Prevention - Prologue

(This is a short chapter. Future chapters will probably be 5k-10k words.)

(I've become increasingly dissatisfied with "Interference" over the past month, and have decided to (mostly) start over. There's more of a character focus here.)

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Consciousness returned slowly.

The first thing I was aware of was that I have a splitting headache. I can't quite remember why I have the headache, or why I'm here.

I sit up with some effort, remembering now. The mission I've given myself, to go back in time 23 years, and undoing all the damage that has been wrought by the Dark Lords. Dark Lords, plural. There was more than one.

How much time do I have?

I examine my surroundings, and then myself, for a brief moment. No clothes, no wand. Fantastic. It wasn't unexpected - my calculations indicated that I could only use this spell on a living soul, and nothing else - but it was inconvenient if nothing else.

The good news is no one is around here. That was why I picked this forest - for the isolation. A way to ensure that no one knew of my arrival. I wouldn't spend the rest of my life in a mental institution for rambling about needing to prevent the future. Or, worse, in Azkaban for being a time criminal. I very much did not want that.

Unfortunately, I have no clothes and no wand. I would need to get some, and I'm not very proficient with wandless spells. I could only cast one if it was simple enough. There were even fewer spells that I could cast without a wand or voice.

I had options, however. A spoken wandless Disillusionment Charm was sufficient to ensure no one could see me, even if it took more effort than the spell would have under normal circumstances. Now, what time was it? And what day and year was it? Had I landed in the right time? I was sure my calculations were accurate, but I needed to double-check them.

I would need to get back to civilization for the answer to that question.

If only I had a wand… well, no matter. I would find one soon enough. I Disapparated, reappearing in a very familiar village.

It was Godric's Hollow, the birthplace of Harry Potter. I needed to check the day, though, and the year. It was dark, so I was pretty close to midnight.

And there was a man walking down the street. I now had the means with which to get my information.

I Apparated right behind him, with an ear-splitting CRACK. Apparition was relatively simple to do without a wand or voice, and I had to take advantage of the resources that I had. He turned around, but not fast enough.

The Disarming Charm sent his wand flying; he tried to draw a second one, but I had caught his first wand. Well, not really caught his first wand. I cheated by using the wandless Summoning Charm to make sure it was on the right trajectory. At any rate, before he could draw his second wand, I had Stunned him, and he was falling backwards. Oh, that was kind of mean. I added a Cushioning Charm for when he hit the ground. I relieved him of his second wand, and his third wand, and his fourth - Merlin, how deep did this man's paranoia run? He was worse than Moody, just with none of the competence. Moody would never have fallen for that trick with the Apparition. On the other hand, he had been defeated by Crouch Junior and Pettigrew at the start of my fourth year, so maybe he wasn't as good as he advertised. Ah, I'm rambling.

Now with a wand that I had forcibly taken from its owner, its allegiance shifted to the one who had defeated him. Me. No longer was I burdened with the disadvantage of not having a wand. But first off, clothes. I stole the man's clothes, charmed them to fit my side, and conjured a sheet over him to save his modesty. Unfortunate, but needs must. A nonverbal Incarcerous wrapped ropes around the Stunned man. Another nonverbal spell, an Enervate, woke him up.

Almost immediately, he began to yell. I sighed. "Imperio." He went silent.

"Tell me what year it is," I commanded.

"1981," he said in confusion. "How do you not know what year-" I adjusted my commands, and he did not voice the rest of his thought.

"And what day," I asked.

"October 31st," he said, still sounding confused. If I was better with the Unforgivable Curses, I could get him to answer tonelessly, but the true expert practitioners of the Unforgivables - like Mulciber with the Imperius, Bellatrix with the Cruciatus, and Rowle with the Avada Kedavra - are all quite insane. I quite like sanity, so I don't use these spells very often. It's not a trade-off I'm willing to make.

I cast again. His watch unclasped itself from his wrist and flew to my hand. It was ten minutes to ten, I didn't have much time to act. Any minute now, Voldemort would arrive and try to kill James and Lily Potter. I knew that without my intervention, he would succeed, only to be forcibly discorporated before he could kill their one-year-old son.

It was the future for these people. It was part of my history.

I knew the approximate location of the Godric's Hollow memorial to James and Lily that had been enacted after their deaths, having visited it before. It wouldn't be here now, before they had died, but I could use it to tabulate the approximate location where they would be, and where Voldemort attacked.

But what to do with the bound man at my feet? I sighed. This man was an innocent in all of this, and he probably hadn't been expecting to be subjected to one of the Unforgivable Curses. If I'd had more time… but that was a pointless train of thought to go down. All the cars would derail.

"In one minute," I told him, "these ropes will disappear. When they do, you will report your Imperiusement to someone else - probably your superiors. After you do that, you will no longer be under my control."

I needed to prevent James and Lily Potter from being killed… tonight. With less than ten minutes to act, I might add, since that was the time of Voldemort's arrival. But I also needed to do right by everyone, including the man I had just Imperiused. I owed it to him to make sure he got the proper psychological attention and help he would need after being under the spell. And I didn't want to leave a drooling vegetable by trying to Obliviate him and failing to do it correctly.

It was 9:50 PM. There was no time to lose. I Apparated to my destination…

And saw nothing where the house should have been. Absolutely nothing. I frowned in confusion. What?

I knew this was the right place. It was the right street name, I knew that. And from the nearby houses, which looked the same as they had when I had visited the Potter memorial in the future, this was the right location. But there was nothing here. Had my presence inadvertently affected the timestream, caused Voldemort to attack some other day?

Or… they had been under the Fidelius Charm. But Pettigrew had betrayed the location to Voldemort, so shouldn't it have been lifted? Or perhaps he would betray it, any moment now… in which case the cottage would become visible, any moment now. Or perhaps it was because he had betrayed the location to Voldemort.

I absently dodged around someone in a costume. He couldn't see me, and I was invisible, so it must have seemed to him as if a ghost was really in the area. The young boy in the costume laughed in delight. He and his little brother were dressed as pumpkins.

"Did you feel that chill just now? That was a real ghost," he blabbed excitedly to his brother.

"No way," the younger child said, eyes wide.

"It was too a real ghost!"

"Was not!"

"Was too!"

"Was not!"

"Was too!"

The voices died off into the distance as the two of them got farther and farther away. I felt slightly uneasy about this...

"Nice costume, mister!" a child's voice rang out ahead. I froze, not making a sound. I knew those words. I knew those words.