Chapter 1

Sitting with his back against the slide at the park near Privet Drive, as close to free as he could be that summer, Harry Potter absentmindedly stared at the clouds as they changed color. The sun was rising and this was Harry’s favorite time of day: the pre-dawn hours followed by the sunrise when Harry was alone. These were the hours when he could force himself to watch the sky without thinking about the fact that Order members were tailing him and that his friends were at home recovering from the DoM attacks, the hours when he could think about Sirius and the stupid prophecy that Voldemort had thought so important that he set a trap for Harry.

“Take this from me,” he whispered, looking up at the sky, not knowing to whom he was speaking. “Take this prophecy from me!”

“That’s an irresponsible thing to demand,” said a strangely casual voice behind him. Harry jumped up, wand drawn and pointed at the tall, black-haired man who had spoken. The man stood still, hands in his suit pockets, looking terribly out of place beside the orange swing set in the playground.

“Who’re you?” Harry demanded, keeping his wand steadily in front of him. If the man were a Muggle, Harry would have to somehow explain why he was pointing a stick at him, but Harry wasn’t about to lower his wand.

“Do you really think destinies can be so easily changed?” the man asked, not acknowledging Harry’s question or his wand. Harry looked more closely at him.

“I know you,” Harry realized, his grip on his wand tightening. The man was a wizard. “You run the rare bookshop next to Ollivander’s. You dropped a bag of books or something in Diagon Alley once when I was there when I was thirteen. I helped you pick them up. What are you doing here? Who are you?”

“Destinies are unique to people,” the man said. Harry was supremely annoyed by the way the man avoided his questions.

“Are you a Death Eater?” Harry asked, knowing that he’d be expelled from Hogwarts for using magic but running through a list of defense spells in his head just in case the man tried anything.

“Who would you want to take your place in the prophecy?” he asked.

“Answer my questions!” Harry demanded, hating any mention of that damn prophecy. “Are you here to threaten me? Is this a trick?”

“Do you feel tricked or threatened?” he asked. Harry didn’t answer, just stood, wand drawn and jaw clenched. If he hadn’t played Quidditch for five years and practiced with the D.A. all that year, his arm would have started to ache from holding his arm out that long in dueling position. “Who would you want to take your place?”

“Anyone,” Harry answered honestly, frustrated with this situation. “Anyone, but me.”

“That’s not true,” the man said matter-of-factly, “but you don’t really understand what you’d be putting on their shoulders because you don’t really understand everything with which you’ve dealt.”

The man meandered closer to the swings and pivoted, holding a chain in each hand as he sat on the low orange swings. Harry had been through enough to know that even seated, the man could still be a threat, could still try to kill Harry.

“I know what I have to deal with,” Harry said. He would have to kill or be killed. That was enough to know.

“No, you don’t,” the man said, pushing the ground a little and swinging a bit. “You don’t even really understand the risks you’ve already taken and the impossible tasks you’ve already completed, but that’s because you’re young, naïve, and a little self-hating. Besides, how can you think your life is odd when it’s the only way you’ve known life to be?”

“What are you talking about?” Harry’s back was to the slide, which supported him. He took two steps to his left.

“And it’s obvious that you don’t understand that prophecies don’t make the future. They only tell what may happen, but I understand what you want. You want Voldemort to have gone after someone else, marked anyone but you.”

“How do you know about the prophecy?” Harry asked, beginning to be truly wary of this seemingly-calm man. Only Voldemort, Dumbledore, Harry, and some eavesdropping Death Eater knew about the prophecy. And this man certainly wasn’t one of the first three.

“You would have someone else have the powers that Tom Riddle knows not,” the man concluded, almost speaking to himself as he continued to softly push himself forward and backward.

“How do you know about that?” Harry asked. Voldemort didn’t know that part of the prophecy. Actually, did Voldemort even know about the marking the baby as his equal part? Harry didn’t think so. Only Dumbledore and Harry knew the entire thing, right? So who was this man? Had he just called Voldemort by his given name?

“Would you have someone else be marked?” the man asked.

“Expelliarmus,” Harry said, deciding it was worth the consequence of expulsion to take this man’s wand, but no wand came. The man smiled at Harry.

“Would you have someone else be marked?” he asked again, not mentioning the spell Harry had cast or his own apparent lack of wand.

“No,” Harry said honestly, answering in order to buy himself time to figure out this situation. What was going on?

“No?” the man repeated, sounding skeptical. “But you just asked me to give the prophecy to someone else.”

“What does that have to do with anything? What are you doing here?” Harry took a step forward.

