Author's Notes: Wow! Thank you, everyone! I'm glad you liked the first chapter so much. It did come out better than I thought it would. So did this one, I think. As always, constructive criticism and Brit-picking are welcome.

I probably won't be able to update this fast most of the time, but might as well use the time while I've got it. And especially because I think this is going to be quite a bit longer than I originally envisioned; I had a lot of new plot ideas last night.

Responses to some specific questions and comments at the end of the chapter.

The Best of All Possible Worlds

Chapter Two: Godric's Hollow

"Harry! Stop playing, and come in right now!"

The voice woke him. Well, either the voice or the pain stabbing through his body. Harry actually wasn't sure which.

Carefully, he sat up, holding his head and panicking for a moment when he couldn't feel his glasses. Then he located them clutched in his right hand, along with his wand, and slipped them on. They were almost completely dry, which puzzled him until he looked up and around him.

He caught his breath. The sky above him was bright in the aftermath of a storm, clouds just breaking up and trailing away towards the west. He could feel the pain from the lightning strike easing just at the sight of it, or so he told himself. It was ridiculously sentimental, but then, people had been telling him he had been that, since Sirius's death.

"Harry!"

Harry looked up swiftly. A woman stood in the doorway of a neat, trim house not too far away, looking directly at him and shaking her head.

"I told you to come in and eat your breakfast an hour ago," she said. "A fine morning to fly, but you'll have plenty of those once you're back at Hogwarts. I know how much you're looking forward to being on the Quidditch team again." Her voice took on a slightly wheedling tone. "Won't that be better than flying around in the morning and giving me such a scare?"

Harry couldn't breathe. He knew her face. It looked out from most of the wizarding photographs in the album Hagrid had given him. Eyes like his own, and a gentle, patient smile… it was his mum. It had to be.

Tears filling his eyes, Harry started to stand up, and then tangled himself in the folds of his Invisibility Cloak. His twitching limbs didn't help, either. He went sprawling back on the ground, grinning sheepishly. That's an impression I always wanted to make on Mum, like I'd just fallen off my broomstick.

Then his worry abruptly deepened. I'm still under the Cloak. How did she see me?

"Coming, Mum!"

Harry slowly turned his head, afraid of what he would see—but he wouldn't have been able to stop if Voldemort was in front of him threatening to kill Ron and Hermione.

A boy was just skidding to a stop in the grass, after an obviously long swoop down from that cloudy bright sky. He dropped his Firebolt and ran towards the house. He passed right by Harry, and gave him an excellent glimpse of black hair, green eyes, a face that was his own face.

Harry tried to curl in on himself, but he still shook and couldn't do that. He just lay and stared at the sky instead, while Lily scolded the other Harry for his failure to listen to her, not packing his trunk properly, coming back so late from his adventures that they had to Apparate to Hogsmeade this morning, and a million other minor injustices. The other Harry complained as loudly, but their voices seemed to fade from Harry's ears as he lay there.

His thoughts boiled around, formless, until they found one overwhelming one that was enough to drive him to his feet.

What is going on?

Carefully, trying not to draw any attention from inside the house, Harry forced himself back to his feet. He limped and shuffled towards the nearest window. He didn't know if he wanted to look at his mum and himself—his other self—again so soon, but he didn't have any other idea about what to do. He couldn't walk away from the house and expect to find anyone who would tell him.

Maybe I'm dead, he speculated as he leaned his chin on the windowsill. But I never knew there would be two of me in heaven, or wherever I am. He winced as his muscles spasmed again. And I don't think heaven is supposed to hurt this much.

He found he had an excellent view of the other Harry, since Lily's back was turned while she bustled around a shelf, arranging books. The other Harry was downing eggs and pumpkin juice with an enthusiasm that made Harry's stomach rumble. His other self glanced up briefly, then shrugged and went back to his breakfast.

Harry stared at himself. There was everything, absolutely everything. He moved that way. He ate that way. He wouldn't have known for certain that he held his fork that way, but watching from the outside, he could recognize his own gestures. And there was no odd sense of disorientation, either, or at least not a huge one. He felt rather dizzy watching himself eat, but he didn't feel as if he were part of the other boy. He was quite clearly Harry Potter.

The problem was, so was he.

Then the other Harry's fringe flopped forward in his eyes, and he pushed it out of them with an annoyed sound. Harry's own fingers flew up and touched his forehead, so hard that he rapped himself in the face with his wand. He winced, but didn't take his eyes from the one difference he'd been able to spot.

This other Harry had no lightning-shaped scar.

Harry put his head down on the windowsill, closed his eyes, and drew in a deep breath. His thoughts were boiling again, and he wasn't entirely sure what to do about them.

He was himself.

So was that boy.

His Mum was alive, and the other Harry had no scar. That meant…

Voldemort didn't attack us? Harry thought dazedly. Could he have chosen Neville instead? But I know he didn't choose him. He chose me. Dumbledore said so. And—

His thoughts all blew away as something barked sharply to the left, near the Firebolt. Harry turned and saw a lean black dog bounding across the grass towards the house, wagging its tail furiously.

There was no mistaking him. Harry put his head down, closing his eyes and telling himself that he was brave, he had faced Voldemort, he was not going to make a fool of himself by crying.

The dog barked again, and Harry made a fool of himself. He drew his head up, wiping away the tears, and moved around the house just in time to see Lily answer the door. She rolled her eyes indulgently at the sight of the dog, but held up her hand when the dog wagged his tail again and tried to jump past her.

"You know the rules, Padfoot," she said. "No mud in the house."

