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Chapter Text

1.

Despite the new wand, despite the new experiences, despite the new moniker, despite the NEWT scores under his belt, Neville Longbottom feels like he still has much to catch up to, much to improve, much to shake off.

It doesn’t help that Gran has passed away in her sleep shortly after she received news that Voldemort is truly dead.

It also doesn’t help that Harry Potter, the figure he has been looking up to since even before they met each other on their first train ride to Hogwarts, has been sentenced to the Veil because of legal technicality. And Harry can’t tell Neville himself because he is to spend these three days leading up to it in a holding cell like a true criminal.

This travesty is in fact what has shaken Neville’s last shreds of respect for the Ministry. He withdraws his assets from all round the Common Wealth, and packs them up or liquidates them like what Hermione has been doing with Harry’s own assets. He is moving to somewhere remote and will raise any family he might have there, far away from the nonsense rife in the so-called civilisation.

He is a little sad and regretful that none of his relatives would go with him, even though he has pointed out everything that is wrong with the world. He understands them. He knows that they are set in their ways, like Gran was. But family is still family, and he wishes that he did not have to part ways with them.

He won’t tolerate anyone badmouthing Harry, though, and he doesn’t, not even when the words come from his relatives. Harry has suffered more than enough on the hands of ignorant witches and wizards like them, and Neville has stood aside for too long when it comes to that.

Never again.

2.

Dean Thomas aspired to be a famous, talented artist since he had been really little.

He found out that he had magic, instead, when he was eleven, and went on to study at Hogwarts.

Life at Hogwarts wasn’t as magical as Professor McGonagall had led him and his family to believe, though, sadly. There was no arts class there, and “muggleborns” like he is were – are – ridiculed, shunted aside, even treated unfairly.

And then there was the war.

The war that, in a way, is still on-going. Because Voldemor tmay be dead, but Harry will soon be murdered by the government for some technicality related to Voldemort, and nobody thinks to even question that.

Not that the fate of muggleborns is any better than during last year, either. As a matter of fact, Dean has been stuffed together with other muggleborn victims that Hermione could find here, in the safehouse she set up with Neville and damned Looney Lovegood.

No drop of help from the government. Nothing from the “good” citizens of British wizarding world, too. Just from fellow “mudbloods” and “blood traitors.” And it doesn’t help that Dean, like so many other mundaneborn children, has lost everything within the last year alone. All of his family were slaughtered that night, when Death Eaters came to their home when they were asleep and toyed with Mum and Dad and Karie and Kathie and Kalie before cutting them into pieces.

Now Dean just aspires to live, and to repay the Death Eaters that robbed him off everything and everyone. He’d even take either, if he can’t get both.

He’d even take living in some remote place, like Neville’s just offered him and the others. He might rebuild himself, there. And, who knows, if there’s a chance to prepare a strike back or at least to build a better community….

3.

Hermione Jeane Granger regrets having Obliviated her parents sorely.

The three of them had grown more and more apart since her first year at Hogwarts, true, but they are still her parents. And, given what has happened again to Harry, she cannot go to Australia to try to track them down, not just now.

Harry needs her more, at present, just like last year. And Harry’s people, even more.

She never even knew that Harry got a people of his own. People like in medieval time. Not until a representative from Gringotts met with her and dumped a trio of self-updating books in front of her, claiming that those are lists of Harry’s assets under House Black, House Potter, and personal bequeathments. She bets that Harry himself never knows of them, or he would have at least talked about them.

He so loves to have a family of his own, she knows, and he would love these folks, she bets. Because, when she visits each pocket of them spread round the world, they insist that they are his, no one else’s, just like he is theirs.

And each group of these folks have never failed to demand to go with him even through the Veil, which necessitates lots of scrambling on everyone’s part to accommodate such a wish for the people and the properties they are “keeping for the Lord” plus the respective wards.

Oh, and a Time Turner that Director Croaker discreetly slipped her, too, which could go for a month at each full turn and got twelve full turns plus some half turns in it still, which is a life-saver especially when Harry’s other friends got wind that she is gathering things for him to bring across the dimensions.

Well, she hopes he will appreciate the hard work wen he at last meets them – not if, never if, he must live, because the Veil is just a dimension portal or something, no doubt, like that book he mentioned when she asked why he chose the Veil.

She might even join him, after she has reunited with her parents and hopefully reversed the Obliviation, if her parents want nothing to do with her. She is quite complicit in taking a chunk of the wizarding world away and to another dimension, after all – land, people and valuables – so nowhere on earth – this earth – will be safe for her from the retaliation of those impacted by such a move. And she will shove little Teddy Lupin along with Harry through the Veil, too, soon enough, so she might not even find sanctuary with someone like Neville, if she can’t convince him of the necessity of it.

She doesn’t regret this, though.

4.

“Hey, you look bad. May and the kid all right? The maggies been causing havoc again?”

Owen Grady stares at his identical twin Ewan, who is not being so identical right now given how the other is looking grim and dejected and regretful. Owen is feeling chipper instead today, on the anniversary of him stepping foot on Isla Sorna, the island of dinosaurs. Everyone involved in the successful rescue of those lunatic stranded in the island has formed a club, and he’s just been from its anniversary celebration.

But, well, Ewan’s face and the way he seems to be memorising Owen’s own face for a forever parting, it’s sucking all the glow from the memory like… like… like a blue whale sucking in seawater for the planktons, maybe.

Owen scrunches up his nose on that thought. And, above all, it’s what makes his twin’s mournful mask crack. If a little. With a smile. The jerk.

But then Ewan tears up. Oh no! Owen can’t even remember when either of them last cried. Maybe it’s when they were eight and their parents died in a car accident? Because then their harpy of an aunt took them in, and “toughened them up,” and there’s no leeway to cry then.

So these tears now… “Umm. Nothing’s wrong with May or Mitch, right? Please say I’m right?” Because Owen adores his nephew, magic and all, and Mayva isn’t half bad if too secretive and proper-like, and–

“Can’t force you to choose, but can’t force myself to choose either. You’re my only family, but May and Mitch are, too.”

–Ow. Even the manly voice cracks, and Owen is positively spooked, now. Not to mention feeling like tearing up, himself.

“What’s going on?” he demands, but his own voice is far from manly – their aunt’s version of “manly,” that is – with how high and reedy it is. “Did May force you to distance yourself from me? What for?”

Ewan’s headshake is relieving, at first, but, “Then what?”

“You remember the fracas down in UK? – No, listen. It’s over, and Lord Potter isn’t coming here as a fugitive or refugee or whatever. He won’t ever come here, in fact… and we’ve decided to come there, along with the rest of his Houses. – no, listen, Owen, I married May knowing full well that she’s wholely devoted to that sprog, and that sprog isn’t bad either. If not for Dumbledore, we’d have been introduced to each other and Mitch would’ve tweeted endlesly about his hero. And now… and now the government there screwed the boy again. He’s sentenced to death, practically, though May’s convinced it's cross-dimension portal or something, and we’re to… follow him.”

Owen blanks out, just so. he would’ve never known that he’s sprung to his feet and yelled, except that Ewan is giving him a bear hug now and his damned throat hurts.

His eyes are definitely wet, too.

And the tears fall, when Ewan explains that the damned feudal maggies have found a way to detect if the “Veil of Death” is a cross-dimensional portal or not in truth and save everyone if the thing turns out to be an execution method indeed, “So, it’s safe. So, will you… come with us?”

God damn it. he loves his job in the Navy, he loves and cares for many in it and outside of it, he adores the dinos, but if it’s between those and his twin and his adorable nephew and the nephew’s adorably proper, adorably fierce mother?

He’d pick the latter. Always. However much he rues the lost chances here.

Time to pack up, then.

Chapter Text

5.

In one very secure room in one very remote place, the top names in the United Kingdom when it comes to internal defence and external relations gather with a tense air about them.

All of their number have reported odd things and happenings throughout their jurisdiction: people who quitted their jobs and packed up and were gone without a trace in the span of just three days, a handful of other individuals doing the very same thing outside of Great Britain, large wathes of empty land or waters in the Common Wealth and outside of it that almost seamlessly appeared – reappeared? – within those bloody three days, their pesky magical counterparts bleeting about big losses of money and resources at the same time and denying that it’s caused by their recently concluded war….

“Is their war not finished yet in truth, then?” wonders one.

“Ruddy freaks,” another mutters lowly, tired and anxious and confused and on the edge of his tether.

“It’s high time we find out for ourselves and not depend on those wizards, I propose,” yet another speaks up, with a side glance at his now-chastised colleague. “It’s high time we get to the bottom of this and get justice for all mundane people who died because of their war.”

“Including our citizens who were drawn into their world?” the Prime Minister perks up hopefully. His beloved niece nearly died in the rampant and enforced persecutions that has been going on in that bloody backward society for all too long.

How glad, relieved and vindicated he feels that this gathering agrees!

