A full year had passed since Harry Potter left the Dursleys' house for good. Since then, his life had changed more than even the wildest entries in Sirius Black's journal could have prepared him for.
The small manor nestled in the remote Scottish Highlands had become a sanctuary—a fortress of magic, of learning, and of transformation. And at the heart of it all was Wanda Maximoff.
Wanda no longer resembled the chaotic figure Harry had first met on that school trip. Gone were the jeans and leather coats of the Scarlet Witch. Now she wore long robes of forest green and midnight black, trimmed in silver threads that shimmered faintly with enchantments. A wand holster—crafted from the hide of a Re'em—hung discreetly from her belt. Her wand, carved from mountain ash and inlaid with obsidian runes, was custom made by a discreet wandmaker in southern France who asked no questions.
"I never thought I'd like wand magic," Wanda said one evening, sipping spiced tea in the library, her fingers resting lightly on the wand's polished shaft. "But it's… elegant. Less primal. More—structured."
"You're saying this while you levitated an entire tomb ceiling last week," Harry remarked from across the room, nose buried in a copy of Blood Magic Through the Ages.
"That was Chaos Magic," Wanda smirked. "This… is art."
Wanda had become a freelance curse breaker—one of the most dangerous and lucrative magical jobs in existence.
She didn't work for Gringotts. Too many rules, too much bureaucracy. And frankly, she had no interest in sharing the profits.
Instead, she roamed Eastern Europe: crumbling castles in Transylvania, haunted manors in Poland, cursed graveyards in Bulgaria, hidden ruins in Sokovia—the land of her birth in another world. She followed whispers and signs of lost magic. Rumors of sealed vaults, of ancient blood rituals gone wrong, of places steeped in magic so deep it warped the air.
Most of these places were sealed with blood wards—runes that demanded sacrifices, or spells tied to ancient lineages long extinct. Others had enchantments bound to forgotten languages or soul fragments of long-dead sorcerers.
When spells failed, when logic crumbled, Wanda did what she always did.
She broke them.
She unleashed Chaos.
She would draw in her power, the red tendrils coiling and slashing like a living storm, and she would tear the wards apart—ripping through defenses that had stood for centuries.
"Why finesse what you can obliterate?" she once said with a shrug, while casually stuffing a cursed goblet into a warded bag.
Each successful mission added to her growing reputation—The Red Breaker, the witch who took what she wanted from the bones of forgotten ages. She didn't ask permission. She didn't pay taxes. And she didn't share her findings unless she felt like it.
She sold rare items through the black markets of Albania, Bulgaria, and the Durmstrang underground. Cursed blades, enchanted mirrors, bloodstones that whispered madness—there were always buyers, always vaults full of gold in return.
Within months, Wanda had gone from relying on Harry's vault to owning more than most pure-blood families in Britain.
She insisted on paying Harry back for everything.
She bought him a set of enchanted robes woven with defensive wards. A high-grade cauldron of goblin steel. A Pensive crafted from veela-glass. Dozens of rare and out-of-print books. But more than anything, she brought home knowledge.
And Harry was the first to read through every page she brought.
The manor's library had once been a guest room. Now it was a three-story tower of conjured stone and spellbound bookshelves. With runes etched into every wall, the room expanded and shifted as needed. A rotating spiral staircase led to alcoves filled with floating scrolls, self-writing quills, talking portraits of long-dead scholars, and animated index cards that sorted themselves.
The books Wanda collected ranged from mundane herbology to outlawed necromantic grimoires.
She didn't care if the magic was "dark" or "light." All knowledge was worth having.
And Harry—despite being raised in fear of the word "magic"—drank it all in.
He studied wandless combat and magical theory, read essays on magical ethics, and practiced silent casting and mind arts. He transfigured pebbles into birds, charmed rain to fall upward, and once accidentally levitated a tree.
Wanda watched all of it with growing pride.
He was more than her adopted son. He was her apprentice.
And she told him so one evening, after gifting him a book bound in the skin of a basilisk and sealed with fire-proof runes.
"You're stronger than you know, Harry," she said. "Not because of your past. But because you choose to grow."
And then… came the greatest treasure of all.
It was a tomb near Munich, buried beneath an abandoned church that pulsed with dead wards and anti-muggle jinxes so old even goblins refused to approach.
Wanda found it almost by accident—guided more by instinct than map.
Inside was a cave, shielded by ancient blood-magic runes tied to one name.
Gellert Grindelwald.
It took Wanda three days to break the protections—two of which left her near collapse. Chaos Magic tore through the layered enchantments like fire through parchment.
And inside, she found shelves of scrolls, hidden diaries, alchemical designs, blueprints for enchanted war machines, and tomes so ancient the ink moved when touched.
The hidden library of Grindelwald.
She brought it all home.
She didn't trust the British Ministry or the ICW. She didn't tell Harry where it came from at first. But he knew something had changed the moment he touched one of the dark green tomes.
"This… this isn't just magic," he whispered. "This is war doctrine."
Wanda nodded. "Learn from it. But don't follow it."
And so the library grew again.
Three copies of each book—one for Harry, one for the tower, one for Wanda's personal study.
She placed barriers around the most dangerous ones, layered with chaos bindings and sentient locks that only opened when asked nicely—in Latin, with intent.
It had been a year since Harry left Dursleys.
Now, he lived in a manor filled with wild magic, sentient books, dangerous artifacts, and the love of a witch who'd walked through hell and back.
