With the deadline for the end of the Hogwarts school fast approaching, Petunia had invited Molly over for afternoon Tea while Karen was at work with Ceeley as her magic was still somewhat unreliable in public.
"How have you been keeping?"
Petunia laughs before continuing, "Though it's not like we don't see enough of each other, but it seems like the right way to start with a cup of tea."
"I know what you mean, but nothing much has changed since I saw you on Monday. How about you?"
"I think I've finally got all of Harry's finances and historical issues sorted out, and I'm starting to wonder where I'm going to go next. As it seems that with Magic, and especially with Ceeley around as well, the housework is really now only half an hour of work a day."
"I'm still not entirely sure how you manage to do so much around the house in such little time, I know I had a big family, but even so, everything seems to take so much longer than it does for you."
"It's the mix of muggle and magical. As long as I can keep my magic under control I can use the washing machine, tumble dryer, food processor, though I don't use that as much as I used to since we got those knives, and hoover. To be fair, it was only when… damn it, who was it that suggested it, blast… thingy pointed out that the animation charm could be used on the hose as easily as it could on a pineapple as they suggest in the books, that that became less of an issue, same with the duster."
"How do you keep it secret then?"
"I do it in the mornings before the curtains are opened downstairs, and no-one can see me doing it upstairs, obviously that's on the rare occasion that Ceeley hasn't done the cleaning before me."
"You mentioned her, but where is she?"
"She goes to work with Karen to help warn her when her magic is going out of control, and also to help cover things up if it does."
"I still don't understand how both of you are still having accidental magic at your age."
"It's to do with how in touch we are with our magic, as we were too old to attend Hogwarts when our magic stabilised enough to be classed as magical, we were never able buy a wand as legally only a witch or wizard can own a wand."
"But you're a witch aren't you?"
"Ah, you'd think that, but the laws actually define a witch or wizard as a magical under the age of 17 that has yet to finish their wanded owls, or a magical that has completed their wanded owls."
"Oh, yes, you told me about that before."
"I did. How do you think Dudley and Ginny are doing with their studies, do you feel like they're prepared to start Hogwarts next year?"
"Oh yes, more than ready, though Dudley had some trouble to start with, it was nothing a couple of stinging hexes and a sticking charm couldn't fix. Now they're both bouncing off each other. Morgana, the other day Ginny remembered that Little Luna existed and took Dudley to meet her. With the way she's improved since you got involve I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't the first Weasley in 200 years to be sorted into Ravenclaw."
"Really? Oh, yes, now she's got over her crush on your Harry, she's moved her fixation on Hermione and Karen, I didn't realise that Karen had so many Mastery qualifications until Ginny told me."
"Oh, yes, that was a surprise to me too, but she brushed it off as one of those things one does when they work in a quiet library. I didn't even know you needed a Mastery to be a librarian until she told me."
"So why were you asking about how the two children were getting on?"
"As you know, I was in an abusive relationship before Harry got his letter." Molly nodded sympathetically.
"Well, it turns out that he was a large part of why my magic came out, as it got really bad once the letter arrived. But we didn't know anything about the magical world at that point. So, as Dudley didn't get a letter, he went to a muggle school till Christmas, but Vernon's disappearance hit him hard and we pulled him due to the bullying. As I couldn't hide the fact that I have magic from him, I promised him that if he improved enough, I'd take him to St Mungo's to get tested and if he had enough magic he'd be able to go to Hogwarts."
"Oh, I think he'll do more than well enough, as they've been looking up so much stuff it's been driving me spare as I don't have the answers to the questions they keep asking. It's why I left them with Arthur while I escaped to have a cup of tea, though I'm not sure who's doing the teaching whenever he's involved. You know, teaching Dudley brought into start relief just how much I do that I take for granted these days. As once he got over his issues of needing to do chores with Ginny, he started bombarding me with so many questions about what I do around the house that I found myself flicking through some of my old textbooks in the evenings just to refresh my memory on why I do them the way I do."
"Tell me about it, I had the same thing with Ginny, all of those books I had to buy just to be able to answer questions like, how to the lights work."
The conversation continued for the rest of the afternoon until the Floo chimed to say that someone was coming through.
