Core of the Issue
This was going to be the end, Harry knew it. Voldemort would kill him and destroy a piece of his own soul in the process.
As he stood before the Dark Lord, Harry Potter was ready to die.
"The Boy Who Lived," said Voldemort, "come to die."
Before Harry could respond with anything, the killing curse was already cast and he saw a flash of green light.
Then it all went wrong.
Instead of ending it all right then and there, the curse turned into green flames. Oddly reminiscent of Floo powder fire, they grew in size quickly enough to capture both him and Voldemort before they could do anything about it.
Harry felt a surprisingly pleasant warmth before everything disappeared.
Harry Potter struggled against the ropes binding him to the tombstone. It was useless. He was powerless without his wand. Peter had done his job well.
"No," the boy thought, "Not Peter. He will always be Wormtail to me."
But as Harry thought this, a pale man emerged from the cauldron, and was immediately offered a robe by Wormtail upon demand.
"Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived," said Voldemort, the Dark Lord. His body was pale as a corpse, missing hair and apparently a nose, but otherwise perfectly proportioned. His eyes were a deep red.
"Let us see who is still loyal."
He watched in horror as the killer of his parents pressed a long, white finger to the mark on Pettigrew's arm.
And then Harry felt pain in his scar, as he always did when Voldemort was nearby.
The Dark Lord seemed to wait for something. He ignored Harry for the moment and stared around the graveyard, muttering.
Soon enough, however, he turned his attention to Harry.
"It feels great to finally have access to my core again. To finally be able to use magic, instead of relying on weaklings," he turned to Wormtail as he said that last part.
Eventually, figures with dark robes started appearing around them.
Death Eaters, Voldemort's loyal servants. Murderers.
"My friends... How long-" but Harry didn't find out what the Dark Lord wanted to say, for in that exact moment there was an explosion.
A huge green fireball appeared above them, though Harry had not seen who cast it, or if it was cast by anyone at all.
Two burning objects fell from the flames to the ground and then all the fire disappeared.
The objects turned out to be people, but they were people Harry would never expect to arrive.
The Dark Lord was already pointing his wand at the uninvited guests, though he, too, appeared confused.
The two people turned out to be Lord Voldemort and Harry Potter.
Upon recognizing where he landed, Harry did not pause to think and immediately sprung to action. He cast a disarming charm at Voldemort (the one he did not arrive with) and sped towards what could only be his younger version.
Of course, his action was not ignored. Voldemort from the past easily deflected Harry's spell, but was already approached by the new Dark Lord.
And that Voldemort no longer focused on Harry.
"I can sense something wrong about you," the older Voldemort said to his counterpart.
Meanwhile, the Death Eaters were too shocked to react. They did not dare intervene, not knowing what was going on with two Dark Lords present.
Harry used this to his advantage. He reached his younger version, untied him and ran towards Cedric's body, all but dragging young Harry with him
This seemed to shake the younger Voldemort from his shock.
"STOP HIM, NOW!" he shouted to the Death Eaters, but they were too late, older Harry was already summoning the TriWizard cup and when it reached him, he and the other Harry vanished.
The older Voldemort laughed at this.
"It seems your prize has escaped you," he said to his younger version.
The other one said nothing but instead quickly cast the killing curse.
The duel began.
Before they reached their destination, Harry already knew where they would land. He would see the spectators of the Third Task, expecting a winner.
As they landed, Harry quickly pointed his wand at the sky and sent out several red sparks, high enough to be seen by all.
And he began shouting: "Dumbledore! I need to see Professor Dumbledore!"
The old headmaster was still alive, he'd know what to do.
It turned out that calling for him was unnecessary, because Dumbledore was already running towards him with a wand ready in his arm.
"Harry? What has happened?" he questioned the younger boy, though he looked at them both.
But there was no time for this, lives were at stake.
The older Harry replied instead.
"Sir, I'm from the future. I arrived here moments ago along with Voldemort."
The younger Harry nodded his head at this.
"It's true, sir! They appeared in a flash of light just as Voldemort returned!"
Albus' face went ashen at this. He ignored a sobbing Amos Diggory clutching Cedric's body.
"Two of them," Dumbledore said quietly and the older Harry noticed the Headmaster seemed very tired at that moment.
Barty Crouch Jr. was sitting in a chair, bound with thick ropes and watched over two Aurors.
"This is madness, Dumbledore! You-Know-Who returned? Two of them? And time travel on such a scale? This is some kind of a joke," said Fudge, pacing around Dumbledore's office.
"Cornelius, you heard it from Barty himself. He admitted that Lord Voldemort has returned," said Albus calmly.
"He's clearly mad, he is," Fudge muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.
