A/N: I've had writer's block for many years now and this fic has been my attempt to work through the block. I am aware this as far from my best work as I can get. It's full of cliches and tropes, nor does it do anything new or interesting with them. I really can't handle any criticism at this time so please be gentle with me if you comment. I know how bad this fic is but I'm posting it anyway at the recommendation of some friends. I hope it will improve over time as my writing becomes better the more I practice. There's especially a lot of shippy stuff and romance with very little plot progression in the beginning of the fic but it does eventually turn into an actual plot so hang in there. Thanks!

"Ah Mr. Potter, please come in and take a seat, we've been expecting you."

Harry didn't have a clue what was going on or how he'd ended up in this strange man's office. The last thing remembered was…but no that couldn't be right, it wasn't possible! Still, Harry found himself oddly compelled to obey and so sat down in one chair while the man sat in the other.

"I've looked over your file, Mr. Potter and I must say things do not look good."

"Er sorry?" Harry offered, just as baffled as ever.

"It's certainly no fault of yours, clearly you have been failed by so many people in your life and with a burden such as yours to carry it's all the more egregious."

"Excuse me but can I ask what's going on, where am I?" He cut in before he could get any more confused.

"Oh no, Mr. Potter please accept my apologies! I got completely carried away as usual. I haven't explained anything. How shall I break it you…" The man tapped his chin thoughtfully before flatly stating, "You're dead."

Harry did a double take. "W-whaaat, but I can't be-" He gulped unable to get the word out.

The man nodded at him solemnly. "Don't worry the shock will wear off in time, always does."

"But how?" He asked, surprised that he didn't remember how he had died or that he was even dead. He thought felt solid enough, and what kind of afterlife took place in an ordinary office like this one?

"Give it a minute, it'll come to you. Think back to what you last recall."

"I remember swimming in a lake, trying to retrieve something I believe. Then the locket I was wearing choked me and" Suddenly it all came flooding back to him and he gasped heavily as if still underwater.

"There it is."

"You're saying I drowned?! But I can't be dead—the horcruxes—Voldemort—I'm the only one who can defeat him!" Harry suddenly felt sick.

"Yes, you can see the problem clearly. That's good. It'll make going forward from here much easier on you.

"Good?!" Harry exploded in anger. How could this man sit here so calmly when Voldemort had effectively won? "I've failed the entire world—all my friends—Hermione—" He felt himself choke up at the very thought of her. He had left her all alone, in danger, certainly to a horrible fate now that Voldemort had won.

"Oh no need to worry, Mr. Potter, your dear Hermione is here too."

"What?" It wasn't clicking in his mind yet.

"She's dead too." Harry stared at the man blankly, uncomprehending.

"No" He moaned, painfully.

"She woke up, wandered outside and dove in after you. I'm afraid she too, drowned in the lake that night."

Harry couldn't believe what he was hearing, it seemed like a nightmare. Slowly a thought formed in his mind and though it didn't bring him much comfort, he couldn't help thinking that at least she could not be captured and tortured by death eaters without him there to fight by her side. At least we'll be together.

The man smiled at Harry as if guessing his thoughts. "You see, things have certainly gone terribly wrong here, but all that can be mended in time."

"But how?" Harry wondered aloud.

"I'm very glad you asked! You see you have a destiny to fulfill, you weren't supposed to die now, this should never have happened. But now that it has, the fates have offered you a second chance at life."

Harry stared in disbelief. "You mean…" He didn't dare hope but he had to ask it. "You'll let me go back, back to being alive I mean?"

"Yes."

"Just like that?" At first a wave of relief washed over him but then a twinge of bitterness hit him. Why was he being given the impossible, to come back from death, when so many of the people he had cared about were lost to him forever. Cedric, Sirius, even his own parents and many more that had lost their lives in the war. And further still, he did not think he could bear to go back now that Hermione was dead too.

"Well not quite. You won't be sent back to where you were. No no, that won't do at all. If things continue the way they are now, the world will still be doomed even after Voldemort's defeat."

"What do you mean?"

"The wizarding world was long corrupted before Tom Riddle and while he certainly made things worse, his death won't completely do away with the many problems the magical society is wracked with. No I'm afraid, it would only lead to another dark wizard rising up and taking his place a few years later."

"And so what needs to be done, is to send you back further, to your fourth year at Hogwarts in fact. It will give you more than enough time to find and destroy all the horcruxes for one. But it will also allow you to have a second chance, to make things right, both in the wizarding world at large, and your own life."

Harry felt hope swell within him. As strange as it would be to become fourteen again, to redo those years at Hogwarts, the thought of being able to go back to when Hermione, Sirius, Cedric and all the rest were alive, and prevent them from dying was too good to be true.

"I'll do it" He agreed.

