Author's Note: A bit of housekeeping: This collection serves three purposes. The first purpose is for me to gather all of my little side-stories for Intercession into one place and make them available for the masses. Ginny's POV during the AU events of her first year, for instance, falls into that category (and that will be up shortly, once I polish it a bit more). I wrote it, it shows something we couldn't see in the main story, and it's there, ripe for the reading. These entries will be called 'EC: title here', and the EC stands for 'Extra Canon'. It fits into the main story.
The second purpose is to show off deleted scenes. I'm a big believer in learning by making mistakes, or better yet by seeing the mistakes of others, and I made a lot of mistakes with this story in the first draft… and in the draft that was posted, honestly. These posts will be called 'DS: title here', and will come with a little foreword detailing where they were in the writing process and in the flow of the story, as well as a little afterword assessing them from my point of view. They'll vary some in quality, not the technical writing (majorly, at least) but the plot, the characterization, how heavily everyone has been hit with the stupid bat, that sort of thing.
The third purpose is to play with AU of AU concepts, either as a joke (My 'what happened to Dobby' comment in reply to a reviewer written out in long form, for instance) or as a way of workshopping improvements to Intercession proper. Expect different outcomes to fights, different approaches, things reviewers said should happen, either as I show in-character why they didn't, or as I genuinely try to improve upon the main story. (Some of this last category may even make it into the main story, in which case I will preserve the originally posted version as a deleted scene here). These will be labeled 'AU: title here' or AUR: title here', for bits intended to be fully AU, and bits that are AU but are being considered for dropping into Intercession as improvements to the main story. I'm not having the latter here as a voting contest or anything; I just figure that if I'm trying to fix something, it ought to be visible to the people who pointed out there was a problem to start with. I won't change anything major in the main story until / unless I'm sure it's a substantial upgrade.
Anyway. I'll be starting us off with deleted scenes from the very first draft, specifically the scenes that were for one reason or another mostly or entirely rewritten instead of edited and retooled. These scenes are rough. They're weirdly out of character. They're interesting! I hope someone enjoys them. If deleted scenes aren't your thing, check the chapter list for Ginny's little side-story. I wouldn't start this collection off without some new content!
Deleted Scene 1: A Weasley Summer, Or Is That A Weasley Summary?
Original draft, originally the start of chapter 6.
No major relevant deviations from published canon prior to this scene.
At Hogwarts, the Weasleys besides Ginny were a background presence to Harry. He knew of them, and he had an idea of who they all were, but if pressed he wouldn't have been able to say anything about them beyond their most obvious traits. Ronald, the guy in his year who hated Draco Malfoy. George and Fred, the mavericks who broke all rules and got away with most of it. Percy, the rule-following ponce. Bill, the cool one, and Charlie, the dragon one.
None of those descriptions, he learned, were wrong. But they all missed a lot.
The Burrow was a madhouse, both in design and in atmosphere. Mrs. Weasley was constantly around, directing her children and scolding them when they did their best to avoid her attention, commandeering their time to get chores done. The twins had a miniature magic laboratory in their room, and they disappeared to tinker in there whenever they could get away with it. Percy was in and out of the house almost as often as his father, having some sort of important internship at the ministry that induced him to drone about cauldron thickness at the oddest of times. Bill and Charlie didn't live at home, having jobs and presumably lives of their own, but their absence simply made the Burrow's crowded atmosphere even more unbelievable. There were less people living there than usual!
It was all a little overwhelming for Harry. He had been an only child, and then he had gone to Hogwarts, which while filled with students was not crowded by any means. There were always places to be alone, or to be alone with a few friends.
The Burrow was packed to the brim with people, and nowhere in the house or on the property around it offered any respite. Mrs. Weasley's more strident yells could be heard from the edge of their land, and Harry was stuck sharing a room with Ronald, who was affable enough but snored horribly.
It wasn't terrible, and he did enjoy being around the Weasleys for the most part, but it grated on him. It grated on his mum more, he could tell. She couldn't even stretch her legs, and Mrs. Weasley, while giving approval for him to have his familiar with him, had insisted he keep her in a transfigured terrarium at night.
Taylor had promptly 'escaped' into the fields around the Burrow, and refused to go back into the house. She went back to visiting only on weekends, and he couldn't blame her.
Harry's favorite times that summer were when he, Ginny, and sometimes Taylor went out into the nonmagical village, or visited Luna, who lived nearby. Away from the chaos of the Burrow, he felt he could finally breathe again.
Ginny, it seemed, felt the same. "They're great, and I couldn't be luckier to have them as a family," she said one afternoon as they wandered the village, "but it gets to be too much. More so now."
Because of Tom, she didn't say, but Harry caught her meaning all the same. "Yeah."
"Mum still won't even let me fly the family brooms," Ginny complained. "She keeps bringing up Saint Mungos…"
"I did notice that." He had also noticed that Mrs. Weasley had a tendency to mother everyone around her, even him. He didn't really appreciate it, though at least she hadn't said a word about the Potters yet. "She's probably just worried about you."
"She shouldn't be." Ginny scowled at nothing in particular as they walked. "I can take care of myself. Want to go see Luna?"
"Sure." And so they went, and Luna showed them a little fort she had built in the forest by her house, and another afternoon was whiled away in the countryside.
Sometimes there was no avoiding spending time in the Burrow, though. Especially when it rained; they weren't allowed to use magic over the summer, and the storms were peculiarly strong compared to what Harry was used to back home. Mr. Weasley had gone off on a tangent about Muggle weather services when he asked – an inaccurate one, that that – but Harry got the sense that the weather-proofing charms on the Burrow might be degrading and instead amplifying the storms as they passed over.
Whatever the cause, some days he was stuck in the Burrow. He bore the incessant noise and chaos as long as he could, then usually sought out somewhere marginally less noisy. Often that meant hiding out with Ronald.
"Twins are testing a new thing," Ronald warned him one morning as he snuck into the boy's room. "Might be safest to shack up here until mum takes it from them."
"Yeah." They would know when that happened; Mrs. Weasley's lectures were audible from anywhere in the Burrow. "Cards?"
"Exploding Snap," Ronald suggested, pulling a deck of the enchanted cards off his dresser. He sat down on the floor, and Harry joined him. "I've been meaning to talk to you, you know. You and Ginny always disappear when it's nice out."
"The countryside is really nice and there's always somewhere new to explore," Harry said. He grew up in a suburb, and occasional day trips to forests and hiking trails didn't have anything on just exploring the fields and forests surrounding the village.
"That gets boring when you live here," Ronald said. "I'll deal. You want to play with house rules or not?"
"What are the house rules?" he asked.
