{Games}

"Prisoner number 6785," a bored sounding voice called out.

Harry's world was still dark. Tiny beams of light shone through the holes in the carrying box he'd been shoved into for transport to wherever the hell he now was.

"Experiment number 0034," the voice continued.

Light flooded Harry's world. The front of the box had been opened and Harry stepped out onto a wooden platform. Two men, perhaps the same two men from the prison, attached him to the platform with chains. In front of him, was a sight that made his underused eyes widen in shock.

"Modified version of the confundus charm, woven into the arch using Hypthorn's static enchantment protocol; dated the third of September, 2002, approved by the Chief Unspeakable."

It was the veil of death.

"Begin the transfer."

Without making a sound, the platform started moving towards the veil leaving Harry no possibility of escape… not that he wanted it.

'For neither can live while the other survives,' he mused, grinning manically. He was about to die, but he knew that what was going on here was something Voldemort certainly didn't know about, or authorise.

He was halfway to the veil now and suddenly terror flooded his mind, but the raw primal emotion wasn't his.

A loud crack sounded behind him and Voldemort's voice screamed "Accio Potter!" but the chains held him fast to the platform and before another word could be uttered he'd plunged through the archway and darkness took him.

Light.

Heat. Harry awoke to a sense of heat; a warm floor, or something like a floor; a flat surface. He was lying prone on it, and it was warm, and it was pulsing at a slow but steady rhythm rather like a heartbeat, one beat every interval each a little less than two seconds. He could have set a watch to it, except he knew he wasn't wearing a watch, and he didn't own one to wear or set anyhow.

He turned over so that he was lying on his back. It was a movement free of pain; so death hadn't hurt. Should he have expected it to? He found he was surrounded by white clouds, white mist, thin vapor swirling all around and over him. The flat warm floor that was pulsing rhythmically had a strange vapor above it; the vapor covered him, for now he could see that he was naked.

And in just that moment, he felt power. Overwhelming power; it surrounded him. Magical power too great to sense any possible limits to it. If it had any.

No one alive had this sort of power.

He tried to shrink away from it, but found that impossible. Even if he had succeeded, he knew that would be precisely meaningless.

"Good day to you," sounded a voice; Harry's ears registered the sounds as being moderately deep and his brain categorized the level a low baritone. The voice was perfectly calm, and even pleasant. Yet full of power.

He couldn't agree that this situation was good, and in his last sense of time it wasn't day either. There was no safety near such power, from such power.

He had no options but to look at whoever was speaking.

It was a man about sixty years old; hair probably brown once but now all gray, fair skin mottled and wrinkling, brown eyes still sharp. Tall though not exceptionally. Dressed in a charcoal gray shirt and black trousers with black shoes.

He knew this man. This man was the very image of the last maths teacher he'd had in primary school, before Hogwarts.

Of course, that man had been a Muggle. So it wasn't him. No Muggle alive or dead had magic, and no wizard or witch had magic of this scale.

Harry wanted to ask "Who in all the hells are you?" He didn't. He said nothing.

"Welcome," came a second voice, soprano this time, so probably a woman.

But the power signature was the same. So there was only one person speaking to him. One person or none at all, but certainly not two.

The woman was an exact duplicate of Hepzibah Smith, whom Harry knew to be long dead, whom Tom Riddle had murdered. Immensely fat, clad in a pink silk dress, wearing too much makeup on her face. Many rings were on her fingers and pink slippers were on her feet.

Her voice was beautiful; perfect for hitting high notes in a theater somewhere.

Harry still said nothing. He wanted to be far away from here. Wherever here was. It was death, and he wanted to be far from death.

"You are between here and there," spoke Hepzibah Smith, or whoever had taken her image.

"More there than here," added his maths teacher … Mr Stephens … Harry thought his first name had been Roger. But it wasn't him, so that wasn't relevant.

He still said nothing.

"Must you be difficult?" asked one of the voices. Harry decided it hadn't mattered which.

He had just enough will to bite back the word "yes".

Power wrapped around him and threatened to crush him in a vice. Power threatened to burn him as though it were an inferno; as though Fiendfyre had been cast with all the magical strength of every magical ever born all at once.

