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This is indeed a Harry Potter fanfic.  It is, in no particular order:

A continuation, peggy sue, crossover, mega-crossover, fusion, alternate universe, original flavor, darkfic, crackfic.  Perhaps the only thing it won't be is a lemon.  Hmm, maybe . . . no.  No.

Oh, by the way, there may be spoilers.  Untagged spoilers at that.  Given the title, you may be able to guess one particular spoiler.

-Murmur

Um... no guesses from me... but...

(Old Lady Voice) Where's the fic?
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

HARRY POTTER AND A MEMORY OF LIGHT

CHAPTER ONE: A MEMORY OF WHAT ONCE WAS AND MAY BE AGAIN

                If
asked, Harry Potter would have called himself quite ordinary.  His hair was a mess, he never focused on
homework like he should, and whenever a pretty girl looked his way he
completely fell apart.  Normal kid stuff,
really.  And so he was safe in calling
himself a normal kid.

                Alright,
yes, so he got into more adventures than the Famous Five—but, he would be quick
to point out, he owned no dog.  He had a
snowy-white owl, but it wasn’t as if she was ever there whenever he risked his
life.  His home-life was a bit too
Dickensian, as a bookish friend of his put it, for his liking.  But then many people had terrible home lives.

                And of
course his school was like Greyfriar’s as run by Merlin.   Instead of learning chemistry, he was being
taught potions; and instead of mathematics, he got charms.  But none of his enemies were nearly as funny
as Billy Bunter, though some were quite as stupid and gross.

                Finally,
and oh very well, he had a mysterious scar on his forehead that he’d received
when the man who had been terrorizing magical Britain had snuck into his house
when he’d been a baby and murdered his parents, only to somehow be utterly
destroyed when he’d tried to kill Harry in his cradle.  When Harry walked down the street, people
took one look at his forehead and bowed, or tried to get his autograph, or some
such nonsense.

                None of
that meant that Harry Potter wasn’t perfectly normal and ordinary—average,
even.  Dull as dishwater and as
remarkable.  He had the grades to prove
it.

                Sitting
in one of the compartments of the grand red steam locomotive that wound its way
unseen through the British countryside , Harry felt his spirits rise.  He was leaving his miserable home life and
going to his true home—Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, his magical
public school.  The only blood relation
he had were the Dursleys: fat bully Uncle Vernon, skeletal bully Aunt Petunia,
his mother’s sister, and even fatter bully cousin Dudley.  Each in their own unique way had his life
quite terrible.  Until he had been
twelve, he’d lived in a cupboard underneath the stairs.  His clothes were hand-me-downs from Dudley,
who was not and had never been even close to his size.  He’d frequently been told that he was a)
unwanted, b) a freak, and c) a waster.

                It had
been particularly bad this summer. 
Firstly, he’d been forbidden his school books.  He’d been unable to start his holiday
homework until the night he’d snuck down to where they’d been hidden and stole
his books back.  Harry had been forced to
do his homework in the dead of night like a fugitive.

                Secondly,
Harry had been forced to run away from home after he’d accidently blown up
Uncle Vernon’s sister like a balloon.  It
had been an accident, and she had deserved it, but it was enough for him to
flee his home –again, like a fugitive. 
Harry had imagined police chasing after him for breaking magical
law.  Not only was he an underage wizard,
thus not allowed to do any magic at home away from school, but he’d done magic
upon a muggle, or non-magical person. 
This was a serious breach of the secrecy laws that protected muggle from
wizards (or possibly the other way around; it was supposedly taught in History
of Magic, but as that was the most deadly boring subject in school, he’d never
been bothered to remember anything that was taught).

                However,
it had all turned out fine.  The Minister
of Magic himself had reassured him that no legal consequences would dog him,
and Harry was allowed to stay at Diagon Alley, the magical high street and market
town that was located in the heart of London. 
He’d stayed there for the rest of summer, enjoying strange sweets and
browsing weird shops.  Everything would
have been fine except for the third thing.

                Harry
was being chased by a great big dog.  He
had noticed it on the night that he had run away from home.  A huge dog, black as anything, had been
watching him on that summer night, just as the wizarding bus had picked him up
to take him to Diagon Alley.  It had
badly frightened Harry, not least because it was one more thing in a night of
one more things.  However, Harry would
have thought nothing more of it if he hadn’t seen a picture of a similar great
big dog on the cover of a book of death omens. 
Apparently, the Grim, as the dog was called, was the most terrible sign
of oncoming death.

                It
certainly didn’t help that Sirius Black, an insane follower of Lord Voldemort,
the man who had murdered Harry’s parents, had recently escaped from
prison.  Apparently, Black had vowed to
avenge his master by killing Harry, or some such.  Honestly, Harry wasn’t too bothered—people
vowing to kill him were getting to be pretty old hat by this point.

                And
life went on.  He’d boarded the train to
Hogwarts on a dreary day that was rapidly becoming dark with rain.  Already it seemed more night than day outside
the train’s windows.  The light from the
gas lamps that had automatically lit up some time before gave a cheerful, warm
glow that was nothing like the cold florescence and garish neon that Harry
associated with muggle lights.  There was
something more human and humane about the flames that danced about on the walls
of the cabin.

