a/n: Please don't die of shock, i know its been a really long time. I don't have any excuses not really, just the truth that i am not as passionate about Harry Potter as i once was. I have no intention of abandoning this fic, it just might take me longer to finish it than i ever planned. Thank you for all of your continued support and your faith that i would one day finish this (if you gave up on me i totally don't blame you!).

Chapter 24: Ally

It was entirely within the realm of possibility that this was the stupidest idea she'd ever had. Given her long history, that was a lot of bad ideas suddenly being eclipsed, but they needed answers and this was looking like the only way they might get them.

The Hall of Prophecy in the Department of Mysteries had changed a lot since she'd first seen it. Most of the changes were because of the destruction she and Harry had orchestrated but it had been necessary destruction and 99% of the prophecies had come through the destruction of the Ministry unscathed.

At the time, she'd been disappointed they hadn't managed to destroy more. Nothing good ever came of a prophecy, Harry could attest to that first hand. Now, when they were at a complete loss as to what they were really facing and what they were supposed to do to stop this new enemy, she was glad for the chance, no matter how small, one of these so-called Phoenix Prophecies could hold the answers.

Of course, there was that slight (major) issue of them not knowing the contents of the prophecies due to no one actually wanting the prophecies to fall into the wrong hands. What was wrong with writing them down in a helpful reference guide before you sealed them away in glass orbs only the people spoken about could touch?

Seriously, that instant of foresight could have saved them a lot of trouble.

And possibly helped Voldemort destroy the world. So perhaps the ancient Unspeakables had been onto something when they'd started spelling the orbs but that really didn't help her now.

'This is a really, really bad idea,' Ruby muttered, staring up at the shelf lined with seven little orbs containing glowing prophecies. 'This is so monumentally stupid Harry will absolutely, definitely kill me.'

'What are you talking about?' Ally tried to laugh but she didn't quite manage the amused, carefree tone she was going for. She thought her hands might have been shaking. 'This is the best idea we've come up with.'

'That doesn't mean it's not a very bad idea, just that it was our only idea.'

Ally kindly didn't point out that, actually, they'd had other ideas, it was just they were all somehow even worse than this one. Which, given what this plan was, said a lot about their planning skills and possibly about how dire this situation was.

'Its not like these people are going around killing people left, right and centre,' Ruby pointed out. 'The worst they've done is set a bunch of golems on Diagon Alley – and are we even sure that was them? It could have been someone taking advantage of the situation. Maybe these guys are really friendly but misunderstood.'

Ally gave her friend a look she thought clearly conveyed how stupid that sounded but when she actually considered what Ruby was saying, she couldn't help but feel her friend had a point. Why were they so sure these people meant bad things were coming?

The dreams, she supposed, the creepy nightmares that didn't feel quite like normal nightmares. But these people weren't actually in those dreams it was just that they gave off the same weird feeling that was in the dream – according to her daughters. Were they really trusting the word of two kids that these people were bad news? And all right, yes, the dreams had led them to the tomb where it was obvious this new threat had come from but were they a threat to anyone other than the four of them? Harry and the kids were the ones who seemed to be involved but that didn't mean anyone else had to get involved.

Did it?

Really, that was the whole reason she and Ruby were standing in the slightly renovated Hall of Prophecy in the dustiest corner where the oldest, most curious prophecies could be found. They didn't know enough, couldn't find enough information from any of the other sources they'd tried, to answer those questions.

And they'd tried a lot of sources. Ally had talked to people she hadn't ever wanted to talk with again. She'd turned over every contact she had both in and out of the different Ministries of Magic, she'd talked to old students, current students, co-workers from now and a hundred years ago (those still alive and some that weren't), she'd had conversations with ghosts and portraits, read through a lot of books since the dreams had first started and then when they'd started seeing these Crazy People.

No one had any answers for them. No one even knew the questions it seemed. It was getting to the point where Ally was genuinely worried they weren't necessarily dealing with something old but something new.

And wasn't that what Stephanie had suggested with her theory about dangerous experiments mixing the powers of magical creatures with those of wizards much like they suspected Voldemort had done when he was seeking a way to cheat death?

Is that what these guys were? Another failed experiment to escape the inevitability of death? And could she even call it that when she herself was over three hundred years old and Harry had died once already?

Probably not.

Death was for ordinary people it seemed and she and her family were anything but ordinary. It was worrying actually. It had been bad enough when it was just her watching the years pass, with her friends and family dying around her, but now she had sentenced her children to the same fate. She couldn't take the blame for Harry; fate had stepped in there. She wasn't self-centred enough to believe some greater power had answered her wish to have someone she could share her life with.

