Full Summary: As time began to bleed out, threatening to obliterate the world in a calamity that saw mammoths marching along riverbanks and extinct flowers in bloom, Horatia Potter discovered she wasn't who she always thought she was. Forced to either abandon all those she loves and die in a time stolen from her, or watching all she adores burn under a time that's broken, she does the only thing she can. Save the world one last time. However, the Medici's were not the small village family she was expecting, and fifteenth century Florence was, perhaps, the most dangerous city the world had ever known. Faced with blood feuds, murder, assassinations plots and decadence beyond imagination, Horatia was determined to make a home in a place that would rather see her, and her family, dead. If only Francesco de' Pazzi wasn't lurking around every corner she turned. She always did have a soft spot for hopeless causes.
Tags(will be updated as we go along): Medici!Harry. Fem!Harry. Fem!Harry/Francesco de' Pazzi. Strong Lorenzo, Horatia, Bianca and Giuliano family feels. Eventual smut. Slow burn romance. Plot driven.
PROLOGUE:
The First.
No One's P.O.V
The Calamity began, contrarily to what it would become known as, gently. Undetected by many witches and wizards, there was no prelude to absolute annihilation. No crescendo from the sky. No fiery pits splitting the earth asunder. Not so much as a trumpet blowing, like the good muggle book said.
The first sign, in truth, had been a field of Silphium flowers blooming in the Highlands. By the untrained eye, they were confused for daisies, with their small, stretched, yellow petals. That was the first of many mistakes.
For they were not daisies.
They were Silphium.
And wild Silphium had been extinct since the first century B.C.
The next was a woman. A woman dressed in outlandish clothing, brocade of real gold and fine pearls, waist cinched by a suffocating corset, and powdered grey hair towering above her head with jewels and pins and fruit, of all things, pinioned within, was caught wandering around Diagon Alley, terrified and hysterical, shouting in French.
She was taken to Saint Mungo's and had an Obliviate cast upon her, the Auror's who took her believing she was merely a muggle, especially with that odd dress, who had ambled in through the wards somehow. No one knew she was an aristocrat from seventeenth century France until it was too late.
The Calamity came swifter then.
A legion of Romans battled a quartet of policemen on London bridge.
A woolly mammoth was spotted tramping along on the banks of the river Trent.
A saber-toothed tiger mauled a family in Coventry.
Roundheads from the civil war laid siege to a church in Gloucester.
The bubonic plague reappeared in a small village in Norfolk.
A knight tried to joust a truck off the M18 motorway.
A clan of cavemen burned down Birmingham museum.
The Ministry of Magic was scarcely managing to contain each incident, relying on flimsy excuses of pranks, complex animatronics, actors going too far with their re-enactments, and polluted water causing mass hallucinations.
The excuses wouldn't hold for much longer.
Muggles believed what they wished to believe, but even they weren't so blind.
Three months after the initial case of the Silphium flowers, the Unspeakables came with an answer the Ministry decreed on letters sent to all wizarding citizens on the backs of an owls wing.
Time was broken.
Bleeding.
One century feeding into the next, rinsing into the following, drowning out the last.
What was, is, and will be became now.
Everywhere and anytime mutating into one writhing, nasty moment of everything. As no one had spied anything from a year into the future… Well, the end was here.
It was only going to get worse; they swore, unless they unearthed the first.
Someone had, against all the laws and regulations in place, stolen something from before. Something that was not meant to be stolen. Time did so love to work in hoops and loops and paradoxes.
Yet, time did not like being messed with either.
One missed tick, and everything fell out of sync.
The clock fell apart.
Immediately, Aurors were tasked to search each home, each family, with a spell to detect any fluctuations in time that often swamped an object not of the current era.
And this is where our story begins.
In a cottage, in Godric's Hollow, on a sun-drenched Sunday morning, Horatia Potter, seventeen, sipping from her mug of peppermint tea, allowed the Aurors into her home with a kind smile.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
Horatia Potter's P.O.V
Spring swept in like a tide, washing away the blankets of white snow and frost, ebbing and rushing. On some days, gilded buttercups and daffodils were soaked in warm air, on others, bitter winds raged fiercely, shredding petal from stem, struggling for the return of winter. Nevertheless, by April, the cold was a distant memory.
And with it, so was the memory of the war.
Birds fed clutches of chicks in the safety of high-topped trees, far from the cats prowling at the trunk. Tepid rain lashed at the windows of Godric's Hollow, in bursts of gentle downpour, both warm and wet. It was in one such shower that Horatia Potter, only a year out from the worst war her kind had ever seen, opened the door of her home to four stern faced Aurors.
Life was good since the demise of Tom Riddle. Quiet. Peaceful. Everything Horatia could have ever wanted. She visited the Weasley's every Sunday for lunch. She met Hermione in a café on Wednesdays for a catch-up coffee between Hermione's lessons from her Ministry internship at the Department of Protection of Magical Creatures, Ron running late most days from his own exhausting shifts at the Auror Academy. After shockingly turning down her own invitation to join the Auror Academy before her completion of Hogwarts schooling, Horatia was kept busy enough with her volunteering at Saint Mungo's.
She might even accept the offer of a place for the Mastery in Healing course they presented her with last Tuesday.
Horatia was happy.
Happy with Godric Hollow, freshly renovated… still, even with the new lick of cheery beige paint, she was unable to go into that nursery, couldn't stomach the flash of green and the scream-
Happy with her lazy mornings… in an empty, cold, lonely bed.
