Professor Dumbledore looked startled as the older Harry Potter's tale finished. Snape was trying to put on his best bored expression, but you could easily see the man was tense as well.
"Well, that is... rather unsettling" finally began the ancient headmaster, steepling his fingers. "It appears we severely underestimated the number of allies Voldemort managed to gather for the final battle".
"There's a bit more to it than that," - replied Harry - "Obviously, giving Voldemort what amounted to a free hand in Death Eater recruitment during my fifth year was pretty bad. But the biggest problem ended up being the fact that most of our allies during the Battle of Hogwarts were students. Students which all received abysmal training in defence." The Adult Potter wanted to also add something about impossible tasks given to teenagers by certain individuals, but decided to bring that up later. Dumbledore nodded, shot a look at his potions teacher, shook his head and continued after a moment.
"Before we get to thinking about how to prevent that outcome, let's discuss how you managed to make it here." This piqued older Harry's curiosity. Could Dumbledore know what he managed to screw up?
"Let me first address your concern about this being a, ah, as you put it, different universe, first..." The twinkling eyes returned, albeit so slightly. "That's correct and wrong at the same time." Harry blinked.
"How so, professor?"
"Well, let me tell you this, first; a couple years before you were born, the Order of Phoenix briefly considered using a ritual to bring someone from another reality into ours to help us deal with Voldemort."
Everyone, including Snape, gaped at that, even if he tried to hide it.
Dumbledore waved his hand. "Oh, nothing came out of it, don't worry. But, while thinking about it, we learned that while there is a lot of different rituals to summon someone, there's really only one to banish a person away..." That was true, Harry mused. The book he read contained ways to summon just about anybody... A hero, a friend, a mortal enemy... even a counterpart of someone you loved from another universe. There was distinctively no mention of sending those people back, however. As he was pondering this, Dumbledore continued.
"While sending someone away, you can't really set a destination, so the person just ends up in another, random universe, of which there's likely an infinite amount of. Thus, we wouldn't be able to bring the person we summoned home if he requested such." The headmaster smiled. "We considered it cruel to bring someone against their will here and force them to stay, so the idea was dropped."
Older Harry nodded. Indeed, being yanked across the multiverse by some vigilante group just to be asked for help in defeating a madman and offered no way back likely wouldn't sit well with most people. It actually seemed like an easy way to install another bitter dark lord in your reality.
"What's that got to do with anything?" - suddenly asked Younger Harry, who was now looking confused. Dumbledore turned to face him.
"Ah, well, you see... if we'd theorize that your older self mistakenly performed that banishing ritual on himself, it's extremely unlikely he'd actually end up in a universe as similar to his as this one seems to be. No, there's a far more likely scenario."
Both Harries' faces lit up in realization, before the time-traveller frowned.
"But then why did Mrs. Weasley stop the twins and Ron from getting me away from Surrey?"
"Ah, there's a very simple explanation for that," - Dumbledore smiled - "You see, your time-travelling endeavour likely ended up producing quite a bit of magical backlash. All it had to do was wake Molly up, who went to check on what was happening."
"But that was at night! I arrived in the morning!" said Harry, nonplussed by that answer. That was the moment Snape, who was quiet up to this point, decided to speak up.
"Potter, do you honestly think something like this was instantaneous on our end?" - he spat - "No, magic was likely leaking for hours before you were finally brought here."
Dumbledore nodded gravely. "I must say you're also extremely lucky you ended up near a magical establishment where the backlash was somewhat hidden. If you landed in some muggle area, you'd likely have the ministry and the unspeakables ready to arrest and interview you the second you appeared." Harry shuddered at that thought. He'd probably be leaking Veritaserum through his pores by now if that were to happen.
Snape spoke up again.
"Still, I don't find it that likely this dunderhead managed to do the impossible and travel so far back..."
"Ah, my boy, I'm not so sure it's that impossible." - replied Dumbledore, twinkling eyes in full blast by now.
"Headmaster, the ministry has tried for centuries..." - bristled Snape,
"...to hide the fact that this is, in fact, easily doable."
Snape's eyes widened and Older Harry gasped.
"You mean..."
