NOTE: On the wiki and other places, the term 'Potions Master' is considered an honorary title bestowed simply by virtue of being the Potions professor at Hogwarts. Fanon has long-established (mostly in Snape-centric stories) that the title is earned, usually by an apprenticeship over a few years, and certification tests afterwards. I'm using the latter definition.

ON FORMATTING: This story uses a lot of formatting for things like lists and letters that just doesn't translate to the FFN website. Where possible, I have placed the site's 'line break' in to delineate where letters (italics) and journal entries (regular text) begin and end. For lists, I've just done what I can!

A SOLUTION MORE BEAUTIFUL

Chapter One: The Wrong Bedroom

Elodie shut her copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with a snap and glared at it. No matter how many times she picked it up to finish the book, she just couldn't make it past the part where her favorite character lay dead. Remus Lupin wasn't given a valiant death scene, nor even a eulogy by another character. She knew the book held other frustrations-the section on her favorite fan fiction archive was full of stories tagged with 'EWE,' or 'Epilogue, What Epilogue?'-but she hadn't even made it that far. She had picked the book back up, time and again, expecting the distance of time to provide the perspective to handle that particular disappointment, but there was just no help for it. The hoped-for redemption of Remus from his sudden self-doubt and abandonment of his wife and child was not only missing, but it had never been attempted!

For one furious, incandescent moment, Elodie wished she had never read past book three. Sirius Black alive, Lupin no longer burdened with the false misery of Pettigrew's innocence and Black's guilt-Dumbledore alive and hope on the horizon. She'd gotten hooked by a friend's insistence she read the series ("Honestly, Elodie, if you like reading Kirk/Bones from the reboot, you'll LOVE Remus/Sirius!"), and the wealth of fanfiction had blown her away. She'd read epic time travel adventures pairing Hermione and Remus and post-war ficlets that hand-waved all the death and destruction and reunited as many Marauders as the author could manage. She had even tried some stories pairing Lupin with characters like Ginny or Luna, though she preferred him with Hermione. The silly thing was, Elodie had gone and gotten so thoroughly attached to Remus and Sirius in particular that no amount of fandom fixits felt like they were enough.

She eyed the laptop beside her as she put the thick volume back down in its place of honor (or disgrace) on her bedside table. Did she want to read a quick one shot to make her feel better? Elodie shook her head. She was in a fanciful mood, and she was shit at using Google after midnight. There was no chance she'd find the right search terms to find the kind of fic she wanted to read. 'Lost in Austen but in Harry Potter' wasn't likely to exist anyway, she knew, and even if it did, chances were high a story like that would be based on the Slytherins or the Golden Trio anyway, not Lupin. She considered rewatching the final episode of that miniseries. It was imaginative; basically fanfiction in its own right, as the main character from modern times steps into Pride and Prejudice and accidentally places herself at Fitzwilliam Darcy's side, instead of Lizzie. Instead, Elodie decided to reread a favorite fanfiction from a completely different fandom, Stargate Atlantis. There, one of the main cast finds himself in the actual Atlantis, essentially an alternate universe where the events of the television series were actually real, as were the characters and the technology. Elodie loved the story because it wasn't just about the characters and their interactions, but also the way the main character experiences the differences between his universe and the one he finds himself in. After a couple of chapters, she felt more content, and she smiled as she closed her laptop and placed it on its shelf.

Elodie got up and prepared for bed, stopping at the window to close it, as the air outside had grown chilly. The night was clear, and the moon was barely a sliver in the sky. The stars shone bright without the moon's glow to obscure them, and as she watched, a falling star streaked across the patch of sky right in front of her.

On a whim, Elodie Merriman made a wish.

888888888888

For 33 years, Elodie's room had been the same, in layout, if not in decoration. That wasn't as unusual as it could have been in some parts of the world, as her sleepy New England town was the sort of place where one could be born, grow up, and settle down as an adult all in the same house. The relevance of all of this was that, barring one particular semester at college (and her roommate had brought and used actual curtains that year), Elodie Merriman had never slept in a bedroom whose windows let the morning sun shine in onto the bed.

Until today.

