When Young Harry finally woke up from the deep, dreamless sleep his older self had induced, with whatever he had done, his first sensation was one of terrifying lightness, one he didn't ever think he'd ever felt before.
It was as if a heavy, rusted iron weight, one he had carried for fourteen years without ever realizing it was a part of him, had been excised from his body and soul. The constant buzzing in the back of his mind, that hum that always seemed to cloud his thoughts when he was angry or tired, was simply gone.
For the first time in his life, his head felt silent. Everything seemed sharper, the colors of the room were like they were no longer muted by a film of grime, the air itself tasted crisper, and his magic felt like a pool of clear water.
He didn't know the mechanics of how the man from the other world had reached into his spirit to untangle the messy knots of his life, but the difference was night and day. He felt like a prisoner who had finally been told the cell door was never locked. He felt... free.
He swung his legs out of bed and made his way downstairs, where the muffled sounds of a truly explosive argument reached his ears.
Ron was the first to see him, leaning against the banister with a look of pale shock. "You're finally awake," Ron whispered, his voice trembling slightly.
"How long was I out?" he asked his friend. "Not long, mum told us to put you on your bed just in case you didn't wake up, but luckily you did. Ron said, smiling, his friend was fine, and he was happy. Then he frowned slightly.
"Dumbledore's back. He showed up a while after your... uh, the other you left to 'get some air.' Hermione and Tonks followed him out, but the Headmaster came back looking like he'd just been struck by a runaway Knight Bus."
Harry walked into the kitchen, and the sheer volume of the shouting hit him like a physical blow. Sirius Black was standing in the center of the room, his face a mask of primal, unfiltered fury. He wasn't just yelling, the man was roaring at Albus Dumbledore with everything he had, who stood near the hearth, looking more rattled and physically diminished than Harry had ever seen him.
Molly Weasley seemed to jump in once in a while between Sirius's yells to add her own bits, her usual motherly warmth replaced by a fierce, protective fire that made her seem ten feet tall.
Arthur stood firmly behind her, his expression unusually grim, his hand resting on her shoulder in a rare show of shared, cold anger.
Even Professor McGonagall, who usually upheld the Headmaster's authority with ironclad composure, was standing to the side, her lips pressed into a thin, white line. She was delivering sharp, biting jabs about "reckless endangerment," "withholding critical information," and "foolish plans" that were clearly cutting through Dumbledore's defenses.
But despite all that, Dumbledore didn't look repentant at all.
"Sirius, you must listen to reason!" Dumbledore's voice was strained, still trying to maintain that calm, grandfatherly cadence that was now falling on deaf ears. "Now that we have confirmed the existence and nature of the soul fragments, we must mobilize the Order immediately! We have to hunt them down before the Dark Lord realizes his anchors are compromised. Every second we waste in this bickering is a second he has to move them, to hide them even deeper!"
And then, the Headmaster had the absolute gall, the sheer, unmitigated audacity to look directly at Harry, who had just entered the room.
"Harry, my boy," Dumbledore said, his voice dripping with a sorrow that felt increasingly hollow to the boy's newly cleared mind, "I am truly sorry for what I must ask. I am. But we must be brave for the Greater Good. Sacrificing the piece of him that lives within you... It is the only way for Lord Voldemort to be truly defeated. It is the only way for the wizarding world to have a future."
Those were not the right words to say. They were, in fact, the worst words possible in his current position.
The air in the kitchen seemed to freeze. Sirius didn't even yell this time. He moved with the speed of a man who one wouldn't be able to guess had spent over a decade in prison. He stepped forward and sucker-punched Albus Dumbledore square in the face.
Sirius black Sucker Punched Albus '100 names' Dumbledore.
The sound of the impact echoed like a thunderclap, as people stared in disbelief.
The entire house went silent. Dumbledore stumbled backward, his half-moon spectacles knocked askew, his long silver beard fluttering dramatically as he hit the floor with a heavy thump.
He sat there on the cold tiles, blinking up at Sirius with the expression of a man who had just realized for the first time in a century that consequences could, in fact, reach him through his reputation.
"How dare you?" Sirius growled out.
That was when the chaos truly erupted. The Order members began shouting over one another, some trying to pull Sirius back, others just staring in frozen shock.
The kids sat to one side, watching the spectacle with wide eyes. Fred and George were already whispering about taking bets on a second round, while Ron looked like Christmas, his birthday, and a Chudley Cannons victory had all arrived at once.
The tension was broken when the front door slammed open. Hermione and Tonks walked in, and they looked like they had been through a spiritual blender.
Their faces were making the strangest, most bewildered expressions. Tonks' hair was cycling through a chaotic disco-light sequence of neon green, hot pink, and electric blue. Hermione looked like she had mentally checked out of reality, spiritually filed for early retirement, and was currently waiting for the universe to reboot.
"You're back! What happened?" Ginny asked, standing up. "Where's the other Harry? Did he get the air he wanted?"
The two girls opened their mouths, then closed them. They looked at each other in a long, silent conversation of 'how do we even begin to explain this?' Finally, Tonks gave a sharp nod to Hermione—the 'you go ahead' nod.
"All of them," Hermione blurted out, her voice flat and completely exhausted. "Every single one of the soul things... they've been destroyed."
