Power of Three

by Qilin

The Dark Lord exists in his past, a chance at romance blooms in his present, and a terrorist awaits him in a corrupted future. Power of Three. Time travel.

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Harry Potter, if I did - blergh, it's to early in the morning to come with something even mildly snappy.

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Power of Three

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He once heard it said by a nurse at school that death by suffocation felt like drifting away on a cloud or falling into thick silk. A kinder way than violence for it to end, the nurse had trilled brightly before he was sent back onto the playground with a new fear of Dudley sitting on him. To those of like minds, Harry would kindly tell them to go fuck themselves.

Suffocation burned.

"Harry! Breathe damn it, breathe!"

"Ron! Push at his chest! He'll die if he doesn't start breathing again! Is there a spell?"

"I don't know any!"

Someone yanked open his mouth and held it as his chest was punched, in some macabre version of the Heimlich maneuver. Ah, yes. The voice of reason. Too bad she wasn't there when you started this fool hardy venture?

"Who the hell– huf. Gave Harry the idea– ergh. That swallowing three bloody broken time-turners with fire whiskey would solve anything?"

That's right. He owed Trelawney for that one.

"Voldemort is calling for him right now! If he doesn't–"

Harry jerked violently to his side and twitched as the magical objects is his gut made it known they were on their way up. He flipped over and faced the floor as Ron steadied him and lightly patted his back. Harry gasped as vomit roared up and out, burning his esophagus on its exit.

When was he?

The headmaster's office, you twit. About to die.

He raised his head in defiance of the voice, to his uncovered eyes the room was a smear of shadows lurking in the corners of the dimly lit room. Cool hardness met his fingertips and he slipped on the glasses handed to him. Hermione's hand returned to her side and she took a step back. The room came into focus; unused bird stand and empty portrait frame serving as reminders of the headmaster that would never physically reenter the room. The room felt alien in its emptiness.

His stomach quivered and rolled. Harry quickly turned away from the desk and dry heaved. Golden particles poured from his mouth and nose before incinerating into ash in the stale air between Harry and his two companions.

"What the fuck was that?" Ron squealed as he had jumped back a pace. The tall redhead waved a frantic hand in front of his body, stirring up motes of ash before allowing it to settle as a pile of dust on the patterned rug.

Possibilities. Three failed possibilities that proved just how screwed up life could be. Harry cursed the first person who thought up the idea of time travel. It did not change a thing– he was still going to die, doomed by Horcrux within him. And the world would move on.

But wasn't it a fun trip? To know that you were the cause of it all? The important piece; the queen, if you will, on the chessboard? All the moves you've made.

Go fuck yourself.

Harry wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve and turned to the two people who had, for the most part, stuck with him through thick and thin. When he was dead and gone, they would continue fighting in his place.

"He's calling for me? I shouldn't give the bastard time to wait." Harry shook his hands in the air popping a few knuckles. He staggered out the doorway on his way to the Forbidden Forest to kill his eternal enemy or die.

Again.

.o0O0o.

From a hellish future to the mind of a baby; do you even know where you're going, Harry Potter?

Harry grimaced at the sound of Voldemort's voice as it echoed though his mind. Lily Potter laughed at the face he made and babbled excitedly back. A man with mussed black hair, his father, joined her at the crib and proceeded to make the weirdest set of faces that Harry had ever seen. He could not help but respond back by laughing; James looked pretty idiotic after all. He fell backwards into the soft blanketed bed of the crib, limbs flopping down weakly. For the first time in his life Harry's eyes could see clearly without the need of glasses. The room was painted in soft pastels with magic snitches darting along the walls. Cartoonish pumpkins and broomsticks decorated the doorway.

The room of a loved little boy.

Harry's head throbbed and he scrunched up his eyes in an attempt to sooth the pounding.

Voldemort was laughing malevolently. That… was not a good sign. As far as Harry could tell, Voldemort was unable to escape the barricade in Harry's mind; the only positive of his first trip to the past. Harry's second travel, well, that had been a giant screw up as well.

He was on his third now, and his chances of changing anything were looking pretty slim. As the world collapsed around him – no matter the when and where, Voldemort was a constant, and Harry took pleasure in the fact that he had killed the man at least once.

Isn't it amusing, Harry? The lives you've led. This… misery you've created. Voldemort convulsed with perverse amusement in the background.

Shut it.

Mrs. Potter crooned a mishmash of words that would have set off any real toddler with smiles and laughter. Harry remained pensive and unaffected as his mind jumped and shifted from topic to topic like the cursed broom from his first Quidditch match. A single thought surfaced above the clamor of the others.

He was in a crib; with the two people he had desperately wished were around to raise him. He could stay. He could forget about everything. It was magic!

Wait.

Harry's happiness deflated and Lily, his mum tried to cheer him up by lifting him out of the crib and rocking him gently. With each rock of the chair, the Halloween decorations came into view. His parents would die tonight. At this juncture, with so many people dead in the last few days, Harry wished he had just given up and walked into that forest to die by Voldemort's hand.

If he was ever able to return to his natural timeline, he would do what needed to be done. Lily held him close to her body; and for the first time that he could remember, he was able to touch her soft face. He stared at her smiling face.

Why did he ever decide to go back in time and destroy Voldemort in the Department of Mysteries?

It must have been the alcohol.

.o0O0o.

Harry's calculations, drunk and as wishful as they were, had been perfect. He had come into being just as Umbridge attacked a centaur for not submitting to her authority. Amidst the chaos of the centaurs taking Umbridge down like the deluded pink bitch she was, no one noticed Harry Potter's form seize before letting off an exhilarated chuckle. He laughed outright after plucking at the worn old jumper– it was tangible, and not what Harry had been wearing when he had ingested the time-turners. Harry's face hardened as the grip he had on his jumper relaxed.

He had a job to do. If he played his cards right, he could get around the problematic seventh horcrux without needing to die.

Time passed quickly as he found himself performing the same pivotal actions leading up to the battle that had occurred at the Ministry two years ago. The repetition was a nightmare, but it needed to be the same. Or as close as he could make it.

In the doorway of the chamber brimming with prophecies, Harry paused. The sound of his heartbeat echoed in his ears as Luna tugged lightly at his sleeve. He would try to save Sirius. He wasn't heartless enough to watch Sirius fall without attempting to stop it. Screwing with the future be damned.

He was already planning on changing it anyway, by tweaking the outcome of this battle. Chances were Voldemort would show up even if Sirius survived.

If the situation was flipped, Sirius would have done the same thing. Harry stepped into the room filled with the prophetic words of a thousand seers, pale glowing orbs shelved in by name and number as far as the eye could see. With one foot across the threshold his resolution firmed; it was too late to back out now. His spine straightened and he led his unknowing friends into battle.

The Death Eaters arrived on cue, just as they had originally.

Harry found himself pulling his punches. He was faster at analyzing the battle than he had been two years ago. For a second, he wondered if he should finish the fight rather than allowing it to continue. He let his friends fall just as they had before, they would survive.

Before he knew it, Harry was in front of the veil ducking and Sirius was calling him James again.

Bellatrix loomed out of the darkness, silent as a hunting predator, Sirius in her sight.

In that critical moment, he could see Bellatrix's mouth open, a horrible curse on the tip of her tongue.

Harry pushed his godfather out of the line of spellfire; the casting rocketed through the pale center of the arch. Harry righted himself in time to see a streak of green light strike his godfather in the temple less than a few seconds later.

Sirius Black was destined to die in this battle.

Lupin dragged him from the corpse, shouting words that Harry could not comprehend as he stared at body on the ground. At the sound of Bellatrix Lestrange's cackling he realized disconnectedly he needed to chase her. Harry pushed out of Lupin's grip and stumbled forward, intent on finishing what he set out to do.

.o0O0o.

"Joke's on you, you dumb fuck!" Harry shouted, his wand raised and pointed at his pale-faced enemy near the broken Ministry fountain just as Voldemort possessed him. This was the moment he had been waiting for.

So here he was. Again. In the presence of a shattered prophecy, the numerous lies of Voldemort's rebirth about to be displayed for all the early morning Ministry workers to see.

Voldemort would not leave the Ministry alive. This time he would succeed.

When Harry felt the cool blackness of Voldemort's mind sliding into his own it was time. His plan was rife with problems, but he had gotten by on pure luck before. Harry pointed his wand at the spot where Voldemort stood, eyes squinting as emotions and bloodlust not belonging to him ripped through his psyche. With all of the hatred he could well up, and Harry had more than enough with the Dark Lord swimming in his head, he cast the Killing Curse.

As the spell catapulted from his wand, Harry faltered at the howl of rage ringing in his head. Even as he winced, Harry smirked when the oily shadow in his mind realized all too late what he had planned.

Voldemort's mind tried to return to his body, but found the rip in Harry's mental shielding he had entered through closed off. It was too late, the trap had been triggered; Harry's meager Occulmency shield came up, a mere shimmer compared to a Master Occlumens.

It only needed to last a few perfect seconds.

To Harry, the jet of green spellfire seemed to move in slow motion as it shot through the black marble room. The casting left a trail of wispy green smoke like the tail of a fiery comet heading toward impact. In his periphery, the Order exchanged bursts of magic with the Death Eaters, small pockets of the room lit up in bursts of firework-like spells.

Harry's aim was true.

The spell struck the Dark Lord, who dropped unceremoniously to the floor like a pile of stones. The battle ceased at the sound of Bellatrix's inhuman shriek of torment, the silent collapse of her master reflected in her black eyes.

"You, you Murderer! You killed him! My Lord? Please, please get up." She blubbered to the empty husk of the man currently locked in Harry's skull. With no body to return to, it was much easier for Harry to keep Voldemort where he was; like holding warmed putty.

Bellatrix touched the downed form of Voldemort and gently shook the dead body before she proceeded to wail over the man who had been too afraid to die.

Harry kept his wand on the grieving witch. A good deed had been performed this day. He wished that he could see the future of this fateful action. It was unnecessary though, as he would revel and live in it soon enough.

I don't think so Potter, you can't keep me in here forever! Voldemort whispered from the spot in his mind that Harry had shoved him in. Voldemort slammed into the cage of light Harry had crafted from the emotions he felt for those that he loved. A domed shell enveloped the black fog, made of his affection and attachment to people he would consider adopted family. Voldemort howled in pain.

A hand wrenched his shoulder and spun him around, startling him back to the present. Dumbledore faced him with a concerned look in his eyes.

At the sight of his dead mentor, face to wizened old face, he almost broke down.

"Harry, I fear you have made a grave mistake– " The old man spoke before Harry was blasted away.

"Filth! You Filth! You will die here today!" Bellatrix screamed in madness. She slashed the wand in her hand forward, the killing spell whispered hatefully from her lips.

Harry responded in the only way he could pinned between her and a thick wall of marble, with a spell he had used liberally earlier. His bright red stunner flew against terrible odds toward his foe. The spells collided in midair with a shower of sparks; and a phoenix song rose above the silence and echoed eerily against polished stone.

"What?" Harry shouted in surprise, as a familiar white dome brightened into existence.

The magical current between his wand and Bellatrix's, with a small glob of white centered between them, proved to Harry that he could sometimes be an incredibly lucky bastard. Priori Incantatem saved the day once more. With Dumbledore waiting outside the glistening trails of magic around the two of them, there was no possible way for her to win. Bellatrix must have used Voldemort's wand in some misguided attempt to honor the bastard.

His mouth quirked up into a grin and he took a step forward, hands tightly gripping his wand, scar on his forehead revealed as large amounts of power streamed past him. Harry focused on the convergence of the two magic streams where they formed the marble of spinning white. It skipped down in fast strides toward the woman who fiercely shook Voldemort's wand in a motion that Petunia would use to shoo off the neighbor's dogs. Waves oscillated between them and Harry was reminded of cheap jump ropes provided in muggle schools. He gave a light chuckle, the sphere suspended on the strands of magic easily bucked and rolled faster down the line toward Bellatrix. She screeched in anger.

Just as the white glow kissed the tip of Voldemort's wand, Harry felt his body buckle and he fell to one knee as wave of power impacted and cracked the floor around him in a shockwave.

You will never defeat me, your power is nothing compared to mine. Nothing!

Harry's jaw whipped violently open, and a pitch black hand stretched forth and grabbed the orb of light. His mouth tasted of iron rust. Every place the dark energy touched felt burned by acid.

Held between the fingers of what could only be Voldemort's will, the light appeared to shrink, absorbed in the nightmare clutching it. In his terror, Harry felt something warm trickle down from between his lips, he wiped it on the side of his arm. Blood and liquid gold dotted his sleeve. The blood was expected, but the gold was not. Harry felt the arm of darkness tug at the ball of light as it reeled back in and sunk deeper into his throat.

He gagged as the globe was pulled closer and closer to the tip of his wand, the blackness suffused the air in his lungs, and he found it hard to breathe as the edges of his vision hazed over. Bellatrix was chanting 'die' over and over again. Just beyond her, outside of the dome, he saw Dumbledore; whose image rippled as if a cascade of glistening sunlit water poured between them. The distorted image of his mentor stood unmoving, like a cardboard cutout, face immobile. Harry could not gleam a bit of advice or help from the headmaster.

