Work Text:
Sawada Tsunayoshi dies, his guardians screaming in the background as fire consumes him.
Harry Potter is born, green eyes flickering with orange and regret.
His first year is a blessing, for all that his memories return with the force of Hayato’s explosions. He is grateful because his parents and family clearly love him, spoiling him rotten with cheek kisses and tender smiles. So even when he wakes, half-mad with grief at losing his precious guardians and his friends- his famiglia- his parents and his uncles wipe his tears away and distract him with shiny, flying toys and sparkles that look downright magical.
That is another thing different in this world- while he can still feel his amber Flames burning in his gut, everyone else feels like a civilian, but more. He is half-pressed to cackle hysterically when his mother, sweet sweet Lily with the greenest eyes he’s ever seen, whips out a stick and turns his father into a cat when he had been throwing Harry into the air like a ball. He had thought it was Mist Flames at first, startled and confused when he couldn’t feel any active Flames in any of the adults, but when his father had summoned his baby bottle with just a flick of his stick, he had been forced to think again.
Magic, he quickly realizes, barely has any restrictions. It all depends on your will and imagination.
He tries, and fails spectacularly, to hold back a sob when he thinks of how Chrome and Mukuro would’ve thrived in this world.
Still, he has not lived years as Vongola Decimo by allowing himself to cry as much as he had when he was a young Dame Tsuna, so when a pale, snake-face man invades their home and murders his mother in front of his eyes, Harry does not cry. Instead, he merely looks at the man solemnly, burning his image in his mind and promising to do everything in his power to kill this man.
He swears, in the name of Sawada Tsunayoshi, the Vongola Decimo, and of Harry Potter, the Chosen One.
As if Magic herself heard his oath, when the Killing Curse flies towards him, he bursts into orange flames and consumes everything in sight.
When he comes to, the man is burnt to ashes and his home is in ruins. The only thing that makes the night worse is when his Uncle Padfoot gives him away to a giant and he is left on a doorstep, shivering in the chilly November air.
He has always had bad luck, he thinks, which is just further proven when a woman opens the door, takes one look at him, and screams.
The worst luck, he later amends, as he looks around at the cramped cupboard he was stuffed in, squirming on top of the filthy dog bed the woman had thrown him on.
They forget to feed him, and he spends his second year surviving on watered down, spoiled milk that the woman- his aunt- gives him every other day. His body quickly collects an assortment of rashes from his barely changed diapers and his grimy surroundings. When they heal just as quickly, he has to wonder whether he has Sun Flames in addition to his Sky, or whether it was magic. And after he develops a burning fever that should’ve killed him, he decides then that he doesn’t care what if it’s magic, because magic is the best thing in the world when his temperature settles impossibly after a night’s rest.
When he finally turns three, he is let out of his tiny prison and shoved in front of a stove. He has to stare blankly at it, before turning to blink at his aunt and her family. She turns a frigid red, anger thrumming in her voice when she tells him that he has to earn his keep, that she was doing the world a favor by educating him to serve his betters, that he should be grateful to them for providing him with a roof over his head and food in his belly while his parents had gotten themselves killed in a car accident, of all things.
The retort is out of his mouth before he can stop it, and he spends the rest of the day nursing his broken hand to his chest as his aunt stands over him as he scrubs the floor clean of his blood.
On really bad nights, when he wakes from dreams of Hayato’s blushes, Takeshi’s genuine smiles, Lambo’s cute voice, Kyoya’s unwavering strength, Ryohei’s loud exclamations, and his Mists’ bloodthirsty awkwardness, he has to shove a bloodstained hand in his mouth to quiet his sobs. He remembers every little moment he has had with them, his precious famiglia, his precious friends.
But he doesn’t remember much of how he died- only their screams of desperation and fire that shouldn’t have burned him but did.
Betrayal, he thinks sometimes, as he examines the burns on his hands and arms from when his uncle and his cousin shoved him against the stove he was cooking their meals on.
