Poll result, Chapter 1: I Need a Hero, I need a Hero to save me right about now, and he's gotta be fast and he's gotta be strong and he's gotta be up to the task. I need a hero! (Patreon)

The front page of a newspaper was hovering, spinning in the air and slowly turning to cinders as small orange flames licked at its edges. The title, “The Boy Who Lies,” disappeared in the flames.

“Reparo,” a young voice said and with a flick of a wand all of the ash that had previously been burned off the paper flew back towards it to reconstruct the original piece of libel.

“Incendio,” a small flicker of fire once again ignited it. The parchment hovered, and spun, and burned away.

“Reparo.”

“Will you bloody well stop already?” Ron suddenly said from where he was lying down on the bed next to Harry's, reading a comic book that Hermione had brought with her. ‘Iron Man,’ if Harry had seen correctly.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Just nervous, is all.”

The red-head glanced at him, put the comic book down so that it lay on his Chudley Cannons t-shirt covered chest. “I wish I had something to be nervous about as well, but I guess I'm not important enough,” he said bitterly and turned away from Harry to face the grimy wall instead.

The-boy-who-lived let his head fall back against the wall on which he'd been leaning to have the biggest possible overview of the darkly lit bedroom and ran a hand through his hair. As he did so a finger accidentally touched at his lightning bolt scar, making it ache once again.

It had been periodically inflamed ever since Voldemort's revival at the graveyard at the start of this summer.

He winced in pain, before a bout of anger overtook him. “I wish I wasn't important enough, at least the ministry wouldn’t send dementors after me,” he muttered with a scowl, his constraint being shown by the low volume of his complaint.

The room remained silent as Ron chose to ignore him.

Harry frowned and felt a familiar anger bubbling up inside of him, but before he could fully lose his temper a loud banging on the door scared him onto his feet and some dust from the ceiling to the floor. Without waiting for a come in the door opened a crack and the gnarly and scarred face of Alastor Moody peeked inside.

“Get down here, Potter. We need you,” the man said and whiplash hit the-boy-who-lived once again as he was reminded that  the Professor Moody that he had spent so much time with during the school year, had actually been Barty Crouch Jr. and that he barely knew the real auror.

He cast a slightly apologetic look at his friend who was petulantly laying on his side and not looking at him, which meant that the gesture became worthless. He exited the room and closed the door behind him.

He wished that he could say that the rest of the house looked better than the bedroom, but if anything it looked worse. They’d focused most of their cleaning on the rooms that they would have to sleep in during their stay, and not necessarily on the common living spaces.

Harry didn't really know why Sirius hadn't sent the house-elf away if this was how the house looked up under his care.

Kreacher certainly wasn't being kept around for his personality, that was for sure.

“What exactly are we doing?” Harry asked as Moody led him down the first flight of steps into the first floor of the house where Hermione and Ginny were peeking out from their bedroom to look at him with concern.

“Not here. Didn't you learn anything about vigilance?” Moody barked as they descended another flight of steps. His wooden leg clanked on the floor as he walked paradoxically informing everyone in the house that something was going on.

Harry stuck his hands in his pockets and hung his head. It didn’t seem like he was going to get any answers, which wasn't really as much of a reversal of the norms as he would have hoped.

He raised an eyebrow as he followed Moody all the way to the drawing room, where most of the order would usually hang out when they were present and where they would hold the meetings from which people under 17 were excluded from.

What surprised him was that no one else was there, it was just him and Moody.

The auror must have seen the confusion on Harry's face with his electrically blue artificial eye, because he barked a raspy laugh and clanged his staff on the floor free times.

“You think you figured out all the secrets of this house after only being here for a few days?” he asked rhetorically. “These old dark families always have hiding places into which they can crawl to hide like the cockroaches they are. It's a lesson you should keep in mind.”

What had previously just looked like a dirty piece of floor made of what was perhaps once a multiplicity of floorboards, peeled away to reveal a stone staircase leading downwards into what must have been the cellar of the house. Harry hadn't known that the house had a cellar, which he guessed was the point.

Moody descended, and when he noticed that Harry wasn't following he shot him a glare and jerked his head down. It worked better than any summoning charm and Harry reluctantly started his descent into what must have been an even dirtier part of the house.

Thankfully there were iron braziers hanging from the walls which illuminated the staircase and the following corridor with bright blue flames. After his head passed below where the floorboards would have been, they materialized right back with a small whoosh sound.

“Vanishing wood, expensive business. Only the best for the worst,” Moody growled.

A few more steps and they emerged into the corridor, Harry could now hear the voices of others coming from somewhere. This was where the rest of the order members would likely be them.

