A/N
Welcome to the first chapter of this story. It's been a while since I last did any writing so apologies if it's not great but this was an idea that got a bit stuck in my head so thought I would give it a go. Plus got to get used to FF formatting.
Chapters will be posted on an as and when basis, I don't have a schedule for this and write mostly for fun.

There are/will be some AU elements e.g. Hogwarts starts at 13

Read/Review/Enjoy

Harry Potter lay on his lumpy and uncomfortable bed, which was only marginally better than laying on the solid wood floor, watching the second-hand tick towards the twelve at the top. July thirty-first was a mere moment away now, meaning that it was nearly his birthday, his fifteenth to be precise.

"Happy Birthday" whispered Harry to himself once he saw the clock tick round to midnight.

Harry's thoughts drifted to his friends and what presents they may have got him, the thought still felt foreign to him. After all, he had only really celebrated his birthday two previous times, before that his relatives did their best to make sure it was one of the worst days of the year for Harry. The Dursleys, Harry's relatives for he refused to call them family, would often make sure they went on some trip and go out for an expensive dinner always without Harry. It wasn't until Harry went to Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry when he was thirteen did he finally meet people that he could call friends that had given him gifts for Christmas and his birthday.

You see Harry was a wizard, he could wave a magic wand, say the magic words and cause something truly magical to happen. He has been attending a school the past two years to learn more about magic, and if Harry was being truly honest magic still amazed and scared him. Magic seemed to be able to do anything that you could think of if, potions to bewitch the mind, people turning into animals and a giant thousand-year-old kill you with a look snake were some instances that came to Harry's mind.

The last part of that list was a more recent addition, the scar on his forearm still sometimes dully pulsed with pain. Harry's second year somehow ended with him killing the thousand-year-old, and at least fifty-foot long basilisk, with a sword of all things. Harry still couldn't believe it, he wasn't sure if he was lucky to be able to escape his somewhat frequent brushes with death or unlucky that he ended up in those situations to start with.

Before Harry could further ruminate on his luck a blinding light filled the room. Startled, Harry jumped out of his bed, grabbed his wand from under his pillow before wildly looking around his room for the cause of the flash. His eyes were flicking around the room, he could hear his heartbeat, wondering if the flash was a spell and he was being attacked or if it was something else. Running over to the window and looking out Harry could see that there was nothing out of the ordinary, another quick look around the room found nothing of note. Except, that is a thin deep red book kept closed with a small brass clasp and gold lettering on the front sitting innocently at the end of his bed. Harry was sure it wasn't there earlier, he was also sure he didn't own any books that looked even remotely like it.

Walking back towards his bed, wand pointed towards the book resting upon it in case it might suddenly sprout arms and legs before attacking him. As Harry neared the book he could start to read what was printed on the front in the dim light of the moon.

"The Encyclopedia of H. … what?" disbelief in his tone, Harry read the title of the book "Why the hell is there a book about me? And where the hell did it come from?" another quick look around the small room and Harry still couldn't understand how this book came to be here. Even with Harry's, admittedly small, knowledge of magic, books didn't just randomly appear in a flash of light, except that appeared to be exactly what had happened.

There was no one about, no owl to have delivered the book, no anything that could have caused the book to appear here. Deciding that caution was the better part of valour Harry attempted to open the clasp on the book with his wand, with very little success. Hoping that if he could read a page from it something in the bizarre situation might start to make sense. An odd prank from the twins perhaps would somehow explain it but something told Harry that it wasn't, something about this book felt familiar despite him having never seen it before.

Deciding to throw caution to the wind, and wing it like he seemed to do with everything else in his life, Harry slowly reached over to the book and undid the clasp. A short stabbing feeling like a needle being poked into his thumb was the only warning he got before his vision began to twist and distort before he found himself inside a similar but different room to the one he was just in.

