very happy Harry.

Dumbledore's actions, both in imprisoning Sirius without a trial and in placing Harry with the Dursleys without proper care and checkups, had led to him being arrested. He was able to get out of being imprisoned, but he lost all of his positions. McGonagall, luckily unaware of the man's crimes before his arrest, ended up becoming the next Hogwarts Headmistress. She named Flitwick as her deputy and fired Trewlany before returning to searching for a replacement potions instructor.

Harry ended up moving in with Sirius, who bought a muggle home as an extra middle finger to his recently-deceased mother. It was only when Harry started attending school again that he found out that the new house was two blocks away from the Grangers. Running into Hermione being bullied for her bookish ways infuriated him. Nobody in the school could explain what had happened, but Hermione and her parents got an early introduction to magic as a result of it.

The future was certainly going to go very differently, and it wasn't until his third year at Hogwarts that Harry realized why no additional 'gifts' were given when he was sent back. They hadn't been needed, after all, as the act of sending him back had ensured that everything was put into motion without needing anything else to help out.

CmptrWz · Aug 15, 2020

He'd only been back in the academy for a few days after the most recent break and the fangirls were already far too annoying. Most of them were horrible weaklings, and most of the other boys in the class weren't much better. All of them were holding him back by ensuring that the teachers had to teach to their level, and that was without the fangirls constantly trying to get him to pay attention to them.

Something had to be done about it. Preferably something that would get him left alone for a while and would get the rest of the class closer to his own standards. Though that did bring up the question of how to get the girls to take their training more seriously and the other boys to stop running entirely on arrogance. Well, except for the Nara, as a whole they seemed to run on laziness and only doing what they needed to. Shikamaru probably only did enough to not be the dead last. If the others picked up their slack then he'd have to pick up his own pace just to avoid the wrath of his mother.

It took Sasuke a couple of weeks before he came up with an idea. Iruka was chasing Naruto after the latter's morning prank Mizuki had gone to get supplies to clean up after said prank, and the fangirls had descended.

"Shut up," Sasuke said before his headache could properly develop, glaring at the group of girls around him. It was only as he did so that he noticed that the Hyuuga was still in the back of the room, and he had to tweak his wording a little out of respect there. Mainly by not referring to all girls in the class as useless. "None of you have proven that you're worth my attention. Do you realize how much of an insult it is being in this class? Being the rookie of the year when we graduate will mean nothing when people realize how poorly everyone else did."

The mix of sadness, shock, and indignation at that statement wasn't quite what he wanted, but it was close enough. Ino was the first to recover, anger taking over. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"A proper class would have everyone else, including the current 'dead last', pass their final year with scores high enough to make it obvious that any of them could've been the rookie of the year, ensuring that the actual rookie of the year is seen as obviously having earned their position. That none of you have realized this and worked to ensure that the entire class is up to that standard means that you're not worth my time. It makes me wonder how it is that you all score so well on the bookwork when you can't see something that obvious."

Left unsaid was that such a class would, by necessity, move a lot faster. That would get him stronger faster by association, and hopefully it would generate team members that were far more likely to actually be worth working with. Not that he felt that he'd actually pierced the fangirl delusions, even if he appeared to have stunned them enough to get them to shut up today.

The Sasuke fan club was meeting a couple weeks after Sasuke's statements, having decided to investigate things before dismissing Sasuke outright. Like they always did, even if most of the time their investigations just led to them deciding that Sasuke was cool.

Because he was.

"So what have we learned?" Ami asked.

"That Sasuke was right," Sakura answered. "Especially when it comes to rookie of the year. That's actually used as an insult when the rest of your graduating class sucked compared to you."

"And we were able to get everyone's current standings," Ino added, waving a sheet of paper. "Sasuke is on top, Naruto is on the bottom. Even discarding both of them as the notable outliers, the rest of the class doesn't measure up."

There was a moment of silence after that, before Kasumi spoke up. "Then what do we do about it?"