                Harry
was sitting in the rearmost cabin of the train, his school trunk stowed above
him.  With him were his two best friends,
but surprisingly there was an adult in the cabin.  The only adult that the Hogwarts students
ever saw on the train was the lunch trolley woman, who came by to sell treats
and other food.  But this tired-seeming
man, who had spent the entire time since before the train left Kings Cross
Station sleeping, was apparently a new teacher on his own way to Hogwarts.  His name was R.J. Lupin, which had a slightly
sinister sound to it.  In the back of his
mind, Harry hoped that this one at least wouldn’t be trying to actively murder
him.  It would make for a nice change to
not be threatened by a grown-up.

                A
thought occurred to Harry.  Turning to
one of his friends, a girl with bushy hair who had her face stuck in a book—The
Standard Book of Spells, Grade Three—Harry asked, “Hermione, how is my life
‘Dickensian’?  I mean, the only ghosts I
ever meet are at Hogwarts and they’re quite nice, really.”

                “What?”
said a baffled Hermione Granger.  The
daughter of two non-magical dentists, she had taken to magic with a
passion.  She read voraciously,
oftentimes did things to her friends ‘for their own good,’ and had built a
reputation as one of the smartest girls in the school, if not the
smartest.  She also had a reputation for
being the swottiest swot this side of Swotland, but that was counterbalanced by
the number of times she’d almost died in one of Harry’s adventures.  Being one of the smartest people around, she
quickly picked up the thread of conversation. 
With a sigh, she answered.  “Oh,
honestly, Harry.  Haven’t you ever read
any of Charles Dickens’ other books?”

                “I
haven’t read that one,” said Harry proudly. 
Hermione gave a disgusted sniff in response.  “I only used to watch the movie before the
Queen’s Christmas message.”

                The
third occupant of the car looked at them curiously.  He was a tall, redheaded boy, with a long,
thin nose and an explosion of freckles on his face.  Ron Weasley was the first friend that Harry
had ever made, never mind the first wizard friend he’d made.  He was in the same year as Harry and
Hermione, but unlike them came from a wizarding family.  As oftentimes as Ron was astonished by
Harry’s ignorance of the wizarding world, so was Harry surprised by how wrong
Ron could be about the muggle world. 
“Sorry, what’s this?”

                “Well,
on Christmas day, the Queen comes on the telly to make a speech,” explained
Harry.  “I haven’t seen one since I
started going to Hogwarts, but before then Uncle Vernon used to make us all
watch it.   It’s usually about, oh I
don’t know, wars and marriages and like that.”

                “I know
about the Queen,” said Ron in exasperation. 
“We get her on the wireless, though I can’t understand half of what she
bangs on about.  No, who’s this Charles
Dickens bloke?”

                “Well,
he’s a writer,” started Hermione excitedly. 
Hermione loved books, and one of the best ways to both distract her and
get her attention was to mention a book. 
Already a pleased flush was spreading across her face.

                Ron, on
the other hand, cared very little for books. 
If it was not about the history of his favorite sport, Quidditch, then
he would much rather not have anything to do with a book.  This meant that when studying with Ron, Harry
was far more likely to skive off than not. 
Already Ron was tuning out, his gaze not-so-politely blank as Hermione
went on to describe Charles Dickens and his impact on Victorian-era social
justice.

                Harry,
whose fault this was, made the effort of grunting every once in a while, as if
in agreement.  However Hermione soon became
absorbed in her book once more, and all three of them fell into a companionable
silence.  Though Ron had wanted to play
exploding snaps, Harry had pointed out the sleeping professor in the cabin.  Instead he and Harry were playing wizard
chess, though Ron had made sure that the pieces fought each other
silently.  To make up for it, the pieces
were being very melodramatic, pantomiming grievous wounds and taking a long
time to die. 

                Ron was
about to tell the pieces off when he became distracted by his stomach.  Going over to the window, and being careful
not to disturb Professor Lupin, Ron went to see if he could tell how far from
the school and its feast they were.  Even
as Ron looked out the window, the train had begun to slow down, which surprised
Hermione greatly.

                “But
we’re not nearly at school yet,” she said, checking her wristwatch.  “We shouldn’t be slowing down at all.”

                “Well,
we are,” said Ron.  “So why’re we
stopping?”

                “I
don’t know,” said Hermione.  Each word
was distinct and filled with distaste. 
Hermione hated not knowing, and even more hated admitting not knowing to
someone other than a teacher.  As often
as Harry led them into adventures, so too did Hermione lead the three of them into
investigations—though those investigations usually began in the library, ended
in the library, and stayed in the library.

                The
train came to a stop with a great hiss and squeal, which was soon followed by
dull thuds and crashes as peoples’ luggage fell from their racks.  Yells of pain and surprised floated through
the train corridors.

                “I
think some people are getting onto the train,” said Ron, his face still pressed
against the window.  “They look like—”

                Whatever
else he was going to say was cut off by the lights of the train suddenly going
out.  The gentle glow of the wall lamps
snuffed out in their cabin.  Harry, who
had been sticking his head out into the corridor, saw that the same was true
for the rest of the train.  With the
darkness outside from the storm, the train was completely dark.  Already the grumbling complaints from the
other students on the train turned into panicked exclamations.  People began shouting, trying to find friends
in the dark.

                It even
happened in Harry’s cabin, as first Neville Longbottom, a fellow third year and
one of Harry’s roommates, stumbled in. 
He was soon followed by Ginny Weasley, Ron’s little sister and a second
year.  As they banged into each other in
the dark, yelling all the while, the Professor woke up and illuminated the
cabin with a flame that floated just above his open hand.

