In My Perfect World
By: JA_Japster
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is copyrighted to JK Rowling. "In My Perfect World" is the product of JA_Japster and should not be reproduced in any shape or form without my prior consent.
Chapter One
That Magical Hour
The small bedroom on the second floor of number four Privet Drive was messier than usual when it was occupied by its sole inhabitant once a year. The entire room was in a state of general unkemptness. Wrinkled robes and shirts lay scattered across the ground, mingling with a host of quills, ink jars, books, used parchments, and other apparatus common to that of a young wizard in training. A trunk rested ajar in a forgotten corner from where the mayhem spilled unchecked, progressively covering the carpet from view with each passing day.
At the center of this mess was a raven haired young man who sat on the room's only bed, his head resting against the window that revealed the desolate gray world beyond its rain streaked pain of glass. A bolt of lightening forked across the dark sky, and the accompanying rumble of thunder caused the young man to stir. Groggily, Harry Potter awoke.
With a soft groan Harry rubbed the sleep from his eyes and slipped his glasses on. It was still raining, but that came to no surprise. It had been raining for the last two days now without pause, an oddity considering that the weatherman had predicted a heat wave during the week. Slowly, as to not upset the numerous parcels and newspaper clippings that were on the bed beside him, he swung his legs over the side and yawned. Despite his caution, though, one newspaper article from the Daily Prophet fell on the ground. Harry stooped down to pick it up, and as he did, his eyes landed on the now familiar headlines. The article read:
INFERI ATTACK KILLS 75 MUGGLES
Yesterday evening at approximately midnight, Inferi summoned by suspected dark wizards allied with You-Know-Who, attacked the muggle Parliament, breeching security and killing numerous guards. The muggle Prime Minister was safely evacuated by muggle soldiers who were overrun by the estimated fifty Inferi and killed. The massacre was only brought to an abrupt end by the sudden appearance of members of Fourth Hunt and Suppression of Magical Anomalies who proceeded to destroy the remaining Inferi before Ministry Officials could perform memory charms on the surrounding populace.
Ministry officials have declined to comment on this recent attack.
Inferi, resurrected corpses of the dead, were last seen during You-Know-Who's last reign of terror, and appearances of the reanimated dark creatures have been reported frequently over the past week. If an Iferi is sighted in your residence, do not attempt to engage it. Remove your family to safety, and please contact Ministry Officials immediately.
Harry put down the Daily Prophet clipping, a grim look on his face. He heard snatches of some sort of attack on Parliament on the television, and according to the news reporters no one knew for sure the true nature of the attack. Terrorists were the majority decision at the moment, though Harry had read about scientists in tabloids speculating at government conspiracies involving illegal experimentation in germ warfare. Despite that, Harry had all along suspected the latest batch of muggle killings were the handiwork of the Death Eaters. The tell tale signs of dark magic weren't exactly hard to identify.
Ever since the attack, a state of emergency had been declared throughout London, and the Dursleys had taken up government officials urge to remain secured indoors with enthusiasm. The fact that the Dursleys had invited him to share their private sanctuary hardly came as a surprise to Harry. After all, the reason they secluded themselves deep under the earth did not derive solely from the fears of another attack on London. Enough armed policeman and soldiers patrolled the streets outside of Privet Drive ever day in case of another repeated disaster. No, the Dursleys hid not only from the dangers of the outside of the world, but also from him.
They were afraid of him.
In the end, their years of oppressing and mistreating Harry had amounted to naught. All the years of subjecting him to the cruel visits of Uncle Vernon's sister, Aunt Marge, and locking him under the stairs with hardly a single possession to call his own could not stop the inevitable. Harry was now seventeen years old; he had finally come of age. He looked at the alarm clock on his bedside table. It read 12:55.
He had been seventeen for almost an hour now.
It was strange. He somehow expected something a bit more dramatic at the strike of twelve, that magical hour of transformation, but only the silence of the night was there to greet his entrance in to manhood. Before falling asleep against the window, Harry had spent quite some time thinking, gazing out the window into the pouring night sky, completely at a lost to what to do with this new world of opportunity. Nothing came readily.
A host of a dozen different dirty tricks he could play against the Durlseys sprung to mind, but then with surprising hast faded away. Such childish immaturity, the kind of juvenile vindictiveness he had craved for years, suddenly seemed beneath him. All the resentment and anger towards his Aunt and Uncle, the only real family he had, no longer seemed so important. In that moment, sitting on his bed surrounded by parcels and letters from his friends wishing him Happy Birthday, somewhere in his heart he found the room to forgive them.
It was Dumbledore's fault of course. It was amazing that even on the other side of death's door the wizened former Headmaster of Hogwarts could affect him so deeply. A spiteful prank against the Dursleys would be the kind of thing that would make Dumbledore frown, and disappointing his memory was something Harry could not bear to do. The old wizard was an exhibition of mercy and forgiveness. It was something that ended up killing him, but Harry had trouble believing that Dumbledore felt any remorse for his choice. To him, everyone deserved a second chance. Dumbledore died trying to help Harry shoulder the enormous burden of fighting Voldemort. It was the least Harry could do to adopt some of Dumbledore's forgiving attitude.
Not that he minded the solitude or anything. In fact, Harry welcomed silence any day over any conversation the Dursleys might have to offer. With a weary sigh born more of pensiveness than any real fatigue, Harry glanced at the pile of books and parchments that lay on his bedroom floor. Most of the books were from Hermione's private collection, a fact that explained their alarmingly thick and complex nature. It had taken the better part of the week to just gloss over the first few chapters, but judging from some of the choice comments Hermione had included, they should tell him everything he needed to know about Hororcruxes.