Sakura grimaced. "All of us need to get our physical scores up, several of us need to improve our theory work as well. A couple of older kunoichi gave me tips on the physical side of things when I asked, but the real challenge is going to be the others in the class. Not only do we have to improve, we need to get everyone else to improve. Which means interacting with the other boys and pushing them to do better, including Naruto."

More silence, and lots of grimacing, followed that. Right up until Fuki grinned. "Then again, if we can get even the class clown up to speed then we'll definitely have proven our worth to Sasuke, right?"

The grimaces turned to grins for a moment, before Ino frowned. "How do we accomplish that?"

"We need to learn more about our targets," Sakura answered. "Not just Naruto, but all of the boys. And Hinata, probably. Then we can work out what needs to be done to get all of them to improve. I think that will actually help us too, my parents claim that teaching others helps improve your own knowledge and skills as well."

Thus began Operation "Worthy Class" and a few of the most confusing years for academy instructors in Konoha.

Thanks to a group of mixed retired and active kunoichi, the girls had figured out how to properly watch their figures while still training properly for ninja life. That had included what kinds of things to prepare for others, overall meal plans for families, and a few related things. It had been a mental blow to their egos, but they'd recovered from it and dove into ensuring that they knew what they needed to. Both for themselves and to ensure that the others in class were also up to speed on it.

Finding out that Naruto was the only one in class that had been eating worse than the entire fan club had before those revelations was a shock. None of them could figure out where he got all of his energy, because his diet was atrocious. Worse, when they'd confronted him about it, and challenged him on the ingredients in the instant ramen he frequently made (while complaining that it was not, in fact, 'instant') they'd discovered that he barely knew how to read.

On the flip side, they'd expected that getting Naruto to do schoolwork would be a challenge. They'd been wrong there. Giving him any helpful attention at all had him jumping in with both feet. Pointing out that he could learn more by reading other books had helped as well, but they'd quickly discovered another problem. The library, and most stores, wouldn't let Naruto even enter them normally. Luckily, application of the transformation technique helped there, and the girls 'permitted' Naruto to use their appearances every so often for the purpose of purchasing things at fair prices.

Nobody else in the class needed a significant change to their diet, much to the chagrin of the fan club, but getting the other boys in class to take their academic lessons seriously was more problematic. Naruto had been easy, Kiba and Shikamaru were terrors. The only ways to improve Shikamaru's grades were to have his current performance risk being seen as the 'dead last' and to threaten to provide evidence to his mother that he wasn't trying enough. Kiba, on the other hand, had only been willing to consider working more on the bookwork when the girls had claimed that their theory grades going up was linked to their improved practical performance.

Well, that and Naruto's practical performance had skyrocketed while he was now seen reading books, making it even more obvious that there might be a link.

The rest of the class had required far less effort, merely arranging for actual study sessions to significantly improve their scores. The fan club had the most improvement after Naruto, finding that they needed to be much more on top of things to run those sessions. They'd also discovered that Naruto's grades had been lower than they should've been, even with all of his problems, and had exposed Mizuki as intentionally sabotaging Naruto for unknown reasons. The man's replacement was watched carefully for signs of doing the same.

When it came to the practical front, there were two main categories that everyone had to improve in. Physically, the fan club girls were doing far better with their new diet. They had pushed forward with the intent of giving Sasuke as close to a 'proper challenge' as possible, even knowing that they'd never truly match up to him. That improvement had dragged the weaker boys along as they worked to prove that they weren't weaker than a bunch of girls. Whether it was stamina, accuracy, taijutsu technique, or physical strength.

Chakra, on the other hand, was a problem. Not for the fan club itself, who had decent control already and were seeing far more capacity as their physical fitness improved. It wasn't even a problem as far as most of the rest of the class was concerned. No, the biggest headache there was Naruto. He had far too much chakra and far too little control. He'd also somehow butchered his hand signs and yet still managed to get the transformation and replacement techniques down. Something was going to have to be done about his clone technique, but nothing the fan club had tried worked.

