Note: This storylet originally appeared as an omake in Rorschach's Blot's excellent story: 'Make a Wish', but it got me thinking - what are all the ways the prophesy could be fulfilled and Voldemort defeated?
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies...and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not...and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives...the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..." - Sybill Trelawney
All the Ways he Knows Not.
The Room of Requirements
Deep underground, in the lowest level of Voldemort's hideout - er.. fortress, three deatheaters plotted.
"Every time the Dark Lord sends people after Potter, they get killed by Mr. Black. This can only mean one thing!" said the first Deatheater, "This means that Mr. Black is Harry Potter's real father! Lily must have kept her affair a secret from everyone but our Dark Lord. There is no way The Dark Lord would target a defenseless baby unless it was the spawn of Mr. Black himself!"
"That is stupid. Harry Potter is protected by Mr. Black because he needs to find out how to survive the killing curse. Once he figures it out, he will start the next phase in his plan for global domination." The second Deatheater nodded.
"Listen, you guys," the third Deatheater shivered in fear, "You two shouldn't talk about Mr. Black so casually. There is a rumor that he hears everything when people talk about him."
"Oh yeah, right! It's just a name!" The first minion rebutted.
"Yeah! Like Mr. Black is going to do something to us just because we're talking about him? Ha! I'd like to see that!" said the second follower of Voldemort before he and the first one simply vanished - only to reappear with his friend, right in front of Harry Potter in the room of requirements.
The third Deatheater blinked and looked around. "Hello? You guys, this is not funn...y..."
His two friends reappeared.. or to say more accurately, the remains of his two friends reappeared. The lone Deatheater looked from one corpse that was missing a large portion of his chest to the headless other body and started screaming. He never stopped.
Two days later, Harry was walking past the Headmaster's office when he heard Snape talking to Dumbledore. "The latest news is that two Deatheaters simply vanished from You Know Who's most secure lair, only to reappear seconds later - dead. One of them looked like he got hit by a reducto curse point blank in the head. As you know, that is one of Mr. Black's favorite spells..."
The voices trailed off as Harry walked away thinking.
"So you're saying that Voldemort never found out about the Room of Requirements?" Ron asked Harry the next day as they stood in the very room they were talking about.
"That's right. I asked Ginny, and as far as she remembers, the young Tom Riddle never knew of this room as of the time he made that diary."
"So... the power that he knows not is.." Hermione started to say.
"Correct. This room." Harry said and faced skyward before speaking in an authoritative voice. "I really need the severed head of Tom Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort... and also his right ventricle. My vampire side is feeling a little hungry."
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pt.2
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A little while ago, the Dark Lord Voldemort was addressing his inner circle.
"Tonight, I must be alone to plan the demise of Harry Potter and Mr. Black!" He spoke with authority. "Now, I shall go to my private thinking chamber. Do not disturb me for any reason, understood?"
The high level Deatheaters all nodded, not wishing to experience the unforgivable pain curse.
"Good, now leave me!" The dark lord spoke as he walked into his thinking room, a small converted bathroom. He sat on the.. um.. throne and cast every locking and silencing charm he knew of.
"Now to get some ideas in the usual way." He said as while picking up the latest issue of 'Naughty Which Magazine' and opening it to the centerfold so he could.. er.. read the articles. "Heh, and the headmaster of my old orphanage said this would make me go blind."
And Voldemort's head promptly disappeared.
When Tom Riddle split his soul into horocruxes so he would be able to survive just about anything, he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. If, 12 years ago, he would have cast any curse other than the killing one at a baby Harry Potter, he would have survived the feedback without any problems. Unfortunatly, a spell to seperate body and soul turned him into a black smokey phantom for more than a decade. Having his head and most of his heart suddenly seperate from his body had no such detrimental effects.
When Voldemort suddenly saw Harry Potter, he immediately tried to curse him. That's when he noticed something was very, very, VERY wrong. For one, he couldn't feel his wand, or the rest of his body for than matter; two - not having any lungs, he wasn't able to speak; and worst of all, he had no idea what happened to his issue 'Naughty Witch Magazine'. All he could do was silently mouth obscenities at the trio of students in the Room of Requirements.
"Oh man, I wish I'd never learned how to read lips." said Harry as he chewed on a piece of Voldemort's heart. "Mmm... dark lord jerky."