“You would trust just anyone with the responsibility to vanquish Voldemort and then face him again multiple times and survive?” The man stood up and put his hands in his pockets.

“That’s not—”

“You said you would trust anyone, anyone but you,” the man reminded Harry as he continued to swing gently on that silly little swing.

“Yes, but the first time it wasn’t even me,” Harry said angrily. “It was my mother.”

“Yes, but it’s always been you, too,” the man said, using his hands on the chain to pull himself into a standing position. “But you really don’t understand that. Teenagers are rather slow, I hear, but you seem particularly dim.”

“Who are you?” Harry was two seconds away from banishing the man into the street.

“If you honestly believe that anyone would be appropriate, I could choose anyone,” the man said, “but I’ll make it Neville because it’s easiest for now. You’ll have to tell me later who you would have take your place.”

“What are you talking about?” Harry asked tensing his arm again, ready to fight.

“If you really believe what you’re saying, we should start now.” The man rocked onto his heels.

“Start what?” Harry practically yelled.

“I always leave a way out,” the man said simply. “A fail-safe, if you will. One person will remember, the person you trust the most to keep the secret, and if you convince them of the stupidity of this truly stupid wish, they’ll make sure it never happened.”

Harry was beginning to believe the man was mad. “What are you talking about?”

“Who do you trust with the responsibility of the prophecy?” he asked. Harry looked at him, confused.

And that was when everything went black.

-----

Waking up, Harry’s first thought was spent wondering where he was. His bed was soft and squashy, unlike anything at the Dursley house and even with his eyes closed he could tell there was too much light for it to be Grimmauld Place. Instinctively Harry reached out and grabbed his glasses. Was he at Hogwarts?

He sat up, put on his glasses, and looked around, alarmed. Where was he?

Harry scrambled out of his dark blue sheets and stood on soft blue carpet, staring around him, confused, scared, looking for his wand, which he found on one of the nightstands. He grabbed it and cast a large Finite Incantatem, knowing he could be kicked out of Hogwarts for such an action, but choosing not to care.

Nothing changed.

There was a white door on the far side of the room next to a desk full of parchment and books much like the ones shoved in Harry’s trunk at the Dursleys’, but the open owl cage near the window was very different from his own. Seeing his own handwriting on an unfinished letter to ‘G’ scared him. What was going on here? Instinctively, he looked for a way out.

The window was open, but he had no broom and he was not on the first floor. The door seemed to be his only option, but what if it was a trap? Well, that hardly mattered at this point: he was in a strange room with no other escape. The people wanting to trap him could just as easily come in than wait for him to leave.

Plus, if it was a trap, why would they give him his wand?

Where was he?

Once Harry opened the door, he became, if possible, even more confused. Despite all of the obvious ways this would be an idiotic plan, Harry had still been half-expecting Death Eaters or something. Instead, he found himself in a hallway that would have made Aunt Petunia jealous. There were five doors, two on Harry’s side, three on the opposite wall, with paintings hanging in between. There was a window at the end that cast light onto the soft, plush, perfectly spotless white carpet. But stranger than the general cleanliness was the tiny blonde girl who was running down the hall until she saw Harry. Then her eyes lit up and she gave him a large, happy smile.

“Harry, you’re up! Come on. Mum has breakfast ready and then we can play!” the girl squeaked, grabbing Harry by the hand.

At the mention of “mum,” Harry’s heart froze. Who was this child? Why was she acting like she knew Harry, like he was her brother?

There was no time for questions, however, before the little bundle of energy began dragging him forcefully down the hall, down a set of stairs, and then into a completely foreign kitchen filled with sunflower imagery and light colors. The little girl ran up to the woman at the fridge, and hugged her. The blonde woman turned around.

“You’re up early, Harry,” she said as she picked the girl up and placed her on a stool at the counter. Harry, freed of the girl’s hand, quit moving, choosing instead to warily stare at the woman.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“All right, maybe you’re not as awake as I thought,” the woman said, summoning two pieces of toast and a plate, putting them in front of the girl. “Butter or jam, Alana?”

“Both!” the girl said. The woman shrugged and started buttering the bread.

“Both what?” asked a voice to Harry’s left, making Harry jump and turn, wand pointed at the man with sandy-blonde hair who just entered the kitchen.

“Both, please,” the girl – Alana – said, sounding very much like she had been asked to say please so often that she was beginning to think of it as a game.

“Good,” the man said, walking past Harry and giving him and his drawn wand a strange look. “Jumpy in the pre-noon hours, are you, Harry?”

“Who are you? What’s going on?” Harry asked.

“Well, I’m Christine, he’s Matt, and breakfast is going on,” the woman said, finishing the toast and putting it on the plate in front of Alana.

