Marcia's return to Hogwarts was met with a strange, awkward silence. It was the sort of silence that followed a horribly embarrassing fiasco that would never be mentioned by anyone at any family gathering or reunion, because the very shame of it greatly outweighed any entertainment value as a story told over beer or hard apple cider.
It reminded her all-too-much of the time she returned home, only to find that half of the Great Northern Kingdom had melted. She knew that Patches was intimately involved, but she was never told the finer details. Or the bigger details. Or anything else, come to think of it.
And the silence here in Hogwarts gave her the sneaking suspicion that she was directly involved in whatever horribly embarrassing fiasco had occurred. Which meant that Harry-!
Her heart thumped madly in her chest and her muscles shook with exhaustion as Marcia rushed to her suite. She stopped up short and downwind of it and winced at the heavy stench of sulfur and burnt materials. She worriedly chewed her lip as she slowly and cautiously approached the suite. The door was blackened and hung from metal hinges that were grotesquely twisted from the heat. She peaked around the corner, trying not to breathe in or disturb the soot that coated the walls, floor, and ceiling. Nothing but ash remained of the furniture within, or the floating red wagon with all of its supplies.
Harry, she realized with a sinking stomach, was nowhere in his fireplace.
Now, this is so not my fault, she figured rapidly. Harry was unusually mild for a fire demon, and she knew that runic demon babes only lost control of their abilities when they felt threatened. She also knew of various demonic mothers who could leave their children alone for hours at a time, and if they could return to their children perfectly unscathed in the Realm of Chaos, then why was it so much harder to believe that Harry was going to be perfectly safe napping in his natural element in a place that was supposed to be a school for children, for crying out loud!
"This is just ridiculous," she grumbled, noting that there was also nothing left of the curtains. That, at least, was one bright side: there was no evidence of her sabotaging school property for a headdress.
Bah! What was she thinking? Harry was her priority, Harry!
She had to find someone who knew what was going on, and that someone had to be Dumbledore. She would trust no one else, it seemed.
Nose in the air, Marcia went up and down hallways until she caught his scent beneath the stench of sulfur, and then followed its twining path through the gigantic castle. She winced when she came across an older current of Umbridge and Remus, but because they were older she decided to forego them for now. And it was just as well, because she shied away from any possibilities of what could and would happen if Umbridge had seen Harry's fire so out of control.
Most of the hallways and rooms were empty of people, but it was later at night and she suspected that the children had curfews and were tucked in their beds (except perhaps Bill, said a voice that was suspiciously like Snape, so Marcia bundled it up in titanium handcuffs and pitched it out of sight out of mind). Guiltily jamming her hands in her pockets, Marcia focused her senses, sniffed the air, and then sought out the areas that best carried Dumbledore's scent – a clear indication of where he would be most likely, as such places tended to be where his presence most occupied.
The classrooms were empty.
She followed his scent then to what appeared to be his apartment. It was easy to Jump past the gargoyle that refused to get out of her way, even when she kicked it hard and battered her toes. She looked around at all the odd little bric-a-brac that cluttered the walls and the shelves. There was a squawking bundle of fluff seated upon a bird perch that had Marcia curiously nosing closer to inspect. The fluff peered back at her with one beady eye, and then unexpectedly sneezed a melodious puff of smoke.
Marcia stumbled backwards from the smoke, rammed her foot against a lower shelf, and made the entire set of shelves sway precariously away from the wall.
"Eeek! No!" Visions of books and bric-a-brac spilling everywhere, once more leaving her pathway strewn with debris and mayhem, danced through her head. She grabbed at the shelves and shoved them hard and still against the wall. Unfortunately, she failed to catch the battered old hat when it tumbled off the very top shelf and into Dumbledore's fish tank.
"Oops." Marcia gingerly grabbed it by the hem and yanked it free. After it sputtered water for a moment, it began to swear vividly at her. While things swearing at Marcia and blaming her for their troubles was nothing new, it was odd that it should come from an old hat that looked like it should have unraveled a few hundred years ago.