Hermione was shocked until she remembered what Harry had said. "Vampire part?"
"Yeah. My vampire side likes the tasty blood of the Dark Lord." Harry said before changing suddenly into his part man - part wolf form. "But my werewolf side loves the chewy center."
If anyone were to listen closely, they would hear the well-oiled gears in the bushy-haired girl's head crash and shread. Hermione promptly decided the best course of action was to faint. Ron quickly followed suit.
The next day, Hermione woke up in her bed and stretched in restful pleasure until she remembered what happened the previous night. "Wow, that was the craziest dream I've ever had!" she said after dressing and heading out to the common room.
"If it involved Harry and the head of a certain Dark Lord, than it wasn't a dream." said Ron. They glanced at each other for a moment and raced up to the Room of Requirements.
They never expected the sight that awaited them. The entire room was cluttered with... stuff! And in the middle of the various items was a quietly contemplating Harry Potter.
"Harry! What is all this... stuff?" exclaimed Hermione.
"Oh this? I decided to experiment with the room some after requesting you both appear in your beds." Harry said. "For instance, I really need the most powerful magic ring ever."
A small plain golden ring appeared in mid air and fell onto the lid of a golden ark.
"Whoa, do you feel that? This thing feels like one solid Imperius curse. Best get rid of it." Harry raised his head up.
"I really need this ring to be no more."
The golden ring vanished without a sound only to reappear a foot above the caldera of a mighty volcano.
Elsewhere.
"This ring is a great burden, Sam. I wish I didn't have to carry it to Mount Dum, but..." Whatever the small hobbit was about to say was forgotten as the one ring vanished.
Frodo blinked. Then blinked again. Gandolf and Samwise followed suit.
Frodo looked up at his wizard friend and spoke, "I wish Sauron and the one ring were destroyed."
Feeling the ring melt, Sauron chose that moment to explode - destroying Mordor.
Frodo, Samwise, and Gandolf blinked again. The ancient wizard did the only thing he could think of. With a twinkle in his eye, he pulled out a small pouch from his robes and extended it to Frodo.
"Do you want a Lemon Flavored Elven Candy?"
Back in the Room of Requirements, Hermione was puzzled.
"But.. vampire... werewolf.. Harry.. heart... Voldemort.." she said eloquently.
"Oh yeah, I transformed one of my nose bogeys into a bowling ball and encased Riddle's head in it. I hope Dumbledore likes his gift." Harry looked toward said pale green orb with the head of a very angry former dark lord in it, still mouthing words. "No, I don't think that would be anatomically possible either for me or for the doberman." He told the head.
"So what did you bring into this place?" Ron asked, looking around. He supposed if hundreds of students practised magic in the same building for a thousand years, the power of the room would indeed be fantastic.
He gazed around and saw just about everything he could ever imagine. There was a alabaster staff like the one he seen in pictures of Merlin, a black growling book with the word 'Necronomicon' on the side, some red sparkling ladies shoes, a small gold puzzlebox, a huge circle with strange symbols all around it, several small orange balls with stars in them, a amulet of what looked like a Yen symbol, a massive monolithic sword with several glowing orbs in it, a necklace of a glowing pink jewel, a sleek silver muggle car with the letters 'DMC' on the grill, and massive boulder with a silver sword stuck in it.
Harry looked over all the things in the room and slowly got up from his chair. "I suppose I should use some of this stuff."
"First to take care of Peeves." Harry said while strapping on the working proton pack onto his back. He attached a light saber to his side on a belt holding several odd red and white orbs. "Then, as for the remaining Deatheaters, I'm gonna catch 'em all!"
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pt. 3
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A fully equipped and armed Harry stood up and blinked as a thought came into his head and wouldn't go away.
"You know, Ron. I don't even have to leave. I can just request the room to bring me a Death Eater. Then, as soon as they appear, I can capture them with these red capture orb ball thingies..." The Boy-Who-Lived had forgotten the proper name of the artifacts he requested that could capture deatheaters without harming them.
Ron stepped over a gibbering Hermione, her brain still imitating Window 98's 'Blue screen of death'. "It would take you forever to get ALL the Death Eaters... and I think this room has been pulling objects from alternate realities, too. There are probably an infinite amount of Death Eaters in all the multiverse."
