Just a story idea I had. I have alot of them so I may not post undates often, however unless I say I have stoped working on a story so do not assume I won't ever update.
The Accidental Butterfly Stepping
Sum: Harry tries to leave the timeline alone, but even a quite little Ravenclaw ends up stepping on butterflies and now if Harry is to save the timeline he has to save Tom Riddle first.
A studious Ravenclaw that spoke rarely, that did well on written test and well on practical test, but never amazing or great. He was completely ignorable really, very unimportant and yet just Harry's being there was stepping on butterflies left and right.
Harry was aware of his butterfly stepping and while he had tried to limit the damage it seemed that somewhere along the way he had changed everything.
Why else would there be a school wide search for the known heir of Slytherin, Tom Riddle and why else would Harry be hiding one unconscious Tom Riddle in the Room of Requirements after all?
Yes somewhere along the way Harry had fucked up royally. No one was supposed to be sent to seriously investigate the deaths at Hogwarts. Of course their also was not supposed to be deaths plural. Somehow Harry's being their caused two Gryffindor boys to be killed by the monster the day before. Harry was at a loss as to how he had done something to cause that, but as Hermione had said even the smallest thing could change everything.
Maybe he had been sitting at the table they wanted in the Library that day and so they had deiced to go somewhere else? It didn't matter that much at least not now, who knows if he had just killed off some of the people he had gone to school with by causing the boys deaths? Who knows if one of them would invent a cure for a curse his father had been hit with and now he would die and Harry had caused himself never to be born?
It was very frightening this stepping on butterflies business. One word, one action, could destroy the world on complete accident.
Somehow he had also made a young Hufflepuff girl named Jenna Albright follow Myrtle into the bathroom that faithful day.
Maybe she had known one of the boys that were killed and that made her worry about the safely of Myrtle girl going off alone? Maybe she had seen Harry help pick up someone's books that they had dropped had realized that he was a Ravenclaw and so had felt just a little more kindly to Ravenclaws like Myrtle?
There was a thousand possibilities' for why, but it didn't change that what happened was that she got there at just the right or wrong time.
She saw Myrtle die, she saw the beast that did it, and she saw Tom Riddle watching with eyes alight with red tinted pleasure.
Oh the girl wasn't dead, no somehow she had escaped. Somehow she had left either without Tom and his pet realizing she was there or without them being able to catch her.
All the way to the Headmaster's office did she run and upon getting there she condemned the heir of Slytherin. She altered reality so much Harry could almost feel the world spinning off its axis.
This was not supposed to happen. Of course Harry didn't know all of this until later. His first clue that something BIG and DIFFERENT had happened was when the Aurors had arrived and tired, note tired to arrest Tom Riddle.
Of course they tried to do so in the great Hall during dinner. So stupid of them to do so in front of Tom's housemates, Tom after all had the loyalty of his house even in 5th year.
Tom who had thought he would never be caught, Tom who wouldn't have been caught if it wasn't for Harry bloody Potter crushing those damned butterflies, Tom panicked.
He didn't panic like a normal person, oh no Tom Riddle panicked like a cornered viper, like a cornered Slythrine.
A few well chosen words to his fellow Slythrines and a swift, flashing, and devastating attack on one of the Aurors, is what dear Tom did. So of course his housemates rose to his aid.
Who would be cursed, traumatized, or killed in this battle of students and Aurors? Who would else would send the world spinning in a different direction that could lead to ruin?
Someone certainly, but no one had as big of an impact on the world as Tom Riddle and so that's who Harry followed.
Tom fled the battle in the excellent cover of chaos his classmates had made for him and Harry under his trusted invisibility clock chased after him.
This was not good; this was not good, this was so wrong!
Somehow he had to stop it, somehow he had to clear Tom's name.
The first step was preventing Tom from leaving the castle, the first step was stunning the now fugitive from the law and hiding him away while Harry gained Intel and found a way to save the timeline and incidentally Tom Riddle from Azkaban.
The next step, Harry thought as he watched Tom Riddle wake, the next step was apparently saying to hell with the butterflies.