Disclaimer: I am not JKR, thus I don't own Harry Potter or its related works.

I also don't own Dalton, he was created by pottermommy1118 and has been borrowed with permission. Gerald is partially a canon character since he is the canonically unnamed brother of Edgar Bones and the fater of Susan, although (once again) pottermommy1118 had a hand in his design, since she named him. Thank you for letting me borrow your ideas, lovely.

Author's Note: Here is the second part, a little earlier than I planned, but better early than late, no? :) I hope you like it and please leave a review! Thanks for reading :)

As always a huge thank you to everyone that helped me with this!

WARNING: GRAPHIC CHARACTER DEATH.

Unstuck

*.*.*

Part II

*.*.*

They lose Benjy before Dalton is even buried. And there is not enough left of him to bury. She rages against the world, against the death eaters, against time, because what's the point in time travel if she can't save her friends. When she no longer has the energy for anger, she cries against Gideon's chest. She hates this, hates feeling helpless, hates feeling useless, hates herself and the world and time most of all. It would be easier if she were living her life the way it's supposed to be lived.

*.*.*

Professor Dumbledore looks old again, but younger than he was in the hallway. He smiles when he sees her, enigmatic and curious and just a little sad.

"There you are, my dear," he says, "I had been wondering where you were."

"Sir?" she asks even as her brain races to connect the dots. She must have travelled to him before. That is, before for him. It seems to be in her future still.

He considers her for a moment. "Have you met him yet?" he asks.

"Met who?" she replies, confused.

"Save the boy, Dorcas," Professor Dumbledore says.

"Which boy?" she leans forward almost eagerly because here is someone she can save, here is a way she can make a difference. "How…" but before she can finish the question Dumbledore begins to spin before her eyes and the world crumbles.

*.*.*

The questions turn into an obsession. Which boy is she supposed to save? And how is she supposed to save him? Is it perhaps little Neville Longbottom? Or one of Molly's boys? Is it someone that's already born? Or are they all boys to Dumbledore and he means Remus Lupin? She comes dangerously close to losing herself inside her own brain and if it weren't for Gideon and Fabian, she might well have. They make her laugh, even though all of them miss Dalton and Benjy desperately, and she loves them all the more for it. Emmeline tethers on the edges of their group until Fabian pulls her close and doesn't let go. Together, they watch. They watch Sylvia and Septima and Gerald curve around the hole that Benjy left. They watch Darren pull away from everyone in his grief. They watch Sirius lash out in his. Together, they stay standing.

*.*.*

Hogwarts does not. The world caves and crumbles and when she can see again, Hogwarts does not assemble itself. She stares because Hogwarts was not supposed to fall. It was never supposed to fall. But the heavy oak doors have been blasted off their hinges and the ancient stone walls have been reduced to rubble and she sees the bodies of children among the debris.

She spins in a circle, once, twice, but she sees no sign of life. Then, among the boulders that used to be Hogwarts' walls, strong and mighty and built to last for thousands of years, a lone figure appears. She stops spinning and regards the person's approach silently. Professor McGonagall has aged far more than Dumbledore ever had, her face is lined with worry, her shoulders are bent under a weight none can see, and her greying hair falls limply around her face. It is more jarring than seeing her old headmaster, not because Professor McGonagall has aged so but because she had always thought that even in age the woman would be tall and straight-backed and firm. It is her looseness that is startling more so than her age.

"What happened here?" she asks, and the professor staggers.

"Miss Meadowes," she says, breathless and surprised, and it occurs to her that this is the first person that has ever seemed surprised to see her. She wonders how many more times she will see them. "Dear Merlin, I had not thought… You are so young."

She smiles half-heartedly. "Or perhaps you have aged, Professor."

McGonagall stares for another moment. Then, she shakes herself. "It was… it was terrible, Miss Meadowes," she tells her. "So many lost, so many children… but it is over. It is won. Take that back with you." She pauses. "When… from when do you come?"

"October," she replies. "October 1981."

