Chapter Text
Time travel is risky, dangerous and unpredictable, even in the most experienced hands. Harry knows this, he watched enough episodes of Doctor Who through the slit in his cupboard/bedroom door. It's why he was so apprehensive about using the time turner to go back and save his escaped convict godfather. Of course, that didn’t stop him. People always said his biggest weakness was his compassion, and his need to save others. Sirius Black, his godfather, his only real family, was innocent. Dumbledore had all but told him it was his duty to save the man. And Harry agreed.
The problem with time travel is not knowing you have caused any damage. It just is and never was. However, sometimes what was is remembered, sometimes something can go wrong, or in this case maybe right. At the exact moment, Harry and Hermione turn time back, somewhere in another timeline, an older Harry does the same, amidst a raging magical storm. One impossible second. Two timelines colliding. The past, the future, shattered, remade, rewritten. This once-in-a-possibility occurrence is where our story starts and where the story you know becomes the was and not the is.
Thirteen-year-old Harry woke with a start, his head splitting open with pain. At first, he thought it was just a headache, the worst he’d ever had. Then, the memories hit. One moment, he was playing chess with Ron. The next, he was burying him. His mind screams as his adult future mindscape absorbs his young untrained mind. As suddenly as he had awoken, he passed out. The Harry Potter of Was and the Harry Potter of Will Be became the new Harry Potter. A boy carrying the trauma of a future that may never come, and the power to change what awaits.