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Chapter 52: You're Just As Sane As I Am
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Meanwhile, back at Jack's apartment.
Gwen very suddenly looked up, startled. Something just felt off. Missing, like Retcon. She knew better than to mess with that, now, but she had this eerie feeling that she was missing something very important.
She looked around curiously, to see that the rest of the team also looked a bit confused. Tosh met her eyes and asked quietly, "What is it?"
"Something's missing." Owen muttered, standing up and looking around.
The bedroom door opened at that point, "What the hell is going on?" past-Jack shouted. Thankfully, he was fully clothed. In fact, he had never wandered around the main room of the flat in any state of undress worse than toplessness, and that had only happened the day the team had come home after their first year in Hogwarts.
Come to think of it, that day seemed particularly odd.
Gwen tried to remember why, but drew a complete blank. "Feels like Retcon." she offered helplessly.
"No, Retcon does periods of time, this isn't that." Owen waved dismissively.
"Memory charms?" Tosh offered.
"I- I feel sick." past-Jack mumbled weakly, like he was in pain, as he leaned on the kitchen counter staring at thin air. "There's so much missing... only bits at a time. There's no way this is Retcon." he looked up at Gwen weakly, "And how did you know about that stuff, anyway? It shouldn't exist for another three thousand years."
"You claimed to have invented it, mate." Owen sniped. Jack pulled a face at that, but then groaned and started rubbing his temples as if he had the headache from hell.
Gwen scowled, trying to think of an example of her own. Suddenly she realised that she couldn't remember two weeks after the whole Bilis Manger incident. Or how that had been resolved, for that matter.
"It must be some kind of spell." Tosh insisted, "Memory charms can do things like this, there's no alien devices that I know of which can make you forget little bits throughout a long period of time."
She was already going for one of her charms books, to research this.
Gwen looked to Owen, questioningly.
"Maybe some kind of alien toxin or chemical. Or a potion, I guess." he offered, "It could have been in our breakfast for all we know."
"Wait." Gwen said, thinking very carefully, "Didn't Jack and Ianto say they were both gonna be Secret Keepers? I know Jack's gonna keep where we're staying, and I really can't remember the address of this place right now... what if the other secret's just really really big?"
"Would have to be pretty damned big." Owen grumbled, "I'm leaning towards alien hallucinogens."
Tosh peered almost darkly at Owen, "Not everything is alien, anymore, Owen."
"Not everything's magic, either!" Owen retorted, "Just because it's the newest thing!"
"Guys, stop it." Jack said, trying to sound like he was giving an order, but it just came out as a weak plea, "Headache. Please, pretend I have a hangover, until further notice."
The three teenagers exchanged wary looks, then as one they shrugged. Tosh went right back to her Charms book, while Owen rather reluctantly took out his Potions text, since checking for an alien cause wasn't an option right now. Past-Jack slumped down on the couch and proceeded to sulk dramatically.
Gwen sighed and went back to what she had been doing. She got the oddly calming feeling that she was right this time, and everything would sort itself out soon enough.
It was almost an hour later that Jack and Ianto returned, and as soon as the door was firmly closed behind them, Ianto announced clearly, "Jack's immortal."
"Oh, yes!" past-Jack shouted out, in a tone that expressed thoroughly indecent joy at this information, "Thank you!"
And suddenly it all made sense again. And Gwen smiled happily. She had been right, it was the Fidelius charm.
x x x
Sirius Black was confused. He knew there was something important that he should be remembering right now.
"And this is why I believe that we need to step up the watch on the Prophecy." Snivellus finally deigned to end his incessant ranting for five seconds, and before anyone else could get a word in edgeways Sirius spoke up.
"Something doesn't feel right."
"Fleas again, is it?" Snivellus sniped.
Sirius casually flipped him off, and then tried to explain more to Arthur and Kingsley, "It feels like someone's not told me a Secret." and the emphasis on this made it clear just what sort of secret he was referring to. He made it sound capitalised.
"Oh please, the enemy would never dare indulge in such a naive notion as trust." Snivellus snapped.
Sirius glowered at him, "Didn't say that was who I thought it was. I said it feels like I already knew something, and now I don't. It was exactly the same as the five minutes before that treacherous rat reminded me where Lily and James lived. I recognise the feeling."
