Title: Made of Iron and Philosopher's Stone
Author: ateanalenn
Fandom: Harry Potter. Mention of other fandoms, listed at the end to avoid spoilers
Characters: Harry Potter
Rating: G
Length: 2.3k words
Author Notes: I meant to write for several missed challenges for this Amnesty Week, but 2020 happened a lot this week and this is my third (or fourth?) version of the prompt, so I'm calling it good.
AO3 link: edited and posted on AO3 2020-11-03
Summary:
Stark men are made of iron, Harry repeats to himself, as he straightens his back and steps in Diagon Alley.
That's Harry Potter! The whispers immediately start.


—

Stark men are made of iron, Harry repeats to himself, as he straightens his back and steps in Diagon Alley.

That's Harry Potter! The whispers immediately start.

Harry ignores them and strides toward Gringotts, keeping ahead of the realization sweeping through the Alley.

Stark men are made of iron, he thinks again, as he jogs up the white stairs and carefully doesn't think about how the goblins put him to death in his first life, after the war had wrapped up and they'd captured and tried him for crimes against the Goblin Nation.

These goblins have nothing against him now and everything to gain. He greets his account manager with a nod, sits in the chair in front of the goblin's large desk, and exchange half a minute of platitudes and 'yes, I'm the last Potter'.

"First, I want to invest in the Muggle World."

"Do you?"

"Yes." Harry lists a series of corporations and businesses from all over the planet. He makes damn sure that the goblin writes down every single one correctly.

"Second, I'm going to invest in the Wixen World."

Money is money and the goblin doesn't care anymore about this investment than for the other. He merely makes sure a second time that Harry knows what he's doing, then writes down the name. "The Daily Prophet", "The Quibbler", "Zonko's Joke Shop", "Nimbus Racing Broom Company" join "Apple", "Facebook", "Amazon", "Toyota Motor", "Volkswagen", "Royal Dutch Shell", and "Samsung Electronics", among many others. The list is comprehensive and varied. It's not one hundred percent foolproof either, there are always changes, but it's just as well. Losing will give him legibility while making one hundred percent benefits would make them suspicious.

"Will you be allying your family with others now?"

Harry's cloud flames churn in his chest, but he manages to keep a lid on it before the purple glow becomes visible around him. His flame rage at the idea that he might become dependent from those stagnating, robe kissing idiots. Even if many of them had nothing to do with the dark bastard who almost decimated the British wixen population.

"No," he answers curtly. He takes another breath. "Maybe later." He moves on to the next subject immediately. "I need the I'm declaring Petunia Dursley née Evans, Vernon Dursley, and Dudley Dursley as enemies of the House of Potter."

"You are aware of the consequences of a traitor curse upon muggles."

"Yes."

"Very well. Sign this file with magic."

—

It takes two more hours until Harry gets everything squared at Gringotts. But now he has a retainer and private healer contracted with the most stringent privacy clauses, his money is going to be doubling if not more in the next months, and a team of contracted warders is going to be shoring up and warding his new home until a Jericho missile could smash on it without even rocking the ground.

The square outside is packed. People are pressed right up to Gringotts' stairs, though no one was foolish enough to loiter on the stairs. Inside is a bit less of a mess. The goblins to not allow people to laze around.

Harry stops in the middle of the lobby and stares outside at the press of people. He takes a deep breath —Stark men are made of iron!—, smooths his hair back and straightens his muggle clothes and the second hand old-fashioned muggle coat he'd bought that could almost pass for wixen, and steps outside.

"Good afternoon," he greets the crowd.

At least, from up on the stairs, he still towers above those vultures.

"Mr Potter!" Cry several people, "Welcome back, Mr Potter!" The welcome backs and various declarations of love and fealty and questions about his whereabouts rings in the Alley, words overlapping each others until there is just one massive wall of noise.

