I heart cliches... I also can't spell that word... Okay, I'm really sorry world, but I just absolutely love the someone goes back in time and makes everything better/ messes everything up fics! The only ones I hate are when people go back and nothing changes... WASTE OF MY TIME! Yeah, well anyway, now that I've bored you all into oblivion, lets start the story on a sad note. I swear guys, I'm not emo!
And btw, yes, indeed, I do own the world of Harry Potter. There. So sue me. Like you don't already have enough Ms. I'm-richer-than-the-queen-of-england-and-am-still-pissed-opra-beat-me-out-for-number-1. Anywho, I'm just kidding, yada yada yada, insert disclaimer here so fanfiction doesn't get sued and on with the story!
Nessy Potter's flyaway black hair fell in a mess over her head as she bent over the crumpled body of her father. Tears falling from her notoriously dry eyes, she cradled his head on her lap, and gently traced the lightning scar upon his head.
"Nes..?"slurred Harry Potter, as he tried with his last glimpse of consciousness to grasp what was going on.
"Shush, Dad, it's me. You won, Daddy, it's all over, and now you get to sleep. You've been really tired and now you can sleep. No one you need to protect anymore Dad, It's over." Her quiet voice cracked slightly, and her bright emerald eyes shimmered liquidly as she tried to reassure her dying father, her trembling words gently trying to comfort the man who'd cared for her by himself through worse times than anyone should ever have to face. Who'd managed to keep her sane growing up in the heart of the war. Who'd given himself so completely to the task fate gave him, that he would never even see the world recover. He would die right here, the scene of his last battle.
And when this noble, driven man looked with slightly confused eyes, into the eyes of his daughter, his own eyes really, for one last time, he smiled slightly.
"Me' mums eyes..." he grinned, and then he closed his own and slipped away, that same sloppy grin upon his face.
Nessy felt her heart crack open along old fault lines as the last of anyone who had cared for her went the way of the rest. Dead. She sobbed, and pulled her father closer, hugging him tightly, unable to let go. Not Dad. Anyone but him. She giggled horribly at that, until her mirth caught in the base of her throat and became an almost indistinguishable sob. It already had been everyone but him. Her mother before she could remember. Her mother's brother when she was eight, his wife the year before that. Great Uncle Remus just six months ago. His wife that same day. Everyone was gone, the entire lot of them. She couldn't bring herself to relive anymore. Such a lot of grief to fit in such a small girl. Only eleven.
Nessy didn't know how long she stood, rocking and sobbing with her father in her arms, but after ages of what felt like minutes to her, she calmed. Her head had the calm swirling of someone who had cried her way numb. She didn't bother to wipe the tears away, but pulled the strands of her black hair off her face where they had been stuck by her wet tears. She took a shuddering breath and released her father, laying him gently on the dusty rug. She looked around.
The Hogwarts library hadn't had visitors for years, not since it closed when she was seven, the same year Auntie Hermione died. She was the last teacher who would teach there. The rest were too scared.
Now, books were littered everywhere, filling the space with a haphazard completeness that Nessy rather liked. Any other time, she might have found a room almost filled to the top with jumbled books intriguing, but considering it was the site of her father's death, the effect was lost on her. She got up quietly, caught in the spell of the swirling dust caught in the rays of bright sunshine from the window. The silent hush that all libraries have the power to project onto their occupants. Even destroyed ones.
With careful steps, she picked her way around the piles of books, passing the handsome black haired man that lay across from her father without a glance. She couldn't bring herself to see Tom Riddle, death having brought back humanity to his features. She thought if she looked her delicate calm tilt, and she would simply explode with the feeling of it. Now she was looking, just looking for the one thing that might, just might make all this right. And then she saw it.
A book, with a cover that mimicked the night sky as it was two thousand years before. It was charmed the same night that the great hall was, and by the same person.
This was Godric Griffindor's book, the only one of his that had survived the years. It had spent them unobtrusively in the farthest, darkest corner of the restricted section, where even Madame Pince hadn't thought to look, smushed against the back of the shelf by two rather nasty books that no one liked to touch if they could help it. And their it had spent the greater part of two thousand years, until a little over fifty years ago, when a boy with rather nasty thoughts had finally removed those two rather nasty books to perform some rather nasty rituals. And so Tom Riddle discovered what the old, dusty book was, and decided it would make a lovely addition to his collection of horcruxes.
Now Nessy walked up to the book and picked it up. It was in two pieces, ripped right down the middle, as if it had been a spare piece of paper and not a thick volume. Her dad's work, of course. But now the most important thing about this book wasn't that it had once been a horcrux, but that it might have information she could use.
