Title: Odd Ideas and Plot Bunnies

Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWaytoTravel

What's this all about?

I get fanfiction ideas. Lots of them. Some of them are terrific, but often only a tiny fraction of them gets written, barely enough to make enough a chapter at times. But they're worth sharing, if only to give others inspiration. So here there are, each idea with its own chapter. You're welcome to borrow. Just give me credit for inspiration in your fic, that's all I ask.

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Plot Bunny:

After a spell gone wrong, Harry and a Slytherin girl find themselves spiralling from universe to universe, collecting other Harrys – and, unfortunately, Voldemorts – on the way.

Every universe is based on a separate fanfic "alternate reality." Some serious, some funny.

(Shameless plug:

Inspired by –but quite different from – Pandora's Box by Minnionette. If you're going to read only one chapter of that – even if it's a great story – than you have to read chapter twenty three. It's hilarious.)

o0o o0o o0o o0o

It was all that Slytherin girl's fault.

Harry was walking along, minding his own business. When he heard someone muttering in another language, it was quite natural for him to follow the voice to see what was going on. And when he saw her, standing on the grass and clearly performing a complicated ritual, it was equally natural for him to go running forward yelling about what in Merlin's name she was doing. It wasn't his fault that he didn't see the pentacle. And it was equally not his fault that he knocked over the bowl of sludge and sent it flying over the grass just as she made the final incantation.

Not in the slightest.

The fact that they were now sitting, in the dark, in an unidentified wood, was entirely her fault. After all, what kind of a person would be daft enough to perform that kind of spell at somewhere like Hogwarts?

The girl groaned and sat up, horrified realisation spreading over her face. It was the new girl, he realised, what's-her-name Mallory, who had had joined Hogwarts at the start of the year. Dark-haired and green-eyed, she had been fairly quiet, and what the other students classified as a 'loner.' Now her eyes blazed with fury in a way that reminded Harry forcibly of Mrs Weasley, or Ginny.

"YOY FLAMING IDIOT!" she yelled at him. "YOU MESSED UP THE SPELL! LORD KNOWS WHAT THE HELL YOU'VE DONE!"

"It's not my fault!" Harry yelled back. "What in Merlin's name were you doing, doing a spell like that where just anyone could come along? What was it, anyway?"

"It was," she said with clenched teeth, putting a strong emphasis on the was, "a spell to carry me back in time. God knows what it ended up as after you messed it up. Thanks, Potter. The others were right. You're trouble personified."

Harry scowled, but said,

"Right now I think we ought to worry about where we are." He looked around, before pulling out his wand. "Point me other people." The wand spun until the tip was facing away to the left. "Come on. This way."

They walked for some time in the moonlight, without speaking to each other. At first the girl muttered angrily about nosy busybodies and interfering bastards with a hero complex, but after a while even they died away into silence and she walked along without a sound but for the crunch of her shoes in the leaves. Until –

"Is that a light?" she asked suddenly. Harry peered forward. Sure enough, a light shone faintly in the distance. They hurried towards it, and as they grew closer saw that the light came from a house set in a small clearing up ahead.

The girl was moving forward, thankfulness evident on her face, when Harry caught her arm.

"What?" she hissed, glaring at him in a fashion that would have impressed even Snape.

"Are you mad?" he demanded in a near-whisper. "Anybody could be in there! It could be full of Death Eaters for all we know!"

She wrenched her arm free and strode forward to bang on the door, looking fiercely at him all the while.

"I don't care!" she yelled. "We're lost in the dark, at night, in the cold, with no idea where we are! I don't give a stuff if it's Voldemort in there as long as we're somewhere warm and comfortable!"

She finished yelling and turned around as the door opened, to find herself facing a tall, pale man with dark hair and handsome features, and ominous red eyes.

He smiled pleasantly into her startled face.

"Ah," he said mildly. "That would be a good thing." The girl took a step backwards and crashed into Harry, who had been staring frozen to the spot at the sight of a Voldemort who couldn't be older than twenty. For a moment Harry clutched at her trying to set them both back on balance while she let out an alarmed squawk, arms windmilling wildly. Balance restored after several unsteady seconds, the girl grabbed Harry's sleeve with both hands and rested her forehead against his arm.

"I think I'm going to both laugh and cry hysterically."

Ordinarily Harry would have been rather ruffled at such familiar contact, and from a Slytherin of all people, but he barely noticed as he continued to stare at Voldemort where he still stood standing in the doorway.

"Do come in," Voldemort said, just as affably as before. "It's quite cold out, after all, and I could hardly leave you here to freeze. Make yourselves welcome." And he stood back, holding the door open, leaving a path for them to walk inside.

After a moment, with the queerest expression on her face – Harry thought that his was probably rather similar – the girl walked forward into the house. Harry reluctantly followed.

"I'm sure a cup of tea would do you both good," Voldemort said cheerfully, leading the way into a surprisingly bright sitting room. "Milk? Sugar?"

"Milk, two sugars please," said the girl, sinking down into an armchair and looking very much bemused. Voldemort turned to Harry, an eyebrow raised in polite inquiry.

"No thanks," Harry said dazedly. "Just straight, please."

"Coming right up," Voldemort assured them both, and left the room.

Harry looked around at their surroundings. They could have been in any middle-class, muggle sitting room, as long as you disregarded the things like quills and floo powder spread throughout the room. The wallpaper was nice, the carpet was attractive, the furniture tastefully upholstered. It was all so – so normal. How could someone as evil as Voldemort live in such a normal house?

Voldemort returned levitating a small tray with a teapot and a couple of cups of steaming tea, which he lowered on to the table. The girl thanked him and reached out for the one with milk added. Harry grabbed the other and cradled it between his hands, staring at Voldemort in sheer bewilderment. Voldemort smiled at him.