"It wasn't my fault," she mumbled as she tried to wring excess water from it. It screeched in protest, so she hastily dropped the hat onto the dry surface of Dumbledore's chair. The hat stopped sputtering and fell silent, glaring at her from its creased folds. "Okay, on a scale of one to ten for creepiness, you rate a twelve," she declared.
"You aren't one of the students up to mischief!" it replied, as if affronted by this fact.
"No, not a student."
"But up to mischief nonetheless."
What could she say to that? It wasn't often when someone spotted her right off, especially when it was an inanimate object. Or at least should have been an inanimate object. "I'm looking for Dumbledore," she said hurriedly before it might go further and accuse her of something. "Actually, I'm looking for my son, Harry, but he's not where he's supposed to be so instead I'm looking for Dumbledore 'cause maybe he knows what happened."
She only had him for two days and already Marcia had misplaced her own son! ("I told you," said another voice, this one very much like Mrs. Umbridge, so Marcia pitched it into the same bag as the Snape voice and winced as the voices began to scream accusations at one another. So much for that attempt at peace… She wondered if she should conjure up her Voice of Reason, which was often silent but did manage to pull off a very good Ria impersonation.)
"Oh, Dumbledore is currently at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures."
"What? What? WHERE? Why?"
"Something to do with Severus Snape being under arrest once more for alleged aggravated assault and premeditated attempt of murder, and a young Harry Potter being reevaluated for registration and restraint under the Beast and Non-Human Division of the Department."
"Re-registration?! As in – my Harry doesn't qualify as human?" Marcia had a sudden thought of Harry being tagged, coded, and released into the wild to be observed by anthropologists who said such things as, Behold, as the creature is groomed – he appears to have a great aversion towards water, as evidenced by the fires melting the linoleum floors, andWe watch as the creature emerges slowly from his den to forage for food; observe his weakness for nachos. It wasn't so bad when Harry destroyed a powerful, evil overlord of some sort that was terrorizing the rest of the population, but apparently it was a crime against all of humanity to melt a room at Hogwarts.
"Umbridge believes he is a-"
"Enough!" Marcia grabbed the hat and threw it on top of the shelf where it belonged. "That woman isn't going to do a single thing to my boy! Mark my words, I'll show her a dangerous creature! Why, compared to Nandin when he's annoyed, Harry is a harmless little butterfly!" So, maybe Marcia herself didn't qualify as a dangerous creature, but she was going to turn up the vocal volume and whine, and become a force of obnoxiousness that could not be reckoned!
Hitching her trousers higher up around her waist, Marcia gritted her teeth against the prevalent ache in her muscles, and Jumped.
She returned a few moments later, one finger pressed uncertainly against her upper lip. "Oh, hey, uh. Do you know where this Department place is?"
The Hat sighed. "The heart of London."
She frowned. "Don't know if that will help. Doubt I'd actually find it on a map." With a sigh, Sydney Jumped once more.
By following Dumbledore's trail, she found herself following a strange network of glowing, light-filled tunnels that were, oddly enough, connected by fireplaces and the occasional portrait and mirror.
Somehow, this backwards little hidden society had stumbled across the secret of teleportation and demolecularization transition. She would stand and applaud them, except they probably wouldn't appreciate it coming from the dimension-hopping demon who grew up in a civilization so advanced that it was like comparing a stumbling, drooling toddler to a matured ballet dancer old enough to suffer menopause. (That being acknowledged, Sydney would have preferred to nick the information regarding how such thingamabobs were created and selling it to some of the richest entrepreneurs clear on the other end of the galaxy where it couldn't be traced back to Earth. Hey; a girl's got to make a living one way or another.)
She stood just outside of Time and observed Dumbledore's current location of existence. It was an old brick and staccato building; its insides had been converted and extended through some old dimension-warping magic that allowed a greater space to exist within. How… odd, but quite telling; she only saw the few rare multi-dimensional telekinetics who could pull off such a thing due to their ability to manipulate gravity. She was beginning to realize that there was so much more to the magic of these wizards and witches than she had first anticipated.
