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"So, it all comes down to this, doesn't it?" said Harry quietly. "Does the wand in your hand know its last master was Disarmed? Because if it does... I am the true master of the Elder Wand."
A look of pure rage crossed Voldemort's face and, suddenly, both wizards jumped into action. However, as he was about to yell his spell at Voldemort, something in Harry froze. He couldn't help but feel like it would be wrong to cast it toward him. 'What the hell is wrong with me?' he asked himself. Unfortunately, those few moments of distraction enabled Voldemort to send his Killing Curse and Harry was too slow to react.
"Avada Kedavra!" yelled Voldemort. Harry began incantating the Disarming Charm but the green spell hit him in the chest and he fell to the ground.
Harry felt himself floating in a grey infinite. He sensed that he was moving and travelling somewhere but he couldn't say where.
While he was travelling in the grey, empty space, Harry thought about his death. Because he knew that he had died. Voldemort had hit him with the Killing Curse a third time. This time however, there was no going back. What perplexed him the most however was how wrong it had felt to try to kill Voldemort.
'But why?' thought Harry. 'Why did it feel wrong to cast a curse at Teresa Riddle... No. Tom... or is it Teresa?'
His mind was confused. Was Voldemort named Tom or Teresa? He was pretty sure that Voldemort was a man, so it should be Tom... but his mind was telling him otherwise. He also remembered a girl, then woman. She was short and had long, jet black hair and bright blue eyes, smiling lovingly at him. He could only associate one thought with this image: Teresa Potter.
Teresa Potter, née Riddle. He had met her in primary school. She was an orphan and poor, wearing clothes too big for her. Clearly hand-me downs. He was Harry Potter, son of James Potter, a Scotland Yard agent and Lily Potter, née Evans, one of the top scientists working on cancer-cure in Europe.
'No... Mum and Dad were killed in Godric's Hollow by Voldemort when I was one... right?'
His family was practically flowing in money. Both couldn't have been more different yet, when they first met, they just clicked. Both quickly became each other's best friend. Others at the school looked at them strangely. Why was Harry Potter, the boy practically living in a manor and son of two very important persons in the country best friend of Teresa Riddle, the girl living at the run-down orphanage a few blocks away?
Harry and Teresa however didn't care about what the others thought. Both were rather lonely and didn't have any other friends. Both felt excluded by others. Harry because the others kids saw him as the pampered prince and Teresa because she was the family-less with no money and no good clothes. Harry was the one to approach Teresa and their friendship began.
A few days after first becoming her friend, Harry brought Teresa home for the first time. His parents quickly fell in love with the small black-haired girl. Being unable to have another child, James and Lily quickly came to saw the orphan as their daughter. Ten months after first meeting her, they made it official.
A strong bond had struck between James and Teresa. James loved to have a daughter of his own while Teresa loved having a strong father to protect her. Harry and Teresa grew up together. They should have seen each other as brother and sister and yet, they never did. During Secondary School, Harry and Teresa started developing feelings toward each other.
'What...? I'm... I'm pretty sure I would remember if... if I fell for someone named Teresa... And I attended Hogwarts... not a Secondary School..."
Harry panicked when he first realised he had fallen in love with his best friend. He didn't know that Teresa was feeling the same toward him and had come to his father's office screaming that he was in love and didn't know what to do. James had been amused by his son's reaction once he got the full story out of Harry and only told him that he would never know until he asked. Harry wouldn't understand right away why his father was looking at him with a knowing smile.
Finally plucking his courage out, especially after having witnessed another boy trying to ask Teresa out, Harry admitted his feelings toward her. To his surprise, Teresa had smiled and kissed him. Harry and Teresa were now dating.
'No... I'm dating Ginny... aren't I?'
Harry and Teresa graduated together in 1999 when Harry was eighteen and Teresa nineteen. By the time they began attending University, the couple was engaged.
'1999...? But that's next year...! What is going on...?'
Teresa Riddle joined the Computer Sciences class while Harry Potter joined the Psychology program. While they weren't in the same class anymore, the couple still lived together in their own apartment close to the campus. In the summer of 2000, Harry and Teresa married.
Two years after entering University, Harry arrived home to see Teresa, the love of his life and now wife, brooding at the kitchen table. When he had asked her what the problem was, Teresa had admitted that she was supposed to start a personal project that would be important for her diploma. She had to design and create her own computer and write her own program to do something... except she had no idea what.