"Blue cards explode if you touch them and let go again without playing them," Ronald said, dealing out a hand. "Twins enchanted this deck, so the explosion times are harder to predict. Bill always won, otherwise."
"House rules sound good." It would be a challenge.
The first hand ended almost instantly; when Ronald said harder to predict, he really meant it. Harry shook out his hands after three cards detonated all at once, and took the now inert deck back to shuffle.
"You sure do spend a lot of time with my sister," Ronald said as Harry fiddled with the cards. "A bloke could get worried."
"Is this the 'stay away from my sister or I break your kneecaps' speech?" Harry asked.
"I dunno, should it be?" Ronald retorted. "Ginny has fancied Harry Potter for… forever… but I saw her putting those old books away last month."
Harry finished shuffling and started to deal out the cards. "Those books are probably rubbish anyway," he said. They were almost certainly far too childish for Ginny to enjoy rereading now. They might have been even if she hadn't been influenced by Tom's remnants.
"Not saying they aren't, what with Potter never even showing up for school," Ronald agreed. "But she loved the ruddy things. Still does, maybe, but I gotta wonder who's replacing Potter."
"It isn't me," Harry told him. "Really. She's a great friend. That's all."
"Well… good." Ronald frowned. "Or not good, 'cause now I've gotta figure out who it is. You have any ideas?"
"One." Harry slapped the deck to start the cards' internal timers. "Back off before Ginny hexes you into oblivion." She would, too.
Ronald grinned. "Hazard of being a big brother," he said, tossing down his first card.
Harry had no intention in joining Ronald in digging his own Bat-Bogey-infested grave, but he did wonder who it might be, if anyone. So long as his friend hadn't decided that he really was Harry Potter after all, and therefore the real-life version of the tall tale she had fancied, it was probably none of his business.
Pros: I liked Ron, here. Most of the concepts talked about weren't bad in abstract.
Cons: 'Show not Tell' is an overstated piece of advice and not necessarily an absolute, but it definitely applies here.
Solution: I took the parts I liked best and turned them into actual scenes in the posted version. The nighttime flight with Ginny was a subtler version of the Ron scene in terms of conveyed meaning, though sadly it didn't involve Ron, and the rest was straight-up improved by being seen in the narrative instead of told in retrospect.
Deleted Scene 2: It's Quiet… Too Quiet. Did I Forget Something Important?
Original draft, originally the final scenes of chapter 6
No major deviations from published canon prior to these scenes
A while later, Harry and Sirius finally made it to the Quidditch stadium proper, just before the game was set to start. Harry tromped up the magically extended stands, a bucket of sunflower seeds clutched to his chest and a pair of wizarding binoculars hanging off his wrist.
They had seats up in the top box, with the Weasleys and Luna and Hermione. Also a bunch of other Wizards and Witches Harry didn't know but thought were vaguely important, along with the Malfoys, who he did know but didn't particularly care for.
He claimed a spot right next to Hermione, who had Ginny on her other side, and passed her his binoculars. "These are really good," he told her. "They can take magical pictures and play them back." Sirius took a seat in the row behind and above them, next to Arthur Weasley.
Hermione ran her fingers over them, peering intently at the surface of the etched metal binoculars. "Ooh, that's really compact… I wonder why nobody has ever made Wizard video cameras yet, if they already have these?"
"What's a video?" Ginny asked.
"Many pictures in a row, with sound," Taylor hissed from her position coiled around Ginny's neck and shoulders. "Explained another way, wizard pictures that don't repeat for hours."
"Too much magic," Ginny promptly explained. "You can't put too many pictures in the same place. They get all fuzzy because the magic is too similar. It's the same reason pictures can't capture more than a few seconds at a time, it's too similar and the magic can't tell the difference between one moment and the next when there are enough of them."
"I guess Muggle film wouldn't work, then," Hermione mused.
"There are pensieves, though," Ginny added. "Those work like long pictures with sound, but with a memory and you can walk around in it."
The game had been in the process of starting while they talked; Harry ignored the officious announcer while he blathered about what game it was, and all of that, but then he felt a pull–
Beautiful women were dancing their way onto the field below. They were radiant, unearthly, and he wanted to catch their attention, to get even one sultry–
Two hands clapped down on his shoulders, holding him in his seat and startling him out of his fascination. "Girls like a guy who doesn't make a fool of himself over Veela," Sirius advised. "And that includes Veela."
Harry shook off the lingering attraction at that, and noticed that of the entire group he had come with to see the game, only Arthur Weasley, Molly Weasley, Sirius, and of course Taylor were unaffected. Ronald was trying to climb the thankfully charmed guard rail, the twins were pulling fireworks out of their pockets – and immediately having them confiscated by their mum – and even Ginny was staring with wide eyes. Hermione flushed and turned away, muttering about "compulsion magic" and brushing a few errant sparks out of her hair.
Even knowing there was magic involved, Harry was quite happy to watch the beautiful women until they left the arena and were replaced by less enamoring but more interesting leprechauns. Then the game began, and the spectacle of brooms and death-defying stunts wiped everything else from his mind.
Everything but the growing conviction that Sirius was definitely all right.
Taylor had intended to spend the night as a snake, asleep in some corner of the Weasley tent. She had expected it to be a mostly quiet night, perhaps with a few rowdy drunks waking everyone up on occasion.
Instead, thugs in matching masks came out to cause trouble and torment the Muggles Taylor had noticed being repeatedly obliviated because they had the misfortune to be responsible for this apparently mundane camping ground. That already didn't sit right with her.
Taylor caught wind of the attack when the screaming and yelling woke her up. A few seconds later, her insects had sufficiently spread out to cover her range and she had a complete understanding of the situation.
Three wizards in masks were levitating the Muggles. Four more were fighting with bystanders. Two were cutting into a tent with their wands. One was throwing fire charms around with wild abandon.
Ten murderous idiots had come out to cause chaos.
Nine murderous idiots learned that their masks were good for hiding their identity, not for protecting the face underneath. The tenth was no more protected by his mask than the others, but he was casting fire at everything that moved.
She slithered out of the tent and countercursed herself back to normal under the cover of darkness and rapidly spreading panic. That tenth Death Eater – for what else could they be, wearing those masks? – she would deal with herself, before he burned someone instead of just tents that rapidly emptied of their occupants before they fully caught on fire.
She was the first one on the scene, so long as she did not count a wizarding family of three apparating away as their tent was bombarded with fire curses. "Auguamenti," she cast, flicking her wand to send a jet of water streaming over the flames licking at the grass and onto the Death Eater himself. Water was a good immediate dampener of heat, but wet cloth conducted heat a lot faster than dry cloth, and the idiot was surrounding himself with fire.