She shied away from such thoughts with long-born ease. She didn't want to think about such implications – she would not let Harry go. But she would do it right and legal; she would do it in a way that Harry, growing up, would never have to regret.
"I will not screw up," she declared boldly to herself as she finally stepped into the bounds of Time and landed within the Ministries of Magic. It became a manta in her head, an undercurrent of thought to which she desperately clung. It never wavered a beat when she chanced upon Umbridge and Lupin, both looking harrowed, harassed, and rather singed in one of the darkened hallways. The mantra remained unchanged when Marcia found herself surrounded by what she presumed to be high-strung officers of the law. She never thought different when she found herself unceremoniously tossed into a jail cell with threats of being forever barred from the Wizarding World, which was rather ridiculous because even the Lord of Chaos hadn't yet figured out how to keep in her one spot, much less away from one.
But the mantra swiftly turned to thoughts of dastardly deeds when Severus Snape snarled at her from the next cell over. She hitched up her waistband, marched over the little window covered with bars that separated their cells, and grabbed them. She hoisted herself up, feet sliding against the side of the wall, so she could glare at him. He looked strangely sunburnt. "You aren't making this any easier!" she declared stubbornly.
Then she dropped to the floor, stuck her fingers into her ears so she wouldn't have to listen to Snape's caustic remarks, and tried to think her way out of this current predicament without somehow spoiling the rest of Harry's life.
Marcia was fairly sure that James had not intended his son to be a refugee on the run for the remainder of his centuries-long life.
She suddenly yanked her fingers out of her ears and hopped up the wall, clinging to the bars. "What're you in for?" she asked curiously. They could hear the other people packed in their cells, calling, crying, demanding and questioning. Most of the voices remained silent, but some were distinct and persistent.
His reply was a wordless snarl. She waited impatiently for a more coherent answer, kicking at the wall and staring with a clenched jaw. Snape stood and began pacing his cell from wall to wall, easily crossing the distance with three steps and whirling around with a dramatic flair of his robes. He wasn't the only one pacing on their current level in the dungeons, but he was the most agitated.
"They accused me of trying to kill James' brat."
She glowered. "What did you do while I was gone?" What was so horrible that it managed to overshadow her own mistakes she somehow managed to culminate recently? (Granted, she might be able to blame that one on Trewnaley… Maybe she ought to have asked the woman for some quick advice before she came? Couldn't hurt, at least.)
"Nothing!" Step step step whirl step step step whirl. "I went in to see precisely what you had done to the Potter brat and then that atrocious woman was in there screaming that I was trying to kill the brat, that I was burning the evidence, then I was attacked by a werewolf, and that brat decided to add fuel to the fire – hell, he was the fire—"
"And you wound up in here."
Snape said nothing as he continued his frantic pacing. His whipping black robes reminded Marcia of storm clouds, of an omen of doom and gloom. But the look he gave her would have made Patches fall in love with him for the threat of violence directed at Marcia's person.
Marcia dropped down from the bars and settled herself on the floor again, her hands clasped between her knees. "I'm in here because I'm a menace to society," she said nervously. Snape muttered something about he could have told anyone just that, clearly, but they didn't listen to him, oh no, obviously, because that was precisely why he was here and why she was there because if they had listened to him then none of this would have happened and she would have been long gone and Harry would be in the care of that atrocious Muggle.
"Don't make me go over there and kick you in the ankle!" she yelled at him over her shoulder.
The muttering continued, unbothered by even another prisoner's call of, "Shaddup!"
Marcia had the sneaking suspicion that she had been deliberately tossed into Snape's neighboring cell in the hope that she would commit violent assault and battery, or murder, and then the authorities would have actual dirt on her.
She groaned and buried her head in her arms, took a deep breath, and let the smells play over her tongue as she sorted out the meaning. Bitterness, rage, fear, frustration… She supposed she could sympathize with how rude and mean Snape was being to her, but she wasn't exactly in the best spot, either. Sure, she could easily slip out of here in the way that Snape couldn't, undeterred by the various spells that the high-strung lawmen had wrapped around her cell, but it wasn't as if she was having a picnic in here!
