It was September first, and it was early. Someone knocked on my door and then entered. It was my mother; she has this habit of humming while she walks into my room so I knew it was her without even opening my eyes. Try as I might I couldn't fight her humming from entering my dream world and waking me up.
"Mum," I say as I clear my throat. "I'm trying to get some sleep. It is after all four in the morning." I glance at my alarm clock as if it would magically change time and say I was late.
"Honey, you have to get up, it's time." Her voice is soothing with an undercurrent of hysteria to it. The undercurrent of hysteria makes me bolt awake and I take in my mother's face. It was time. "Go shower and I'll get your things ready for your trip."
I leave the room with one glance back and see my mother hugging my old tattered teddy bear that my dad had given my when I was born. This image stayed with me through the quickest shower I have ever taken, and as I descended down the stairs of our house I could see that me and my parents were the only ones awake on this early morning.
"She should eat something," My mum fretted as soon as I sat down at the kitchen isle. "I'll go make some eggs…"
My dad reached out and grabbed my mum's hand and shook his head. "No food will only make everything worse."
Suddenly I began to panic for I knew that once I was sent I was going to forget until it was time to remember, and I didn't know how long before the tea was going to wear off. What about school, my friends, what would I do come Christmas time, who was I to call if something went wrong, did anyone know what was going to happen, what if I screwed everything up? My dad must have sensed my inner panic for he gave my shoulder a quick squeeze, and brushed my auburn hair back from my face.
"Calm down," his voice carried through my mind a message of calm. "Take a deep breath. We've explained everything you need to know to you. You know all the stories, and the only stuff we've left out is the stuff we can't fill in. So here is your bag. It has some essentials in it for when you get there." He handed me my leather backpack and I tried to take a deep breath but only succeeded in yawning.
"Why can't I go for her," Mum's voice hit that pitch it usually did when she was about to cry.
"Mum you know why. Now you just have to let me do this. I'll come back I promise." With those words I saw my parents exchange a glance that I couldn't read. "So hand me over that tea and let's get on with this."
My mum's hands shook as she poured me my tea, adding something extra to it, and handed it to me. Just as I was about to take a sip she stopped me. "Remember it is okay to change history." And with that I took one last look at my mother's face and my father's smile and drank the tea.
The pain was unbearable. It felt like my whole body was spinning in four different directions. I could feel my presence leaving my parents and then turning and going into the distance. I knew my body was following, and I felt myself let out a silent scream as my body met up with my presence. Quickly, afterward, I slammed into the cold hard ground. My nose jammed into some soft grass and my bag landed closely to my head. I wanted to groan, I wanted to puke, but most of all I wanted to cry. I was given the option of none of these as my arm was grabbed by something slime-y and with teeth, and I let out a scream of pain before succumbing into the darkness that had threatened to take me from the moment I smelt the tea my mother had given me.
It could have been hours later, but I knew by the shaking of the ground it was only seconds. Someone was approaching, but I was more focused on the queasy feeling in my stomach. Turning I dry heaved into the soft grass. As soon as I made to swipe my mouth I felt the thing that had bite me sniff my hair, and then run away.
"You have got to be kidding me I repel even dogs," I mumbled as I tried to sit up but found I could not support my own weight. "This is it. This is my worse nightmare." I said, and with that I rolled on to my back and looked up at the clear, sunny, sky, before I let sleep take me once more.
"I just found her on the ground, outside me hut." A muffled voice cut through my nightmare. I try to give indication that I could hear them but I found my whole body was paralyzed.
"She could be…" the voice was joined by another
"I doubt it."
"What about what was in her bag?"
"I can't get in it," the voices had grown steadily louder and as the third one chimed in I felt something in me lift.
"Aunt Poppy," I mumbled out into the darkness.
"She's awake." The first voice chimed loud and clear inside my head and I fought down a cry of joy, Uncle Hagrid was here.
"Did she say Aunt Poppy?" And that was headmistress McGonagall. I had to open my eyes, I had to make sure it was them, and I had to tell them why I was early for the start of term feast.
"I can't move," I managed to get out of my unbearably dry throat.
"We do need to un-paralyze her if we want to question her," I could hear the rustling of Aunt Poppy reaching into her starched apron, and then with the swish of a slight breeze I felt my body spasm before settling down.
"Why am I being questioned? I didn't do anything wrong…Oh my god! Did something happen to mum and dad?" My eyes flashed open, something was wrong. I immediately sought out Aunt Poppy's face. She was looking at me like she had never seen me before. I, silently, began to panic.
"I'm afraid we don't know who your parents are?" I turned to look at Headmistress McGonagall. She had to be joking, but as I took in her grey eyes behind her square spectacles I knew she wasn't. "We don't even know who you are."
Here I was sitting in the hospital wing at the coveted Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and the
Headmistress didn't know her two favorite pupils. She didn't know me. Something was completely wrong. There was
no way I was going to let them forget me. I didn't have the highest OWLs score for nothing, but I reasoned I would
start with begging.
"Uncle Hagrid, please, tell them who I am?" I begged my half-giant godfather. "Aunt Poppy, you know me
don't you?" I looked again at my godmother, the one who had taught me so many healing charms and potions I
could have become a healer by the time I was twelve, but she looked just as confused as Uncle Hagrid. "This is
insane," I started to say but stop short as another spasm shook my body.