Professor McGonagall closes her eyes. She looks pained. "October," she repeats. "Early still?"

She nods, wondering why the other woman seems so certain of this. "When are we?" she asks instead of contemplating the question further.

"May. 1998."

She blinks, because she had known she travelled to places long after her time, but to know how much longer it would be… "And he's dead? He's truly dead?"

McGonagall nods. "This time," she says.

"This time?" she echoes but the world swims before her eyes. It's as if time doesn't want her to have answers.

*.*.*

Edgar dies in a fruitless attempt to protect Selina and the kids (little Ellie and John and Claire) and Gerald and Sylvia and Septima crumble. Sylvia refuses to let go of her daughter, Susan is with her now wherever she goes, but she barely goes anywhere and Gerald hovers around them, crafting ward after ward to protect them, to protect the rest of his family (Amelia strains against Gerald's protective instincts, but she lets him because he sleeps easier this way.) as Septima herds her remaining seven sisters close, from Primula to Nerissa, and Decimus closer still, because he's the baby and the only boy. All the while she watches, and she wonders. What if little John was the boy she was supposed to save? What if she failed the only person she could help? To distract herself she convinces her mother to take her siblings (oh so young still at 12 and 13) away, to France or Spain or further still. It does not alleviate her guilt.

*.*.*

Professor Dumbledore sits behind his desk, younger and less burdened than she last saw him (except she saw him yesterday at an Order meeting but that's different, that's real, that's in the past). He is studying something on his desk, she is not sure what, but he looks up when Fawkes trills.

"Good afternoon, Professor," she says. The surprised astonishment on his face tells her all she needs to know. "I take it this is the first time."

"The first time?" he questions, but she can see his mind racing behind his halfmoon spectacles.

"I haven't found the boy yet," she tells him.

"Which boy?" the professor asks, and she sighs.

"I was hoping you knew the answer to that," she admits quietly.

"I'm afraid not, my dear," he replies. "But how is this possible?"

She sighs again, more deeply this time. "I wish I knew."

"We shall endeavor to find out then," he says, but she simply shakes her head.

"No, Professor. I believe…" she sighs a third time because somehow time and war have burned away her curiosity. Back in school, she would have done everything to find out how this works, what she can do with it. But the things she most wishes to do, the people she wishes to save, are beyond her grasp and all research seems pointless. "It doesn't matter how it works, only that it does and that it can be useful." She pauses and then says, her voice just shy of pleading, "You have to help me make use of this, Professor."

He regards her silently for a long while but then he nods. "What do you know?"

"I am told the war ends in 1998," she says. "In May. I also know I'm supposed to save a boy, but I don't know who. I know we'll meet again in your future." The world lurches around her and she says the next sentence to an empty room, "I know I can't change the things I wish to change most."

*.*.*

It is so often now that she shares her last moment with someone, so often that a goodbye is final, and she learns to love more freely than she had thought herself capable of and so fiercely that it startles her sometimes. She clings to her remaining friends, tighter and tighter, as if that can make them stay, as if that will keep death from reaching for them. And when she must, she fights for them with a desperation in her heart that wants to swallow her whole and a strength born from nothingness. When she has no one to love and no one to fight, she feels empty. And she realizes that for all its love, all its strength, her heart is a fragile thing.

*.*.*

The world reassembles itself into a busy city street and it takes her a moment to recognize London. How much and how little the muggle world has changed, she thinks as she looks around. No one takes notice of her, as if she isn't even there and yet the masses part around her like a river around a rock. She isn't sure why she's here, why time has brought her here, what she's supposed to take from this. Perhaps, she is supposed to see that life goes on despite everything.

She watches a gaggle of schoolchildren following behind their teacher like ducklings and almost smiles. Part of her wishes she were that young still. Again. One of the children laughs. It's a boy with curly blonde hair and she has to turn away because he reminds her of Dalton.

It is then that she sees the reason she was brought here. Emmeline stands only a few paces away, frozen in shock as she stares at her. She has aged, perhaps not the twenty years Narcissa spoke of but certainly fifteen, and yet she is still the same tall, strong woman she last saw a few hours ago.

