Summary: Defeating Voldemort proves to be only the beginning when the dying wizard's curse thrusts Harry back through time, to the start of his fourth year. Faced with the daunting prospect of fighting the war all over again, Harry must strike a balance between changing the future for the better and losing it all with one single misstep.
Disclaimer: The characters and world of Harry Potter belong to J.K. Rowling. No profit is being made by the author of this fanfic.
Author Note: Because what the world really needs is another Harry-goes-back-to-his-younger-self story... Some parts from GoF paraphrased in this chapter. The story takes into account concepts from Deathly Hallows, such as the locations and identities of the Horcuxes, but assumes a different seventh year occurred.
The Unsheathed Sword
Chapter One: Everything Old...
Of all the ways Harry Potter had expected Voldemort's death to ultimately play out, he would have ample time to reflect later, it had to have ranked close to the very bottom. Not the manner of his death--destroying the Horcruxes had always been a given, as was carrying out the actual deed, using the killing curse or any other lethal means at his disposal.
The sword of Godric Gryffindor shone red with blood as he pulled it out of the chest of the dark wizard who had ruined so many lives and come so close to destroying everything Harry cared about. He felt something like peace as he watched the hate-filled eyes of his enemy begin to lose focus.
Just die, he thought at the bloody form at his feet. The sounds of battle raged around him; the Death Eaters had not conceded victory yet, and desperation drove them now. The wizarding world had long ago lost its patience for feeble claims of forced servitude through the Imperius Curse. If anything, the ministry erred in the other extreme now. It was a harder world than that of five years ago, when Fudge had denied to the world that the Dark Lord could possibly be back.
Harry caught a flash of light out of the corner of his eye and distractedly erected a shield to absorb the curse, following through with an impatient blasting spell that sent the Death Eater who had fired the curse flying through the air. He impacted the ground in a flail of limbs and went still.
"Harry Potter."
Startled, he looked down. A glimmer of awareness had returned to Voldemort's eyes. His hand tightened around the sword, prepared to strike another blow if it proved necessary. Take no joy in death, Dumbledore had cautioned him years ago, but he was dead now and it had been a very long war.
The war. It had been an unforgiving crucible, melting them all to fit the mould of battle. Harry had fought for many things; in the early years, his life. Later, the lives of his friends, and then for the future of the wizarding world. That future was what drove him now; it was too late for his generation. They would be haunted by the spectres of this war for the rest of their lives; he had seen it in Remus and Sirius, his parents' generation. But the next generation of children at Hogwarts would not live in fear of attacks, of losing their family, and they would not grow up to be him.
A rasping laughter rose from the ground, accompanied by a sucking sound that Harry knew meant his stab had punctured one of Voldemort's lungs. The laughter caught him off guard, made him uneasy, especially since it must have been exceptionally painful. He stared at his fallen enemy, refusing to appear anything but unruffled.
"It's never over, Harry," Voldemort wheezed. A hand snaked out, lightning-quick, to grab the hem of Harry's mud-stained robes, and he laughed again, that man who had feared death enough to destroy his own soul in order to escape it. The hairs on the back of Harry's neck rose. There was a note of triumph in the eerie laughter that shouldn't be there, had they missed one of the...? "Here, my final gift to you. Reverte ad initium!"
There was no curse-light to dodge, or rather, it was so vast that he could not have dodged it had he tried. The world around him shuddered for a moment and began to grow grey as colour leeched out of it. Noise dropped away, until it was silent except for that horrible laughter, which went on and on--
His tight leash on his anger snapped, and his calm abandoned him. He stabbed again violently, and again, and one last time before the grey overtook him entirely, determined to ensure that Voldemort was dead if this curse somehow destroyed him too. The sword heated in his hand, and the grey turned abruptly to a blinding white that pressed in on him from all sides, building to an unbearable pressure that denied him the breath to even scream.
He's dead, Harry had time to think to himself. The laughter that echoed around him was entirely in his head. Voldemort was dead at last, and his friends even now must be finishing the last of the Death Eaters. They had won, even if his own life was over now. He'd resigned himself to such a fate long ago, and he would not be afraid--
x x x x
Harry woke to a burning in his scar that made him clap a hand to his forehead. He blinked, surprise at waking up at all surpassing, for a moment, his horror to feel the tell-tale sign of Voldemort's continued survival. It was dark around him, and he wondered wildly for a moment if he had been taken to St Mungo's.