The kitchen went so quiet you could hear the dust motes hitting the floor.
"What?" Dumbledore asked from his position on the floor, his face looking like a fish gasping for water. "Mrs Granger, that's impossible. Gringotts, the Malfoy Manor, those are —"
"He destroyed them all," Hermione whispered, moving past the Headmaster in an unhermione move, without a second glance. She flopped onto the couch beside Harry, looking utterly drained. "He destroyed them all, we saw."
"Are you telling me," Ron asked, his voice cracking with a mixture of awe and terror, "that Harry, the other Harry, just went out for a stroll and dismantled the Dark Lord's entire life insurance policy in an afternoon?"
"Yep," Tonks confirmed, leaning heavily against the doorframe. "And Gringotts? He just walked in. The goblins practically welcomed him with open arms. He went to the vault, burned the soul, and walked out. Then went and destroyed all the others, well, not all. He dropped us back before going to the last one."
"Where is he?" Remus asked seriously, having a sinking feeling.
"he said he was going to Malfoy Manor to kill both the snake and the dark lord," she told them, making them gasp.
As the adults began to sputter in disbelief, Kingsley Shacklebolt's Patronus, a shimmering silver lynx, burst into the room. Its voice was urgent.
"The Dark Lord and his Inner Circle have appeared in the middle of Diagon Alley," Kingsley's voice echoed. "They are under attack. By... by a group of children? We need reinforcements immediately, though I'm not sure who we're supposed to be helping!"
Nobody understood what that meant. Children? Fighting Voldemort?
Harry stood up, his heart pounding against his ribs. He was going to fight. He wouldn't run from the man who murdered his parents, not when the monster was finally out in the open.
But the adults immediately blocked the exit, saying that the kids were not going, sparking another fierce argument. Why couldn't they go? If Voldemort was out there, people were dying! Then there needed to be there right now.
They were wasting time here, while Voldemort was probably out there killing people, no, not probably, definitely.
Harry needed to fight, he needed to be there to defeat the man, the monster who killed his parents and Cedric.
They continued arguing, wasting precious time.
But the argument died in an instant.
The front door opened again. Older Harry strolled in, looking entirely too relaxed for someone who was just said to have just detonated a dark regime. He waved at them casually, his boots clicking on the floor as he headed toward the stairs.
"Harry, wait!" Tonks shouted, rushing toward him. "What about Voldemort? We just heard he's in the Alley! What happened?"
Harry paused on the first step, glancing back over his shoulder with a look of mild amusement. "Oh, yeah. He was there. I'm the one who took him there. Don't worry, though. It's over. The show's finished."
With that vague, infuriating statement that didn't explain anything, he disappeared upstairs toward the Black Library.
Minutes later, Kingsley's Patronus returned. This time, the Auror's voice was trembling with suppressed laughter. "You... you won't believe it. He's dead. Voldemort is gone. " The Prophet is already printing, you have to see this," it said before the voice of the man set out laughing.
When the special edition of the Daily Prophet arrived a few hours later, the room descended into hysterics. The front-page photo was a high-resolution shot of Lucius Malfoy on his knees working the strap-on of his lord, clad in enchanted leather tights and a harness, and another photo was of a gagged Voldemort, on his knees, with his followers around him wearing a strap-on as he screamed through a ball-gag.
The article described "The Dark Lord's Theatre of Humiliation," detailing how "toddlers" had toyed with the Death Eaters like cats with mice before they were erased by a pillar of pure, divine light.
Young Harry stared at the photo. He felt like he should want to claw his eyes out seeing Voldy and Malfoy in leather, but it was also the funniest thing he had ever seen.
The fear that had defined his life, the monster that had haunted his every dream, was gone, replaced by the image of a tyrant in a gimp suit. He knew he could never look Draco Malfoy in the eye again without bursting into laughter, remembering his father like this.
Later that night, the house finally settled into a strange, uneasy peace.
"Where is he? Where is Harry?" Tonks asked, looking around the kitchen, getting Harry's attention. "No, not you, the other one," she added when Young Harry looked up from his soup.
"He said he was going to work out," Hermione replied, her nose buried in a book on dimensional energies that the other Harry had given her. It was fascinating.
They found him in the ancient training room of the Black family, a vaulted stone chamber that smelled of old metal and cold air. They had expected to see him practicing spells. Instead, they found him moving with a beautiful, lethal elegance they couldn't fathom. He held a long, white-and-gold spear that seemed to hum with its own celestial light.
He wasn't using magic, or at least, not any magic they recognized if he was using. He was a storm of grace and violence, moving so fast he became a blur. He was cutting down enchanted dummies and shattering incoming training balls with his weapon, his movements echoing the martial arts Harry had seen on Tv when he was at his uncle's home. He moved like a god who had forgotten how to be human, his feet barely touching the floor as he pivoted through the air.
When he noticed them, he stopped mid-thrust. The spear vanished into a spark of gold light that dissolved into his palm. His breath fogged in the cold room, and his eyes—vibrant, piercing green, glowed with a fading intensity that made them look like emerald fire.
He looked at them, and before anyone could say anything, he spoke the words that would end this strange, impossible chapter of their lives.
"I'm leaving today."
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