Title: The Dangers of Trans-Universal Portals
Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWaytoTravel
Story Summary: One of Albus and Rose's experiments goes horribly amiss, and something's wrong with Lily. Lily, meanwhile, has found herself in another universe, full of strangers and people she knows to be dead.
Set after Deathly Hallows. Follows canon, except that Lily is black-haired and green-eyed in my 'verse.
Author notes:
Set in the same universe as my short stories The Next Morning and It Was James's Fault, Professor. This'll make more sense if you read those first, although I guess it's not absolutely necessary.
THE DANGERS OF TRANS-UNIVERSAL PORTALS
CHAPTER ONE
THINGS GO HORRIBLY WRONG
AS EXPERIENCED BY ALBUS
Albus Severus Potter lay on his back in the grass and stared at the sky, watching his brother circle lazily above with his friends.
"We should," Rose agreed. She too was lying in the grass. "The Prat deserves it."
The Prat (also known as James Sirius Potter) thoroughly deserved his title recently. Rose and Albus had hoped that their impressive prank near the end of term would have made him loosen up a little; indeed, James had been gobsmacked. Unfortunately he had also been affronted that his quiet little brother and bookworm cousin had masterminded and carried out such a magnificent idea, and as a result had in fact picked on them even more.
Hence his new nickname. Even Lily was using it sometimes now.
"I wonder what we should use," Rose mused thoughtfully.
Albus watched the clouds pass by.
"One of those immortality rituals," he suggested idly, "he can be our sacrifice."
"You need one per person," Rose pointed out, "and anyway I'm not going to help you sacrifice your brother in an illegal and dangerous immortality ritual, even my intellectual curiosity has limits."
"Kidnap him, leave him in the Chamber of Secrets, and obliviate him so he doesn't know how he got there."
"Except that requires Parseltongue," Rose observed.
There was a long silence.
"…yeah."
Rose digested his reply. She rolled onto her side and propped herself up on one elbow.
"You never told me," she said curiously.
Albus just stared at the sky.
"Well, Dad doesn't have the ability anymore. He lost it with that bit of Voldemort's soul. So how come I've got it? I shouldn't. Something's gone wrong. So I kept it to myself. I found out halfway through first year. There's this portrait with a snake on the fifth floor."
He rolled onto his side to look at Rose.
"How about we open a gate between universes?"
-
For the next few days the two of them parked themselves up in the attic for privacy and researched. Rose brought along copies of her mother's notes. Hermione had locked her study since the Fidelus Incident, but that was okay, Lily had a device from Uncle George with a key on it that opened any lock, so they just borrowed that. James was busy with his friends and Ginny was just plain busy and Harry didn't think they could get into much trouble up there, so they were mostly left alone. Lily wandered in occasionally to see how it was going, but mostly did mysterious things in the clump of trees behind the house.
Lily, Albus knew, was very smart, in a way different to Rose. Rose was smart in an intellectual, practical fashion; in Lily the smartness was a sharp, worldly spike of intelligence that blazed its way through everything. No one but Albus seemed to notice, though. Oh, they knew she was clever, but they didn't know about the maths things she'd done or the old science books borrowed off Auntie Hermione, or the way Lily always knew exactly what you thought of her no matter how you tried to hide it.
Sometimes Albus wondered if this was his own gift, being able to see the things no one else did. Anyway, Lily was due to start at Hogwarts this year, like Rose's brother Hugo, and Albus knew that things were going to be very interesting when she did.
-
Albus' ruminations were interrupted by Lily herself climbing up through the manhole into the attic and firmly shutting the trap door.
"The Prat and his mates drove me out of the kitchen," she explained, "and there was nothing worth listening to, so I left." Lily was a shameless eavesdropper.
"Berk," Rose said without looking up. "Any idea what morphic resonance is?"
"I think it's something to do with shapeshifting," Albus said doubtfully.
"Albus, you need to read more," Lily declared, shuffling past in her overlarge galoshes and staring out the window. "Look, they didn't even really want the kitchen, they're back playing Quidditch again. I shall put a spider next to al their pillows."
