The first thing I noticed was that I couldn't breathe.
Well, technically I could breathe—my lungs were working just fine, inflating and deflating with mechanical precision—but there was this overwhelming pressure, this sense of wrongness that made every instinct scream that something had gone catastrophically wrong.
The second thing I noticed was the cold.
Not the pleasant chill of air conditioning or even the biting winter cold I'd known in my previous life. No, this was the shocking, all-encompassing cold of leaving a warm, comfortable place and being thrust into a bright, loud, utterly terrifying world.
The third thing I noticed, as blurry shapes moved above me and something soft wrapped around my tiny body, was that I had somehow, impossibly, been reincarnated.
Well, I thought with the kind of hysterical calm that only comes from complete cognitive dissonance, this is new.
I would have laughed if I'd had the motor control. Instead, what came out was a warbling cry that sounded like a distressed cat being stepped on. Apparently, newborn vocal cords weren't designed for expressing existential amusement.
"It's a boy!"
The voice was warm, female, and exhausted. Through my blurry vision—because of course newborns have terrible eyesight, why would reincarnation come with any perks—I could make out a woman's face. She had kind eyes, honey-brown hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, and she was looking at me like I'd hung the moon.
Mom, I realized with a jolt. That's my mother.
The thought was accompanied by a strange rush of emotion that definitely hadn't existed five minutes ago. Some instinctive, biological thing that made me want to be close to her, to trust her implicitly. It was disconcerting, having new emotions suddenly installed like software updates.
"Let me see him."
Another voice, male this time, with an edge of nervousness that suggested this was his first time doing the whole 'father' thing. A man's face appeared next to my mother's—thin features, prematurely gray hair despite looking relatively young, and eyes that were a startling shade of blue that seemed almost familiar.
Dad, the same instinct supplied.
"He's perfect," my mother whispered, and I felt her finger brush against my cheek. The touch sent another wave of that strange, biological affection through me. "Absolutely perfect."
"He has your eyes, Margaret," my father said softly, and there was something in his voice—pride mixed with something else. Sadness? Regret?
"And your nose, apparently," my mother—Margaret—replied with a tired laugh. "Poor thing."
I would have rolled my eyes if I'd had the muscular control. Instead, I focused on the more pressing matter: figuring out what the hell was going on.
Reincarnation. I've been reincarnated.
The thought kept cycling through my mind, competing with the overwhelming sensory input of being a newborn. Everything was too bright, too loud, too much. But beneath the chaos, my memories remained intact. My previous life, my knowledge, my understanding of—
Oh.
Oh no.
The realization hit me like a freight train made of lightning bolts and bad decisions.
I knew that shade of blue. I'd seen it in movies, read about it in books, watched it on screen a hundred times. Those eyes, that particular, unmistakable shade, belonged to one very specific family.
Dumbledore.
My father was a Dumbledore.
Which meant I was in the Harry Potter universe.
Which meant I was FUCKED.
If I could have screamed, I would have. Instead, what came out was another one of those warbling baby cries, which my mother immediately interpreted as hunger and moved to feed me.
And there was another humiliation to add to the list: being breastfed while having the full cognitive awareness of a grown adult. I was going to need so much therapy. Except therapy didn't exist in magical Britain, did it? They'd probably just obliviate the trauma away and call it a day.
Focus, I told myself as I… ate. Don't think about the existential horror. Think about the situation.
Harry Potter universe. I was in the Harry Potter universe. As a Dumbledore.
My mind raced through everything I knew about the series. The books, the movies, the Fantastic Beasts films—I'd consumed it all. I'd been a fan, the kind who could quote passages and debate house sortings and argue about whether Snape's redemption arc was earned or not.
And now I was in it.
"What should we name him?" my mother asked, her voice pulling me from my spiraling thoughts.
"I was thinking…" my father hesitated, and I felt him touch my hand. My tiny, useless baby hand instinctively gripped his finger—because apparently, newborn reflexes didn't care about dignity. "What about naming him after my great-uncle? Percival?"
There was a moment of silence.
"Absolutely not," my mother said firmly. "I love you, dear, but I'm not naming our son after the man who attacked those Muggle boys and got sent to Azkaban. Bad precedent."
Wait, what?
"He did it to protect Ariana," my father said quietly, and there was that sadness again, deeper this time. "After what those boys did to her—"
"I know," Margaret interrupted gently. "And I understand why he did it. But our son deserves his own name, not one weighted down with that history."
My mind was already spinning. Percival Dumbledore—Albus's father. Attacked Muggle boys who hurt Ariana. Sent to Azkaban. Died there. Which meant…
Ariana.
My father knew about Ariana. Which meant he was connected to that branch of the family. The tragic, broken branch that had produced Albus, Aberforth, and their sister.
