My Name is Barry Potter, and I am the twin brother of Harry Potter : Chapter 1.2 (Patreon)

Commissioned by [Damien Jones]

My Name is Barry Potter, and I am the twin brother of Harry Potter.

Chapter 1.2

–Barry Potter–

He came to awareness, without any of the usual senses that he had gotten used to in the admittedly short period of time he was alive in the form of a baby. He had no senses and thus, no way to know where he was or what he was. He had a sinking feeling that he was in a soul form, ready to move onto whatever it was that came next, and along with that came a strangely calm feeling.

As if the worst was behind him now, and that he couldn't do anything about the rest. It was incredibly relaxing, as in the exams were behind him now, and now all that was left was to wait for something he no longer had any control over.

He liked to think that Harry survived, even with the new version of the Killing Curse that Voldemort had boasted of, weirdly to a year old kid, before he killed him. Man, the dude must be conversation starved if he took that opportunity to brag about his spell. 

Hopefully, Harry kicked the snake’s ass and grew to enjoy his life and not live his life going along with the flow. 

With that prayer done, he moved on to the next topic on the agenda, i.e, his current situation. What could he even do about something like this? With no senses, no movement possible, and he couldn't even sense any limbs or anything like that. 

Or was this the equivalent of the afterlife in the Potterverse? A blank void that you had to spend an eternity in, until you went mad and your soul could then be sent back to the Reincarnation cycle?

Or was it something like the Good Place and the Bad Place, Heaven and Hell system? Where in he didn’t even have enough time to do any deeds, putting his karmic scale at zero, which resulted in him being in this hellscape?

But that doesn’t make any sense. This void was a punishment, that much he could conclusively say. Why subject people with zero karmic balances to this punishment? Especially since the souls most likely to have such a reading were beings who never even had the chance to do something, which meant those souls were most likely babies who hadn’t even grown up.

Before he could make heads or tails about the entire situation he had found himself in, he felt something. A distant presence, something that felt angry? He didn’t know how he knew that or how he suddenly even had the senses for distance as well as emotions, but he was thankful for them.

Beat the hell out of just stewing in your own thoughts for eternity, until you went so mad that you came back to sanity.

The anger seemed all consuming to him, even as he felt the distance between them lessen as time went on. He accepted the addition of the time sensing to his growing repertoire of senses as he tried to get past the blinding ball of anger that was his roommate in this void.

It was hard, as in it took a long time, but he finally began seeing behind the wall of anger. Fear. Lots and lots of fear permeated the entire being of the soul? Whatever it was, it was deathly afraid and masking it rather well with an unhealthy amount of anger. Good for them, he supposed?

Only for him to reverse his opinion of them completely when another unit of time passed in this void, and he now gained the senses to look past the emotions and delve into the thoughts category. Only then did he realised who he was looking at, and as time went on and he began gaining some more of that mobility, well, let’s just say that it was good that Voldemort couldn’t see his face since he had no face right now, otherwise he would have sported the most unhinged, maniacal, and gleeful grin. And that, would have just sent the bitch running for the hills, metaphorically of course.

The anger continued to rise, as if it had no ceiling, as did the fear. As time went on, he could even hear the distorted thoughts of Voldemort here. He had no idea why both of them were sent to the same place. Could it be that the new spell Voldemort touted was just a gateway to some hellish, empty place? And after sending his soul here, the protection from his mother was activated, sending the monster here as well?

If that was true, it would be so hilarious, and he would be rolling around laughing if, you know, he was not a victim as well, this place had a floor to roll on, and he had the required parts to laugh.

Either way, he was glad. Back then, he was a baby, a year old abby with barely any motor control and no power whatsoever. It stung especially bad because he was isekai’d, and he was supposed to get a chear that would allow him to defeat the final boss, to vanquish any enemy, and then live happily ever after.

And yet? What did he get? Barely months after he had regained his sealed memories, he was killed by the Final Boss equivalent of the Magical world. A great tragedy.

A tragedy that he was going to address, partially anyway. There was no bringing back Lilly and James Potter, no bringing back the nice, happy and comfortably rich childhood and adulthood that he and Harry were supposed to experience, no turning back the fact that Harry was most probably an orphan, about to suffer under the hands of people who would love nothing more than to dump him at some orphanage and never see his face ever again in their entire lives.

So, after he felt like he had gained sufficient skills, he latched onto the soul of Voldemort, for lack of a better term.

“W-What? What is happening?! Who are—AAAAAA!” Voldemort’s confused questioning quickly turned into pained screams as he quite literally began tearing into his soul, using it as food for his own. He didn’t know what this would lead to, if the soul could even be killed, or if he could survive doing it, but what he did have was all this pent up anger and a perfectly acceptable target in front of him.

Which is why, even when he felt small attacks from the now flailing Voldemort shard, he continued eating the damned thing, uncaring of any damage he might suffer in return. This thing had deprived him of a life in a literal magical world! Millions of people dreamed of one day getting that Hogwarts letter and going through the whole thing, and this bitch had taken that from him.

He was not going to let him go. It was as if whatever ROB sent him in this universe, without a way to defend himself, finally felt guilty about the whole thing and sent him Voldemort’s soul as compensation, on top of the abilities he seemed to have but Voldemort did not.

“--AAAAAA! Wait! Sto—AAAA!” Tommy boy here continued to scream, just like he did when his matron whipped him for—

Wait. He paused in his metaphorical or maybe literal soul eating as he pondered on the piece of information that he now had. Not like the kind of information he had from the fanfictions he read, but from real memories, as if he had experienced it himself, or atleast looked at memories and distantly felt the sensations, like an advanced Pensieve maybe.

He then did the soul equivalent of a shrug before diving back in, his hunger for knowledge now acting as the fuel to the fire that was his anger towards the wizard, soul form or not.