Clearing a spot against the wall, she sat down amidst the heaps of books, and sit cross legged with the two halves of the book side by side on the ground. She took a deep breath, that caught a little in her throat, but managed to shudder its way out her mouth again without her bursting into tears. She looked at the broken book. There was no danger in it anymore. Voldemort was dead.
With a dizzy feeling of foreboding, Nessy opened the bottom half, and began searching for the page number she'd found before. 623. Some of the pages were out of order, she assumed this was because of Voldemort's influence, but for all she knew Griffindor was just a highly eccentric person. Finally she found it, and leaving it open to that page, switched to the other half. When she opened it she choked, her forehead knitting in a sad mix of hopeless frustration with the book, and her carefully contained emotions sloshing over the edges. The top had no page numbers.
After a painstaking hour or so of searching, she turned the page and smiled at the heading that greeted her, the relief of a desperate girl who had found something to cling to washing over her.
The Risky Art of Changing What Has Already Happened, Why it Might have Already Happened and We Wouldn't Know it, and Why it May Yet Happen and We Wouldn't Know it.
Nessy's green eyes lit with a fire as she read this. Hope flooded from the wordy title to every inch of her. Time Travel. Thats what the page was talking about. She could do it. She could go back.
She frowned, and dove into the page with a determination to understand every little bit of it. There was a slight delay when she turned the page and found that the bottom of the second page was out of order and she had to flip through for five minutes or so before she found it (it wasn't very far off). She sighed with relief when she found that it was a potion not a spell that sent her back. She had been brewing potions since she was old enough to beg instruction, as it was something useful that her father thought might keep her out of more dangerous pastimes, such as trying to get involved in fights with death eaters. Spells, on the other hand, she only knew the basics of. Even though the Ministry fell when she was six, and would have done little to enforce the underage magic laws before then since they had bigger problems, the wizarding community had certain conventions they always kept. One was to not teach a kid to use a wand until they were mature enough to handle it.
Twisting clumsily out of her cross legged position and getting to her feet, Nessy put one half of the book under each arm and waded straight through the books this time, no dancing around them for her. She tried not to look at the black haired bodies to her right as she headed for the door. She'd go straight to the dungeons and start. If they had all the ingredients, then she'd be in her father's first year in three months. That should give her time to prepare herself, create a person for her to pretend to be, all that jazz. She needed money as well. She'd already decided on his first year. That was when it all really started, and when she would be able to get close to him, because he'd be her age. She knew she couldn't save her grandparents. As much as it would have meant to her father, they had to die, or even more people would. She shuddered to think how many more would have been lost if her father had never been marked.
Yes, she could devise a plan in three months, while her potion stewed, and then she'd see her father again. Her eyes automatically drifted to the huddled lump in the corner. Her mind seemed about to break when a strong voice took over. You can have him back. It said. But it won't really be him, she responded to the voice in her head. It'll be him when he was young, not a father. Does it matter? Responded the voice. You don't have to save him for yourself. Do this so that the man who gave so much to you and this world can have a better life. And the same for so many others. Nessy's eye's hardened with determination. She'd save his life. After all, he'd saved hers more times than she could count.
She was almost at the door, when a voice sounded behind her.
"So you intend to go back Nochless Potter?"
This was so completely unexpected that Nessy nearly fell down. She was stopped by a pile of books that already happened to be in the space she should have fallen into. She turned with apprehension, hoping against God that it wasn't a remaining death eater, or Voldemort still alive. But it was just a boy, her age perhaps, sitting atop on of the bookshelves that leaned against the wall.
"Who are you?" She asked with caution. She'd grown up in a war, and having talked often with a certain Alastor Moody, knew that even small boys needed to be seen as potential threats. But this one seemed alright. Besides the fact that he couldn't possibly have climbed to that perch without notice, or indeed even entered the sea of books without leaving a trail, and thus couldn't possibly be where he was, he was a completely ordinary looking boy. He had dusty looking straight brown hair, dull grayish brown eyes, a rounded nose with a smattering of freckles, and wore simple tan robes that completed the altogether dull look of him. All in all, by the end of her careful evaluation, Nessy was positive this boy was the result of the ever widening crack in her sanity. She cast an unconscious look toward her father's body.
"'m no one." said the boy casually with a modest shrug, "do you intend to go back Nochless Potter?"
"Nessy" said a still shocked Nessy out of habit
"Nessy" repeated the boy with a grin on his face. Nessy couldn't help but notice it was a very friendly grin. And then she snapped out of it.
"Yeah, I am going back, so what's it to you?" she said defensively. She didn't think lying would get her far here.
"I'm here to try and stop y-"
"THERE IS NO WAY YOU'RE GOING TO STOP ME!" Screamed Nessy, her calm shattered by the spiraling hysteria which suddenly seemed to fill her. Who was he to stop her? Just because he could sneak into rooms really well and spy on what she was reading didn't make it his problem.
