When Harry returns on a mission to his native England, he finds himself pulled into a world he never imagined existed... once again.
Know Thyself is a Harry Potter/The Matrix Crossover fanfic by Hoshi-tachi that is a sequel to Know Thyself: the Prelude and can be read on Fanfiction Dot Net here
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Contains the following tropes
- All According to Plan: According to the Oracle, the "Dark Lord" is a deliberately programmed factor placed into the Matrix by the machines as a method of culling and controlling the otherwise unpredictable Wizard population that crops up. This is also why wizards are more antiquated than muggles; since a Dark Lord utterly destroys their community every thirty years, by the time they manage to rebuild they already have another one and History Repeats all over again.
- Ambiguously Human: When Harry meets Dumbledore, he gets a weird reading off of Dumbledore, seeing the code that makes up his body in the matrix pulse slightly. Harry struggles to get a proper read on him, unsure if he's a bluepill, redpill or some type of program.
- Benevolent A.I.: The moment the Sorting Hat is out on Harry's head, he nearly has a panic attack when he realizes that the hat is a sentient program that is able to scan his mind, worried that it would out Harry (who is basically a wanted criminal to the agents) either to the machines or to the wizards and separate him from his family. The hat assures him that all he does is get a basic read of his personality and nothing else.
- For Want Of A Nail:
- Given Harry's absence for the past two years and the time and resources that ensure Harry's safety while attending Hogwarts, he doesn't begin his attendance until All Hallow's Eve.
- Harry is inducted into Ravenclaw House instead of Gryffindor.
- Internal Reveal:
- The Oracle knew about the Wizarding World and Harry's place in it the whole time, not divulging in it until after Neo, Trinity and Morpheus confront her about it.
- In Chapter 5, Harry reveals that he can teleport in the real world, convincing the Council to pool in the resources to research the Wizarding World further.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The Oracle never elaborates if wizards are particularly powerful redpills and don't even know it, if magic is some kind of psychic power that was unintentionally created by the Matrix — especially since Harry is able to perform it in the Real World - or if it had existed beforehand in mankind's genetics without the machine's knowledge.
- Not So Omniscient After All: While the Oracle knows about Harry's origins and is aware of the Wizarding World, she admits that she doesn't know everything because it is "out of [her] jurisdiction... [it] has its own Oracle."
- People Jars: After the Council gives the go-ahead for Harry to attend Hogwarts and learn magic for the war effort, they manage to steal and jury rig an unused pod from the machine power plant and essentially re-plug Harry into it - bald head, wires, amniotic fluid and all - in a safe place under observation so that Harry could attend full-time at Boarding School.
- Real Event, Fictional Cause: According to the Oracle, the Salem Witch Trials were orchestrated by the machines as a culling method for the wizards in the matrix.
- Spanner in the Works: While Voldemort was a carefully crafted factor in the machine's plans, Harry surviving his encounter with a scar and Voldemort's code being scattered from it was such an anomalous event, agents had been keeping a close eye on him to ensure that he wasn't a threat up until the point that Trinity found him. Not only that, but the machines didn't even notice his absence at first because he is the only wizard to have been successfully unplugged, all other attempts rendered in a vegetative state.
- Took a Level in Badass: By the start of the fic, Harry has long-since become an official member of the Human Rebellion despite his age, joining his parents on missions into the Matrix and then acting upon the Council's best interests when the existence of the Wizarding World becomes known to them.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Looking past his knee-jerk hatred for Potters, Snape could not help but notice how unlike a regular eleven-year-old Harry acts; spartan, calm, quiet, asking only necessary questions, is unfazed by his unfamiliar surroundings, is unafraid at the seedier parts of Diagon Alley (confident that Seraph - his "guardian angel" - is watching) or the hideousness of Gringotts goblins and keeps an impressive amount of muggle currency on his person. The fact that Harry doesn't behave like an irritating ball of energy seems to stress Snape out more than if he had followed his expectations.
