u/Fuckmetilldeath

This is another weird half-dream idea I had and I genuinely don’t know if it works, but I can’t stop thinking about it.

So we’re at the end of canon. Voldemort is about to kill Harry.

He succeeds.

Harry dies.

Except he doesn’t.

Instead, everything freezes.

The entire world stops moving except Harry and Voldemort.

No spells work. No movement. No sound. Just absolute stillness.

And then something else appears.

Not Dumbledore. Not magic.

Something colder.

A presence that calls itself Death.

And it basically says:

The timeline is broken.

Something happened that prevents the future from continuing normally.

So it gives them a choice:

> Fix it. Or stay trapped in this frozen moment forever.

And then it sends them back into the past.

Harry and Voldemort are forced to work together (very reluctantly) to figure out what caused reality to “fail”.

They hate each other. Constantly argue. Blame each other for everything.

- “It’s your fault for chasing immortality.”
- “It’s your fault for killing things that shouldn’t die.”

But they’re stuck together, so they start jumping through time trying to find where the timeline broke.

They end up everywhere:
- Hogwarts eras
- Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s timeline
- random historical magical incidents
- moments where things almost changed but didn’t

It becomes this chaotic, Gravity Falls-style time travel mess where they’re basically trying to debug reality.

Eventually, they discover the truth:

Harry is (or was) a Horcrux.

But something is wrong.

The Horcrux doesn’t behave like it should.

And then it hits them:

Harry stopped being a Horcrux years ago.

The moment it happened was during his 5th year.

A suicide attempt he doesn’t remember properly.

Not because it didn’t happen.

But because his mind buried it so deep it effectively erased it from his conscious memory.

And that moment is what “broke” the timeline.

Because Harry dying, even briefly, created a contradiction the universe never resolved.

So the real core of the story becomes:

They have to go back to 5th year Harry.

And stop him from doing it.

Harry has to confront a version of himself he doesn’t even remember existing.

And Voldemort has to confront the fact that the “immortal object” he built his entire system around… was unstable from the beginning.

In the end, once they fix it, time resumes.

And somehow, against all logic, they survive it.

And they don’t immediately destroy each other.

They just… exist.

Together.

Trying to pretend the universe didn’t almost delete itself.

I don’t even know what this is. It’s part time travel AU, part existential horror, part Tomarry enemies-to-something.

If anyone wants to write it, feel free, because my brain clearly doesn’t know what to do with it anymore.

I don’t even know if this is a full AU or just a recurring nightmare I keep expanding, but here we go.

So we’re in a Hogwarts-era AU where Tom Riddle and Harry Potter grow up together in Wool’s Orphanage. Tom is the golden prodigy Slytherin everyone pays attention to. Harry is… just there. Half-blood, overlooked, unremarkable in the way people tend to become invisible when someone brighter is standing too close.

Not abused in an obvious way, just… selectively ignored. The kind of neglect that doesn’t leave bruises you can point at, just absence where attention should be.

Years pass. Tom rises. The “Knights” form around him. Power consolidates. And eventually, Harry is dragged along into their orbit anyway, mostly because proximity is unavoidable, not because he belongs there.

Harry doesn’t care about ideology or politics or purity. He wants to graduate. Play Quidditch. Sleep. That’s basically it.

One night, there’s a feast after a Knights gathering. Tom leaves briefly, saying he has “business with Slughorn” and tells everyone to stay and behave.

Music starts playing. Something slow, distorted, almost wrong. Climbing Up the Walls by Radiohead.

Harry puts his head down on the table.

And wakes up still there.

Except he can’t move.

And everyone else is watching him.

At first, he thinks it’s a prank. Then he realizes they’re not looking at him like a person.

They’re looking at him like food.

Not metaphorically.

Hands on him. Pulling him apart. Not elegant, not ritualistic. Just… animal. Like something primal broke loose and no one remembers how to stop it.

Orion Black is there. He’s laughing while tearing into him like it’s nothing personal.

Someone climbs onto the table and reaches for his chest.

Harry is conscious the entire time.

He tries to speak. Begs. Recognizes people. Names them. It doesn’t matter.

No one stops.

And then, just as suddenly as it starts, it ends.

Obliviate.

He wakes up the next day in the same room. Same table. Same students eating breakfast like nothing happened.

His body feels wrong.

In the mirror, he looks fine.