Dudley came barrelling into the living room, the door swinging open into the wall with a bang which caused him to freeze with a wince, something that Petunia noted he wouldn't have done a year ago.
"Sorry! Can Luna come round with Ginny so that we can play on the console?"
"What do you think Molly?" Petunia said with a smile.
"As long as they're gentle with the doors I don't think it would be a problem. Have you checked with Xeno whether it's ok?"
"Ah, I'll just go and check."
"Invite him over for a cup of tea while you're at it." Petunia called after Dudley before getting up to check that the terylene curtains were securely in place.
"Molly, would you mind putting a mild obscuring charm on these just in case it get dark and we forget, as I don't know how comfortable, Xeno wasn't it, will be in a muggle area."
Molly reaches into her handbag and pulls out her wand to cast the charms, "Oh good point… yes very good point."
After she'd been introduced to a person who looked like they'd stolen the clothes from a hippy commune and then made robes from them, she had quite a pleasant evening, even if it did get stranger the longer it went on.
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A few days later she took Dudley into her meditation room to talk to him.
"Dudley, I promised at Christmas that I'd try to make you magical if you did well with your studies."
A hopeful look came over his face as she continued. "I spoke with Molly the other day, and she things you've been doing really well, Karen does too."
"Does that mean that I can become magical?"
She laughed at the eagerness in his voice, "Maybe, I need to know that you're ready for it as it will make things harder for you. After all, playing with Piers or Malcom would be much more complicated if you have to worry about not telling him about magic."
Dudley looks down at his hands before replying in a small voice, "I don't think that will be a problem, Ginny and I met them at Easter, and when I wouldn't go to the offie with them, and wouldn't stop hanging around with Ginny they beat us up. And taunted me with the fact I was a loser for not going back to school."
"Oh Dudley, why didn't you tell me?"
"We didn't want to worry you, as it was just the once and you had so much going on with Harry."
"Oh you silly boy, you are my son, and I love you, I always will. I will also always make time for you if something is wrong, or even if you just want to have a cup of tea while we watch TV."
"But over Christmas…"
"You know that Karen became magical over Christmas?"
"I do, but…"
"What you probably don't know is just how dangerous it was for us to do it."
"I do, but… What do you mean dangerous?"
"Do you remember when we took you on holiday to the beach when you were 8?"
"Yes, it was great."
"Do you remember what the lifeguard told you about swimming in the sea?"
"No?"
Petunia sighed, "Ok. When I give you magic I'm going to have to take you somewhere where there is a lot of magic so that you adapt to it. "However getting there is like trying to swim with the tide, and if I'm not careful I could be swept away with you and disappear never to be seen again."
"I think Ginny and I read about that when we were studying with Karen."
She let's out a sigh of relief as it makes the explanation easier, "That's brilliant, well done on remembering that. Now at Christmas I'd been practicing to try and learn to swim in these currents safely, but I'd only managed to get a little way out. However, I needed to take Karen much deeper than I'd ever gone before.
"When we got that note from the Ministry on Christmas Eve telling me that they were going to take her away and I panicked. I made mistakes that if I'd been thinking more clearly would never have been made and you paid for that with your nightmares. I know you've still been having them. If we could have returned your memories more gently we would have done, but I didn't want Nixie to cause any problems so I left her out of my rooms, which left you as the only person that had any magic she could feed on. I do hope that you can see Nixie when we've got you magic. But I hope that we don't go anywhere near the world that she comes from, as that's too close to where I've almost died twice. What we will do instead is hang around there for a while... Sorry, I side tracked, what was happening there isn't that you were bothering me with your needs, it was that I had so many things going on that I didn't have time to look at any of them properly. For that I'm sorry, and I'm sorry that I didn't notice that it had left you with the impression that I didn't have time for you. I can't promise that similar things won't happen again, but I can't see any reason why it should."
After a moment while Dudley worked out that Petunia wasn't going to add anything, he angrily dashed the few tears away from his eyes. "When can we do it?"
"We could do it tonight if you want."
"Can Ginny come?"
"I'm afraid she can't honey, if you want to wait for another day you can ask her Mum, and if she says yes I can try as she hasn't received her Hogwarts letter yet."