In the moment, it got his attention. "Burn!" he screamed, spinning around to send a fresh wave of flames at her.
Fire powers were some of her least favorite powers to fight as Skitter and later as Weaver, but basic Incendio blasts were nothing compared to the terrible versatility of someone like Burnscar, and she wasn't relying solely on bugs anymore. With someone this stupid… She dodged the plume of flame, dropped low to duck his next blast, and 'Accio'd a tent stake out of the ground from behind him, pulling it to her and by extension directly into the back of his leg, just above his knee.
Tent stake met thin robe and weak flesh, and tent stake won so thoroughly that she heard the crack of it striking bone head-on.
After that all she had to do was stamp out the flames separating them, stun him to put him out of his misery, and put out the fires. Elsewhere, bystanders were stepping in to stun the writhing, agonized Death Eaters trying to draw the mosquitos and grasshoppers out of their various facial orifices.
The flames drew the eye, and she soon found she had plenty of help in putting them out. Not the Weasleys; Arthur and Molly had started apparating them and the other children back to the Burrow once they realized what was going on. Luckily for them, Taylor had struck quickly enough that none of the Death Eaters had time to establish an anti-apparition ward.
"Now there's a new way of putting down scum," a familiar voice remarked from behind her.
"Moody, nice of you to join me. In the area?" She wondered if he was a retired Auror as well as a veteran of the last war. He definitely had that presence. On the other hand, he didn't stink of incompetence and had arrived on the scene well before any actual Aurors.
She turned to 'see' – as if she hadn't already noticed with her insects – Moody crouching over the downed Death Eater. He gripped the bloodied tent stake and yanked it out of the man's leg.
"Cauterize or bind it or he'll bleed out, there's a reason I left it in," Taylor remarked in between 'Auguamenti's aimed at the remaining hot spots. The other wizards and witches fighting the fires were leaving, spreading out to hunt down the last few smoldering embers.
"Don't teach a veteran to treat wounds, I might decide to dust up on the subject using you as a practice dummy," Moody growled. "This idiot will live until the Aurors show. Now, whether he'll ever walk again depends on what curse you used to take him down."
"Accio, not a curse at all." She flooded a smoldering tent with water until it collapsed and stopped smoldering.
"No permanent harm done, then," Moody determined. "Fancy running into you here, though."
"My son wanted to see the game. What's your excuse?" She couldn't see Moody as a big Quidditch fan.
"Black's trial got me antsy, decided I wanted a good old-fashioned blowout with a chance of brawling, the World Cup fit the bill." He tapped the side of his head. "Saw them coming. Saw them all flopping down and tearing their masks off, too."
"How convenient." She knew this little dance. Plausible deniability remained a constant across worlds. Here, not even the use of insects could be linked back to her. Any number of magics might be able to replicate the effects of her power on a smaller scale, though her power's disapproval at that thought implied otherwise.
Aurors were beginning to pop up within her range, apparating in ready for a fight. Taylor was not impressed with their response time. Surely an event as big as this was supposed to have dedicated security?
"Convenient, but most of 'em will get off," Moody predicted. "Muggle baiting, at most. They'll claim the masks were planted, and nobody'll look too closely for the truth, if they don't just go all the way and get out on bail before claiming Polyjuice or some other blatant nonsense. No dark mark, no murders, not even any serious injuries."
Taylor couldn't bring herself to care about that. "No murders, not even any serious injuries," she said, repeating his words with a much more positive lilt. "Sounds like a total success to me."
"No charges that'll stick," he graveled. "Next time let them do some real damage first."
"Duly noted." She hadn't been thinking about arresting them. "The Muggles are safe?"
"Safely obliviated," he said. "The wife might have a new unfounded fear of heights," he added, cracking a grin.
Taylor glared at him. "I don't find obliviation funny," she said coldly.
Moody scowled thoughtfully, and Taylor knew she had successfully planted another seed for eventually revealing Dumbledore's actions. "They were handled by trained obliviators," he said after a moment.
"Fuck that spell." It had almost taken her son from her forever. Only literal extradimensional alien intervention gave her back her memories. It had its uses, but she didn't have to like or approve of it.
"You're interesting, for sure," Moody asserted. "How'd you do the bugs? Seven Death Eaters all more interested in crying and vomiting than fighting back."
"Nine, and it's a personal spell I won't be spreading around." She pulled a few flies in close, several dozen flying in tight formation around Moody. "It comes in handy."
"I'll bet it does." He reached out for the flies, so Taylor jolted them out of reach. "Keep your secrets, then. Your kid, he go to Hogwarts?"
"What's it to you?" she asked.
"Just wondering." Moody tucked his wand into a holster on the underside of his right wrist. "If you wanna keep that bug trick of yours from being widely known, don't stick around for Auror questioning."
"I'd think you would advise me to cooperate with law enforcement," she said.
"Lazy untrained buggers, all of 'em," Moody grunted. "You put this attack down, but see who the papers credit with it. Force went to shit before I retired and it hasn't gotten any better. See you around."
He twisted and popped out of existence, just as the Aurors started popping up within Taylor's range, finally realizing that maybe the dying fires were something worth investigating.
"Fuck that spell, too," she grumbled, forced to settle for transforming into a snake and sneaking away.
Pros: I kind of liked this interaction with Moody.
Cons: Full disclosure, I totally forgot Barty was supposed to be in the VIP box with Winky during the game, hidden only by an invisibility cloak and Barty being under (and then breaking but hiding it) an Imperius. I also had Taylor established as being able to feel invisibility cloaks with bugs, as they are not intangibility cloaks. Which meant the first part of this doesn't work, and the second part, well, once I was going to the trouble of introducing Barty…
Solution: A new scene with Taylor discovering and removing Barty and Winky in the VIP box, playing out so that they're not just eliminated from the story. Modify the setup of the second part of this set of scenes to introduce an all-new fight and a different role for Barty in general. Revamp the entire Barty and Moody aspects of the plot from here on out. (Seriously, it was a big change). There was no Barty fight in the first draft, and that is perhaps my personal favorite scene of this entire story now.
Deleted Scene 3: No, I Don't Think This Is Pointless At All!
Original draft, originally the start of chapter 8
No major deviations from published canon prior to these scenes (aside from the underlying assumption that Moody in Hogwarts is fake-Moody, though there's no actual difference in the text up until this scene)
Taylor was inarguably a shadow of her former self when it came to being Skitter. She didn't doubt that she still had some of the quirks, the attitude of her former self, but the decade between her and Earth Bet had sanded off some of her sharp edges, and Harry dulled the rest. This was good. It kept her grounded, kept her stable.
The lingering rust wasn't helping her now, though.