He didn't dare speak. He didn't dare move. He didn't dare breathe.

"Maybe you will do," said the woman at length. The power threatening him withdrew and then withdrew further. Now he could feel only a trickle of power, from two different directions that he couldn't see to decide where was which.

"Who are you?" Harry asked, surprising himself in doing so. And being surprised by how clear his voice was, since he had not used it in years.

"We are Death," replied the man, and at the same time, the woman replied "We are Fate." And then together, they said, "We are Magic."

"Why did you bring me here?" Harry asked, recalling the Unspeakables and the gurney and the Veil.

"Where you were, you were trapped," said the man.

"And would have been trapped for the greater part of a thousand years," added the woman.

"Where you were, you could not act," the man continued.

"And that could no longer be tolerated," the woman finished.

The Prophecy, Harry realized immediately. Before saying exactly that.

"Just so," agreed both beings.

"I'm dead. It's done, it's been fulfilled," Harry said.

"Not so," disagreed the man. "Not so fast," added the woman.

This didn't make sense to Harry, and he held himself back from asking why. He was dead, therefore he no longer survived, therefore Tom Riddle could live.

"Tom Riddle vexes us," said the man, who Harry had decided was Death. "Horcruxes are an abomination. Multiple ones, even more so."

"And there are other people who vex us even more," added the woman, Harry now thinking of her as Fate. "People interfering with what is foretold."

"Tom Riddle has to die?" Harry asked.

"You or him," Death said.

Harry almost said, "I did. That's done." but stopped himself doing it.

"You by his hand, or him by yours," Fate clarified. "Not through the meddling of arrogant fools or stupid fools. Or any other sort of fools."

The urge to laugh overcame him, and he allowed himself to, for the first time in longer than he could recall. It sounded light and bright, then dark and deep.

"If you're Magic, you allow Horcruxes to work," Harry said in spite of his better judgment. "Why resent them?"

"More the direction of how they are made than the objects themselves" replied Death.

Harry thought he could well understand that. Still, he thought, it was up to those sorts of fools who sought immortality to make that decision or not.

"Is it my fault I was a Horcrux?" he now asked.

"No," said Death immediately.

"But once you had become one, Albus Dumbledore decided he would prevent you from becoming the threat to the wizarding world he believed you would inevitably become," Fate added.

"I don't see what you mean me to do about any of it" Harry said at length. Unless I'm not really dead, he thought but did not add.

"You are," Death said.

"But perhaps that can change," Fate said at the same time.

"We can send you back," they added in tandem.

"To Azkaban" Harry asked automatically, stupidly, before wanting to hit himself.

"Through time," the two answered.

Harry wanted to ask why. He didn't. He stayed silent.

"You know of Time Turners," Fate said. Harry did, although he'd never personally seen one.

"You know that they send someone backwards, or in one awful accident forwards," Death added.

Harry recalled that bit of trivia that Tom Riddle had known. Eloise Mintumble, he thought her name had been, had once traveled forwards by five centuries. But there was no time turner here. Or, at least, none he could see

"Those artifacts are for use by the living, as their interface," Death said.

"We don't need them," Fate added, "We are Magic. We act."

"When would I go back to?" Harry asked. Why are you really doing this, he held back.

"Because even we can make mistakes," Death said, answering his unasked question.

"Tom Riddle vexes us, as does Albus Dumbledore," Fate spoke in a sharp voice. "And so does John Potter."

"My brother?" Harry asked. What does that braggart have to do with anything, he wanted to ask, but didn't.

"Even we can make mistakes," Death repeated, his voice now a bit ominous.

Harry felt instantly there were layers to those words they weren't going to reveal. He decided it was up to him to puzzle them out.

At this thought, the beings smiled, but darkly.

"How was I sent to Azkaban in the first place?" Harry asked. "I never got much of a trial." This, he thought, was not quite true. He'd been innocent of the charges, but the wizarding world's system of justice was failure itself.

"Albus Dumbledore maneuvered it. And John Potter aided him, for his own reasons", came the response.

At this, Harry discarded whatever shreds of "family" he'd felt about his brother for good.

"Dumbledore seems to want me out of the way," Harry said, then asked why, even thinking he knew the answer.

