"You got a letter from her, through the post, said something about someone called Voldemort, and an attack, dunno." Dudley said.

"Did you open my mail Dudley?" Harry asked incredulously, Dudley had never given a whit about anything involved with Harry's life.

"Was curious, whatever. Later dork." Dudley wandered out of the room.

Harry blinked, and just as he had before Fawkes appeared in a burst of flames next to him, carrying the same letter as before.

He glanced outside, and sure enough, Dumbledore, and some of the Order popped into existence just outside the doorstop.

And then Voldemort, who looked up at Harry in the window, sneered and shot off a spell at him. Harry exploded with the majority of the top floor of Number Four.

And then in a kaleidoscope of light he was staring at Dudley's dull face again.

"Oh Merlin."

 

Edit your post with the quote from the last you're replying to, or else we're all going to have a really bad time here

 

Confused on the plot? Aren't we all? I've compiled some semblance of sense to help everyone follow along:
>>Check the cliff notes here.

 

Lights flashed in Harry's vision as his legs turned to jelly. He collapsed into a heap on the carpeted floor in front of Dudley, clutching at his head as triplet bursts of pain erupted from his scar and temples. Scrunching his eyes shut, Harry bit down on his tongue, trying not to scream.

"Uh, Harry, you alright?" Dudley's question fell on deaf ears. Kneeling down to help the scrawny boy up, Dudley noticed a puddle of blood collecting on the floor under his head. Roughly pushing bloodied black hair aside to try and find its source, he felt his finger brush up against a deep gash on Harry's forehead; his scar seemed to have split open.

Eyes wide, fear etched deep into his face, Dudley began screaming, "Mum! Dad! Harry's dying! He's dying! Mum-"

A brilliant flash of flame interrupted his hysterics, and Dudley recoiled from the golden bird that appeared in the blaze's wake. The screaming restarted, this time lacking intelligible words.

Keen eyes recognizing the writhing form on the ground, Fawkes let out a pained screech, disappearing just as he had come.

Grabbing meaty fistfuls of Harry's oversized t-shirt, Dudley - still whimpering loudly, tears now running down his face- dragged Harry out into the hallway and towards his parents' room. He repeated, "Mum! Help! Harry- a fire! A bird- Harry's bleeding!"

Petunia burst out of her bedroom, eyes wild and hair curlers askew. A moment later, she joined Dudley's cacophony. Rushing back into the room, she reached for the phone on the nightstand, shaky hands trying to dial 999.

"Hello? Help! My nephew is bleeding to death!" she wailed into the phone as she returned to the hallway where her son was still trying to drag Harry to her room.

Except he wasn't. Dudley had disappeared. With Harry. All that was left of them was the bloody trail that led from Harry's room up the hallway.

The white, cordless phone clattered to the floor as Petunia screamed with empty lungs.


Harry opened his eyes to a face he recognized in a room he did not.

 

It was Voldemort, who proceeded to move swiftly across the room plunging his hand into Harry's chest.

Voldemort drew his hand back and was clutching a blood-soaked amulet with a bright red gemstone at it's center.

Harry looked on in shock as the gaping wound in his chest disappeared.

"We're in your mind you fool", said Voldemort chuckling.

Then Voldemort hurled the amulet at the wall where it shattered.

"No more Amulet of Chronos to protect you," Voldemort laughed.

"Mess with time all you want, but it is all for naught. KRONOS IMMOBULUS" snarled Voldemort

Time merged. This time Harry had a sinking feeling there would no temporal shenanigans to save him.

He was back. Voldemort was floating high in the sky, a golden glow surrounding him, shooting lances of red Fiendfyre into the midst of Little Whinging. His Death Eaters had turned into smoke and were tearing through the wreckage, looking to cause as much carnage as they could.

The nundu began to charge at them. Harry whipped his wand forth and screamed, "AVADA KE...".

His wandtip was glowing with a green light as Fawkes burst into a fiery wind, sweeping Harry, Dumbledore and the rest of the Dursleys away in a flash of fire. The nundu burst through were they had been previously and let out a roar of anger

When Harry awoke, he found himself in a soft, comfortable bed looking at the face of a pretty brunette with stunning grey eyes.

"Daphne?" Harry asked questioningly

 

"Sorry, mate, no," the stunning brunette said. "Darren. Darren Greengrass."

 

At that moment, Dumbledore walked in with a curvaceous blonde with a pretty, heart-shaped face and ice-blue eyes.