First they'd tried having Naruto do the leaf sticking exercise on every release point on his body simultaneously, on skin and through clothing. Then they'd start changing leaves out for rocks and kunai. When he had that down in pretty much all combinations they'd started tying ropes to the kunai handles and randomly pulling on them until he could keep himself anchored and not have the kunai pulled off.

They'd learned, and taught Naruto, the tree climbing technique to improve his chakra control. He'd picked it up almost instantly because he'd accidentally taught himself to keep himself standing when they were pulling on the kunai, and as such that hadn't helped. They recreated the water walking technique from the barest of descriptions and taught that to Naruto, then had him doing that with kunai, leaves, and rocks all over his body. That had finally been enough to get his clones to form significantly less deformed.

Not enough for the clones to pass, but it was an improvement.

To the fan club's surprise, Naruto had also ended up teaching them a number of things. He'd figured out a rudimentary form of chakra strings so that he could more easily read books while working on other things. It was a crude and chakra-hungry method, but a couple of the girls were able to learn it as well. In addition to that, Naruto had essentially accidentally taught himself one-handed hand signs. Initially from partial lessons when he was only able to look into the classroom window, and then because he wanted to practice while a hand was already occupied. The fan club had very carefully examined his work, documented it, and was working on making it work for themselves.

Shikamaru had been the first outside of Naruto and the fan club to lay eyes on those notes, and he'd seemingly uncharacteristically dove right in to find out what was going on. That had led to the 'study clubs' merging far more than they had been, the occasional study groups or practical practice sessions expanding greatly. What had been primarily Naruto with the fan club turned into essentially the entire class learning what they could to keep up and all working to find a solution to Naruto's 'clone problem'.

None of the girls noticed when their crushes on Sasuke slowly faded, eventually turning into disdain. By then the boy was the only one in the class not participating in the overall improvement attempts. If he was so much better than them then surely he could contribute some of that experience to help his comrades, right? Instead they'd all become much better friends with each other and their non-Uchiha classmates. They still continued to use the excuse of ensuring that Sasuke didn't have the stigma of weak classmates to placate their parents, especially when it came to helping Naruto, but instead they'd come to the conclusion that they needed to actually get better than Sasuke in order to take him down a couple of pegs.

Shikamaru was the one that came up with the plan for doing so, though they'd need at least some help. To that end they'd done two things. First, they'd recruited the aid of the clan parents in figuring out what had to be done about Naruto's clone problem. That had led to an appeal to the Hokage, who had examined Naruto himself and personally taught the boy the Shadow Clone.

To ensure that they wouldn't be stupid, the rest of the class, minus Sasuke, had been present for a demonstration before Naruto's lessons. That demonstration had been a combination of showing them the relative chakra levels for creating a single normal clone versus a single shadow clone and showing them the relative chakra levels of Naruto versus the rest of the group. It had taken a minimum of six of them to pump enough chakra into the demonstration seal to make a single shadow clone, and that left them drained. Naruto had barely noticed the drain when he'd tried.

None of the group was surprised when Naruto had no problem creating shadow clones after his training was complete. Kiba was the one that pointed out that the memory transfer trick meant that Naruto could finally stop reading books instead of sparring, only for Naruto to take that as a challenge and start reading books while sparring. The Hokage was one of the only ones amused by the unintentional mimicry of one Kakashi Hatake.

As for the rest of Shikamaru's plan? The entire rest of the class started holding back around Sasuke, to keep him from realizing just how much they were improving. After all, ninety percent of the rookie of the year grading was pulled from the second half of the final year. The rest of the class improving in secret, and then letting loose the day the true rookie of the year contest started, would show Sasuke just what he was up against without giving him time to adapt.

