Dis Lexics vault of Secrets

Ideas, plot bunnys that won't let go, possible future stories. feel free to pick up the stories if you like them.

And we're back with another entry to the Vault, this time with an answer to DZ2's I Will Not Die challenge, rules below:

DZ2's 'I Will Not Die' Challenge

Plot: Harry didn't take seven years to destroy the Horcrux inside him; it happened before that time, but when it happened, it didn't just leave him free of Voldemort; it left something else in its place.

Rules: All affinities are welcome

The Horcrux in Harry must be destroyed as a result of one of his adventures before 7th year

When the Horcrux is destroyed, its residue leaves Harry with an additional magical gift/ability/power

The power MUST be tied to the event in question (e.g. Because of the Dementors, Harry can now influence souls/fears/emotions; because of burning Quirrell, Harry can control fire etc.)

If the story starts after 4th year, the destruction of the Horcrux has a backlash on Tom

All pairings are welcome EXCEPT Harems

Guidelines: Harry actually appears to die when the Horcrux is destroyed

As a result of the above, people add to the infamy of Harry being the BWL

Crossovers

Slash

Harry discovers a power/ability tied to being Master of Death

Even when the Horcrux is destroyed, Harry still goes to the 'crossing point' in his sleep/unconscious state

Forbidden: Horcrux-Harry

Weak Harry

The Horcrux being destroyed in 7th year

If after 4th year, Tom MUST feel the backlash no matter what

Harems

Other than that, it's up to you...

This idea is a crossover with Overwatch. Enjoy!

Out of Time

Harry Potter was worried. He was sat in the Gryffindor table at breakfast, watching best friend, Hermione Granger, try to read a truly massive tome he was surprised she could lift, despite the fact she was nearly nodding off. Every few minutes, Hermiones head would bob forwards, only to snap back up again, upon which Hermione would look around guiltily and go back to reading. It had been like this for weeks since the start of their Third Year, steadily getting worse as classes went by. Harry knew what was to blame. Hermione had been taking every class she could, somehow managing to attend all of them. Simultaneously.

Now, Harry was nowhere near as stupid or unobservant as some people believed, so it hadn't taken long for him to realize that Hermione was using some sort of device she wore around her neck to get to all of her classes. A short time in the library had revealed the existence of Time Turners, giving Harry his answer. To begin with, Harry had been content to let Hermione just continue what she was doing, believing that she knew what she was getting herself into. However, after weeks of watching Hermione drive herself into the ground, Harry had finally had enough.

Once breakfast was over and everyone started heading off to lessons, Harry ignored his other friend, Ron Weasley's complaining about having to leave the food in favor of following Hermione, putting the skills he had learnt from avoiding the Dursleys as a child to good use. Hermione lead him to an out of the way area of the school at the top of a short flight of steps that somehow went from the Ground Floor to the Fourth, where she took a furtive look around, before pulling a chain of some kind out of her robes. From his position in the shadows, Harry saw that it was indeed a timeturner, just like the one drawn in the book he'd read, a chain with a small hourglass filled with golden sand on the end.

"Are you OK Hermione?" he said.

Hermione jumped nearly a foot in the air at the sound of his voice and spun around to face him, hastily hiding the Time Turner behind her back.

"H-Harry, what are you doing here?" she stuttered.

"I'm worried about you Hermione," said Harry, stepping out of the shadows and up to his friend, "You look exhausted. Did you get any sleep at all last night?"

"I'm fine Harry," she said, "I did have a bit of a late night, but I had homework to do."

"Hermione, you're doing too much," said Harry, "Between all of your classes and the homework that comes with them, you aren't getting anywhere near enough sleep and I noticed your eating less as well. You're going to collapse if you keep this up!"

"Harry, its sweet of you to worry, but I'm fine," said Hermione with a weak smile, "Now come on, lets go to class."

She turned to leave, but before she could, Harry caught her wrist.

"No Hermione, I'm taking you to the Hospital wing," said Harry.

"What? But why?" gasped Hermione, "I'm fine, really!"