"Could we wait for the weekend so that I can ask?"
"If that's what you want."
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A few days later, a very uncomfortable conversation with Molly, Arthur, Amelia Bones, Karen, and an unspeakable of all things. Petunia was sitting in her meditation room with an audience consisting of the people at the meeting, Healer Gosling, and Healer Andromeda Tonks. She was in the middle of an argument with them as they were arguing that they should be allowed to stay awake to observe, while both She and Karen were trying to impress on them just how stupid an idea that was.
Petunia lets out a frustrated scream. "OK, apart from Karen and myself, does anyone here actually have any expertise in what we're going to be doing?"
Lots of shaking heads.
"And you're not going to accept my word for it being dangerous."
"I don't see why we should, as you don't exactly have any credentials."
"OK, stay there, I'll be right back. Harry's going to kill me for this." Petunia storms off to where the letter from Lily was kept, and brings it back and shoves it at Amelia.
"Madam Bones, is this authentic?"
Amelia waves her wand over the parchment a few times, "I believe it is, but without proper analysis I couldn't say for definite. I'm willing to accept it's authentic for tonight though."
"Fine, I'd like you to read the bit about learning to meditate and why harry has to do it."
Everyone waited a few minutes until she had, "OK?"
"Do you know what Occulumancy is?"
Everyone apart from the Weasleys nodded.
"What does the letter say about Occulumancy?"
"or a book on Occulumancy and don't move on from calming your mind until you've found your magic."
"How many of you lingered long enough to find your magic if you've even practiced Occulumancy in the first place?"
The unspeakable spoke up, "I have, it's standard training."
"Did you then learn to make it more or less active?"
"We learnt how to flare it in order to increase the strength of our spells."
"Which is the exact opposite of what you need to be able to do. Flaring your magic would be like shooting yourself out of a canon in order to land in a shallow pond 10 feet away. If one of the healers can monitor our magic, Karen and I can demonstrate the control you need over your magic before you can even start to try what I'm going to do, and Karen is going to follow along only as far as she feels is safe."
Andromeda turns to Gosling, "You're the Master Healer, so over to you."
"Yes, I can monitor magic, though it's going to be unreliable due to your situation."
"Do your best."
They then both start to meditate and wait for Gosling to say that she's monitoring, the unspeakable adding their own spells.
"Andromeda, could you double check my results please, the standard spells should work."
Andromeda cast her spells a couple of times, then made a couple of notes and cast them again.
"They're reading as having negligible levels of magic, same as I'd expect a muggle to have. How the hell are you doing that?"
"That's what's needed to just stay here, we're going to adjust to where I know I'd need to keep it just to stay in the next world."
"Nought point one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, One… Two… And Karen is at 3.5. How the hell is that possible?"
Petunia touches Karen's shoulder, "You can stop now. Until you can hold that first one and have a conversation you will be pulled into the depths of The Dream with no way of rescue. Once you can have a conversation you can try to release your magic slowly, and even then you'll find it's very difficult as it tries to draw you in and if you're not careful it will pull you deep and your only hope is to slam your magic back to nearly nothing before you pass the point where your body can exist."
The unspeakable managed to look disgruntled in their concealing robes and disappears with a soft pop.
"Well, they didn't seem happy, anyone else or should you all conjure some beds in the other rooms of the house and set an alarm for 2 AM so that you can check we came back OK?"
With that Karen cuddled with Petunia until she had calmed down enough to meditate with a clear head, while the other adults found places to sleep.
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At 10 to 1 Petunia and Karen woke the kids and gave them a quick snack. Once they were fully awake Petunia had them both sit in front of her.
"Ginny, I know you've been practicing your meditation with Dudley.", Ginny gives her a guilty look
"If I had a problem with it I'd have told you off when I caught you both doing it in Dudley's room. Given how long you've been doing it, I imagine that you've been able to touch your magic."
Ginny nods.
"Does it feel settled or is it still changing?"
"It feels mostly settled, though it does jump round a bit."
"Ok, we'll start early, and I'd like you to concentrate on reducing your magic as much as possible, as I don't want you to accidently be pulled in further. I don't think it will be a problem, but I'd rather take as many precautions as I can, do you think you can do that?"
