A/N: Even with an upload schedule, I remain easily distracted. Apologies for the trend of uploading a few hours into what is technically Sunday.

Chapter 24

"Can I plan another prank, now?" Jamie asked urgently.

Jack snorted from the thick branch he was sprawled across. "The effects of the last one haven't even worn off. She's jumping at shadows, she needs to take bathroom breaks every class period, and a lack of pink clothes seems to have made her too embarrassed to speak up more than necessary."

"But she's still causing problems, right?"

His face fell and he adjusted himself to lean against the tree's trunk. "Well, yes. Her power is unchecked in the school, and I can feel its drain on the students. We managed to decrease her eagerness to use it, for now, but it's not a permanent solution."

"So you still need me to mastermind something," Jamie insisted from a branch above the winter spirit.

Jack chuckled. "If you think of something, feel free to let me know. But pranks won't make her leave for good."

Jamie sent him a look, and there was a rather stubborn set to it. "I'll still try. It's better to try and fail than to never know one way or another, right?"

Jack began to nod, then hesitated and shot a scowl upwards. "You're not talking about Umbridge anymore, are you?"

"You've gotta talk with your sister!"

"I hardly recognize her anymore, Jamie," he insisted, eyes distant.

"So you don't love her anymore?"

"Of course I do!" Jack replied immediately, indignant. "But she's grown to dislike the magical, and that's putting it lightly. Do I seem particularly mundane to you?"

"Well, you're not a wizard."

"Doubt it'll matter," he grumbled. "It's not like there's exact technicalities of magic versus spirits that makes her dislike the first."

"Then what makes her dislike it?"

Jack hesitated. "I… I really don't know. It used to be jealousy, but I'd think it would have faded by now…"

"Then you should ask her. Give her the benefit of the doubt."

Jack looked at the staff resting on his lap and furrowed his brow. "I already lost one sister, Jamie," he whispered. "I don't want to lose another."

"Would it help if someone came with?"

"Me? Yes. But her? Anyone who is vaguely magical would probably just make it worse."

"Then I'll go."

"What?!" Jack yelped, looking up so suddenly he toppled backwards into the large snowdrift beneath him.

Once he finally dug himself out, he saw Jamie's resolute expression. "I'll go. I'm not a wizard, I'm not a spirit. I'm just a friend."

Jack sputtered, "I can't just fly you to England!"

"Yeah, you can."

"It takes time, Jamie."

"Maybe I could skip school."

"Skip school? Jamie Bennett, who's been such a bad influence on you?"

"You."

"Touché." Jack looked into the forest as if it would somehow provide him with another argument.

"So you'll talk to your younger sister? And bring me with?" Jamie asked in the same tone he always had when he was striking a deal with any of his friends.

Jack glanced back at him. "I'm not flying you. We'll use one of North's snow-globes."

"You think he'll give them to you?"

Jack made a drawn out noise of playful hesitance. "'Give' is a strong word."

Petunia Dursley had woken up nice and early, had a lovely chat with the neighbors, and settled down to make herself some tea. Dudley was visiting from Smeltings for the weekend, and Vernon was settling onto the couch, a peaceful smile spreading across his face. It was a peaceful day, and it looked to be a promising start for what would be a relaxing Sunday.

But as it always was when things got peaceful, her mind began to torment her.

She recalled many years ago, shortly after she'd been married, when she and her sister had attempted to rekindle their sisterhood. Lily had still been in school, and both sisters had been writing and decided that they ought to try. Petunia had opened up, been honest enough about her true feelings of loneliness as her childhood playmate had left her. Her whole life she'd had someone — first Jack, then Lily too. She'd tried to convince herself as both her siblings left her in different ways that she didn't need them, and allowed her loneliness to harden into bitterness. But as she grew older, and her parents began to fade, she knew that there was little place for that bitterness. Lily had agreed.

Perhaps it would have worked, too, if Vernon and James had managed to look past their differences. Unfortunately, the sisters both seemed to be fond of prideful men who weren't fond of compromise.

As Petunia grew busy with her new family, her letters to her little sister waned, always promising herself that once things settled down, they could try again.

Then she was left with a bundle on her doorstep with only a note to let her know that her sister too had left this world, and some form of ancient magic she had cast meant that her son would be protected as long as he called a blood relative his home.

She could hardly look at the boy for years. He seemed to embody every way she had failed her sister. Those big green eyes begging for affection the same way Lily's had, but slowly coming to look like the father, the man who couldn't manage to compromise so she and her sister might become close again.

