*Chapter 1*: Prologue-I:SIC PARVIS MAGNA

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Book 1: Press Start

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Prologue:

Harry Potter was good at running.

Sometimes he would run from things like his Uncle and Aunt, and their reprimands and anger. Other times he'd run from his freakishness, for whatever Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia said, the freakishness was there, and it showed, sometimes turning someone's wig blue and sometimes closing a cut on Harry's hands in seconds. And even other times he'd run from the dreams that haunted his nights, bringing out memories of a red haired woman and a sickly green light.

He'd throw sarcasm and dry wit at all of those problems, trying to slow them down, and he'd run.

Harry Potter was good at running after all.

"Com'ere Potter!"

Right now, however, he was running from his overstuffed pumpkin of a cousin Dudley Duddykins Dursley, a rather obese boy who looked like he could drape his many flaps of stomach fat over his hips and never need to wear any pants again.

Well. He said running, but it was more of a slow jogging, perhaps even a lazy ambling. Considering the massive weight that Dudley had, the youngest of the Dursleys would have trouble outrunning a dead snail. So Harry grinned at Dudley, taunting him, and took off running towards the park in the Surrey area.

That was where he was caught in an ambush. Piers Polkiss was waiting for him near the park gates!

Harry dodged the punch Piers threw at him and started running in earnest. If Dudley had brought Piers, then the rest of his gang would be nearby. And while Harry was fast, he wasn't fast enough to escape an all out ambush by all of Dudley's gang. And sure enough, Malcolm, Redgie and the rest of the gang had surrounded him. Dudley jogged over, panting heavily.

"We . . . we got you now . . . Potter!" Dudley said in between heaving breaths.

They cracked their knuckles and prepared to pummel Harry with punches, when suddenly,

"WHAT is going ON here?" The voice of a woman cracked sharp across the almost empty playground. Harry turned towards the direction of the voice, and groaned when he recognised the source.

It was their Chemistry teacher, Ms. Roemmele. The tall and rather strict looking teacher was a master of reprimanding and punishing students, yet while in class, spoke with a voice so devoid of enthusiasm that, to Harry, it seemed as if she had given up on life and that she, like most teachers in today's economy, was hoping for a quick and painless death. It would have been sad to look at, had she not punished every single student in their class at least three times.

"MISTER Dudley Dursley! I come to your home for a teacher's visit, only to find that not only did you not inform your parents about my coming, but also that you're fooling around and hassling people in parks! And you Mr. Polkiss! Rest assured your parents will get a visit from me. The rest of you can also count yourself in for that as well! Now scram!" They all stood frozen on their spots. "SCRAM!" The entire gang disappeared from the pack in minutes, running as fast as they could.

She looked at Harry, who was trying to get away unnoticed. "And you! Mr Potter! Come here!"

Harry looked up in surprise, before he walked over to the woman, "Ah . . . yes ma'am"

"Come. I will drop you off at your house."

A bit weary of what was to come, since teachers taking special notice of Harry had never quite ended well, he started walking towards Number 4 Privet Drive with the strict woman walking by his side.

Through the corner of his eyes, he saw her stare at his forehead. Harry's hand went up automatically and brushed against his scar. Ms. Roemmele seemed to catch herself and looked away. Maybe she was wondering how he got such an oddly specific lightning bolt shaped scar, Harry thought.

"Have you prepared for the test on the historical and archaeological evidences of the origin of modern chemistry?" She asked after walking in silence for about five minutes.

"Er . . . no ma'am." he truthfully replied

She set him with a piercing look. "I expect better of you Mr. Potter. Haven't you understood how important these so called 'history lessons,' as your classmates have taken to calling them, are to your future education."

Harry shrugged, "I'm sorry Ms. Roemmele, but weren't we supposed to do the periodic table last class? It's going to be in the finals and if I don't score well then Aunt Petunia will have my hide."

Ms. Roemmele shook her head, and keeping her gaze on the street in front of her, spoke, "Exams aren't everything Mr. Potter. History teaches us many things. Early 1600s Roman paintings tell us that people then believed in dragons and somehow had knowledge of reptilian biology that the Western World hadn't discovered till the late 1900s. People who believed in Alchemy, like the French Nicholas Flamel inspired most of the modern nuclear chemistry we see today in our lives. That is why we need to learn about these stories Mr. Potter . . . to understand where we come from, and what stories influenced the great people who built our world."

