Fanfic / Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past

The Golden Trio is now the "Gryffindor Six".

Sorting Hat: Your plan is an audacious one; you seek to meddle with the workings of Fate itself.
Harry: Well, I had literally nothing left to lose.
Sorting Hat: True. I wish you well in this endeavour. Never fear, I will keep your secrets. The more who know the greater the risk.

Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past is a Harry Potter Peggy Sue fic written by S'TarKan / Viridian / Evil Author Lord Matthew Schocke.

The story opens with an adult Harry finally defeating Voldemort after fighting him and his Death Eaters for about thirteen years. The victory is extremely hollow, however; the war has directly or indirectly claimed the lives of virtually every named character in the series and Harry has lost everyone he ever loved and then some. Then, as a potentially fatal case of depression begins to settle in, Harry uncovers theoretical texts in the ruins of Hogwarts that suggest a means by which to travel backwards in time.

With nothing left to lose, Harry gambles his life on a second chance, and hits the jackpot when his spirit merges with his younger self partway through the summer before his first year at Hogwarts. In classic Peggy Sue fashion, "young" Harry then begins subtly altering the timeline to make things better... with mixed results.

Harry's efforts to change the future create as many problems as they solve, and the multiple layers of conflict in the story prevent Harry's advanced skills and greater power from making things too easy for him.

Status

The story has not been abandoned, though Viridian states that updates will likely be slow due to personal issues, both health- and job-related. After about a three-year hiatus, chapter 39 was released on October 19, 2012. After another three-year hiatus, chapter 40 was released on February 20, 2015, chapter 41 was released April 7, 2015, and chapter 42 was released September 8, 2015. The most recent update was that he fell into nearly fatal health problems, but is now recovering; he publicized the beta version of chapter 43 on March 22, 2019 and posted the final version on April 2, 2019.

On May 13, 2019 the story disappeared from FanFiction.net, with the author clarifying on his website that this was due to an accusation of copyright infringement involving song lyrics (namely, "Weasley is our King", which Harry sings in Chapter 28), though it is still available at other locations and he is appealing to the site directors to undo their decision. The fic has since been made available on various other sites, including:

• Sink Into Your Eyes, up to chapter 40
• FanficAuthors.net, up to chapter 42
• Phoenix Song, up to chapter 38
• More recently restarted on Royal Road (here), up to chapter 43.
• There is also a community-maintained eBook (and PDF) on GitHub.

Viridian maintains a blog and a forum where he posts occasional word count updates. Viridian Dreams Quests are run out of his forum.

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This fanfiction series contains examples of:

A-C

• Abusive Parents: The Dursleys of course, but Vernon more so than usual thanks to the Butterfly of Doom, moving from verbal and emotional abuse to physical.
• Academy of Evil: While Durmstrang had a reputation for this in canon, it became this outright in the Bad Future; after Voldemort razed Hogwarts many of Voldemort's supporters sent their children to Durmstrang, with Dolohov as headmaster. At the end of second year in the new timeline, Draco and Professor Snape both transfer there.
  Harry: They teach Defence against the Dark Arts at Durmstrang, only they don't worry about the defence part. They call it 'a progressive approach to non-traditional magic'. I call it Death Eater boot camp.
• Actually Pretty Funny: Professor McGonagall sounds slightly amused at Harry's imitation of her when he apologizes.
  There was no doubt. She was actually smiling a little. Finally she spoke. "I never said that I considered your words insulting, Mister Potter. Only that you had a fine grasp of the obvious."
• Adaptational Early Appearance:
  • Since Harry retains his knowledge of how to use the Knight Bus from the books and the Bad Future, Stan Shunpike shows up in Year 1 when Harry uses the Knight Bus to travel from London to Surrey and back.
  • Kingsley Shacklebolt first appears in Year 2 to help catch Peter Pettigrew, three years before his first appearance in canon.
  • Slughorn is invited back to teach potions after Snape transfers to Durmstrang between Years 2 and 3, again years before Slughorn was introduced in the sixth book.
  • Harry pays a visit to Azkaban to meet Sirius shortly before Year 2, a whole year before Sirius' canon escape. Justified by the fact that Harry was intentionally aiming to get Sirius out as soon as possible.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Unlike the canon Voldemort who had no means of knowing if his horcruxes were found or destroyed, Voldemort in the Bad Future was careful enough to put silent alarm charms on the places where his horcruxes were hidden. So when Harry, Ron, and Hermione found Hufflepuff's cup, they triggered a silent alarm, Voldemort quickly checked on the rest, then sacked Hogwarts without them noticing until it was far too late.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Harry is definitely on different footing with several of the adults from his previous life.
  • Professor McGonagall is concerned about how outspoken he is and whether he's thinking his actions through, but overall their relationship is closer and more equal than before.
  • Professor Dumbledore is worried about Harry becoming a second Voldemort, and seems unsure of whether he needs to be stricter or kinder to prevent it. For his part, Harry is confident that Dumbledore will try to do the right thing, but not so sure that he'll consider other opinions on what the right thing is. As a result, they're more or less on the same side, but more distant than canon.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Snape, for a start. Since Deathly Hallows hadn't been released when the fic started, the author obviously had to go their own way in regards to the greasy git. Not to mention Harry's behaviour in the new timeline rubs Snape entirely the wrong way, making him much, much worse than he was before.
  • Vernon. While the original version was undeniably a Jerkass of the highest order, here he winds up beating Harry half to death, then locking him in his room to die. Some of this is implied to be the result of mind-charms, but still…
  • Marcus Flint, of the Slytherin Quidditch team. While in canon he was, like all Slytherins, a jerkass, here he's a willing murderer and attempted murderer, who fantasizes about painfully killing Harry and Ginny by Year 2.
  • Draco Malfoy. He was a first-degree Jerkass in the books, but little more than a nuisance. Here, he nearly kills Harry during Year 2 and conspires to get Ginny killed via Tom Riddle's diary. His stay in Durmstrang has only made him worse — such as brutally killing a nesting mother dragon using a flask of very corrosive acid, destroying all of its eggs, and grinning about it afterwards. However, there are some indications that he is being manipulated with personality-altering potions and perhaps other methods.
• Adults Are Useless: Harry seems to have this opinion firmly in mind given what he saw unfolding in his future. However even when an adult figure does do something right, Harry is still prone to reluctantly awarding them a point in his mind and bitterly remarking to himself what a wonder it was.
• Age-Down Romance: Played with. Harry is strongly tempted, but also considers it very unethical, and worries that with all his efforts to build Ginny up, he's engaged in Wife Husbandry. Ginny is not impressed by his concerns, especially when Charlie weighs in; she's just fine with how her crush has behaved, and wants Harry to have more faith in himself and her. As of chapter 43, they're not actually dating, but it's pretty clear that they're an unofficial item.
• Ambiguous Syntax: When Draco Malfoy finds out about Harry Potter and the Gryffindor Quidditch team doing a photo op with the broom manufacturers sponsoring them, he comes stomping over demanding, "Who the hell do you think you are, Potter?" Harry takes advantage of the phrasing to do some Literalist Snarking, "I think you just answered your own question, Malfoy."
• America Saves the Day: Downplayed in the Bad Future. When the US military steps in they're able to put Voldemort at a standstill and contain him east of the Atlantic Ocean, but by then most of Europe has been devastated and of course everyone that Harry knows and loves is dead. They're also unable to put an end to Voldemort himself; Harry has to finish him in person.
• Amoral Attorney: Mr. Bendricks, the advocate Mr. Weasley hired for Harry's custody hearing, turns out to have been bribed by Lucius Malfoy to sway things in his favor.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Ginny threatens Colin Creevey's little brother after Colin enters Harry in the Triwizard Tournament. Harry is taken aback by her venom, but she was mostly bluffing.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Harry uses his inheritance to buy shares in his uncle's company in case he needs leverage at some point. It becomes moot when his uncle beats him within an inch of his life, and the Weasleys become Harry's guardians — so instead, once out of hospital, Harry uses his shares to have Vernon fired, prosecuted, and turned out of his home.
• Anti-Villain: Dumbledore. In a refreshing twist, the Big D isn't portrayed as a Machiavellian Chessmaster or a cacklingly evil Magnificent Bastard, but as a fundamentally good person with the unfortunate flaw of thinking he knows what's best for people. He's not even a villain, really, more like a hero who could really mess things up if he tries to do what he believes is the right thing. Now Snape, on the other hand…
• Apologetic Attacker: In the prologue, Harry apologizes to the Sorting Hat before killing it.
  Harry: I'm sorry.
  Sorting Hat: Don't be, that was really a clever plan. I still say you would have done well in Slytherin.
  Harry: Maybe so. Thank you. [blasts the Hat]
• Arc Words: "Broken and battered body" comes up a lot whenever Harry thinks of the future.
• Armor-Piercing Question: As Gryffindor Tower begins to celebrate their new Triwizard Champion, Hermione points out that, despite the talk of 'eternal glory' for winning the tournament, nobody there can name a past champion without looking the names up in a book.
• Badass Bureaucrat: Percy Weasley, who, after being fired from his position at the Department of International Magical Cooperation for stunning Barty Crouch Sr. after the Quidditch World Cup Final, is hired by Madam Bones to become her assistant because of his ability to document anything and his intricate knowledge of the Ministry bureaucracy.
• Bad Future: When the story begins, Harry has at last defeated Voldemort for good, and the rest of the Death Eaters died with him... but Hogwarts has been leveled, all his friends and family are dead, Diagon Alley is gone, and the Death Eaters had been committing purges of the British Isles and devastating continental Europe at such a scale that the US military stepped in to contain Voldemort to the east side of the Atlantic Ocean.
• Batman Gambit: The Gryffindor Six run one to capture Barty Crouch Jr, and it works, masterfully, when he snatches up the bait and very publicly reveals himself.
  Harry barely had time to register the incantation before it was all over.
  He only had one regret.
  Harry didn't think Barty Crouch, Junior, realized he was pointing a bouquet of flowers with lethal intent before he was hit by a stunning spell.
• Battle Trophy: The Voldemort from the Bad Future kept the Sword of Gryffindor as a souvenir after he sacked Hogwarts.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Downplayed with Ron. When he was younger, he might have wanted to surpass his brothers in something good, but time spent with Harry slowly eroded that. He realizes it's all not all it's cracked up to be when he becomes besieged by others following his killing of a Dementor with the Sword of Gryffindor.
• Berserk Button:
  • When a Boggart transforms into a succession of his friends' dead bodies, exactly as he saw them in the future, followed by a representation of Voldemort, Harry freaks out and reacts as if it was real. Which, in this case, means annihilating it with a spell that reduces half the classroom to kindling — and that was the half that was behind him. Everything it actually hit is just gone without a trace.
  • Professor Lupin asks Dobby if he knows where the stack of essays from his desk went. Dobby immediately starts berating himself and beating his head against the desk hard enough to risk actual injury, just because he wasn't able to restore them after Harry completely disintegrated them.
  • In the Bad Future, Alastor Moody rallied the Aurors posted at Azkaban, and held off a siege by Voldemort's forces for several days, destroying everything Voldemort wanted on the island and ultimately giving him a Pyrrhic Victory. The battle apparently traumatised the Death Eaters to the point where from that point onward, any prisoners they took could shout out Moody's catchphrase, "Constant vigilance!" to get instantly executed and avoid torture.
• Best Served Cold:
  • Invoked by Harry when Neville gets upset and wants to immediately pummel the boy who told Neville's grandmother that he's still spending time with Luna. Together they plan a more subtle and sophisticated revenge.