"Hey, Cujo." Jack Harkness' voice suddenly sounded in his ear, "We've got something important to talk to you about."
Sirius blinked twice, "Y'know what, it's probably nothing." he back-pedalled quickly, "I need to find a fire hydrant or something." he sneered sarcastically, standing up and once more offering Snivellus a rude hand-gesture before turning and leaving the meeting room.
"Fire hydrant? Cute." Owen Harper snickered.
"Talk to me, then, kids." Sirius demanded curtly.
"Jack is immortal."
At these words, the feeling of being left out of the loop evaporated instantly, and he remembered everything again, "Wow, that's a big one. And here I thought the best use of the Fidelius charm was for hiding people or objects... not world-altering concepts."
"Well." Jack said in a diplomatic tone, "We kinda figured if Voldemort ever found out, the planet might implode, so-"
"Yeah, and imagine the damage we could do if we made something like the laws of physics secret." Owen interrupted. Sirius could hear the grin.
"Or the words to the killing curse." Toshiko offered chirpily, "Think of the lives it could save."
"Or the existence of an entire species." Jack offered. A deathly silence followed this statement, and once more Sirius could just picture the other three (or was Gwen there, too?) staring at Jack in blank and shocked confusion... much as Sirius was doing now, at the equally blank wall in front of him. "What? It could have already happened for all you know." Jack said, defensively.
Ianto sighed dramatically, "I hate when he does that... can never tell when he's joking."
"WE KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING OFF ABOUT YOU!" Fred Weasley suddenly crowed over the commlink.
"THIS IS BLOODY BRILLIANT!" George cheered, "Best bit of eavesdropping we've done this decade!" Sirius could only know which Weasley was which because Fred always spoke first. Always.
"You know you physically can't tell anyone, right?" Ianto asked somewhere between put out that they had heard and smug that they couldn't pass the information on.
"Oh, who cares!" Fred laughed, "Hey, what about decapitation?"
"Burned alive?"
"Killing curse?"
"Drowning?"
"Fire and drowning? You're so unimaginative Gred."
"Hey, you're Gred I'm Forge!"
"That's it, I'm turning this thing off and going back into the meeting. Snivellus is very slightly less annoying." Well that was a lie, but he still didn't care, right now, "Goodbye."
x x x
"So if someone did decapitate an immortal, would they re-grow a new head or a new body?" Fred asked.
"Or would they have to wait until the two got put back together again?" George added.
It was a week after Ianto had told Sirius the secret, and the twins were still going on about it. They had been forced to word it very carefully in neutral contexts. 'If someone were immortal'... not 'so if you were killed this way'... but they had done it. Persistently. The team had turned off their comms after the first hour. Now the twins had greeted them the instant they had stepped onto Platform Nine And Three Quarters.
"In the movie Highlander, decapitation is final." Owen offered almost cheerfully, as he helped to haul Tosh's school trunk up onto the train.
"Yeah, but-" Fred started, but then he worked his mouth for a full ten seconds with no sound coming out, before finally giving up and swearing in French.
"Hey, I just thought of something!" Tosh said, turning to the twins with a grin, "French!"
"What about it?" George asked.
"Well, Voldemort is French." Tosh explained blankly, "The name, I mean. It's a very rough- very bad- translation. It could either mean 'flight from death', or I think more likely, it's a shoddy abbreviation of 'cheater of death'. But if you changed 'mort' to something else in French... well."
A pair of identical grins spread across the twins' faces, and in perfect synch they both said, "Cheater of shit!"
"I like it Gred." one of them said eagerly.
"I like it a lot, Forge."
"We must spread the word!"
And so they were off.
"Oh, thank god, they're gone." Gwen whined, hauling her trunk up onto the train, with Owen's help.
"I wonder why they swore in French in the first place." Tosh wondered vaguely.
"I heard their eldest brother's dating that Delacour girl now." Gwen offered by way of explanation.
"I have one more good way of shutting them up, but I'm saving it for emergencies." Jack offered, pulling his own trunk onto the train unaided.
"And that is?" Owen asked.
