DEJA VU

Summary: Harry is in Dumbledore's office, after viewing Snape's memories and being made aware of her true destiny, when a wish allows her to go back to 1995, just before the third task in the Triwizard Tournament. She knows she has to die, she's ready for it, but she's going to save as many people as she can along the way. When she will stand in front of Voldemort for the last time she will have no regrets. 'No one has to die. No one but me'.

Pairing: FemHarry/Severus eventually.

Warnings: Female Harry Potter, Time Travel, Do-Over, Genderbending, Girl-Who-Lived, Alternate Canon, Canon Rewrite, Powerful!FemHarry, Smart!FemHarry, Survivor Guilt. Angst. Underage Sex (16 years old). Age Difference. Teacher/Student relationship. Older Man/Younger Woman. Time Travel to 1995.

A lot of this chapter is taken directly from chapter 34 of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'.

Also, I imagine FemHarry as looking like Danielle Campbell, only with emerald green eyes and curvier in the chest department.

Hope you like it. Read and Review!

Prologue

Hogwarts Castle – 2nd May 1998, Original Timeline

Finally, the truth. Lying with her face pressed into the dusty carpet of the office where she had once thought she was learning the secrets of victory, Harry understood at last that she was not supposed to survive. Her job was to walk calmly into Death's welcoming arms. Along the way, she was to dispose of Voldemort's remaining links to life, so that when at last she flung herself across Voldemort's path, and did not raise a wand to defend herself, the end would be clean, and the job that ought to have been done in Godric's Hollow would be finished: Neither would live, neither could survive.

She felt her heart pounding fiercely in her chest. How strange that in her dread of death, it pumped all the harder, valiantly keeping her alive. But it would have to stop, and soon. Its beats were numbered. How many would there be time for, as she rose and walked through the castle for the last time, out into the grounds and into the forest?

Terror washed over her as she lay on the floor, with that funeral drum pounding inside her. Would it hurt to die? All those times she had thought that it was about to happen and escaped, she had never really thought of the thing itself: her will to live had always been so much stronger than her fear of death. Yet it did not occur to her now to try to escape, to outrun Voldemort. It was over, she knew it, and all that was left was the thing itself: dying.

If she could only have died on that summer's night when she had left number four, Privet Drive, for the last time, when the noble phoenix-feather wand had saved her! If she could only have died like Hedwig, so quickly she would not have known it had happened! Or if she could have launched herself in front of a wand to save someone she loved. . . .

She envied even her parents' deaths now. This cold-blooded walk to her own destruction would require a different kind of bravery. She felt her fingers trembling slightly and made an effort to control them, although no one could see her; the portraits on the walls were all empty.

Slowly, very slowly, she sat up, and as she did so she felt more alive and more aware of her own living body than ever before. Why had she never appreciated what a miracle she was, brain and nerve and bounding heart? It would all be gone . . . or at least, she would be gone from it. Her breath came slow and deep, and her mouth and throat were completely dry, but so were her eyes.

Dumbledore's betrayal was almost nothing. Of course there had been a bigger plan; Harry had simply been too foolish to see it, she realized that now. She had never questioned her own assumption that Dumbledore wanted her alive. Now she saw that her life span had always been determined by how long it took to eliminate all the Horcruxes. Dumbledore had passed the job of destroying them to her, and obediently she had continued to chip away at the bonds tying not only Voldemort, but herself, to life! How neat, how elegant, not to waste any more lives, but to give the dangerous task to the girl who had already been marked for slaughter, and whose death would not be a calamity, but another blow against Voldemort.

And Dumbledore had known that Harry would not duck out, that she would keep going to the end, even though it was her end, because he had taken trouble to get to know her, hadn't he?

Dumbledore knew, as Voldemort knew, that Harry would not let anyone else die for her now that she had discovered it was in her power to stop it. The images of Fred, Lupin, and Tonks lying dead in the Great Hall forced their way back into her mind's eye, and for a moment she could hardly breathe: Death was impatient. . . .

But Dumbledore had overestimated her. She had failed: The snake survived. One Horcrux remained to bind Voldemort to the earth, even after Harry had been killed. True, that would mean an easier job for somebody. She wondered who would do it. . . . Ron and Hermione would know what needed to be done, of course. . . . That would have been why Dumbledore wanted her to confide in two others . . . so that if she fulfilled her true destiny a little early, they could carry on. . . .

Like rain on a cold window, these thoughts pattered against the hard surface of the incontrovertible truth, which was that she must die. I must die. It must end.

Ron and Hermione seemed a long way away, in a far-off country; she felt as though she had parted from them long ago. There would be no good-byes and no explanations, she was determined of that. This was a journey they could not take together, and the attempts they would make to stop her would waste valuable time. She looked down at the battered gold watch she had received on her seventeenth birthday. Nearly half of the hour allotted by Voldemort for her surrender had elapsed.

She stood up. Her heart was leaping against her ribs like a frantic bird. Perhaps it knew it had little time left, perhaps it was determined to fulfill a lifetime's beats before the end.

She just wished…but what was the point of wishing now?