                The
relief that Harry felt at having both light and someone taking charge was
snuffed out like the cabin lights when someone began to open the cabin
door.  Standing there was a cloaked
figure.  It— for it was impossible to
tell if it was a man or woman beneath that black cloak—loomed over everyone,
the top of its hood brushing the ceiling. 
Mist gathered around its unseen feet and crawled up it and slowly filled
the cabin.  The only thing that was
visible was a single hand, scabrous and skeletal. 

                As if
sensing Harry’s gaze somehow from beneath its concealing hood, the figure
started to withdraw its hand back into its cloak.  But then, before it had halfway hidden it,
the figure stopped.  Professor Lupin
began to lunge forward, but before he could pull Harry back the figure reached
out and grabbed Harry.  The corpse-like
hand gripped Harry firmly.  Terror filled
him, and his mind went blank with it. 
Never before had he been so frightened. 
Even facing his parents’ murderer, his monstrously pale face pushing out
the back of his Defense against the Dark Arts professor, had not been as
horrifying as that hand touching him.

                The
cloaked figure drew in a deep breath, the hissing inhalation loud and
ominous.  And with it, it seemed that the
figure was somehow breathing in all the happiness from the world.  While before he had been struggling against
the grip despite his fear, Harry went limp in the figure’s grasp.  The mist seemed to fill him, his mouth and
nose suffocated with it.  The wand that
Harry had unconsciously drawn from his pocket, but had been too stupid to use,
fell to the floor.  Harry was distantly
aware of the shouts of his friends and the Professor, but it all seemed so far
away.  The figure drew back the hood
slightly, revealing  . . . .

                Everything
went dark.

[*]

                “Not
Harry.  Please, not Harry,” screamed the
woman.

                “Stand
aside,” commanded a high, cold voice.

                There
were more screams, terrible and pleading. 
A choice was made, to sacrifice a life willingly in order to buy just a
few more moments of time.  There was a
flash of green light, and a thud as a body fell.

                Harry
stared down at the woman who was his mother. 
She was beautiful and brave, and he knew nothing about her.  Yet he loved her and it tore at him to see
her like this, to remember her like this. 
But he could not stop looking at her, drinking in her features even as
they were frozen in death.  Everything
went dark, and Harry both regretted it and was thankful.

Quote:(Old Lady Voice) Where's the fic?

You ki-- er, old ladies these days, you need to have everything done for you.  No imaginations.  Haven't you ever had stone soup?  Why, in my day .  How the rant can apply to fanfics, you'll just have to imagine.
-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[*]

                There
was a man in a forest.  It was night, and
the man was tired.  Harry watched as the
man walked cloaked and unseen, surrounded by the loving dead.  The man was tall, with dark messy hair and
glasses.  He walked until he came to a
clearing in the forest, where masked figures waited impatiently.  A huge man was hanging, restrained and
struggling, while a large snake floated in a glowing cage.  Beneath the snake, and watched by his
followers, was a pale, bald man in black. 
His eyes were slits, reflecting the fires that lit the clearing.   The pale man was growing ever more furious,
but that fury became twisted delight when he spotted the tall man, who had
taken off his cloak and revealed himself.

                The
followers stilled themselves, watching intensely as the pale man slowly and
with great deliberation raised a long wand. 
The pale man was obviously taking great delight in this moment.  This was triumph, this was victory; a balm
for all those years in the dark, screaming in impotent frustration.

                The man
stood there, watching impassively, even as the huge man struggled and screamed
a name.  But then there was a bright
green light, and the man—who was a boy, really, couldn’t have been more than
seventeen—was on the ground, dead.

                Harry
looked down at the dead body, and knew who it was who lay on the ground.  Harry knew that he had witnessed the
sacrifice of Harry Potter, who had given his life to save his friends.

                And the
world went dark again.

[*]

                There
was a palace, wonderful and wondrous.  It
was the site of great struggle and great joy. 
It was a palace but also a home, filled with husbands, wives and most
importantly children.  Yet there knelt a
man on the ground, screaming in agony, surrounded by his dead family and
friends.  Most terrible of all was the
woman that he held close to him, her hair still vibrant as the sun even as her pale,
dead face was locked in her rictus of disbelieving horror.  She, like everyone else in the palace, had
died by his hands, for this man had been insane.

                Yet he
was no longer mad, as he had been healed. 
It was not done kindly, but as a cruel torment done by the gloating man
in black with fire for eyes.  This man
was laughing at the kneeling man’s grief. 
Yet he stopped laughing when the crying man drew in power, and more
power, and still more power.  He held
that power for a brief instant, before letting it go in a torrent.  The man in black disappeared before the
release, wanting to see his grief but unable to withstand the grief-stricken
man’s unfettered might.  He had nothing
left to live for, and so had no need to hold back.  His world was already destroyed, and so he
would usher in the age when everyone’s world would be shattered by the power of
madmen.

                The
palace was destroyed in fire and churning, molten earth.  And where it once stood rose a mountain,
taller than any other mountain.  A cairn
for a lost world, and a lost family.

                Harry
Potter watched the death of Lews Therin Telamon, called the Dragon, the Lord of
the Morning, and finally the Kinslayer. 
Harry watched and knew himself in Lews Therin.