6.

“Ron? Something wrong?”

Charlie Weasley – well, Charles Weasley, but really – crouches beside his youngest brother, who is wanly, listlessly watching his youngest sister fly about in the orchard but not joining in. Compared to Ginny, who is not chipper let alone her usual fiery self but at least alive, Ron looks dead, blank eyes and greyish skin and all.

And his expression still doesn’t stir, when Charlie nudges at him with an elbow. He just scoots away on the log that is their “garden bench.”

It makes Charlie wonder sickly if he might lose three brothers soon, what with how George has been behaving since… since Fred.

It also makes him wonder what happened in the Ministry that Ron is this way. Wasn’t Ron there to meet with Harry and… “Oh. Ron. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about Harry. Wish we could do something to overturn that stupid law.”

He flings an arm round his youngest brother. But it’s like he’s hugging a clothed statue with spungy surface instead, really.

Just like George.

And, come to think of it again, Percy, too, who made up with the family via the twins only to lose one of them under his watch a moment after.

`The deaths didn’t end with the war,` he realises, remembers, and has to straighten up with how sick he feels.

Oddly, it’s only then that Ron speaks – whispers, rather, and his words are nearly blown away by the late-afternoon breeze that is picking up all round the orchard.

Charlie hopes that he has misheard because of it, and blames the wind for good measure.

But still, he cannot unhear what he has heard.

“The baby’s gone. Tonks’ and Professor Lupin’s kid. Hermione pushed him on Harry at the Veil. I can’t believe it….”

Charlie has heard about Harry’s hypothesis that the Veil of Death actually leads not to death. But it remains a theory. And, if what Ron said is true, if what Harry said is false, Hermione has condemned a baby to death, a werewolf’s son or not.

On top of what Ron told him yesterday, about her Obliviating her own parents, now Charlie is in the firm opinion that his family had better be far, far, far away from that girl. Who knows what she will do next! Her name might just be equal to – or even exceed! – Bellatrix Lestrange someday!

Well, the Burrow hasn’t been rebuilt has it? They’re still living in tents in the orchard, while the grounds are cleansed and the foundation is checked over for damages. Then, perhaps it’s time to join forces with Bill and persuade the family to move somewhere – somewhere Hermione will never know.

7.

Blaise Zabini is not human.

Well, not all human.

And they are proud of it.

Not that anybody ever suspected them, thus nobody ever asked… or accused them.

Not that anybody would dare, with the might of Agnes Zabini looming ready for those who would.

Blaise is not alone, either, being this special kind of mixture. They went to school with one, in fact.

They went to school in dreary Scotland highlands for that person, to be exact, though Dumbledore and his ilk had gotten their claws into that person before they could move in to scoop the other up.

And, recently, that person got snuffed out. Blaise could literally feel it in their soul. Every milaða soul is… “linked with another of their kind” is perhaps not accurate, but the accurate thing would involve a long, in-dept explanation of theory, history and anecdotal evidence. So, basically, one who bears the soul of a milaða will recognise another who bears the same, even if they are physically halfbreed or reincarnated or deeply unconscious.

Abý warned them about this, long ago, and told them it’s why a civil war or any war involving milaðen is ugly because of this factor alone.

Abý is one such survivor, in fact.

Abý was part of the Royal Guard and is still considered an elder sibling by the reigning monarch. And one of the Monarch’s twin children was murdered in cold blood at the end of the last war, only to be reborn round the time of Blaise’s own birth. Abý never asked them to befriend the other child, let alone take a more serious role, but Blaise knows that the Royal Family is Abý’s family, if neither legally nor culturally, hence they are Blaise’s family, so Blaise asked Mama for permission to study at Hogwarts.

They just never thought that they would be separated so soon and so far from the so-called “mascot of Griffindor.” With no chance whatsoever to intermingle, at that, given to which House they had been sorted into, and how quickly the other was poisoned against “the slimy snakes,” including their own kin.

`Eh, no. Harry is definitely a he now… right? Given what Daphne said about that year? Or do they just prefer to snog a certain gender? Bleh, these genders are confusing!`

But thinking about genders is far better than thinking about the reborn Loki dead before Blaise can have a chance to meet with and get to know them. Dead because of a laughably faulty law, at that.

`Never again. That society needs to go down and be reborn. Abý said old and tired people who can’t get on living anymore get to be reborn anew and afresh, so maybe it is what these prejudiced, unthinking, antiquated, mindless, herd-like, inbred people need. Now, better ask Mama if she will help, and Abý, and Daphne, and perhaps Susan?`

8.

Dudley Dursley freezes as he passes beside the living room that is also his bedroom.

His mother is there, seated on the edge of his camp bed, and sobbing quietly.

Over a letter.

She is clutching the letter, in fact.

“What’s wrong, Mum?” He rushes towards her, abandoning his bookbag by the front door of their one-bedroom flat. “Did Aunt Marge – is Aunt Marge all right? Are you okay? Did you go to the doctor or something and that’s the result?”

He is working himself up in a panic, but he can’t help it! Dad died just a few months ago from heart failure after ranting too much at the freaks sharing their safehouse. He only has Mum now, as he can’t afford Smeltings anymore and his friends have all abandoned him, and Harry no longer lives with them, and he can’t bear even the prospect of Mum leaving him because of anything, let alone death.

He seats himself right by Mum, then, and hugs her with one arm even as he tries to gently pry the paper out of her hands because she hasn’t even reacted to his presence.

It takes a little while, but he is patient, he must be patient, because this is for his mum, his only anyone left aside from Aunt Marge and Harry.

When he manages to get the paper and unwrinkle it, though, it turns out not to be an unfavourable bloodwork report or a letter from Aunt Marge or her friend.

No, it’s a letter from Harry. And it reads:
Dear Aunt Petunia,
I hope this letter finds you well. I am certain you thought you would never hear from me. Me, too. But the current situation has forced my hand. I hope you will bear with me for at least a little while more.
Voldemort is dead. Mum’s killer is dead. But apparently his death is not the end of everything. I got snagged in Voldemort’s last law that says I am public enemy number 1. Apparently the first task of the new government is to finish the last orders of the previous one, including this one.
I had to choose between being tossed back to the mundane world with my memory and body wiped of all traces of magic, being tossed into Azkaban (the magical prison) for life, or being tossed through the Veil of Death. I have my own hopeful theories of the Veil, so I have chosen it.
Whether my theory is right or not, this means I will never see anyone on earth ever again. And this means I can no longer watch out for you. Or rather, your line. Because whether you like it or not, ours is a magical line, and there is a possibility that Dudley or his child might get a magical child one day. So I am begging you, Aunt Petunia, for all the fondest memories of your little sister instead of the bitter ones, please treat that child well, unlike how you treated me. If you find it hard, just remember that that child comes from your Dinky Duddy Dums, not your unwanted nephew. And thank you because, for all you and Uncle Vernon and Dudley did to me, for all the abuses that Hagrid and Dumbledore have done to you, you still took me in.
I have asked Hermione (a Muggleborn witch, like Mum) to help you, in case my prediction becomes reality. I have also set aside a trust vault for the child’s or children’s schooling needs, because their abilities MUST be schooled in some way, or they will hurt themself and others round them. again, I hope you will treat them well.
This is my last wish. You will be rid of me forever after this, whether I am dead or transported elsewhere. I am not certain if I can forgive you, and I certainly cannot forget my childhood, but I certainly have no wish to go with this unsaid and unplanned, and I will not take revenge on you via another magical child down the line.
Just, take care, Aunt Petunia. Move out of UK or even the common Wealth maybe. Things are still not good here for everyone, especially muggleborns and muggles, and the government proves to be just as horrible and nonsensical. Make new roots and new memories. In Majorka maybe? The point is, save yourselves.
Harry

Now Dudley knows why Mum is crying so. and he feels like he wants to cry, too. And rage. Oh how he would really like to lash out!

`Harry is dead. Because of the freaks.`

He bears his teeth at the drab wall of the living room opposite where he and Mum are seated, and vows to himself, `Well, the freaks will just have to die too, then.`

Chapter Text

9.

Kingsley Shacklebolt was an auror, and happy as one. He never aspired to be the Minister of Magic, unlike Rufus Scrimgeour. But Rufus is dead, and too many individuals in the upper tiers in the Ministry are the Dark Lord’s followers or puppets, so the pickings for the role were so very slim, and Kingsley had to step up or the government would wholely collapse… and the society, soon after.

Since Umbridge dug out Mordred’s Law out of antiquity just to at last kill one of her remaining nemeses, however, Kingsley is so very tempted to let it all happen. He was useless to prevent Harry Potter from having to choose between all bad options as laid out by the Wizengamot, led by bloody Malfoy. And, as the result, one innocent young man – no, hero of the wizarding world, twice over – had to go through the Veil.

