Oops, Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, and I'm not making any money off this in any way. That should do it for a disclaimer.

AN: Ok, so this is a plot Bunny that came to me when I was working on my other stories. This is a EDIT: NOT A ONE SHOT, but if people are interested in where this is going then I might continue it. I've seen some really interesting Harry Potter/Minerva McGonagall relationship stories or other time travel to Grindelwald times, but they often have Harry raising a young Tom Riddle or growing up beside the boy and trying to sway the young Voldemort to the side of angels. (Most of them have been abandoned at one point or another.) I thought, how about go back to the point where there is no doubt Voldemort is evil, and just actually kill him. Then to add some flavor, we get Harry Potter, prophesized dark lord destroyer, powerful wizard and all around trouble magnet and we get him stuck in the past and let him screw with history. So if any of this interests you, drop me a review and let me know. I'm still going to finish up my other stories, but if you like this, then I can make this into something longer also. This will be a strong Harry, if I continue it, but not uber/godly Harry story. No real bashing other than the fact that Harry will screw with history and get into a lot of trouble. Also NOT Slash, I don't write slash. Anyway, Cheers, and I hope you enjoy it.

Parsel

'Thinking'

"Normal talk"

Chapter 1: Checklists Are Important

"That's just how time travel looks like to the untrained eye. The reason why there aren't more travelers is that your average physicist refuses to be eaten by a giraffe in the name of science."
― Bradley Sands, It Came from Below the Belt

The year was 1941 and in the bowels of Hogwarts Tom Riddle's first horcrux ritual was almost complete. Tom paced around the ritual circle in his Hogwarts school robes, a sneer painted on his face. The runes were drawn on the stone floor of the Chamber of Secrets in a mixture of the cinders of an elder branch mixed with the blood of a werewolf. Any dark creature's blood would have done but sixteen year old Tom Riddle felt a certain sense of glee as he used the blood of some unfortunate werewolf who was so down on his luck that he had to sell his own blood. To a wizard, selling their own blood was the lowest of the low, for blood was all. Your magic was in the blood, your life was in your blood, and the power to control you was in your blood. Tom Riddle, self styled as Lord Voldemort, sneered at the thought of the pathetic being that was willing to sell their blood in Knockturn Alley and just for enough money so that the mangy werewolf could feed his family for a week. But the unfortunate werewolf's misfortune was Tom's gain.

Tom reviewed his notes from the journal he kept that contained all of his studies on dark magic and the bits and pieces of parcel magic that he had found. Encapsulated in that book was all he believed he needed to take over the Wizarding world, from the rituals to go through to strengthen his core and body, all the way up to a blood and mind magic ritual that made it amazingly easy to learn new spells and shore up occlumency shields.

Taking one more look at his journal, Tom smirked as he checked his arithmetic calculations in the journal against what was drawn on the floor, everything he had learned from Professor Slughorn and from books purchased from Borgin's and Burkes pointed to the magic and ritual circle being correct. The circle was finished, and the one and only diary of a young Tom Riddle sat in the center of the rune carvings. All he needed now was to summon Slytherin's basilisk and proceed to kill some mudblood scum in the castle above, and then his power over death would be complete.

Yes tonight, Tom's Riddle would take that first giant step towards truly becoming Lord Voldemort, tonight he would finally rise above his greatest fear; death.

"Truly I will be the greatest dark wizard of all time!" Tom said out loud with a malicious smirk. "Soon I will leave this castle behind and begin my path to true power and greatness, and even Grindewald's name will be feared less than mine." He hissed in glee before turning to the large stone relief of the face of Salazar Slytherin that took up a huge chunk Chamber of Secret's wall.

Tom hissed in parseltongue "Speak to me, Slytherin, Greatest of the-" "What the!" Tom flinched back with a yell in English as a bright blinding flash of blue light and a horrible grinding-ripping sound interrupted his summoning of the basilisk.

When Tom stopped blinking and the blurry spots disappeared from before his eyes, he was surprised to see a dark haired teenager of about eighteen standing before him in the Chamber of Secrets. The boy was wearing a mix of muggle and magical clothing, black military cargo pants and boots, a tan safari shirt with many pockets, and a long flowing black wizard's robe that was open down the middle to reveal the muggle clothes beneath.

"Oh, did I make it?" The unknown teen stated, looking his body over and patting himself down. "Wand? Check. All my limbs attached? Fingers, toes, head shoulders knees… Ah!" The stranger stopped his verbal check list while quickly looking down the front of his pants only to thrust his hands down into his underwear and groping himself.

