Work Text:
-8-
Escaping Azkaban had been difficult, but he was extra happy he had decided to become an animagus. It had looked really cool when he first saw McGonagall transform from a cat into a human, and vice versa the first time around. Okay, he knew she had done it primarily as a means to show the entire class what transfiguration could do, and what a master of the art was capable of in the long run if you put in the effort, but when he had seen it being done, he had merely seen it as a means to an end.
When he had learnt of what happened to Black, and how his own animagus form had allowed him to keep some degree of sanity even if he was disgusted by his lack of commitment towards his own godson - him - he had accelerated his animagus training until he finally succeeded, and he was able to transform into three different animals with the animagus method used by the Native American Indians, similar to the one used by the wizards and witches of Uagadou.
Oh, how he wished he had attended that school. They were so cool! Not only did they learn and master alchemy and wandless magic, they also learnt how to become animagi when they were about 14 years old! And some of them could become more than one animal. How cool was that?
But anyway, the forms he had….two he had chosen, and the one he was born with. The one he had chosen was a raven, and the one he was born with was a cat; having the different emotional and primal brain prints of two different animals had been a problem for him, but he had used his occlumency skills to control and filter out the animalistic emotions.
That was important, especially when you considered that the last of his forms was a very, very, very dangerous and temperamental hydra. If he needed any proof of his Slytherin heritage, he had it in droves. Discovering that he was descended from Salazar Slytherin had opened dozens of possibilities for him once he had found out about it in the Chamber of Secrets, and he had learnt of a heritage spell which was powerful enough to uncover the truth about his mother's past.
-8-
Harry Potter had only been inside Azkaban prison for 3 days before he had made his escape. He had wanted to lull the Ministry and Dumbledore into a false sense of security, and he used his three animagus forms, transforming at random in order to spread the mental trauma so each one wouldn't be stressed out while the others weren't. He used the time to make preparations and to make plans.
He had been locked up in Azkaban for mass murder, a crime he hadn't committed. Lord Voldemort, the dark wizard who had stalked him since he was a baby, the same dark wizard who murdered his parents, the same wizard who had driven Harry to study many arcane and difficult forms of magic just to shorten to gap, and to survive, was back. They had duelled each other in a remote graveyard somewhere where Voldemort's muggle family lived, and while they reached a stalemate, Voldemort had one last little weapon. He cast a curse on the Triwizard trophy, just as Harry vanished with the portkey.
When someone touched it while he was still weakened, the curse activated. Harry still wasn't sure how many people died in the horrible wave of dark magic which exploded with the force of a bomb and ripped the crowd to pieces, everything happened so fast, and by the time of the trial everything was so rushed while Fudge and the Ministry, determined to prove him guilty to the point they didn't even bother to give him truth potion, Harry never got the full count of the dead, and he was then thrown into a cell.
Azkaban was a nightmare; every single day and minute, the Dementors' terrible presence threatened to drive him mad. And they would, if he hadn't already taken precautions against them, but he had decided to spend a few days here at the prison to think and to prepare for the future. One thought dominated his mind, if he escaped what then? He would be hunted down, by Dumbledore, Voldemort, and by the Ministry.
He could change bodies using the essence transfer process he had discovered, but at the same time he wished he could make sure none of this happened, and he recalled the books on time travel he had found in the Room of Requirement. No Ministry of Magic, it turned out, kept their Time Turners for long; most were destroyed after a year to prevent any changes to ancient magical history. And in any case, according to the books he'd read, all if most magical forms of time travel resulted in the creation of parallel universes which diverged at the point of arrival.
One day, Harry Potter vanished from Azkaban.
-8-
Arriving at the bungalow he had inherited from his mother, although he would need to find some way of working on staying there at his current age, Harry returned to his human form, and he began to make plans. When he got in, he noted his possessions and his trunk were there; despite his exhaustion, he washed himself as best as he could, and he went back out and did some shopping quickly to buy some basic essentials.
After a good meal, Harry brainstormed his plans. He could go after Voldemort now, end him, or he could just focus on his own life for a bit before he was in a better place to deal with things down the line. Harry decided to focus on himself. Why should he care for the magical world? He had been expelled from Hogwarts, he owed them nothing after being locked up and forced to deal with his worst moments.
Returning to Diagon Alley as he needed help from the goblins, Harry had managed to access some of the resources he had to use to make a new life for himself, and he discovered a piece of Voldemort's soul after they performed an examination. Harry had decided to wait until Voldemort came back into the open and reignited his war before he had the piece removed. He might have spelt the deaths of many, but he didn't care.
