navyaphobic

[navyaphobic]

This Charming Man (2898 words) by navyaphobic

James Potter knew this day would come. He’d been waiting for it since 1981—the day time would twist, the day he would go back. Yet it had felt surreal. One moment he was 25, fighting in the middle of a war. The next, he is seventeen again. A student at Hogwarts. A Marauder. Only it’s not his Hogwarts anymore

It’s 1945. Tom Riddle is still just a boy, still charming the world with his lies. And then there was her. Edith Lillian Elmwood. A Muggle-born marked for tragedy. She doesn’t know James. Not yet. But James remembers her. Her voice. Her freckles. And her final words—etched into his bones, alive in his blood: "When we meet again—and we will—I may not remember you. You’ll have to remind me—Of who we were. When you will whisper it all back to me, I’ll love you, just the same."

Time had taken everything from him—his youth, his charm, his laughter, his light. But now, impossibly, it had given him something back. A second chance.

One more breath of youth. One more season to fall in love. One more shot at rewriting a fate that was never hers to carry.

To be seventeen again. To feel reckless again. To believe in love again To become this charming man she would fall in love with. Again