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The first time she woke up everything was bright and fuzy and she was so tired she let the darkness claim her again. She would deal with what happened when she had a clearer had.
The second time she gasped as her eyes flew open, like she just came back from the dead and for a moment she thought she died but then her pounding headache made itself known and she groaned.
Rubbing her temples she stared at a fixed point above her head and concentrated on pushing the pain away until it was nothing more than a distant throb and she was finally able to look around.
She was in the same room as she went to sleep but there was something different. It felt newer and she soon spotted a closet that wasn't there last night. Her trunk was at the foot of the bed and she quickly grabbed her wand from its holster and got out bed, making sure to silence her footsteps. The Potter house is brand new and unfamiliar around her. A few confusing moments later she finally realised what happened.
She was Andrea Potter, travelling back in time to 1944, really shouldn't surprise her so.
A few months later, out of boredom she would say, she was enrolled for her seventh year at Hogwarts. Andrea was a rather good actress when it came to play the poor orphaned child whose parents were killed by Grindelwald(not entirely a lie) a few days after her seventeen birthday. Headmaster Dippet was convinced and addmited her, though she felt his dislike for her aparent blood status. Hate of muggles and muggleborns was even worse here than in her time. Though she supposed it wasn't her time anymore.
In retrospect she really should have thought this more through, she thinks, sighing as she waits with the first years to be sorted. Her eyes wonder through the hall and she spots him. Tom Riddle. Anger flares in her and soon diminishes. It's not Voldemort. Not yet, a voice whispers from within and even though the voice is right, her hand still inches towards her wand. Andrea knows she has to look away when his eyes meet hers, but she can't, and it's not red she sees, but blue, as blue as the sea and there is something behind them that she can't quite distinguish. She breaks out of her thoughts when her name is called. It seems rather fitting that the name she choose would honor her dead mother, considering she is about to go to school with her-would-be murderer. She shivers and as soon as the hat is placed upon her head it bellows the house that haunted her entire life. Slytherin.
Slytherins, she observed, are more united than the other houses. Even though her status is questionable, when they leave the safety of the common room, nobody says anything and to an extent they have her back. But as soon as that wall slides closed it's masks off. Andrea takes it all in stride. She doesn't care for the insults about her, she heard worse. They can't seem to curse her and that makes them angry, but she was the daughter of a Marauder and she will be dammed if she lost to these uppity purebloods. She pranks them from time to time and they look suspiciously around them but they don't suspect her. Riddle, for all his talk as Voldemort, never bothers her and only speaks to her when necessary, in soft tones, nothing like his future counterpart.
It takes everything in her power not to curse him to hell and back the first time he asked her something.
The first month passes uneventfully and she spends most of her time reading, studying, and trying to figure out if she is stuck here and if so can she change everything?
Unfortunately Slughorn finds her as brilliant as the last time and she and Riddle are partnered for a project. She sighs and ignoring the itch to kill him they throw ideas back and forth and she finds herself stunned at how brilliant he was before madness overtook him.
She is reading in a corner of the common room, waiting for Riddle, when Abraxas Malfoy(stupidness is a trait in the Malfoy line she thinks) decides to have some fun with her and insult her. She ignores him like one would ignore an annoying fly and Andrea knows that he would snap soon. After all Malfoys don't like being ignored. She is prepared for spells, magic, anything but his next words shock her through the core. "Your stupid mudblood mother couldn't even pick up a pen it's a wonder she had you." Her wand is in her hand before she even registers what she is doing and she's firing spells like she fired in The Last Battle, trying to get through Death Eaters. Malfoy doesn't even have the chance to put up a shield before a Conjunctivis Curse, a Bat-Bogey Hex and a Levicorpus hit him at the same time. He is upside down and screaming from the pain of the Bogey Hex as bats fly out of his nose and she silences him with a flick of the wand. Her magic is angry, just burning at the surface and she hasn't felt this alive in months. She feels the entire Slytherin house watching her, silent, observing as she gets in his face and nearly hisses(she's very careful not to slip to Parseltongue),"Nobody insults my mother you utter useless bag of meat and gets away with it." Her words are whispered but she knows everyone heard. Andrea turns around and cancels the Bogey Hex but refuses to let him down. She watches him,as she gathers her things, hanging there, still silenced and some try to get him down but nobody tells her to do something about it. She pushes past a curious Riddle as she exits the common room and she doesn't care. Andrea goes outside, steals a school broom and for the first time in over a year she flies again.
It took Riddle two hours to get Malfoy down and another one to cancel the Conjunctivis Curse.
Nobody dares insult her mother now.
Malfoy still can't see as good as he had.
By the time November rolled around everybody in the Slytherin house knew not to mess with her mother. Insults were thrown casually around(Mudblood whore was a favorite of theirs) but it grew boring after a while. Purebloods weren't known for their inspiration in insults. Malfoy didn't speak to her since the incident(what a shame, she thinks smirking) but she can feel his eyes burning into her back.
