Harry Potter: Multiverse Maelstrom: Chapter 4: Seeds of Doubt

The voice of the Sorting Hat faded, but its rhyming prophecy echoed in the profound silence that followed. Every wizard and witch in the room, from the most powerful to the most humble, stared at the frayed piece of magical millinery. It knew. The ancient, sentient artifact, a keeper of Hogwarts’ deepest secrets, knew this boy was an imposter. It knew about the Horcruxes. And, most terrifyingly of all, it had decided to help him.

Albus Dumbledore felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature. For decades, the Hat had been a constant, a symbol of the school’s enduring magic. Now, it had become a variable, an unexpected co-conspirator in a game he was only just beginning to comprehend. He had planned to speak with Harry, to gently probe his mind and understand the trauma of the past ten years. But this... this was not Harry. This was a player who had arrived with a copy of the rulebook and a willingness to set the entire board on fire.

Voldemort’s red eyes narrowed to slits. Horcruxes. The Hat knew his most guarded secret. A piece of the Founders' own magic, an artifact of his hated school, was aware of his immortality and had just aligned itself with his prophesied vanquisher. The rage that boiled within him was cold and precise. Hogwarts, which he had once sought to possess, now felt like an even greater enemy.

Jack broke the tension with a low whistle. "Well, that's a turn-up for the books. The Hat is officially in on the con. Things are about to get a lot more interesting."

The screen flickered back to life, showing the continuation of the Sorting Ceremony.

<Chapter 3 Start>

Daphne also went to the claws, I felt sorry for Hermione and whispered: "The Ravenclaws have a library in their common room, the others do not, I even heard Gryffindors are bullies. The Claws dorm needs to be expanded because Hermione got Clawed.

Hermione Granger, who had been watching the screen with rapt, analytical intensity, flushed with anger. "Felt sorry for me? For being sorted into Gryffindor, the house of courage and chivalry? He thinks I would value a common room library over the house of Albus Dumbledore and Godric Gryffindor himself?"

"And what is this nonsense about Gryffindors being bullies?" James Potter demanded, looking offended. "We were pranksters, not bullies!"

Snape let out a long-suffering sigh that was audible across the room. "The distinction, Potter, was often lost on your victims."

"And he's lying about the library," Professor Flitwick piped up, adjusting his stack of cushions to see better. "All common rooms have a selection of books, of course, but the main Ravenclaw library is the Hogwarts Library. We encourage our students to use the school's full resources, not to sequester themselves away!"

"He's trying to isolate her," Remus observed, his eyes narrowed in thought. "He sees her intellect, knows from his 'canon' that she becomes Harry's friend, and he's trying to preemptively poison the well. He wants her to feel like she made the wrong choice, that she's missing out."

"He won't succeed," Ron said staunchly, giving Hermione a supportive look. "Hermione's the most loyal friend anyone could ask for. She wouldn't abandon us for a few extra books." Hermione beamed at him, her anger momentarily forgotten.

My turn came up, the Hat said: "Hmm? That is new, Isekai is it called? WTF? We are in a children's book? Bloody fuck? Horcruxes? Alright, call on me if you need aid, you will need it. Better be Ravenclaw!"

On the screen, the Hat was placed on the imposter’s head. There was a long pause. The audience couldn't hear the words, but the text on the screen revealed the silent, telepathic conversation. The raw, vulgar language used by the ancient artifact sent a fresh wave of shock through the room.

"Did... did the Sorting Hat just say 'WTF'?" Fred Weasley asked, his eyes wide with a kind of sacred awe.

"And 'Bloody fuck'?" George added, looking at the real Hat as if it were a newfound deity.

"Language!" Molly Weasley and Minerva McGonagall snapped in unison.

The real Sorting Hat on its stool rustled. "A mind so strange, with thoughts so crass, required words of a different class. To speak its tongue, I had to learn, for the school's own fate was my concern."

The rhyme did little to soothe the frayed nerves of the Headmaster. "You spoke to it of my Horcruxes?" Voldemort hissed, his voice dangerously quiet. His followers flinched. The word itself felt profane.

The Hat turned its non-existent gaze towards the Dark Lord. "A soul in shreds, a tattered cloak, your darkest secret, of which I spoke. A mind laid bare beneath my brim, reveals all shadows, bright or dim. To save the children, save the school, I must bend every ancient rule."

Dumbledore closed his eyes. The Hat had made a choice. It had sensed the Horcrux in the real Harry's scar, a fact Dumbledore had long suspected but only confirmed later. This imposter, arriving with full knowledge, had forced the Hat's hand. It chose the knowledgeable, morally bankrupt player over the innocent, ignorant pawn, all for the singular goal of destroying Voldemort. It was a terrifyingly pragmatic decision.

