Fanfic / Harry Potter and the Artificer Legacy

Harry Potter and the Artificer Legacy is a Harry Potter fanfiction by Kairomaru.

Everyone knows the story, the Potters attacked and little Harry left with his relatives. But what happens when the last Potter stumbles upon something left behind? What does someone with no preconceived notions about Magic do when they find out that it's real? Do they follow along just like everyone else? Or do they find their own path? Harry Potter did always like to make things!

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Harry Potter and the Artificer Legacy provides examples of:

• Accidental Discovery: The communications mirror Sirius gives Harry was a complete fluke for the Marauders. According to Sirius, it took them over a hundred tries to get it right and they never managed to reproduce their results. After months of study, Harry eventually puzzles out that the two mirrors were cut from the same larger mirror.
• Accidental Proposal: Harry declares his method of learning wandless magic to be a family secret but then agrees to teach Tonks and Penny, not knowing that sharing a family secret is basically declaring his intention to marry them.
• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • Having no preconceived notions of what is or isn't possible with magic, Harry not only learns wandless magic before even entering Hogwarts, but also creates a proper unit of measure for magic itself.
  • Harry creates his first Artifact^note albeit, one of the lowest grade almost on accident, having merely intended to create a safe that no one but him could open.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: The Sword of Gryffindor was forged by dwarves rather than goblins.
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Tonks first appears on Harry's first train ride to Hogwarts, rather than before Harry's fifth year, partially due to being a year younger.
  • Since Harry's a Ravenclaw, he meets Penelope during the Welcoming Feast in first year rather than halfway through second year.
  • Sirius is first mentioned when Harry hasn't heard of magic yet but makes his first appearance during Christmas break of first year, the same time as Remus, both of whom didn't make an appearance until third year in canon.
  • Luna's first appearance is on the train ride during Harry's second year, a full three years sooner than canon.
  • Fleur appears during Harry's first year and meets him after his second year.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: The Dursleys towards Harry.
  • They are emotionally distant at worst rather than abusive or neglectful like canon. Indeed, Vernon sends Harry off to a summer day camp and seems genuinely interested in his nephew's hobbies of woodcarving and sewing.
  • While the Dursleys still don't tell Harry about magic, it's because he never did anything blatantly magical around them so they figured they'd wait to see if he got a Hogwarts letter before telling him.
• Age Lift: Tonks is a year younger than canon, being a 7th year when Harry starts his 1st year rather than having already graduated.
• All for Nothing: Voldemort spends months preparing to summon a massive demon and sacrifices a ridiculous amount of resources, including most of his followers, in order to do so. He's defeated that very night with all his horcruxes destroyed.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Penelope Clearwater only had a few appearances in canon but is one of the main characters here. Similarly, Tonks is one of Harry's best friends from his first train ride to Hogwarts as opposed to an acquaintance he meets before fifth year.
  • In canon, dwarves only made a single appearance in Chamber of Secrets where they played cupids that Lockhart hired. In Artificer's Legacy, Harry establishes a relationship with them and is declared a brother of the Erdunn dwarves by their king.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Becoming an animagus is (usually) a highly useful ability, but a large part of why almost nobody bothers is because the preparations include, among other things, having to keep a potion soaked leaf in your mouth for a month straight just to start the process of becoming one. Later subverted when it turns out a group in Africa has a much more efficient method though it's one they don't teach to outsiders except under specific circumstances.
• Beyond the Impossible: Dementors are believed to be impossible to kill or even damage. In chapter 55, Harry's newest magical sword kills all of the Dementors by absorbing them.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The dwarves are a downplayed example compared to goblins. While goblins consider any goblin made artifact to be merely on loan to the commissioner and demand its return when they die, dwarves only seek a commissioned item's return if the commissioners entire line dies out.
• Boring, but Practical: Harry invents both a unit of magic^note A mana, which is equivalent to the lowest amount of magic needed to cast a Lumos spell and devices which can measure how much magic a person or item has. While not very flashy, they are easily some of the most important inventions in recent magical history and cause a minor industrial revolution among magic users due to the possibilities they offer.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: Harry's first magical sword destroys Tom Riddle's diary but crumbles into inert sand afterwards.
• Bullying a Dragon: Despite knowing full well that Harry has just killed all the Dementors of Azkaban, Umbridge insists on trying to arrest him for it.
• Cannibalism Superpower: A variation. Anyone who consumes the flesh of a magical creature they bested in a Rite of Conquest will receive a significant boost to their magic, though only the first time they consume it. Eating more of the same beast later will result in a very minor boost at best.