The gentle heat on her face was what woke her up. Elodie opened her eyes and squinted, lifting a sleepy hand to block the unexpected light. Something was off, but she wasn't awake enough to know what it was just yet. The blanket was right, the pillow was right, but the window—the window was wrong. The sun was shining through the top window pane, and as she sat up, Elodie saw that the lower two thirds were covered by a delicate lace panel curtain she'd never seen before in her life. Beside the window on either side were two powder blue parlor chairs that were also unfamiliar. Next to one of the chairs was a roll top desk, identical to the kind she'd always wanted, and atop it sat a picture frame she recognized. Elodie couldn't make out the subject of the photograph, but what made her startled enough to stand up and rush over to it was the fact that the picture inside the frame was moving.

She'd had that particular frame since she was a teenager. It wasn't any thicker than a regular picture frame, and she turned it over to check that some computer chip hadn't been added to it to allow video functionality. It looked completely normal, with no wires or technology hidden in the smooth wooden backing. She turned it over, half expecting the image to be stationary, but sure enough, her eyes hadn't been deceiving her: the image of her mother and a stranger were moving and interacting.

"What the hell?!" Elodie blurted out. Her mother had died on July 27th, 2001, on a flight from Boston to Miami. Yet here she was, smiling, waving, and gesturing to the view behind her in that endearing way Elodie so loved about her. 'Can you believe this?!' she seemed to be asking, as always delighted by the beauty of touristy places, as if the postcards and snapshots of others could never do those places the justice they deserved until seen by her own eyes.

Elodie stared, mesmerized by the ordinary everyday look of the woman who was clearly her mother, clearly alive and happy.

There was a knock at the door, and Elodie set the frame down carefully in its place at the desk, and went over to open it.

"Good morning, Miss Elodie," a young woman said, her English accent unmistakeable. "Owl post's just come, and this one is for you." She handed Elodie a roll of parchment and turned to leave. Unrolling the scroll seemed the most obvious thing to do, however strange her situation, and when Elodie saw the signature at the bottom, she burst into a loud peal of laughter that echoed down the hallway.

"Of course!" she said, holding up the curling paper in a jaunty salute to the woman who'd handed it over. "The signature says Albus Dumbledore. Who else would it be from?!"

"That'll be the juice from last night," the girl said, clearly unfazed. "It made Jenkins from down the hall go for a swim in the stream at 5:30 AM. I think I'll pour out the rest of it. Can't have any more guests going batty. I'll bet you it's cursed!" She turned back toward the nearby staircase and started down them, humming a tune as though nothing of consequence had happened at all.

Elodie couldn't think of a response. The reality of what she was holding in her hands and what it had to mean came crashing over her, and she walked back into her room as if in a trance, her finger tracing across the signature almost reverently.

Dear Elodie,

It appears that I was right about needing your brewing skills. Therefore, I have a few favors to ask, if you are amenable:

Please ask Winnifred if there is lodging for a former Hogwarts staff member there, for a few months. I fear Professor Lupin will be rather forlorn at the loss of his position, however predictable it may have been. Hollyfield House is remote enough that he should be able to convalesce nicely.

If you have not yet begun the process of brewing Wolfsbane, please start it soon. Any ingredients you do not currently have access to will be provided for you.

I have acquired a book for you about the Wolfsbane potion and other powerful and rare spells useful to a Potions Master. The book is only produced once a year, and many skilled witches and wizards vie for the few copies that are created. There are powerful forces that threaten the peace you have only so recently achieved. I will be honest with you: I feel I need your help. I hope this gift will reveal the level of trust and faith I have in you.

If you are interested in helping, please conjure and send back an imitation phoenix feather with the owl that will arrive with your book tomorrow. Your message should read, 'Thank you for the use of this phoenix feather. My potion has been a great success.' If you choose not to assist, I will not blame you. You remain a person I hold in high regard either way.

A simple touch of your wand to this message should activate the Incendio it is cursed with.

Thank you, my dear.

Albus Dumbledore

Elodie supposed that taking a picture of the letter would defeat the purpose of the Mission Impossible style self-destruct that had been included in it (and her pathetic flip phone's camera was broken again, and at the shop, again). At the same time, Elodie had a self-imposed rule to never leave something important to chance. Even if she only needed two things from the store, she always made a grocery list. If she gave a promise, she made a note of it right away. For this, she decided, she'd make a list of the tasks, and then write out a response to Dumbledore about the feather before his message was destroyed and took the exact wording with it.