The first snow just settled when it happened. Andrea was walking back from the library one night, just before curfew, when she felt it. A chill swept her and as soon as she turned around she was faced with the red of a Stunner and blonde hair. I am going to kill him, is her last conscious thought.
When she wakes up she can barely see and her arms hurt. Her eyes adjust eventually and she realizes she's in a broom closet, her arms stuck above her head and Malfoy leaning casually against the wall, eyeing her hungrily. She cracks her neck loudly and steels herself."For a mudblood whore you are quite the eye catcher.", he growls, crossing the small space to grip her chin in his hold. Andrea looks into his cold grey eyes, defiant, and spits in his face, because goddammit she survived Death Eaters and Voldemort at the height of his power and she's not about to be cowed by a Malfoy.
He looks shocked for a second then it disappears and rage seeps in. She feels the fist, rather than see it, and she definitely tastes the blood in her mouth. She looks up at him and grins,"Is that all you got?" and she starts laughing. He doesn't silence her, but his slap does. Her head snaps to the left and she knows her lip is split. Then, without warning, he starts fondling her, murmuring in her ear,"I'm going to have so much fun with you tonight", over and over again. She licks her lips and tries to roll her shoulders. Andrea gasps when his cold hands raise her skirt and shoves it down her knickers, proding. For a moment she does nothing. Seconds pass and her anger raises and she smiles, a smile that her friend Ron described as "bloody terrifying". Then her magic is freed and flows freely around her. Malfoy is thrown from the closet, but his back doesn't touch the door(thrown open before her magic reacted to her will) and instead he clashes against the stone wall, hard and falls down with a satisfying thud. Riddle and Pollux Black stand there watching Malfoy in disgust. She stands, claims her wand from the floor and exits the closet, striding like she was queen marching to her throne. She knows her hair has seen better days and her robes are in disarray but she doesn't care as she advances on Malfoy, murder in her eyes.
Pollux thinks she looks like a lioness ready to pounch on her prey.
Tom doesn't think. He just feels her magic, her power, and it feels intoxicating.
Andrea silences Malfoy and then she sees him mouthing his screams as the blood boiling curse races through his veins. She wanted to make him suffer just a bit longer but a firm hand stops her."Don't", he says and she tilts her head slightly hearing behind that simple word, not here, not now, and she sighs."Fine", she gritts out through bloodied teeth and waves her wand in a sweeping motion that stuffed Malfoy in the closet. The door is repaired, but before she closes it, she Obliviates Malfoy. All he would remember would be that he fell asleep in a broom closet after a good snog with Lucida Nott. But she would remember, she would never forget and he will pay.
When they enter the common room later that night Andrea knows what it looks like, though she doesn't care and ignores the rest of the Slytherins who stare at her, as she licks her lips and strodes into one of the shared bathrooms intent on fixing her appearence. She can't fill it in her to be surprised when Riddle follows her. They sit in silence as she checks herself over. There is a neat bruise already forming on her cheek and she rolls her eyes, her bottom lip is split and she can feel a knocked loose tooth. Sighing she cleans her mouth but when she tries to heal her lip, her hand is shaking and she can't. She knows what's coming and she refuses to break down in front of Riddle, but he says nothing as he gently guides her to a chair and fixes her lip and tooth. He reaches into his robes and she tenses automatically but he ignores her as he pulls a bottle potion from his pocket. He crouches down to her level and opens the bottle. A sour smell fills the space and he takes hold of her chin, tilting her head, and pouring some of the potion on her cheek. It's hot, nearly painfully so but she ignores it as she stares into those blue eyes. In the future she would have spat in those eyes but now, now she doesn't know.
She kisses him then. Stops thinking for a second and kisses him. She know he's shocked but then he returns the kiss.
He tastes like apples, cinammon and death. Intoxicating.
She tastes like fresh mint, chocolate and blood.
Just as suddenly he pulls back, but Andrea doesn't want to open her eyes. Not yet. When she hears the door slam closed that's when she blinks and looks around. Slowly she gets undressed and steps into the hot shower trying to figure out what happened to her.
Her lips still tingle hours later when she stares at the ceiling trying, and failing, to fall asleep.
She dreams of blue eyes turning red.
By tomorrow morning the whole house knows what happened. They part before her like the Red Sea.
At breakfast she caches a glimpse of blue eyes and she runs. Nobody sees her for hours.
She's watching the sun set when he appears next to her. They sit in silence for a moment but then strong arms turn her around and he crashes their lips together. Andrea melts in his embrace and forgets that he's supposed to be the enemy, that she killed him in the future, she forgets the monster he became.
Later she tries to remember how they managed to get to the Room of Requirment but she realizes she doesn't care and she closes her eyes, Tom already sleeping next to her, and falls asleep.
In her dreams handsome, seventeen year old, Tom turns into Voldemort and kills her. She wakes up with a start and notices she is alone.