It was Harry who came up with the idea of creating a simulator for the mind. Like Teresa, Harry had his own project to do and present and he, just like his wife, hadn't had a clue what to do. When Teresa had told him about her problem, the solution clicked.
The Potters could work together to build a machine capable of transporting people's mind in simulations. Harry could already see how revolutionary a machine like this could be for both of their fields. While Teresa had doubts at the beginning, she quickly accepted Harry's idea and, together, they began working.
Their project was finished about a month and a half before the end of their stints at University. They then spent three weeks working on the first scenario, the one that would be used to present the machine. They gave it a simple name: The Wizarding World. It was based on their own experiences in youth.
That morning, Harry and Teresa decided to test their finished machine. They connected themselves to the machine, laid down on their bed and entered the world of magic.
Finally, Harry woke up.
Harry's eyes opened and he saw the beige ceiling of his and Teresa's room. With a swipe of his hand, Harry removed the various plugs around his head before he turned to his left. There lay Teresa, his best friend and wife. Harry could see her chest rising and falling slowly. She was snoring lightly. Her shirt was lifted lightly and Harry could see a stripe of skin. In Harry's opinion, Teresa always looked cute but it was situations like this that made his heart melt.
For all instances and purposes, Teresa was asleep but Harry knew better. Her mind was working overdrive to process all the data their machine was sending her. When she would wake up, she would feel physically fine but mentally tired. He should know, that's how he was feeling currently.
Suddenly, Harry heard a small gasp coming from Teresa. Her breathing became quicker and less soft. Her eyes opened and she turned around. Her bright blue eyes looked at him with some confusion before she suddenly grinned and said "I won!"
Harry chuckled. "You did."
When they had wrote the scenario, Harry and Teresa had decided that it would be fun to put themselves on opposite sides of the magical war. Both would be the leaders of their side. Teresa's Lord Voldemort would begin with more experience but Harry's... Harry would have a power that Teresa wouldn't have. Teresa removed the plugs in her head and slowly raised, followed by Harry. "Why didn't you cast the spell at me?" she asked suddenly. "You did this whole speech that had me speechless yet, you didn't cast anything at me."
Harry thought about it for a moment. "I'm not sure I could." he said.
"What do you mean?"
"When I pointed my wand at Voldemort, something in me stopped me. It suddenly felt so wrong to cast a spell that could injure or kill you that I froze. I think my mind recognised you behind your male, evil counterpart. I think it recognised that I was about to kill the woman I loved and warned me not to do it. My moment of indecision gave you the advantage."
Teresa smiled and kissed him. "That could explain why I never outright killed you." she said. "I know I would never show any type of mercy or give anyone a chance to fight back if I was a true Dark Lord (or Dark Lady) and Voldemort never did either... Except for you. Perhaps, just like you, my mind recognised my beloved husband and never tried to hurt you too much."
"Your Cruciatus would hurt." whined Harry. Then, he laughed. "If you hadn't married me, I would have believed that you were enjoying torturing me."
Teresa grinned. "Maybe I did. Then, maybe you would learn not to leave your dirty socks lying around our bedroom again."
Harry looked sheepish. "Oops?" he said. Teresa laughed.
"You know," said Harry with a laugh. "It's funny that both of us and all our fictional characters believed that 'The power he knows not' was love. While I can see their point. It just wasn't. It was sheer dumb luck."
"They still should have seen it." said Teresa. "The number of times you survived something horrific relatively intact is immense!"
"Maybe that's just my Potter blood." grinned Harry.
Teresa rolled her eyes good-naturally. "Yes, I'm sure that Dad also keep getting in dangerous situations and get through it with luck alone."
"Maybe he does."
"Go tell him that."
"No thanks." said Harry rapidly, his face palling. James Potter's catch phrase was 'There is no such thing as luck'. Teresa chuckled.
"One thing I really can't understand is how you followed Albus Dumbledore's word as if it was law."
"I think it's something to do with him appearing like this god-like figure that saved me from the Dursleys." said Harry with contemplation. "That's something I will have to study for my thesis. The recordings worked, right?" he asked.
The couple left the bed and walked toward their machine. Teresa looked through the files for a few minutes before she confirmed that there were recordings of the session.
"Perfect." said Harry. "Well, let's get to work."