The Boggart kept shifting rapidly in front of Harry, but for some reason, it never managed to settle into any one shape.
Harry suddenly lowered his mental defenses and deliberately allowed the Boggart into his mind.
He quickly realized that the Boggart's mind magic had not been able to break into his thoughts at all, which was why it had kept changing forms without ever locking onto what he truly feared.
But the moment it finally slipped into Harry's mental space, the entire Boggart froze.
It possessed magical powers tied to transformation and peering into minds, so it was not some mindless creature. It could even sense the strength of a wizard through the power of the wizard's soul.
Yet when it faced this young wizard, its magic had abruptly failed. It simply could not read his mind.
Thankfully for it, that failure only lasted a very short time. Soon enough, it managed to push its way into the boy's thoughts and take a look around.
And the instant it prepared to transform into the thing Harry feared most, the whole Boggart stopped dead.
What the hell was this?
The thing this young wizard feared most was not something else.
It was himself.
Deep in Harry's heart stood a tall, slender figure with the exact same face as his own. But unlike the real Harry, this version of him was wrapped in streams of chaos light.
The flowing radiance whirled around him like a boiling magical vortex, seven colors crashing and churning across his body in a frenzy.
That figure in the depths of Harry's mind released an overwhelming presence, and the pressure of a higher dimension came crashing down on the Boggart.
Its transformation magic broke apart instantly, and in the end it could only turn into a twisted vortex of chaos.
To everyone else, all they saw was the Boggart approach Harry and begin, very slowly, to take the shape of a young wizard wrapped in multicolored light. Then it suddenly froze and fell back into a state of unstable, repeated transformation.
Even after glimpsing the thing Harry feared most, the Boggart still could not fully become the image of Harry when his power ran out of control.
Professor Lupin hurried forward at once and stepped in front of Harry. When the Boggart shifted into a silvery-white orb, he said lazily, "Riddikulus!"
The silvery-white orb turned into a balloon and vanished. Professor Lupin turned back toward Harry, concern written across his face.
"Are you all right, Harry?"
"Of course," Harry said with a shrug. "I feel fine."
"But..." Lupin said, clearly puzzled. "Why would you be afraid of yourself? And what exactly was that form just now?"
Professor Lupin had never been the sort of man consumed by curiosity, but Harry was not just his student, he was also the son of one of his dearest friends, so he had to ask.
Harry was a little surprised by what the Boggart had shown, but at the same time, it made perfect sense.
Yes, the thing he feared most really was himself.
Because the chaos magic inside him was so unimaginably powerful that even multiversal Dimensional Demon Gods would struggle to truly harm him, much less kill him.
What Harry feared now was not some outside enemy.
It was the chaos power inside himself running out of control and devouring everything around him.
Especially in a total loss-of-control state, when violent chaos magic would shatter even intangible things like the very concepts of time and space. At that point, not even the Time Stone would be able to restore what had been destroyed.
Ever since he was very young, Harry had been plagued by dreams in which everything around him was destroyed by his own uncontrolled power, and Aunt May and Uncle Ben had never been exceptions.
He had even dreamed of Peter turning to ashes right in front of him, killed by the backlash of the chaos power inside Harry spiraling out of control.
Because he had struggled so much as a child to control the overwhelming force within him, those dreams had followed him for years. Even now, they still came back from time to time.
That was why Harry had always pushed himself to grow stronger, not only to fulfill the Sorcerer Supreme's final wish and gain enough power to protect Earth.
He also needed complete mastery over his own power, enough that even if he unleashed all of his chaos magic, it would never spiral out of control again.
Other than the Sorcerer Supreme, no one knew the truth about Harry's chaos power.
That was not because they were less important to him.
It was because a power at that level carried consequences simply from being known. Even awareness of it could be dangerous.
A being on Mephisto's level, for example, could reach across endless dimensions to influence an ordinary mortal and peer into their mind.
If Mephisto learned that some ordinary person knew things about Harry, he would absolutely go after that person with everything he had.
So for everyone else's safety, Harry kept anything related to chaos power hidden.
