Chapter Text
The first time that Harry remembered something that had never happened to him, he was six years old. His aunt Petunia had, for some months, been getting Harry used to cooking for the rest of the family, but the cooking implements were still overlarge for someone of his age. Accidents were bound to happen.
When Harry lost his grip on the heavy pan and spilled grease on the stove’s eye the rush of flame sent him to a different place entirely. For just a moment he was standing in his solo dormitory in Wool’s Orphanage, and someone who had introduced himself as the headmaster of an academy for sorcerers had set all of his valuables aflame with an errant thought.
As soon as the episode had passed Harry was, once again, standing in front of the stove in Surrey. Petunia was too busy getting the fire to go down and cursing “The Freak’s” ability to follow simple directions to notice the gap in his attention, but the memory had been powerful and it stuck with Harry.
A few years later his first experience with, what he had to assume was magic, came when his Year 4 English teacher was scolding him for breaking dress code. In Harry’s opinion, there wasn’t much he could feasibly do about receiving clothes that were four to five sizes too big, but in the heat of the moment Harry only remembered that he wished his teacher could experience what it was like to have something abnormal about her pointed out in front of the class when it wasn’t in her control. As soon as the thought crossed his mind his teacher’s pretty auburn hair turned a violent shade of electric blue.
“Miss Taylor, your hair!” was shouted from a row behind him, and he knew that he had caused it but he had absolutely no idea how. The event caused quite a stir for a few hours, but it was attributed to some unknown prankster and let go (mostly because no one could provide a good explanation for the how of it all). When Harry got home that afternoon his cousin Dudley provided a detailed recounting to his aunt and uncle, and Petunia had pinned him with such a poisonous look that she had to know what happened, but Harry dared not ask her.
The next day at school his teacher’s hair had returned to normal and no one seemed to be able to remember the event except for Dudley, who seemed keen to coast through life without thinking about anything. This immediately rubbed Harry’s young, but suspicious, mind the wrong way. Without any proof, one way or another, life went on, but Harry started cataloging strange occurrences in his life. He even, on occasion and always in private, started trying to make these things happen on purpose.
The first talent that Harry could reliably achieve was speaking to the grass snakes that visited him when he was caring for Petunia’s garden. None of them were particularly good conversationalists, but they all seemed strangely reverent when it came to him so he figured they were probably more positive company than his relatives.
When Harry went to bed thinking about what new snakes he could potentially speak to the next day, he dreamed what felt like years in a single night. He dreamed of experimenting with the parsel-tongue language by making his voice more sibilant at the orphanage when the other children annoyed him. He dreamed of learning the written form of the language in the Chamber of Secrets. He dreamed of the addicting control he could achieve over serpents of all kinds with the language. When he finally woke up, he realized that the recollections were too vivid to be dreams, but he didn’t have a better explanation for them either.
As these snippets of memory, that had clearly never happened to Harry, became more common he decided to see if he could learn anything from them intentionally. As distasteful as watching himself dominate serpents in his dreams had been, he couldn’t deny that his mastery of parsel-tongue had exploded overnight! He even knew the language had a name which he absolutely had not the day before!
His only idea for a place to start was the public library, so once he was done with all the chores his uncle Vernon had left before he went to work, he stole twenty pounds that Dudley had forgotten about on the counter and snuck off to the one place of learning that never seemed to ostracize him.
Harry obviously didn’t find any helpful guides to magical memory transplants, but he did find a couple self help books that spoke of meditation and the importance of a well centered mind. He certainly spent enough time quiet and still in the cupboard to develop excellent meditation habits, so he checked those out and endeavored to find where in his head these memories were coming from.
The thing about using meditation to search your mind for memories that aren’t yours, Harry found, is that it tends to bring up this strange second life’s experiences with meditation. He saw his new head of house, Horace Slughorn, tutor him in occlumency to help him catch up to his magically raised classmates. He saw himself ask Horace about the counter-discipline to occlumency which was named legilimency. He saw himself gain confidence as he began to casually invade the privacy of his classmates’ minds. He saw himself write all of his notes on the mind arts in a journal inscribed to Tom Marvolo Riddle .
When Harry came to after this round of memories he tried to use his newfound occlumency knowledge to help settle his mind and separate himself from the rather amoral decisions that he experienced as Tom, but he found that what worked for Tom wasn’t necessarily going to work for him because of the deeply personal nature of occlumency.
Legilimency, however, came almost naturally to Harry, and that frightened him a little. He knew that he didn’t want to become as numb to wrecking the privacy of others as Tom had, but he couldn’t deny that a mind reading talent could greatly help him in his quest to learn all he could of magic and his own mind.
