This is my first story for the Houses Competition, Year 2. I'm back in HP world!
House: Slytherin
Category: Drabble
Prompt: Crossroads
Word count (without AN and FFN styling):494 words
Also, this chapter is dedicated to the most amazing beta in the world, maripaz6! (Yes, Harry is Mari. Go and smirk at us.) And this is fem!Harry story.
Privet Drive, Surrey.
Nothing special about that place; boring, suburban area, where the sheer monotony was enough to drive most people insane.
Not for Maristella Potter, though. There was no such thing as monotony for her. Walking up to the end of the Privet Drive where it met Magnolia Crescent, she sat at the crossroads. Okay, she didn't really sit at the crossroads, on the road itself – she wasn't crazy! Freak, maybe, but crazy, nope. She sat on the sidewalk, emerald green eyes dancing with barely contained enthusiasm. She got to people-watch again!
She didn't get to do that for the last week, being stuck with that horrible hag she called Aunt Marge in the house, but she fully intended to make up for it today and tomorrow.
„Awfully alone, are you, little one?"
Mari blinked, and looked up at the speaker. The lady who spoke was... beautiful, for the lack of better word. Not beautiful like those models wearing skimpy and strange clothes in Aunt Petunia's fashion magazines, but beautiful still in her dark brown skirt and bottle-green blouse dotted with small yellow stars.
"Not really," Mari finally answered, done taking in the strange lady. "But I'm not supposed to talk to strangers."
The lady chuckled and sat down next to her, neatly folding her long skirt. „Smart one, too. But it's okay if you don't want to talk. I'm not here to talk to someone, either."
Mari cocked her head, hearing the stress on the word to.
"You talk to yourself?"
The lady smiled and shook her head, and for the first time Mari spotted the small circlet on the lady's head – two silver half-moons and disc between them, with thin silver strip going around her head.
"I ponder. I've found that the crossroads are always the best place to think." She waved at the crossroads. "Tell me, little one, how many paths can you choose between at the crossroads?"
Mari frowned, sensing the trap in the simple question. "Um, two?"
"Nope", the lady popped the 'P'. "How many paths do you see now?" She pointed at the crossroads they sat at again.
"Um, three?" Mari guessed, and was rewarded with a brilliant smile.
"Exactly. Remember sweetie - very few decisions are irreversible. You can always go back and choose another path. You just have to be brave enough" The woman stood up. "Remember that, Maristella Lillian Potter."
Mari startled at the usage of her full name, but before she recovered, the lady was gone.
"I'll remember. I promise," Mari said to the empty space.
Little did the eight-year-old know, she would use that advice years later. She knew she shouldn't have, but the entire room was filled with time-turners… . Besides, magic could accomplish almost anything, if you were brave enough to try. So why not try and change the future?
In the end, she felt that erasing herself and seducing Tom Riddle was a small price to pay for a world without Voldemort.