"Their own evil candy." Jack answered vaguely, now turning to help Ianto with his trunk as well.
"Oh, the ton-tongue toffees?" Owen asked, grinning. Jack answered with a nod and an even broader grin. "How're you gonna force-feed those things to them, then?"
"I was actually just going to talk to them about it." Jack said, shrugging too-innocently, "Suggest alternate applications for smaller doses."
Tosh choked with stifled laughter, Ianto raised one eyebrow in sceptical amusement, and Gwen's eyes widened to comical proportions. They all got what Jack meant, there... and none of them could think of a reasonable retort.
Owen's reaction to the insinuation was somewhat more dramatic. He dropped Gwen's trunk on his own foot, and then proceeded to curse and swear profusely, employing as many graphic and sexually explicit insults as he could come up with.
It managed to go on for about five minutes.
Once Owen had finally run out of obscene things to rant about- and by this point the train had already been moving for some time- they began to search for a compartment on the train. While it was considered just fine to leave most of the luggage where they had gotten onto the train, Tosh wanted to work on some of her projects on the journey, so Jack and Ianto brought her trunk along with them.
They were halfway down the train and still hadn't found a compartment yet, when suddenly the trunk began to feel lighter... and then it floated up out of their hands.
"What the-?" Ianto asked, shocked.
"Here, let me help you with that." a maliciously amused voice called behind them.
All five of them turned to see that the culprit was Ron Weasley. As they watched, he levitated the trunk right up to the roof of the train, and then turned it upside down.
Tosh shrieked as her books, robes, underwear, and pieces of Muggle technology all fell out.
A PDA, a GPS and a Game Boy all shattered on impact, sending pieces of circuitry skittering all over the floor.
"Oh no!" Tosh cried, rushing forward and gathering up the pieces of technology with the sort of abject horror normal people would only express upon witnessing the kicking of puppies. She looked close to tears. "I spent weeks readjusting the power levels so these shouldn't overload in Hogwarts." she said weakly, staring at the dented cover of the PDA she now held.
Ianto knelt next to her, and briefly placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, before staring to help her gather up the books and robes.
Owen glowered threateningly at Ron... pulling a fork from the pocket of his robe and holding it up menacingly. "Oh my god!" Gwen declared indignantly, "Do you just carry that around in case he-?" She waved vaguely at the scattered contents of Tosh's school trunk.
"In case he said something, actually." Owen growled, eyes darting to Ianto for a moment, "Didn't think he was this much of a twat." Owen was sort-of half crouched, in a way that really did look like he was going to pounce on Ron, with the fork as his only weapon.
Ron, for his part, looked thoroughly surprised that the trunk he had upturned was not Jack's or Ianto's. In fact, he was blatantly speechless and his ears were starting to turn a very interesting shade of red.
"What did you just do, Weasley?" another malicious tone, but this time it was the smugly drawling Draco Malfoy, "Picking on third years? Tut tut." he leaned casually against a doorframe, "You guys want me to report him, when we get to Hogwarts? Oh please let me report him."
"We need to let you, now?" Gwen asked blankly.
"Oh, you know how it works, Gwen." Owen answered for him, in a truly dismissive tone, "Can't press charges without witnesses willing to testify."
"You know, if it was anyone else, I'd insist they pay Tosh to replace her broken tech." Gwen hissed darkly, "But those things aren't cheap these days, and we all know how best to insult Ronald Weasley."
Draco's eyebrows shot up at that, "Well here's something new. A Gryffindor I don't detest." And all because she insulted Ron Weasley. Yes, that actually made perfect sense.
"She's Muggle-born you git." Ron snapped, as if making Draco hate her would somehow count as defending Gwen.
Draco just shrugged, "Any friend of Jack Harkness..."
"Careful, Draco. That's a dangerous promise." Jack taunted, grinning.
"No idea what this will do to Muggle toys, but..." Draco waved his wand at the broken pieces of tech in Tosh's hands, "Reparo."
The thing Jack really didn't get about that spell was that you could cast it on any broken thing you had all the pieces of, even if you didn't know how it was supposed to fit together. And sure enough, the three devices reassembled themselves before the team's bewildered eyes.
But then the GPS shorted out, explosively.
The other two seemed intact and unaffected, though.