  • Goldfarb the goblin is impressed by Harry's plans for subtle yet effective revenge on the Dursleys, since his people consider it to be an art form, and participates in setting up a Humiliation Conga. The chapter 14 title specifically references this trope.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Neville is generally a quiet, polite, private person, very affected by the fate of his parents, who were tortured until their minds broke and they were reduced to Empty Shells. And then Draco, the nephew of the psychopath responsible, taunts Luna Lovegood, in front of Neville, by suggesting that she's not talking because she's lost her mind. Neville proceeds to leap over the table and pound Draco's face in.
  • In the Bad Future, captives of the Death Eaters could shout CONSTANT VIGILANCE! for an instant kill thanks to Moody's Dying Moment of Awesome.
• Black Cloak: Aside from the regular black cloaks used by Hogwarts students and Death Eaters alike, Harry buys another one to disguise himself while moving around Diagon Alley in Chapter 2. He figures his short eleven-year-old height will work in his favour, because it could be a goblin under the cloak, and no one wants to accost a goblin in the street at night.
• Blood Knight: Voldemort in the Bad Future. When Harry starts off their duel by attempting to blast him with Reducto, Voldemort is impressed.
  Voldemort: You aren't as enfeebled as I thought. Good. I was hoping this wouldn't be boring.
• Briar Patching: Harry repeatedly denigrates the sweets he bought from the trolley witch on the Hogwarts Express, and acts as if Ron would be doing him a big favour by trading a corned beef sandwich for some of them — knowing that Ron's pride means he will be much more likely to accept the trade that way than if he suspected Harry was being generous. (Harry also genuinely likes Mrs. Weasley's cooking, and has reason to appreciate it more than Ron does.)
  Harry:“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to take some of this junk for one your sandwiches, would you?
• Bring It: After he kills one Dementor with the Sword of Gryffindor, Ron taunts all the others, who decide to book it as fast as they can.
  Ron: Come and have a go, if you think you're hard enough!
• Burn the Orphanage: One of Harry's memories from the Bad Future involved coming upon an orphanage in Manchester that was massacred by the Death Eaters. To hammer home the cruelty of it, any children who tried to leap from the burning building or use the emergency exits were all cut down by curses; Harry remembers that some of them appeared to be as young as four or five. It's the first nightmare he has at Hogwarts, waking all his roommates with his screaming.
• Butterfly of Doom: Harry's efforts to rewrite history frequently have totally unintended consequences, both good and bad. He starts seeing the effects almost from day one, such as his conversation with Ginny causing Ron to approach him differently on the train.
• Call-Back: Ron's death in the Bad Future is similar to Dumbledore's at the end of the sixth book; he and Harry were Lured into a Trap, Ron placed the Full Body-bind curse on a concealed Harry, and he distracted the Death Eaters for as long as he could, with the lifting of the curse marking his death.
• Calling the Old Man Out:
  • Arthur Weasley does this to Dumbledore after the Dursleys' abuse of Harry is discovered.
  • Neville calls out his grandmother for interfering in his developing relationship with Luna.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Harry doesn't want to risk the consequences of killing Wormtail on sight, but he certainly intends for the rat to face a reckoning eventually.
• Care-Bear Stare: Harry uses this on Voldemort in the very first chapter, assaulting Voldemort's mind by letting him feel Harry's pain — which Voldemort is unprepared for. It even includes the associated light show.
• Cargo Envy: Harry sees Ginny stroking Crookshanks on her lap and feels a momentary stab of jealousy toward the cat.
• Catapult Nightmare: Several of the eponymous nightmares have Harry awakening violently, often throwing himself into action. After a particularly harrowing occasion when his mind replays the deaths of each of his friends, one by one, he not only wakes up in mid-air, he's also set the blanket on fire.
• The Cavalry: In Chapter 39, Dumbledore's Patronus and Fawkes, which are Just in Time to prevent a Dementor from sucking out Ron's soul and probably Hermione's.
• Chekhov's Gun / Dreaming of Things to Come:
  • Chapter 29's reference to a magical core exploding in nightmare form is ominous in the extreme. The accuracy of Harry's previous nightmares doesn't help, nor does the fact that the author pretty much states that it's foreshadowing.
  • Almost certainly a literal example in the enchanted Glock that Harry picks up fairly early in the story. It's referenced enough times that the only way it's not a Chekhov's Gun is if it's a Red Herring.
• Chess Master: Harry and Ron. Harry for the practical usage of the trope, and Ron for the literal usage; amusingly, Harry is rubbish at actual chess.
• Clarke's Third Law: Pettigrew banks on this to convince some Provisional IRA terrorists to attack Hogwarts, passing off the Imperius Curse and other spells as advanced technology being developed by the British government.
• Clock Roaches: The "agent-in-place", who is working behind the scenes to ensure that certain things happen as they did in the original timeline. It's unclear how much he knows, but he has been responsible for delivering the Diary to Ginny despite Harry's efforts, and endangering Harry's life in the first Triwizard task.
• Cluster F-Bomb: When Colin Creevey enchants a photo of Harry to make it talk, it pours out a stream of vulgar language.
• Common Law Marriage: Ron and Hermione did exchange vows in the future, but being on the run and with society collapsing, they didn't have a chance to be officially married. Harry specifically refers to Hermione being Ron's "common-law wife" in his own thoughts, when remembering how her death affected Ron.
• Contrived Clumsiness:
  • Harry pratfalls to break Ron and Neville's heirloom wands so he can get them replaced with ones that properly match them.
  • Harry pretends to have pulled a muscle in his shoulder as an excuse to let Ginny try out his top-level broom.
  • At Gilderoy Lockhart's book-signing, after Harry calls out Lockhart's predatory marketing practices, he's gently pushed on his way — so he deliberately trips and drops books everywhere to cause an embarrassing scene.
  • Ginny silences Fred's teasing during breakfast by "accidentally" spilling hot tea in his lap.
  • When Professor Snape blames Harry — without evidence — for Draco's brewing going wrong, and tells him that Draco will get the marks for Harry's potion, Harry "accidentally" knocks his own cauldron to the floor with his elbow in passing, spilling it all and leaving nothing to mark.
    Harry: As you wish, Professor. <Beat> Oops.
• Convicted by Public Opinion: Arguably happened to Sirius, since he was jailed, albeit by the police force, without actually being tried by a court. Harry aims to turn it around by working through the media and reversing public opinion in order to create pressure to free him. Results are mixed; the system doesn't respond, but many individuals, even among the Aurors, are convinced to doubt his guilt.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Parodied when Madam Pomfrey has Harry under her care for straining his throat, and does "something so ruthless, so diabolical, that he was still shocked."
  She'd put Ginny in charge of him. And given her his wand.
• The Corruptor: Lucius Malfoy tried to become this by attempting to sway things in his favor at Harry's custody hearing, even bribing Mr. Weasley's advocate.
• Crime of Self-Defense: Harry has to defend himself several times.
  • In his first year, Draco attempts to steal a letter Harry is about to post to Ginny. When that fails, Draco, Crabbe and Goyle all cast Stunners at Harry simultaneously, which he shields himself against. Professor Snape then turns up and announces that he'll have Harry expelled for dueling in the corridors.
  • This is how Harry breaks the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery between first and second year: Someone (implied to be the Malfoys) sends him a box of doxies which inevitably bite him and attack Hedwig, forcing him to use his wand to stop the doxy from tearing out her eyes. The resulting owl triggers Vernon Dursley into a rage.
  • Harry is later placed on probation and barred from playing Quidditch after he and his friends anticipate an ambush, turn the tables, and non-lethally disable their attackers. The fact that the attackers were using potentially lethal spells like cutting curses doesn't seem to make much of an impression on the headmaster, who is intent on giving them more chances to turn away from the dark path they're walking, and doesn't want to alienate them.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Discussed and defied; when Harry starts teaching his friends hand-to-hand combat, Hermione initially specializes in aikido, but after Ginny joins their lessons and manages to outmanoeuvre Hermione in their training fights, Harry encourages Hermione to branch out as her favoured combat strategy wouldn't work on Ginny.
  Hermione: But I'm good at this!
  Harry: You are. But different situations call for different tactics, right? Ginny's very fast, and I would never try to catch her like that. Unless she badly overextends herself she'd be almost impossible to hold on to. But you can attack her as well, and a few punches or kicks will keep her off balance and not let her set up like she has been.
• Crowd Surfing: Harry gets this from the Quidditch crowd after winning the Cup by leaping off his broom to catch the Snitch.
• Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon:
  • It's not clear exactly what Professor Sprout intends to do if she catches the culprit behind the attack on Cho Chang, but it's got Neville spooked and he's not even responsible.
    Neville: I never even thought of using a trowel like that before.
  • Harry warns Sirius that if he gets himself killed again collecting the Horcruxes, Harry will bury him in a dress.
    Harry: I'm sure Mrs Weasley has a nice frock I can borrow. Pink sound good?
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Basically applies to Rita Skeeter, as Harry deals with the potential threat she poses by basically blackmailing her with his knowledge of her Animagus status and an offer to make her his exclusive journalist. So long as Rita doesn't write anything scathingly against him or his friends, Harry will provide her with at least one interview a year, while also ensuring that she gets first shot if any stories come up involving him; Harry even recognises that it's a good deal for Rita as she gets exclusive insight into one of the most famous figures in the wizarding world.

