Prologue – In Time

Awaking and rather painfully, Rowan let out a pained groan holding her head with one hand and still blinked at her surroundings. Trying to regain her bearings, she gazed wildly about until her eyes came to rest upon a previously missed figure only standing mere feet away from her. A rather thin man with shallow skin, a large, hooked nose, and piercing black eyes. His dark silk robes hang limply on his body; however, they are stained with what appears to be encrusted, dried blood. Most concerning of all, he appears to have been observing intently for some time.

Rowan's hand automatically reaches for her weapon kept her side. Yet her hand comes up empty sending a cold shiver of dread down her spine. She tries to recall just how she got her when an agonizing pain threatened to split her head open. Gasping in white-hot pain, she clutches her head until the terrible ache dulls to a mere throb. The pain is so awful that she feels nausea swirling sickly as it climbs up her stomach towards the back of her throat.

Deciding not to press her luck, Rowan slowly raises her gaze to meet that of the stranger. A strange sense of unknown familiarity causes her to frown. She knew for a fact she had never met the man before; he was far too memorable to be easily forgotten. Yet before she can ponder further, the unknown man collapses onto the floor. A strong metallic scent wafts through the air.

Rowan sniffs the air and immediately recognizes the scent. She hurries over to the supposed dried, blood-encrusted robes. She none too gently presses her hand against the man and hears the man release a groan of pain. A gush of sticky wetness clings to her hand suggesting a gaping wound.

Despite the abrupt circumstances of their meeting, Rowan reaches for the medical kit only to grasp the air and find nothing. She withdraws her hand and applies pressure on the wound to still the flow of blood as much as possible. Without proper treatment, the stranger before her would bleed out before her very eyes.

Raising her gaze, Rowan carefully begins to study her surroundings. It was a plain white room that lacked any visible entrance or exit. Her eyes carefully searched for any signs of crevices or cameras. She could not find any, but that did not mean they were not there. Far more pressing to learn is where are they and why?

The thin stranger seems to slowly come back to and shoves her hand away. He grunts in pain and stiffly sits up despite the gaping wound on his side. "You should rest," Rowan said. "You need to keep pressure on your wound."

The stranger's nostrils flare and his lips curl in a dismissive sneer. "It is nothing," he coldly said causing Rowan's face to twitch in annoyance.

Turning his head to the side, the stranger's long black hair falls over his face. "It will make no difference," he muttered in a velvety English accented voice.

The room falls into silence for a moment, before the stranger raises his face again. "We are upon the fringes of time."

Rowan eyes the stranger with a healthy sense of skepticism. In the unlikely circumstance that the explanation was true that still did not explain what they were doing there nor much less the stranger's wounds. The reasonable conclusion was that the present situation was a product of her imagination or an illusion. Her gaze falls back to her hand covered in drying blood. Even the best illusions could not recreate blood, it was their strongest weakness. Alternatively, she could be experiencing a severe hallucinatory psychosis or coma.

"Thine concern is not necessary. The wound is fatal. And regrettably, there is nothing more that can be done at this juncture," the stranger drily interjected.

Deciding not to discount any possibility, but still unconvinced, Rowan says, "Presuming we are on the fringes of time. This would not be a time-traveling paradox would it now?"

Just in the case that it was, there were several rules for survival that must never be broken. Rule one, never trust an AI. Rule number two, never fully trust the timeline for the past and future can always be re-altered. Rule number three, every single action has a ripple effect. And Rule number four, nothing is ever as it seems.

"A time-traveling paradox?" The man's brow crinkled in confusion and annoyance at the term.

Furrowing her brow and much more suspicious, Rowan slowly leaned back. Theoretically, if the stranger before her was a product of hallucinatory psychosis or coma, her brain should still supply sufficient knowledge to create a realistic character for her mind to interact with. That did not mean she believed the stranger's unbelievable statement, but rather she was excluding the possibility of a mental breakdown or coma.

However, was something eerily familiar about the man that Rowan couldn't quite put her finger on. It was as though she is looking at a long last relative, but her father had been an only child. And as far as she was aware she was also an only child. Yet there was something, especially captivating about his ink-colored eyes that seemed to absorb all-natural light.

A loud cough startles Rowan out of her thoughts as the man coughs out a wad of blood. Reaching into his pocket for a blood-stained handkerchief, the cold-faced man irritably wiped his mouth clean. "Am I presently before the descendant born from the lustful union of a tree dryad and a druid?"

Rowan sighs with resignation at the family's skeleton in the closet so to speak. For once upon a time, a nature-loving druid fell in love with a tree dryad, and from their mutual love a child was born, her many great-grandfathers. The love story was true by all accounts as all their family members carried a spark of magic within them some more than others.

