Ouch. That was my first thought as pain filled my head. My second thought was that I was cold, and that I was wet. Cracking my eyes open, I found myself lying face down on the cold, uncomfortable pavement. Why? Then, it all came flooding back to me: Grace abandoning me, struggling to get a taxi, some idiot naming their pub after the one in Harry Potter, and then finding that necklace with the hourglass on the end. After that it was all a bit blurry. I remembered feeling as though everywhere was spinning, to the point where I was so dizzy I had lost my balance. I suppose I must have hit my head on the pavement, thus knocking myself out. Pushing myself up, I noticed that it was still raining, and that I was absolutely soaked. I was still on Charing Cross Road, but I noticed that certain things were different. The bus stop I had been sitting in was no longer there, and the cafe that had been across the road was a dressmakers' instead. I frowned, and turned to look at the pub that I had been lying in front of. The Leaky Cauldron. It certainly didn't look as worn as it had done before I'd been knocked unconscious; in fact, the sign hanging above the door looked relatively new. The lights inside were off, and I supposed that was because of how late it was. It was then that I heard voices, muffled ones, which suddenly became louder as two people emerged from an alleyway next to the pub.

"She's just down here, in front of that old shop, Sir. Found her unconscious on the floor," an old woman, with greying hair in a long floral dress was saying to a man in a blue uniform. Policeman, I realised, wondering if the police in London wore old dress, like the guards at Buckingham Palace with the fluffy hats did. That would explain his old fashioned uniform. They both came towards me, and the old woman suddenly cried out and rushed to kneel next to me on the pavement.

"Oh, deary, you're awake! How are you feeling? Don't you worry; this nice policeman is going to look after you! Oh, look at your head, it's bleeding something terrible!" she rushed out, hands fluttering over me but not touching me, as though unsure of how to help me. I just sat there, arms propping myself up, feeling the cold of the pavement and the wetness of the raindrops.

"It's not that bad, Agnes," the policeman told the woman in a gruff voice. He was older, too, in his early fifties by the looks of it, with a worn face and greying hair sticking out from beneath his hat.

"You get yourself off home, before there's a damn air raid and you're caught in it," he told the old woman, Agnes. She huffed to herself, but got up and began to leave all the same. I got the feeling he knew her, as though she was one of those busybodies who was always getting into peoples' business, or one of those old people who took it upon themselves to start their very own Neighbourhood Watch and was always reporting trivial things to the police.

"Goodbye dear!" she said cheerily to me, but I didn't notice, I was too busy think over what the officer had said. Air raid? What? I was brought back to my senses by the policeman clearing his throat. I looked up, and saw him looking over me, not in a leering way, but a suspicious way. His eyes paused over my exposed belly button (the waistband of my skirt had pulled down slightly), and thus the piercing there, and my skirt, which fell messily around my upper thighs. Then, he took in my bruised and bloodied knees, sore from their impact with the pavement. He raised his eyebrows.

"Care to tell me what a young girl like you is doing out in the middle of London at this time of night, there is a war going on, you know? And I can bet my right arm your mother didn't let you go out like that? What on earth are you wearing? You're worse than those women down in Whitechapel," he shook his head condescendingly.

"What do you mean there's a war going on?" I asked, ignoring the rest of his sentence. First he talks about air raids, and now a war? Was he one of those crazy war veterans? He looked a little too young.

"Ah, we have ourselves a northerner, from up Durham way by the sounds of it. Well, I'm pretty sure they still know who Hitler is up there, so you can stop pulling my leg. Now, get up, I'm taking you home and having a stern chat with your mother. Letting a young girl your age out dressed like that, at this time, barely more than sixteen by the looks of it, too..." he carried on mumbling to himself, helping to pull me to my feet. Hitler?

"Wait, Hitler? Hitler's dead!" I stopped the policeman dead in his tracks. He just stared at me.

"Unless he died in the past hour, I can assure you he is very much alive. Listened to the wireless before I left for patrol," he sniffed, his eyes narrowing curiously at me.

