It was a particularly cold day on which Harry Potter woke to the sound of familiar bickering of his two friends. Even within the comfort of his bed, he was shivering from cold and something else that he couldn't name. While waiting for the argument to end, he couldn't help but reflect on how he'd come to be where he was, trying to hide from the world while wallowing in self-pity and disgust.

Mere thoughts of what he'd endured put a shiver through him and he realized ashamedly for the hundredth time that it was his own incompetence that had brought him here.

His parents were dead through the incompetence and machinations of Dumbledore and he continued to suffer under his relatives in the aftermath. Hogwarts had seemed like salvation when his letter had arrived and then he'd been too elated to leave Surrey into the welcoming arms of the secret world of magic. And then he'd come to realize, although belatedly, that the monicker of 'freak' that his relatives had assigned him purely out of spite had come true in this strange new world as well. Here, he was the freak who had survived the impossible and was thus heralded for adventures and accomplishments by the ignorant public that wizards thrice his age and experience couldn't boast. And in the middle of all this was his schooling at the magical castle, the one where he had found a new home.

It had been supposed to be his sanctuary, his true home away from his childhood prison and it had been thus for the longest time. But a series of misadventures and tragedies had utterly defeated him.

And now, he had nothing left.

His parents had been lost sixteen years ago. His godfather had been lost a year ago. His best friend, the girl, nay, the woman he'd come to care for much more than a friend, had become distant and jealous of his sudden competency in a subject he'd always been poor at and his other friend had more time to suck his new busty girlfriend's tonsils out than anything else. Not the mention his constant jealousy at anything Harry was good at, and more recently, he and his sister's horrible conspiracy against him that Harry had accidentally come to discover.

"Get out! I don't need another one of your lectures right now! And you shouldn't even be here! This is the boys dormitory!" Apparently, his perpetually jealous friend had had enough.

Hermione huffed and then began another one of her rants about the responsibilities of Prefects and how Ron was breaking a dozen different rules in spending so much time with Lavender.

Harry tried and failed to burrow deeper into his quilt to drown out their voices but to no avail. And neither did he dare to remove himself from his bed since his presence could alert them both and inadvertently bring him into their spats. He had neither the time nor the patience for their childish jealousies and tantrums.

Perhaps, he could use his cloak?

Harry carefully and noiselessly slid one leg from his bed onto the ground on the other side of Ron's bed and waited with baited breath for any indication of whether they'd registered his presence. They hadn't. He slid further from the quilt onto the warm carpet and immediately crouched low beside the bed. His trunk lay open in front of him and his cloak glistened in the faint moonlight streaming from the window.

The common room was blissfully empty and for a long minute, Harry debated taking refuge in one of those comfortable chairs by the crackling fireplace. As he warred with his decision, a lone figure emerged from the shadows and startled him.

"Hello?"

Neville Longbottom was looking around at the empty space around him, looking tired. Harry decided that a simple hello to his friend wouldn't go amiss so he uncovered his head.

"Hey Neville, I...er couldn't sleep," he explained pitifully.

Neville seemed to lean away from the back of his chair and rubbed his eyes.

"I'm just delaying walking upstairs to avoid Hermione and Ron."

Harry grimaced, but nodded, most willing to understand why his friend wouldn't want to come between his two best friends when they were having one of their...moments.

"I'm sorry," Harry didn't know what else to say or do.

Neville shook his head. "You have nothing to apologize for, Harry. It's not your fault. Are you leaving?"

Harry shrugged, struggling with himself. His mind was suddenly conjuring a dozen different things he hadto apologize for and he just couldn't form the words to make his contrition apparent enough to a friend who had stood by him even when his two best friends tested his patience and had all but abandoned him.

Instead, he simply gave a curt nod. "I'm sorry for everything."

Neville looked confused but Harry didn't wait for him to say anything.

Less than a minute later, he was running away from the Gryffindor tower, leaving a confused Fat Lady behind as she tried to determine just who had she allowed to pass in the middle of the night.