Elodie was halfway across the room reaching out to open the desk in search of a pencil before the unreality of her actions caught up with her. She had always responded to stressful situations by micromanaging, but this was ridiculous! Elodie turned and sat on the edge of her (was it hers?) bed and looked at the scroll again. If it hadn't been for that picture on the desk, she'd think her fangirl friend from work was up to a monumental prank. The picture of her mother was pretty compelling evidence to the contrary, though, and Elodie was reminded of a quote whose author had escaped her. Something about cutting edge technology being indistinguishable from magic?

She looked back down at the thick parchment paper in her lap, and once again felt completely overwhelmed by the task of making sense of everything. Micromanaging was a much needed lifeline, she decided.

Elodie set the scroll down carefully on the bed and again moved toward her desk to search for writing supplies.

"This is crazy, you know that Mom?" she said, looking up and smiling at the framed image of her mother. "I mean, you used to make fun of me for talking to myself, and I never told you this, but after you died? I started talking to you, instead." She found a pencil and a thick roll of paper that she stared at for a long while before ripping off a section to write on. "Now, I'm still talking to you, but it feels less like an excuse." Elodie looked up at the smiling avatar of her mother, who was waving gaily at her. "You feel more real than anything else, right now."

Her instinct was to find a flat surface to write on and settle back onto the bed, but she realized that was because she didn't actually have a desk of her own, at home. The lap desk she'd purchased a few years back was so comfortable and the laptop she usually wrote emails on were both much more familiar, but of course, she was without both, here.

"All right, here's the desk, where's the desk chair?" she asked aloud. She turned around and scanned the room, finding the chair in front of a charming wardrobe she hadn't noticed before. She walked over and stared at it for a long moment before narrowing her eyes and climbing up on it. Once elevated, it was a natural action to examine the decorative carved edge of the wardrobe.

There, sitting hidden in a wooden recess of the wardrobe's domed top, lay a small book.

Elodie felt like she was truly and honestly a heroine in a storybook.

She reached out and took the book, and at her touch, the cover morphed into that of a diary. The change started in the top left corner and fluttered at an angle toward the lower right, each piece flipping over like dominos collapsing end to end. Elodie was startled, but forced herself not to drop it. The changing book tickled as it transformed underneath her hand, but it didn't hurt her. She was glad of the solid weight of the wardrobe in front of her, and she steadied herself with a hand resting firmly against it as she held the magical object through its transformation.

Elodie took stock of her situation and remembered what her mother had always advised her when she was little. 'Never combine tasks when you're learning something new.' As a toddler, this had meant not holding a banana and trying to climb up onto a dining room chair at the same time. In Elementary school, it was learning to swim without stopping in the middle of the pool to put her hair into a tighter ponytail. As a teenager, she had rather disastrously had her first kiss while stopped at a red light, two days after trading in her learner's permit for a shiny new driver's license. Applying the concept to her current circumstances, Elodie knew that she shouldn't try to climb down from the chair while holding a book that might change its shape and texture at any moment.

She tossed the book towards the center of the bed only a few feet away, and watched as the accordion-like transformation reversed itself as soon as it left her grasp. Elodie climbed down and grabbed the desk chair, dragging it easily over to the desk. Then, she reached out toward the book, pausing only slightly to remind herself to pay attention to how the change started. Would it feel like a transfer of energy from her body to the book? Or did it generate its own shimmer of magic by virtue of her touch?

Elodie touched the tip of her forefinger to the center of the book.

This time the change pulsed out like a tsunami from the spot she touched, and it was like a static charge had passed from her body into the object. Elodie bit her lip, excited about what that might mean for her here in a world of magic. She hadn't missed that there were aspects in Dumbledore's letter that would require her to be, quite frankly, not a Muggle, but via her usual compartmentalization, she'd set that aside until it became relevant again. As she grasped the journal more firmly and sat down to read what was inside, Elodie realized exactly how relevant her personal relationship to magic really was.

May 5, 1994

Finally settled in Hollyfield House. I think I'll be eternally grateful to Albus for finding me a place where I feel like I am safe and can be independent! This time two months ago I never would have seen myself as a Potions Master, much less having earned the title and gotten away from Jerk Francis. I think I was too afraid to write down my hopes when it came to this, but now I am confident that despite everything, I have come out the other side. So I'm going to say it!

