Chapter Text
Long Aotian – no, Harry James Potter, gazed sadly at his mother’s still form on the floor. Her body did not move, and her eyes were wide and vacant.
She was a far cry from her usual spirited self. The fire that had burned inside her had died out – she was gone.
Her last words as she defended him from that creature, suffering from what was likely the magical equivalent of qi deviation, still lingered in his ears.
She had been fierce and protective, as befitting a mother and a warrior.
His father had similarly been felled in the hallway, protecting both him and his mother.
They had not gone down without a fight, but the creature in the throes of his deviation would not be swayed by reason or logic, and certainly not emotion. The glee in those red eyes told him that the creature had not a moral bone in its body.
Harry quietly mourned both parents, both warriors in their own right. Let them have the happy and peaceful afterlife that they deserved before moving on to other worlds.
Tears spilled down his face as he mourned for the moments that they would never have in the future, for the infinite possibilities that were now gone. He mourned for loss of two warriors to the world, never being able to do anything in their silence again. He mourned that he would never be able to express how much they meant to him, short though it may have been.
His chest was aching something fierce, not just with the heartache, but from the wound that had been left in the wake of the attack upon their home, decimating their family and home in the process.
His fingers didn’t come away with blood as he touched the wound, but there was something else there that lingered in the wound, a fragmented soul not unlike those demonic cultivators left behind when they escaped from death. It almost always ended with the possession of the body that the soul had been left behind in.
The creature that had attacked them had come after him specifically for some reason, felling his parents in the process.
He didn’t understand why.
It wasn’t like those who suffered mania from qi deviation, where they would attack anyone and anything in sight. No, this had been a premeditated attack. The creature had attacked with a focus. There had been mania in his eyes, yes, but he had clearly had a plan.
He also didn’t understand why he hadn’t gone the same way as his new parents when it had hit him in the chest. Dodge though he did, he hadn’t been able to move that fast. The evidence that it had hit him was clear.
But why wasn’t he dead?
Harry knew that magic wasn’t like qi – the effects it produced were simply a fantasy that those storytellers in his world produced.
As far as Harry could tell, spells channeled magic for wizards, just like qi, only through wands instead of the body. But magic – wonderful, strange magic – produced consistent results. There was no reason why the same spell that had murdered his parents would fail to produce the same results in him.
It was at this moment that he heard the tell-tale sound of apparition, though this was softer.
He heard feet falling, with haste and barely hidden dread, only for it to stop at the doorway.
Harry quietly looked at the intruder, trying to determine if they were going to be a threat. He was barely a toddler right now, and he very much doubted that he would be able to fend off a threat right now, let alone a fully grown adult.
The man was obviously stricken, and he stumbled forward, barely catching himself on the doorway. His hair covered his face, his eyes locked on the still form of Harry’s mother.
Harry had not seen this man before. But he recognized him on sight. It was Sev – his mother talked about him to Harry sometimes, when his father was off with his godfather and friends. She always sounded annoyed but fond, and Harry knew that they would make up from whatever fight they had the next time they met again.
But now, it would never happen.
Sev stumbled forward, collapsing just before his mother.
He reached trembling fingers out, hovering over her still form, but never touching.
The grief was so abject in the man that it all but consumed him.
“Lily—” he gasped, sounding eerily like how one sounded when blood was pouring out of their cut throat, “no—”
Like a dam had broken, Sev surged forward, clutching his mother’s body to him as he wept. The man cradled his mother’s head to his chest. He tilted his head back as tears fell from his eyes, as if he was asking the gods why they were so cruel.
Harry barely withheld a gasp at the abject despair and devastation contained within those eyes. He made a soft, comforting sound as he reached out from behind the bars, wanting to comfort the man in their shared grief. Tears quietly continued to spill down his cheeks. He was still in the crib with its numerous protections. He could not leave.
Harsh gasps tore their way out of Sev’s throat, and onyx eyes that shone with tears locked onto him. Sev stared at him blankly before he shut his eyes, visibly pulling himself together.
Harry made another soft sound, his hand reaching out towards Sev again.