After thinking for a moment, Harry gave a deliberately vague answer.
"Sorry, Professor Lupin. Maybe it's because I suddenly found out I was supposed to be the wizarding world's savior. That's a lot of pressure, so maybe that's why I'm afraid of myself."
Whispers immediately rose from the surrounding students.
"So Harry Potter's under that much pressure?"
"Yeah. He's only in third year, and he's already carrying the wizarding world's future on his shoulders. Of course it must be crushing."
The students all looked at Harry with admiration, while Lupin, Hermione, and Ron wore distinctly odd expressions.
There was no need to explain Hermione and Ron. They had spent far too much time around Harry.
How could Harry possibly be the sort of person so crushed by pressure that he feared himself?
He had practically no pressure at all.
As for Professor Lupin, his past had given him sharp instincts and a keen eye for reading people.
Naturally, he could tell Harry was not being honest. There was clearly a deeper reason Harry feared himself.
Still, since Harry did not want to talk about it, Lupin chose not to press.
Harry was far too mature for his age. He would know how to deal with his own problems.
...
After class, Harry, Hermione, and Ron headed back toward Gryffindor Tower along the stone steps that cut across the lawn.
Ron spent the whole walk praising Professor Lupin. He liked him that much.
"Professor Lupin's class was brilliant. Compared to him, the last two Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers were like a pair of trolls, they didn't know a thing!"
Hermione nodded in agreement. "It really was interesting. Defense Against the Dark Arts teaches me a lot, but Ancient Runes is great too. Following Harry's advice and signing up for Study of Ancient Runes was honestly one of the luckiest decisions I've made recently."
Ancient Runes, as an old magical script, naturally carried power of its own. Even writing ordinary runes could form spell arrays and produce magical effects.
After only two lessons, Hermione had already borrowed Harry's magic and managed to cast some Kamar-Taj spells.
"Ancient Runes?" Ron said, confused. "How many electives did you even take this term?"
"Just a few," Hermione said lightly.
"Wait!" Ron suddenly realized something was off. If Hermione had taken that many electives, there was no way she could actually attend every class.
Some of them overlapped. Unless Hermione could literally split herself in two, she would have had to drop some.
Ron stared at her. "That's impossible. Ancient Runes and Divination are at the same time. You'd have to be in two classrooms at once!"
"Don't be ridiculous, Ron. Nobody can attend two classes at once." Hermione exchanged a glance with Harry, and everything passed between them without words.
Even though Hermione did know a kind of duplication spell, her body and mind could not handle the backlash when it was undone. If she tried that, she would collapse from exhaustion.
So she had not used a duplication spell to attend two classes at once.
Instead, she had used a much more advanced, and much more dangerous, method.
A Time-Turner.
...
In the library, Hermione took the golden chain off her pale neck and handed it to Harry.
"Harry, this is it. It's incredible, it involves time itself. Can you really analyze it?"
Hermione had complete confidence in Harry, of course, but time was even more abstract and profound than space. Even a wizard on Dumbledore's level had only scratched the surface of it.
Harry nodded. "Of course. Compared to space, I understand time even better."
Having worn the Time Stone for years, Harry's understanding of time ran deeper than his understanding of space.
He carefully studied the Time-Turner resting in his palm, while dense observation runes flashed in his eyes.
The Time-Turner was a small golden hourglass hanging from a thin gold chain, meant to be worn around the neck like a necklace.
It contained powerful magic that allowed its wearer to travel back into the past for a limited period of time.
Each turn of the hourglass sent the user back one hour.
The Ministry of Magic kept strict control over Time-Turners, and only a tiny handful of people were allowed to use them with special permission.
That was because recklessly tampering with time could have catastrophic consequences for the timeline and for the order of the entire wizarding world.
Unlike the timelines of the multiverse, time in the wizarding world was linear and absolute, with no branching paths at all.
So if a wizard went back and changed the past, the butterfly effect could erase many people from existence and cause others, who should never have existed, to appear.
Compared to the wizarding world, time was an even more dangerous force than it was in the multiverse.
