AUTHOR'S NOTE: Just over six years ago, I was dragged to the theater by my college roommates to see a movie about which I knew only two things—it was based on some British kids' fantasy book, and Alan Rickman was in it (which is the main reason I actually went without a fight). That movie had such an impact on me that I spent my Christmas break reading all of the Harry Potter books then out, and I returned to school with the beginnings of what was to become a life-dominating fanfic in mind. I have since posted about half of a very long trilogy, which is what that story somehow developed into, and I might well have posted more except that the ugly inevitable took place: canon intervened, stranding my characters halfway through Harry's sixth year and leaving my mad writing collaborator and me wondering, if we bothered to finish the story, would anyone bother to read it?

Even more to the point, we had little time to finish said story because we found ourselves engaged in a tooth-and-nail defense of our hero and icon, Professor Severus Snape—all the while quietly biting our nails and hoping that a certain British writer didn't blow it big-time. We lulled ourselves into the false hope that, once the seventh book came out, the debate would be over one way or another and all would be well. Ironically, it was after the release of Book Seven that things actually got nasty. My collaborator and I are both dyed-in-the-wool Slytherins, but even our Gryffindor friends were outraged at the writer's shameful treatment of Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy, and Slytherin House as a whole.

I know I am hardly the first person on this site to write a fanfic that could be classified as either a "Book Seven Didn't Happen Because I Said So and Here's Why" or a "Book Seven Did Happen but on My Terms, Dammit!" story, but I do hope that it will contribute to, rather than take away from, present thoughtful reflections on the canonical installment in question.

One other thing: Several of the characters, including the main, in this story have come from my "Contented Wi' Little" stories, but I have tried to write this in such a way that you won't have to read those unless you actually want to; they should hopefully explain themselves as they go along.

Disclaimers: (because I like to have them over and done with once at the beginning) If you recognize characters, concepts, terminology, and in some cases directly quoted text from the published Harry Potter books, they are the intellectual and marketable property of J.K. Rowling, whether I or anyone else likes it or not. All others are mine, with the exceptions of Zarekael Sel Dar Jerrikhan and The Watchers, who are the creations of my mad fanfic-spinning collaborator Snarky Sneak. All poetry and lyrics, unless otherwise credited in author's notes attached to the pertinent chapters, were written by Robert Burns. Any translations of Burns' work which appear were done by yours truly (so yes, if I screwed up a translation, you can let me know, but please be polite about it; I tend to become Snape-ish when responding to flames).

Song of Death by Robert Burns
Farewell, thou fair day, thou green earth, and ye skies,
Now gay with the broad setting sun!
Farewell, loves and friendships, ye dear tender ties,—
Our race of existence is run!

Thou grim King of Terrors, thou life's gloomy foe,
Go, frighten the coward and slave!
Go, teach them to tremble, fell Tyrant, but know,
No terrors hast thou for the brave!

Thou strik'st the dull peasant—he sinks in the dark,
Nor saves e'en the wreck of a name:
Thou strik'st the young hero—a glorious mark!
He falls in the blaze of his fame!

In the field of proud honour—our swords in our hands,
Our King and our Country to save—
While victory shines on life's last ebbing sands,
O! Who would not die with the brave!

Prologue
They stood as if frozen—Voldemort, his back straight and proud; Harry, with wand leveled and eyes flashing; Severus and Zarekael, masked and cloaked in Impalers' robes that swirled about them; and Meli, knowing what must come but having no idea how to prepare for it. Only the rain moved, pouring down in torrents over them with an angry roar.

The spell flew in an explosion of green light. Voldemort, to his credit, faced his inescapable death with his eyes open, and he even drew himself up straighter to accept it at last. The bolt struck him… there was a last flash of red in his eyes…

And Meli's world dissolved into excruciating agony, like nothing she had ever experienced. Even the defeat at Godric Hollow was nothing to this; everything was swallowed up in the pain and the screams. She fell and curled up, writhed and roiled, coughed up blood as her throat screamed itself raw, and begged anyone who would hear her for death.

