I do not own Harry Potter. Any parts that look like they are from the books or movies probably are.

As a thirteen year old boy given the choice between subtle magics and flashy explosions, I'm fairly sure I would have chosen the explosions as well, especially as Harry didn't really know about manipulation magics.

The bit about House magics is there because Harry James Potter-Black-Ravenclaw-Hufflepuff-Slytherin-Gryffi ndor-Emrys-whatever-whatever starts to grate after a while.

As for Daphne, you won't see much more off her yet...

29th June 1994 – Kings Cross Station

Harry stepped of the Hogwarts Express and onto a crowded Platform Nine and Three Quarters. His trunk had been shrunk and placed in his inside jacket pocket, having changed out of his robes and stored them in the trunk on the train. He had sent off a letter to Seizemaul, the Potter account manager, and he had agreed to an appointment later in the day.

Harry headed through the fake pillar and into the muggle part of Kings Cross station, anxious to find a quiet place out of anyone's sight to apparate to Gringotts. He cursed as he did so, another train having only just arrived at Platform Ten, and was forced to go along with the flow of the crowd. A few minutes later he found himself spat out at the exit of the station, businessman after businessman flagging down a cab.

He was in a fairly busy part of London and it wasn't until he had crossed a few bustling streets that he finally found somewhere quiet enough to apparate. He glanced towards the name of the shop next to the alley and paused, an idea coalescing in his mind. He unshrank his trunk and pulled out the Invisibility Cloak, ignoring the urge to explore with his Occlumency.

He'd gotten rather good at it now, thanks to constantly fighting off the call of the Cloak and the subdued call of the Wand, but he wasn't a Master. He'd need to be able to defend himself easily but to do that someone had to constantly assault his mind and where was he going to find someone willing and able to do that?

He peered through the window and when the shop keeper turned his back, opened the door and slid inside. It was a pawn shop of sorts, although it more resembled a jeweller's than anything else with how many precious stones and jewellery was on display, but the shop was pretty close to what he was looking for.

A plan quickly formed in his head. Take off the cloak and sell as many of the gems as he could to the shop keeper, then find another place and repeat. He have to earn a decent amount of cash though with how much Gringotts charged for converting wizarding Galleons to muggle Pounds. Perhaps he could tell the shopkeeper that he had been asked to sell them by a parent or grandparent...

He was about to commence with the plan when he noticed the sign next to the counter, asking for I.D. to be shown for anyone who looked under twenty-five, and that they were sorry for any inconvenience. Harry frowned at that, he didn't look anything close to twenty-five, and he didn't have any aging potions at hand, nor did he know any spells to simulate it.

He drummed his fingers on his arms as he lent back against the wall. Whilst he was glad he had found the hole in his knowledge, it had come at a rather annoying time, and he really needed to change the gems into cash.

He wondered if Seizemaul would be able to help, he had seen the Goblins weighing gems when he was last there, but still the pawnshops were a place to keep in mind. With that he waited for the shopkeeper to turn his back, then quickly silenced the bell, opened the door and slipped back towards the alleyway where he had been planning to apparate. A few moments and the feeling of being forced through a tube later and he was in Diagon Alley, Cloak shoved in one pocket and a bag full of gems in the other.

He strolled down the street and into Gringotts, spitting a greeting to the Goblins guarding the door in Gobbledegook. The goblin looked surprised for a moment then spat back an insult that had Harry laughing all the way up to the counters. Most people were still picking up their children from Kings Cross so it was fairly quiet in the bank.

"I have an appointment with Manager Seizemaul," Harry stated curtly, aware that Goblins didn't like to waste time.

"Heir Potter?" the Goblin replied, a sneer on his face.

"Yes."

"Follow me," The goblin said, flipping the sign on his counter and dropping out of his seat, before striding towards a nearby door.

A few minutes' walk past down the corridor, past more and more bland walls and identical doors found him outside one with Seizemaul's name set into a bronze plaque on it.

"He's waiting." The goblin said before he turned and left, leaving Harry to knock on the door to the room he was standing outside of.