Fire shouldn’t hurt, he thinks. Fire should be safety and home and protection and peace, but in this world without his guardians and where his remaining “family” seemed hellbent on scorching him bloody, fire feels like a betrayal.
Then he is four, and he finds he is just as scared of dogs as he is of cockroaches and slugs. When he is finally allowed to limp back to his cupboard, his ears ringing from barking and growling dogs and the laughter from his relatives, he feels a tiny part of him grow to resent family.
When he is five, back bleeding from his uncle’s whipping and legs burning from his uncles’ cigarettes, fire and family become synonymous with betrayal.
But one day he wakes, green eyes burning with orange, his dreams filled with an infuriating smirk and black eyes flashing with challenge, and he thinks, no more.
For the longest time, he had been beaten down and pushed into the dirt as Tsuna, and he had just accepted it as his due. Crybaby, useless, no-good Tsuna, he thought to himself, and with every sneer and every punch that left him broken and bleeding, he never did anything in retaliation. He had believed that he deserved it; he had believed that for so, so long that even now, it fills him with a quiet shame when he thinks of his childhood as Tsuna. He had been so weak, but that all changed once Reborn came into his life.
Yet even after he became Mafia, became Decimo, it took him such a long time to act and attack for himself instead of merely fighting for his precious people. He had years of trauma, years of wrecked self-esteem, years of looking at himself in the mirror and not seeing something worth protecting, worth fighting for. His guardians had taken it all in stride and just added it to another one of the things he had needed to work on. In their own little ways, they nudged him and pushed him and irritated him, all so that he could see what they saw when they looked at him- something precious.
And Reborn, sadistic, manipulative, caring Reborn, had taught him to defend himself, how to stand up for himself. But the most important thing that his tutor-turned-advisor had taught him was how to strike. While he had always preferred to roll with the punches and do his best to placate those who bullied him as a young Tsuna, Harry looks at his broken and bruised and burned body and thinks this is far more than just bullying.
If he didn’t have his Flames and his magic, he would be dead by now.
As a ridiculously powerful Sky with immense Sky attraction, even when he was sealed, and later on as a Vongola heir and then as the Vongola Decimo, a lot of people had come after him with the intent to maim and kill. He had always managed to turn things into his favor, sometimes outright befriending them like with Hayato and Hibari and Mukuro.
But if there is one thing his stint as Vongola Decimo had taught him, some people cannot be reasoned with. The Dursleys are the same.
No more, he thinks. I deserve more than this.
So, with Reborn’s vindictive glee purring in his ears and Mukuro’s cunning in his eyes, he burns down Number 4, Privet Drive, Surrey, and surrounds himself with his amber Flames. When the firefighters arrive, he is the only survivor.
Fire doesn’t feel like a betrayal, after that.
He spends the next six years passed from foster family to foster family, smiling politely but never allowing himself to get attached. He takes care to dull his Flames, not wanting people to feel the lure of his Sky attraction. It leaves him vulnerable, reminding him just how much he relied on his Flames to soothe and charm others to follow him when he took up the mantle of leadership.
With his flames hidden, he knows he unsettles them, his smile unnerving just like Reborn’s fellow Arcobaleno Fon’s, gentle but with a hidden edge that could cut if needed. He doesn’t mind when they nod and pat his shoulder hesitatingly, returning him to child protection services and saying that while Harry here is a good kid, they simply weren’t a match. Maybe another family can take him in and love him?
He doesn’t mind, because these people aren’t his famiglia, and will never be.
He has long grown over his desperate need to cling onto any hand that reached out to him. He merely smiles and allows them to move him to different families, eyes dull. In his darkest days, as he smoothly moves away from his foster family’s caring arms, he wishes he can just kill himself. There is a hole, a gaping maw in his chest that his Flames try to smooth, but cannot. It needs more than just his Flames; he needs the Flames of his guardians, and their broken bonds make breathing difficult.
But when he fingers the kitchen knife, the cold steel sharp against his skin, he thinks of the heart-wrenching screams of his guardians as he died and the furious blaze in Reborn’s eyes whenever he thought of giving up. It makes him place the knife back and walk back to his room, his feet silent and his body a ghost.