Marcia's stomach growled.
She glared at it as Snape stopped upright, and gritted her teeth as she waited for him to say something scathing.
It didn't come. She heard him sniffing the air, and opened her mouth to say something when she tasted it.
Smoke.
She jumped to her feet and hurried to the door that separated her cell from the rest of the dungeon. "That's… not good," she said weakly.
"It serves them right," Snape responded snidely. "They can all bloody burn as far as I care."
Marcia entertained the brief vision of a charcoaled hole in the ground in the midst of London, one naked little baby crawling around in the ruins and calling for his parents. While a barbeque sounded like a really good idea at the time (mostly because she hadn't eaten anything for a while, and her belly was just starting to growl), this really wasn't the best time or place. "I suppose I ought to go rescue the others from Harry," Marcia muttered.
Snape said something caustic, but she wasn't paying attention as she slid through the warded bars and purposefully made her way through the halls, her nose in the air as she went towards the source of smoke, brimstone, sulfur, molten rock, fear, panic, and sadness.
The guards she had been unceremoniously marched past were all missing from their stations, either gone to stop the fire or fled out of danger. Marcia's pace quickened until she was running through the halls, and then she jumped upward and through the next two floors where the air was choked with ash and smoke, bright red embers floating lazily through the air. Coughing, Marcia cried, "HARRY!" She didn't bother to listen for any answer coming as she crouched close to the ground and quickly scuttled forth on her hands and knees. She found a few bodies of wizards who appeared to have passed out from the smoke, and even flipped their bodies over. Since she didn't recognize their faces, she flipped them onto their backs again where they were less likely to get smoke poisoning and continued on.
"This is either the bravest or the dumbest thing I've ever done," she muttered between gritted teeth as she crawled into the heart of the heat's worst; a blistering furnace of heat completely unlike what she had happened upon the first time with James and Harry, a heat that was sustained and fed continuously, unlike the sporadic blast that had rocketed a dimension and attracted her in the first place.
She happened upon Umbridge curled up in one of the corners, enclosed within a magical sphere that seemed to protect her from the heat and smoke. Marcia poked at the sphere, partly because she was a crow demonling and poking at unusual things was what Marcia was given to do, and partly because Umbridge looked so hysterical that she was on the verge of insanity and, well, poking Umbridge was probably something that Marcia was going to be doing for a long time to come.
"That demon brat is going to destroy us!" Marcia was glad for the protection of the sphere. She had a feeling that the frothy spittle that flew from Umbridge's lips would have landed on her face.
"Yuck!" Marcia declared, before she began crawling away.
A bolt of some sort of electricity sailed over Marcia's head. The remains of Marcia's hair stood on end as she whipped around, dragged herself backwards on her butt, and stared accusingly at the maddened witch who had trained her wand upon Marcia, the tip of it glowing an ugly red. "He'll die!" Umbridge snarled. "All of you can die and bloody well rot in hell but I'm not going to!"
"You ain't exactly a saint yourself!" Marcia reached towards the magical sphere, and met with resistance that gave off brightly colored sparks.
Umbridge gave a hollow laugh. "Nothing can break my sphere! Avadgerk!"
Marcia, gritting her teeth, forced her hand through the peculiar molecules. She wasn't given to just Jumping parts of her body, unless whatever she was trying to filch happened to be locked in a box that she herself was too small to fit in. Her arm within the sphere, she grabbed Umbrage's collar, twisted it tight, and then fiercely shook Umbridge back and forth until the woman's face turned white, then blue, and she passed out.
The magical sphere winked out of existence. "Totally not necessary," Marcia muttered as she left Umbridge face-up and began to crawl away. "But it sure felt good."