"Enter," came Seizemaul's voice, clearly audible despite the thick oak.

Harry pushed the door open and walked in, taking the seat in front of Seizemaul's desk and waiting for the Goblin to finish reading the document he was holding.

"Afternoon Manager Seizemaul."

"Heir Potter," Seizemaul replied, nodding his head slightly in respect, "You wished to see me?"

"Yes," Harry said, reaching into his pocket and removing the bag full of gems, "Would it be possible to exchange these gems for galleons and invest them in something? I'd rather not leave the money sitting in the vault inactive where ... someone ... could get at it."

"Unfortunately not," Seizemaul replied with a sigh, "There can be no investments from an inactive set of vaults such as your own. You could deposit the gems but they would simply stay in the vaults unused until the account was activated."

"I take it the only way to activate the vaults is to become Lord Potter?"

"Indeed," He replied, "But you would have to wait until you are of age."

Harry sat back in his chair and turned the problem over in his mind. Something was niggling at him, something he had only been slightly aware of during the last year, something he had brushed off as an annoyance.

"Seizemaul," He began slowly, "How is it that Draco Malfoy is Lord Black if he is the same age as I am?"

Seizemaul opened his mouth to reply, then frowned and replied slowly, turning his words over as he did so, "I would say that he is lying, but if no one has called him on it...?"

"They haven't," Harry interjected.

"Then it would probably be to do with the separation of powers," Seizemaul continued, before expanding at Harry's confused look, "There are three things needed before anyone can claim the Lordship of a House, Magic, Money and Influence.

The Magic is just that. They must have the Magic of the House and no other. The Money is access to their Vaults, something Gringotts is keen to give in the case of an inactive account. Lastly is the Influence, the seat the House has in the Wizengamot.

This is why I was so surprised, as far as I am aware the Black account is still inactive and so Draco could not be Lord Black. Also you referred to him as a Malfoy, does he still claim both names to himself?"

"Yes," Harry replied after a moment, "He referred to himself as Draco Malfoy-Black, the Lord Black. Is that important?"

"Yes, in fact it is another mark against him being Lord Black. The Magics of a House are exclusive due to old enchantments. To be Lord Black he could not still be a Malfoy, in fact you could be Lord Black since your Grandmother was one, but you would have to give up the name and magic of Potter to do so, and so that brings me to the last part, Influence.

Given that no one has disputed this it is likely that the others houses have forgotten this or glossed over it, so that Malfoy senior could claim the Black Seats and increase the influence he could have on the Wizengamot. He likely bribed the Minister of Magic to pass a law allowing his son to take up the seat."

"In that case," Harry replied, "Can't we benefit from this? I am a member of House Potter, the last in fact, so I have the Magic and you said that Gringotts would be only too keen to reopen dormant vaults. That gives me the Money if I can get the Influence, which this Law might allow be to do, right?"

"I doubt it," Seizemaul replied, "It's likely that it was a singular law, only applying to the Malfoys, the Minister wouldn't have been stupid enough to make a blanket law like that."

"You think that highly of Minister Fudge?" Harry asked with a raised eyebrow.

The two of them shared a look before Seizemaul sighed and bowed his head.

"I'll check the Charter to see if any new Laws have been passed."

A short while later

It had only been a few minute before Seizemaul returned to his office, a smile on his crooked lips and a spring in his step.

"The Minister was stupid enough to make a blanket Law," He started, walking around to his desk and pulling out several documents and a few books, "The law has gone to being of age for claiming your Lordship to being thirteen, so sigh here and here and will that be all Lord Potter?"

Harry pulled the piece of parchment towards him and signed with the quill in the places Seizemaul had asked, before looking up with a grin on his face.

"Not quite, Manager, I'd like to talk to you about investment opportunities..."

A long while later

Harry walked out of Gringotts a few hours later with a few books under one arm and a satisfied smile on his face. It was getting on a bit and he had yet to set up camp so he turned himself towards the Leaky Cauldron, intending to ask Tom for a room for the night.

