Title: Time Mage Harry Potter

Author: Joshua

Rated: M (Just to be on the safe side, mostly for Language and Adult Situations in later chapters)

Disclaimer: JK Rowling has Harry, and whoever else from the books show up in these plots. As for the Time Mage powers, they're drawn from multiple sources, too many to name, though some may be more recognizable than others, but suffice to say, if it has to do with 'control of time' of any sort, I'm gonna use it. I don't own either and I'm not making any money from all this, so don't bother suing me.

Summary: Harry gets sent a book on his eighteenth birthday. This book was written by H.J. Potter, and is filled with information regarding a unique style of magic; Time Magic. The thing is, he hasn't written the book yet...

Time Mage: Origins

- Phase One -

[August 11, 1999]

Potter's Mill

Ottery St. Mary, Devon

England

It was Ginny's birthday. Her first since graduating Hogwarts, which she had finished only two and a half months ago. One she looked forward to celebrating with close friends and family. And her new husband, of twelve days and counting of course!

There had been some conversation about getting married right out of school, and even more conversations about how Harry wanted to make it easier to remember their Anniversary by having it on his own birthday rather than hers. Although to be fair she had gotten rather impatient at some point and just went with the earlier date.

The honeymoon was worth every knut, and Ginny strongly suspected that she could be expecting their first child in nine months, but she wasn't about to 'cry wolf' until she'd gotten herself checked out by a Healer. Still, as amazing as it would be to be a mother, she and Harry, Mister Chosen One, aka the Man-Who-Vanquished, aka Slayer-Of-He-Who-Still-Must-Not-Be-Named, and a few other more official titles, including Lord Potter, were very happily married and enjoying it just being the two of them for now. What was interesting about being 'Lord Potter' was that while the title was inherited, as far as anyone could recall, the Potters had never been one of those 'Most Ancient And Noble' families like the Blacks were. And yet, there was no denying the fact that he was now a Lord and one of the Nobility.

Harry didn't really care about that, except that notification of the title came the day after his wedding/birthday and in addition to the letter announcement it came with a rather unique book. At first he would have foisted it off to his best friend, who was still in the 'dating phase' with his other best friend, but something about the book made him hang onto it. Might have had something to do with the author's name on the spine; H.J. Potter. Didn't mean it was written by him, just perhaps somebody with his same initials. He strongly suspected that if he didn't have a newlywed wife wearing very little in terms of clothing, he probably would have dropped everything to read the book and wouldn't have stopped until he'd finished.

He later confirmed this after the honeymoon was over and they moved into the new home he'd bought for them to raise their family in. The moment he'd opened the cover to the first page and read what it was about, he was hooked. After all, he still had so few connections to his family that every scrap of it was worth any amount to him. Fortunately it didn't take him long at all to get through it all. Just three days. Three days during which Ginny was 'thoroughly distracted' while he was supposed to be planning her surprise party. What a surprise indeed.

[August 11, 2099]

Potter's Mill

Ottery St. Mary, Devon

England

Ginny was dead.

She… she'd been killed, she was killed…

Harry didn't understand what had happened. One moment, he'd been scrambling to get everything in the house ready, magic was awesome like that but it still had limits, and then Ginny and all the guests arrived, the party started and was underway and everyone was having an amazing time, and the moment after that… some… masked warlock showed up, stepping out of a portal in the open air, and he… he… he…

He'd taken Mrs. Potter hostage, holding her by the neck against his body, keeping the rest back by holding a knife to her throat with one hand, and a solid black metallic wand trained on the rest of the party guests. Harry had been at the front of that line, restrained only by the fact that the woman he loved was still alive and nothing else. The same portal the masked warlock manifested from appeared behind him and with no words being said, he slowly dragged Ginny through it. Harry didn't hesitate and before her feet were swallowed up, he dove after them through the portal.

Unlike most magical transportation this time he didn't find himself feeling sick or queasy, neither during nor after. It was just like going through the portal at Kings Cross Station, one step through and you find yourself someplace else, like stepping through an open doorway. Although, he still found himself on the ground, but that is what you get when diving headfirst through 'an open doorway' without looking where you leap.

The place where he found himself was very different from where he had started. It was a rundown very old building, the garden untended and growing wild, and the countryside was likewise abandoned, though there were signs that civilization had once been there. It wasn't until he stepped outside and saw the broken water wheel and the curving stream that he realized it was his home, Potter's Mill!

This revelation, of apparently being in his home years after he'd either died or abandoned the place, was overshadowed by the fact that the masked warlock still held his wife at knife-point and before any words could be said by either party, the masked figure slit the petite redhead's throat. Arterial spray stained the ground and she bled out in seconds. Harry screamed and charged wand firing curses, one of them a distinctive shade of green, but the warlock vanished through yet another portal, leaving the man alone with his dead wife's body.

It was hours later, after cradling the slowly stiffening corpse in his arms as he cried, that he remembered the book he'd just spent the past few days reading. It was a book detailing the forgotten and almost but not quite forbidden study of Time Magic. And not just casting a spell to see what time it was, although that was certainly covered, it went further than that. It had read of rituals, spells, artifacts and powers that could allow a person to not only travel through time, into the past and future, but to control the ebb and flow of time. Of ways to change time!

Decision made, without even daring to speak it aloud, he kissed his dead wife's cool lips one last time and then went into the crap shack his once beautiful home had become and began searching for the spot where he'd hidden the book. Not surprising, it was exactly where he'd left it.