And, now, the Muggle world demands to know everything that has been going on, refuses to accept any placation or obfuscation, and threatens to kill wizarding folk if there is a proof of Obliviation or Confundus going on, let alone Imperius. The office room of the Prime Minister has even been changed with the wizarding folk none the wiser about it. Kingsley was nearly shot down when he visited the old office room to inform the Prime Minister about the Dark Lord’s death, even! And the Prime Minister, when he protested about it, shot back that now Kingsley knew how he felt about unauthorised entry into protected sites of a different government….

Relations between the two worlds have rarely been so fragile and volatile since the formation of the Ministry of Magic, and Kingsley is the one that has to deal with it.

Worse, Umbridge and her ilk have begun to pick up where they left off, now using the strained relations between the two worlds as an excuse to boot the muggleborns entirely off the wizarding world. The smarter of them have even built a case using what MACUSA has been doing across the ocean, separating from the muggles entirely and punishing those who would not comply with the harsh line.

And Kingsley has the suspicion that, the moment he vacates the office of the Minister of Magic, laws to that effect will snap together and into place almost right away. But it won’t do! He has to get as many affected individuals out, first. Maybe have them go with young Mister Longbottom to wherever the latter might set down new roots?

Who knows, he might even join them, some time soon after….

10.

Hogwarts is home to Minerva McGonagall more than her clan’s village. It has been a bittersweet fact since the summer after her first year being a student in the castle, emphasised during her apprenticeship in transfiguration to Albus Dumbledore, and solidified when she was hired as teacher for Transfiguration almost immediately after she had achieved mastery.

And, now, her home lies in ruins, in more ways than one.

Physically, the grounds of and even hallways and rooms inside the castle have been contaminated by spellfire, also the sometimes-violent deaths of magical folk. Emotionally, remaining students and teachers are still… volatile, with grief and anger and remembered helplessness and guilt and hostility and so many others jumbling into one mess. And, culturally, there is a growing rift between many, many splinter factions.

No more Hogwarts House pride. No more uneasy but relatively civil pass-by in the hallways. No more pranks, let alone of the light-spirited kind. No more juvenile sneakings to forbidden places, including to the kitchen.

Minerva is presiding as headmistress over a few handfuls of child soldiers scarred and/or twisted by the very recent war, and her allies in coralling the damaged – or even broken – next generation of British wizarding world is barely a handful of teachers.

Not that the teachers themselves are whole, either. Not even herself.

`If Tom wanted to ruin the wizarding world, he had succeeded fantastically, even beyond the grave.`

She still remembers the firsty with handsome features but secondhand robes, staring with half-concealed fear at all the new things and new people in the Great Hall during the Sorting. She also remembers the firsty being bullied by his own Housemates, before something changed drastically and the latters either fawned on him or feared him immensely.

She remembers nothing of Tom Riddle past their shared Hogwarts years, before he returned as a hardlined political leader that became more. But it’s easy to make the connections between his diary that had nearly lured Ginevra Weasley nearly into death and the prominent figure of the harshest of the pureblood faction and Albus’ hint of who Voldemort is.

`If Tom were sorted into Griffindor or Hufflepuff, could we have avoided this?`

Each time the thought surfaces in her mind, she wishes that she could ask the Sorting Hat for advice. But the Hat is just as dead as Albus, burning right atop the head of one of her best Griffindors during the recent battle. And, for the first time ever since the founding of this school, the newcoming students were sorted simply by putting them with family or friends they had previously known and been close to… which has proven not the best decision in all too many cases.

The wizarding world at least hereabouts is simply too broken to even lean on family ties and alliances.

`But if not for them, whom do we have? We do not even have our most stalwart defenders with us, by now.`

Young Potter has been Veiled for some technicality, young Longbottom has been driven far away from home, and they are young indeed, heros to boot. They led the defenders in the battle that has fouled and ruined this place that should have been a sacred sanctuary, the battle that did not become more for their help, and now they are gone.

And Pamona came back to teach having hoped that young Longbottom would have approached her for apprenticeship, perhaps even for a tenure as teacher of Herbology afterwards. Oh, how she laments it each time the few teachers remaining gather for the evening….

`Perhaps, perhaps, we should think of a better solution for the children’s education. Moving away from this place might be good. Less haunting memories, at least, and less exposure to all the taint and ruin. But where should we remove ourselves to?`

She fiddles with the shrunkened trunk in her pocket as she pads along to the Great Hall, to oversee the last of the work clearing it up from debris and returning it – hopefully! – back to its glory. And, as her finger idly, softly traces the outline of the matchbox-sized wooden thing, a plan begins to form in her tired, heartsick mind.

`Now, would Miss Lovegood let me copy her habitation trunk for my students’ use? Or perhaps Miss Granger? If Kingsley has freed her from the holding cell, that is. Honestly, that girl….`

11.

Susan Bones stares long into Hermione Granger’s eyes, who looks stubbornly, defiantly, tiredly back at her through the holding cell’s bars.

Then, “Do you know that the Ministry is planning to toss you through the Veil too?” she asks quietly.

She wants to say, “You look like a stroppy brat who doesn’t get her way.” But it’d spark a row between them and attract attention, so she’ll keep her mouth shut on that for now and ask just the currently pertinent things.

“Let them. I’ll just reunite with Harry, then,” is the answer she gets, just as defiantly as the other looks.

Just as grating, too.

Susan shakes her head. “So you’re certain that the Veil doesn’t lead to death, and it leads only to one place?”

“Fairly certain, at least for the former. And I can try to focus on Harry, I suppose, for the latter,” Hermione nods, and now looks and sounds quizical instead of defiant, which is far preferable.

Also, in accordance with Susan’s earlier plan, which she hatched and developed with Blaise and Daphne and Neville.

Just, “Why didn’t you pack Professor Lupin’s child away in the trunk along with the workers of Houses Black and Potter?”

Hermione’s eyes narrow crossly, now, but Susan stands stolid in the face of it, waiting patiently.

`You get more out of people when you are calm, not when you are angry,` Auntie once said, when little Susan had one of her tantrums, and she oftens employs this advice to great effect.

…Including now, apparently, as, gritting her teeth and glaring, Hermione at last confesses, “I didn’t think. I didn’t want to let Teddy go with Harry, just… just in case. What I put in the tent for him, it’s just for just in case. The message in the letter I left there would’ve been different if Teddy weren’t with Harry. But when I was going to the Veil room for Harry, I passed by Umbridge and she threatened to have Teddy executed for being the child of a known werewolf, while I knew Macnair’s still free. So I changed my mind. At least this way Teddy got a chance, unlike if Umbridge or Macnair managed to get him. And I wasn’t certain if I could defend him if it came to that. I didn’t manage to defend Harry, after all. Now, satisfied?”

Susan simply nods, unruffled by the tone and the words and the look. “Fair warning, though,” she pre-empts before the other can do anything beyond opening her mouth, “you won’t be the only decisionmaker in this group, and raising your voice won’t net you anything but being silenced.”

Then, ignoring the barrage of questions the other now hurl at her, she undoes the locking wards tied to the cell, as she once saw a few aurors doing while she tailed them, having been brought by her aunt to work for the day, and they flee the detention block even as alarms ring.

Now, she can only hope that neither she nor everyone else involved in this plan will regret it, sooner or later.

Chapter Text

12.

Katie Bell freezes in the middle of organising supplies that the other two former Griffindor quidditch chasers will store in the habitation trunk that already contains everyone else from the safehouse.

Then, “Ollie?”

Because, silhouetted on the doorway is the former Griffindor quidditch captain and overall quidditch maniac Oliver Wood, who stands there as if gearing up for a battle and a long journey, and not of the quidditch kind.

At least, she doesn’t think there’s any quidditch team in the world that has sturdy, protective travelling attire plus backpack as its uniform. Not to mention, last she knew, Ollie has been elevated to starter keeper of Puddlemere United, so he won’t change teams any time soon.

“What’s wrong? What’re you doing here?” she manages to splutter out after a few attempts, when her former captain still just stands there, all silent and grim and stubborn.

Well, the questions somehow make the prat smile a little, but that’s all, and Katie is more and more alarmed by the moment by this uncharacteristic behaviour.

“Are you even Oliver Wood?” she presses, now glaring and relaxing her wand-holding fingers, ready for spellcasting. “Because if you aren’t, you are not welcome here.”

She raises her wand when the implied threat only nets an eyeroll from the usually verbose and opinionated former Griffindor quidditch captain, a spell chain on the tip of her tongue.

Before she can let loose, though, the intruder raises his hands, palms facing him and showing bare forearms, and sighs, “No, I’m still me, KitKat. You wacked me with a beater bat when you thought you might try to be a beater during your first tryout, remember? You broke my jaw, and you’re allergic to beater bats ever since.”

Oh, now Katie wants to let loose for a different reason entirely. Especially when the prat mutters, “Women. There’s no right answer with them,” just loud enough to be audible in the silence of the safehouse’s common room.

