Disclaimer: I do not, and will never, own Harry Potter, the places, or characters related. Furthermore, any places and ideas that come from other literary works are not mine, as I am not currently a renowned author. Speculation on magical theory and certain cause and effect simulations are probably mine though, as JK never really discussed any of it.

"RIDDLE," bellowed a young man in his twenties with wild black hair, piercing emerald eyes, bloodstained clothes, and a lightning bolt scar upon his forehead that bled black.

"Poor baby Potter," a middle-aged woman with greying frizzled black hair taunted in a mocking voice. "All his fwiends are dead. What ever will he do now?"

Mr. Potter did not answer her, and for a split second, he relived what had just happened. He and Hermione, the last living members of the Order of the Pheonix had carefully planned their final assault on the Dark Lord's fortress, that had once been Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but it didn't survive neither Murphy's Law nor First Contact. In a change from their normal strategy, the Death Eaters fought him while Tom had mercilessly slaughtered his last friend. The snake-faced wanker then walked back into his throne room to wait for his minions to drag Potter to him, but in Harry's rage, they all fell. Harry held Hermione as she bled out through numerous wounds, as Riddle had been too cruel to allow her the relatively quick and painless death of the Avada Kedavra. Instead, he fired multiple piercing hexes at her, and while the only lethal blow had been the one that pierced her stomach, it was beyond Harry's capacity to heal.

Ron had died months before, jumping in front of a killing curse that would have killed his longtime girlfriend. Neville, Ginny and Luna, along with countless others died at the Battle of Hogwarts, in which the Golden Trio barely escaped with their lives. The grounds had since been desecrated, the only thing remaining untouched was the tomb of Albus Dumbledore, which was protected by ancient magic beyond any of their understanding. At least the Death Eater's victory that night had been pyrrhic, with at least five of the Dark Lord's minions dead per Defender of Hogwarts. Fawkes had had a battle of epic proportions with Voldemort's fledgling basilisk that had ended both their lives, permanently.

Instead of rising to her taunts, Harry raised his wand at her in a fist with whitened knuckles. She died laughing, just like the cousin she murdered. Harry felt no remorse as he summoned her black heart, no pun intended, straight from her chest. With the reflexes trained first as a Quidditch seeker and later as a soldier, he caught the organ with his free hand, and crushed it. That was the last thing Bellatrix Lestrange had ever seen, and even though she never stopped laughing, her eyes showed the horror as it happened.

"Potter," Voldemort answered, determined not to let the brutal death of his right hand bother him.

"We finish this tonight," Harry stated, and the Dark Lord nodded, drawing his wand.

"You know this won't end any differently than any of the other countless duels we've had?" the Dark Lord quipped.

Harry smirked and pulled something from his sleeve. "Recognize this?" he asked coldly.

"Dumbledore's wand won't help you, just as Lucius' didn't help me."

"Ah, but this is no ordinary wand," Harry said, his eyes glowing ever so slightly with magical power. "Now that the segment of your soul that had been siphoning my magic is destroyed, we are on equal footing, but this is the fabled Elder wand, the Deathstick, the Wand of Destiny, the unbeatable wand," Harry almost gloated. If it were possible, the color would have drained from Voldemort's face. "When we paid our respects to the headmaster, his tomb broke open and his skeletal hand presented it to me, to use to defeat you." Voldemort stood, proud until the end, and drew his wand, preparing for the duel to come. He stared as Harry grabbed the Elder wand with both hands and snapped it. The surrounding magical discharge made the world go white for both of them, and as it grew less intense, they found themselves on opposite sides of a stone circle.

"What have you done, boy?" Riddle cried in outrage. "You have just destroyed the most powerful weapon known to wizardkind, without any idea of what may have happened."