In the last few hours he had learnt a great deal about his family's history, the most recent of it from Seizemaul and the more ancient stuff from the book under his arm. The Potter Grimoire was an odd mix between a history book, encyclopaedia, diary and spell book. Notes on spells were squeezed between journal entries from four centuries ago, next to pages on the analysis of a certain magical artefact from eleven centuries ago and breakthroughs in runic sequences from six.

Originally before the founding of any of the Houses, back before even the Celts had really gotten their act together, magic users weren't really organised. They only learnt what they could make up, and as a result, none were very powerful. Eventually like minded wizards and witches with an interest in similar magics joined together, creating loose groups that shared knowledge and pushed each other higher. Their children went on to marry and soon the Houses began to form, each of them specialising in a type of magic.

Those who were of a darker nature became House Black, whilst those who swore to do no harm and heal people became House White. House Bones was formed of Necromancers and others who sought power in death, whilst House Longbottom was made of those Viking mages who came over from their homeland. House Potter had, rather obviously, been makers of magical ceramics and similar. Fortunately some of these specialisations had been lost in the intervening centuries and millennia, otherwise Harry would have been avoiding Susan like the plague.

At this point the Houses had still been accepting people in who had not been born into the House, but as the amount of magic users born outside of the Houses decreased, most Muggleborns not surviving particularly long at this time in history, the practice fell out of fashion, and eventually use altogether.

The House Magics began to from at this stage, both tangible power and inherited knowledge of their specialisation, and the Houses began to become protective of it. They had sought a way to prevent others from stealing from them and that was where House Potter had come in.

Whilst House Potter had originally been potters they had quickly expanded out into other magic storage, and eventually into the creation of pretty much any type of magical artefact and object, as well as a fair amount of non-magical ones. They had created a ward that could be attached to the magics that would prevent anyone from stealing it as one of these wards would repel another.

Unfortunately this had become a problem when it came to marriage between Houses. House Rider and House Breedyr had planned on marry their Heir and Heiress to bind the two houses together politically, and magically, as both Houses agreed to teach the other some of the magics by using the, at the time, out of fashion practice of imbuing someone with the magics of a House. The Potter Ward however prevented this, and as no one wanted to remove it, the Heiress agreed to lose her magical specialisation and gain a new one.

This was where the practice of a dowry originated from for magicals, the cost it would take to retrain the new wife from her old, lost specialisation, to her newly gained one. But, whilst the wife had lost her old talents, she was still very good at breeding magical mounts, better than any of House Rider that she had just joined. Eventually her children were found to be powerful in both areas as well, and the practice of marry politically to gain influence and improve the magical strength of a child was started.

Soon the families couldn't even conceive of the thought of marry someone without that kind of pedigree behind them, although fortunately the size of the Gene pool was large enough that was very little problem, even if each generation did seem to be a little physically weaker, what did that matter to their much improved magical might?

House Potter though never really cared. They didn't really have a specialisation like other Houses did, more the willingness to try anything to create something, although this had led to some problems during their long history.

Most Houses had an alignment, Light, Dark or Neutral. House Potter tended to bounce around randomly, the House's alignment depended on whatever the current Lord Potter, known as the Chief Artificer internally, happened to be building or researching. Harry himself was shaping up to be a Neutral, but his Father and Grandfather had both been Light, whilst his Great-Grandmother was fairly Dark, the generation before was Neutral, then Light, Dark, Dark, Neutral, Light and so on.

This alignment had led to House Potter sometimes fighting Dark Lords, sometimes throwing their weight behind the Dark Lord and sometimes staying out of the conflict altogether, unlike the other Houses who always joined the same side. Sometimes the Dark Lord won but mostly they lost and this led to House Potters fortunes jumping up and down rather rapidly, reaching peaks higher than any other House and then crashing down so much deeper, unlike the slow rise and fall of other Houses.

