The desert stretched endlessly beneath a sky filled with swirling sand.
When Dawn reappeared, he found himself standing upon Egypt's dry, barren wastes.
He cast a spell to shield his nose and mouth from the blowing sand.
After orienting himself, he concealed his presence and quietly entered a nearby wizarding settlement.
There, he launched a surprise attack, knocked a wizard unconscious, and dragged him away.
He returned to Harris's abandoned house for the experiment.
Thud!
Dawn dropped the unconscious man onto the dust-covered floor.
Looking down, he realized his captive was a middle-aged wizard, somewhere around fifty years old.
°Reducto°
Without the slightest interest in learning who the man was, Dawn raised his wand.
A crimson flash erupted.
Crack!
Like the snapping of an invisible thread... The black lines within the wizard's body instantly shattered.
Natural magic immediately flowed into the gaps left behind.
Dawn moved quickly.
His own magic enveloped the unconscious wizard.
One by one, he began altering the abstract trait patterns inside the man's body until they perfectly matched Harry Potter's.
Only then did he stop.
Taking a slow breath, Dawn lowered his gaze once more.
Just as expected...
The wizard lying on the floor had become Harry Potter.
Even the lightning-shaped scar on his forehead had been reproduced flawlessly.
But appearance alone wasn't enough.
Dawn summoned a handful of water and splashed it across the boy's face.
The false Harry jolted awake.
"W-Where am I?"
The boy looked around in alarm. The instant he saw Dawn, his pupils contracted.
"Richter!
Was it you? Did you bring me here? What have you done to Hermione and Ron?"
Although fear was plainly visible on his face, he quickly gathered his courage and shouted the questions anyway.
Even his personality perfectly resembled Harry's.
Dawn raised an eyebrow.
Ignoring the frantic accusations, he cast Legilimency.
His consciousness plunged directly into the boy's mind. Memory after memory unfolded before his eyes.
Life with the Dursleys.
The overwhelming joy of receiving his Hogwarts acceptance letter.
The terror and agony of having his throat slashed during his first Halloween at Hogwarts.
The shock and lingering fear after reading the murder announcement printed in the newspaper.
Even...
The argument with Dawn in Diagon Alley only moments earlier.
Suddenly...
Dawn's eyes snapped open.
He inhaled a deep breath of dusty air.
Everything matched. Every memory matched perfectly.
He had expected as much.
After all, he had once copied Grindelwald's trait patterns to obtain his gift of prophecy.
However...
Because Dawn himself possessed a double-layered special pattern and had only copied Grindelwald's outer layer...
He had never inherited Grindelwald's memories or altered his own sense of self.
This...
Was different.
Now...
Having completely duplicated another human being... He found himself overwhelmed by genuine astonishment.
'So it really works...'
The thought echoed repeatedly through his mind.
Yet strangely...
The first emotion he felt wasn't excitement.
Nor joy.
Instead...
A deep sense of unease settled over him. As though he were standing alone upon a dark ocean at midnight.
Turning one person into another... Including their memories... Their personality...
It resembled cloning.
But in truth... It was something far more terrifying. It completely erased the very concept of identity.
Who am I?
That most fundamental question... Could now be manipulated at will.
Dawn slowly drew in a breath.
For the first time...
He genuinely wondered whether his ability to perceive special trait patterns—the power to rewrite human beings themselves—
Had been born from his thirst for knowledge...
Or whether magic had responded instead to his confusion over what was real...
And what was false.
His thoughts grew increasingly muddled.
One possibility after another surfaced.
He remembered the child version of himself that had appeared inside Dumbledore's dream.
Then...
His mind drifted toward World Correction.
Previously...
The worst possibility he'd imagined was that false memories had somehow been implanted into him.
But what if... He wasn't merely given false memories?
What if...
He himself had been replaced?
Was his current self created by transforming someone else's body?
Or had this identity simply been fabricated out of thin air inside some empty shell?
The horrifying possibilities multiplied.
Fortunately...
Perhaps because he'd already experienced so many impossible things...
Or perhaps because this terrifying ability belonged to him...
Dawn quickly forced himself to calm down. He dismissed those meaningless speculations.
Instead...
He focused on practical applications.
Memory theft.
The idea came to him instantly.
As long as he secretly memorized another wizard's trait patterns... He could simply recreate them...
Then search through their memories at leisure.
Then...
A wave of regret struck him.
If only he'd been able to observe Nicolas Flamel's complete trait patterns while they were together...
He could recreate Flamel now.