"I will not destroy you with an unbeatable wand, it would mean nothing," Harry replied, his voice cold and emotionless. "This was one of the conclusions I had come to. We are outside the veil, the other side of the looking glass that is Stonehenge. Here, as the last of the Peverell blood, we can fight with our own wands, without any interruptions. Once again, the Lord Slytherin battles the Lord Griffindor for the fate of the known world," Harry ranted rather maniacally. "Now then," he readied himself. "First, we bow," he waited for Voldemort to mimic him. "and now, we fight."

Like that fight ever so long ago in the graveyard, Riddle opened with the cruciatus curse, which Harry deflected with a flick of his wand before sending a cutting curse at the dark lord, who conjured a shield that blocked the brunt of the curse, but a small portion nicked his ear, and his blood ran, the dark red painfully bright on the abnormally pale skin. He retaliated with a blast of fiendfyre which would have disinegrated a lesser opponent. With another flick of his wand the hellish creatures turned to ash and began to fall as Harry conjured a wind to blow the hot ash back on Voldemort. Struggling to keep his balance, the dark lord tranfigured the ash into an army of poisonous snakes before siccing them on the chosen one. A blasting curse shook the ground beneath their feet and distroyed the snakes.

Voldemort followed up the snakes with a whipping motion, and dark purple flames whipped out of his wand at his nemesis, who made his own slashing moment bisecting the attack and sending it harmlessly to the side. Harry returned to the offensive with scalding hex, which Voldemort countered with a bloodfreezing hex that cancelled it out. "ENOUGH," Voldemort roared. "No more games, Hary Potter."

"I'm just getting started," Harry retorted, sending off a volley of spells. Voldemort struggled to block them, and the last broke through, sending the dark lord's wand spinning into the white oblivion surrounding the stones. "YOU TOOK EVERYTHING FROM ME! My mother and father, simply because I was their child. Sirius and Remus and Tonks, Moody, Dumbledore, Shacklebolt. Professor McGonagall. You didn't hesitate to kill any of them. You killed Snape, thinking that the wand was his, but I had already beaten him and learned the truth. But I wasn't strong enough, even with the wand to face you, not then, not yet. You took the darkest path, your dark rituals magnifying your already prodigious strength. But I learned something, something that truly ties us together Tom, unlike that old fraud's "prophecy". Did you know that she only told that to Dumbledore so she would get hired? I guess not, seeing as when we found her she was on a rack, barely alive and begging for death. It was in Godric's Hollow that we found the first clue. The village is there because of the Potter family, just as Little Haggleton was there because of the Gaunt family."

Voldemort's eyes widened. "Surely you don't mean?"

"Ah, so you did know what that ring symbolized. Yes, we are the descendants of two of the three brothers. You from Cadmus Peverell, of the Stone, and me from Ignotus Peverell, of the cloak. You from Slytherin, and I from Griffindor. And now, I'll erase the stain from the Peverell family history that was the twisted Gaunt family. But first, do you know why your father left your mother? It was not, as Albus Dumbledore had speculated, that he was disgusted by the fact that she was a witch and had forced him to love her, but of the secret shame of the Riddles. For the same reason that Marvolo did not kill Merope, your ancestors did not kill their squib children. How could they spill the noble blood of Salazar Slytherin, even if the magic only ran dormant within their veins. Your father was disgusted by the incestuous nature of your conception, for his own mother was Marvolo's squib sister," Harry monologued half-insane.

"Please, have mercy," Voldemort begged, realizing the futility of his situation, wandless before a greater opponent, leaving him with mere parlor tricks.

"Did you have mercy on poor Hermione, whose skin decorated your throne, back in the real world. Or on Ginny Weasley, my pureblood love, who I comforted as she died after the Battle of Hogwarts, raped, tortured, and left in the cold snowy ruins of Hogwarts?" Harry punctuated each with a curse. First a piercing hex to the gut, where he knew there was nothing that would cause a fatal injury, then a incising curse that tore the well aged dark lord's arm off. "I have no mercy for you, I pitied you, I understood you. We had similar childhoods, shunned, because of what we were capable of. Feared, because of our magic. But now, I feel nothing, with her death, I have nothing else, except for this. Avada Kedavra," he finished, the green blast pushing the older man into one of the stones, before he slumped down dead. "At last, its over," he said to the corpse.

