Harry Potter, aged 73, lie on the floor of the Department of Mysteries watching his doom approach. His last six hours had been unique, now that he could reflect on them. Six hours ago a man had been lying right where Harry was lying now, getting crushed to death by the giant time turner.

Harry had been Head Auror since he was 55 and this is why he was called to the scene. Incidents in the Department of Mysteries went straight to the top. When he ordered the team to move the remains of the time turner out of the way they were all shocked to find that the body was shifting chaotically through all ages and features. The body was quickly moved to St. Mungo's. Five and a half hours later Harry was leaving for the night when an unseen assailant attacked him while he was in front of the cabinet of time turners.

The attack was low powered but it still was able to take Harry by surprise. Falling backwards Harry knocked over the case spilling time turners everywhere. Several of these landed on Harry and triggered, dropping him off unknowingly six hours in the past. With a groan he rolled over just in time to see the giant time turner falling towards him.

In his final moment alive he thought of the marriage he had with Ginny, the girl he fell out of love with. He thought about the wasted potential he had with Hermione all those years ago. He thought of his second son, whom he had named Albus Severus only a couple years before truly learning of their motives. It was a name Harry regretted his whole life. Last he thought of poor Teddy Lupin, Harry's godson and half-werewolf half-metamorphmagus. Only Harry's intervention kept the unspeakables from asking to study him. Harry didn't know what the boy was going to do now that Harry wouldn't be around. At long last the reality of his situation settled in and Harry screamed one last time.

"AAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Harry screamed at the top of his lungs. Startled to find himself very much alive. Even more startling was the size of his hands. He was so caught up in this revelation that he didn't even notice when the door behind him opened.

There was a rustle of paper and a few moments later a woman shrieked. "VERNON!"

Harry found himself being lifted up and carried through the house. He already knew he was going to the cupboard under the stairs. He did manage to see the calendar and confirmed his suspicions.

November 2nd 1981

HPCOC

Harry's first few days in his infancy were important. He quickly found that he retained his ability to apparate as well as use the improved version, called Weasley Warp. One of the Weasleys went insane in the 50's and invented and used a new form of magical travel to bypass wards and left a trail of death and destruction across the magical world. His reign of terror ended after just a week when he tried to warp into a Gringott's vault. It had taken weeks to clean all the Weasley off the walls, but they discovered the wards to stop warpers.

Shortly after that the method was analyzed and the wizarding public found it to be much superior to apparition, mainly due to the fact that there was no unpleasant squeezing sensation associated. It was an interesting phenomenon that no one who didn't know how to apparate was able to learn how to warp. With apparition you magically threw yourself across the world but when you warp you simply become present in the other place and absent where you were.

After Harry warped out of his locked cupboard that first night after the Dursleys went back to bed he checked his second talent to make the journey. A fifteen month old baby walking around was not anything special, but a fifteen month old baby with glowing eyes who was calmly inspecting a vase would have sent most muggles running.

Harry could see glowing runes floating in the air all around the vase. He could easily recognize them and the magical signature was one he could never forget. Albus Dumbledore had applied charms on this vase to keep the Dursleys from ever getting rid of it and a few to make them hate Harry more than they already would. Harry couldn't leave it be so he picked it up, warped to a cliff he knew and unceremoniously dumped the vase over the edge. After hearing it shatter he warped back. Interestingly the largest change this brought was that within a year Harry had his own room, what would have been Dudley's second room, the physical abuse and expected servitude was the same, he just had more room to recover in.

One look out the window and Harry could see all the details of the alleged blood wards. The only one that had anything to do with blood was a simple monitoring charm so Dumbledore would always know what was happening. Harry couldn't do anything about those without a wand, which was still almost ten years away.

Over the next several weeks, while pretending to be an ordinary toddler, Harry found a loose nail and used it to carve runes into garden stones. Once he finished placing them all Albus Dumbledore would no longer be able to set foot on the property. Harry couldn't stop the wards but they gave him more than enough of Dumbledore's magical signature to use.