"You're right," my father conceded. "What did you have in mind?"
As my parents debated names—and I silently prayed they wouldn't pick anything too embarrassing—I tried to piece together my situation.
I was a Dumbledore, but not a direct descendant of Albus or Aberforth since neither of them had children in canon. Which meant I was from a branch family. My father knew about Ariana, spoke about Percival with familiarity. A distant cousin, maybe?
And my mother was a Muggle—Margaret, kind and practical and very clearly not from the wizarding world.
Between the muggle and magical world, I thought, remembering the setting my parents had mentioned before. Somewhere liminal. Somewhere in-between.
Which meant my father was probably a Squib.
That would explain the sadness in his voice, the way he talked about the Dumbledore family with a mixture of pride and distance. A Squib from a branch family, living in the margins between worlds, married to a Muggle woman.
And I was their son.
Their magical son, if the weird tingling sensation I could feel beneath my skin was any indication. It felt like electricity, like potential energy, like something waiting to be shaped and directed. Magic.
I have magic.
The thought was exhilarating and terrifying in equal measure. Because if I had magic, that meant I could actually do something about the canon timeline. I could change things. Save people. Prevent tragedies.
Or I could completely screw everything up and make it worse.
No pressure, I thought hysterically.
"How about…" my mother said slowly, "we wait a bit? See what suits him?"
My father chuckled. "You just don't want to commit to a name yet."
"Can you blame me? Look at him. He could be a… a Christopher. Or a Thomas. Or a—"
"Let's table this discussion," my father suggested diplomatically. "We have time."
Please don't name me Christopher, I thought desperately. Or Eugene. Or Humphrey. Please, I'm begging you.
As my parents continued talking in soft voices, I felt exhaustion creeping in. Apparently, being born was tiring work, even if you were mentally an adult. My eyelids—surprisingly heavy for such tiny things—began to droop.
But before sleep claimed me, one thought crystallized in my mind with perfect clarity:
I'm going to fix this.
The Harry Potter universe was full of tragedy. Sirius dying. Dumbledore dying. Fred, Remus, Tonks, Colin Creevey, Lavender Brown—so many deaths that could have been prevented. So much pain that didn't have to happen.
And then there were the things that happened before Harry's story even began. The Marauders' betrayal. The Potters' deaths. Voldemort's rise.
I had knowledge. I would have power—I could feel the magic thrumming under my skin even now, promising strength if I could learn to wield it. And I had time. Three years before Harry Potter was even born, if I'd calculated the timeline correctly.
I can change everything.
The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it was absolutely terrifying.
Because I also knew what happened to people who tried to change fate in stories. Time turners had rules. Prophecies had weight. And the universe had a way of course-correcting, of ensuring certain events happened no matter what you did.
But I had to try.
For Sirius, who spent twelve years in hell for a crime he didn't commit. For the Weasley twins, who should have both lived to old age. For Remus and Tonks, who deserved to raise their son. For Dumbledore himself, who died with so many regrets.
And, a small voice in the back of my mind added, for my father. The Squib Dumbledore who spoke of Ariana with such sadness. Who carried the weight of a family history filled with tragedy.
I'll make it right, I promised silently as sleep finally overtook me. I'll fix the timeline. I'll save them all. I'll become strong enough to change fate itself.
I'll become stronger than Merlin if I have to.
It was an ambitious goal for someone who currently couldn't even control their own bladder.
But hey, everyone had to start somewhere.
One Week Later
Being a baby was, without question, the worst thing I'd ever experienced.
And I'd died once, so that was saying something.
The lack of motor control was bad enough. I couldn't hold my head up, couldn't roll over, couldn't do anything except lie there like a particularly sentient potato. But the truly horrifying part was the complete lack of dignity.
I was changed. I was bathed. I was fed. And through it all, I had to maintain the facade of being a normal baby, which meant I couldn't protest or explain or do anything except cry when things were particularly uncomfortable.
This is character building, I told myself as my mother cleaned me up after another diaper incident. This is teaching me humility. This is—oh God, this is hell. This is actual hell.
"Such a fussy baby," Margaret cooed, completely misinterpreting my expression of existential dread. "Yes, you are. Yes, you are."
Please stop with the baby talk, I thought desperately. I'm a grown man. I have dignity. I have—
She blew a raspberry on my stomach, and despite myself, I giggled.
Traitor, I thought at my own body. Absolute traitor.
But at least the week had given me time to observe and learn. Our home was exactly as my parents had described it—a quiet corner between worlds. Literally.
We lived above a pub called The Crossroads, which catered to both Muggles and wizards. It was one of those liminal spaces that existed in the margins, where the Statute of Secrecy bent but didn't quite break. Muggles came for the surprisingly good fish and chips. Wizards came because it was one of the few places they could drink without constantly maintaining magical discretion.