"Thank you for your kind words," he simply tells them. There are more questions, but he ignores them. "I am glad to be back as well, and thank you for your interest. Now, excuse-me, I must go shopping for my school supplies," he tells them.

Harry takes one step forward and raises an eyebrow at the closest wix. They simply stare back, eager and greedy.

Harry clears his throat and takes a decisive step forward.

"Mr Potter, what's going to happen now?"

"Now, you'll go back to your lives and I will prepare myself for several years of learning at Hogwarts. I came to realize that I had more to offer this world than just making things that blow up."

The wix looks a bit surprised by his sentence, but Harry doesn't elaborate and pushes the memories away. What a pathetic bunch of herbivores, a disgusted voice whispers at the back of his mind. Harry pushes that voice away too and catches the eye of a group of Aurors who'd probably been called by some shopkeeper or the goblins themselves.

A few spells later and a few loud exclamations later, Harry follows his Auror escort to Ollivander's.

"Bit dangerous, that, Mr Potter."

"Mmh." Harry nods. "Yes. But I couldn't meet the masses with a bunch of bodyguards at my back the first time. The Press would have eaten me alive. Now that I have an history of being mobbed, it won't raise as many eyebrows when I show up with a couple of trained wix."

"Smart," the guy says.

"Thank you. I apologize for monopolizing your afternoon. I will not linger in shops." Harry frowns. "Well, except for the book store. And the stationary shop. Possibly the bag shop too, given everything I'm planning to buy." He winces.

The leading Auror laughs. "That's fine! I'm Shacklebolt by the way."

"Hadrian Potter, nice to meet you."

The whole group does a double take, staring down at Harry. "Hadrian?" one of them asks.

"Yes, my name. Oh, you didn't think that family nickname that the masses stole to make themselves feel closer to me was my actual name, did you?"

"Well..."

Harry waves him off. "Don't worry, it's no trouble. I should have expected it. After so many years of appropriating that family nickname, I should expect that people will have trouble using my actual name. I guess that's one more family tradition that I can't hang on," he sighs, carefully doesn't smirk when all the wix around him shift uneasily and look away, unable to meet his eyes, then steps in Ollivander's store with a "I will try to not be too long."

Managing his fame is always such a pain, but he's learned a long time ago that it was better to set the narrative himself.

The wand —surprisingly still his old wand— glows extra bright under the Eagle sight. Harry wonders if that means that it's a treasure to hold onto for a future quest, or if it just marks it as an important item for him. Either way, he tucks it into the hidden wrist sheath.

There are many points of interest in the Alley, but Harry has monopolized the Aurors' attention for long enough. He has his supplies and a secure bag and trunk to keep it, that's good enough for the day. Plus the most interesting place, loot wise, seems to be Knockturn Alley and there's no way the Aurors will let an eleven years old waltz in Knockturn Alley.

He thanks them with a serious bow, then strides through the floo to his next appointment, his brand new lawyer.

—

Stark men are made of iron and possibly the Philosopher's Stone, Harry muses, given his history. Multiple histories, even.

Hogwarts is both unchanged compared to his memory, and a culture shock. Everything is quaint and enthralling for a child, but Harry mostly see how they're stuck in the past, frozen in a previous era with no drive to keep learning and inventing, and even the wish to suppress more knowledge than they teach. He's never cared to learn the history of Hogwarts' past curriculum and he wouldn't trust Hogwarts A History, a book written "by the victor", farther than Hermione and her nerd-trained (lack of) strength would manage it. But as one who's gone through several childhoods of learning, the educational holes are wider than a space portal. No math, no engineering, no foreign languages, no bloody geography? Do they expect that all a kid will need in his future life is to know how to change a teacup in a rat?