The ugly sandy-haired man chained to the wall in Grimmauld Place's hidden prison cell spit blood. He no longer looked like Moody; his body had rippled and warped to his current appearance while she was levitating him down the passage to Hogsmeade.
He was not Moody, but he had the composure of a veteran. Based on his tattooed forearm, he was a veteran – for the other side.
"Barty Crouch Junior," Sirius had said was his name. He was the son of an important official, a known, convicted Death Eater, and legally dead, buried in Azkaban. That was all they knew. They certainly hadn't learned anything from the man himself.
She hit him again, bruising her knuckles on his cheekbone. "Why were you kidnapping Harry Potter?" she demanded.
He laughed, his voice high and nasally, and blood tracked down his chin. It dripped down, landing on the writhing chitinous mass covering the floor of the cell.
"He isn't talking," Sirius told her. He was outside the cell, and he had his wand trained on their prisoner, just in case. "No veritaserum. No time for more complicated compulsions."
"Yes, I know." She also knew Sirius wasn't so stupid that he was unwittingly revealing the weakness of their position. He had a point beyond letting Crouch Junior know they couldn't force him to talk. "Suggestions?"
"If he won't use his tongue, have your bugs take it out of his head," Sirius said blandly.
Barty had an impressive poker face. She drove insects up his legs, clinging visibly to the outside of his robes and creeping along underneath, pricking and creeping up bare skin. They reached his knees, the swarm bunching up around him as bugs literally crawled on top of each other to get higher.
He scowled, spit more blood, and growled, "do your worst."
He was the first enemy she had encountered on this world who wasn't outwardly affected by the sheer, visceral horror of her power. Compared to that, smacking him around was nothing, though it did make her feel marginally better.
He wasn't going to talk. Not unless they resorted to outright torture, and quite possibly not even then.
"Think about whether you want to keep your tongue… and eyes," she told him, before leaving the cell and casting a silencing charm on him. She left the bugs, slowly creeping up his chest now.
Sirius put up a silencing ward as they stepped out of Crouch's line of sight. "I wasn't sure, but now I am. The bastard knows Occlumency. He could be screaming bloody terror on the inside, but as long as he keeps his shields up he won't give in."
"And there's no magic we can apply to crack that?" she asked.
Sirius grimaced. "Veritaserum, which we don't have and can't get on short notice," he said, listing off on his fingers, "a compulsion charm will have him spitting out nonsense or lying depending on the power, any better truth magics in the library will take too long to learn and set up, and I don't know any curses off the top of my head to make him want to talk." He shook his head. "If you're certain he needs to be returned before anyone notices he's missing, and that our part in his capture be kept secret, we can't make him talk. We probably can't convince him to talk, either."
"Fine." Not fine. They still didn't know what Crouch had intended to do with Harry, or whether he knew anything about the Death Eater attack at the World Cup. They didn't know if he wanted personal revenge or was working for some unknown mastermind, and they didn't know what he had intended to do after kidnapping Harry. Was there some other purpose to him being in Hogwarts that would have had him continuing the charade, or would he have disappeared along with Harry?
Perhaps most immediately important, they didn't know where he was keeping the real Moody. Polyjuice required the subject be alive and the user have access to their hair, but that told them nothing about where Moody might be, or whether he would remain alive.
"We take him back, then." They couldn't get any of those answers quickly enough to avoid the consequences of holding him for too long.
"And drop him off, unconscious, in the corridor?" Sirius asked.
"No, that leaves too much to chance. We're going to do what we did to Pettigrew." Public, unavoidable outing with multiple witnesses.
"I'm not bringing that damn hat," Sirius grumbled.
"I have a different cast in mind." Neither she nor Sirius had an excuse to be in Hogwarts to unmask the fraud. "Obliviation?"
"I can do the last day," Sirius confirmed.
"Do it." It made her skin crawl, but small obliviations were the lesser evil.
"Come quick!" Harry found his Head of House in the Great Hall, eating breakfast that morning, right next to all of the other teachers. "There's somebody passed out on the floor in front of Professor Moody's office!"
Professor Sprout stared at him, a piece of toast paused halfway to her mouth.
"That's a matter for Pomphrey," Snape sneered, filling the silence.
"I don't know who he is but he's not a student or teacher," Harry argued.
Professor Flitwick stood, hopping down from his stool. "Lead the way," he commanded.
He wasn't the professor Harry had asked, but seeing as Professor Sprout instantly nodded to Flitwick, he supposed the Ravenclaw Head would do just as well.
Harry led Flitwick right to Moody's office, and to the unconscious form of one legally dead criminal, though he pretended he had no idea who Barty was. He had a minor part to play in this little setup, one his mum had explained to him in great detail. Namely, he was supposed to duck out as quickly as possible once a few correct conclusions had been reached.
"He most certainly is not someone I know," Flitwick said gravely as he hit Barty with a precautionary stunner. "What would he be doing here?"
"Maybe Moody got him?" Harry suggested. A small crowd of students came down the hallway, stopping to gawk. He had made a scene of telling the professors in front of a good portion of the student body.
"That is no excuse, but I wonder…" Flitwick slid Barty's sleeve up. "I see. That would be the why, and very good work for alerting me." He stepped over the unconscious Death Eater, heedless of the increasingly loud chatter from their audience, and pushed into Moody's empty office. "But where is Professor Moody?"
Harry waited a moment, but it didn't seem like Flitwick had noticed or was likely to notice soon, so he spoke up. "Aren't these Hogwarts robes this guy is wearing?" He nudged Barty's arm with his foot, disturbing a half-filled flask that spilled out onto his shoe, the liquid an ugly brown that had him jumping back even though he had expected it.
"They are." Flitwick came out of the office, his face grave. "Run along now, everyone. Ten points to Hufflepuff for noticing this and bringing it to a teacher's attention. I suspect Defense against the Dark Arts will be canceled today, but do not assume so until an announcement is made."
Most of the crowd made only token gestures of compliance before hanging around to watch Flitwick and the mystery intruder with a Dark Mark, but Harry happily took the dismissal and left. The Hufflepuff grapevine would catch him up on what happened next, and the sooner he was out of sight the less likely it was anyone would connect him to the incident as anything other than the first person to stumble across it.
The real Moody turned up that afternoon to teach his Defense classes, looking rather rumpled and irritably deducting points from anyone who asked him where he had been. Rumors of Polyjuice, Death Eaters, and Azkaban quickly circled the school, proving that all of the important facts had at least made it to the Professors to be overheard, distorted, and spread around by the students… For all of a single morning, and then the arrival of the foreign schools and their many students provided something much more interesting to talk about.