She didn't imagine she was actually that important in the grand scheme of things. She (and Harry) were just a weird quirk of nature. Right?

'I really think we should reconsider.' Ruby tried again to dissuade Ally of even attempting this harebrained scheme.

She knew it was a bad idea, didn't that make her decision one made of sound mind?

She noted, however, as much as Ruby protested her curiosity had her feet firmly glued to the floor.

'We've tried everything else,' Ally pointed out, rather unnecessarily she felt. They'd had this conversation at least four times already. 'Its been a week, Ruby, we haven't found a better way to do this.'

'Maybe we just need another few days.'

'Look, Harry and the others haven't found anything coming in or out of the Ministry. Neither Snape nor McGonagall have ever even heard of the kinds of magic we've been facing and the research teams at the tomb site haven't come up with anything more than a language they can't read and several they can but aren't making any sense.

'This is our best option of finding out what's going on.'

'I feel like you were reassuring yourself with that,' Ruby grumbled. 'It was not at all comforting.'

Exasperated, Ally rolled her eyes. 'You're not even the one risking your sanity by touching this thing!' she pointed out. 'You only have to catch me if my brain turns to jelly and you have to carry me out of here.'

Ruby turned a cold look on her. 'That's not funny.'

Ally waved her concerns away, she'd had a week to come to terms with the very real possibility she'd be spending the next few decades trying to piece her mind together a little bit at a time. She refused to believe that she wouldn't recover from this, even if it took her a few decades or a century it wasn't like she was going to die any time soon.

Perhaps that was contributing to her blasé attitude. It wasn't like she wanted to miss out on her daughters going through Hogwarts or whatever they might chose to do after but in the grand scheme of things, missing a few years of her children's lives to get more information on a seemingly indestructible enemy was well worth it. She'd have centuries to make it up to them.

Assuming something didn't come along in the meantime and successfully manage to kill them all. Perhaps she should have been a little more worried about what she was about to do but she wasn't all that sure she could. It wasn't in her nature to be overly cautious and there didn't seem to be much point in starting now.

There were a lot of things in life she'd have missed out on if she'd taken a cautious attitude toward her incredibly strange life. There were a few decades when she first realised she wasn't aging like everyone else where she'd been terrified people would start noticing and try to burn her at the stake. Her attitude of being herself and simply assuming that how she was was exactly how she should be seemed to give people the impression there was nothing to comment on so she hadn't bothered to hide away.

The people in the surrounding farms and village had made their own excuses for her strange behaviour and different attitudes. Clearly muggles, even in times when magic was still a thing of reality (mostly), were much happier if they could just blindly write off what they were seeing and not have to think too clearly about it.

She supposed that had saved a lot of people over the course of history.

She'd had enough of Ruby's stalling. She reached out to grab the nearest prophecy but Ruby grabbed her hand before she could. She was beyond exasperation by this point. Her friend had never been so cautious before; she was normally being reckless alongside Ally. Surely having children hadn't changed her so much? She was married to Sirius Black after all; she didn't imagine there was anything cautious about that family. She'd nearly been injured on several trips to their home and she knew that other people had been injured during some very strange practical jokes and a weird vacation that had involved burying someone alive – entirely by mistake she'd been assured.

'What if these really are meant for human phoenixes?' Ruby asked.

'I thought that was the whole point,' Ally snapped.

'There are four of you,' Ruby pointed out.

That gave Ally pause. Of all the things they'd been worrying over since they'd come up with this ridiculously reckless plan, that wasn't one they'd considered. There was a part of her that felt like these prophecies were for her but maybe that was just her desire to finally have some answers. Not that it mattered, she was going to try this either way but if she could somehow narrow down which of the seven on the shelf were more likely to be about her then that lessened the risk she would end up a dribbly mess at the Malfoy Institute.

'Well,' she considered, 'do they look any different?'

They both leaned in and squinted at the dusty orbs. Each of them seemed to be the same size and shape but if she tilted her head slightly and opened one eye wider than the other she thought it looked like the mist glowing inside each was a slightly different colour.

That might just have been her eyes playing tricks on her, though. It wasn't like the Hall of Prophecy was all that well lit and there were shadows playing over the shelves that might have contributed to what she thought she was seeing.

'Do they look like some of them are slightly different colours?' Ruby asked, shaking her head and blinking rapidly after staring so intently at the glowing orbs.

'Unless its just our eyes,' Ally pointed out. 'But no,' she looked hard at each of them again, 'I think you're right, some of them are a slightly different colour.'

They both leaned in again, heads tilted eyes squinting, trying to distinguish between the different orbs. She thought she could make out at least three different colours but she wasn't sure.

'I'm getting five,' Ruby contradicted.