She can’t waste her time to just curse Ollie to oblivion, sadly. Angie and Licia will return from gathering the last supplies and news soon, then they’ll need to pack everything and move out and shrink this house and put it in the trunk and join Neville at the meeting point. He might leave without them if they’re too late! not to mention, they’re in a muggle neighbourhood and it’ll be so easy for both governments to bother them, if they say any longer.

So, with an answering eyeroll of her own, she just repeats her earlier questions while stowing her wand… which relaxes Ollie, the scaredy cat.

The said scaredy cat answers the questions, still, so she doesn’t tease him about his scarediness.

Besides, she is too busy drilling him about his wish to go with them to bother about that. This will impact so many aspects of their plan!

It’s a good thing, though, if they can pull this. Ollie is a good guy and a good leader when his head is screwed on the right way, unbent by quidditch. He can help encourage and lighten people up, if their relocation proves harder than the expected, which is already hard.

13.

Dennis Creevey stares numbly at the large television screen hanging on a side wall of the eatery. The news playing on it, filtered through a different language, is both unbelievable and sadly expected.

His homeland is in a civil war.

The non-magical government claims that they are warring with a wide-spread terrorist group which has unknowingly rooted themselves deep for decades. But the places mentioned on the news are familiar to those who have their feet in both worlds. And, well, the individuals who were captured instead of bombed or riddled with bullets all have weird mish-mash of non-magical clothes.

It’s like “muggle-hunting” but in reverse, really, and Dennis finds a sneer begin to twist his lips before he can tamp it down.

`Serves them right,` that part of him scoffs. But another part whispers, `Were there children among them? Did anyone get captured and experimented like in the films and comics?`

He looks away and down from the telly, stares at his partially eaten sandwich, sighs, and has the remaining bit packaged as takeaway. The thought has thoroughly killed his appetite, on top of the news, but he can’t afford wasting food.

Nobody who went with Neville can afford wasting anything, including food. Because building a community from scratch is as hard as he once saw on a documentary regarding the American pioneers. Everything is rationed, needs to have a purpose, has to be logged when taken out and sourced for replacements preferably before the stock is completely empty….

He nods and smiles in gratitude at the waiter who has just brought a takeaway container to his table. He then pays based on the amount written on the bill and has to trust that the eatery hasn’t cheated him because he knows so little of the language, gives the waiter some tip, and trudges back to the home that the refugees is trying to build in a cave system somewhere deep in the largest forest here in Iceland.

Just as per usual, really. He has been appointed the news-gatherer of the newfound community, and this is what he does in a weekly basis.

But today something is different in their hidden shelter, which some viking magic user long ago apparently had warded to high heavens for concealment and protection.

Or rather, someone is different.

And that someone is standing right before the wardline, right in the middle of the vine-covered entrance hole, and staring right at him.

“Luna?”

The girl is… spacy, and eccentric, usually. But right now she looks very there, and very serious, and very sad.

Not to mention, she’s clad in travelling clothes… with the ankle-length thick, hooded cloak coloured neon pink and her boots bronze and deep blue and her robe summery yellow, but still.

Dennis bites down on his lower lip, and uses the pain from the action as distraction so he won’t comment on the colours. Then, when he is more composed, and noting that she has only answered him with a nod, he continues, “Did you bring news for us? Did we lose anyone? Or are you here to join us?” Because, despite how almost instantaneous information can travel globally nowadays, he bets that the situation back home – no, in England – must have been going on at least a few months before it travelled here. Individuals have been trickling in, too: some genuine refugees, some would-be spies, some would-be avengers of their families against the so-called “muggle-loving traitors.” But lots more are still back there, either trapped with no means to flee or by circumstances, or loving home too much to leave it.

Not a few of them are former Hogwarts students of generations surrounding his, too, including Luna, although other remaining DA members barring Ginny have been accounted for.

It’s still very hard, though, when she answers in a precise and very Luna manner that he would usually be amused by, “I brought news for you, we have lost a lot, and whether I join you or not depends on whether you will join me or not.”

He skirts round the two points and figuratively pounces on the third, even as he reaches out a hand to guide her over the threshold of both the ward bubble and the physical shelter, so that she will be recognised by the ward bubble as an invited friendly and not attacked or diverted. “Where are you going after this?”

And, “The Chamber of Death,” is her matter-of-fact answer, just as Neville trots out of a side passageway, wand out and ready.

“The Chamber of Death?!” Neville squawks, while Dennis can only gape for the longest time, freezing like a Petrificus Totalus victim.

But, like before, Luna just nods. Calmly.

“Why’d anyone go there, Luna?” Neville presses urgently, even as he flicks his wand back into its sheath and trots forward to grab one of her hands in both of his.

“To make a new life elsewhere, Neville. What else?” is the answer, and Dennis’ heart squirms in his chest.

`Does it mean Harry is alive? Does it mean we don’t have to hide and fear reprisals anymore?`

Given that, his vote is certain.

14.

Daphne Greengrass is usually a patient person.

It is very hard, however, to be patient when she has to deal with an outraged, sanctimonious Hermione Granger who has been forbidden from even getting close to the way out of the habitation trunk they’re in.

The brash, crass loudmouth has been claiming over and over again that she ought to be the one that tries to find a way to where Potter has been deposited into, as Blaise has wanted, instead of Lovegood. And, not for the first time and apparently not for the last one either, Daphne sorely regrets having voted for Susan to retrieve the said loudmouth from the Ministry’s holding cell, that time. Now he has to deal with this and her own family’s dirty looks aimed at her and her own anxiety if they will even be alive to be thoroughly tired of Granger’s rants after this.

Worse yet, she knows that she would have let Granger have the lead if Lovegood had not swanned into the forest clearing where her family and Blaise’s and Susan had retreated to and told them that she could guide them to Harry.

And Granger knows it, too.

Well, Lovegood agreed to give the miniaturised trunk a tap when she is about to pass through the Veil, and she has not, so casting magic is still possible and safe….

Daphne whirls round, her wand and magic ready, and casts a silent spell chain before Granger can even finish flinching. And, within half a minute, blessed silence reigns supreme in the small room both young women have been shunted into for Granger’s boorishness and Daphne’s task to keep an eye on her, as Granger lies petrified and thoroughly tied on one of the couches and glares mutely at the ceiling of the habitation trunk.

`If only I had thought of this before!`

Still, peace has been achieved, at last. At least until the next however much time Lovegood needs to retrieve whatever she said she must retrieve and go to the Chamber of Death and “cross the dimensional portal to the nations of many stars” and set up rudimentary protection in the new place, but Daphne is not going to think about that. She is going to pick up a book to read and that is all.

But if Granger makes trouble again….

Chapter Text

15.

Mister Shacklebolt is upset, but not nargle-upset or wraksput-upset. Luna is glad, because she had to deal with Hermione earlier and the other was hurtful. Unintentionally, she is sure. Hermione just has so many wracksputs round her sometimes, and even some nargles in a few times, like Ronald, and they often see from behind invisible eye coverings that make them look only in front and through certain colours. But it is still not nice, unlike Mister Shacklebolt, who only looks at her doubtfully when she says that she will lead them all to Harry but follows after her anyway.

The timing is nice, too. Something is making a great booming sound somewhere up there, and everything is shaking down here. Mister Shacklebolt even urges her to walk faster. But the portal cannot be hastened! It will extend a tendril only when it is ready. Not before, not after.

The door up the tiered seats crashes open when they are ascending the dais on which the portal is anchored. And, still, Luna holds on tight to Mister Shacklebolt’s arm so that he will not bring them either to an empty dimension or a very old one or somewhere where their Harry is not there.

“Everyone who will go with me is with me, Miss Lovegood. We aren’t waiting for anybody else, so we’d better go now,” Mister Shacklebolt insists, even more urgently than before, but Luna shakes her head with appropriately increasing firmness.

“I hoped to avoid us being tagged along by undesirables,” Mister Shacklebolt confesses, at last, with a quick, jerky look back towards where Luna can hear footsteps thundering down the tiers.

“We can deal with it when we need to and not before, Mister Shacklebolt,” she insists back. Calmly, so as not to incite him further, the poor man. Wraksputs have slowly been attracted to him!

He gives her an exasperated look, to that, while flicking his wand about to create a pretty twinkly bubble all round them that feels so safe. But, thankfully, he settles down afterwards. Just in time, too! The whispers are getting louder, informing, beckoning, and the semi-physical veil in front of her and Mister Shacklebolt begins to shift, readying for the tear.

One – or maybe a few as one? – of the whispers tells her to prepare to fly, so she fishes out her broom from inside one of her pockets and asks Mister Shacklebolt to do the same.

“We walk into the gap between universes,” she relays to the man, who doesn’t seem to hear what the whispers say. “But we must be ready to fly, at the same time. So perhaps we should mount our brooms while walking? Just until we are through, I would say.”