“Shouldn’t Hogwarts have taught you about breakfast?” Matt asked, sitting at the counter beside Alana and opening the Daily Prophet. “Don’t you have to get up early to go to class?”

“I don’t—What’s going on?” Harry repeated, angry now.

“Breakfast!” Alana chimed, giggling as she repeated her father’s funny joke.

“Good job, sweety,” Christine said absently. “Now finish your toast.”

“I know it’s breakfast,” Harry snapped at both of them. The little girl looked over at him quickly at the sound of his angry voice. “I want to know why I’m here.”

“There’s no need for you to talk to Alana or Christine like that,” Matt said, looking disapprovingly at Harry over the top of his paper.

“Why’s Harry so mad?” Alana asked, looking at her mum with large eyes.

“Sleep deprivation,” Christine answered calmly, holding out a glass of orange juice for Harry to take. He stared at her.

“What’s deprivation?” Alana asked, taking a bite of her toast.

“A lack of something,” Christine said. Seeing that Harry not taking the orange juice, she drank from the cup herself before putting it on the counter.

“I’m not lacking sleep!” Harry exclaimed. Why were they acting like this was normal? Like he belonged there? He’d never met these people in his life. “I don’t sleep in.”

“It’s that the rest of the world rises too early?” Matt asked jokingly.

“No! I’ve never slept in,” Harry finally yelled, slamming his hand down on the counter. “Who the hell are you people and why are you acting like I belong here?”

“Harry, this is your home,” Christine said, suddenly not joking anymore. Matt, likewise, was looking at Harry in a very worried way.

“This is not my home!” Harry exclaimed, waving a hand around.

“What’s this about, Harry?” Matt asked, and now the paper was lying on the counter.

“I don’t belong here!” Was this a Death Eater trick?

“Harry, you’ve been a member of this family for fifteen years,” Christine said. “You belong.”

“What are you—” Harry cut himself off, remembering suddenly the man in the park, the man that asked him who he would change places with, the man who was the last thing Harry remembered before he woke up in this strange place, the man who said Harry would have to learn a lesson.

Harry was vaguely aware of someone speaking as he walked toward his vague reflection in the window above the sink. He saw his glasses, his eyes, his forehead-- his scar-less forehead.

Pivoting on his left foot, Harry raced back to the stairs and climbed them. He ran down the unfamiliar hallway. He pulled open one of the five doors in the hallway, trying to find the room he started in, but instead he found a dark room with a boy sleeping in a bed. He ran out, shutting the door behind him, tried another, found the bathroom, and finally found “his” room.

He scanned the room, found his trunk and shuffled through everything to find his money pouch and a change of clothes that he threw on without looking. What had that man done? The money pouch wasn’t where he normally kept it. He scanned the room, spotting it on the desk, ran over, picked it up, and opened it to make sure he had enough money for the Knight Bus. He did. There were multiple knuts and sickles, but something was missing.

“Harry, you all right?” Matt asked, knocking on the door and pushing it open a little more than it already was.

“Where’s my key?” Harry asked, looking up from his money pouch.

“Your key?”

“My Gringotts key,” Harry said quickly, spinning around to look on the cluttered desk.

“Why do you need it?” Matt asked, watching his search with growing concern.

“I just do,” Harry said, turning to face the older man. What did he care why Harry needed his own damn key?

“I suppose it’s in your box of things in the attic,” Matt said, looking carefully at Harry. “What’s going on Harry? Christine and I are worried.”

“I’m fine,” Harry said, deciding he had enough for the bus. “I’m going into Diagon Alley.”

Matt’s mouth set in a line. “Now?”

“Yes,” Harry said, walking toward the door and past Matt.

“It’s eight-thirty in the morning,” Matt said. “You haven’t eaten and you seem to be having a nervous breakdown. Maybe now isn’t a good time.”

“I need to talk to someone,” Harry said, walking faster. Matt grabbed his elbow, stopping him and Harry yanked his arm away out of reflex, already reaching for his wand as he crouched into fighting position. It took a moment for him to override his instincts and keep walking until he spotted the fireplace.

“Honestly, Harry, I don’t think you ought to go into town right now. You don’t seem well,” Matt said. “Maybe you should lie down and Christine’ll bring you some soup.

“I’m fine. I’m fine,” Harry said, waving off the stranger’s concern.

Matt, who looked like he was in his mid-forties, said, “Harry, I’m really not comfortable with you leaving right now. Something’s obviously bothering you, and I—”

“Something is bothering me,” Harry said, seeing the fireplace at the base of the stairs on the left, in the living room, “but it’s nothing you can fix. I need to talk to a man.”