She never could say afterward how long it went on or when oblivion finally took her; she only knew that when waking came… something was horribly wrong.

ooo

It was just past nine o'clock in the evening on 24 May, and the only noteworthy thing that ought to be taking place was Ludo Bagman notifying the four champions of the maze that would be their final task in a month's time. Within the halls of Hogwarts, all was more or less quiet, and the hospital wing was silent as the grave, its only occupant Madam Pomfrey.

The mediwitch had stayed a little late to finish inventorying her various medicines and compiling a short list for the potions master to brew over the next fortnight. It was a routine, mindless task, just boring enough to tire her, and her only thought as she rolled up her list was that she might go to bed early that night.

That off-hand thought was abruptly forgotten when a roiling, agonized scream shattered the silence. Madame Pomfrey dropped the parchment and scrambled to her feet to dash into the main ward. It was a scream unlike anything she had ever heard, but the utter agony of it made her think that someone must be dying horribly.

The sound had faded as she came out of her office, but she could clearly see a black-clad figure crumpled on the floor in the center of the ward. She ran to it without hesitation and checked it magically for damage before touching it. The readings she received made no sense whatsoever, but they did at least assure her that the person was still alive and could be safely moved.

Madame Pomfrey gingerly reached out to roll the figure from its side to its back. It turned out to be a young woman, probably no older than thirty, with tangled black hair and a deathly pale face. Her lips were almost white, and spotted with blood; she whimpered when the mediwitch touched her, but she was definitely unconscious. She wore what Madame Pomfrey recognized as Muggle clothes, all black, with black witch's robes over them, she held a black wand in her left hand… and the mediwitch knew for a fact that she had never seen this woman before.

"Oh, dear." The woman's arrival made no sense whatsoever, but she was obviously in bad shape and required immediate attention. Then, too, there was Dumbledore to notify, and he would probably want certain measures put into place….

"Well, my dear, I suppose I won't be going to bed early tonight after all," Madame Pomfrey said dryly then stepped back to levitate her visitor to a bed.

Chapter 1: The Watcher
When Meli Ebony opened her eyes, she knew immediately that the place in which she stood was not the real, waking world. After the seizure she'd just had, she should have been lying on a bed, hyped up on six different pain potions and still hurting badly; instead, she stood in a perfectly blank gray room with no trace of pain and no company except a very confused-looking man.

"You're early," he said, "and not the one I was told to expect." He furrowed his brow in concern. "Has the other champion died, then?"

Meli stared at him in bewilderment that faded quickly into irritation. "What are you talking about?" she asked shortly. "And as long as you're explaining that much, you may as well go the rest of the way and tell me who the hell you are, what this place is, and why I'm here." She leveled her teacher's eye at him. "I may be dead, but I'm bloody well sure that this is neither Heaven nor Hell."

The man looked startled. "Something has gone very wrong," he muttered, his eyes flicking around as if in search of an explanation. They finally came in for a landing on Meli's face. "Well, there's no undoing it now, so I suppose I had better tell you."

She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms. There was something ominous in those words, no matter how flustered the speaker might be. "I suppose you'd better."

He sighed and ran a distracted hand through his hair. "I'm called Avallach," he said. "The name of my people is unimportant; we're most commonly called The Watchers.

"Millennia ago, our ancestors constructed a network of gateways between dimensional worlds—what you might call alternate universes. Their primary interest was in observing how history moved and people changed within those worlds." His eyes flashed as he emphasized his next point. "To observe, you understand, and never to interfere."

"Naturally," Meli said coldly. There was an odd familiarity to some of what he was saying, but she couldn't place it.

Avallach's eyes narrowed. "Believe what you will; the truth is that we meant well."

When Meli didn't comment, he went on. "Unfortunately, some of the Watchers went bad, with catastrophic results. There are always two assigned to each world. Sometimes both went bad, and their worlds were destroyed or nearly so by their pursuit of power over the inhabitants. On other worlds, one went bad and the other must fight him while still trying to limit and repair the damage. It's an exhausting task—too much for one."

He cleared his throat. "So we select champions, men and women who will be able to infiltrate key societies and right those wrongs—"

"Zarekael." She said his name without even thinking it consciously, while the realization was still coming. "He's known to have come from another world through a gateway—"

"Yes," Avallach said. "Zarekael Sel Dar Jerrikhan. Yours was the first world to which we sent him, and this was to be his second." He sighed. "But as I said, something obviously went wrong. He's still alive, yet you, not he, came through the gateway, and you arrived almost three months early."