The point of light, pushed by a green stream of magic and pulled by a Voldemort's conviction met phoenix and holly.

His wand drank in the convergence of magic and pulsed an angry red; the dark energy vaporized into motes of tar in his mouth, tasting of gasoline and charcoal before vanishing completely. He could breathe again, but his wand, if it ever had the ability, could not. It coughed up images and hacked up figments of worked spells. Stunners and hexes, to the lumos used to light up the room full of prophecies, blasted out of it in backwards order.

Kill him you fool! Kill him! Voldemort shouted to no one but his host. The crackling image of another stunner erupted from his wand.

A light blossomed in front of his face, the image of himself swallowing the cracked and broken time-turners, though he had not cast a spell, assembled for Bellatrix to see. When the image faded, he knew that she had cared not one wit; for in her empty hand, she clutched a second wand. Her own.

Voldemort shouted for her to kill him again and she cackled, as if able to hear the man howling inside Harry's head. Bellatrix pointed the extra wand at her clear target.

Bellatrix Lestrange smiled psychotically this time yellowed teeth glinting. She had outplayed him.

"Avada Kedavra!" The viridian spell streaked forward.

On this end of the killing curse, it moved blindingly fast.

The world was green.

.o0O0o.

What the hell?

He was at a desk.

A very nice desk, but not something he expected in the afterlife.

He should be dead.

He should be twice dead; if one counted the time he was hit with the Killing Curse as a baby.

Harry rubbed his hands along his torso and frowned. For being dead, he was fatter than he used to be. The sleeves of his robe were pristine; a brilliant red with a golden hem. No sign of the debris or clothes he had been wearing in the Department of Mysteries. No sign of Bellatrix Lestrange either.

Harry tapped the fingers of one hand against the hardwood top as he looked about the room.

Awards and medals lined the walls, congratulating him on things he'd never done. The desk was covered in odd baubles and trinkets, reminiscent of the many he had smashed in Dumbledore's office. As he looked at the desk, with all of its weird odds and ends, he noticed that his hands were wrong. Wrinkled and scarred much more than his own had been; the scar given by Umbridge's cursed pen was so weathered he could only make out the writing if he squinted.

He righted a picture frame that was facedown near the corner. It was a familiar picture of his parents hugging in an unknown square; one of the originals given to him by Hagrid. As a child he had often wished they were still alive. He ran a thumb over the happy couple the picture fondly before gently placing it down. Harry pulled open the drawers in an attempt to learn where, and when, he was.

The first one opened was filled with writing quills, some broken. In second drawer, Harry hit pay dirt. He found Ministerial pamphlets. Ones that easily seemed to be modeled after the ones he had discovered in Umbridge's desk. He flipped one open and was surprised to discover that it was about the banning of homemade wands.

Huh. He didn't even know people were able to do that.

An alien thought curdled in his head. Too time consuming with little to show for it.

His extra passenger had survived as well.

Pity.

I will kill you, and your body will hang before the Ministry fountain, for all to see. The flesh will rot from your bones.

Harry ignored the voice in his head and stared in bewilderment at the last line of the pamphlet, bearing his name. It was published under his direction. He dug about in the drawer, each newly discovered and read pamphlet worse than the one before it. Harry's aged hands shook as lifted one out of the drawer and slumped in his chair.

The pamphlet itself was a dark blue with a house below a sky obscured with clouds. As he watched the clouds opened up revealing a full moon. Wolfish figures ran on four paws toward the house. He opened the pamphlet and screams arose from the paper. White ink welled up from the page with the words, 'The Brutes of Society: How to Discover and Dispose of a Werewolf'.

His name appeared directly below it.

"I would never sign a thing like that!" Harry shouted, throwing the pamphlet on werewolves across the room in anger.

He was startled by a harsh rap at the door. The door burst open and an older woman with blond hair neatly drawn up into a bun walked in.

"They've got him, sir!" She announced with a weird sort of face. She ran her hands along the sides of her pristine black skirt, as if removing unseen wrinkles.

"Who?" Harry asked quite lost to begin with. He shoved the exposed pamphlets back in the drawer.

"The White!" Her hands quivered as the stopped their roving search. She moved to the doorway and engaged the lock.

"Um. I'm still a bit lost." Harry stood up and flinched, his knees cracking and popping in what he suspected might be old age. That was new, and mildly painful. He stretched one leg out and then the other.

"The White. You know, the leader of that terrorist faction your aurors are all up in arms about?" She came closer and cocked her head to the side. "Are you alright, Mr. Potter?"

"Perfectly fine, just a bump on the head. Er… if I had amnesia, what would your name be?" He gave a slight smile and swung his arms behind his back.

"Minister, its Hannah Abbott. We were in the same year, remember?" Her eyebrows drew together.

From what he last saw of Hannah Abbott she had certainly aged well– as long as he was more than fifteen years in the future. From the achy soreness in his back he suspected it was well past that number.

Well damnation. What the hell was he doing here?

To cover for his shock and confusion he turned around and faced a plaque, eyes roving over it blindly as he tried to compose himself.

"I'm sorry sir."

"What are you sorry for?" He muttered. As far as he was concerned, it was not the fault of his schoolmate for his current screwed up predicament.

"You've become nothing more than a coward hiding behind false ideals. If he dies, the Ministry's actions will strangle our society until there is nothing left," Hannah whispered, voice growing louder as she stepped closer.

"What?" Harry turned about in confusion; the knife she hefted dug a small chunk of flesh out from his side as it skipped over bone.

He panicked at the feeling of pain and took stumbled forward toward his murderous secretary. Harry's body careened toward his would be murderer, toppling her in his downward descent before she had a chance to move away. He had her pinned to the ground, the knife skittered off to the side a meter away.

"What the hell was that!" Harry shouted hoarsely. He grabbed her wrists and held them tight to the maroon carpet. Blood dripped from the cut, and though it throbbed, he would live. The Basilisk fang going through his arm in second year was more painful.

"Die, You bastard! He doesn't deserve to be kissed, he should– "

"A moment, please. Who is about to be kissed?" Harry breathed out harshly and squinted. His glasses had slipped off when they toppled to the floor.

"White!" She kicked at him.

"Who or what is White?" He asked again in frustration. The witch beneath Harry stared at him with narrowed eyes.

"Your only son who wanted to protect the rights of wizards is about to be kissed. On your orders," she spat bitterly at him.

"My son is the leader of a terrorist faction?" Harry's voice going flat.

"How else would the Ministry label a group of people that did not agree with them? Same way you killed most of the werewolves."

"I called for werewolves to be slaughtered?"He questioned out loud, not looking for an answer. This world was a mess; and he did not understand why.

"At first transformation. Regardless of person. They are too dangerous to exist in polite society."

His stomach roiled at the thought. He remembered passing by Lupin's dead body laid out in the Great Hall filled with the dead and injured from the first battle that took place on the Hogwarts grounds. Time wise for him Lupin's death was less than a day ago. A good man and husband. Remus should have had a chance to be a great father.

"I would never, never agree to that." Harry looked her in the eye, hoping she would see the truth of his words.

"But you did! Every decree, every ban, every new law you created has locked our society into a downward spiral of control and regulation by the Ministry!" Hannah Abbott yelled from her position on the floor.

Harry made a split second decision then, and quickly rolled away from her. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. He had killed Voldemort. Everything should have been better. That's how it always went, good defeats bad and everyone lives happily ever after.

Life is not a fairy tale Potter; the righteous will always fall before the powerful.

Hannah stayed where she was, mouth moving in suspicion before clenching her jaw. He patted himself down until he found his wand unobtrusively holstered to his forearm and gestured for Hannah to stand up.

"If what you say is true, and my…son has been captured, surely there would be a trial or something?" He watched her slowly stand and move to the other side of the desk. He kept an eye on her hands; the last thing he needed was for Hannah to pick up something sharp.

"No. He has always been against giving more power to the Ministry. The more vocal you are about it the higher your chances of having an unfortunate accident." She raised her chin. "Albus has survived far longer than any of us would have hoped for."

"And the terrorist title?"

Hannah looked him in the eye. "He may have killed a few people that deserved to die."

The idea of people being killed put him on edge… but there always seemed to be circumstances that could change this. Such as his killing of Voldemort.

His curiosity got the better of him; he wanted to meet this person. "Where would he be held?"

"Where do you think?" Hannah shook her head.

"Don't be that way, just tell me." Getting information from her was like pulling teeth the muggle way.

"The holding cells."

"Good. Now we're going to go there. Don't make any wrong moves. Put these on." He transfigured a pair of restraints out of one of the random objects on his desk and held them out.

"Why are you doing this?" She asked as she eyed the handcuffs he had made. He jiggled his hand and the links clicked together before she finally reached out and grabbed them.

With her hands connected, Harry cast a notice-me-not charm on the cuffs. "I'm not the person you knew as of yesterday, and… I don't like this. Something went wrong. March." He flicked his wand at the closed door, it unlocked and slowly creaked open. Harry grabbed her elbow and they began a journey of the building he had once broken into three times.

.o0O0o.

The walk down to holding cells was an eye opener in the very least. Harry grabbed a newspaper that hung off the edge of a desk they passed by. He crinkled it up and tossed it in a bin after seeing the date. It was the year 2030. An addition of thirty-three years to his original seventeen. The body he was in happened to be fifty and that explained more than a few things.

Common looking wizards bustled to and fro by Ministry employees in peacock blue uniforms. He failed to see how this much Ministry surveillance could have been a good idea.

"This year's graduating class, sir! Please specify which departments they will go into." A lanky man in too short robes pressed a sheet of parchment into his hands before bowing his head and walking away.

A small number of students, 8 at the most; Harry could not help but notice that the five of them were already drafted into Ministry positions.

"Why is the list of students so small?"

Hannah snorted. "Because Fudge made it that way."

He poked her lightly with the tip of his wand. "A real answer please."

"The background checks and civil war. One of the first regulations: If the child has a familial tendency toward injuring and hurting others they will not be taught. The Slytherins in our year were all dropped if they were related to Death Eaters."

"Wouldn't the parents just teach them in secret?" Harry looked over at her. "What about Malfoy?"

"How could they? Their wands were taken away. The only people allowed to have them now are Ministry officials and aurors. Without a wand, how would children be able to practice spells?" She paused before answering his second question, her face darkened. "His father was caught during the famous Atrium Battle. Draco and the children of those caught had their wands snapped at Hogwarts as we all cheered."

Hannah mouth dropped into a disapproving frown. "If we had known what was to come, nobody would have cheered."

Harry shook his head. "By the by, where is your wand? I wouldn't expect someone with a wand to attack with such a small knife." Her hands were still cuffed in front of her and yet, Hannah walked with refined grace down the corridor, balance hardly impeded by her hands bound together.

"And leave the image of your death to stain it, when they check for the murderer? No. I only use it here, and even then, sparingly. All wands provided by the Ministry are tracked by spell usage, and none of our created wands are able to handle harmful intent. That knife was all I could find on short notice. I leave my wand at home on a typical day like this."

Harry mulled that over. "If homemade wands are so incapable, why are they banned?" He whispered as the passed people intent on getting his attention.

"That was one of your laws. Or were you not joking about the amnesia thing?" Hannah said words lighter in tone at the end. She shifted her eyes forward as they navigated around small groups of people on their way to the lift.

"No. Not amnesia. I' don't think you'd believe the real cause," Harry whispered to himself. He nodded to the people who smiled at him, and gave a sigh of relief when they made it to the lift. On pure luck it was empty. Once inside with the door closed shut, he released his captive who moved to the farthest wall.

Hannah gripped a handle tightly before answering belatedly as they were jerked to the left, "I'd assume that it had something to do with your twisted need to protect people even from themselves. It is possible to murder someone with a levitation spell, and amateur wands are notoriously crude and dangerous if handled incorrectly."

"Bollocks. The entire idea is stupid." Harry snorted. He snickered at the idea of dropping a boulder on Voldemort. Too bad he knew how to apparate. The look Hannah gave him had him covering his chuckles with coughing.

"How did I come back when I died?" He belted out in the silent wrongness of the elevator as it accelerated downward.

The muffled silence of the elevator made him feel anxious; he was reminded of the last time he was here, not counting his repeat storming of the Ministry he went through because of time travel. He felt like he was wearing a bodysuit or had ingested polyjuice again; the tick of the clock would reveal him for what he really looked like in the heat of a confrontation. Last time, the polyjuice wearing off had led to Ron getting splinched. He tapped the handrail and shifted uneasily.

"Voldemort's spell rebounded off of you as a baby. You cannot have lost that much." Harry jumped when Hannah spoke up suddenly a minute later; he had assumed she was not about to answer.

He blinked. "No, I mean when Bellatrix cast it in the killing curse at me here." Harry leaned toward her and spoke in an undertone. "When I lost the Priori Incantatem."

Hannah looked flabbergasted. "I don't know what you're talking about; you didn't lose. Everyone saw you win, and Dumbledore finished her off when you stopped it."

Harry leaned back and looked toward the gated opening."That's not how I remember it," he muttered to himself. The lift opened before he could continue.

