Tamsin's Universe – December 1994

"I still can't believe you convinced me to go to a Malfoy Yule Ball," Harry said with a groan. She was in a navy slip and sitting next to a sapphire blue dress whose skirt twinkled in an accurate rendition of the winter night sky. Every so often a comet swept across it in a streaking blur.

"So you've said multiple times," Tamsin said with a sigh.

They were supposed to be getting ready in Harry's room before flooing to the party, but so far it was mainly Tamsin dressing while Harry did every other possible activity up to and including making the pairs of shoes do a little tap-dance.

"What do you think about, I dunno, making people talk in rhymes or turning blue the hair of everyone that drinks from the punch? Sirius gave me some delayed acting tablets so that we can be across the room when it happens," Harry continued on.

"No. Making connections is important. This whole night is important," Tamsin said.

This was Tamsin's debut into polite society, after all, and no one was going to spoil it. She wished once again that compulsions or even the imperius worked on Harry, but the girl was just too stubborn for them to make even a dent.

"Don't be a grump. Things like this are always so boring!"

"Not everyone has a whole life of fancy parties or a prominent last name to fall back on if there's any trouble," Tamsin said quietly.

Harry paused, letting the dark tights she was now fiddling with fall down on the bed as she looked up into Tamsin's eyes.

"Hey. You know you're just as good as anyone there. Better even. And one day you can rub it in their dumb, posh faces."

Tamsin sat down next to her, careful not to wrinkle the emerald green tulle of her skirt, and rested her head on Harry's shoulder. Harry's hand reached out and grabbed her own.

"I will, but there's a lot of work to do first. I have to impress them, win them over to my side before they even ask my name," she said.

The Malfoys only invited the very best of society. The Potters, as cousins, were politely invited for show but rarely attended to the relief of all parties involved. It had probably come as quite a shock to receive a positive response for "Heiress Potter and friend."

And friend. She hated this dependency, this vulnerability. But Harry had promised -had vowed- to always keep her secrets, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. It would have to do until she could make her own name for herself.

"You'll do fine. We just have to sweep in like we own the place. Then you do that creepy face thing and charm them or whatever," Harry said.

"My face is not creepy."

"It's pretty creepy. Plus your voice gets all lulling and welcoming. You even smile," Harry said with a demure look and exaggerated eye flutter.

"Shut up. I do not," she said. Her voice was still stern, but she felt the twitches of a smile escaping.

"Then you'll just have to mimic what all the fancy ladies do," Harry continued as she pitched up her voice, "Oh Minister, it's such a delight. I've heard so much about your work. No, please do go on. I'd love to hear about the new cauldron tax you're thinking of proposing next session…"

"I'm never even going to meet the minister if you don't hurry up already," Tamsin said with a sharp nudge against Harry's shoulder.

"Alright, alright. I'll get moving."

Harry's Universe – July 1996

They were around the corner from No. 4, hiding in a large bush like perfectly normal people. The other residents of Privet Drive might even consider it the most normal thing that Harry had ever done.

Tamsin was fixing herself up, smoothing out the wrinkles of her cream colored, button-down blouse and putting her hair up in a tight bun. The effect was startlingly severe and grown up looking.

"Are you going as a Madam Pince?" Harry asked.

"If your reputation is as bad as you claim, they need to see someone who looks respectable to balance it out."

"I don't think even the Queen showing up would change their mind about me," Harry replied.

"We'll have to do something about this whole...street urchin look you have going on."

"What? I look fine. I didn't know I was going to a party. Actually, my one order today was very specific about not going to it."

Tamsin pulled a doll sized backpack from her pocket. Once exposed to the outside, it immediately unshrunk itself with a soft woosh without even having to tap it with a wand. Harry wondered if that was a thing in this universe as well. It would be great at hiding her things from the Dursleys each summer.

"Here, put these on. You're shorter and skinnier here, but they should fit well enough," Tamsin said, pulling out a blue floral sundress with spaghetti straps and holding it up against Harry.

"Oh my god, no. I'm not getting undressed in a bush!" Harry exclaimed. What the hell? Anyone could come by! And a dress of all things? Sure, they somehow had to charm the Dursleys. But there were limits.

"Fine, but at least change your shirt from that monstrosity," Tamsin had already turned away, brokering no argument, and was back into shuffling through the small backpack. Her whole arm and half her shoulder was hidden in it. Could a whole person fit in? How deep was this thing?

"Unfortunately, we do not have time to do anything about your hair right now."