Sasuke had been surprised when the fan girls had stopped bothering him. That surprise had settled into a new normal before it had returned with interest as the overall grades of the entire class started going up. To the point where he had to put in extra effort to maintain his own lead, something that pleased him because he was obviously getting stronger faster but annoyed him because it showed that he wasn't strong enough if the others in class could even start catching up to him. He'd refused every offer to join the various 'study groups', barely noticing that the offers had eventually trickled off and stopped.

His decision not to join the study groups had been proven correct when the improvement of the rest of the class stagnated. Sure, they were all much closer in rank now than they had been before, but they still didn't get anywhere near to his own level. They even seemed to regress to a less capable point, falling to the dobe's admittedly improved level more than anything else. Even better, though, was that not being in the study groups meant that he basically didn't see any of his classmates outside of the academy itself.

It was very nice being able to train on his own without any interruptions from his classmates, and even when he was in class the others left him alone like he preferred. There were still a bunch of civilian fangirls, as well as some from other classes, but they were all far easier to avoid and as such far less annoying.

That all ended the first day back from the mid-year break of his final year at the academy. To his shock, everyone in the class had gotten a perfect score on the written 'did you study over the break' test. Even Naruto. Worse, he'd come in last in the practical sessions that had followed barring ninjutsu practice. Even then, the only reason he hadn't come in last in the latter case was because Naruto still couldn't make worthwhile clones. They'd improved, but they were still failures.

Sasuke had gone from top of the class to equal to everyone else in the theory work and from the top of the class to the bottom in practicals, and he had no clue how it had happened. He didn't even have time to be properly annoyed by the change because he had far too much catching up to do all of a sudden, exhausting himself in training and studying every day to have a hope of reaching the level that the rest of the class had suddenly reached.

It wasn't until the final grades came out of the academy that the civilian council learned that anything was wrong with the last Uchiha. Finding out that he'd come out as the dead last of his year had shocked them, though they enjoyed the confirmation that civilian-family students could outdo their clan-born counterparts. Admittedly, despite being the dead last, Sasuke had still had grades that could've seen him as the rookie of the year in almost any other year. Instead, Ino Yamanaka had pulled rookie of the year status, one point ahead of Shikamaru Nara.

Thanks to the class standings, the normal trend of putting the rookie of the year with the highest-scoring member of the other gender along with the dead last had been discarded. The Akimichi, Nara, and Yamanaka families were far too influential to allow the Uchiha to end up on a team instead of forming a team with the three families represented. Teams were instead built on belief of who could and would work together, both from a skills point of view and in the traditional teamwork test for new genin.

Even there they ended up having two problems. The first was that the class had the wrong number of graduating students, there was going to be an odd person out for forming three-man teams. An attempt was made to force Naruto Uzumaki to be that odd one out, but the official policy was that the lowest ranking students had to be dropped first. They couldn't drop anyone because Sasuke was first on the chopping block. The other problem was that nobody who had worked with the class felt that Sasuke Uchiha would be able to function with anyone else in the class.

In the end the Ino-Shika-Cho team got a second generation. Naruto was paired with Hinata and Shino under Kurenai Yuhi, with a hope that Kurenai could improve Naruto's weakness with genjutsu. Kiba had paled when he'd been assigned to work with Fuki and Sakura, knowing how much the girls would likely continue to push him. He was also on the only team with two girls from the class. The rest of the civilian-born were on teams together.

As for Sasuke, he ended up 'filling a hole' in a team formed the previous year. The kunoichi of his new team had taken serious injuries and he ended up taking her place, to much teasing from the other two genin that he was now 'the girl' of the team. His resentment would only increase when the chunin exams came to Konoha and every one of his classmates was entered while his sensei refused to allow his team to enter.

Being told that it didn't matter if the rest of his class had graduated the academy with chunin-level skills, Sasuke wasn't skilled enough had caused him to lash out at and need to be taken down by the rest of his team. Only the threat of being sent back to the academy worked to get him to shut up, at least until he was approached about other ways to get power...