Broodingly Lily stomped back across the attic to a little area hidden by stacks of boxes, where she'd set down a rug next to a rickety old bookcase of old books from when Ginny was young. If you didn't know she was there, you would never have guessed.
"I think we've got it," Rose said suddenly. Albus craned his neck to look at her notebook.
"Oh. Good."
"When you doing it?" Lily's voice floated over.
Rose did calculations in her head.
"Tonight," she said decidedly. "About 1.30am-ish, I think."
"Great," Lily said. "Push James through the gate for me. I don't want him."
-
They set up the runic circle late that night by torchlight.
Most of these kind of spells seemed to involve runic circles. And arithmantic calculations. Albus hadn't done arithmancy yet, but it seemed to be a sort of special maths that dealt only with magic, sort of like a kind of magical physics. Carefully he chalked out the necessary runes, spelling them not to smudge, while Rose set out the candles. The candles weren't strictly necessary, but what's a powerful ritual without the appropriate dramatic touch?
Together Rose and Albus spoke.
"Apartio habitation mundus utilitas meus potestas magicus."
The runes lit up with a brilliant white light and the world outside the circle began to swirl, faster and faster until it was a blurred featureless mass of color. Wind poured of the howling vortex and buffeted them this way and that within the circle.
"What now?" Albus yelled about the wind.
Rose never got to answer. There was a burst of golden light and suddenly everywhere they looked Lily stood, filling every possible space in the vortex and looking astonished.
Then there was a heavy, percussive BOOM that launched Albus and Rose into each other at high speed, rendering each of them unconscious.
The spell had shattered.
-
Albus woke up. Immediately he wished he hadn't.
A headache like a steady drumming on the top of his head filled his skull and affected his ears so that he felt as though he were lurching through space, although he could feel the cold hard wooden floor beneath him.
Gradually his ears made sense of the signals they were receiving and the jabber of sound resolved into speech.
"I am going to kill them."
Albus had never heard his father sound so icy and distant. The furious voice of Auntie Hermione broke in.
"Kill them! Oh, that's nothing compared to what is going to happen to Rose, breaking into my office and sneaking over here in the middle of the night and embarking on such a terminally stupid endeavour as this…"
"Hermione…" Uncle Ron was trying to calm her down.
"Shut up." That was his mother's voice, cold and curt. "I'd like to find out what they did and the consequences before we decide on a punishment."
There was a silence, heavy with non-verbal communication.
"Enervate."
As the rest of the fog faded from his mind Albus could hear Rose being brought to consciousness. He opened his eyes and yelped; his mother was only inches from his face, glaring.
"Er… hi," he croaked. His throat was swollen and dry. He swallowed.
"What did you do?" Auntie Hermione screeched at Rose. Rose cringed backwards, too afraid to speak.
"Hermione." His father's voice was flat, but it shut Auntie Hermione up.
Albus gulped. His father's eyes positively glowed with power. It was a fearsome sight. Albus remembered uncomfortably that his father was, after all, the Destroyer of Voldemort.
"We were going to open a gate between universes," Albus blurted without prompting, "to… get revenge on the Pra – er, James, for refusing to leave us alone… but, erm, Lily got into the spell somehow and… it sort of exploded," he finished lamely.
He was disturbed to see that his father's fists were clenched and his face white with anger. His father turned to look at someone behind him:
"Is this true, Lily?"
Albus turned in surprise to see his sister standing near the doorway.
She was smirking.
His heart lurched. That expression – somehow it was wrong on her face, in some way he couldn't put his finger on. The feeling of wrongness increased as he took in the rest o f her. Her hair was neatly tied back with a ribbon instead of hanging around her face. She was wearing a bright green dress, and instead of galoshes a pair of hated, shiny black shoes reserved for formal occasions over pink socks. Pink? Lily hated pink!
Her voice interrupted his thoughts.
"No Daddy," her voice was innocent and puzzled, "I don't know what he's talking about."
As Albus stared in horror, beginning to realize something was deeply, horribly wrong, Rose said indignantly,
"That's not true! You came up here!"
