AN: Alright, if this is your second time reading this you will no doubt be wondering what the hell happened.
A Harry/Hermione suddenly turned into a Harry/Luna.
Well, I wanted to continue this work, but I became a Harry/Luna shipper after watching the fifth movie and reading the fifth book.
So here it is. The new and improved "Last Shot". As if books 6 and 7 didn't exist, and only enough of five to have Luna.
Last Shot
Prologue: Time Broken
Harry Potter. The boy-who-lived. The one destined to finish the dark wizard. The one who could survive the killing curse. The one who, now, only a few weeks after his 18th birthday, wishes for nothing more then for that last curse to have hit. He kneels on the ashen ground of what had once been the beautiful grounds of Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. His wand falls to the ground from his now limp hand.
It is finished.
The world around him stops. The battle between the light and the dark, the aurors and the death eaters, continues around him. But ten feet away lays the lifeless corpse of Voldemort, killed by the hatred and anger Harry had held in his heart until this moment. Hatred for watching his best friend, Ron, get obliterated with reducto not three feet away. Anger for the lives of his Hogwarts friends and teachers, all of which had been slaughtered in the opening salvo of the dark lord. Malice for Hermione… killed only minutes ago at his side with the killing curse from a now dead Lucius Malfoy. All of his feeling and existence had been wiped away with her last breath, the last breath of thelast of his friends.
And with her last breath, a power entered Harry Potter. He cast an unforgivable curse. He cast crucio, not once, not twice. Voldemort had been hit with the curse three times in a row before Harry Potter ended his suffering with the killing curse. Now, Voldemort lay face down in the ash, his body magicly decaying too fast to be natural, while Harry Potter stared at the hands that had once been used for good. He didn't notice time passing as the battle came to its inevitable end as the last remaining Wizard of Hogwarts leads the army of the ministry of magic against the now leaderless death eaters.
Dumbledore had been at the ministry on the day Hogwarts had been invaded, and had come back to find his beloved school empty of everything but the lifeless corpses of his students. Harry Potter and a small group had survived only by luck that Voldemort did not think to look in the Chamber of Secrets carefully. But now the greatest wizard to have ever lived and the boy who, some might say, had surpassed him in power, were the lone survivors of the school. And one of them was ready to end it all.
Harry Potter considered picking his wand up and casting the killing curse on himself, he knew he would mean it enough to pull it off. He also considered just staying where he was. He didn't want to get up, or he would probably be ushered around as a hero. A hero who couldn't save the two people who meant the world to him. He didn't want to lay down, for then he might glimpse the body that was only a few feet to his left and a few behind him. The body of Hermione Granger, the only one to stand by his side till the end even as her heart had been crushed by Ron's passing. Harry thought back to the girl he had once thought of in a similar way. And her death. And now... he didn't want to die, but… he didn't want to live either.
This is how Dumbledore, the wise old wizard, found Harry Potter. In deep shock, so deep that he was completely conscious of his surroundings. It was as if his brain had taken all it could take and overloaded, only to have taken more till it finally was forced to understand reality. Harry should have been rejoicing, or weeping, or screaming… but he just stared at his hands. The elder of the pair walked over to him and placed his hand on his shoulder.
"Harry…"
"Yes, professor." Dumbledore gave a small smile at that. School had been invaded and taken over in his sixth year, but Harry still called him professor.
"How are you?"
How was he? What kind of question was that? He was alive, both an unexpected and nearly unwanted occurrence. He was fine, but that was bad, so he wasn't fine… was he?
"… I feel like shit." Harry still didn't look up, but noticed the light around him grow brighter. This would have been the day that school would have started again after summer break. He would have already graduated by now, though… Hermione would have been reading a book anyway and Ron would have been practicing quiditch. Ron… brutally murdered as he helped Harry stall for the rest of his friends as they escaped to the Chamber of Secrets. Hermione… the girl who had become his second friend and one of the best. And... her. Now there was no chance for anyone, least of all him. If only she had survived. If only he had been stronger. Faster...
"No serious injuries?"
"Just my heart…"
"I am afraid I have no potions to help that."
"Could you… could you please do something for me?"
"For the savior of the wizardry world? Of course, what is it?"
"Please… kill me."
"Wha… what?"
"I can't life my arms to curse myself. Please… kill me…"
"Harry, I can't kill you."
"Yes, you can. It's easy. Just think of everything that has happened because Voldemort was looking for me. The death of Hogwarts, for instance. Blame me for it and cast it."
"Harry… I can't do that."
"YES YOU CAN! Just kill me so I can be with my friends!"
"… does it mean that much to you, Harry? These friendships? The lives of the people who died at his hands?"