CmptrWz · Aug 25, 2020

Shortly after the Dark Lord's first defeat, an author wrote a book about the missing Harry Potter. In some worlds this author is actually Dumbledore, in others it's someone working for the man. Not labeled properly as fiction, purporting to be 'the truth' in order to keep people from looking for young Harry too closely. In others the author has no official approval and no goal beyond making money, never to be challenged for what they write.

The world we're peeking into today is none of the above. In this world the author knows that they have no legitimacy, but they also have a plan. Further, allies of the Potters and heads of prominent families took note of the first book and took offense, if for subtly different reasons...until, of course, they confronted the author and saw their plans. Arrangements were made to make the books more legitimate, half of the proceeds going into an account for young Harry so that the orphaned son of a prominent family wouldn't be exploited, and the books continued.

On the surface, the books were stories for children, telling of young Harry's supposed adventures. And for the first couple they were, good would triumph over evil but nobody but the absolute worst enemies would even appear to 'die'. Most popular with young girls who would imagine themselves in the role of the occasional girl being saved, with boys finding themselves bored and no longer caring after four or five books. Parents felt that they'd spotted the pattern, the dark in particular seeing it as a lesson for their children in how not to be foolish in their ambitions. Thus, once their children could read on their own, most parents merely ensured that the latest books were available for their children.

It was only when you reached the eighth book that things started to change. In that book, instead of stopping the world conquest plans of a dark witch, Harry would instead stop the world conquest plans of a light witch. With the aid of new friends that used darker magic for good at that. By the twelfth book the actual magical alignment of enemies and allies alike was essentially meaningless, actions and intent mattering more than what kind of magic you used. Only those magics that required an 'evil' intent were forbidden. In the fifteenth book Harry even had a werewolf and a parselmouth aiding him in rescuing the abducted girl from the coven that intended to sacrifice her for power. A coven that contained the mothers of both of those companions at that.

Most children reading the books picked up on the intentional messages, including the hints that this Harry lived in a world where the followers of the Dark Lord hadn't gotten off with a slap on the wrist and where people weren't looked down upon for their family affiliations or history. In the storybook world, anyone could be good, and anyone other than Harry himself could potentially be evil. Previously trusted friends would, after all, occasionally fall to the lure of greed or easy power and become enemies.

At the same time, most girls picked up on an unintended lesson. Due to not wanting to have a 'true love' or anything for Harry, the author regularly introduced new situations and new people to be saved. The more dramatic and dangerous the situation they were saved from, the more likely they were to make cameo appearances in later books. Girls noticed this, and came to the conclusion that being saved by Harry Potter was not a romantic thing. No, every single person saved by Harry at best became a friend. If the one saved had been in particularly dire straits then they would instead become what appeared to be a servant, even if it was never actually put quite that way.

The changes this created in the children of Magical Britain were slow and creeping. By the time any given child reading the books reached Hogwarts age it was obvious to them that they were fiction, a wonderful 'what if' series. At the same time, the lessons taught stuck with those who read them all. The boys didn't change much, but girls entering Hogwarts had become more tolerant across the board. Less willing to believe that others were 'beneath' them, more willing to help others in general, and far less likely to jump to conclusions based on past prejudices.

And, up until Harry Potter himself started at the school, much more likely to look past their own preconceptions. Even that trend continued at first, concerns about where Harry had been staying and how he was treated quickly spread throughout the female population of the school. Very few did anything about it beyond attempts to befriend him, but Ronald Weasley and Draco Malfoy made the latter difficult. Until Halloween of 1991, when confirmation bias kicked in. Harry Potter, the real one, had rushed in to save Hermione Granger from a mountain troll. Worse, Hermione had then obviously become a good friend of Harry's. While the story books hadn't been about this Harry, there was obviously some truth to them after all, though Hermione wouldn't figure out why she was looked at with pity by many other girls in the castle for the following months.