• Child Prodigy: Having dabbled in alchemy, enchanting, and runes years before most and created his first true Artifact when he was only eleven, making him the youngest Artificer ever, marks Harry as an incredible prodigy. After merely four years of being an Artificer, Harry has already made more True Artifacts than many who have held the title for five times as long.
• Cold Iron: Isimun or Everlasting Iron is completely immutable by magic. After receiving a ingot of it as a thank you gift from the dwarves, Harry intends to use it as the core of his spell cleaving sword.
• Contrived Coincidence:
  • Harry learns about magic three years early because boxes containing Lily's and Petunia's school things got mixed up, causing Lily's things to end up at Privet Drive while Petunia's are in the Potter Vault.
  • Harry, Tonks, and Penelope discover a teacher's abandoned quarters because Tonks accidentally knocked aside the enchanted block of wood hiding it from their view.
• Cool Big Sis: Penelope Clearwater makes a point of looking out for younger Ravenclaws, such as comforting those who are homesick and checking that they've done their homework. She also steps in immediately after learning about Luna being bullied.
• Crime of Self-Defense: Umbridge attempts this after Harry is attacked by Dementors, claiming he "stole Ministry property" when his Artifact sword consumed them.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • Umbridge dies trying to wield Dourfrost despite Harry's warning.
  • The entire Malfoy family is sacrificed by Voldemort in a ritual.
• Demoted to Extra:
  • Hermione is one of Harry's study partners as opposed to one of his best friends. Once Harry graduates early, she almost disappears from the story entirely.
  • Ron has it even worse, only being mentioned once in the entire first year and not making an appearance until the summer before second year.
  • The Dursleys were never a focus of the books, but they're not even mentioned after Harry's first year due to him moving in with Sirius.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • Tonks tries to show off her enchanted belt buckle, which improves her balance, by leaping onto an unstable table. After the table collapses and she falls down, Harry reminds her that the belt buckle only makes it harder for her to lose her balance; it doesn't turn her into an acrobat.
  • Voldemort reworks how his horcruxes work so that any time he dies, a horcrux is destroyed and he's instantly revived. Then he dies several times in a single night and soon finds himself with no horcruxes left. The last one is destroyed because the demon he summoned was bound to his life, meaning he died if it did.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation:
  • Peter Pettigrew dies in Azkaban long before Harry even enters Hogwarts, rather than being strangled by his own magical arm as he was in canon.
  • Most of Voldemort's Inner Circle die trying to break him out of a military prison as opposed to in a big final battle.
  • Rather than his own curse rebounding and killing him, Voldemort is executed by a muggle firing squad for his crimes.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Imbuing an artifact with a Consume Array allows it to absorb anything that would make the artifact stronger, something that was done with the Sword of Gryffindor. However, actually creating such an array and getting it to work properly is difficult to the point of being near impossible. Even the Erdunn dwarves have only ever made one successful artifact with a Consume Array, the Sword of Gryffindor.
• Doorstopper: As of August 31, 2023 the story has 65 chapters containing 337,660 words
• Early-Bird Cameo: After becoming the youngest Artificer ever, Harry receives a letter from an anonymous well-wisher. Over 30 chapters later, it's revealed the letter came from Zosimos, the inventor of alchemy, who's enacting some millennia long plan.
• Entertainingly Wrong: The Death Eaters assume Dumbledore is basically all-knowing except when it comes to their plots. So obviously he must know where Voldemort is being held prisoner. In reality, he has no clue as he wasn't part of the team who did it and hasn't had time since to find out.
• Equivalent Exchange: Harry's second True Artifact, a magical sword, is granted the ability to cut magic by losing the ability to cut anything physical. Spells can't even touch it before they're destroyed but against a person, it's functionally a metal bar.
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Dementors radiate an aura of cold which is more intense the more Dementors are in the area. After absorbing all of the Dementors, Harry's artifact sword does likewise, including freezing anything it touches.
• Evil Is Petty: Umbridge tries to have Harry Kissed because he refused her attempts to coerce him into working for the Ministry of Magic.
• Evil Weapon: Harry's Artifact sword, Dourfrost, is explicitly a cursed weapon, meaning it will harm anyone who touches it if they don't possess more mana than itself. The greater the disparity, the faster it will kill them.
• Exact Words: Harry promises to give the goblins the Sword of Gryffindor in exchange for them giving him all of the Potter assets. After their deal is complete and Harry is banned from Gringotts, he uses the Sorting Hat to take back the sword and give it to its true owners, the dwarves.
• Expert Consultant: After becoming blood brothers with the Erdunn dwarves, Harry occasionally speaks with their king, Drasurd, on matters of runecrafting and metallurgy, both areas the dwarves are far more knowledgeable about than him.
