HOGWARTS

Have you ever dreamed about a loved one after they died and had the most peculiar feeling that they were still alive once you awoke, dear reader? A feeling ever so realistic that you feel that if you search well enough, it's capable to find the deceased well and happy, walking around and laughing in the company of friends and family.

To Anne, looking at Dumbledore and seeing him pacing around his study and seeing him looking back at her, was simply out of touch with the reality she had in mind.

She had never been as close to him as Harry had been, but it sure hadn't been easy for her after he passed – Harry's grief and reactions had been unhealthy and she started to be a victim of his anger; she was his little sister and he felt responsible to protect her, so with Dumbledore's death things became far harder to deal with his overprotective-older-brother poise. Then the Horcruxes came in and messed up with his head even more, making it unbearable for her to be anywhere near him and show any negative feelings, because he would start the self-loathing and self-blaming.

Dumbledore's death, to many, was what truly started the war and proved to all the real threat around the simple people of the Wizarding World.

Many people had not realized that the war started much before that, in the moment Harry and Cedric had held on together to the Cup of the Triwizard Tournament and fell on a dark, eerie cemetery with Voldemort himself waiting for them. The war started with the murder of a child, and ended with the murder of another child – this time, Harry.

War is a terrible thing; a hungry wolf eating whatever it's on its way, it doesn't hesitate, it just takes what it can get – there is no difference between saints and sinners, women, men or children. In war, a beating heart is enough to make you a target, no matter what side you are on.

Something about war that grown-ups never seem to understand, no matter how many times they went through it before: negative actions lead to negative chaos, and negative chaos is destruction at its finest, while positive actions lead to positive chaos, and positive chaos is constructive and worthy of teaching. And people look back then, they learn the truth about such simple things about war and peace.

She wondered if the feeling in her chest, suffocating her, was sadness for knowing his destiny or if it was anger for knowing what he did and still lead them to losing.

Anne thought it was most likely anger – a person wouldn't change so much from a good person to a person who was willing to manipulate people and raise children to make themselves believe in god-like theories just to lead them to slaughter once they were old enough; Dumbledore had yet to do those all of those things, still Anne felt anger for him boiling in her blood. If up to her, she would kill him herself and she feared she wouldn't regret it.

It wasn't like she hadn't killed before. It wasn't like she wasn't ready to kill once more.

"I believe you are in need of medical assistance," said Dumbledore suddenly, stopping the pacing. His voice sounded more curious than anything else.

Of course.

Dumbledore was the type to see a sixteen-years-old girl appear on the doorstep of his school bloody, hurt and exhausted and stir nothing more than curiosity in his chest – no worry, no concern for her well-being despite the polite obvious observation after she told an-hour long story to him and watched him pace around his office for ten whole minutes in silence.

Anne allowed her teeth to almost crack as she forced one against another to keep all the insults in her head to leave through her mouth.

"I had worse," she said, dismissing his polite and obviously fake care by turning her bleeding hand palm down, away from his eyes. "Professor, I'd love to be delicate and careful about this, but I'm really tired. Are you going to start the questions I know are about to come or I can get a good hour of sleep in here? I don't mind sleeping in a chair. I just mind having to watch you pace around all night long," she complained, pulling her feet up to the chair and resting it on the arm of the chair. That left her in an awkward position, but she was very certain that would bring the hint to a point where it couldn't be ignored anymore.

She was tired, hungry, grieving and sleep-deprived.

The 'trust-bridge' he was trying to build with her was useless, for she knew him too well and he seemed to get that as he watched her with blue eyes twinkling in hesitance. That type of manipulations would have worked in her eleven-years-old version (it did before), but it sure as hell wouldn't work now.

"Forgive me, my girl," he said, she winced with the way he said it, "but I feel we need to go through your story once more," he insisted.

She held back a loud sigh and just scoffed tiredly. She had explained shallowly, but very well that she had travelled back in time by accident during the 90s when she and the rest of the Light had just lost the war – Harry had just gotten buried alive by a wall, Hermione violated before her throat was torn apart by werewolf teeth, the twins torn apart forever, the Weasleys broken and Remus bloodied up and down, his wife nowhere to be seen, his son's name being the last word he wheezed out in Anne's arms.

"What are your questions, then?" she asked, resting her head on the back of the chair. Her neck cracked.

It was almost four in the morning and she was as tired as a girl could be, seconds away from passing out in exhaustion.

"So, you didn't turn the Time-Turner?" he confirmed.

She raised her hand, showing the glass on it, but didn't look away from the ceiling. Her eyes were threatening to close at once, but she forced herself to stay awake; she refused to show how tired and weak she felt to Dumbledore at the moment.