Times passes and they continue like this, loosing themselves in each other during the night and when the sun rises she's always alone, in a cold bed.
Andrea sometimes wonders if she was a bad as Septimus Weasley when she was a Gryffindor and realizes that yes, she was, because even then being a Slytherin meant Death Eater. Now it meant scum of the earth, follower of Grindelwald, her supossed blood status definitely didn't help matters.
Weasley and his gang manage to corner her, one cold February day and she curses the fact that her awarness of her surroundings is slipping through her fingers. Septimus is ready to curse her when a shield bursts to life between them and Andrea is shocked to see Charles Potter, her grandfather, defend her with the same expression she had when she cursed Draco after insulting Hermione. Septimus and his gang leaves but Charles stays and helps gather her fallen books then he escorts her to the dungeons. He doesn't say anything when she asks why and she understands. When she thanks him he just stares at her for a few seconds then leaves.
The next morning Weasley and his gang suddenly turn green and their hair silver. Andrea smirks proudly and nobody sees the questioning look Potter throws her.
Tom and her continue meeting in the Room and one night she puts her foot down and asks him why. He doesn't asnwer, just kisses her and it's different. This is soft and slow and it tells her everything that Tom can't. They take their time that night, kissing and discovering their bodies all over again and in the morning when she wakes he's still there. Andrea smiles for the first time in months.
After that Voldemort and Tom Riddle are two separate persons in her head. And she swears on her parents grave that she would do everything in her power to stop Tom from becoming Voldemort.
The Slytherins notice how Tom suddenly is everywhere she is, having her back, but they don't question it because nobody in their house wants to make Tom mad. He may not talk much and likes to keep to himself but everybody knows what he's capable of.
All her research led her to one conclusion: by arriving in 1944 she created an alternate universe with a future nobody could predict. That scares the living daylights out of her and at the same time makes her happy thinking that maybe Tom didn't need to become Voldemort.
She stops her time travel research and instead reads everything she can get her hands on Grindelwald. She would not have another idiot with illusions of grandeur ruin her world. She ended one Dark Lord, she can stop another.
It's March when Andrea walks in the Room to find Tom reading a book about Horcruxes. The same book that she read when she was hunting Voldemort's. She sees red and her magic reacts taking the book from his hands and throwing it across the room. He jumps, wand in hand and she has a powerful sense of deja vu.
"What do you think you're doing?", he asks, pointing his wand at her and suddenly hers is in her hand and she has to stop the curse that nearly rolled of her tongue.
"Believe me you do not want to go there."
"What do you even know about Horcruxes?"
"More than you", she responds and tilts her head thinking,"I can show you." And she closes her eyes asking the Room for a pensieve and praying that she's doing the right thing.
He eyes the bowl like it will bite him while she puts her wand to her head, bringing the memories forward. A few minutes later the pensieve is full,"It's not a trick Tom. These are my memories and they will show you why Horcruxes are not the answer.", she says tiredly. He looks at her and for a moment she sees Voldemort, then he lowers his wand and takes her hand.
They jump in the memories together.
They are in Godric's Hollow, the place where she was born and she can see her parents playing with baby her and suddenly the door is blown. Moments later baby her is staring in the red eyes of Voldemort as he points his wand and utters two words. The memory fades. Andrea knows he has questions but she shushes him, telling him to be patient.
She shows him her first year, her fighting for the stone and what Voldemort became.
She shows him her fighting the basilisk and her finding out who Voldemort really was. Tom gasps near her as he sees his younger self.
She skips third year and jumps straight to the Tournament. She shows him the Tasks and Voldemort being reborn. She watches as her younger self battles Voldemort and next to her Tom is speechless.
She shows him the battle in the Department of Mysteries and after that the prophecy.
She shows him his past, through Dumbledore's eyes and how she fought the Death Eaters that invaded Hogwarts at the end of that year. Shows him how her cutting curse decapitated Bellatrix and how later, while she cried in the aftermath of what she's done, realised what she knew(but didn't accept it) for months, war had come.
Andrea doesn't show him how she studied everything she could get her hands on, dabling in dark magic, black magic and everything in between to be better preppared for her next encounter with Voldemort. She doesn't show him how in her research she distanced herself from everyone to the point her coming into the past didn't even bother her(maybe it should). Instead she shows him the Final Battle on Hogwart's grounds(how poetic, she thinks now). Shows him, how she danced between Death Eaters, cutting them down one by one, trying to get closer to Voldemort. She shows him the duel that ended his life in another future and then..and then she shows him the destruction of the wizarding world.
When they exit the Pensieve he is quiet and the only thing she says is:"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will." He is startled by the sound of her voice and she sees him grab his wand tighter, backing away from her.
Something inside her breaks and she exits the Room as fast as she can, tears in her eyes. She hasn't cried since Sirius. That night she falls asleep, outside, in the grass, the full moon and stars twinkling happily above her.
When she wakes up she's in the Potter house and everything is exactly as she left it.