Mister Shacklebolt’s look on that speaks a lot. He doesn’t believe her, thinks her loony, feels awkward and uncomfortable about it.

It hurts. A little. But just a little, because she is used to it.

He does as she says, anyway, frowning and grimacing all the while.

He lets her come close and link their arms and hands together, too, and doesn’t look back when she tells him not to. Even when spellfire begins to splash everywhere. Even when Madame Umbridge hollers for them to surrender and calls them traitors. Even when something yanks at the back end of the two brooms. It’s awesome!

But, well, she speaks too soon, maybe. Because part of the veil’s arch has just crumbled, struck by a stray Bombarda that doesn’t manage to strike past the pretty, twinkly, safe-feeling bubble.

Luna sighs. This means the tear will be smaller, too; not enough for two broom riders. Damn it! Just as she is settling down for the travel, too. Why must government officers be so pesky? She can only hope that Harry’s people are more reasonable….

Before she can gripe aloud about it, though, the whispers tell her that the time is very soon. So she dismounts her broom and shrinks it, ignoring how Madame Umbridge squawks and thuds onto the dais and rants. Then she shimmies onto the front of Mister Shacklebolt’s, ignoring his own squawk of surprise and confusion and exasperation, and informs him of their impending travel.

“We should hold on tight to each other and the broom, I think, Mister Shacklebolt,” she muses as the dais buckles under their feet and Madame Umbridge shrieks. Thankfully Mister Shacklebolt’s pretty, twinkly, safe-feeling bubble manages to divert the debris from it away! Although, come to think of it again, it feels less twinkly now, and less thick, while she suddenly has a very strong feeling that they will sorely need the bubble soon.

`Uh-oh.`

“Could you please strengthen the pretty bubble, Mister Shacklebolt? You could borrow my magic for that,” she tells her broom buddy apologetically. “We will sorely need it, the whispers said.”

She can feel Mister Shacklebolt’s chest expand and deflate in a soundless sigh behind her. But she can also feel him jerk sidewise and back while Madame Umbridge growls and curses, so she can’t contemplate if this is his first sigh or his… third, maybe?

She is just all too busy holding onto him and the broom and her footing.

Unfortunately, though, yet another explosion rocks the dais just as Madame Umbridge snarls and shoves.

With a yelp that’s swallowed by the portal and yet another explosion, the broom zips tiltingly forward almost at the right moment, and it’s all she can do to direct them all to at least the right dimension.

Bothersome.

16.

Pomona Sprout, former Herbology professor at Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, cannot help but stare bemusedly when Minister for Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt sends her a paper-aeroplane memo, summoning her out of the habitation trunk and asking her to put on a protective suit meanwhile.

 This is… new. She has rarely been picked first in anything, except in matters of herbology, in all her years. Surely warders and the like are needed first in a new world?

Still, she might be needed, and duty is a call that any Hufflepuff finds hard to resist.

She gathers up her armoured, expanded pack that contains all her tools, potions, wardstones, trunks of hardy and useful seeds as well as a handful of water skins and ready meals, dons the suit that all herbologists wear in unfriendly environments, tells Neville – her pseudo apprentice, perhaps soon-to-be apprentice now indeed – that she is summoned, that he should prepare to step up if she needs him or if she somehow dies, and marches towards the lift up the trunk amidst his alarmed squawking. That fussy boy….

Minister Shacklebolt meets her by the lip of the trunk, looking unhurt but… frazzled, and severely exhausted, and unnerved, and confused. He is hovering on a broom, somehow, with a somehow silently weeping Miss Lovegood seated in front of him and a lumpy someone or something slumped on the spread of white sand beneath them. And there is – there has been, it seems – a protective bubble encasing all of them.

Pomona frowns, even as she gives him a polite nod of acknowledgement. “Minister.”

“Madame Sprout,” he sighs, “apologies for the haste, but I’m finding myself quite tired. Could you please handle where we need to set up camp and the protections thereof? I need to escort Miss lovegood to somewhere she can rest, and I admit I’m in need of a respite myself. But please make sure the Sphaericus Protego holds up, because the air felt weird on my skin and in my lungs when it was down. I’ll rejoin you once I’ve got a Pepper-Up in me, and perhaps get myself and Miss Lovegood checked by a healer. Madame Umbridge needs checking and containing, as well.”

“Madame Umbridge!” Pomona growls, although she doesn’t dally in erecting her own protective bubble inside the Minister’s. She hasn’t forgotten and will never forget what that odious toad did to her students a few years ago, and what the said toad did during the war that raged last year. Who knows, that toad may have been the reason Miss Lovegood is crying now.

“A stowaway,” the Minister grumbles. “Miss Lovegood was rather insistent that we wait for the perfect time to go, despite all the explosions and the attempts to arrest us.”

Pomona huffs, thoroughly unimpressed. “The war truly hasn’t ended, then, after all.”

When the Minister’s answer is only a bleak snort that seems ludicrous for one of his station but apt for both the topic and his exhaustion, she tells him that she is going to clean everyone up before she’ll let them into the habitation trunk. Then she hits him, a still-weeping Miss Lovegood and the stowaway each with a set of cleansing spells meant to get rid of anything that is not of the subject’s body and clothes, which is usually utilised by herbologists after wading into a spore-thick site or somewhere too teeming with life, or before entering a sterile area after spending a day in their beloved greenhouses.

Neville, willful, reckless boy that he is, pops out of the habitation trunk – thankfully in a protective suit! – while Pomona is cleansing the Skurge of Hogwarts with perhaps more vigor than necessary. He spares her a startled, wide-eyed look, but – wisely – doesn’t malinger or ask questions. He takes up guiding the Minister and his former schoolmate into the trunk, too, so she needn’t do that herself.

She goes right to work after dropping a groaning Umbridge into the lift box and closing down and locking the lid of the trunk. A detailed survivability test is the very first thing she does afterwards, involving a whole cadre of spells, potions, test plants and rune arrays. A dictaquill records the grim, grim findings on a hovering scroll of parchment beside her as she ploddingly goes on despite the sinking, suffocating, squirming feeling in her throat, in her chest, in her guts.

How not? This desert of odd white sand is toxic for all life. Not as toxic as what happened after the bombings in Japan during her childhood, but still not good for any length of habitation. And, somehow, there are large traces of some kind of metal in the sand. As well as burnt bones, actually, but the latter can nourish life while the former kills it.

The briefest imagining of what may have happened here gives her goosebumps, it feels, so she resolutely moves to the next phase instead, namely testing the level of ambient magic in this place. Because, if the level is high enough, in theory they can clear up a patch of ground, ward it against all the contaminants, and try to eek a life here for the time being. Nobody will bother them here, she wagers, given the toxicity level and the haunted, lonely, hurt feel of this place, and they do need to be not bothered for at least the next while.

Her eyebrows rise up sharply when spell after spell give her the same conclusion:

This place is highly magical.

Better yet, a search for potable water afterwards nets her a deposit deep, deep underground but almost directly underneath her feet.

“Well, that decides it, then,” she muses to herself, then flicks her wand to summon a Patronus to sed a message to the Minister.

They have found their new home.

Chapter Text

17.

Dudley Vernon Dursley has never run this fast in his life.

He has never been forced to be this sneaky, too, slinking and hiding every so often instead of strutting with confidence and taking whatever he wants.

And, dimly, he realises that, if he were not feeling so distant and pressed right now, he would have sobbed the hardest and most genuinely in his life.

He just… doesn’t want to think about what could make him do so. Nope. Not right now. He can’t, or he’ll stop and do it and – no.

`The freaks, I must get to the freaks. Maybe go after Harry after that?`

He’s not sure the freaks will let him in, let him live, but that’s fair. He just has to get there with these pipsqueaks, see them cared for by good people, then they can do whatever they want to him.

After all, he willingly trained to be a freak hunter, and didn’t even stop to think if the “freaks” specified in the contract would include babies.

Mum was horrified when she found out. She hadn’t even liked Harry but still taken him in, because he’s a baby and he’d be hunted down and killed or turned against his own blood if not, and now her Duddy did it.

Turned out, though, he couldn’t back away and out of this programme.

When he tried to resign, a squad came to fetch Mum for “protective custody,” and she fought back.

It was self-defence, the squad said.

The Commander relocated Dudley to prison duty for the freaks, then, and the wardens there were just as isolated as the prisoners, so he was really a prisoner himself.

But a prisoner who got to snoop and make a map of everything, occasionally.

And now here he is, herding kids who are at most a decade younger than he is out of the prison, out of the little island the prison sits in hopefully, and back into their freaky world.

For Mum. It’s all for Mum.

18.

Erny “Ernest” Shunpike is a simple man. He tries to do his best for his family and the wizarding world at large, even if it’s by becoming the driver of the Knight Bus for decade after decade. He even took his technically-not-nephew Stan back, after the loudmouthed boy got jailed for boasting emptily of all things – though he maybe shouldn’t have been surprised.

