Chapter Text
Being Harry Potter
(Whether She Likes It or Not)
Chapter One: Oh, Come On!
She remembered being tired and having a headache.
For good reason.
She was taking a full class load at college, as well as working as a caregiver at a memory care facility - and she wasn’t as young as she used to be.
Having to ride the bus across town after class - which could take anywhere from an hour to more than two depending on how well she timed her transfers or if she missed a bus and had to wait for the next one - only added to the bone-deep weariness that came over her some days.
So though she liked to avoid it because it could make her motionsick at times, she closed her eyes and rested her head against the fogged-over glass of the transit’s window.
And that was all she remembered, until she woke up in a different place altogether.
[Welcome, Host, to the System!]
Along with the soft blue rectangular screen that popped up in the blackness before where she found herself hunched in like the most annoying ad ever, a bubbly female voice seemed to read out the screen's message.
She couldn’t see anything beyond the darkness, it was nearly complete.
But she could feel that she wasn’t on the bus any longer, and that her body was hunched and packed into wherever - whenever - she was.
[Because of your experience in twisting fate combined with your reputation for creativity as well as kindness, you’ve been given the newest version of the System to help you adjust to your new life! In return, you will help with keeping Harry Potter Splinter Universe 52669936 from creating additional divergent worlds!]
She didn’t know whether to be appalled - she was going to have to do this shit all over again? Or feel cheated. Where was the promise of rest for fuck’s sake! (The grief that threatened to overwhelm her, the resentment for not being allowed to rest - she shoved those aside. They wouldn’t help her now.)
The system ignored her choking coughs of surprise. And just kept going.
[Please help create your preferred life! ヾ(＠^∇^＠)ノ ]
Then before she could do anything, a screen popped up to display what looked like a character page for DnD.
Only parts of it were already filled in - the Name most significantly.
Name: [Henry “Harry” James Potter]
Age: [8 years, 6 months, 17 days, 8 hours, 13 minutes]
Gender: [Male]
She didn’t realize it, but in that moment - where she realized just how fucked over she’d been - but she screamed and passed out.
Or whatever approximation of ‘passing out’ she could manage when she wasn’t fully awake or aware or really even alive yet.
She - and she was very much a fucking she - had been transmigrated. Into a boy. And not only that, but some A/U version of the Boy-Who-Fucking- Lived.
The irony was not lost on her.
An annoying chiming eventually roused her from her stupor or fugue or whatever one called it when one wasn’t quite alive yet due to having apparently died from an unknown cause - though she had a System, maybe it might know and be able to tell her? - but also not quite integrated into the, ah, empty shell that the System needed filled to keep a universe from spiraling into chaos and making additional splinter universes.
Maybe.
If she understood the problem correctly.
(Fuck if she knew. Her fanfiction specialty was alternate universes and crossovers, but the main System fic that she remembered was Scum Villain. And she’d never actually read many of those fics or the original material because whoo boy, did she have problems with a lot of the themes.)
She didn’t know how much time passed before she snapped out of it.
It could’ve been seconds or eons with how unrelenting the darkness was and no clock to check.
But eventually her sense of fuck it, this might as well happen, kicked in and she focused back on the glowing blue screen-like System and its information, actually managing to get beyond the fact that she’d be possessing - for all intents and purposes - the body of an eight year old Harry Potter.
Name: [Henry “Harry” James Potter]
Age: [8 years, 6 months, 17 days, 8 hours, 13 minutes]
Gender: [Male]
STR : 0 (+)
DEX : [16] (+)
CON : [18] (+)
INT : 0 (+)
WIS : 0 (+)
CHA : 0 (+)
Please drag and drop the following numbers: 12, 13, 14, 15
Okay.
So.
From putting her finger - soul-finger? Mind-finger? Physical-finger? Who knew? (Not her.) - over the various bits and pieces, she discovered that anything in italic script she couldn’t “grab” or move. Those were frozen and inviolate.
Damn it.
Which meant she had to deal with being a woman shoved into a prepubescent boy’s body instead of Rule 63-ing it.
Fuck.
There was also no altering his age or name.
Her age or name.
(What. Just… What.)
And given the baked-in character traits of the original Harry Potter, or however closely this a/u splinter version kept to the OG, she wasn’t all that surprised that his - her, fuck - stats for Dexterity and Constitution were the highest and she couldn’t change them out to use in Intelligence or Wisdom.