"I'm sure he'll be disappointed to hear it," Meli retorted. "I don't mind telling you I'm not at all thrilled, myself."

"He has no way of knowing about it," the Watcher blurted, and his eyes widened suddenly as if he realized he had said too much.

"What." Meli's voice was cold and deadly—the same tone she used with Death Eaters, Voldemort, and problem students. "Do you mean to tell me that Zarekael is unaware of his status as champion?"

Avallach cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Well, we always tell them after the second changing of worlds." He sounded almost pleading. "The first shift can be taken for a strange accident, and often the champions are grateful; we pull them out at the moment of death."

"How very merciful of you."

"And we only choose champions whose souls are forfeit!" Avallach pressed on stubbornly and rather desperately, but Meli heard the undertones of a man trying to convince himself of a lie. "Zarekael was damned before he ever left his own world."

"Bullshit!" she spat. "He was no angel in his world or mine—I know that quite well—but his soul was no more forfeit than mine is, you bloody lying worm!"

Avallach raised his chin and gave her a cold glare. "In any case, there's nothing you can do for him now. He is marked, we do have a claim on him whether or not you understand and approve, and he will be moved when the time comes!"

"And since you have no corresponding claim on me, you're going to send me back where I came from," Meli hissed.

"I'm afraid that's impossible." He looked regretful, almost even believably so. "The gateway is closed behind you; there is no going back. Even now, you're lying in a coma in the hospital wing, and when you wake up, it'll be in a world about to descend into chaos."

"How convenient for you," Meli said through her teeth. "I can either go along with your little repair scheme, or I can live as a hermit and blame myself when it all goes to hell because I did nothing."

Avallach shrugged. "I never said we were fair to our champions."

"And because you're employing emotional blackmail to motivate me, I can't even bargain for Zarekael to be left in peace as a condition of my agreement."

The Watcher set his jaw. "Zarekael Sel Dar Jerrikhan is not on the table, and no leverage you possess could ever put him there."

"Very well." Meli took an intimidating step toward him. "Out of the goodness of my black heart, I'll put your shagging Humpty Dumpty back together again, but I do have very specific terms that you will meet, or so help me, I will let this world be damned."

"Name your terms," Avallach allowed, "and then we'll talk."

"First, if I need you, I'll call you; I won't have you popping in and out to muck things up."

Avallach raised his eyebrows. "You've been watching too much Star Trek, my dear," he chided. "I'm not Q."

"Secondly," Meli said, glaring at him, "that will be the last time you call me 'my dear', or I'll see to it personally that you're unable ever to produce little Watchers." She narrowed her eyes a hair further. "And you're the one who introduced science-fiction with your parallel universes, you twat.

"Thirdly, it sounds as if you have some knowledge of what's coming in this world. I want every single detail you have—times, places, people, and chains of events."

"It can be done," Avallach said, looking impressed, "but the, hm, information upload will take some time. Best if you stay comatose for it."

"I've been in a coma before," Meli growled. "I'm fairly sure my constitution can stand for it."

Avallach shrugged. "Fair enough. Any other demands?"

"Only one." Meli widened her eyes. "You've made it quite clear that I'm not one of your champions, which means that you have no hold over me. When this is over, if there truly is no way to send me home, you will leave me where I am. I'm not your pawn, and I won't agree to become one. Is that understood?"

Avallach was silent a moment, and she was almost afraid that she'd gone too far. At last, though, he nodded. "What you say is, unfortunately, very true," he sighed. "And if calling you 'dear' is enough to warrant a threat to my manhood, I probably don't want to know what stiffer penalties you have up your sleeve."

She favored him with a mirthless smile. "I'm so glad we understand each other."

The Watcher smiled grimly. "Very well. I'll gladly meet your terms. Anything else you'd like to ask or discuss?"

Meli snorted. "My opinion of people who play God comes to mind, but that might require more of your time and honesty than you're prepared to part with."

Avallach rolled his eyes. "How fortunate that I never entertained hopes of us being friends. Sweet dreams, then, and happy waking."

"Fuck you," she replied, but Avallach just smiled and disappeared, and a moment later the room faded to black.