The pained screeching continued, drowning him in the emotion of fear as Tommy boy finally realised that after all his planning, all his efforts to ward off death, he was going to die because he was being eaten by the soul of a wizard kid he had just killed. Ah, if only he could somehow transmit the thought to the soul he was eating at the moment. It would have been priceless to see Tommy boy’s face morph into one of realisation as it dawned on him that all the steps he took to stop Death, led him directly here, in his mouth.

Ah, Death really could not be denied her rightful prize, be it from Harry’s wand or from his soul teeth.

And just like that, after some amount of screaming and begging towards the end, he had finally consumed Voldemort’s soul, leaving behind nothing but the silence of the void that previously felt hellish but felt relaxing now.

As he did the soul equivalent of a burp, his soul now full of data and information, he felt his awareness slipping. He tried to hold on, to hold onto consciousness, but it felt like pushing against the wall of a very large dam. Impossible, even if you were a wizard who had just eaten the soul shard of a very powerful wizard. As he slipped into unconsciousness, he did so with the satisfaction of taking down Voldemort with him.

The only one who could share the feat would be his twin brother, and that will happen in the future. A future he was most likely not going to see at all.

___xx__

[7 years later]

“Yes, Harry, the letter will arrive on time.” He sighed in exasperation, reading through the book in Harry’s hand, even as the brat was hell bent on eating his brain, always badgering him about the Hogwarts letter.

“But how do you know? You don’t even have a body to check. What if things had changed and they just forgot about us?” Harry asked him as he sighed, and after sliding back control of his body, answered the impatient boy.

“Harry, trust me. Why would I lie to you? Have I ever lied to you before?”

Harry, now back in control of his body, shook his head wildly. He rolled his eyes at that, as the sensation was transferred to him as well.

“Then, just shut up, go to sleep, and let me read the book, okay?”

“....Okay,” The answer came extremely reluctantly as he retook control of the body before he felt Harry fall asleep. Perks of sharing a body, he supposed. Harry didn't need much beyond a mental command to fall asleep.

And even when he fell asleep, he, Barry Potter, the tenant in Harry’s brain, remained awake and alert, ready to defend his brother.

As he looked out of the window at the moonlight coming through the window of the room he had negotiated with the Dursleys, he thought of just how this exact arrangement came to be.

As it turns out, the void that he had been in was not a void but the space where the souls residing in Harry Potter’s body were kept. He didn’t know why Harry’s soul was not there, but the space itself was a theory until now so he did not dwell too much on it. What he did dwell on was the memory package he got for consuming Voldemort's soul shard in Harry’s body.

He didn’t get all of it, but he got enough, which is why Harry was sleeping in his own room, clothed, fed properly, not bullied, and respected and feared in equal measure by the Dursleys.

As it turns out, sharing a soul space with a stranger could lead to other effects, but sharing a soul space with an identical twin? Now, that came with some great benefits. His soul, being older and more powerful, even before he consumed Tommy Boy’s soul shard, was obviously the dominant one, but he never took control over Harry’s body.

It felt…icky.

Which is why, for the past 7 years, he had remained the backseat driver in Harry’s body, guiding him on situations, teaching him stuff that no one else bothered to reach, protecting him from the Dursleyes, the bullies at school and in one rare case, from Aunt Marge’s pitbull, who, rest in peace, was no longer alive.

He knew that putting the blame on the dog was wrong, but Harry had panicked and given him the reins when he first heard the dog, and by the time he could do anything, the Dog was already on them. Being just seven, the Dog was a lot larger in his vision, which resulted in an unfortunate explosion.

Good thing was that after that, the Dursleys didn’t even dare breathe in his direction. Bad thing was that the dog was innocent, and to this day, he still felt bad about flinching like that, magically of course.

That was four years ago. It had taken him over a year to awaken in Harry’s body, to get access to his senses. After that, it had taken him only six months before he could reliably take over Harry’s body and control it properly. Six more months to feel the magic in Harry's body.

Six more to get basic telekinesis and basic matter manipulation, along with an Intimidation Aura, created as the hard part of actually feeling the magic was done.

One month to get properly acquainted with the feeling. And only two days to convince the Dursleys that it was in their best interest that he was treated properly, when the wizards inevitably came to check on him, and that he could call upon them too. It was really easy to stoke their fears of being disappeared by the wizards, and spending their lives in a magical dungeon, with Dursley going to an orphanage.

They came to fear him after that, but after the dog incident, they were terrified of him. And honestly? He liked it like that.

He didn’t have to do anything beyond maintain his room, and cook his own food if there was none in the kitchen, an agreement that suited him just fine. He liked to cook for himself, less chances that Petunia would try something stupid like poisoning his food.

Now, Harry was eleven, and already powerful enough to destroy the entire house with a mental thought if he so wished. The lack of wand proved detrimental to Harry’s magical progress, which is why he focused on the basics.

Telekinesis. Matter moulding. Intimidation Aura. Physical reinforcement. Mental reinforcement.

He also made his little brother exercise, a lot to make sure he didn't become as scrawny as the movie counterpart, but it would seem that housing two souls in one body did have its toll, or maybe the earlier formative years spent under the tender mercies of the Dursleys inflicted permanent damage on the growth curve of Harry’s body.

Either way, Harry’s body was nearly as strong as it should be, even with all the food and exercise, a problem he was going to fix later on. He already knew of some ways to mitigate that, but all of them came from Voldemort’s knowledge and thus were Dark in nature.

No matter, he was sure that there must be something they could do. Something they could find in Hogwarts’ expansive library.

Which is why they were both waiting for that letter to arrive, Harry more so, since the kid was fascinated with all the memories he had shared with him from what little he had seen of the movies.

Until then, book reading it was.

Word Count - 2606