Harry Potter was an abused kid who avoided beatings by outrunning his cousin and his band of thugs.
He survived shit that should have killed him, even if just going off of the canon neglect and bullying.
His highest stats being Dexterity and Constitution made sense for a scrawny, scrappy one-step-from-street-kid.
She wasn’t that familiar with D&D, she’d never got into it, but she thought that based on a D20 die, then ten or eleven was the baseline average human.
Which meant either Harry was benefiting from a protagonist buff in some aspects, or she was getting a benefit as a transmigrator.
Either way, she wasn’t going to question it lest the System decide to nuke her stats and make her scrape for trait points (hey, she may not have played D&D but she was no stranger to video games: it could happen.)
Dragging and dropping the available points, she tilted her head a little as the System locked them in and then applied buffs. Honestly, at this point she was just glad that she got at least a little say, because otherwise she had a feeling that Intelligence would get the lowest number left given Harry’s jock-like build in the OG material.
Weird.
Cool.
But weird.
STR : [12] (+1)
DEX : [16] (+3)
CON : [18] (+4)
INT : [15] (+2)
WIS : [14] (+2)
CHA : [13] (+1)
She’d always valued her mind and ability for insight, so she wasn’t about to make Intelligence and Wisdom her weakest traits. Plus she knew that Strength was probably the easiest ability for her to build on, given that she was going to be dumped into the body of an athletic boy. And while she’d always been able to spin a story, she’d never been a great liar, so making Charisma a bit on the weaker side was fine, even if Harry traditionally had a bit of a golden boy gift for gaining a following.
This was going to be her life now, and she was going to have to live it.
With that decided, she hit the [Next] button that locked in her new ability stats for her baseline Harry Potter build.
(What the fuck even was her life now?)
Across the “screen” that was her field of vision, two new attributes scrolled, both with the same “locked-in” script as Harry’s stats. But ones that didn’t make sense for belonging to Harry - or at least, not entirely. Buffs from her own life carrying over, maybe?
Perception (+4); Stealth (+2)
She’d survived a lot of shit both as a child and as an adult - and even when she wasn’t using it to keep herself safe, making others do a jump-scare because of how quietly she moved never really got old - but given that she’d, you know died, she wasn’t surprised that she wasn’t getting a buff on Survival.
Damn it.
As Harry Potter, there wasn’t much that would come in more handy than a Survival buff, for fuck’s sake.
The two skill-buffs faded out, ushering in the next line of locked-in text, which made her sort and roll her potentially-non existent eyes:
Race: <Magical Being>, Empathy (+5), Deception (+2)
Yeah, based on Harry Potter’s everything, and the wizarding world in general - that checks out.
Though she was curious that HP’s race was a ‘magical being’ and not specifically a wizard or human.
Maybe it was the gender-issue or the transmigration fucking things up?
Impossible to really know unless the System was willing to answer questions once they got to a resting point in this whole character-modification/creation montage, but she did kinda wanna know.
Hitting the [Next] button again, she saw another selection screen come up, but that one of the two “special abilities” that she saw she was allowed to choose had already been locked-in, as well as a “feat” being granted, even as the chirpy female-toned voice of the System prompted her to choose skills for the three empty skill slots.
Special Abilities: [Parselmouth], [One Skill Slot Remaining]
Feats: <Prophecy Child>, [Two Skill Slots Remaining]
But…honestly.
What the fuck was she even supposed to choose? And how? Her video-game knowledge had not prepared her for this, anymore than her fandom knowledge had.
“Um…System? Is there any way you can tell me what options there are for skills?” She decided to ask, since the two lines of text just kept hovering there, waiting for her to make a decision.
[This System cannot. Transmigrator 1397250 must make their own choices without This System interfering.]
She resolutely ignored the implication that number-tag for herself meant, both in a dehumanizing fashion - what the hell, they could snaffle up her fucking soul and shove in somewhere else, but they couldn’t use her name? - and in how often some strange power-that-be messed around with people’s souls as well.
Though it wasn’t as bad as it could be.
It wasn’t Chuck.
Ok, then.
Skills, skills.
What did she know about video game logic, or transmigration stories, or manga/danmei and skills?
Well, she knew if you chose wrong at the beginning with creating your character and choosing their stats and skills that you could completely nerf yourself later on once enemies and/or situations got more difficult and complex.
So there was that with a heady dose of anxiety to go with it.
But these were special skills too, not just the regular or default skills that came with a Class choice or how ability stats were distributed.
