WARNING: This Fanfiction contains cannon and cannon-typical abuse, and Dursley-typical xenophobia. Swearing may also appear.

ALSO: Wholesome Peter Pettigrew content. The end-game romances will be very slow-burn. Wolfstar [Sirius/Remus], James/Lily/Severus [polyamorous ship], OC/Regulus.

PART 1 - THE FIRST YEAR

Chapter One - Spinner's End

Thud. Pain splinters through the back of Carrie's head. Ouch.

Her eyes shoot open. Daylight seeps through the thin black curtains, illuminating the deep-blue walls. Above her bed, a vintage Doctor Who poster is stuck to the wall. Rain drizzles outside. An alarm clock which sits on the bookshelf ticks nine-sixteen. The chipped laminate floor is cold under her bare feet. She shivers as a draft sneaks in.

It's her room...but it isn't. The dimensions, the colour scheme, that's all hers. But the poster, the books, the alarm clock, they aren't hers. Too vintage. Retro, even. A paper catches her eye, laying on the bed - a letter. She picks it up.

Carrie,

I have moved you and your family back to the summer of nineteen-seventy-one, on Spinner's End. I had to send you there, as my power is only so strong. You're here to restore the timeline; to save the life of a misguided, to save the life of an innocent. As far as everyone other than you are concerned, you've always been in this place and time. Choose your battles wisely.

Sincerely, the Fang Kid.

Her eyes pour over the letter. Thick, like cardstock, but softer than silk. Written in a flowing cursive, ice-blue ink. She tucks it behind some books on the shelf, her hands shaking.

The throbbing in her head grows, and so she walks downstairs to grab a bowl of hot AB+. With the bowl, Carrie sits next to her dad on the orange sofa in the living room. The two resemble each other. He's quite small, five ft three, with soft black hair and a porcelain complexion. His sharp-featured face glows with natural red eyes that he hides behind hazel contacts. Everyone sees him as twenty years old, so as far as the humans are concerned, he's her older brother. She pushes her glasses back up her nose.

"Hello, Dad."

"Afternoon, Carrie. I heard a thud - what happened?"

"I just fell off the bed - hit my head on the floor," she says. "I'm fine! Just have a headache."

"It's your bedtime, anyway. You might just need rest."

"Probably. Night."

"Night."

The next morning, Carrie wakes up to the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who poster. Scrambling out of bed, she rushes to the shelf and pulls back the books. The letter sits folded up behind Frankenstein.

She paces her room, gnawing at her bottom lip. All of her family are here, they've always been here. There were no friends back in the 21st century for her to miss.

Save the life of a misguided. Who could that be? Severus Snape? Peter Pettigrew? The entire Slytherin house? The Seventies were so dark for the Wizarding World, it could be anyone.

And save the life of an innocent? Well that could be any Marauder bar Peter, or the Longbottoms, or - again, practically anyone. Could be a bloody cat for all she knows.

But one thing is certain - she's stuck here. Sighing, Carrie pulls The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie off the shelf - a bookmark sticks out of it, so she must be reading it in this timeline - and walks downstairs to read it on the sofa.

Her dad walks in from the kitchen with two bowls of porridge (the milk replaced by A-), one of which he hands to her. Carrie gets up to turn on the TV. A re-run of Patrick Troughton's Doctor Who plays on the screen.

"You're cooped up in here all the time," her dad says. "You need fresh air. Once you've finished breakfast, I want you to get dressed and go to the park."

Carrie groans and glances out of the window. It had been raining heavily overnight, and it moistens the summer heat into mugginess. She wrinkles her nose. "Fine. But I'm taking my book."

—

The sun forces her to squint for her to see anything. A tall, wide oak tree casts a shadow that stretches towards her. She sits under it, her corset forcing her to sit upright, when a boy roughly her age walks over.

The boy is tall, pale, with pointed features and straight, shiny black hair that reaches his shoulders. His worn button-up sits too big on his shoulders, matching his mud-stained trousers. It might just be his height, or the oversized clothes, but he appears thin and lanky. Carrie puts the bookmark on the page she's reading and closes the book.

"Who are you?" he asks, furrowing his brow.