"Now," he said conversationally, "who are you?"

The girl took a sip of tea.

"Melania," she replied. "Melania Mallory."

"Melania," Voldemort mused. "From the Greek. 'The dark one.' Interesting."

Melania smiled perfunctorily.

"My family has strong connections to the ancient days," she elaborated. "And to the darkness."

"Interesting," Voldemort said again. "I've heard a great deal about the Mallorys. You don't happen to have any of their gifts, I suppose?"

"Not that I know of," she replied. "But some of them don't manifest until later in life. My uncle Roger only found out that he had the Sight after he was thirty." She frowned. "He had difficulty adjusting, I'm afraid. Found solace at the bottom of a bottle."

"Ah. Distressing." Voldemort shifted his gaze to Harry.

"Harrison Griffin," Harry replied quickly, his mind suddenly beginning to work again as the red eyes peered into his own.

The brows rose.

"And 'ruler of the army,' from the Old English," Voldemort concluded. "An interesting pair of names."

"You seem to know a lot about languages," Melania noted. His eyes rested on her assessingly.

"I was a rather studious child," he said after a moment. "I was interested in learning."

A muggle saying came to Harry's mind.

"Knowledge is power," he said quietly.

"Precisely," Voldemort smiled. He leaned forward. "Now, to what really interests me; how do you know about me when the rest of the world does not?"

Two sets of stricken green eyes, one the shade of glass bottles, the other brilliant emerald, met.

"That's a long and rather complicated story," Harry said evasively, while Melania said simply, "We're from another universe."

Harry glared at her while she gazed disdainfully back. After a moment they both looked back at Voldemort, who was waiting expectantly.

"You're a dark lord there," she expanded. "A really powerful one. They call you 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named' or 'You-Know-Who' because they're too scared to say your name."

Harry poked her, hard, and she turned to give him another Snape-worthy glare.

"I see," the future Dark Lord murmured, a slow, disturbing smile curving full lips. The two of them froze and stared at him, disagreements forgotten, as he slowly stood, an aura of power gathering about him as he rose, and took a step towards them.

Harry, quite familiar with that particular smile, fled from his armchair and sprinted for the front door.

"Whatever happened to your stupid Gryffindor hero complex?" Melania shrieked from behind him, have managed to dart around Voldemort before he could do whatever nefarious thing he had been planning. "You just left me there!"

"You told him about who we were!" Harry pointed out, colliding with the front door at high speed and trying to open it, oofing as Melania ran into him. He tugged on the handle and after a moment of fierce rattling it gave in, allowing him to fling the door open so that the two could burst out into the night like a bat out of hell was behind them. It had begun to rain some time since they went inside and was now pouring steadily, obscuring their vision, which is why at first neither of them noticed that the world had turned oddly blurry until he whipped sideways and both Melania and Harry crashed into the ground.

A rather wet Harry blinked in the sudden sunlight, for a moment failing to deduce that he had, once again, travelled between worlds. Someone was yelling at him.

"Stupid bastard!" yelled the girl he'd brought crashing down with him. Swearing, she glanced up, and both froze as they noticed certain similarities between each other.

"Bloody hells in Spain!" she blurted. They were interrupted with a scream.

"POTTER!"

Automatically both of them looked around to see Melania running frantically towards them, an irate Dark Lord close behind.

"Crucio!"

"You –"

"Rictumsempra!"

" – stupid "

"Relashio!"

Melania shrieked as that particular spell shot past her ear.

" – bastard, Potter!"

Harry's female doppelganger blinked twice

"Is that Voldemort?"

"Kind of," Harry allowed, watching the approaching pair with feelings of resigned doom.

"Oh."

"Damn it Potter, you're the Dark Lord slayer!" Melania screeched, grabbing him by the shoulders and using him as a human shield. "Do something!"

Harry watched nervously as Voldemort – who was as soaked as he and Melania were – slowed to a stop, lowering his wand slightly. Harry wasn't reassured. Those scarlet eyes were blazing.

Voldemort put his face right up to Harry's, furious red eyes glaring down into frightened but defiant green ones.

"What," he asked, very softly, "did you do, boy?"

Harry gulped, blinking fast.

"Mallory was doing a spell to send herself back in time," he explained rapidly, "and I accidentally botched it up."

"Stupid Gryffindor," Melania muttered, peering warily over Harry's shoulder. Her grip was digging into his skin.

"And, um," Harry continued, voice unusually high, "that's how we travelled universes. I don't know why it happened again, it was totally random, and we certainly didn't mean to bring you along."

Voldemort took a deep breath. Then another. Slowly everything about him stilled, and after a moment that seemed to last forever, he stepped back, eyes closed, clearly keeping himself under rigid control.

Melania's eyes promptly rolled back into her head and she dropped like a stone.

"Neat," drawled a female voice. Harry looked round to see that it was the girl he'd collided with earlier. He'd completely forgotten about her. Angry Dark Lords tend to do that to people.

She gave a lazy smile, great green eyes looking carefully between him, Voldemort and Melania.

"You might wanna do something about your friend there," she observed, gazing at where Melania was sprawled passed-out on the grass. Her eyes came back to rest on Voldemort, who was now scowling darkly.

"Wow," and her voice betrayed appreciation, "you were a real cutie before you went all snake-corpse-ish." She turned to Harry, a brighter, more real smile lighting up her face.

"Harriet Potter," she greeted him. "From that brief but enlightening explanation you gave the Dark Dude over there, I'm assuming you're my counterpart."

Harry nodded.

"Harry Potter," he introduced himself. He glanced down at Melania. "That's Melania Mallory, and I'm guessing that you already know Voldemort."

She laughed.

"We've met," she said demurely.

For the first time Harry noticed the Slytherin badge pinned to her robes.