It all began and ended in a flash of green.

"Harriet Potter. Come to die."

The words echoed in her brain like the sound of a bugle, and her world was awash with green. Like her eyes. Like emeralds. Like the colour of Slytherin House. Like the house of the man who had decided she had to die. Gryffindor against Slytherin. The way it had always been, and the Gryffindors had always won thanks to the Headmaster and his eagerness to see the Gryffindors win.

Harriet wondered if that was why – why she had walked to her death. If there was some part of her which thought everything would be okay on the other end of that bolt of green. She wondered if that had been part of some manipulation to lead her towards her slaughter. "Raising her like a pig for slaughter!" Snape's words had been so very accurate, oddly enough, and they had stripped away the flesh, leaving nothing but the bare bones of the truth. The truth of what the Headmaster had done. How he had smiled that smile which made her think everything would be fine when in the end she had to die when all was said and done. Harriet wondered what it said for her to be agreeing with something Snape of all people had said.

Numbness was leaving her now, a familiar age old anger stirring beneath her skin along with the blistering burns of betrayal. That was what she felt. Only it was ten times what she had felt when Ron had abandoned her and Hermione in the forest.

"Harriet Potter must die."

She had done that, hadn't she?

"And Voldemort himself must be the one to do it."

Harriet closed her eyes, tiredness washing over her as she pondered on what it meant to be dead. She could, after all, still hear the sounds of birds singing. In fact, she could still feel the grass beneath her feet, and she could smell the burnt grass too. Her nose wrinkled and she stilled herself then, blearily opening her eyes, frowning when all she could see was sky above her. So not the forest she had been killed in. The trees in the Forbidden Forest were tall and blocked out the skies above. That stifling feeling which had surrounded her there was gone. So definitely not the Forbidden Forest, then. She blinked, confirming that no one was around before she sat up.

Clouds loomed in the sky above, heavy and grey, and Harriet knew it would rain sooner or later. There was a heaviness in the air, and something other which lingered there, just out of reach of her perception. Her nose twitched, and Harriet frowned as she took in the ground around her. There were burn markings all over the ground, and the longer she looked at them, the more they tickled at her memory. She had seen symbols like that someplace before. Though she couldn't remember for the life of her where.

She looked down at herself then and where she sat in the midst of those strange runic symbols, freezing as she noticed how she was dressed. She was wearing robes – the same ones she had changed into to enter the Forbidden Forest. Only they were many sizes too big. They quite literally swamped her, and Harriet could only wonder why her robes had suddenly grown, even as she lifted her hand to adjust her glasses—which weren't there. Blinking, Harriet patted at her face, looking around, noting her unblurred vision – her perfect vision – and—

Harriet blinked. Hard. She pulled her hand away from her face, wondering if it was a matter of perspective, but no. Her hand clenched and unclenched, and Harriet was utterly mystified by the tiny, child's limb attached to her wrist. "What in Merlin's name…?" she muttered, rolling back the sleeve of her wrist to marvel at the tiny arm, noting how some of her scars had vanished. But the scar from the grease from the kitchen fry pans at Number Four were still there, not to mention the unforgettable scar from the basilisk in second year. Beyond that though… Gone. Frowning, Harriet wracked her brains, wondering what exactly was going on as she sat there. "Bugger," she mumbled, fishing around in the gigantic pockets of the robes which outsized her ridiculously. Her fingers closed around a familiar length of wood and she pulled it out, readying to try some spells to figure out what exactly was going on.

Only she couldn't.

Tears bit at the corners of her eyes, and Harriet stared at what had become of her wand. Holly wood, once varnished and a dark brown in colour, was now blackened and cracked – phoenix feather not in sight. Only wood and ash left. Her hands shook, an inexplicable sense of loss flooding through her. She remembered first getting that wand from Ollivander's. She could still remember the first charm she had ever cast with that wand. It had been with her since the very beginning, since she had first started discovering magic and its joys. Now it was just blackened, dead wood. She cradled the wood almost reverently in her hands, a sob escaping her as she stared at the mess it had become. It had basically been her right hand, and now it was gone. Harriet didn't think it would ever come back.

Crack!

The sound had Harriet looking up, the state of her wand momentarily forgotten, eyes widening at each subsequent crack, a lump in her throat as she stared up at the witch who was pointing her wand right at her. Apparition. There were wizards and witches apparating to her location. Wherever she actually was. She swallowed then, highly aware that they were likely Voldemort's supporters, if the ministry crest they wore was any indicator.