"But Ms. Roemmele," Harry said, "other than being interesting stories, it's not like all these actually have any other use. All that stuff is just dreams and myths cooked up by some crackpot old fools with more time that they know what to do with."

"Don't be too sure Mr. Potter."

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At the very moment, two entities, one male and one female, undetectable to the world around them, were idly following the student-teacher duo.

The man clicked his fingers, and the world around them slowed down. The birds froze mid-flight, and the leaves falling from the trees stilled in mid air. Time itself crawled to a stop, holding everyone but the two mysterious entities completely frozen.

The two entities made their way over to the boy frozen besides his teacher. The man looked over the boy. "He doesn't look as bad as we had thought he would," he commented.

The woman flicked her hand, and various parts of the boy's body lit up yellow in their vision. "Dozens of broken bones, damaged nerves, excessive blunt force trauma, lack of appropriate nutrition . . . looks can be deceiving"

"Indeed" the man muttered, retracting his previous statement. He gave another flick and the yellow light vanished, replaced by a pulsating blue aura around the boy's head.

The man closed his eyes as he cocked his head to the right, as if listening to what the pulsating light had to say to him, before with a wave of his hand, the light disappeared.

"I sensed various mental disorders in his mind . . . he's incredibly close to breaking," the man said quietly.

"He has the enormous weight of his destiny to uphold. And those broken shoulders will not be able to carry them . . ." the woman stated with absolute certainty.

"Then fix them," the man said fiercely, "Fix him."

"You know the rules. We are not to interfere in the activities of wizardkind."

"We made the rules," the man insisted.

"Which is why we cannot break them. The others will not take well to hypocrisy."

"The others will not take well to utter and complete annihilation either. Its either this or doing nothing"

The woman seemed to have wanted to debate the point even more, but held herself. Instead, she said, "We will have to fix his mind. His mind is his greatest tool, but its broken, and on the brink of falling off the edge."

"His guardians fear him. And that mindless fear of someone who they believe to be better than them gives rise to hatred. Blinded by that hatred, they've done this to him. Coupled with what happened on the night he was orphaned . . . well . . . I'm not surprised that his mind is in the condition that it is . . ." noted the man sombrely.

"We will need something to hold it together and keep it from breaking"

"Easily done," the man snapped his fingers, and Harry's head was enveloped in a luminescent membrane, which then sunk into his brain.

"You shouldn't have done that," the woman said disapprovingly, "That ability is dangerous . . . Even we won't be able to control his mind now . . . and someone with magic that powerful being out of our control will not sit well with the others"

"The boy needed it. It'll keep the dangerous memories away and hold his psyche together. The others won't know about this . . . and there are ways to control a man other than to control his mind"

"Oh really? So enlighten me," the woman snapped, waving her hand, trying to undo whatever the man had done, and failing.

"Addiction."

The woman froze, " . . . Keep talking."

"We give the boy power . . . and then we get him addicted to that power. So deeply and inherently addicted that he would be willing to give his own life to not loose his power. That, will ensure his loyalty."

"So your solution to keeping a powerful being under control is to . . . give it more power? Hand him an even more powerful weapon? Genius really." the woman mocked.

"No . . . not a weapon," said the man, "Something more. Something that will be all consuming . . . Something that will alter his very perception of the reality around him."

"So what you are thinking of . . . "

"Indeed." the man answered the unasked question, before raising his hand, which was now holding a glowing orb fully composed of a gentle fractal undulating light.

The woman hesitated for a second before she nodded, and the orb of light lifted from the man's hand, just as invisible to the world around it as the entities that summoned it, spinning and bathing its surroundings in a gentle rhythmic purple as it slowly descended down into Harry, permanently altering his true nature beyond anything that mankind or wizardkind could ever even comprehend.

Within the blink of an eye, the two entities vanished from their spots, and time resumed its normal flow.

* * *

Harry's head suddenly spiked with a sudden burst of unimaginable pain, and his knees almost buckled under him.

But before he could even get his hand up to his head, the pain disappeared just as instantaneously as it had come.

Frowning, Harry massaged his head, wondering what the pain was.

"Is there anything wrong Mr. Potter?" Ms. Roemmele asked, noticing his frown.

"Er . . . No ma'am. I'm fine," he replied.

And so they went off to Number 4, where Ms. Roemmele gave Harry a generic speech about bullying that went into Harry's one ear and flew right out of the other, before she turned around and walked off to who knows where.