Having that task done Harry settled back and got to work on rebuilding his occlumency shields and getting his mind tuned up and ready to work. Every student of the Mind Arts learns first thing, or several years later in a dusty old tome if your instructions initially came from Snape, that the human is made of three parts, body, mind and soul. Every human naturally can see with their body, that's the waking world. Some magicals can see with their soul, which is where magic comes from, and see the eddies of energy swirling about, typically this is called Mage Sight, and it only sometimes is only visible.

With training any magical can see with their mind, called the Mind Arts. Legilimency is the art of using your mind to see into someone else's. Occlumency is the art of using your mind to look at yourself. Through occlumency one can view their memories and store information, they can reflect on personality traits and they can examine their soul, they can also defend against legilimency by constructing shields.

Harry was quite surprised when he entered his mind and found a second mind. It wasn't Voldemort's horcrux, it was his own infantile mind. Now suspicious he checked and found a second soul as well, along with Voldemort's fragment. Looking deeper he found that neither of his infant parts had developed since his adult parts had arrived. In fact, his adult mind and soul were crushing those of the infant.

This was a problem because without the infant mind the infant soul would soon perish and on a similar note without the soul the mind loses its connection to the body, it was why victims of the dementor's kiss were so helpless. Unfortunately adult Harry was attached to the baby body through the baby's mind and soul. Harry would have to restructure his adult mind and soul or both of him would cease to exist.

Controlled suicide to save your own life. Great. Harry thought as he got to work on his soul. His mind would have to go second or he would lose focus. The fix was rather simple in the end, but only temporary. Harry pulled his souls apart so his older one wouldn't smother his younger one. He didn't want to lose his older soul either since that would allow him access to essentially twice the amount of magical power once he finished growing up. Once they were separated Harry noticed that they were starting to repel each other. To fix this he grabbed some of each soul and braided them together with the bit of Voldemort's and used the three to tether the two together.

This solution wasn't perfect and left a significant amount of magic left over that would be dangerous to Harry, and everyone and everything around him if he ignored it. Without access to his Potter properties, or even Diagon Alley, Harry couldn't get a storage matrix. Harry eventually settled on concentrating the magic into the very cells of his body, hoping that it would make up for the years of neglect and abuse he was facing. This made it safe for him to be around electronics and would keep him from blowing things up when he got slightly upset, now he'd maintain normal levels of accidental magic. It wasn't for another two years that he discovered what else this did.

His soul being stable, Harry moved on to his mind. It was amazingly depressing to him as he went about systematically deciding what to destroy and what to plant in the younger Harry. That was, of course, until older Harry destroyed his center for depression and sorrow. After that it was smooth sailing and soon the mind of the older Harry was reduced to little more than memories and younger Harry was developing again. This Harry certainly wasn't going to grow up into the same person.

The first signs of the changes that Harry's second soul had made came two years later, while Harry was four. The Dursleys were inside eating the breakfast that Harry had cooked them that morning, just like in his last life they started making him make breakfast as soon as he was tall enough. Naturally Harry wasn't allowed to eat anything until they were done and was forced to wait outside. With his memories from the other time line, though, he had plenty to think about while he waited.

It was while he was idly waiting that he found that his scratching in the dirt was more efficient than usual. He looked at the deep gouges in the ground and the many small piles of dirt. Then he looked at his hands. Finally he examined the claws that he suddenly found himself in the possession of. Neither of his existences had provided him with the experience of discovering a new body part. In the end they were retractable, and not the only change that would happen to his body.

His second, first experience with accidental magic came when he was six, and fell out of a tree. The weightless feeling of falling along with the terror of surprise triggered a rush of magic through him. Harry remembered the story of when Neville's accidental magic triggered during a fall and he bounced, he wasn't surprised though as his great uncle dropped him out a window after dangling him for a while. The terror of surprise must have made the difference because instead of bouncing Harry found himself floating.