"No, just broke it by accident," she explained. "I thought about coming back and killing young Tom Riddle, of course, but the 70s was the opportunity given to me,"

"You are aware of the consequence of meddling with time, aren't you?" he asked, left eyebrow raising.

"Of course, I do, I'm not that stupid," she answered in anger, finally looking down from the ceiling and into his eyes. "The idea of not existing anymore scares me, yes, but... it would be worth it. I don't mind it. As long as we win the war this time around, I don't mind what happens to me. I can take it. I'll be more than happy to let my family survive this," she explained. "Dying as a martyr isn't half as bad as I thought I'd die, actually," she confessed. "Quite the legacy to leave behind, don't you think so, Professor?" she asked, eyes becoming blurry with memories and distant from the past – present.

Dumbledore seemed oddly annoyed by her lack of love for her own life, but admired her for a second too long as she lost herself in her own memories as if wondering how to scold her for that.

"Yes, you said we lost," he said out loud, but sounding more lost in thoughts than in a conversation.

"I suppose so. I don't think my memory is bad enough for me to forget to say something like this," she said. She slipped her feet back to the ground and sat straight on the chair again. "Call me a Seer, a crazy bint, I don't know... I don't care, just make sure to trust me and make your ridiculous little minions believe me too," she hated begging, but she was ready to do so – for Harry, for her own little version of months old being left in the doorway of a hateful family. "I can change the world. I can help and save people,"

"Changing the timeline is dangerous. We never have any type of certainty to fall back on. If we start changing everything, perhaps we'll lose the war again and things will get even worse than it already was in your time, Miss..." he hesitated, "Potter, you said, am I right?"

"I did, yes," she answered. "Professor, there is no way things can get any worse than it already was, alright?" she said too loud. "Listen," she said lower and taking a deep breath to calm down, "Muggles found out about us and they were trying to kill all of us, including the Light side, they don't care if we are trying to kill them back. Muggles don't understand magic and they don't want to understand. They want to end it because they don't know how to deal with the unknown. Besides, Voldemort killed everyone that had any change the direction of the war before he killed our only hope –"

"Which was your brother and his friends," he completed, nodding slowly. "I find it hard to believe a seventeen-year-old boy could somehow be the saviour of the Wizarding World."

"I found it hard to believe so too, and yet you raised him to believe such a thing ever since he was eleven and found out about the magical world. Let's be honest, gathering children as soldiers is not beneath you," she spat towards him. "I know it sounds crazy, believe me, I know. I have no reason to lie about those things to you" she scratched her forehead a bit too roughly, the dry blood going underneath her nails and making her skin red and marked. "I can drink Verituserum or whatever you want me to do, sir, but this will also save your life. You die. You die in 1996, you're killed and then you fell off the Astronomy Tower and my brother had to watch it. I don't do this for you, I do this for him."

For his whole life, Harry made sure Anne had enough to eat when they were both forced to go without eating for too long, her would give his portion of food to make sure she was fine. He would curl up as little as possible to give her room in the small closet they were sharing when little kids. He took jinxes, hexes and curses for her – it was her time to do something for him, even if that meant she would never be able to live with him and ever thank him out loud for all he's done for her.

"I see," he said.

"No, you don't. My brother is yet to be born and, until then, you are our only hope, sir. Voldemort fears you," she continued.

"Voldemort respects me," he corrected.

"He hates you," she answered. "He fears you, but no more than that, sir. Tom Riddle is a smart, cunning man, but nothing more than an ambitious and very obnoxious half-blood with an inferiority complex that he developed because he was mistreated during his childhood, he's just sucking off power from people that can give it to him – he's a parallel to my brother, and the poor boy grew up listening to this," she said angrier than she expected to become. "He likes power, he knows how to milk it out of people that can give it to him. He'd do anything for it, believe anything for it; he knows how this works,"

"Knowledge is power," Dumbledore agreed distantly, nodding slowly to himself.

"Power is power," she corrected him this time, voice sharp. "Look, we've been through this before. You made your little speech to me before, even if you can't remember it. You can't teach me shit –"

"Language, Miss Potter,"

"Fuck my language!" she screamed, getting up from chair and stumbling with the wave of pain that shot up her leg. She held onto the back of the chair. "I've been awake for 38 hours, I stink and I'm starving, I'm dirty for head to toe with blood that's not even mine and dirt from months camping on the bloody forest!" she stumbled once more and stood straight, trying to be as tall as him. "I don't care if you're offended by my bloody vulgar vocabulary, Professor. I need you to understand me, and I need you on my side on this, understood? For now, you're my only hope, even if that makes me hate myself even more than usual," she sighed and looked down in defeat, eyes filling with tears, but holding them back. "I'm just so exhausted..."

Dumbledore watched her a second.

