A/N: Oh, yay! Two reviews! Thanks, Queen Queen of Nerdingham and vlalita!

This chapter is half rehash of the episode and half (sort of) original. This is the last chapter which will directly play off the events of the actual episode.

Disclaimer: My owenership status - or lack thereof - of Wizards of Waverly Place hasn't changed from yesterday.

Chapter IV
We Need To Know

The next few days passed in a flurry of activity. Between school, magic lessons, running the Sub Station, Justin's injured eye and ankle giving him visual and mobility problems, and Jerry, Theresa, and Max suddenly coming down with nasty colds – forcing Justin and Alex to handle their shifts at the Sub Station as well as their own – the siblings hardly had time to think about the foreboding future, let alone do anything about it. Nonetheless, the thought of H.J. Darling and Future Justin was never far, lurking in the back of their minds. Furthermore, the one time they managed to use the IPP to return to the paint-your-dish warehouse, H.J. Darling had gone – they could only assume that Future Justin had taken her back to the future.

Harper couldn't understand why Alex was suddenly giving her the cold shoulder. She cornered Alex in school by their lockers the day after their visit to the paint-your-dish warehouse.

"Alex, I called you ten times last night. How'd it go with H.J. Darling?"

"Oh, I think you know how it went." Alex glared at her. "Or, maybe you don't, but you will. Then you'll know why I didn't call you back."

Harper was bewildered. "You're upset with me?"

"Oh, so you do know."

"No." Harper was genuinely puzzled. "What did I do?"

Alex almost told her, but then H.J. Darling's voice echoed in her head. "I really shouldn't say a lot about the future, because it could change the future." While changing the future was quite an appealing prospect, given what they knew – or didn't know – about it, Alex knew she couldn't risk making things worse by cluing Harper in without knowing exactly what she wanted to change.

"I can't tell you," she confessed. "But it's not what you did do. It's what you will do."

Harper scoffed. "Whatever you think I'm gonna do, I guess I'm sorry for it."

"No, I don't think you are, or you wouldn't do it."

"I don't even know what I'm going to do!" Harper objected.

"Not yet," agreed Alex, "but you will."

"Hey," interrupted Justin, limping over to the two quarreling friends. "What's going on?"

"You know what?" said Harper. "If you're gonna be mad at me and not tell me why you're mad at me, then I'm gonna be mad at you and not tell you why I'm mad at you." She scowled. "Oh, shoot, I just told you why. Now I'm mad at both of us!" She stomped off, flowerpot hairband bobbing.

Justin turned to Alex. "Aren't you gonna go after her?" he demanded.

"No." She noticed the odd contraption Justin had around his eyes. "What is up with your sunglasses?"

"It's filtered-light therapy for my injured eye."

"It's a pair of Mom's sunglasses with a lens knocked out."

Justin paused. "Don't tell her."

Alex snorted and marched back to her locker. Justin followed after her.

"Are you gonna tell me what that was about?"

"Nope."

"Alex." Justin made her turn around to face him. "You can't do this. You can't argue with Harper about something she's going to do in the future."

"Why not?" Alex queried.

"Because if you let something she hasn't done yet affect your friendship, it could change the future. It might even make it worse than it already is!"

"This isn't about the future, Justin. This is about Harper using our stories to become rich and famous without my permission."

"So give her permission. You heard H.J. Darling – if she could've got your permission, she would've."

"But she didn't," Alex countered. "Is it so hard to drop by before leaving for the past and saying, 'Oh, hey, Alex – I'm going to the past now, do you mind if I decide to write stories about your adventures?'"

"We don't know what happened in the future," Justin stressed. "Maybe she couldn't meet you before she left. You can't hold it against her. Alex, you have to give her permission."

"You can't give permission to someone you can't trust, and I can't trust her because she went ahead and wrote those books without my permission."

"Look, if this about the books, I've read them, and they're really good," said Justin. "They're not just about us as wizards – they're about your friendship with Harper."

