As quickly as he could, he willed it and the butterfly which had just taken off from his desk turned into dust while he looked around if anyone else had seen this as his emotions fell in turmoil.

He was happy, no, immensely happy because he had been able to successfully create a new life (at least that's what it looked like). But he was also wary that someone might have seen it and would learn the full extent of his capabilities which was something that he would never do willingly.

He looked at Minerva who was reprimanding Draco about something and the rest of the class was giggling at him and felt a weight lift off his chest.

Thankfully, no one had seen his… miracle. For what else would you call it when a person could turn a matchstick into a butterfly and then give life to it.

But while he felt thankful that no one had seen it and learnt how truly talented he was, he was also a bit sad that everyone had missed this miracle. His miracle.

And then he saw the movement and turned to look at his desk mate and grimaced at her gob smacked expression.

She had seen him do it.

"How?" she managed to ask before he flicked his wand and silenced her mouth and with his will, he put his Shroud of Concealment around the both of them so that Minerva would not notice what he was about to do next.

She had only a moment to look panicked before he pointed his wand at her and said "Obliviate" and erased the last minute of her memory from her mind.

As much as he was loath to rely on it, the wand was truly a convenient tool. If he had the wand with him from the start them maybe those homeless people whom he'd experimented on would not have turned into the drooling mess. Well maybe a few of them might still have lost all their memories but he guess that more than half of them would have held their sanity.

With his new wand, the precision of his memory charm had truly reached a whole new level.

He couldn't wait to remove the trace from the wand and go back home so that he could use it on more test subjects.

He kept his wand back on his table and kept it on his own desk and watched discreetly as she gained a glazed look in her eyes for a moment before she regained her bearings and went back to her work without ever knowing that she had been obliviated by anyone.

And he was once again reminded of how scary magic can be.

A wizard can literally break into the home of a unsuspecting muggle family, rape the woman and then Obliviate her before leaving and she would continue to live her life as if nothing ever happened.

He shivered for a moment when he realized that quite a few wizards all over the world would have done the exact same thing at some point during their lives.

Some of them multiple times.

Magic was a dangerous tool. And he would learn how to wield it better than anyone else.

If only to keep himself safe the machinations of other people.

He gave one last glance to Hermione who was still gushing under Minerva's praise and went back to transfiguring a butterfly from a nail taken from the desk.

—————

BOY WHO LIVED ON THE PATH OF BECOMING A DARK LORD?

Harry looked at the headline in prophet and could already start feeling the gazes on his back.

Beneath the ominous headline was a whole article explaining how he was a Parselmouth and brought a snake along with him at Hogwarts along with speculations that he had been training under some dark wizards before he came to the school.

He held the urge to scoff at the looks he was being given but as more and more owls delivered the newspaper, more and more speculated gazes fell on him. More pointed fingers, more whispered words behind his back.

Ironic how he went from their saviour to a possible future dark lord in such a short amount of time.

He looked at the name of the writer and realized that it was not Rita Skeeter. And wasn't that a surprise.

He had thought that she was the only one employed by the Daily Prophet who made money by vilifying other people.

But apparently she not the only one in that industry. Just the best one.

He had no doubt that if she was the one had written this article then it would have been even worse then it was now.

He glanced from peripheral vision and watched as Padma who was sitting beside him squirmed in her seat and felt the irritation turn into anger.

Sheep. All of them.

He stood up from his seat and rolled his eyes as some of the students sitting beside him visibly flinched at his sudden action.

Then he turned around and left.

The Prophet had ruined his reputation, but he had already expected something like that to happen as he knew about how the rag worked from the movies but the instant negative reaction of the students in the hall still baffled him and he would never admit it to anyone but it hurt him a bit that even Padma, who had tried talking with him three times since the last day had squirmed with discomfort for just sitting beside him.

Apparently there was big difference in knowing something and experiencing it first hand.

But, oh well, now that he had a reputation, at least the students will stay away from him and allow him to start his plans with ease.

He walked through the corridors under his Shroud of Concielement and followed a pair of unsuspecting Hufflepuff girls back to their dorm rooms.

Once he found their dorms, it was easy for him to find the entrance to the kitchen where he asked the elves to serve him something so that he could eat his lunch in peace.

After that, he had 'Defense against the Dark Arts' class after which he could truly put his plans into motion.

