{Games}

"Prisoner number 6785," a bored sounding voice called out.

Harry's world was still dark. Tiny beams of light shone through the holes in the carrying box he'd been shoved into for transport to wherever the hell he now was.

"Experiment number 0034," the voice continued.

Light flooded Harry's world. The front of the box had been opened and Harry stepped out onto a wooden platform. Two men, perhaps the same two men from the prison, attached him to the platform with chains. In front of him, was a sight that made his underused eyes widen in shock.

"Modified version of the confundus charm, woven into the arch using Hypthorn's static enchantment protocol; dated the third of September, 2002, approved by the Chief Unspeakable."

It was the veil of death.

"Begin the transfer."

Without making a sound, the platform started moving towards the veil leaving Harry no possibility of escape… not that he wanted it.

'For neither can live while the other survives,' he mused, grinning manically. He was about to die, but he knew that what was going on here was something Voldemort certainly didn't know about, or authorise.

He was halfway to the veil now and suddenly terror flooded his mind, but the raw primal emotion wasn't his.

A loud crack sounded behind him and Voldemort's voice screamed "Accio Potter!" but the chains held him fast to the platform and before another word could be uttered he'd plunged through the archway and darkness took him.

Light. Spectacular light. Cleansing light … burning light … calming light. Unwavering light.

Light filled his eyes; magic filled all his other senses. Magical power he could sense no limits to.

Power, perhaps, without limits to sense.

"Good morning, Mister Potter." The voice was empty and distant, so far away and yet so close. A voice so clearly from wherever the power flowed.

He no longer could say he agreed that it was good.

"Good morning," he lied by way of reply. He could not see the speaker, and he felt no reason to offer truth. In the instant he spoke, he wondered at how undamaged his voice sounded … perfectly clear as though he had not been silent for years.

"You are of spirit at present, Mister Potter, not of flesh. There is no need for wonder that you speak clearly."

Harry wondered if this statement had been meant to reassure him of something. He felt no reassurance; he did not like that his thoughts were apparently open for reading.

"There is no cause for fear, Mister Potter. Where you are should be beyond fear's reach."

Harry suppressed the snort that would have come instantly if he'd had a nose.

"I see you are determined to be difficult," the voice continued, sighing as if overcome by fatigue.

It was then that Harry finally saw the speaker. A man stood before him, for all the world looking perfectly average.

It was a lie. There had yet to be cessation of the sense of power.

"Are you Death?" Harry asked.

Death raised a perfectly ordinary brown eyebrow. "Would I be anyone else?"

"You look like the last maths teacher I had before Hogwarts," he said, bewildered.

Death smiled. "An image for your benefit." The smile disappeared. "I'm a touch displeased at the moment, Mister Potter." In spite of the power previously having no detectable limits, it now somehow grew.

Harry recoiled. "With me?"

Death shook his head. "With Tom Riddle, and so with you by extension."

"But," Harry tried to begin speaking and tried to recoil away further from what, he found, could not be recoiled away from. He might have choked from fear. "Is it my fault I was a Horcrux?"

"No," Death responded, "but I do not like it when what I am owed is withheld. You are now dead, but Tom Riddle still lives. I am not pleased."

"I don't know what you expect me to do about it," Harry replied sarcastically, flippantly.

And this, to his great surprise, seemed exactly what he had needed to say. Death positively beamed.

"We want you to do your job," came a second voice, this one feminine. A woman appeared next to Death.

She was very old, immensely fat, and clothed in a pink silk dress. She wore far too much makeup on her face. She rather resembled a melting iced cake.

Her voice was beautiful though.

"Who are you?" Harry asked.

"I am Death," she replied. "Or perhaps I am Fate. Or perhaps we are Fate, or Death … for the fate of everyone that lives is death." She smiled.

"Why would you be separate from him, then?" he asked, while seeming to nod in the direction of the figure of Death.

"Because," replied the woman, still smiling, "for most beings Fate is incomprehensible. Death nearly always is as well. Or perhaps people do understand death, but do not wish to admit they must die."

Harry felt filled by disgust. He certainly had never had any trouble comprehending death, and since he had learned of the existence of prophecies the concept of fate did not trouble his mind either. He felt no attraction to immortality either.

"You are wiser than your years, Harry Potter," Death finally used his name, "far wiser than most mortals. Certainly far wiser than Tom Riddle."