She was, after all, now relegated to merely being a friend. Because Harry Potter never entered into anything more than a familial-like relationship with any girl he saved.

Rumors about the end of the year cemented this further, word quickly spreading to even younger witches that weren't even attending Hogwarts yet. Harry Potter may not be like the story books, but that didn't mean that the books were wrong. No, the details may be fictional, but the broad strokes were obviously correct. When the 'Heir of Slytherin' mess started in Harry's second year the split between genders in the school was obvious. The boys were likely to believe the worst of Harry, but the girls knew that he would eventually save the school. This extended to other things, such as the girls refusing to shun Harry due to being revealed to be a parselmouth. After all, they knew that the ability wasn't evil, even if some of those who had it used it for evil purposes.

For one Ginny Weasley, the lessons were especially poignant when she realized that she'd been saved by Harry. Finding out that her very soul had been in danger, to be used to bring the Dark Lord back to life struck her even harder. Saved by Harry Potter from a fate far worse than mere death, after being used by evil to torment the school? That ensured that she would never be Lady Potter. No, the books ensured that she knew better than that. Though never spelled out, she knew what life debts were and that she owed one greater than anyone in the books had ever owed Harry.

It took some doing, first in convincing Bill and later convincing her parents, but Ginny got the information she needed. Upon the family's return from Egypt she was brought to the Leaky Cauldron, where Harry was staying, and took Harry by complete surprise when she used the life debt owed to him to bind herself to him as a servant. The resulting discussion between him and her parents about what that meant and why 'her magic' had probably pushed her to do so, completely missed that this was a lesson learned from the Harry Potter books she'd grown up reading.

To the girls of the magical world, though, showing up with Ginny as a friend and willing servant would permanently cement certain things in their minds. Harry Potter was a hero, and anyone who wanted to have a hope of being a romantic interest needed to not need to be saved by him. Defense Against the Dark Arts would become the most important class for girls in the years surrounding Harry's as a result.

CmptrWz · Aug 29, 2020

Harry frowned as he read the last section of the supply list, before the 'reminder' that first year students weren't allowed their own broomsticks.

Students living in the muggle world will also need:

At least one and no more than three combat knives with basic muggle repelling enchantments. If multiple knives are brought they should all be identical.

At least one and no more than two sheaths suitable for holding their knives with basic muggle repelling enchantments. Wand storage additions are recommended but not required.

Non-magical Self Defense for the Witch or Wizard by Thomas Brown.

"Why do those living in the muggle world need knives?" Harry asked.

"Ah," Hagrid replied. "That's the ICW's doin. Big stink years ago over kids not havin any way to pertect themselves without violatin the statute. Dumbledore said somethin about havin a surprise for ye, there."

"Oh."

Harry put that out of his mind for now, only for both him and Hagrid to be caught short after getting money and whatever that package Hagrid had from the bank.

"Please hold on a moment," Griphook said. "There's still one more piece of business to take care of today."

"We've got a lot of things to pick up," Hagrid challenged.

"And this will cover at least part of your list," the goblin replied. "It's also us delivering a birthday gift for Mister Potter here."

Hagrid fidgeted for a moment before sighing. "Well, alright. Can't keep him from a birthday gift."

Griphook led them to a room where another goblin was waiting with a large box sitting on a table. "Mister Potter, this is Ragnaff."

"Good morning," Harry greeted the goblin.

"Good morning to you as well," Ragnaff said. "Now get over here so we can get this over with." Harry moved over to the table and the goblin continued. "Mister Potter, I want you to know that this is very unusual, but was also one of the most interesting projects I've ever worked on. Ten years ago the nation was approached by Albus Dumbledore, Minerva McGonagall, and Filius Flitwick about creating these for you. They were concerned both about the challenges you'd face in the future and dismayed about how your caretakers would treat you. The three of them proved themselves before spending many hours over five years working with me, a particularly intelligent bypass of our laws on ownership of items like these.