No giving up, he promises himself and his famiglia, I won’t let you guys suffer through me killing myself. I’ll live, and live, and live, and when I die, we’ll all be together again, he swears, the broken bonds in his chest throbbing in longing.
Then his Hogwarts letter arrives, and he finds that the Wizarding World had placed him on a pedestal.
Savior, they cry when they see him in the Leaky Cauldron, half-hidden behind Hagrid- the giant who took him from Sirius, the reason why he spent four years being systematically tortured-
He calms himself, smiling wryly at the looks of surprise he would probably get from his guardians and tutor if they saw how easily he put on a mask. Then again, if they were here, and found out what his relatives did to him, maybe they wouldn’t.
Still, he is hailed as a Savior, and very nearly worshipped. So he steps out of the giant’s shadow, plotting, widens his emerald eyes and waves.
The way they all clamor around him, hands reaching out to pat whatever part of him they could reach as if it would solve their problems, eyes bright and adoring, has him biting back a snarl or a laugh.
Herbivores, he thinks wistfully, remembering tonfas and Kyoya’s growls and complaints of crowding. Nonetheless, allies are always welcome, and he knows just exactly how much of a pain people could be if you didn’t stand up to their standards. If they needed something to worship, well. Vongola Decimo was something he didn’t want to be at first, but it had settled easily on his shoulders when he finally gave in.
Savior will just be another mantle he has to wear.
But when he is sorted into Slytherin, instead of the House of Hufflepuff that he had expected, he finds that it weighs heavily on him. It is only after he has made stiff introductions with his fellow first-year Slytherins, been glared at by a variety of people, received an angry warning from his Head of House, and curled up in his bed that he allows himself to silently let his tears fall, a bitter smile on his too-young face.
He should’ve known that he wouldn’t be sorted in Hufflepuff. After all, he has no one to be loyal to here, no one but himself. And without that loyalty that made him raze entire cities for his beloved famiglia, the only thing left in him is the sheer ambition to survive.
When he is shunned by the rest of his year mates, when he is looked upon with suspicion by his teachers, and when his gut warns him away from the headmaster with a fake benevolent smile, he nearly breaks again. The constant searching and reaching out of his Flames for his dead guardians wears on him doubly when the anniversary of his parents arrive, and a troll kills a girl in Gryffindor.
Anger anger anger, his hyper intuition tells him when they all settle in the dungeons, the older years laughing and mocking the girl for being a mudblood. Serves her right, coming into our world with her muggleness and dirty blood, they jeer, and while Harry had begun this life with revenge and regret and self-preservation seared into his blood, Tsuna had been a Sky who protected the weak, smiled at his enemies, and vowed to change the world.
You are too kind, Yamamoto used to say, smile wavering between exasperation and amusement. The tenth is a good person, he is the best, Hayato would then interject, sparking their Flames into an argument cheered on by Ryohei and Lambo.
It is with those memories that Harry steps back, and Tsuna steps forward, silencing the filth pouring from their mouths. When they move to attack him for his differing opinion, he finally, finally allows his Flames to play, unsealing them from his own chains and cowing the Slytherins with his mere aura. He might not overtly care about the dead girl, but he will not stand for this needless taunting any longer.
The haze that had been clouding his eyes clears, and for the first time in eleven years, he takes a stand.
No more, he intones, commands with the air of a man who is used to being obeyed.
You would side with mudbloods, with muggles, they snarl from the floor, cowed but adamant, and for a moment he remembers fire on his limbs and blood on his back. You would let them parade in here, changing our traditions and changing everything that makes us unique?
Tradition. How he hated that word with a passion. Even here, he finds that he is still shackled by it, tradition demanding and deciding how he acted. When he entered the Mafia, he had gone in guns blazing, determined to change and overhaul tradition. It was only when he was fully entrapped, feet sinking into the quicksand of Family and tied down by enemies and allies alike that he realized how foolish he was.