"What job?" Harry suddenly asked. "The prophecy wasn't fulfilled … there's no longer any job for me to do."

"Death is not so simple as you believe, Harry Potter," remarked Death. He smirked.

"Nor is Fate," added Fate, also smirking. "You were supposed to kill Riddle, but never got allowed any chance to develop into one who could. As much as we are vexed by Tom Riddle, we are vexed by others."

"Albus Dumbledore," said Death, no longer smirking. His face was cold.

"And John Potter," added Fate. Her face was no warmer.

"My brother?" Harry asked.

"The same," Death said. "The same one who knew he was not the Boy-Who-Lived, knew that you were, knew that you were completely innocent of the crimes for which you were charged … and still did nothing."

"HE KNEW!" Harry more yelled than asked.

"He knew," Fate confirmed. "He knew the truth, and kept the lie going because he enjoyed the rewards. He liked the fame of being the Boy-Who-Lived." Fate sighed. "Ugly, but unsurprising."

Death continued. "We are vexed by John Potter because he completely failed to do the job he took on."

"What job," Harry asked, suddenly suspicious.

"Yours," Fate replied simply. "Harry Potter … you saw, via Riddle's eyes, the way your brother died. What you do not know is that this was his second death at Riddle's hands. You are from a second timeline … John Potter is from the first."

Harry was now stunned beyond words. He started forcing his thoughts to coalesce. "He was a time traveler … no wonder he seemed so much older and more powerful than everyone else. He really was older." Harry paused. "How much older?" he asked, wanting confirmation for what he suspected.

"Four years," Death replied, confirming what Harry believed.

"When did he learn the truth?" Harry asked, wanting those answers badly.

"He learned it from Dumbledore's own mouth shortly before he first went to Hogwarts," Fate replied.

"Dumbledore," Harry muttered, thinking about how much seemed to come down to the Headmaster's actions.

"There is more you need to know, Harry Potter," said Death. "It was Dumbledore who first created the fiction about John Potter to begin with. He concealed the truth, lied to your parents, and let the lies stand."

Harry had not realized he could be more startled. "But … why … why everything?" He asked, almost pleading.

"In this, your parents are mere tools," Fate said. "They started with no ill-will against you, and simply went along with the plan they were told, because they believed their leader honest. You may say that makes them fools, but fools are hardly rare." She stopped speaking.

"And Dumbledore," Harry asked, when no more seemed forthcoming.

It was Death who continued. "Albus Dumbledore heard Sybill Trelawney's prophecy when it was spoken. In his life he had seen two terrible Dark wizards rise … and felt he was to blame for their rise in both cases. Perhaps he felt more to blame than he really deserved, but once Riddle had marked you, Dumbledore acted to make sure you would never become the threat to the wizarding world he feared you could be."

These words took Harry aback. "Threat? Voldemort was real; what did it matter that I was a threat?"

"What indeed," Fate broke her silence. "Dumbledore decided that any child who could be Riddle's equal was too dangerous to be allowed to fully develop; he feared that any such child would inevitably become Dark, could never be anything else. And so he planned for you to be a sacrifice … you would weaken and delay Riddle, and once you had died, Riddle could be finished by someone else."

If Harry had a body, his eyes would have been pinched closed and his fists clenched, and he would have been trembling from anger. "So Dumbledore … traded a possible Dark wizard … for the success of one already established?"

"Yes," Death said.

"It is even worse than you suspect," Fate said. "A wizard or witch's magical power is the pool of their experiences … widened and deepened by the breadth and depth of their knowledge … made clear and pure by their willpower … and made active and energetic by their environment and mental state. With the Horcrux as additional hindrance, Dumbledore's manipulations made you certain to fail, and Riddle certain to succeed."

Harry might have laughed. "So no wizard or witch is really more powerful than any other … just more or less effective." It was as he had long guessed. "What do you want from me?" he asked, now wanting it made plain.

"We are," Death began, "intervening," Fate completed the sentence.

In spite of lacking a body, Harry blinked. "I'm dead. The prophecy was unfulfilled." He ignored that they had sent his brother back once already.

"We can send your soul back," Death said. "We are, as we said, intervening. Tom Riddle needs to die."

"You have a plan," Harry said evenly. This was obvious.