It took him another day to find the ritual that would allow him to open a portal, the same portal the masked warlock had used incidentally, and the remainder of that night to have it ready to use by dawn. He returned with Ginny's body in his arms to the moment they left. The book warned that, unless properly warded or otherwise protected, matter from two different points in time cannot coexist in the same space/time continuum. This counted for people and for objects in equal measure. The book warned that the best case scenario if something like that were to happen would be that both sources of matter would mutually destroy one another. They'd both blow up.

Not wanting to risk his one chance at getting his wife back, Harry left the book back in the future, intending on studying the one in the 'present' to the best of his ability, no matter how long it took him, until he could go back and save Ginny from her murderer.

[August 31, 1999]

Potter's Mill

Ottery St. Mary, Devon

England

He was ready. Finally. It took him the better part of the month, but doing nothing but studying that book, even to the point of ignoring all his friends, and missing the funeral that he hoped would soon never have happened, made it all worthwhile. When properly motivated, as when he was thirteen with learning the Patronus Charm after having faced Dementors on multiple occasions, he could learn just about anything—no matter how difficult—very quickly.

He'd begun by memorizing the book's contents in its entirety, at least as well as Hermione had no doubt memorized all of her text books back in the day. Then he'd started to experiment and test himself. He took the warnings to heart, not willing to risk with Ginny's life in the balance, and worked from the easiest and least dangerous spells and rituals and wards and potions and… suffice it to say Time Magic covered the whole curriculum of what had been covered at Hogwarts, and then some.

Fortunately, one of the early moderate level skills he'd learned from it was a way to create 'stable' time loops; where time keeps looping back in on itself for one or two people without affecting the surrounding space. The Time Turner effect without creating another 'him' in other words. It gave him more study time and a way of safely experimenting without having the Ministry of Magic coming down on him for illegal magic use. Considering he was looking at changing history, he had no doubt that they would absolutely view it as illegal!

He had also successfully completed every one of the rituals required to grant him innate magical protections and skills related to using time magic. It wasn't easy, for one there were warnings about potentially needing two or more people participating along with the 'target' of the ritual, but thankfully there were notes' hinting that it was because the average witch or wizard doesn't have enough innate magic to complete one. As it turns out; he was one of those who did.

His past was now 'Time Locked'. It happened, it always happened, it always will happen, and it is even happening now in exactly the same way he remembered it happening, and if anyone or anything were to try and change any part of his past, leading up to him receiving the book, all of space and time would become forfeit. Not even Voldemort was that stupid. Hell, not even the stupidest entity *EVER* was that stupid!

He'd also made the ward that allowed him to 'coexist' with past and future versions of himself permanent, as well as half a dozen others that allowed him to survive in different timelines despite whatever difference there may be in the atmosphere and environment, communicate flawlessly as though he were a native speaker no matter what culture he came across, allowed him to 'detect' nearby instances of time travel or time manipulation being done in the same way his intruder detection wards worked, keep him from being tracked or followed through time via any magical means, identify the differences between natural, artificial, or magical time manipulations, and the most important one by far, a ward to identify when a paradox or Rewrite was in effect. And those were just the basic ones that it was advised needed to be in place before even considering traveling through time in the first place!

As far as actual time traveling spells and abilities he'd taken to mastering, aside from the little time turner trick, he'd also learned how to stop time, how to 'fold' Space/Time in a way that was so much more comfortable to use than Apparating, and most importantly he'd mastered three, yes *three* different ways of traveling through time. One was the same 'folding', only through time rather than just space. The other—the first he'd actually learned—was to create Time Portals like the masked warlock had done. And the third and final way, which had taken him the longest to master, but was essential if he wanted to succeed in saving Ginny and changing history, was a Penteract.

Basically, he had to combine all the theories the book told him about, separate them into identifying every aspect of what exactly his magic was going to be doing, and then take that understanding of different and opposing facts and bring them back together. It made him wish he'd actually taken Arithmancy in school, as he was getting an amateur refresher course now. Fortunately, Ginny had taken Arithmancy rather than Divination or Ancient Runes, so he could borrow her old school books while giving himself a 'one day' education in order to perfect his Penteract spell as soon as possible. Of course calling it a spell was like calling Quidditch 'flying a broom'. The words themselves were only a very small part of what went into making the Penteract work.

But get it to work he did, and the moment after he'd succeeded in going back to the future Potter's Mill and back again, several times, and proving that he could in fact change the past and future because of it, he started making plans. He would go back to the point Ginny had been kidnapped, just before it in fact, and stop the masked warlock from even appearing. Oh, yeah, he'd also learned exactly how to prevent time portals from opening up too.

Final preparations made, he caressed the two-dimensional cheek of Ginny from their wedding day portrait. She, the image in the painting, smiled sadly and made as though she could feel his touch. The him in the portrait just smiled grimly and nodded, holding the redhead in white a little closer in his arms.

"See you soon, Gin-Gin," he whispered and focused his mind and magic on establishing the Penteract. He cast the spell and from his wand a single point of pure white light emerged and started moving in an exact pattern around him. This continued until there were eight such points moving around him, depicting a cube moving on its axis. Then more lights, until he was surrounded by what mathematicians would call a Tesseract, all of it still moving in harmony, a cube cubed. It continued until there were three Tesseracts moving with him at the exact center.

All during this, Harry had kept his eyes shut and his mind absolutely focused upon his goal. The combined light from so many moving points made it very bright, so that was undoubtedly a good thing. Suddenly, he felt everything come together and his eyes snapped open, at the very same moment all the points rushed in on him and collapsed into a single point, taking him with him, disappearing from that point in space and time in a blinding flash of light.

-END Phase One-