Harry's True Love

Lucius stood right in front of Lord Voldemort, pointing his wand straight at him, a look of unimaginable malice on his face.

"You've had this coming for a long time!" he screamed at him. "Finally I'll make you pay for all your vile and evil crimes, you putrid, wicked, pathetic excuse for a wizard! Don't even try to beg for your life, for your pleas will fall on deaf ears! Prepare to die!" Voldemort took a deep breath, his eyes wide with amazement.

"And what did you say to him?" he asked. Lucius lowered his wand and replaced his hideous snarl with a proud smirk.

"Say, my lord? I said nothing. I merely whipped out my wand, hit him with a silent Disarming Charm and before he could even react, I killed him on the spot." Voldemort let out a cold, high laugh (you ever notice that Voldemort never laughs in a warm, low kind of way? Really? Then it's not just me).

"Most excellent, Lucius old friend. I always enjoy hearing about your wand-whipping ventures." Lucius bowed low before his master.

"My wand is always ready to be whipped out at your command, my Lord." Still laughing, Voldemort turned to sit in his chair.

"And now to business ...how goes the search for Harry Potter's one true love?" Lucius' smirk vanished from his face as quick as boiled asparagus. His left eye began to twitch nervously. His hand dived into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a small, squishy rubber dragon figurine. This he began squeezing compulsively. "Lucius ...what exactly is that?" asked the Dark Lord.

"It's a stress reducer, my Lord. You're supposed to squeeze it whenever you feel panicky or stressed. My doctor recently suggested that I start using it."

"How recently?"

"Ever since I started trying to locate Harry Potter's one true love," replied Lucius, his voice sounding a little strained. Voldemort's eyebrows rose several inches (or at least they would have if he had any).

"I take it then, that the search is not going well?"

"If I'm honest, no, my Lord. Potter did at one point insinuate ...or rather proclaim ...that his one true love is my son, Draco." He was still squeezing the little dragon.

"And you think he's lying to you?"

"Yes! Of course I bloody think he's lying to me! My son's bread is not buttered that way!" said Lucius a little louder and higher than he had intended. He was squeezing the dragon dangerously hard now. Voldemort was a little taken aback by this sudden outburst.

"What else has he said?"

"He implied that he and young Crabbe were in a serious relationship ...he then changed his mind and said that he preferred Zabini's body to Crabbe's but he had nothing on Goyle ...I strongly suspect that the little sod is having me on ..." The little dragon's rubber eyes were now bulging out with every squeeze. "My Lord, if you'd allow me to torture Potter himself ..."

"No!" snapped Voldemort. "Potter will pay for his impudence when he is forced to watch the one he loves most suffer excruciating torture before he himself goes through the same thing. It shall be done exactly as I've said, Lucius. I don't care if Potter tells you he's bonking every Slytherin boy in Hogwarts, you will sift through his lies and find his one true love! Now go." Lucius gave another bow, turned and left through the door. A few seconds after the door closed, Voldemort heard a faint pop from the other side, followed by a very dispirited voice.

"I broke my dragon."

~|~

While all this was going on, Harry was still chained to a stone wall and getting somewhat bored. Somewhat very bored. Putting Lucius Malfoy through psychological hell had been fun at first, but after he had broken down and cried for the third time, it started to get a little old. He was fairly confident that the Death Eaters would never discover who his boyfriend was, even though he was right under their noses. Luckily they hadn't found the Time-Turner in his pocket, not that it was much use to him at the moment.

All of a sudden, there came a series of loud shouts and bangs from outside the room. A huge battle was going on outside, which meant one of two things: either someone had come to rescue him or the Death Eaters were fighting each other. Both were good in Harry's book. The door to Harry's dungeon was blown open from the other side and a familiar face emerged from the thick smoke. It was certainly familiar to Harry; he saw it whenever he looked in the mirror.

"Hello gorgeous, miss me?" said Harry (the one who has just entered the room).

"Is it possible for me to miss myself?" asked Harry (the one still chained to the wall).

"Do we care?" asked the other Harry as he severed the magical chains holding his past self to the wall. Once free, Harry threw himself at ...well ...himself and kissed himself passionately. Suddenly Ron and Hermione appeared in the doorway. Ron was certainly dressed for the occasion. He was wearing a torn bandana around his head, a huge clip of bullets around his otherwise bare chest, camouflaged trousers and a pair of army boots. The very wizarding equivalent of Rambo. After what Hermione had done to him with that candle, he had felt the need to reconfirm his masculinity.

"Harry!" cried Hermione as she rushed forward to throw her arms around him. "I'm so glad you're okay ...you IDIOT!" She hit Harry hard in the chest, winding him. "Do you have any idea how worried I've been? How could you let yourself be captured so easily? And in Hogwarts as well! Didn't you even try to fight back? And what have you been telling them? Draco's been going round making the most bizarre inquiries! OK, so it's obvious he's a secret agent for Voldemort but I still shudder to imagine what you've been telling the Death Eaters to lead Draco to investigating my pants drawer!"