"What's going on here?" Harry asked in surprise; beyond the opened door, people packed the area speaking and shouting excitedly. A large statue, of what Harry was disgusted to notice of himself, now stood where the Fountain of Magical Brethren had once been. The statue Harry stood triumphant as witches and wizards meandered around it in close knit groups.

"Not good. They must have opted to do it publicly," Hannah said from his side.

"Minister! There you are! Today is an exciting day indeed!" A Ministry employee shouted when he had turned at the chime of the opening elevator. The man was almost skipping, auburn locks bouncing with each step. People in the crowd cheered enthusiastically. Harry started to feel ill.

"Well! Come now, I figured you like a word with the convict before he has his soul ripped out." Brown eyes sparkled mischievously.

Harry was pulled from the elevator and nudged toward a side passage; he grabbed Hannah's wrists and dragged her there as well. No way in hell was he going without her.

Noise faded as they followed the man deeper into the Ministry. He wished that he could ask Hannah who the employee was, but with the sudden silence of the side corridor, Harry was sure he would be overheard. The man look familiar; Harry suspected that the brown haired man was the son of someone who had gone to Hogwarts with him. Someone from Hufflepuff, perhaps?

"You must be extremely happy Minister; I know I was when I saw him brought in. Albus always was a blight in the way of progress."

"Um, yes." Harry glanced at Hannah. A hardwood door loomed in front of them, the employee unlocked with a whispered spell.

"I can give you a few moments alone with him; I'd like to speak to him alone myself. Afterwards, he'll be brought forward to the crowd where we will then euthanize him by way of dementor." The man gave a scathing guffaw and gestured Harry, followed by Hannah into the room. "Oh, the irony of little Al fueling my future patronus charms once more makes me quite giddy."

He moved back into the corridor, shutting Harry and Hannah alone in the room with an unconscious bloodied and bruised person on the ground. Hannah dashed to the man on the floor and rolled him over. Harry watched the door click closed, rubbing his slick palms on his sides.

"You weren't kidding about a public execution. These people are sick." Harry mumbled looking everywhere about the room but at Hannah and the person she was attempting to revive.

"Albus! Al! Wake up, wake up for me please." Her pleas passed over Harry as he examined the granite walls for an escape route. The door was the only exit.

"…Hannah?" A voice groaned hoarsely from the floor. Out of his control, his eyes darted downward toward the wounded terrorist. Harry was stunned; the wounded man could easily pass for him, or how he looked before he had left his original timeline. They both had the same dirty leanness in the face, which Harry himself had picked up after spending the majority on the hunt for Horcruxes while evading snatchers and Death Eaters. So this was Albus.

"Yes, it's me. You'll be alright; we're going to get you out of here."She directed a look over the downed man's head toward Harry and mouthed, "Please?"

Siding with this unknown terrorist faction seemed safer than walking out into a building filled with aurors and people he was probably supposed to know. Harry seemed drastically different from his future counterpart, and if he stayed at the Ministry, he would be caught for sure. Harry pulled his wand out, the half powered stunner keeping Albus down was dispelled and Hannah's cuffs reformed into a firebolt shaped trinket, dropping to the ground.

"Okay." He nodded as she helped his son up. Harry moved to help them, but his son flinched away and looked at him grimly. Al walked around the room on his own as he regained his balance. The twenty-something year old rubbed at his wrists to increase blood flow. Harry suspected he must have been stunned for a few hours.

"Al, do you have the time?" Hannah stressed the last word.

Albus looked at his watch and stated, "Its nine o'clock for the two of us, with a positive influence based on the date. The number of panels in the ceiling ups our chance of escape by thirty percent." Albus' eyes darted to Harry before he mumbled, "I'm not sure how his presence falls numerically into all of this."

"Good enough. We will separate and meet up at compound. As you can see I've got a gift that may turn the tide of this war." Hannah nodded toward Harry; Albus stared at him for a second or two before understanding sparked in his eyes.

"You've done quite well; I'll never doubt your abilities for using Imperio." Albus smiled at Hannah.

"I've not been placed under the Imperius Curse."Harry felt the need to point out.

"A very good show," Albus said. The door groaned open.

"Time's up fa–" Harry shot off a stupefy dropping the Ministry employee to the floor. Harry cast a levitation charm on the body and dragged the auburn-haired man the rest of the way into the room.

"We don't have much time; they'll expect him to show up soon." Hannah stalked to the door, almost treading on the downed form.

Albus stared at the man on the ground. He looked up at Hannah with a mulish face, blood dripping from a cut on his head. "I could do it you know. Killing him would be so easy. He's taken away so many of us; Rosie, Porpington, Nutcombe, so many dead because of him."

"He's just a Ministry stooge Al. He was suckered in; you can't change his mind if he's dead. Let's go," Hannah spoke from the doorway. Albus looked at the body with a frown before smearing the blood across his face in an attempt to mop it up with his hand. It gave him a demonic look, and Harry wondered if he himself looked that hollow when covered in blood. Al gave Harry a look before pointing towards Hannah. Harry moved into the hallway and Albus followed close behind.

Harry peaked around the corner at the mass of Ministry employees standing dutifully for the chance to see someone have their soul devoured. He whispered an incantation; large amounts of smoke spread toward the crowd, cloaking them in a thick cloud of grey. Panicked shouts and coughing arose from the crowd. Harry was dragged into the larger room by the now un-cuffed Hannah, and toward one of the floos lining the wall. He smacked into a cage near the fireplace they were heading to, a man reached through the metal bars and grabbed him by the robes.

"Please get me out! I won't 'urt nobody! I won't!" The beaten and battered face peering out through the bars whined, his dark eyes lighting to amber briefly.

"Hannah, we need to get him out," Harry said when she grabbed him.

"Nobility is nice, but we need to get out of here. Fast." She whispered, pointing to the thinning smoke. As the smoke dispelled, Harry noticed that the single cage he had run into was not unique. Cages dotted the area near the floos, some filled with people. The bars were bent in odd directions with dented frames holding them together. Many of the cages were grungy, dirt and grime lined the floors, especially in the ones being used.

Harry raised his wand and blasted the cage apart. The other prisoners were too far away to attempt a blasting spell.

"Go help the others, please!" Harry shouted following Hannah. The spell fog had disappeared, and many of the building's personnel was running towards them. The floo gates began to drop down.

"Revenge!" The man snarled in his direction. The werewolf ran at the crowd milling about around the revolting statue.

Hannah pushed him into the green flames and shouted a destination just as Harry tried to shoot off a stunner. The spell arched over the man's shoulder as he hunkered down and jumped into the mass of people.

The last thing he heard before being sucked up and into the floo network were the screams of the crowd as the wolfish man attacked.

Harry was shot out of a small fireplace and into the kitchen of a homely cottage. Coughing up ashes, he watched as Hannah walked through after him.

She stared at him sitting on the moldy tile floor, the sides of her lips quirked upward and she reached out a hand to help him up.

"Well. That was exciting," Hannah said as he brushed off ashes from his front. The ashes smeared deep into the robe fabric. Harry huffed and gave up at cleaning the damn thing.

Hannah shook her head at him and called out toward the open door, "Al? Did you make it?"

A shuffling sound came from the doorway and Albus walked in, eyes glittering as he looked at his father. The bruised man ignored Hannah and walked straight up to Harry invading Harry's personal space. The freed terrorist cocked his head to the side and stared at him; a 'shhhrrk shinnk' could be heard in the room.

"Yes?" Harry asked the bloodied face a foot away from his own.

"Hello again, father." Albus Severus Potter smiled as he thrust a dagger into Harry's gut.

.o0O0o.

"Why the hell did you do that? It was covered, stabbing him was totally unnecessary," a familiar female voice said in a disapproving tone. His head felt lined with cotton and he was having problems focusing on the words said.

"The minister cut our numbers down to what they are. I felt justified."

"There's something going on that we don't know anything about! And minister, Al? Really? Everyone knows he's your father."

"He's not dead, and I admit I might… have jumped the gun a bit. But he watched unblinkingly as most of muggle London burned to the ground. This isn't the same case as James– my father is more than just a stupid twat."

"Thank god you went for the gut rather than the neck." The voices lost their fuzzy tone; he this one was Hannah.

"Ughhhhn," Harry groaned as the arguing voices got louder.

"He's coming around. Ubbly did a superb job repairing his punctured kidney." Al said as a finger poked him in the side sending rippling pain up his nerves. Harry tried to jerk away, but was restrained by the chair he was in.

"Harry? Joining the world of the living?" Hannah's semi-familiar voice asked through the haze. He opened his eyes, blurred colors coming into focus as someone shoved his glasses haphazardly onto his face and kicked the back of his chair.

Join the world of the living Potter; let us see what you have wrought.

"Hannah?" He asked, and she moved into his vision, she rolled her eyes at someone behind him and righted his glasses.

"Sorry about this; but we can't quite trust you, you know?" Hannah replied in an apologetic voice, eyes blinking rapidly. She moved to the side and returned, cradling a small beaker.

"Huh?" He asked in surprise when a hand gripped his chin and held his mouth open. He bucked out of the hands and struggled to get up, but the ropes wrapped around his wrists and ankles held him down.

"This will go better if you take it willingly," Hannah said. She pulled out an eye dropper filled with a clear liquid from the beaker and held it near his face.

He stared into her eyes before opening his mouth. Harry flinched when three cold drops landed on his tongue, and the hands restraining him left. He smacked his lips as the world around him fogged and he floated in a calm ocean of warmth. "Veritaserum?" Harry asked groggily, before the potion took hold completely.

"Yes, I have questions for you," the male voice responded, as Harry found himself looking at an angrier version of himself. Albus.

The duplicate pulled down one of Harry's eyelids, and proceeded to snap his fingers in front of Harry's face. Satisfied at the lack of response Albus asked, "Are you Harry Potter?"

"Yes," Harry said without a care in the world.

"Why have you changed your regard for the Ministry?"

"I haven't. I've always hated the place." At this Hannah leaned forward in a chair across from him about to ask a question, but Albus intercepted her with a wave of his hand.

"Are you the minister?" Albus asked.

"No." Harry was pretty sure he wasn't. The Ministry would have a lot of problems with a seventeen year old directing them after all.

"Who are you?" The voice asked angrily.

"Harry Potter."

"Where are you from?"

"England."

"Where are you from?" The voice– Albus asked again. The fuzzy feeling in Harry's head confused him. At times, Harry thought he was speaking to himself; Albus could easily be his doppelganger. Harry figured he didn't want to hear the same answer, and opened his mouth to specify the year he had time traveled from. A niggling voice in his head told him not to say when he was from.

"…erghf."

"Respond," Albus Potter demanded.

"England." Don't tell them when.

"You are hiding something. What is it?" Hannah asked from behind Albus.

"1998." Harry blurted out, the inner voice cursing at him.

"What does the date have to do with it?"

"It's when I'm from." Harry grinned, his head rolling to the side.

"That can't be." The woman said, as she stood up and paced, skirt twisting as she jerked in one direction then another.

"He's still dosed, so it must be correct," the duplicate Harry said after more finger snapping in front of Harry's face.

"You came here, from 1998?"

"After going back and killing Voldemort in 1996." Harry added a second later, "That bastard."

"Voldemort wasn't dead where you were from?"

"No. He was living." God. Harry was going to have to fight if he ever went back.

"Well. It's safe to say you aren't from around here at all," Hannah said as she collapsed back into a chair. Albus grimaced at him and removed the ropes keeping Harry down. Harry continued to answer their questions until the entire story was out and the Veritaserum had left his bloodstream. Harry staggered from the room guided by Hannah to a bed; leaving Albus in the interrogation room with a thoughtful look on his face.

.o0O0o.

Harry woke up to the sound of his door being pounded on by a hammer; or at least that was the impression he got when his headache pulsed to the same tune. He gripped his head and sat up on the cot he had been dropped into. Someone knocked at the door again.

"I'm coming," Harry grumbled, bare feet touching cold concrete floor. He paused at the door before yanking it open. Hannah stood there with a fist ready to strike the door again, before it dropped to her side.

"Albus and a few others have gone to the Ministry." Hannah said bluntly, no emotion in her face.

Harry squinted at her through the rhythmic beat of bludgers bouncing off his brain. "He wasn't captured was he?"

"No."

"Then why would he go there?"

Hannah crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. "He wants to do the same thing you've done. Albus plans on breaking into the Ministry to steal time-turners."

Harry groaned, and brushed a hand along his scalp. "You don't think it's a good idea."

"No, I do not think this is a good idea! We just busted him out of there!" Hannah vented in the concrete walled hallway, hands grasping at thin air. She took a deep breath and rubbed the fingers of one hand in a clockwise circle on the side of her brow.

Harry emphasized with that. "Headache?" He asked cheekily.

Hannah huffed and looked off to the side. "Always. Sometimes the DA seemed more organized than this."

Harry rolled his eyes. "This place must be a nightmare then."

Hannah's face fell a bit. "It is. Compared to then I mean." She took a step back and beckoned him forward. "C'mon. You're probably dehydrated, Veritaserum can do that sometimes. Water should help, and they tend to stock up on the headache potions I almost ritualistically use."