"Excellent! I knew you would be more than willing to cooperate on this matter. Now before we send you back we must give you two gifts. The first of which is the gift of knowledge. Obviously going back just as you are now, you would know enough to make many great changes, however there are a few important matters you must be made aware of that will help even more."

The man then explained about Dumbledore's manipulation of Harry throughout his whole life, all in the name of the greater good. He explained that Harry himself was a horcrux and that Dumbledore expected him to willingly sacrifice his life to defeat Voldemort. The man pulled out a pensieve like object and showed a memory of a conversation of Snape and Dumbledore's further proving this to be true.

"Naturally the fates would not allow such a noble act to go unearned and would gladly return you to life for doing so, but what matters is that Dumbledore does not know this."

Harry remembered his conversation with Hermione in the Forest Of Dean, wondering if Dumbledore was truly a good man. Hermione had been adamant that he was, that he cared about Harry. But this new revelation made Harry fixedly decide that no, Dumbledore was not a good man. How could a good man raise a someone from infancy 'like a lamb for slaughter' as Snape himself had put it in the memory he had been shown?

Next the man explained the truth about Snape, that he was a double agent fighting for the side of light.

"But you see Mr. Potter, he was not doing this out of a recognition that his previous actions were wrong but for his own selfish ends. He was infatuated with your mother, I dare say obsessed. He rightly blamed himself for her death by relating the prophecy to Voldemort who then hunted her and your father down to kill them along with you. But Snape never cared about you or your father, the two people whom Lily loved most in the world. He was more than willing that you both had died while Lily lived. As you've seen first hand, he resents and hates you for living instead of her. Becoming a double agent for the side of light was doing the right thing for the wrong reasons."

Harry agreed with this quite easily. He had six years of memories to recall of Snape's treatment not only of him, but of Neville and Hermione too.

"This last subject will be a bit harder on you but it concerns the Weasleys."

"What about them?" Harry asked already feeling defensive.

"Well let me ask you this, how did you find your way onto the platform in your first year?"

This question threw Harry off, baffling him as to it's relevance in this conversation.

"Hagrid forgot to tell me but when I heard Mrs. Weasley-" Slowly it dawned on him.

"A little too convenient don't you think, Mr. Potter?"

"But why?"

"That's not the question. The question isn't why, it's who."

"Dumbledore."

"Now you're getting it. He wanted to make sure you made friends with a family who could influence you in the right way. The last thing he would want is for you to have ended up being influenced by someone like the Malfoy family."

Harry snorted at that last sentence. As if he could ever have become friends with someone like Draco. He'd already hated him before having even met the Weasleys.

"If it's some consolation, Ron didn't know any of this. His mother implored him to seek you out, something he was more than willing to do might I add, by sitting in the same compartment after Molly helped you find your way through. It turned out to be quite mistake on Dumbledore's part.

Ronald Weasley has some good in him, but he was not equipped with all his insecurities and weaknesses to handle a friendship with someone like you, not many would be. He who was always in the shadow of his brothers, always feeling inadequate, to befriend the boy who lived himself. Well you saw for yourself when your name came out of the goblet of fire. And again more recently, though this second time has proven to have fatal consequences."

Harry nodded understanding, Ron had let his jealousy get the better of him again, leaving him and Hermione when they needed him most during the hunt for Voldemort's horcruxes. He still felt a great deal of pain at the thought of his former best friend's actions.

This conversation about people he thought he could trust but had been manipulated by was beginning to drain him emotionally. Molly who had been like a mother to him, Ron his first ever friend and of course Dumbledore. Who could he trust if not them?

Hermione, came a small voice inside his head. She was the only one he could trust, for she had stayed by his til the very end. She had died for him.

"I'm sorry to have to have added an extra burden of knowledge like this, Mr. Potter but you needed to know before you went back."

"I understand" He replied, voice hoarse with emotion.

"Now for your second gift. Once you have gone back in time, you will have the ability to restore the memories of one person of your choosing. They will then have knowledge of everything that happened up to this current timeline even though you will essentially be creating a new one when you go back based on the changes you make."

Harry's first thought was to give this gift to Hermione but his thoughts soon became divided between her and Sirius. He couldn't decide on the spot like this, he would have to give it more time and consideration.

"Whenever you are ready to bestow this gift you need only focus on the person in question and say the incantation memini."

"One last thing I should mention. There are certain fixed points in time, things that must happen no matter what, that cannot be changed. Voldemort's resurrection is one of them. Whether it happens like the first time in the graveyard during the third task, is changeable but his coming back is not. Understand?"

"I think so" Harry replied, head swimming with information and revelations.

"Then it is time."

No sooner had the man said these words then Harry felt lightheaded, his vision went black and he felt as though he were slipping out of his chair, then he knew no more.