Prologue
Evangeline Potter couldn’t believe she could get herself into these sorts of situations anymore. This particular little adventure had started with an accident, as a great many of her other adventures had before.
After the war with Voldemort, Evangeline had buried herself in studies. There was nothing like study to get Hermione off her back about getting out and being social. After all, if Hermione had to be physically dragged from her books by her fiancé just to eat, then it would be hypocritical of her to suggest Evangeline be removed from them to socialise with people she barely knew – and certainly didn't care to.
At her twentieth birthday party – which was as small an affair as it could be when the Weasley clan was invited – she announced her intention to become a healer and a doctor. Kingsley had been bugging her via owl to please join the Auror corps since the war ended. Evangeline had no such intention. She'd had enough of that life.
She'd never forget it. She'd never stop being totally, utterly, and completely paranoid (because there were still factions out for her head on a pike, and she wasn't stupid). But she didn't want to go on like that.
Becoming a non-magical doctor took years. Becoming a healer was just as time-consuming. A lot of the studies involved overlapped though – just for example, anatomy was anatomy, magical or muggle – so she quietly acquired a time-turner, and did both sets of studies at the same time. The repetition drilled it all into her head and made sure it all stayed very permanently lodged there, if nothing else.
She eventually graduated in the top ten of her class, for both sets of study. Not the ultimate top of the class, but top ten, and she was happy enough with that.
The accident happened about a week after that.
Now, it's important to understand that travelling backwards through time with a magical artefact like a time-turner is not at all something that is advisable when done at the exact same time as you are travelling across space. Be that by portkey, apparition, or simply walking along. Always be as still as possible when turning the time-turner. The side-effects vary for how much movement across space to how much movement back in time. A few steps while going back an hour might put you in, for example, entirely the wrong room in Hogwarts, but the time you were aiming at. Apparating across the country while going back an hour will probably land you in the wrong country a day or two ago. A portkey, on the other hand, adds extra spin. The spinning of the time-turner and the portkey will amplify each other if they're both active at the same time.
That was how Evangeline ended up in what looked like medieval times, in a world very different from her own, oh, and in a body that is not her own either.
When she had woken in a delightfully comfortable bed (very suspicious as she had been port keying at the time of her going unconscious) she was bombarded by memories that were not her own, the soul that had been in the body had died from some feverish illness (nobody had told her what illness it was). Raising a hand to rub her aching head, her eyes caught on a bracelet. A bracelet from her previous life. It seemed whatever force had put her in this body also left her with all her belongings from her previous life. That was certainly appreciated. There was the finger-nail-sized red box (her shrunken trunk), an itsy-bitsy black motorcycle, a tiny gold cage with nothing in it, a small silver stag, and a little blue-and-white medical symbol on a circle of silver the size of her finger-nail.
Each one had a purpose. The trunk most obvious, as it contained just about everything she owned, from books and underwear to number twelve Grimmauld Place. Okay, so she'd gutted, de-magicked, and sold the building, but everything out of it (that she hadn't sold or set fire to) was inside her trunk. The motorcycle was simply shrunk down. It was Sirius' old enchanted Harley Davidson. Arthur Weasley's beat-up old car that he'd enchanted didn't have a patch on Sirius' bike, if for no other reason than Sirius actually knew what-all he was doing, and was a much better wizard than Arthur could have ever hoped to be.
The little gold cage was also shrunken down and covered with enchantments. It was for putting people in, cruel as that might sound. Anything put into that cage would shrink with it, and it had a ward scribed on the bottom that prevented any and all magic use within it, so, no transforming into an animagus and making a get-away, and no cursing her from within the cage as it dangled from her wrist. No getting away at all, in fact. It could only be opened from the outside, and only after it had been enlarged. The lock vanished completely when it shrank. Evangeline had learned that it was a good idea to always have somewhere to put a prisoner, just in case. She'd delivered five wanna-be's to the DMLE for questioning thanks to having that little cage on hand.
The stag carried protective wards. They'd been micro-etched all over the little guy with a laser and a powerful magnifying glass, so that each rune-sequence looked like a stroke that gave the illusion of fur. With a tap of her wand, they'd activate either layer the area around her for twenty metres, or else latch onto the building (or tent) she was in when she did it (and potentially extended for the same distance out around the outer wall of the structure). It also had a permanently active anti-Dementor ward, which prevented the foul creatures from getting within ten feet of her. Yes, she could cast the Patronus Charm, and cast it well, but that was only good if she was awake to cast it, and she had to sleep some times. After the war, the Dementors hadn't been returned to Azkaban, but they hadn't all been destroyed either. For Evangeline, that particular ward was not paranoid, but practical.
The blue-and-white Rod of Asclepius was, of course, a representative of her being a member of the British Medical Association, ie, a Doctor. It was also micro-etched with runes. Specifically, runic versions of charms that induced calm and trust. Not a whole lot, because Evangeline knew that some people (like herself) would just panic more if a wave of calm washed over them when they were on the edge of a panic attack, and out of nowhere she suddenly trusted a complete stranger with her life. This was just a nudge. "I'm a medical professional, and I can help if you let me. Breathe." That was about as much influence as that charm had, but she'd found it was utterly sufficient and didn't make her conscience ping about mind-control. It was tweaked to specifically only effect people who needed medical aid too, so there was no way she was going to be able to use it to create her own army of followers.
Evangeline sat up to look around and paused, no, she was Rhaenyra now, Rhaenyra Targaryen, daughter of King Viserys and Queen Aemma of the seven kingdoms.