Someone pushes past her roughly and she takes a step toward her closest female friend. "Emma," she says softly, gently, because the other woman seems ready to bolt.

She doesn't, though. Emmeline stumbles forward and falls against her and it's all she can do to catch her friend. "Dorrie," she whispers. "Dorcas." There is something in her voice that she doesn't understand for a moment. Two. Three. And then it hits her that this might not be her last moment with Emmeline, but it is Emmeline's last moment with her.

"It's alright," she whispers even though she knows it's not, she just hopes it will be one day. "I love you, Emma. I've got you." She hopes she doesn't disappear while Emmeline still needs to hold on to her.

*.*.*

She can't quite look at Emmeline the same after that, knowing that as hard as she has tried to hold on to her, as hard as she tried to keep Emmeline from leaving her, she will be the one leaving instead. And, oh, how she wishes she could change things, but she cannot. It's all happened already, Narcissa's voice comes back to her and it makes her want to throw things. She knows it's pointless, the way so many things seem to be these days. Still, the sound of shattering porcelain makes her feel better.

*.*.*

"What is peace like?" she asks Professor Dumbledore when she sees him next. In the future, that is. She can't really talk to the other Dumbledore.

"This one is tense," he tells her. "I do not believe Voldemort is dead."

"He's not," she replies, even though she feels like she's told him this before. Except maybe she hasn't yet. "Not until 98."

The professor sighs heavily. "It is so, then," he says. "At least we shall be prepared."

She nods and hopes it will be of use to him, this information. She hopes that it's not all pointless. "I don't know when he returns. Or how."

"That's alright, my dear," Dumbledore smiles. "What is life without a few surprises after all?" She stares at him incredulously, but before she can question him, he asks, "What of the boy?"

She sighs. "Nothing, Professor. But do keep asking."

"I shall," he tells her. "Because I am quite curious about him."

She looks away to hide her face from him, because she isn't curious. She's just desperate.

*.*.*

Peace, she reflects later, changes things. Maybe peace could return her curiosity to her, could make her think of knowledge as something other than a tool again and soften her wit until it is no longer so hurtful. But it could not return Dalton or Benjy, it could not bring back Emmeline's brilliant smiles and Sylvia's unafraid eyes, nor could it stop Gideon and Fabian from looking over their shoulders and sticking close enough to defend each other's backs (and hers, except she knows now that one day it won't be enough and she doesn't know how to tell them it's okay. She doesn't blame them.)

*.*.*

The surroundings that assemble themselves around her are unfamiliar to her, but there is magic here, old magic. It doesn't feel like Hogwarts, it's not ancient, but magic has lived in this building for a while. The décor strikes her as rather over the top, dark and ornate and almost foreboding. She wonders whose house it is. She wonders who she is supposed to meet here. Then, she hears the sound of a door opening. Still, she doesn't turn. She is almost certain she can't die here.

"Who are you?" someone asks. A male voice, but one she doesn't recognize.

"Who are you?" she asks back, turning around leisurely. The person in front of her is gaunt and pale, with sunken cheeks and haunted eyes. His hair doesn't shine anymore, his wrists look boney and he stands less straight than he used to. Still, he is unmistakable.

"You're dead," Sirius Black tells her, disbelief clear in his voice.

"You're the first person to say that to my face," she replies and then, because she can see the glimmer of hope appearing in his eyes and she knows it's pointless, "I'm not from this time."

"Not from this time?" he echoes.

He doesn't think as fast as he used to, either, but it's to her advantage because she can't change all the things he'll want her to change, so she forges on before he can ask her to. "What happened to you?"

He laughs, but it's a bitter thing. "Azkaban happened to me."

"What? How?"

He shrugs. "The ministry messed up," he says as if it doesn't matter to him, but his shoulders are tense. "I'm a Black, after all. I must be evil." He lifts his arms. "How could I not be, coming from this house?"