Yet her regrets weighted on her mind like a backpack full of rocks on her shoulders. How could she walk calmly to her death if all she could think about was everyone who had died to keep her alive for a little while longer? And what about those who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time? All those deaths…for nothing, absolutely nothing. Cedric, Sirius, Dumbledore, Dobby, Moody…Snape, who had spent the last seven years with only one goal in mind: keeping her alive.

All the people who had died tonight during the battle…Remus and Tonks who had left their only son an orphan. How many more orphans would this second wizarding war create before it was all over? How many families lost one of their own like the Weasleys? And what about those she had never even met? Was their death less important simply because she didn't know them personally?

If only she had known it earlier what she was supposed to do…how many people would be spared if she had known about the horcruxes years before? If she had only destroyed the Horcruxes before, if she had only sacrificed herself before…Just because she was destined to die, it didn't mean other people had to die as well.

Too little too late – always too late.

She was ready to die. She was…and yet she wished she had done things differently.

If only she had killed Nagini before tonight, Snape would never have died in that horrible way. And if she hadn't asked Cedric to take the Triwizard Cup with her, Cedric would be alive now.

Every single death, tonight and in the last three years – ever since Voldemort came back to life – was on her, it was her fault. She was the only one who could end it. She just wished she had done it sooner.

No one has to die. No one but me.

What was one single death if she could save thousands? Nothing, absolutely nothing.

Perhaps, if she had really applied herself to learn Occlumency, Sirius wouldn't have died. Perhaps he would have been alive and free now.

Perhaps, if she had never gone to the Ministry at all, Lucius Malfoy would not be arrested and therefore Draco wouldn't be forced to become a Death Eater. That would meant that Narcissa wouldn't have to ask Snape to swear an Unbreakable Vow and therefore be forced to kill Dumbledore when Draco couldn't do it.

And if Harry had also applied herself to her studies more, tried more, maybe Snape would have despised her less, even learn to respect her maybe. Harry had never realised it until now but having never been able to earn Snape's respect had hurt, even more after finding out that Snape and the Half-Blood Prince were the same person. She had hated him, oh yes, but a part of her had always wished Snape would look at her, not with disdain but with respect, if not affection. And now, finding out what Snape had done...she wished it even more.

But Snape was dead and she would be dead soon as well. What was the point in wishing for anything now?

And yet she couldn't stop thinking of the what ifs.

She wished she could go back to before the third task in the Triwizard Tournament. She would do things differently then. She would bring the sword of Gryffindor with her and kill Nagini with it. She would not ask Cedric to take the Cup with her so he wouldn't die.

There was no point, though, wishing for something that could never be.

Time to die, Harry.

She was just about to leave the office when something caught her attention from the corner of her eye. A cabinet door – not the one containing the pensieve but another one – was slightly ajar and something inside of it was…glowing?

Harry came closer, unable to resist her curiosity. What she found inside was…another pensieve? But no, this one was different from the one she had just left. It still looked like some kind of basin but it wasn't made of stone but some kind of black glass-like material. It was perfectly polished and shone when the light hit it. Harry thought it could have been obsidian but she wasn't sure. Engraved on the black surface were tiny runes she didn't recognize, looking nothing like the runes she had studied in class. Inside the runes there was a strange blue liquid. It didn't look like the silvery substance memories were made of. This looked completely liquid, almost transparent except for the strange blue tint. That was the source of the glowing.

Harry knew that she was wasting time. That she needed to go, do her duty and save the wizarding world; that she couldn't stay there any longer, especially snooping around things that could very well be dangerous. But there was something about this thing that was…calling to her.

That was probably another reason why it wasn't a good idea for her to even be close to that thing.

Like usual, though, her recklessness and her curiosity won out and she extended her hand forward. Her palm touched the black surface and immediately the runes started to glow blue like the liquid inside the basin.

She felt her palm burning but she couldn't move the hand away from the strange occurrence. Then a peculiar, warm wind rose up around the room, moving objects around and throwing things on the floor. Harry was frozen in place, unable to move away and knowing that she had set something in motion and terrified to know what.

Then the wind rose higher until she felt like it was a living thing, squeezing her chest and blocking her lungs. The pain in her hand became unbearable and she cried out but the noise of the wind was so strong in her ears that she couldn't even hear her own voice.

Then, everything quieted. The wind stopped, the pain in her hand was gone and Harry found that she could move. She immediately retracted her hand and observed her palm. Something had been carved on her hand. It was black like a tattoo and it looked like a circle. However, she could see the head of a snake biting its tongue and knew immediately that what was in her palm wasn't a simple circle but an ouroboros. She frowned, confused and scared.

When nothing happened for long minutes she breathed a sigh of relief but then, both the strange black pensieve and her own palm started to glow blue once again. In a second that burning sensation that she had felt on her palm was back but it soon extended all over her body. The pain was immeasurable. Harry felt like every single particle in her body was tearing itself from the other. She looked as her own hand started to disintegrate in front of her, then her arm. She screamed until she had a mouth to use and then everything went black.

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