D-G

• Dad the Veteran: Hermione's father is a former Royal Marine.
• A Day in the Limelight: A lot of side characters from the original series get more attention, some even get half a chapter told from their perspective (Molly Weasley in chapter 9, Ginny in chapter 17).
• Dead Fic: Not updated properly since 2019, and no author activity since 2022.
• Deadly Euphemism: In anticipation of Harry's visit after being beaten nearly to death by Vernon Dursley, Goldfarb the goblin prepares a list of "discreet removal specialists". He's surprised by Harry's decision not to make use of them, until Harry simply explains that he would prefer a more drawn-out and aboveboard vengeance, at which point Goldfarb is impressed by the artistry.
• Deadpan Snarker: Harry, even more so than in canon.
• Deconstruction Fic: Of the Peggy Sue genre. While Harry manages to use his future knowledge to make things better, his actions end up causing unintended changes, both for good and bad.
• Defeating the Undefeatable:
  • Harry uses the improved wards at the Burrow to destroy a bunch of Dementors.
  • Ron kills a Dementor in a mano-a-mano combat, using the Sword of Gryffindor.
• Delaying Action: For all their training, the Gryffindor Six can't actually defeat an immense horde of Dementors, but they can buy time for other students to get away and for the teachers to get involved.
• Determinator: Harry's dogged determination to see the war through was what kept him going when everyone else had died and he was suffering from depression; he just couldn't quit until Voldemort was properly dead. Once that was done, he started to slip into darker thoughts — until he found a new purpose, the hope of going back and saving his friends, at which point he was willing to brush aside the concerns of Professor Dumbledore's portrait and sacrifice his own life just for step one.
  Harry didn't blame her, as he knew that Lucius was deliberately targeting his enemy's family with the Diary. It was just too bad Malfoy's plans would run afoul of an enraged wizard willing to kill himself to travel back in time to stop him.
• Didn't See That Coming: Harry's vision of his older self in Chapter 2 says he should have expected that merging their souls would be very difficult given Harry's own ability to resist the Imperius Curse.
• Dirty Coward: Draco Malfoy, as Harry points out after Draco stuns him In the Back, "as he's too cowardly to try it from the front."
• Disabled in the Adaptation: In this work, Luna is revealed to be nearsighted and starts to wear glasses. In canon there are no mentions of her having any such issues.
• Disposing of a Body:
  • Harry promises Millicent Bulstrode that if she can get proof of who killed her sister, the Aurors will never find the body. She doesn't think he's serious, but after the war he's fought, chances are that he is.
  • Charlie makes it clear to Harry that if he hurts Ginny, "I can hold a human-to-beef transfiguration long enough for a Horntail to digest the evidence."
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Harry's confession in the Chamber of Secrets might seem similar to someone coming out to their family, with the fear and very real possibility of being rejected once the truth is out. Harry's resignation that his friends would automatically hate him right afterward would also hit close to home. The fact that his fears are proven wrong also may be similar to being accepted rather than rejected like one would fear.
• Dope Slap: When Harry starts blaming himself for the changes to the timeline he made resulting in Melissa Bulstrode's untimely death, Sirius starts his lecture on how Harry is not responsible for the Butterfly of Doom by rapping his knuckles on Harry's head.
• Dramatic Irony: Mrs Weasley, accustomed to tight finances, is uncomfortable with letting Harry help pay for groceries, and tells him that he needs to think about his future.
• Dramatic Unmask: Of a sort. In Chapter 2, Harry has a dream of his future self, but doesn't know that it's him until the future Harry pulls back his bangs to reveal his lightning-shaped scar.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • After killing Voldemort, future!Harry started to feel the slip towards full depression and potential suicide. Only the possibility of going back in time and fixing things prevented it — and, in the end, he did kill himself to send his soul back to his 11-year-old self.
    Harry: I might as well make it possibly count for something.
  • Harry came close to this 13 years earlier, when Ginny died, but he threw himself into the war effort to stay focused.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Harry and Ron both went through some of this in the future.
• Drunken Boxing: Luna picks this up from watching television at a friend's house once. One of the many reasons she's awesome.
• Due to the Dead: After the Battle of Hogwarts in the Bad Future, Harry visited the ruins every anniversary of it. It was during one of these visits when Harry was ambushed by Death Eaters and entered into a Teleport Spam battle throughout the ruins and Hogsmeade.
• Empathic Environment: The enchanted ceiling at Hogwarts in the Bad Future is always raining inside after the sack, as if the castle is mourning those who perished defending it.
• Enlightened Self-Interest: Horace Slughorn's modus operandi. He's genuinely helpful and friendly to anyone whose company can be profitable, which Harry decides is easier to deal with than outright villainy. During third year, he spearheads, supervises, and brokers the rendering down of the basilisk and the sale of its parts, yielding substantial rewards for each of the Gryffindor Six — and a tidy commission for himself.
• Eskimos Aren't Real: Ron pokes fun at Luna Lovegood for having an "imaginary creature" as her Patronus. Luna's Patronus was a duck-billed platypus. When Hermione tells Ron that the duck-billed platypus is a real animal, he flatly refuses to believe her.
• Evil Gloating: Voldemort left Dumbledore's portrait at Hogwarts undamaged just so he could gloat about turning the Sorting Hat into a horcrux.
• Expendable Alternate Universe: Invoked; Harry acknowledges that sending his memories back to his eleven-year-old self after he has defeated Voldemort will either create a new reality or destroy the one he exists in, but Harry is so broken after seeing virtually everyone else he ever knew die that he doesn't care and the only other person he can talk to (Dumbledore's portrait) accepts that he can either help Harry with this last plan that might save some people, or just wait until Harry becomes so depressed he kills himself.
• Eye Color Change: The older Harry in Chapter 2 has green eyes like his canon self, but duller and murkier, most likely because of the decade-plus long war he lived through.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Much like the Ministry of Magic in-canon, the Ministry is presented this way here as well. When Harry has Peter Pettigrew arrested by ministry officials, providing unavoidable proof of Sirius' innocence, they completely change guards and wardens at Azkaban and deny visitation rights to them, trying to starve Sirius to death in his cell and pretend nothing has changed rather than admit that the Ministry made a mistake. Harry later lampshades this corruption in his interview with Rita.
  Harry: Those forgiven Death Eaters were all from wealthy and influential families, or were closely allied with them. Money and/or favors had to change hands for that many people to drop the ball and let them go free. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Look at my godfather, and the Ministry's complete failure to give him a trial while he rotted in Azkaban – for a crime he never committed. Look at the goblins, treated as second-class citizens, despite the vital role they play in the Wizarding economy. Look at house-elves, who are treated even worse. Sometimes I wonder if the Statute of Secrecy isn't maintained more to prevent the Ministry from being scrutinized too closely by the Muggle governments. By Muggle standards, I'm afraid the Wizarding world would be considered hopelessly backward and barbaric.
• Feed the Mole: While Hermione isn't betraying Harry on purpose, Harry essentially does this by guiding her towards the necessary clues to realise that Snape is somehow reading their minds, thus ensuring that Snape will underestimate Harry from what he sees in Hermione's memories.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Fred and George do this constantly in the earlier chapters. It's hard to find a line that they don't split. Around year three, they turn to something more like collaborative interrupting, like the twins do in the books.
• Flashback: Harry gets these all the time. Frequently he will meet someone and involuntarily recall watching them die, or in some cases, how they killed someone else. His nightmares are almost all flashbacks to scenes from the war.
• For Want Of A Nail: After Deathly Hallows was released, the author noted that the point of divergence from canon should be considered the fact that Voldemort made the Sorting Hat a horcrux on top of his canon horcruxes; fracturing his soul that many times made his soul so unstable that he embarked on the more violent campaign depicted in Harry's thoughts on his original timeline, rather than the more patient, behind-the-scenes conquest he attempted in canon.
• From a Certain Point of View:
  • Harry's modus operandi. He did happen to overhear Draco boasting about a special room in his house full of illegal items, it just so happens that he did so in an alternate timeline.
  • The Sorting Hat learns of Harry's secret the moment it's placed on his head and decides to keep what it knows of Harry in confidence. When later asked if some "invading mental presences" were in Harry's mind, it coyly answers:
    Sorting Hat: Oh no, no invaders at all. Nothing between his ears but Harry James Potter.
  • When Harry's friends realise that Snape can read minds, Harry honestly tells them that something in his past prevents Snape reading his mind, allowing them to assume it's a side-effect of his scar rather than him having learnt Occlumency in the future.
• Future Badass: While Bill is good at his job, he's still relatively new to the role, so he is understandably shocked to learn that, in Harry's future, he died when he sacrificed himself to destroy the wards around Durmstrang in a single night.
• Game Within a Game: When the Weasleys are playing board games together, the Twins entertain themselves by finding various ways to cheat. Hermione then finds it more interesting to focus on catching them out than to keep rolling dice. And the whole thing is actually a ploy by the Twins to connect with her, so that in future they can involve her marvelous brain in their pranks.
  He had to suppress a chuckle as he recognized the game within the game within the game he was witnessing.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: The older Harry stopped wearing glasses because Hermione became annoyed with him losing his glasses at inopportune moments.
• Glass-Shattering Sound: Harry does a version of this when he uses magic to amplify his voice during Chapter 39. The windows facing him in Hogsmeade cracked. (And he ended up in the hospital wing with strained vocal cords.)
• The Glomp: Ginny glomps Harry in the Chamber of Secrets, followed by his other four friends, after he tells them about travelling back from the Bad Future.
• Godzilla Threshold:
  • When Ron, Fred, and George rescue Harry during Chapter 11, Ron is afraid to move Harry for fear of hurting him more. So he breaks the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery by using mobilicorpus so he can move Harry.
  • Also in the same situation, Mrs. Weasley doesn't like to apparate if she can help it, preferring to use the Floo Network. However, Harry is in a bad state, so she apparates with him to St. Mungo's.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Dumbledore has a moment of this; after Harry makes it clear to him how much he hates being at the Dursleys, he "takes measures to ensure Harry's safety" — apparently by erasing parts of the Dursleys' memory. However, it has the precise opposite effect, resulting in Vernon beating Harry almost to death and leaving him to die in his room.
• Good Cannot Comprehend Evil:
  • Even before she starts Hogwarts, Ginny realises that part of the reason her mother has trouble believing that the Dursleys are as bad to Harry as she and Ron claim is that Molly can't imagine having a child and not loving it.
  • During the Triwizard Tournament, when the Gryffindor Six realise that Snape 'stacked the deck' to ensure that Draco Malfoy would be the Durmstrang champion while providing him with various tricks to ensure Malfoy's victory, Ron expresses incredulity that someone could be so foul, but Harry assures him that the lack of understanding from Ron is just because he was raised by good parents and so finds it hard to think that way, whereas Harry saw worse examples of humanity while growing up even before the time-travel.
• Groin Attack:
  • Ginny gets Percy with a heat-activated Shrinking Solution in his underwear, causing him to run out of the room squeaking.
  • The first time Ron spars with Ginny, he starts with some patronising remarks, until she gets past his guard and punches him in the gut.
    It was surely an accident that her punch landed, well, lower than she probably intended.
• Grudging "Thank You": In Year 2, Snape gives Gryffindor 5 points due to Hermione's levitation charm saving a Slytherin from falling off of his broom at the Quidditch game.