• Fantasy Metals: Alchemy features several such as Oulm, Sylvuan, Adamantite, and Orichalcum. Though the method of making each appears to be well known, each is more difficult to make than the last. Despite being a Child Prodigy, Harry's first attempt to make Oulm failed, and Orichalcum is so difficult to make that it's almost impossible to purchase on the open market.
• For Science!:
  • Harry to a minor extent, researches and crafts because he wants to see if something can be done.
  • Penelope and Fleur are both interested in becoming magical scholars, people who make a career out of studying magic.
• Foreshadowing: The first mention of Harry's scar comments that it's pale and faded, rather than still vivid and red like canon. Later chapters cement that Harry isn't a Horcrux in this story.
• Fun with Acronyms: Harry's two magic measuring devices are the Spell Crafted Ocular Unit Total Energy Reader (SCOUTER) and the Transfigured Energy Scanning Talisman (TEST).
• Gadgeteer Genius: Harry has enjoyed building things since he was a little boy and invented two different magical devices before even entering Hogwarts.
• Godzilla Threshold: Voldemort summoning a massive demon to rampage across England forces Harry to break out Dourfrost.
• Greed: The primary motivation of all goblins is to own absolutely everything of monetary value.
• Hate at First Sight: Harry's very first interaction with the Gringotts goblins cements his distaste for the creatures, as they wished to charge him exorbitant fees to move his money to a different account.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Harry fully admits he's likely to make more Artifact swords because "Magic swords are cool".
• Ignored Expert: Umbridge refuses to listen to Harry's warning not to touch Dourfrost, a cursed Artifact he accidentally created. The sword kills her.
• Impoverished Patrician: While not nobility, the Potter family was reasonably well off, especially after they sold their sole business for a massive profit. However, due to James helping to fund the war (among other problems), Harry only possesses roughly fifteen thousand galleons^note About 75,000 British pounds or just under $57,000 in 1991 and the lands the family manor used to be on as of the start of his first year at Hogwarts. Part of the reason Harry sells his inventions is to rebuild the family fortune.
• In Spite of a Nail:
  • Sirius captured Pettigrew and got him thrown in Azkaban but still couldn't take in Harry due to falling into a coma from his injuries.
  • As of Halloween during Harry's Third Year, Voldemort is on the path towards regaining his body despite Pettigrew being dead. In this case, it's because a branch member of the Flint family sought him out after being cast out by the main family.
  • The attack on the Quidditch World Cup still happens, though this time it's because a resurrected Voldemort sent his Death Eaters there himself.
  • Harry is still a champion in the Triwizard Tournament, though he's the only Hogwarts champion rather than a fourth champion.
  • Umbridge still sends a pair of Dementors after Harry. Rather than attempting to silence him for claiming Voldemort's returned, it's because Harry refuses her blatant attempts to force him to make artifacts for the Ministry of Magic.
• In-Universe Factoid Failure: Some Moral Guardians in Tennesee talk about burning witches in their "New Salem Witch Trials". A wizard whose grandmother actually lived through the trials calls them a bunch of idiots since not only were the Salem Witch Trials class warfare rather than anything to do with magic, but the alleged witches were hanged, not burned.
• Irony: Voldemort spent his whole life disdaining muggles, only for muggles to be the ones who ultimately decide his fate.
• It Only Works Once:
  • Harry's Ward Breakers can tear through temporary wards and a group of them can destroy even ancient wards. But because they absorb all the backlash from breaking said wards, they burn out after a single use.
  • Harry's first semi-successful attempt at creating an artifact with a Consume Array can only have the array activated once, after which it can never be reactivated.
• Just Think of the Potential!: While Harry invents for the sake of it, he still considers practical applications for his devices. When a spell-cutting knife instead leaves limbs magically exhausted, Harry figures out a way to create a baton that can do the same thing, which he then sells to the Aurors.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After trying to have Harry Kissed then trying to have him arrested for defending himself, Umbridge is killed by the Artifact Harry created by having it consume all the Dementors attacking him.
• Literally Shattered Lives: Umbridge's ultimate fate due to trying to wield a cursed Artifact while possessing less than a twentieth as much mana as it.
• Logical Weakness: As magical as they are, dragons still need to breathe. Harry kills the Hungarian Horntail by trapping it in a bubble with no oxygen.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • Normally, an Artifact cannot be left incomplete or it will fail^note Harry is left physically and magically exhausted when he spends three solid days making a sword. After creating new tools out of basilisk bones, Harry imbues his hammer and anvil with an effect that lets him keep ongoing Artifacts in stasis for up to twelve hours at a time, allowing him to eat and rest while working on longer projects.