He followed Moody past three empty rooms, one of which looked to be a wine cellar, another a library and a third, disturbingly, enough a prison cell. Then as their destination they entered a spacious circular room with a ceiling that was too high for the architecture of the house in which they were gathered and where the adult members of the order as Harry knew them were standing around and having hushed conversations.

Shacklebolt in his purple robes was talking to McGonagall with her stern look. Tonks who was nervously shifting her hair between purple and red as well as tapping her foot on the floor was next to Remus who looked haggard due to the recent full moon. Sirius was also there, and he gave Harry a friendly nod and bid him to come over.

The final members were Dumbledore and Snape who Harry wasn't particularly happy to see here and who reciprocate his feelings by throwing him a sneer which threw his pale greasy face into an even more unpleasant pall.

“Harry, my boy, glad that you could make it to this sordid affair. I'm afraid I have no refreshments or sweets to offer you but you can join whichever conversation you wish as we complete the preparations,” the old man said in a disproportionately pleased voice, as Harry noted that two notable members of the order that weren't present were Molly and Arthur Weasley.

Harry arrived next to Sirius who's gaunt face looked even worse in the dark shadows thrown by the flickering blue flames.

“What is this place?” he asked in a whisper, affected by the atmosphere of the room.

“It's a recent find during the cleaning. I always knew that my father had a wine cellar that he wouldn't allow us to enter, but it's all I thought was under here. I didn't know about the…” Sirius trailed off and groaned, putting a hand over his face. “Bloody prison cell under the drawing room. Another secret library and this,” he gestured to the room at large with a disgusted look on his face.

Harry looked around. Other than the people present, the room was large but empty. They were all huddled over in a corner and the only thing of note was the large circle of chalk drawn in the middle of the room which measured around 7 meters in diameter and which had a variety of ruins scrawled on its outside.

“What is, this?” he asked.

“It's a ritual room, Harry,” Remus said in a calm voice that Harry had gotten used to during his third year. “Rituals are a delicate form of magic that doesn’t rely on wands. They are also mostly forbidden. That is why dark families have had to hide the rooms in which they did them for the longest time. They are generally empty because any unnecessary objects can mess with the results.”

“Why are we here?” Harry asked, trying to dig deeper.

“We don't know,” Sirius said with a shrug. “Dumbledore called us and then he went over to the greasy git and has been discussing with him for around an hour now.”

A clap suddenly gained the attention of everyone in the room and they looked towards Dumbledore whose old hands had committed the act.

Snape was standing next to him looking the same as always. Unlikeable.

“Thank you all for gathering here. As you can probably surmise, I have an announcement to make.” Considering the general atmosphere Dumbledore seemed rather cheery as if he had recently managed to solve a complicated puzzle or won at bingo.

“As we all know we have entered some rather dark times recently. Lord Voldemort has returned,” some people flinched, “and the ministry seems more intent on hiding the fact rather than planning for the inevitable start of hostilities once the dark lord has once again gathered all his followers and resources.

“Thankfully, during our most recent discovery of this underground hiding space we have come upon some literature on rituals. I have been studying the books to gain some insight into a potential advantage we could have over our adversaries,” Dumbledore said.

“If it's magic that my family was using then I don't think it's going to help us,” Sirius interjected with a snort. “It always turns on you in the end.”

“I see that our resident expert on all forms of magic shall grace us with his doubtlessly groundbreaking insight gained from his Hogwarts education and his stint in prison,” Snape drawled and Sirius was doubtlessly about to respond alike by the way he was bristling, but the headmaster shot them both a sharp look and they stilled.

“Trust me, Sirius, when I say that I'm not planning on doing anything of the sort. I have rather become inspired by an approximation of an idea which I took from the books, rather than wanting to use anything I found inside them. Rituals are not inherently dark, but they are one of the forms of magic that has been most misused by dark wizards,” the Headmaster explained.

Harry looked to his godfather to see that the man was still throwing dirty looks at Snape who was acting unperturbed.

“On one hand our issue in regards to Lord Voldemort is information, we do not know where he is, we do not know what he is doing and we certainly do not know what he has planned. On the other hand we are rather at a lack of people who can face him in battle which shall most definitely be necessary to conclude this blood war once and for all.” Dumbledore stroked his beard.

“That's all well and good but why are we here, exactly,” Tonks piped up. “Place gives me the jeepers,” she said with a serious nod.

That's when Moody stepped forward to stand next to Dumbledore. “We are here because we are the ones who will inevitably have to fight Voldemort and his gang of criminal retrobates,” he said, which didn't really explain anything to Harry.