You can’t just change tradition. You influence it, shape it, and mold it to conform to your own ideals, and when you are strong enough and powerful enough, when you rule over everyone, that is when things can change.
Nevertheless, he has a lifetime already lived to know how to deal with fanatics. While he cannot immediately change their entire ideology and memories like a talented Mist can, he has always known what to say in order to nudge people to think and listen.
The purebloods won’t allow him to say that everyone is equal, that a mudblood can be on the same level and standing as a member of a Noble and Ancient House, and rationally, Tsuna knows that men are not born equal. It is a fact of life, like how a noble is different from a peasant, but the way mudbloods are being oppressed leaves a bad taste in his mouth. It is useless persecution, when the Wizarding World should be tightening its ranks around everyone with magical blood.
Just like how the Mafia opened its arms and dragged every Flame-active into its depths, keeping them informed and hidden, witches and wizards should find comfort and security in the Wizarding World, regardless of their purity and station.
Social classes are needed to keep a society turning; blood status and racial disparity are not.
For thousands of years, this problem has festered in each corner of this world, and the wheel of infighting has kept the Wizarding World from progressing. Instead, everywhere Harry looks, there is stagnation. He is not unfamiliar with warring factions; he has, after all, wiped out entire famiglias that dared threaten Vongola. But Magical Britain is small, and their population even smaller.
There is no need to waste precious magical blood.
And so, he preaches his new creed, and his new purpose in life begins to unfurl right before his amber-flecked green eyes:
Magic is magic, sacred and pure, and it was magical blood that was spilled tonight, he tells them, letting his Sky Flames flare a bit brighter and scorching it into their minds and souls. Male, female, pureblood, mudblood- nothing matters but magic. We must always remember that magic is a gift, and should be treasured. You might not be equals, but magic is magic. There is no need for magical blood to be wasted. After all, magic is might, he says a bit ironically, echoing the sentiments of the man who killed his parents.
From the wary look on the Slytherins, he knows that they understand the reference. Voldemort may have had the right idea early on, with complete separation from the Muggle World, but he went off the deep end and became drunk on his power. Harry knows all about the pitfalls of power; too much of it without enough safeguards can turn a reasonable man into a megalomaniac. Still, he is not above using whatever he can to his advantage. Reborn raised him to be pragmatic, after all. And as the supposed vanquisher, Harry claims all the rights from his vanquishing. Voldemort’s ideologies will make a nice starting point for his goals.
To the victor goes the spoils, he thinks, and grins with a shade of mocking. The Wizarding World is in need of a serious overhaul, and who better to change it and mold it for the better than the Neo Vongola Primo who dragged the entire Mafia world kicking and screaming into the new age?
He lets the Slytherins get up from the floor when they exchange looks, smiling politely when they glance at him from the corner of their eyes. Maybe Reborn has rubbed off on him more than he thought, because he has to bite his cheek from laughing when they flinch at the flash of his teeth.
When his housemates start taking their cues from him, and his Slytherin year mates follow him first with hesitance, then with restrained gusto when he does not dissuade them, he wonders if he may have overexposed them to his Flames. Flame-drunk, he remembers the term, and remembers his Family members gazing at him with adoration every time they felt his Flames.
Eyeing his year mates’ flushed faces, glazed and eager eyes, he thinks of Ryohei’s viciously cheerful laughter and Hayato’s pride if they knew that he had gained a cult by just flaring his Flames. They would never let him live this down, he thinks, and has to stuff a hand in his mouth to prevent the hysterical laughter.
A boss will always be a boss, no matter what name he dons.
With most of the Slytherins eagerly differing to him, he settles easily into the mantle of a leader. It is not as hard as he thought; even with the Slytherin Head of House alternately glaring at him with suspicion and eyeing his house with confusion, Harry starts spreading his propaganda.
All magic is precious, whether dark or light or grey, blood is just blood, and every magical being is family.
