Life's a Glitch

"Godfather?" spluttered Uncle Vernon. "You haven't got a godfather!"

"Yes, I have," said Harry brightly. "He was my mum and dad's best friend. He's a convicted murderer, but he's broken out of Wizard prison and he's on the run. He likes to keep in touch with me, though … keep up with my news …check if I'm happy…."

And, grinning broadly at the look of horror on Uncle Vernon's face, Harry set off toward the station exit, Hedwig rattling along in front of him, for what looked like a much better summer than the last-

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…

…

…

A problem has been detected and the World Operating System has been reset to prevent damage to the timeline.

GENERAL_PROTECTION_FAULT

You may be experiencing some disorientation and memory loss. If this is the first time you've received this Stop error screen, reinitialize your avatar. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check to make sure your avatar is properly initialized. If this is a new incarnation, ask the Loom of Fate for any bioware updates you might need.

If problems continue, enter assisted access mode. Disable or remove any newly installed bioware. Disable enhanced interface modules such as prophesy or magesight and reinitialize your avatar. Then reinitialize in normal mode.

Technical Information:

*** STOP: 0x00000042 (0x8F354A49, 0x78AF8319, 0x00038AD1, 0xCB37A372)

Reinitialize Avatar
Assisted Access Mode

Harry stared dumbfounded at the words written in white fire hovering in midair in front of him. Beyond the words everything was colored a deep shade of blue. His uncle and everyone else was frozen in place like someone had pressed pause on the world. He tried to turn to see if his friends were still in sight and found his body was frozen as well from the waist down. He could still turn at the waist, but his friends had already vanished from view. That would be bizarre enough, but he also felt completely drained and exhausted, worse than any one of his visits to Madame Pomfrey. It wasn't just his body that felt week. He couldn't focus. The words before him were strange and muggle and made less sense than Hermione trying to explain arithmancy.

"Help! Someone help me!" His cries for help went unanswered. Nothing reacted. Not the words. Not his uncle. Not the other frozen people. For a while he panicked, screaming and struggling to move. He even drew his wand, but the last thing he needed was to get in trouble for breaking the underage mage rule thing again. His eyes went to the bottom of the white fire words. 'Reinitialize Avatar' and 'Assisted Access Mode' were both blinking. Did that mean something? He wasn't sure what reinitialize avatar meant, but he certainly needed assistance. Lacking anything better to try he reached out and pressed those words.

King's Cross faded to black and everything with it vanished including the words in white fire. For several seconds he was draped in darkness then new words of white fire appeared.

WOS 42.301 – Assisted Access Mode

Harry James Potter
Race: Human
Heritage: Half-blood
Father: James Fleamont Potter
Mother: Lily Judith Potter nee Evans
Birthdate: July 31st, 1980
Level 1

Assign Characteristics – 25 points available

STR: -1 -/+
DEX: 1 -/+
VIT: 1 -/+
INT: 1 -/+
POW: 1 -/+
CHA: 1 -/+

Press Okay to continue.

What? This was like a video game? His life was a bloody video game?! That was nuts, crazy, insane… par for the course. You're a wizard, Harry. Boy-Who-Lived, paraseltongue, kill a bloody basilisk, no your crazy godfather isn't trying to kill you, it's Ron's pet rat, time travel – sure. Why not everything being a game? After screaming, yelling, and cursing accomplished nothing he decided to try pressing the words in front of him mostly at random. Adding points to STR and VIT made him feel better, but adding points to INT cleared the fog in his head. Suddenly he could think again and manipulating the controls seemed obvious. Quickly he reassigned 26 points to his INT, leaving the minimum 1 for the others. He felt weak as a kitten, but he could think clearly again. He also discovered that by hovering over the names he received an explanation for what each of the characteristics did:

STR – Strength, the ability to exert force. Strength impacts damage done in physical combat.
DEX – Dexterity, represents your coordination, dexterousness, and deftness. Dexterity impacts your chance to hit and avoid being hit in combat.
VIT – Vitality, the measure of your vigor, stamina, and health. Vitality impacts your hit points which is a measure of how much damage you can survive.
INT – Intelligence, reflects your character's memory, capacity for clear and reasoned thought, intelligence, and store of basic. Intelligence impacts your ability to learn new spells and skills. Intelligence also impacts the success of many skills.
POW – Power, the ability to exert magical force. Power determines the success, strength, duration, and impact of spellcasting.
CHA – Charisma, reflects your character's force of personality, presence, and ability to inspire feelings such as awe, fear, or courage.

What he didn't see was if these statistics were permanent or if they could be increased. Harry didn't have much experience with videogames, but he'd watched Dudley play. He knew that in some game characters got stronger. They leveled up. However, he couldn't be sure that the characteristics would increase which meant he'd have to pick as if they were permanent. So what to pick? While he had enjoyed watching Hermione deck Malfoy, physical strength meant almost nothing in the wizarding world. Harry decided to leave it at 1. Charisma seemed more useful, but he had obviously had a low charisma. Everyone in the neighborhood was convinced that he was criminally disturbed. At Hogwarts his reputation had flipped and flopped depending on the latest rumors. He could live with shaving it a few points. He made it a 3. That left him with four stats all of which were important. Low dexterity meant missing with spells and getting hit. Low intelligence meant trouble with classes and learning spells. Besides, he could feel the difference 26 INT made as compared to 5. VIT meant not dying when falling off a broom or getting bit by basilisks. Maybe his vitality didn't have to be high, but he didn't dare make it low. Power, his magical power had obviously been high as he'd turned away the dementors and based on the past three years he needed that power. It wasn't easy but he eventually settled on a compromise that he felt he could live with:

STR – 1
DEX – 6
VIT – 5
INT – 7
POW – 8
CHA – 3

I stumbled across this recently when looking through my old files. At one time I thought about doing a gamer Harry Potter. The twist is that rather than start off 1st years as most do, I wanted to start in the middle of the series where a random bug drops Harry out of immersive mode and into a more game-based mode. This predates Bug in the Game. If I did dust it off, I'd bug Faria Lyton who has been working on some rules to run gamer fictions like this one. I'd also probably rewrite it significantly. While I still like the concept of starting a Gamer crossover with a crash, I'd have to put a lot more thought into stats, skills, and even when to place the glitch.