He waited until his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and the second shock came: the room was blurry. Had something happened to his eyes? He'd had them magically corrected years ago, after one too many Death Eaters had summoned them or shattered them in an attempt to blind him, so why would--?
Despite the dark and the blurriness, the room was horribly familiar. He squinted, and the third shock swam into focus. What in Merlin's name was he doing back at number four, Privet Drive? He had left the protection of his relatives directly after his sixth year. Panic growing, he struggled into a sitting position. By chance, his roving hands fell upon a pair of glasses, set neatly on the bedside table. Slipping them on, he took a deep breath, and tried to figure out just what was going on.
His scar had hurt, and that had to mean... He clamped down tightly on his rising fear and horror. This was not the time for panic. It had to mean that Voldemort had somehow survived, which must mean they had missed a Horcrux. The ministry would have pulled back--but then why was he at the Dursleys?
A sobering thought occurred to him. Perhaps they hadn't simply retreated. Perhaps Voldemort's forces had somehow won, and the ministry's remaining wizards had been forced into hiding. Privet Drive had been safe for him once, perhaps they had thought...
What? What had they thought, to place him here? How had they persuaded the Dursleys to agree, for that matter? He got to his feet, rubbing his face. His hand froze, and a sudden, terrible suspicion gripped him. Reverte ad initium. He had never been a master of Latin, but he could get by, and translating roughly, that meant--
Return to the beginning. He raced over to his wardrobe, flung it open, and peered into the mirror inside of the door. It was still his face, but soft with the lingering traces of childhood, eyes just slightly too large for the face they had yet to grow into. He clutched at his arm, which was scrawny, nearly bony, from poor nutrition. His mouth tightened; he had spent years reversing the damage his relatives had done to his growth.
He moved his hand away from the scar, pulling the hair back to study the lightning bolt shape in the mirror. It still stung, though it didn't look irritated.
Voldemort. He lowered his hand, feeling it clench into a fist, and he had to suppress the urge to throw it at the mirror. Instead, he stepped back and sat heavily on the bed. Ten years. That was how long he had been fighting, since his very first year at Hogwarts, his first encounter with the evil that would consume his childhood and his life.
Ten bloody years, and just when it seemed that it was over and he could finally rest-- He breathed deeply, trying to banish the feeling of anguished frustration that welled up in his chest. It was over, they had won. Voldemort was dead, even if the bastard had died laughing at him.
Damn it, hadn't he given enough to that bloody prophecy? He didn't think he could fight this war a second time. Not if it meant watching the people he loved die all over again, suffering through the losses again: Sirius, Dumbledore, Remus-- His thoughts came to an abrupt halt, and his breath caught.
They didn't have to die, he thought with a rising euphoria that left him slightly dazed. He knew how it would happen for each of them; he could prevent--
No. The reality of the situation jerked him out of those fantasies. He needed to be cold about this.
If he made any significant changes, the future they had won through so much sacrifice could be endangered. Voldemort had been defeated, he was certain of it, never mind the laughter. But surely that wasn't the only path that led to victory; surely, there was some way he could do things better, prevent those needless deaths.
Perhaps he understood Voldemort's final laughter better now. This was both gift and curse; he would be trapped between the desire to protect the people he cared about and to preserve the certain victory he had achieved in that last battle.
Five years ago, even three, that would not have been a question. Friends would come first, and damn the rest. But if, for every friend he saved, he consigned one hundred innocents to death...
He would simply have to do better this time. He would have the best of both worlds. He had the knowledge, the foresight, and the skills to handle Voldemort. If he chose the right moment to break with his past, once he was absolutely certain he could kill Voldemort, then it shouldn't matter what he changed after that.
But before he decided anything else, he needed to learn just how far back he had gone. He rummaged through the trunk at the foot of his bed, which contained his spellbooks from previous years at Hogwarts. The books did not go beyond third year.