H-M

• Happily Adopted: Harry is blindsided when the Weasleys suggest becoming his legal guardians. It's not quite an adoption, but for practical purposes it's similar.
  Somewhere inside of him was a thirty year old Harry thinking how much easier it would be to protect them at The Burrow, and how much studying he could get done over the summers if he didn’t have to hide his books. Somewhere inside of him was an eleven year old Harry who was amazed that someone actually wanted him. All of this was wrapped up inside a newly-twelve-year-old Harry who realized he’d never been this happy before. He opened his mouth and closed it and suddenly he was being hugged by Mrs. Weasley.
• Heroic Sacrifice: While it became a recurrent happening in the Bad future, mentions must go to:
  • Ron, who Polyjuiced himself as Harry during a trap and ended shredded/tortured;
  • Shacklebolt, facing Voldemort singlehandedly to gain time for the Order;
  • Bill bringing down Durmstrang's wards and being killed by the magical backlash;
  • Above all, Mad-Eye Moody, who executed all the Death Eaters in Azkaban and rallied the guards to a Last Stand against Voldemort's forces, to the point that his catchphrase is a Death Eater Berserk Button from then on.
• Hero Worship: Given Fred and George's use of the Marauder's Map, they're amazed to meet Padfoot and Moony in the flesh. Complete with groveling, in fact.
• History Repeats: All obvious jokes aside, from Dumbledore's P.O.V., this is happening with Harry. A young boy, with both parents dead from a young age and raised in a loveless household, showing tremendous aptitude and skill, with a clique of devoted young friends, most of whom seem to have little regard for the rules. Professor McGonagall calls him on this view, by pointing out that Harry and his friends are True Companions, something the Death Eaters most assuredly aren't.
• Humiliation Conga: After Vernon beats Harry to a pulp and leaves him locked in his room to die slowly, Harry makes arrangements to have him investigated and fired for financial discrepancies, his mortgage foreclosed, and his son's boarding school enrollment cancelled. Just before he appeals against his termination, the Twins slip him a Truth Serum, resulting in him not only losing the appeal, but being charged with contempt of court. His wife is later caught shoplifting groceries.
  Harry cracked a nasty grin and wondered if he was an awful person for taking such delight in their misery. He shrugged. With all he was doing to save people he'd likely never meet, he figured karma owed him a little petty behaviour.
• Hypocrite: Harry's friends call this out when Snape gives Draco full marks for the first task in the Triwizard Tournament, and then gives Harry an appallingly low score, even though they both damaged the dragon's eggs, Harry only breaking one egg (and even that was external sabotage), while Draco's actions damaged several as well as mortally wounding the dragon itself.
• I'd Tell You, but Then I'd Have to Kill You: Harry tells Seamus Finnegan this when not explaining why he and Neville have been out past curfew. Being wizard-raised, Seamus doesn't get the joke, but muggle-raised Dean Thomas explains it to him.
• If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her...:
  • Harry warns the Twins that their not-entirely-serious flirting with Hermione will probably end with Ron killing them both, "and if you do anything to hurt her, I'll help." George is merely amused, stating that winding Ron up is fun and that pushing Ron to admit his own feelings for Hermione would be a good thing.
  • Charlie Weasley confronts Harry about his friendship with Ginny.
    Charlie: Look — I'll say it just in case no one has spelled it out for you. You hurt her, I can hold a human-to-beef transfiguration long enough for a Horntail to digest the evidence.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Mr. Weasley proves the inefficiency of a magic gun to Harry... by putting the gun to his head and pulling the trigger. The worst part? It was loaded and the only reason it didn't fire is that Mr. Weasley wasn't pulling the trigger correctly. It takes Harry several minutes to stop shaking, and he confiscates the gun as soon as Mr. Weasley's back is turned.
• Implacable Man: Voldemort in the Bad Future. Until his horcruxes were destroyed, he regularly withstood curses that would reduce most people to charred meat, if they didn't miss.
• Innocent Innuendo: While talking about Ron's Wizard Chess match against Percy. As it's a tense situation, Harry has to restrain himself from pointing it out to anyone.
  Harry: You two must have been going at it at least forty minutes, right? That's the longest anyone in Gryffindor has lasted so far this year, isn't it?
  Ron: Hermione went thirty five minutes once, but she always took a while to make her moves.
• In Spite of a Nail: Harry notices how events have a tendency to turn out similarly, sometimes worse, when he tries to change them.
  • He tries to ensure that their first flying lesson doesn't end with Neville's wrist being broken, but Crabbe and Goyle ram into him and Neville, injuring Neville even worse — and then Draco steals the letter Harry received from Ginny and hasn't read yet, prompting a broomstick chase to get it back, which draws Professor McGonagall's attention...
  • Harry tries to be friendlier with Hermione early in first year, but a rude comment by another student still sends her crying into the bathroom the mountain troll enters on Halloween.
  • Despite Harry's very best efforts, Ginny is still nearly killed by the diary of Tom Riddle. Malfoy nearly killing him in a sneak attack, then breaking into his trunk to get the diary and Harry's cloak contributed, though.
  • Gilderoy Lockhart still loses his memory. Upon seeing it, Harry decides that "Fate can have him."
  • Hogwarts is still besieged by Dementors hunting Sirius Black in third year. They even attack a Quidditch match. And they come extremely close to devouring the souls of dozens of students, narrowly thwarted only by the DA training many students to cast the Patronus Charm, plus help from Fawkes and the Sorting Hat.
  • Harry is still entered into the Triwizard Tournament, even with Barty Crouch having been arrested and taken off the board; in this case Colin did it 'on Harry's behalf', wanting Hogwarts to win and not thinking about the danger or what Harry really wanted.
  • Enforced: There is a character known only as "the agent-in-place" and "one of the few minds worthy of being associated with his house" who is working behind the scenes to ensure that certain things happen as they did in the original timeline.
• In the Back:
  • It's not like Draco Malfoy was going to attack Harry from the front... Harry calls him out on it after he's recovered.
  • Someone stuns Cho Chang this way — while way up in the air, resulting in serious injuries. When suspicion falls on Hufflepuff House, Professor Sprout is most displeased.
    Neville: If it was someone from her house, they better hope an Auror arrests them before she gets her hands on them. <shudders> I never even thought of using a trowel like that before.
• Instantly Proven Wrong: Ginny is incensed when she overhears Ron talking with Harry, then proceeds to undermine her own point.
  Ginny: What's not hard?
  Ron: Talking to you when you're mad about something, without getting hexed.
  Ginny: Ron, I do not go around — how could you say such a thing? <while reaching for her wand>
• Irony:
  • Ron ends up becoming Crookshanks' owner after Pettigrew is revealed.
    Ron: Well, I'm not going to be a rat person after what happened, am I now?
  • When Harry leaves the future, Number Four looks exactly the same as the houses either side, which is something the Dursleys were always proud of. Except in this case, all the houses are ashes.
• It's All My Fault: Harry starts blaming himself for the changes to the timeline he made resulting in Melissa Bulstrode's untimely death. Sirius talks him out of it, starting with a Dope Slap.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: With his friends ignorant of his future past, Harry is painfully aware that his manipulation of them for the greater good makes him no better than Dumbledore, but he's prepared to accept their hatred if it means they'll survive the coming war. When he finally tells them, he finds out he shouldn't have worried.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Harry's opinion on the Ministry of Magic's restrictions on underage apparition. The Ministry maintains that underage wizards and witches can't apparate safely and Harry is forced to concede that even with adult wizards, prolonged apparation within a short period of time is a very risky venture.
• Jerkass Realization: Harry has a minor one when he looks back on his interactions with Hagrid in the 'original' timeline and realises how often he, Ron and Hermione visited Hagrid just to interrogate him about the latest crisis rather than just dropping in to spend time with Hagrid as a friend.
• Keystone Army: In the old timeline, Hermione discovered that the Dark Mark was a corrupted form of the Protean charm. When Voldemort, who had the Master Mark, was killed, whoever bore the Mark would die.
• Kick the Dog: Bullying Luna Lovegood is a nasty, nasty, thing to do. It doesn't end well for Draco.
• Killed Off for Real: Melissa Bulstrode. Harry takes it pretty hard; since it didn't happen the first time, he figures it must be somehow a result of his actions and therefore ultimately his fault.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: Harry was trained this way in the future, and passes it on to his friends. Justified, because children won't have the magical power to shield themselves from adults, and the Killing Curse can't be blocked at all, so dodging is often the best strategy.
• Last of His Kind: Harry in the Bad Future is introduced as the last surviving member of the Order of the Phoenix.
• Late to the Tragedy: In the old timeline, there are multiple flashbacks of Harry, Ron, and Hermione coming upon the aftermath of a massacre, too late to do anything.
• Laugh Themselves Sick: When it turns out that Luna's Patronus is a duck-billed platypus, Ron believes Hermione is having him on when she says it actually exists. Harry breaks down laughing and does not stop until he sees black spots.
• Lawful Stupid: Percy Weasley starts this way, as in canon, although he does begin to thaw after learning just how seriously Draco provoked Neville.
• Literalist Snarking: When Draco Malfoy finds out about Harry and the Gryffindor Quidditch team doing a photo op with the broom manufacturers sponsoring them, he comes stomping over demanding, "Who the hell do you think you are, Potter?" Harry takes advantage of the Ambiguous Syntax to snark, "I think you just answered your own question, Malfoy."
• The Lost Lenore:
  • Ginny became this to Harry in the original timeline. The older Ginny slowly starts to slip from his mind in favor of her current self, but occasionally it still hits him (like when a boggart becomes her corpse).