Durmstrang and Beauxbatons were the sparks that lit the flames of a school-wide frenzy; though they had known about the Triwizard Tournament for weeks beforehand, it was all anyone could talk about once the other schools had arrived and the Cup was put out to take nominations. In the classrooms, in the halls, in the dorms… Everyone had something to say.
Pros: Uh… It resolved the Barty plotline? And introduced a whole load of new issues… I got nothing. This one was bad.
Cons: So many. Why fake-Moody at all, if he's this trivial to remove? How the heck does Voldemort come back at any point if Barty and Pettigrew are both incapacitated and nobody cares enough to go looking? Why is this even a thing? Is Taylor in character? Is Sirius? Is Harry? Are people idiots to go along with this? Was there any point to this beyond having a reason for Harry to not be in the Tournament?
Solution: Thankfully rendered completely irrelevant by the changes to chapter 6. This one's a stinker. At least it makes the published story look better by comparison?
Deleted Scene 4: Who Wants Story, When We Can Have Summary Instead?
Original draft, originally the end of chapter 11
No relevant major deviations from published canon (Barty was replacement guy, so he got caught a bit later, and Moody doesn't know Taylor is Hissy, but that's about it. Oh, and the Bulgarian vampire prosthetic arms weren't a thing in this draft, just go with it.)
Harry had missed a lot, facing Voldemort and then spending the night in Saint Mungos. More than he would have thought.
Fleur Delacour won the Triwizard Tournament, despite being in third place going into the final task, and Cedric having all of Hufflepuff behind him. In the end, it came down to chance more than either of those things. Cedric and Krum ran into each other, dueled, and stalemated for long enough that Fleur found the cup just as Cedric vanquished Krum. It was, he was told, an anticlimactic end to the tournament. Fleur gave a speech about many mistakes the tournament organizers had made, and refused the trophy – but not the prize money, which she took 'as a pitiful attempt at making reparations for placing my sister in mortal danger.' He was told it was a huge slap in the face to the Minister, the tournament, and Britain as a whole. Fudge was not pleased.
He learned these things from Hufflepuff and other students, not his friends. They were far too busy to watch the tournament end themselves. Down under the stands, they guarded Barty Crouch when he returned. When nobody else came back, Neville went to tell the Professors. This turned into the Aurors finding out that they had Barty, and that got back to Fudge, culminating in a standoff between Fudge, his one Auror, and all of Harry's friends. Fudge summoned a Dementor to 'end this farce and protect the Ministry's reputation'. Luna, of all people, responded with a patronus.
Apparently it had come close to an all-out fight between Fudge and Ginny, with Hermione and Neville as her backup. Then the tournament had ended and Fudge ducked out to give the trophy away. By that point Percy Weasley had made it to the Ministry and called Aurors to the scene of the battle, both at the graveyard and at Hogwarts to inform the Minister.
His friends guarded Barty Crouch until Amelia Bones herself came to tell them that Moody was dead and promised nobody would be quietly sweeping Barty Crouch under the rug.
Voldemort might have been the bigger threat of the two, but Harry was thankful Barty Crouch wasn't going to slip away again and return to cause trouble a third time. He thanked his friends, then returned the favor by telling them what happened. All of it, even the parts Dumbledore wanted kept secret, though he trusted them not to spread it any further.
After that… His mum was stuck in Saint Mungos for recovery and magical surgery. He didn't have an excuse to go visit her, especially as Dumbledore no longer remembered that he had a mum named Taylor Hebert; the one time he asked, Dumbledore told him that he wouldn't have to go back to the Dursleys that summer, as Voldemort was dead for good and the blood wards unnecessary.
He had no idea who the Dursleys were; presumably the people Dumbledore thought had raised him. He hadn't dared correct the old man, for fear of undoing Sirius' obliviation. And blood wards… Ginny had to explain those to the group to prevent Hermione arranging a heist of the restricted section in pursuit of research.
Harry resigned himself to waiting for the end of the school year to see his mum, and threw himself into his studies to pass the time. It was easier now; he was worried for her, but her injuries were the last lingering thread that had started with her silence in first year, and expanded to include Dumbledore, Death Eaters, and everything in between.
In the meantime, oblivious to Harry's circumstances, the school year ran to a close. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth come exam time, as the Triwizard Tournament revealed itself to have been a much larger distraction to studying than Quidditch ever was, but this phenomena did not reach into Harry's group of friends, so it was largely something they observed from the outside.
Other things happened. Ronald Weasley lost three teeth in a knock-down brawl with Draco Malfoy. Draco revealed that his father had arranged hand-to-hand fighting lessons for him, only to learn that Ronald had grown up with five brothers and was no stranger to brawling himself. Draco went to the infirmary with two black eyes and a crestfallen expression. The twins got detention for taking bets on the fight.
Cedric Diggory publicly got up in the Great Hall after the tournament to thank his house for supporting him, and in the process revealed exactly how much they had supported him throughout the tournament. Hufflepuff house temporarily gained the title of 'the house of the bloody scary cheaters', a badge they wore with honor as it tended to be said more admiringly than not.
Professor Moody's replacement quit one week before exams, complaining that Moody's office was booby-trapped to high heaven. The replacement's replacement was none other than Bill Weasley the cursebreaker, who made a special lesson out of breaching Moody's office with the seventh-years. Half of that class was laid up in the infirmary for a week, including Bill himself, but it was said that incident convinced Bill he wouldn't be bored teaching Defense, and that he had signed on for next year.
Hermione spiraled into her usual pre-exams stress fest, but Harry wasn't needed to put out her short fuse. Truthfully, he didn't know she had started to spiral at all until he walked into an abandoned classroom they had claimed for spell practice and ran into her snogging Ginny Weasley on one of the desks, sparks flying everywhere.
That prompted Hermione and Ginny to either make their relationship public, or possibly to start a relationship then and there; Harry was fuzzy on exactly what had passed between them in the time between the Yule Ball and now. All he knew was that after that day, it was obvious they were together…
Thus leading to Ronald Weasley's second infirmary trip for missing teeth, when he tried to give Hermione the 'broken kneecaps' speech and got a little too aggressive. She would only say of the encounter that he was lucky she had her lightning affinity so thoroughly under control, and that Ginny might be upset if her brother became an inefficient lightning rod. On the bright side, after a midnight visit from Ginny Ronald publicly endorsed the relationship.
Harry learned of the midnight visit from Luna, who had apparently come along to 'bear witness'. He had, through Sirius, gotten her a set of Muggle colored pencils and paints, and as a result was given a sketched picture of Ronald quaking in his bed with Ginny looming menacingly over him.
Harry knew he and his friends were weird, and he embraced it for the most part, but he had absolutely no idea what to do with that picture except to thank her, take it, and tack it up on the inside of his trunk as a reminder, should he ever forget, that his Hogwarts years really were that weird and he wasn't remembering incorrectly.