"No Hermione, you're not," said Harry, "I'm not blind. If you keep up like this, you're going to make yourself really sick. You have to drop some lessons!"

"But I can't!" protested Hermione, pulling her hand out of Harrys, "If I do then…"

"Then what Hermione?" demanded Harry, losing his temper, "What could possibly be worth using a Time Turner to live 35 hour days and making yourself seriously ill?!"

Hermione's eyes widened.

"W-what do you mean Time Turner?" she gasped.

"Don't treat me like an idiot!" shouted Harry, snatching her other hand out of the air and forcing her fingers open to reveal the enchanted hourglass, "I did my research! I know all about Time Turners and what they're used for! I can't believe that you'd be so stupid as to use one just to take more lessons!"

Hermione looked shocked for a moment, before her face melted into a look of anger.

"You have no idea what you're talking about!" she snapped, "I appreciate the concern, but this is none of your business! Now let go!"

She brought her hand up and pushed Harry. Unfortunately, while Harry did let go of her hand, he had somehow got the chain of the Time Turner wrapped around his hand so, when he took a step back from the push, he tugged on the chain. To make matters worse, Hermiones unstable emotions from a combination of her exhaustion, confused mixture of happiness and anger at Harrys concern and just being a teenaged girl manifested as a small pulse of accidental magic that added more force to her push than she meant to, forcing Harry back a few more steps, putting him at the very top of the steps and causing him to overbalance and begin to fall.

As he fell, the chain of the Time Turner tightened around both Harrys wrist and Hermiones neck. Fortunately for the Bookworm, the chains clasp hadn't been strengthened and the sudden tug caused it to snap, meaning she wasn't choked. However, that left Harry falling down a staircase with the Time Turner still wrapped around his hand. Normally, that wouldn't have resulted in anything other than minor injuries from the fall, but the person who had assigned the Time Turner had been a Blood Bigot and, as such, had provided a slightly subpar Turner. Not so much that it wouldn't work, but the charms put on it to prevent the unstable Time Sand from being spilt weren't as strong as they should have been. When Harry hit the solid stone at the bottom of the steps with a nasty crunch of his arm breaking, the Time Turner was between him and the stone floor. The impact overloaded the Unbreakable Charms, releasing the Time Sand all over Harry.

Time Sand is a magical substance created by the Unspeakables using unknown methods that existed outside of the normal flow of time, which is what allowed it to move things through time. However, it was also very unstable and, if it came into contact with any other sort of magic, it reacted by unanchoring the object from time. Thats why it was kept in Magical Null containers that prevented magic from coming into contact with it in large quantities. When a Time Turner was used, a very small amount of magic was fed into the Sand, causing the user to become momentarily disconnected, followed by the Runes on the Turner dragging the person backwards until the disconnect naturally dissipated. However, even when used to the maximum, the amount of Magic used was miniscule to the point where even a Squib could use them. And Harry, a very powerful young Wizard, had just been showered by the stuff.

There was a brilliant flash of golden light that forced Hermione to cover her eyes, an anguished scream that sounded way too high to have come from Harry's lips and a loud cracking sound.

Hermione slowly opened her eyes, dreading what she would see of her friend, and looked down. To her surprise, Harry was still there, albeit unconscious, with an unnaturally twisted arm and his scar was open and bleeding a thick, black gunk. Letting out a sigh of relief, Hermione hurried down the steps to check on her friend. However, when she tried to touch him, her hands simply pass straight through him. She jerked back with a gasp of shock, her eyes wide as she watched her friends body flicker and vanish.

The disappearance of Harry Potter quickly became known to everyone thanks to the rumor mill running at its usual efficiency. According to the story, Hermione Granger had come bursting into Professor Mcgonagall's classroom in the middle of a lesson in tears, babbling about an accident involving the Last Potter and a Time Turner. After calming down the girl and getting the full story, a search was mounted for the missing boy, only to turn up absolutely nothing. That is until the Department of Mysteries got involved. Here is where stories became somewhat blurred, with theories ranging from Harry being summoned to another world to fight in a tournament of Heroes, to him being abducted by aliens, so we'll leave the Rumor mill and focus on the true story.