Sev gently placed his mother down and made his way over to Harry’s crib, picking him up with hands that said he was afraid of breaking this fragile creature.
Harry touched Sev’s face, trying to pour as much comfort into his touch as possible. She wanted to make up with you. She misses – missed you.
But baby vocal cords were not able to say those words yet.
Sev choked back a sob.
“Too late – It’s too late—”
Harry made a small, pained sound when Sev pressed up against the wound the creature had given him.
Dark eyes focused on him as Sev checked him over. His eyes lingered on the wound.
Just as he had been about to take a closer look, they heard the thundering up the stairs, as well as the sudden influx of sounds.
Sev hesitated before placing him back into the crib.
Harry clutched his sleeve. It was the height of bad decision-making to just leave a child here to whomever was coming.
Harry made a disagreeing sound, pleading with his eyes. Take me with you, he said.
Sev stared into his eyes, stricken, before turning his head away like not looking at him helped.
“I’ll be back,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
He pried his hand away with firm but gentle hands, taking one last look at his mother, before disapparting.
What happened next was a whirlwind of his godfather and a rather large human arguing before coming to a compromise and them riding away into the night sky on some metal contraption that he likened to a wagon or carriage.
Harry was then left on the doorstep of some home in the middle of winter, in a basket of all things.
Did they not at least have the sense to knock on the door before they abandoned him there?
He couldn’t even describe the sheer rage and utter disbelief he felt at these adults when he finally realized what was happening.
They ought to be counting their blessings that Harry had a little resistance to the cold after he entered the first stage of qi refining (or he would have died), because if that had happened Harry knew some demonic techniques that allowed one to exact one’s vengeance before they passed on.
He was a righteous cultivator, yes, but the sheer anger he would’ve felt at dying in such a stupid manner would surely have allowed him to descend to the demonic path before he let himself pass on.
Not from that creature suffering from magic deviation that had literally murdered his parents before trying to do the same with him, but from the cold. The sheer audacity rankled something fierce.
At least the woman that came with the large man had argued with him about leaving him on the doorstep with ‘those sort,’ whatever that meant, but she had conceded in the end!
Did no one have any sense around here?
Or was it that this world’s common sense ran parallel to his?
And his godfather. Was he even thinking at all? How could he just allow him to be placed on a doorstep? Did being a godfather in this world not come with the responsibilities as well?
Then, of course, it only got worse when he was woken by the owner of the house shouting at him like this was somehow his fault. The letter that came in the basket with him helped clear some things up.
And brought some new questions to light.
Why were they leaving him with his mother’s estranged sister when he clearly had godparents?
He was then promptly taken to an orphanage. Of course, that was the logical thing to do when you found a child on your doorstep in the morning that you weren’t capable of caring for. Even if his godfather couldn’t take him in, surely, they should have just taken him to the orphanage in the first place without that one extra step in the middle?
Harry couldn’t comprehend how these mortals were doing their decision-making. He lacked key information and knowledge about this world.
But Harry settled down in the orphanage. As the days passed, it became clear that no one would be coming for him.
Not his godfather, not his parent’s friends, not the large man who left him on the doorstep in the first place, not the woman who had come along, and especially not Sev, who had said he would be back to check on him.
It was if he had never existed at all.
It’d been at least six years by now, and not a single one came to check in on him, or even see whether he was still alive after leaving him in a basket on someone’s doorstep in winter (clearly, he wasn’t quite as over it as he thought).
Harry sped up his cultivation in light of these events. Since clearly none of the adults around him were trustworthy, he would have to take a look for himself after he was able to protect himself.
It was hard. Qi – or in this case, magic, was scarcer around here. And none of those around him seemed to have any inkling that magic existed in the first place.
There were no spirit plants around, nor was there qi in this world as far as he could tell, which ruled out shortening his cultivation process, but no matter.
Long Aotian, now Harry Potter in this life, had not achieved everything he had in his last life without putting in hard work.
Determined green eyes slowly opened as he exhaled a mouth of turbid air.
He’d finally broken through to the foundation stage.
Now he could finally get some information.