He dropped to the ground as soon as he realized what he was doing, having lost the feeling. With his inherited occlumency Harry spent years recalling the times he saw Voldemort fly at the end of the last war with him. He also recalled the memory of his accidental flight and soon isolated the ability. Within a couple of years Harry was able to out-fly any broom that would be released before the Firebolt, and even then he would still have the better maneuverability.

Harry wasn't done evolving though, if anything learning to fly was speeding up the process. Just before his ninth birthday Harry woke up the whole household with agonizing screams. Vernon kicked his door in and found Harry, still unconscious, thrashing about in his bed, glowing noticeably and now had hair that looked like it was made out of silver and skin that looked like dark copper.

Vernon went to shake Harry and found that he was radiating incredible amounts of heat, even though nothing was burning. Not wanting to risk it Vernon lifted the side of the bed and dumped Harry on the floor. The screams cut off sharply and were replaced by moans as Harry woke up. He looked around wildly eyes now solid white and glowing brighter than the rest of him. In a rare moment of compassion Vernon decided to leave Harry lying on the floor, curled up in the fetal position, and sobbing in agony, instead of breaking a few ribs for waking Vernon up, as was standard practice for Harry's nightmares.

Harry wasn't allowed outside or near any open windows for three days while he struggled to get a grasp on what he concluded was his new metamorphmagus power. Finally, glow dampened, irises and pupils restored and skin back to its organic appearance, and claws retracted, Harry saw the sun again.

The last development during his Dursley years came later that year while he was walking home from school. He had ducked into a construction site to escape Dudley and his gang of minions, who were set of beating Harry up. He was watching the ground when he heard a shout of warning. Quickly looking up he saw a dumpster falling off of an upper story. Harry was reminded of the giant time turner and was expecting to be crushed. Then, just like when he learned to fly, the sensation of accidental magic filled him as the dumpster hit his head.

Instead of becoming dumpster paint like he expected Harry found himself knocked off his feet and landed a few feet away. After checking on him the foreman of the site took Harry to the Dursleys' and talked to Petunia about how lucky Harry had been to jump out of the way in time.

When Vernon got home and heard the story he took the initiative and beat Harry thoroughly for drawing attention. He finally gave up after he had been working on Harry for an hour and Harry still didn't have a mark on him. Petunia had been delightfully helpful at that point when she took up a cast iron skillet and swung as hard as she could at Harry's head. She hit him with enough force to knock him off his feet, but he got up again immediately without even a headache. After that the physical abuse stopped.

Harry knew that he had to test himself, so he warped into the wilderness one day and started flying into things. Harry ended up needing to hit trees with much greater force than any human could produce before he so much as bruised. Harry decided to stop testing once he managed to fracture his arm. He found that his skin was tougher as well, now able to resist minor cuts and lacerations.

Since they couldn't do much to Harry anymore he stopped doing more than his fair share of the chores. Without another choice Petunia eventually assigned Dudley to some of the easier tasks and left Harry with the gross or difficult ones.

Gardening was the one chore they both had, and thus ended up working alongside one another frequently. Unexpectedly, instead of making the job worse for Harry, Dudley ended up talking to Harry and an amount of mutual respect developed. Dudley even stopped his friends from tormenting Harry at school.

With all of these other changes Harry never even noticed that his eyes stayed perfect, and thus he didn't get glasses.

HPCOC

Harry's years at the Dursleys' were much better than his last time around, but they were still bad and Harry was looking forward to Hogwart's. Vernon and Petunia eventually gave up trying to deny the existence of magic around the time that Harry became a metamorphmagus and told him about Hogwart's when he turned ten. Harry decided against telling him that he already knew, and them telling him early would keep it from being suspicious when he wasn't surprised to get his letter the coming summer.

When his letter did finally arrive Harry quickly wrote a reply saying that he would be attending and he simultaneously requested the key to his trust vault at Gringott's. He found the delivery owl loitering outside and quickly had it on its way back to the Headmaster.