It was always easier to blame someone else, Petunia realized, but there would always be moments when the truth of it all came into stark and unpleasant clarity.

Whenever Harry was there, it was easier to just forget about him and all the complicated feelings that accompanied him. But as soon as he was gone, she remembered that he was all she had left of her family — not the one she'd made for herself, but the one she'd been born to.

Some child deep inside her bitterly decided that it had all started when Jack died. If he'd survived, he would have told Lily and her to ignore their husbands and spend time with each other anyway. He had always been rather blunt like that.

He'd never had the chance to make his own family, not like she and Lily did. And neither of them got to experience that swell of affection in their chest as they looked upon their growing child, to look around their home and think, "This. I made this. I chose this."

How odd and painful to think that Dudley and Harry were nearing the age Jack was. He'd seemed so much older, then. Now her son and nephew would soon surpass him. Not that either of them knew that. It was easier to forget about whom she'd lost if she didn't talk about it. Vernon knew of him, but very little about him. Part of her wanted to keep it that way. The other part wished she could talk until the knot of pain that had been stuck in her heart since she was twelve years old disappeared.

There was a light rapping on the door, and Petunia distractedly asked Dudley to go get it.

"You must be Dudley!" came a youthful voice with a cadence so similar to the one that had been filling her thoughts. She closed her eyes and set down her shaking cup, trying to brush it all away again, to forget. "I was hoping to meet you."

"Er… who are you?" Dudley asked, regaining Petunia's attention. She had assumed it was for Dudley based on the age of the speaker, but if he didn't know him…

"Oh, right, sorry. I'm afraid I'm here for your mother, is she here? Sorry I didn't call ahead…"

Petunia made her way out of the kitchen, brushing out the folds of her skirt as she made her way to the front door. "I'm here, sorry, just a moment…" She gasped loudly, hands flying up to cover her mouth.

"Mum?" Dudley asked in concern, but she was utterly frozen.

She was certain she was seeing a ghost, summoned from the afterlife by her thoughts. He looked oddly spectral, in a way, the color leached from his once-brown hair and eyes. But while the first was bright white, the latter was a shocking, crystalline blue. And he looked like he hadn't aged a moment from when she last saw him, twenty-six years ago. He even wore the same clothes he had then.

A childlike grin fell from his face, eyes filling with tears. "Tuney?"

"...Jack?" she breathed.

She was waiting for him to say no, for her eyes to have deceived her. But he swallowed harshly and only nodded.

Petunia hesitantly drew near. "It… it can't be possible…"

Jack looked down at himself. "Once, I might have agreed with you." He managed a weak smile. "But it seems the two of us had to deal with a whole lot of 'not possible's, haven't we?"

Tears filled her eyes. "It's really you."

He half smiled. "In the flesh."

Petunia rushed forward and pulled her big brother into a hug, tears streaming down her face and not caring for hows, or whys, or anything other than the boy in her arms.

Jack sat in his younger sister's living room, holding a cup of tea in his hands, just the same as Mum used to make. Jamie had hung behind him at first, but once it became clear neither Petunia nor Jack were in a space to be making introductions, leaving poor Dudley utterly confused, Jamie guided both Dudley and Vernon out the back, promising to explain for them. Evidently he was doing alright, as they had remained out there for a while and showed no sign of coming back in.

But now that Petunia and Jack had managed to stop crying, he couldn't meet her eyes, utterly unsure of what to say.

She seated herself across from him. Wrinkles had appeared around the corners of her mouth, and she had come to look rather like Mum. He was struck with the realization that his younger sister had grown up, and would grow old. And he wouldn't follow, not for a long, long time. Maybe not ever.

His heart tightened and he looked back at his tea.

"How… how are you here?" Petunia asked.

He managed to briefly look up, but immediately glanced away again, attempting a grin. "Well, Jamie and I came across these snow-globes that allow you to open a portal—"

She seemed briefly thrown before she evidently remembered who she was talking to and how to interact with him, and cut off his attempted diversion. "I thought you died, Jack. We—" she choked on the word. "We all did."

He grimaced. "Well… I did die."

Petunia was utterly out of her depth, dealing with an eternal sixteen-year old who wasn't used to opening up enough to be vulnerable, talking on matters she couldn't infer anything about. "And now you're… alive. How… are you alive?"

"Depends on what you'd count as 'life.'"

"Capable of saying things that will utterly infuriate me seems alive enough," Petunia snapped.

Jack flinched, lowering his head. "Sorry, it's just… I never really had to… talk about it. I'm not very good at it."

