A/N: I do not own Harry Potter. I do not have a for this nor will I ever have one for this.

A/N 2: First fanfic on this site. Advice is welcome.
Ideas: "What if Voldemort was Grimdark evil? What if the Harry of this universe has already died, but one of another came to try to undo his past, only to find himself in a worse version of his old world?"

Notes are written like this.

Thoughts like this. Same for spells. Remember also that some spells are obviously "shouted!"

"When shadows fall and light flickers dim,
A child shall rise from worlds within.
Not born of this realm, nor rooted in time,
But forged by fire, and fate's cruel rhyme."

"The world will burn with the Pale Lord's might,
And in his wake, a kingless night.
Yet, one shall return with fire in hand,
To cleanse the ashes, and heal the land."

"The Boy Who Returned—marked by death,
Shall stand alone, by prophecy's breath.
The hollow heart he wears is his,
For only through loss can victory live."

"He carries both death and hope, side by side,
With a wand of Death, and Light's burning tide.
In his veins runs the blood of the fallen,
But from his hand, salvation will be called in."

"Beware the first step he takes in the night,
For the world will see both heaven and fright.
When he crosses into the war-torn street,
The Prophecy's end will begin to repeat."

Prologue - The Last Attempt

The war had ended but so had the lives of nearly everyone he had ever known. Harry was mostly alone. The war had wiped out most of the wizarding population. There was no parade he joined in, no celebration. Only the silent, cold wind at the end of a long battle. Fred was the only one who had survived the war other than him. But even miracles like that didn't seem to last.

Harry stood now in the ruins of what used to be The Weasley Burrow. Nothing remained there now but charred wood and empty wind. Fred had been the last one to laugh in this world, even when it had been fading.

Earlier that morning, he had found Fred in the spare bedroom of Grimmauld Place. Stiff as a board, cold, and in death. A single bottle of fire whiskey next to him. A large potion next to him. Dreamless sleep. Too much of it, made potent enough that the sleep was the last sleep one would ever take. All things considered, it wasn't a bad way to go.

A single note rested on the table beside him:

"I'm sorry Harry. I can't keep pretending that this world is still worth it. I lost my brother, my family, most of my friends and my future wife. It's over for me… But you, Harry… Don't stop trying."

But Harry had stopped… The day he buried Fred, he buried everything else with him. His heart. For a long time, he just existed inside Potter Manor. Days bled into nights. He wandered through echoing halls with no destination. The portraits didn't even speak anymore. They hadn't in years. Magic in Great Britain was dying. It was as if the house itself was grieving for a lost friend. Just like himself.

However, one night, as he was wandering about his home's halls, he found something odd. There was a tear in the wall behind one of the dying magical portraits. Odd. He hadn't seen it before. He stared at it, half-drunk and breath stinking with whiskey, until curiosity got the better of him.

He reached out and gripped the back of the portrait. A latch? He pulled it, and the portrait opened up, not unlike the Fat Lady in Hogwarts. Behind it was a hidden stairwell, choked in dust, cobwebs and darkness.

It didn't take but a second of thought. With a quick lumos he started to descend it by wand light. What waited below was far more than he ever had expected. It was a library. But it wasn't just any regular library. It looked to have been expanded several times, almost like he had walked into the Library at Hogwarts. But this one felt far older. Further in he was surprised again. A ritual chamber laid before his eyes. He apparently didn't know his family as well as he thought.

Near the center was a stone column, and on it was a worn journal. As he looked through it he soon found that these notes were not any of his past ancestors of the Potter's… no they were his mother's notes. It brought some shallow comfort to have another piece of her again. But one note in particular stood out to him above all the rest.

"The Vault's Tome—buried with the Potter Legacy. It claims to send the soul and body backward. A full traversal. Dangerous. Unproven. And one-way. I believe one of James' ancestors attempted it… but there are no records beyond the ritual's completion. He never returned."

He read it twice. Then again. Then again. Something foreign started to blossom in his chest. Hope.

He hadn't felt that in a long time. But he was tired of this world. This world was one he had fought for, but nevertheless it was broken, and there weren't enough to fix it.

So he gathered the materials.

Blood of a Potter. The ancestral ring. Ashes of a phoenix feather from his old wand. The ritual circle was drawn in crushed basilisk bone. Words in dead druidic language that could only be spoken once.

It took weeks, maybe months to prepare. He didn't care anymore. The passage of time was just a passage of time. The only finite thing in the future was the completion of this ritual.

It was time. Luckily it rained the week before. Finally, it rained on the second Sunday of the month. Both strange ingredients within the ritual, but he didn't question it. But now it was time.

At midnight, he stepped into the circle he had drawn.

He cut his ring finger and placed the ring upon it.