It was Fate who spoke for the pair. "You made the best of terrible circumstances, Harry Potter. Raised as you were, you might have been a monster, but instead you are much better a person than the world deserved. And once Riddle had risen, you used your time in confinement well, taking his knowledge for your own. You even learned from him when he forced you to witness his depravities."

Death continued when Fate fell silent. "We plan to send you back to your ninth birthday, two years before you would start Hogwarts."

Harry thought about this, but could not see all the connections. "What's the change?" he asked. "The real change … there's got to be something more. Knowledge itself, I doubt that's enough."

Both entities now beamed. It was Fate who responded. "You have just proven that you are far more capable than your brother, Harry Potter. He thought knowledge was more than enough."

Harry felt disgusted. "I am not my brother. I at least like to think that I know how to think. What will stop me from being thrown in prison again?"

"You will save Ginny Weasley," Death said.

Harry nodded. "Fine. What then? Even if I save her, Dumbledore still wants me out of the way." Permanently, he did not add.

Fate clapped her fat hands. "The way you think is more proof of your worth, Harry Potter. I confess myself disappointed we ever relied on John Potter."

"Why did you?" Harry asked. "He was never marked; he was never the subject of the prophecy."

"Because perfection is a myth," Death said. "Even the gods can make terrible mistakes. Perfection is antithetical to reality, unattainable. We decided, that since he willingly died fighting Riddle in the first timeline, that made him close enough to work. We admit our error."

Harry seized the opportunity these words granted. "What happened to me in the first timeline? You said John is from the first, and I'm from the second."

"Your brother managed to save Ginny Weasley in Slytherin's chamber, but Dumbledore convinced him to submit false evidence that you had opened the chamber in the first place."

Harry thought his disgust had peaked. He had been wrong. He went over the connections in his mind, thinking of all the worst possibilities based on what the entities had said. "In the second timeline … did John let second-year happen? Did he know what was going on and tried to keep the timeline intact anyhow?" Harry hoped, just hoped, that he was wrong, but didn't believe he was.

"Yes," Death confirmed.

Any flicker of hope Harry might have had was extinguished. He didn't know why he'd tried to hold any. "Dumbledore wants me out of the way," he repeated himself. "So much so that he'll take any excuse and put forth any lie. What stops him from completely manufacturing a way to get me imprisoned?"

Death beamed again. "Your knowledge is one thing. You have all of Riddle's knowledge about himself and his Horcruxes, and all his other knowledge for that matter." He stopped speaking.

Fate continued for him. "You know how magical society works, how stratified it is. The true way to stop Dumbledore is to be higher up in the system, high up enough he cannot control you."

Harry seized at that. "How? He's the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. Almost half of them are in his corner; I know they're the biggest group." And I don't trust the others either, he did not say.

"We are going to grant you a lordship," Death said.

Harry barely needed any time to respond. "The only way I can be Lord Potter is for my dad and brother to die, and you said I'd be nine years old. Lords have to be at least seventeen," his thoughts came out almost instantly.

"You are correct, but you would not be Lord Potter," Fate replied. "What do you know of your heritage?"

Harry could have spat. "You know I was taught nothing. I know you're in my mind, and you would have known that even if you weren't."

Death nodded. "There are other options. Three discounting the Potter seat."

Harry honestly had no idea what they knew. "Tell me," he demanded.

"By right of conquest, you could take the Slytherin lordship," Fate said. "We will allow it."

"And through your blood, you could claim Peverell or Gryffindor," added Death.

Harry was taken aback. "Gryffindor? Really? I'd think the Potters would have crowed about that for centuries."

Death shook his head. "It is not through the Potters. Lily Evans was the first witch born to Gryffindor's blood in more than six hundred years. As a witch, she cannot claim the seat. As a wizard, you can."

Harry wanted to laugh, but didn't. There was something else he wanted to ask. "If I go back, will I still be a Horcrux?"

Death and Fate both shook their heads.

Harry stayed silent for a while. They were, obviously, leaving the choice up to him. "I can only have one, right?" he asked, already knowing the answer. There was no provision in the law for multiple lordships in one person; it simply was never done.

The entities nodded.

Harry tuned the overwhelming sense of power out as he marshaled his thoughts for the decision. He immediately concluded all three of them had potential value: it was likely that either the Slytherin or the Gryffindor lordships would grant him some control at Hogwarts. Peverell lacked even that shadow of a possibility.