"A Slytherin," he guessed. "I should've seen it coming," he mumbled. "What will you get from this?" he asked louder.

Anne looked up at him with a blank expression, her body was too tired to understand if she should be somehow baffled by his accusation or should laugh of how ridiculous those words sounded and how straight-forwards exhausted and annoyed Dumbledore could be.

No word plays, no power-shifting, just plain accusations.

It wasn't a secret Dumbledore's clear distaste by the general Slytherin House, even if he had Snape as his little lap pet in the time she grew up with as normal. He only liked Snape because Snape was willing to do his beading; be the bad guy when Dumbledore wasn't able to do it himself, too afraid to make his own hands dirty in public.

The memory of Snape's face when he first saw her – the shock and uncomfortableness that surrounded them for the whole first year – made her bite the inside of her cheek so she wouldn't laugh out loud or smirk. Snape was around her age now and that much would be awkward enough.

"I lost everything in the first time around," she explained. "I have nothing else to lose, I can only gain from this and so can you. While our goal is the same, you have no reason to worry about my loyalties,"

"Is that a threat?" he asked, interested.

"A promise," she corrected again. "Look... I know, it's odd how sincere I'm being and how straight-forward it sounds, but I think that if we're both honest here, then we'll be able to work together with minor casualties"

"I'll take you up to that promise," he said back.

And just like that, Anne Lily Potter was turned into Anne Cordelia Sage, a ward of Dumbledore himself, the second daughter of Jonathan Sage and Lilian Sage, a couple that lived in Canada, but sent their daughter to do the last two years in England in her mentor's school for money related reasons.

Sage, decided Dumbledore, was the safest surname they could choose for her at a moment like this. They were a pureblood family that moved to Canada in the roaring 20s for business partnerships that insisted money was easier to be done in there and very famous for Divination gifts and Seers appearing every couple generation of Tarot readers and other talents related to such area of deep, subjective magic.

If Anne let something escape her mouth, then no one would bat an eye if she already was a Seer from such an old family. Also, as a half-blood (a blood traitor, but raised in a pureblood family nonetheless), her protection was almost required and no dumb pureblood would attempt to mess with her when she had the Sage House and the Dumbledore family on her side.

From that moment on, Anne was more than she ever was – she was no longer Anne Potter, the little sister of the Boy-Who-Lived; she was Anne Sage, a name that was a threat standing by itself.

The power that such name and such confidence gave her was hard to describe and easy to use, easy to enjoy.

She had been warned, of course, to try and stay under the radar of people that would not be happy with her presence in there (Voldemort himself), but by her smirk Dumbledore knew that such request had been listened by deaf ears and attentive portraits who were confused by her presence in there.

Her wounds had been treated in secret by Dumbledore himself. She was less wounded than she looked. She had just one broken rib and cuts and bruises around her body, but nothing that was life-threatening; still, Dumbledore couldn't help but notice she flinched when he brushed against her arm. He watched her as she gathered the clothes that he got her and left to the bathroom in the side of his office to change.

She hadn't told him much about her life before the war, the life she had before Hogwarts to him in her little story-telling time, but it was very clear to him that, whatever that life was, it hadn't been good at all. The flinching, the way she hoarded the sweets he gave her and shoved it deep into the pockets of the pyjamas he gave her, as if she scared that he would change his mind and take it all back from her, the attentive eyes over all his little movements.

It had also been decided that, although she was a Slytherin, she would be safer in the Gryffindor House, the House of the Oblivious (name she suggested herself, making Dumbledore sigh).

If she allowed something too obvious escape in the Slytherin House, she wouldn't be safe anymore, besides, they both agreed that it would be important for her to be close to her parents – Lily and James Potter – to make sure they would end up together. Dumbledore and her were ready to change the timeline, allowing themselves to take on the consequences of changing so much suddenly, readying themselves to not care the wounds and battle scars that would come to them.

"I ask your permission to share this with one specific person," said Dumbledore as he walked her to the Gryffindor Tower.

"Who would that be?" she asked, not really enjoying it.

"Minerva, Professor Minerva McGonagall," he answered, "I believe it's for the best if she knows the truth about where you came from. Perhaps not to talk about the outcome of the war, but she needs to understand why you're here and so lost... She'll notice,"

"Notice what?" Anne asked, stopping in front of the Fat Lady's portrait.

"Has someone ever told you how alike you are to your mother?" he asked, eyes glistening and twinkling as if he knew a deep secret. "But your eyes... they're deep brown, just like your father's"

"Yes..." she grumbled. "I heard it once or twice,"

It was the first thing people would say to her whenever they met. Something few people could look past. She was always little-Lily-Evans, nothing more than that other than Harry Potter's sister.

She wondered if now that her eyes were still living, and no longer just the reminder of a corpse, they would still be as important.