"What you're doing goes against fate. What gives you the right to mess around and play God? What's your excuse for that?" said the boy plainly. Sounded as if he was a telemarketer, asking questions for the latest survey. Thats how much emotion he put in his voice.
"Fate?" Nessy laughed in a way that lent strong evidence to that crack in her sanity. "Fate went against me. See him? That's my dad over there. Yes, he's dead. So's my mum, if you'd believe it. And all her brother's and their wives. And every single adult I've ever so much as thought about looking up to. So what gives Fate the right to mess with me? I'm going back kid, and you can't stop me."
The boy gave her a calculating look, though he still had a pleasant look on his face. Nessy was on the verge of breaking down, but that didn't mean she didn't mean what she said. It didn't mean that in five years, when this was all behind her, or as behind her as it could ever be, she wouldn't mean what she said.
"Okay." said the boy. "and what if I had the power to stop you?" He was anything but casual now. Now there was an air of power around him that was only made creepier by the fact that he seemed to be just a boy. Nessy got the distinct feeling that he did have the power to stop her.
"I'd go anyway." she said softly, and as dangerously as she could to match him. "And I'd give you all the hell I've got trying."
The boy saw the resolve in her eyes. He saw her stance. He saw her intentions in going back. And he smiled again.
"Okay" said the boy.
Nessy was flabbergasted, completely thrown off. "Okay?" she said confused and angry. Who was this boy? This was just too much for the day she was having.
"Okay!" said the boy happily, and he jumped nimbly off his perch on the bookshelf and landed gracefully on a patch of ground free of books.
And with that cryptic declaration, the library began to spin.
By the time it stopped, Nessy was so dizzy she didn't even notice that it had. The world just kept on spinning. She stumbled, and reached out for the pile of books she'd known was there a second before, but they had gone. Trying with all her power to see clearly what had happened, she sat down hard on the ground, closed her eyes, and waited for the spinning to stop. When it did, she still didn't open her eyes. Where did that maniac send me? She asked herself with horror. She didn't want to know, but when she opened her eyes, there was the library, except...
The books were on their shelves. The bodies had gone. It was altogether less dusty. The sun still shone from the same position through the window, but it seemed weaker, and when she looked she realized it was cloudy. What was going on?
She twisted on the floor and say the boy, standing right next to her, also looking out the window.
"It's not quite as pretty a day." he said simply, with regret in his voice.
"You are insane" said Nessy, just as simply. She'd come to the conclusion she was going insane as well, and seemed to be taking it quite well. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that she was going insane.
Shaking off that feeling, she came up with something a little more productive to say. "What happened?"
"Well," explained the boy, still looking regretful that it was cloudy "I've brought you back to the summer before your father goes to Hogwarts. Enjoy." He made a move as if to leave, but Nessy grabbed his arm desperately.
"What! But you wanted to stop me! You were there to convince me not to go! Why turn around and bring me? I had the potion, I was going anyway, all you needed to do was... was... was nothing! I don't understand! Who are you?"
The boy chuckled, which didn't much improve Nessy's mood. "that potion is just a decoy. It doesn't work. If you want to change something, I have to help you. And for me to help you, you've got to prove you want it badly enough to do it in spite of me. Oh, and you need good intentions, you've got to be going back for somebody else, or to right one of my wrongs or something."
"What- But- so you were testing me! But how... wait your wrongs, what do you mean your wrongs! Who are you? O god my head is still spinning." Nessy hung still harder to his arm, begging him to answer her.
"'m fate" said the boy casually.
Nessy's jaw dropped, and she let go of his arm in shock. Through her amazement she managed to say, "Not what I expected you to look like."
"Yeah," said the plain boy, massaging the place on his arm where she grabbed him. "Thats the point."
"Wait! One more thing!" she yelled desperately as he went to go.
"What?" he asked.
Nessy slapped him as hard as he could, leaving a white hand on his face.
"What was that for?" Asked a hurt fate, massaging his jaw.
"You've been cruel to me" Said Nessy.
Fate looked down at the sad eleven year old sitting on the library floor, her eyes still read from crying.
"I'm trying to make it right" he said.
And then he was gone, leaving a shocked and out of place eleven year old sitting in the middle of an abandoned library, gapping at where he had just been.
"Bugger" she said as she sat, just waiting for the next thing to come and shatter her world.
Whahoo! First chapter done! That was fun to write. I think I might continue this story even if no one reads it. But then I might not, so if you read it, please review with some constructive criticism, or even flame me. Seriously guys, NO ONE has ever reviewed anything I've written. Probably because I've only ever written the beginning chapter of another story and it sucked. So people, find it in the kindness of your hearts to give me one review and make the year for one particular Harry Potter nerd that you all know as, Ya know, me.
Ta peeps, peace out and all that.