Lily looked hurt and angry.
"Don't lie Rose!" she accused. "Just because you're in trouble doesn't mean I need to be!"
Rose gaped.
"We are very disappointed in all of you," Albus' Mum began scolding angrily.
Albus barely heard. He just stared at the thing that looked like his sister, smirking at him in satisfaction.
What have we done to Lily?
o0o o0o o0o
Over the next few days, as Albus was worked to within an inch of his life in punishment, he had the opportunity to observe the behaviour of pseudo-Lily.
Every morning, she emerged bright and early, prettily-clad in one of the dresses Lily usually kept stuffed at the back of her wardrobe, hair neat, and with a light-hearted smile on her face.
She chattered happily to everyone she met, carried out her chores promptly and without complaint (not that she had many to do, Albus thought sourly, with all the work he was doing), spending her time doing girlish things like reading romance novels and holding pretend tea parties – tea parties! – out the back of the house.
The worst part, Albus thought bitterly, and with a certain amount of betrayal, was the way everyone welcomed her sudden existence.
Pseudo-Lily was charming, certainly, and without doubt a lot more comfortable to live with than his sister, but she wasn't Lily.
Until now Albus had naively assumed that his family loved each of them as they were, despite their flaws, yet they were completely ignoring Lily's seeming transformation!
The only one besides himself who seemed at all concerned was their mother. Ginny had been watching Pseudo-Lily with a troubled look, and one evening Albus overheard her talking to his Dad.
"I'm worried about Lily," Ginny said abruptly one evening, when Pseudo-Lily herself was at a sleepover with their cousins Evangeline and Eugenié. "The way she's suddenly changed the way she acts isn't natural, Harry. I think something's wrong."
Albus could hear the surprise in his father's voice.
"Are you sure, Ginny?" Are you sure you're not overreacting? I know it's strange of her, but Victoire went through something similar, you know. Remember how Fleur used to moan about how much of a tomboy she was? Then she hit thirteen and suddenly it was all about clothing and makeup and boys."
Ginny sighed.
"You're probably right, I just… no one noticed, do you remember? Four brothers at school with me, and no one noticed something was off."
"Ssh, love, I'm sure it's fine. We'll keep an eye on her, but it's probably just one of those adolescence things."
Albus scowled in frustration as his mother agreed, and the conversation turned to other things.
-
When Pseudo-Lily got home the next morning, Albus watched carefully until she was alone, then went in to talk to her.
She was standing in Lily's room, folding the extra clothing she'd taken to the sleepover but hadn't worn, and carefully putting it away.
She looked up as he entered, glancing at him with a smile.
"Albus," she said brightly, almost gleefully. "How are you, my dearest brother?"
"Shut up!" Albus snapped. "I don't know who you are, but you're not my sister! What have you done to her?"
Pseudo-Lily just smirked, eyes darkening to almost the same color as her hair.
"You really want to know?" There was unholy anticipation in her voice.
"Tell me," Albus ordered grimly. "Now."
Pseudo-Lily leaned close.
"Nothing," she whispered. "She was gone when I got here. I just took her place."
She leaned back again, smiling,
"Now if you'll excuse me, James has some friends over, and I think they'd enjoy some refreshment, don't you?"
She winked at him, and moved around him and out the bedroom door.
Albus sat on Lily's bed, near tears.
What could he do now? No one was going to believe him, not really, they'd just humour him, like they always did. And Lily was lost somewhere, and it was all his fault.
As he sat he could hear Pseudo-Lily outside, chirpily offering the Prat and his mates lemonade, giggling and no doubt giving them the big-eyed smile she reserved for older boys and men. No doubt the pack of them were delighted, Albus thought.
He cried.
-
A little later he was walking downstairs, crossing to the kitchen door when someone yanked him around and pushed him hard against it.
His brother stood there, glaring at him, his usual arrogant airs completely missing.
"What the hell," James said, as serious and as angry as Albus had ever seen him, "have you done to Lily?"
-
END CHAPTER