"Dumbledore was the witness to Sybill Trelawney's prophecy when she uttered it," Fate said. "And once you were marked, as it mentioned someone would be, he acted."

"Why?" Harry asked. "The one marked was supposed to kill Tom Riddle. Or die trying."

It was Fate who answered, and with length. "Albus Dumbledore had watched Gellert Grindelwald's rise, and Tom Riddle's. He felt he was considerably to blame for both. The idea of someone being able to equal and even perhaps surpass Riddle was something he feared, because he believed someone with that potential could only be like Riddle. And so he decided to sacrifice you: you would weaken and delay Riddle; and once you had died, Riddle could be finished by someone else. Or so he planned."

At this, Harry felt only anger. "So Dumbledore … traded a potential dark wizard … for the victory of one already established?"

"Just so," they replied in tandem.

"Magical power is the pool of knowledge, experiences, raw intelligence, willpower, and emotional state", Fate said. "With the Horcrux in place, Dumbledore's actions meant you were certain to fail, and Riddle certain to succeed. What he desired was the doom of all, for centuries."

"And John Potter?" Harry asked, only curious of his brother's reasons.

But he received no answer, none more than he already had. Did this mean his brother was irrelevant? Or perhaps it was up to him.

At this thought, the entities smiled again, even more broadly and darkly.

"How far back would I go?" he asked again, only in different words.

"Far," Fate replied.

"More than a decade," Death added.

"To the morning of your first Hogwarts' letter" Fate finally answered.

Harry did not see what this would help. And he almost said so, but stopped himself. For a while he didn't speak.

At last, he said, "Dumbledore wants me out of the way, And my brother, for his own reasons, helped or will help him. But you have a plan." He thought that was the best way to say it.

The entities nodded. "You have all of Riddle's knowledge; of his magic, of his Horcruxes, and of his Death Eaters. All of it will stay with you," Fate said for the pair.

"We are going to grant you a lordship." added Death.

This stunned Harry, for Tom had learned how lordships worked and Harry knew through Tom knowing. "I can't be Lord Potter while my father or brother live. And I'd have to be seventeen. You said I'm going back to the day of my first letter; that was a week before I turned eleven."

"You are, so as you know the rules, correct. But we are Magic. We can change the rules," Fate said simply.

However off-balance and stunned Harry had been, now he was more so. "For my benefit?" he asked.

Fate nodded slightly.

"What happens to my father and brother?" he asked, still thinking of the old rules.

"It is not the Potter lordship you will take," Death answered.

Harry had not known of other options. "Tell me." He hoped his sentence didn't sound like a command.

"By right of conquest," Fate began, "you may claim the Slytherin lordship. We will allow that."

"And by inheritance of blood, you may claim Peverell or Gryffindor," Death added.

"Gryffindor," Harry almost shouted, astounded. "I'd have thought the Potters would have crowed about that for centuries." He decided to leave the Peverell name aside for the moment.

"It is not from the Potters," Death said simply. "After the last Lord Gryffindor died over five hundred years ago, the line birthed nothing but witches for centuries, until the squib only-child who one day became your mother's father was born. As a witch born to that squib, your mother could not inherit the title. As a wizard born to her, and not already set for another seat, you can."

Harry wanted to laugh, but didn't. After a long minute, he asked about the Peverell line.

That answer was simpler: the last Peverell daughter had married a Potter nearly seven hundred years ago with a marriage contract that did not sufficiently protect her, as she'd had two elder brothers. When they both died childless, the bloodline was left to her. The seat became dormant; extant through the Potters. It would be reawakened.

Harry wanted time to think about the three options, but he felt he had more important questions to ask first. "If I go back, will I still be a Horcrux?"

Death and Fate both shook their heads.

Harry had another question almost immediately. "If I go back, will I still be a Parselmouth?" It was likely to be needed, he thought.

Death shook his head while Fate did nothing. "If you choose the Slytherin lordship, you will become one in full truth, and it will pass to your descendants, as it is the gift of that blood. Choose another and what you have will be lost, for it was not yours to begin with, but Tom Riddle's."