Harry nodded and ducked back in the door before locating a pair of shoes and slipping them on. He followed her to the mess hall.

"This area is larger to accommodate more traffic; the smaller hallway contained the living quarters for those of us that are leading this foolish battle against the Ministry." The hallway widened the closer they got and was rife with activity.

"I thought –"

"Don't get me wrong. The Ministry is screwed up. But the longer this goes on with no end in sight, the less chance I have to see it righted to the point it was when I was a kid. Voldemort's short appearance was better than this stalemate."

"Oh," he answered, eyes darting to left and right as people stared at him with burning glares. A commotion erupted at his left, a black bearded man had dropped what he was carrying and was running towards Harry. Hannah stepped in front of Harry, as people grabbed the arms of the man.

"You've been told before Brown. He's here and under our protection, don't try this again," Hannah said in a chilling tone.

Harry watched as Brown strained against the people holding him back, muscles bulging on his neck. The large man was held back four wizards murmuring in quite tones. His amber eyes with pin point pupils focused solely on Harry. Spittle flecked the man's beard.

"Request kennel." Brown's gravelly voice strained.

"Good man." Hannah said as a different wizard, clad in autumn colors, walked up to the restrained man and pointed a bent looking wand at the Brown's head. The people holding him back released him as his arms and legs locked into place by the body-bind curse cast upon him.

Hannah relaxed slightly. "I'd appreciate it if someone could move Tyler down to his kennel; his wolf is too close to the surface. The full moon is rising soon after all." She tugged Harry's sleeve as they continued to the mess hall.

Long tables were laid out with small groups of people talking together; memories of dining at Hogwarts filled him with familiarity and comfort. Hannah sat him down at one of the table ends before leaving through a side door. Alone at the table, and stared at yet again, Harry bounced one leg on the floor. He kept an eye on the doors and the people currently in the room. The smirks and angry glances in his direction made him nervous.

But you have ruined their lives. Surely they deserve some kind of compensation? Voldemort whispered.

I didn't do anything to them.

They seem to think you did. Why not allow them to take what they want from you? Isn't that what you were going to do, essentially for the whole Wizarding World, before that moronic seer pushed those time-turners into your hands?

No. Never. Harry answered; on the table his hands formed fists.

You lie Harry Potter. You were going to let me kill you. Horcrux within, you still would have died. At least your friends would join you soon, no reason to keep the scrapings of the Wizarding World alive. I don't know who I have killed slowly first, the mudblood or the blood traitor. What would have hurt more? Perhaps the–

Shut up.

It must be a trait Dumbledore fostered within you, to be so afraid of death to take such drastic measures, and yet, willing to die the sacrificial lamb.

The table bucked lightly as Hannah dropped a tray in front of him and sat down on the other side. Harry picked up the water bottle and drank half of it as fast as possible.

"Drink slower. Guzzling it down won't help your headache, nor will the team that charms the water into existence appreciate its waste." Hannah nibbled on a piece of toast.

They ate in silence as groups of people entered took spots together at the tables. The lighting flickered, and everyone but Harry stood up as one. The light over the door blazed red three times before returning to the original color.

"What is it?" asked Harry, dropping his fork full of egg onto the plate.

"They're back. With casualties and possible dead." Hannah muttered. She clutched at the table leaning heavily on it, as if trying to steal comfort from the hardwood. With a lost look on her face, she turned to him. "I need to make sure that Al got out alright, without his abilities we will be in shit. Deeper, actually. It's disgusting, how we've come to rely solely on his predictive abilities using Arithmancy. We can't even stand without him."

"What should I do?" Harry asked, getting up from the table.

"Can you make it back to your room alright? Do you remember where it was?"

"Yes." He was mostly sure.

"Good. Go there. Don't talk to anyone; don't even stop till you make it to your room. We put you there because my door is on the left and Albus' is right across. That should prevent anyone with a grudge from going after you."

The two of them left the mess hall and darted into the main corridor where people were shouting orders. A mass of people, clothes ranging from shades of tan to deep greens stood out starkly against the pale grey walls. Harry pulled off his brilliant ash-dusted red rope; the black shirt underneath would help him blend in the crowd better. Hannah pointed down the hallway where his sleeping quarters were before turning down a corridor to his left where most of the commotion was coming from. Harry lost her in the crowd.

He ducked and dodged around anxious people, being sure to keep his head down. The smaller the hallway, the lesser amount of people he encountered. Harry kept to a wall in attempt to be more inconspicuous; he had never wished for his invisibility cloak more.

Harry heard a swish of fabric behind him just as a wand poked against the skin at the back of his neck. A spell zapped him and he fell forward; limbs locked in place.

" 'ello Minister. We might not be able to harm you, but we've got'a lovely kennel pick out." Breath smelling of decay overwhelmed him. Harry gagged noiselessly as was pulled upward by the back of his shirt.

"Not a kennel for 'im, a cage. Hope one of them bite." A second person said from behind. They were staying out of his vision. A dark rag, smelling of rubbish wrapped tight against his eyes. They grasped him by his arms and dragged into the depths of the unknown.

.o0O0o.

Harry was dropped onto a cold cement floor.

His stiff body was flipped over and the rag was untied when he was face down. The concrete in front of him was blasted by a spell, a misfire or misaim. A warm feeling rippled through him, the counter curse to Petrifcus Totalus.

Harry rolled over and jumped up quickly, joints aching.

He was too late. The door swung closed behind the backs of his captors. Harry stood in the middle of his barred cage, hair grazing the metal beams above him. He had enough room to pace and walk around in, but the occupants of the cages connected to his had him wanting to stay where he was.

On one side, Tyler Brown paced along the bars between them. In the opposite enclosure, a scruffy-looking blond man sat against the far side of his own cage facing Harry. Brown made a sudden lunge for him through the columns of iron and Harry jumped closer to the other side. The sad sob in the other pen gave him a milky eyed look before focusing back on the ground.

Harry withdrew his wand, ready to blast his way out.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you." A desolate sounding voice came from his left. Harry looked at the pale blond, whose hands were hidden behind him. The brutish Tyler Brown on the other side grunted.

"Why shouldn't I?" Harry asked with his wand still raised.

"Spells don't work right inside these cages; you might blow a hand off." The man chuckled wildly as he waved one of his arms around. His hand was missing. Harry took a step back before jerking forward once more as Brown took a swipe at him. The pale eyed man cackled– distorting his pointed features into the madness he had seen only in Bellatrix Lestrange. The blond seemed younger than Harry had originally thought; youth brimmed in his face as sanity shattered within.

Harry near the door of his cell, equidistant from the monsters on either side.

Tyler Brown let out a scream of anguish as his form lengthened just as Lupin's had, the night Pettigrew had escaped.

His first introduction to time-turners.

Harry leaned back against the bars. It had been a hellishly long day if he counted getting drunk enough to eat broken magical devices and his second run of the Atrium fight. The Veritaserum probably added to his fatigue.

Fuck.

Lupin and Tonks had died less than a day ago. Harry didn't want to know if he caused Lupin's death here. He made a promise to himself sitting on the cold concrete; he would not ask about Ron or Hermione. Chances were they would be dead; Harry could not see either of them allowing the Ministry to become what it was. Hermione would have fought hard against the persecution of werewolves.

Tyler Brown howled in pain and anger as fur sprouted along his back. Harry scooted closer to the cage of the one-handed, deranged blond. Harry watched the werewolf for what seemed like an age as it tried to get at him, teeth biting against the bars leaving trails of blood.

Behind him the door opened, and the insane blond perked up.

"Why hello cousin! Come to visit me again?" The one-handed boy trilled with eager happiness.

"Not this time." The familiar voice of Albus said as he stalked over to the middle cage and looked down at Harry sitting on the cold floor.

"Cousin?" Harry asked as he turned and shook out the tingling in his leg.

"Fourth cousin once removed. Do I want to know how you ended up in one of the werewolf enclosures?" Albus asked from the shadows.

"Probably not." It was easy enough to guess.

"Well at least they didn't harm you. You might be more necessary than I had originally thought." Albus sighed. Harry gasped when the man walked closer. A bandage wrapped around Albus' head and over one of his eyes.

"It didn't turn out well?" Harry asked, leaning forward.

Al smiled bitterly, and gently fingered the edge of the bandage wrapping over his left eye. "Got caught by a weak disabling curse. 'Said I was lucky the eye was the only thing that atrophied too fast for Ubbly to save."

"She didn't want you to go." Harry said, sitting back on the ground and leaning on his hands when it seemed that Al wasn't going to let him out any time soon.

"Yes. Hannah called it impulsive. It was. We lost another working with us in the Ministry. We didn't get what we went for."

"Put me back in there, I promise to help this time. I will spy for you!" Al's cousin shouted, startling the werewolf into baying.

Al curled his lip. "You are just as insane as your father was. I know he somehow found a job as an unspeakable. It must have cost him his fortune, before he delved too much into Dark Arts to care about you."

"Shut up! Shut up about my father! He will bring the Dark Lord back! He will." The man raved.

"Keep sipping from that cup of lies, 'Perion."

"I'll have you killed. I'll have you all killed." The blond said as he cradled his handless arm close, rocking his body back and forth.

"His name is Perion?" Harry asked when the caged blond's rages had devolved into sniveling.

"Hyperion. His middle name. It the one he went by here before turning rat for the Ministry."

The two sane men sat silently in the room filled with monsters. Brown, in the form of a dark ugly werewolf scratched at himself, leaving claw marks and spatters of blood in the wake of his yellow talons.

"Whose child are you? Did I stay with Ginny?" Harry asked in the awkward silence.

"Yes, until the accident." Albus leaned against the wall and slid down it into a sitting position. He stared up at the moon shining through the windowed ceiling.

"Accid–"

"I don't want to get into it. Not here, in this room." Albus sighed, his head dropped against the wall.

"Oh. Where is Dumbledore? He wouldn't have let this happen."

"He went insane when he put on a cursed ring. Mum used to say that the only man who could have helped died in Azkaban a year before he slipped the ring on. Severus Snape, my other namesake. When he was sent to prison even though he was an Order spy, mum said you died a bit inside because you failed him. Somehow. I didn't understand it." Al tipped his head to the side.

"So Snape died in Azkaban." Harry said. Guilt ripped at his insides. He shook his head. "Dumbledore put on the cursed ring and died by it?" Harry knew he was forgetting something, but in his tired state, he couldn't put a finger on it.

"Albus Dumbledore died towards the end of 1996 in the Janus Thickey Ward. He ingested poison when the withering curse reached his internal organs. He was quite mad when they took him there to begin with. He kept calling out for someone named Ariana."

Harry grimaced at the last part. It was a terrible thing to die calling out for a loved one who would never appear. Death by Killing Curse seemed much more humane. He found it interesting that even in this other timeline, he had named a child for the two of them. It had crossed his mind when he saw the images in the pensieve, though he hadn't been so sure about naming someone Albus.

"Your namesakes are very brave people. When you get born in my original timeline, if I ever make it back there, I'd name you that too."

Al exploded. "You could name your child Fiddlesticks Pompanoose for all I care– it won't be me. You've changed the future just by being here, you stupid twit, so even if I'm born I won't be the same person. I will die here as myself. Hell, I might not even be the lucky guy that's a fast enough swimmer. By naming me after those guys, I grew up in your shadow and theirs– no wonder I'm such a depressed rebellious little shithead. No one remembered your parents enough to tell my siblings that 'Oh, you'd best get on the ball little James, your namesake was quite gifted at transfiguration and I see you've got a troll in it. What, have you been masturbating this entire time?'"

Albus raised a flask to his lips and took a large gulp. Harry stared at him wide eyed. Harry's one-eyed son looked up, cheeks tinged with red. "Sorry, it's been a long day. And that was a tangled knot I've always carried. The alcohol probably isn't helping either."

Harry held up his hands. "I never thought about it that way, just that it would be honoring them." He rubbed a hand on the side of his head and grinned. "The alcohol rarely does. At least, when one uses it to down time-turners." He look off to the side. Hyperion was still rocking himself. "I'm sorry that I've screwed this up for you," Harry whispered.

"That I might never be born you mean?" Albus looked up through the glass domed ceiling at the moon slowly overtaken by clouds.

Harry paused. "Yes."

"It's not so bad, I guess. Even if everything happened the same way and I was born, I wouldn't remember any of this, so I wouldn't be who I am today. Perhaps that's a good thing. I doubt he'd want to go out with a bang." Al looked at Harry vacantly. "It would be nice not to be so needed all the time."

Harry nodded slowly and looked over to the werewolf staring silently at the moon in the sky; each breath huffed out in a swirl of steam. The sight of a calm werewolf was unearthly. But then, he had never seen Remus transform under the Wolfsbane Potion, so perhaps it was like that.

Albus pushed off the wall and stretched his legs when he was fully standing. Harry watched him approach the door to his cell and unlock it.

"Well father, it must suck being a sixteen-year-old in a fifty-year-old body. The lack of hormones must have gone to your head; you could've just spelled the door open." Albus said, looking every bit like a pirate when he smirked.

"Ha, bloody ha. I'm seventeen now." Harry said rubbing warmth back into his arms. "Turning eighteen in a month, if it is currently June."