The letter was turned over to Albus Dumbledore after Minerva McGonagall had received it herself. He sat at his desk pondering just how Harry came into knowledge of his vaults. Dumbledore had specifically place Harry with his muggle relatives who wouldn't tell him anything about the magical world. Albus had been planning on sending Hagrid to take Harry to Diagon Alley for his supplies and to indoctrinate the boy into the role that Albus needed him to play. He was supposed to be completely ignorant and take up the pro-Gryffindor and anti-Slytherin outlook that Hagrid had. That and early contact with the Weasleys would have guaranteed that Harry would stay under Albus' control.

Now that Harry was requesting the key on his own initiative Albus had lost the upper hand. Albus couldn't deny the boy access to his vault without losing the position as a hero to Harry. In fact, the whole scenario demanded more attention from Albus. There really was no choice, he had to take Harry his key and he had to take Harry around Diagon Alley and learn how the boy thought. If Harry wasn't ignorant sending Hagrid to him wouldn't work in Albus' favor.

A couple days later, the encounter all planned out, Albus departed Hogwart's and apparated to Privet Drive. He walked down the sidewalk until he came to Number Four, where two boys were out front weeding. That's odd, the Dursleys should hate Harry enough by now to have him doing all the work, the other boy must be his cousin, Duncan I think. I wonder why he's helping, punishment perhaps.

"Excuse me, could one of you tell me where I could find Harry Potter?" Dumbledore asked from the sidewalk.

Both boys turned around quickly in surprise, but only the black haired boy spoke up. "I'll go get him for you professor."

Before Albus had even noticed that the boy knew who he was Albus found himself alone with the brown haired boy. "Was that Harry's cousin? Duncan, I think."

"No, I'm Harry's cousin, Dudley by the way." Dudley replied calmly and not looking Albus in the eye. Harry and he had planned this out and it sounded like a fun joke.

"So who was that other boy?"

"Oh, he is my friend Piers." Dudley said as a third boy with sandy brown hair and blue eyes came outside.

"Did you bring my key Professor?" The new boy asked as he walked up to the sidewalk.

"Harry?" Albus asked surprised by the boy's appearance

"Erm, yeah. So my key?" Harry said impatiently.

"Ah, yes well after I have a word with your Aunt we can head over to Diagon Alley and get all of your supplies." Dumbledore said smiling, eyes twinkling.

"Oh that's okay, I really only need my key." Harry said holding out his hand.

"After I speak with your Aunt." I should be able to convince her that she shouldn't go and let me take Harry instead, it should be easy. He took several steps towards the door only to find himself still on the sidewalk. Well that's strange.

"If you make me ask for my key one more time I will press charges, with the goblins, please just give me my key and leave, everything is arranged." Harry said.

Albus didn't know how Harry knew goblin laws but he did know that Harry wasn't making empty threats. What happened here? My work was so tidy. With a sigh he pulled Harry's key out of his pocket and handed it over. Harry promptly turned around and walked back inside, Dudley following close behind. Albus thought he was right behind Dudley but then looked again and was still on the sidewalk. Why can't I move onto the property?

"Excuse me? Boys?" When the children didn't respond he stalked off and apparated back to Hogwart's to try to figure out what happened over the last few years to get this response. It simply didn't make any sense. Who put up those wards? I wonder how long it will take me to take them down. Albus thought as he walked away, his plans disrupted more than he had thought possible.

HPCOC

Harry waited until his birthday to go to Diagon Alley. It was his birthday when Hagrid took him the first time and Harry felt it was appropriate. His first stop, after an uneventful visit to Gringott's, was Ollivander's.

"Ah, Mr. Potter, I was wondering when you would be in here. Happy birthday by the way." Ollivander was smiling genially. Harry wasn't surprised that he saw through Harry's disguise immediately.

"Nice to see you Mr. Ollivander. How are your children?" Harry asked kindly.

