Humble Beginnings and Stark Realizations
"Look at him, he's so cute! How could anyone willingly give him away!" a voice called from somewhere in a room filled with blinding sunlight. Opening his eyes with a slow wince, he held his hands in front of his face, trying his best to clear his vision from the strange blurriness he was experiencing.
"Who would even name their child Tom Dick Harry? Did they think his life was some sort of joke?" the too loud voice continued with a sour note, a pair of massive hands reaching down to pick him up from where he lay on the bed beneath him. Soon, his eyes fully opened, and he saw the most gigantic woman he had ever seen in his life, holding him close to her chest like he was some sort of child.
He grasped the hem of her shirt, afraid that she might drop him by mistake even as she turned to walk back into the house, her body going mostly slack for some strange reason. "Ah, yeah, I understand. I'll take him in," she said to someone, as if she had been reacting to an order from a superior talking aloud.
The woman adjusted him lightly, allowing him to look over her shoulder by accident, and what he saw was horrifying. A woman in all black robes with a tall, pointed Witches hat was giving them the most stern, no-nonsense look he had ever seen on a woman, and holding a rather strange looking pointy stick, it's tip glowing with a strange essence he had never seen before.
Tom, as he supposed his name was now, wasn't too worried, however. The woman holding him was gentle and seemed to like him a little already. The inside of the house was warm and cozy, and looking at it one way, it was like a fresh start on life.
The matron, as he assumed she was, put him down into a crib inside the room again as the witch left, allowing the two of them to sit in the room together on their own. It took a few minutes before the woman nodded to herself and tucked him in, cooing to him with gentle tones as she smiled and turned on a small, vintage Television for the sake of having a children's cartoon play for him. "Don't worry little one, you'll grow up strong and smart, and receive plenty of love," she told him, before making her way towards the door to the room, muttering about making something for the children to snack on.
Once he was left alone in the room, he sighed to himself. Taking in the feel of the warm fluffy blankets and the sounds and sights of the crackling fireplace nearby, he decided that this wouldn't be a bad place to restart his life.
It wasn't like he had much left going for him in his old life, considering he was already retired. His grandchildren had already forgotten about him in the care home they had left him in, while his children squabbled constantly over who was going to get his inheritance, like he wasn't still very much alive at the time. It was quite annoying, if he had to put an emotion to it.
Well, they would certainly be in for a shock when they found out that he had left it all to his younger brother's children instead of his own. One of them had managed to get a job as a banker and was willing to invest it for his siblings and cousins, so maybe something good would come of it in the end.
He knew that he might have some trouble getting to the level of wealth and comfort in his last life, as it seemed like he was an orphan in the Harry Potter universe. But he was fairly certain that he probably had some form of magic if a witch was dropping him off at an orphanage, and that should make up for any lacking monetary means rather quickly as long as he studied hard enough, and wasn't literally in Britain during the time Voldemort was still alive and kicking.
The TV swapped to the local news broadcast when one of the older kids walked into the room, as if by itself for some reason. With a sigh, the young boy grumbled about it under his breath and made his way over to press the buttons and try to get it back on the correct channel again. "Stupid TV, why do you always switch channels whenever I enter the room and no one else?" He murmured in what sounded like a stereotypical London accent, as if straight from one of the movies.
While he worked on fixing it, Tom caught a glance at the screen. A news clip was playing, stating that it was January first of the year nineteen-seventy-five. Apparently, some people had gone missing and or died as a result of gas leaks. Why gas leaks? That sounded somewhat ridiculous, considering some people had somehow vanished.
That got his still tiny mind to think as hard as it could. If it was Harry Potter, there was no way in hell that that was a gas leak. Never mind that he apparently was in Britain. The place where Voldemort was going around killing everyone who wasn't a purebloodwizard, as if he was somehow the Nazi champion of all wizard kind and had the right to do so. His reign of terror was still ongoing by the looks of it, and he was receiving undeniable proof that even so much as going to the mall could be a serious hazard as a result. That he could lose his life in the mundane world due to magical means like a spell to the chest, and it would be explained away as a gas leak.
After a moment of horrified realization, he remembered the fact that not only was this the case, but that this was a world full of people with casual methods of mind control. Things such as the imperious curse or love potions were something of the norm in the world he was in. Hell, they sold the love potions to literal children. And it was implied in canon that Ginny and Molly had been dosing Harry Potter for the entire time. Not outright stated, but yes, the implications were there if you knew where to look for them.
His horror only grew when that brought up the rest of Harry's school years. In year one, he met a possessed professor and a literal troll. A well-known man-eating being that was highly resistant to magic that was let into Hogwarts, as if that was somehow just perfectly fine to have in a school full of children.
In his second year, they flew a sentient magic car to get to school and crashed it into a murderous tree called the whomping willow. As if that wasn't terrifying enough, they had to fight both acromantula — a literal race of giant spiders raised in the school by a half-giant half-wit — and a damned basilisk. Only one of those things was relatively outside of the school, the other of which was literally locked away in the basement.
Even in third year, there were Dementors and a werewolf at the school. Seriously, if that was the standard of security at the premier magical school of the world, what the hell was wrong with all the rest of the planet? Tom wasn't sure he really wanted to know.
With all of that taken into account, it painted the world in an entirely different light than what the books had offered to the readers. Then again, what could he expect when the story revolved around the misadventures of three schoolkids without a proper understanding of the world at large? Nothing was truly elaborated on in any lengthy manner, and no matter how much one could claim that it was a children's novel, the fact of the matter was that the world itself as it was presented wasn't exactly safe.
Now that he thought about it, living in a world full of dark, hazardous creatures and potentially Actual Evil beings, or even just morons wielding spells and waving their wands all over the place, it didn't seem conducive to his long-term health and well-being no matter how he put it. The fact that if he ever told anyone about his knowledge, he would have it all extracted and then his mind wiped and twisted into something that he truly wasn't was absolutely terrifying.
He really should probably look into finding a way to get the fuck off this planet before he ended up dealing with the utter madhouse that the Harry Potter universe was. It would certainly be better for his long-term health and wellbeing.
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AN:
Kitsu: Here is the chapter I was talking about earlier when I posted my latest DXD fic chapter with Fungame2. Asdo21 has decided to sponsor me a bit, and he actually does want some feedback on the story as we go, so I'll hold back on my usual snark as much as possible and just let him deal with the comments on this once it gets it's own thread lol.
I don't want to do this to the man, but I'm not good at talking on QQ, and get active anxiety from that when people start trying to cause a fight for no real reason or demand things without being a part of the team for that fic, which I hate to say it, happens a lot more than I'd like. I have more people blocked on this site than any other two combined, including twitter, so uh, yeah. Kinda need to leave the comments to someone who actually enjoys those.
Asdo21: Yeah I look forward to your feedback everyone, feel free to direct it to me instead of Kitsu, especially if you got any complaints.
Kitsu: So yeah! I will be looking forward to working with him a lot more, and you know you can reach me via the links attached to my carrd https:// aiko akiyoshi. carrd. co/ if you want to support me, or get stories like this for yourself!
Thanks for reading and stay fluffy y'all!