"Sorry about that, I know we don't have the best experience with mysterious books" came a deep voice with a chuckle from behind Harry. Lifting his wand as he quickly turned Harry came face to face with himself, or so he thought, a much older looking version of himself. The lightning bolt scar visible on his forehead, although it appeared to be long faded now resembling a normal scar and not the angry red that Harry's often was. He was dressed in a black wizard's rob,e but the whole scene had no colour to it now that Harry had a chance to look around, and the edge around the person appeared to be fuzzy like it was out of focus. The messy mop of hair on his head only further confused Harry, either he really was an older version of him or someone had done a really good job of imagining what he might look like in thirty years.

"Who…?" Harry started before being interrupted by… his older self?

"Now you must be wondering who I am and before you ask I can't hear you, like Riddle's diary this is just a memory" Harry couldn't stop the shiver that went through his body at the thought of the last book that had managed to bring him into a memory. "Simply put I'm you but older, about sixty years to be precise, wonderful thing magic" both Harrys couldn't help but smile at this. "And if this worked and we're lucky then you should get this book sometime around our fifteenth birthday" younger Harry couldn't believe it, how could this be a memory from the future, unless time travel was real. Harry hadn't seen any magic that could do that yet but that didn't mean that it couldn't happen, after all, Harry didn't think someone could just turn into an animal when they wanted but Professor McGonagall had quickly disproved that idea. "Now focus, shut up and sit down" came the voice of elder Harry interrupting his younger counterpart's wandering thoughts, younger Harry couldn't help but comply with the authoritative tone of his older self.

"Where to begin? This must be the 10th or so time I've tried to get this memory right." older Harry let out a deep sigh "This book is everything I can remember about everyone I know about and all the knowledge you need to be a great wizard. Use it, learn from it."

Older Harry looked towards young Harry for the first time and his brightly burning emerald eyes, the only thing that was in colour in the whole memory, pierced him with staggering intensity.

"Become great Harry. Protect those you love with everything you have like I know you will" the intensity in his eyes seemed to fade, like a man lost in thought or past memories. "Do a better job than I did, be better than I am" with the end of his short speech Harry found himself back in his room laying on the floor taking large, gasping breaths.

Harry didn't want to believe that this book was somehow from the future that he had found a way to send it back. Something told Harry that this was exactly what had happened, will happen? Time was weird Harry decided before shaking his head. The only way Harry could describe it was like when he got his wand, that it just felt right, that he could trust it, that it wasn't some elaborate prank from the twins.

Seeing that the latch was no longer keeping the book shut. Harry decided to attempt opening it and hoped that he wasn't sucked into another memory. Gryffindors charge forward after all. The first page had no title but plenty of text, 'I've come this far" Harry thought as he started to read the page

To prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is real here are two random facts.

We once got offered a cig from an older kid, took it, inhaled too deeply, got laughed at and decided never again. Before we went to Hogwarts we had a crush on a girl called Daisy Turner because she always smiled at us when we came into class and we thought her blonde hair looked really soft.

We never told anyone those things so should help you believe this is what it says on the tin.

I could have explained more in the memory, but they are often fickle things, so I decided to make it long enough that you could tell it was me, or us, but short enough that hopefully it doesn't get too messed up.

The first thing you should do is write to McGonagall as soon as you can, drop divination and take up ancient runes. Divination is only good if you have a gift for it, before you ask we don't. Ancient Runes is amazing and might help you in more ways than one.

Once you return to Hogwarts change the book to the training page and follow it. This is the only thing I will beg you to do, even if you never use the rest of the book just follow the training guide. It could save your life at some point or even better some you love.

Now I'm not going to write much about us or more accurately me. I made this book to make you not me, to make you better than me. There are things I've done I'm not proud of and many more things I wish I could have done better. I hope you use this book to see what people could become, just remember that experiences often define people just as much if not more than circumstances of their birth.

At the time of my writing this Magic, as wonderful as it is, mourns the death and destruction brought to this world. Many magical creatures, plants and people have died in the passing years and I hope by writing this I can stop it.

If you ever need the motivation to train, to push yourself harder, just remember my final words to describe myself and why I'm doing this.

I am Harry James Potter, Husband to a murdered wife, a friend to piles of corpses and ashes, I stand victorious and I stand alone.

