AN: You may all thank Petrificus Somewhatus who proves in Sliding Doors a story doesn't have to be finished to be great. He inspired me to finish this story. I was going to wait until the next movie comes out, but who knows where I'll be then. So this fic is about to unravel the mystery I started with the title.

Buckle the fuck up.

P.S. Star Wars fans, I'm coming back to you very soon :D

KEYNotes: I reverence a real place but none of its history. Also, the Memories James and Lily got were the purely magical ones of this timeline (Henry Peverell) not Harry Potter from the canon timeline.

Chapter 27 - Cats and Cubs on All Hallows Eve

"Cats. Nothing but cats," Narcissa answered with a sigh, putting down her book, "Nothing but cats."

Cygnus didn't even lower his paper as he asked, "What do cats have to do with finding the Alantis?"

"Not Alantis, Papa, the heart of all magic," Narcissa told him.

Cygnus glanced over his paper, "Apologies, my dear."

Harry fought not to smirk, he was growing quite fond of his father-in-law and uncle-law. Both were relatively quiet men with a sharp wit and dry humour.

They complained about absolutely nothing. Orion would make tea for everyone. Both appeared happy with whatever Harry made for meals. He also told great stories that had Teddy and Nym wrapped around his finger.

True, most of those fantastical stories had dark undertones, but then, most fairytales did.

Harry shifted on his feet, rocking the infant in his arms.

Helix Shacklebolt Peverell was three weeks old and the single best thing to happen to Harry in October.

Narcissa had convinced Harry to adopt the newborn, though in all honesty, 'convincing' was more like agreeing. As soon as Harry saw the babe he wanted him in their lives.

That he and Narcissa were actively trying to have their own was another thing that hadn't taken much convincing. Though they hadn't been successful yet it wasn't for lack of trying.

Bellatrix was still at home healing, though Kingsley visited almost every other day. Helix's birth parents may not be the ones to raise him, but the boy would grow up knowing and being loved by them.

Teddy and Nym were already fond of their newest cousin, though as he was infant and they were hardly five there were limits. Much like liking a puppy they couldn't play with.

"What about cats exactly?" Harry asked. The summer had passed too quickly with moving into a new house in Hogsmeade, enjoying time with Teddy, their extended families, being newly wedded by Voldemort's curse, preparing for a new baby, and researching the foundation of magic. Not to mention adjusting to life with Cygnus, Orion, Sirius, and Regulus Black.

Sirius and Regulus were a joy, even if Sirius spent most of his time at James's, James becoming somewhat reluctant to deal with the time travel nature of their relationship. Remus also spent more time at James'. Hope probably had visited more than Remus had.

Regulus was as quiet as his father and read as much. It pleased Harry to see Regulus follow his father around, utterly relaxed and happy reading in the same room together. Even Sirius seemed quietly awed about being able to sit with his father and have nothing bad happen. It made Harry realize how much the two Black matriarchs had ruined for their children. If just spending peaceful time in the same room with one of your parents was a novelty, something was wrong.

Funnily enough, despite how peaceful the summer had been, Cygnus and Orion had been in the news far more often than Harry was. Their public divorces had broken their society, especially as no one seemed able to blame them.

Both their wives had been ruined and even though they kept their homes, Harry hadn't realized how ruining their reputation had been worse than dementors to the witches.

Narcisssa had claimed lead on. Mostly because while he was cooking and baking, Teddy and Nym being his assistants -assistants who considerably more time to the process- she would research.

Narcissa had no interest in the kitchen whatsoever.

Harry was okay with that, the large new kitchen becoming his space and the centre of his new home.

Cygnus would sit at the island table on the side of the chaos, supposedly impassive, but Harry had caught him hiding quite a few smiles behind his tea cups at his grandchildren's antics. Orion was much more of a night owl, but when he did manage to get up, he claimed the armchair by the fireplace and would read consistently.

Harry most have gotten through a twenty books each week. Which seemed to be a large component to the full library that nearly doubled the size of their house Narcissa had added.

"They are the guardians of the portal. Apparently Morganna liked cats, is really the only thing I can conclude."

