Chapter Text
Harry gasped. She felt pain convulse through her body, every fiber ignited. She screamed as she curled into a ball, tears running down her face. She continued exhaling shallow breaths. Minutes passed, but it felt like hours. The pain subsided.
Wearily, Harry sat up, noting she was relatively unscathed. She had cuts and bruises over her limbs, but she was still intact. Harry groaned, and stood up. She felt her legs wobble, but regained her balance.
She barely remembered how she got here. Her most recent memories were of the Final Battle. She could feel the death, the misery. It had all ended only a day ago. The dead were not even buried..
Harry didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think about having to look into Colin’s lifeless eyes, or Molly’s sobs when she refused to let Fred’s body be taken away from the makeshift rows of dead in the Great Hall. Harry had to hold Ron tightly, his head resting on her shoulder.
She called out for Ron, then Hermione. No sign of them.
She remembered she had gone back to the Ministry to debrief Kingsley, and while he had been grateful for their efforts in their secret mission, the war was over and she could return to Hogwarts. It seems she was no longer needed anymore.
While Harry had always wished for a normal life, she realized that she didn’t know what normal was anymore.
She had left the office and was about to head for the Atrium when she decided to make a detour. She snuck into the Department of Mysteries, not exactly for old time’s sake, but she felt a pull, a compulsion.
Strangely, it seemed to be empty. She was surprised no one was there, she was sure she would have been caught by now. Then again, the Ministry has declared a holiday/temporary leave for restructuring, but she was sure that wouldn’t stop the Unspeakables.
She had wandered across the various rooms and stopped at the Time Room. They had left the shelves of empty Time Turners bare. Harry felt remorse for their actions in Fifth Year, but perhaps it was for the best they were destroyed. If only she had one now, she would have done things differently. Maybe she could have saved more lives.
She noticed something glinting from the corner of her eye. Behind her was a small hourglass. The sand was bright silver, and it shone with an eerie glow, whirring from the intensity of its own raw power.
Instinctively, Harry found herself drawn to the object. She reached out towards it, before stopping herself. Should she? Maybe she could try for a few hours.
Really she could go the day before, the day of the Battle. It wouldn’t be that big a jump. Slowly, she lifted the hourglass in her hands, examining the precision of the metal and glass. There were two rotating knobs on the top of each side with small tick marks chiseled into the metal. Unsure what those stood for, Harry left them alone. Who knows what could happen if she meddled too much with what looked like a prototype. Slowly, she turned the hourglass. Once, twice, three, then four times. Four hours might still be enough time.
Harry felt the pull. It was painful, tugging from the navel and almost turning her body inside out. She screamed, but heard no sound.
With her memory of the current situation fully restored, she tried to assess her bearings. She could tell she was in London, but it had changed. The cars were different, larger with rounded edges. People dressed differently too, dressed for women and suits and hats for men. It reminded Harry of those old movies Uncle Vernon used to watch on the Telly. She must have gone too far back.
Desperately, Harry rummaged through a bin and found a nearby newspaper.
173 Crushed While Trying to Enter Bethnal Green Tube Station
Harry’s hands shook as she flipped through the paper. She tried to ignore the date, even though that was exactly what she wanted to find out, but she didn’t want to know. After reading through Sports, Business, and Obituaries, she frowned.
March 3, 1943
It was the middle of World War II, and close to the end of the Grindelwald War. Harry was lucky to have Hermione full her in on the ins and outs that bit of history after the fiasco at the Lovegood house. She would have to get in contact with Dumbledore soon, perhaps he’d have some idea of what to do.
Harry paused, and thought about her situation. If Dumbledore was preoccupied with the War, he’d hardly have any time for her. Also, she wasn’t certain he would trust her, let alone believe her. He might just throw her in the Janus Thickney Ward, or worse, believe her and send her to the Department of Mysteries, never to be seen again.
Harry picked herself up, and threw away the newspaper. She assessed her situation. No money, no identity, and no contacts. To top it all off, her clothes were inappropriate for the time period. She glanced at her jeans and her jumper. It would have to do for now.
“Miss, are you alright?” A man asked. He was fairly young, but plainly dressed in pants, a shirt and suspenders. He looked like he might have worked at one of the nearby shops.
Harry jumped. She looked at the man suspiciously, wondering if he was going to attack. When he had not, she admitted she was a bit out of sorts.
“I’ve lost everything, and I’m at a bit of a loss about what to do next,” Harry confessed.
“Well, there’s a Red Cross nearby, I’m sure they can find you a change of clothes, and possibly some medical attention. Those cuts look nasty.”
The man supported her as she walked, despite Harry’s protests, and escorted her into the location where it looked like there were piles of clothes and shoes ready to be sorted.
“This is where I take my leave,” he nodded. “If you need anything, here’s my address. Not that I’ll be of any use.” He quickly scrawled something illegible on a scrap of paper he had in his pocket. Harry couldn’t read most of it, but it seemed to be in Clapham.
Harry gave a half-hearted smile. She responded, “Still, I’m grateful for your help Mr…”
“Tonks. But you can call me Tony,” the young man grinned.