"RAVENCLAW!" the onscreen Hat shouted.

The Griffs were disappointed, the Claws sheered, I sat between my Allies and all was well. When the food appeared I went over it with my ring, I bought one that could detect potions, once it was clear, I stacked my plate. Everyone was curious, a Chinese girl could not hold it in: "What did you just do with your ring?"

As the line was read, a pretty girl with long, dark hair in a Ravenclaw tie appeared near Professor Flitwick. She looked around, utterly bewildered. "Cho? What's happening?" she asked another Ravenclaw student who had been summoned earlier. It was Su Li.

Onscreen, her alternate self was pointing at SI-Harry's hand. The camera zoomed in on a simple silver ring he was wearing.

"A potion-detecting ring," Snape identified immediately, his lip curling. "A common enough trinket for the paranoid, though rarely seen on a first-year."

"But what follows..." Dumbledore murmured, a deep sadness in his voice. "This is where the poison truly begins to spread."

I answered: "checking for potions, it is easy to put a loyalty potion in your food, and the next thing you know you are worshiping the headmaster." Everyone protested, I nodded: "See? Loyalty potion, done over the years can cause your mind to be numb, and you even agree with the most stupid ideas."

The accusation landed with the force of a physical blow. The Great Hall, which had been simmering with individual pockets of outrage, now unified in a collective gasp of disbelief and fury.

The teachers were on their feet. "How DARE he?!" Professor McGonagall's voice was like the crack of a whip. "To accuse Albus Dumbledore—the man who has dedicated his life to protecting this school and its students—of something so monstrous! Of dosing children!"

"It's ludicrous on a practical level," Snape added, his voice dripping with scorn. "To brew enough loyalty potions of sufficient strength to affect a thousand people, day after day, would be a monumental undertaking. The magical signature would light up the castle like a Yule tree. The accusation is not just slanderous; it is moronic."

But Dumbledore wasn't looking at them. He was looking at the students. At Harry. The real Harry. His expression was one of profound hurt. "Do you... do any of you, believe I would ever...?" He couldn't finish the sentence.

"No! Of course not, Professor!" Harry, Hermione, and dozens of other students cried out at once.

But across the room, Lucius Malfoy leaned towards his son. "Listen well, Draco," he murmured, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. "This is how you dismantle a reputation. Not with curses, but with whispers. He is planting a seed of doubt. A brilliant, venomous little seed."

Voldemort watched, his lipless mouth curved in a triumphant smirk. The boy was doing his work for him. Why conquer a school when you can convince its own students to tear down its leader from within?

An upper year said: "Name one stupid idea." I looked at him and said: "The most stupid one I heard was that muggles stole our magic. The one that came up with that is almost brain dead."

"Well," Arthur Weasley said, blinking in surprise. "He's not wrong about that. That's one of the most idiotic pieces of pureblood propaganda there is."

Hermione nodded vigorously. "His logic is sound. It's the same argument I've made for years. Magic manifests in those with magical ancestry, however distant. The idea of it being 'stolen' is genetically and magically impossible."

"Do not agree with the creature," Snape warned them. "This is another manipulation. He is using undeniable logic to give credibility to his insane accusations. By proving himself 'smart' on one point, he lends weight to his slander on another. It is a classic debater's trick."

He was offended: "How do you explain that muggles get their magic? There is no other way than to steal it from us." I looked at Daphne and Tracey and said: "I thought this is the house of the smart?" I said to smarty pants: "Listen, and listen good mate, where do you drop your squibs? ... Now tell me, do you still believe they steal our magic? You are giving our magic away dum-dums!"

Professor Flitwick groaned and put his head in his hands. "He's insulting my students on their very first night. Calling them 'smarty pants' and 'dum-dums'. This is not the Ravenclaw way! We encourage debate, not condescension!"

The Malfoys looked deeply offended. The idea that Squibs—family embarrassments to be scrubbed from the tapestry—were the source of new blood was anathema to them. "He speaks of Squibs as if they are a valid part of the magical world," Narcissa said with a delicate shudder. "It is... unclean."

But the logic was, as Hermione had noted, inescapable. Even some of the more open-minded purebloods in the room shifted uncomfortably, unable to refute the core of the argument. The seed of doubt, once planted, was already sprouting.

I smelled at the drinks, and said out loud: "Elves, can I have water, please. Thank you. This is another enigma, why do you all drink pumpkin juice? This smells and tastes awful. Maybe it is to mask the taste of the potions."

This, for many of the younger students, was the final straw.

"Pumpkin juice is delicious!" Ron exclaimed, looking personally offended.

"It's a staple of the wizarding world!" George said.