A few moments later, and she had crawled back to Umbridge's side. Gritting her teeth unhappily, Marcia flipped the witch over so her face pressed against the boards. With her conscious thus appeased, Marcia wiped the ash from her eyes, and turned to face the center of the storm: a whirling wall of demonic fire, white in the very core, flashes of purple and blue lightening rippling through and screams of madness shredding through the color. Black chaos lurked on the edges of the demonic firestorm, bubbling like wild mist rising from a hot spring.
A sane person, or at least someone with a healthy sense of survival would have turned tail and ran as far from the firestorm as their abilities could take them. Marcia, being neither sane nor even too survival-minded (that admittedly required more forethought than she often had), would have done just that anyway if she knew that Harry wasn't the heart and source of the firestorm.
Harry was her son. She was doing this because his father had superceded his rights as a parent to Marcia, because there were very few mortals who could gaze upon the inheritance of Harry's power with awe rather than a horrified fear, who would be able to walk through that power that no mortal could ever hope to withstand.
A power that was increasing, Marcia realized in dismay. "Oh no you don't!" she yelled as the wall seemed to bulge outward. Fire was not an element any of her family had – Marcia had only before dealt with earth, water, wind, snow, and the occasional bouts of sunshine (who knew that a sunburn was such a devastating wound?) – but she had the sneaking suspicion that the next thing that would happen would be an explosion.
And whether she liked it or not, she was going to have to stop the explosion one way or another.
A glowing doorway opened up and Ria stepped through it, her heavy woolen cloak gathered around her thin form. Seraph followed her, his eyes hidden behind his thick pair of glasses. They looked around at the bedlam that surrounded them as the doorway quickly vanished. Cloaked wizards and witches rushed around, magic flying through the air, panic unchecked as the building in their midst burned with a fury of a sun that was too close and too person.
"I'm going to need more than just a lawyer for this," Ria muttered as she hurriedly stepped out of the way of someone who was much taller and heavier than herself. "Do you think anyone would notice if I brought in an entire army of ice elves to douse the heat?"
Seraph adjusted his glasses and wiped away sweat that was already beading at his brow. The relative warmth of London's autumn was practically balmy compared the frigid temperature they had left, but the intense heat cast by the demonic firestorm was almost unbearable. "They might stick out like a sore thumb."
"Where's Sydney and Harry?" Ria demanded.
Seraph shielded his eyes and looked over the heads of everyone else. "I'm not seeing her," he said nervously.
"Naturally."
"Knowing Sydney, chances are that she's either beat a hasty retreat at the first sign of trouble, or she's in the very middle of it."
As one, Ria and Seraph turned to look at the firestorm.
"Why do these things always happen when Sydney and Grandfather are involved?" Shaking her head, Ria pointed a finger at the fire. "Well, it looks like we're all going to get in the middle of it."
"Do we have to?" Sighing, Seraph waded through the chaos that surrounded them, shouldering people out of his way and creating a little pathway for his mother to doggedly follow.
Marcia Jumped through space, battled her way past flames that were intent on destroying her, even reaching to the little sanctum that Marcia had always thought of her own. With a shriek of indignity – this was her space, and no demonic fire was going to tell her otherwise – she batted it aside and made it through the firestorm. It was hotter than anything else within the center, and Harry was screaming in anger and fear, his runes blazing white against his flushed skin and the scar on his forehead burned black, like it had been branded there with an iron. She landed beside Harry, glanced around at the crumpled body, leaned forward to grab Harry, and then whipped around to stare at the crumpled body.
She tentatively reached a finger out and poked. It didn't poke back – it didn't even stir. "Did you kill him?" she asked Harry over his screams. Harry grabbed Marcia just as she grabbed one of the body's arms and was going to flip it over. Her attention diverted, she drew Harry close to her side and his angry wails trailed off into sniffles and whimpered. "Whazza matter, mmm?" When her questing fingers trailed over his bare arm, they came away slick with blood. Harry cried and flinched away from her. Raising her fingers to her eyes, Marcia saw red – anger flared, and it wasn't Harry's fault this time. The scars that crisscrossed her back ached in sympathy as she brushed the blood away and saw a number.
A fricken' number.