They leaned in again, so close their noses were almost touching the wooden shelf as they tried to peer up at the prophecies. Ally held out longer than Ruby this time and after carefully studying each of the orbs one after the other and back again she thought she had to agree with her friend. There were five different colours. They only differed slightly; it was like looking at five different shades of gold.

Ally had a flashback to the last time they'd painted Alex's room. Alex and James had gotten into such an argument over colours while she and Harry had stood back marvelling at the ridiculousness of arguing over the colour red. As far as either of them had been able to tell, the two girls each held the exact some shade of red in their hands.

The one time they tried to point it out, though, they'd gotten such stern looks they'd both immediately shut up. It was that or laugh.

'I hate to say it,' she told Ruby slowly, 'but I think we need James.'

'You're not going to make your daughter pick up one of these orbs!' Ruby hissed.

Ally rolled her eyes. 'Of course not! I think she'll be able to distinguish between the colours.' She shrugged. 'James sees things we don't, she might at least be able to narrow it down.'

'Isn't she at school?'

'Well, see, that's the beauty of being her mother.' Ally looked at the shelf one more time, nodded her head and said, 'I'll be right back.'

Fetching James from school was as easy as she'd expected it to be. She simply walked right up to the office, explained there was a bit of an emergency and whisked James away before anyone tried to ask her if everything was okay or if there was something they could do.

'Sally and I were in the middle of a project,' James protested, though not very strongly.

'Oh, sorry,' Ally apologised, not sorry at all, there was only so much interest she could take in her daughter's muggle schooling. Just because she wholeheartedly supported what Hermione was doing with this initiative didn't mean she understood the necessity of it all. Sure, it generated better relations between muggles and the magical community but was there actually ever going to be a use for the things their magical children learned there?

She didn't ask that question of Harry anymore because he kept pointing out that if the kids didn't go to school then either one of them would have to stop working or they'd have to start taking advantage of Molly Weasley. Ally hadn't liked either of those options and so her girls went to school.

'Where are we going?' James asked when they stopped a safe distance away from any prying eyes at the school.

'Hall of Prophecy,' Ally replied, reaching down to take James' hand. 'I need your help.'

The Ministry still didn't have any wards that could keep her out and so she and James flamed right back to the very spot she'd been standing in the Hall of Prophecy before. Luckily, James didn't flame right on top of Ruby.

James was looking around the room with interest; Ruby was once again squinting at the orbs trying to distinguish their colours. She barely even looked up when they arrived, so used to their style of travelling as she was.

'This place is creepy,' James announced. 'Why would anyone want to put this much potential future in one place?'

This got Ruby's attention and both she and Ally blinked down at James. Sometimes her daughter could spout off things that made her sound about four hundred years old. Other times she would argue with her sister over who got to wear the sparkly socks.

These two were not necessarily mutually exclusive which made it all the harder to take her seriously on certain occasions.

Merlin, but she loved her children.

'Can you tell me if you see a difference in the colours of those seven prophecies?' Ally requested. She had to lift James up so she could actually see the prophecies in question. 'No touching!' she then immediately added when James started to reach out a hand.

Her daughter had the audacity to roll her eyes but she at least did as she was asked. She brought her hand back to her side, gripping Ally's arm to help keep her balance as she carefully studied each of the prophecies in question.

'I can see five different colours,' she announced, confirming what they'd suspected. She went a step further than they'd been able to and quickly pointed out which ones were the same shades of gold. 'See, this ones really bright and then this one but then these two are the same, and these two and then this last one.'

'You can really tell which ones match?' Ruby sounded impressed and Ally smiled with smug pried.

'Uh huh,' James nodded. She was staring in fascination at the brightest of them all.

'What is it?'

'You should grab that one, mum,' she said firmly, with all the confidence of a kid with no cares in the world. 'That ones meant for you.'

She probably should have been surprised by James words but Ally wasn't. Her children could see things even she and Harry couldn't – wasn't that why she'd brought her along? 'Are you sure?'

James nodded. 'That one's daddy's,' she said pointing at what Ally just assumed was the next brightest in the line. 'This one is for me, that ones for Alex, those two are for all of us and the last one,' she frowned. James had seemed so sure of the others but this one seemed to give her pause. 'I don't know what this one is.'

Ally put James down on her own two feet and stood up straight. 'Well, let's try this then.'

And she reached out and plucked the brightest (according to James) orb from the shelf. For a moment nothing happened. She exchanged confused looks with Ruby who seemed to have expected, despite James' certainty, that Ally would collapse into a screaming heap.

'Well,' Ally muttered, 'that's a bit – '

Quite without warning her head filled with the sound of phoenix song and the world around her exploded into a shower of golden light.