Fourth year. That puzzled him. Reverte ad initium--but fourth year was hardly the beginning for him. First year would make far more sense or even that Halloween night when Voldemort had fulfilled the first part of the prophecy; then again, it was at the end of the fourth year, in the final task of the Triwizard Tournament, that Cedric Diggory would die and Voldemort would be reborn, from his blood.
He could stop Voldemort from rising as early as the end of the year--but should he?
He frowned. Dumbledore had explained to him that Voldemort's use of his blood in the resurrection ritual at Little Hangleton had rendered Harry immune to any attempt by Voldemort to cast the killing curse on him. He risked losing such a protection if he ruined the ritual, either by not going to the graveyard at all or disrupting it himself. Unfortunately, neither option guaranteed Voldemort's defeat. There were seven Horcruxes--well, six, with the diary destroyed--left, and he could simply try again in the second case, or use another victim in the first.
What did he know about the Horcruxes? He went through the list, long since memorised. The diary, destroyed. The ring, still at the Gaunts'. Ravenclaw's diadem, safe in Hogwarts and readily accessible. Hufflepuff's cup, locked inside the Lestrange vault. Slytherin's locket, which should still be in Grimmauld Place. Nagini. Himself.
His face darkened. The process they had used to destroy the Horcrux within him had come close to killing him with it, and had, in fact, required him to be dead for a time. He didn't look forward to going through that process again, particularly since he would need skilled, wholly trustworthy help for that.
No. Not unless he had destroyed all of the Horcruxes would he disrupt the ritual. Letting anyone else be Voldemort's victim went against his every instinct, and it was not worth giving up that protection against the killing curse. And he wouldn't be able to destroy all of the soul shards without help; the Trace remained on him, the Order's headquarters remained locked under the Fidelius, the Lestrange vault would be all but impossible to reach without a full-on assault...
The question was--who could he trust? And more sobering still: who would believe him?
Save those questions for tomorrow, he told himself. His body may be rested, but his mind had just come from a long battle. He ignored the tightness in his chest that built as he remembered that one, aching moment of peace he had felt, of knowing it was all over and the nightmare was over--only to wake up, to begin it anew.
He was a soldier. He would take rest where he could find it, and fight when he must.
x x x x
Harry woke the next morning with the frustrating feeling that he had forgotten something, and he remembered what it was as he sat down to breakfast with the Dursleys. His scar had hurt last night--he must have woken right after his first encounter with his mental link with Voldemort, the dream where he had watched an old man die. He'd written to Sirius the first time, embarrassed to express unease over a mere dream but anxious enough about his scar hurting to mention that.
If he remembered correctly, that was what had prompted Sirius to come north. He was reluctant to begin mucking up the timeline this early, particularly when the consequences of Sirius not coming were so vague, so he resolved to jot a quick note later. Of course, now that he knew what day it was, he knew what would happen next.
Indeed, after the breakfast with measly slices of grapefruit--he reminded himself that he'd had plenty of supplemental food hidden away in his room that he could enjoy later--his uncle confronted him with the stamp-plastered envelope containing the Weasleys' invitation to see the Quidditch World Cup with them.
His memory of the event was mixed; the game had been the first time he'd really been surrounded by his world, other wizards and witches, in something other than a school environment. He supposed that techinically Diagon Alley was truly the first time, but it had been new and puzzling and more than a little overwhelming then, while Quidditch he had known well enough to enjoy the whole experience.
The aftermath had not been as pleasant.
Unable to recall how he had responded to the letter the first time, he went with a neutral response. "Looks like you'll be rid of me for the rest of summer, then."
His uncle's red-faced anger deflated slightly, perhaps derailed by his bluntness. "Er. That's--I've said nothing of the sort. What is this Quidditch rubbish?"
"Wizarding sport," Harry said, feeling oddly relaxed to see Vernon's face purple at the first word. This was something he knew, could deal with. "Played on brooms--"
"Fine, fine! I'll thank you not to speak anyone of that vile, unnatural nonsense under my roof!" Vernon rubbed at his moustache, clearly reluctant to concede when there was a risk of Harry actually experiencing happiness. His eyes dropped down to the bottom of the letter. "What's that mean, 'the normal way'?"