"It is. I'll be twenty-four next month. Birthday is a day before yours after all." Al held open the door and Harry exited the room with cages. Hyperion screamed as they left. Harry turned to the man locking the door.

"How do you go on? When it gets so tough you just want to drop everything and leave?"

"The same reason you probably stay. It's the right thing. Now," Albus said before covering up a yawn. "Let's reassure Hannah you aren't hanging from the rafters. I'm pretty tired and I need to figure out a better way to steal the time-turners from the Ministry."

Harry stopped. "Will you use them to change the past?"

Albus, farther down the corridor spun around with a lopsided grin. "No. You will be."

.o0O0o.

When Harry looked in a mirror the next day, he was surprised to find his hair completely black and an inch or two longer. He fiddled with his bangs in confusion, his hair had been a gun metal grey the night before. He placed his glasses on and was surprised by his slightly younger looking face. The frown lines around his mouth and eyes had faded to a point of being barely perceptible. He flexed his fingers into a fist; none of the pain he had encountered yesterday.

"Please let this be a good sign," he mumbled. Harry pulled down an eye lid and made a face at the mirror.

"Well that's hardly respectable for a minister." A disembodied voice floated from his reflection.

"I'm not the minister." Harry responded automatically.

He whipped his longer bangs out of his face, performed the rest of his morning duties, and hurried out of the bathroom connected to his room.

Harry knocked on Hannah's door; a small slip of parchment slid out from under the door. After reading the bubbly handwriting, he pocketed the note and headed for the conference room that Al had taken him to the night before. Harry felt the stares of the vagabond nation pierce his back as he focused on the space in front of him. He had his wand at the ready just in case. Harry knocked at the confrence door before pulling it open.

He sighed in relief, Hannah was there. She straightened up over what looked like a map of the Ministry.

Hannah gawked at him. "Harry? What the hell did you do to your hair?"

He shrugged. "I woke up and it was like this. Less wrinkles as well." Harry poked one of his cheeks and smiled.

She walked over and circled him; Hannah reached a hand out and gave, what to Harry felt like a massive tug on his hair. She did it again.

"Ow! Stop!" He said batting her hands away.

"You don't sound as hoarse as you used to either. Maybe it some type of reaction to time traveling so far?"

"Like I'm de-ageing?" Harry asked. He wiggled his eyebrows.

"Stop that." Hannah lightly slapped his shoulder. "I was called the minister's whore often enough without you adding to the scandalous idea."

"Why didn't you kill me as soon as possible?" He sighed melodramatically with a hand to his forehead. Her lips quirked up.

"There was never a good time. Good thing I didn't kill you when I was first called that. You'd be in a box deep underground. I wasn't going to play second fiddle to a dead woman." She said with a faraway look.

"Al mentioned an accident?" Harry asked hoping for a bit of information.

Hannah sighed. "Yes, that was probably how it started." She glanced at him, then away toward the map. "The year Al entered Hogwarts was the year everything changed. A rouge werewolf slaughtered Ginny and your daughter, Lily on a camping trip. You were new to the post, and ready to right the fiascoes that Minister Fudge had left behind. It twisted you though, and after that, you became a different person. You blamed yourself. You stayed the night at the Ministry looking over the new auror trainees. Afterwards, you were often visited by the Unspeakables. What we call 'First Moon Slaughter' became your first decree." Hannah gave him a veiled look. "There was even a rumor that you were looking to necromancy to bring her back."

Harry rubbed his face. "I don't see how people would have let me get away with that."

"You were our savior and celebrity, Harry. If you said jump, people would fly for you. Any person who spoke against you was steamrolled into submission. It's part of the reason why muggleborns and half-bloods seem so rare; they have a different perspective that clashed with the dictatorship formed by the Ministry. You were just too powerful to say no to. Necromancy was just a rumor; Skeeter was sent to Azkaban for spreading it. The people lusted for blood when she tarnished your name on the anniversary of their deaths."

He digested that. It was a lot to take in.

"Enough with this type of talk. You've joined us now, and what you said was right; you are not the same person." She tilted her head to the side and nodded. "Go sit down, you need a haircut."

"No I don't! It looks fine, I can see and everything," Harry said, startled by the sudden change.

"Right. Your hair looks twice as long as it was during the Yule Ball in fourth year. Sit down."

He groaned when he was pushed into the seat. "I should tell you now; it has a habit of growing back if I hate the way it turns out."

"Oh? How'd you learn that one? Allowed the Weasley twins to shave it at Hogwarts on a dare?" Hannah asked, digging through a rusted metal box.

"A dare? No one would ever take a dare from either those two mischief makers. It was actually my aunt. Accepting a dare from one of those two would be just begging for trouble." He laughed at the thought before the image of the Weasley family standing silently around the corpse of Fred flashed in his mind. He stopped abruptly and took a shaky breath.

"Harry? What's wrong?" Hannah questioned a pair a scissors in hand.

"It's… nothing." She stared at him and frowned. He caved. "It's… I was laughing about him, but he's dead, I miss him already. Lupin and Tonks. Colin, who shouldn't even have been there. God, I even miss Snape, though he was an evil bastard with a hygiene problem." Harry rubbed his eyes and breathed in deeply. He gave Hannah what was probably one of the most pathetic smiles she had ever seen. "Well maybe not miss him exactly, but he fought for us, only in darker and lonelier places. None of them deserved to die."

Hannah sighed and touched his shoulder. "Harry, no one who fights for others ever deserves to die. But this is war. And you will have to come to terms with death. You'll have to let them go; you can't carry them around with you. That's a burden no one needs. Especially not you."

He sat in silence, cut locks of hair falling to the floor in thick clumps. Hannah's fingers chilled his scalp as she ran her fingers along the finished areas. She moved silently to his side and began working on the area just above his right shoulder. He closed his eyes as the sound of the scissors snipping together calmed his anxiety.

"Tilt your head to the side please. It's not bright enough for me to see." Harry tilted his head, he could just make out the blurry outline of her face through the corner of his eye.

"Thanks. For the hair cut… and the talk, I mean."

Her mouth moved into what he hoped was a smile. "No problem. Al and I have worked out a plan that should fix what happened."

He spun his head to look at her face. "How?"

Hannah grabbed his chin and moved his head back into the position it was in before she dropped that bombshell.

"He is rather smart, for all his claims otherwise. We wouldn't follow him if he wasn't. When she was here, he was Septima Vector's pride and joy. It was well known that she considered him a prodigy in Arithmacy."

"Vector's here? She must be ancient now." He quirked an eyebrow at the only thing he could comfortably see; tattered blue wallpaper on the other side of the room.

The snipping stopped. "She was old; and sometimes I fear she will be the only one of us who drifts to the realm of the dead peacefully during sleep." Hannah sighed. "Now I've gone and made it awkward again." She resumed snipping pieces off. "Anyway, Septima had a passion for time travel and its consequences. She was one of the driving forces to getting that time-turner for your friend in third year. With the rebellion that happened five years ago, we figure that too many magicals were slaughtered. Al was quite adamant about changing the outcome of it or preventing it from ever happening. We have you now though."

Harry turned to face her, and was glad he did. The genuine smile that graced her lips lit up her features like a beacon of light shining through fog. Hannah reached out and mussed his hair with both hands; his view funneled to seeing only her, side vision blocked by her black sleeves on either side. She really was beautiful for her age and horrible circumstances. He wondered if she knew that as she tugged and realigned locks of hair framing his face. Hannah pulled lightly on his bangs to find their true length, pulling his head closer to her chest.

"This side is a bit longer than the other." Hannah leaned forward into him, pulling the bangs on right taunt. She was much too close for comfort; he reddened and stuttered when she moved to trimming the unruly cowlick at the top of his head.

With an eyeful of chest, Harry blurted out the first thing that came to mind, "Did you ever marry anyone?"

He winced when the cut of the scissors seemed particularly loud, and a large chunk of hair landed in his lap.

Time to shut it, before he got himself a bald spot.

"We got along great in the beginning, but we were too much alike. He was very gifted with plants. I think you're done." Hannah stepped away from him and placed the scissors on the table, squinting at his hair as if waiting for it to lengthen right in front of her eyes. When it stayed the same length her eyes moved to his blushing face. She smiled darkly.

"Ah... during the summer before fifth year, my godfather showed me how to conjure flowers." He slipped his wand out from his sleeve, and silently conjured a pink-petaled flower. He was not going to mention that Sirius said it was a great way to get a date.

Hannah gave him a look before shaking her head. "That would be cute if I was in my teens. Now this, this is beauty." She pulled out one of the gnarled wands created here in the hideout, and pointed it at the palm of her hand. A sky blue light twitched and licked out of the wand, curling like smoke, before it formed a twisted globe. When the spell completed, Hannah held out the globe to him and he noticed it wasn't one after all.

The large green bud in Hannah's hand, rapidly opened, revealing many small yellow petals before the corolla of larger white ones in the center opened up, and a floral scent drifted around them. Harry was never really one for flowers, but the one she held was quite stunning.

It was the saddest thing he'd ever seen when a she held it close, cradling it to herself, as if protecting the very flower that had just bloomed in her hands as it rapidly wilted and decayed. Hannah walked over to the table and deposited it gently on the surface. "It was my favorite flower; for the silly romantic idea behind it only blooming one night a year. Lately, it's become nothing more than a flower I see too often, wilted at the gravestones of family and friends." She turned to him. "Apparently, I can't quite let go either."

She took up her wand and slashed it at the wilted flower. A small thread of red light carved through it like tissue paper. "One day all of this will end, and we will all have learned something." She twisted her wand hand and the pieces of dead flower sprung up into the air as small black beads. They strung themselves together a conjured string and tied around his wrist.

He clapped his hands at the feat of magic. Albus had allowed him to try out one of the illegal wands and the things Hannah had been able to do at a distance were amazing.

"Hey! If you were able to cut the flower that way, why did you use scissors?" He asked as his fingers slipped around the black beads.

Her cheeks pinked and she grinned with her eyes closed. "I might've cut into that empty head of yours. Where would we be then?"

Harry laughed.

Hannah came closer.

Just as Hannah reached him, an explosion rocked the compound and she grabbed one of his shoulders to steady herself.

The lights dimmed and flickered before kicking back on in a constant red hue.

She gasped as the wristband wrapped around her belt barred in warning and flashed white. Hannah yanked him out of the chair and pushed him over to the wall nearest to where the door was.

The other side of the room bulged inward like a balloon filled with water until the wall burst in a cacophony of shearing rock and debris. Pebbles rained down around them as the ceiling cracked and Hannah shot wild and erratic looking spells into the ruptured dust filled space. Spellfire returned quick and precise, colors familiar to him peppered the room in straight lines shot from Ministry issued wands.

"Get through the door!" Hannah shouted between casting a stunner that roved the room like a blind dog and one that shot upward, intent on flying through the ceiling. The cracks grew larger.

"I can't leave you here!" Harry pulled out his wand and shot a few stunners forward.

A brief motion from her wand pointed at the ceiling dropped dust and small bits of rubble onto the intruders.

"Go!" she shouted, bits of dust in the air merging into small mass that she transfigured into needles. He stayed where he was. Blasting curses flew into the opening from the darkened wood of his well used phoenix and holly wand.

The needles glinted in the red as she banished them forward. Screams emanated from the enemy lines. A spell rocketed from the darkness and clipped her in the shoulder. Blood, near invisible in light of the room spattered from the wound, and her arm dropped lifelessly to her side.

Hannah grit her teeth and told him to leave once more. Loud voices came from the opening as someone shot fire into the room. Harry moved to her side to help her exit the room before it burned down around them. She pushed him away and yelled, "Someone needs to hold them off, go now!"

He shook his head. The fire casting stopped and a myriad of spells impacted the walls as Harry and Hannah ducked behind a table. She grabbed him by the shoulder and looked deeply into his eyes. "Get out of here and stop this from ever happening."

Harry stared at her, determination written across his face. A spell impacted the table they were crouched behind. "No. I won't leave you behind. I cannot just walk away. I wouldn't be myself if I did that!"

Hannah gave him a watery smile and gripped his shoulder with her working hand. "Good. Never forget that. …And Harry? Good luck."

She punched him in the gut, and while he was gasping, pushed him closer to the door. Harry yelled in pain when she blasted the ground between them at point blank range, effectively sealing him in the large hallway full of people running toward exits. They scurried for doorways like house-elves running toward dirtied rooms. He wiped the blood off his face and clutched at his stomach as he raced down the hallway searching for Albus. The building shook and groaned; cracks appeared in the ceiling of the hall and Harry felt sure he would die here.

I must admit to being quite sad I was not the one to off you.

You had to choose now to speak?

Harry staggered in the dark as the lights went out, hands stretched outward in hopes of encountering something before his knees did.

Oh, but this is might be your last few glorious minutes of life, Potter. I will enjoy this, making you as miserable as I can until I am freed of your rotting corpse.

I should fucking muzzle you.

Do you ever weep at the thought that you can be this tough in your head while failing in real life? Tough guy you are not Harry Potter, for I know you well. You will die alone, unloved and uncared for bearing the spite of the world.