_-_-_-_ .

The Room of Requirements was in its usual element, the enclosed space containing auror-training dummies ready to fire lethal curses at their willing victim. Harry closed the door and took his stance. Training to be a better wizard was the only thing that could take his mind off the failure that was his life.

It's now or never, he told himself. If he didn't work on himself at this point in his life, which he could argue was his lowest, he didn't think he could ever hope to come out of the incoming conflict alive. And conflict it will be, for Voldemort and his supporters will come knocking as soon as whatever nefarious plans they'd been concocting in the meantime bore completion.

Soon, his mind was devoid of thoughts as adrenaline filled him and his body began to dance in between curses that would pale in comparison to the ones his little Ministry-raiding group had been subjected to last year.

To think that he considered Cruciatus as the most horrible curse in existence, he laughed bitterly to himself. Up until a year ago, he'd been an innocent, ignorant and incompetent fool.

A malevolent gray curse almost grazed his earlobe and he chided himself. It would be just like him to forget his surroundings in the middle of a fight and fall prey to an unknown curse from one of his masked enemies.

As his wand obliterated a dummy after another, he silently cast a cooling charm on himself, wanting nothing more to take greedy gulps of water lying on the table well within his reach but outside the training enclosure. But he resisted. It's not as if he could satisfy his body's urges so easily in the middle of a battlefield. Although the burn in his calves was a stark reminder of his unfit body, he got up once again and fired a curse at the dummy standing in the middle of the enclosure, which in turn immediately began to replicate around him as its copies surrounded him on all side with no hint of escape.

Well, no escape except kill or be killed.

Harry realized only eighteen gruelling minutes later that he was now completely spent. He had just enough energy left to walk back to his dorm and get into his waiting bed. He couldn't think of anything else more inviting, not even a visit to the kitchens to get himself some late-night snack. Pulling his freshly laundered shirt over his torso, he exited the Room, making sure to check the Map to avoid any stray students. He'd had enough of the gawping and whispering to last seven lifetimes, especially after last year.

However, before he'd even taken a step outside the fifth-floor corridor, he felt his body recoil from a sudden shock, his arms going limp at his sides as if suddenly wrenched from within his control.

Before he could so much as panic at his complete loss of motor ability, he was dragged unceremoniously back into the Room of Requirement, the door closing behind him eliciting a surreal feeling of hopelessness and shame within his stumped mind.

Now, his utterly exhausted body was at the mercy of some student with a grudge, probably a Slytherin whose parents had suffered in the Ministry last year. He didn't anticipate any easy solution to his latest misadventure. He was tired, kidnapped by someone who he had wronged, in the middle of the night when all the staff had retired, in a wing of the castle that next to nobody knew about.

He felt hollow. Was this the end?

What use had been his training after all?

_-_-_-_ .

"There is no need to panic, Harry. I'm just here for a chat and... an opportunity."

The voice was surprisingly soft and devoid of malice. Harry took in his attacker and tried to remember where he'd seen such a strange mask but came up blank. The voice did seem familiar but his mind could be playing tricks on him, as could the charms that would've modified his voice to any number of degree.

There was no telling who was behind that mask and Harry pushed his panic deep into his rudimentary Occluded mindscape with herculean effort.

"Who are you?"

His attacker seemed to consider it for a moment before he shook his head.

"I'm afraid I can't reveal that right now."

Harry forced himself to concentrate on the words of his attacker and saw some meagre hope. Did he mean that he will reveal himself later? Later when? When he'd gotten his revenge?

Harry blinked and suddenly realized that only his facial muscles seemed to be within his control. The warm glow from a nearby lamp sought his eyes and he exhaled. The Room seemed to have taken the form of a study, with a sizeable ornate desk and a comfortable chair, a sofa, and a large bookshelf adorning the three walls. Harry realized he was slumped against the fourth wall, looking at his attacker who was sitting on the edge of the sofa.

"What do you want?"

His attacker leaned forward. "That is a good question."