"Whew, still there." A look of relief flashed across the older teens face and he smiled before looking up, only to realize that Tom was staring at him stunned. The older teen quickly pulled his hands out of his pants.

Tom looked startled as he stared at this pale stranger with the dark hair, green eyes and a jagged scar on the young man's forehead, even more startled when the stranger realized he wasn't alone and looked back at Tom with a hug smile.

"Tom?" The boy moved forward quickly towards Tom Riddle. "Tom, is that really you?" The young man said with an almost over exuberance painted across the stranger's face.

Tom took a step back with a raised eyebrow, but the boy approached until he clasped Tom on the right shoulder with a hearty slap. "Tommy boy it is you!" The stranger said with glee while clapping Tom on the shoulder hard enough to send Mr. Riddle stumbling forward with the force of it.

The stranger took a good look around and his smile got larger, "Let me guess, making your first horcrux?" The stranger said excitedly.

Tom looked shocked and his eyes widened, "How did you know about that? Who are you?" Tom demanded, still too stunned for 16 year old Tom to really react to this stranger who suddenly appeared through the Hogwarts anti-apparition wards and into the most secret sanctum of the castle.

The young man replied with a smirk, "Oh me, no one special, but you can call me Harry. Fast question, if I asked you who Lord Voldemort was, what would you say?" The green eyed older teen questioned with his hand still resting on Tom's shoulder while looking the younger teen in the face.

Tom Riddle smirked and puffed out his chest, "The greatest Dark Lord in the history of the world." Tom said with a voice full of pride.

"Good!" Harry stated, and then his wide grin turned into a smirk, right at the point where Tom felt something heavy thud right into his chest.

"Urk!" Tom blinked at the young man in front of him as Tom felt wetness and heat travel down his chest, only to look down and see Harry's hand burying a dagger right in Tom's heart.

Tom only had the time to look up into Harry's green eyes before collapsing to his knees.

"I wanted to make sure you were evil, and I promised Albus's portrait and Hermione that I'd check first to make sure you were actually in need of getting killed at this point. The old man still asked that I not kill you and try and lead you down a different path, for the "Greater Good" and all that rot. But I told him that if you were already making horcrux, then there was only one way to stop you." Harry Potter looked down as Tom Riddle keeled over and fell sideways, smearing the previously carefully painted runes on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets with tom's body and blood.

Harry crouched down so he could look Tom Riddle in the eyes as the smile left Harry's face and he turned serious, watching as the life drained out of his archenemy. "Just in case you're wondering, I made the dagger out of a fang from Slytherin's basilisk. I thought it was fitting, you know, seeing as how we are back in the Chamber where I killed your first horcrux, stabbing you with the same tooth that I used to kill said first horcrux." Harry stated with a shrug, torn between enjoying the relief it was that Voldemort was dying while also realizing that he was watching a man die due to the dagger Harry had planted in said man's heart.

Tom Riddle gurgled, and a tear rolled down his cheek, "gggrrgule I.. cough cough, don't want to die…" Tom gasped between breaths.

Harry Potter frowned as he watched the 16 year old teen slowly start to lose consciousness. Fate was an interesting thing, given the fact that the first time Harry had come to the Chamber of Secrets, Tom was the one crouched over the dying body of Harry Potter, in both cases near death by basilisk poisoning.

In the case of one Tomas Riddle however there would be no phoenix tears to wash away the poison of the Basilisk, and even so the blade through the heart was fatal.

With a final sigh, young Tomas Riddle, the evil dark lord known as Voldemort passed away before he could ever leave his true and horrifying mark on the world.

Harry released a long exhale of air that he hadn't even realized he had been holding. Carefully, and with more caring than Tomas Riddle probably deserved, Harry brushed his hand over Tom's eyes to close them in Voldemort's final repose.

With one last look at the body of the dead future Dark Lord, Harry reached down and yanked the dagger from Tom's chest. With a look of finality on his face, Harry then turned towards the diary sitting in the circle of runes, and gave it a good stabbity-stab-stab for safety's sake before jumping back to see if anything happened.

When no ghostly spirit or black vapor escaped from the pierced diary, Harry finally relaxed, his shoulder's slumping as the long battle against Voldemort had ended before it even began.

Staring at the diary quietly, Harry just stood there for a few moments.

Slowly, ever so slowly, a smile crept across Harry's face. And then with a whoop of joy, Harry started doing a discombobulated jig; after all, Parvati from back in his time would have told you that Harry wasn't a very good dancer.