"To insult pumpkin juice," Fred finished, with the gravity of a judge passing sentence, "is to insult life itself."

Dobby the house-elf, who had been summoned earlier, began to wring his large ears in distress. "The great Harry Potter does not like the pumpkin juice? Dobby must tell the elves! They will be so sad!"

"He's not me, Dobby!" Harry said quickly, trying to console the frantic elf. "I love pumpkin juice!"

"He's connecting it back to the potions," Remus said, shaking his head. "Every word is calculated. Every observation is designed to build his narrative of paranoia and distrust."

Tracey grinned: "We are going to have so much fun with Harry." Daphne nodded, setting the Ravenclaws in their place the first ten minutes after sorting was impressive. She added: "I am asking my father for such a ring. I think it is going to be useful." I put my twenty cents with it: "Ask for one against mind magic too, I heard there are professors that can use Legilimency without that you can notice it. I heard the headmaster and a man called Snip are specialized in it."

Snape, who had been observing with cold fury, flinched at the mangling of his name. "Snip?" he hissed, his voice dangerously low. "He dares..."

"He's warning them about you and Dumbledore," Moody growled, his magical eye fixed on the screen. "He knows about Legilimency. He's not just building alliances; he's teaching his allies how to defend against us. Against the established authority."

Lord Greengrass and Lord Davis exchanged another look. This was valuable intelligence. Their daughters' new ally was arming them with knowledge that could protect them from the Headmaster himself. The contract was looking better and better.

An upper year asked: "How do you know all that?" I grinned: "I spent last month in Diagon Alley, you be amazed by the things you hear." The seeds are sown, now I just have to watch them grow.

"'The seeds are sown'," Dumbledore repeated softly, his voice heavy with sorrow. "He sees it. He knows precisely what he is doing. He is not a child lashing out. He is an enemy agent, waging a campaign of psychological warfare against the unity of this school."

The screen showed Dumbledore rising to give his start-of-term speech. The real Dumbledore watched himself, remembering the simple, if eccentric, words of welcome he had always given.

Dumbledore's speech ended with certain death in the third corridor. I commented: "See? Loyalty potion, there is no other way he won't get fired for getting students in danger. What does he have there? A Cerberus?" Man, I have a blast. This is fun, messing with these airheads is easy.

"He knows about Fluffy," Harry breathed.

"Of course he knows," Hermione said grimly. "He knows everything. And he's twisting a genuine, if ill-advised, warning into more 'proof' of his conspiracy theory."

The teachers who had been involved in protecting the Philosopher's Stone—McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout, and Snape—all looked deeply uncomfortable. The imposter's casual deduction was unnerving.

"And he calls the students 'airheads'," Flitwick squeaked, looking utterly demoralized. "My brilliant Ravenclaws..."

at the riddle doorknob, the thing asked: "What comes first, the chicken or the egg?" I was first to answer: "Neither, they evolved from a single cell to entities that can reproduce with eggs... The door opened while I was still lecturing! I was not even half done! I winked at the girls and whispered: "Even if you don't know the answer, over bluff them with facts they can't check."

Professor Flitwick looked as though he'd been slapped. "That is the single most offensive, anti-intellectual approach to our door's guardian I have ever witnessed! The point is not to 'over bluff' it! The point is to engage in a battle of wits! To think! To ponder! This... this is brute force, using irrelevant Muggle science to bypass a magical philosophical query! It is a perversion of everything Ravenclaw stands for!"

The eagle knocker, in this stranger's world, had seemingly opened out of sheer boredom. It was the ultimate insult.

I am very happy now, those Ravens have private rooms! Well, they are doubles, but those wimps are afraid of my intellect. When I lay in my bed I thought: "It has been a productive day, I made contact with the upper class, made the claws doubt themselves, and have a contract with two pretty girls." I fell asleep with a smile on my face.

"Private rooms?" a former Ravenclaw prefect muttered. "We haven't had private rooms in centuries! It's five to a dormitory, just like every other house!"

"Another fanon trope," Jack supplied. "The idea that Ravenclaws are so intellectual and introverted they require private chambers is a popular one in these stories."

The imposter's summary of his day, however, drove the final nail in the coffin for many. He hadn't made friends; he had made 'contact'. He hadn't engaged in debate; he had made people 'doubt'. And he hadn't found companionship; he had a 'contract'.

"He sees people as things," Lily Potter said, her voice filled with a cold disgust. "Tools, allies, contacts, pretty girls. Not as people."

Xxxxx One of the first spells I learned was to set an alarm... An hour later I took a shower and dressed. At seven twenty both came down and inspected my clothes. Daphne said: "This is not acceptable, show us your room." Fifteen minutes later I was 'barely acceptable' Tracey commented: "We will make a list and send it to Malkins, you just have to sign it and press your vault key on the signature. The magic recognizes it.