I have done this to stop you from making the mistakes I did, to make you strong enough to protect those you love like I couldn't, to make you better than I could ever be.

The last paragraph really struck Harry this wasn't his future self trying something out or to fix a small mistake he regretted his whole life. No this was a desperate man's final gambit and Harry wondered just what the hell had happened or was going to happen in the coming years. Harry had been staring at the page for a few minutes now, contemplating what could have happened before he suddenly noticed a single line of text on the inside cover.

"Place thumb here" Harry read aloud, thinking what's the worst that could happen Harry placed his thumb over the text.

"Not again" Harry complained as he felt another shallow stab into his thumb. Bracing himself for the world to spin and to end up in another memory Harry was pleasantly surprised when instead all that happened is the blood on the page soaked into it before disappearing.

"Long-distance time travel is a terrible thing. I don't advise it" Harry couldn't help but blink at what appeared on the page before him. A drawn face had appeared on the page, a drawn face of his older self drawn in blood by the looks of it as well. A small started to appear on the face "Knew that lock would be worth it to see that look on your face". A small frown began to form on the face "our face? Meh time travel, don't think too hard about it"

"Wait. It's you from the memory? Me from the memory? Older me?" questioned Harry

"As I said, time travel is confusing. We really aren't geared up for the whole what will be is both is and was depending on how you look at it. Since this book is, was and will be without ever actually ever having been made since the time I made it no longer it exists so can it be a will be" book Harry said with a grin that quickly turned into a frown "Anyway, enough of that. I'm Harry, you but not you, something you will be while at the same time something that you will never be"

"Can you please stop that" moaned younger Harry beginning to feel a headache from all the talk of what is, was and will be getting too much

"Sorry" apologized book Harry

"What should I call you? And what are you?" asked younger Harry. Book Harry hummed in thought for a while before replying

"Just call me James. As for what I am, that is an imprint like the talking pictures at Hogwarts but not like that diary of riddles. I'm not getting out of here for a start"

"James it is, how bad did things get for you to do this?" Harry couldn't help but ask

"Bad, real bad, bad enough that I effectively ended magic in my timeline" James explained, Harry couldn't help but be slacked jawed at the thought of basically removing magic completely.

"How? Why?" was all that Harry could get out

"Quite easy once you know-how. Find somewhere with a load of ley lines overlapping, more the better, draw the power into a multi-layered runic array, cause a cascading failure in the outer layer which then compresses all the magic in it into the next layer which causes the ley line magic to be sucked into the next and repeat like sucking the worlds magic through a straw until you get to the last array where the real magic happens" James gave a quick wink to Harry at the use of the pun "so by my calculations before I did that it should have used about ninety-nine or more per cent of the worlds magic in one go. The 'why' is it takes a lot of magic to go back in time going up exponentially the further you go back and I wanted to go a long way back"

"I'm just going to pretend I understood that and then go study runes so I can make sure no one ever does what you just said" stated Harry

"Sounds good, now for what I can do I'm here to advise you, I wrote that little first page just in case you didn't unlock me and the memory was just to try to get you to read the first page. Think of me as like your older brother, dad, fun uncle, and both the devil and angel on your shoulders all rolled into one," said James with a grin

"So I should talk to you if I want to know anything about girls or what to do at school or if I need help with any sort of decision?" Harry questioned with a raised eyebrow wondering why his life seems to be so messed up that he now has a talking book that is apparently him from the future.

"Pretty much. Anyway, you should go to sleep, just shut the book and run your wand down the spine thinking about it turning into a necklace and it should turn into a necklace, tap it twice with your wand while thinking about it being a book to turn it back into a book," explained James. Anticipating what Harry was about to ask " Don't worry about me I won't notice anything once the book is shut until you open it again, like turning a tv off and on"

Thinking it was best to do as instructed Harry quickly closed the book and ran his wand down the spine thinking of it turning into a necklace. Before his eyes, the book quickly morphed into what Harry assumed was a quite expensive looking necklace. Putting the necklace on Harry started to get into his bed and was asleep not long after laying down.