Harry gulped as the mask practically melded into his attackers face, his lips turning upwards into something that resembled a smirk.

"Tell me Harry, are you happy with your life?"

His brain working in overdrive, Harry tried and failed to understand how to answer the silly yet weighted question. It was in futility that he shrugged the strange question out of the way before settling on the bigger, more pertinent thing before him. Namely, his freedom.

"What do you want from me?" he rasped.

"Answer the question, Harry."

Harry tried to shake his head but his muscles refused to obey. Failing in this simple endeavour, he simply chose to glare at his tormentor instead.

"Yes! I'm extremely happy with my life! I'm so happy that if you kill me right now, there's not a single person that will miss me."

"How did it come to this point?" he was asked without delay. Harry struggled to know if his attacker was simply apathetic or this was just an exercise in his humiliation.

Once more he struggled to free himself but neither his body nor his magic obeyed. He'd had enough.

"Well?" His tormentor prompted when the silence had stretched enough.

Harry glared with all his might. "Why don't you just kill me and be done with it? What's with these questions? You want to know how much I've failed in life before you kill me?"

With supreme self-control, Harry stopped struggling and chose that waiting for the inevitable was better than struggling against his traitorous body or betraying his life's worst failures to this cruel stranger.

It could've been minutes or even hours before he heard a voice other than his own and hurried to open his eyes, not recalling when he'd closed them in the first place.

"I'm not gonna hurt you, Harry."

Not knowing what to do or say, Harry chose to remain silent and looked askance at his attacker, one who had conveniently forgotten that he had paralyzed and dragged him to the secluded Room against his will.

His attacker seemed to sense it and sighed. Harry, when he'd chosen to act out hadn't known what consequences his reticence would bring, but was immensely thankful when his attacker waved his wand and suddenly, his arms were free.

Immediately, his wand was aimed at his tormentor who seemed to be struggling with himself.

Harry's shouts and taunts remained unanswered as his kidnapper chose that moment to remove his mask.

His eyes bugged out and his wand clattered noisily on the floor beside his useless legs as he struggled to make sense of what he was seeing.

"Hello Harry, it's nice to meet you. You can call me Harry."

_-_-_-_ .

Years upon years of memories passed before his eyes and his heart stuttered with a mixture of fear and hope.

He had forgotten how many times he'd pinched himself in an effort to convince himself that it was real and not a dream designed to torture his soul in the cruelest of ways. He'd scarcely believed it when he'd looked at the unmasked, alive, breathing and healthier version of himself. He'd gaped and sat there stunned for minutes before his brain had started working again.

While the motivation behind the other Harry's decision for them to watch each other's memories was still a mystery, Harry hoped that what he was seeing was indeed real and that somewhere, in another world, he'd had a different life.

It was not only different, but a complete opposite of the life he'd lived. So different that Harry ached to have it for himself.

When he was ejected back into the Room of Requirement, Harry blinked away that tears that were threatening to fall. Taking command of his last kernel of strength, he faced his attacker, the Harry who'd been gifted such a beautiful life and spoke in a tone that betrayed his anger and a volatile concoction of emotions that he didn't know how to handle.

"Why? What do you want with me?"

The other Harry shrugged and he simply watched himself pace near the hearth, muttering to himself with his face set in a blank mask that revealed nothing.

"Do you wish that you had the life that you've just seen?"

His arms at his sides in barely controlled anger, he spat, "Is this a joke? Why are you doing this to me? What do you want?"

His attacker looked at him with pity.

"Do you wish that you had the life that you've just seen?" he repeated.

Harry glared at him, his fury barely restrained against such an unfeeling question. "Have a life where my parents are alive and well and I have a family? Where I have a brother and sisters and I'm not the Boy-Who-Lived? Where my godfather, no, my godparents are alive and care for me? Is that what you're asking? I'd kill to have that life!"

The other Harry stopped pacing. Harry saw him come closer and regard him with an intensity that made the hair on the back on his neck stand.