"Yes, Harry, time-travel is not a novel concept to wizards by any stretch of the imagination. However, it tends to be rather abused, so the ministries around the world have been trying to stop any progress in that field and destroy any texts that contain instructions on how to perform the jump." - Dumbledore smiled again - "In fact, Time-Turners exist just so that appearances can be kept that something is being done in the field - the unspeakables "manage" to make them go back an hour more every couple decades or so - while keeping that branch of magic closely monitored."
"How do you know about this, then, professor?" - asked Older Harry and it was his younger self responding this time.
"It's probably because of all the titles he has!" - he exclaimed happily - "Someone like the Chief Warlock of Wizegamet would be in on all the secrets!"
Snape rolled his eyes and Dumbledore chuckled. "That's 'Wizengamot', Harry. But yes, you're quite right. I am, indeed, as you put it, in on... well, almost all the secrets."
Harry conceded that point, but there was still one thing off.
"Well, alright, but that's not what the ritual I performed was labelled as."
"Ah. I have a feeling that's why that text wasn't destroyed in the secret purge of such lectures centuries ago. Someone - either the author of the tome or the owner - likely learned what was happening and purposefully mislabelled it to preserve the book."
"But the ritual still had something to do with time travel..."
"Ah, yes. But a ritual like you described would unfortunately be quite useless, so it was ignored."
Older Harry stared. "Useless? Why?"
"Well, let me ask you something. What did you expect would happen if you did manage to send just your memories back in time?" - asked the headmaster, with a suppressed smirk.
"I already told you; my younger self would visit you and..." - Adult Harry started explaining, just to be stopped by an impatient wave of Dumbledore's hand.
"Yes, yes, quite, but I was referring to your side? You send a copy of your memories back into the past, so what happens to YOU now?"
The time-traveller blinked. He hadn't really considered that, but...
"Well, I imagine, uh, that, er, reality would change right then and there and it'd become what my younger self achieved?" Snape let out an annoyed huff, while Dumbledore just smiled again.
"That's not how the whole affair with time-travel works. Which brings me nicely to my second point - how you are technically not in an alternate universe, and still, in a way, you are. You see, when you do something like this, be it using a Time-Turner or a ritual like yourself - you create a fork in the timeline."
"A fork...?"
"Yes. Indeed. The timeline has split, and this one is now hopefully heading somewhere far different than the one you left. The way you described would only create a heap of paradoxes. Here's a question to prove it: if time-travelling worked linearly like you assumed, you'd right now remember yourself being taken from the Dursleys by yourself during this summer. Do you, Harry?"
Older Harry frowned and started to think. He still vividly recalled being rescued by the Weasley twins and Ron using the flying Ford Anglia. The only memories of the other scenario were from the adult point of view. A look of realization overtook his face and Dumbledore clapped.
"Very well. Naturally, I expect this information to be secret. Either way, now that we explained that conundrum, I daresay we should discuss how to proceed from here..."
"W-well..." - started Older Harry, now unsure of how to lay all of his knowledge out and not miss anything important. "I suppose the biggest concern right now is the reason why Voldemort is still alive..."
"Ah, yes" - nodded Dumbledore - "I've had my suspicions for years, but it'll be nice to have them either proven or disproven. Well, do go on..."
"Wait, why is him being alive so strange?" - asked Younger Harry and his older counterpart turned to face him.
"Well... the night Voldemort decided to play tennis using our forehead and the killing curse, the curse rebounded and hit him, right?" Older Harry looked around and shrugged. "That curse is supposed to kill, not leave you as a bodiless spirit. No exceptions. We lived because of our mother's sacrifice, as you know. But Voldemort didn't have it, so he should be completely and totally gone."
"Yet, as the encounter with Quirrel last month proves, he's not." concluded Snape, who was starting to get impatient by the looks of things. "So how did he manage this feat?"
"Horcruxes." - said Older Harry simply and Dumbledore sagged. There was no response from Younger Harry, as expected, but even Snape seemingly had no idea what those things were. He turned to Dumbledore. "I take it that's what you were expecting?"
"Yes, it was one of the possibilities... "
"And what are Horcruxes?" - inquired Snape and Older Harry quickly started explaining the concept.
"Containers for pieces of a soul. You rip yours apart through cold-blooded murder and lock the piece that split into an obj... into, er, something. Since there's now a piece of your soul that's not tied to your physical body, you... can't die."
Snape paled at this. "He's... immortal?" That particular sentence was uttered at the same time by both him and Younger Harry. Dumbledore sighed.
"Yes. We have to find it and destroy it. There's thankfully several ways that work."