Not only would that amount to a different kind of resurrection...
He could also uncover every secret Flamel had kept hidden.
"What... What did you do to me?"
The furious voice of the false Harry interrupted Dawn's thoughts.
Looking down at the boy—who was clearly enraged after having his memories searched—Dawn remained completely unmoved.
Then...
Another idea occurred to him.
After a brief hesitation...
He deliberately entertained the thought of killing this Harry.
But...
Just as expected...
No warning came.
That overwhelming sense of danger never appeared.
Dawn narrowed his eyes.
As expected...
No matter how perfectly someone was copied... Replacing another person entirely wasn't that simple.
At the very least...
This duplicated Harry carried no prophetic destiny. Killing him wouldn't provoke natural magic's warning.
"So..."
"Is it related to the external trait patterns?"
Dawn murmured quietly.
He already knew that a person's trait patterns didn't exist solely inside the body.
As people interacted with the world...
Additional patterns naturally formed around them.
Just as when Anubis had hunted him through Egypt... The patterns inside his own body had remained unchanged.
Following that line of reasoning...
If someone truly wished to replace another person...
Would they also need to rewrite every pattern surrounding that person's existence?
The possibility seemed highly likely.
Oddly enough... That realization actually relieved him.
Then he remembered something else.
The Invisibility Cloak. The artifact capable of revealing those external patterns.
Still...
Dawn had no intention of researching them yet.
He hadn't even fully understood the internal patterns of the human body. Attempting to study the external ones now would only scatter his attention.
After organizing his thoughts...
Dawn slowly raised his wand.
°Avada Kedavra°
A flash of green light erupted. The duplicate Harry was struck squarely in the chest.
His eyes widened with fury.
Then...
He collapsed lifelessly onto the floor.
Dawn reduced the body to ash with fire.
Originally... He intended to leave Egypt immediately. Then another thought occurred to him.
His footsteps stopped.
Instead...
He returned to Luxor and abducted an ordinary Muggle.
There was one more experiment he wanted to conduct.
Could he transform a Muggle into a wizard simply by completely copying a wizard's special trait patterns?
Filled with curiosity...
Dawn covered the Muggle's body with his magic. The hidden trait patterns appeared before him.
He carefully rewrote them.
Once the Muggle had likewise become another perfect Harry Potter... Dawn immediately cast the Imperius Curse.
Then calmly gave an order.
"Use magic."
°Expelliarmus°
The second Harry shouted the incantation confidently.
Nothing happened.
The room remained completely silent. Not even the faintest spark appeared.
Dawn frowned.
Was it because he couldn't perform wandless magic?
After a moment's thought... He tossed over his own wand. Then ordered the duplicate to cast something simpler.
°Lumos°
The false Harry repeated the spell several times.
Still...
Nothing.
Dawn raised an eyebrow.
In his opinion...
Even with an unfamiliar wand... Someone shouldn't fail to perform a spell as basic as Lumos.
The conclusion became obvious.
Although the duplicate's body contained magic... It was entirely natural magic.
He possessed none of the personal magical power that allowed a wizard to consciously cast spells.
In other words...
A wizard's internal trait patterns did not fully determine whether magical power was born.
Perhaps part of the answer existed there...
But certainly not all of it.
"...That's troublesome.
The trait patterns connected to magical power...
They couldn't possibly exist outside the body, within natural magic itself... could they?"
Dawn clicked his tongue.
The workload had suddenly become much greater than expected.
It seemed his research into transforming matter into magic would have to be postponed once again.
Even so...
He still refused to begin researching external patterns.
As he'd already decided... There was no need to rush. He had plenty of time.
Mastering the internal patterns first...
Then progressing step by step...
Was the proper path.
Pressing his lips together, Dawn burned the second Harry to ashes as well.
Satisfied there was nothing left to do... He prepared to leave Egypt's unbearable climate behind.
Crack!
A burst of displaced air scattered the dust.
Just before disappearing... One final thought crossed Dawn's mind.
Sooner or later...
He needed an opportunity to memorize every one of Dumbledore's special trait patterns.
Only then could he create a duplicate... And search through the Headmaster's memories.
After all...
Although he had observed Dumbledore's patterns before...
They had been far too intricate to remember without intentionally committing them to memory.
Harry's patterns, by contrast...
Had only been fresh in his mind because he'd hurriedly memorized them back in Diagon Alley, driven by his curiosity about the prophecy.
___________
Upto 20 chapters ahead on patreon :-
patreon.com/BloodAncestor