The Knight Bus itself is important for those who can’t apparate or portkey or floo or ride on a broom or carpet from place to place. It began as Knight Carriage, long ago, for witches and wizards laden with children to escape death by muggle.

And, nowadays, it – and therefore, Erny – serves that purpose again.

Case in point, somebody is hailing the Bus right now.

It’s across the water, though. Not good, that. The Bus can’t skip over or under water.

Except when there’s a bridge – however small, however accidental, however not-bridge-like.

So, maybe he could hitchhike on that flat-topped ship? And maybe one of the passengers could make a bridge with a long, long, long roll of yarn? The island the hailer is standing on doesn’t seem far away from this well-guarded pier the Bus is currently parked on. Erny has checked, both with and without his wayfinder specs.

So he makes use of the gangplank the ship is tethered to to skip up to the flat top, asks the passengers to donate the yarn, and gets Stan to levetate one end of the yarn to the hailer.

This, he knows Stan could really boast about, though strangely the boy never does. Maybe the silly thing thinks helping his mummy pick herbs from windy cliffsides by levitating her is “unawesome”?

Well, anyway, the point is: The yarn gets to the hailer unbroken, and the hailer smartly ties it to some stone post, so now the Bus can skip over.

Time to get the magicals and skip away.

All the magicals.

Then away to… follow the Boy-Who-Lived, maybe. Erny doesn’t bother about it. He is a simple man, after all.

19.

Working with goblins to earn profit has been both necessary and a pain, in one Bill “William” Weasley’s experience and opinion.

Working with them to go to another universe entirely is just as much of a pain, he is finding out, and probably technically not necessary.

He refuses to hand over anything or anyone with even a shred of magic to the vicious muggles that keep hunting and killing and kidnapping them, though, including the goblins, hence the cooperation.

Eh, not even Dad does, after seeing with his own eyes how the muggles grabbed a young family right from their home and rained numerous hot metal pellets on the would-be rescuers on high speed, shredding them.

It’s a nightmare come true, really. No more burnings, no more stonings, no more dangerous rumours in a village of ignorant muggles. It’s instead rapid and violent response to words spoken by traitorous – or maybe just broken – folks who were kidnapped earlier, or sightings of individuals trying to go as muggles.

It’s a nightmare especially for him and his siblings, after a lifetime of listening to Dad and Professor Dumbledore natter about poor muggles.

`Good for the old man, he’s dead and can’t experience a wake-up call like this,` he thinks uncharitably, for the… however many time it is.

This thought was born and had its first few scores of steps while he was trying to convince various beings and villages to move with him, following Harry Potter’s trail, as unofficially requested by the Minister of Magic. It has been kept alive thus far as the effort continues and he is liaising with the goblin nation for the move while also making sure important sites such as Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest are ready for transport, even if Hogsmead might refuse to move.

It doesn’t help that ICW has declared rule over the Wizarding Common Wealth, given the Ministry’s incompetence.

It also doesn’t help that, whenever Bill is home, he is faced with the nearly catatonic George and Ron, the lack of Fred, the morose Ginny and Percy, and his weepy parents. Charlie and Fleur are the most ordinary sights there, but they are now gone: Charlie back to the preserve to tender his resignation and say farewell to the dragons, and Fleur similarly to try to convince her parents, little sister and veela community at large to move with them.

The world will be much less magical soon, one way or another, he reckons. And, even now, he can’t help but pity the muggles for that eventuality.

20.

The Department of Mysteries study the various mysteries in the universe, yes, but it also keeps abreast of the non-mysteries happening throughout the Common Wealth and the world at large, both the magical and the mundane.

The reason is simple, really: continuity.

Ministers may change, Wizengamot members might bicker endlessly and pass stupid laws, but the Department of Mysteries run like clockwork on its own laws. It also stores and consults meticulous records of everything, and, most importantly, make sure that there are various plans to safeguard the magical side should the mundane one turn hostile again.

There is no division between blood status here, although research has been done to find out where muggleborns truly came from. There is only research, testing, brainstorming, and then research again for further information based on the results of prior brainstorming.

Well, back to the mysteries of the universe, the Veil of Death is one such mystery that researchers keep coming back to. It has been proven a misnomer down the centuries of research, actually, but none bothers to amend it.

Officially, that is.

Unofficially, it has been termed the Gateway.

From what the collective research has gathered, this phenomenon began as a tiny, probably natural crack in reality. It was thought – and later proven – to lead to another dimension, another layer of reality – sharing this world together with the one living humans live in, one which is strange and full of rubbish but otherwise empty, causing individuals who come into it to die immediately or soon after, hence the name. But later – much later – research showed that, at certain alignments or facilitated by certain rituals or items, this crak leads to another universe entirely, complete with planets and stars and galaxies.

The initial discovery of this feature was totally accidental. The crack got bigger and bigger the more it was used as execution method, so its keepers built a runed stone arch standing on a runed stone dais carved as one unit to contain it. And, during the finishing touch, one of the rune carvers tripped into the thing, bringing her tools and gadgetry with her, including a shrunken version of the same arch, this time for two-way transport.

She did her analysis, and managed to return home by the twin of the transportation arch held by her husband, leaving hers behind. A few of her more recklessly curious or otherwise disbelieving coworkers immediately barged past the arch, seeking the new universe, but they were locked away on the other side because the alignment had shifted.

Since then, many trials were conducted and many errors were committed, and many people as well as equipment went missing in the course of this experiment. The research grew ever more expensive in that way, and also funding-wise, so it was terminated in 1911.

However, the records stay, both in the Department of Mysteries’ keeping and the libraries of the backers.

The knowledge was used as intended, even, recently, by the heir to two of those backers.

And, even more recently, Selene Lovegood’s child, apparently quite sensitive to the fluctuations of the Gateway, somehow transported herself and the Minister while under duress to the right universe without any assistance.

But, maybe, because the Gateway had been so recently opened to that place, it became easier to traverse? The records say that it became easier and easier down the centuries, at any rate.

Given the current sociopolitical climate in Great Britain, however, which threatens to spill everywhere, this path needs to remain open as long as possible but only to magicals or dorment magicals.

Just so, the plan that involves the Gateway, which used to be at the very back of the back-up plans, gets punted to the fore.

And, if a big price is needed?

Well, if the alternative is being the muggles’ research toys, not a few magicals would willingly pay it, no doubt.

Chapter Text

21.

At the core, Owen Grady has always been a practical being. Ewan, too.

And then someone came and told him and his twin they are fucking wizards, and Ewan fell in love with a weird maybe-spy maggy to the point of producing a sprog legally, and… well, it didn’t change things very much, really, and still doesn’t, but it also means Owen can’t scoff at the dreamers anymore. Because, who knows, what they dream is maybe actually real somewhere – or even somewhen! – like all the stories of magic and witches and wizards!

John Hammond proved it, too, with the dinos.

And, now, the family – along with who knows how many other families and individuals – are doing a cross-dimensional travel.

Or maybe even cross-universal.

Who knows, maybe the new whatever-it-is has timelords in it, or sentient robots, or laser guns, or ion bombs, or animals in space, or sentient planets, or… well, maybe he ought to stop “inciting” his twin and nephew. Their scary overlady looks ready to throttle him, as high-strung as she is right now.

Case in point: “Are we there yet?” Mitch asks for the umpteenth time, and Owen winces empathetically when May glares at the poor boy.

She does check their current bearings again, though, this time.

And this time, none of them recognises the dating system, or the location, though the time seems normal.

But, wait….

“Coruscant?” Owen echoes the writing in the air out loud, frowning. The name sounds familiar.

“Coruscant! Coruscant! Coruscant! Coruscant!” Mitch sings, wriggling in his seat.

“We’re in a different universe entirely,” Ewan notes, his voice and face blank. And, just so, reality crashes down on Owen like a huge bucketful of ice water on a hot day.

“We’re in a different universe entirely,” he mouths along, tasting the shape and vibration and sound of each syllable separately, trying to internalise it that way.

Because otherwise nothing feels different. All four of them are still gathered in the kitchen of the house May is in charge of keeping for the Potter family, and nothing round them – or even in them – feels different.

“We are in a different universe entirely,” May confirms, solemn and… joyful. Anticipatory, even.

Owen frowns quizzically at her.

She grins wolfishly back.

“We are no longer barred from interacting with Lord Potter, or I assume it is Lord Black Potter now, and we will make sure that it stays that way.”

Owen stares at her for a long moment, warily mute.

It feels like coming face to face with a recently fed wild lionese with no protection between them and on him.

Which is… rather exciting, really.

22.

Luna said, “They are all so sad. They have been betrayed by their own.”