• Ludicrous Gibs: One of Harry's flashbacks in Chapter 14 has him casting a Reducto that splatters a Death Eater against the hedgerow behind him.
• Luminescent Blush: Pretty much all of the Gryffindor Six pass this at one point or another as they start 'pairing off''.
• Lured into a Trap: How Ron was killed in the Bad Future. The Americans had captured a Death Eater and had supposedly gotten the location of the last remaining Horcrux out of him. Harry and Ron went to investigate, but the location turned out to be a hoax. In the end, Ron body-bound a wounded Harry and hid him before leading the remaining Death Eaters away.
• Magi Babble: Bill and Hermione discuss a magical survey of The Burrow. Harry understands about one word in three.
• Manipulative Bastard: Harry again, though without the bastard part (although Harry does wonder sometimes). He uses what he knows about his friends to smooth the way for Ron and Hermione to realise they like each other, boost Neville's confidence earlier, protect Ginny from isolation in her first year, stop people from bullying Luna, and even nudge the Weasleys into allowing him to spend money on upgrading the protections around their home. He frequently knows what levers he can pull to make people listen to him, and does it fairly ruthlessly when needed, if he feels like it could affect their safety in the looming war.
• Martyr Without a Cause: After everything Harry went through in the future, all the people who gave their lives to give him a chance, it's understandable that he now feels the need to protect them regardless of the cost to himself. Ginny still kicks him in the shin for trying to leave The Burrow after revealing his future past, assuming that they would no longer want him.
• Mental Time Travel: The time travel spell can't transmit other spells nor anything with mass, so all Harry manages to send back is his soul. That gives his younger self his memories, and extra magical strength as a bonus. Chapter 1 specifically mentions that his body falls down dead in the original timeline.
• Merger of Souls: The basis of Harry's time travel; his soul goes back 19 years and fuses with his eleven-year-old self. He eventually gets a medical scan that shows the two attached souls, although the doctor assumes it's related to his scar.
• Mind Rape:
  • Both played straight and defied. Both Snape and Dumbledore use Legilimency to read students' minds, although Dumbledore is much more reserved about it than Snape. Once Harry catches on to this, he begins training the Weasleys, Hermione, Neville, and Luna in Occlumency, eventually getting everyone good enough that they can't be read, which drives Snape berserk.
  • Voldemort would do this to Harry every so often throughout the war in the Bad Future. Whenever his Death Eaters attacked, Voldemort would lower his Occlumency shielding to express his joy once the violence was complete, leaving Harry collapsing in pain and unable to do anything before the massacre.
• Mobile Menace: Voldemort in the Bad Future was constantly on the move, with Harry often attempting to use Legilimency to find him.
• Mutual Kill: Harry recalls finding that Neville and Bellatrix killed each other in the Bad Future.

N-R

• Noble Bigot: Neville's grandmother definitely has shades of this, as, other than finding Luna's behaviour questionable, it's implied that she disapproves of her because 'her blood is not pure enough'. After Neville calls her out on this, she gets better.
• No-Sell: Barty Crouch Jr. tries to use the Killing Curse on Harry when the latter discovers him... but since he turns out to be holding one of the Twins' joke wands, it is a total failure.
• Not So Similar: Dumbledore expresses concern that Harry is very like Tom Riddle, considering that both of them were unusually talented muggle-raised students who quickly formed a 'gang' of loyal followers and are skilled at defending themselves, but McGonagall counters that Harry never attacks first, and where Voldemort never shows any concern for the Death Eaters Harry makes it clear more than once that he is as loyal to his friends as they are to him.
• Off with His Head!: In the Bad Future, Ron killed Lucius Malfoy by decapitating him, taking revenge on him for his father's murder.
• Oh, Crap!: Harry awakens from his coma in Book 2 when he hears that Ginny has been writing in a diary and is now missing.
• One-Man Army: During Chapter 23, Harry recalls a time in the Bad Future, about six months before he finally defeated Voldemort, where he was attacked by 30 Death Eaters in the ruins of Hogwarts and Hogsmeade and killed them all in a two-hour running shootout.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Molly Weasley realises that the situation is serious when Ron interrupts her yelling at him and the twins after they rescue Harry from Privet Drive to get her to take a look at Harry first, as Harry needs urgent medical attention.
  • Luna isn't herself after Neville's grandmother keeps him from visiting in an attempt to break up their friendship.
    Ginny: Harry, she didn't mention a single imaginary creature today. She's really depressed.
  • Harry becomes worried when Ron refuses to leave the dormitory in the aftermath of his getting the Sword of Gryffindor and killing a Dementor, since Ron would require a "life-threatening illness" to be put off from eating.
  • After the first task of the Triwizard Tournament, Hagrid is notably more sullen and depressed than usual after witnessing the death of the Chinese Fireball due to Malfoy hitting it with a dangerous acid.
• Open Secret: By second year, Harry's friends are all aware that there are some things he isn't telling them, but he's told them enough to realise that he only isn't sharing his secrets with them because Snape would learn about it when he reads their minds, giving them extra incentive to learn Occlumency to keep Snape out.
• Operation: Jealousy: The Twins pull this by flirting with Hermione to light a fire under Ron. The fact that they want to build a good relationship with her anyway, because she's brilliant with transfiguration and that's one of their skill gaps, doesn't hurt either. Oh, and the way it irritates Ron amuses them, too. Harry, however, warns them that If You Ever Do Anything to Hurt Her... he'll help Ron to thrash them.
• Original Character: Goldfarb, a goblin who becomes Harry's Guardian of his Vaults and assists Harry with financial matters. And a few security matters, such as revenge on the Dursleys for their abuse.
• Outside-Context Problem: The IRA is able to damage the Hogwarts wards with a bomb, because the school's defences against non-magical assault haven't been updated since the castle was built; Flitwick makes it clear that he will remedy that while repairing the wards.
• Outliving One's Offspring: It's mentioned in Harry's flashback to the burning of The Burrow that Mrs. Weasley, who is killed there, outlived most of her children, most notably Ginny and Charlie (who went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge after Ginny's death).
• Person as Verb: Ron makes fun of how poorly knitted Ginny's Christmas gift to Harry is, then apologizes for putting a damper on Harry's Christmas.
  Harry: Ron, remember when you asked me why I got so angry when Malfoy nicked my letter?^note Malfoy was taking away one of Harry's rare (and thus treasured) experiences of friendship.
  (Ron nods)
  Harry: Remember when I told you how many Christmases I've celebrated before this one?^note The simplified answer is zero.
  Ron: Same thing, yeah?
  Harry: Spot on, mate.
  Ron: I wasn't trying to Malfoy your Christmas, Harry.
• Phrase Catcher: People have a tendency to refer to Snape as "that greasy git".
• The Power of Friendship: Harry and his friends are a closer-knit group than canon; he puts a lot of effort into ensuring that. It proves quite valuable when, for example, he's facing the basilisk, without Fawkes or the Sorting Hat — but he has four other people with him, and their massed fire takes it down before it can hurt anyone. Or just when quietly working to set up Ron and Hermione.
  Hermione: I'm sorry. You must think I'm mental.
  Luna: No. You've just never had friends before, have you?
• Pre Ass Kicking One Liner: Right before seizing the possessed Professor Quirrell in both hands.
  Harry: Let's test out mum's handiwork, shall we?
• Predecessor Villain: Lord Voldemort in the Bad Future; his brutal and devastating campaign is the reason why Harry sends his soul back in time to do things right.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality:
  • Harry is very adamant about certain people being bad and/or wrong, and is quickly able to sway people into thinking along the same lines as himself. Understandable when it comes to someone like Professor Snape, since he's both a suspicious and deeply unlikable man, but not so much when it comes to Professor Dumbledore. Harry only has to throw out a few snotty rants and adults who have known him for all of a couple of years are suddenly ready to take his side over Dumbledore's, who they've known and fought alongside for decades.
  • To be fair, though, it was only after learning of the Dursleys' abuse to him, that Dumbledore had allowed that, and that the Dursleys almost killed Harry and Dumbledore still wanted to send him back there after he recovered that people began to question his judgement. Going along with that would just be blindly trusting someone, and as venerated as Dumbledore is, even those closest to him have limits, as seen with McGonagall. Finding out that Harry was right about Sirius Black's innocence also gives his opinions more weight with Mr Weasley.
• Psychic Static: Luna's mind is a natural case of this. Everyone who tries to read it is left with an impression of the taste of purple and a headache.
• Psychoactive Powers: Harry's Merger of Souls has overcharged his magic, leaving it less stable than normal. This is of course potentially useful for fighting Voldemort, but for a war veteran with PTSD, it means that he may wake from one of his frequent nightmares of the previous future to find his bed on fire, or the whole house shaking, for example. Professor Lupin briefly encourages him to explore just how far he can push it; focusing on anger resulted in channelling so much magic that he nearly set fire to his wand.
• Pummeling the Corpse: What Ron was hit with in the Bad Future, his body was only identifiable by his hair. Harry hoped most of the damage was posthumous and that the Death Eaters were taking it out on his corpse.
• The Purge: In the bad future, the Death Eaters inflicted these on the Muggles, apparently just because they could. The Dursleys, along with the whole of Privet Drive, were among the first victims.
• Pyrrhic Victory:
  • The premise that pushes Harry to go back in time. He defeated Voldemort, but not before Voldemort killed everyone Harry knows and loves.
  • Alastor Moody inflicted one on Voldemort when he rallied the Aurors to defend Azkaban, killed all the prisoners Voldemort wanted to rescue, levelled every structure that Voldemort could have used, and presumably inflicted numerous casualties on the invading Death Eaters, before finally going down and leaving Voldemort to claim a barren rock.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Most of the time Harry has to subtly manipulate the authority figures in his life to try and make them do the right thing, such as making false claims about childhood memories to get Dumbledore to consider the possibility of Sirius's innocence. However, Kingsley Shacklebolt is swiftly established as one in his own right when he learns the circumstances of Harry's rescue from the Dursleys, ignoring the issue of the flying car and making it clear that he recognises that Ron's use of magic in the rescue was necessary to prevent further injury to Harry.
• Recursive Fanfiction: There are at least two brief spinoffs by other authors (and authorised by S'Tarkan), "G for Ginevra" and "A Night at the Burrow". Also, the premise of The Lone Traveler is stated by its author to be based on this story.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • Part of the reason Harry starts taking 'risks' by using some of his future knowledge, such as Sirius's innocence or Rita's Animagus status; for anything where he has to make his knowledge public, most of the time people are too concerned with trying to stop him going too far (by their standards) to question how he learned that information in the first place.
  • Hermione convinces Harry that this applies when he starts worrying about others learning about his status as a time-traveller, such as when his lesson with Lupin on boggarts starts with a boggart appearing to him as the older Ginny's corpse; Lupin is distracted and misses seeing the other future corpses the boggart turns into, only witnessing Harry be confronted by an image of Voldemort at full strength, with Hermione arguing that Lupin will make the more logical assumption that the first briefly-glimpsed corpse of a red-haired young woman was the corpse of Harry's mother rather than Ginny.
• Rescue Romance: Luna is very impressed when Neville beats Draco Malfoy to a pulp for the way he spoke to her. Harry later hears her musing to herself about how she wouldn't have to change her initials.
• Revealing Cover Up: Harry teaching his friends Occlumency is basically announcing that they've worked out that Snape is using Legilimency on them. However, while Snape is correct in deducing that they are learning Occlumency to keep something from him, he can't actually do anything to stop them learning it as that would be announcing that he and Dumbledore use Legilimency on the students in the first place, and Dumbledore is content that Harry and his friends wouldn’t do anything dangerous to other students. It does affect their training style, though; Harry doesn't bother trying to teach his friends any subtle Occlumency methods that can conceal thoughts without the attacker being aware, since Snape would read their minds before their training is complete and find out anyway.