"Careful you don't electrocute yourself on those, Tosh." Owen warned, eyeing Malfoy with deep scepticism.
"The hell are you playing at Malfoy?" Ron snapped, turning on him and now ignoring the Torchwood team. "You're just trying to make me look like the bad guy here!"
"Is that a flawed representation, Weasley?" Draco asked sceptically, smirking all the same.
"Should we hex him while his back's turned?" Ianto asked in a low whisper, glancing up at Jack. The very fact he was suggesting it said just how bad an impression Ron had managed to make on him.
"This fork literally has his name on it." Owen put in quietly, "And shoulder wounds aren't that serious..."
"You would know." Ianto smirked darkly. That one memorable time that he had actually shot Owen had been in the shoulder, and if Owen's scowl was anything to go by he remembered this detail all too clearly.
"You know what? You can all just piss off!" Ron yelled, before shoving past Draco and storming off in a sulk.
Draco laughed, turning back to the Torchwood team, "So you're gonna let me report him, right?"
"Wrong." Jack said, helping Tosh put the last of her things into the trunk and closing the lid. To the team he quickly commanded, "You guys go find a compartment here, I'll catch up. And Ianto, if you see Harry Potter, you know what to do."
Ianto nodded curtly, and he and Owen began to haul the exceptionally heavy trunk on down the train, with Tosh hovering next to it protectively. Gwen shot one last look over her shoulder at Jack and Draco, then turned and followed the others.
"You're really going to let him get away with doing that to your little girlfriend?" Draco asked.
"She's not my girlfriend." Jack muttered, casually guiding Draco to the end of the carriage.
"Really?" Draco said, glancing back at the team as they departed. "She's cute."
Between the carriages was a semi-enclosed walkway that nobody usually loitered in because it was very noisy and cold, and it was here that Jack stopped and closed the door to speak to Draco, "You know Weasley's right about Gwen and Tosh. They're both Muggle-born."
Draco shrugged, "Doesn't matter anyway. I think Hermione Granger is doable, doesn't mean I'm ever going to act on it."
"So your prejudiced, but you can still ogle the girls even if they're not what you perceive to be your kind?"
"Your point?" Draco asked blankly.
Jack shrugged, "Nevermind. Look, what I need to ask you is what you want to gain from the impending war."
"What do you mean, exactly?" Draco asked warily.
"What do you want?" Jack asked as if it was the simplest question in the world, "And I mean this very specifically, what do you want, not what does your father want or what is expected of you. What do you want?"
Draco stared at him for several tense seconds, before finally shaking his head very slightly, "I'm not really sure."
"Good." Jack grinned brightly as if this was an excellent answer.
"What?" Draco asked blankly, "How is not knowing a good answer?"
"Because it means you're not reading from somebody else's script." Jack laughed, "When you do know the answer, please let me know. I want to stay friends, remember?"
Draco blinked, realising that yes, the word 'friend' had been used several times during their acquaintance. Draco had a gold-digging girlfriend... he had mindless drone henchmen... he had sycophantic hangers-on... but Jack was the only one that had actively sought out his friendship for just that, with no visible strings attached.
"And if I give you the wrong answer, later?" Draco asked sceptically.
Jack shrugged once more, "Just because we're on opposite sides of a war, wouldn't mean we couldn't still be friends. It's been done before." It took a great deal of self-control for him not to say 'I've done it before' the way he would usually boast. But it was true that he had.
And more than just friends, at that.
Draco gave him a sceptically bemused look, "You hate Yaxley and Avery, and you made it very clear why. I think I know where you stand. Either way, I really don't want to lose you as an ally." he hesitated before adding, "Or a friend."
x x x
Harry had had a really bad summer, and the train ride to Hogwarts proved to be no better.
Luna Lovegood was an alright sort, if you could get past the air of weirdness she projected. Neville wasn't good at conversation even with those he was friends with. The result had been a rather boring journey until Ron and Hermione had returned. And then it had gotten worse, with Ron sulking darkly and Hermione seething in righteous indignation.
The only words exchanged were Hermione's angry snap of, "I never thought I'd agree with Malfoy, Ron, but..." She failed to find words- possibly a first ever- and instead she had let out an angry almost-growling noise, and proceeded to bury her nose in her book.