"No, its only the beginning," a woman said from behind one of the ancient monoliths. "You, Harry, have a choice. With the end of Voldemort, here, in this place, you can choose. Forward, to a new day, and help the world rebuild."

"Or you can go back, and fix the damage that this one man made possible," a man said, stepping out from behind another.

"Whatever you wanted the world to be, it would," she continued. "Even if you choose to go back, everyone will know you name, Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived, the Chosen One, the Savior, Harry Darkslayer, Champion of the Light. Albus Dumbledore will pale in comparison to you. You'll truly be the next Merlin, remembered for generations."

"But you will have to do it alone," the man countered. "War changes people, and though you would be great, no one would truly understand their champion. Going back is a chance for new life, to save the fallen."

"Only forward can give new life, new chances, there will always be others. Looking back is to embrace death," she argued.

"Those who are unwilling to embrace death will be condemned to make the same mistakes as the past. Embracing death allows for new life to prosper. When the forest burns, new life can bloom when the fire dies."

"Exactly, the fire has burned, so let new life grow, instead of clinging to what was."

"The ground of the proper timeline has been burned and salted. Nothing can grow there."

"ENOUGH," Harry roared, allowing his magic to ripple outwards from him. They turned immediately to him, silenced. "There is nothing left for me. Ginny's dead, the Weasley clan no more, Hermione was butchered, Luna lost to the lunacy of our world, Neville never backed down, not even to Riddle himself, despite being outclassed. Everyone is dead. Hogwarts is in ruins, the ancient magics that made her unique dispersed to the four winds, Europe is in anarchy, with much of the rest of the world in a state of civil war. I feel that in this world, wizardkind faces its twilight. The day of witches and wizards, magical beasts and wonders has come to an end. So let the muggles have their day, let them their chance to rule truly independent of our world, free from the unknown and hidden terrors of things that they can no longer comprehend," Harry explained his thoughts.

They nodded. "Its settled then?" they asked each other, who nodded. "You show a wisdom beyond your years, aged by the tragedy of war," the woman cried for him.

"You will not remember everything. The toll must be paid, but you will have your power, your finely honed reflexes, and knowledge of magic," the man stated.

"And it will hurt. You will become what you once were. Innocence will be restored, for Mother would never stand for an abomination such as a child without innocence. Despite your lacking life, you had it, until that night in that graveyard. Were you allowed to keep your memories, then you would be damned to become like him, twisted by the power that is the only thing you have, and there would be a new Dark Lord, one unlike anything the world has ever seen," she continued.

"I accept," Harry said, unfazed. "To see any of them again, would be a gift beyond measure."

"Fool boy," the woman chided. "You are meddling with forces you cannot possibly comprehend."

"When you are ready, touch your wand to each stone, and then put the two halves of the elder wand together. It will take but a moment, and we will try to distract you from the pain for as long as possible," the man said.

Harry did just that, and then it began. It began in his toes, and felt as though someone decided to boil his blood inside his veins, but wouldn't allow him to die. He bit back a scream, pushing the pain to the back of his mind. "What is this place?" he asked, knowing that Hermione would never forgive him if he didn't ask.

They grinned at him. "This, Harry, dear, is what lies beyond the looking glass that is Stonehenge. Merlin built it and powered it upon a ley line, so that he could speak to the parents he never knew as a boy. He never used it for that purpose, deciding that it was better not to know, that to regret the decision."

"How did we get here?"

"The Elder Wand was made for the purpose of activating the circle. Merlin knew that he could not handle that sort of power, and the only person he ever met who was was the youngest Peverell, but he didn't want it. When you broke it, the magic he invested in it was released, and it brought you here."

The burning was almost all encompassing, but Harry managed to ask one more question. "Who are you?"

"That's the million galleon question, isn't it?"

AN: Lots of ideas running through my head right now, just wanna get some written out.