Harry shook his head, glancing down at the sleeping babe, "I can't help at this point, I can't read ancient runes."

Narcissa smiled up at him, her beautiful hair braided back from her face. Despite neither of them getting much sleep recently, she was as lovely as ever, "Aren't you going to be late?"

He narrowed his gaze on her, "You encouraged me to go back to work so you could have more time with the baby."

"Of course," she said with a smirk, "But then you can blame yourself for not agreeing to take Helix until he was being born."

Harry sighed, but passed the baby to a delighted Narcissa.

Narcissa was every bit the happy new mother.

And Harry was happier for seeing her this way.

Harry bent to kiss her cheek, public displays of intimacy wasn't something they did in front of Narcissa's apart from some long looks, eyebrow waggles, and kisses on the cheek. "Have a wonderful day, love."

She smiled up at him, "You too, Harry."

"Teddy," he called at regular speaking volume, "time to go."

Teddy came sprinting out of his room, backpack on, Harry swept the boy up in his arms as Teddy began talking a mile a minute about the new magical creature Hagrid had told him about yesterday that he needed to tell Nym about.

They waved at the door, Teddy blew Narcissa and Cygnus kisses, "Bye Momma Cissa, Grandpa Cyg, Grandpa Orin, and baby!"

Narcissa blew him a kiss back and Cygnus merely raised a hand in farewell. Orion, who was in the living room and out of sight didn't bother responding.

He set Teddy back on his feet once they passed the main juncture of buildings in the town. Harry could easily have apperated to the castle, but he had found the long walk in the morning helped Teddy stay settled for the day. Especially days like today.

A full moon day, which was increasingly seeming to make Teddy more hyperactive with every passing month.

Oh, and today was also Halloween.

Something that was easy not to worry about with a baby in his arms, as he was besotted as Narcissa with having another son.

But it was Halloween.

"You be good for Hagrid today," Harry said to Teddy who was skipping by his side, looking like a mini-him. "I mean it, Teddy, you be on your very best behaviour today."

"I will, Daddy," Teddy said, caught up in his own thoughts as he all but ran in the direction of Hagrid's hut.

Harry tried to bury his anxiety, he regretted not calling in sick.

But not nearly as much as he would before the day was out.

It was an odd start of the term for James for a number of reasons.

Setting the whole issue of the professor being his future son, or version of him, there was the reminder that they were short a friend and that was entirely their fault.

James didn't know why he thought the summer would magically erase his guilt, that a new year would be a new start for them. It wasn't. It took the sparkle out of their fun.

Well, it had for James.

Sirius and Remus seemed happier than James had ever seen them. Sirius even talked about his father and brother in casual conversation. Sirius talking about his family in any positive light was… odd.

Remus also, seemed more content. Apparently having so many people in his life know he was a werewolf and not mind in the slightest had done wonders to his self confidence.

Well, that, and Remus had stopped bowing out a fight ever since Peter had died.

Sirius was grinning as they left DADA, "Isn't Professor Rell the best?"

James shook his head as they walked down to lunch, "It's so weird that our son is our proff-"

"He isn't our son," Lily snapped startling them.

"Lily?" James asked uncertainty, turning to face her.

"He's family," Lily clarified, "he's blood but he isn't our son. We aren't the James and Lily that gave our lives for him. We aren't- If we don't have a son, he we don't end up together, he will still exist. Which means he isn't ours and aren't his. We are just relatives."

James bit his lip, he had kind of been avoiding Lily but his heart sank at the idea that she didn't want to ever be with him.

Lily caught his deflated look and rolled her eyes, "I didn't mean we can't get together. I just meant we don't need to in order to keep Professor Peverell around."

James smiled slightly, but before he could say anything to that open window, Remus asked, "How do you know that?"

Lily smiled, they had stopped walking and the lunch crowd had long passed, "The library of course."

Sirius gasped, "Lily Evans prioritizing something over school work, the world must be ending."

She rolled her emerald eyes again, "Come on, I need to show you three something."

James raised a brow, "In the library?"

"Of course," she said, taking him by the arm, Sirius and Remus following after them as Lily dragged him along.

"What about lunch?" he jested just to get a reaction out of her.