They had carved a number on the arm of her son like he was an animal!
"Oh, this is absolutely bullshit! I've killed people for less than that!" She hefted Harry onto a hip and began kicking at the body. "You! Wake up already, you don't smell dead yet!" She finally planted a foot against a shoulder and forced the body face-up. "Look, I don't have all day for you to wake up so you can drag your own sorry ass out of here." Marcia cast a critical look over him, taking in the singed clothes and hair, the burnt hands… She paused to take a closer look at them, and while she bent over to see how far up his arms the burns went, Harry tearfully reached a hand out to pat at Lupin's face. "Friend or foe, Harry?" she asked him.
Since Harry didn't seem to be responding negatively to Lupin, Marcia figured for now that Lupin probably hadn't had anything to do with Harry being branded like someone's cattle. If Lupin had grabbed for Harry when it was happening, it might explain why his hands were burnt. "Okay, so I'll forgive you for now," she told him snidely. "But we gotta get out of here before we fry. Or you fry."
She tightened her grip on Harry and hooked an arm beneath Lupin's once she checked to make sure she wasn't grabbing anything that was blistered. Tugging him close as well, she Jumped once more, body straining to haul two magical creatures along through the wall of flames. They parted before her like a curtain, and Marcia spared enough of her concentration to glance at Harry. "At least you're coming in handy now," she said. "But after this is all said and done, I'm going to hole the two of us up somewhere in a cupboard for the next few years, and we can drink pina coladas together and just not worry about fame or fortune or little old grannies stealing your diapers from the trash."
They came out of the Jump outside the building, landing on pavement beside the beacon of white that Marcia instantly recognized as her mother.
"Oh, Sydney!" Ria called, hurrying over. She stopped and bent over to examine Lupin, who remained unconscious. "What's going on?"
Marcia opened her mouth to answer, but something sizzled through the air. She shoved Harry into Ria's arms and then both of them out of the way before a bolt of green smacked her in the head. Her vision went fuzzy as various wires and chips scrambled and short-circuited. Her language chip began to kick out various alien forms of Christmas tunes as the racket of the melee around was blotted out.
Forcing herself upright and blinking away the fuzz, Marcia knocked a hand against her ear. She saw Dumbledore swooping in from somewhere and Ria had moved to confront him, Harry wrapped safely in her robes, one hand flung out to point accusingly at someone who was flat on his back. Several witches and wizards stood stock-still and watched in wary fear while others were trying to cast spells on the firestorm to put it out. But a demonic fire wasn't going to be put out by mortal means. It required something far more stronger.
Marcia turned to Seraph, who had produced a vicious looking knife from somewhere and was hovering worriedly over her body. The wave of vertigo that came from moving would have made Marcia flip over and vomit all over the pavement, but her stomach was empty. All the better to flip-flop, apparently.
Seraph's lips were moving, but Marcia couldn't hear anything. "I can't hear!" she yelled, pointing at her ears. "Tell Mama to stop the fire!" Not waiting for Seraph to relay the message, Marcia turned to face Ria (another wave of vertigo, why, hello ground! Fancy meeting you up here!), struggled upright, and began to yell. "Mama! Mama! Put out the fire there's people in the prisons! Mama!"
Ria dismissed Dumbledore with an irritated wave of her hand and hurried back to Marcia's side. "The fire, Mama." Marcia fisted Ria's robes. "I can't hear anything, but there are still people in the building – please put the fire out!"
Ria stared at the building for a long moment, then nodded curtly as she slipped her cloak off her shoulders and handed it, Harry still bundled within, to Marcia. Flexing her fingers, Ria took several steps back as she closed her eyes and concentrated.
Marcia quickly unraveled the cloak and hid beneath it, leaving only her face free and uncovered. The surrounding temperature began to rapidly drop, and she saw Dumbledore come to Ria's side, saw the bushy beard around his lips move. Ria said nothing, but Dumbledore's gave flickered over to Seraph and Marcia, and then he swiftly backed away from Ria, flinging his arms wide and making gestures at the people who were gathering behind Ria.