After staring at his teacher's steadily disappearing back for a few more seconds, Harry had headed into Number 4 to no doubt face his Aunt's reprimands, completely oblivious to what he had become.

The rest of the day passed in a whirlwind of chores, and by the time he had finished up all his chores and was putting away all the silverware that the Dursleys for some reason insisted to eat from, Harry was more tired that he was even after a regular day of work. So he stole a few loafs of bread from the fridge and completely devoured them, before he jumped onto the half broken cot in his cupboard and fell straight asleep. As he drifted into the realm of sleep, a ringing bell rang in his ears, but he was too far gone to wake and see what it was.

The next day, after an unusually peaceful night of sleep, Harry blearily opened his eyes and stretched his arms as well as he could in the very limited space that he had. No school, no homework, and no Dudley jumping about in danger of reaching critical mass, turning into a black hole and killing everyone one on the planet.

Feeling very refreshed, Harry yawned, and suddenly caught sight of what was in front of him.

He blinked.

And he blinked again.

A translucent blue box hovered about a foot away from his head. There was some text in it.

You have slept in you own bed, HP and MP have been restored 100% each. All ailments and negative status effects have been cured.

Harry blearily looked at the glowing screen before he reached out to touch it, and the box disappeared instantly.

Had that actually happened?

No.

No. It couldn't have.

It was probably the light from the cracks of the air vent of the cupboard or something. He didn't have his glasses on, so he must have imagined it or something like that.

Maybe it was just his head telling him to stop staring at Dudley playing video games. He'd have to make sure not to mention this in front of his Uncle or Aunt, lest they decide to dump him at some loony bin and get rid of them.

Harry absentmindedly moved to get off the bed, and like the truly graceful little beast he was, slammed his head right into the low roof of the cupboard in the process.

"Ping!" he clearly heard, and that, he knew, was definitely not his imagination. He had definitely heard that. He rubbed his eyes and put on his glasses, before he stared disbelievingly at what was floating in the air in front of him.

Skill created!

Skill: Physical Endurance, Lv-1 (5%)

Your Body's durability increased and you take less damage.

3% less damage from physical attacks.

The text was immune to relative displacement, Harry concluded, as he moved his head about and saw that the text remained unmoving in relation to his head. That it was intangible was something he discovered the moment he tried to touch it, only to see his hand to go through the screen, leaving nothing but some barely visible ripples.

'What . . . ?' Harry thought to himself, thoroughly puzzled out of his mind.

'What the hell is going on?' Harry muttered to himself.

His mind sifted through ideas and discarded them at an incredible rate, until one idea stuck out to him, something that sounded crazy . . . almost dangerously so . . . but nowhere near as crazy as the strange floating boxes with game statistics that had appeared in front of him.

'What if this . . .' he thought with an incredibly ridiculous feeling, 'What if this is . . . a game?'

Had his whole life been some sort of video game that some higher form of intelligence was playing? Was he some sort of controller . . . some sort of Playable character, and others around him NPCs? Was his whole life even real? Was there some teenager with bad acne who had sit down in front of a crappy computer and programmed his entire life!?

Harry took a deep breath and let it out, calming himself.

'Think about this logically, Harry' he told himself.

If there was a game, there would be commands. And if there were commands, then there would be some sort of method to input those commands. He didn't have some keyboard or controller to input those commands, so it had to be something else. Write it on the ground? Make weird hand motions? Voice control?

Deciding to try out the least crazy one of his hypothetical theories, he then opened his eyes and with all his determination, intoned, "Status."

A box appeared before him, and it read;

Harry Potter

Health-100/100

Mana-50/50

The Gamer

Title-None

Level-2 Exp-30/400

Race-?

STR-2

VIT-1(+2)=3

DEX-2(+2)=4

INT-1

WIS-1

LUC-3

POINTS-0

MONEY- 0£/0G0S0K

Harry Potter is a ?, the son of Lily Potter and ?. He has bad eyesight making it difficult for him to do well in class. His ? has gotten him trouble over the years in various schools. Strange things seem to happen around him. Harry is unaware of who he is, and wishes to find meaning in his life. Harry hates the Dursleys.

Status- ? giving Harry - +2 VIT, +2 DEX and the ability to ?

Harry stared at the floating screen for another split second, before what shred of curiosity and willpower was holding him together long enough in this strange dream snapped, and the green eyed boy fell back down into his cot, fully unconscious.

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