The pain was unbelievable. I felt my teeth hitting each other each time another jolt of energy went through my body. In the distance I could hear Aunt Poppy saying spell after spell trying to get my body to relax, but it wouldn't. It couldn't until the process was through. As suddenly as it started it stopped.
My auburn hair was plastered around my oval face, I was breathing like I had just run a marathon, and I knew my hazel eyes must have shown my exhaustion, but I remembered everything. I remembered the tea. The tea which had smelt like honey and polyjuice potion and tasted like dirt. I remembered that they wouldn't know anything.
"She needs to rest," Aunt Poppy said as she started to usher the others out of the hospital wing.
"Wait," I call out to them and they all halted. "What year is it?"
"Year?" Uncle Hagrid spoke up as if he thought I was dumb.
"Yes, I need to know. What year is it?"
"My dear," Headmistress McGonagall walked over to me. Her eyes softened as she took in my face. At least she didn't think of me as a threat anymore. Now I was just a girl with amnesia in her eyes. "It is 1997."
As she said this I sunk back into the pillows. This was my parents seventh year at Hogwarts. This was the year everything happened.
"Once she is better send her up to my office. She will need to be sorted." McGonagall took in my face as she said this and I carefully kept it blank. "This I believe is yours." She handed me my bag and then with a turn she left the wing.
Aunt Poppy gave a huff of annoyance before she went into her office. She came out seconds later bear a cup of what I judged to be Pepper-Up potion by the steam coming off the cup. I silently thanked her and downed the potion in record time. "You can leave in five minutes time. Hagrid will take you up to the Headmistress's office."
I heard the clicking of her heels all the way to her office as I felt the potion starting to make my body become energized. Quickly I opened my bag, which was charmed to open by my touch only, and pulled out a trunk that looked like it belonged in a doll house and one ash wand. I took off the charm on my trunk and began rifling through it. Everything was there. My mom had truly thought of everything. She had included her old school books, an advance set of potion ingredients, and my dad's old firebolt. Along with all my school supplies where several sets of robes bearing the crest of Gryffindor and one bearing the crest of Ravenclaw. I knew she was trying to be thoughtful by including my old house robes in with the new ones but it just made me homesick. Casually I took out the plain black robe and put it on over my jeans and t-shirt. No use in making them ask more questions, I thought. Checking the time I saw I could leave and hastily stuffed everything back into my trunk and re-shrunk it before stuffing it back into my bag.
"Ready?" Uncle Hagrid asked as I appeared around the drawn curtain. I nodded to him and tried to look like I had no clue where I was going. This was going to be one hell of a seventh year, I thought as I silently followed my silent godfather out of the hospital wing and into the hollowed halls of Hogwarts.
Ten minutes later I was standing on a spiral moving staircase going up to Headmistress's McGonagall's office. As I reached the top I braced myself for any changes that were going to be, and then I knocked.
"Come in," I entered the room and sat down at my usual seat across from her desk and diagonal from the sorting hat on the right part of her circular office. She raised one eyebrow at me before pulling out a tin and pushing it towards me. "Have a biscuit." After I had eaten three she said, "I want to know who you are and what you are doing here."
"Before I tell you…" I swallowed the last bit of biscuit and smiled softly at her. "I need you to promise me that what I tell you will stay only in this room."
"You have my word," she spoke.
Up until that moment I had barely glanced at the multiple pictures on the walls of her office but now I carefully made sure all the occupants were in their frames. I could tell that they weren't sleeping and were carefully listening to every word I was saying. "I need you to promise."
"I just said you have my word."
"Not you, Professor McGonagall," And with that I waved my hand to the walls. "I need the old headmasters of the school to promise me they won't say anything to anyone neither." At this the whole room went quiet. The snoring that was usually present had stopped, and all the pictures had awoken with their eyes locked on me.
"You have our word," I turned to the portrait that spoke. There sitting on a regal throne was Albus Dumbledore. Graciously I smiled up at him, and then turned to look at the one Headmaster I knew would speak unless giving incentive not to.
"And what say you Phineas Nigellus?"
"Dumbledore just said you have our word."
"But do I have your word as a member of the house of Black?"
"The last of my house is dead," he narrowed his eyes at me. I smiled back up at him and then pulled back my robe to reveal what lay on my right wrist. He saw the gleam of the bracelet of the House of Black a gift my father had given to me for my seventeenth birthday. A gift he said would come in handy very shortly and now I knew its purpose. "Yes you have my word."
"I suppose I should start at the beginning," Sheepishly I turned back to look at a stunned Professor McGonagall. "My name is Jillian Albus Potter, and I'm seventeen years of age."
"Potter?" She sputtered out at me.
"Yep, I'm a Potter and I've come from you from nineteen years into the future. I've always wanted to say that." Grinning I looked up at her and I could see her reaching for her wand. "Okay let me see if I can prove this." I began to search my brain for something that only she would know about. "I've got something. When Albus left Harry Potter on the Dursley's doorstep, after Lily and James Potter were murdered by Voldemort, you spent every summer until his eleventh year at Mrs. Figgs' house watching him in your animagus form."
With my incredibly long sentence she put her wand on top of the table. "How did you know that?"
"Well, that's just the thing isn't it?" Grinning, I thought that this might not be as hard as I thought it was going to be.
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