[*]

                Names
and lives flickered through the darkness, each time ending in death.  Sometimes it was in triumph, others in
tragedy.  Oftentimes it was both.  Strange fates shaped those lives, and in each
of them Harry recognized himself in those men and women.

                Garion
and Sparhawk, who led lives of wonder and courage against evil gods and bleak
futures.  Leto, who sacrificed his
humanity for the sake of humanity. 
Severian the light-bringer, the sun-maker.  Kimball, Dave, Donal, Valentine and Elijah.  Elric, Erekose, Corum and Jerry.  Usagi, Utena, Nausicaa.  Nadia, Shinji and Simon.  Gully and Kaneda.  Sinclair, Sheridan and Delenn.  John, who created himself.  Kara and Jack.  The boy magicians: Tim, Christopher and Will.  Ged, who was truly named.  Ellidyr, who had nothing except his name, his
sword, and his friends.  Paul the
twice-born.  Eustace, who was saved when
he turned into a dragon.

                All of
them and more.

                Finally,
there came the last life, which was also the first.  Yet in the confusion of lives, Harry wondered
if there could ever be a first, just as if there could be a last.

[*]

                The
black sword spoke, as he knew it would. 
His pride brought him here, just as it had killed everyone who had loved
him and succored him.  Every home he had
known, he had destroyed for his pride. 
He could blame the curse that was laid upon his family by the Great
Enemy.  He knew that, even now, the
others were doing so.  Yet here in this
last moment, as he molded the earth around the sword’s hilt so that it would
firmly hold the blade in place, he knew that his pride was curse enough.

                How
many innocent men and women had he killed, generous friends who had taken him
in and cared for him, rescued him even from the ruin that he brought, only to
be ruined thereby?  Two of them he had
killed with this very sword, one unknowingly but the other in purposeful
rage.  But he knew himself well enough to
know that he could have lived with the guilt of even that last murder.  War filled him up, made him great.  He was a war leader of great power and
presence, eventually turning people away from their own chiefs and into his
soldiers.  He had done this very thing so
many times, but always to the death of those same followers.  He had no doubt that he would have continued
on in this fashion, if not for the truth which had caused the last murder.

                He looked
down at his hand, where the dragon’s venom had fallen and burned him.  It had been bandaged, lovingly, the last
loving gesture by his wife.  When he had
killed the dragon, he had fallen unconscious from his malice, and she had come
upon him and healed him as best she could. 
But then the dragon, in his dying, used the truth to cause his wife to
kill herself by leaping from a great cliff. 
Already all things died on the cliff side.  He had briefly considered joining her in her
fall, but no.

                For
here was the murderous truth: that the dragon had, in years past, caused his
wife to forget herself, and in the forgetting find herself in his company.  They fell in love, a great love which calmed
his martial spirit, and she eventually were married.  She carried their first child in her, and he
looked forward to that birth most of all. 
But the dragon’s death brought with it the end of his works, and its
culmination: for his wife was his sister, and the horror of it caused her to
kill herself.

                Now he
shall do the same.  And he did.

                The
sword shattered at he fell upon it, and he was buried with its shards.

                And
Harry Potter knew himself in Turin, son of Hurin, called Turambar, Master of
Doom, who was himself mastered.  The
darkness claimed him one last time.

I hope you old ladies are now sated with this first chapter.

Remember, replies save lives.

-Murmur

That is tasty fic. MOAR!
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Oh, yes, indeed, now that I have had the time to read it. More, please.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

This looks like it is going to be really interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing how you are planning on weaving (heh) together the different types of magic from Harry's other lives, from Rand's use of the One Power, to Garion's Will and the Word, and Elric's Sorcery, just to name a few.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

Given the risk of that, I don't know if I'll have Harry wielding Stormbringer in one hand, the Sword of Aldur in the other, weaving balefire and shooting spiral energy, all while floating telekinetically using the power of his Lens.  Seems a bit overkill, honestly.

However I am working on the next chapter even now.

Oh, fun game, try to identify all of the lives that Harry experienced.  I'll give you one of them: John who created himself is John Connor from The Terminator.

-Murmur

Harry doesn't need any of the special powers of his other lives to be awesome, just a bit of self-confidence, the ability to think things through and follow up after the immediate moment is past, and the motivation to not be such a slacker. Potterverse magic lacks major direct damage effects, but if you just combine the various exploitables it is godlike in the support/utility roles, and with a whiff of planning and effort mundane physics can do all the direct damage you could ask for.
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

Harry *could* do all that.  He *could*.  Unfortunately, he is a teenager, and therefore genetically programmed to carry the Idiot Ball for quite a while.

-Murmur

Well, it lacks major direct damage effects that they teach to teenagers in school, anyway. Pettigrew was able to blow up that street somehow, after all.

Also, regarding the different forms of magic, I meant it more along the lines that they would all presumably be differing expressions/manifestations of the same thing, likely the One Power (which comes from the True Source, as opposed to the True Power which comes from the Dark One.) Those are just different Ages of the world, after all, not entirely different worlds.
Edit:
I showed the list of names to a friend, who was able to get all of them but the John Connor one, which he says needs a better hint.  He also said:

Quote:He lacks Robert Howard references.  I'm not saying Conan it up but a nice throw out to Bran Mac Morn would be cool

Just passing that along.
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

After all, the whole Kull to Conan to Bran mac Morn reincarnation thing is pretty well established.  One of the reasons why I didn't is because Robert E. Howard heroes tend to eschew the "messianic" hero stereotype that I was working with, and more into the adventurer/conqueror hero.  Besides, I was getting a bit full up.