"What's wrong with my hair?! I cut it myself," Harry said. She flattened down her bangs over her scar.

"Yes, I can see that," Tamsin sniped back.

Harry opened her mouth to respond but froze as she heard footsteps on the sidewalk. She put a finger to her lips and pulled Tamsin down to the ground as quietly as she could. A soft breeze rustled a leaf in Harry's face.

The footsteps continued on past the bush, not even pausing once.

They crouched together for a moment more. She felt Tamsin frozen almost inhumanely still beside her, their cheeks almost pressed together.

"We should get going. It'll be counter intuitive if we're discovered here," Tamsin finally whispered. Harry nodded and braced herself at the thought of actually going through with this whole thing. Somehow it felt even worse than the Yule Ball disaster.

"You'll do fine. Just use all those Slytherin manners and cunning you must have somewhere," Tamsin said as she eyed Harry's grimace.

"Gryffindor," Harry whispered back.

"Right. Gyffindor. Of course you are," Tamsin said with a distracted air as she snuck back out onto the sidewalk.

It was easy enough to slip into the party through the side gate mostly unnoticed. The Dursleys had no defenses set up for the unimaginable.

Women, all in their Sunday best, were sprinkled in groups throughout the garden. The garden itself looked lovely, all the flowers a riot of bright colors against carefully clipped leaves.

Fancy tea cakes and cookies were stacked on silver platters on a table by the front. A bowl of pale pink punch glittered in the fading sunlight. Fairy lights, strung from the trellis, provided a soft ambiance. Harry took a moment to admire it all. It was rare to see the final product of her work.

Tamsin squeezed her hand once before letting it drop and smiling at the nearest group who had noticed them. They were eyeing Harry quizzically. A woman glanced over towards the front of the party. Petunia, wearing a white dress with pale pink and green tea roses, had her back turned to them.

By the time Harry glanced back to the group, Tamsin had already made a bee line towards them.

"Good afternoon! Your neighborhood is so nice. I'm so glad that the Dursleys are letting me stay with them this summer so that I can spend more time with Harry. I'm Tamsin, by the way," she said with a smile that could rival Lockhart.

"With – with Harry?" a brunette (the woman who lived at No. 6, she was sure) in a dark green tea dress asked, staring at Tamsin with badly concealed horror. The others were looking between Tamsin and Harry, as if trying to reconcile the two of them even being in the same room. Which you know what? Fair. Harry was rather baffled by the idea too.

"Oh yes. She's my dearest friend. We rarely have time together during the year since she works so hard tutoring the younger students. The professors just adore her," Tamsin said.

"And you both go to Saint Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Girls?" another woman asked faintly. Harry thought she might live at No. 11 and had once crossed the street rather than walk past Harry.

"Saint Brutus?! Heaven's no! Our school does do lots of volunteer work there – those poor girls, so troubled – but we go to Saint Rowena's. They're easy to confuse though since they're so near each other," Tamsin answered breezily.

"What do you think of the Dursleys? Tell the truth," Tamsin asked after a few more minutes of small talk. Her voice had taken on a strangely compelling quality. The sound of it felt thick and oily against Harry's skull. Tamsin seemed otherwise normal though. Maybe it was just how she talked sometimes?

No. 6's face went blank. Okay, that was weird.

"Such awful people. Petunia actually thinks we believe she baked those cakes. She only ever "bakes" things in the summer now. That Dudley boy is a bully. He's always pushing down the younger children. He gets it from his father, obviously. And have you seen that ugly mustache on Vernon?"

There was a choked back laugh, poorly disguised as a cough, from the woman (No. 5?) next to Harry.

The surrounding women looked taken aback and quickly glanced around to see who else might be listening. Several nodded and Harry saw some nudges and whispers in a nearby group.

No. 6's face cleared and she shook her head.

"This punch must be stronger than I thought!" she said with an awkward laugh before taking another sip.

"You do a good job with the roses," said No. 5 with a pointed look at Harry, "I see you pruning them sometimes from my window."

"Um…" Harry felt a sharp nudge in her side, "I mean, yes, thank you. That's very kind."

They were slowly making a circuit of the party, introducing themselves to every small group and asking about the Dursleys.

Meanwhile the stories about Saint Rowena's were getting increasingly outlandish, painting Harry and Tamsin both as some sort of super Cedric style prefects. Harry took to trying to one-up each story of her own saintliness with one about Tamsin. One of the current women listening was getting misty-eyed as Harry retold the epic of Norbert to be about a stray kitten that Tamsin had found and nursed back to health, but then had to smuggle out of the school to a new home.