"Well, I don't care about our friendship," Alex insisted. "I told her secrets. She betrayed me, so our friendship's over."

"All right. But you're missing out on the part where you and Harper are getting chased by a dinosaur, and Harper uses her knitting skills to repair a rope bridge and you get away."

"Ooh," Alex mocked. "An adventure about knitting. Pass."

Justin exhaled in exasperation. "Fine. Don't read any of the stories about the great times you and Harper have in the future." He lowered his voice. "But you have to be careful what you do around Harper. We can't risk changing anything until we know exactly what it is we're changing."

Then he walked away – but, whether by accident or on purpose (Alex was willing to bet it was the latter), the Charmed and Dangerous book he'd been carrying was left on the bench. Alex stared at the book, deliberating. Then she sighed and bent down to pick it up, much to the amazement of her peers. A collective gasp of shock rippled through the corridor, and someone incredulously said, "Alex Russo has a book?"

Alex glared at the girl. "Oh, I can hear you!" She stalked off, carrying the book.

Over the next few days, whenever her enormously hectic schedule permitted, Alex read Charmed and Dangerous in her rare snatches of free time. It was probably the first time she had willingly read something since she was eight – and as she read more, she had to admit that Justin was right. A major theme of the book was her character, Julia's, friendship with Harper. Alex found herself warming to the Charmed and Dangerous books – the stories were witty, engaging, and well-written – she never knew Harper had so much talent.

It took her almost a week to finish The Story of the Lost Wand; once she had, she marched up to Justin's room and flung open the door without knocking. "You," she accused, "are a liar."

Justin looked up from his homework, filtered-light therapy thankfully absent (his eye had finally healed), nonplussed. "What?"

In response, Alex held up Charmed and Dangerous. "You said this book would have dinosaurs and knitting, and it doesn't."

Justin smiled. "So you read it."

"Yeah, no thanks to you," Alex scoffed. "Liar."

"In order to get you to read the book, I had to lie to you about what was in the book," Justin explained.

"Well, fine," Alex conceded. "And you know what? You were right. It is a good book." She exhaled. "I didn't realize, now that Harper knows the secret that I'm a wizard, that there's all these adventures we're gonna take together."

"Max and I are in that book too," Justin reminded her.

"Yeah…I skipped to the parts with my character Julia. The rest was just blah, blah, blah."

Justin bobbed his head in acknowledgment. Typical Alex. "So, you should give Harper permission to write the books, so you two can stay friends."

"I guess." Alex sank herself onto Justin's bed. "So do you have a plan yet?"

"Sort of." Justin closed his textbook. "Obviously, we won't be able to find H.J. Darling in this time period again."

"Okay. So?"

Justin took a deep breath. "So, I think we have to go to the future."

Alex blinked. "Are you crazy?" she hissed. "After everything we've heard about it?"

"We don't have a choice. If we want to find out what happened, and no one will tell us, we have to go see it for ourselves. You do want to change the future, don't you?"

"I don't even know what we're changing!"

"Exactly," said Justin. "That's what scares me."

"What do you mean?"

"If we don't know what happens, we can't avoid it. We have to know. Don't you want to save our family?"

Alex was silent, remembering the last time they had had to fight to save their family, on their ill-fated Caribbean holiday and their frantic quest for the Stone of Dreams. Although he didn't say it, she knew Justin was thinking of it too.

"Of course I do," she admitted. "But a spell to take us to the future…Justin, that's advanced magic. We'd never be able to pull it off."

"Yes, we could," Justin assured her. "I found a spell that'll work, if the three of us work together."

Alex stared at him. "You are crazy."

"You're rubbing off on me."

Alex snorted. "Fine. When are we doing this?"

"Tonight."

A/N: Yeah, I suppose this timeline is sort of AU, given that in canon the Wizards of Wavery Place Movie didn't happen until after Season 2, but here I've placed it before Future Harper. Oh, well - it's fanfiction - it's almost meant to be AU.

Let's keep up the review trend, yeah? ;)