"Carrie Enache, I live down the street." she holds her hand out to shake, which he gingerly takes.

"You?"

"Severus Snape."

A screech echoes from behind the tree. The two turn to find that two girls, a blonde and a red-head are playing near a swing set. The blonde appears to be older, with a sour face scrunched up in panic. The other must be younger, the same age as Severus and Carrie, with sharp emerald eyes. Both wear shin-length floral dresses, making Carrie feel boy-ish in her blue denim jeans and scarlet blouse.

"Stop it!" the blonde shrieks.

"It's not hurting you," says the other girl. The seat behind her swings with the momentum of someone jumping off abruptly rather than waiting until it had slowed on its own.

"How do you do it?"

Carrie and Severus walk up to them from behind the tree.

"It's obvious, isn't it?" says Severus. The older girl, startled, dashes over to the swing but the other stays put.

Feigning ignorance, Carrie turns to Severus questioningly.

"Well, you're...you're a witch."

The girl glares at him. "That's not nice."

"I doubt he meant like the Wicked Witch of the West," Carrie jokes. "I'm Carrie. Carrie Enache."

"Lily Evans," the girl answers.

"You've got a normal name for foreigners," says the blonde. Carrie tenses.

"What d'you mean?"

"And your accent's good as well. You're from Europe, aren't you?"

"We're still in Europe," Carrie snaps. "And I've lived here just as long as you have."

"You're from the Russian family down the road."

"Romanian. Didn't the Romans conquer England centuries ago? Would that make you Italian or English? The Normans were French, does that make you French?"

"...Shut up."

"That's my sister, Petunia."

"Severus Snape," Severus answers. "And you are a witch, but there's nothing wrong with that. My mum's one. I'm a Wizard."

Petunia gives an icy laugh. "Wizard! Why've you been spying on us?"

Severus folds his arms and hunches his shoulders. "Haven't been spying."

"Wouldn't need to," Carrie cuts in. "Could hear you a mile off."

"Come on Lily, we're leaving," says Petunia, kissing her own teeth and glaring at Carrie.

"You go back, I'm staying out a bit longer."

Petunia turns and runs in the direction of where she and her sister must've come from.

"Where to now?" Lily asks.

"The river's not far from here," Severus says. "We could go up there."

The two girls nod and he leads them to the river, at the end of Spinner's End. The water rushes past, the only noise in the otherwise dead street. Carrie's house, a redbrick semi, sits with its other half; mirrored redbrick, but the paint on the frame of the windows is peeling, and tiles have fallen off the roof.

"That's my house," Carrie says, pointing to the first half of the semi.

"And that's mine," adds Severus. He points to the second half.

The three sit on the edge next to the river. Lily reaches into the water and splashes Carrie. Cold water hits her, sharp against the summer heat. She splashes her back. Shrieks of laughter fill the air, care and caution lost.

Carrie reaches in too far. She slips. The water's deeper than she thought. Colder. The current's pulling her. Severus and Lily are calling. Their voices muffled. A third voice joins them - Dad.

A hand pulls her out. She looks up to find her dad, who wraps his coat around her. He gives all three of them a stern glare.

"I don't want you three playing here. It's too dangerous, it could've been a lot worse if I wasn't there."

"Yes, Dad," Carrie mumbles, her head numb.

"Yes, Sir," Lily and Severus answer.

A woman calls Severus' name and he heads into his house.

Carrie curls up, shivering. Her dad picks her up and carries her inside, laying her on the couch while he makes a hot bowl of blood. She looks at her clothes - they should be itchy and wet, but they're completely dry.

—

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I hope you're enjoying this so far. It means a lot to me when people enjoy what I write. I enjoy trying to fill the Marauders content void.

Also, I'm boycotting JK Rowling. She's ruining her name and her brand by excluding a large number of her audience with her Twitter account, hiding under the mask of being 'feminist'. She's not being feminist, she's being transphobic. She has created a fandom built around the concept of acceptance, an inevitably LGBTQ+-welcoming concept, and what she's saying contradicts that. I refuse to buy any official merchandise, as she benefits the most from it.

That being said, I fully support fanfiction authors, as they're writing something that they're passionate about, filled with creativity, and Rowling doesn't benefit financially from it.