Both Harrys were there too, the older one standing near a window, watching through it for any additional trouble, while the younger one sat in a chair quietly with Cedric's death still heavy on him.
And then the young Harry fell over, clutching his suddenly bleeding scar and letting out an unearthly scream. Dumbledore's reaction was fast as lightning; he was near the boy and casting a complicated spell in seconds.
It lasted at least a minute. The boy was thrashing around and screaming like a tormented soul, with Fudge looking more and more horrified.
The older Harry didn't know what to do, this wasn't something he had expected. None of it was.
The weakling was dead. There could be only one Voldemort alive.
It was clear to him now. There was no time travel involved, he was not in the past.
He already suspected it upon arriving, when he sensed something off about his supposedly younger counterpart.
Wizards in this reality, for an another reality it surely was, were weak. Very weak, in fact.
Voldemort noticed it during the duel itself, when his opponent cast very few spells and seemed to become more and more tired as the fight went on.
This seemed almost absurd, but it had to be true. His enemy has run out of magic. What an irrational idea.
The Dark Lord looked around and saw that the Death Eaters were still here. Some of them, at least. Good, he needed some answers.
"My friends. I'll ask you some simple questions, which I expect to be answered," he spoke softly, but it was clear to anyone involved that he was not to be denied.
Lucius Malfoy stepped forward first.
"Anything, my lord," he spoke humbly. Voldemort snorted, Malfoys proved to be a disappointment in his reality.
"Tell me, Lucius, is it possible to run out of magic?" he asked slowly.
Malfoy seemed confused at the question, but answered nonetheless, "Yes, my lord."
Voldemort nodded, "can you tell me why?"
"Because every witch and wizard has a magical core which stores the amount of magic they may cast," Lucius was speaking with uncertainty. Was the Dark Lord playing with them?
Voldemort's face took on a sneer. What a weak and pathetic world he found himself in.
Then, a realization struck him. He looked at the dead body of his counterpart.
He smiled.
"Lucius, prepare for a war you have never imagined to live through."
"Take him away from here!" said the Minister and the Aurors took a mad Barty from the room. They could still hear his screams of denial in the corridor for a moment.
Then they all turned to the boy in the chair.
"He's dead?" asked Fudge again.
The younger Harry, still shaking, nodded. "Yes. The future Voldemort killed him, but something was strange about the fight."
"Strange, Harry? Tell us what happened," requested Dumbledore.
"The one from the future, I'm not sure how that's possible, but he wasn't running out of magic. He cast spell after spell and did not seem tired," the young boy was speaking with disbelief in his voice.
The older Harry was the confused one now. Run out of magic? How can one run out of magic? That didn't make any sense.
"Strange indeed," muttered Dumbledore and then turned to the older Harry.
"Mr. Potter, does Voldemort from your time possess such an unusual ability?" he asked Harry.
"Unusual? What's so unusual about it? You can't run out of magic, it's impossible. I've never seen anyone run out of magic." Harry really wasn't sure if this wasn't all a terrible dream.
"Dumbledore, is he right in the head? Don't you teach kids about magical cores at this school?" asked Fudge.
"What the bloody hell are magical cores?!"
The headmaster looked as if he saw a ghost, for it was clear he realized something terrible.
"Mr. Potter, magical cores are the source of a person's magic. They have a certain storage capacity which determines how much magic can a person cast in a given time," short and to the point, but for how unhelpful it was to Harry at that moment.
"And I've brought with me a Voldemort with unlimited magic," said Harry and saw horror on their faces.
It had been months since the TriWizard Tournament and a lot has happened since that time.
Harry looked around the meeting room, waiting for Dumbledore to arrive, and he wasn't alone.
The other Harry-or Core Harry, as he called the younger boy- was here as well, having joined the Order at the older Harry's insistence.
Some people Harry recognized from his own reality, like Kingsley Shacklebolt or Hestia Jones. But the addition of Sybill Trelawney was surprising.
When Harry asked Kingsley why she was in the Order, the Auror looked at him funny and said that prophecies could be ripped out of a person's core.
Right, cores. Everything revolved around those damned cores in this world.
The Marauder's Map never showed his name, because it detected magical cores, Homenum Revelio never showed he was around, because it worked the same way.
Dementors ignored Harry, because in this world they sucked out a person's magical core instead of a soul.
And if Harry was underage, even the Trace wouldn't detect him because it worked through magical cores.
None of this really bothered Harry, until he realized that it was the same for Voldemort.
Dumbledore admitted that it was certainly possible that the Fidelius Charm they were hidden under would prove ineffective against this new Dark Lord.
To say that it was disastrous to Order morale would be an understatement.
The door opened and Dumbledore walked in.
Usual greetings ensued, followed by some basic information regarding Death Eaters, until Dumbledore finally held up his hand.
