Prologue: Time and Fate
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters, names, places are property of their respective owners. I'm not making money from this I do it for the shits.
"text"- speech
'text'- thought
A/N: As this is the first time I have attempted fanfiction you should be prepared for bad writing and bad grammar. So apologies at the start for my slightly messed up story telling skills. But please, if you hate my story hate it in peace, I don't need flamers. And of course constructive criticism is welcomed.
Warning: This story will contain violence/gore, torture, language and may have sexual situations. Undecided as yet.
Summary: Despondent and tired after 50 years of brutal war Harry allows Voldermort to kill him sending him into the realm of fate and time where he offered a chance to save the world from its hellish future and fix his life by going back to the end of his 3rd year to re-live his life and prevent the hellish future he lived through. Will be Ron bashing. Possibly rest of Weasley bashing and mildly Dumbledore bashing. Main pairing will be Harry/Fleur with maybe some others in the background.
A man stood tall to his full 6'2, powerful muscles evident behind curving blood rune tattoos, scars and a worn and beaten muggle style set of dragon hide body armour. Glock 18 under each arm and twin machetes hanging down at the small of his back cut for an imposing figure. Burning green eyes below pitch black hair fixed on the snake faced monstrosity stood across from him. "Look at us Tom, look at this." His eyes roving over the scorched earth around him he laughed. The only remnant of the once great Diagon Alley a 'Weasleys Wizard Wheezes' sign embedded in the cracked and broken ground between the two, occasionally changing colour as if to try to remind the mortal enemies of the past glories their conflict had torn down and turned to dust.
"Don't call me that." Snapped the tall snake faced man, so thin he was reminiscent of a concentration camp victim and wearing once glorious black robes now burnt and broken.
"LOOK AT US." Screamed the man. "Forty eight years Tom, forty eight years since your re-birth. So much war. For what? To what end? Ruling the world? Pure blood pride?" He laughed bitterly. "There's nothing left for me to fight for here." He finished in almost a whisper. "You can have it, take it, re-build it in your own image Lord Riddle. Its not worth my suffering anymore"
"Your giving up Potter? After so long?"
"Too long." He replied quietly, sadly. "Far too long, too much death, too much war, too much loss. We end it. END ME."
"The great Harry James Potter, Lord of the Light, boy-who-lived, prophesied saviour of the world, muggle and wizard alike is giving up? Going… Meekly to his death? Your death? After all this time I expected more, I thought maybe neither of us could win, locked in an immortal battle until the end of time. Yet it's not to be. It seems you're broken potter. BROKEN." Spoke tom with a hint of humour while walking towards the dark haired green eyed man. Reaching him he paused, a quizzical look on his face for a minute before raising his wand and pressing it gently against the scar on his opponents forehead.
"Goodbye Tom, See you in hell."
"Goodbye Potter, Harry." He said before looking into the flaming green eyes and whispering, almost lovingly and with not just a hint of regret. "Avada Kedarva"
The green light washed over the green eyed man, gently caressing his beaten body taking him into the blackness of the end, leaving his body to fall gracelessly to the ground in a twisted heap of limbs, the green light lingering on his body for a moment as the flames in the eyes of the corpse slowly died. "Goodbye Harry Poter." Repeated a serpentine voice while flicking his wand towards the body and apparating away with a distinct absence of noise. Behind him remained a gently burning body encased in an emerald obelisk next to the ever present 'WWW' sign.
Slowly awakening as if from a deep slumber Harry stood, to find himself in a river of humanity slowly trudging between black cliffs miles apart, towards a large white gate in the distance mostly hidden in the thick grey fog filling the place. Thoughts swirled through his mind. 'Where am I?' 'Am I dead?' before his mind started to cloud, as if filled by the swirling fog. And then the thought came. 'The gate. I need to get to the gate.' And he succumbed. So he slowly, lethargically set off walking, just one of the crowd, one of the many thousands of lost souls making their way towards the white gate at the end of the trench, the end of their journey.
An un knowable amount of time had passed and still he was walking, without pause towards the only thing that mattered, the gate. 'How long has it been? A hundred years? A thousand years? Longer?' To Harry the time seemed to stretch on for eternity as he kept forcing himself towards the Gate without ever questioning why.
After another impossible amount of time had passed quietly in the back of Harry's mind one word was whispered. 'Why?' the small bit of his mind fought, it kicked and screamed, begged and pleaded all to seemingly no avail. Until eventually something had to give. And it did. The small part grew and took over the whole and in his mind one word was screamed until it filled his whole consciousness and spilled out of his mouth. "WHY?"
