AN:

This is a story for round 2 of QLFC (once again with an OC, and once again with young Voldy(is this gonna be my thing now?)). The theme is Stephen King.

Chaser 3 prompt: Themes in 11/22/63

Optional prompts: A small town, descending into madness, trying to change the future (low hanging fruit, I know)

Normal text - preset

Italics - past

This story contains mentions of torture and violence against children.

Mary panted as she collapsed to her knees. The cobbled path was covered with a layer of fresh snow, but her vertigo was too strong to focus on that. She felt like vomiting up the last two days of meals, but managed to hold it in as she took deep breaths and surveyed her surroundings.

Hogsmeade was not much different than the one she knew. Some buildings appeared less worn, and she saw a shop she knew was run down full of customers. Good. That means it worked. Probably.

Her gaze fell on the device lying beneath her. The time turner was cracked and the parts had broken off, the stress of the travel too much for the device. That was disappointing, but she had long since accepted the possibility of this being a one way trip.

People passed her and they slowly left the cemetery, most offering a few kind words or a supportive hand on the back. She barely perceived them. Her focus was on two gravestones in front of her. Gravestones that should not be there. Gravestones that she made happen, with her ideals and her restless crusade.

The last words she exchanged with Richard was an argument. Those had been common lately. Him mad about her risking her life, her trying to explain the need to act, him exhausted as he brought up Lucy mostly alone while she worked, her promising they were so close, so close to something good.

Last words she exchanged with Lucy were a bedtime story. She played the "big eyes and clutching a stuffed dragon card", which Mary found impossible to deny. After the story Lucy had asked when she would be back from her trip. She promised soon, and that then she would take her on a trip to see all the old castles and forts Lucy always fantasized about.

She got herself a room in a tavern and got to work on drying and warming herself. She didn't know how much time she had before students from Hogwarts began to arrive, so she needed to be prepared. She made herself a strong cup of coffee and sat herself by the window, eyes on the street approaching the village.

The warmth of the fire and the slow snowfall made her doze off, but she was thankfully startled awake by some loud voices outside. Students have started arriving and some of the younger ones were having a snowball fight. She collected herself and intensely studied all students. She knew what he would look like, and she could not miss her chance.

There. Him. So young. So much before his prime. She would have a chance, she knew she would. She downed her coffee and headed outside quickly, lest she lose sight of Tom Riddle.

They were gone. They were gone and they were not coming back. It was all Mary could think as she slammed her door in her father's face. He had come earlier to try and talk to her after she hadn't come out of the apartment in a week and had started on some spiel about acceptance and grief and she did not care what. They were gone. It was her fault. That's a fact.

She threw herself on the sofa and took another swing of gin. Second bottle in a week. She knew it wasn't smart, but she did not feel smart right now. The rest of the room was just as messy. Dirty surfaces from when she managed to cook some food, dishes in the sink from when she didn't even have the strength for a simple cleaning magic, clothes thrown about. She was slipping.

Colleagues have called, family came to visit, she rejected them all. What she needed, they could not give. She had to have them back. She had to fix things.

Somewhere from inside her half-drunk mind, she recalled where she was when she found out. The ministry asked her to improve time turners if she could, as there arose a need once to go back past five hours. She was working alone when a message went through calling her to her office. She had to leave her work unfinish…

Wait. That was it.

How was he so skilled, even as a teenager. Mary was a trained Auror, and yet Riddle managed to beat her and currently had her leaning on an alley wall.

Isolating him proved to be easier than she thought. He was mostly alone, so all she had to do was wait for a while until he went into the wrong street. She jumped him with a hex, and yet he still managed to dodge and, after a brief and humiliating brawl, managed to rid her of her wand and grace her with nasty burns on her hand.

"So, who are you exactly and what do you want with me? Because I saw you following me. Not very sneaky, are you?"

His face was a mixture of smugness and curiosity, but his voice betrayed a hint of anger. Clearly this was the first time something like this happened to him.

She saw no need to lie.

"I came…..to kill you" she managed through gritted teeth.

"And why would you want to kill an innocent student?"

She almost laughed. Him, innocent? It made her blood boil.

She spat blood in his direction and struggled to stand.

"Because you are a piece of shit who deserves much worse. But I chose the easy option."

He smirked.

"Not as easy as you thought then?"

He looked around as if searching for something.

"Well, if you won't tell me directly, I guess I will have to just drag it out of you."

And that was the last thing she heard before he knocked her out with magic.

Her fingers hurt like hell and they were starting to bleed, but she kept turning the dial.

She managed to modify the time turner slightly, so it would allow, theoretically, to travel as far back as one wants. And hopefully return. If it works that is. It still had to manually wound up though. So there she sat at her desk, time turner affixed to it, one hand turning the dial over and over again, while another waved the wand as her sandwich made itself next to her. Her door was barred and windows closed tight, as she knew nobody could see this and she also took precaution and destroyed her fireplace. No one would interrupt her now.

Hours and hours went by as they worked on it. She didn't even register how many. All she did was turn and turn that dial and slowly counted the turns in her head.

A third of the way there.

Halfway there.

Only a fourth left.

Her clothes were stained with dirt and sweat, her hair a disheveled mess, her fingers calloused.

And yet she turned. Because she knew what she must do. She would go back, find him, and kill him before he ever hurt her family, before he hurts anyone

Slowly she turned the dial one last time, and then the world spun around her.

As an Auror, Mary had been trained to resist curses and spells that would mess with her mind. But when she went through her training she wasn't underslept, starving, tired and wounded.

Riddle kept pushing and pushing, probing into her psyche with Legillimency and then torturing her when she resisted. She resisted as best she could, but then he managed to catch a glimpse of her family. And he smiled. He used that image to show her images of her daughter. Images of her daughter dead, wounded and…so much worse.

Still she resisted. She could feel blood draining from her. Could feel Cruciatus sapping more and more of her strength every time he used it. She would not last, and they both knew it.

He did manage to extract some information, sadly.

"So you've come from the future? Fascinating. Well from what you've told me I seem to be doing quite well then. No wonder you hate me so much."

He probed her mind again. She saw stars. She bit her tongue till it bled to keep her focus here and now. She could not let him have the knowledge of the future.

And like that, with one final combination of Crucio and Legilimens, she broke. Her mind could not take the strain and it shattered, and her body with it. She could feel darkness washing over her, that cold endless darkness, and in it she saw her family as they once were. Richard, playing with Lucy by the fire as she watched. He turned and smiled, then called her over to join them. Her daughter spread her arms wide and demanded a hug. Yes. Here she comes.

Tom looked at the dead body in front of him. A shame. She was certainly tough, not letting him in for a second. But, unluckily for her, he did manage to see something. As her life left her, her mind opened up for a brief instant and he caught a flash. A single word that intrigued him greatly.

A prophecy.