I

AM

FREE.

Losing everything I own and everyone I was still friends with hurts worse than Cruciatus, but I'm sure that was the point, for him. It will just have to be too damn bad for him that I plan to be happy from now on precisely because that's the opposite of what he wanted. If only he'd been less thorough, I might have been demoralized and depressed beyond redemption!

It was definitely her own handwriting. There was something utterly haunting about it, for all that the tone was joyful. Something awful had clearly happened, and in a perverse way, Elodie felt grateful that she didn't have those memories. She looked down at the entry for May 5 and decided that, while she wasn't going to read through the whole thing in one sitting, she needed to see the last entry, at least. Elodie flipped through, seeing words and phrases in passing: 'relieved,' 'triumphant,' and 'full of misery.' She had no idea what today's date was, but when she found the final entry, she recognized that this iteration of herself was no better at staying on task when it came to writing daily in a diary.

June 2, 1994

Lovely visit from Albus! He has told me there's a curse on the Dark Arts position at Hogwarts, and that as a result the wizard holding that professorship will lose his job by the end of the term this year. He confided in me that he has a fondness for the man, named Lupin, and that he has been watching over him in a way since he'd arrived, given the state of the curse's prior, as he described them, victims. He confided in me that Lupin is a werewolf, got bitten when he was a child, and that he thinks that is misfortune enough to keep the man safe from any further harm when the curse comes into play.

I have to admit that hearing these secrets-they are clearly secrets-from him about someone I don't know felt wrong somehow, but I have always wanted to try Wolfsbane again. I told Albus I hoped that was what he was getting at, and he admitted as much. It takes some preparation and gathering, and but this is me declaring my intent of beginning the brewing as soon as possible. If I hurry, it should be ready for the next full moon, but aconite in particular is tricky to get.

Is it silly to be so excited about wanting to brew again?

"Mom," Elodie said to the photograph nearby after sitting in silence for a long time, reading and re-reading the words in her own handwriting. "I think we're witches. Like, real magic-using, wand-waving-" A realization hit as soon as she spoke the words 'wand-waving.' Elodie stood up in a movement so quick that the chair lurched sideways. She caught it, but only just. After making sure the chair was stable again, she rushed over to the bed, consumed with excitement and curiosity. Elodie was a creature of habit, and every night, she took off her watch and necklace, setting them in a shallow rectangular tray on her bedside table. If she was right, and this was her room, her wand should be there.

It was.

Elodie stood and just stared.

The wand fit perfectly in the tray. Elodie wondered if, somehow, she instinctively used that same tray in her own universe because it fit her wand inside it in this one. She reached out and slid a finger along the carved, reddish wood. She wanted to pick it up and cast Lumos. She wanted to conjure up the house she could see so clearly in her head but always, ever since she was very young, failed to draw to her own satisfaction. She wanted to figure out where in the United Kingdom she was so she could find the soonest train to London and go ask Ollivander what kind of core her wand had.

The wand was heavier and more limber than she expected when she picked it up; the tip wobbled, or perhaps more accurately quivered, when she gestured with it. There was something deeply comforting about holding it in her palm just so, and this faded when she swapped hands. It was, quite simply, Elodie Merriman's wand.

She couldn't remember if there was a special wand movement for Lumos, and decided that she would close her eyes and hope that, perhaps, the spell was so elementary and instinctual that she'd cast it via muscle memory, somehow. Elodie raised the wand, checking to see that the tip had no glow to it whatsoever before shutting her eyes and saying in a confident voice, "Lumos!"

She felt an honest to goodness trickle of power in her right arm as she waved a modest curlicue in the air. Elodie opened her eyes to be greeted by a glowing ball of light at the end of her wand.

"Nox," she whispered, enchanted and terrified. The light winked out. "Lumos!" she said again. "Nox!"

"Okay. Time to get serious, here," Elodie chastised herself in a loud voice. "Very serious!" The very next second, she'd curled over into a hysterically laughing ball on the bed, clutching her precious wand to her chest. If Albus Dumbledore was sending her letters referencing Remus Lupin, then Sirius Black was also presumably a real flesh and blood person that also existed. "Whoooooo," she breathed once she'd calmed down. "Getting that out was probably necessary."

