Rachel woke with her head pounding. Not surprising, given how late she'd gone to bed last night and she'd never been a morning person anyway, but what was more surprising was her bedroom. Or rather, the fact that it wasn't her bedroom, despite the fact that she could have sworn that's where she went to sleep last night, just after reading the scene of Dobby's death for the umpteenth time and sobbing. This room was much bigger than hers, with wide windows and several bookshelves lining the walls. The bed she was lying in was much comfier than hers too, with several pillows surrounding her like a halo. All in all, a very nice room. That didn't change the fact that she still hadn't figured out what she was doing in it.
"Feeling ok?" Came a voice to her left, slightly concerned and yet with an easily detectable undercurrent of excitement. Rachel's head snapping round, she stared at easily one of the most bizarre people she'd ever seen in her life. The girl, who looked to be late teens, was dressed in black leather and red like a punk, but with blond curly hair held back by a pink Alice-band and a face that looked like it belonged on a child featured in a Barbie-doll ad, playing princesses. The confusion was added to when you took into account the lime-green nails clutching a Nokia phone.
"Wha?" was Rachel's unintelligible and slightly garbled response, thrown off by the girl's sudden appearance in her bedroom that wasn't her bedroom, and her apparent ease with the situation.
"Cross-universe travel is very difficult to manage - controlling all the variables plus directing you past the vortar and not getting you lost in the In-Between was a nightmare. Sci-fi have it so easy, I know they complain about Daleks and Darth Vader but at least they have inter-planetary travel, your universe has to be the most mediocre in all of Knowndom, though I suppose it has to be when you consider it's the base-uni. But I did it and you're here!"
The girl (Rachel was quickly naming her Maddie in her head, the nickname for Absolutely stark-raving Mad) spoke all in one breath, eyes glinting with triumph at the last part.
"And where exactly is here?" Demanded Rachel, once she trusted her mouth.
"The Potter universe of course," sighed Maddie impatiently. "You did want to be here, didn't you?"
Rachel had no response that anyone could interpret as English; she was left using all of her stubborn determination not to let her mouth hang open at the Maddie's statement. Maddie took her silence for confirmation and continued.
"You're going to have to play it carefully of course, too much fore-knowledge can definitely be damaging and if you change everything the minute you arrive then your knowledge will become inaccurate and redundant anyway, but you could definitely do some good. We agree on a lot, I was very careful in my selection-"
"The Potter universe?" interrupted Rachel. "As in, Harry Potter? The Boy-Who-Lived?"
"Yes."
"The fictional Harry Potter? As in, not-real?"
"Yes. Well, no. Well- technically, what you would define fictional, but is actually real."
"Explain." Managed Rachel, the manners her mother had hammered into her forgotten with the shock.
Maddie sighed, checked her Nokia (God that phone was old, didn't it come out in the '90s? Rachel thought) and plopped down on the bed next to Rachel.
"It's really quite complicated, and if I were to try and explain everything to you, it could take several days which is time I don't have unfortunately, but basically put: there are several million universes. All are featured in your universe as fiction. That means all the stories you read, like Harry Potter, or watch on TV, like Doctor Who, are real. They all have doorways, or stems, in your universe, which is why we call it the base-uni," Maddie explained.
"OK, then which one are you from?" asked Rachel, unable to keep the slight incredulous note out of her voice.
"Well, that just makes this complicated. See, I'm not from a universe as such, though I suppose it could be considered a universe. It may have been originally, though we've evolved since then. I'm a Muse, one of those who inspires the actions of others. There are loads of us actually, maybe not the billion you have on your Earth, but a lot. We think we descended from the 12 Muses mentioned in the Ancient Greek Mythology, though we're now the muses mentioned by the fanfiction writers. We try to make sure that no stems to other universes are lost. It's not pleasant when they are."
"What happens when a stem is lost? And how do you lose one?" Rachel asked, her curiosity overriding her disbelief at the whole idea.
"The world disintegrates, or folds in on itself. It's more commonly known as an Apocalypse. A stem is lost when there are no records of the universe in the base-uni. It's not so common now that you have the press and mass-produce books and films like you do, but in the olden times when they used to burn books they didn't agree with, it was a lot harder. You can't imagine the pain caused by the burnings of libraries. Sometimes several universes were lost at once.
But let's not talk of depressing things - we need to plan!" Maddie had grown quite downcast while she talked, but her manic excitement returned at the final thought. Rachel watched warily.
"Plan what?" She thought was a valid question.
"What you're going to do in Harry Potter of course! I know you agree with me about the final books, I did find you crying over Dobby and wishing he didn't die after all. We need to try and stop all those pointless deaths, and help Harry more. His life really sucked. I'm not technically allowed to do anything to directly influence events though, so you're going to have to do everything, but that shouldn't be impossible, and you're motivated!" Maddie's grin would have been bigger than her face if that were possible.
"And how am I going to do that?"
"Well, duh! You're going to Hogwarts." Came the reply.