Professor Sprout said, “We may have landed on either a favourite funerary field or an odd battle site. There are so many burnt remains of living matters here, mixed with some kind of metal. We need to dig very deep to reach the topsoil; and, even then, given this environment and what might have happened to make it this way, it might not be viable.”

It all makes for an ominous start on this new life of theirs, perhaps, but Neville Longbottom is not one for such superstition. Gran did not raise him that way. She would have said, “Poppycock. It is needful, therefore we do it. longbottoms do not shirk away duty or baulk from hardships.”

So, with Gran’s… encouragement… ringing at the back of his mind, he organises scouts that will map out this place on foot and from air. And then, although he longs to find out for himself what their potential new home is like, he tasks himself to both soothe Luna and ask her what she has seen that made her cry on arival. In detail. As much as he does not wish to upset her more by indirectly forcing her to dwell on it. The information might be pertinent. She is quite perceptive, after all, however loony she appears.

Her subsequent description of this place’s former inhabitants – who are not ghosts but somehow still visible to her as echoes? – is… somewhat odd. He knows that certain individuals used to wear armour, magical and muggle alike, and people still wear a variety of robes until now. However, he has never heard of people wearing armour and robes at the same time. And the relevant image she helpfully sketches him on a scrap of parchment does not help his lack of comprehension at all.

Only, it sadly matches the unusual amount of metal in the sand all too well. Also the unusual amount of burnt living matters. And her story that the people here were burnt alive by fire from the sky. Which… maybe also caused this place’s air to be toxic? Maybe like the muggle bombs back in the 40s that trapped two Japanese magical enclaves for years and poisoned an overbold bunch of them by air and water?

`Are we next in line? Or was it a one-off situation? She did say those poor sods were betrayed by their own, no? should we just take steps to ward ourselves from the same fate?`

He frowns. And frowns even more when the scouts trickle back into the meeting room in the habitation trunk and give their reports. Because Katie has ventured the farthest from this landing spot of theirs, and she says she has spied a bunch of people in weird armour sneaking among the dunes.

“Can’t remember all the details,” she continues as she sketches the armour on a muggle parchment with what she called a pencil when he braved himself to ask her in second year. “Looks somewhat familiar, but I don’t know where I saw it.”

“Oh.” He agrees with her. The armour does look familiar.

Newly familiar, in fact.

Wordlessly, he fishes out Luna’s sketch from his robe’s pocket and slides it onto the table the scouts are all gathered round.

Their discussion shifts, just so. Especially when the scouts get Luna’s story out of him.

“I think I found a cave opening not so far away,” a newly arrived, newly de-dusted Susan offers, breaking into the jumbled talks of safety measures, ways to get to a better place and even offensive measures. “Let’s stay there for a while. It’s better than out in the open like this. We can ward and conceal it, like before, so we can buy the time we need to consider what we should do next.”

Neville sends her a grateful look, then verbalises it, and follows with, “You’re in charge of security then, Sue? Like before?”

She shrugs. “Maybe,” she hedges. “But it’s more complex here. More complicated. I don’t think I can do it alone. Someone needs to find out more about this place and its people, while someone else needs to keep us all safe. We can’t just hide without knowing anything. And we can’t just listen in like before, in case people here are aliens or something.”

He returns the shrug with his own. “You’re in charge of them, then.”

She gives him an ungrateful look, for that; an unspoken promise to make his life difficult.

But, eh, it is needful, is it not? There is no way but to go forward, then.

23.

Ayuningtias stirs a huge potful of Solonese chicken soto*(1) and sindens*(2) her prayers for the food to be good, fulfilling and strengthening at the same time to those who will eat it. Beside her, her sister Ayuningsih does the same with a potful of beef rendang*(3).

It’s just as per usual when it comes to preparing food for themselves and all the other employees in this plantation, really.

But, at the same time, it is… not.

Tias is very aware that what they are doing now – hell, even the chicken and the beef and all the other ingredients that went into these two pots – are a very tiny remnant of the world they have left behind, preserved in multiple spelt trunks stored in a spelt tent held in the spelt backpack of the teenage boy that holds their ultimate allegiance. How not? They met Gusti*(4) Harry for the very first time quite recently, something which would never have happened where they had been before for the machinations of someone named Albus Dumbledore and a few other reasons. Furthermore, during that meeting, he had not only a baby with him but also a robot’s head. And then select few – including Rangga, that lucky sod – went magically fishing for more alien things, and succeeded. There is even a living alien child scampering about in the back garden beyond the kitchen right now, resulting from one of the attempts.

It's all bittersweet… and she has to not think about it right now, lest she ruins the blessing on the food and the food itself. It would be unconscionable! They do have plenty of supplies at present, but it doesn’t mean the supplies are endless, as they have to feed a lot of people and have no supplemental suppliers yet. Not when Gusti Harry is lying unconscious in one of the trunks like this, recovering from the “fishing,” and not when they still know practically nothing of where they have ended up in, although one of the bule*(5) workers seems to suspect something.

For that matter, given that the alien child – who is now… sniffing the ground over the herbs patch? – seems to subsist solely on insects, they must regulate their insect population, too! Because they did not think to stock up on those beyond what is necessary for pollination and the natural cycle, fearing a pest problem. But, at the same time, of course, they do not wish the poor skittish, far-too-skinny thing to starve, nor do they wish to ignore the said child in the effort of trying to provide more food for them.

Come to think of it again… “Ning, arek iku wis mangan urung?” (“Ning, has that child eaten yet?”) she nods towards the little shadow flitting outside the kitchen window, deeper than the late afternoon shadows, once the sinden has concluded.

Her sister concludes her own in a high, wavering note, then pauses.

Not a good sign, that, Tias thinks as guilt squirms in her chest and down to her belly. It means they have left the child alone and unfed for too long already, while Nada – on behalf of Gusti Harry – entrusted the poor little one to them.

This morning.

While it is already near dinnertime.

`oh.`

The sisters’ eyes meet, alarmed and so, so guilty.

Tias looks away first and scrambles for the boxful of crickets she has bartered with her enterprising son for a batch of her piping-hot serabi*(6), which she stowed on the topmost shelf. Then, as her sister hums notes for warmth preservation at the stove, she hurries out of the kitchen altogether through the back dor.

Fortunately, the little one – Kondo, Nada said – is still there, loitering close to the kitchen window, from which the aromas of dinner’s menu no doubt have been wafting out of for some time by now.

Very, very hungry, likely. Because they have been avoiding everyone, otherwise.

Feeling very, very guilty in turn, Tias crouches down and calls softly for her charge, with the box of crickets extended in her hands.

She switches to balancing it on one hand and miming eating with the other when a pair of golden eyes, shining lamp-like in the late-afternoon glow, home in on her with predatory precision.

She shivers, too. She can’t help it! Tiny and timid as the little thing is, that stare screams danger-danger-danger to her hindbrain.

And the little menace’s attention sharpens, just so. On her, instead of on the probably delicious live crickets chirping away in the box in her hand.

Maybe they mistake what she means with her miming?

Damn, she is not for eating!

With that in mind, she shakes her head emphatically while patting her chest over her breastbone, then pats the side of the box and mimes eating the crickets in it. to be more inviting and safe for her, she puts the box on the grassy ground afterwards and scoots back a few paces.

Aaaaand, success!

After a palpably contemplative moment, the child stalks forward warily, straight to the box of crickets.

Golden eyes flash up once more just as a pair of tiny, green-striated grey hands rest on the lid of the box, like a pair of signalling torches.

She nods again, just as emphatically as before, while pointing at the box then the child.

“Makan,” (“Eat,”) she verbalizes as clearly as possible at the same time. Children learn languages fast, right? Her English is not good, barely on the edge of being understood, but her Indonesian is fluent if thickly accented. Gusti Harry could always teach this new child of his English by himself, she figures. She just needs to have something to connect with the little one right now.

And, surprisingly despite the expectation, the child parrots her word verbatim, down to the thick Javanese dialect and insistently slanted imperative.

Now she wants to laugh, and coo, and gather the scrawny little thing into her arms.

She hasn’t forgotten the predatory look, though, so all she does is to hum approvingly and watch as the child carefully inspects the box from all angles, then peers into the little holes dotting the sides, then extends a couple of the green-with-grey-stripes fleshy hair-like things ringing their bald, bony pait towards the said holes.

She wonders if those are for hearing, since she can see no ears on their head.

She wonders, too, if food in their original time – original time! – was so scares, or if meals were conditional on good behaviour or doing some chore. Because one tiny hand then darts into the box whose lid the other hand lifts slightly, grabs a no-doubt-surprised cricket, clasps the lid back down, de-wings and de-legs the poor insect, stuffs it into their lipless mouth full of sharp teeth, and nudges the box back to her with a clearly conveyed expectant look.

She chooses to think kindly of the child’s previous guardian, and tries to convey how glad she is that they are eating by look alone, even as her hand motions them to continue eating.

But they do not. And the expectant look remains.