Harry tried not to gasp. He did remind her a little of the former Auror in his ease and charm, but didn’t really look similar to her at all. Then again, who really knew what Tonks looked like. From her hazy memory, Harry thought he did look a little like her father (the son of the man standing in front of her), but the age difference made if difficult to place.
“Thank you Tony, I’ll keep that in mind.” Harry replied.
Once she received help, she changed into a worn, but clean dress and shoes. They fed her, and tended to her wounds. Seeing as she had nowhere to go, she volunteered as a nurse.
As the month went by, Harry wondered if she should contact Dumbledore. She felt that there was something vital that she should be remembering, but she wasn’t sure what.
It was around April she remembered. This was the year Tom Riddle would open the Chamber of Secrets.
She couldn’t go to Hogwarts. There were security measures to prevent strangers from entering. On her day off, Harry excused herself from work and headed to Diagon Alley.
It was strange, while Muggle London was tense, dotted with craters and filled with dread, Diagon Alley was bustling with life as if there wasn’t a war going on. It seemed they weren’t even under rationing. Harry made a mental note to pick up some butter, milk and other heavily rationed items before heading back, just to remember how they tasted.
She stopped by the Owlery, and with her last remaining sickles, sent a note to the Transfiguration professor
Tom Riddle is the Heir of Slytherin. The monster is a basilisk.
She did not bother signing it.
She hoped it would get to him on time and he could use the information to punish Riddle, even if it could be accused of being a poison pen.
Perhaps he wouldn’t, because Riddle was still considered a child, still possible for redemption. But there was already darkness in his heart, and a thirst for blood. Soon enough he would commit the murders in Little Hangleton and create his first Horcrux.
Unless…
She would have to stop him. But how?
Get the ring and the locket from the Gaunts. If she could rob Gringotts that would be easy enough. But what about the Riddles themselves? Tom was going to murder them out of anger and revenge anyway, and he was going to use the diary for his first Horcrux, so taking those items wouldn’t change anything.
Harry sighed. The only way to prevent Tom from killing the Riddles was to eliminate them first. But how would she be able to reach Little Hangleton undetected? She’d need an alibi.
As Harry walked back to her room at the boarding house, she passed a variety of posters, mostly propaganda for doing one’s bit. Harry usually ignored them, but one caught her eye.
Join the Womens’ Land Army!
The Riddles has a fairly large estate. She could pose as a Land Girl, stake out the area and devise some sort of plan when she got there.
But first, she was going to have to enlist.
Joining the Land Girls hadn’t been too difficult. While her recruitment officer asked why she didn’t want to remain in her nurse training, she didn’t push when Harry said she was tired of city life and get out to the country.
Initially, she was supposed to have been stationed in an estate near Birmingham, but a quick Imperius and she found the nearest posting to the Riddles. As Harry has suspected, their estate was an option, and she had the recruiter draft the required paperwork.
While on the train over, she folded over various plans in her head. Should she poison them? No, too obvious. Place the blame on someone else? She wouldn’t be able to live with that. Maybe follow Voldemort’s lead and a simple Killing Curse.
But could she, if the moment demanded it? She couldn’t even kill Bellatrix, one of the most vile people imaginable, how could she kill the Riddles? They were horrible people, but they were relatively innocent.
As the train rolled into the station, she realized she was going to have to formulate a plan later. As she and the other girls headed to the platform to meet their supervisor.
Harry’s duties were fairly simple. She was to help with the tractor, and milking the cows. It was hard work, waking up at dawn and spending the day outside. But while she was getting accustomed to farm life, she found her mind drifting.
She wondered if she would have time to sneak out and spy on the Riddles. She didn’t have much time, and she needed to be able to scope out the house.
Harry was sitting with the other girls for tea, a simple affair, but made the days bearable. While Harry tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, it was difficult not to get caught up in the chatter of her colleagues.
“Well I heard Margie went up to the Big House, the other day,” one of the girls, Charlotte, gossiped.
“Charlotte, you promised!” Margie replied indignantly.
Harry sipped her tea from her chipped enamel mug.
“How’d you get in?” She asked. “Must’ve been difficult.”
Margie blushed. “Well, no, it wasn’t.”
The other girls laughed.
“I forget you’re new, Harriet. You see, the head of the estate sometimes has his eye out for one of us, he’s not picky. He invites us over to the house, we have a few drinks, and see where it goes. It doesn’t last very long, but it’s nice to live it up a little.” Charlotte continued
“Honestly, it’s just nice sleeping in a proper bed,” added Sophie, another girl in their group.
“But he’s so old,” Harry gasped.
The other girls looked uneasy.
“Well,” Margie interrupted, “He’s not that old, and I’d say he’s still fairly handsome.”
“And he is very charming,” agreed Charlotte. “When it was over he even sent some money to my mam, really appreciated his kindness.”
Harry thought about it. While it was unorthodox, and really went against everything she stood for, this was her in. She was going to have to seduce Tom Riddle.