“I don’t think—”

“Trust me,” Harry said, marching forward and searching for the bowl of floo powder. It was on top of the mantel.

“I do trust you,” Matt said, watching Harry take a pinch of floo powder and throw it in after calling out, ‘Leaky Cauldron.’ Then Harry stepped into the fire and was gone.

-----

Unconsciously flattening his hair over his forehead, Harry stepped out of the Leaky Cauldron and into Diagon Alley, heading straight for Ollivander’s. He pushed through the crowds, twisting around strangers, past Fortesque’s and Quality Quidditch Supplies. It was like tunnel vision almost, and he found his way to Ollivander’s and then turned left to the rare bookshop beside it.

As the bell rang out, Harry tried to locate the owner. It wasn’t hard; He was helping bag a patron’s books and saying, “Thank you for shopping at Rare Books.”

“Oh, I’ve always loved your shop, Robert,” she said, shrinking the bag of books and putting it inside a larger bag she carried on her shoulder.

“I’m glad,” Robert said, nodding over her head at Harry, “because I don’t think he’s quite as happy as you.”

The woman turned to follow his motion and saw Harry scowling in the doorway. “No, he doesn’t seem very happy at all.”

“In fact, he’s probably seething,” Robert said. “Or brooding. Something melodramatic and angsty, no doubt.”

“Oh, he’s Harry Potter isn’t he?” the woman asked, smiling at him. Harry grimaced. “Having a shopping day, are you?”

He wasn’t used to people talking to him. They normally just stared awkwardly. Or they asked him to sign something, which was much worse. But now he had to answer her question despite his rush to talk to that man—Robert—about what the hell he did to Harry. So the green eyed boy told her he was indeed shopping.

“Well, I hope you have a good time. Be sure to look in the back left section, it’s great for school children,” she said, walking past him and out of the store. There was something different about that interaction. Harry brushed it off. Everything was off.

“What can I do for you, Harry?” Robert asked pleasantly, as if the boy had just stopped in for a normal chat. Harry approached him, remembering his anger and confusion.

“You can change it all back,” Harry suggested. The man picked up a stack of books and walked around the desk. He began to walk through the aisles. Harry followed.

“What do you mean?” he asked innocently.

Harry glared. “You were the one that changed everything.”

“Yes.” Robert was so casual about the admission that Harry was momentarily confused. Then he shrugged that off.

“What did you do? Why did you do it?”

“I brought you to a world where you can see yourself from the outside,” Robert said, shifting the book in his hand so that he could take one out of the stack and put it on the shelf. “I thought you’d be more grateful, actually.”

“Grateful?” Harry exclaimed. “Why would I be grateful?”

“I’ve given you the opportunity to fulfill your wish and find your answers.”

“What answers?” Harry asked. “I woke up this morning in a bed that was not my own, in a world where I’m living with strangers who think I’m their son—”

“They don’t think you’re their son,” the man said, putting another book on the shelf.

“What? Then who are they?”

“The McGraths adopted you when you where a baby after your parents—”

“Fine, whatever,” Harry cut him off, not really caring. “Bring me back to my world!”

“Why would I ever do that?” Robert asked, sounding honestly confused. “You haven’t changed yet, haven’t discovered who you trust to take your place or who you trust with your secrets. You still think you’re not all that important and that the prophecy is transferable.”

“Take me back,” Harry said stubbornly.

“I’ll take you to a new world, which ever world you choose, as soon as you tell me your answers.”

“What answers?” Harry repeated, terribly frustrated.

“Who would you want to take your place? Who would you want the prophecy be about if not you?” the man answered.

“I’m not going to pick someone for that,” Harry said.

“You said, ‘Take this prophecy from me,’ and I asked who you’d give it to and you said, ‘Anyone,’ and I said, ‘Anyone?’ and you said, ‘Anyone but me.’”

“Right, but—”

“So I brought you here in order for you to be able to chose someone specific.”

“I’m not going to choose something!” Harry wanted to throw all of his books into the wall. Then cast an Incendio.

“Why not?”

“Just take me home.”

“That’s not up to me,” Robert said. “If you want to go, you need to convince the person you trust the most to keep the secret of your other life.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that the person you trust the most not to talk about your old world knows and remembers your natural world. Figure out who you want to replace you, convince that secret keeper, and then you’ll have that world.”

“If you knew who I trusted the most, you must know who I trust with the prophecy,” Harry said.

“Yes,” the man said, shelving another book.