Slowly, he spreads out feelers and carves out a place in each house for his ideals as the rest of the students warm up to the “nice” Slytherin Savior. He widens his smile, gentles his touch, and charms his way into their hearts. And when someone gets it in their head to oppose him, well. Tsuna has always been gifted in using his Flames to weed out dissenters in his famiglia, and now he even has magic to back it up.
While he consolidates his power base in Hogwarts, he grows quickly, rising through the years like smoke, and accepts allies and supporters alike outside the school. In the summers he builds orphanages, appealing to the masses and lawmakers alike to search for magical children cowering and being beaten in the Muggle world. With every child he saves, the burns and scars on his back burden him less and less. And in Samhain and Yule breaks, he rubs elbows and schmoozes with politicians and nobles, laughing his tinkling laugh and nudging their thoughts to strengthen the Statute of Secrecy and separate themselves completely from Muggles.
The Mafia and Triads and Yakuza were thought to be a dark stain, to be blood and gore and horror. But to a young Tsuna who had been raised in the civilian world and been beaten and forsaken and found wanting by them, he had found family and a purpose in the Mafia. In the Mafia, you had to get stronger, yes, strong enough to survive, to protect, and to kill. But it is there that Tsuna found a home.
Civilians and Muggles; he sees no difference. They both shy away from anything different, both lash out with fear and hatred. There is a reason, after all, why Omerta existed, and why the Vindice worked tirelessly to keep Flames under wraps.
The Wizarding World should do the same. Harry would hate to have to fight against the Muggles if the Witch Trials began anew.
Still, the Wizarding World really shouldn’t have placed him on a pedestal, he laughs ruefully, because he is the absolute worst person to be in a position of power. He might have fully embraced being the Decimo in his past life, but that just means he has looser morals and a high drive to achieve whatever he sets his eyes on.
What’s his will be his, and what he wants will be his. And ever since he stepped into this world of magic that claimed him as Savior, Harry already knew that the entire Wizarding World is his.
Magical Britain might not be Vongola, and the Wizarding World might not be the Mafia, but that’s okay. He’s not Tsuna anymore, not completely, and Harry knows all about possibilities. His intuition keeps him up at night sometimes, drawing him to different paths with different consequences, but they all lead him to a burning need to make everything he sees his.
(He thinks Kyoya might be a little proud of how Cloudy his thinking has become.)
So he greedily accepts witches and wizards under his banner, but whenever he hears about blood purity and discrimination, he gentles the harsh anger purebloods have towards mudbloods. Honestly, he has had enough with the ridiculous blood purity indoctrination.
He thinks of Xanxus being sealed in ice for eight years for not being a blood heir, and thinks of his own childhood walking around with bruises because of his own seal for being fourth in line to a bloody throne. He thinks of an old man smiling down at him and telling him to call him Grandfather before cutting off a vital part of him. He thinks of his own father, watching and doing nothing.
Blood really isn’t anything extraordinary- it is all red red red when throats are slit.
He guides the Wizarding World away from blood segregation, shifting their priorities to protection and progress. He sponsors inventors, opens companies and gambling houses, bolsters the economy and provides jobs and homes alike. He starts charities, builds connections with the rich and endears himself to the masses. He whispers into politician’s ears, ensuring that new laws emerge for the better and hires trustworthy people to dispose of those who won’t listen. Hiding behind his facade as a student, he shows a genial, ambitious, and concerned wizard who merely wants his world to flourish. All the while, he binds the underworld to him with coin and care, winning over criminals and scum the same way he won over the Mafia.
And when he steps onto the stage for his graduation, when he looks at all the adoring looks he gets from witches and wizards alike, all clamoring to talk to him, to touch him, to see him smile, he is reminded of the very first day he entered this world and was called savior.
He looks at them all and sees just how much they want him to step up, to lead them, to take this world and make it his own.
Oh, he thinks a bit gleefully, don’t mind if I do.
And later, when he runs unopposed as Minister of Magic, and sees the entirety of the Wizarding World changed and thriving, Harry Potter feels the ache in his chest finally settle and smiles.