My father, whose name I'd learned was Thomas (though everyone called him Tom, which was both ironic and concerning given another famous Tom in this universe), ran the pub with quiet efficiency. He might have been a Squib, but he knew the magical world inside and out. I'd heard him talking to a wizard customer about the latest Quidditch scores, discussing broom specifications with the kind of knowledge that came from deep, personal understanding of something he could never truly participate in.
It broke my heart a little.
My mother, bless her, treated magic like it was the most natural thing in the world. When a wizard's drink refilled itself, she just smiled and wiped down the bar. When someone's luggage was clearly bigger on the inside, she helped them carry it upstairs without comment. She'd chosen to marry into this world, and she'd done it with the same practical kindness she applied to everything else.
They were good people. My parents were genuinely, honestly good people.
Which made what I was about to do even more complicated.
Because I couldn't just be a normal baby. I couldn't waste time growing at a normal pace, learning to walk at one year and talk at two and go to Hogwarts at eleven like everyone else.
I had three years before Harry Potter was born. Probably ten or eleven before Voldemort came back. Maybe fourteen before things truly went to hell.
That wasn't enough time to become "stronger than Merlin" if I developed at a normal pace.
Which meant I needed to accelerate.
The problem was figuring out how to train when you were a week-old baby with the muscle control of a overcooked noodle.
Magic, I'd realized, wasn't just about waving wands and saying words. That was just the tool, the focusing mechanism. Real magic—the kind that Dumbledore could do wandlessly, the kind that Voldemort wielded like a scalpel—came from within. It was will and intention and power all combined.
And I could feel it.
Even now, lying in my crib and staring at the mobile above me (little golden snitches that my father had charmed to actually fly in lazy circles), I could sense the magic thrumming through me. It felt like a second heartbeat, like electricity in my veins, like potential energy waiting to be directed.
The Dumbledore bloodline power—the phoenix fire that Albus had known about but never manifested. I could feel that too, buried deeper, like embers waiting to be fanned into flame. It called to something in me, resonated with a frequency that felt both foreign and intimately familiar.
But I couldn't access it. Not yet. Not without control, without understanding, without—
One of the golden snitches dipped lower, close enough that I could almost touch it.
Without thinking, I reached for it. Not with my hand—my arm was still flailing uselessly—but with my will. With that electricity in my veins, that potential energy, that magic.
Come here, I thought.
The snitch wobbled.
My heart rate spiked. Had that been me? Had I actually—
The snitch drifted closer.
Holy shit.
Come HERE, I thought again, more forcefully.
The golden sphere trembled in midair, its tiny wings beating frantically. For a moment, I thought it would work. For one glorious moment, I thought I'd just performed wandless magic as a one-week-old baby.
Then the snitch shot upward, smacked into the ceiling, and fell directly onto my face.
"WAAAAAH!"
The cry was automatic, a reflex response to sudden pain. But it brought my mother running, and within seconds I was being picked up and comforted.
"Did the snitch get you?" Margaret asked, checking my face for injuries. "Tom! Your charm is attacking the baby!"
"It's not supposed to do that," my father called from downstairs, and I could hear him climbing the steps. "The charm should keep them at a safe distance—"
He stopped in the doorway, staring at the snitch, which was now lying on the floor spinning in dizzy circles.
"Huh," he said.
"'Huh' what?" my mother demanded, still holding me close.
"The charm's been disrupted. Like something interfered with it." My father picked up the snitch, examining it with a frown. "That shouldn't be possible unless…"
He looked at me.
I looked at him with the most innocent baby expression I could manage.
"Unless what?" Margaret asked.
"Nothing," my father said, but his blue eyes were thoughtful. "Probably just a faulty charm. I'll fix it."
After they left, I lay in my crib and contemplated what had just happened.
I'd done magic. Actual, observable magic. At one week old.
The thought was exhilarating.
It was also terrifying, because if my father suspected…
No, I told myself firmly. One incident doesn't prove anything. Babies sometimes cause accidental magic. That's normal. I just need to be more careful.
But I also couldn't stop. Not now that I knew it was possible.
I spent the rest of the day practicing. Not trying to move objects—that had clearly been too ambitious. Instead, I focused on the magic itself. Feeling it, understanding it, trying to direct it in tiny, invisible ways.
By nightfall, I could make the magic pool in my hands. I couldn't see it, but I could feel it—warmth and tingling and potential.
It wasn't much.
But it was a start.
And as I drifted off to sleep that night, one thought echoed through my mind:
Three years until Harry Potter is born. Eleven years until he goes to Hogwarts. Fourteen until the Triwizard Tournament.
I have time.
I'll make it count.