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Chapter 1

The world I knew ceased to exist overnight. I went to bed in my American apartment as an adult woman and woke up to the cool morning air of some alleyway in London as a scrawny boy just over eighty years ago.

At first I thought it was a dream, but that illusion was short lived. Everything was consistently old timey-the newspapers read the 31st of July, 1938, the technology was the stuff of museums, and the clothes looked like the movies set in the thirties. It was all too horribly real.

This was earth shatteringly bizzare on its own, but the situation managed to get much weirder.

I saw my reflection and I appeared to be... Harry Potter? I didn't look like Daniel Radcliffe, but I had all the distinctive features-messy black hair, green eyes, an underfed body, and the famous lightning bolt scar.

It's a bit of an understatement to say the first day was passed in a bizarre, surreal haze. There were just so many things to wrap my head around. Not only had I time travelled, but I had ended up in the body of another temporally displaced person. How does that even happen?

I, of course, questioned my sanity.

It wasn't until the Hogwarts letter came via a beautiful tawny owl with the name "Harry Potter" written in neat ink that I even considered accepting my new reality. I decided to go on as if I was sane, because what else could I do?

I'm not even sure why or how I got the letter. Neither me nor Harry belonged in this time. How had the school known to send it? But the letter had come, delivered to my lap while I was sitting at a park bench, that same evening I awoke.

I wrote back immediately, accepting. I requested a name change and explained that I had no money, but was already familiar with the magical world and did not need a guide. If allowed, I would keep Harry's first name and alter his last. Picking somewhat arbitrarily, I settled on Snow.

The owl returned the next day with a sack of galleons and a note. Hogwarts had provided me with funds and accepted my name change. I was shocked at the simplicity of it.

That first night I slept in the same alleyway. It had a warm wall and to my surprise, no one bothered me. When I woke up shivering, early in the morning, I made my way to The Hog's Head.

Diagon Alley was amazing. Magic was even more beautiful than I expected. And so I spent the whole day there, gawking at all of the things I had believed impossible in my muggle life.

My errands panned out in an eerily predictable manner. I had to ration my money, buying things second hand and I was given Harry's wand-holly and phoenix feather. Ollivander did not say anything about it being a brother wand to another one recently sold. Had Tom Riddle not purchased his wand yet?

I remembered enough of Harry Potter to know that Tom Riddle would start his first year in 1938. So far, everything I'd seen of the magical world, pointed to the books being accurate. I'd also read my fair share of fan fiction, which had reinforced my knowledge of the time and magic. I only hoped that I remembered canon facts as opposed to fanon interpretations.

The month of August passed pretty fast. When I wasn't caught in the surreal haze, I read the school books, some multiple times, having no difficulty grasping the material meant for eleven year old kids.

I risked casting magic. Hadn't Hermione in book one said on the train that she had already tried out several spells and that they had worked for her? How could she have done that if the trace was in effect before school started? And so I practiced magic. To my relief, I received no letters from the ministry and I was able to make my life significantly more comfortable. I slept hidden in an abandoned building, cocooned by the heat of a warming charm on my new cloak.

I had some sleepless nights in which I thought of everything I had lost. My life, identity, home, and everyone I cared about didn't exist yet. Was my grandma alive yet? When was she born again?

Being a boy was odd. I had never been the most feminine person, but I missed my body. Most of all, I missed being an adult. I wondered if I would be stuck here long enough to go through puberty again. And I did feel stuck. Stuck in a body I did not belong in and a time I did not want.

I missed my phone. It felt like missing a limb. I kept reaching into my pocket to check the time, but of course, my phone wasn't there. And so I learned the tempus charm.

It was this excitement of now having magic that carried me through those darker moments. I threw myself into learning everything I could.

I told myself that I had a purpose here. I was an adult woman, armed with knowledge of the future. I thought I could make the world a better place.

The simplest thing would be to kill Tom Riddle while he was young and horcrux free. I wasn't sure I could murder another human being, especially one so young, but if I could save countless lives by doing so, then I would find a way to make myself do it.

I would do it soon too. Who knew how being here worked? Was I stuck in the past for good or could I be pulled back at any moment? I searched for Wool's Orphanage a couple times, but without the internet, I could not find it. It was not on the paper map I checked. Was it even in London? I couldn't remember. I knew it wasn't in Little Hangleton. I wandered around the streets of London for a bit until I was stopped by a concerned parent asking if I was lost.

I gave up and vowed I'd do it when we got to Hogwarts. I would do it in the Room of Requirement, where I would request a spare wand and a place where his death would not be detected. I would use the severing charm instead of the killing curse in case I didn't have enough intent to kill. Then I would exit through a door elsewhere in the castle and Tom Riddle's body would disappear with the room.

On September 1st, I arrived at the train station an hour before it was set to depart. Very few people were there, so I wandered through the train, deciding to take it all in. It was nice, but not overtly magical.

About halfway through my exploration, I had a sudden headache come on, centered in the upper left part of my forehead. It soon dissipated as I kept walking.

It wasn't until I made my way through that car on my return trip and it happened again, that I put it together. My scar was hurting. As the pain peaked, I glanced into the nearby compartments.

In the one to my left, sat a young boy with pale skin and black hair. He was watching the platform outside the window and casually twirling a long, pale wand. Dark eyes met mine as he looked up.

Tom Riddle, the boy that would become the darkest wizard of all time was mere feet away and my scar was hurting. Several horrible things occured to me in rapid succession. Harry Potter was Voldemort's horcrux. The pain in my scar was clearly linked to his younger self's presence.

Something of my thoughts must have shown on my face, because he looked at me strangely. There was an awkward silence, and then I fled with a paltry excuse. These were the first words I ever said to Tom Riddle, and I can't even remember them.

I was a horcrux. The thought circled through my head accompanied by pangs of panic like a beating drum.

Horcrux. Horcrux. Horcrux.

I found an empty compartment as far from him as I could. I felt disgusted, violated even.

Some older Hufflepuffs filtered in. I made polite small talk before pulling out "Hogwarts a History" and pretending to read while they caught up with each other. They were kind and all seemed to genuinely care for each other.

A pang of homesickness rushed through me, but I spent the entire several hour trip oscillating between numbness and horror.

I had a piece of Voldemort inside of me. My existence made him immortal. In order for Tom Riddle to die, I would have to be dead. I didn't want to die.

But for those hours riding through the English and Scottish countrysides, I contemplated killing myself. I could take us both out. It wouldn't even be that hard. I could build a bomb and detonate it in Tom Riddle's presence. As long as I was closer to the bomb, I'd probably die first.

But… I wanted to live. Perhaps that made me selfish.

When we arrived, the first years were grouped together. I tried to be on the opposite side as Riddle, but I was still close enough for my scar to ache. He met my eyes once and I looked away, pretending to be shy.

My pain was relieved some as we boarded separate boats to ride to Hogwarts. The lake ride was, of course, spectacular, but I was too preoccupied to enjoy it.

It wasn't until all of us first years were lined up that I finally made my decision. I would not kill him.

Instead, I thought I would prevent Tom Riddle from becoming Voldemort and find a way to destroy the horcrux inside of me.

Oh, how naive I was.

A/N: I hope that by sharing my story, I can prevent disaster. It's hard for me to tell this so publicly, but the more people that know the truth, the greater our chances. I will have to hide specific details of my identity because my past self exists now and I can not risk her (my?) death. I can only hope she reads this and learns from my mistakes. I no longer care if her doing so erases my timeline and existence. I might even want that to happen.

Please believe me. Magic is real and if events follow the same path they did, the world will soon be a bleak place for muggles and all magical beings.