She also noticed that she hadn’t been allowed to choose a class yet.
Maybe because of Harry’s age?
Since class was similar to profession and he was basically a blank slate at this point.
Anyway. She knew from the other text blocks that’d gone by that she (as Harry, or whatever) already had skills in Deception, Empathy, and Parseltongue.
“System?” She tried again. “Can you tell me if a skill is viable before locking it into my build?”
There was a long pause, almost as if the System was checking with management (ah, and there was her time in retail showing, like the Millennial she was) then at last came a confirmation:
[That is within This System’s parameters.]
Alright, that was actually helpful, so if she was stuck with a System, at least it wasn’t a punitive one - thus far.
And given that this was a Harry Potter universe that the Powers-that-Be had tossed her into like so much plot-armor, she knew exactly what she wanted to start with:
“System, can you make me immune to controlling spells and potions? Like the Imperious Curse?”
There was another long pause, then the System offered:
[This System’s skill catalog has available: <Hard Head, Harder Will> <<Passive Ability>> which would make User impervious to all artificial magical methods of control.]
“That.” She agreed immediately, jumping on the option even as the skill’s name made her want to laugh at the video-gameness of it all. That was very in tune with the sort of thing she would’ve seen available when playing Guild Wars back in the day. She clicked on the skill description and dropped it next to the Prophecy Child feat, thinking that it was more aligned to protagonist-halo type nonsense than something like Parsel. “I want that.”
Call her paranoid, but without knowing what kind of Harry Potter a/u she was getting into - other than it was one that ended up with Harry dead before he ever received his Letter - she wanted to avoid any nasty compulsion charms or influencing potions or whatever fuckery ethically bankrupt magical people might come up with.
And she thought it might make her immune to love potions as well with how the System described it, which - bonus!
If it didn’t, like all skills she could maybe train and rank it up until it could offer her that kind of protection, which was a benefit she wasn’t about to overlook given that how casually love potions were treated in Harry Potter was the sort of thing her nightmares were made of.
Okay, what else?
Well, she was going to be effectively stepping into the role of Harry Potter, so other than the issue with the Imperious Curse and associated spells and potions, what other issues might she run into because she was, well, her and not actually Harry Potter.
Which.
Wait.
She was remembering something about Scum Villain and it’s System issues….
“System, is there an Out-of-Character skill option?”
Because she did not want to have to act like a doormat to the Dursleys, or like an adoring fanboy towards Dumbledore, or what-have-you, if at all possible.
The System made a kind of sad, bum-bum-bahhh noise that wasn’t heartening.
[Out-of-Character is a special ability only available via points purchase for completing Quests and Side-Quests from the System Store, User. This System is sorry.]
Fuck.
That meant that potentially everytime she wanted to act out of character for Harry Potter at his current development or OG character, she’d have to either find a way to justify it to the System as in character from a certain perspective or take a punishment - if she was allowed to do it at all.
“System, is there an improved luck skill?” She asked, trying to think of ways around the out-of-character blockade. If she played her cards right, and used her luck wisely, then she might manage to avoid the majority of out-of-character moments while she was building her points.
That was the plan, anyway, though whether it would actually work remained to be seen.
[Luck Skills available for User Selection: <Happy Go Lucky> <<Passive Ability>> 0.5% increased average good luck; <Fortuna’s Touch> <<Passive Ability>> 2% increased average good luck with 50% odds on passing good luck to others rather than it affecting the User; <Felix Felicis In Your Veins> <<Active Ability>> 10% increased good luck for 10 minute duration, 10 day cool down; <What is Life without a Little Risk?> <<Active Ability>> 50% increased luck for 5 hours, with 50/50 odds on whether good or bad, 15 day cool down.]
She narrowed her eyes, studying all the options with care. They all had their positives and negatives. Mainly that the “better” initial luck skills came with a potential backlash whether in passing it to someone else - and that someone else wasn’t guaranteed to be benign let alone friendly - or actual streak of bad luck.
She hovered her hand over one of them to double check something, then nodded. The usefulness increased with leveling them across the board, and eventually the negatives could become less severe along with having the cool-downs reduced. But it was still a risk whichever she chose, if she went with the risk-reward options over the more benign but less powerful ones.
But she had one thing on her side: magic.
As Harry Potter, a lot of issues could probably be avoided without fancy skills or abilities.
Though before she made her decision, there was one skill that she could really fucking use to help her beat the odds on surviving as Harry Potter.