After observing it for a while, Harry realized, a little unexpectedly, that the Time-Turner was not as difficult to understand as he had first imagined.
Compared to the Time Stone's brute-force reversal of time, the Time-Turner was much gentler.
It really only did two things. First, it merged the user into the timeline itself. Then it shifted the user upstream through time.
If the Time Stone directly affected the entire river of time, then the Time-Turner affected only the user.
At the same time, the two shared something in common.
Both drew on the power of the world they belonged to.
Just as the Time Stone lost its proper power once removed from its original universe, the Time-Turner would lose its power too if taken out of the wizarding world, becoming nothing more than an ordinary necklace.
Once Harry had fully analyzed the Time-Turner, he tossed it back to Hermione.
She looked at him expectantly. "Well? Did you figure it out?"
"I did. Its structure is even simpler than I expected."
"Then do you have a way to completely block this kind of time travel?" Hermione asked.
By now, Hermione naturally knew about the plan Harry and Dumbledore were preparing, and as a Muggle-born witch, she supported it completely.
Of course, Ron, whose father was practically fascinated by Muggles, supported it too.
Harry had now gathered more than enough power. All it would take was a single order from him, and he could openly challenge the Ministry of Magic.
But before that, there was one crucial problem that had to be solved.
The Time-Turners.
If someone used one to move upstream in time, then even Dumbledore would probably be unable to resist what followed.
Harry himself was protected from temporal interference by his chaos power, but he could not ignore the safety of his friends.
So he planned to spend several months placing sealing runes all over the world, runes that could absorb magic on their own and grow stronger over time, until they fully cut off any possibility of traveling through time.
...
Time flew by, and soon dozens of days had passed.
That day, Harry finished another Quidditch match as usual, easily crushing the opposing Slytherin team.
Just as he was taking off his Quidditch robes and getting ready for class, he suddenly heard a sharp scream in the distance.
Students nearby rose up on tiptoe and craned their necks toward the source of the shouting.
The moment Hermione saw what had caused the panic, she cried out and grabbed Harry's arm tightly.
"Oh my God!"
The Fat Lady had vanished from her portrait.
The painting had been savagely slashed. Scraps of canvas lay scattered across the floor, and one great chunk had been ripped away completely.
At that moment, the professors came hurrying in.
Dumbledore took one quick look at the ruined portrait, turned back, and said gravely to the other teachers, "We need to find her. Minerva, go to Mr. Filch at once and have him search every painting in the castle. Find the Fat Lady."
The Fat Lady was soon found. She was hiding in another portrait, trembling behind a painted rock.
The moment she saw Dumbledore, she came rushing out from behind it and spilled everything that had happened.
"Dumbledore, it was him! He came!"
"Who?"
"Sirius Black! He tore my portrait to pieces. You must catch him quickly!"
Dumbledore's brows shifted slightly. He seemed thoughtful, and he shot Professor Lupin a quiet glance, though he said nothing more about it. Instead, he ordered all the students back to the Great Hall to sleep there for the night.
Hogwarts was now under lockdown.
Harry pulled a blanket out of his Pocket dimension and folded it neatly. Ron watched with envy from the side.
"Harry, that magic of yours is ridiculously convenient."
"You're qualified to learn it too. If you work hard enough, you can master it."
As one of Harry's Lenders, Ron could naturally use most of Harry's magic.
Ron did not sound convinced. "It's way too hard, way harder than normal spells. At this rate I'll need years to learn it. Maybe I won't get it until after I graduate."
Harry shook his head, stood up, and started toward the doors of the Great Hall.
"Stay here," he told Ron. "I'm going out for a bit."
"Where are you going?"
"To the Headmaster's office. I need to see Professor Dumbledore."
The moment Ron heard that Harry was planning to see Dumbledore, he shut up immediately and abandoned any thought of following him.
Dumbledore was kind, but he also carried real authority. Hardly any student would ever dare seek him out on their own.
By the time Harry gave the password and entered the Headmaster's office, Dumbledore was already waiting for him.
Harry walked up to him, reached into his Pocket dimension, and took out a vial of potion, then handed it over...
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