  • Even as a sworn brother of the Erdunn dwarves, Harry isn't privy to their artificing and crafting secrets. But while they can't and won't tell him the solution to his problems, they're perfectly willing to act as a sounding board and tell Harry if a proposed solution will work.
• Loyal Phlebotinum: Harry's artifact sword is specifically designed to only truly work for himself and his descendants. For anyone else, it's just a magical sword, still useful but far less powerful. Harry later reveals that the handle has an intent based ward; anyone seeking to harm him or his family will be unable to even touch the sword.
• Made of Indestructium: One of the hallmarks of a true Artifact is that it will be nearly impervious to damage. Harry's safe ignores even Fiendfyre.
• Magic A Is Magic A:
  • Harry comments that the same runic array that makes his safe nearly indestructible can't be used on an armor or shield. The reason is that a safe is an inherently static object while armor and shields are designed to be moved around.
  • One important aspect of artificing is that the Artificer has to either create every component from scratch (including smelting ore into ingots) or has to obtain the components through a Ritual of Conquest. Magical items that were purchased can only be used to create enchanted items, not Artifacts. Furthermore, Harry can create Artifacts for other people but there's a limit to how powerful they can be as he isn't the master of the components and thus they won't respond as well to him.
• Meaningful Rename: After being gifted back to the dwarves who created it, the Sword of Gryffindor is renamed the Sword of Erdunn, for the clan who forged it centuries ago.
• Mugging the Monster: Because they're so insular and convinced of their superiority, the Death Eaters think nothing of attacking the British military to free Voldemort. Every one of the attackers is killed within seconds.
• Mundane Solution:
  • While testing Harry's safe to see if it's a true Artifact, one of the testers throws it at the stone wall. Said tester cites that a lot of wizards make objects all but impervious to magic and forget simple blunt force.
  • Rather than wait months for their own mandrakes to mature, Hogwarts simply purchases a mandrake draught from St. Mungo's when a student is petrified.
• Mundane Utility: Harry, Penelope, and Tonks use wandless magic to play games with each other, such as juggling Lumos spells. Such games also double as a form of training.
• Necessary Fail: Harry's first attempt to make a spell cutting blade fails entirely. However, the resulting blade does cause magical exhaustion in any body part that touches it, rending it numb and immobile. Harry later reworked the same formula into a baton, which he let Tonks use on Auror duty. A few months later, Harry received a massive order from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement who wanted to make his batons standard equipment.
• One-Man Industrial Revolution: Harry's seemingly minor discovery of a way to quantify magic results in a massive boost to magical research as researchers now have a definitive way to measure what's occurring.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: As a cursed Artifact, Dourfrost can only be safely wielded by someone with more mana than it. Unfortunately for Harry, at the time he created it, he had less than half as much mana.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Before they fell on hard times, the Erdunn Dwarves lived in a mountain hall where the mined, smithed, and crafted metals.
• Perception Filter: Harry's first creation is one he calls a Hiding Stone which makes anyone or anything touching it less noticeable. By his own admission, it's rather weak and doesn't work on those actively looking for what the stone is hiding, but it keeps them from noticing it "out of the corner of their eye".
• Persona Non Grata: After Harry takes all his family's holdings out of Gringotts, he's told that he'll be killed if he ever steps foot inside again. Presumably, this only worsened by him taking back the Sword of Gryffindor he had traded to them.
• Playing with Fire: After learning wandless magic, Penelope starts specializing in using fire spells.
• Poisoned Weapons: A dagger Harry makes from a basilisk fang is inherently poisonous as a magical effect. After seeing how lethal it is (a mere scratch killed a rat in seconds), Harry resolves to lock it away in his runic safe.
• Power Equals Rarity: There are five grades assigned to True Artifacts^note Minor, Median, Greater, High, and Legendary Due to how hard it is to make stronger Artifacts, anything from the top two grades are exceedingly rare. One veteran artificer outright states that most artificers' magnum opus is only a Greater Artifact.
• Power Levels: Harry develops an proper unit of measure for magic using the least amount of magic needed to cast Lumos, one of the easiest spells to cast. Harry also invented two separate devices to measure how much magic a person or creature had, a lens that shows the magic level of others and a frame that shows the magic level of the user.
• Power Up Letdown: When Harry finally becomes an animagus, he learns his animal form is a raccoon, something Tonks finds hilarious.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Goblins only abided by the Statute of Secrecy because they knew they couldn't survive the reprisal if they broke it.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Voldemort is defeated during his first major attack, but it irreparably broke the Statute of Secrecy and killed countless people.
