Ethan Cole learned early that dying was rarely heroic.
It was usually loud, chaotic, and deeply inconvenient.
The briefing room lights hummed softly as satellite images scrolled across the screen—grainy rooftops, heat signatures, alleyways mapped into sterile grids. The target compound pulsed red on the display, surrounded by narrow streets and too many blind corners. A bad place to be pinned down. A worse place to hesitate.
Ethan stood with his arms crossed, helmet resting against his hip, eyes moving faster than the laser pointer tracing routes on the wall. He didn't interrupt. He never did during briefings. Talking was for after. Thinking was for now.
"Extraction window is six minutes," the commander said. "Any delay past that, and we abort."
Abort. The word floated in the air, weightless and dishonest. Everyone in the room knew what it meant. Abort meant leaving someone behind. Abort meant paperwork wrapped around a body bag.
Ethan shifted his weight, already mapping angles in his head. The building had three entry points. Two were obvious. One was suicidal. Which meant it was probably the one they'd need.
When the briefing ended, the team dispersed in quiet efficiency. No speeches. No bravado. Just the calm ritual of men and women who had done this too many times to pretend it was exciting.
Ethan checked his rifle, the familiar weight grounding him. He had read once—during a long night on deployment, pages lit by a red flashlight—that some people believed soldiers were addicted to danger.
That had made him laugh.
They weren't addicted to danger. They were addicted to control.
The mission went wrong exactly three minutes in.
The first explosion wasn't planned. It tore through the east wall, collapsing a stairwell and cutting off the clean route
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Ethan woke up choking.
The first sensation was pain—sharp, disorienting, everywhere at once. The second was darkness so complete it felt solid. The third was the unmistakable smell of dust, mildew, and something old.
Very o
Ethan tried to breathe and found that his chest barely moved. Panic flared—short, bright, immediately crushed.
Control. Assess. Adapt.
He forced air in through his nose, shallow and measured. The ceiling was inches above his face. Wood. Cracked. Splintered. He could feel it with his fingertips—too small, too close.
This was not a coffin.
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"I'm… alive," he whispered, voice thin, high, unfamiliar.
Not alive. Different.
Memory came crashing in like a delayed shockwave. The mission. The explosion. The heat. He remembered the moment of impact, the certainty of it.
He was not supposed to wake up.
Slowly, carefully, he pushed against the door above him. It resisted, then creaked open, light spilling in and forcing him to squint.
A cupboard.
He was in a cupboard.
Ethan sat up—and froze.
His knees hit his chest far too easily. His arms felt wrong, proportions off. He looked down at himself, heart beginning to pound in a way no battlefield ever had.
Small hands. Thin wrists. Pajama sleeves several sizes too large.
"No," he said quietly.
The word echoed uselessly in the cramped space.
He crawled out, standing on unsteady legs. The room beyond was a narrow hallway, faded carpet worn thin by years of neglect. The walls were covered in photographs—dozens of them.
A family.
All smiling.
None of them included him.
Ethan—Harry—stumbled toward the nearest reflective surface, a dusty mirror at the end of the hall. He stared into it, breath catching.
Messy black hair. Pale skin. A thin face with sharp green eyes far too old for the body they sat in.
And a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead.
"Oh," he breathed.
Oh no.
The realization hit him harder than the explosion ever had.
"This is—" He swallowed. "This is Harry Potter."
Not a story. Not a metaphor.
The boy who lived.
The boy who should not have remembered dying in a burning building on the other side of the world.
Ethan leaned against the wall as the weight of it pressed down on him. He knew this house. He knew this hallway. He knew exactly whose voices he was about to hear from the kitchen.
As if summoned by the thought, a shrill voice cut through the silence.
"Boy! Are you awake yet?"
The words sent a chill down his spine. Not because they were frightening—but because they were familiar.
Too familiar.
He didn't answer.
Footsteps approached, heavy and irritated. A large woman appeared in the doorway, eyes narrowing as she took in his presence.
"Well? Don't just stand there," she snapped. "Breakfast isn't going to make itself."
Ethan studied her face, cataloging details automatically. The tension in her jaw. The habitual cruelty. The way her eyes slid past him, dismissive, practiced.
Petunia Dursley.
He nodded once, controlled, neutral.
"Yes, ma'am," he said.
The words tasted strange. He filed that away too.
As he moved toward the kitchen, memories layered over each other—two lives colliding, overlapping. He remembered this place from the books. The neglect. The cupboard. The smallness of it all.
He also remembered clearing rooms with live fire, remembered the weight of responsibility when lives depended on his choices.
And that, more than anything, terrified him.
Because he knew what was coming.
The letters. The school. The stone. The war.
He knew who would betray whom. Who would die. Who would suffer quietly while the world pretended it was necessary.
Ethan sat at the table, hands folded, eyes distant as Vernon Dursley unfolded his newspaper.
This world thought Harry Potter was a child.
That mistake was going to cost someone dearly.
Or save everyone.
Later that morning, as he scrubbed dishes at the sink, Ethan felt it—a strange warmth under his skin, a pressure like static before a storm. It responded to his emotions, subtle but undeniable.
Magic.
He didn't flinch.
Magic was just another variable.
Another system to learn.
Another weapon to master.
He stared out the window at the quiet suburban street, sunlight spilling across lawns that looked too peaceful for what he knew lay ahead.
"They have no idea," he murmured.
No prophecy would save them.
No destiny would intervene.
But he was here now.
And this time, the war would not be fought the same way.
Not if he had anything to say about it.