Harry kept sneaking glances towards the front. Petunia still hadn't noticed them and appeared exaggeratedly laughing at a story from the owner of No. 8 Privet Drive.

She felt alive and like a real person again for the first time in weeks, probably for the first time since that day in the ministry. The whole last month had been a daze. And it was nice to have someone around who didn't either despise her or constantly remind her of the war and all that she had lost or was about to lose.

Harry didn't know what to make about the whole "parallel universe" thing. But there were semi-sentient magic castles and dragons were real and Voldemort could come back from being a scary ghost snake face thing. Was universe hopping any less insane?

She wished that she could write Hermione to ask, but she probably wouldn't even respond to the letter. Did she even read them?

The idea that someone would want to cross whole worlds though because they missed her was wild. Sure, maybe summon her to defeat some alternative Voldemort or something crazy like that. But miss her?

She knew that her friends, Remus, and Sirius loved her. But sometimes she was afraid that they didn't love her. Maybe they just loved the idea of Harry Potter, girl hero extraordinaire. Or Harry Potter, daughter of James Potter. It was almost the first thing out of Ron and Hermione's mouths, after all. And Sirius had always been calling her James and prongslet. Would anyone have wanted to be her friend at first if she was just Harry?

But Tamsin didn't know anything about Voldemort. She just…cared about Harry.

Plus, Tamsin must be super smart to figure out all that dimension travel stuff. And she seemed so nice about Harry's questions. She didn't even press about the Dursleys though she clearly wanted to. She was so pretty and sweet.

Harry also suspected that they may be a little more than just best friends.

It was probably due to all the brooding that she missed Dudley come out through the sliding glass door until he was making his way straight to them. His mouth was open as he gaped at Harry in shock.

"You're not supposed to be here! You're going to get into so much trouble," he said before he added with a yell, "Mum!"

Petunia finally turned towards them. "Yes, Dudders?" she cooed before taking in the sight of Harry. The loving smile slipped away into something tight and plastic. Only her eyes betrayed her confusion and then absolute horror.

She quickly reached them and leaned towards Harry.

"What do you think you're doing here?" she hissed.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw something sharp and vicious flit across Tamsin's face, but it was gone by the time Harry pulled herself away from Petunia's glare to examine further.

"Oh, Mrs. Dursley, it's such a delight. I've heard so much about you," Tamsin said as she stepped in front of Harry.

Petunia looked at her in puzzlement.

"Thank you for letting me stay at your lovely home and visit with Harry this summer," Tamsin continued, "I've told all the guests about how kind of you it was."

Petunia's mouth made a little "o" as she quickly looked around at the assembled guests, several of whom who were watching the meeting with interest.

"I'm so glad you could make it," she replied in a surprisingly cheery voice.

But Harry was soon distracted from Tamsin and Petunia's ongoing dance of polite verbal threatening by the sight of Vernon's thunderous face as he stared at Harry from the back doorway.

Did Dudley get him? Or had Vernon just sensed the feeling that somewhere Harry might be having a nice time? Oh, that shade of red couldn't be healthy.

Harry steeled herself for the inevitable bellowing when the most surprising thing happened. Or maybe not that surprising, considering her luck. There was also no way she was not going to be blamed for this. And to be fair, the table of perfectly stacked tea cakes simply exploding out of nowhere did seem to be a very "that whole Harry Potter chaos" (as Ron affectionately put it) sort of thing.

The party erupted in chaos, a whirl of screams and very much ruined fancy dresses.

Tamsin looked equally stunned. Harry didn't know the girl well, but she doubted the existence of any secret plans that ended up with pink and white frosting splattering Tamsin's very dry-clean only looking shirt. Petunia, standing closer to the epicenter, had ended up far worse. Clumps of sponge cake clung to her hair.

The party dispersed quickly after that, most of the party goers fleeing with only an awkward glance towards their hosts.

Vernon quickly hustled Harry and Tamsin into the house. The splotchy red coloring of his face was quickly morphing into a purple. Once in the kitchen and safely hidden from the neighbors' view, he rounded on them. Tamsin was pushed to the side, into the arms of the quietly following Petunia, while Harry was gripped tight in his hands.

"HOW DARE YOU! WE SHELTER YOU AND THIS IS THE THANKS WE GET?" his voice boomed, "I WILL NOT TOLERATE THIS, THIS - ABNORMALITY UNDER MY ROOF."