The air turned icy cold and the abrupt change in temperature clashed with the demonic firestorm. Marcia watched in mute fascination as a whirlwind of frost whipped up around Ria as she summoned a cold far worse than anything this planet could have produced. The people behind her fell back even further, pushed by a fierce wind that was more than just sentient.
The Queen was calling upon her domain, and Winter was responding like a jealous lover, bringing with it an arsenal of frost, snow, and ice.
Harry clung tight to Marcia, fending off the cold with his own little heat. "Don't you dare burst into flames," Marcia warned him before Seraph yanked up a corner of the cloak – "Hey! You're letting in all the cold air!" – and ducked beneath it, wrapping strong arms around both her and Harry. The wind rushed over them, stinging their faces with frost as smoke and ash were forced away.
It would only get colder and worse. "Tell me when it's over," she told Seraph before grabbing the corner of the cloak and pulling it over her face. As she burrowed deep and wrapped herself around Harry, her body shivering from the cold and pain, the language chip cheerfully launched into a round of Frosty the Snowman.
By the time Marcia's hearing was returning, the demonic firestorm had been turned into a column of crystalline blue ice that reflected a very pretty sunshine above. Still wrapped up in the heavy wool cloak and her arms around her own personal little furnace, Marcia poked her nose out and glanced around. Ria and Dumbledore stood together, speaking to four very stern-faced older men. Seraph stood just behind Ria, but he moved to Marcia's side when she hissed at him.
"What's the scoop? Should I continue playing dead?"
"I wouldn't recommend it. Apparently an otherwise one-hit killing spell glanced off your head and they're all expecting you to be alive."
"Eh?" Marcia was tempted to tell Seraph that her language chip got stuck on The Nutcracker and she had been listening to it for the past twenty minutes on loop, and that would have killed her before any high-flootin' spell could have.
"Everyone is thinking that the shifting gravity and winds caused by Harry's firestorm shifted the spell enough to brush against your head rather than hitting you directly."
Marcia tightened her hold on Harry. He had fallen asleep some time ago and looked so quaint and innocent in her arms. "Just… just how close did it come to hitting me?" she asked
Seraph shrugged and looked away. "I wouldn't worry about it," he said. "You are immortal."
"Yeah? Well excuse me, but the thought of being an immortal vegetable is hardly appealing!"
Seraph sighed and fiddled with the stems of his glasses. "It smacked you head-on, directly, dead-center. Satisfied?"
Marcia sulked. "Better. At least the worst that thing can do is make me listen to Christmas songs for the rest of my life." When the paperwork got straightened out she was going to have to visit an alien neurologist to reset her language chip.
"Anyway, Mama is quite mad that you were attacked after rescuing Harry and the other guy from the fire, and everyone else is quite mad that you are out of prison, and no one is pleased to see the damage that Harry is capable of."
Marcia growled as she looked down at Harry. She brushed a finger over Harry's number.
"But being a queen apparently affords Mama a lot of status that neither you or Harry had. That, and Mama's also making sure she's going to get all the worth she can for putting out Harry's fire."
"They're just going to say that it was Harry's fault to begin with and they don't owe a thing." That's what Marcia would do if she were in their position.
"Oh, they tried that already, but Mama said if that was the case then they better start hoping she's feeling generous to melt the ice before taking all of us – Harry, especially – far and forever away."
Marcia twisted around to look at the pillar of ice that stretched upward several stories. It stood as a testimony of Ria's power and control over the harshest of all seasons – and that even a fire demonling who destroyed the greatest enemy of the wizarding world couldn't hold a candle against her. Literally. "That one would be awkward to explain to the authorities. I bet they can always blame it on global warming."
By now, Ria and the others had noticed that Marcia was up and stirring and they walked over to her side.
One of the older men stiffly nodded his head to Marcia. "We're currently gathering up the papers now," he told her formally.
"Matters will be settled before we leave" Ria told Marcia. "With Harry your responsibility, you can take him with you rather than stuffing him in a fireplace."