The scene shifted to the next morning. A young, studious-looking girl with a 'Prefect' badge appeared, looking flustered. Penelope Clearwater.

"They're dressing him now?" Molly Weasley said, aghast. "Like he's some kind of doll?"

"They are protecting their investment," Narcissa Malfoy corrected her smoothly. "His appearance reflects upon them. An ally of House Greengrass cannot be seen in ill-fitting robes. It is a matter of presentation."

Penelope Clearwater guided us down to the great hall along the way, Granger's mouth did not stop talking for a second. Finally, I asked: "Miss Granger, when you are nervous do you hide it by talking? Because I think you are very nervous. Calm down and give us time to answer your questions. For your information, everyone is nervous, me too, we just are better at hiding it."

Hermione's face, which had been a mask of scholarly indignation, crumbled for a moment, showing a flash of raw, remembered pain. She remembered that first morning, her desperation to prove she belonged, the torrent of facts and questions that poured out of her due to sheer, overwhelming nerves.

"He's not wrong," she whispered, her voice small. "I was nervous. I was terrified. But to use it like that... to cut me down in front of everyone..."

"He's a git, Hermione," Ron said fiercely, putting a hand on her shoulder. "You were excited. There's nothing wrong with that."

"He weaponizes empathy," Remus said, his voice grim. "He correctly identifies her insecurity and then, instead of offering comfort, he uses it to publicly humiliate her and shut her down. It's a classic bully tactic, just dressed up in clever words."

That stopped the talking, I sat between Tracey and Daphne, are they shielding me? Protecting their property? Anyway, Flitwick passed the schedules out, when he reached me he said: "Mr. Potter, after breakfast you need to see the headmaster."

A palpable tension filled the room. This was it. The confrontation. Dumbledore leaned forward, his blue eyes fixed on the screen, his expression unreadable.

The real Professor Flitwick watched his counterpart on screen, his hands clasped nervously.

I asked: "Why sir? What have I done? It is my first day here!" he answered: "I don't know, never the less he is expecting you after breakfast." Daphne interrupted: "Any meeting of a student with the headmaster must be attended by the head of House. It is in the rules." I smiled gratefully at Daphne, that contract is paying itself already.

"That is not in the rules!" McGonagall and Flitwick exclaimed simultaneously.

"A Head of House may request to be present, certainly," McGonagall elaborated, "especially if it is a disciplinary matter. But it is by no means a mandatory requirement for a simple meeting! She's inventing bylaws!"

"And my onscreen self is just letting her!" Flitwick wailed. "I would never be so easily cowed!"

"The contract is paying for itself," Lord Greengrass said with a satisfied nod. "Legal protection. An excellent clause."

Flitwick frowned: "I have a class right after breakfast." I cut in: "The headmaster will understand if you rescheduled it, sir, after all, teaching students is more important than chatting with a celebrity student. You may inform him that I don't like to be famous, and don't hand out autographs. So if it is for an autograph tell him not to bother."

The sheer, unadulterated arrogance of the statement left the audience breathless.

Dumbledore, the defeater of Grindelwald, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, the most powerful wizard of his age, was being accused of wanting an autograph.

Sirius Black actually barked out a laugh of pure disbelief. "The nerve of this kid! I almost have to admire it."

The real Flitwick looked mortified. "He's telling me how to do my job! He's putting words in the Headmaster's mouth! And my alternate self is just... taking it!"

Flitwick went to the headmaster to reschedule, I said to Daphne and Tracey: "Girls, going into your compartment is the best idea I ever had." Flitwick came back: "Mr. Potter, the headmaster asks that you make an exception this one time." I looked at him and asked: "Did he inform you of the subject of the conversation? No? Then I am sorry Sir, being called to the headmaster is a serious thing in the muggle world and I suspect here too.

The screen showed the final standoff. The small, eleven-year-old boy, flanked by his two new allies, looking up at his Head of House with an expression of polite, unyielding defiance. Dumbledore could be seen at the head table, watching the exchange, his expression calm but his eyes blazing.

"He's won," Moody growled. "The boy has completely outmaneuvered him. He's used procedure, feigned ignorance, and invoked his own trauma to refuse a direct request from the Headmaster, and he's done it all in public, making Dumbledore look either weak for allowing it or tyrannical for insisting."

Dumbledore said nothing. He simply watched the screen as it faded to black, the imposter's final, defiant words hanging in the air. He was no longer dealing with a troubled boy who needed guidance. He was facing a political opponent who had declared war on the very first day. And, most worryingly, he was starting to win.

The words <Chapter 3 End> appeared on the screen.