"It? Professor, I specifically said 'Horcruxes'. As in, plural" - corrected Older Harry and Dumbledore balked. "Sure, no one ever attempted to split their soul multiple times before, but Voldemort's a rather special wizard, isn't he?"
"How many?"
"We had to destroy seven," - Harry ignored the horrified look on the headmaster's face - "However, right now, there's only six of them." Dumbledore sighed, but then looked up.
"You know where they are, however, correct?" - he said with hope in his voice. Older Harry just smiled and nodded.
"Yep. In fact, two of them are in this very castle at the moment." That revelation stunned everyone, until Snape demanded they collect them immediately.
That was when Older Harry realized this was the moment. He knew very well one of the Horcruxes was sitting right next to him, looking at him expectantly. Fortunately, combing through the Black Library had brought yet another pleasant find.
The information Hermione found in Secrets of the Darkest Art detailing how to destroy a Horcrux was mostly accurate. The only way to do so is to damage said Horcrux in a way it was unrepairable by any magical means. For a living being that would be dying.
Harry, just like Dumbledore, found no alternative for destroying the Horcrux in his scar - he had to let himself get killed. That was, however, when he realized that they both approached the issue from the wrong angle.
After all, a supposed Horcrux-making Dark Lord might one day of his eternal life decide to change the vessel it was stored in. Perhaps as a means of strengthening the defences - or maybe because he got bored of the trinket. Whichever it was, a spell to move a Horcrux to another container existed. He could move the one from his younger selves' scar to some other object and destroy that instead, with no danger posed to the smaller Harry.
If he hadn't found this spell early on, he might have disregarded the whole time-travelling experiment entirely. When he was told he was housing a piece of Voldemort and the only way to get rid of it was to die, he immediately rushed out into the forest the Dark Lord invited him to get killed in and promptly allowed said individual to do so. He didn't know how his younger self would react to such news.
Even with the Horcrux-moving spell, he thought very long about whether his past self would be able to cope with having the Dark Lord's soul stuck in him for almost all his life. He could easily panic and do something stupid. Still, this was the only way. Hopefully it would be over quickly enough, and now he was at least there to fully and slowly explain everything, without the news hitting all at once.
"Well, we originally took care of this Horcrux at the very end..." he started, thinking of the best way to phrase this. He turned to his younger self.
"Harry, do you remember how your scar used to hurt whenever Quirrel was near you?" The inquiry was posed naturally, but Older Harry noticed Dumbledore already started to observe the conversation with trepidation. That man was really quick on the uptake. Harry Jr. just looked on confused.
"Well, on that Halloween night Voldemort was reduced to a ghost... he had already split his soul multiple times, as I've already said. That rendered it especially unstable..." He took a deep breath and continued. "...so when came to our house, even though he didn't wish for it, a piece of his soul happened to split when he fired that killing curse at us."
Right then Older Harry was sure everyone in the room started catching on, so he decided to get to the point quickly.
"Anyway, basically, there was no object prepared to be a Horcrux to latch onto in the vicinity, so it attached itself to the only living thing in that building left... us."
There. He said it. As expected, his younger counterpart didn't take the news well. In fact, no one took the news well. The boy immediately shrunk upon himself, folded his arms and dug deeper into the squishy armchair he was sitting in. Dumbledore paled, while Snape just froze. Before they all started panicking, he moved on...
"But, there is some good news. It's possible to remove it." He tried to smile reassuringly, but it probably didn't work. He still had horrified green eyes pointed at him, and the boy's breathing quickened. "Look, I had the thing removed and I'm completely fine, yeah?" He added quickly, noting not to mention the exact way he had the Horcrux removed right now.
The other two visibly relaxed upon hearing that comment and Dumbledore looked intrigued. Snape removed a vial out of his robe, uncorked it and gave it to Younger Harry.
"W-w-what?" was squeaked out.
"Calming draught. Drink it, Mr. Potter, there's no need for us to have you go through a panic attack right now." The comment, while still fairly snarky, lacked the usual malice used when conversing with the spawn of his school nemesis. Older Harry subtly inclined his head towards the potions master for quick thinking and coaxed his younger self into taking the concoction. After several moments, the breathing slowed down to a reasonable pace. That was when Dumbledore stepped in to appease his curiosity.