"Ah yes," thought Harry, "the girl with Dumbledore was Daphne Greengrass, although she and Darren looked remarkably similar"

As if noticing his confusion, Daphne spoke, "This is my cousin Darren, he goes to Durmstrang"

Then Dumbledore spoke up, "Harry, my boy, I think it is time you learned about the power of love"

 

It was a library, but not one of Hogwarts: outside of the restricted section, he was pretty sure he’d never been in a library quite as grotty before. This one had overturned bookshelves bowing before tall stacks of overspilling loose-leaf sheets. Set neatly before each pile was a different discarded leather cover, set aside as if someone was waiting to glue all the pages in.

“This is… this is really strange,” Harry said warily to the boy opposite him, who raised an exact mirror copy of his own eyebrow at him. The creepy library was the least weird thing, actually. “And you’re… me?”

His doppelganger stood opposite him, shoulders slouched, relaxed, as he also cast his eyes around the place. It truly was bizarre to see himself from an outside perspective - like if the enchanted mirrors had pulled themselves out of the frames. No wonder he had mistaken himself for his own father, the first time. Did his face really look that square from the side? It was hard to see clearly - the air was thick with fat motes that tried to cling to his eyelashes, and when he irritably swatted at them all it did was stir the dust into a frenzy.

“Disorganised,” his doppelganger mused, face taking on an amused twist. “I can’t say I’m surprised. This is your mind, you know.”

Startled, he examined the library more closely. It wasn’t all grotty - for every upturned shelf there were more with filled, sorted books - and for every cobweb, there was a polished shelf. Were these his memories, his thoughts? A book for every lesson? A stack of papers for every solution to a mystery, waiting to be put together? And the doppelganger - was this his inner self?

Spoiler

Man! I haven't written in years. Cheers for this thread guys.

Edit: Actually I had more but I deleted it, I'd rather see where it goes from someone else.

 

Harry picked a slim book off the dark floorboards between the shelves, 'Inamninate Transfiguration: Solving the ffiDuu sequence'. He flicked through the pages, for every paragraph that was legible there were two that were misspelt, or even empty spaces where a paragraph ought to be. Before any of this had started he had been reading Transfiguration Monthly on some new inanimate to inanimate spell that had warranted an eight-page spread for reasons that escaped him. What was his name? Fidelucci, that was it. He looked back at the binding, 'Inanimate Transfiguration: Solving the Fidelucci Sequence', all now correctly spelled and capitalised. This was unnatural, unmagical, even.

"I think I'd quite like to go back, please," said Harry.

"Rather you than me, mate," replied his doppelganger. The homunculus set off down the aisle, pulling books from their place at random to tumble to the floor.

"Stop it," said Harry. "Oi, stop it."

"We're diving with no broom, and no mistake," called the other Harry. And they were half-running now. Chasing each other through the dusty, half-lit library. No matter how he moved or dodged through the aisles, he could never get any closer, running as fast as he might over uneven hardwood, and abused books. The other Harry never came closer than a few yards.

They stopped in the central rotunda, a small circle with a completely round reading table in the middle, and some dim lamps showing the streaming dust in the air. Sweat, somehow, was dripping down his forehead, and his twin's too.

"Truce. Truce," gasped the other Harry. He had his hands on his knees, bent in the middle trying to catch his breath. Harry leaned against the old, shabby high back of a reading chair.

He felt awfully hollow in the middle. "The air..." said Harry.

"It's too thin."

Harry just nodded, taking deep breaths that brought him no relief. This carried on several minutes, but there was a feeling, a tightness in his chest that wasn't abating and the library seemed dimmer, drearier. He could no longer see to the edges of the small aisles.

"Am I... am I dying?" he asked.

His doppelganger stood straight, hands on hips, sucking in air through closed teeth. Wasn't that a weird sight, Harry had always thought himself short. Was his clone taller than him? Green eyes met green eyes, and the other Harry shrugged.

"I can't make sense of it," said the clone, "there was a letter from Dumbledore. There was Voldemort, death eaters, even a nundu?" It touched at its forehead, there was no scar there, Harry noted.

Harry touched his own forehead, his fingers came away without blood. "What now?" he asked. "No offence, I'd rather Hermione was my subconscious to figure this one out, as I'm apparently so fond of libraries."

The clone laughed. "I'm not your subconscious, Harry," he said, "I'm your understudy." He laughed, again, and Harry ran cold. He recognised that laugh. That high, shrill laugh.