"Start from the beginning, then. You… you fell through the ice."

"I saved Lily," he corrected mutedly. "I took this staff and pulled her away from the cracks, but it was slippery. Doing so pushed me where she had just been." He looked down at his pale hands, shaking at the memory of his death. "And I was a lot heavier. I fell in. I tried to swim back up, but it was so dark, and when I fell in I got so disoriented. Everywhere I swam to was blocked. I heard Lily calling for me the whole time. My chest hurt, everything hurt, and my mind started to go fuzzy…" His eyes went distant. "And then I let go."

"Let go?"

"You don't realize how much of life is simply… holding on. Not until you've lost the strength to keep going." He swallowed harshly, gaze distancing itself as he fell back into the memory. "And then I felt a tug. I opened my eyes, still under the water. I couldn't remember anything; I just saw the moon, and the moon's spirit told me my name was Jack Frost. He didn't tell me anything else, no matter how much I asked."

"Wait, slow down." Petunia pressed her fingers to her temples, and after a moment took a deep breath. "First, Jack Frost?"

Jack looked up at her, expression deadly serious. "That's the only name I knew for twenty-five years."

Petunia shivered, the conflicting aspects of his sixteen-year old features and his words speaking of years beyond his appearance creating a feeling that was somehow both sad and haunting. "Second, the 'moon's spirit'?"

"When I died, I became a spirit. Both ghosts and spirits are souls who didn't move on, but the technicalities are… confusing. It took me ages to understand, myself. Generally, ghosts are souls who died and are dead, but don't move on for whatever reason. Spirits die but aren't dead. Under the right circumstances, we could theoretically die again, but our attachment to either "side" of mortality is more fluid than a mortal's. At least, that's what they tell me." Jack shook his head, bringing himself back to his sister's question. "Manny is what we call the moon spirit. He's… our leader, I guess? He's just been around the longest so we defer to him in those sorts of areas. But he doesn't interact with anyone much."

"And this… moon spirit, made you a spirit?" Petunia asked slowly.

"Technically no. Evidently I did that myself in the way I died, but I understand that even less than the ghost versus spirit thing. He just… welcomed me, I suppose."

Petunia swallowed. "And… you said you lost your memories."

Jack looked down. "I didn't even know that until last year, just a bit before I managed to regain them. Most spirits keep their memories, but I… didn't. As far as I knew, I was created in that lake, and given a name by Manny." He looked back to her, waiting for more questions, but she just gestured for him to continue. "As a spirit, I had powers relating to my role."

She raised an eyebrow. "Powers?"

He couldn't meet her eyes, shuffling his feet instead. "I didn't ask for them, Tuney," he mumbled. "And it's not the same as magic."

Petunia set her cup down. "I'm not jealous of powers, Jack. I grew out of that years ago. What are they?"

"I can control the wind. Sort of. More like Wind took a liking to me and now follows me around. I also have Fun Magic, and um." He held out a hand, and a small flurry twirled about in his palm for long enough for Petunia to look at it before vanishing it again. "But… spirits can only be sensed if they're believed in. And I… wasn't. After playing around on the lake for a bit, I ended up in town. I tried to say hello to people, but they couldn't hear me, they couldn't see me." A hand made its way to his chest. "And they walked right through me. I nearly flew away right then, but I heard children crying." He met Petunia's pale eyes. "It was you and Lily. You'd lost your brother. Me. I felt sorry for you, and wished I could have saved 'Other Jack'. I decided… I decided I would watch over all you, for Other Jack. But when Lily went off to Hogwarts, admittedly I followed her. I wondered if wizards could see me, help me understand my own abilities." He fought tears, though he wasn't entirely sure why. "But they couldn't help me. I couldn't even help them, not when it mattered." He met Petunia's gaze again. "I was there through it all. All the fights, and I tried to get you to stop, to talk again. And when you tried again I raged at James and Vernon for ruining it for you two. I don't know why I was so attached so quickly, but I was. Maybe some part of me knew."

"You said you were there for… for everything."

"Well, not everything. I did have some sense of privacy. But… it was like I never left. Except… except it was like I didn't exist to anyone but myself. And when Voldemort came after Lily I… I couldn't stop him. She died right in front of me, and I couldn't do anything to stop it."

Petunia promptly set down her cup again, seating herself on the armrest of Jack's chair and pulling the boy into her arms. He had curled into a ball as he told the story, and tears began to escape his eyes as his voice trembled.