Harry stayed silent for a while. They were, obviously, leaving the choice up to him. "I can only pick one, right?" he asked, already knowing the answer. There was no provision in the law for multiple lordships in one person; it simply was never done.

The entities nodded.

Harry closed his eyes and thought hard. All three had merits: it was likely that being either Lord Slytherin or Lord Gryffindor would give him considerable rights at Hogwarts, though he could not name them yet. On the other hand, Peverell afforded him some anonymity that the other lordships could not possibly do. As Lord Peverell, he would be just one more lord on the Wizengamot, one of more than a hundred. A slightly infamous lord, given the line's most famous ancestor; but no more so than any of at least a dozen others that had birthed prominent dark or dangerous wizards.

But the two more famous lines shared a downside: to be either Lord Slytherin or Lord Gryffindor would mean that one or the other of the two large factions would hound him relentlessly for his support of their goals. As for the Death Eaters on the Wizengamot, for Harry knew there were some, they at least couldn't act on their master's orders until he returned. If Harry prevented that ... well, even with his knowledge that might be easier said than done.

Should Tom restore himself or be restored, Tom would be after any "Lord Slytherin" to murder him and take the seat for himself, or an underling he could install as proxy. Right of conquest had to work both ways.

The obvious question loomed: did Tom know the truth? Had the dark wizard known, in the time that Harry would be returning to, that it was not John Potter whom he had once failed to kill?

Harry wracked his mind for an answer, but found none. Could Tom figure it out? That was conceivable, but also unanswerable without evidence.

Dumbledore's faction would be instantly wary, if not instantly opponents of, a Lord Slytherin.

He would have snorted if he were capable. No substantial change there. Dumbledore was already his enemy.

On the other hand, if he took up the Gryffindor mantle, he would instantly have Dumbledore's followers and Dumbledore himself trying to convince him to lend his name to their cause. Among them would almost certainly be Lord Potter.

Though he found it deeply ironic that he might claim the Gryffindor lordship based on inheriting his mother's blood, the thought of constantly being hounded by any or all of the Potters made him furious and sick.

The Dark houses and Riddle's followers would want to destroy Lord Gryffindor just on principle. Well, probably. Actually, he thought, he really couldn't say that with any certainty.

Which direction to take? Choose either Gryffindor or Slytherin, he would at very best always be watched by both major factions, perhaps always hunted.

To be Lord Peverell gained him freedom from that, but forfeited the possibility of rights at Hogwarts, rights he could not yet name, but only imagine.

Tom Riddle had spent seven years in Slytherin house. At first he had been unwelcome, but eventually he had come to lead it, even dominate it. Harry Potter had all those memories.

Harry himself had been a Slytherin for the brief time he'd attended Hogwarts. His time in the house had been miserable, but he'd liked what the Sorting Hat sang before his Sorting. The words about Slytherin had appealed.

He had not liked what the Hat sang about Gryffindor … "brave at heart", "daring", and "nerve" all seemed the same thing.

And yet, Fate had implied that magical power was intimately related to the wizard or witch's experiences. Harry Potter, and Tom Riddle, had only the experiences of Slytherin house and what that life meant. Choosing it would probably not help him. It would not be a path to growth. If anything, it seemed to be a path to stagnation.

And, he realized he felt a distinct thrill for the prospect of taking the Gryffindor lordship. The seat had not been held in centuries; British wizarding society had lost track of the line. Probably they believed it gone. Harry knew that Tom Riddle had never given it a thought.

But the higher powers had known.

"What do you really want from me," Harry asked suddenly, wanthing a diversion

"We are intervening," Death said simply. "You will be the first to reap the benefit, though you will have tasks. You must save Ginny Weasley; that will help you save yourself from Albus Dumbledore."

"Is the Weasley girl important to you?" Harry asked, his voice betraying more than a hint of suspicion.

"Only in that her death enabled your incarceration under false circumstances. Further importance of her to you would all be in your hands," Death replied.

Harry found this phrasing curious, but decided not to ask. It might mean many things, or nothing at all.

There was in his mind an obviously much bigger question. "Won't people wonder how an eleven year-old can be on the Wizengamot?"

"Humans will not realize it when the change happens," Death began; "for we are altering time," Fate continued the thought.