 

The doppelganger's laughter broke into a coughing fit as he doubled over, hands returning to his knees.
"Shite," he said, "You're not doing very well at all right now, are you? You're too weak."
The last word was spat out with more vitriol than Harry had ever heard put into single sound before. But he couldn't defend himself; the 'understudy' was right, he was definitely dying.
"Shouldn't you be happy about this? Doesn't my death mean you're better off?" Harry asked, over-stressed mind unable to connect dots that were almost too blurry to see. Privately, he wondered if it might mean everyone would be better off with him dead, if Voldemort was in his mind.

The unmarked doppelganger scowled at the scar-carrier. "No. Did I knock down too many books? I'm not Voldemort, you fool. I wouldn't look like this if I were him: not here, where no magic can hide your identity. I am neither you, nor Voldemort." Seeming to catch his breath- as much as he could given the lack of oxygen in the air- he stood up straight again, eyes focusing on Harry's scar.

Harry leaned more heavily against the chair next to him for a moment, before giving in and falling into it with a soft thump. It was comfortable, he could easily fall asleep in it. Wrenching his gaze from the ground, he was surprised to find the self proclaimed understudy watching him with barely restrained glee. Immediately, he shot up off the chair. He couldn't fall asleep in here. This... thing would seize control of him, he was sure. After all, wasn't an understudy's role to step in when the main actor was indisposed?

The clone chuckled to himself, "Ah yes, why did I think even for a second that it would be that simple. I'm not going to kill you, Harry. But I don't know any way out of here either; I would have left a long time ago if I did. This was fun, I hope you die soon."
With that, he turned back to the aisle they had destroyed, and walked resolutely back down it, picking up a book every now and again to replace on a shelf.

So lost in thought was Harry, that he didn't notice the new presence behind him until a voice cut through his reverie.

"A library, Harry? I won't say I'm surprised, but this certainly wasn't what I expected."

 

Harry nearly tripped on the chair in his haste to look. Dumbledore's tall frame, along with his colourful robes and blue eyes behind half-moon spectacles and everything else, was behind him. He seemed to be the real deal. "Professor Dumbledore...?" Harry said, tripping over his words in his confusion and relief at seeing the man, "wh-what's going on? I'm supposed to be in my mind, so why-?"

"A somewhat more involved variation of Legilimency, Harry," Dumbledore said, raising his hand to forestall any more questions, then walking up to Harry's left side, facing the doppelganger, who had turned back, his expression thunderous. Dumbledore's own expression had changed from his usual genial one into something carved from granite. "Hello, Tom- no, that is not quite correct. May I have the pleasure of knowing what, exactly, you are?" The man said, bright blue eyes blazing rather than having their usual twinkle-like mirth.

"As if you don't know, Dumbledore!" the clone said, almost as much venom in the final word as he had previously put into saying 'weak', dropping a small dark green book in the process. The clone then walked around a corner, disappearing behind the bookcases.

Harry stepped forward to chase... whatever that clone was in the library corridors once again, when he felt a hand on his left shoulder. Barely managing to contain a flinch, Harry turned to see Dumbledore, his expression solemn.

Dumbledore said, "I believe, Harry, that your look-alike wishes for no more words; I highly doubt we can catch up to him at the moment, and we have more to discuss." His customary twinkle starting to return, though dim.

Spoiler: OOC

I hope this is up to standard. I edited it a bit.

 

"Professor, wh-what's happening to me?", Harry asked, his eyes looking around, trying to make sense of everything since his birthday.

"I am afraid you have been in a magical coma for the past 2 years, Harry", Dumbledore answered, removing his hand from Harry's shoulder and taking out his wand.

"Coma?", Harry asked with his eyebrows knit.

"Yes Harry", Dumbledore replied with a look towards Harry and started casting a spell. "What do you last remember?", he asked.

"I- I was talking to Dudley, and-", Harry's right hand flew to his forehead rubbing over his scar, "-and then my scar started bleeding."

Dumbledore finished his spell and looked at Harry with solemn eyes, "Forgive me my boy, I was a little bit too late to stop Tom's spell". Then, he started walking towards one of aisles.

"What spell Sir?", Harry asked walking after his Professor.

"All in due time Harry", Dumbledore said. They reached a plain old brown door and Dumbledore's hand reached out towards the door knob. "Let us go through this door. I want to show you something", Dumbledore said after opening the door and then entered it.

Harry had no choice but to follow. He felt wind blow across his face and saw green grass all around him. Any direction he looked, all he saw was plains of grass gently blowing in the wind. He moved up to Dumbledore who he realised is looking up into the sky. Harry followed his Professor's gaze and felt breath leave his lips. Hanging in the sky is an enormous swirling fireball almost covering an entire half of the sky. The flames of the fireball are green and red mixed with each other and with both the colours fighting the other, it looks like a divine and eternal dance capable of mesmerising even the gods.