Ginny nods, and then when Petunia is still waiting says, "I can."
"Good, now the next thing is that I need both of you to hold on to me and not let go until we come back here. If we have to leave quickly you could find yourself trapped there. We'd then be lucky to find you again as distance doesn't equate well between worlds. Karen, I'll wait for you to arrive in each world before we move onto the next, if you don't arrive I'll come back and we'll wait for half an hour before returning home."
"Sounds good."
They all settled in to meditate and wait for The Dream to begin. Once it did Ginny involuntarily let out a whispered "Merlin" as she felt the tug on her magic. She opened her eyes to look around as the walls greyed out to reveal a starlit sky, a sliver of moon hanging just over the horizon in front of her, as she looked around in wonder she saw a second moon that was half full above their heads. The moonlight illuminated the ground around them and she saw Lizards with six legs frozen on rocks, their tongues darting out tasting the air. Karen slowly faded in beside them and Petunia looked at her with a silent question. Karen responded with a nod and then the world started to fade into a rainforest, the night lit by a brilliant full moon that filtered through the canopy, Ginny could hear the sounds of animals moving around in the deeper forest. As Karen faded in beside them Petunia glanced at her and nodded, then the world started to fade into an icy tundra, the sun providing scant warmth as it lit up the strange plant life. A small white rabbit with a short horn on its head darted behind a bush at their appearance and unfamiliar birds whirled and spun overhead. Again, they faded out once Karen arrived, this time to a meadow where a few birds flew around with tentacles, grabbing bugs out of the air. This time Karen arrived and started fading again before she stabilised, so Petunia paused for a moment.
"Are you ok?"
"Yeah, this is harder than it looks."
"OK, let me know when you're ready."
A minute later they moved on while Petunia was describing how this was the last world she remembered clearly on her first time through, as those birds also eat spells. Ginny was so absorbed in her story that she missed the next couple of worlds. She certainly noticed their arrival at the next world for two reasons, the first was that her magic was singing inside her, it seemed to be trying to harmonise with the world around it but kept stuttering. The second was that Karen didn't arrive. She looked around in wonder as insects that looked like they were made from pure magic flitted around and strange birds that bore some similarity to the ones they'd seen before flew around catching the insects.
"Mrs Dursley."
"Call me Aunt or Petunia, you know me to well to be that formal."
"Ok, Aunt Petunia, didn't we see birds like those a few minutes ago?"
"You know, I think we did, I wonder if they managed to migrate accidentally. Ok we're going back one world as Karen isn't here, then we can have a break and a drink. How are you both doing."
Ginny nudges Dudley as the world fades around them and Karen comes into view. He stops doing a goldfish impression and looks around at them.
"Huh?"
"How are you doing Dudleykins?" Petunia asks him, to which he blushes at the nickname.
"This is amazing, I can't wait until I can do this."
"It's going to be a long time yet, this is as far as I can go, and I've been practicing for a month or so."
Karen pulled out some paper cups and a bottle of water and handed around some biscuits while they relaxed. Petunia wouldn't let the children go beyond arms reach, although they were allowed to stand up and stretch their legs. Karen took the opportunity to do so as well. They were almost at their half an hour when they heard the sound of running footsteps from behind a rocky outcrop.
Petunia immediately called the children to hold her hands and started to return to earth. The running immediately turned towards them and they saw a House elf running towards them cradling a bundle in it's arms, it looked back desperately and popped out only to reappear where it left, desperation on it's face.
Bounding up on the rock behind it a creature that looked like a cross between a wolf and a porcupine looked down at the two groups. A faint heat haze appeared over it's back as several of the quills disappeared and reappeared around the elf, who desperately popped again just as the quills passed though it's space. It managed to appear a couple of paces closer to them and Ginny could clearly see that it was carrying a baby.
The world was fading out as she wrenched her hand from Petunias grasp and ran over to the elf. Karen desperately chased after her as the thing disappeared from the rock and appeared a few strides behind the elf. Ginny and Karen both dived forward at the same time, and by some miracle Karen managed to grab Ginny's foot as she slammed her magic closed, the worlds passing in a flicker of light before she found herself lying in the middle of a road holding Ginny's leg.