Dying alone is better than listening to this load of bull.

In your final moments, I want you to think of this. I know what you are. The voice mocked. In your travel to your past, you forgot something, didn't you?

'Didn't you?' seeped through his mind like an echo bouncing off pools of pristine water.

He found a wall and casted a light spell. Debris rained down once more as another explosion pounded through the walls of the building. His lumos reflected harshly off the surfaces of crumbling walls and burst pipes spewing water. He kept silent in the destroyed hallway; everyone who might possibly have helped him had left already. No reason to call out. And Harry hoped; he hoped badly that Al was still in his room like the note had said, alive and able to show him the way out of this maze.

You don't even want to know what I've known ever since you arrived here? You used to want to know everything, Voldemort taunted.

Because you're just trying to screw with me now, you bastard. I've got you in a place you can't get out of. And it chafes your pride so. Harry smirked in the pale light of his lumos.

You. Are. Wrong. Voldemort hissed out in such a way that Harry was sure he had angered the disembodied wizard a great deal.

Harry turned down toward the sleeping quarters with a small smile on his face, and hope in his heart. There, across from the room he had been allotted, a light shined through a crack under the door. Harry hurried to the door as fast as his older body could move around the patches of ceiling and rock that littered the corridor.

I can feel it you know. I still exist in this future. You have failed. The whisper threaded through his mind.

And yet here you are, taking up too much space in my head.

Harry snorted and raised his hand to knock on the door.

Ah, but in changing the past you have changed the future have you not? I can read it in your thoughts, that niggling feeling you have. I know you want to know who finished off my Horcruxes.

He hesitated with his hand an inch from the hard wooden surface.

Who would have finished off the Horcruxes? If Dumbledore had died not long after, and the Harry that survived the fight with Bellatrix had no idea– in fifth year he hadn't even heard of the word.

And Voldemort laughed.

Harry stood there for an indefinable period of time as his mind whipped through each and every possible scenario with someone discovering the Dark Lord's horcruxes – with someone destroying them. Each sinking into the undesirable abyss of truth that the horcruxes would not have been destroyed by anyone.

He had failed.

The door slammed open causing him to fall back against the opposite wall. Albus, hands full of rolled up scrolls stood in the doorway.

"Thank god. Perfect timing!" Albus shouted as he wrenched Harry up from his position on the floor, scrolls dropped and scattered on the floor.

Harry grabbed the man's shoulder and wrenched his focus from the evil echoes of laughter dripping through his skull onto the face of his possible son turned war leader. "You need to go to the conference room, Hannah 's in trouble!"

Another explosion rocked the compound.

"It's too late for her, we need to leave now!" Albus looked at him as if he were crazy.

"No! If we go back we can save her!"

"Hannah knew the chances of being one of us. We need to go." The one-eyed man twenty-three year old moved down the hallway with Harry following after him.

"She saved me. I can't just leave her." Harry said, rubble crumbling around him.

"This building is coming down one way or another. The only people still here other than us and the Ministry are the dead," Albus replied, knocking on a blank wall at eye level. A door materialized.

Albus started to chuckle quietly.

"What?" Harry demanded.

"We were all already dead the moment you changed your past; it just hasn't caught up to us yet!" Albus laughed harshly, as he yanked open the door and held it open.

"Why the hell would you find that funny?" Harry shouted, still standing in the same spot.

"Because, it can all be fixed. We need to break into the Ministry and steal some busted time-turners. Your third travel hasn't happened yet, and that should be able to induce it." At Albus' words, Harry walked into the open doorway. He took a step forward and tumbled into an open shaft filled with water. Harry heard the door click shut and followed by a second splash of water that pushed at him.

"Al?" Harry sputtered.

"Here." Albus cast a lighting spell, and the watery passage was illuminated in an eerie green light. Harry followed Al down the wet tunnel past a few intersections and into a drier, cave-like tunnel. One light was more than enough for the small tunnel.

"How?" Harry asked. The walls of the tunnel had gotten closer together; Harry was stooped over in an effort not to bang his head on the ceiling.

"Don't you see? It's all in threes here! You've become some kind of arithmancer's wet dream, I could write a book purely on what you've done so far. Did Hannah have a chance to explain what you've done?"

"No she– "

"Shush," Albus whispered. They were near the surface. A crack in the left side, with light flooding in, revealed three aurors huddled in a group talking before disapperating. A moment later he gestured Harry forward.

"You ingested three time tuners, and this is your second travel, while I could be totally wrong, I don't think you have finished, not yet. It just doesn't fit with the identity of the number three."

"What has that to do with anything?" Harry asked his only companion. More cracks riddled throughout the passageway. He hoped they would leave the tunnel soon; the small roots dangling from the ceiling reminded him of the passageway to the Shrieking Shack. He nervously brushed the dirt and debris from his arms.

"Because you– just because! You'll have to trust me on this because it's obvious you didn't take Arithmancy during your schooling." Albus squinted at Harry and threw his empty arm upward as he made a frustrated noise. His arm smacked into the dirt and rock above.

"Al, just tell me why you think I'll visit another time after this." The tunnel began to slope downward.

"Three is one of those very, very magical numbers. You know about the power of Seven right? And Thirteen? Well, Three is just as important. Hell it's a bloody time identifier! Past, present and bloody fucking future! Which one haven't you done yet?"

"Present, I think? Or is based on what is closest to the point I left?"

"Depends on how far you go, I suppose. You must be the luckiest son of a bitch I've ever met, your body would have been ripped apart, best case scenario, if you had eaten just one more time-turner."

"That's your gran you're speaking about!" Harry said to the man in front of him.

Albus turned and rolled his eyes. "Mum used to say quite often when she was angry with you that gran's intelligence skipped a generation."

Harry flinched. "Ouch. Happened often?"

"Often enough, when the fighting got bad."

Silence took over at the tunnel went deeper before leveling out.

"Will Hannah be alright?" Harry asked quietly.

Albus paused to check his wristwatch, every hand bearing the name of each person Albus considered highly important to the cause. All pointed at the numeral twelve.

"Yes, she's fine. Hannah is out of the hands of the aurors now." Al said wistfully. He continued down the passageway without turning around.

He moved to brush the wrist band she had made for him and found it to be gone. Understanding filled him with dread.

"I really wish you would remember; chances are this is not the end for you. The rest of us will die here yes, but those of us that you knew before hand will probably be fine. You will see her again."

"So three is my lucky number?" Harry asked, as the tunnel widened and became high enough that he no longer needed to stoop.

Still walking, Albus replied, " If threes occur often enough for you they very well might be. Arithmancy is just a way of predicting the future and connections between numbers after all. In layman's terms. Look, have you ever flown in a circle or square? By only turning in one direction you end up at the same place right?"

Harry nodded, unsure of the point.

"Yes," he answered when he realized Al could not see him.

"Consider this. You've taken three turns, and if a line continued from where you started you'll meet up with it if you turn in one direction. I think you've formed your own little bubble in time."

"So you think I can return to the one I left then?" Harry hoped this was true.

"Yes, if you've made the correct turn."

"How the hell do I figure that?" Harry paused.

"Don't know. Could be as simple as going through them all; or you might have to actively choose the right path. Time is not completely understood."

Harry sighed and rubbed his forehead before groaning.

"Any thought to why I'm growing younger?" He asked as his hand touched newly cut hair.

"Thought you seemed less fat." Albus smirked when he looked over his shoulder.

"Funny."

"Hm, I suppose it could be the age of your past self merging with your new one."

"How strange."

"It might be that in extreme cases of time travel, only one of you can exist at a time."

"That makes no sense. We did it fine enough in third year without any off problems." Harry said as he maneuvered over a boulder in the path.

"Extreme cases. Besides, it's just a theory. I'd suspect that doppelgangers cannot exist on the same plane with such large differences in time. The Unspeakables who work on time would love to get a hold of you." At Al's words, Harry shuddered.

"Of all the places, I would want gone the most, it would be that place."

"Why? You triumphed there."

"Because Sirius died there. Twice for me." Harry never wanted to see the Ministry again. He promised himself he would never run for minister.

"You know, James' middle name is Sirius. Before you became minister, you used to say that he and James would've got along well. I have a few things from his room at Grimmauld place; you auctioned off the rest."

"James? I have another son?" Harry vaguely remembered a mention of him.

"He followed your path into the Ministry; I haven't spoken to him in years. You've probably met him already." Albus halted at the end of the tunnel, just beyond him; Harry could see a small patch of light on dirty water. The smell was atrocious. It must be a sewer.

"What's the hold up?" A voice shouted from above the grate.

"Shh. Thought I heard something." Harry held himself perfectly still. He heard scraping noises coming from above, and afterwards a small blast. A low beep filled the tunnel.

"Move back now! They're going to trip the mines above us! Move!" Albus shouted as he threw himself backward and into Harry.

Harry turned about and began to run back through the passage. He looked back to see Albus performing some quick wand work with a crooked wand, a light blue hue formed between Albus and the passage exit.

Harry whipped out his wand to help, just as the tunnel collapsed with a resounding roar. Harry was tossed off his feet. Twisted metal caved through packed dirt; it danced in the flames before Al's shield collapsed.

.o0O0o.

Harry awoke to the bright midday sun shining down on his face, his body riddled with small bruises and scratches. Harry rubbed his eyes and groaned as he leaned forward. The tunnel had caved in around him; the blast had exploded the street above forming a ditch. He took his time navigating through the piles of pavement strewn across the street. Harry cleaned his glasses on the edge of his shirt and looked about. Cars were flipped and the road was a mess; ramshackle houses with dull paint peeling from their sides lined the epicenter of the blast. A water main had burst; spray shot up straight into the blue sky.

No one was around. The area had been abandoned.

He looked around the street, forehead wrinkling in confusion; something should be here. It was a dead zone, completely devoid of life. No birds, no small animals.

Harry stumbled over the shards of pavement haphazardly thrown about the way upset child would have tossed small toys. Harry walked in the direction he suspected they had originally headed in; larger pieces of pavement lay here and supporting rods shot up from the dirt and asphalt.

A pain filled groan rose from behind a pillar of rock, Harry circled it quickly hoping to find Albus relatively unharmed.

He stopped as so as he could clearly see.

Albus Severus Potter was pinned between two large pieces of pavement, a bloodied rod through his torso holding him sandwiched in place. The only part of him that looked relatively untouched was his right side of his face; the other was horribly burned in the explosion.

"Al!" Harry shouted in aguish as he rushed over to the shredded body. The glazed-over green eye focused on him. Harry grimaced when he coughed up blood. He knew it was too late; there was no way he'd be able to fix this kind of damage.

"I've… been thinking." Albus said with blood dripping in rivulets from the sides of his mouth.

"Oh god– oh fuck, please don't speak." Harry panicked, unsure of just how to help the dying man skewered through the middle by a metal pipe. The lower half of his torso not covered in a piece of street near the smashed area was black with mottled purple around it. Harry stripped his shirt off and placed it rolled up under Al's head.

"No…I…there's nothing you can do now, just…listen." He coughed again, a horrible gurgling in the back of his throat.

"Don't fucking say that! You're going to be okay. I'll get help! Stay with me.!"

"Ha," Albus started to say before coughing up more blood and phlegm. "…Harry, I was off. Maybe you're more of a One number than Three."

"I don't understand what you're talking about. Save your strength."

"No! Listen, three travels. You need to complete the circle. Don't worry about doppelgangers, you can't ever be one. Remember!"

"What?"Harry's hands hovered over the dying man, unsure of what to do.

"…And Harry, don't be afraid of the end."

"Al?" Harry leaned in; closer to the man's bloodied lips and burnt face.

"You don't need to break…into the Ministry. Let them win." The body whispered. He gurgled and Harry understood that the man was laughing.

"At least I got to go out with… a bang," Albus said in a faltering voice. The twenty-three year old stared unblinkingly at the sky.

"Al?" Harry asked in desperation gently shaking the man's shoulder.

The renegade was silent.

Harry wept for a brave man he wished he had known better.

.o0O0o.

Time moved on as it always did, and in the day following the death of Albus Severus Potter, terrorist and harbinger, Harry wandered aimlessly through a rundown neighborhood that seemed to stretch on endlessly. Shelters were made of broken concrete and miscellaneous bits of whatever could be found.

With every step he felt a new pulse of energy from within. With every hour a wrinkle, varicose veins, or a liver spot erased from his body as if it had never existed. His hair grew long and shaggy again. He was eerily reminded of the Death Eater whose head had become that of a baby's and back again in an endless looping cycle. He shivered to think about what else the Department of Mysteries could have held that they had not stumbled upon.

Walking was his only means of transportation; apparating without the needed knowledge of his destination was too risky. In the middle of his aimless walk, Harry came upon a field of scorched earth and craters. In the middle of it stood a monument in the shape of a giant gavel striking the land with a bronze plaque above the stricken earth.

It was covered in graffiti, eyesores upon a larger eyesore. The plaque was plain and rang with wrongness in words that should never have existed. 'Obey, Or Face Judgment' – four words more than enough to describe the scene laid out before him.