He had a promise to keep, a destiny to reach, a prophecy to fulfill. He was Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived.
So far, however, his search had revealed nothing that he did not already know from what Dumbledore had taught him. They were objects that a spell caster would use to anchor their soul in the mortal realm, preserving it from destruction if their physical form were to ever sustain fatal damage. Voldemort had used them to cheat death when the killing curse meant for Harry rebounded, allowing him the chance he needed to resurrect his body. The only way to ever kill Voldemort would be to first destroy his Hororcruxes.
Of course had to find the damn things first.
Harry picked up one of the tomes he had been reading when he had fallen asleep. While Dumbledore had proven adept at locating and destroying the sources of Voldemort's immortality, not for the first time Harry wondered if he was hopelessly out of his league. Dumbledore had been the greatest wizard of all time, the only man Voldemort feared, and even he had made mistakes during his search, mistakes that ultimately cost him his life. If as powerful of a wizard as Dumbledore could fail…what chance did Harry have?
Another sigh escaped his lips. The depressing morbid thoughts concerning his chance with a Hororcrux, however, was still contingent on him actually learning where one was. Even after a week he had no clues to the Hororcruxes whereabouts aside from the ones he had gathered from Dumbledore the year prior. For all he knew, one of them could be sitting right under his nose and he would never be able to tell the difference.
He looked out the window at the torrential rain, and glumly thought how perfectly nature reflected his mood. Even the joy of becoming seventeen was eclipsed by the overwhelming responsibility he had inherited when Dumbledore died. The numerous presents he received from his friends helped alleviate his mood slightly, and perhaps the only object that managed to make him smile came in the form of a letter from Ron Weasley inviting him to spend the rest of the summer with his family at the Burrow. The prospect of finally leaving the Dursleys home for good sent his spirits soaring, and almost made him forget about his troubles for a second.
Almost…
While turning seventeen years old had brought him some happiness, Harry was not so foolish to think that its benefits did not come with consequences attached. He remembered all too clearly Dumbledore's warning to the Dursleys last year. The moment Harry came of age he would lose the protection that his mother had purchased in blood the night she was murdered. While nothing had physically changed to the house, the knowledge that Voldemort could now walk through the front door at any moment left Harry feeling very vulnerable.
The letter Ron had sent him had only specified the day for pickup, Harry's birthday, but not a time. Nonetheless, Harry decided it was probably time to pack anyway just in case of the outside chance they would show up at one in the morning. With a few flicks of his wand, all of Harry's items leaped up and soared into his trunk. He watched as a pair of socks fought their way past a packet of Owl Treats, and then with a sort of victorious wiggle, flopped down. When the rest of his possessions had finished packing themselves, Harry closed the trunk and magically locked it.
Time past. Ten minutes, then a half hour. Harry vaguely entertained the idea of unpacking his trunk and repacking it just to occupy himself, but dismissed it. Twenty minutes later, just when he was re-entraining the thought, a blindingly bright bolt of lightning illuminated the dark sky, and a deafening rumble of thunder shook the house.
The lights died and the shrill crescendo of a blaring alarm shattered the stillness of night. Somewhere in the distance a cat hissed its disproval.
Involuntarily, Harry's grip tightened on his wand. Could this be an attack?
"Quite an entrance there, Hits." A voice said in the darkness. "Think you could do it next time without frying the power grid?" It was coming from downstairs. Harry froze. He did not recognize the voice, but if they were Death Eaters it seemed unlikely that they would be introducing themselves with such fanfare.
"You try next time," sneered a different voice. A loud bang echoed throughout the house as, from the sounds of it, something fell over and broke. Someone cursed loudly, which invited a torrent of scathing rebukes from two other voices, neither of which Harry could identify.
"So much for stealth," Someone muttered.
"So much for proficiency," Said the first voice again.
"I didn't know muggle doors were made so flimsily!" Argued the second.
"What did you do?" A new voice entered the fray, and Harry's eyes widened when he realized he finally knew the speaker. He relaxed, and calmly walked out of his room and onto the landing that lead downstairs.
"I said quietly!" The voice continued. There was a hint of tired resignation in it, not unlike a teacher rebuking an incorrigible student. "And what did you do his Aunt and Uncle? I'm surprised you didn't kill them."
"Look, I'm sorry!"
"You're damn right you are."
Harry arrived at the top of the stairs, and a grin crept across his lips at the strange sight that greeted him. Standing in the middle of the living room, dripping wet from the rain, stood four figures clad in formless black robes. Their faces were hidden behind white masks, but even Harry could not have mistaken them for Death Eaters. Far from looking fearsome or intimidating, the masks looked undeniably cute painted with animal faces, ranging from bunnies to kittens. He stifled a laugh, which came out more like a snort. Immediately the group turned to face him.
"Hello, Harry," a man with brown hair speckled with traces of gray pushed his way through the group of masked figures, and Harry found himself looking at the smiling, but exhausted, features of Remus Lupin. Harry smiled back.
"Hello Professor."
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Author's Notes:
Sorry for the slow updates. Just started school this week, and between classes and homework, I've also had to compete with a computer that keeps crapping out on me. First my mouse decides to randomly freak out and start deleting my file (it now rests in pieces from a beating with a kendo stick…stupid piece of junk) and then my computer decides to stop booting up. So after reformatting my computer twice and replacing my fried motherboard, I finally was able to sit down and write. This chapter only took three drafts (each was around 2000 words before I decided to scrap them) as opposed to the usual four or five I need to write before I'm satisfied, and it's probably a good thing to since my fingers are beginning to hurt.
Questions, complaints, comments? If you've read down this far, please stop for a second and write a quick review. Thanks!