After remembering Petunia’s reaction to his first accidental magic episode he decided to carefully see if she knew more about magic than she was willing to tell him. The next morning while he was preparing breakfast for Petunia and Dudley, Harry made hesitant eye contact with his aunt as she looked over her newspaper.
At first all he got from her was bitter resentment towards her nephew and a strange sad contentment towards her son, but as soon as Petunia registered the eye contact she immediately thought of her sister’s same shade of unnaturally green eyes. This gave Harry his first real look at his mother, but the memories were from his aunt’s perspective and they came with all of Petunia’s contradictory emotions. He felt how his aunt had genuinely loved his mom, at least at first. He saw how Lily had blossomed into a beautiful young woman, while Petunia, the older sibling, couldn’t shake the long lankiness of her youth. He experienced his aunt writing to Albus Dumbledore pleading to be let into Hogwarts with her sister. He felt her anger and jealousy build as her parents doted on Lily when, obviously, the only difference between the sisters was that Lily had been born with some freakish genetic anomaly. He read the letter that his mother had sent her sister to tell Petunia that she was getting married to a man named James, and he read the letter that was left for Petunia with the infant Harry explaining how his parents had died.
He would have to unpack all of this later and see if he could keep any of these memories of his mother’s early life without Petunia’s caustic bitterness.
Perhaps most relevant to his purpose that morning, he saw the sisters travel to London to gather Lily’s school supplies so he now had an idea where to go to get more information.
After waiting for his aunt to leave for her garden club meeting and bribing Dudley with his silence the next time the larger boy skipped school, Harry gathered what money he had saved up over the years and hopped on the weekend bus to London. On the way Harry focused on Tom’s memories of Diagon Alley and knew that he wouldn’t be able to get a wand from Olivander’s for at least another year, so he was better off heading straight to Gringotts Wizarding Bank.
When the bus came to a stop after an hour or so of commuting he looked at the map on the wall of the bus stop and realized he was about a half mile from the entrance to the Leaky Cauldron so he started walking. The closer to the pub that Harry got, the more people there were walking the streets of London in obviously outdated garb. Harry privately thought it was pretty funny that wizards seemed to be so strict in their use of magic around non-magic people, but would probably ruin their secret world at some point anyway because they couldn't keep up with modern muggle dress.
As he entered the moderately dingy pub he walked straight up to the barkeep and asked for help getting through to the alley. The man’s gaze briefly went up to Harry’s brow and his eyes widened significantly, but the man only nodded and led him out the back door of the bar.
Up to this point in his journey he’d had to trust that Tom’s memories were real and that he wasn't somehow going insane, but seeing the bustling alley so packed with life and magic with his own eyes tore his breath away. Just standing here where he now knew his parents had stood once allowed him a greater connection with them than he had ever felt before.
Once the initial wave of emotion had passed he went as straight as he could to the large white marble bank building, all the while, dodging pedestrians and their precious cargo. When he made it to the front steps of the bank and saw the armored goblins out front he couldn't help but smile. He was nearly ten years old and swords and armor were still pretty cool to him so he gave the guards a wave and walked through the large front door. Before he could even take his first step inside he noticed a large poem inscribed on the second set of doors.
Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed,
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn,
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned, beware
Of finding more than treasure there.
Well, he didn’t have any plans to get on the wrong side of these goblins but that little poem made him rethink this venture anyway. Screwing up all his courage he headed to the closest available teller and began to wait in line.
Harry couldn’t help but look around the bank in slight awe at the grand architecture, and try as he might, he also couldn’t help but stare at the first magical beings he had ever encountered. He had known peripherally that the bank was run by goblins, but had zero context in his mind to frame what a goblin would even look like. It’s not like his relatives had allowed him to lounge about reading fantasy novels all day, but looking at these creatures Harry thought that they absolutely fit the word goblin.
They were all around three feet tall on average with leathery skin that made determining their age a bit difficult, or at least, Harry didn’t see any that looked particularly young. Their nails and teeth both seemed to be a bit longer and sharper than his and their faces were all slightly angular with pointed ears that he would have attributed to elves based solely on depictions of Santa’s helpers at the North Pole.
With his scan of the bank done Harry settled in to wait for an open teller. As the line started to shorten Harry began to notice that all the Wizards and Witches in line were fidgeting and looked to be slightly uncomfortable. As far as he could tell the temperature of the bank was fairly nice so he didn’t know what everyone's problem was.
When it was Harry’s turn the goblin at the desk had to lean over the edge to make eye contact with him as he snarled out a curt “What do you need, wizard?”