• Renaissance Man: Harry becomes one out of necessity due to the rules of artificing. While he was always a scholar, because everything he creates has to be made entirely himself, Harry also has to know how to smith, cut gems, cut glass, work leather, sew, and make jewelry. He's also a skilled fighter along with a decent potter and woodcarver.
• Self-Destruct Mechanism: While not explosive, Harry's inventions all carry a runic array that destroys all other runes on the device should it be disassembled.
• Set Swords to "Stun": Justified. One of Harry's attempts to create a blade capable of cutting spells instead creates a knife that drains all magic out of any body part the blade touches. Harry taps Sirius on the shoulder with the knife and leaves the man unable to feel or move his arm until it recovers.
  • Harry's perfected spell cutting sword also counts as Harry sacrificed it's ability to cut physical objects in order to cut magic.
• Shout-Out:
  • Harry's second invention is a Scouter.
  • Upon learning the ludicrous process to become an Animagus, Harry asks Remus, "Are you making that up? It sounds like you're making that up."
  • One of Harry's creation is a pair of bracers that let him deflect spells.
  • Voldemort's summoned demon is Gleam Eyes from Sword Art Online.
  • Voldemort's boasting after summoning a demon comes from the song "Awaken" by Dethklok.
• Significant Birth Date: Tease and all around jokester Tonks was born on April Fools Day.
• Skilled And Strong: As of chapter 53, Tonks is the second strongest member of Harry's group and the fourth strongest person to ever be tested^*After Zosimos, Nicholas Flamel, and Dumbledore as well as a trained Auror with plenty of combat training under Mad-Eye Moody.
• Soul-Cutting Blade: Due to being created by consuming every Dementor in Azkaban, Dourfrost severs the soul of anyone who makes contact with the blade unless the sheer could of the artifact kills them first.
• Spared by the Adaptation: The Flamels survive as the Philosopher's Stone Nicholas provided Dumbledore was a fake.
• Square-Cube Law: Harry mentions that dragons are far too large to fly normally, especially with the relative size of their wings, and must be using magic to compensate.
• Stronger with Age: Downplayed. Wizard do naturally gain more mana as they grow older but regularly using their magic is considerably more important. Tonks, Fleur, and Penny all have about twice as much magic as an average adult wizard before they graduate due to their hard work.
• Sworn Brothers: For returning the Sword of Gryffindor to them, Harry is officially declared a sworn brother of the Erdunn dwarves, complete with the Erdunn sigil appearing on his arm.
• Sympathetic Magic: Communication mirrors require each mirror used in the set all be made from the same original mirror so the magic from one properly interacts with the magic from another.
• Taught by Experience: Harry's projects are universally him creating a series of failures until he puzzles out exactly what he needs to do.
• The Tease: Tonks frequently teases Harry, and to a lesser extent Penny, for fun. In particular, she enjoys making Harry blush.
• Training from Hell:
  • Snape's classes are seen as such by potioneers. Anyone who graduates his class is already one of the best potion brewers in Britain, possibly even Europe.
  • Tonks' training under Mad-Eye Moody involves a lot of time spent fighting him, with the older wizard refusing to pull his punches at all. Apparently they've received several complaints from how much time and effort it takes to fix the training rooms after they're done each day.
• The Unmasqued World: Voldemort's summoned demon destroys several miles of land and kills countless people, permanently obliterating the Statute of Secrecy.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Harry quickly surpasses most adult wizards in total mana, and by the time he kills and eats part of the Hungarian Horntail, he's even stronger than Snape (one of the strongest people Harry's ever scanned). But, as Harry specializes in enchanting and artificing, he's not as good in actual combat as Tonks is, given she's an actual Auror with combat training.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: When Penelope gets sick of Percy's rather pathetic attempts to woo her, he tries badmouthing Harry, her fiance. Penelope warns Percy that one more insult towards Harry and he'll have to face her in an honor duel.
• Wham Episode: Chapter 61. Voldemort sacrifices most of his followers to summon a 60 meter demon and unleash havoc on England.
• World's Strongest Man: When Harry gets a chance to measure Nicholas Flamel's mana, the reading comes back at over a million. For comparison, Dumbledore had a bit over forty thousand and was nearly quadruple the third highest Harry had measured.
  • It's later shown that Zosimos is both older and stronger, getting a reading so high (over two million) that it burns out the Test Frame he uses.
• You Kill It, You Bought It:
  • Harry accidentally initiates a Rite of Conquest when he declares his intent to kill the basilisk and use it's body as materials for his artificing. The basilisk in turn states that Harry's flesh and magic will belong to it should he die.
  • He does so intentionally during the First Task to get his hands on dragon parts with their full potency.

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