I may be making references to Kull and Conan and Bran (maybe even Howard's boxing character?), but I may not.  

This does not mean, of course, that Harry Potter didn't have visions of Conan reaving and wenching, just that I never mentioned it.  Just like I never mentioned all that Harry spent trying to reach a certain tower inhabited by a certain figure in red.

I will say this: Harry Potter was never Merlin or King Arthur or any of his knights; nor was he Robin Hood.

-murmur

So I'm just finishing up chapter two.  Look for it soon, and when reading it watch for as many cliches as you can find!

It has quite a bit more exposition than the previous chapter, and not a lot of banter.  I hope it reads all right, though.

-Murmur

CHAPTER TWO: A DIFFERENT COLORED JUMPER

                Harry
woke up in stages.  He was convinced,
upon opening his eyes and seeing only darkness, that he was somehow trapped in
the non-place between lives.  His heart
thudded fast and painfully for a few moments, until he noticed the dimmed lamps
that glowed from high brackets on a wall before him.  He knew then where he was, as the familiar
crisp linen sheets rustled beneath him and he cocooned himself deeper in his
soft blankets: he was in the Hogwarts hospital wing.  He spent quite a lot of time there, over the
years.  Just last year, he had had a memorable
and painful night as the bones in his right arm regrew after a bungled healing
attempt.

                Just
last year . . . what did that even mean, now? 
All those lives and memories swirled in his mind, but what was
especially clear was the life of Harry Potter, the man who had walked to his
death willingly.  Was he now him, reborn
in a thirteen year old kid’s body?

                A
bone-deep exhaustion, one that had been pushed aside by the rush of fear and
adrenaline upon waking, came back with a rush. 
Unable to stay awake any longer, and truly not wishing to, Harry fell
asleep and dreamed ordinary dreams.

[*]

                Harry
woke at lunchtime to the sound of friends talking concernedly.

                “Isn’t
he supposed to be better now?” asked Ron, his tone at once worried and
angry.  He oftentimes sounded like this,
as if embarrassed by caring, and angry at being embarrassed.

                “He is
better,” said Hermione, though she too sounded worried.  “Professor McGonagall said that Madame
Pomfrey told her that Harry was sleeping instead of . . . instead of . . .
.”  She trailed off, as if choking on the
words she could not get through.

                Awake
enough to move now, Harry stirred in his bed. 
Forcing open his gummy eyes, it took a moment to focus properly.  Automatically, he reached out his hand to try
to find his glasses.  With a squeak,
Hermione took them from the side table and placed them in his hands.  Sitting up now, Harry put on his glasses and
looked at his friends.

                “Do I
look as bad as you lot?” he asked.  Ron
grinned widely, instantly destroying the wan expression on his face.  Hermione, on the other hand, still looked
worried and upset, though much less so than a moment ago.

                “Nah,”
said Ron, obviously lying.  “You look
fine, now.  You should have seen yourself
after the Dementor attack, though. 
That’s what that cloaked thing’s called, by the way.  A Dementor.”

                “Oh,
Harry, we were so worried,” said Hermione, now looking as if she were about to
cry when before she had seemed to be feeling better.  “When you collapsed, everyone thought that
you had . . . died.”

                “Yeah,
mate.  You should have seen it.  Professor Lupin shot this white, glowing mist
from the end of his wand.  Scared the
Dementor right off the train, it did.” 
Ron’s eyes shined with the memory, the words bringing back a part of the
fearful energy he must have felt at the time. 
“Anyway, he started forcing small bits of chocolate down you all the way
to the castle.”

                “Apparently,”
added Hermione, “chocolate is recommended treatment for exposure to
Dementors.  However, from what Madame
Pomfrey said when we got here, it’s never been used for severe cases, because
people usually . . . usually die.”

                “Well,
yeah.  But I’m not dead, am I,” said
Harry, trying to sound breezy to keep Hermione’s spirits up.  From her quavering smile, he knew that he was
at least somewhat successful.  Ron, who
had been looking at Hermione worriedly, smiled at Harry and nodded
encouragingly.

                They
told him all about what happened after his collapse.  How, as soon as the train had stopped at the
station, Professor Lupin had rushed Harry off of it.  Hagrid, a huge, hairy man that was the
school’s gamekeeper and the one who had introduced Harry to the wizarding
world, saw Harry in Lupin’s arms and wanted to carry Harry himself.  However, by this point, Professors Dumbledore
and McGonnagal and Madame Pomfrey had rushed down from the school and met them.

                Professor
Dumbledore was the school’s headmaster, and a very old and powerful
wizard.  Though he had an odd sense of
humor, oftentimes leading others to believe that he wasn’t quite all there, he
was nevertheless greatly respected by the wizarding community.  Indeed, he had been instrumental in fighting
off dark wizards for over fifty years. 
He was even on a chocolate frog card, which meant that he was very
important indeed.  Professor Dumbledore
had ordered Hagrid to continue taking charge of the first year students and to
leave Harry in the care of Professor McGonnagal and Madame Pomfrey.  One of Hagrid’s jobs was to lead the incoming
first years on a boat ride on the lake between the train station and Hogwarts
as a way of marking the transition from their old lives to their new ones.