• Right Behind Me:
  • In Chapter 25, Draco really should have known better than to call Professor McGonagall an "old hag" in the middle of a meeting of the club she sponsored. Though in fairness, he's implied to be affected by mind-altering potions.
  • Harry does an Affectionate Parody of Professor McGonagall as the Professor herself walks in to bring the Gryffindor Six to the Headmaster's office.
    Harry: She walked up right behind me as I said that, didn't she?
    McGonagall: Your grasp of the obvious is as keen as your gift for imitations, Mr. Potter.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In the Bad Future, Charlie Weasley went on one as a Dragon Rider atop Norbert after Ginny was killed, striking at multiple Death Eater holdings. It took Voldemort to kill them personally.

S-Z

• Senseless Sacrifice: Ron almost makes one to save Hermione from the Dementors in chapter 39, since, if he dies, there's nothing preventing the Dementors from kissing her, but Fawkes' timely appearance with the Sorting Hat and the Sword of Gryffindor allows Ron to kill the Dementor and scare the others away.
• Shipper on Deck: Harry has seen Ron and Hermione find happiness together after many years of conflict, and is keen to help smooth the way for them this time, right from their very first meeting.
  "She still seems kind of mental to me," he said stubbornly.
  "You mean when she was getting mad about George tricking you with that fake spell? Ron, she was getting mad on your behalf you know." Harry stopped and cracked an evil smirk. "Maybe she fancies you?"
• Shock and Awe: One of Harry's flashbacks (the one to finding the Manchester orphanage) involves him firing off a lightning bolt into the sky after finding the corpse of a red-haired girl. The bolt blew Harry off his feet and left his wand smoking.
• Shout-Out:
  • The title is a reference to the X-Men "Days of Future Past" plot, where someone is sent back in time to prevent a Bad Future.
  • A fairly subtle one to Gary Gygax in chapter 33.
  • To Spider-Man after Harry blows up not just a boggart but everything in the room along with it. Dumbledore cautions him that with great power comes great responsibility, and Harry tries to remember where he's heard that before.

• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Harry normally restrains himself, but he's been through enough war to have quite a vocabulary. After his abysmal first Potions lesson, he paces back and forth in the common room "cursing like a sailor under his breath."
• Sleep Cute: Everybody in the Gryffindor Six gets one, all at the same time, in Chapter 22. Due to the cold weather, they're even paired off, with Luna and Ginny sitting on Neville and Harry's laps respectively, Ron and Hermione leaning against each other. Several of them are quite startled when they wake and see the positions they're in, though.
• The Smart Guy: Harry presents the image of a bookworm to help explain any advanced skills he may let slip.
• Spanner in the Works: The reason why Pettigrew's plan to cause chaos at Hogwarts fails is because the Gryffindor Six and some other students know how to use the Patronus Charm.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • The Bad Future Voldemort is of the "died later than in the source material" type compared to his canon self. Instead, this Voldemort takes 13 years to track down before Harry can kill him.
  • In the Bad Future, Tonks died several years after her canon counterpart; she was killed in a raid on Malfoy Manor that left more than 12 Death Eaters dead, including Lucius Malfoy.
  • Similarly, Mad-Eye Moody was killed defending Azkaban from the Death Eaters after Harry had started searching for the Horcruxes, holding out for three weeks after the Sack of Hogwarts.
• Spit Take: Luna triggers several.
  • Such as a rather blunt and nonchalant declaration of how much she likes watching Neville.
    Harry dodged to the side as Neville sacrificed a mouthful of Pumpkin juice to the gods of the spit-take.
  • Or wondering aloud how long Professor McGonagall could remain a cat without getting hairballs.
    That little comment earned her a dirty look from Hermione after Ron choked on his pumpkin juice and sprayed a little across the table. Luna gave Hermione a bland smile and handed her a napkin.
• The Stations of the Canon: To Harry's periodic horror, certain specific events seem impossible to avert. Even when the only way a certain scene could happen is by a ludicrously specific chain of improbable events, those events will occur. Justified by the fact that there's a very smart and capable character working to ensure that those exact events happen, for Viridian alone knows what reason.
• Stunned Silence: Ron and the Twins are giving Percy a hard time, when Harry and Ginny step in, get their attention, and thoroughly distract them, allowing Percy to finish breakfast in peace. When Percy later asks what just happened, Harry simply tells him that ganging up on him wasn't fair, and walks away, leaving Percy to just stare after him.
• Sword Cane: Lucius Malfoy's cane contains a poisoned blade, which killed Mr. Weasley in the past future.
• Talking in Your Sleep: Harry dozes off in the Weasleys' car, and wakes with several of them staring at him. Luna later tells him that he was making death threats and using "some words I'm going to have to look up when we get to school."
• Taking You with Me: In the original timeline, when the Death Eaters attacked Diagon Alley with overwhelming force, the Weasley Twins planted explosives all over the Alley and blew the whole place to kingdom come, with themselves and many of the Death Eaters inside.
• Taught by Television: Leave it to Luna to learn the basics of Drunken Boxing from watching television.
• Technical Euphemism: After Healer Stanhope uses medical jargon to tell Harry about the details of cutting dead tissue out of his arm, Harry replies that he knows what all those words mean, which the Healer replies is a pity.
  Stanhope: I usually skate by using technical terms when people want to know what happened. Most of them don't really, not in any detail. They just feel like they should ask.
• Teleport Spam: Harry was forced to do this in a running shootout with Death Eaters in the Bad Future, apparating right after killing, then repeating the process. It took a week for him to move without feeling pain.
• Temporal Mutability: When Harry does some reading after travelling back, there isn't much to go on, but one author insists on Enforced Immutability, that as soon as a time traveller tries to change anything, s/he will be ejected from the time stream and stuck in limbo forever. Since Harry has already changed many things by that point and "didn't feel like he was currently doing the ethereal back stroke," he dismisses it, and suspects that Branching Timelines are more likely.
• Thanks for the Mammary: Ginny catches Harry when he stumbles out of the Floo, and one of his hands lands somewhere that he's glad Mrs Weasley didn't see. (Ginny isn't bothered.)
• There Are No Therapists: When Harry arrives at Hogwarts and the Sorting Hat sees his future memories, it really brings home to him how much he wishes he had someone to properly talk to. Writing to Ginny about the mundane events of his day does help, though, feeling like he's draining off the excess emotions from his horrific screaming nightmares.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: After making the calculations for his time jump, Harry burns all his papers, because long-distance time travel is too dangerous to spread.
• They Would Cut You Up: A major reason that Harry is not more proactive about gathering the Horcruxes is that he fears the Ministry's response if they learned about his time travel. Specifically, he expects that he would disappear into the Department of Mysteries, drinking Veritaserum endlessly until they had learned everything he could possibly tell them about the future.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Harry loses his muscle tone because of getting knocked unconscious for more than a month. When he's reminded of how much conditioning he's lost, Harry spares a moment to think ruefully of how much next morning's sparring session is going to suck.
• Token Good Teammate:
  • Melissa Bulstrode for... pretty much all of Slytherin. So naturally, she dies.
  • Then her little sister turns out to be not so bad. She's driven out of the school and transfers to Beauxbatons.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • The Gryffindor Six, due mostly to Harry starting up the D.A. a few years early in the guise of a dueling club.
  • Neville benefits greatly from a few words of encouragement in just the right place.
  • Neville and Ron both get their wands "accidentally" broken by Harry at the end of first year, and replaced with wands that actually work for them.
  • Percy, who does not hesitate to stun his boss (Barty Crouch Sr) when he realizes he is acting way too strangely, and ends up getting a better role in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as Amelia Bones' secretary.
• True Companions: "The Golden Trio" are now "The Gryffindor Six" thanks to the additions of Luna, Neville, and Ginny into the core group, all of whom are so devoted to Harry that they swiftly forgive him for his time-travelling-inspired 'manipulations' as they recognise his motives were good. As in, he literally died to come back and save them.
  Scrimgeour: You seem to be collecting followers of your own, Mr. Potter.
  Harry: Friends, sir. Friends don’t have to be branded like cattle, and they don’t hesitate to tell me where to get off.
  Ginny: No matter how often it needs to be done.
• Understatement: The author is fond of using this for humour.
  Harry's academic career had been marred by the appearance of some spectacularly bad Defence Against the Dark Arts professors, Remus Lupin being the sole exception. Technically, the Death Eater masquerading as Mad Eye Moody had done a decent job of preparing his students… but that whole resurrecting Voldemort and getting Cedric killed thing sort of ruined any chance of Harry giving Barty Crouch Jr. a good recommendation.
• Unishment: After Draco provokes Neville into attacking him, Professor Dumbledore questions them both, and finding that Draco isn't willing to admit his own part, transfers Neville's detention from Professor Snape to Professor Sprout. Since Neville loves Herbology, the prospect of garden work isn't especially daunting.
• Unwitting Pawn: Surprisingly, Snape becomes one for Draco (and, by proxy, Lucius) Malfoy. Snape unfairly punishes Harry so that Draco will be able to attack him from the back and sneak into Gryffindor Tower to steal Tom Riddle's Diary (which Malfoy sends to Ginny anonymously, saying Harry bought it for her) and Harry's Invisibility Cloak, which was the purported objective of the attack. When Snape learns about the events afterward, he's upset enough that he doesn't raise a word of objection towards Draco's expulsion.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Ginny punches the daylights out of Colin Creevey after he reveals he was the one that put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire, forcing him to participate in the Triwizard Tournament. (She's not officially Harry's girlfriend, but unofficially they both know they're an item; she knows they dated in the future and her reaction was, "Good.") Harry is taken aback at first by just how violent she was, but then realises that he would have responded similarly (or worse) if their positions were reversed.
• War Is Hell: The alternative future war ended with the virtual destruction of Magical Britain, the death of every single named character, a "helpful" invasion by the US Military, and the high probability of the loss of The Masquerade.
• Western Terrorists: Peter Pettigrew manipulates some Provisional IRA terrorists into blowing up the Hogwarts gates right when the students are lounging outside the castle, so that the Dementors outside can run wild on the kids.
• Where It All Began: Harry's final duel with Voldemort took place in Godric's Hollow, the place where Voldemort tried to kill Harry when he was an infant.
• Wish-Fulfillment:
  • One of the first things Harry does is to get leverage against the Dursleys, and then he goes on to avoid most of the uncomfortable things Snape originally did in the novels. This may end up being a subversion, as the much-increased defiance of Snape may turn out to have been a bad choice.
  • Everything about Snape starts in the first Potions class, where Harry attempts to show Snape he is good at Potions. Snape doesn't take it well, and despite Harry's efforts Snape ends up hating him even more than in canon.
• Would Hurt a Child: Harry has witnessed the Death Eaters massacring nonmagical children as young as four or five just for fun. It features in his first nightmare at Hogwarts.
• You Answered Your Own Question: When Draco Malfoy finds out about Harry Potter and the Gryffindor Quidditch team doing a photo op with the broom manufacturers sponsoring them, he comes stomping over demanding, "Who the hell do you think you are, Potter?" Harry takes advantage of the Ambiguous Syntax to do some Literalist Snarking, "I think you just answered your own question, Malfoy."
• You Can't Fight Fate:
  • One of Harry's most pressing concerns. Some events seem determined to happen despite Harry actively attempting to avert them, which keeps the plot from going completely off the rails but also has Harry sweating bullets about his seeming inability to change history.
  • In book two, it turned out that there was an "agent-in-place" who acted to ensure that the events happened no matter what. They may have also been responsible for cursing Harry's broom causing him to fall during the third book's first Quidditch game.
  • Harry is still entered in the Triwizard Tournament through an ill-informed attempt by Colin to 'help' him achieve fame and glory.
  • In Book Four, Harry is well prepared to subdue his dragon efficiently and safely, until the agent interferes and makes the First Task dangerous again.
• You Can Turn Back: Harry warns his friends that the Chamber of Secrets will be very dangerous, and assures them that he won't think less of them if they don't come. None of them agree, of course, but he does remind them as they proceed.
  Neville: A basilisk?
  Harry: Yes, and if you meet its gaze, it'll kill you on the spot. What part of 'really dangerous' did you not understand?

---

Harry: Fighting him again is nothing, if I have a chance to do it better this time.
Dumbledore: Do it better, Harry?
Harry: I plan to cheat like Draco Malfoy on a wick check.