Ah.. That's probably why everyone was so uncomfortable. Harry had needed to become an avid student of body language when he was growing up to stay ahead of his uncle’s tempestuous moods, and everything that he had learned was telling him that this goblin did not want him here. Surprisingly, this attitude only lasted a split second.
As soon as the goblin’s vision landed on Harry’s brow he swallowed whatever emotion he had allowed to show on his face and Harry thought he heard a whispered “Way above my paygrade.”
Without allowing Harry so much as a word in edgewise, the goblin took up a gavel and slammed it down on his desk with a sharp crack!
“Preferred Accounts Specialist needed!” the goblin called while waving Harry aside to take the next customer. This made several of the bank patrons look to Harry in confusion, and he despaired that he couldn't even be treated normally in the world he thought he was supposed to be a part of.
“Well Mr. Potter, it is with great eagerness that I invite you to join me in my office.” spoke a voice from over his shoulder. When he turned around to look at who was speaking to him he laid eyes on a goblin that Harry immediately knew to be the oldest person he had ever spoken to. The goblin’s white hair was long enough to reach the back of his hips, but it was pulled together with jewelry and fasteners of bronze and silver so it only reached the middle of his back. Despite Harry having not reached his tenth birthday he was still taller than this goblin but it felt to Harry that this being was eight feet tall just because of his presence.
With a wave of his hand, he guided Harry further into the bank. The farther they traveled the more the bank started to look like an office building instead of a gilded fortress. When they arrived at their destination the goblin held open the door for Harry and ushered him into a seat inside of what looked like a moderately modern accountants office.
“I am Durnolf, the asset manager for the Potter estate and longtime representative for your family in the hallowed halls of this establishment.” As he said this he made his way around his desk and walked up a small set of stairs to reach a large leather backed seat. He threaded his fingers together under his chin and looked at Harry for a moment before continuing. “When the tragedy that befell your parents occurred, we here at Gringotts expected an executor to be announced so that the estate could continue to generate monies for your family, but this never happened. For years the assets of House Potter have neither dwindled nor grown, and this stagnation is an affront to everything Gringotts represents. We resigned ourselves to waiting until you became old enough to correct this problem yourself, so imagine our surprise when you strolled into our domain, years early and without supervision. What have you come for young Potter?”
“I don’t know about any of that, Mister Durnolf. I came to see if my parents left anything that would help me learn more about my heritage and magic in general. I live with my aunt and uncle who abhor magic, so it's been difficult to learn anything for myself. When I heard that your bank dealt with all manner of inheritance in the wizarding world, I knew I had to see if there was anything left for me here.” Harry didn’t know who he could trust with the knowledge that his memories weren’t entirely his own, so he went with partial truths and oblique language just to be careful.
The goblin had a stormy look in his eyes for a moment, but Harry didn’t get the sense that it was directed at him. When he did speak it was with a careful tone that Harry had only heard in troublemakers that were trying to sound innocent. “There might be a way for us to help each other, Mister Potter. I am quite old when compared to my compatriots and my eyesight is beginning to fail, so I apologize, James, for confusing you for your young son. I even woke up this morning and forgot the year was 1980! If you would just sign this release for Gringotts to continue wisely investing your family’s assets I’ll escort you to the family vault for your perusal.” Durnolf said this as if he was refereeing a toddler’s football league so it was easy for Harry to grasp his meaning. Harry would forge his father’s signature and the bank would back date it to when he was still alive in exchange for access to a vault he wouldn’t normally be able to enter until he was at least thirteen.
He wondered at how often stuff like this happened here, but ultimately, he couldn’t deny the usefulness of such an offer. Harry looked at an example of his father’s handwriting that was on the desk in front of him and did his best to copy it stroke for stroke. When he was finished, Durnolf rolled up the document and started out his door with a swift stride. Harry followed and began to get excited about seeing his inheritance.
His asset manager led him into a series of tunnels that looked as if they were shorn from solid stone. They came to a steep drop that gave way to endless darkness and a few feet away were a set of metal tracks and the strangest trolley cart Harry had ever laid eyes on. While they boarded the cart Durnolf gave Harry all the standard warnings about staying seated and keeping his limbs inside the vehicle, but once they got started Harry learned this was not a standard trolley ride at all.
The cart traveled at a truly blistering speed, and it swiveled in so many directions Harry was never able to parse where they were headed. It was the most fun Harry had ever had.
When they arrived at the vault in question, Durnolf exited the cart and pulled a key from nowhere Harry could discern. He opened the Potter family vault with care and reverence and when the door was finally pulled back Harry was treated to a sight he had never even thought to see before.
The sight of his family’s legacy.