The hammer provided him with shade from the sun that had bore down on him ever since his son had departed from this hellish world. The ground stank of death and defilement, the air here was stale; he knew he would be moving on soon.

He wished that Al had given him a direction of just what he was supposed to do. Harry wished he knew Arithmancy better as well, but wishing, he found, never solved anything.

His hands dragged over the dried and blistered soil until his left encountered some strange bumps rising from the dirt. Harry turned and began to dig it out, he had little else to do but to dig or sit as his stomach groaned. The dried ground brushed away easily as the withered plants were unable to keep it together. He was horrified to discover the tips of fingers hardened in some gruesome fate of eternal frost.

Harry threw up what little he had in his stomach.

In an attempt to clean himself up with a small water charm, he found out how the Ministry had discovered the base of the rebels.

Not five minutes after the use of this minor spell, the auror department arrived in full force. Harry was surrounded and shot down before he could even fight back.

"Minister Potter, for consorting with terrorists and werewolves, the penalty is death." The man paused and gave him a quick look up and down. "For obvious dark magic use to enhance body physique, the penalty is death."

"Today you will have your soul removed by a dementor. May those who look upon you with favor know the evils of your misdeeds." He was hefted off the ground.

Well, fuck.

Oh I like this. Without your soul here I'll get a free body; that of a wanted man, but a body all the same. The boy who was soulless, they will call me as I show them true terror.

A black bag was draped over his head, and he knew no more.

.o0O0o.

The fabric was ripped off his head; Harry squinted in the bright light focused on him. Blinking rapidly, himself found himself chained to a chair between the legs of the statue of himself that graced the Ministry. The man who had dragged him and Hannah to the scene of Albus' condemnation by the Ministry stood in front of him silently with a blank face.

"You never should have helped Al escape, father. It was your undoing." And Harry realized that he was looking at his last son, the only one alive.

"James?" Harry asked. James stared at him with a grim look.

Tick tock.

"I'm disgusted that you would throw your lot in with him, you never agreed with his murderous methods before." James was silent for a moment before his arm shot out and the barriers between Harry and the crowd fell. The roar of a misguided nation screamed for his death. The cages along the walls were now empty and pristine waiting for a new batch of people to be murdered at the next full moon. The crowd, Harry noticed vaguely, seemed thinner than before. Whether by people not wanting to see him die or by the unnamed werewolf gaining his revenge, Harry would never know.

Tick tick tick, tock.

Stop that.

Can you not hear it? Voldemort's voice soared above the crowd and declaration of his charges.

The cries of the sycophants or your attempts to be a clock?

Harry was resigned to his fate. This time there would be no escape. He was not afraid, but with his last breath, he would fight.

How very infantile. Your banner of benevolence will fall, here. Just like the carriers before you. Dumbledore and my little pet betrayer.

It won't matter if I die, or haven't you seen that yet? There will be someone there to pick up where we've fallen. You're nothing but a mark on the scroll of time. A mere page in a history book.

Tick tick tick tock. Above him a dementor descended from the ceiling, barricaded by a ram patronus preventing it from landing on Harry or the crowds. James walked back up to him with two followers shrouded in the robes of the Unspeakables.

"Do you have anything you wish to say while your soul is still intact and among the living?"

Harry looked out at the crowd. "Wherever there is evil, a light will always shine in the dark. Hannah Abbott and Albus Potter showed me this. Someone will take my place in the fight, just as anyone who dies making the place better for us all. I hope our successors give you hell."

Very touching Potter.

"Very touching father," James said as he enveloped the area once more in a transparent shield. "But, like as not, you are the enemy here."

One of the Unspeakables stepped forward and pulled the hood of the back revealing one of Harry's most hated teachers.

"Well, hem. Look how the mighty have fallen. Obviously your lessons did not take hold as tight as we all thought." Umbridge, ancient and grayed, thinner than he had ever seen her with skin hanging down in flopping wrinkles said. She unbuttoned her cloak after pulling down her hood.

Mad laughter blared from the second Unspeakable. He caught a flash of red hair beneath the person's hood.

"It is time," James said with ceremony.

He stepped back a few feet, Umbridge and the hooded unspeakable followed. He pointed his wand at the silvery ram, with particles drifting up wards barricading the single dementor. James pointed his wand at Harry, and the ram's head lowered, the dementor dragged toward him in a sphere of happy memories.

"And with this, your reign of terror ends."

Harry pushed back as deep into the chair as possible as the dementor was moved near. The air grew colder. Soon it was upon him and despair clouded all thoughts. He gave one last look at James Sirius Potter. The man was frowning, as for why, Harry was unsure. Umbridge smiled her malicious little grin and her eyes sparkled with red hate. Around her neck was a familiar necklace.

Tick tick. He could hear it now.

The dementor descended; his soul was sucked out in a kiss that rippled with gold and white light while Harry's soul dissolved as it was devoured.

.o0O0o.

"Who's my beautiful, wonderful little boy?" His mother said as she tickled his stomach.

Harry gurgled without a care for she deserved a response and it was the best he could give.

I chose the Longbottom boy you know. I was at his house. But then… I felt it. Don't you want to know?

Anything you say is designed to hurt me. Not this time.

A familiar feeling, it called me. Voldemort continued on, unabated.

Shut it.

You.

Seriously? Your baby senses must have been tingling. Harry mocked as his father lifted him up and tossed him up in the air. It had been so long since he had been in the air for fun. He gained no enjoyment from it this time; not with Voldemort feeling chatty.

"James! Not so high!" Lily screamed when she reentered the room and caught him.

Enjoy it. Enjoy it all you want; you being here– my presence, is the reason your parents will die tonight boy.

What?

I was standing in front of Longbottom manor; they weren't nearly as well protected. I felt something call me away.

I don't believe you.

Believe what you will – know this, you took more part in their deaths than Pettigrew ever did.

Fuck you. Fuc–

"James? Is someone at the door?"

"No! Don't!" Harry garbled out, his parents unable to understand him. His father left the room, and not a minute later the house shook as a spell blasted from the kitchen.

"He's here! Run Lily!" James shouted from the hallway, wand at the ready.

Voldemort's laugh surrounded him as his mother carried him quickly up the stairs. As they reached the room Harry could hear his father battling bravely in a duel he was fated to lose. He was placed gently in his crib while Lily turned to the door, spelled it shut and wand raised. Her hand trembled slightly and she sobbed when the curses yelled from below grew silent.

One down, one to go! Voldemort mocked.

A powerful force ripped the door off its hinges; there in the door way stood a Voldemort, complete with nose and hair.

Enjoy it Harry James Potter. Watch as she dies!

He couldn't. His eyes were closed as the scene played out just as it always did in his dementor induced nightmares. He heard Voldemort advocate only killing him, Snape's small attempt in saving the girl he loved. Harry scrunched his eyes tighter as it failed and his mother made her stand; only to die as her husband had. When the Killing Curse dripped from Voldemort's lips, his eyes opened of their own accord, in time to see his mother staring into his eyes as she was struck from behind by the green spellfire.

"No! Mum!" He babbled without thought as she fell. A flurry of red hair in contrast to the light blue carpet, like blood that would never flow in her veins again. Voldemort callously kicked part of the door over her body; from his crib only part of her face was visible. The rest of her was pinned by the door.

I hope that hurt, I hope that feels like a thousand needles striking your weak heart. She died because you existed. How does that feel, Harry Potter?

There was nothing he could do to stop death. The past could not be changed for fear of destroying the future; he accepted that now.

How does it feel?

I wish I had the problems I started out with originally; this is just too fucked up to take. Harry thought as Voldemort laughed.

Harry gurgled as Voldemort, the one with a body, lowered his wand to his forehead. Harry felt a slight tingle as the cool tip brushed over his skin in a zigzag that would form his lightning bolt scar. The spit in his mouth turned to powder, and if he checked, he would not be surprised to see gold flakes in it. Dust from the time-turners.

"And now, you die Harry Potter. And with your death, my reign of terror begins."

It was funny how phrases were repeated.

Harry closed his eyes.

"Avada Kedavra!" Harry wished with his entire being to be back at the point he had started from.

The Killing Curse struck him in the forehead just as it had originally. The time-turners within him clicked and spun; the green spell shot out of his head and back into Voldemort's wand. The Dark Lord walked backward and the spell that had struck down Harry's mother leapt forward into the wand that had cast it. The body rose from the floor. When the door repaired itself and his body floated upward into Lily's outstretched hands he realized that time was moving backward.

Quicker and quicker scenes that he had lived through passed by around him. The dementor vomited out his soul, the destroyed street imploded into a sewer and tunnel around him. Albus pulled the knife from his gut. Hannah ran out of the door to his office in the Ministry. His first attempt at changing the future blasted through; he watched the Priori Incantatem unravel, spells zipping back into his wand and Bellatrix's in near perfect synchronicity.

Voldemort rose gracefully from his spot on the floor. Sirius jumped back up cheeks rosy and grinning in the midst of battle as Harry was suddenly jerked away from him. The room filled with prophecies reorganized itself as the domino like shelves stood upward, glass shards flying backward forming opalescent globes. The flight to Hogwarts on threstrals gliding backwards, wings moving counter-clockwise. Umbridge slithered backward and the centaurs moved back into formation.

Harry stood paralyzed in the second of his first breath in his adventure through time. He turned and everything was frozen, Umbridge's face filled anger, one centaur poised in the middle of attacking.

"Hello?" Harry's voice echoed in the unmoving forest, leaves bent in the paused wind. From the night sky, filaments of gold dripped down, motes falling like snow to the ground. The forest saturated with glinting gold and amber.

"Hello?" He tried again, fearing that Albus may have been wrong about luck saving his ass.

He seemed to be stuck.

The motes in the air froze in the middle of their dance; everything sucked toward him and spun as it impacted his body.

He yelled.

Harry was choking and it burned more than anything he had ever felt before.

.o0O0o.

"Harry! Wait up you can't just take him down alone; they'll rip you to shreds!"

"It was planned this way from the start. I have to fight him. Alone. That's what Dumbledore wanted," Harry said, his face set and determined. He was ready to meet his destiny, no easy way outs this time.

Ron grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. Off balance, Harry twisted into the wall. "You can't just go on protecting us. We started this together and we will end it that way!" Ron stared at him unblinkingly, as if trying to impart the words by will power alone.

Do you see, Harry Potter? Beloved by all; you will watch them die around you. You can do nothing.

Suddenly everything clicked. Harry let out a giggle, confusing Ron, and Hermione who had just run down the stairs from Dumbledore's office.

Thank you, Voldemort. If this works out…well I suppose it will prove him right. Different planes of existence.

Wha– Harry mentally shoved the voice deeper and ignored it; now was not the time to deal with a mostly dead Dark Lord. He would have his time in the spot light soon enough.

"Harry? You alright, mate?"

"Perfectly fine Ron. Better than before, actually. You want to help out? Get whoever is willing to fight one more time. I have a plan," Harry said. The corners of his mouth quirked upward.

Ron grinned back and nodded before darting down the corridor.

"Oh! And Ron!"

"What?" Ron shouted back as he slowed to a stop.

"We'll need Bill if he can be spared, and those able to lay down a disapparition-jinx that would incapacitate anyone who tries to disapparate."

"Gotcha mate!" Ron waved before running to the main stairwell.

"Harry, what kind of plan is this?" Hermione asked, confusion leaking into her words. She gripped her wand tightly.

"A horrible plan based on luck and the hope that something someone theorized to me is correct. Mostly luck." He answered. Her grip on the wand slacked and her eyes grew watery.

"You can't do anything like that! Harry– I, we don't want you to die." Hermione hugged him tightly as if it would shield him from the evil that dwelled in the woods.

Harry squeezed her back lightly before he grasped her arms and pulled away. He smiled into her tear stained face. "I have no intent on dying, in fact, I think it will work. It will work. Just… if for some reason it doesn't go down the way I hoped, don't name any children after me." Al's face flashed in his mind.

"Harry, don't say things like that, please!" She started to cry again. It had been a very long and stressful day. Many had died. Harry hoped there would only be one more death required, but he could easily see others added to it, he only hoped it did not belong to his friends.

"Please Hermione, don't worry about it, it will be alright." He shrugged. "But if you want to name a kid for me that badly, I think Fiddlesticks would be a good." He tugged on a lock of her hair, till she swatted his hand away.

She laughed, tears dripping down her face. Hermione rubbed her eyes on her palms and gave him a hard look. "You better survive Potter. I'm not naming one of my children Fiddlesticks. After this is all over we'll – we'll do something fun. Just you, me and Ron. Introduce him to movies or something." She gave him a small grin, her eyes watering anew.

"Yes. Just the three of us. It will be a tradition." Harry said. He looked forward to it.

.o0O0o.

"I see you've finally realized the triviality of fighting against me. It is a grand day for the death of Harry Potter, once known as the boy-who-lived."

Death Eaters jeered as Fenrir Greyback shoved him into the ground at the foot of Lord Voldemort, in a clearing lit only by a roaring bonfire and the wands of three dozen Death Eaters.

"What could this hero, this boy, be thinking?" Voldemort thought out loud to his audience, long pale fingers wrapping around the Elder wand, as he walked around Harry's form. Voldemort's dark robe trailed on the ground rustling the grass and dead leaves he paced.