They sit through the rest of the Sorting, people half staring, half whispering and completely ignoring the remaining children. Harry ignores them with practiced ease and checks on the high table. He casts a skeptical eye on the squib tasked to keep control over a horde of children and keep a magical castle clean. For one patting himself on the back for his support to muggle-born and squibs, Dumbledore never did care to learn or pay attention to Argus Flinch and attempt to check on his happiness or how up to the task he felt in his job, did he? Beyond that, a ghost stuck in a repeating loop of specific lessons, therefore ignoring several centuries worth of new events, a teacher forced into the job under threat of Azkaban, forced to deal with children when he'd rather stay away from them and focus on research, a revolving door worth of Defense teachers, with a subsequent varied levels of skills, and a teacher / supervisor / manager with too many jobs and therefore no attention to spare fully on any task? Truly a pinnacle of an education establishment, right. And that's not counting the permanently drunk teacher, the teacher so bad at his job but so spineless that even after losing body limbs, they merely go on with their terrible life, and the teacher who hasn't updated her education books since before the muggles visited the moon. Most prestigious school of Europe. Right.

Truly, having several adults lives worth of insight stripes a lot of glamour right off the castle and its inhabitants.

Harry smothers a sign and turns his attention back to his new house mates.

"A Potter in Slytherin," one arrogant Fourth-ish Year snarks, "your father must be rolling in his grave. Wish I could see that."

Harry takes the time to swallow a sip of water, then lowers his cup, pats his mouth with a napkin, and finally turns just enough that he can stare at the idiot from the corner of his eyes, not giving him the reward of his full attention. "Given that there have been three Potters in Slytherin in just the last two centuries, the fact that you don't know this doesn't give me much hope regarding your talents and usefulness. Though you did reveal yourself as a useless potential acquaintance, so thank you for clarifying this matter right away."

Harry ignores the flabbergasted faces around the table and carefully doesn't wince as Dumbledore announces that they'll be singing the school song. His inner bard dies a little the more the auditory torture goes on and it makes him wish that a monster would attack so they'd have to cancel the "concert".

Quirrellmort barely stopped staring at Harry for the length of dinner, but thankfully Harry has long ago used his Flames' propagation nature to extend and level up his mother's protective magic into containing Voldemort's taint in the smallest possible amount of space and then burning it out. It had taken a couple of years to deal with it without destroying important parts of Harry, but he'd gotten rid of that parasitic leech well before he'd even received his Hogwarts letter. It had made him wonder if the backlash would be enough to un-anchor from the mortal realm, but apparently not, more's the pity.

The trek to the under-the-lake common room is not quite silent, but certainly a lot quieter than the Gryffindor's path. Harry takes advantage of the walk to peer at as many corners and shadows as he can with the Eagle sight. There aren't as many points of interest than he'd have expected, but he did locate three glowing places that might led to secret passages.

One the Slytherins are gathered in the common room, he looks at them too. There are surprisingly less enemy-red students than he'd have expected. Malfoy glows a very light golden, while Theodore Nott glows of importance bright enough that he has to look away. There are a few ally-blues here and there, but mostly indifferent-whites. And Professor Snape regularly shifting between ally-blue and indifferent-white.

Well, that's honestly better than Harry had expected. He's got plans for his future and he needs the future businessmen and businesswomen and various intellectuals and well placed individuals of their world to have a neutral attitude toward Harry at minimum, preferably cordial or even friendly. Working from the Slytherin House will make things a bit more difficult at first, but with careful management, they'll reach the state where the children will realize that petty stupidity is damaging their future prospects and pandering to important people is in their interest, even if the one they're scrapping for is Harry goddamn Potter.  

He just needs to hold onto his temper until they turn fourteen or fifteen, and not kill half a dozen of them, even though it would be so damn easy, doubly so with magic.

Harry has plans and the memories of several lifetimes worth of stratagems and business deals to hold onto, as he makes his mark in this life. The Wixen World isn't going to know what hit it.

—

Fandom mentioned (more or less vaguely):
The 1st version of the HP world, Iron Man, Katekyou Reborn world, Assassin's Creed, Witcher,