AN: I can't find the sweet spot to write the serious Harry Potter story, and Naruto is coming along as I alter a few plot points here and there to make it more to my liking in the future, so meanwhile, entertain yourselves with some crack that just came to me, and will probably devolve into more and more crack as it goes. Enjoy!
Also, Harry Potter and everything related is property of J.K.R and other people whose names I don't know and whose pockets are fairly deep. As MY pockets aren't that particularly deep, then I have to presume that I don't own squat.
"Harry!"
Hermione Granger gasped as soon as her eyes snapped open. She gingerly got up, a phantom ache plagueing her back as she did. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, she she tried to gather her thoughts in order to dispell her confusion.
'Wait a minute... Dispell... Spell... The Ritual!'
She abruptly jerked into the realm of full awakeness, memories blood, chalk, flames and ritual circles bursting forth within her head and giving her a massive headache. Employing the occlumency that she had painstakingly learnt - to a very good level if she did say so herself - she temporarily pushed back the flood of memories to establish her location and status. Years of war had a way of changing people.
The first thing she did was check for her wand, finding it under her pillow as usual. With that out of the way, she checked herself for any scrapes, cuts, bruises or any other sort of damage, finding none. With those things out of the way, she decided to give her surroundings a check.
She found herself inside one of the 4 poster beds of the Gryffindor dorms, the burgundy coloured drapes drawn and silenced from the inside, as she remembered. Palming her wand and keeping it close, she opened a tiny slit through the drapes and peeked through, situating herself properly.
'Everything seems good so fa-... Wait a second. That poster.'
Hermione was, of course, referring to a certain provocative poster of a wizard modeling in nothing more than his underwear, having been removed from a PlayWitch magazine by Parvati before being enlarged and staying in their dorm for a whole of 6 months before the prefects got wind of it. Most importantly, she remembered that all of this happened during fourth year.
'Goddamnit I overshot it with the spell! I was supposed to return to 5th year!'
Yes, That's right folks. Hermione Jane Granger had managed to successfully travel back in time.
After an honestly depressing clusterfuck of a future, she decided to come back and do-over, in order to save her Harry.
Yes, Her Harry. They had gotten together in the future.
'Far too late, in retrospect. It seems I will have to speed things up a bit.'
Getting up from bed and taking care of her morning ablutions, Hermione made her way to the common room only to find it empty of all but one person. A certain Raven-haired, Green-eyed wizard whose gaze was very intently placed upon her.
Having him scrutinizing her so much caused Hermione to fidget lightly before Harry let out an exhasperated sigh, seemingly finding what he was looking for.
"When did you come from?"
Hermione froze. Harry somehow knew she was a time-traveller. Was it something she did different, or wore different? 'Oh god I've ruined history!'
Harry shook his head lightly, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her into a hug while sitting on one of the common room couches. They stayed quiet for a while, Hermione trying to recover and Harry allowing her to. Finally she decided to speak.
"How did you know?"
Harry snorted lightly before answering "I came back too. Kinda. And it was all my fault."
"Your fault? What do you mean?"
Harry scratched his head sheepishly "Well... You see..."
-Flashback-
It was November 3rd. Not 1 week since Halloween and his name came out of that ruddy goblet and people were already turned against him, calling him an attention-seeking cheat of a gloryhound. It was 2nd year except worse because it wasn't just the school. Or the strangers.
He expected his friends to hold strong, but Ron had turned on him as well. Hermione was worried about him so she took straight off for the library to help him prepare, but that just made him feel more lonely. The glares, the looks... It raised doubts that he harboured for a long time.
'Are any of my friends really my friends? Am I that unlikeable? Will nobody ever really love me?'
Harry's thoughts were following a downard spiral before he slammed the brakes on the pity train and decided to hear the little voice in his head (which sounded suspiciously like Hermione) when it advised him to ask more. If people couldn't answer, then books may.
6 hours and 15 books later, and Harry finally found his answer. Well, kinda. He hadn't really found the answer to his question in the books. Instead, he found a book on love-based rituals in the restricted section. He studied the book cover to cover, memorized every incantation, wand movement, runic arrangement, everything he needed, and he had to honestly say he learned a lot.
Love is very powerful, Runes are useful as hell, not all rituals are evil, and, most important of all, If nothing else can answer your question, ask magic itself, and it'll answer. Probably. Maybe.
He happened to absentmindedly comment about finding a place to practice magic in peace while in the kitchens, and Dobby introduced him to the Come and Go Room, or, Room of Requirement. The room defined itself in whichever way would suit the user's needs, and that was just fine with him as he didn't know if his drawing was precise enough to map out the runic circle. The circle mapped, Harry cut the palm of his hand and dropped a few drops of his blood on the circle before muttering a long-ass incantation, and then a pink light enveloped him...
-Flashback End-
"And here we are."
Hermione goggled at Harry "That shouldn't be possible."
Harry just shrugged "You're friends with me. You should be used to the impossible."
Hermione shook her head emphatically "No! No! In the original timeline Neville found the room of requirement during our 5th year..."
"With Umbridge, yes I know."
The bushy-haired brunette slowly asked "Harry, what exactly did your ritual circle do?"
Harry cleared his throat before responding "It was basically an over-glorified way of asking the universe who I'd marry. Except, instead of simply telling, it decided to show."
"And what exactly does that mean?"
"Well, my theory is that it tried to pull someone from the future who loved me in order to show me directly, but since you were messing with time magics, the weakened threads between time and space dragged you here instead. The same happened with me, sort of."
"Dragged me here? Happened to you sort of? Explain."
Harry sighed before scratching the back of his head "We're in an alternate timeline. You know the many worlds interpretation where there are various realities coexisting at the same time, parallel to eachother?"
Hermione nodded, prompting Harry to continue.
"Well, associate this concept to the concept of branching timelines. There are various parallel universes, separated from one another by dimensional barriers. I cause a disturbance in the timestream in my timeline in my universe, you do the same in yours and mine happens to 'hijack' your signal as it were, and changed your landing destination."
"That's... Very well thought-out. Huh."
"Yeah, I'm smart like that. I was marginally smarter than your original Harry, so I decided to do the ritual. Maybe in different timelines I didn't go through with it, or botched it up and either simply failed or died, but what happened in this one is that I happened to intercept a fuckload of other Harry's at the same time, minds and souls alike. Normally my brain would have dribbled down my nose at the information overload, but I'm anything but normal. Before the actual other Harry's started arriving, the concept of occlumency and the occlumantic experience from many of the other Harry's hit me like a sledgehammer. I straightened out my mind and toughened my brain up to resist the amount of information. You probably feel like your older self, as you merged into one-another without any buffers or such. You are, in all intets and purposes, that Hermione. I segregated the life experiences and emotions of the other Harry's from mine, so I'm basically the same Harry as I was before, except with various new perspectives and a new maturity derived from the knowledge and experiences of other me's."
Hermione nodded thoughtfully "Ah, I see. But wait, I came back as one person only, yet you had multiple you's. Is it possible that other time-travellers..."
Before Hermione coud finish, Ginny bolted down the staircase from the female dorms, dashed towards them on the couch before kneeling in front of Harry, her eyes burning with an unholy mix of desire, devotion and lunacy.
Harry and Hermione looked at eachother, both recognizing that look, and blanching at the implications.
"I am returned to you for you to make use of, my lord."
That was the look that Bellatrix LeStrange gave Voldemort.
To be Continued