"Runes?" someone whispered, and realisation struck Harriet like a lightning bolt. Runes. Ancient Runes. That was where she had seen those symbols before; in Hermione's Ancient Runes Textbook.

"You there, girl," the witch who was still pointing her wand determinedly spoke. "What happened here?" she demanded in a shrill voice, and Harriet flinched back. That ear-splitting screech was all too reminiscent of Aunt Petunia, and when Aunt Petunia used that tone, nothing good ever happened to her.

"Calm down Madame Umbridge," a man spoke up, and Harriet could only blink and stare at the man with umber brown skin and an alarming resemblance in the face to Kingsley Shacklebolt. But that couldn't be right, because he wasn't Kingsley, and he certainly couldn't be working under Voldemort. Besides, many of the Shacklebolts had died during Voldemort's reign, opposing him as they had alongside the Bones Family and the Prewetts. Kingsley himself had been one of a handful left – and Harriet distinctly mentioning that the rest of his family had relocated to another country in the aftermath. Which begged the question of what an unmistakable relation of Shacklebolt's was doing there.

Harriet blinked hard then, the name taking a few moments to sink in. Umbridge? She almost choked on her spit because that was not Dolores Umbridge in front of her. There was not a single part of her which could match up the pink toad to the woman before her. Except, perhaps, the tone of voice which unsettled her so.

"Hello there," Shacklebolt said kindly, "My name is Charles Shacklebolt, and I am an auror from the British Ministry of Magic. What might your name be?"

"Ha-Harriet," she said, cursing her stutter. Way to sound like stu-stuttering Professor Quirrell, part of her added snidely, and she could only shift where she sat, at least one wand still trained on her.

"Harriet…?" Charles repeated, trailing off, looking at her expectantly.

Harriet blinked, scrounging for another name and cursing how she had automatically answered with her proper name. She was totally going to be dragged back in front of Voldemort in a heartbeat, and then she might actually die properly that time around. Her heart rattled around in her chest like a cursed bludger, the name rolling from her lips without much thought. "Evans!" she declared, mentally smacking herself in the head moments later. Way to go, Harriet, she mused, give them the last name of your well-known mother and see how long it takes for them to connect the dots! "Harriet Evans," she repeated, knowing she wouldn't be able to change it without sounding as suspicious as Slytherin's Chamber of Secrets. She'd sound like she had something to hide, and that wouldn't be good. So she just had to pray nobody connected the dots to figure out she was a mystifyingly de-aged Harriet Potter.

"Harriet Evans, then," Charles Shacklebolt said, nodding, and Harriet tensed and waited for the curses to fly at her head. She didn't have a wand – she might as well be a sitting duck. Tears bit at the corners of her eyes, a traitorous sniffle escaping her. She had somehow survived, and though she had willingly walked to her death, she didn't particularly want to actually die. Another sniffle escaped her, and she blamed it on the younger body she seemed to have. Or was she crying from the insanity and confusion of it all? Harriet didn't know.

"Keep it down, girl!" Uncle Vernon's words echoed in her mind, and she fidgeted with her hands, curling them around her broken wand and did her best to hide and contain her tears. Like she always did. Tears had never bought her any sympathy and beyond fourth year… Well, there probably would have been some ridiculous headline in the Daily Prophet if she had. The 'Girl-Who-Cries' or something equally stupid designed to slander and mock her.

"How, might I ask, did you get yourself in this situation?" Charles Shacklebolt enquired, gesturing to the blackened ring of grass with the numerous runes burnt within, and Harriet wracked her brains, desperately trying to come up with an explanation. She could hardly say 'Voldemort shot a Killing Curse at me and I somehow survived. Again.' That wasn't an appropriate explanation. But then again, Harriet was well aware she couldn't lie worth a damn. A lifetime of living in a cupboard had done that to her – one hardly needed to regulate their facial expression when one's face was never seen in the first place.