Enrolling himself at a good school, Harry returned to his education happily while he studied magic on the side without anyone meddling in his business.
For a whole year, Harry continued his education. In that time, he made some new friends although he kept them at arm's length since he had learnt never to trust anyone.
Voldemort didn't reveal himself until the very end of the year, and by that time he had been growing in strength. From what he learnt, Voldemort had been trying to break into the Ministry of Magic for something, and it was during that time Fudge laid eyes on the monster he was. Voldemort, before he fled, told him that he should thank them, for making sure the only one who could stop him was now either dead or insane, and that Harry Potter was innocent.
While the magical world was stunned into trying to find him, they didn't have a clue Harry had gone to Gringotts and had the piece of Voldemort removed. When it was and the magic of the soul piece was removed for good and drained, Harry had wondered just how long it would take before it was discovered what he did, but he didn't care.
His whole life was ahead of him, but Harry still had work to do.
-8-
Following through with his plans, Harry had long since planned to send his knowledge and memories back in time to different realities, knowing it would affect the lives of dozens of people, dozens of versions of himself. After he set up the runic circle, Harry created four parallel worlds, although he was still open to making new ones.
-8-
In one world, he found a version of himself who was the twin of a sister who was later manipulated into becoming a Death Eater. When he discovered that little twist, Harry made sure to send the future knowledge of what the girl would do and the knowledge of how to avert it. He made sure they knew what was going to come, how they could either find the Room of Requirement and destroy the Horcrux there, or they could find some other way of getting out.
-8-
One world disgusted Harry the most when he learnt his parents had survived that night, only they had believed he was dead thanks to Dumbledore's lies and manipulations. Lily and James both left, believing their child was gone. The Harry Potter of that reality received a mental download of the memories from Harry, and what happened to his parents, resulted in a Slytherin Harry who ended Voldemort earlier on despite Dumbledore's plans.
It was during this period that he vanished, and he travelled to Australia, where his parents were.
From the runic circle, he watched the scene;
A version of Harry, younger than he was, walked nervously towards the front door of a house in the Australian outback near a city. Harry knocked on the door, and he knocked on the door.
A pretty woman with red hair and green eyes appeared. "Yes?" She said instinctively before she realised who was there.
"Mum?" Harry whispered.
"Who are you?" Lily's voice trembled, nervously sneaking a hand to her wand.
"It's me, Harry. Dumbledore lied to you. He wanted me to grow up with the Dursleys," Harry said.
Lily stared at her son in shock and horror. In a voice trembling with emotion, Lily whispered, "Harry?"
"Yes, it's me, mum," Harry wiped the tears away from his eyes.
Lily sobbed and she stood up and quickly lifted her wand, and she summoned a patronus. "James, get back here!" She said to it, and it flew off to deliver the message. She wrapped her son up in her arms, sobbing. When James appeared, he stared at the boy who shared his face, and it took a few minutes for him to learn what was going on, the broken family were soon starting again tentatively. In later weeks, Harry withdrew from Hogwarts and entered into a different school, although which one it was, Harry did not know.
-8-
It was kind of a shock for him to find a world where he had been born female, but as Harry studied the female version of himself, finding out her name was Rose Potter, he saw her life would have largely been like his, including a stint at Azkaban. Harry made sure to give her his memories and his outlooks, and he made sure to protect her from the Dursleys, and making her stronger than before.
-8-
The last parallel world showed a mirror opposite of Lily and James; in this world, he had a brother. A twin brother. The Harry Potter of this world grew up at the Dursleys still; Dumbledore had gotten into Lily and James's ears in this world, and while his brother was lapping up in a luxurious life, Harry grew up abused.
To make matters worse, Dumbledore interfered once more; he got into Lily and James's ear again when they had another kid, a daughter this time. For the next few years, Harry raised his little sister, a little girl called Jasmine. Harry watched through the portal with a breaking heart, watching as that version of him raised the girl before going to Hogwarts and discovering what Dumbledore and his parents did, and learning enough magic to become stronger.
Harry gave that version of himself and Jasmine a push. He showed them what he'd gone through, his time at prison, at Hogwarts, and what he had done, and how to solve it all.
Once Harry sent the memories to that version of himself and to Jasmine, he sat back and considered. He was tempted to open more portals to the past, but he was not only tired, he was scared the Ministry would discover what he was doing and stop him, and besides he felt he had done enough already.
Now, he could look out for himself.
The End.