"This is more important!" she almost shouted.

James smiled, willingly letting himself get dragged along.

She pulled what seemed like a hundred books from her bag when they got to one of the back tables.

Sirius whistled, "If I ever wondered why you had higher grades than Remus."

Remus huffed, "She's better at Potions, and I'm better at Transfiguration."

Lily waved it away, "Look at this."

James refocused on the problem at hand and read the page out loud.

"Many believe the Morganna a myth, but in Merlin's old journals, the wizard who was said to have last met the Morganna, he references a poem and warns his notes that the tempering with such powers was beyond what any human could hope to marshal;

Fear that which is hidden and longs to be found

Trust not the darkness that claims to shelter the light

Be wary of secrets that desire to be told

Pay no heed to the magic that wishes to be unbound.

"Creepy," James finished after he was done reading, "What does any of it mean?"

"Something to do with cats," Lily answered.

The three of them gave her equal looks of bewilderment.

She sighed, "Listen, James, what you in experienced, it was magic, just magic. Someone or something is trying to tell us something."

"Okay," James said and tapped a finger on the page, "But whatever this is, it's telling us not to get involved."

Lily flipped open another book, "Yeah, by a wizard, but I found a book translated from a Mer manuscript. The scholar says that Alantis-"

"Atlantis?" Sirius interrupted, "Isn't that a muggle thing?"

Lily glared at him, pushing back her long red hair, "Don't interrupt, as I was saying, the scholar seems to think that Alantis or rather, Atlanta, is what the Ocean Mers call Morgana. And every source I can find that isn't coming from wizards or witches is trying to unearth Morgana. It's like she is lost and they are trying to free her, but they don't know where she is. She only talks to people through dreams."

James shook his head, "Lily, I don't know what you are reading but none of this makes any sense. Also, no woman talked to us in our dreams. It was just the Dark Lord."

"How did Harry Potter travel back in time?" Lily asked.

"I have no idea," he said, "even he doesn't know."

"Henry Peverell exists," she said emphatically, "I researched him this summer. I found old newspapers about his marriage, his house burning, and his leaving work at the library. How can one man be two people?"

"That is the question," Sirius said.

She smiled, "The answer is magic."

Sirius snorted, "No? Really? I take it back, Remus is the smarter one."

She glared at him, "You don't get it. I mean raw magic. Magic doesn't have limits. Explain to me how you can enlarge matter, how you can take away an objects mass, how you make something out of nothing? Because you three grow up with it, you fail to see how impossible it all is. What happened to Professor Peverell is just one more impossible thing. It doesn't make sense because it doesn't have to. Magic is limitless."

James sighed, "No, Lily, even magic has limits."

"Does it?" she challenged, "or is it humans who have limits? Because the thing in common I've found with all these books is that the writers all assume themselves to be the greatest, to have the strongest magic, but wizards and witches aren't the only beings out there who can use magic, are we?"

James exchanged a look with Sirius.

Remus asked, "Alright, so what do you actually know? You can't really believe this has anything to do with Merlin or Morgana, can you?"

She nodded, "I do in fact, because Merlin is the only reference I can find about visions like ours. What James and I experienced wasn't a vision like in divinations, it was something else, something real. Like, well-"

"Well what?" Sirius asked.

"I think it was like a peek into another world, another dimension connected to our own," she said.

James blinked, "Lily, that's really advanced magic. People who go chasing portals to other dimensions tend not to come back."

"So it is possible?" Lily asked, looking far too eager.

Sirius shook his head, "Possible and advisable are two different things, Lils."

She frowned, "I didn't go looking for this. If I had to experience being tortured to death, I would like to know why? I have to believe there was a reason for it, I have to."

James sighed, "You're not going to find anything in books, trust me, if it could be solved by a library it would have been solved by now. Besides, we saw something belonged to Professor Rell's past in our timeline. Other dimensions, portals, those things belong to the ministry and the Department of Mysteries. "

"I know but-"

Sirius cut her off, "No, you don't know. Did you know that people who work in that job have to basically erase the personal history? That they have to give up having families and getting married and having their names even listed under ministry employ."