"Oh, they are very good. They always get excited during the summer hoping that they will get matched up with their witch or wizard." Ollivander said smiling. He pulled a wand box out from under his desk. "This one has been particularly excited this morning, care to try it out?"

Harry opened the box to find his wand lying there. He took it in his hand and felt as though he were seeing a close friend for the first time in several decades. "I'll take it."

"Curious, very curious. The phoenix that gave the tail feather for that wand gave one more. The brother of your wand is the one that gave you your scar." Ollivander said, Harry's hand quickly went to his forehead to check and make sure that he still had the scar hidden by his metamorphmagus talent.

"Erm, how did you know about the scar?" Harry asked.

"I lost both of my eyes when I was young and had them replaced with magical prosthetics. Over time I have manipulated the enchantments and now they see through almost any attempt at concealing one's identity." Ollivander said with a shrug. "It was an accident really."

"Well, accident or not I would really appreciate it if you would not tell anyone about my real form." Harry said.

"I have always kept the secrets of my customers, I didn't feel it was my place to tell others what I learned by mistake. The tan looks good though, you're positively radiant." He finished with a wink and Harry laughed. "May I ask what happened?"

"I don't want to go into details but I found myself aware of my magic at a very young age and used it, the results are in front of you." Harry said.

The two of them chatted for a while before Harry left having bought his wand, two wand holsters (Ollivander raised an eyebrow in question when Harry asked for the second one but didn't say anything.), and a wand servicing kit.

Harry quickly got his trunk next, he got one that shrank with a wand tap, had an expanded main compartment with three small drawers inside, one for potions and two for everything else, and was warded to prevent anyone other than him from opening it. There were two like that, one was plain wood and brass but he got the more expensive version that was covered in black dragon hide and had a silvery metal to fasten it. The shop owner called it mythril but Harry suspected that that was just another name for titanium.

The rest of his supplies were found and purchased quickly, he even got a few books about metamorphmagi while he was at Flourish and Blotts, and soon he found himself only needing to get his robes fitted and find Hedwig. The shop owners always offered to shrink his purchases for him and were always surprised when he pulled out his trunk and expanded it. It was fun but a little concerning that no one thought he would have that kind of trunk. He was still mentally shrugging as he entered Madam Malkin's. Draco was there just like last time.

Harry ordered that standard Hogwart's robes and hopped up on the stool next to Draco with a nod to acknowledge his presence. Harry didn't remember what he did the first time to get Draco starting but nodding had the same results it seemed.

"Hello, Hogwart's too?" Draco asked.

"Yup," Harry said trying to sound as uninterested as possible, it didn't work.

"Me too, what house do you think you'll be in?" Draco asked

"Dunno"

"Well no one really knows until they're sorted. I'm going to go into Slytherin of course though, my whole family has, it's the best house after all." Draco said

"Doubt it." Harry replied.

"It is the best, everyone says so." Draco said with a glare.

"Except anyone from any other house, snakes lose 3 to 1." Harry said blandly.

"Only the opinions of Slytherins matter, who cares what gryffindorks and puffs think. Claws have good thoughts but aren't good for anything other than help on homework." Draco was amazingly condescending even at this age.

"You're too dumb to make it in Slytherin." Harry said without looking over. "You won't make it past the first plot against you."

"WHAT? HOW DARE YOU INSULT A MALFOY!" Draco screamed. "WHEN MY FATHER GETS BACK HE'LL-"

"Be vary upset that you're using him as a threat to your peers." Lucius said as he walked in quickly. "And if you ever yell that loudly in public again there will be consequences."

"Sorry Father." Draco said turning red.

"You probably shouldn't threaten people without finding out who they are first either." Harry added helpfully, Lucius sent a whithering glare at Draco again.

"I apologize for Draco, he might be too stupid for Slytherin like you said. I am Lucius Malfoy, Head of the Malfoy family." Lucius said apologetically, extending his hand to Harry.