Happy with her peppermint tea and silent evenings… Aching for the nights back in Gryffindor's tower, lit hearths and chatting kids filling the void of silence, and sneaking to the kitchens for a midnight snack only because they could.
Happy, If a little, only a little, bored.
So fucking bored.
Life was going well.
It was.
Apart from, of course, the little fact that the world was bloody ending.
Time was bleeding.
Whatever that meant.
As bad as it sounded, Horatia was only glad it wasn't her in the crux of it this time.
She had once, only once, messed with a Time-Turner in third year, and she had not, not so much as a pebble, taken anything from her short trip to the past. Horatia had not stolen anything, nothing at all, and so, she opened her door with a kind smile and welcomed the grim Aurors into her humble home with, perhaps a bit dramatic, a sweep of her arm.
She had nothing to hide.
Or so she thought.
They were efficient with their search, trailing downward from upstairs, combing room by room, cupboard by closet, desk by counter. The final room, the kitchen, was seconds away from being declared clean when they found the damned trunk that wrecked her life.
"Sorry, Miss Potter, but can you open this chest?"
Horatia Potter, still clad in her loose pajamas, hovering by the door with a warm mug of tea in her clasped hands, grinned at a sombre Bill Weasley.
"Miss Potter is it? Wait till I tell Molly and Fleur how cold you've been to their daughters and granddaughters godmother. I can hear the Howler already."
He flushed, sharp cheeks staining pink, as Horatia chuckled. As one of the best Curse Breakers' in Britain, Bill had been roped in on the hunt early on, and by the bruises underlying his amber eyes, it was the last thing he wanted to be doing right now. Getting under his skin was all too easy, and all the more gratifying.
She really was bored if she was willing to piss off a werewolf just to do…
Something.
Perhaps even draw out the time he was here, just so she had someone, anyone, even an Auror on business, to talk to.
So she didn't feel so torturously alone.
Merlin, they were on a world saving mission, and here she was, delaying them for an idle chat.
Shame lapped hotly up her throat, bitter like bile.
How pathetic was that?
"Horatia, please open the chest."
Her cup clicked on the granite as Horatia rested it on the kitchen counter closest to her, before she strolled over and, with a tap of her wand, the lid of the small chest popped open. A pile of parchment greeted the band of Aurors.
Letters.
Her letters.
That was all.
Still, the four Aurors scanned the items one by one, corner by corner with the tip of their wands, methodically examining the contents. Nothing happened.
Bill slapped the lid shut.
"Sorry, Horatia, but you know what it's like on duty. Can't play favourites. But that's the last of it. Everything's clear, as we knew it would be. I know it can't be easy watching strangers rifle through your belongings, especially after all you've given for us already."
Don't.
Horatia couldn't stand it when people treated her like an idol. Something remote and faraway and inaccessible. She was no hero, no star in the night sky, she had been just a kid trying to survive till dawn.
A kid who had died.
Not now. Stomp it down. Keep it locked away.
Horatia smiled compassionately.
It strained in the corners.
"No need for apologies. It's happening with everyone and I'm no exception. It's fine, really. As long as my name is cleared so you can focus on finding the real culprit, I'm glad to do all you need me to."
Bill bobbed his head wearily, mouth opening to reply, when his man, Horatia forgot his name, bowed, wand falling just so to skim over her, spell still active.
The tip flared crimson, a bell buzzing in the space between them.
He glanced up to her, wide eyed.
Disbelief and silence tumbled through the room.
Horatia laughed.
"What does that mean? Am I… Ill? I have just gotten over a cold and-"
The Auror's mouth thinned to a knifes edge, grim and slim.
"Empty your pockets, take off any jewellery you have on, and place your wand on the table. Slowly."
No please. No Miss Potter. Nothing.
Well… Shit.
Frowning, Horatia did what she was asked to do, deliberate and sluggish, eyeing the sudden apathy the remaining Aurors swelled rigidly with. Flinty.
"There must be a mistake. Horatia wouldn't-"
Bill was ignored as they swooped onto the measly pile now gathered on her kitchen table, picking over her wand, a hair tie she kept on her wrist, and pack of muggle chewing gum, like vultures pecking at a carcass.
A sweep of three wands.
Not a single flash.
The man she couldn't remember the name of, though Horatia was sure he was some distant Diggory cousin by that jawline, pulled back scowling, gaze flickering between her prone form and the knickknacks on the kitchen counter.
Three large strides and he stood before her and-
He yanked the hem of her pajama shirt, tugging it away from her belly.
"What are you doing-"
He, as he did with a blustering Bill, snubbed her indignation, and directed the tip of his wand to the cloth.
Nothing happened.
"False alarm. Perhaps we should take a break. We're all tired and-"
Anew, Bill's voice fell on deaf ears. Horatia yanked her top free from the Auror's tight grip.
It was fine.
Nothing was wrong.
It was a mistake.
False alarm.
They all just needed to calm down and-
The Auror raised his wand, aimed it right at her face.
The tip sparked a sickening red.
"It's you."
Of course it was her.
When wasn't it?
"Fuck."
Thoughts?
A.N: Self isolation has left me with too much time on my hands, and I ended up binge watching Medici on Netflix and, well, this was birthed from 4 am thoughts lol. I hope you enjoyed the prologue, as always, chapters will likely grow in length, and I hope you are all looking forward to the next chapter.
If you could, drop a review, so I know whether to continue or not. Hopefully, I will see you guys soon! Stay safe!