"No! He's dead! Hitler died in 1945!" I protested, getting quite annoyed at this crazy man; was he even a police officer?

"Look, sweetheart, Hitler is very much alive, get your facts right before you go shouting that and getting everyone's hopes up!" he was almost raising his voice.

"I have got my facts right!" I spat at him, getting seriously frustrated. "I'm doing a bloody History degree; I think I know when Hitler died. 1945, when the war ended!" Now, the police officer really stopped and looked at me, his eyes narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

"Love, it is 1942," he said quietly, "and I can assure you that the war is very much going on and Hitler is indeed alive." I blinked away the tears. He was being serious. I spun on my heel and looked around me and up and down the street as far as I could see. There were no high street shops on the street, no Boots, or Superdrug, or even a New Look or Costa Coffee. The bus stop was gone, as were the bus lane markings on the road. Parked a few yards up were a few cars, but not cars I was used to seeing; the kind I expected to see in films about the 1940s, or in my history books. Then there was his uniform, the kind you would expect a policeman in the 1940s to wear. I saw one of the old fashioned, black bins a few metres away and hurried towards it, grabbing the crumpled up newspaper from the top of it. Despite its ink being smudged from the rain, which was still pattering down, it clearly read 6th August 1942, in fancy lettering across the top.

"That's a few days old, that, it's the 10th today," the policeman informed me, watching me carefully. He was looking at me as though I should be committed to a mental asylum, and for once I was inclined to agree with him, but I knew from my studies what the asylums were like in the old days, and I did not want to end up in Bethlehem Asylum, or Bedlam, as it was sometimes known. Assuming that I was in the 1940s, and with the way I was being looked at, I was inclined to think that, I decided to at least go along with the policeman.

"I must have hit my head quite hard," I faked putting a hand to my forehead and swooning, "I remember now, I'm so sorry for being so troublesome, of course it's 1942, just ignore what I said, Officer." It worked. The officer shook his head and smiled at me.

"Don't worry, now, let's get you home, maybe your mother should get a doctor to see you tomorrow, where do you live?" I froze. I didn't have anywhere to go, if this was, in fact, 1942 – which I was slowly beginning to panic that it was.

"I...I don't have anywhere to go," I managed to get out through my panicked breathing. What the hell was I going to do? That was when the officer really looked at me. My bruised and grazed knees, short skirt, bloody head wound on my forehead, and my very exposed chest, and my face, wet with blood and now tears. He shifted uncomfortably.

"I'm not going to ask what happened to you," he began, "but just know that there are a lot of young girls in your situation. You're too young to provide for yourself, I don't care if you have no parents, there are procedures in place to help you." At my completely confused look, he sighed.

"I know of an orphanage that will take you in, at least until the proper paperwork has been sorted. I shall take you there tonight. I know Mrs Cole well, in fact, she will sort you right out." If that was meant to be comforting, it was not. And I was nineteen, too old to go to an orphanage.

"I...I'm too old," I stuttered, I could feel myself forcing the panic down, and as for now it was working.

"You can't be. You only look fifteen, sixteen at the most. Come on, let's go, you're not getting out of this. You may not have had the best start to life, but you'll get sorted, don't you worry."

I went along with the lie, telling him that I was fifteen. It would mean I got somewhere to stay for the night, at least. I reached down for my clutch bag, noticing for the first time since I had awoken the little hourglass necklace. I picked it up and slipped it over my neck, tucking it into my top, and grudgingly followed the policeman. Everything was so surreal, and I just wanted a warm bed to go to sleep in so that I could wake up and find that it had all been a dream, or a drunken hallucination.

A/N So, another chapter done. I'm going to be updating quite frequently, just until I get into the main storyline, so that it gets to the interesting stuff. Next chapter will introduce Tom Riddle! Let's see how he reacts to a 21st century girl, and will Jess realise that not only is she in 1942, but who Tom Riddle actually is?

Please Review! Thanks