But when he lifts his shirt, there are faint marks. Like something tried to erase him and didn’t fully succeed.

And he remembers everything.

Or thinks he does.

From there, it becomes a pattern.

Harry starts avoiding gatherings he doesn’t remember attending.

He panics in the Great Hall for no reason.

He flinches when people touch him.

Sometimes he wakes up with missing time and the sensation of being inside-out.

And the worst part: no one else acknowledges anything is wrong.

Except Abraxas, who refuses to say anything meaningful.

Harry asks him directly:

“What happened that night?”

And he just answers:

“You don’t want to know.”

Which, of course, makes it worse.

Meanwhile Tom notices inconsistencies.

Harry’s behavior changes. He isolates. Explodes randomly. Starts talking about his heart like it’s missing.

One night Harry says it outright:

“You have my heart. Where is it?”

And Tom laughs it off at first.

Then stops laughing.

Because Harry isn’t joking.

The climax is basically Tom finally confronting him after everything spirals:

“What happened at that feast?”

And Harry, barely holding himself together, tells him what he remembers.

Being eaten. Being watched. Being put back together.

And Tom realizes something terrifying:

Either Harry is delusional…

or something happened in that room that even magic tried to erase.

And no one, not even Tom, has the full version of it.

The story ends (or loops) with Tom tearing everything apart trying to find the truth, and Harry still not sure if he is remembering trauma, or if reality itself edited him like a mistake.

Either way, the question stays the same:

If everyone forgot you were destroyed… did it really happen?

I got this idea showering please write it.

Harry Potter comes downstairs expecting some new Quidditch gear and instead finds Tom Riddle standing at his front door.

His parents are smiling like they’ve just adopted a puppy.

“Harry,” Lily says gently, “this is your new brother.”

Harry thinks this is some kind of horrible joke.

Tom Riddle, his brilliant, arrogant, deeply unsettling school rival, has just moved into his house for the summer. James and Lily adore him immediately. Tom is polite, charming, and terrifyingly good at manipulating adults. Harry hates him on sight and becomes convinced there’s something deeply wrong with him.

Tom, meanwhile, seems to enjoy provoking him.

But the situation is part of something much larger.

Decades ago, Grindelwald won the wizarding war across most of the world. The only major exception was Great Britain, where Dumbledore seized absolute control of the Ministry in order to isolate the country from the outside world and protect it from Grindelwald’s regime.

Ever since then, Britain has been sealed off.

Nobody can leave.

Nobody really knows what’s happening outside its borders.

The Ministry insists the isolation is temporary and necessary. Old pureblood families whisper that the outside world must be better than this tightly controlled society. Hogwarts teaches a carefully filtered version of history. Meanwhile, Dumbledore implements aggressive social programs designed to integrate muggleborns into wizarding society and combat the country’s declining birth rates.

Tom is supposedly part of one of those programs.

At least officially.

In reality, James Potter was secretly ordered to monitor him. There are suspicions involving dark magic, Horcruxes, and possible espionage. The adoption was arranged so Tom could be watched constantly from inside the Potter household.

Harry knows none of this.

All he knows is that he’s suddenly stuck sharing a house with someone who seems to hate the entire world.

The summer is filled with arguments, rivalry, domestic tension, constant competition, and a mutual hostility so intense it slowly starts becoming something else.

Then the Triwizard Tournament begins.

For the first time in decades, Hogwarts welcomes students from outside Britain.

The Durmstrang students are physically perfect. Tall, elegant, confident, impossibly powerful. Britain is immediately fascinated. People begin wondering whether Dumbledore lied to them. Whether isolation was really protection… or just a prison.

Harry starts wondering too.

Until he discovers the truth.

The Durmstrang students are not teenagers.

They’re elderly people hiding behind glamours.

Because the outside world is dying.

Generations of magical blood purists reproducing exclusively among themselves slowly destroyed the wizarding population: deformities, infertility, weakening magic, and social collapse. Grindelwald maintains the illusion of perfection through propaganda, militarization, and carefully staged spectacles designed to convince Britain to reopen its borders.

And Harry slowly realizes Dumbledore never sealed the country away to control people.

He did it to save them.

As the tournament progresses, Harry and Tom become trapped between two monstrous systems, political espionage, family secrets, and a relationship that grows increasingly intense, obsessive, and destructive.