"Friends, allies, I have something to reveal," he announced with a grave voice.
"As you know, thanks to Mr. Potter's information I was able to locate Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes and destroy most of them," here he nodded to Harry.
"However, as I worried, it appears Voldemort does not care about them at all," Dumbledore spoke with disappointment in his voice.
"In Mr. Potter's world, Horcruxes are pieces of a torn soul, ensuring a dark wizard's survival in the face of death," continued Albus.
"But here, they're shards of a torn magical core. They're worthless to Voldemort," he said with finality.
Murmurs started around the room, which were silenced when Dumbledore held up his hand again.
"This is why I have decided to finally duel Voldemort and attempt to kill him myself," he revealed and this time murmurs turned into shouts of protest.
"Please, do not attempt to stop me. It has to be done," he spoke softly.
He then looked to the older Harry.
"Mr. Potter. If I should fail in this fight, you are to lead the Order, as the one who knows this Voldemort best and the one with the best possibility of matching him. This is my final request."
Harry sat before them as the new leader of the Order of the Phoenix. While Dumbledore had fought with all his might, he was simply no match for a wizard without a magical core.
After Voldemort defeated Dumbledore, he took this world's Elder Wand from him and destroyed it, just to make sure Harry would never get it.
All hope seemed lost for them. Harry could not even begin dreaming about defeating the Dark Lord with his limited knowledge of magic. Hunting Horcruxes was pointless too, since they didn't work for Voldemort anyway. Now that Dumbledore was gone, Harry simply did not know what to do.
The Ministry, Hogwarts, Gringotts, all were under the rule of Death Eaters now.
Even the Order was halved in size, with only a few members remaining. They now sat before him and waited for his orders, for his leadership. But what could he do? Nothing.
Hermione sat near him, she had lost her left arm in one of the many duels she was forced to be involved in. Most of the Weasleys were dead, the very thought making Harry feel ashamed with himself.
Nymphadora Tonks, now with Alastor Moody's eye replacing one of her own (which made her metamorphmagus skills useless) turned to him.
"Harry, are we truly safe here? We don't even have a Fidelius to protect us, what do we do now?"
And Harry didn't know what to say. Should he tell them that there was no hope? That he had no answers? Should he tell them that-
An explosion destroyed the door.
Immediately, there was a pandemonium and someone screamed "Death Eaters!"
Harry jumped into action immediately, though a small voice in the back of his head told him that his effort was meaningless. But that wasn't entirely true, he still was a wizard without a magical core, he still was a monster on the battlefield, compared to core wizards.
Perhaps this time they would win, he wondered as his curse hit Bellatrix Lestrange right in the face.
But that was a temporary hope, for Voldemort himself entered their hideout. He did not approach Harry for a month now, so this was clearly going to be Harry's last day alive.
The younger Harry ran closer to him, determined to be involved in his last fight. The older one understood, he would do exactly the same. Either they died together or not at all.
Voldemort did not waste time for talking and cast a killing curse immediately upon seeing them. Harry quickly jumped to save the younger from death, even if it was for a second.
The world went up in green flames and he disappeared, along with Voldemort. The fight stopped.
Death Eaters and Order members alike stared, stunned, at what just happened. The Dark Lord ... gone? Just like that? He attempts to kill the one he arrived with and they both vanish as if they were never there?
Young Harry, now the only Harry around, was the first one to get over his stupor and cast a reductor at Yaxley. He knew, he somehow knew that this time the Order would be victorious. Without Voldemort, Britain could be freed. And perhaps soon the war would be over.
-Epilogue-
"Bone of the mother, unknowingly given, you will renew your daughter!"
"Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your Mistress!"
"Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe!"
The cauldron exploded with a white light, sending a wave of heat alongside it. Harriet Potter struggled against the ropes binding her to the tombstone. It was useless. She was powerless without her wand. Piper had done her job well.
"No," the girl thought, "not Piper. She will forever be Wormtail to me."
But as Harriet thought this, a pale woman emerged from the cauldron.
"Harriet Potter, the Girl Who Lived," said Voldemort, the Dark Lady. She was as beautiful as she was horrible. Perfectly shaped body, perhaps too perfect to be considered natural, with skin as pale as the bones scattered around the graveyard. She was missing hair, but these would grow in time, and her red eyes distracted from that anyway.
Voldemort walked over to Harriet, not even acknowledging Wormtail. She was uncomfortably close.
"Magic is so amazing, don't you think Harriet? It can kill," here the Dark Lady looked at Cecilia's dead body, "but it can also bring back to life, as I just demonstrated."
Harriet's eyes narrowed in defiance. "I will never join you, no matter what."
Voldemort only winked at her. "We will see about that. We will see."
And then there was an explosion of green fire above them, as two figures appeared out of nowhere.