They had reached another peak just before Grindelwalds had started his reign, Harry's Light aligned Grandfather standing at Dumbledore side as they fought across Europe. It was during this war that the ancestral Potter estate had been destroyed by one of Grindelwalds strike forces, taking a few members of the House with it.

Unlike the other House the estate wasn't a huge mansion surrounded by lush gardens, it was called the Storeyard, and just like its name implied it was a huge warehouse that contained thousands of magical artefacts as well as workshops and tools gathered from throughout the history of the House. A powerful dark curse had hit one of the objects that had been lying there covered in dust and it had reacted badly, which had then caused others to react even worse.

The explosion destroyed the entire estate, the strike force and a large section of the English countryside, something that had been blamed on German bombers.

Still, bits of the Potter legacy were around all the time, in plain sight and everyday use. Several designs of trunk were created by a Potter, as were the wards that hid the Alley from view and harm. In fact it was another Potter ward that appeared to be responsible for the attitude of the Purebloods.

When the Romans invaded Britain they attacked several of the Houses, who despite their magical power were overwhelmed by the disciplined Roman Legions. After a few Houses were wiped out the others decided to simply run and hide if they were attacked, the Romans couldn't keep up with the brooms used to transport entire families out of the battle, their belongings slung underneath them. So the Romans used the only weapon they could against the fleeing brooms, Archers.

Thrown javelins couldn't reach them and were also inaccurate but a few good archers could take out quite a few before they could get out of range. This was the weakness the Potter Anti-Arrow wards were made to cover. The wording was something along the lines of 'prevent any unnatural non-magical object from moving', and it prevented the archers from firing, giving the magicals time to flee.

For the time this was fine until the attacks stopped and the ward was partially forgotten about. There were very few large attacks on magical communities during medieval times, most being singular burnings, and warfare remained that wizards or archers beat melee troops, which beat cavalry, which beat archers or wizards.

But then came the invention of gunpowder and the almost total abandonment of melee troops and cavalry for ranged infantry, infantry who couldn't fire at magicals in magical communities due to the Anti-Arrow ward. The Magical world was amazed! From their point of view the muggles had seemingly abandoned any possible method they could have of hurting them, and it was from this that their feelings of superiority began to gain dominance. The feeling had always been there, but it was hard to be sure of it when some great burly soldier was about to impale you with a pike.

For the muggles of course it was a different matter, they had long since stopped believing in witchcraft and had a different set of aims whilst the wizards had all forgotten that the wards only worked in the areas they had been places, wizarding communities, and not the entire British isles so there wasn't going to be a successful takeover of the world just yet. It was fortunate that the wards didn't extend very high otherwise there would have been odd patches around the country very aircraft couldn't fly. It had also saved the magical world from a great deal of damage from World War II, apparently there were a large number of bombs that had hit the wards and simply stopped, held there by magic as the ward prevent the 'unnatural non-magical object' from moving.

Harry wondered if anyone had actually bothered to take them down after the war as he eyed the sky above him carefully before ducking into the Leaky Cauldron.

5th July 1994 – Harry's Tent

Harry had finally gotten around to applying the various rune sequences to his tent. He was about half way through sewing all the sequences he wanted into the inner lining of the tent and it had resulted in some rather strange effects. At one end of the tent the sequences had turned it into a warm and spacious room nearly a dozen meters across whilst the other end was still just a tent.

The area Harry was working on at the moment was between those two and the room seemed to warp down and twist into the cold tent at the other end. As Harry continued to sew the runes into the tent the effect was slowly moving further and further down the sides of the tent and the room warping itself further away.

It was rather odd to look at, and almost painful in a way.

The Potter Grimoire had been very useful in completing the runic clusters that would go into the sequence that had enlarged the room, as well as change the fabric of the tent into wooden walls, whilst keeping a consistently warm temperature and low weight.

It had also brought various items to his attention that his family had found and that he wouldn't mind recreating. The massive magical cannons used to get around their own Anti-Arrow wards as well as improve upon the standard cannon in almost every way had seemed a little outdated until he had looked at another section applying a great deal of those improvements to handheld guns. He still needed to improve upon them though, the various designs had been based off an Enfield pattern 1853 musket, not the most modern of weapons.