After scanning the spot where Harry had vanished and questioning Hermione, the Unspeakable Croaker eventually determined that Harry had contracted a condition referred to as chronal disassociation. That basically meant that he had become disconnected from Time, resulting in him randomly traveling through time as a kind of living Ghost, unable to control it or even interact with the world around him wherever he ended up. Unfortunately, there was no cure, so Harry Potter was basically lost forever.

Despite that prognosis that was enough for everyone else, Hermione wasn't deterred. Harrys condition was her fault and she wasn't about to just abandon her friend, not for anything. She threw herself into research, dropping out of all of the classes she could to focus on it. Her grades suffered, dropping from the top of her year to more average levels, but she didn't care. With the help of Dobby the House Elf who had found her after hearing of her determination to help the 'Great Harry Potter Sir', she had found the Room of Requirement that provided her with everything she needed for her research. These days she spent all her time there, leaving only for what lessons she couldn't skip and meals, sometimes not even that. Its not like she had anyone to pull her away from her research either since Ron Weasley had blamed her for Harrys disappearance and went out of his way to make her life miserable. Well, he tried since nine times out of ten she didn't even notice him, either having her head buried in her notes or being more interested in getting back to the RoR.

This continued for nearly six months, during which time Hermione's only companions were Dobby and the spectral Harry the few times he managed to manifest. However, Harry could barely hold himself together for more than a couple of hours before he vanished again and in that time, he still couldn't touch anything or interact with the world. In the short time he could talk with her, Harry begged Hermione to just give up and live her own life, to not worry about him. However, that only enflamed Hermione's desire to help her friend and she threw herself into her research with more vigour after every visit.

Then, just a few weeks before the end of term, Hermione finished. She stood up from where she had just finished attaching the final part of her creation and took a step back. She was covered in dirt, her hair was a total mess and she had a smudge of something that looked like oil on her cheek, but she didn't care. Why would she? After six months of nonstop work, she had finally done it. She looked around the room that had basically been her home for the past six months. It was a fairly large room that looked more like it belonged in a university than a school of magic, with numerous benches and desks scattered around the room, every one of which was covered in scattered bits of paper, tools, parts and more in a disorganized that would have horrified the Hermione of six months ago. However, in addition to having taught Hermione a lot about Magic, engineering, physics and far more, the past six months had taught Hermione a lot about herself and allowed her to shed most of her neurosis and insecurities. While she would have preferred that Harry had never been hurt in the first place, she had learnt not to look a gift horse in the mouth and decided to take what good out of the whole debacle she could.

After finishing her reflection, Hermione turned her attention back to the device in front of her. It wasn't a Magical one, at least, not completely, but instead a blend of Magic and Technology, created through months of trial and error from parts retrieved by Dobby from all over the world. She called it the Chrono Accelerator and it was designed to anchor Harry back in time. It looked like a watch made of white metal that glowed with a faint blue light when active. Now all that was missing was Harry to activate it.

"Still locked in this room Hermione?" said Harrys voice from behind Hermione.

The bookworm turned inventor didn't react, having long since got used to her friend appearing out of nowhere.

"I told you Harry, I refuse to give up on you," she said.

"But you should," said Harry, "Theres no way to help me, nothing that can be done. I'm alright with that, I've made my peace with my fate. I don't want you to waste your life trying to help me."

Hermione smiled.

"But Harry, I haven't wasted anything," she said, turning to face her ghostly friend.

Harry didn't look any different than he had from when he had vanished, other than the fact his scar had healed and his eyes were dead, completely devoid of hope. For a moment, his dull green eyes lit up with surprise and a small amount of hope, before it vanished again.

"This again?" he asked, "Come on Hermione, haven't you realized you're wasting your time?"

Hermione shook her head.

"This isn't like the other times," she said, "This time it will work!"

"You said that the last time," said Harry gently, "And the time before that. Please Hermione, I don't want to see you disappointed again."