                Professor
McGonnagal was the head of Griffindor House, as well as the transfigurations
teacher.  Stern and straightforward, she
had little tuck with shenanigans, but she was also even-handed and just.  Her colleague, Madame Pomfrey, was the
school’s matron and thus handled all of the medical emergencies that could
happen when you had hundreds of underage wizards and witches banging into each
other in a great heap of a castle.  They
led Professor Lupin, still holding Harry, through the thick crowd of students
and into the hospital wing.  Professor
McGonnagal had had to speak quite sharply to some of them to get them to move,
and a talking-to from McGonnagal was no laughing matter.

                But she
was not the only one who was upset by the situation.

                “You
should have seen Dumbledore,” said Ron. 
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry.”

                “Obviously
he’d be angry, Ron,” said Hermione. 
“I’ve heard that he protested quite vigorously against the Dementors
being posted at the school; and even before we got here, there was a wrongful
attack.”

                “Anyway,
as soon as we had you in the hospital wing, and it looked like you were going
to make it, Dumbledore went running straight back to his office to talk to the
Ministry of Magic.”  Ron laughed, though
it was tinged with anxiety.  “I thought
that I saw lightning shooting out of his wand, he was that upset.”

                “Why
are the Dementors here at the school, then?” asked Harry. 

                “It’s
to capture Sirius Black,” said Hermione. 
“The Ministry believes that he’ll come to Hogwarts, and so they’ve sent
out Dementors to look for him.”  She
looked at Harry with an expression of grave concern, which at least brought the
color back into her face.  Hermione was
very empathetic, easily crying in sympathy towards other people’s pain.  It made her a very good person, but an
embarrassing friend.

                “Cause
Black’s looking to kill you,” said Ron matter-of-factly.  “Though if he doesn’t hurry, the Dementors
will be doing his job for him.”  Ron, on
the other hand, had all the sensitivity of a paralyzed boulder.  It made him an oftentimes cruel person, but a
funny friend.

                “Ron!”
chided Hermione.

                “Anyway,
the rumor is that the Ministry’s going to let the Dementors do a kiss on Sirius
Black.  That’s what they do when they
want to kill someone—just suck people soul’s out when they lift up their
hood.”  Ron sounded both disgusted and
fascinated by this, while Hermione merely looked ill.

                “Like
what they tried with me,” said Harry quietly. 
“Why did they try it?”

                Ron and
Hermione had no answers, nor did they try to make one.  They only looked back at him in concern.

                Soon
enough, Madame Pomfrey came back in to chivvy Ron and Hermione away.  Hermione promised they’d both come back after
dinner with all the homework Harry missed. 
Ron merely rolled his eyes in disgust, then promised that he would be
bringing him some dessert.  As Madame
Pomfrey waved a wand over him, apparently to check to see if he was still breathing,
Harry watched his two best friends walk out of the hospital wing.

                “Give
him his homework?” said Ron.  “Hermione,
don’t you know that the best part about being ill is that you don’t have to do
homework?”

                “Honestly,
why would one be at school if not to study?” asked Hermione rhetorically.

                Ron
looked at her in shock as they went through the wide oak doors that opened onto
one of Hogwarts’ many corridors.  The
last thing Harry heard was Ron saying, “It’s like you’re another species or
something, you are.”

                After
telling Harry that he was fine but would have to spend another night in
hospital, Madam Pomfrey left Harry to settle back down on his bed.  Harry stared at the hospital wing’s ceiling
and brooded.  He was not, despite what he
may have thought, a seventeen-year old stuck in a thirteen year old boy’s
body.  He knew this because he simply
could not imagine himself doing what the older Harry Potter had done.  Some of the most memorable acts of the older
Harry Potter, beyond the battles and derring-do, was dating and kissing girls.

                Harry
imagined kissing Ginny Weasley, both the twelve-year old girl as she was now,
and the sixteen year old girl she would grow into, and blushed scarlet.  He and Ginny seemed to have spent most of his
sixth year snogging in isolated corners of the castle.  He thought of Cho Chang, a very pretty girl
who was one year old than him and was in Ravenclaw House.  The older Harry Potter had gone out on a few
dates with her and had even had his first kiss from her.  Harry blushed even hotter at the memory.

                So, in
conclusion, and anyway, and let’s ignore kissing girls and stop it, Harry very
well may be the reincarnation of Harry Potter, but he was not Harry Potter.

                Harry
briefly considered asking Madame Pomfrey to come back and give him a potion for
the headache that just rampaged through his mind.

                Once
recovered a bit, Harry resumed his brooding. 
In other words, he was living his life over again from its very
beginning.  Indeed, it was possible that
the world was playing out its history all over again from its beginning.  Both Rand al’Thor and Lews Therin Telamon
believed that time was a wheel, replaying its events over and over again until
time ended.  Rand believed that he was
living in the Third Age and was the reincarnation of Lews Therin, while Lews
Therin believed he was in the Second Age and believed that he was some unknown
person’s reincarnation.  Both had been
told, and both believed, that they would have to live their lives over again
when their respective Ages came around again.

                Harry
had no idea if this was true or not.  It
was all a bit too mystical for him.  Did
all of this happen before and was happening again?  Now, however, Harry frowned in
consternation.  Was his life playing out
exactly the same?  Or was something
different?