"You're right, Ron! But what can I do? I really do not want to kill all the Death Eaters everywhere if I don't have to. " Harry sat back down in his comfy chair and absent-mindedly started spinning the Dark-Lord-Voldemort's-Head-In-A-Snot-Filled-Bowling-Ball on the ground as fast as he could with one hand.
Harry looked at the green orb and said, "I request the bowling ball with Tom Riddle's head be placed on Headmaster Dumbledore's office desk. Add a note with the words 'Courtesy of Mr. Black and Harry Potter' on it."
The orb with the very very dizzy head of a Dark Lord vanished.
"Well, you're the master strategist. What do you suggest?" Harry shrugged.
Ron requested a similar chair to Harry's and sat down in it to think. "What if you request the room to make them not be Death Eaters?" he said lamely. "No.. that's stupid."
"Yes, Ron. That is stupid." Harry said. "So stupid it may just work!"
Hermione opened her mouth to try and retort to that sentence out of habit, but all that came out was a long string of drool and a 'Guhhhhh!' sound.
Harry, on the other hand, raised his head and said, "I request that the parts of the brain that make every Death Eater everywhere a horrible nasty person, be sent to the Zombie World."
Nothing noticeable happened in the room.
"Is there really a Zombie World?" Ron asked after a moment.
Harry just shrugged.
Zombie World:
"Zombie Dumbledore tell Zombie Harry Potter that Dark Zombie Lord is bad. Dark Zombie Lord keep all brains. He not share none!"
"Zombie Harry Potter think that bad also. Zombie Harry Potter wish brains fall from sky!"
"Zombie Dumbledore think that stupid wish!"
Pieces of Death Eater brains suddenly started to rain from the sky.
The two decrepit magical zombies looked at each other, blinked, and said what came naturally.
"Braiiiiins!"
"Braiiiiiiiiins!"
"Braiiiiiiiiiiins!!"
"Lemon Drops.. er.. I mean.. Braiiiiiiiiinnnnns!!!!"
Hogwarts:
The Room of Requirements was created a thousand years ago by all four of Hogwarts' founders in order to do one thing and one thing only: create food for the house elves to use to feed the growing student body. Hey, it was a thousand years ago and without current agricultural techniques, food was scarse. The founders figured that with time, the number of students would increase - so they made it that the room would absorb all the ambient energy in Hogwarts. Every time someone magically cast a spell into a wall, emptied a potions cauldron by tapping it, or just used magic - the Room of Requirements would absorb some part of it like a giant magical battery. But unlike regular batteries, with a limit on how much energy they could hold; the Room of Requirements - when full - would use some of the gathered magic to increase its limits. The end result being the single largest hidden concentration of pure magic anywhere on Earth.
So when Harry realized that he had just taken care of all of his problems and obligations to the Wizarding world, he did the only thing he could think of. "I request that Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger were back in their rooms without the knowledge of what has transpired in this room since I've been here."
Harry's friends disappeared.
"In fact, I request that nobody except myself remember that the Room of Requirements exists or has ever existed." Harry looked at all the artifacts scattered around and realized that there was no need for them any more. "I request that all the artifacts here be placed back where they belong, unless they are evil - in which case I wish them to be no more."
All the various items in the room vanished.
Harry Potter stood in the center of an empty white room that only he knew of. Another thought entered his head and wouldn't go away.
"I... I request that the Room of Requirements be bonded to me. That the room and all of its abilities and powers were within me and would respond at my call."
Harry stood in the school corridor, right outside where the room should be.
He smiled.
"I request a large tropical drink."
As Harry walked to his next class, sipping his drink, he thought about requesting that everyone forget about Harry Potter. He could just be Mr. Black from that point. No longer paraded around as the Boy-Who-Lived or savior of the magical world, but just go on a much, much, MUCH longer vacation as Mr. Black. His island fortress and company ran fine without him. And with his capable support staff, he could travel around the world helping people full time.
But the more he pondered, the more he realized that there was only one chance to have a childhood. One chance to spend it with his friends, playing Quidditch without a care in the world.
So it was a happy Harry Potter that sat down in his chair in the dungeon to learn about potions.
Severus Snape came out as usual and stood behind his desk.
"Gaaaahhhhhhh!" He drooled brainlessly, adding, "Duuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh!!"
It was the best potions class ever.