What begins as a forced proximity rivals-to-brothers romcom gradually turns into political horror, state paranoia, and psychological tragedy.

Llevo semanas dándole vueltas a esta idea y necesito que alguien la escriba, por favor.

Ambientada a finales de los 60 o principios de los 70.

Tom Riddle tiene catorce años y vive en el orfanato de Wool. El orfanato está abandonado, es pobre, está superpoblado y resulta profundamente inquietante, como muchas instituciones: a veces desaparecen niños, entran y salen adultos extraños, y todo el mundo aprende rápidamente a no hacer preguntas.

Un día, un hombre alto, vestido completamente de negro, llega al orfanato en un elegante Mustang negro y anuncia con calma que quiere adoptar a un niño inmediatamente.

Su nombre es Gellert Grindelwald.

Tom no tiene ni idea de quién es, pero enseguida se da cuenta cosas.

1. Tom desea salir de Wool's más que nada en e

l

1. mundo.

Tom ha visto antes a niños irse con hombres como él. Algunos regresan al orfanato más callados, extraños, profundamente cambiados. Tom lo nota, pero al final no le importa lo suficiente como para quedarse. Su mayor sueño es escapar de la pobreza, mudarse a Londres algún día, convertirse en escritor y no volver a depender de nadie.

Así que cuando Gellert lo elige casi con indiferencia, como si escogiera un objeto de una estantería, Tom se va de buena gana.

Gellert lo lleva lejos de Londres, a un pueblo agrícola rural Inglés .

El pueblo en sí le resulta extraño desde el principio. Es hermoso, tranquilo, aislado y extrañamente dependiente de Gellert. La gente lo trata con silenciosa reverencia. Todos lo conocen. Todos lo obedecen. Todo el pueblo parece girar en torno a él, social, económica y emocionalmente.

Gellert posee una enorme finca rural oculta tras campos y tierras de cultivo. A primera vista, parece idílica: vallas blancas, jardines, árboles centenarios, el calor del verano, la luz del sol que se filtra por las cortinas, música suave proveniente de otra habitación. La atmósfera debería evocar fuertemente a Las vírgenes suicidas: onírica, nostálgica, hermosa y, en el fondo, profundamente asfixiante.

El trabajo en la finca lo realiza la familia Weasley, que vive en la propiedad con sus hijos a cambio de dinero, vivienda, educación y seguridad. Gellert paga la asistencia de los niños a un prestigioso internado durante el año, y la familia depende completamente de él.

Pero hay rumores.

Charlie Weasley escapó hace años y huyó del país. Se rumorea que Percy Weasley intentará marcharse pronto. Cada vez que un niño se rebela o se va, la familia sufre las consecuencias.

En cuanto Tom llega a la finca, conoce a Harry Potter.

Harry tiene trece años, es pálido, delicado, viste de forma extraña y resulta inmediatamente inquietante para Tom, de una manera que no puede explicar. Lleva ropa blanca y suave que parece anticuada y fuera de lugar para la época. A menudo parece más una muñeca o un fantasma que un niño de verdad. A veces vaga descalzo por los campos llevando corderos o flores. Otras veces desaparece por completo en el silencio.

Harry y Tom se caen mal al principio. Harry es posesivo con la atención de Gellert porque, hasta que llegó Tom, siempre habían sido solo ellos dos. Se ven obligados a compartir habitación.

Con el tiempo, sin embargo, Tom empieza a notar cosas que le incomodan profundamente.

Harry llora por las noches. A veces, Harry sale sigilosamente de la habitación después de medianoche y regresa horas después visiblemente afectado, intentando desesperadamente no llorar. Una noche, Tom nota sangre en las sábanas.

Otra noche, Tom escucha a Gellert hablar con Harry a través de las paredes: «Eres Albus. No eres Harry Potter. Eres Albus Dumbledore».

Harry asiente en silencio.

Tom se da cuenta poco a poco de que Harry no está siendo criado como él mismo. Lo están convirtiendo en un reemplazo de otra persona.

Años antes, Gellert Grindelwald y Albus Dumbledore habían vivido juntos en esa misma finca rural como amantes. Con el tiempo, Gellert se volvió cada vez más obsesivo, controlador, religioso e inestable. Finalmente, Albus lo abandonó. Poco después, los padres de Harry Potter murieron en un incendio. Harry sobrevivió envuelto en un grueso abrigo o manta protectora que más tarde se convertiría en el símbolo de la "Capa de Invisibilidad" de este universo.