She looks around. It's certainly not a welcoming place, but there's something about it that she can see in him too. It's an observation he would not welcome, so she steps closer to one of the walls and studies the tapestry covering it. "Your family?"

"By blood," he replies. "Bloody mental, all of them."

"What about him?" she points to a name she vaguely recognizes. Regulus Black. Sirius' brother if she's not mistaken.

"He was just scared." His voice is soft, almost too soft for her to hear, and the silence that follows is tinged with sadness, but he can't seem to let it linger, because he speaks again, louder this time, "Just as mental as the rest of them. Followed Voldemort until he got cold feet and then they made short work of him." He shrugs, almost nonchalant. Almost but not quite.

He's a good actor, but she has younger siblings, too, so she asks, "Did you go to his funeral?"

"There wasn't one," he replies, and he can't hide from her that despite everything the death of his younger brother haunts him. "They must have made short work of the body, too."

*.*.*

She looks for the same pain in the Sirius from her time when she sees him next, but he hides it better. Still, she imagines that she sees him flinch when someone mentions finding remnants of what was once Benjy's body and she supposes it's because of his brother. She wonders if other people cared about Regulus Black, who was barely eighteen when he died (and he seems oh so young to her even though she's only four years older now than he was then), so she looks for them. And she finds them, closer to her than she would have thought and far away all the same. Darren's little sister Mary had been meant to marry him, had been in love with the boy despite everything and it doesn't fit into the picture she'd made of him. She wishes she could ask Mary about Regulus Black, but Mary is gone like her family is gone.

*.*.*

Hogwarts is still standing tall when the shores of the Black Lake assemble themselves around her, but it is cloaked in sadness, in fear. She looks up at the great castle in silence and wonders what happened here. When she turns, she sees something that she had never expected to see on Hogwarts' grounds: a funeral. A little further down the shoreline a veritable sea of mourners sits while a lone figure walks down the aisle at the center; it is unmistakably Hagrid and he is carrying a body wrapped in purple cloth. The merpeople rise out of the lake to sing the most sorrowful lament she has ever heard, and she feels a wave of sadness wash over her without really knowing why.

"It is Dumbledore," a voice says from the trees behind her and she turns to find Narcissa standing in their shadow. She looks old, but there is something defiant in her eyes as if she expects her to disapprove of her presence.

"Dumbledore," she repeats quietly, perhaps not quite as surprised as she should be, but, she supposes, had he lived he would have told her of the end of the war himself. "When are we?" she asks, because there will be time to grieve for him later, when time takes her back to where she rightfully belongs.

"It is June now," Narcissa replies, stepping closer. "Of 1997."

"Only a year," she whispers before she can stop herself and by the glint in Narcissa's eyes the other woman has caught the words and understands their meaning. Still, she does not push for more. It is a trait she can appreciate. "How did it happen?"

"There were death eaters in the castle," Narcissa replies and as she lifts her chin, she looks defiant once more. It is a strange thing, this defiance, for she can hear the disdain in the other woman's voice when she speaks of death eaters.

She sighs. "I suppose it was too much to ask for him to go peacefully." She looks back to the funeral where a short man has begun to speak. "Why are you here?"

She can feel Narcissa's eyes on her, sharp and calculating, no doubt, but she doesn't turn. "I have come at your request, Dorcas Meadowes."

Surprise colors her features for a moment before she nods slowly. "I see."

"Why are you here?" the other woman asks.

"I wish I knew," she says. "But there must be a purpose to it." They sink into silence, the wind rustling through the leaves is the loudest sound, but in the distance the short man speaks, and many others cry. Finally, she tells her companion, "I forgive you."

"I do not require your forgiveness," Narcissa replies, her voice soft and distant.

"I know," she says. "But I hated you for the pain you caused him. I thought you should know it can be forgiven."

Narcissa takes a hissing breath and when she speaks again her voice has turned harsh and hollow. "It cannot."

"Yes," she replies calmly, "it can." A pause. "I wish I knew you better, Narcissa Black," she says. "We could have been friends."