And it was one that she knew of no way to replicate with magic.
“System, is there a copy-cat skill? One where I would only have to see a spell performed once and be able to repeat it?”
Alright, it was a massive cheat if so.
And ripping off another franchise aside.
But it would make her life so much easier if she had to play Harry Potter if she could just watch upperclassmen or teachers or even Mrs. Weasley perform a spell in front of her and then be able to replicate it.
[<Sharingan> is only available to Hosts in the Naruto splinter universes, User.]
The System sounded both amused and apologetic, even as it crushed her Kakashi of the Thousand Jutsu dreams.
Party Pooper.
[However, <Eidetic Memory> <<Passive Skill>> and <Kinesthetic Specialist> <<Passive Skill>> are both available for User from the Skill Catalog.]
Well fuck.
If she went with both of those, she’d basically be replicating Tom Riddle’s ability to learn, but…
She knew the downsides to having an eidetic memory, and they were a nightmare. Literally. Never being able to forget things you see or read sounds awesome - until you’re reliving your worst moments over and over and over again without respite and can’t shut your brain off.
No thanks.
She’d take being plain old smart instead.
Making a decision, she grabbed <Felix Felicis in Your Veins> and dropped it next to her <Hard Head, Harder Will> ability under Prophecy Child, and then snagged <Kinesthetic Specialist> over to her special abilities section.
Staring at that build for a long moment, she cataloged what she’d be looking at with those skills added to her stats. She thought they lined up pretty well with what she already had going. Improved luck and learning by doing would both align with her buffed Dexterity. She thought choosing a learning-based skill would also probably improve both Wisdom and Intelligence as better luck improved her potential for survival under Wisdom as well. Not being able to be magically controlled was probably aligned with Constitution so no buff towards skills there. But it could also have a potential effect on Charisma given that she might be able to intimidate others if someone figures out she has immunity to an entire class of spells and potions.
Or maybe not and this was just a whole-ass fever dream.
Either way, she liked the way her skills looked, and Parsel was definitely aligned under Animal Handling, so she was ready to call it good and jabbed the [Next] button.
Only instead of moving her on to the next segment of character creation, instead there was a chirpy little parade trill that sounded out (and filled her with suspicion) then the System announced:
[Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Good news must be said three times! Secret Quest Complete! Secret Quest: Understanding the Assignment has been successfully completed by User!]
[User has successfully chosen role-aligned Special Skills and has completed the Secret Quest: Understanding the Assignment.]
[Completion Awards:
Feat: <Boy-Who-Lived>, Skill Awarded: <Golden Boy> <<Passive Skill>>, Skill Awarded: <Love ‘Em Or Hate ‘Em> <<Passive Skill>>
Completion Points: +500
+2 Stat Points]
Okkayyy then.
So that happened.
She was still waiting for an explanation regarding the points system and how the System Store worked, but she’d take the extra skills and the stat points - even if that <Love ‘Em Or Hate ‘Em> skill reminded her of how polarizing Harry Potter was in his setting.
But it wasn’t Love to Hate Him at least, so there was that.
And she’d imagine that <Golden Boy> skill made it so she’d be able to get away with more crap or benefit from HP’s fame and “golden” reputation.
It could always be worse, and hopefully (crossing her non-corporeal fingers) her System had a Help Menu or a guide or something that’d tell her about the skills in more detail.
For the moment however, she had to allocate those awarded stat points, and figured she might as well drop them both into her two lowest stats, as then if she understood the underlying mechanics properly, she’d get an extra buff-point each for advancing them.
And after she did so and hit [Next] she was pleased to see that she was getting the hang of it - sorta, she was off by one, so she only got a two-point buff to Charisma instead of two to each to Charisma and Strength, but it was better than nothing - as the System showed her new Stats line up before moving on:
STR : [13] (+1)
DEX : [16] (+3)
CON : [18] (+4)
INT : [15] (+2)
WIS : [14] (+2)
CHA : [14] (+2)
After letting her view her new Stats, the System moved on, flashing more information up for her that was locked-in:
Background: Halfblood, Muggle-Raised
Yup, no surprises there, though it did tell her that she wasn’t dealing with an alternate universe where Harry actually had different parents - probably - or was a secret pureblood or muggleborn erased to “fill in” for a dead Harry Potter or whatever.
Then everything went black once more.
[The System was successfully activated! Role bound: The Boy-Who-Lived, Harry Potter. Starting C-points: 600!]