Author's Note: Welcome to the rewritten prologue/first chapter of The Torture of Time. My long absence has very many excuses, but I won't trouble you with them. Instead, enjoy the beginning of a much better version.

A note on the origins of this story, it was inspired after one too many (insert Supernatural force here) intervenes. So do keep that grain of salt with you.

Breathing comes in pairs, except for twice

one begins and one's goodbye

-The Fray, Enough For Now

Hope was lost and had been for years. There was simply no one left to have hope. Smoking ruins of famous places and ashes of famous people were the new scenery. It wasn't just the famous or the best or even the vaguely important. It was everybody and everything.

In a small clearing surrounded by dead, forbidding trees, a small tree hung to life by a leaf, and a boy struggled to stand. Across the clearing a madman smirked.

"And now Potter, I've saved the most painful for last. Perhaps I should make her suffer..." Harry's temper was set aflame, but his usual reactions had been discarded after months and years of the same thing. Instead, he gathered the last dregs of his Gryffindor courage and hobbled over to a huddled mass in the middle of the clearing. With his support, a broken Hermione Granger stood.

"I'm done with your games, Tom."

"The-Boy-Who-Lived begging for death. Oh, how the mighty have fallen," he said with a smirk and a twirl of his wand.

"Yeah, you've won. Woo-fucking-hoo," Harry started quietly, voice slowly rising, "But what have you won? Nothing. Not a single reward. You've left the biggest cities all the way down to the smallest backwoods shack in ruins. You've killed everyone, including those who pledged their wands to your service. But to what end? You may be king of everything, but there's nothing left for you to rule over." This Harry James Potter closed his eyes for the last time.

If he could be given a last a wish, he knew it would be to go back and fix the string of tragedies that had led to this. Centuries of wizards have underestimated the power of the dying wish of strong witch or wizard. All that power needs to go somewhere... It had been Lily and James Potter's will and magic that had saved him on that night years ago, and now...

Voldemort never had done well with being mocked or ridiculed, and his response was the same as always, "AVADA KEDARVA!" A swirl of blue and silver of unknown origins interrupted the green beam. To his utter frustration it seemed Harry Potter had escaped his grasp for the final time as there was no trace of the Golden Duo left. As he fumed, the universe began to fade around him. Second by second and moment by moment time dissolved. (Not So) Slowly, it shrunk down to the Milky Way galaxy, and the stars went out.

Eventually even Earth's listless twin, Venus, slipped out of existence.

As the Earth itself vanishes, a whispers into the darkness, "Help will always be given at Hogwarts for those who ask for it." Those immortal words echoed around the clearing as Voldemort looked confusedly about.

"Show yourself!" he shrieked into the vanishing night.

"Time makes fools of you all," With this the clearing and its shrieking madman faded leaving only a soft blue glow and a laugh.