Dumbledore took the stage again. “I have devised a piece of magic which might perhaps aid us in finding out more about Lord Voldemort's activities as well as potentially gaining an ally in his defeat. Now I assume most of you are not familiar with the theory of alternative realities. But, suffice to say that it is considered a valid belief in academic circles; that there exist different versions of the same world in which different decisions were made and different outcomes came about. Those versions which are more similar to us are closer while those that diverged longer ago or have more widespread changes are further away. Metaphysically speaking. The fascinating thing about alternative realities is that they do not necessitate meddling with time to touch something which has already gone through the events that we would consider our future. For example, if someone would cross over from one alternative reality to the other it would not be time travel if they stepped a few years back from whence they left.”

Harry's mind swam as Dumbledore continued speaking, explaining the intricacies of the theory. He wondered why the man was focused so much on explaining what was going on. Hermione would have likely been overjoyed to be present and to be listening to what was essentially one of the greatest wizards of all time debating magical theory. The whole thing was probably a bit wasted on him however.

Looking to his left and to his right, it frankly seemed like the talk was wasted on everyone other than perhaps Remus, Shacklebolt and McGonagall. The first two were nodding along while the last seemed like she already knew what Dumbledore was speaking of.

“Regardless, the core of the ritual is simple. We will send out a call for help to the alternative realities most close to ours in the form of an open letter, perhaps that is the best explanation,” Dumbledore muttered, seemingly finally getting to the point. His lime green robes clashed horribly with the seriousness of the situation. “Should someone be willing to accept our letter they will be able to take on the invitation held within it. If they do accept the invitation, a replica of their body, their identity, their memories shall appear in the middle of this ritual circle. Now obviously we are not sending out an invitation to  just anybody, but rather setting the criteria for that person to be someone who has already vanquished Lord Voldemort in their reality. This is what makes the ritual not a dark ritual. By giving the intended recipient a choice in their summoning and by creating a copy rather than removing them from their place of birth and putting them here we are essentially generating an ally that we otherwise would not have had.”

“That's all good, Albus, but that doesn't explain why you've gathered us here. I can't truly wrap my head around how you will enforce these criteria but on matters of magic I trust you more than anybody else in the world. But, is this truly necessary? You are after all one of the wizards capable of facing the dark lord in a duel,” Shacklebolt questioned in his deep voice.

“Unfortunately,” Dumbledore said as he put a hand to his forehead in a gesture of apology, “Voldemort has always had the advantage over me because I have been preoccupied with defending Hogwarts while he strikes elsewhere before I can react.”

Kingsley seemed to consider those words before nodding. “All right, I understand.”

Albus continued. “The reason why I've gathered you here is because of the fact that it is the people present here, the members of the Order of the Phoenix who are the most likely in fact to have contributed in some way to vanishing Lord Voldemort in an alternative reality. This means that by having you in the room as the ritual occurs, we are narrowing down the list of candidates by sympathetic properties into something more resembling a good selection,” the man continued.

Harry’s heart started beating faster as things started to fall together.

This was why he was here. Right now he wasn't ready to face Voldemort, but maybe a future version of him would be? Was this what Dumbledore was Implying? Did he believe that Harry could one day protect himself and others from the mad man that had killed his parents?

“If there are no other questions, then let us commence,” Dumbledore said and turned around dramatically. His hand disappeared into his pocket and he retrieved what appeared to be a multitude of sharp red sharp pebbles. He cast his hand wide and threw them haphazardly into the ritual circle as Harry’s eyes widened. The little shards had the exact same color as the sorcerer’s stone that Voldemort had tried to obtain in his first year by possessing Quirrell. Hadn’t it been destroyed? Or did it still retain some use after being destroyed?

The headmaster raised his hands in the air to clasp his wand and started chanting something in a language Harry did not understand. The circle and the accompanying runes drawn on the floor started lighting up in a deep red.

The ritual commenced.

-/-

It had been several hours since Dumbledore had first raised his arms in the air to start the ritual. The runes had been glowing at the same consistency for the entire time, but no visible effect had occurred yet.

Everyone in the room, even the dignified Remus and Kingsley were sitting on the floor, forbidden from conjuring seating, watching Dumbledore as the man’s sweat started dripping down his brow and onto his beard.

The chanting did not stop. Even if the voice had grown raspy.

Harry let his head loll back and let it hit the stone wall of the chamber, as his arms hugged his knees closer to himself.

He’d never thought that watching a powerful wizard do magic would get boring somehow, especially when the stakes were so high. Somehow it had happened. Most other conversations died out an hour ago and now the order was just a group of frustrated people sitting in a circle watching as the headmaster seemed to futilely try to make something work.

“Maybe we should,” Sirius said slowly, he coughed once. “Maybe we should stop, I don't think this is going anywhere,” he said more loudly.

“I for one won't let a bit of discomfort get in the way of potential victory,” Snape’s voice suddenly hissed from the other side of the room where the man was standing, leaning against the wall. the least composed that Harry had ever seen his potions professor.

