nightseer

Prologue


To change one event in time, you have to know what came before, right?

The easy answer is ‘yes’, but that was an easy question.

The not so easy question is: what’s important and what’s not? And once you know that, how will you remember everything you need to remember to make the changes you want to make?

A list of important historical dates is tedious, but somewhat easy. All the little things that bring about those historical dates?

Yeah, that’s next to impossible to remember. Even with the aid of a hundred notebooks filled with massive amounts of notes, a stack of flash cards, and a handy computer with all the relevant files with you at all times, you’re not going to know everything you need to know to change to prevent something from happening or cause the event you wish had happened. Why? Well....

For every little thing you change, the living history changes from what’s in your notes and memory. Your detailed notes and psychological profiles and observations slowly become useless. All those dates and times and names you carefully wrote down become a waste of paper. That computer full of transcripts of trials and laws, diaries and research notes, that’s all become the background information for a fantasy novel based off the world you’re currently living in.

You’re thinking of Rochsauld theory now, aren’t you? Time fixes itself so your notes and memories will change as you make changes?

Wrong.

Time fixes itself by splitting. The new world you’ve created with all of your carefully planned changes and nudges is just that, a new world. A new timeline. A new dimension. A new reality. It’s a completely different world from the world you lived in before. You no longer belong there, if you ever did. This means Time never planned on you being there, so it has to fix you.

If you’re lucky, Time will find a place for you in this new world of your creation and plop you down in it, new memories free of charge. If you’re unlucky, you’re simply erased from existence.

If you’re me, it means the final change that separates your world from the one you’re trying to create happens on the night of your birth, and you’re shoved into an infant body in time to see parts of your mother you never wished to. I missed having parents and I always wanted to know more about my mother, but that’s something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I wouldn’t even curse Snape at his cruelest to see what I saw.

I ignored Hermione’s warnings and came back. I killed Voldemort for a second time in the hopes what had happened to me, wouldn’t. As a reward for my brave actions, I expected to be plopped down in the new timeline at the right age with new memories to go on my merry way, none the wiser to what I had done.

I didn’t think I would come out of my mother, screaming in terror at being birthed the natural way, to get poked at by an overly enthusiastic Healer, and then get passed around by my dad while listening to Sirius, talking over Peter's denials, inform Remus of Peter’s screaming fit when he found out his girlfriend was pregnant.

I sure as hell didn’t expect Sirius to almost drop me when it was his turn to coo at me. Nor did I expect my dad to bumble a levitation charm.

Glaring at the blurry things I think are my father and godfather from the relative safety of Moony’s arms, I decide I’m unleashing the full force of my tiny bladder on them first chance I get. Revenge will be mine!

... ... ...

“Did Harry just cackle?”

“Uh huh.”

“Newborns don’t cackle. They eat, mess their diapers, sleep and drool.”

“He cackled, Moony!”

“Peter, I think you and I should get the healer. Those two aren’t right in the head.”