Cursing inwardly, she racks her brain for something easy, quick and light for the tiny, skinny little one to do, just so that they will continue eating.

And, just as a thought begins to crystalise in her brain, someone comes striding out of the dormhouse – Ningsih, by the somewhat-stompy footsteps – while… bouncing a ball aloft on her palms, it sounds, and sing-songs, “Sapa arep dolan bal?” (“Who wants to play ball?”)

Kondo straightens up, tenses.

Tias sighs, gets up to her feet, glances to the side and gives… yup, it’s her sister… a dirty look.

Still, it’s… not a bad idea. It’s play, and everyone knows children love it.

So, even as she gives Ningsih a glare, she motions the other woman to throw the ball to her, which she then throws to Kondo.

Fortunately, Kondo seems to be a bright, bright child, and they catch up to the unspoken simple rule almost instantly. They toss the ball back to Ningsih, if far harder than the two previous examples – serves her brat of a sister right, though! – and the little game is on.

In fact, it is how the other inhabitants of the dormhouse find the three of them come dinnertime: running round, trying to catch the ball that is thrown with increasing swiftness and difficulty of angle, squealing – in the sisters’ case – and laughing.

It’s fun.

And, better yet, at the end of the little catch-and-pass-the-ball game, Kondo eats four more crickets.

Chapter Text

24.

They are all in a different universe now, so Luna said.

Raised in the non-magical world, Dennis Creevey knows very well what it means, or at least as any film or comic maker or fan could understand it.

Ironically, it’s those who grew up in the magical world who can’t.

Oh, he is so, so tempted to mock them for it, like many mocked him and Colin for being “mudbloods” and hunted them like animals.

But he doesn’t.

At least not right now. Because those who are with him now are either fellow “mudbloods” or “blood traitors” or just… indifferent to it all – which is not good, really, but at least not that harmful in the short run.

And they do need to consider the short run, right now.

Because he recognised the helmet shape sketched by both Luna and Susan.

From comics and films.

“All we’ve imagined is true some place, then?” he wonders aloud after sharing his realisation with Katie, who is a “halfblood” raised in the non-magical world.

She shrugs. “Maybe the creator of the story got some latent magical ability and accidentally glimpsed into this universe?” she offers, then scrunches up her nose. “Bloody hell, I would’ve never thought I’d ever say something like this….”

“Not me either,” he snorts, and they share a laugh.

It’s not a happy laugh.

He hasn’t been happy for a year. Or maybe even more. And Katie even longer.

“You think Harry’s somewhere round here?” he asks after a while, after a silence that’s surprisingly not so bad after the laugh.

“Right here? Maybe not, if Luna is to be believed,” Katie shakes her head. “I don’t know much about the story. Dad’s the one that’s more into it, ironically.”

She pauses, closes her eyes, harshly wipes some leaking tears away, and forcefully continues, “But from what I remember, it’s a whole galaxy out there, and a galaxy has billions of stars in it, and each star probably has about a dozen of planets surrounding it. And Luna said we’re almost at the right moment to pass through the Veil, so it’s likely we’re not exactly where Harry was. He could’ve flown off, too, if he got his hands on a spaceship and managed to figure out how to fly it.”

She laughs again, and there’s a raw mixture of sobs and hiccups in it that makes Dennis wish he’s elsewhere.

“That sod is the most natural flier I’ve ever known,” she says amidst all that, and Dennis agrees whole-heartedly with her.

As callous as it feels, though, they do have a more urgent matter than where Harry is, right now, and she needs to pull herself together again as soon as possible so they can discuss what to do next and how to tell it to the others. Because the helmet shape belongs to “the Mandalorians,” as the comics and films said, and they are a warrior people.

A warring people, even, in a couple of comics. And they must not get themselves involved in it. At all. And in any way. even accidentally.

25.

Susan Bones is a pureblood witch and raised accordingly, though not traditionally in many aspects. She knows little of the muggle world, therefore, though these seven years she has known far more than prior to Hogwarts.

Also, for all her upbringing and ambient knowledge, the more obscure branches of magic elude her.

Dreaming about other worlds out there, for instance.

But the fact of it is irrefutable, however dubious anyone is.

Case in point, she is spying on a people group that Dennis said were present in… picture books, recorded plays and the like. Thought up by muggles. Who probably had some latent magic in them and dreamt of these beings somehow from a universe away.

Well, anyway, the people she’s stalking at present – on her disillusioned broom, with her own self encased in various spells to mask her by sight, heat and scent – are a squad of five, all armoured from head to toe, but not with the armour sets like one could find at Hogwarts.

Their helmets, for one, have not just one single strip with holes on it for the visor but a pair of large, darkened plates of some glassy material, set side by side with a narrow vertical bridge between them that is also connected to some kind of embedded box that is the mouth piece.

Their weapons, for two, are… strange. No axe, no sword, no shield, though she spies a few knives tucked in boots or hanging from belts – not primary weapons, but still familiar.

“Those are called blasters – some sort of pistol, but with… laser? Instead of bullets,” Dennis tells her when she gets back and describes the weapons to her. “And, I think, some sort of grenades? But maybe they have a different name for it here?”

He shrugs.

She stares.

“I don’t understand anything you’ve just said,” she confesses after a beat.

He snorts, scornful and bitter – but not towards her, she thinks. “Welcome to my world. I was clueless, too, when I got to Hogwarts,” he says. “But I was lucky. Colin told me much, though he didn’t know that much, either.”

He closes his eyes. She closes hers, as well.

The wound is still so raw.

But they must go on.

She is the only Bones, now, and he is the only Creevey.

Maybe, someday, there will be more that bear their names.

For now, though, “What should we do about them? They seemed…. I don’t like them. They seemed quite dangerous. And, if this is their planet, why must they sneak about?”

“Any emblem on their armour?” Dennis seems to pull himself together, too, thankfully.

Susan summons the memory back to the fore of her mind and rescrutinises the armour, now juxtaposed with what she knows of the colours and coat-of-arms of the family and school Houses she knows.

“Blue and black,” she announces after a while. Longer than ought to be, perhaps, but she wants – needs – to be sure, in case it’s important. “Blue and black and some kind of a stylised M on their shoulderplates, or maybe some kind of stylised clawmark. Pretty simple, really.”

Oh, she doesn’t like the sharp breath he draws on the description of the… no, not coat-of-arms, after all, but perhaps just a symbol to denote something?

And she likes it even less when he announces, “They’re Death Watch, then. Trouble.”

She believes him.

The name is too close to “Death Eaters” for her comfort.

“We steer clear, then?” she offers. “Or I could follow where they go and have a look around.”

His shoulders tighten. “No. better not,” he says after a long, painful thought. “Too risky. I don’t know if their helmets have cameras on the back, but… better don’t risk it. Non-magicals can see the colours of our spellfire, you know, though they can’t see dementors and the like, so we can’t even tag them with a locator, if there’s even such a spell.”

“There is,” she sighs, rueful and despondent, “and I was about to mention it.”

He grimaces. So does she.

Still, they need to establish new roots somewhere. And, however horrible this place’s past may have been, however horrible the people who will become their neighbours might be, this spot is as good as any. So, “Shall we put it to discussion with the others, then?”

Oh, how she hopes they will not be embroiled in yet another war!

26.

Loptr-who-is-reincarnated is here.

Not here here, obviously, but in the same universe at last.

Unfortunately, many would rather build something in this eerie wasteland, even with the potential threat of antagonistically violent neighbours, than attempting to reconnect with them – well, him, Blaise supposes.

It even got worse last night, when various beings from British wizarding world and the Knight Bus – of all things! – suddenly materialised where Miss Lovegood said she and the Minister had before. It has been awfully chaotic since then, and Blaise has found themself seeking shelter with one of Gryffindor’s so-called Terror Twins – the only one still present in this plane – who promptly secluded himself in one of Neville’s potion-ingredient greenhouses upon arrival.

They do not talk with each other. They just… be. But the longer the silence keeps, the more impatient Blaise feels about being separated once more from the one they should protect and keep company with and teach about the milaðen, about staying in this precarious location, about the “headless-chicken” chaos and mistrust and posturing.

The half-twin is the one who ends the silence, however, in the end.

“I thought we were going to join Fred,” he croaks out, and it’s awful to say when his whole family and many more came with him, but at the same time understandable.

Blaise did agree to pass through the Veil alongside the others in the Minister’s contingent, after all, and Mama – the only family member who has always been there – came with them.

But she is not second out of two in their family, at least in Blaise’s case.

Oh, it gives them an idea.

“I am going to contact my other parent, to ask if they could facilitate my travel to rejoin my kin, who is apparently not on this planet. If you would like to be away from your family for now, would you like to join me? Surely two is better than one during such an uncertain journey? They would likely enjoy your company, too, once we rejoin them. They are called Harry Potter to the wizarding world, if you must know.”