"Humor me," said Hermione stubbornly.

Harry sighed and nodded.

"Very well," he said, "But first, promise me that if this doesn't work, you'll give up."

"Harry…"

"Promise me or I won't come back," said Harry.

Hermione bit her tongue to keep from snapping at her friend.

"Fine, I promise," she said, "But only because I know this will work."

Harry sighed and stepped forwards.

"Alright, what do I do?" he asked.

"Hold out your arm," said Hermione, picking up the Chrono Accelerator.

Harry did as he was told and waited patiently as Hermione positioned the device over his wrist. She looked up and met her friends eyes.

"Moment of truth," she said.

"Remember your promise," said Harry.

Hermione just scowled and turned the device on. There was a low hum as it started up, a glowing blue circle appearing over it. For a moment, the two teenagers stared at it as nothing happened, before Harry looked back up at Hermione.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Hermione didn't respond. She stared at the device as if it had betrayed her.

"No, this isnt right," she muttered, "Maybe if I…"

Harry stopped her by placing a finger to her lips.

"No Hermione, you promised," he said, "No more wasting your life on me."

Hermione stared at her friend for a moment, before her anger and frustration boiled over and she slapped him.

"YOU BASTARD!" she screamed, "DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU'RE ASKING ME TO DO..."

She trailed off as she noticed what she had just done.

"I...just slapped you," she said, her eyes wide.

Harry was stood stock still, his head still in the same position as Hermiones slap had left it, a red mark slowly appearing on his cheek. Slowly, he turned his head back to stare at Hermione, life slowly flowing back into his eyes as a grin slowly appeared across his lips.

"You slapped me," he repeated.

"IT WORKED!" they shouted together as Hermione pounced at Harry and wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tightly with tears flowing down her cheeks.

Harry returned the hug just as tightly, his own tears flowing as he relished in the first physical sensation he had felt in months. They slowly slid to the floor amid the scattered notes, designs and tools Hermione had been using, not breaking the hug for a moment.

"Hermione, there's something I need to tell you," said Harry into Hermione's hair, "I've had a lot of time to think over the past few months and I've learnt a lot."

"Can't this wait Harry?" muttered Hermione, trying to get as much out of the hug as she could before they inevitably had to separate.

"No Hermione, it can't," said Harry, pulling away to look Hermione in the eye, "I need to tell you this Hermione. I'm afraid that if I don't, I won't get another chance."

Hermione sighed and nodded.

"Alright, lets hear it," she said.

Harry took a deep breath.

I-I think I love you Hermione," he said.

Hermione froze. Of all the things she had been expecting Harry to say, that wasn't one of them.

"I think I've been in love with you since last year," continued Harry, "I don't really know when I fell for you, but all I know is that when I saw you petrified by the Basilisk last year, it nearly killed me. Then this year, seeing you slowly kill yourself with stress from the Time Turner was pure torture. Watching you sacrifice so much in search of a way to help me, despite what everyone else said tore me apart."

Hermione stared at Harry in shock, tears slowly gathering in her eyes once more.

"Harry…" she whispered.

"I know you probably don't feel the same about me, but I'm happy to just be your friend," said Harry.

Hermione shook her head and placed her hands on Harrys cheeks.

"Idiot," she said, her voice a little choked, "I love you too."

Before Harry could react, Hermione kissed him.

The next few weeks were both pure bliss and pure torture for Harry. The fact that Hermione was now his girlfriend was a dream come true for the young Potter, not to mention the fact he was once again a physical being. However, the amount of attention he received was nothing short of infuriating, made even worse by the general public's refusal to listen to the fact that it was Hermione who had provided the cure. After all, he was the Boy-Who-Lived, surely he could beat something as simple as a case of chronal disassociation without the help of a Muggleborn. However, all thats a story for another time and Harry could put up with anything so long as he had Hermione at his side. As an added bonus, Hermione had invited him to stay at her house over the Summer and her parents had confirmed that it was alright.