He took his old wand out, and with some anguish, snapped it. He used the Elder Wand to turn it to ash.

Finally, he spoke the incantation.

"Tempus redemptum… ego redibo…"

The world slowed. Then it stilled. And then, he screamed.

Pain shot through him like never before. His magic felt like it had detonated like a star in his chest. Every memory, every scar, every breath he had ever taken was pulled from his mind and rewound. The air boiled, and the chamber shook. He saw flashes of faces. His old friends—Hermoine, Ron, Fred… Sirius. They flickered like dying flames.

Then a voice.

"One chance."

At that moment the Harry Potter of his original world ceased to exist. But another appeared. His body collapsed, the ring white hot upon his finger.

Then cold darkness.

-[Break]-

When he awoke, his hands were… smaller. His limbs thinner. He was fourteen again. It had worked!

But then he noticed his surroundings. The stone beneath him was jagged and cracked, blackened by magic. The air was still. He lay within the center of a ritual circle, scorched into the floor of what once must have been a vault. But it wasn't just any. He recognized it. This was his Vault! In Gringotts! But it was different. More barren. No piles of gold anywhere to be seen.

His musings were interrupted by a cold breeze. It was just then that he realized that his vault doors weren't there. Instead, there was a half caved in ceiling. Only through small gaps did the cold air of Gringotts' cavern filter through.

Thankfully, to the far right, where a wall should have been—where it should have doomed him to die trapped in his own vault—was a large crack. Big enough for him to squeeze through.

He stood slowly. His legs, as they were now smaller, felt unsteady. He groaned. He was unfortunately short again. His feet now under him, he slowly limped to the crack. He pressed his shoulder to the stone and leaned to the side, just barely squeezing through. On the other side, the world opened up again.

It was a second vault. Darker, wider, and it felt a lot older.

The walls were smooth and seamless, carved in a style he'd never seen before—angular and deliberate. Silver and gold symbols shimmered faintly along the arches. Pillars of obsidian-like stone reached from floor to ceiling. There was no gold here either, but the vault didn't feel empty. It strangely felt alive.

His eyes scanned the room, half-expecting some trap or enchantment to go off, but there was only stillness. And yet, there was something else. A pull. A hum… just beneath his thoughts, like pressure against the inside of his skull.

"Took you long enough."

Harry spun, Elder Wand half-raised, but no figure stood behind him. He was alone.

Did the voice come from inside the room? No, it felt closer.

"I've waited for generations, boy. Now stop gawking. To your left. Pick me up."

Harry turned to his left. At the center of the vault, buried in a stone dais, was a sword. Jet black hilt. Thin, almost too elegant for war as well. But it pulsed with a soft golden hue, chasing away the darkness around it.

Harry stepped forwards, but warily. Objects that could talk had brought him only pain before. "What are you?" he asked.

"Your inheritance. Now hurry."

A/N: I will do what I can to get the first chapter out as soon as I can. Just know I'm currently trying to get my Masters degree, so I don't have much time to do anything :). I have a few other ideas for Naruto (rock lee centric) and another Harry Potter that's a semi-self-insert. I've already got a few chapters written of that one, though I've constantly rewritten it. I feel like this one starts well enough, and I will try to flush it out more later.

I got into the idea of making my own fanfiction a year ago. Mainly because I've been reading this stuff for so long. I've kind of put off the idea until now because I thought that there was no reason to write them. So many people write fantastic stories on here (though my all time Favorites are Basilisk Born and Shinobi: The RPG) that I've gotten lost and been entertained by their worlds. But then... the more I read, the more I realized that there's a lot of unexplained possibilities within either story that I could possibly tell a story about. Especially with Grindelwald. Or the darker side of things. I've always been a fan of more pragmatic, neutral or grey Harry Potter Fanfiction. I like it when the main character isn't a goody-two shoes all the time. And what character would realistically be that way at the end of a war? So what if there was a Voldemort that got started earlier? That came into power faster? that was more powerful than his counterpart? Someone that would willingly break the statute to incite more fear and force more people to align with him? This is the kind of Voldemort I don't see too often for some reason. Someone who willingly fractured their mind 7 times in the pursuit and mastery of dark power. What if this Voldemort was smarter? What if this Voldemort killed the boy who lived of his own universe and destroyed any semblance of hope from the get-go?

And on the flip side, what if Dumbledore truly regretted his choices, about how he consistently believed in the redemption of redemption-less characters? How would that change him? Would he regret not being more forceful? Not taking care of a problem when he could have... even at the cost of his own morality, which he never sacrificed for the greater good, even though he constantly chanted it? What if, he regretted his defeat of Grindelwald, due to how chaotic and horrible the world had become? Would it have been like that had Grindelwald won?

I want to explore the bad side of things. What could have gone wrong, and what path would have actually been a greater evil?