"It's great to see you too, Hermione," gasped Harry, still a little winded.

"We don't have time to argue," said Ron a little gruffer than usual. "We still have to escape this place."

"But I've seen how many Death Eaters there are around here! Even if you've brought the entire Order of the Phoenix with you, we're still hopelessly outnumbered!" said the present Harry.

"Not to worry," muttered Hermione grudgingly (she had calmed down a little). "You've solved that problem with your damn Time-Turner." Before Harry could ask what the hell she was talking about, another Harry appeared through the doorway.

"Hi handsome," he said. "I'm you, two hours from now." The present Harry looked round to the Harry that had freed him.

"Whereas I'm you just one hour from now." Another Harry, this one looking very sweaty, appeared in the doorway.

"Hey there, hot stuff. I'm you, three hours from now." Several more Harrys poked their heads in the doorway, each looking more battle weary than the last.

"Four hours from now."

"Five hours."

"Seven hours."

"Where's me from six hours from now?" asked the present Harry.

"He's snogging you from eight hours from now over there in the corner," said one of the future Harrys. "Oi! Cut it out you two, we've still got a battle to win!"

"You see, after we infiltrated the Death Eater's hideout and found where you were being kept, all these future Harry's started appearing from out of nowhere and started helping out," explained Hermione. "This is going to seriously screw up the space-time continuum but at least we stand a better chance of winning."

"To hell with the space-time continuum," exclaimed Harry excitedly. "After all, the laws of space, time and causality ..."

"Are for chumps!" shouted several Harrys in unison. With this great battle cry, the forces of the Order of the Phoenix charged into the fray, flattening Death Eaters left, right, centre and sort of in between centre and left. Lucius soon arrived on the scene with reinforcements, but when he saw the small army of Harry Potters facing him he had a huge panic attack and keeled over on the spot. After just under an hour of intense fighting, the Harry from one hour from now grabbed hold of the present Harry.

"Harry! You've got to go back one hour and rescue yourself. We'll hold things off here!" The present Harry understood instantly what he had to do. He quickly pulled his Time Turner from his pocket, put it around his neck and turned it once.

Now, this is basically how it works. The present Harry goes back in time one hour after he was rescued so that he can rescue himself in the past. Meanwhile, the Harry that rescued him originally fights on for another hour before going back in time two hours so that he can appear in the doorway and say "Hi handsome. I'm you, two hours from now." This particular Harry then fights for three hours before going back in time three hours so that he can be there to say "Hey there, hot stuff. I'm you, three hours from now." (Got a headache yet?) Now, Hermione managed to count at least ten Harrys on the battlefield before she gave up. So, if you keep in mind that each time Harry has to wait a consecutive number of hours before going back into time, this adds up to a substantial amount of time. To make matters more ironic, Voldemort was killed just three hours into the battle by ten killing curses from ten Harry Potters. However, Harry still had to do all the time travelling in order for there to be that many future Harrys there in the first place. To conclude, by the end of all his time travelling, Harry was bloody shattered.

Bet you've got a headache now, ay?

~|~

Harry awoke to find himself in the Hospital Wing. He was back at Hogwarts. After he retrieved his glasses from the bedside table, Ron and Hermione sitting on either side of the bed suddenly came into sharp focus.

"Ron! Hermione! What happened?"

"You passed out after that last time-trip," explained Hermione. "You and your future selves had just ganged up on and killed Voldemort, remember?"

"My future selves! They ..."

"They're all gone, mate," said Ron quietly.

"One by one they made the same trips back through time as you've just made, so eventually the timeline will have returned to normal with you as the only Harry. Essentially, you are all those Harrys compacted back into one."

"Is he?" whimpered Ron, feeling so confused that it just wasn't funny anymore.

"Yes, I am," said Harry triumphantly. "You see, Hermione? There's nothing dangerous about time travel at all! Thanks to the Time Turner, I was able to provide us with enough extra firepower to defeat Voldemort and no harm done to the timeline. Like I said, when my future self ...or in this case selves visit the past, it's destined to happen and nothing can stop it." Hermione looked ultimately dejected and defeated. Ron, on the other hand, was signalling to Madam Pomfrey.

"Madam Pomfrey? Can I have a very powerful sedative, please? My head hurts." Smoothing out the bed sheets with his fingertips, Harry seemed thoughtful for a moment.

"It seems a shame that all those Harrys are gone though. Just think of the orgies we could have had. They'd have put Alexander the Great to shame, especially if we got hold of some big vats of..."

"MADAM POMFREY! WHERE'S THAT SEDATIVE?" screamed Ron.