Harry smiled as Hermione pulled him through the barrier. He could hardly believe that he was ever so lucky as to have such a brilliant and beautiful Witch as his Girlfriend.

"Come on Harry, I want to introduce you to my family," said Hermione, dragging Harry over to where a group of three adults were stood.

The group consisted of two women and a man. The man, clearly Hermiones father, was a big fellow, with muscles clearly visible through his white shirt. He had brown hair cut short military style and light grey eyes. He wore a white shirt and blue jeans with a set of old dogtags hanging around his neck.

The woman next to him was petite and slim, looking tiny beside her husband's massive frame, with brown hair tied up with a clip and the same chocolate brown eyes as her daughter. She was wearing a black sundress under a lab coat.

The third woman was clearly related to the other one, sharing the same brown hair and eyes. Her hair was short and spiky, not unlike Harrys, and she was wearing what looked like a yellow leggings and a brown flight jacket with a bulky white chest piece over the top. She had a pair of orange and white goggles resting on her forehead.

"Mum, Dad!" called Hermione, running over to hug her parents, before turning to the other woman, "Aunt Lena! Its so good to see you again!"

Harry followed his girlfriend at a more sedated pace. As he approached, Hermione's mother looked over at him with a curious look on his face.

"Whos this?" she asked in a thick, cockney accent.

"Oh, Mum, Dad, Aunty, this is Harry Potter," said Hermione, grabbing Harrys arm and pulling him forwards.

"So, this is your Boyfriend?" asked Hermiones father, eyeing Harry up and down.

"Don't even think about it Dad," said Hermione.

"But Hermione, its a fathers job to scare his Daughters first boyfriend," said Mr Granger with a grin.

"I just got him, I don't want you scaring him away already," said Hermione.

While Hermione and her father were arguing playfully, Hermiones mother came up to Harry.

"Hello dear, I'm Jenny Granger, Hermiones mother," she said, "Its nice to finally meet the boy shes talked so much about in her letters."

"What she said," said the other woman, grinning at Harry, "Names Lena Oxten, 'Mione's favorite aunt."

"You're my only aunt," said Hermione.

"Its the thought that counts!" said Lena with another cocky grin.

Hermione just rolled her eyes.

"Its nice to meet you," said Harry, shaking Lena's hand.

Before he could release her hand, she suddenly pulled Harry's arm and pulled up his sleeve, revealing the Chrono Accelerator on Harry's wrist.

"Where did you get that?" she asked.

"Um, Hermione made it," said Harry, "I was involved in an accident at school and she made this to help me with the fallout."

"Chronal disassociation, right?" asked Lena, making Harry and Hermione jerk in surprise, "I have a bit of experience with that."

She tapped her chestplate.

"I've got it to. A friend of mine built this for me to help anchor me."

Lena turned Harrys wrist back and forth, examining his Accelerator closely.

"Impressive, you should meet Winston," said Lena, turning to Hermione, "You two'd probably get on really well."

"Who's Winston?" asked Hermione.

"Oh, hes…" started Lena, but was interrupted by a beeping from her coat.

She reached into her jacket and pulled out a phone. She glanced at the screen and her eyes widened.

"Sorry luv, gotta take this."

She hurried a short distance away and answered.

"Whats going on?" asked Hermione as Lena returned, looking excited.

"Sorry luv, but I'm gonna have to go," she said, "That was Winston. He's reactivating Overwatch!"

I'm gonna end this here, mostly because I have no idea where to go from here with what I have. I hope you enjoyed it!

Basically, Harry ended up in the same boat as Tracer from Overwatch, only he didn't have a super intelligent gorilla as a friend and teammate to build him something to help. No, he just has a super intelligent Witch as a best friend and now girlfriend.

I hope my explanation of Time Sand and everything made sense. I had to keep changing it, so it might be a bit all over the shop.

Hermione is apparently Tracers niece. That should be interesting.

This is set at the same time as Overwatch, but the Wizarding World are naturally in denil. They probably didn't even notice the Omnic crisis going on.

And with that I'm done. Hope you enjoyed it! Please leave a review!