*.*.*

She is unstuck. Gideon and Fabian die and the world stops making sense. It's as if someone took a pair of scissors to her already tenuous connection to reality and cut her loose. She drifts through the world, aimless and useless and helpless, and looks at everything as if through a layer of fog. She is numb to the pain of everyone around her and deaf to their words, even as a part of her that refuses to give up makes her slug through the days that follow. Still, she can no longer see the point in it.

*.*.*

Time tears her away and she wants to curse it, crush it, burn it, because how dare it take her away from their funeral, how dare it take away the last time she will see them, how dare it take away her chance to say goodbye. Then, the world assembles itself into a battlefield and she drops a man to the ground before she even has time to think. Three more are already scattered around and another follows shortly. The last stares at her for a moment and then he turns and runs. She sends another curse at his retreating back, but he is gone before it can hit him. She stays still for a moment, tense and ready to spring, waiting for another enemy to show, but none appear. Instead, someone takes a rasping breath behind her and she whirls around.

The mere sight of them almost has her dropping to her knees. She staggers and stumbles forward and then she does fall to her knees. Fabian lies motionless, the grey sky reflecting in his empty eyes, but Gideon is still bleeding sluggishly from a wound in his stomach and when she lets out a single sob that tears at her throat harshly, he turns from the sight of his brother's lifeless body.

"Dorrie," his voice is nothing more than a broken whisper but to her it seems impossibly loud. For a moment, she is frozen. Then, she scrambles to his side, and presses both hands to the wound on his stomach to try and stem the bleeding. It's all she knows to do, and she wishes she knew more of healing (wishes for Dalton because he could have saved him, but Dalton is gone, he can't help her now).

"Please," she croaks around the lump in her throat. "Please, no." He lifts a hand with the greatest of efforts and his fingers brush against her cheek. She almost chokes on her own sob. "Gid. Giddy." She squeezes her eyes shut against the tears, but they flow down her cheeks either way and so she opens them again because to look away from him is unbearable.

His lips form a single word soundlessly. Her name, she realizes after a moment. Her name, over and over.

"I'm sorry," she whispers through the tears. "I'm sorry, please don't leave me. Don't leave me." Her hands shake even pressing firmly against his wound as they are. They're covered in blood already. "I love you. I love you. Please, I don't know how… I need you, please, I…"

"I love you," he replies in a voice strained with effort. "You…" his voice fails him, but she thinks she can see in his eyes what he means to tell her. Another sob shakes her.

"Gid," she whispers.

"Angel," he breathes, and she can feel herself crumble.

"Please," she chokes out. "Please, no. Don't leave me. Don't…" the sobs swallow the rest of her words.

"I love you," Gideon murmurs and then, almost too fast for her to process, his hand slips from her cheek and the light leaves his eyes. For a moment, there is silence. The world seems to stop breathing as he does, still and silent. Her mouth opens in an equally silent scream. Then, she bends over, caves and crumbles and lets out a single broken sob.

"Gideon," she whispers into his chest, the same chest she had cried into when Dalton died. But there is no heartbeat to be heard anymore, no steady, reassuring rhythm of life. His lifeless body shakes with the force of her sobs as she pulls him half into her lap and cradles his head in her arms, but other than that he is completely, unnaturally still.

She isn't sure how long she stays like that, but eventually she straightens enough to look at his face and brush his hair out of his eyes. Her fingers leave a trail of blood where they touch his skin and even though the sight of blood never bothered her before, her stomach turns. A tear falls onto the rapidly drying blood and it begins to smear. Her attempts to wipe it away only make it worse.

"I love you," she says softly, her voice still cracking but steadier than it has been for days. Then, she turns slightly and reaches for Fabian's hand. "They're done taking away the people I love," she tells their dead bodies and hopes that somewhere they can hear her. "They're done. I won't let them take anyone else." She lifts her head, turns her tear-stained face to the sky and feels a steely resolve harden her spine. She will bring him down. Bring all of them down. And she doesn't care how.