Several Death Eaters shouted out inanities and lewd remarks.

"Why do you not answer, Harry Potter?"

"Because I'm thinking that you aren't very scary when I've defeated you every step of the way," Harry replied with a smirk.

"Crucio!"

"Urgh!" Harry's body jerked as his nerves fired off, pain shooting up to his skull.

"Scream in despair Harry, you aren't escaping from this alive." Voldemort showed his teeth and looked at the Death Eaters watching; they laughed at the boy twitching on the forest floor.

"Maybe you're right. But neither will you. I'll have the last laugh this time," Harry said into the dirt and wet grass.

"You are… but a child. One last chance, I am your master. Say it. And I will let you live longer." Voldemort pressed Harry's head down into ground.

"No. My secrets stay with me if you kill me. I do know why your wands don't work," he said when Voldemort released his head. Eyes reflecting the flickering bonfire, Harry stared up at his enemy.

"You are forgetting Harry Potter that I know your mind." Voldemort yanked Harry's head up by the hair and traced his curse scar all most lovingly, like a parent.

"Everything you know is mine." Voldemort's hands tightened around his face and Harry felt the man before him pierce through his weak shields and slide into his mind, as if carried on a raging river.

Gotcha.

What is this? Two identical voices called out in the whiteness.

Two black towering serpents, one for each Voldemort present in his mind, coalesced. Harry looked up at the behemoths, so large and high he was not able to see their faces – he smiled. In his mind Harry was nothing more than the size of a bug as two hurricanes shifted about colossal arms of blackness breaking off and rematerializing around the dark scaled snakes.

With his head as far back as possible he shouted upwards; only the smallest belief they could hear someone the comparable size of a single cell– "This is your past! This is your present! And this – this is your future! The two of you are much too different to exist in the same place! Doppelgangers cannot exist through time!"

The twins roared as they were pulled forward to meet in a clash of wills, for Albus was right. The Voldemorts were here, in his mind, at the same place and time – one would destroy the other, for only one could survive. Harry hope the one left over would be wounded enough for Harry to finish him off.

Meteors of darkness collided as the large duplicate snakes spiraled about each other, effervescent trails of ink fading as they danced and parried. One serpent dove and struck the other beneath the head. The bitten chunk dispelled into the emptiness, dusting off as if carried in the winds of a sandstorm. The gigantic forms of Voldemort slashed and bit at each other, pieces evaporated from both snake-like-forms; spines flaring, gaping maws screaming for blood and flesh.

From his position, Harry noticed that the coils of snake were not purely black, but streaked with blues and dark purples, studded with reds and whites. If this was not taking place in his head, he would have called it beautiful. They seemed as galaxies– as black holes endlessly devouring each other through time.

A niggling pain overtook him, and small patch of blackness ripped from Harry's head joining the leviathans in combat. The twining forms fell to floor, one vaporizing and cloaking the room in darkness. Harry found himself face to brilliant sunset colored eye.

How? It echoed in eternity.

Doppelgangers largely different cannot exist in the same time and place. Harry's thoughts poured out into the abyss as took a seat on floor in the darkened space.

Somehow, the time tuners shielded me outside of the timeline, forcing me to take the place of the other Harry. He finished in the calm after the storm and rested his head on one knee. Harry continued.

How? The serpent whispered once more.

Harry chuckled as he looked into the eye of the damaged hurricane.

Your weakness is that you are too strong – insanity not without standing. I've used your strength against you.

Harry stood up a waved a hand focusing on something that might damage what was left of the snake. The sword of Gryffindor formed in his hand. Harry was unsure if it was the real version or not, but in the end he figured that it didn't matter. He gripped the pommel with both hands and thrust it deep into the glaring eye.

The snake bust into thoughts and dark shadows. Harry found the place fading to white as he was brought back into reality.

.

.

It was over in an eye blink.

In one swift motion, the Death Eaters that ringed the Dark Lord watched as their master held his last greatest enemy in submission. Less than a second later the Dark Lord fell over dead.

And in his death there was chaos. Harry slowly stood up from his kneeling position and raised his head with eyes a clear green, the color of which one might only find in the depths of a jungle never before visited by man. He stood tall.

"Any of you other fuckers want to try a staring contest?"

The secluded glade chosen by the deceased Dark Lord suddenly sounded like a parking lot full of old cars all turning on at once.

He sighed at the sound; his bluff could have gone over incredibly badly. Now he was alone with the corpse of Voldemort and the one death eater that had opted to stay behind and weep for her perceived ruined future. What Bellatrix did not know was that it was ruined two years before, in another time when he had been hit with the Killing Curse sent from her wand.

"You, you Murderer! You killed him! My Lord? Please, please get up." She blubbered to the empty husk of the man that had died in his head.

"Avada Kedavra!" Harry shouted with his wand pointed at her hunched over form, and Bellatrix died instantly with the man she desired above all else. A second green spell shot out and struck her in the torso as she fell. The invisibility cloak dropped and Ron silently walked over to Harry and the two fallen corpses. He kicked Bellatrix over; her body rolled until she was staring up into the night sky.

"For you Fred, Remus and Tonks. For everyone you've ever hurt. May you rot in hell."Ron muttered. Harry watched Hermione move behind their red-haired companion and hug him from behind. It was over, but he suspected he would be jolted out of sleep for the next week.

"You got her, Harry," Ron said when he and Hermione moved back, kicking up wet dead leaves. Ron held out a hand, and helped Harry stand up, his body twitching slightly from the Cruciatus Curse cast on him. "No, you got her, I think my spell might have overshot her shoulder, she was very good at ducking."

Ron's mouth opened and closed before he said, "Thanks mate. I appreciate that. It will make mum happy… that one of us got her in the end."He tightened his hold on Harry's hand before releasing it.

A rustling sound moved in the grass, as Nagini dove toward Ron from her hiding place near the trunk of a tree, mouth open and fangs glistening. A spell impacted into her side as Hermione hit the snake with a blasting curse. She quickly levitated the vile snake, the last horcrux, and impaled it with the fangs taken from the basilisk. The serpent squealed in pain; wrapping in on itself while it was held in midair. It shuddered and wilted as a burst of darkness rose out of it, leaving nothing but an empty dead snake skin. Hermione placed her wand in a pocket completely ignoring the fall of the dead carcass. She moved closer to the two boys.

The three of them stood there in a contemplative silence. An owl hooted in the distance.

"Come on. We should let everyone know that it's all… over." Hermione tugged the two of them lightly in the direction of the castle before releasing them. Harry began the long slog back to the castle, with a much lighter head and a much lighter soul.

.o0O0o.

Harry found himself in the hospital wing where he normally ended up after each and every one of his harrowing adventures. This time, because the infirmary had been converted into a dormitory of sorts while the injured were kept in the Great Hall where there was more space. St. Mungos was flooded with those that could be moved, a few of the more dangerous cases needed to be treated at Hogwarts before they could even attempt to move them out through the floo or portkey.

"Next time you decided to kill someone by looking at him, want to let the rest of us know you can do something like that?" Hermione said the next morning as she waved her wand at the bed she had slept in, sheets and blankets straightening into a perfectly done up bed.

"I'll be sure to mention it." Harry yawned. He raked a hand through his hair and looked about. "Where's Ron?"

"I can't believe that worked, you're lucky you didn't die out there," she continued to vent.

"The two of you were with me; I knew he would go down." Or at least, Harry had been mostly sure at the time.

"That's not what you said in the castle." Hermione glanced at him as she crossed her arms.

"I know. But the closer we got to him the more sure I was it would work. I just needed to get them on the same playing field."

"What are you talking about Harry?"

"Nothing that really matters now. Everything will happen differently." He lay back down on the bed, with his hands behind his head and smiled at the ceiling.

"Ginny was looking for you earlier, you know," Hermione said, after giving him a headshake for his antics.

"I know." He sighed and closed his eyes. "I don't know if I'm ready to see her yet. The world is so different now that the battle is over. The war is over. We've all changed."

"Harry, you haven't seen her for most of a year. Yesterday, you both seemed so close. What could change between then and now?"

"A lifetime." He wished he could explain better, but he had things he needed to sort out for himself first.

A knock at the entryway sounded before a much younger Hannah Abbott, hair haphazardly tied in pigtails entered. He sat up in his bed and watched her in curiosity.

"Excuse me; do either of you know where Madam Pomfrey might be keeping a stash of boil cure potion? A few Death Eaters tried to use a boil spell on our fighters as a distraction, and while they weren't bothering the victims then, they are now." Hannah said, going over a chart with a list of potions she was told to retrieve. Harry shook his head in answer to her question and moved to help her find it.

"She might have moved it to make room for the more common potions needed. It wasn't in her office?" Hermione asked a minute later as she joined them in looking over the shelves.

"No, just her folders. I have no idea were any of her stuff is. It's been a year since I was last in here." Hannah said; hand on her head as she squinted at the neat script on the label of a jar she held up in the other.

"I know what you mean," Hermione said. "Here it is!" She dug out a small bottle from behind a row of Pepper-Up potions. Hermione handed it to Hannah, who placed it in an empty bag she had brought over.

"Thanks. Now to find a few others…" Hannah said as she examined her potions list.

"Did you see Ron by any chance?" Hermione asked when they had found a few more of the potions and remedies on the list.

"Yes. He was heading down to the Great Hall, when I was coming here."

"He didn't wake me up. I need to go check that he's okay." Hermione bit her lip before turning to Harry. "Will you be okay?"

"Yeah. I'll be fine," Harry answered, rolling up his sleeves. The sound of her shoes rapped on the stone floor as she left the infirmary.

"Which potion are you looking for now?" He asked the blond.

"Hmm… I need some bruise balm as well. Madam Pomfrey added it to the list just before I left."

It was so different to see her young again. If Harry looked hard enough, he could see flashes of the person he had met in the future.

"So…" Harry said, unsure how to converse alone with her as the last time he had talked to Hannah it had been in a horrible future, that he would never allow to happen.

"Did you find it?" Hannah asked as she turned to him pale eyebrows raised.

"No." Harry sighed. "Can I ask you a question?"

She tilted her head to the side. "Go for it."

"Now that this is all over, do you know what you plan to do with your life? I had an idea that I would be an auror, but I think… I should not get involved with the Ministry. They may blindly accept everything I say without merit to the actual idea."

"Understandable," she answered with a faraway look, "Madam Pomfrey has inspired me a bit. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do but I think I could do this. Helping people, I mean." Her face reddened.

"I think I would like to see the world first." He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. "The world is full of plants and creatures I would be interested to see, exploring sounds fun. Perhaps there is something out there that can help cure werewolves." He blushed as well when their hands brushed against each other's. Between them on the shelf was the jar they were searching for.

"…It does, maybe I'll meet you at some point on your travels. It would be nice to leave the UK. Is that the balm? Here." She held out a hand as she stared at her checklist, and he grinned when she peeked up from her chart, her cheeks a deeper red. Harry placed the balm on the nearest bed.

"If not, perhaps I'd meet up with you in a hospital some time. Infirmaries seem to be a place I'm in often. A flower for a beautiful lady." Harry conjured the flower she had shown him in the destructive future he would never participate in. The flower bloomed in his palm as he held it out to her.

"That's my favorite flower!" she gasped. Her checklist fell to the floor. "May I?" Hannah asked. He nodded.

Hannah raised the flower to her face and took a deep breath. Her eyes opened and she smiled sweetly at him. "My mother loved these flowers. Did you know they only bloom once a year at night? They are… indescribable."

Hannah's smile morphed into a slight frown and the color left her face. "I know she's dead; but this year when her flowers bloomed, it felt like she was with us, like she was telling us– everything would turn out alright. I know it's stupid, though." She grimaced and shook her head quickly; her pigtails spun through the air.

"It's not. Hope can exist in the brightest day and the darkest night. This world will be a better place because we will make it that way." She smiled at him and fiddled with the flower in her hands. Hannah cast a quick glance at him before she grabbed her bag of potions and headed for the door way. She turned back and gave him a slight wave before she took off down the hall, without the bruise balm.

Oh? And what makes you think that this new one will be any better?

Because you're dead. Dead enough that you will be forced to wander as a shade. Remember, I know you. You're tapped on empty. Your followers will know that their marks still burn, that you still walk the land. But they will never find you.

We will meet again Harry Potter, and this time I shall not lose. I will kill your friends. I will kill your family. I will save you for last. You will bend to my will or die in despair and alone. If not me than the next Dark Lord or the next after that. You will fail. Voldemort's voice faded as the last bit of his form unsheathed from the bonds trapping him in Harry's body, take the form of black shapeless fog, and vanish.

"I look forward to it. Do your worst; there will always be someone waiting, ready to fight whatever incarnation you arise in." Harry whispered in the light streaming through the infirmary window.

"Hey Hannah! Wait up!" Harry grabbed the forgotten jar of Bruise balm and took off down the corridor.

---

As I wrote it, this story grew and evolved till it became different from what it was to be originally. I hope you enjoyed reading it.

R/R - Feedback would be most appreciated, instances of spelling errors as well so I can knock them out is also quite helpful.