"Good day young one." Came an emotionless genderless voice from behind Harry. This disturbance caught Harry by surprise setting into motion a fatal chain of events. Harry whipped round lashing out with his hand casting a silent, deadly and overpowered version of the bone breaking curse, the bone exploding curse, a distinctly dark curse designed to brutally and messily kill an opponent in a shower of bone shards and blood. And so when Harry realised there wasn't a gory mess lying in front of him but a healthy looking old man Harry was understandably shocked. Even more so when a beautiful tinkling laugh sounded from over his shoulder, the direction he had originally been facing. Warily backing up Harry found himself facing two people, an impossibly old man and the single most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on and he had seen, and slept with many pure blood vela in his time. The man cut an imposing figure, dressed in an empty looking hooded black cloak billowing in a non existent wind. He had a Dumbledore esque beard and hard steel grey eyes. Behind him floated a clock face attached to him by a great chain curling around his neck and arms. The woman was young looking wearing a fragile, white, gossamer robe that clung to her glorious figure causing Harry's eyes to stray. After a few seconds the woman laughed again, a beautiful and pure sound tinkling and flowing like a small stream flowing over rocks sending a shiver down Harry's spine. The sound was totally out of place with where they found themselves and instilled a sense of hope in his heart. At her laugh Harry was snapped out of his daze and looked back to her face before gasping. Her face was perfect of course, perfectly proportional, flawless and symmetrical framed by beautiful, mussed almost wild black hair curling down to below her shoulders. Harry felt fear. True debilitating fear, the kind of fear that takes the most hardened of men and leaves them sobbing in a puddle on the floor. And he froze. For where her eyes should have been were deep black holes. Holes that seemed to lead straight to hell. They emitted an aura of pain and death and made him remember all his worst moments from the war simultaneously. They called for the rise of chaos the spilling of the blood of races and the end of all things and all people.
"I am Fate." She spoke. Her voice calling Harry back from the brink of insanity caused by the eyes. For her voice was as her laugh, a thing of beauty, of promise a voice that sounded like it was about to break into song at any moment and gave a glimpse the inner peace and contentment craved by many and felt by few.
"And I am Time, Old Man Time." His voice was toneless, genderless and held no accent. "Fate decided you could have a second chance if you could fight away from the masses. And as fate chooses so happens."
"Where is here? And how long was I fighting the pull for? It felt like years. Hundreds of years maybe."
"This is… a cue to be sorted. A place where mortals wait to make up for their failings in life before moving on to the next place. It is similar to the human idea of purgatory." She spoke with the delicious voice.
"And you were here for forty seven minutes and thirteen seconds before you broke the pull of the gate. You were scheduled for over seven hundred years in this place for the acts you committed on earth. The longest anyone has ever been sentenced here. People with far less time than you have been sent straight to hell in the past." Said Old Man Time.
"So you committed many evil acts many dark crimes but all were in the benefit of the vast majority of the living creatures inhabiting the earth. Now, as the old man said I am giving you a second chance. Its no fun being fate if there are no mortals left to play with." She said, finishing with a quirky grin. "So, to solve my problem I will be sending you back to the year nineteen ninety four, the end of your third year and specifically the morning after your little jaunt with the time turner. This is your chance to go back and change the fate of the world as you know it, change history to suit your whims, have a… laugh and solve all that was wrong with your life and with the world at the time."
"If your fate then how did you manage to allow the future to get into the state it did. A state where you don't like it. Don't like it so much you feel the need to send me, a mere mortal, back to fix it for you."
"I was not paying attention and missed it falling into such a state of disrepair. By the time I returned it was too late to directly do anything." She replied with a small laugh and a quirk of her eyebrow. "Now think, when you go back you will only have one wand, not the five you had when you died."
"Technically I only had three."
"You had five on or in your person. And technically your dead and I'm the one that's going to change that." She replied with a wink. Then whilst eyeing his body up and down she said. "You will also loose your… enhancements and physical fitness which you will need to begin work on immediately. The holly and phoenix feather wand that you do have will be unmodified and will still have the trace on so you should use the room of requirements and perform the rituals on it before you leave Hogwarts for the summer. Over the summer it may be worth planning on which tattoos and rituals you will be doing over the next year as Tom will be rising in the summer after your fifth year regardless of any action you take. There are some things I can not change and even if I could I wouldn't. Your war with Tom will be entertaining for me if it doesn't get out of hand." She said causing Harry to gape in shock. "Remember Harry, I am not human however much I may seem it and so I will seem cold to you. Soulless even." She finished laughing.
Sighing in defeat Harry asked "My skills, mind magic and knowledge?"
"Anything non-physical will still be there along with your knowledge and your magical core. However your stamina will be low so beware of starting any too strenuous duelling drills too soon. Magical exhaustion will take a few days to recover from and you don't have the time." As her speech finished she walked over to Harry and stroked his cheek before planting a gentle kiss on his lips. "Good luck Harry Potter." At this the clock face emitted a bright flash and Harry found himself plummeting backwards through empty space faster and faster before waking with a jerk on a bed. He looked around the familiar setting and sighed. 'Why do I always wake up in the Hogwarts hospital wing?'