What If the Dark Lord Was Never Lost?

The Department of Mysteries didn't smell like air or dust. It smelled like ozone and rotting roses-the unmistakable scent of Time.

"James, get back here!" Lily hissed, clutching her wand. "If we're caught-"

James barely listened. His eyes were fixed on a golden bell jar filled with floating silver sand. Remus went pale. "That's an experimental Time-Turner casing. It's unstable."

James reached out anyway.

The jar shattered with a scream of twisting clocks. Silver sand rose into a vortex, swallowing them whole. Lily felt herself stretch, James's hand gripping hers, and then everything turned white.

Cold hit first.

They lay on snow-dusted stone beneath unfamiliar yet familiar towers. Hogwarts-but older. And they were children again.

A professor approached, confused. Then a pale boy stepped forward, dark-eyed and composed.
"I'm Tom. Tom Riddle."

The name froze the air. They weren't just in the past-they were at the beginning.

Sorting confirmed it. Gryffindor took the Marauders. Slytherin claimed Tom.

"We can't kill a child," Remus said that night.
"No," James replied. "But we can change one."

James sat with Tom in Potions. Shared points. Shared warmth. Defended him in the Hall. Dragged him to the Black Lake, laughed as the giant squid juggled bread. Tom watched, wary but curious.

In Hogsmeade, older Slytherins cornered Tom. The Marauders stood in front of him without hesitation. For the first time, Tom wasn't alone.

At year's end, James gave him a two-way mirror. "Say my name," he said. "You won't disappear."

Tom kept it.

As the Hogwarts Express pulled away, Tom Riddle sat with friends, cards in his hands and voices in his ears.

The seed of Voldemort remained-but it was no longer growing alone.