Harry gauged the level of his uncle's temper before replying. It would be inconvenient to send him flying into a rage, enjoyable though it might be to watch. He'd considered various forms of mild revenge to take upon his relatives over the years, but each time, he dismissed the ideas as unproductive. A part of him would always hate the Dursleys for doing their best to crush his spirit, near-starving him, locking him up, and using him as a house-elf, but in a way, he pitied them too, for being so terrified of a small child.
"She means owl post," he said finally.
His uncle twitched, but apparently "owl" was just close enough to the line separating normal words from unacceptable, freakish ones that he didn't blow up. "And this Weasley woman, she knows that if you go, we'll not be responsible for feeding you, or paying--"
Irritation ripped through him at this fresh reminder of his relatives' seemingly boundless capacity for pettiness. "She knows."
"Well, then." Vernon seemed stuck, unable to bring himself to actually speak the--metaphorically speaking--magic words that would allow him to go.
"Thank you, Uncle Vernon," Harry said, finding the words of gratitude perhaps equally hard, but he'd learnt long ago that a conflict avoided was one extra conflict he'd have energy for later. Conservation of battle-readiness, he thought with mild amusement.
He passed Dudley in the hall as he went up to his room, ignoring the hostile glance sent his way. He entered his room to a blur of feathers, zipping round the room--Pig. He took the dropped letter and read it, feeling an odd disconnect as Ron's enthusiasm buffeted him; like what he read was not in real time, but rather a long-delayed echo--distinguishable but slightly hollow.
He didn't belong. It was a fresh stab that he tried to shrug away, succeeding only partially. Finally, he sat down to pen his reply to Ron and his letter to Sirius. Once Pig had calmed enough to accept the letter--for a given value of "calm"--he tied it to the excitable owl's leg. So much exuberance, from both Ron and his owl, was emotionally draining.
His letter to Sirius had been more difficult. He couldn't ignore his past, the fact that, in a way, he was writing to a dead man. He hoped it hadn't coloured his writing, but he had to accept that the actions he would have taken before would now pass through the filter of his experiences.
His third letter, to Dumbledore, was blank. He'd stared at the blank sheet of parchment for several minutes, at a loss what to write and uncertain if he should write anything at all. What could he say? "Dear Dumbledore, this may sound crazy, but I'm from six years in the future"? Time travel did exist, as their adventure during third year with Hermione's Time-Turner had demonstrated in vivid detail.
But this wasn't time travel. If it was, he wouldn't be fourteen years old again. So what had Voldemort done? Considering what Dumbledore already knew about the Horcrux he carried within him, his first guess could easily be that the piece of Voldemort's soul had possessed him, as the shade of Tom Riddle had Ginny. Hell, even if he said nothing at all, his altered behaviour might lead the headmaster to the same conclusion.
And if Dumbledore did believe him, Harry knew he would still want to protect him, like his clumsy attempts during his fifth year--but that hadn't worked the first time round. Same with Sirius. All of the adults would have trouble accepting that he was a grown wizard, and he didn't even want to consider what Fudge's ministry would do if they found out.
Information shared was risk multiplied. That was one fact that had been drilled into them by betrayal after betrayal--unintentional and not.
Destroy the Horcruxes he could get to, he thought as he attached his second letter to Hedwig, who hooted softly at his distracted manner. That was his first step; everything except Hufflepuff's cup was accessible, within reason. He could use the last task to get rid of Nagini. That would leave himself and the cup, and the events of fifth year hopefully enough intact that he could rely upon the attack at the Department of Mysteries for a final battle. By then, he could probably trust Dumbledore to help him gain access the cup, and repeat the process required for the removal of the Horcrux within him.
He would keep the truth to himself until doing so did more harm than good. A two year timetable for Voldemort's defeat was not shabby, and would finish long before the worst of the deaths began. For once, he would be the one shielding everyone else.
The memory of his enemy's laughter echoed once more in Harry's head, and he gritted his teeth as he opened the window for Hedwig. Go on and laugh, you bastard, he thought furiously. I killed you once, and I'll kill you again, and faster this time.