Gellert adoptó a Harry poco después de que Albus lo abandonara.

No porque quisiera un hijo.

Porque quería recuperar a Albus.

Harry pasó años atrapado en un entorno psicológicamente abusivo donde su identidad, cuerpo, comportamiento, apariencia y personalidad eran constantemente controlados y moldeados para convertirlos en algo que Gellert consideraba "puro", "bello" y aceptable.

Ejemplos:

• Gellert impone rutinas y oraciones religiosas en la casa a pesar de que Harry admite en privado que no cree en nada de eso. Harry explica las reglas extrañas con naturalidad porque las ha normalizado.

Gellert controla obsesivamente la apariencia de Harry: ropa pálida, alimentación restringida, baños ritualizados, presentación impecable.

Harry adapta constantemente su personalidad según lo que Gellert espera de él.

Harry teme a Gellert, depende emocionalmente de él y no puede imaginar una vida fuera de la mansión.

En un momento dado, Harry le confiesa en voz baja a Tom que, cuando este llegó, esperaba que Gellert lo hubiera adoptado como reemplazo para que finalmente lo dejara en paz.

Pero Gellert tiene otros planes.

Comienza a preparar a Tom para que sea su propio sustituto.

Tom es inteligente, carismático, ambicioso, emocionalmente distante y ávido de poder y estatus. Gellert se ve reflejado en él de inmediato. Poco a poco, Gellert comienza a moldear a Tom para convertirlo en un heredero que eventualmente heredará la propiedad, la influencia del pueblo y, por completo, su visión del mundo.

Uno de los puntos de inflexión de la historia ocurre cuando Gellert lleva a Tom a visitar a sus parientes biológicos. Durante este viaje, la familia de Tom es asesinada, directa o indirectamente por Gellert, lo que obliga a Tom a romper definitivamente con su pasado. Tom se marcha con un anillo tomado de la escena, que se convierte en la versión de la Piedra de la Resurrección en este universo.

A lo largo del verano, Tom se obsesiona cada vez más con comprender:

• qué sucedió exactamente entre Gellert y Albus,
• por qué el pueblo se comporta como una secta,
• por qué Harry parece incapaz de irse psicológicamente,
• y si él mismo está siendo arrastrado lentamente al mismo ciclo.

El internado de Hogwarts adquiere una importancia simbólica porque todos los niños pasan el verano esperando desesperadamente volver allí. La escuela es el único lugar donde pueden respirar, aunque sea temporalmente, lejos del control de Gellert.

El núcleo emocional de la historia debería girar en torno a cómo Tom desarrolla lentamente sentimientos genuinos por Harry, al tiempo que se da cuenta de la horrible magnitud de lo que le han hecho.

Harry, por su parte, se siente atraído por Tom porque es una de las pocas personas a las que Gellert nunca ha quebrado ni transformado por completo.

Posible final:

Las Reliquias de la Muerte existen simbólicamente, no mágicamente:

• La Varita de Saúco se convierte en un cuchillo («El Cuchillo de Saúco»).
• La Piedra de la Resurrección se convierte en el anillo que Tom toma tras el asesinato de sus familiares. La Capa de Invisibilidad se convierte en el abrigo/manta protectora con la que Harry sobrevivió al incendio cuando era niño.

Casi al final del verano, Harry usa las tres Reliquias simbólicas para matar a Gellert Grindelwald.

El acto no debe sentirse triunfal ni heroico. Debe sentirse desesperado, trágico, íntimo y psicológicamente devastador. El asesinato representa la destrucción final de la identidad que le impusieron y la recuperación de su identidad como Harry Potter en lugar de "Albus".

La historia podría terminar de forma ambigua, con los niños partiendo hacia un internado tras sobrevivir al verano, emocionalmente destrozados pero finalmente fuera de la finca.

I got this idea while showering and I need someone to read it.

Set during Harry’s fifth year, after everything in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix starts crushing him all at once. Cedric’s death, Voldemort’s return, the Ministry slandering him, Umbridge tormenting him, isolation from his friends, Privet Drive, constant fear and exhaustion. Harry is only fifteen and emotionally collapsing under the pressure of being “The Chosen One.”