Exams came and went, a disappointingly easy set of tests that left Hermione crestfallen and the rest of them smug, even Neville, who was catching up to their accelerated learning by merit of just absorbing everything, mostly from Hermione, via verbal osmosis.
Neville did end up serving a detention during the last week of school, though. Everyone, even Harry and his other friends, was shocked to learn he had mail-ordered a juvenile Magical Man-Eating Tiger Lily – illegal to own in Britain, Neville himself had told Harry two summers ago – and raised it in a corner of one of the greenhouses, all year. It was discovered when Professor Sprout almost lost a first-year, though Neville swore that since Tiger Lilies only swallowed their prey, the student would have been fine even if it successfully swallowed her, as she could just cut her way out or be cut out by someone else.
That it was only a week of detention could be chalked up to Dumbledore chuckling and assuring Neville that donations to the Hogwarts Potions supply could not be punished too harshly, even if they were a little too enthusiastic.
Professor Snape could be seen in the Greenhouse on the last day of school, sweating like a stuck pig as he harvested Tiger Lily digestive fluid and plant fibers from the only place they could be effectively removed without spoiling, inside the plant's digestive pod as it attempted to digest him through his magical protections.
Neville swore it was all worth it, even as he anticipated a very stern lecture from his Gran when he went home.
They all piled into the Hogwarts Express on that last day, Harry boarding the train for the first time since he arrived at Hogwarts for his first year. It was exactly as he remembered it, except much smaller and jam-packed with people he knew, not total strangers.
Also, nobody insisted he was Harry Potter. That was another marked change from his last train ride. He even shared a compartment with the same people he had on the way up four years ago. Ronald Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Neville Longbottom. Luna, Ginny, Susan Bones, and the Weasley twins were there too this time, filling the compartment to bursting with bodies and noise.
They talked summer plans, among other things.
"I'm going to be grounded for a month, I expect," Neville said glumly when asked. "But after that it'll be good!" he added with a smile. "Gran wrote me about the Barty Crouch thing. She was very proud. I reckon after the grounding the two will cancel out."
"I'll be home, of course," Ginny said. "You all better let me come visit often!"
"I'm going to be home too," Hermione said. She held Ginny's hand with her left hand, and flicked sparks from finger to finger with her right. The sparks increased in intensity as she continued, "and Ginny is coming over for a week, I know that."
"I will be drawing," Luna said absently. "Whatever I see… Some things I do not, too. Daddy says the colored pencils work well with the Quibbler's duplication charms, so he will be printing some of my drawings!"
And then there was Harry, who for once had absolutely no reservations about how he would be spending the summer.
When the train pulled into Platform Nine and Three Quarters, he disembarked with everyone else and looked around. For a moment he worried that something had gone wrong.
Then he saw them, both of them. Sirius, in that weird hat of his from Diagon Alley, and Taylor, with one real arm and one fake arm, but the two switched around now. They were waiting for him.
Finally, he was home.
Pros: Again, the actual events, especially as pertaining to the end of the school year and all of the little details, were good. Mostly.
Cons: Again, a case where show not tell is applicable advice. Also, that bit with threatening Ron is OOC for the Ron I wrote, who's not an ass, and possibly for Ginny as well. Where did Fudge get a Dementor on short notice, and would he really bring one of those to a publicity stunt he wants to go well?
Solution: Scenes showing all of the parts of this I could fit into one of our three main POVs, and scenes talking directly about what I couldn't to add flavor.
Deleted Scene 5: Because I Felt I Needed To Mistreat More Worm Characters
Original draft, originally the entirety of chapter 12
See the last deleted scenes for relevant changes from published canon
Harry swept into his flat in a flurry of half-discarded outer robes. "Late, late, I'm late," he chanted as he tossed his work clothing on the bed and pulled on a much nicer set of robes that had been left out, prepared for the night ahead.
Tonight was a bad night to be late, but work had kept him and when the consequences of leaving might be a hundred-year-old self-contained magical terrarium cracking open, little things like parties just had to take second place to fixing the problem, no matter how much he wanted to be on time. But he had wrangled the magical glass and helped the others stick it all in place with enough sticking charms to lift an Erumpent, and now he was only twenty minutes late.
He hurried over to the fire, took a pinch of floo powder, and called out his destination. The fire roared, and he stepped through at an angle. A moment later he moved out of the fire and into a vaulted room, only stumbling slightly on the reentry.
"Harry!" Neville greeted him with a clap on the back that sent him further sprawling. He was sporting a rather distracting rash on his upper lip; it wasn't the beginnings of a mustache, it was green and blue. "You're late!"
"I know, is Luna here?" he asked.
"Whatever kept you didn't keep her, she was here before me," Neville answered. "You didn't miss the dedication, though, so it's all right. She's on the fourth floor, I'll be up in a moment!"
Harry thanked his friend, took a good two seconds to make sure he had his balance back, and moved out into the mingling crowd.
The room was vaulted, with four levels all opening up to a big open space in the middle, and people wandered all four levels, peering at temporary wooden blockades lining all of the walls and sectioning off a large portion of the empty space in the middle of the first floor. There was a little plaque and a ribbon strung up in front of the front of the wooden blockade, and near the front door were tables of food. The ceiling glowed, a deep yellow that reminded him of the sun in the afternoon on a warm day.
He had been in this room, this building, many times over, and his surroundings didn't interest him. Not yet. Instead, he worked through the crowd, saying hello to the people he knew and politely greeting the ones he didn't.
Everyone he particularly cared about would be on the fourth floor; it was blocked off by a sphinx doorknob asking riddles, but the secret few of the party guests knew was that the only answer that would grant entrance to the fourth floor's balconies wasn't an answer to any of the riddles asked.
"Dimensional," he told the doorknob once he had ascended the first three flights of stairs, cutting off it's riddle before it could begin.
The door swung open, and he quickly entered and shut it behind him. This might be a party for Britain's high society by way of necessity, but it was his mum's big night and her real party only included the people she already knew and liked. She wouldn't make an appearance on the public floors until it was time to do the unveiling.
The first person he saw when he came out onto the top balcony was Luna, in an emerald-green dress that reminded him of the Yule Ball, going on seven years ago now. "You made it!" she said, meeting him with a quick kiss.
"You almost lost your Pygmy Erumpents," he told her. "But we got the terrarium glass back before they blew it to smithereens, so it's all good now."
"The Department of Mysteries could use more Pygmy Erumpents anyway," she said thoughtfully. "I'll have to introduce a mandatory pet policy."
"There'll be riots," he said dryly.