"No," she said, "Why would-?"

"Because a lot of them end up dead," Sirius finished, "You can't go playing with magic-"

"I don't want the magic, I just want to understand what is happening!" Lily roared, standing to her feet and pointing a finger at Sirius, "I died, I was tortured and I was keeping a secret that even I can't remember. I died for something I don't understand. I need to understand!"

They were all silent, and the part of James that he had been ignoring, that felt the same exact way asked, "Where do we start?"

Lily's anger deflated and she met his gaze, "The Forbidden Forest. I don't know how to talk to a merperson, but I think the centaurs might-"

"You think centaurs will help a couple of wizards and a witch?" Sirius asked. "Again, I thought you were better in history than Remus."

"We aren't adults," she said, "we don't count, as far as I can tell a centaur has never killed another's young before."

"And the Forbidden Forest?" Remus asked, acting as if they never went into the forest.

"It's still daylight," she said, "We should be fine."

James felt a sudden surge of excitement, maybe they would get some answers, sure, centaurs cared more about the stars than anything else, but maybe if they asked the right questions…

Sirius rolled his eyes, "Great, lets go antagonize some centaurs, this is going to end well."

James threw an arm around his shoulder, "Just look at this way, Padfoot, you'll have some stories to tell Teddy."

Sirius smirked, "He'll be jealous he wasn't there."

Remus chuckled, "I'm certain of that."

Lily, who already had her stack of books tucked back into her what had to be expanded bag, brushed by them, "Let's go, boys."

Harry had just gotten through his last lecture when the absolute worst happened.

Hagrid ran in, nearly crushing a few first years who scurried out of his way.

Harry already had his wand out. "What happened?" he demanded.

Hagrid had tears in his eyes and spoke in a low voice as the last of the students exited, "He transformed, Rell, I-"

Harry felt the blood drain from his face, "No."

"I tried to catch'em, honest I did, but he's so little and- I know you'd want to know-"

Harry didn't hear the rest of what Hagrid had to say because he was already gone.

Sirius huffed, "We got lost, how did we get lost?"

Remus wasn't looking so hot, usually it was the day after the full moon they had to worry but with Lily here, Remus's anxiety was stirring the wolf that lived inside him.

In less than an hour the sun was going to start to set and then they were going to be in trouble.

"Lily," James called, "We need to turn back."

She gave them a stubborn look, "We haven't found the centaurs yet."

Sirius tried coming up with an excuse, but for the first time ever, Remus said, "No, Lily, we have to go back, or at least you do."

"Why?" she asked turning on him.

He looked her dead in the eye and said, "Because I'm a werewolf."

Lily paused.

Sirius held his breath, waiting for her to crush Remus's heart. Remus had always respected Lily but he was always afraid of making new friends for this very reason.

For the fear that others would fear and hate him.

But Lily just said, "Oh, um," she looked around, "How do we get back again?"

Sirius grinned and was about to turn into his animal form when the centaurs showed up.

Bows drawn.

The four of them went back to back in a small circles, hands near their wands, but none of them drew on the creatures that could kill them first.

"What are you doing in our forest?"

Lily, like a true Gryffindor, stood taller, "We've come to ask you about Morgana."

"Actually," James said, "We're trying to get back to the castle, mind pointing the way?"

"Who asks this?" asked a centaur with surprisingly blue eyes and white blonde hair.

Another snarled, "What are children doing looking for Morgana?"

"James and I had visions of her," Lily lied.

All the bows lowered at once and the centaurs began a furious conversation between themselves.

"As it was foretold!"

"The shifting of the stars!"

"Tonight is that night!"

"Peverell didn't let us down after all."

"The younger must have, if the Morgana had to speak to children."

"Why do we need the humans anyway?"

"Because it was the humans that bound her!"

Sirius was disturbed at what he was hearing, because what he was hearing was not only that Lily had been right about Morgana being a belief shared by magical creatures but that Uncle Rell was a part of it.

Sirius had had the best summer of his life living with the Peverells. He had actually been able to spend time with his dad without wanting to kill something. He had never realized that his dad didn't have the same opinions as his grandfather Pollux and his mother and aunt. He was just a quiet man.