"You have the honor," Rowan flatly replied, before her face grows still as the last piece to the puzzle clicked into place. However, she could not deny the manner in which he pursed his lips and frowned identically to that her own. He was far older than her, he couldn't possibly in her twin! Her mind returned to his previous statement taking into account Occam's razor that states that the simplest explanation is always right.

Perturbed but unable to deny the principle of Occam's Razor, Rowan stiffly asks, "I apologize for any rudeness my question might incur but are you my future self? Because please do not misunderstand me, but I very much prefer being a woman and have no interest in being otherwise."

"Preposterous," the stranger scoffed looking rather appalled at the idea itself. Holding himself up with dignity, he solemnly says, "I am from an alternative plane if you will."

Rowan privately sighed in relief as she could not imagine herself as a man. However, that did little to put her at ease. Narrowing her eyes, she coolly asks, "In that case, what is the reason for bringing you here? Interplane travel is forbidden by the very laws of existence and magic. The breaking of these laws requires an impossible price that death would be preferable than the price paid."

Partially ignoring the question, the thin man breathlessly rasped, "I require your assistance," before violently shaking with back-breaking coughs.

Concerned by the statement, Rowan rolls up her sleeves to reveal a leaf-like birthmark on her upper wrist. The grizzled man's lips twitch into a bloody smile. "So, you're a Magician?" The grizzled man bitterly coughed revealing blood-stained crooked teeth.

Rowan blinks in surprise and frowns at the bitter reply. "You are not one, I take?"

The grizzled man adamantly shakes his head in thinly veiled horror. "What an utterly ludicrous suggestion, Madam. I can assure you that I am a wizard!" He proudly declared.

Rowan frowns in dislike and stared down her nose at him. "A mere wizard, yes?" The grown man sneers back at her with a familiar twist of lips causing Rowan to sneer back in an identical fashion.

Turning away, Rowan folds her arms over her chest in solemn contemplation. If Magicians did not exist in an alternative plane, then why was the wizard before here? Magicians in some respects are undoubtedly weaker than wizards. Wizards may perform all sorts of magic with a wand. On the other hand, Magicians are born only being able to use one type of magic. And even then, very few Magicians were ever able to match a wizard in power, and those rare enough to do so are classified as Grand Magicians.

"I am not a Grand Magician," Rowan warily said. "I cannot fulfill your request for power if that is what you seek."

"Were it as simple as that," the thin man coughed streams of blood into his handkerchief. "No, I need you to fulfill a far greater task. I require you to change fate itself."

"It is impossible," Rowan flatly stated. "The flow of time cannot be changed, and fate cannot be stopped. And even hopefully contemplating this madness, my very existence will be rejected by your plane. My very existence is a virus that your plane will seek to eradicate."

"That is exactly, why it will work," the thin man snapped back refusing to be dismayed. "Any changes that are made by your persona will be permanent as your existence is not from my plane nor the original timeline."

"Presuming this highly improbable theory is correct," Rowan asked, "just what exactly am I supposed to prevent?"

The thin man triumphantly stares down his crooked, hooked nose at her. "There is an evil wizard that must be stopped. We lost all hope the boy died, we just didn't know it then," his voice trailed off into a whisper, before regaining strength. "Lord Voldemort must perish before he ever succeeds."

"Wait, are you talking about H**** P*****?" Rowan incredulously said and frowned. She tried to speak again, but nothing came out of her voice.

"Excuse me?" The thin man sputtered vaguely insulted.

"I'm assuming your name is Severus Snape, am I correct?" Rowan deadpanned.

The thin man narrows his eyes and icily responds, "Given that you are my alternate version, I should think that should be a surprise to you." He waited for more, but nothing more came. "I forewarn you, prepare yourself."

"Hold just a second!" Rowan protested reaching over to grab him by the collar. "I never agreed to this!"

Severus Snape blatantly ignored Rowan's protests, "The year will be 1971."

Before Rowan can shake some sense into Severus Snape, a loud audible crack is heard. Cracks spread throughout the room as if ice breaking into pieces. A defeating roar is heard from outside as if they are moving through a vacuum of space. "What have you done, Severus!" She shouted into his face not releasing her grip on his robes.

"We've run out of time," Severus Snape croaked, before staring grimly at her. "You were already dying when I found you. I changed your fate, now change mine."

Rowan releases Severus in shock as she touches her chest and remembers the agonizing feeling of being stabbed through the chest. She glances down only to see a giant hole in her chest that was not bleeding. She should be dead from her wound, but she wasn't.

The white room rapidly breaks apart like an eggshell as the grizzled man yells over the roar, "Save-!"

"Wait-!" Rowan called out too late as the white room broke apart and they fell into utter darkness.