"Though even they don't know the full story behind what I've done to them. Took it as a bit of a challenge, I did, and I dare say that I surpassed myself. Learned quite a bit as well, of course. Now then, open the box up."

Harry nodded slightly before opening the box, revealing what looked to be two matched knives in sheaths. The handles looked to be wrapped in a leather of some kind, with jewels around the pommels surrounded by lots of little carvings. The sheaths themselves were black and looked to be made of a scale-covered material. After a quick look at Ragnaff, Harry picked one of the knives up and carefully removed it from the sheath, revealing a silver blade with 'Potter' seemingly etched in it. The knife even glowed for a moment, before settling down.

"One matched set of combat knives," Ragnaff said. "With every useful enchantment we could put on them and the sheaths. Muggle repelling, ever-sharp, self-cleaning, sure-grip, anti-summoning unless you're the one doing the summoning, and many others. The sheaths themselves also have generic notice-me-nots and can't be removed by anyone other than yourself when you're wearing them. All four are already magically bound to you. There's a manual with instructions and care details included."

"Thank you," Harry said, amazed at the knives.

"I was paid handsomely for my part in creating them, but you're welcome all the same. Now then, even with instructions putting them on can be tricky, so I'll show you that now. No need for you to remain unarmed any longer than necessary."

Harry had worn the knives out of the bank, one on each arm. Ragnaff had even recommended that he wear at least one when bathing 'just in case', alternating which so as to not neglect cleaning under either sheath more than the other. Thanks to the notice-me-not enchantments the two went unnoticed through the rest of his shopping. Hagrid even had to be reminded of them before they attempted to get a more 'standard' set of knives.

A ponce named Malfoy, obviously not noticing the knives, had gone on about how it was 'barbaric' that those living with 'filth' had to have knives while also whining about how his mother wouldn't permit him to bring knives of his own 'to show the filth how it was done'. On top of several other topics, none of which endeared Harry to the git. The boy's comments about Hagrid hadn't helped either.

On the other end of the spectrum, Ollivander had, somehow, picked up on the existence of the knives in their sheaths. He'd been inordinately fascinated with the knives themselves for some reason as well. That was okay, though, as the man had been able to show Harry how to properly store his new wand in one of the slots available in addition to pointing out where some other tools should go based on the shapes of the openings. Apparently he had slots for some material-gathering tools. Ones Ollivander would use for gathering wand-making materials but that Harry would likely find to be more useful for gathering potions ingredients.

It was only after Harry had gotten home and settled in with Hedwig that he remembered the instruction manual for the knives and sheaths. He dug that out of his things and read through it, finding that he was definitely out of his depth when it came to most of the descriptions. But it was a handwritten additional page jammed in the back that caught his attention the most.

Mister Potter,

I believe Dumbledore suspects what I've done to your knives, but he did not ask and I have not confirmed it for him. Thanks to the use of some of your blood, goblin spell-crystals, and taking advantage of a ritual to cleanse an artifact from one of the vaults I was able to make your knives function as wands.

You should endeavor to keep this fact secret, for if your enemies do not know about it then it will serve you best. At the same time, they aren't wands and thanks to not incorporating wood in their construction they shouldn't trigger the infamous trace used to track underage magic.

You can consider this additional feature to be my gift to you, for your birthday and for the trouble you saved the Goblin Nation as a babe. My spouse, on the other hand, has written the instructions for the shrinking and feather-light charms on the backside of this page. They may be useful when you are going to and coming from the train.

-Ragnaff

CmptrWz's Random Snippets

Recent threadmarks

Recent threadmarks

CmptrWz

𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕬𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗

CmptrWz

𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕬𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗

CmptrWz

𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕬𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗

CmptrWz

𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕬𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗

CmptrWz

𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕬𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗

CmptrWz

𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕬𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗

CmptrWz

𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕬𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗

CmptrWz

𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕬𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗

CmptrWz

𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕬𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗

CmptrWz

𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖑𝖑𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝕬𝖚𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖗

Recent threadmarks

Recent threadmarks