Chapter One: A Sound Like Breaking Glass
They always said time was a river.
Harry knew better now.
Time wasn't a river. Rivers could be dammed, diverted, or dried up. Time was a pane of glass - fragile, cold, and prone to shattering when pushed too far.
The last shard fell on a Tuesday.
It had been a quiet morning, the kind that never lasted long for Harry Potter. He was twenty-one, scarred, bitter, and bone-weary. Voldemort had died two years ago at his wand, in the ruins of Hogwarts, and yet still the wizarding world found new ways to tear itself apart - this time through Wizengamot infighting, bloodline purges, and a Ministry clawing for control like a drowning man desperate for air.
Harry had forced himself through Auror training, more because it was what he'd said he wanted to do years ago than anything else. Ron followed in his footsteps, but Harry knew Ron's heart wasn't in it either.
During a raid on a long-forgotten manor in the moors - supposedly a hideout for rogue ex-Death Eaters - Harry found it. A rune-covered arch. Not the Department of Mysteries veil, but something older.
Colder.
Hungrier.
His partner had begged him to wait. Ron had gone for reinforcements. But the runes whispered his name.
He stepped through.
He didn't fall.
He shattered.
Darkness. A biting cold. Screams.
When Harry woke, he was lying on damp grass, his body aching like it had been pulled apart and stitched together wrong.
The air was too crisp. The stars were wrong. The castle in the distance wasn't ruined like it had been in the future he'd left behind.
Hogwarts.
Intact. Lit. Alive.