On the other hand, Peverell also afforded him some anonymity that the other lordships could not possibly do. As Lord Peverell, he would be just one more lord on the Wizengamot, one of more than a hundred.

Neither of the two larger Wizengamot sections would ever let either a Lord Gryffindor or a Lord Slytherin go until they knew everything they could about him. To become Lord Slytherin would instantly put Tom Riddle and all his minions on the hunt … currently, it was probable the minions at least were not. Tom Riddle's followers and the other houses of the Dark faction thought his brother was the one Tom had attacked that Halloween.

Tom would, naturally, want to find and kill any Lord Slytherin to take the seat for himself.

The obvious question loomed: did Tom know the truth? Had the dark wizard known, in the time that Harry would be returning to, that it was not John Potter whom he had once failed to kill?

Harry wracked his mind for an answer, but found none.

Dumbledore's faction would be instantly wary, if not instantly opponents of, a Lord Slytherin.

He would have snorted if he were capable. No substantial change there. Dumbledore was already his enemy.

On the other hand, if he took up the Gryffindor mantle, he would instantly have Dumbledore's followers and Dumbledore himself trying to convince him to lend his name to their cause. It was especially true for the Potters.

Though he found it deeply ironic that he might claim the Gryffindor lordship based on inheriting his mother's blood, the thought of constantly being hounded by any or all of the Potters made him furious and sick. It twisted at his insides and felt like burning poison.

The Dark houses and Riddle's followers would want to destroy Lord Gryffindor just on principle. Well, probably. If he could somehow circulate false information that he was pureblood … perhaps from a foreign land, only recently returned to Albion …

He shook his head. No, that wasn't even worth trying.

Which direction to take? Choose either Gryffindor or Slytherin, he would at very best always be watched by both major factions, more likely always hunted.

Peverell gained him freedom from that, but forfeited the possibility of rights at Hogwarts, rights he could not yet name, but only imagine.

Tom Riddle had spent seven years in Slytherin house. At first he had been unwelcome, but eventually he had come to lead it, even dominate it. Harry Potter had all those memories.

Harry himself had been a Slytherin for the brief time he'd attended Hogwarts. His time in the house had been miserable, but he'd liked what the Sorting Hat sang before his Sorting. The words about Slytherin had appealed to him in a way he'd rarely displayed before Hogwarts.

He had not liked what the Hat sang about Gryffindor … "brave at heart", "daring", and "nerve" all seemed the same thing.

And yet … and yet … Fate had said magical power was the pool of a wizard or witch's experiences. If he chose Slytherin, it was not a path to growth. It was just too similar to his own experiences and Tom's experiences. Continually treading the same path didn't force someone to grow.

And, he realized he felt a distinct thrill for the prospect of taking the Gryffindor lordship. The seat had not been held in centuries; British wizarding society had lost track of the line. Probably they believed it gone. Harry knew that Tom Riddle had never given it a thought.

But the higher powers had known.

"Gryffindor", Harry said at last, deciding he really didn't have much of a choice.

"It is agreed," said Fate. She sounded like she was pleased by his choice.

"There is one other thing I should tell you, Harry Potter," said Death. "Something for you to puzzle out. You wondered why I appeared to you in this visage. That has a very simple answer: None may know the true face of Death, for Death claims every face."

Harry looked bemused at this statement, filing it in his mind for later.

It seemed like hours more that Harry and the two entities discussed the plan, with Harry using them as a sounding board for his early strategy. He was not sure what they agreed with and what they thought was simply the immature thoughts of mortals, but he made some goals for himself. Eventually they sent his soul back through time to the living world.

On the last day of July in the year 1989, the once-again physically nine-year-old Harry Potter awoke on his mat in the cupboard under the stairs at Number Four, Privet Drive.

He rose quickly and banged his head on the ceiling, not remembering how small that space had been. When he rubbed his head enough that the pain subsided, he felt the lordship ring on his finger.

A thought made the Gryffindor ring appear, and then another disappear.

The grin that crossed his face looked like an opening in the gates of hell. Wizarding Britain had no idea what storm was about to hit it.

"Shall we dance?" he asked of empty air.

{Games}

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The bold section at the beginning of this is quoted from "Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches", by LeadVonE. If you haven't read the first chapter of that story, you won't understand where I started.

A/N2: I've reworked this somewhat. In addition to sending him back one less year (a change made in August), in early September I rewrote Harry's thoughts about which lordship to take.