"Woo hoo, woo hoo, Tom's dead, it's my birthday, woo hoo Ding dong the dark wizard's dead!" Harry sang while dancing around the chamber almost like doing a rain dance, twirling his fingers in the air and kicking up his heels.

Finally after a good five minutes of dancing and shaking his money-maker as well as any average Englishman could, Harry stopped to take breather and leaned over to support himself on his knees.

"Ha ha, I told Hermione we could do it." Harry said with a smirk of triumph as he started patting down his pockets.

"She said we should go over the lists again, but no I told her it would be easy and that we didn't need to go over one of her lists again for the hundredth time." Harry stated to himself with a smirk, digging into his pants pocket and pulling out a couple shrunken chests, only to lay them on the ground as he kept digging.

"Harry, we need to make sure you don't forget anything." Harry stated in a high pitched falsetto, doing his best Hermione Granger imitation; after all, Harry had a lot of experience listening to her nag him, what with all the times she had hounded him and Ron to study.

"Bah I say, I've got everything I need and we've gone over the plan a million times." Harry finished, digging in one of the cargo pockets on his leg, pulling out a shrunken pensive, his father's invisibility cloak and the Slytherin family ring with the resurrection stone still embedded on it.

Patting down the pockets of his butt, Harry started to get a bit flustered, but he kept talking to himself, "Wallet, check." Harry stated while checking his right rear pocket, "Elder wand, check" Harry felt the wand sticking out of his left rear pocket; Moody would have had a fit and no doubt Harry would be in for another hour long history of butt injuries due to improper storage of one's wand.

Harry grimaced having forgotten that he stuck that wand back there, and quickly slid it into the secondary wand holster on his left arm and continued patting down his pockets while monologuing to himself.

"I've got everything we need, I told Hermione." Harry continued, now getting a bit frantic as he continued to search his body and breast pockets of his coat he was wearing. "Emergency money raided from Gringotts…The Black fortune, the Potter fortune, Check and check, even the sword of Gryffindor for goodness sake, and I even brought a tent with a kitchen sink… But where is that bloody transit portkey to get me back to the future!" Harry finally swore as he pulled on the chain of the gold necklace that he had been wearing under his shirt.

The charm bracelet like long necklace held Hermione's old time turner, it held a Swiss army knife that had been shrunken to the size of a toothpick along with a small foe-glass, but on the clasp that should have held the portkey back to the future… there was nothing.

Harry held the necklace up to his face with a goggle eyed look, and sure enough, his only hope of getting out of 1941 and back to the future was missing.

It was at that point that Harry remembered setting down the return trip time traveling portkey when he went to the water closet five minutes before his trip to the past; it didn't make sense to wet himself in transit to visit the young Lord Voldemort. After all, what type of image would that have presented if Tom Riddle's first meeting with Harry had a large wet stain on the front of Harry's pants? Harry had been holding onto the portkey so he wouldn't forget it, but then he had stopped to wash his hands after using the toilet and right before he was due to leave.

Unfortunately it appeared that Hermione Granger was right again, as usual. Harry really should have gone over the check list one more time.

With that, the color drained out of Harry Potter's face as he realized that he, 18 year old Harry Potter, was stuck in the year 1941. World War II was in full swing, Albus Dumbledore had not defeated Gellert Grindelwald, and Harry Potter was lost in a time when his parents weren't even a twinkle in his Grandparents' eye.

It is in situations like this that one can do only one thing.

Curse vehemently, then rinse and repeat until thoroughly exhausted.

"Buggerdy-bugger-bugger, bloody hell, Slytherin's left nut, and soap on a rope!" Harry screamed in anger at himself before finally allowing his shoulders to slump, for he was in fact well and totally screwed. Such was the everyday life of one Harry James Potter, Fate's bitch and the world's largest trouble magnet.

AN: Well, that sets the scene for what could end up being a fun travel to the past story. It was short, I know, and not up to my normal length. However, this is like I said a one-shot unless people like it. Voldemort is out of the way, yet a truly fearsome enemy of a Dark Lord is just ramping up his invasion of Europe over on the mainland across the straight from Great Britain. The Potter family, albeit Harry's grandparents and great grandparents, are alive and kicking and Harry has no way of getting back to the future that he knew. Heck, he might have totally erased the future that he knew as Voldemort was never allowed to start his rampages, muggle-baiting, or muggleborn slaying. Relationship options abound, and zaniness could come from any angle. Anyway, it's a one-shot for now, but could potentially be turned into a full story sometime in the future. Let me know what you think. Cheers!