"How can you ask me that? My life has been dedicated to them!"
"What would you give up for a chance to save them?"
"Wha… what do you mean? I would give anything and everything." Dumbledore now saw as Harry Potter lifted his lifeless eyes to him. Dumbledore gave a sigh.
"Harry, there is something that I have been wanting to try ever since that day. But I couldn't, for everyone here still needed me. Now that he is finally gone, you might want to try it. I have a way to, theoretically, travel back in time." Dumbledore pulled a large medalion shaped thing from his robes which Harry instantly recognized.
"The time turner won't work. It can't change events."
"No, that wouldn't work. The thing is, if it works then you would travel back in time and replace the previous soul of your body. It would create a whole new future. But the chance of failure is staggering, and failure means certain death."
"I'll do it."
"You don't know what you're saying. Even Sirius would have listened to what I had to say before leaping into the unknown."
"Sirius is dead, killed as he waited for me in front of that thrice damned house! You don't understand, professor. If there was a ten to one chance I could change this, I would take it. If there was a million to one chance to have my friends alive again, I WOULD DO IT EVEN IF IT WAS ONE HUNDERED PERCENT CERTAIN I WOULD DIE FROM IT! Tell me."
"Here." He handed the time turner to Harry. He noticed it was larger than the one he had used in third year. "The time turner I gave Miss Granger in her third year is not like this one. That one had a time limit of one day that one could travel back in time. This one has a limit of three years. Her time turner could not turn back more then a day, a safety spell insured that, but this one could be turned back for thousands of years. Do you know what happens when you turn a time turner further then the maximum and then use it?"
Harry shrugged.
"I will tell you. Your soul would be ripped from your body and you would die on the spot. But there have been three cases where this has not been the truth. Two people managed to survive turning back time four days on a three day time turner, but they were not copies of themselves. The same happened to a person who tried going back eight months on a half year turner. The body they left in the future died, but they came back the same age after being very careful to not alter anything they had done. It is strictly illegal to alter the past in such a way, not that it is an inforcable law, but in this case…"
"So you want me to use this time turner to go back four years and hope my soul, after leaving this body behind, bonds with my body of four years ago? And then change the future?"
"The time you are to go back is completely untested, so the likeliness of your death is close to guaranteed…" Dumbledore didn't have a chance to speak again as Harry Potter began to wind the turner.
"I understand, professor. Thank you for your help and everything, and I appreciate everything. If I fail, make sure Hermione gets a hero's burial."
"Even if you succeed, I will never know. You will both recieve hero's burials."
"You mean, this future won't go away?"
"You will merely be creating an alternate universe really, Harry. Don't ask me, I don't fully comprehend all the theory behind it. The first change you make will put the enitre world on a whole different path. How close it is to this one is your choice. I wish you good luck."
Harry Potter had finished winding the time turner till the small face on it showed that it was overloaded by a complete year. This would put him back in his fourth year at Hogwarts, the tri-wizard tournament, and the resurrection of Lord Voldemort. Without letting go of the turner he put one arm around his old mentor and only surviving friend.
"Thank you again, professor. Create a bright future here and I will try to do the same in the past." Harry had tears in his eyes as him let go of Albus Dumbledore. The old wizard had streams of tears traveling into his beard as he watched Harry Potter give his last smile in this world.
He released the time turner, as it started to spin faster Harry Potter winced once. Then, with a flash of light and a loud crack, Harry Potter lay on his back next to the body of Hermione Granger, together in death as the friends they had been in life. Dumbledore wiped tears from his eyes as an auror walked up behind him.
"Sir, what was that?"
"That was a boy taking the last option."
"I am sorry, sir, but I don't understand. Is he dead?"
"You do not need to understand, just know that Voldemort is dead at the hands of Harry Potter. And now this Harry Potter is also dead."
"This Harry Potter?"
"Yes, this one is dead." Dumbledore smiled at the still spinning time turner. "But somewhere, sometime, he will live again."
Harry Potter felt his consciousness drift through the void of nothingness. To describe feeling nothing is impossible, for it most certainly doesn't feel like the nothing that it is. He felt the emptiness like it was tangible, like fullness, but the opposite. He felt the lack of senses not as if something had been removed, but as if something had been added and it was too large or miniscule to grasp in his mind. It was dark, but not due to lack of light. Silent, but not due to lack of sound. A vacuum, but not from lack of substance.
Is this death? With that thought, the nothingness broke. Harry Potter was thrown from the nothing and into the something. He instantly returned to a reality with a scream of what could have been fear or pain, but he felt neither. But the something, even in his unconsciousness, was more then the nothingness.