It started with a single line in an old, leather-bound book Wanda brought back from Eastern Europe:
"Magical education begins at eleven not because power is born then—but because it is when the first wave of maturity has reached the majority of children."
Harry read that line while sitting cross-legged on the library floor, a thick cushion beneath him, surrounded by half a dozen floating books that turned pages at his gesture. He blinked at the sentence again and let the meaning sink in.
His magic hadn't started when he turned seven.
A lot of children didn't reach that point until they were nine or ten. Some even later. But Harry—he had matured early. Maybe it was the trauma. Maybe the ritual. Maybe something deeper inside him.
Either way, it explained everything.
The way he could light candles just by staring at them. The accidental outbursts of lightning storm when he cried as a child. The way the Dursleys' windows had frosted over in summer the day he'd been locked in the cupboard for shouting "Stop!" at Aunt Petunia.
He had magic.
And now, after a full year of living with Wanda and America in their hidden Scottish manor, Harry was no longer just a boy with strange powers. He was training, learning, and growing.
Wanda had not stopped injecting Harry with Chaos Magic, though she had become more cautious with it.
"Your core is like a jar," she explained, gently placing her glowing red fingers on his chest. "If I pour too much magic too fast, it spills. Makes a mess. Hurts you. But if we fill it slowly…"
"It grows," Harry whispered, eyes wide.
"It grows stronger," she finished.
And so, every few nights when Wanda returned from her travels, she sat with Harry by candlelight and infused his magical core with a small stream of Chaos Magic. At first, it had been jarring—like swallowing lightning. But now, his body had adapted to it.
He could feel the difference.
He could cast powerful spells with almost no exhaustion. When he channeled raw energy—his favorite was levitating all the books in the room and spinning them like a wheel—his body didn't burn or ache anymore.
What's more, the Chaos Magic wasn't just being added to him.
It was being made by him.
"I think it's mutating my own magic," Harry had confessed one day. "I don't think I just have Chaos Magic. I think my body is making it."
Wanda looked at him with narrowed eyes, a mix of awe and wariness.
"Then we must train harder. Chaos is like fire. Beautiful and dangerous."
But Chaos wasn't the only thing awakening in Harry.
Something else stirred inside him, something always there—something bright, fierce, and sharp.
It started with static on his fingertips.
Then came the crackle in the air when he got emotional. Once, when a book nearly fell on America's head, Harry had reflexively shouted, and a bolt of electricity leapt from his palm and zapped the book midair, turning it to ash.
Wanda tested him with a ritual.
And the results were undeniable.
"You're channeling elemental lightning," she had said, stunned.
"Is that bad?" Harry asked.
"No," Wanda said slowly, "but it's very rare. And usually... it means Thor blessed your blood."
Harry didn't know what that meant. Wanda wouldn't explain further. But ever since then, lightning had become his second nature. He could call it to his wand, shoot it through his hands, summon massive lightning bolts from the sky, and even use it to charge objects like a magical battery.
Even so, he knew he still had a long way to go. He was only eight, after all. His dueling spells were sloppy. His Latin was still shaky. His Apollo shield charm fizzled out if he wasn't focused.
But he was learning.
And his power—his identity—was no longer something hidden.
Meanwhile, America Chavez had carved out a life of her own in the manor.
She didn't have wand magic. And she couldn't use Chaos Magic.
But she was brilliant in her own way.
With Wanda's help, she had added and magically expanded the greenhouse—again. It was now a living ecosystem of magical flora from all over the world.
She grew Ashwinder eggs in enchanted nests, Mandrakes in quiet chambers with silencing charms, and even cultivated tiny Bowtruckles in a vine-covered alcove.
And America didn't stop at plants.
The forest behind the manor had become her personal sanctuary. With Wanda's help, she bought up the surrounding hills and lakes, turning the entire region into her own magical reserve.
Unicorns nested in the higher cliffs.
Mooncalves danced at night.
And in a carefully warded grove, she raised Thestrals and Hippogriffs—the first time Harry had ever seen a creature that made him go completely still with wonder and fear.
She sold rare ingredients to potion masters in Diagon Alley, shipped bundles of magical herbs to Saint Mongos' infirmary under an alias, and ran an underground trade with other magical greenhouses across Europe.
And she was only just beginning.
The manor itself had transformed into a small magical fortress.
What was once a guest bedroom had been magically expanded into a two-floor library. The bottom shelves were safe books—textbooks, fiction, magical theory.
But the upper shelves… those were different.
Those held the grimoires Wanda had taken from tombs. Forbidden books of spellcraft. Wards inscribed with ancient blood-runes. Tomes once belonging to Grindelwald himself—recently recovered from a warded cave in the mountains of Germany.
"It was his final study," Wanda whispered as she unpacked the ancient volumes. "No one knew about this vault but him."
And now, the library belonged to them.
And Harry devoured every page Wanda let him touch.
"I want to know everything," he said one night, sitting by candlelight, eyes gleaming with quiet hunger.
"You will," Wanda promised, wrapping her arms around him. "But not all at once. Magic isn't a sprint. It's a storm you must learn to ride."
Soon, Harry would be nine.
And on that day, Wanda had promised, they would complete the Blood Adoption Ritual.
He would officially become Wanda's son in more than just name.
They would share blood. Magic. Destiny.
And even though Harry was still just a boy—not yet old enough for Hogwarts, not yet ready for the world—he already knew one thing for certain:
He was no one's prisoner anymore.
Not the Dursleys'.
Not the Ministry's.
Not Fate's.
He was his mother's son.
A boy of Chaos.
A child of Storms.