For a while there was silence. At length, Death said, "It is Gringotts that keeps the books. The goblins will know first. They track all the lines, per treaties with the Wizengamot."

"The goblins won't talk," Fate said. As if that needed saying, Harry thought.

Harry could almost hear the unasked question, "Will you?" But there was more to the question than just "talk". It wasn't really about talking; it was about making it plain that something had changed, it was about making his identity plain and known; it was about being indiscreet. They wanted to know if he could be clever, if he could be capable; they wanted to know if he could be worthy.

He decided himself that he was going to do everything in his power to prove that he was.

But he thought he still needed more time. "If Parseltongue is the gift of the Slytherin bloodline, are there gifts for the Peverell or Gryffindor lines," he asked, only partially interested.

"The Peverells have always been gifted at Occlumency and Legilimency both, but no more so than Tom Riddle was, and you already have all of his potential at those arts," Fate answered.

"And for Gryffindor?" Harry asked again, when neither seemed willing to say more.

But neither entity responded. After a minute it seemed clear to Harry that neither would. Was this a challenge for him? Did they want him to commit to the Gryffindor lordship, so that he could find out? Or was there perhaps no gift to that line at all, and they wanted him to take a risk by taking that chance, and prove that he had that sort of boldness?

What was in it for them?

What was in it for them, Harry realized he needed to know. So far as they had told him or that he could guess, the only thing they really needed for him to do was ensure Tom Riddle's death, or die in the attempt. They had told him little regarding his brother, nothing regarding his parents, and given him no direction either way about Dumbledore. Though to be fair, he had not asked anything about his parents. Maybe they would have given him direction there if he had.

Even if he thought he needed to know more, it was becoming apparent they weren't going to tell him more.

And eventually he thought he'd had the answer all along. It was all about choices and it had always been all about choices and it always was going to be all about choices. And his choice, the only real choice, was to deny the people he hated something they'd desperately want if they had known or even thought they could get it.

"Gryffindor," he said aloud, feeling a weight settle in his stomach like he had eaten a huge meal in one gulp.

Fate smiled, or seemed to smile. "It is agreed." She sounded like she might be pleased by his choice. Or perhaps that was all in his mind.

The ring appeared on his right ring finger and he spent some time looking at it. The stone was a large ruby set in brilliant yellow gold. He took the ring off and saw that the title Lord Gryffindor was engraved in the metal, on the inside of the band. There were no other adornments; it was by appearances a very simple ring.

Well, he supposed, he probably had to be alive for any other benefits to be conferred. Without hesitation, he slipped the ring back on and willed it to disappear. And because he willed it, it did.

And it was then that he felt a massive pull of gravity or something else, some attractive force, as if he had activated a portkey of immense power. He was being pulled back, or thrown back. He was going back. Without further warnings, without further orders, without further time to think or to plot or to plan.

But maybe that was best; maybe that was what they wanted.

The next thing he knew was that he had awakened to near-total darkness; there was just a sliver of light below him. He could feel the presence of the ring on his finger; he could feel all his magic, bright and strong and waiting to be used; he could feel the slightly stale air that made him instantly know that he was back in the cupboard under the stairs. He could feel nothing of Tom Riddle in his mind or in his soul, and he knew that the Horcrux connection really was gone.

A glance up at the ceiling above him confirmed where he was, as did the overall tiny amount of space.

If the entities had told the truth, it was now in the last days of July in the year 1991. Probably within hours his aunt would knock on the door of his cupboard, sharply telling him to get up, probably to mind the bacon. The summer solstice Wizengamot meeting would have been a month before. He had never learned if anything significant had happened there.

He would have a month before Hogwarts. Well, about five weeks to be more accurate. Probably only days before he met the Potters, including his brother. All of whom he already deeply resented at best. He'd have to be careful to hide that.

The winter solstice Wizengamot meeting would be about five months ahead. The Gryffindor seat would activate then, and he'd have to be at the meeting, or have a proxy there. And finding any proxy would be difficult with this little time, especially one he could trust.

What could he do with any of these lengths of time?

One way or another, he needed to be ready.

No, scratch that thought, he decided. It was the world that needed to be ready for him.

{Games}

Author's Note: Authors put notes in their stories.