"And that's just the pets rioting over being stuck with the boring researcher types," Neville said as he came up behind Harry. "Give me a plant any day."
"Have you been kissing your plants, Neville?" Luna asked. "Or is that lipstick?"
"Got nicked by a Fungal Thumper," Neville admitted. "My mistake, really, it was just spitting at a fly."
Harry took Luna's arm, and they walked out to see the rest of their friends. Ginny and Hermione were picking at the wooden blockades barring them from the things hidden behind. "Hey, don't mess those up," Harry called out.
Hermione spun with a fierce blush, but Ginny just shrugged her shoulders. "We're not getting through those without alerting your mum anyway, it was a lost cause from the start."
"Tell your mum she's cruel, Harry," Hermione complained. "Walling all of that off…"
"Maybe she just knows you too well," Harry suggested. "How are things? I haven't seen either of you recently."
"We've made progress on the Dementor theory," Ginny said proudly. "We've been busy! Can you say the same?"
"I'll have you know I just came from protecting the Wizarding world from an invasion of Pygmy Erumpents," Harry said seriously. "You wouldn't want that. They explode when they sneeze."
"It's fascinating what sped-up isolated evolution can produce," Luna sighed. "So many cycles of reproduction and mutation…"
"Don't get started on reproduction," Hermione said darkly. "Molly is in time-out, don't think I won't put you in time-out too."
"What's this?" Harry led Luna to a nearby four-person table, and she, Hermione, and Ginny took seats. "Please tell me she didn't put her foot in her mouth."
"That's too nice a way of saying it," Ginny griped. "You know the situation with the possibility of Weasley grandbabies as it stands, right?"
"Uh… no?" Harry said truthfully. "Are there any?"
"Well, let's go down the list, shall we?" Hermione said sardonically, leaning back in her chair. "Bill Weasley is still Defense Professor, and the only new people he meets are his students. He's single, though a lot of them want to change that. Charlie Weasley may as well be dating a dragon, for all anyone knows."
"We don't even know if he has dated anyone since moving to Romania," Ginny added. "Best to assume he won't, or if he is he's got the good sense to keep it secret."
"The twins don't have steady girlfriends and aside from that prank last year, no kids," Hermione continued. "Percy Weasley is married to–"
"Justice!" Ginny interjected with a wicked smile. "Justice and cleansing magical Britain of corruption in all its forms."
"Yes, that," Hermione agreed. "Also, he's shagging the Minister on the sly."
"Uh…" Harry tried to get rid of that mental image. "You mean the new Minister, right? Please?"
"I think Percy Weasley would be the power top if he was in a relationship with Cornelius Fudge," Luna said.
Everyone paused to not imagine that. Or if they did, to wish Luna hadn't said anything.
"It's Susan, not Fudge," Hermione said. "The way I heard it from Susan, he refused to so much as kiss her until after he handed off control of the Ministerial investigation committee to his second in command."
"So whoever he's shagging, he's married to Justice," Ginny insisted. "And I will not let that joke die. Spread it around."
"Percy isn't in our good books right now, either," Hermione explained. "He's the one who provoked Molly by telling her he was using protection, and why he felt he had to explain that to her… Ugh. Do the math. How many Weasleys are looking likely to pop out grandbabies?"
One not dating, one probably not dating, two unwilling to be tied down, one in the beginning of a relationship… "What about Ron?" he asked.
"Shagging every Quidditch groupie who can convince him she's interested in more than his fame," Ginny said scathingly.
"Right. So that leaves…" He looked at Hermione and Ginny, and at the rings on both of their fingers.
"Us," Ginny concluded with a groan. "Percy made her think about grandbabies when he denied the possibility of her getting any from him anytime soon. Then we walk in, ready for our weekly lunch with her and dad, while he skips out, mayhem caused and Justice waiting for him at the Ministry. She's got baby rabies now, and it's all his fault."
"She brought it up," Hermione continued. "We were looking into adopting. As something for the future, in a few years, once we're done working on the Dementor problem. I made the mistake of telling her that."
"As it turns out," Ginny sighed, "adoption 'doesn't count.'" She scowled at nothing in particular.
"Really?" Luna asked. "She said that?"
"That's the least of the things she said," Hermione confirmed. "Apparently, we are to find a willing donor, both get pregnant at the same time, and move into the Burrow for the duration of the pregnancies as well as the next eighteen years afterward so she doesn't have to part from her new grandbabies for as long as possible."
Harry, still a little stung that Molly Weasley had said adoption didn't count, couldn't stop his jaw from dropping at the sheer presumption. "Did she really expect that?" he asked.
"We'll find out in a month when her time-out ends and we talk to her again," Ginny said grimly. "Maybe she'll realize she was out of line. Maybe not."
"Isolation does tend to kill off Nargles," Luna said sagely. "If it doesn't work, just ignore her."
"I'd rather not, but we will if she makes us," Ginny agreed. "How about you? Taylor nagging you to tie the knot yet?"
"Taylor agrees that a seven-year engagement is a magically advantageous number," Luna replied. "We are only on year four, she would not want us to cut it short."
Harry privately thought that officially getting married would change exactly nothing about their relationship. As such, he was happy for their engagement to last as long as Luna wanted. "She's been great, of course," he said. "No out-of-control longing for grandchildren there."
"There wouldn't be," Hermione laughed. "She's far too busy."
"Where is she, anyway?" Harry asked, finally taking a moment to properly look around the balcony. It was mostly empty, and his mum was not among the people looking down at the lower levels or chatting at the small tables scattered around.
"Up on the roof," Luna said serenely. "If you go now, you will arrive exactly when she needs you."
Harry didn't question it. Luna's intuition had a touch of Seer to it even if she was content to not develop the talent, and her suggestions were prescient more often than not. He returned to the stairwell and walked up the extra-tall fifth flight of stairs, quietly unlocking the door to the roof with a muttered 'Alohomora'.
It was dark out, and the stars were covered by scattered clouds.
Five people stood on the roof, four with their backs to him. His mum faced them, her arm behind her back.
Harry sidled out into the open, walking silently. He didn't like the look of this, and Luna had said he would arrive when he was needed… His mum wouldn't need him to do something as trivial as break up a friendly conversation.
"She left a note. Two parts, one for me and one for Vicky here." The speaker was a normal-looking woman, wearing Muggle attire. All four of the strangers were women, actually, and none were dressed as witches. "So we could check on you."
"Make sure you aren't causing trouble here," the blond one said.
"Bring you back," the first speaker retorted. "Or something in between. She didn't say. Probably for the best. You know how she was. We had no idea what we were walking into, coming here."