Ron hadn't deigned to explain either, simply sulked spectacularly. Harry hated it when the two of them fought, and tended to imagine it was how other kids might feel with their parents fight.
He was actually quite grateful to escape the train, when they finally made it to Hogsmeade station, and was happy to make his way up to the carriages with Luna and Neville instead of sticking around with his usual friends when they were being like this.
"Of course, they're not really magical at all." Luna was explaining chirpily to a befuddled Neville, "It's all just a conspiracy to keep the Muggles out." Harry couldn't even remember what she was talking about, only that it had been started by the words 'disillusionment charms'. Something called 'Weevils' had been mentioned, and whatever they were, they apparently really liked to eat small magical creatures like doxies and jarveys.
"Archie started it." Jack Harkness said, appearing suddenly behind Luna with the unsettling stealth usually reserved for vampires and serial killers in horror movies.
"Doxies, huh?" Ianto Jones asked clearly having followed Jack up here, but not having- or at least not using- the same level of stealth about it, "Must remember that one."
Luna smiled serenely, "Something looks different about you, today, Jack." she said, puzzling for a second, "Did you get new aftershave?"
"It looks different, so it just has to be the aftershave?" Ianto asked sceptically.
Luna shrugged vaguely, and turned around to face thin air in front of the carriage. Which she then began petting as if there was an animal there. Harry stared at her in confusion. Nobody else seemed bothered by her behaviour.
"You guys actually understand her, don't you?" Neville asked warily.
"Nobody understands Luna." Jack said bluntly, "We understand that fact."
"She's petting an imaginary animal." Harry exclaimed in confusion.
"No she's not." Jack said, elbowing Ianto sharply.
Ianto shot Neville and Luna a wary look, before quickly stepping closer to Harry, and before Harry could even ask what was going on Ianto had whispered two words in his ear that suddenly made a whole lot of sense out of why he was so calm and trusting of the Slytherin boy in their midst.
Harry blinked a few times, shook his head as the memories all fell into line again, and then asked, "What-? But-? How did I not know I knew that?"
"Sometimes it's difficult to see what's right in front of your face." Luna said vaguely, and Harry turned around to look at her.
Then he saw the imaginary animal she was still petting. Very much not imaginary anymore.
There were in fact two of them. They looked a bit like black horses, but they were thin and fleshless, like the skin was just stretched right over the bones. Their heads had an unnaturally reptilian look to them, somewhat like a dragon, and huge leathery wings that put him in mind of giant bats, folded back against their bodies. Their eerie white eyes stared unblinkingly in no direction you could really tell when the eyes were all white.
Just something about them really made him feel like if Death himself had a horse, it would be one of these.
Harry stumbled backwards, away from them. "What are those things?" he yelled, shocked.
Neville blinked at him cluelessly, "You didn't notice them before?" he asked blankly, before looking around nervously as if checking for something that he really didn't want to find.
"They're called Thestrals." Ianto said blandly, "And you can only see them if you've seen death... which might be why you couldn't see them before I told you... that." He once more glanced warily at Luna and Neville, still apparently incredibly unsure of having this conversation in front of them.
"How did I even forget about it?" Harry asked, utterly dumbfounded.
"We figured if a certain person ever found out, the planet might just implode." Jack said casually, with a tone of one quoting a line he had said or heard before, but quite liked so decided to repeat it to ever new person he told about this. "So we used the Fidelius charm."
"Oh. But wouldn't that break something?" Luna asked curiously, turning now to face Jack, "A Secret big enough to hide Thestrals too... I don't much care to know who died, but what if somebody else knew and doesn't remember, now, too?"
"Let's see." Ianto said, counting on his fingers, "Jack, Gwen, Owen, Tosh, Lassie, Harry... nope, we've covered everybody."
Jack suddenly turned towards the carriage and hit his head almost violently against the side of it, "You have to tell the Doctor." he mumbled darkly.
"Oh, do I have to?" Ianto protested, "It'd be more fun if we don't."
"Luna's right... might just make his brain implode." Jack explained.
Ianto remained impassive, "Like I said, it'd be more fun if we don't."
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