                Desperately,
he searched through memories that he knew to be his own and compared them to
the life of that other Harry Potter. 
This was particularly difficult, as all that he could think of when he
tried to remember his life was the ice cream he’d had at Florian Fortescu’s Ice
Cream Parlour in Diagon Alley just a few days ago, or the first time he’d
ridden a broom two years back.  Beyond
unpleasant memories of Professor Snape, the potions teacher and Harry’s least
favorite person, he could not remember much of his time in class.  Well, there was that one time that Gilderoy
Lockhart, the second-year Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, had released
Cornish pixies in the classroom and they’d attacked everyone.  That was one of those funnier in hindsight
moments older people keep on talking about.

                When he
thought to compare the other Harry Potter’s life, what stuck out were the big
events: battles at the Ministry of Magic, a fight with a dragon, a duel with
Voldemort, another fight with a dragon, another fight with Voldemort—this time
in midair, and so on.  All the
life-threatening things that he’d done in the past, and would apparently do in
the future.  That, and of course, kissing
girls.  Harry far preferred the memories
of kissing girls, even if it made him feel feverish.

                It was
not until he was thinking of nothing in particular, possibly having to do with
Quidditch, that his eyes fell upon his clothes. 
Ron had brought him a change in clothing, and Hermione had thoughtfully
folded them into a neat pile on a chair next to the bed.  On top of the black school robes lay a wooly
jumper which Mrs. Weasley had knitted for him last Christmas.  Every Christmas since his first year, Mrs.
Weasley had knitted him a Weasley family jumper.  He had already been having a wonderful year,
as he no longer had to live with the Dursleys and had found friends for the
first time in his life.  Yet with that
first Weasley family jumper, he felt like he truly belonged.  That, in a way, he was loved.

                Though
he had outgrown it, he still kept the jumper in the bottom of his school
trunk.  Mrs. Weasley, though she had only
seen him for a few moments, had remembered Harry’s green eyes and had knitted
that first jumper in green, with a large letter H at its center.  This showed how truly generous in her love
Mrs. Weasley was, and the kind of mother that Harry always wished he had, and
always envied Ron for having—not that he would ever tell Ron that.  It would way too embarrassing.

                His
green jumper.  He knew it as well as he
knew the feel of his Nimbus 2000 flying broomstick that he used to play
Quidditch.  It was green.  So why did he think, for a brief moment, that
it was black?  A black jumper . . . black
jumper . . . .

                It came
to him, then.  That other Harry Potter:
his first Weasley family jumper had been black, instead of green.  In the letter that accompanied the jumper,
Mrs. Weasley explained that it was to match his black hair.  To relieve it, there had been a red letter H
at the center, and red trimming.  The
other Harry had loved it as much as he loved his green jumper.

                So,
there was the difference.  It was
unlikely to be the only difference in the lives of the two Harry Potters, but
it was the first that he noticed. 
However, despite the different colored jumper, the large events of his
first and second years at Hogwarts had not changed.  Both had faced Lord Voldemort before the
Mirror of Erised for possession of the Philosopher’s Stone.  Both killed the basilisk that had been
terrorizing Hogwarts during their second year in order to save Ginny Weasley
from possession by the ghostly memory of Tom Riddle, the Hogwarts schoolboy who
would grow up to be Lord Voldemort but who had somehow been able to place a
copy of himself in his old school diary.

                Harry
sat up with a start.  It wasn’t
‘somehow’; Harry knew exactly how Voldemort had left been a copy of himself in
his diary when he was a schoolboy at Hogwarts. 
It was because of this method that the other Harry Potter had walked
willingly to his death.

                Harry
gave a low groan that mixed frustration and misery.  He had far too much on his plate in the
immediate future to have to deal with this Voldemort nonsense.  Quidditch season was coming up.  He was too busy to plan to die.

[*]

                Harry
spent the rest of the day, and part of the night, deliberately not thinking
about dying.  Instead, he took the
opportunity to explore the other lives that had somehow made their way into his
head.

                The
three lives, other than his own, that were most clear were those of Rand
al’thor, Lews Therin Telamon, and Turin Turambar.  The first two were the most obviously
connected, one being the reincarnation of the other.  Rand’s world was completely different from
Turin’s world.  Rand’s Great Enemy was
the Dark One, an amorphous and chaotic being trapped inside the world by the
Creator—God, presumably.  The Dark One
was released in Lews Therin’s time by an experiment in the One Power, their
version of magic.  Lews Therin, now
called the Dragon, led the Armies of the Light against the Dark one’s forces,
among them evil men and women called the Forsaken and manufactured monsters
called Shadowspawn.  The forces of Light
won, but at a cost.  In trapping the Dark
One and the Forsaken in the hole in reality that was his trap, the Dark One had
tainted the male half of the One Power. 
It drove every male channeller—their wizards—insane, and in their
insanity they had killed families, friends and ultimately shattered and remade
the world. 

                After
thousands of years, Rand was born.  It
was at a time when the Dark One’s power was growing, spreading his influence
across the world and brining death and chaos everywhere.  Rand fought against the Dark One with the
help of his friends, and by learning life lessons he was able to overcome him
and heal the world.  There was a bit more
to the story than that, but that was it in its essentials.  Life lessons and friendship.

                There
was a Dark One in Turin’s world as well. 
Called The Great Enemy, apparently at the dawn of creation when the
All-Father—God again, presumably—was creating the world, the Great Enemy had
somehow corrupted part of creation, bringing in evil.  The Great Enemy then manifested himself in
the world and did what evil things do: dominate and destroy.  Turin’s father, Hurin, fought against the
Great Enemy but lost and was captured. 
Hurin’s whole family was cursed, and Turin’s death was the result.