Elodie rolled over onto her back and held up her wand, admiring the way it seemed simultaneously ancient and stylish. It was time to take stock of what she planned to do with all of this new information. She wondered if there was a spell that would let her use her walls as a temporary chalkboard, allowing her to make notes but also erase them permanently. Hermione Granger would know, and she was almost assuredly also a real person who was existing somewhere in the same country Elodie was in right now. She was also, if Magical Elodie could be trusted to make journal entries roughly every two to four days, probably in the midst of her end of year exams, at the beginning of June, 1994.

Elodie sat up.

1994.

Her father had died in 1993 of cancer, but in 1994, Laurel Merriman was alive. And in 1994, Elodie Merriman had been 21 years old. She let herself fall back onto the bed with a thump.

"I promise I am NOT complaining," she said out loud, ostensibly to whatever instruments of fate that might think she was regretting the situation she had found herself in. "This is just very, very complicated."

She decided to take each complication, large or small, at face value, one at a time. Face value, she thought to herself, is as good a place to start as any. Elodie looked around and didn't see a mirror, but she hadn't yet opened the wardrobe. She got up and walked over to it, hoping she'd find a mirror. It turned out she was right, there was a mirror on the inside of the door-and that mirror showed her an Elodie she recognized, not one she'd been prepared to cringe over. Middle 1990's hair had been something else.

"All right, Mom, looks like you are alive and I'm oddly grateful I'm not 21 years old," Elodie said, unsure which revelation was the more earth-shattering. Losing her father at 20 had been incredibly difficult, and losing her mom just over 8 years later hadn't been any easier. There wasn't a week that went by that she hadn't wished she could somehow inhabit a world where even one of her parents still existed, and now, miraculously, she did. There was just the small matter of the presumably thousands of miles of distance that separated them, instead of years.

She could feel the hysteria bubbling up inside her. There were actual people in this world who were actually depending on her to be able to do actual things, and even if she was going to wake up back home after a mere 24 hours, Elodie felt like she still needed to try to do right by everyone. For all she knew, Magical Elodie had started the Wolfsbane and needed to stir it once a day.

That was something else. Right now, she was Magical Elodie. What could she call her counterpart that didn't come off as insane if she talked to herself out loud in mixed (as in not batshit insane time traveling universe hopping) company? 90's Elodie was right out, because she hadn't enjoyed being 90's Elodie all that much even back when she actually was 90's Elodie. She thought about it as she walked back over to her desk to participate in the one activity that would help calm her nerves.

Listmaking.

To do:

1. Subtly figure out which person Winnifred is, ask if there's any vacancy for a friend of Albus Dumbledore

2. Find the library, start with the Standard Book of Spells (thanks, Hermione!)

3. Find the maid I met and tell her I drank some of that cursed juice and can't remember where I'd been planning to brew potions

4. Read all of the journal entries and learn more about M. Elodie

Elodie paused and reached over to grab Dumbledore's letter. She looked at it with new eyes, trying to learn something about the nature of their friendship in relation to the way M. Elodie had referred to him in her journal. After a quick read-through, Elodie grabbed her wand and stuck it in the back waistband of her pyjama pants, fearful of burning it to an unreadable crisp by accident. She added to her list of tasks, based on what he'd asked her to do.

5. Make a separate library list and add a potion book with Wolfsbane

6. Make a list of needed ingredients for Wolfsbane to send back with Dumbledore's owl tomorrow

7. Learn how to conjure a faux phoenix feather

8. Write out his letter, 'Thank you for the use of this Phoenix feather. The potion was a great success!'

It was time to destroy the parchment. But, would Incendio cause any damage to the room she was presumably renting? She should go outside, Elodie realized, but that meant it was time to get dressed, and was a 36 year old Elodie going to fit into anything Magical Elodie had in her wardrobe? Elodie looked down at her list, running her finger across the place she'd written 'M. Elodie.' She'd had a babysitter when she was in elementary school who used to call her 'Mellie,' which had stood for 'Miss Ellie.' The older Elodie had gotten, though, the more the nickname had felt like something she'd left behind as she'd grown up. Now, that felt like the perfect reason to use it for a younger version of herself.