So something which was the truth, and yet also not the actual truth. "Uh, well," she said, stumbling over her words, feeling like she was so very out of her depth there. She might as well have been a fish out of water. She had thought herself a Gryffindor, and by the end of it all, she could safely say those of her own house tended to charge in headfirst without a plan. Which was probably what Dumbledore had been banking on in the end, she mused darkly, shaking her head then, ridding herself of those thoughts. Dumbledore was dead, after all. Dead and buried as a man she had respected. Harriet was mystifyingly alive, and she needed to get her brain in gear if she wanted those wands to no longer be pointed in her direction and ready to curse, jinx, or otherwise impede her. "The Dark Lord came…" she mumbled, staring at the remainders of her holly and phoenix feather wand. "He… he… my father," she said, brain aching, working overtime, and Harriet could only internally wince at how quickly she was going to end up back in front of Voldemort once more. "My father told my mother to take me and run… and then…" she trailed off, gesturing to the burnt circle of grass, mentally swearing at herself – because really? Mentioning the 'Dark Lord' then and there…

Madame Umbridge lowered her wand then, and Harriet dared not let herself get her hopes up as she turned to Shacklebolt. "What the girl says," she murmured, looking between the burnt circle of runes and Harriet herself. "You don't think…"

"Evans isn't a magical name as far as I'm aware," Charles Shacklebolt said, and Harriet could only frown. "And from what the child is saying, I highly suspect her parents were running from Grindelwald, rather than working for him."

Grindelwald. Harriet tilted her head, mulling over the use of the infamous Dark Wizard who had terrorised the world during the muggle Second World War. Why would they be talking about Grindelwald? He was dead as far as she was aware, murdered by Voldemort in the bowels of his cell. She frowned, turning her attention back to the broken wand in her grasp. All that mattered was that they weren't turning her over the Voldemort. Movement caught her eye directly in front of her, but Harriet ignored it, busy focusing her attention on the wand in front of her rather than digging herself an even bigger hole by trying to add too many additional details to her story. Simpler was better in her mind.

"I don't think we have a security breach here," Shacklebolt was saying, "and that is besides the point – look."

Harriet stirred herself from her daze, blinking as she found an owl perched in front of her. A familiar owl. The kind belonging to Hogwarts. It held its leg out then, one taloned claw pointedly holding out a letter. A familiar letter. Though there was different writing in that emerald green ink.

Miss H. Evans,

A Burnt Field,

Chippenham,

Wiltshire.

A burst of laughter escaped her at the sight. A burnt field beat the cupboard under the stairs any day. The owl hooted at her, even as her chest continued to shake with laughter at the sight of that letter and that ink. So many things were green. So many things were there to remind her of how she had stood before the killing curse and ended up not dead as she should have rightly been.

Her fingers fumbled, hurrying to untie the letter from the owl's leg, the familiar blood red wax seal staring back up at her and she pried open the letter. Green eyes scanned the page, reading through the words, startling at how much information for her was in that letter. She was going into Hogwarts for her third year, or so the letter told her, and her electives were Ancient Runes and Care of Magical Creatures. She ran her fingers over the parchment, feeling terribly numb and disbelieving, and the feeling of blankness and distance only grew as she spied the date the letter had been made and sent out. The day it was right then.

It wasn't the 2nd of May, 1998 – the date she had walked to her death. Rather it was the 21st of July – the same day all letters (except the original acceptance letters which always arrived just before the eleventh birthday of the young witch or wizard) came. A courtesy for muggleborns and introductions to the Wizarding World – those could hardly be squeezed into one or two days, more so when it came to convincing the highly religious parents to send their children off to a school for witches and wizards. A courtesy she never received, for all she might as well have been a muggleborn. But what really got her were the four numbers following the 21st of July. Because that couldn't be right. It was 1998, not 1942. But at the same time, that would make the references to Grindelwald make that much more sense. He had still been terrorising Europe at that point, until a bit after the end of the muggle war – and Primary School had ensured that Harriet knew that much. But that also made so very little sense, because it being 1942 would mean some form of time travel—

"Time travel isn't simple, Harriet," she could vaguely remember Hermione saying in that no-nonsense tone of hers after quizzing her about the use of a time turner. The time when she had sneakily wondered if she could use it to go back, save her parents, and somehow live a normal, quiet life. "You can't just blithely go from one place to another without a plan."

Well, unless your name is Harriet Potter, the part of her mind which wasn't reeling in shock corrected snidely, and you happen to be fate's bitch, that is.

Though according to the letter – the magically written letter which was infallible thanks to Rowena Ravenclaw or so said Hermione in all her wisdom – her name was Harriet Evans and the year was 1942. She wondered if the aforementioned Potter's Luck still applied. A giggle escaped her, the way one could only laugh when their world had been turned on its head and shaken up like a snow globe for good measure, and the stares on her tiny form stung like pinpricks on the back of her neck. It probably did. Once fate's bitch, always fate's bitch.