For a moment it felt like he hovering in mid-air, until a surge of energy pulled him down. He was lying down on something soft.

He tried to move, but it was like moving underwater; slow and heavy. It felt like he'd been hit by a truck.

Sitting up, he felt how his head was spinning.

He looked around him, but everything seemed distorted and broken in some sort of way; almost like looking at a broken mirror. All he could make out was that he was in an office of some sort. The whole room was dark, outside was dark with thunder roaring above them but it sounded more like a broken record. A man stood in front of one of the windows with his back turned.

"You're awake?" the man turned around.

Harry slowly nodded. He couldn't see the person clearly in the dark. The man took his hand hand helped him up. All he could see was a mask.

"This is your doing, isn't it?" the voice came from a female, who came right out of the shadows.

She also had a mask.

Harry jumped a bit.

"Calm down – he's just a kid. We've all been there, haven't we?" the voice came from another man with a mask, standing in the shadows.

"Reckless, that's what he is", another voice said.

Harry's heart almost stopped; he was surrounded by masked people.

"This is just some messed up dream, isn't it?" Harry. "I've finally lost it."

"I'm not sure if you're ready to find out", the man who'd helped him, said.

Harry shook his head. "No. But I have to."

The lights turned on, and what Harry saw was like looking in a mirror a dozen times over; the entire room was filled with what he assumed were him - Spider-Men.

They all wore different costumes, they all behaved differently, they all sounded like him and they all were him.

"This is nuts. This is completely nuts", Harry felt the panic rising as his eyes darted between the different Spider-Men.

"I suppose you could say that", the man in front of him said.

Harry took a long moment to take it in, but he still couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"I need to see your faces", he finally said.

Without questioning why, they all pulled off their masks – including Harry himself. A majority of them resembled him, others pretty much exactly the same, while others didn't look like him at all or were completely different people all together.

Harry's eyes stuck on what seemed like Hermione in the crowd. Slowly he started walking up to her.

The costumes they wore were identical. He stared at her, until he quickly backed backwards.

"Okay, you better explain what the hell this is", Harry sneered at one of his other selves.

"I think we all would like what exactly caused this", one of the Harry's said. "Why are we all gathered here?"

"What do you know?" Harry asked.

"Time is broken", said one of the other Harry's, wearing a futuristic costume. "There's a reason time travel of any kind is banned in 2099."

One of the Spider-Men walked up to him. It was one of the Ron's he had spotted in the crowd of Spider-Men. He wore almost an exact replica of Harry's own suit.

"It's strange", Ron said, looking at Harry.

"What's strange?"

"Nothing – just seeing the Harry I once knew in a costume."

"I'm not superpowered in your world?"

"No, you're dead."

"Oh."

The futuristic Spider-Man pushed Ron out of the way. "C'mon, don't tell him that. Anyway, we need a plan. We can't just stand here and argue all day – or whatever it is – we have to do something."

Harry took out the modified time turner. "I believe this thing is what caused this."

"Let me see it", one of the Hermione's said and grabbed it.

"You're an idiot for messing up", one of the Spider-Men said to him; it was Draco Malfoy.

"Back off", one of the Harry's said and pushed Malfoy away.

Hermione looked back at him. "This contains a time fragment. I've only read about these."

"A what now?" Harry asked.

"A time fragment – heavily modified gems. They are not easy to make, and if you do manage you can loop yourself out of existance", Hermione said, inspecting the time turner. "Somehow you managed to pull us all together in a single broken loop. Sadly there's only one way out of this."

Harry slowly nodded. "So you want me to create on of these stones and erase myself from history?"

A contained laughter was heard spread across the room.

"No, but I can send you back, stopping yourself from ever doing this and the loop should end and send us all back to our respective worlds."

Harry looked at her for a while, and for a moment he could feel the hard thud as her body hit the ground.

"You're okay?" she asked.

"Is it possible to prevent something else from happening?" Harry asked.

They all looked at him.

"What do you have in mind?" Hermione asked.

"The reason why this happened. I need to prevent Ron from killing Hermione."

Harry fell face first into the ground, in what seemed to be an empty corridor – still in his suit.

"Ow."

He grabbed the time turner, put it in his pocket and hastily changed clothes in a dark corner. As fast as he could, he hastily walked towards the Gryffindor tower. The dim morning light shone in through the windows as he traversed the castle, telling him roughly what time of the day it was.