                Harry
recognized himself in all three of these men. 
Though it sounded insane, he thought that might actually be those
men.  Was he not only Harry Potter
reborn—ha!—but also the Dragon Reborn, Reborn? 
Turin reborn?

                But
their worlds were so different from his own. 
For one thing, the magic of Rand’s world was very much more destructive
than any magic he had ever heard of.  The
One Power was capable of terrible lightning storms and hail of fiery arrows
that were capable of destroying armies. 
There was a weave—or spell—that could erase people from time and
existence, burn them out of reality back before the moment they were hit by the
spell.  Given enough power, it could be
and had been used to destroy entire cities.

                In
Turin’s world, magic was the province of the Gods and the craft of the
Firstborn, the immortal first thinking peoples of the world.  Turin’s black sword was such a creation of
the Firstborn.  It carried its creator’s
dark nature, and gloried in blood, but even it could not like the accidental
murder of its owner and the killing of the innocent.  The Gods could make the trees to light the
world, the sun and the moon, and people too. 
But the Firstborn could make fabulous jewels to carry the last light of
those trees, and stones to see far, and glowing stuff.

                Their
worlds were not Earth as he knew it, but could it be Earth as they knew
it?  Could entire universes have risen
and fallen, with a thread of life that would one day be called Harry Potter
running through them all?

                He had
vague memories of the boy magicians, Tim, Christopher and Will.  They had all lived in England, and in some
ways their lives were much like his. 
Ordinary kids thrust into extraordinary lives by the magic that bubbled
in their blood.  Yet their magic was
unlike his, as far as he could remember. 
Similar but not the same.  Or
maybe he was remembering it poorly.

                With
yet another mounting headache, Harry drifted to sleep, dreaming of skies so
clean, and waters so pure that you could just reach out and touch paradise.

                The
homework that Hermione had brought after dinner was left untouched, but Harry
had finished the dessert Ron had snuck into the hospital wing before going to
bed.

[*]

                The
first thing Harry realized upon waking was that he had absolutely no idea what
to do.  There were so many things to do
that he just couldn’t decide where to start. 
First, there was the problem of the horcruxes.  These were containers of pieces of
Voldemort’s soul and which ensured that even if his physical body was
destroyed, he would still stick around even as something less than a
ghost.  Or at least this had been how
Voldemort kept from dying during the other Harry Potter’s life.  Was this how he kept from dying this time?

                Harry
thought back to the other Harry Potter’s sixth year, when Professor Dumbledore
had been teaching the other Harry how to kill Voldemort.  Dumbledore had been absent from school quite
a lot, always searching for clues and memories. 
Despite the diary, which held Tom Riddle’s schoolboy memories and soul,
Dumbledore still required proof.  Dumbledore
had been fairly sure, even almost certain, but he still wanted proof—not just
to the method, but the number of horcruxes Voldemort had made.

                Harry
too wanted that certainty.  He was fairly
sure that this time around Voldemort was using horcruxes again.  The diary was certainly one.  And so was he.

                The
method by which a horcrux is created, according to Dumbledore, was through
murder.  Murder tore at a soul, weakening
it.  Somehow—and Harry never learned the
details—there was a method by which one could tear apart the weakened soul and
affix it to an object or a person.  So
long as that object or person existed, then the soul-portion was
protected.  So long as the soul-portion
was protected, the person who created the horcrux would not die completely.

                But
Voldemort in the other world had made so many pieces of himself that, when he
murdered the other Harry’s mother and then tried to kill other Harry but failed
and was destroyed, in that failure a piece of Voldemort’s soul went into other
Harry and made him into a horcrux.  It
was because of this that the other Harry had the lightning-bolt scar.

                And
presumably this was true for Harry now. 
Harry rubbed at his scar, though it did not prickle or burn as it would
in the presence of Voldemort.  He was a
container for a piece of Voldemort’s soul—Harry felt that this was true,
despite not having any real evidence that he could show.  It wasn’t as if he could open up his skull
and see a tiny Voldemort waving out at him, probably ranting about
‘mudbloods.’ 

                Harry
distracted himself a bit by imagining reaching into his head and squishing the
tiny Voldemort between his fingers like a flea. 
It was quite a satisfying fantasy.

                The
second problem had to do with Sirius Black. 
The other Harry Potter too had been chased to Hogwarts by Sirius
Black.  Sirius Black back then had been a
friend of the other Harry’s father, his best friend, along with Professor Lupin
and a man called Peter Pettigrew.  The
other Harry’s father had made Peter Pettigrew the only person who could
magically reveal the location of the entire Potter family, after they had been
magically hidden away.  However the world
thought it had been Sirius who had been the Secret-Keeper, the key to the
magical protection around the Potter home. 
And so when Voldemort had found the Potter family and killed both of
other Harry’s parents, people thought it had been Sirius who had betrayed them,
not Peter Pettigrew.  It didn’t help that
Peter ‘confronted’ Sirius on a street filled with dead muggles, crying foul
betrayal and disappearing in another explosion. 
People thought that Sirius killed Peter, leaving behind only a finger,
when in reality he turned himself into a rat and was in hiding in the Weasley
house.

                So,
having made absolutely no decision, but knowing what the problems before him
were, Harry got up with the sun and went to breakfast.