A crack suddenly resounded through the room causing several heads to snap towards the center where a bright red light suddenly emerged in the middle of the air. A black dot appeared floating in the middle of the room, more dots joined it shortly. Harry was surprised he could make out such details, but he could see as more and more dots formed, slowly creating the outline of a human. A man.

He looked beneath the apparition and saw that the shards of the philosopher's stone were growing smaller as the dots multiplied.

As more and more of the dots materialized, some of them gained color. The color of skin, blood, bone, tissue Hermione would definitely have been able to name more components.

Dumbledore's voice became louder and it seemed like he was putting in more effort than ever.

With a final shout from the Headmaster a magical silence descended on the room and the  runes around the circle fizzled out in their light, while the circle remained bright. All shards of the philosopher's stone were gone and there was a man standing in the middle of the room.

He was amongst other things, completely naked.

-/-

Harry Evans had been having a perfectly normal day. He’d gone to the market in the morning to buy the ingredients for his breakfast, lunch and dinner for the day and had then gone to the$ beach to swim in the pleasant Mediterranean blue as his prerequisite daily exercise and also out of sheer enjoyment.

After some lounging around under the fragrant pine trees, and reading a book, he returned back  to his little sea cottage to make lunch.

That was when he received a weird ping against his occlumency shields. Very curious indeed considering that his magical sense informed him that there was no one in his vicinity. He unraveled the bundle of data sitting politely at his mental drawbridge and parsed through the information it contained.

Vanquishers of voldemort. Willing to have physical copy created in alternative reality. Complete the same task again. SOS.

He stood there in his little blue kitchen staring into nothing as his mind crashed like a newly updated windows computer.

“What the fuck?” he muttered, scratching his head.

Summoning, doubling? He followed the data shard back to the magic that had spawned it and suddenly felt a vast array of different threads of dimensional and time magic opening themselves up to his senses as if summoned by his need to analyze.

He slowly started putting everything together.

If he agreed to the query of help, it seemed that his body would be duplicated at the atomic level in another reality. Essentially he was getting an offer to create a twin he was never going to meet. There didn't seem to be any compulsions or contractual obligations implicit in the magic, but that could just as well come once the body formed.

He suddenly smirked as he realized that if he accepted this then the doppelganger that the people on the other side of reality would receive, would be quite mad at him for having accepted in his stead before his existence gained any sort of agency to accept or deny the request.

It wasn't often that one got a chance to prank oneself. He chuckled. Thought for a second if maybe doing this was a bad idea considering that while he was a very good wizard he wasn't arrogant enough to think that he was the best there ever was. There could be hidden traps inside the construct that necessitated his consent to activate.

But, if there was one thing he trusted it was his well developed magic sense. He hadn't met anyone more proficient than himself yet and if whoever was sending him this piece of magic was so much above him that they could trick one of his best skills, then they would be able to do whatever they wanted anyway.

He accepted the query, allowing a sort of magical scan to run over his body, before the whole thing simply slipped away and disappeared. Leaving him in his kitchen with the sardines that he would have to gut before he could fry them.

He scratched his head.

“I mean. It is a bit funny,” he said with a slow nod. “But, if I don't really get to see the results, then this is it, no?”

He shrugged and went back to his day. His vacation wasn’t endless. He had to enjoy it while he could.

-/-

Dumbledore warily stepped back from the ritual circle as the naked man curiously looked around and tried to put his hands in pockets that weren't there. The red-head looked down, noticed his lack of clothing and frowned.

Before Albus could explain that he unfortunately could not hand over any objects at the moment due to the protective runic circle still intact and keeping the summoned entity contained, the man snapped his fingers.

Darkness materialized itself around him and Albus could see the threads of a complex conjuration having occurred even if he did not understand the substance that had been summoned.

He narrowed his eyes at what seemed to be some sort of free moving black particles which nevertheless held onto a shape within a certain parameter.

A pair of shadowy black pants wriggling against reality formed themselves around the man's lower body. The upper chest was left bare.

The man glanced around the room, before opening his mouth. He was handsome in a way, in the way that Tom Riddle had been young. This worried Albus for some reason. The man had red-hair and a more androgynous face than Tom, but the facial expressions were shockingly similar. In control, distant, patronizing.

“I keep trying to think of a dramatic thing to say, but I really don't give enough of a shit,” the man suddenly said, dispelling the tension in the room. “Who the fuck are you morons?” he asked.

-/-

AN: I have a lot of gripes about the shitty tropes surrounding the summoning genre of Harry Potter fanfiction. Which is why I'm changing it, a lot. Don't like bash fics, so Dumbledore actually rubbed two brain cells when designing the ritual. Nevertheless, things will go wrong somehow I guess....

Which you will see in the next chapter. Coming relatively soon I'd say. Maybe a week. Need to figure out some dialogue. First chapters always harder than ongoing stories.

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