While in Diagon Alley earlier that year, Harry finds a strange old book hidden in a dusty little shop. The book advertises a potion capable of “bringing the drinker to a better life” and promises peace, happiness, and escape from suffering. Harry buys it impulsively, mostly as a joke at first, but after another horrible day involving Umbridge and a fight with Ron and Hermione, he finally brews and drinks the potion.

Instead of killing him, the potion puts Harry into an enchanted sleep.

Four months pass.

Harry cannot be awakened by any magical means. He is physically alive, but mentally trapped somewhere unreachable. The Order panics. Dumbledore eventually enters Harry’s mind/sleep himself in an attempt to rescue him, but never returns. After about a week, Snape follows him in. He disappears too.

By the beginning of the fic, Harry, Dumbledore, and Snape have all been unconscious for weeks.

Then Voldemort has a dream.

In the dream, he finds Harry lying peacefully on a bed floating down a dark river. Harry casually mocks him and tells him something along the lines of, “Now you can’t touch me anymore.” The two sit together on the bed as the river carries them through the dark. Voldemort wakes up furious and immediately decides he is going to hunt Harry down personally, only to discover that Harry Potter has seemingly vanished from the world entirely. No one talks about it. The newspapers barely mention it. Hogwarts is strangely silent. Then he learns that Dumbledore and Snape are gone too.

His greatest enemies have disappeared without him.

Insulted, intrigued, and unwilling to let anyone else “take” Harry from him, Voldemort enters the dream-world himself to retrieve them all… fully intending to kill them afterward personally.

Inside the dream, Harry has unconsciously created an entire fantasy kingdom based on fairy tales, especially Grimm stories and Sleeping Beauty aesthetics. The world reflects everything Harry secretly longs for: comfort, beauty, peace, safety, affection, warmth, childhood fantasy, and escapism.

The dream-world feels heavily inspired by Mabeland from Gravity Falls. It is not evil in an obvious way. It seduces people into staying.

Harry is essentially the sleeping king/prince of this realm. He lives in an enormous enchanted castle surrounded by forests, rivers, villages, magical gardens, impossible architecture, glowing libraries, endless staircases, and surreal dreamlike locations inspired by “impossible dream homes” aesthetics.

The villagers are all based on people Harry knows in real life, distorted by his subconscious perception of them.

Most importantly: Cedric Diggory is alive there.

Cedric acts as Harry’s closest companion, possibly his knight, servant, prince, or castle steward depending on interpretation. Harry is visibly happier around him and develops the sort of awkward teenage crush he never got to fully experience in real life. Cedric represents Harry’s longing for innocence before everything went wrong.

Harry KNOWS on some level that none of this is real, but chooses to remain in the fantasy anyway because reality hurt him too much.

The dream reshapes everyone according to Harry’s perception of them:
- Snape only speaks in riddles because Harry genuinely thinks Snape and Dumbledore never say anything normally.
- Dumbledore is trapped inside a dungeon that manifests as the cupboard under the stairs.
- Voldemort is unwillingly pushed into the role of a fairy tale “Beast” or dark intruder by the narrative logic of the kingdom itself.
- The world actively tries to assign characters archetypal storybook roles.

A major part of the fic would be Voldemort exploring this bizarre kingdom while trying to gather Snape and Dumbledore and ultimately convince/force Harry to wake up. The dynamic between Harry and Voldemort should alternate between funny, unsettling, emotional, and strangely intimate. Harry treats Voldemort almost like an annoying recurring guest in his kingdom while Voldemort becomes increasingly frustrated by how absurd the world is.

There should also be a corrupted region hidden somewhere in the kingdom representing the Horcrux connection between them. Unlike the rest of the beautiful fairy tale world, this area is rotten, dark, green-tinted, dying, and almost uninhabitable. Harry avoids acknowledging it exists.

The emotional breaking point of the fic should involve Cedric.

At some point, Voldemort realizes Cedric is the emotional anchor keeping Harry inside the dream. As long as Cedric exists, Harry will never willingly leave. Voldemort ultimately destroys or kills the dream-version of Cedric in order to force the fantasy to collapse and rescue Harry from it.

This completely shatters Harry emotionally because, from his perspective, Voldemort has now “killed Cedric twice.”

Meanwhile, the real world outside slowly destabilizes because Harry Potter, Dumbledore, Snape, and Voldemort are all simultaneously missing from the war.