"Professor, wh-what is that?", Harry asked, his eyes tracking one of the red swirl trying to attack a smaller green swirl.

"This-", Dumbledore said with his arms wide, "-is called a soulscape which represents your soul, Harry. And that-", he said pointing one of his arms to the sky "-is your magical core."

"Is- Is it supposed to be that big, Sir?", Harry asked, now watching the green swirl attack back with other smaller green swirls after retreating for a bit.

Dumbledore turned towards him with his twinkle fully back, "I found Miss Granger's little analogy to stars a better way to explain to others. You see, Harry, every magical person has a core where their magic comes from. For a normal wizard, when looking from their soulscape, it's looks like a yellow dwarf, like our sun. More powerful wizards have bigger cores. Mine, for example, looks like a supergiant."

"Is mine a supergiant?", Harry asked looking back at the ball in the sky.

"No, Harry, it is a hypergiant, the biggest there is."

Harry felt he might have broken something with the way he turned his head so fast to look at Professor Dumbledore.

"You see those red and green flames, Harry?", Dumbledore said pointing towards the dance of the flames, "Those are the Basilisk's venom and Phoenix's tears in your magic. They represent the force of eternal destruction and eternal creation.", he turned back to Harry. "Those forces are the reason you are in a coma my boy and not dead."

Harry's eyes widened and he turned to look back at his core before he realised something, "Professor, what is happening with the war? I-Is everyone okay?", he asked turning his eyes back to Dumbledore.

Dumbledore gave him a little smile with his twinkle in full force, "The war outside doesn't matter anymore Harry, because, you have power over time itself", pointing his arm back to the big ball in the sky. His eyes dimmed little bit, "Unfortunately, you can only go back to the midnight of the day you were attacked".

Spoiler

Might have a few grammatical mistakes which I can correct if pointed out. I wanted to write more but wanted to leave something for others. What I wanted to do was:

• They try to control it and go back to the night
• Dumbledore comes faster now (because his mind went back in time with Harry)
• He apparates Harry to Greengrass manor
• Lord Greengrass whose family makes time related magic wanted Harry's power in their bloodline and offered to build a device that lets Harry control his power for an unbreakable vow that Harry will marry his eldest daughter after he won the war
• Harry's conflicted wondering if he should sacrifice his happiness for saving a lot of lives in the war

 

Spoiler: Grammatical mistakes

'The war outside doesn't matter anymore Harry, because, you have the power over time itself'
I think that this particular 'the' needs to disappear.
I also think that the 'magical core size' part sounds like penis innuendo( ) but that might be just me.

 

Spoiler

Thanks

Me too. I am @Taure's follower. But it was a requirement in the story

 

Spoiler

No problem.

It's one of the more annoying cliches, though magical cores still have nothing on, say, Hadrian being Harry's actual name (why not Henry? Like Harry's great-grandfather? Or better yet, leave his name alone!) or House Merlin or Harry getting a wand (or worse, staff) that's as powerful as the Elder Wand when he doesn't even need a wand or marriage contracts Draco is a Veela stealing magic through the Dark Mark Lords and Ancient/Noble Houses The Unspeakables are superbly powerful and competent Death / an agent of Death berates Harry and sends him back through time; also tells him whom to marry for some reason Soul Bonds, destined partners, soul mate marks/words

Sorry, needed to get that off my chest.

 

Dumbledore continued on, telling Harry that he needed to combine his hypergiant magical cores with the power of love. It sounded like a load of nonsense to Harry, and most of it flew over his head.

Harry's head was still spinning from all that had happened that night ⁠—he didn't feel like he'd slept in a coma for 2 years⁠— but one thing stood out to him.

"Why would the war not matter?" Harry said. "If I've been in a coma Professor, tell me what's happened!"

Dumbledore frowned, "Harry my boy, when you travel back in time none of that will have happened so why do you want to know? It'll only trouble you. It's for the best my boi if you just time-travel as soon as possible."

"Dumbledore please, I need to know." Harry grimly said.

Dumbledore looked bleak all of a sudden, "The war has gone terrible while you've been in a coma, the Order lost morale and the people lost hope. Voldemort has driven fear deep into the populace and I fear that resistance will falter even more in time."

Harry stared at the older man that he deeply respected, yet Dumbledore was obviously holding things back. Albus looked more weary then Harry had ever seen him, the years weighing on his face.