"It is nice to meet you Lucius, I don't hold you at fault for your son's indiscretion. He is only eleven after all, I'm sure I'll make some mistakes too before I am done." Harry shook Lucius' hand with a smile. "I am afraid though that I would like to maintain my anonymity until September though. If I see you on the platform I'll give you my name then otherwise I'm sure your son would be delighted to inform you after the sorting."

"I can respect that." Lucius said evenly.

The next few minutes passed in silence, Draco was too embarrassed to talk, Lucius had nothing to talk to an eleven year old about without establishing an identity, which he decided to avoid, and Harry simply didn't want to talk to the Death Eater and Future Death Eater. Soon though Draco was done and the Malfoys were leaving with his new robes.

"So how important are you?" One of the assistants asked.

Harry smiled at her. "Promise not to tell anyone until September second and I'll tell you."

"I, Constance Smith, swear on my magic that I will not willingly reveal the identity of this boy to anyone until after he has been sorted." She said holding up her wand and a pulse of magic verified her oath.

"Well you didn't have to go that far, but I appreciate it. My name is Harry Potter." He said calmly.

"Oh..." Her eyes jumped to look at his forehead. "No scar?"

"Disappeared after a few years." Harry lied.

"Oh, wow, little Malfoy is going to be in so much trouble when Lucius finds out." Constance said giggling.

"Yeah, that's why I didn't tell him." Harry laughed.

The last few minutes of his fitting went by quickly with casual small talk between himself and Constance. Soon though he was done and put his robes in his trunk with everything else.

After a quick stop to get Hedwig he left the alley and warped home. Now that he had a wand he could take the trace off of himself. He did so immediately. Interestingly anyone who knew the spell could remove the trace from them without triggering it. The ministry never noticed because no one without a high level of clearance was taught the spell and it was rarely used, but the trace only sends a message after a spell has been successfully cast, without effecting the spell itself. This meant that once Harry cast the trace removing spell there was no trace left to send the message. That day Harry went to sleep very pleased with himself.

HPCOC

August was uneventful for Harry. During the entire month he only did two things. First, he returned to Diagon Alley a week later, disguised as a middle aged woman, and tracked down a pensieve that could hold two occupants at a time, Dumbledore's wasn't as limited but it was larger, more fragile and less secure, Harry's fit in his pocket and required a specific action to enter the memories stored within, Harry would never forget how his older self had learned the hard way not to stick his face in mysterious objects and didn't want anyone else to do the same thing with his memories.

After finding the pensieve he made his way down Knockturn Alley to a magical pet store and eventually found a single chameleon snake in a back corner. Chameleon snakes were the metamorphmagi of the snake world and could change their coloration and size at will. It made the snakes very valuable to parselmouths as spies, since they could blend in until they were all but invisible. The only limitation on their ability to change shape is that they were limited to maintaining a constrictor shape. Few people were discerning enough to notice the difference though. After having a quick conversation with the snake while no one was listening Harry found out her name was Hande, and he bought her.

The second thing Harry did was on the night of August 31st. The Hogwart's Express would be taking all of the students to school and many of the students were too excited to sleep. Like them Harry was awake, but unlike them it wasn't because he couldn't sleep.

After disillusioning himself Harry warped to Dumbledore's office. Being careful not to draw the attention of the portraits in the room Harry made his way over to one specific shelf and quickly put The Sorting Hat on his head.

AN:

So here is my making it better thing. New details about how things work and stuff. It also closes a few plot holes, I think, and makes the whole story a bit more cohesive.

Changes:

Harry now had Mage Sight when he arrived in the past, rather than developing it when he was five or so.

Why Harry doesn't act like an 83 year old in an 11 year old body is explained.

Harry's path to flight is slightly tweaked and him becoming a metamorphmagus is a bit more violent.

Harry's trunk is written to be a little better and his pensieve a little worse.

Oh yea, it is also like three word document pages longer!