"Why couldn't I save her?" he whispered. "I saved her once, why couldn't I do it again? I would have done anything, given anything. But I was invisible; jumping in front of his spells didn't stop them because I didn't even exist, to them. James died, Lily died, and then he hit Harry…"

For a long time Jack couldn't speak, simply sobbing into his younger sister's arms, who cried too as she was told the story of their little sister's last moments.

Eventually he sniffled and began his tale again. "I didn't know Harry had survived. There was no way he could have. And I was so heartbroken, I felt so useless… I flew away. I didn't stop flying for a long, long time. Not until I got to America, where I met some more spirits and promptly got on their bad side." He laughed in a way that had no humor. "The first people to see me in what I thought was my entire life, and they hated me. I was a loner, until last year when Manny apparently told North that the Guardians needed me…" He saw his sister's confusion, and backtracked. "There's a group of spirits that more directly interact with the mortal world. They're more powerful too, as so many living people believe in them. These are the Guardians. Specifically the Guardians of Childhood, protectors of children. North leads them, but like everyone else, they defer to Manny when he talks to them. And he told them that they needed to make me a Guardian.

"That was an unpopular idea to say the least, but circumstances threw us together. There was a rising conflict in the realm of spirits, and it was spilling over into the mortal world, harming children. This spirit, Pitch, was killing belief and turning it into fear to power himself. With some help from one of the Guardians, Tooth, I found my memories and got them back. Eventually, there was only one believer left to fuel the four Guardians." He nodded out the back door. "Jamie. I found him, did what I could to keep him believing in them. And… I got him to believe in me in the process. He's my first believer." Jack smiled fondly in the direction he knew Jamie was. "He and I got his friends to believe too, and we fought off Pitch and restored belief world-wide. I'm still a new spirit, so my believers are small, but they're growing.

"Then a wizard, Dumbledore, tracked down the Guardians, asked for our aid in protecting his students during the war. They sent me to take a Visibility potion and pretend to be a professor of elemental magic. And I met Snape, and Harry, and Lupin, and Black… My past was facing me again. And Jamie said I should try to find you again. My last family. I wasn't sure you'd want me disrupting things, but he was insistent. And so we snagged some of North's snowglobe portals," he proffered one. "And came here."

"You thought I wouldn't want to see you?" Petunia asked, her voice quite small.

"I mean… look at me. I don't exactly fit the peaceful, quiet life you've made for yourself."

"Despite my efforts, my life will never be peaceful and quiet; I'm beginning to resign myself to that. But you're… you're my brother, Jack. I don't care about your oddities."

"Then why doesn't that apply to Harry?" he asked softly.

Guilt flashed in her eyes as she put her head in her hands. "That boy… I fear he brings out the worst in me. He reminds me of all my failings every time I think of him."

"You and Severus both," Jack murmured.

Petunia made a face at the comparison, but otherwise ignored it. "I took the boy in, yes, but… I don't think I was prepared to love him as a child truly needs." Her head fell again. "If only Lily had lived… we could have fixed things with more time…"

"I think so too," Jack replied softly. "But things didn't turn out that way, did it?"

Petunia laughed wetly, looking her older brother up and down. "You didn't even get to grow up. Do you… did you just not physically age?"

"According to North, my mind is still that of a sixteen-year old, just with… an extra twenty-six years of living stuffed in it," Jack answered.

Evidently that wasn't a particularly comforting answer, as Petunia's eyes watered up again. "I should have come with that day. I could have helped."

"No, Tuney. You couldn't have," Jack shook his head. "No one could. It wasn't anyone's fault, in the end."

"I suppose that if Lily, with all her special magic, couldn't save you, no way I could," she muttered.

Jack tilted his head. "Is that your issue with magic? That it couldn't save me?"

She pulled up short. "I… I suppose that is part of it."

"Yeah, I suppose you didn't even like it when I was alive."

"I was a jealous child," Petunia said stiffly, but not without genuinity. "Perhaps… perhaps under different circumstances I would have grown out of it."

Jack took her hand. "Tuney… Lily was a child with uncontrollable magic. She couldn't have done anything more than you, or anyone else. What matters is that I am here. As odd as it may be." He managed a smile. "I mean, look at you! You finally caught up with me," he joked, referencing her toddlerhood and oft-referenced insistence that someday she would catch up to Jack in age.

She managed a laugh. "Far more than just caught up, Jack."

He huffed and folded his arms. "I'll have you know that I'm still forty years old, though I may not look it."

