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HRA# Chapter 1: Concrete… You count as an earth element?”
🕑 Added 2025-01-12 07:24:35 +0000 UTC“Prophet? Prophet Harry?”
“Please wake up. We need your guidance...”
It was as if he was surfacing from deep underwater. The voices calling to him seemed muffled, as though they were coming through a layer of swelling bubbles—indistinct yet oddly clear enough to pierce his ears. The sound sent a shiver through Harry.
He abruptly opened his eyes, but the next second, Harry doubted whether he was truly awake or still dreaming.
The surface beneath him wasn’t the soft hide of a beast. There was no crackling of firewood burning in the brazier, and the usual aroma of burnt spices that lingered in his home was entirely absent. Instead, the air was filled with a musty stench.
There was no sunlight, or rather, the only illumination came from a faint glow seeping through the thin cracks of a nearby wooden door. After a few seconds of adjustment, Harry finally took in his surroundings.
It was cramped, dim, and so narrow that he couldn’t even stand upright. Stretching out both arms would have him touching the walls on either side.
Above his head were layers upon layers of steps, constructed from dark gray cement. Wait… steps?
Fragments of memories—long buried, forgotten, dismissed as childhood fantasies—began to resurface in his mind.
This place—could it be real?
Had he returned to what he once considered “home”—his aunt and uncle’s house?
What was it called again?
Earth?
Was this real or fake?
Harry stared blankly at his hands—thin and frail, with bones clearly visible beneath the skin. It looked as though a mere fall could break them.
All the muscles he had built up over years of training were gone, vanished without a trace. Harry instinctively pinched his arm, finding it hard to believe that in his current state, he’d probably lose a fight against a stray cub.
With the utmost care, afraid of snapping a limb by accident, Harry slowly stood up and pushed open the door beside him.
White walls. A hallway leading into what looked like a living room—or perhaps a dining area. On the mantelpiece were numerous photographs. Harry examined them closely: a chubby boy riding a bicycle, the same boy on a carousel… but not a single photo of himself.
Harry rummaged through his memories. Yes, he remembered now—this was his cousin. And his presence in this house had always been systematically erased, as though he didn’t exist.
Everything Harry saw in the house stirred long-forgotten memories, bringing them back into sharp focus. It all felt so real—so real that it made him question whether everything he had experienced was just a dream.
The whispers of the elements, the secrets hidden by spirits, the temptations and howls of demons, the blood spilled on the battlefield, the shouts of his comrades...
Could all those vivid memories, the physical pain, and the power he wielded have been nothing more than an incredibly realistic dream?
It was hard not to entertain such doubts when his physical body was here, solid and responsive, his thoughts crystal clear. Yet Harry remained equally convinced that everything he experienced in Azeroth was real.
Because—
Harry raised his hand, and in his open palm, a thin, translucent stream of water coiled like a serpent, gliding nimbly between his fingers.
Though faint and sluggish, as if dormant, the elements of this world still answered his call.
In addition, Harry could still feel the magic within him—though even Jaina couldn’t pinpoint its origins. Yet, when he channeled this power into shamanic arts, it worked remarkably well.
The elements seemed to appreciate it.
And beyond these tangible changes, Harry’s keen senses, heightened awareness, and the marks the elements had left on him—all remained. The scars of war were still etched into his body, just as they had been in that other world. Nothing was different except his age, which had regressed, and his body, which had returned to that of an eleven-year-old.
“…I don’t recall stepping through any unstable portal,” Harry muttered to himself.
From his experience, portals created by mages rarely ended well—especially those opened by certain mischievous individuals who thought it amusing to link them to places like the ruined Dalaran crater, giving people an impromptu skydiving lesson.
Harry could only say that survival instincts had kicked in during that ordeal, and he had later ensured the offending mage learned their lesson.
Considering how often mages—much like goblins—came up with unpredictable creations, it wasn’t entirely surprising that Harry had been mysteriously sent back to this world, with his age reversed as a bonus.
Time travel? In Azeroth’s tangled timelines, Harry had grown accustomed to it. He’d even attended a celebration hosted by the bronze dragons, where composure was key no matter how strange things got.
For example, in the peculiar world, a realm populated entirely by murloc versions of people he knew, Harry had kept his cool.
Harry nodded to himself. But now, the real question was: how could he return?
He longed for his small home in Thunder Bluff, built with the help of his father, Cairne Bloodhoof, and his older brother Baine. It was a cozy space tailored to his size, a place he considered his true home.
When Harry, once a frail and clueless child, had ended up stranded in Kalimdor, it was Cairne Bloodhoof who had taken him in, guided him, and cared for him. He had taught Harry how to live—not as a human, but as a tauren.
Even though Cairne was a tauren and Harry a human, there had been no distinction in the way he was treated.
In fact, Harry sometimes thought of himself as a peculiar kind of tauren—one whose horns had yet to grow and whose fur was a bit sparse.
So… where could he find a mage to open a portal for him?
Harry fell into deep thought.
Crash!
Just then, a sudden clatter behind him broke his concentration. Turning around, Harry saw a plump middle-aged man struggling to get up from the floor, his face a mixture of panic and fury.
Oh, and anger. Definitely anger.
“You little brat! I warned you already!”
The man roared, his face flushed red with rage, his entire body seeming to swell with fury.
“No magic! No freakish, disgusting magic in this house!”
After a few false starts, the man finally spat out a description for what he had witnessed.
“You mean this, Uncle?” Harry raised his hand, and the water snake coiled between his fingers moved more energetically in response.