"But, Harry, in all of the books I read on the subject, the only way to get rid of a Horcrux was to destroy the vessel it was in... And destroying a living vessel would involve..." - the last part was left unspoken, but it was clear what he meant. Older Harry inwardly cursed the old fool and hoped his younger counterpart wouldn't start to hyperventilate all over again.
"Yes. That is the only way. But, as Hermione once said... 'A lot of greatest of wizards don't have an ounce of logic'. All we have to do first is to move the Horcrux to another container and then destroy that. No need to harm anyone."
Dumbledore looked stunned, but Harry guessed the wrong reason.
"Well, yes, obviously, but... you mean you found a spell that can accomplish this?!"
Ah. Whoops. So the old man did just now consider this, then. Harry started to ponder whether that meant he couldn't find a book containing this information last time or that he was getting senile as the years went on. Probably the former, he mused. It would be just like the darkest family in Britain to have the only copy of such a tome holed up somewhere in their house. That was when he heard his younger self squeak out again.
"C-can we do it now? Please?" Ah. Good. It looked like the boy was past the initial panic, probably thanks to that calming draught and already down to determination to see the blasted thing gone.
"Certainly." Older Harry quickly recalled the steps he found in the book. "Well, first, I need something to transfer the soul piece to." He looked around and spotted a handkerchief the headmaster was just using for his meal. Grinning, he picked it up. It'd soak up the basilisk venom nicely.
"Potter, what are you about to do?" asked Snape, clearly not quite trusting the time-traveller with the process. So, Harry began to explain.
"Basically, I need to set this up," - he waved the piece of cloth around - "like one would a real Horcrux. It's dark magic, true, however I think there's a rather good cause for it." Dumbledore seemed unsure for a moment, but eventually seemed to acknowledge the point. "I know how to do it, because I memorised it before I tried to send my memories back in time."
"Wi-will it hurt?" - asked his younger self apprehensively. Older Harry sighed.
"I... don't know, to be honest." The book didn't describe this, it only assured the user that the process would not destroy the vessel nor any inherent magic of the object. "Your scar will probably burn. The process shouldn't take more than a couple minutes, though, so hopefully it won't be that bad." Younger Harry shuddered, but looked up and said, determined;
"Okay. Do it."
So, the time-traveller laid the handkerchief in the middle of the room, while the three other wizards watched. He got out his wand, pointed it and uttered the first spell.
"Viventium simulare!"
A dark brown beam shot out and connected with the piece of cloth. It scrunched up a little bit before turning limp again. What this spell was supposed to do was fool a piece of soul into thinking the object was alive, and thus give it incentive to latch onto it. Harry moved his wand in a complicated pattern next and muttered the second incantation.
"Receptaculum inaversibilis!"
This spell gave the object all the properties of a Horcrux. There was now a nearly-indestructible piece of linen on the floor. However, if the process wasn't completed soon, the spell would destroy the object by itself, unable to hold it up in such a state all alone. Without this enchantment, the soul piece would be able to flee the object and probably attach itself to Younger Harry again. Another spell joined it soon afterwards.
"Adficio vicinia!"
This made the object take ambient magic and use it to hold up the two previous spells in place. It's also why Horcruxes affected the magic of those who used or wore them - they were being actively used as fuel for the trinket.
"Alright, Harry, come here and sit near the handkerchief". His younger self shakily complied and soon Adult Harry was pointing at his scar. He breathed in loudly and after another complex wand motion uttered the last spell on the mental list.
"Motus aliena anima!"
The effect was instantaneous. A black wisp of smoke came out of the scar and attached itself to Harry's wand. He slowly started to guide it towards the handkerchief on the floor. The smoke seemed to stretch itself like some sort of gassy rubber band. Eventually, the wand made contact with the proto-horcrux piece of fabric, his younger self screamed and was about to reach up to his scar, when the black mist detached itself from the twelve-year old's head with an audible snap and rushed into the linen cloth. Said turned completely black for a moment, before returning to its regular, innocent appearance.
It was done. A moment later, the four wizards were left staring at the Dark Lord's new and not-very-improved Horcrux.
"Anyone wanna blow their nose on that?" - Asked Adult Harry, but the joke fell flat.
[Author's note: Thank you for all the reviews. A bit of an exposition chapter today, but I promise we'll get into action next time. There's a couple of nods to other fanfics out there. Give yourself a cookie if you recognize them.]