Chapter 1: Complications

Disclaimer: I disclaim! Very much so! All characters belong to the wonderful Mrs. Rowling and (I think) WB.

Summary: Harry had been ready to die; he had long ago accepted that fact. So when Voldemort cast the killing curse at him in the Forbidden Forest, he was ready to finally see his parents again. Be careful what you wish for Harry ... Finding himself in an alternate reality where Lord Voldemort never existed, and everyone he loved is alive was fantastic. The catch? Gellert Grindelwald was still undefeated, and is still out causing havoc. And after decades of constant war, the Wizarding World is not quite how Harry remembers it ...

A/N: Takes place in alternate universe, just after Deathly Hallows 'The Forest Again'. T – for violence and just plain awesomeness.

And still, Voldemort and Harry looked at each other, and now Voldemort tilted his head a little to the side, considering the boy now standing before him, and a singularly mirthless smile curled the lipless mouth.

"Harry Potter," he said, very softly. His voice might have been part of the spitting fire. "The boy who lived."

None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting; everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his –

Voldemort had raised his wand. His head was still tilted to the one side, like a curious child, wondering what would happen if he proceeded. Harry looked back into the red eyes, and wanted it to happen now, quickly, while he could still stand, before he lost control, before he betrayed fear –

He saw the mouth move and a flash of green light, and everything was gone.

He lay there, listening to the silence. Eyes shut; he could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, almost as if he had ceased to exist. But then again, Harry thought, that was the whole point, wasn't it? He had gone willingly to his death so that Voldemort could finally be defeated. So that the others would have a fighting chance. One life, for the greater good? Of course. Despite all his fears and feelings, he would still have done it again. That wasn't even a question.

And now he was ... Harry frowned in consternation. He was ... what, exactly? Was this what being dead felt like? Weightless, blind and deaf? If so, then the afterlife wasn't looking too pleasant for the foreseeable future. He tried to turn his head, but couldn't; he tried his arms and legs next, but still nothing seemed to work. Panic began to set in. However, it didn't feel like his body was responding at all to his mind's commands – it was as if he had no body at all. Which made awful amount of sense in a macabre sort of way, Harry considered after a few moments. After all, the dead needed no bodies.

Was he doomed to spend the rest of eternity as an immovable, unseeing ... thing? His soul floating around in a limbo?

Then he began to hear the voices. Low and muffled at first, as if a blanket had been thrown over the world, but steadily getting louder. At present, they were indistinguishable, like listening to a crowd through a badly tuned radio. He could still see nothing, but the gradually, the complete darkness that was his vision began to slowly lighten, like a thick black fog lifting. A faint white glow was now steadily creeping into view.

And then the pain hit.

Harry's pitiful sight exploded; every single part of his being crying out as if fiendfyre itself were coursing though his veins. If Harry had a mouth, he surely would have been screaming. It was a hundred times worse than the cruciatus curse; as if his body was slowly and surely being disintegrated into liquid flame and a part of Harry that wasn't immersed in total, absolute pain, briefly wondered if this was some sort of delayed reaction to dying.

It felt like an eternity later to Harry when it finally stopped. Everything returned to a blissful nothingness.

Harry's eyes flickered open.

He found himself lying on a soft, comfortable bed. A quick glance around told Harry that he was in the Hogwarts hospital wing; even blurry, he had been there enough times to be able to recognise it immediately. His hand automatically reached out for his glasses and his hand fumbled slightly on the bedside table, searching, before someone, whom he could only make out as a fuzzy, shadowy figure, pressed the familiar wire frame and cold glass into his hands. He mumbled a thanks, slipped on his glasses and froze.

At this point, several impossible things began to happen at once, and Harry Potter became hopelessly lost for words or thoughts to describe or even comprehend the situation. He settled for disbelief, followed closely with a sort of resigned acceptance that, yes, it could only happen to him.

Firstly, the blurry figure who had given him his glasses sharpened to that of one Tom Marvello Riddle, who stared back down at Harry with an expression of worry across his haughty features. And yet, it was not the Tom Riddle that Harry remembered from the Chamber of Secrets. True, they bore a strong resemblance, but this Riddle was far older than the original, more lines graced his face and his eyes bore none of the malice, arrogance and regal hate in them that Harry had come to associate with Lord Voldemort.

The second impossible thing Harry saw was Albus Dumbledore standing slightly to the side of Riddle. Harry remembered, all too well, that night in the astronomy tower. Dumbledore's last, almost pleading words to Severus Snape, and then the cold, indifferent look on the former Potions Professor's face as he uttered the killing curse, sending Harry's last great protector tumbling off the edge of the tower and into death.

Although Harry now knew that it had all been pre-arranged and Snape hadn't really murdered the former Headmaster in cold blood, watching him die was still one of the worst moments of Harry's life. And yet, he was; this was definitely Dumbledore, down to the eccentric midnight blue robes, the pointed hat with moving stars, the long snowy white beard, and the slight twinkle of his eyes over the half moon spectacles.

The third thing that settled it for Harry that things had indeed, become very complicated was the fact that two people were standing on the opposite side of his bed clutching one other and both staring at him as if he were a miracle come to life. Despite never having seen them before in real life; only in the mirror of Erised, in tiny photos from the album Hagrid had given him, and briefly again during his battle with Voldemort in that cemetery in Little Hangleton, the figures of James and Lilly Potter were unmistakable.

His father (his father!) looked incredibly relieved, his eyes misting up behind his glasses. Beside him, his mother, her auburn hair tumbling down her back like a red waterfall, clutched her husband's arm and was almost sobbing in happiness.

Harry's mind whirled in shock. Was he dead? Was he not dead? Was this the afterlife? Was he merely hallucinating everything after finally going mad in that horrible limbo ?

He was shaken out of his thoughts when Lilly eventually sobbed out, "Oh thank Merlin! Harry!" and then his mother proceeded to envelop him in a warm hug, which he could not help but slowly, almost awkwardly, return.

Dumbledore was alive.

Tom Riddle was in the same room as him and not hurling killing curses at his head.

He was being hugged by his mother.

His very dead mother.

Oh, dear ...

Things had indeed, become, very complicated, .

A/N: The next chapter will have a very uncooperative Harry and a lot of discussion about Riddle and his choice of robes.

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