—————

Defense against the Dark Arts was boring class in more ways than one.

For one, Professor Quirrel had only taught them theory for a whole hour and for another, anything productive that he might have said came out as a jumbled mess because of his stuttering.

Just like his previous class, he chose the last corner seat to sit in so that he would not be disturbed by either the students or the teacher before he used put on a low level Shroud of Concealment on himself and took out the book on Warding that he had been reading recently.

Even his own desk mate, some bloke from Hufflepuff did not look at him even once during the whole class so he knew that his shroud was doing it's job spectacularly but despite that, he felt several intrusions of legilimency probes during his time in the class and a prickle of pain in his scar every now and then.

He had not looked at Quirrel's eyes even once, so how had he use legilimency on him.

But then again, he had not looked at Voldemort in the eyes at the feast either so it was sufficient to think that Voldemort could use legilimency without making eye to eye contact.

Or maybe it was not legilimency at all and some other form of attack instead.

Maybe wraiths simply had access to some different form of mind arts.

Thankfully, he Occlumency shields held themselves together against all the attacks and he was spared the splitting headache that the original Harry Potter often complained about in the movies whenever he sat in the Defense against the Dark Arts class.

At the end of the class, he had gone through two chapters in his Warding book and the other young witches and wizards in the class looked thoroughly bored and had learned absolutely nothing at all.

—————

"It's not easy to find you two you know." Harry said as he entered the abandoned the empty classroom where the two pranksters were brewing some kind of potion for god knows what.

Both of them turned abruptly at his presence but before they could say another word, he cast two quick spell at them in which put them into full body bind at once.

Before both of them could fall on the cauldron they were brewing on, he flicked his wand and sent them toward the two chairs at the corner of the otherwise empty classroom.

Even in their partially petrified state, he could see the fear in their eyes as he bound them with ropes and took their wands for himself.

He felt no need to check for a spare wand on their bodies because he knew that the Weasleys were a poor family who were not even able to buy a new wand for Ron so buying a spare wand was a luxury that they would hardly be able to affford.

Then he removed the Petrifying spell from their bodies and watched in silence as their faces contorted with anger and a bit of fear.

"Harry Potter" one of them said.

"The Boy who lived." The another one continued.

"The savior of the wizarding world." The first one said with a mocking voice.

"The vanquisher of The Dark Lord."

"A Parselmouth"

"And a future dark lord."

"What is the meaning of this?"

"Why are you doing this to us?"

"It's not like we've ever…"

Before they could continue their antics any longer, he swished his wand and both of their mouths shut together at once.

"You have something that is created by my father, my god father and his friends." He said in a soft voice which reverberated in the empty classroom. Hmm… interesting effect. Maybe he could use some kind of spell on his voice to always get this scary edge.

Both of them shook their heads frantically at his words and he said "I'm talking about the Marauder Map you fools."

At his words the both of them looked at each other and went into some kind of silence conversation.

He let them converse among themselves but when they said nothing for almost a minute, he lost his patience and flicked his wand once again before imagining the Marauder Map in his mind.

"Accio Marauder's Map." He said and send forth his will and magic through the wand and in a few seconds, a roll of parchment flew out of one of the robes kept at the corner of the room which he caught in his hands easily.

He wondered why he had not done this at the start. If he had then he would not have to converse with the annoying twins.

Oh well. Live and learn.

He unfurled the parchment and just like he had predicted, it was empty.

"I solemnly swear that I'm up to no good." He said and tapped the parchment and watched in fascination as lines started to form int he parchment and soon enough, a large portion of the area he was standing on became visible in the parchment along with the footsteps and names of the people in the corridors and rooms.

With a smile he rolled up the parchment and looked at the twins who were eyeing him with apprehension and pointed the wand at them.

If he was better at the memory charm, he would have been able to erase the very existence of the Marauders' map from their memory. But since he was not that good, he had to contend with simply erasing their memory of meeting him in the room.

At some point in the future, they would realize that the map is missing from their robes but hopefully they'll just think that they dropped it somewhere or something like that and not suspect that someone stole their map and obliviated them.

With a jaunty tune, he unfurled the map to make sure that no one was following him and went to the seventh floor where the painting of Barnabus the Barmy teaching Belle dancing to the trolls was hung on the wall.

And smiled.