Quite why his Great-Grandmother had needed a few thousand muskets that could still work inside the Anti-Arrow wards, Harry didn't think he wanted to know.

4th August 1994 – Little Hangleton

Little Hangleton was a fairly quiet village, a few streets branching off from the village green and local pub, The Lamb, along with a few small shops, whilst the church and cemetery were both a short way away from the village, near the old Riddle Mansion, long since abandoned.

That had certainly peaked Harry's interest. He knew that the House of Gaunt, Voldemort's House, had had their ancestral home near here, and another old home with the same name as Voldemort's supposed surname, he doubted that was a coincidence.

It hadn't taken him long to find out the story from some of the local gossips, even if they had given him some funny looks over his age and the fact he was apparently travelling alone. According to their stories the entire family was murdered by their gardener and handyman, Frank, although there were no signs of death on any of the bodies. They just seemed to have died of fright.

That sounded like the Killing Curse to him.

He had asked about Frank, wondering if he could possibly meet the man, but apparently he had vanished only a week before, not that anyone had really noticed, so it could have been longer. Seeing as that line of enquiry had taken him nowhere he had excused himself and headed out to where the Gaunt home was supposed to be.

The Gaunts had used to own all the land around this area along with a large manor house, but they had been declining for years before they had eventually sold of the house and lands in the early seventeenth century. The manor house had been passed through several hands before it had eventually been lost track of, whilst the Gaunts had kept a small piece of land near a forest and built themselves a home, a home that became smaller and smaller as the amount of Gaunts declined and they sold bits of it off for Galleons.

He had bought an OS map in a bookshop in the town and had a quick look through, spotting a few small forests that might have been the ones near the Gaunt home, if they hadn't concealed it with magic however.

The largest one, and the one he was wandering around now was called Hangleton Forest, situated halfway between Little Hangleton and Greater Hangleton. It was a common route for the locals to walk their dogs, as it was fairly open and Harry had met a couple of them as he walk through the dappled shade trying to find the hidden shack.

After an hour or so he gave it up as a lost cause. He hadn't found nor felt any traces of magic near his criss-crossing paths through the forest, and he was starting to get a few odd looks from a husband and wife he had just walked past for the fourth time. He pulled out the map with a sigh and opened it, hoping there would be another location that fit the description. Fortunately there was a much smaller forest nearby and the name was...

Gauntwood.

"Well," Harry muttered to himself, still staring at the map, "Now I feel silly."

Gauntwood

It hadn't taken Harry long to find Gauntwood and find that it had been well named. The forest was very dense and only a little light met the ground, not that there were any paths for it to illuminate. It wasn't a popular place to walk a dog, being far too overgrown and out of the way.

It also hadn't taken long to find a few traces of magic in the air, all emanating from a Muggle-repelling Ward. He would have written it off as nothing, it felt temporary, like something thrown up for a moments peace and quiet, but the location was too much of a give-away. Still if he hadn't been looking for it he probably would have ignored it.

It took Harry some time to actually reach the edge of the ward, a great many brambles impeding his path, but when he did he was greeting by the sight of a partially overgrown hovel, not something he would have pegged for the Gaunt home but the rotten snakeskin nailed to the door told him it probably was.

He turned his attention to the wards surrounding the property, sure that there had to be more than a single Muggle-repelling ward on the place. He thought about pulling it down, but decided it would be best to leave it up and keep him from being disturbed.

Still there was something not quite right about this ward, its structure was slightly off, it was too large, almost as if it had another purpose even though he couldn't see another purpose...

There.

Intertwined with it was a stealth ward, something designed to conceal other wards placed within it. Something that probably hid all of the really nasty wards. A brief pull on his magic and a moments tweaking of the muggle-repelling ward cancelled it out and revealed all of the really nasty wards. One seemed to summon and enlarge hundreds of snakes, another drained magic and one prevented you from leaving. And those were some of the nicest.