On his way there, he bumped into professor McGonagall; she didn't look very happy to see him.

"Mr Potter, what have I told you about wandering about in the castle at this hour?"

"Sorry, professor. I have to find myself – I mean I got lost in the dungeons.

In the common room, Hermione was already awake, invested in a book as usual. She didn't notice him when he quickly passed by and went into his dorm.

Harry knew himself he wouldn't be there at this hour, but had to find him somehow. Luckily, the Marauder's Map was still in his possession.

As he grabbed the map out of his trunk, someone landed behind him. In that moment, Harry realized who it was he'd seen taking the map; it was his own doing.

"I don't know who you are, pal – but that sure don't belong to you", the present Harry behind him said.

Harry turned around, spotted himself in the suit, and started running towards one of the windows. He dove right through it, closing his eyes as glass flew everywhere.

And before the present Harry could catch up, Harry himself had already swung himself out of sight.

He heard his other self talking to himself at a distance:

"What? Where did he go? Where did he go? No, seriously!"

Harry spent the rest of the time keeping track of his present self, barely leaving his suit and taking food from the Great Hall to keep himself going, and occasionally grabbing a newspaper or two when there was literally nothing going on.

As the days passed, Harry lived as Spider-Man and very rarely did he walk among other students. Neither could he keep himself from listening in on Hermione or any one else he happened to hear.

"This is ridiculous", said Hermione's voice as he listened in through the open window. "I can't keep avoiding him. Everytime he looks at me, I can tell how much he is suffering."

"You have to talk to him, Hermione", said Katie Bell.

Ginny slowly nodded.

"I don't know if I'm going crazy", Hermione sat down on her bed. "I thought I saw him on two different places at once today."

"Maybe it's best to forgive?"

Harry were still wondering who had assaulted Hermione. Was it another version of him, who'd accidently slipped in from another world?

Or was it just someone abusing a poly juice potion? Dumbledore had to have some slight idea.

Intending to find out, Harry sat off towards Dumbledore's office and snuck his way in. As Dumbledore was sitting by his desk, inspecting some sort of object, Harry landed softly in the chair on the opposite side.

But Dumbledore didn't seem to mind him. Harry cleared his throat, for Dumbledore only to quickly glance at him.

"Yes, Harry?"

"I need your help, sir", Harry took off his mask.

Dumbledore slowly looked up at him. First he didn't say a word and only inspected him.

"You've come a long way, haven't you?" Dumbledore put away the item in his drawer.

Harry felt confused how he knew this. "How do you know?"

"Anger and loss, they often arrive together", Dumbledore shook his head and sighed. "Please tell me, Harry. What happened?"

Harry told him in detail about what happened and when he was finished, Dumbledore didn't say a word. A couple of minutes passed until he finally said something:

"There's no denying someone is impersonating you. For what reasons I can not tell, but they are most certainly hostile. I will look further into this matter. As for your friends – saving them is only a matter of time."

Almost as if a light bulb had lit inside Harry's head, a spark of hope.

Of course. If he could get there in time to catch her, time would realign itself and the loop – in which probably every possible version of him were trapped – would never occur.

A sudden explosion shook the entire office. Harry exchanged looks with Dumbledore.

"I have to go. Thank you, sir."

Harry jumped out of the window and made haste towards the Astronomy Tower.

AUTHORS END NOTES

Anyone confused by what was going on in this chapter: Spider-Verse is a thing in the Spider-Man comics.

To put it simply, it's several different versions of Spider-Man. Be it Peter Parker or someone else, they are all

Spider-Men.

Or if you've played Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, it's more or less that but with every Spider-Man you

can imagine.

Why are they all in an office building? I don't know. I felt it would be a good place to have them at.

Fun fact: Several different versions of this chapter were made. One where Harry ends up in a different dimension,

meeting himself and Hermione as siblings (that version of Harry is named Barry. If you're a fan of the Flash TV show, I think you know where I was going with that); another where he meets them as well but also his parents in that dimension.

The most interesting version I wrote was when he meets the siblings and they bring him to Dr Strange's mansion.

Harry meets Dr Strange, but then I decided to scrap all of it. Just an interesting fact about this story :).