Marcia wanted to say that it wasn't really her fault in the end, but the truth of the matter was… the truth of the matter was, she was indeed at fault. She had to act more responsible, put more thought into her actions, and face the consequences when they arose. It wasn't just herself that was going to get into trouble, because now Harry was going to get intimately involved with the mistakes she made. Yeah, Marcia wasn't perfect and she would undoubtedly find even more problems to get herself stuck in, but she could lessen the rate of occurrence by hiding in some cupboard under the stairs and staying there for the next ten or so years.
Except that hiding wasn't a very adult way of handling life's problems, either.
"Right," Marcia finally said meekly. Her hand closed over the number carved into Harry's arm. She knew of a good plastic surgeon who could wipe away any trace of the carving. She also knew she could effortlessly sneak into records and wipe away any trace that might be on file regarding Harry's number. Then she'd scramble the records so no one could be traced to their numbers, because Harry was still a person and shouldn't have to be tracked like a criminal.
But she wouldn't say a word. She wouldn't give anyone a hint of her deadly thoughts. Marcia was slowly coming into her own adulthood, and it was a very daunting, very deadly thing if she kept up this line of thinking.
"How's Lupin?" she asked Dumbledore. He smiled kindly at her.
"He's resting."
"I know that his burns were bad."
"Not too bad. Lupin heals very quickly."
Marcia would have asked Dumbledore how Lupin got burned, but she didn't want to know the answer. She would wait until later, when he was alone, and ask him privately. "What about Snape?" At the darkening expression two of the stiff men were giving her, Marcia hastened to add, " 'Cause he said he was in trouble for Harry being in a fireplace, but it wasn't Snape's fault, it was mine. See, Harry was upset, and when Harry's upset, he calls up fire. The fireplace was a safe place for everyone so Snape wasn't really trying to hurt Harry."
As one, everyone looked at the pillar of ice, and then back at Marcia. "About that," Dumbledore began.
"Harry uses fire for protection," Marcia cut in. "And until he's old enough to know better, to control his instincts and urges, he has to be protected from anything that he's going to perceive as a threat. Or stuffed in a fireplace where the damage can be kept to a minimum." She glared at the rest of them, silently daring them to tell her that sticking Harry in a fireplace was considered child abuse.
Dumbledore smiled tightly. "Well, at least all's well that end's well."
Marcia hugged the sleeping Harry close, and that was when Marcia suddenly realized what being a mother was about.
It was about protecting, nurturing, loving, and accepting someone who was too vulnerable to take care of themselves. Most of the times, the choice is made freely and planned for, but other times the choice is shoved into your arms before a decision is reached. Ria didn't have much a choice when Marcia had imposed herself upon Ria and Turk, but both had accepted the decision and made the best of it. Marcia hadn't so much has the choice shoved into her arms as much as she sort of tripped over it and decided take it home with her.
It didn't matter that Harry had destroyed the darkest wizard of Europe. It didn't matter that Harry was powerful enough to melt rooms and burn down ancient buildings beset with many layers of magic.
It did matter that Harry couldn't feed or clothe himself; he didn't know the difference between right and wrong; he didn't know who to trust or why. All of that was to be her responsibility; it was up to Marcia to shape Harry into a socially-acceptable (mostly) human being, taking Harry as far as she could before finally releasing him to his own fate and his own responsibilities.
Marcia behaved exceptionally well during the little time it took for the adoption papers to be drawn up. She even managed to keep all snide remarks to herself, and Harry asleep and flameless the entire time.Admittedly she should have waited until she and Harry were out of sight before she boogied a victory dance, but then again, she was still only human. Mostly.
Author's note: Wooo. Snape was extremely difficult and didn't want to cooperate in this chapter, so it took several month's worth of rewriting, but I managed to finish up! I was originally going to have Sirius held in the cell on the other side of Snape, but those two were just murder on the scene. Just murder. D Now we can go into a time jump and a Harry who is far more entertaining than a pyromaniac baby, and more frequent updates!