Dumbledore continued on sternly, "The mind magic keeping me here isn't that long lasting. My boy, you must quickly recombine your two halves, your pheonix and basilisk sides. It is of the utmost importance-"

Harry stared, something was wrong, deeply wrong. Dumbledore didn't have eyes like that. Cold, unchanging and emotionless eyes.

Dumbledore stopped his droning speech, he looked with false concern at Harry and said, "What's wrong Harry?" placing a warm hand on his shoulder.

"You're not Dumbledore", said Harry. Dumbledore let his hand drop from Harry's shoulder.

"I'm not", calmly said the fake Dumbledore, "but does it matter? I am how your own mind decided to approach you and this visage was how you would be at most ease."

"Everything was fake then, and if this is my own mind-" Harry concentrated and the ignored Dumbledore just stood there calmly as he slowly faded away.

"I should have realised earlier," Harry muttered, staring up at the star. "Hypergiant core? Everyone knows magical cores are-"

Harry shook his head at the fleeting thought and did what came naturally, he turned around and walked into the endless fields of green grass and before he took five steps-

Harry woke up to a room he knew well and a face he didn't recognise.

"Why am I in the hospital wing? And who are you?" Harry demanded.

"My name is Daphne Greengrass," The girl frowned. "I'm in the same year at Hogwarts as you, I thought you'd know that."

 

Harry frowned, searching his aching head for a memory of this girl. If she was telling the truth, he had no way to know for sure: he was drawing blanks.

Trying desperately to school his features into one of recognition, he decided to play along, "Oh yeah! Greengrass; I remember you. From uh, potions..."
He hoped it was enough. Judging by the new tightness around her eyes, he didn't think it had been.

"Alright Potter, I don't care that you don't know who I am. I've no idea how you've gone four years without learning at least your year-mates' names, but I guess the stories of your mental ineptitude aren't as exaggerated as I'd hoped."

Harry's frown returned. If she was telling the truth, she was definitely a Slytherin.

"Where's Dumbledore? Or Madam Pomfrey?" he asked, hoping she would decide to just fetch one of them and leave him alone. If he didn't remember her, he decided, there was a reason. And based on their conversation so far, he figured it was because he had blocked out her unpleasant personality. Her looks certainly weren't forgettable, he thought to himself as he looked at her more closely. Though no Cho, he couldn't deny she had attractive qualities. His adolescent mind began listing off a few of them before he caught himself: it didn't matter how well the ponytail she was wearing suited her, he didn't know what was going on.

"... take care of you until they get back. Are you listening, Potter?"
Caught off balance, Harry stammered out, "Huh? Oh, uhh yeah. Got it."
"Well then, are you feeling okay? Any aches and pains? Are you feeling warm?" she strode over to his bed as she finished her final question, not waiting for his answer before touching his forehead with the back of her hand. "No fever, from the looks of it."

"I've got a bit of a headache," he said, glaring at her, "But apart from that, I'm fine. I just really need to talk to Professor Dumbledore."
Ignoring his question she walked into Madam Pomfrey's potion cupboard, return a few seconds later holding a vial with a clear potion in it.

"Drink up. This should take care of your headache." she said, handing him the vial. He stared at it for a few seconds, gauging his options. Could he trust her? He was in Hogwarts' hospital wing, and he was definitely awake this time around. Focusing on the potion for a few seconds, he thought he recognized it as one Madam Pomfrey had given him on numerous of his prior visits.
Figuring it was probably safe, he gingerly reached for the glass tube, raised it slowly to his lips and downed the potion in one go, grimacing at the vile tasting liquid as he forced it down his throat.

"Thanks." he grunted, placing the vial back into her waiting hand. Shutting his eyes, he could feel the drummer behind his eyes let up a little bit.
"You're welcome," he was surprised to hear in reply. He opened to search for sarcasm in her expression, but she was already walking back to the cupboard.
"I hope that helps enough. I'm no potions master, but a Relieving Reconstitution isn't too complicated a brew," she called over her shoulder.
Surprised at her clear attempt to start a conversation, Harry took a moment to reply, "It's working just fine, thank you. Are you helping Snape out over the summer, then?"
A snort echoed from the cupboard. Derision obvious in her tone, Daphne said, "As if that man would ever accept help. No, I'm studying under Madam Pomfrey. It's not ideal, but everyone else is apprenticing starting this summer, so I figured I might as well too. I'm surprised you're hanging out here, shouldn't you be on yours? Or are you just taking it easy before OWL year?"

Harry was very confused. This whole interaction was just one bamboozle after another. Summer plans? Apprenticeships? Why was she even trying to talk to him? Was she just trying to get him to talk about himself so she could report it to the Death Eaters?