The dog clearly sulked at her. Harry stared. He'd never seen Sirius do that without an undertone of brooding.

"Change back, at least," said Lily, her lips twitching in that same resigned smile she'd used when watching Harry—no, her son—come down from his broom.

The dog changed into a man. And Harry reeled back, clutching at the side of the house and wishing he could just take off his Invisibility Cloak so he didn't have to keep stumbling over it.

Sirius wasn't lean. He wasn't haggard. He looked well-rested, and his hair had only a little gray in it. He had lines around his mouth, the same way that Harry's Sirius had, but these were clearly lines of laughter and not the grim scowling lines that Sirius had worn in Harry's own world. And, most different of all, his eyes shone with a deep, contented joy, as though he had never lost twelve years of his life to monsters that ate away at his memories.

"That better?" he asked.

Lily nodded. "But I have to ask you not to distract Harry," she said. "We have to Apparate in this morning, and if you take Harry out flying, I'll never get him down again in time to leave."

"Would I do that?"

Lily just snorted at him, as if to say that the question wasn't worth answering, and then turned and called back into the house, "Harry! Your godfather's here to say goodbye to you!"

Harry turned away. He just couldn't watch this.

~*~

Later that morning, Lily was rushing around the house doing a last-minute check of everything, Sirius had changed back and bounded off somewhere, and Harry was fidgeting outside the house, ready to leave.

No! Not me! The other me! Harry shook his head rapidly enough to dizzy himself. I have to keep us separate, or I'll go mad. Well, maybe I'm mad already, but I've got to try this.

He took a deep breath and carefully approached the other Harry, not letting his Invisibility Cloak swish and drag too much. This was the only ruse he'd been able to think of that might have some chance of succeeding. He had sneaked into the house earlier and stolen a few leftover bits of scrambled eggs, but even then, Lily had nearly bumped into him. He'd never realized just how fast his Mum would be.

I still don't know. This has to be a dream, or a hallucination, or…something.

But it didn't appear to be ending, so Harry thought he might as well try some way to make it more bearable. If even one person knew that he was here, he might have help in figuring out what had happened.

He stopped in front of the other Harry and stared at him. He supposed he'd found one other way in which this one was different from him; his face was less tired than Harry knew he looked, given the way that Ron and Hermione had commented on it endlessly.

A wave of homesickness struck him, and he shivered. I'm going to get there. I'll see them again. I have to believe that.

He drew in his breath and spoke in Parseltongue. "Good morning."

The other Harry jumped and stared around in every direction, including the right one, with wide eyes.

Not the best reaction, but then, the boy hadn't known that anyone else was there. Harry didn't want to take off the Cloak until he was absolutely sure that this Harry wouldn't just run into the house screaming for his mother. He waited until his other self's face turned in something like the right direction and hissed, "Sorry if I startled you. I just wanted to know what year this is, and if you ever heard of a wizard called—"

The other Harry wailed and bolted towards the house, yelling, "Mum! Mum! There's a snake in the garden!"

Harry blinked after him, then reached out and hooked himself around the waist. The other Harry sprawled on the ground, panting in fear. Harry stooped over him, clutching his wand and fighting the urge to hex him. Probably not the best thing, to hex myself. I don't know what would happen.

"Will you just hold still?" he hissed. "I wanted to speak to you in Parseltongue because I didn't want you running and making a scene like that. If I spoke in English, she would hear my voice and know something was wrong."

"It's an anaconda, Mum!" yelled the other Harry, his voice rising to the edge of panic. "It's got hold of me and it's hissing at me and I can't see it!" He hit the edge of hysteria with those words.

"I'm not an anaconda," said Harry in exasperation. "Will you just calm down and listen to me for a minute?"

"He cannot underssstand you, human sssnake."

Harry glanced sharply to the left. A tiny green snake hissed at him in amusement from the shelter of a thick clump of grass. "You are the only one here who can underssstand my wordsss. It hasss been long sssince there wasss sssuch a one. You will ssstay and talk?"

Harry looked hopelessly back at the other Harry, who was trembling, and then let him go. He immediately rolled away and ran inside the house.

Harry sat down with a thump in the grass, and wondered what he was going to do now.

"Ssstay and ssspeak with me," the snake suggested.

Harry sighed dismally and waited while Lily comforted her son, telling him there had been no invisible anaconda, that he probably tripped over a branch and heard one of the snakes hissing, that no, this wasn't the right kind of climate for Runespoors and there was nothing out there to threaten him.

What am I going to do now?

Harry stood and shook his head, draping the Invisibility Cloak firmly back over himself. Go to Hogwarts, I suppose. If anyone can help me, it's this world's version of Dumbledore. Maybe he can tell me why this me has no scar, and why my Mum's alive, and Sirius, and why this other me is such a—such a prat!

Eventually, Lily calmed the other Harry down, and brought him back out into the garden, where she shrank his Firebolt for him. Then she ordered him to stand close to her and hold on while she Apparated.

Harry took a deep breath and grabbed her other arm while she was concentrating, hoping he wouldn't get splinched.

Oddly enough, his mind was on another thing as they vanished.

I wonder where Dad is?

_____________________

Tanydwr: Thanks for the offer! So far, I've just been rewording in places where I don't know the British word, but I might ask for help if I can't avoid it.

Lil Miss Potter: I haven't read a lot of AU stories for a while now, but Yih's Mirror of Paradox is supposed to be rather good. I also like March Madness's Fugitive Prince and Becka's In Memory I (both these are darker).

Until next time!