"Well, Mellie," Elodie said, trying the name on for size as she walked back over to the open wardrobe. "Let's see if I can fit into anything you've got in here."

Mellie seemed to prefer long, flowy dresses, and while Elodie herself remembered that phase of her life mostly fondly, she didn't want to think about the reasons she no longer liked them. As for how they looked on her, well, it didn't hurt that she was taller than the average woman. That height of 5 feet, 8 inches was thankfully not enough to put her in the same realm of miserable shoe sizes that her mother, at 5'10", had suffered.

There were three variously printed ankle-length dresses, two single colored ones (including a blindingly white dress that Elodie was dying to know whether Mellie had ever worn, because she herself had always feared the myriad embarrassing ways such a color could be ruined during a simple night's outing), and no less than six skirts. She stood there just staring at them for a very long time, wondering when any version of herself had gotten trendy before feeling a sharp pang of guilt when she remembered a key piece of information about Mellie.

They were probably all new, or within a month or two of being so. What little she'd already read from the journal (Don't even think about it, she told herself firmly, you need to get dressed and destroy the parchment before you can read everything else! Priorities!) had made it clear that she'd come to the UK with next to nothing. A woman who had spent a length of time trapped and miserable would probably want the least restrictive clothing she could wear, once she was free.

Elodie told herself rather firmly to stop wasting time judging her younger self on something as ridiculous as amounts of skirts. She had things to do, and they felt much more important than the things she'd be worried about had she woken up at home in New England. She slid the skirt hangers aside and looked at the blouses, which were all beautiful. Mellie had good taste. To her immense relief, there were also a selection of pants and casual shirts, all of which had little embellishments or styling to them that made them stand out as the kinds of things a person might splurge on. She pulled out a pair of jeans that had embroidered flowers all along the left pantleg in her favorite colors, and a light linen top with lace accents.

The drawers of the wardrobe were filled with equally delightful undergarments, and after she'd chosen her favorites of these, her hand came upon the hard outline of a book, The Wise Witch's Wardrobe Workbook. The back of the dustcover (and that was a fascinating development in and of itself, that magical books still had dustcovers) had a blurb about using magic to alter clothing to have the style and fit needed for the day, without permanently changing them from their original state. There was even a picture of a woman wearing a skirt with very similar embroidery to the jeans Elodie had just chosen, next to a picture of the same color slacks with identical stitching.

Elodie had sold her younger self short by a mile.

You have got to get over your hatred of skirts, she told herself. It was ONE bike accident! Mellie herself probably had never ridden a bike, Elodie realized. She'd probably ridden a broom, something she was pretty sure didn't have a 'skirt hazard,' unlike her own humiliating teenage trauma. Even if she had, Mellie probably wouldn't have had to spend a week in St. Mungo's with a dislocated shoulder and lacerations up one side of her body and down the other, either.

"That's enough with the neurotic ancient history, thank YOU!" Elodie singsonged to herself. She held up Mellie's clothes, flipped through the book she'd found, frowned, and turned back to the wardrobe, digging out a hastily folded shirt in a color she'd always hated. There was a strong sense of unreality in that moment: Mellie had used this same shirt to test the book, she would bet money on it. That was why it wasn't hung up, and that was why it remained a color they both hated.

Twenty or so minutes later, once Elodie was dressed, she discovered another difference between their worlds. She'd picked up her wand after putting on the necklace she'd always worn (same style, same length), and found herself a bit lost when she realized she hadn't seen a purse or any place to put the wand. Something like instinct told her that witches and wizards kept their wands close, like in a pocket, so she felt along the waistline of her jeans. There were the same pockets she'd expected to find, but there was also one at her side, on the right, deep enough for her wand to fit, but not at a position where her wand would be damaged if she sat down.

Elodie turned around to survey the room. It looked more homey now than when she'd first awakened. She wondered if that was because she knew Mellie didn't have much to decorate or personalize the space. She told herself it was time to leave, and that was when she felt a strong compulsion to walk over to the bedside table and open the drawer there. Inside was a change purse and a miniature sweater.

"I'm going to wait on casting Engorgio until I know exactly what I'm doing," Elodie said to herself firmly. "I'll be back soon, Mom!" She waved at the picture of her mother on the desk, wondering if any other magical people behaved similarly. She hoped they did. It was comforting.