She flinched at the sound so close to her ears.

With each new syllable he uttered, Tamsin looked equally more murderous. That sharp look was back and Harry was abruptly reminded of the kinds of hungry creatures that lived in the forbidden forest.

"And to bring in another one! She's not bloody staying here, no matter what you've told everyone. She can go back out on the street with all the other freaks," he continued.

Something in Harry snapped. It was one thing to berate her, but to bring a friend into it?

"You can't! She could get killed out there!" Harry yelled. Tamsin would be a target out in Diagon Alley, with nowhere to go and not knowing who to trust. Did she even have a doppelgänger family here? What if they were on the other side? One wrong move and she could be snatched up by Death Eaters.

Like bloody hell if anyone else was dying on Harry's watch. If Tamsin was getting tossed out, then so was she. They would go hide somewhere together.

She struggled against Vernon's grasp, but he only scowled and gripped tighter as he started to pull her towards the stairs and what was sure to be weeks locked up in her room. Her shoes tried to get purchase on his shins, but he barely even seemed to notice.

"Wait! You have it all wrong. I'm not a witch, but my sister is one and she told me to come here," Tamsin yelled.

Wait, what? Harry twisted around to try and get a better look at her. This was a terrible plan. Tamsin had a wand and magical backpack in her pocket that could be discovered with the slightest search.

Petunia faltered. Her grip loosened on Tamsin's arm.

"Your sister?" she asked.

"She said to come here if there's trouble," Tamsin said.

"We're not running some shelter for freakish youth!" Vernon yelled.

"Please," Tamsin begged. The transformation was startling. All the sharp edges had disappeared. She sounded so scared and sad. Just a lost young girl tossed up against a scary world that she wasn't apart of and couldn't really understand.

Petunia was silent. Her mouth was a thin frown. She finally let out long sigh before stepping back and releasing Tamsin entirely.

"She can stay here tonight," Petunia said quietly.

Vernon sputtered.

"Pet, you can't be serious. She might not be a freak herself, but she knows all about them! What will the neighbors say?"

"They already know she's here. They'll see if we toss her onto the street. It'll be a scandal."

"Tonight," she said to Tamsin, "You find somewhere else to go tomorrow."

Harry had seen her aunt in many moods. Proud, loving (to others), disappointed, disapproving (she knew that one best), furious, queasy (whenever magic was alluded to), but rarely sad.

She had seen it only once before, late one night when a six-year-old Harry had snuck out of her cupboard for scraps. The rest of the household had long ago gone to bed and the kitchen was so quiet that Harry had assumed the light was left on by accident. Petunia sat at the kitchen table, an empty bottle of wine and plate of cheese and crackers next to her, still as a statue as she stared at a photograph.

From her height, Harry could just see the edges of it: an impression of gold and red hair in matching pink plaid dresses, a sweater covered arm looped around the waist of someone she suspected – hoped – could be her grandmother. Harry had been desperate to see it, to know, but she was too terrified to break the heavy silence. She had crept to the table, waiting for the angry threat that would send her rushing back to the cupboard, but it never came. They just sat quietly together, Petunia's sad eyes never leaving the photograph. Eventually Petunia pushed the half-eaten plate of food towards her and left the kitchen without a single word.

They never spoke of it.

But here it was again, that look like all the worries of the entire world had caught up with her. She had slumped herself at the kitchen table and rested her head in her hands.

"Pet?" Vernon asked. His voice was soft in a way that Harry could never guess him capable of. Like her aunt was a fragile piece of china that could break with even the lightest of touches. He let go of Harry without even a glance and moved towards the table.

Harry's view of her though was cut off as Tamsin's arms wrapped tightly around her and tugged them towards the stairs, away from this strange and confusing version of her relatives.

A/N: Harry: She crossed parallel universes to see me, promises to never leave, and wants to hold my hand. Do you think she likes me?

After better organizing my conspiracy looking board of the the different timelines, I've added a scene to the first chapter since it works best there. If you don't want to scan it, here's a quick summary: Tamsin does the ritual in the cave and has to use the bodies of some people she's sacrificed for it. She's a bit unhinged and conflicted. Not about the whole murder thing, but more if loving someone is a weakness.

Also, the sympathy for Petunia at the end of this chapter was a bit of a surprise. The Dursleys are absolutely terrible people, but even terrible people can miss their sister sometimes or love their wife.