The two laughed together for the first time in decades. For a good time after that, brother and sister simply talked, and teased, and behaved as siblings usually do.

But eventually, conversation came back around to Harry. "Do you think you'll be able to give him the love he needs now? Now that you know I'm not… gone?"

That expression of guilt flashed across her face again. "I want to believe I can, but it was more than just what happened to you, Jack. It's not going to go away all at once, to say nothing of working with Vernon and Dudley on it."

Jack nodded. "You were hurt at a young age multiple times, all of which had ties to magic. That can't be easily fixed or ignored. It'll just hurt everyone involved. We're working on getting his godfather, Sirius Black, proven innocent — he really is innocent," he tacked on when she looked affronted at the mention of a criminal record. "Perhaps Harry could live with him."

But Petunia shook her head. "When the boy was left with me, Dumbledore had a letter with him, with instructions and an explanation. Lily cast some sort of ancient blood magic, and as such, Harry is protected as long as his home is with a blood relative. All his grandparents are dead, James had no siblings… so it fell to me."

Jack's head shot up. "Do you think I would count?"

"I'm not particularly familiar with the inner workings of blood magic, Jackson," she sniffed.

He smiled sheepishly for a moment before his mind went back to its task. "Perhaps I could ask Dumbledore. I'll send you a letter once I find out one way or another." He smiled at her. "I think things will get better if you and Harry have some distance. I may not have a formal residence, but I'll see to that if it will help both of you."

"I wish things could have gotten better with Lily, too," Petunia said, gaze lowering.

"So do I." Jack smiled. "But at least we've got this much."

Petunia returned the expression. "That we do."

The back door opened, exposing the sound of voices. "I'll not be denied an explanation any longer, boy," Vernon grumbled, making his way inside, closely followed by Dudley.

Jamie flashed Jack an apologetic look. "I kept them distracted as long as I could."

"No, Jamie, your timing was perfect," Jack assured him.

Petunia sat her husband and son down and began to explain to them, Jack adding in things from time to time. Vernon seemed displeased overall by the oddities of his wife's brother, but due to that relation, he seemed willing to follow his wife's lead on the matter — though he often glanced at Jack with a somewhat disturbed look, to which the spirit replied with an obnoxious grin. Dudley mostly just seemed pleased that Jack didn't pinch his cheeks like his Aunt Marge. And besides, Jamie had seemingly endeared himself to the older boy. Dudley and Vernon likely wouldn't have handled it quite so well if it weren't for Jack subtly using his Fun Magic. Once, he might have worried that he was dipping into more manipulative territory, but he had long ago learned otherwise. His Fun Magic didn't force the feeling upon anyone, but rather it brought out what was already there, buried beneath memories and pain and time.

As Vernon asked Petunia more questions, Jack had made his way over to Dudley and Jamie. By the time the adults looked over, Jack had handed Dudley his staff and was explaining in detail exactly how it worked, which was quite a feat since he, in truth, did not know exactly how it worked. He was behaving, not that he'd ever admit it, quite like James Potter likely would have interacted with his nephew, if things had gone the way Petunia had, deep down, wanted them to.

Jamie shot Jack a somewhat smug look, and Jack huffed a laugh and ruffled the boy's hair. "Fine," he murmured. "You were right."

Jamie smiled back, pleased at the admission. Not so much due to a desire to win, but because his friend's loneliness had finally had a good chunk of it chipped away. Now, perhaps he had a hope of convincing him to have a similar conversation with that other nephew at the magic school.

A/N: You know, back in the day I would reply to every single review. Now I'd still like to, but I don't have the same time on my hands as I did then. Or at least not the same mental capacity. It's like going from inhaling massive books in a day during middle school to struggling to read a similar book in months as an adult. But like. Writing. I'll try to reply to some every now and then, but apologies if I don't get to you and you would like a reply. I read all your comments and I appreciate the engagement.

So. About the chapter. Anticipating the question, yes, Jack switches between his original accent (British) and his learned American accent as is needed. Aka Guardians, wizards not in the know, and new believers all get the American accent treatment. But of course he switched back when he went to meet Petunia. On the subject of Petunia, I have the tendency to take characters and give all of them generational trauma so uh. Call it coping, Petunia is part of a generational trauma cycle in this fic. Yaaay... Time for me to put everyone in therapy now. My favorite fanfic occupation.

Next update: Saturday, February 5th. Hogwarts refuses to be cowed by Umbridge, and Hermione is reminded of an old, odd memory.

Until next time. Koala789 out. *sails away on a flying-boat-fortress-thingy*