“Then just make that world!” Harry glared at the back of the man’s heading, willing it to explode. Harry had enough to deal with this summer without some crazy bloke playing a prank on him

“The point is for you to know who you trust,” Robert said a bit snappishly, annoying Harry more.

“No, there is no point to this stupid thing! I woke up this morning in a home I’ve never seen with people I don’t know—”

“Exactly. You couldn’t pick your replacement in your world so I brought you to an unfamiliar one where you can see the responsibility of the prophecy through your easiest replacement,” he said, obviously frustrated with Harry for not understanding this.

“My easiest replacement?” Harry repeated.

“Well, the one it was easiest for me to arrange,” Robert said.

“I don’t understand.” Why couldn’t he just change it back?

“You don’t have to,” the man said, setting the books down on the footstool and facing Harry. “Just go home.”

“That’s all I want to do!”

“I meant go home to the McGraths.”

“That’s not my home.”

“But it could be,” the man said. “Or, at least, it’s a place where you can find your answers.”

“I don’t have any questions,” Harry said again.

“Everyone has questions,” the man said simply. “And maybe they’ll help you find those as well.”

“Who are they?”

“See, you already found a question,” Robert said proudly, turning and picking up the books.

“Are they Death Eaters? Are you?” Harry asked.

The man stopped and looked at Harry for a long moment over the top of the books in his arms. “I’m no Death Eater. Neither are the McGraths. They are—well, you can find that out for yourself.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

“You don’t,” he said, shrugging, “but as I just performed the amazing feat of changing the entire history of the world without bothering to try and kill you, maybe you ought to try to figure out who you trust the most with the responsibility of the prophecy and focus on the other things secondarily.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because you made your wish—though admittedly a stupid one—and told me you’d trust anyone but you with this responsibility. I want you to know who you’d really trust.”

“Why? If you have all of this power, why not just pick the right person?” Harry asked. The man looked at him again.

“Because it’s your choice, your wish, your responsibility to give away,” the man said, turning around and handing Harry a few books to hold for him as he climbed a stepladder.

“I hate you for this,” Harry said as the man took the book from him and put it on the shelf.

“You’re fifteen, you hate everyone right now, but as long as your anger serves a purpose, teaches a lesson, it’s fine.” He was so frustratingly nonchalant. “Go back to the McGraths now, your family in this world. Their home is called the Stump.”

“To get back to my world, I just need to find the one I trust the most to keep the secret and tell them who I trust most?” Harry asked through gritted teeth. This was so stupid. Like some sort of game to determine the fate of the world.

“What’s your obsession with going back to your natural world? I’m offing you a new world where your wish is a reality, where you have what you wanted: a life free of the prophecy,” Robert said. “Why are you so opposed to that idea?”

Harry didn’t know what to say, and said so.

“I think, Harry, that that’s one of the questions to which you need to find an answer. Go to the Stump and find your answers,” he said, turning with his stack of books. “Oh. But first, go to Ollivander’s.”

“Why?” Harry was trying to put this together.

“Because that wand was made for a different you, a you without your memories, a you raised by the McGraths, a you not connected to Voldemort.”

Harry started. “I’m not connected to—”

“You were never marked.”

“I have no scar. I can’t speak parseltongue,” Harry said, thinking aloud. “I don’t have to kill him. He isn’t trying to kill me.”

“No,” Robert said condescendingly, “he’s not.”

And maybe that was the moment that Harry realized the full potential of this gift, this new world. The man seemed to have noticed that Harry was beginning to understand.

“Go buy a new wand,” Robert said. “Then go home and figure out who you trust.”

Harry was shaken, thinking about this. He could pick anyone, anyone in the world, to take his place. He could pick someone strong and smart and capable, someone to duel the Dark Lord and defeat him. Someone who wasn’t merely lucky, but had actual talent. He could find the person that needed to lead the Order. In the meantime, Harry could be normal. Normal.

Harry looked at Robert and asked, “What’s in this for you?”

“You are a cynic, aren’t you?” Robert asked with a smirk, looking down at Harry.

“Why are you doing this?” Harry repeated his earlier question, but this time with this hostility and more interest in truth.

“Because in the end I get a savior, Harry,” he said. Harry took a step back and shook his head at the man. Giving someone the prophecy was not creating a savior. That would mean that for all of the years of his life that’s what Harry had been, and that wasn’t right.

“I’m no savior,” Harry said.

“Then pick your own as well.”

Author’s Note:

I hope you all enjoyed this. I just wanted to post the first chapter and see if there was some interest. I need something to do while waiting for the sixth book and this will be really fun. It takes place in the Prelude to Destiny/Backfire universe. Check out my livejournal if you want!

Miranda