"You can have it then. My life. And I'll take yours."

Harry watched stunned as his doppelganger closed his eyes and a large wooden cupboard materialized in the corner of the room.

"This is the gateway to the life that you want."

Harry struggled to understand why he was being given such a gift. It was insanity. Sheer insanity to give up what he'd only gotten a glimpse of, and to do it willingly!

"Why? Don't you love your parents? Your family? Why would you give that up? I wouldn't give it up for anything!"

His words seemed to have little effect on his counterpart. His face remained inscrutable.

"You've only seen a glimpse of what my life has been. You haven't lived it. When you get there, read my journals and you'll know. Then, I'm not sure you'll be so thankful."

Harry took a deep breath, trying to understand just what could've been so bad about living in a world where he had people that cared about him that this other Harry wanted to leave his world for one where he wouldn't have anyone.

Still, he didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. If this was seriously happening, he was all for it. Never in his dreams had he imagined such a thing and here he was, on the precipice of exchanging his world for another. And not just any world, it was a world where his deepest wishes were answered in full.

What could be so devastating that his counterpart hated his life? Harry thought about his own life up to this point and grimaced. There was nothing waiting for him in this life. Even his friends, ones that he'd thought were his true friends had been more self-serving than he'd ever thought and every single person he'd cared about had been lost to death. The year before in which he'd lost Sirius felt like the beginning of the end, his soul had been shattered in ways that he couldn't explain. And now, he was being given a way to get it all, and more, back.

"Do you want to proceed?"

He was jerked back to the present where the other Harry was waving his wand on the cupboard.

"Yes."

"Good. Now, there are a few things that you need to know."

Harry woke up to find himself in the familiar study in the Room of Requirement, now empty of its other occupant. His body ached everywhere as he stood up and dusted his shirt.

In the dim luminance of the lamp, he could swear he'd woken up exactly where he'd been apprehended, now doubtful whether all he'd seen, dreamed and remembered had been real.

But there was only one way to find out.

He left the Room and found himself in an identical corridor. The door disappeared just as he walked towards the stairs and saw the expanse of the castle before him.

Disillusioning himself, he walked in the direction of the Gryffindor Tower, his brain cautioning and urging him to be careful as in this world, if it was indeed a new world he was now inhabiting, Harry Potter was a Slytherin student. But thankfully, he already knew the password to every House, courtesy of Harry2.

He breathed a sigh of relief when the common room was empty of most students, only a few younger years loitering around. Grabbing a discarded copy of the Daily Prophet from one of the sofas, he dashed back outside, now stopping only when he was safely back within the confines of the Room.

Only then did he stop and read the date: 20th June, 1993.

This was the year, that he'd been warned from Harry2, when all went to hell for him. Apparently, this was the year in which his family had been torn apart by grief, betrayal and the most horrific of all, war.

And while much of the student body and the public blamed Harry Potter for everything that had gone wrong, his family never spoke out a word against him. And that was where his grief came from: of opportunities missed, of the road not taken, of relationships that could've been, of the lives that had been saved and of the grief that could've been avoided altogether had Harry not been as much of an...ignorant little moron.

But regardless of the warnings and the apprehension, Harry knew it was his chance of a lifetime. The chance to have everything he'd ever wanted, and to live his life in a way that he'd come to realize, would give him the most contentment.

In this world, he was no longer the Gryffindor's Golden Boy, or the Boy-Who-Lived, or Dumbledore's favourite or the Saviour of the Wizarding World. He was simply Harry, the insignificant twin of the boy who'd survived the Killing Curse.

Sure, he'd live up to his full potential, not doing so was out of the question, but he'll do so in a way that suited him and him alone. No one else will dictate how he lived his life.

He was finally free. And he felt more alive than ever.

AN: This is my first HP story and I'm very excited to share this! After years of reading fanfiction, finally, I'm writing my own!

I'll be updating this story once a week as I have several chapters already written ahead. Please, if you like what you read, write me a comment so I can know your thoughts! Cheers!