He was beginning to remember who this man was—his uncle, Vernon.
“I told you not to do that! Boy!!!”
To Vernon, the livelier movements of the water snake were a deliberate provocation. He roared, charging at Harry like a tank, one hand reaching directly for Harry’s hair.
Bang!
The sound was sharp and solid, the kind of noise that made one wince just imagining the pain. It was the unmistakable thud of flesh meeting an unyielding surface.
Vernon’s face turned an even deeper shade of red, though this time it wasn’t from anger or fear but from the sheer agony coursing through him. For the moment, however, Vernon was too preoccupied to hurl insults at his typically timid nephew. His eyes shrank to tiny points, much like a beetle's, wide with horror as they fixed on the thing that had stopped his hand mid-swing.
A shield? Or had the wall itself just moved?
When Vernon had lunged at Harry, hand outstretched to grab his hair, Harry had instinctively rejected the hostile action. Without thinking, he’d used one of the most common spells in a shaman’s repertoire—the Earth Shield.
The intent was fine, the spell itself executed perfectly. The issue lay in where the material for the shield had come from. The wall next to where Harry and Vernon were standing now bore a gaping hole. Actually, to be precise, it no longer resembled a wall at all.
Chunks of concrete and brick seemed to have taken on a life of their own, surging together to form a protective shield large enough to cover Harry completely.
“Monster!” Vernon screamed reflexively, his voice shrill, matching the screech that had come earlier from the direction of the kitchen.
Harry turned his head toward the sound and saw a woman clutching a spatula, her hands pressed to her head as she let out piercing shrieks. It was his aunt, Petunia.
The sight of her ruined home—evidence of her nephew’s unwanted antics—seemed to stun her into a moment of horrified clarity. The thought of her spotless reputation now at the mercy of the neighbors’ gossip threatened to make her faint on the spot.
“Harry! What are you doing?!” Petunia shrieked. “Today is Dudley’s birthday!”
“And the neighbors... they’ll see us!”
“Well,” Harry mused inwardly, “at least she remembers her son’s birthday amidst all this chaos. That’s some impressive maternal focus.”
Still, these weren’t the most pressing matters. No, the real issue was that if Harry’s calculations were correct, this house wasn’t going to hold together much longer.
After all, the Earth Shield had pulled its material directly from the house’s load-bearing wall. Not just punctured it—obliterated it entirely.
Harry glanced around. The walls nearby were already trembling, small cracks spidering outward ominously.
The commotion downstairs had clearly roused someone from their slumber. From above came a thunderous stomping, and soon, a pajama-clad boy with a nightcap perched on his head appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Dad! You’re being so loud! What’s going—oh my god!”
Harry recognized the boy immediately. The photographs he’d seen earlier had been filled with this round-faced individual. This was Dudley, his cousin, whose long-forgotten antics had once left Harry bruised and battered.
Dudley, however, seemed far more interested than horrified. His eyes lit up as he surveyed the scene below.
“This is so cool!” he shouted, his voice reverberating through the shaking walls. “What kind of game is this?!”
“It’s clearly not a game,” Harry sighed.
In some ways, Dudley was exactly as Harry remembered him—brash, excitable, and utterly oblivious. But for Harry, who had lived through more than thirty years’ worth of experiences, his cousin’s past behavior seemed like trivial squabbles between children.
A harmless calf, at best.
“My house!!!”
Petunia’s shrill cry cut through Harry’s thoughts. The pristine white walls were now riddled with cracks, and the house itself was trembling on its last legs. The cacophony of Petunia’s screams, Vernon’s roars, and Dudley’s exclamations made Harry’s head throb.
It reminded him of the noisy meetings held by orcs—boisterous, unruly, and loud enough to rattle one’s brain.
But regardless of the chaos, Harry couldn’t just let anyone get hurt.
And so, in Little Whinging, Surrey, at Number Four, Privet Drive...
A plume of dust rose high into the air as the once-immaculate house, standing for over a decade, crumbled into rubble, reduced to a heap of debris in a cloud of gray smoke.
Well, not entirely rubble.
Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley were all sprawled on the ground, groaning as they tried to push themselves upright. Moments before the collapse, a torrent of water had swept them to Harry’s side. Now they sat in stunned silence, staring at the nephew they had barely acknowledged in the past.
Or more accurately, they were staring at the massive, towering figure standing protectively over them—a golem of sorts.
It was a hulking giant, cobbled together from the remnants of the house: shattered concrete, steel rebar, and bricks all melded into one colossal body.
If this were Azeroth, Harry mused, the creature would surely have an appropriately grand name—something like "Concrete Earth Elemental" or “Brickwork Titan.” Whatever it was called, its massive arms and body had shielded them all from the collapse, ensuring no one was harmed.
“Sorry about that, Uncle Vernon,” Harry said with a sigh. He turned to face his still-stunned relatives. “I didn’t expect the magic here to draw directly from the surrounding earth, rather than tapping into the Elemental Plane. I’ll compensate for the damage caused.”
Vernon didn’t respond. He didn’t rage, didn’t shout, didn’t even flinch. He just stood there, frozen in shock, his face blank and uncomprehending.
The term stunned silence had never felt more apt.
Crack! Pop!
Harry’s attention was drawn away as a series of sharp, crackling sounds erupted. Beyond the rubble of the house, figures began materializing in the street.
Not walking out of portals or gates—no, these people appeared out of thin air, dressed in long robes, their wands clutched tightly in hand.