Fortunately all of them were tripwire wards, and he wasn't planning on getting close enough to trigger them. Harry leaned back against a nearby tree and started to ponder how to get round them. He couldn't get close enough to the wardstones to disable them without triggering them, and nor could he suspend that many wards to allow him to get close enough to disable the wardstones. He could probably suspend a dozen or so and take down another three dozen but that still left nearly fifty more that he had no clue with where to start on taking them down. And it was fairly obvious there was a Horcrux here, he could exactly leave it...

Harry paused and wrinkled his brow. There was a Horcrux here and he needed to destroy it. He could only do that with Fiendfyre, the only technique that was strong enough to destroy them. Fiendfyre was not a precise spell.

He couldn't see anything wrong with that line of thought, nor could he see any wards for fire-proofing, at least, not any that would stand up to Fiendfyre. And even if there were, he doubted the wardstones were Fiendfyre-proof.

Harry rolled his eyes as he drew his wand, he'd stopped thinking off it as Dumbledore's now, and centred himself. It had gotten easier to through off the voices now and he thanked his attempts at Occlumency for it, although he still didn't like relying on a wand.

"Fiendfyre."

Moments later the burning forms of Norberta, Fluffy and Ssesseena appeared, each consisting of a deep, vibrant orange fire, smaller trails of fire quickly catching on nearby plants and trees as they charged towards the hovel. He could see multiple wards being triggered, none of them slowing the Fiendfyre in the slightest , although he found himself almost wincing as the summoned snakes were immediately immolated. A few seconds later and the wards collapsed, the wardstones having apparently been destroyed.

He kept the Fiendfyre fed for a few moments longer, making sure the Horcrux had been destroyed, before dismissing the fires with a grunt of effort. He took a moment to look around, taking in the difference between his use in the Room of Requirement and here. The tree he had been leaning on a moment ago was on fire, normal, non-sentient fire, but fire none the less. In fact all the trees and plants he could see were either on fire or already ash and the ground had been blackened whilst the sky was obscured by a growing cloud of smoke. The shack had simply disintegrated and he was standing near the centre of a rapidly growing clearing.

It was truly a hellish scene.

"Accio Horcrux!" Harry coughed, not even taking a moment to look at whatever it was that had flown into his hand before he apparated away and reappeared, wheezing on a nearby hill.

He turned his eyes to Gauntwood and paled slightly. There was a great pillar of smoke and ash rising into the skies and the fires were rapidly spreading through the rest of the forest.

"I'd better get out of here," Harry muttered to himself, taking a long look round to make sure he wasn't being watched, before he apparated out, "Hope someone calls the Fire Brigade..."

26th August 1994 – Harry's Tent

Harry was current flicking through the Potter Grimoire hoping to find some reference to the stone he had recovered from the Gaunt Shack. He believed it was once part of the Head of House's ring but the ring itself had been melted by the unnatural heat of Fiendfyre. There were an odd set of scratches in it, a line within a circle within a triangle, but he had yet to find anything thing.

Hopefully the library at Hogwarts would be of more help.

His Tent itself was much different now that he had finished the runes and wards. It was room more than a dozen metres square with several doors leading out of it. One led to the outside whilst the others led to his bedroom, storage rooms and bathroom.

The walls appeared to be wooden panels, pine by the looks of it, whilst the floors were a much darker wood and festooned with thick rugs. There were magical lamps flickering around the entire room illuminating it just as well during the night as the great windows in the walls and ceiling would during the day. There was a modern kitchen in one corner and a large dining table with seats in another, whilst the rest of the space appeared to be a huge living room.

Harry was currently enveloped by a huge overstuffed armchair, his feet propped up on a footstool and one hand keeping the Grimoire floating in front of him. His other hand was currently gesturing in small circles towards the kitchen, keeping the bacon and eggs he was planning on having for dinner cooking nicely.

'I love magic,' Harry thought happily, before letting the page of the Grimoire turn itself, 'Combat Applications of Memory Charms? This could be interesting...'