And when he asked why he never spoke up against Mom, he had actually answered, Because she would have killed me in my sleep or poisoned me and she would have done worse to you. I am proud of you son, and I am proud of what you have done to keep Regulus safe.

"It is now or never!" one of the centaurs yelled.

"We were going to go ourselves, we have just enough dust-"

"We don't have the power to unleash her! We need a wizard-"

"These children don't have the power to do it!" Another roared.

Sirius was watching the light die, and he grabbed James wrist, and said in a low urgent tone, "Prongs, transform, you can out run Remus even if Lily is on your back."

"What?" Lily hissed, "How would that make us faster?"

James grinned, and with a mischievous light in his hazel eyes that Sirius hadn't seen in a while, he dropped to the forest floor and army crawled between Lily's feet.

Lily's outraged exclamation was swallowed by a shriek as James transformed. A moment later James was snorting in his buck form with a spooked Lily clinging to his back.

Sirius smiled innocently up at her, "James and I are the best at Transfiguration, Lily-Flower."

She scowled down at him, her flaming hair making her look ethereal sitting on a large antlered deer as if she and James had just stepped out of a fairytale.

Sirius stayed human so he could talk, "I'm sorry, we have to leave."

The centaurs had momentarily paused at James' transformation and Lily's shriek but they went back to ignoring them.

"Please," Remus begged, his skin sheened in sweat, "Just let her go."

A gruff looking centaur with a scared face, asked, "Tell us what Henry Peverell's weakness is and we will let you all pass."

Sirius gaped at them, "What do you want with him?"

The blonde spoke, "To save our kinds, humanity will destroy the earth, they have already run so many species into extinction. Magic and Earth cannot go on like this forever."

Sirius didn't exactly know what to say to that but just then three fuzzy shapes ran under the centaurs' legs.

The black shape he recognized as Teddy's cat, but the beige furball crashed into Remus's legs.

Lily exclaimed, "Hey, that's my cat!"

Sirius glanced at the orange furball, "Evans, that's the ugliest cat I've ever seen."

She sniffed, "He's half kneazle."

Sirius picked up Regina who cuddled against his chest as orange fuzzbutt hopped all the way up to James' antlers, and wasn't the least deterred when James tried to shake the thing off.

Remus kneeled by the beige fuzz that looked like a puppy, or maybe a coyote pup.

Remus's nostrils flared, "Teddy?"

Sirius gaped, "No way. But how-"

Teddy, the baby were-cub chumped down on Remus's hand.

"Ouch!" Remus exclaimed, but didn't hesitate from scooping up the pup. "Uncle Rell is going to be devastated."

"Are you okay?" Sirius asked, seeing the blood drip down Remus's hand, pity filling him, knowing that Teddy would share Remus's curse.

"Remus?" Lily asked.

Remus shook his head, gazing mournfully up at Lily, "I'm alright, I'm already infected."

"Uncle Rell?" the blonde asked, "Henry Peverell you mean?"

Sirius growled, "What's it to you? Let us go!"

"That's Peverell's son?" a chestnut male asked.

Sirius suddenly didn't want to answer that.

"I'm a werewolf," Remus announced, "If you don't let us go, we will all be in severe danger."

"It is the Peverell child," the scar faced one," the scared one said. "If we send them, Peverell will go after them."

Sirius pulled his wand, as did Lily and Remus, Regina mewed in protest, but Sirius held onto her, Teddy meanwhile seemed content in Remus's arms.

The blonde centaur whistled a bird call and pulled a satchel around his shoulder forward, and then another wave centaurs came forward out of the deepening shadows of the trees.

They had boobs and they were singing in strange, strange voices that sounded the earth rumbling in words that he couldn't understand, the meanings as distant yet as beautiful as stars.

The blonde centaur threw the satchel high into the sky above them, sparkling dust, rained down on them like a smashed bag of flour.

All of them, the cats, the cub, and the stag included, sneezed-

And were whisked away into another dimension.

AN: Please review, this story has two chapters left and will be finished this week. Anything you want to see, or know, or think, now would be the time to be heard. Thank you to all the reviewers!