His head filled with a buzzing as the senses he hadn't felt in either seconds or decades or millennia returned slowly. The blurs he saw with regained sight began to become clear. The sounds he heard gradually became clear. There was color, there was noise, there was something.
Harry Potter sat up instantly from his laying position, cracking heads with someone who had been only inches away from him.
"Harry! Damn it… ouch… that hurt, mate."
"Oh, shut up Ron! Harry? Harry, are you ok?"
"Back off, Hermione, he was the one to head butt me, unless you have gone blind."
"You didn't collapse while you were screaming for no reason, did you?"
The voices. The names. What… what happened. Oh… I remember… OH!
Harry Potter sat up slower this time. He was on a train, a very memorable train. The train that would take him to his destiny.
"H…Hermione? Ron?" It was like he was seeing them for the first time in years, which in almost every sense, he was.
"Yes, Harry. Are you ok?"
"Am… am I ok?"
"Yes, are you ok?"
"He's not deaf, Hermione!" Both Hermione and Ron were obviously worried, his female friend's eyes were moist with unshed tears. And Ron looked as if Harry had just been struck by an Avada Kadavara.
"Hermione… Ron…" His friends were startled as Harry Potter engulfed them in an embrace. It took only a moment for them to notice the moisture seeping into their robes. He's crying?
"Harry? What's wrong?"
"Wrong? Oh, Hermione, nothing is wrong anymore. Nothing is wrong anymore and it won't be wrong again."
"Um… ok, then." Ron was getting uncomfortable hugging his best friend on the floor of the train car when his sister and about five other people were looking in from the hall way. They must have heard him scream and collapse.
Harry released his friends before getting back into his seat. He had a smile larger then most on his face, even though his tears were still streaming down his face.
"Harry, you're crying. And you passed out. Are you sure you are ok?"
"I am better now then I have been in years, Hermione. Believe me." He looked at the faces of Ginny and others that were looking at him with worry in their eyes. They were alive. Ron was alive. Hermione was alive. Harry was alive. Nothing could go wrong. Suddenly Harry sat straight up.
She's here.
Harry, with tears still in his eyes, was instantly out of his seat and out the door. He instantly started down to train, ignoring his friends exclamations at his actons. He glanced quickly into every cabin, trying to find that one person he needed to see the most. Even if it was one year too early to meet her, he wasn't going to wait that long.
Not this time.
Harry was racing through the train cars, dodging first and second years. Sometimes even accidentally casting a repelling shield charm silently and wandlessly to get through the students. Luckily no one seemed to notice.
It was in the last car that he found who he was looking for.
In a smaller than normal cabin, sitting all alone, was a blond haired third year staring out the window. Harry flung the door open without a thought and leaned against the door frame, much more tired then he should have been. The girl was slightly startled, though her face showed nothing as she turned to him.
"Yes?"
Harry just smiled as he looked into her eyes. Three and a half years younger than the last time he saw her. He couldn't help it as he slumped to the ground in exhaustion, his last sight being the young girl looking down at him with just that slight hint of worry in her eyes. He could always tell when she was worrying...
Harry woke up for the second time in as many minutes much more refreshed than the first time. He guessed his soul had finally merged or whatever it was supposed to do. His head hurt like it had when he had fallen from his broom after the dementor attack five... no... one year ago. He grimiced as he opened his eyes to see exactly the same people that had been their the first time. Ron and Hermione now looked very worried and upset, more so then before. He just smiled and pulled himself up into the seat next to him.
It did not escape his notice that the third year girl was still staring at him and was now seated directly next to him.
"Harry..."
"I'm fine."
"No..."
"Yes. I am. I just got up too quickly last time. Hit my head on the way in, must have given myself a mild concussion."
"But then you ran all the way down the train to here? Without passing out, mind you. And then just konk out again upon reaching this car?"
"Yeah." Harry smiled again, trying his hardest to lie believably, as he sat next to the blond. "And I don't think I should move again for a bit. I need some rest."
Ron and Hermione seemed mildly ok with his excuse, but informed him that the moment they reached Hogwarts that he would be dragged to the nurse with or without his approval. Then they took the seats across from him. It was only then that they even seemed to notice the girl next to Harry.
"Um... Hello. Sorry about the... inconvenience?"
Hermione tried to greet the smaller girl, but after a few words noticed that her gaze didn't waiver from Harry. Harry seemed to notice this as well.
"Hello."
"Hello." Harry almost had to laugh. Her voice was just as mysterious and charming as it had ever been.
"I'm..."
"Harry Potter."
"And you are?" Not that he didn't know the answer.
"Luna Lovegood."