Harry knew where his mum had come from, with all the gory details included. She had told him after he graduated from Hogwarts, a long-awaited explanation given in a single long night. He also knew she had no desire to go back, and if these people were going to try and take her back, well, that might be why he was here.
"It is… good to see you, Lisa," his mum said carefully. "You know I mean that. And you, Rachel. How are the dogs?"
"Good," the bulky woman next to the first speaker said.
Harry knew them; Rachel and Lisa, his mum's old friends. He didn't know the others; Vicky was a name that didn't ring any bells, and the fourth was a silent spectator.
"And you, Victoria. I hope you are well. I don't know you, though…" His mum trailed off.
"Sveta," the fourth girl volunteered, her voice soft. "We only met once. I accidentally tore your arm off."
"You are looking much better nowadays," his mum said graciously. "If you're here to check on me, well…" She shrugged her shoulders. "Here I am. But Lisa…"
"Yes?" Lisa asked.
"When you go, close the door behind you." Taylor frowned. "This world is doing good. It doesn't need parahuman shit mucking it up."
"Wow." Lisa recoiled, as if physically stung. "Not the welcome I expected. But you really mean that."
Harry could tell this was his moment. "Yes, she does." He pointed his wand at Victoria, who reacted first. She was floating, he noticed, and she could turn much faster than the others.
"Harry, they're not enemies," his mum said.
"No, but if they try to take you, they will be," he retorted.
"Boyfriend?" Victoria asked.
"Son," Harry replied. "Her husband is downstairs, taking the kids around to meet Britain's high society." It was probably good Sirius wasn't here right now; he'd jump right to the attack, consequences be damned. Harry would rather see these off-world visitors leaving peacefully, if possible.
Lisa smiled, but it was a pinched, forced smile. "Something about you is giving me a headache," she said. "I don't like mysteries. I might stay until I figure it out."
"The headache won't go away," he warned. "It'll get worse and worse. It won't just be you, either. That's what happens to anyone with powers who comes here." Magic was debilitating. More specifically, powers trying to figure out magic took its toll on the human in the middle. His mum was only now beginning to understand enough that headaches were rare even when she learned new things.
"We're not staying," Victoria said, loudly for her companions' benefit. "We came to check on Taylor. She's not a warlord, she's not the secret world ruler, and she's not in some backwards slave camp, so I would say she's fine. Better than fine."
"I came hoping for a reunion," Lisa said.
"You can have a hug and a few little secrets before you go," Taylor offered. "But that's all. I missed you, but not enough to want the problems you'll bring with you if you stay or try to take me with you."
"People move on," Lisa agreed. Harry sidled around their group so they wouldn't have to turn their backs on him to look at Taylor. "You found power here, didn't you?"
"I found more important things," his mum said firmly. "I'm glad you're alive and thriving."
"Same here, I suppose," Lisa replied. "We're going now." She didn't look like she wanted to go.
"Rachel… Be well." Taylor strode forward and embraced the stocky girl. "I don't know what else to say."
"You've got your own pack." Rachel shrugged her off. "Good for you. You needed one."
"Lisa…" Taylor hugged her too, and whispered something in her ear.
Lisa recoiled. "Why would you tell me that and then expect me to leave?" she demanded.
"Because I'm almost certain you'll have an aneurysm and die if you try to stay here, given how your power treats you normally," Taylor told her. "Mine almost killed me by accident. Those are the important things. Try not to think about it. Poison fruit."
Lisa laughed. "Fuck you, Taylor," she said without heat. "This is not how I expected things to go."
"What did you tell her?" Victoria demanded.
"Enough to make sure she knows why this dimension was so hard to reach, and why it's in her best interest not to come back," Taylor answered. "You… You've found your own peace, haven't you? I can tell."
"You don't get to pull the wise woman act," Victoria said.
"No, I don't. Good luck." She waved to Sveta. "Congratulations on having control."
"Thanks?" Sveta asked.
Harry watched as the four of them stood together and flashed out of existence in a burst of black light.
"That's not how we crossed dimensions in my day," Taylor remarked.
Somehow, that was the end of it. The parahumans didn't come back, his mum didn't suddenly vanish across dimensions, there hadn't even been a fight. "Did you want to see them?" he asked.
"I'd not thought of them in a long time," his mum admitted wistfully. "I suppose that makes me a bad friend. But I think, just knowing that they live, that they've moved on… Lisa and Victoria, working together. Who'd have thought?"
"They could have stayed a little longer," Harry offered, knowing that it was a lot easier to suggest such a thing after the moment where it could actually happen had irrevocably passed.
"Not without bringing their problems with them," Taylor answered. "It's better this way. We said the important things, did the important things, and they've gone before it could get messy. We won't be dragged into their interdimensional society or an interdimensional war. I won't be dragged back into it all. This is best."
"Well…" His mum knew better than anyone else on in this dimension when it came to parahumans. "I think it's time for the unveiling."
"It is, isn't it?" she asked. "Has Hermione broken down the barriers yet?"
"No, we convinced her not to," Harry laughed. "But you know it's torture for her."
"She can cope," Taylor said. Harry held open the door to the stairwell, and she went in front of him, her hand on the railing of the stairs as she descended.
Harry broke off at the fourth floor to get Luna and the others, while his mum continued down. The first floor, when he got there, was teeming with Britain's magical elite, most of them the same snobby purebloods who had obstructed his mum and Sirius every step of the way to this night. Two-faced cravens, the lot of them… But they knew when to grit their teeth and applaud, and tonight was one such night.
It helped that many of them were personally scared of Taylor Hebert. She had given them reason to be, though nothing provable in court.
Harry took Luna's arm as they moved out into the press of people, escorting his physically fragile fiancee through the inconsiderate crowd. She could hex everyone in sight with a shrinking spell of her own invention if anyone actually jostled her, of course, but it was the principle of the thing.
They took a spot to the left of the podium and the walled-off center of the first floor, right next to Sirius. He had his and Taylor's older daughter clinging to his leg, their younger daughter in his arms, and the ever-foulmouthed hat on his head at an odd angle.
"Any trouble?" he asked out of the corner of his mouth.
"Extradimensional parole officer checkup," Harry quipped, knowing Sirius wouldn't take him seriously. "Mum passed with flying colors, so they've gone. No problems."
"Mouthy little bugger, aren't you?" the hat whispered.
"Mothballs," Harry threatened.
Taylor stepped up to the podium and cast a sonorous charm. The crowd quieted down expectantly.
"I'll not keep you long," his mum began, "as I know you're all eager to look through what many of us have worked for almost half a decade to create. The idea was derided as unworkable and antithetical to magical culture at its onset, by many who have changed their minds and are here tonight. Some of you even donated to the cause… Much appreciated!"
She smiled, and Harry saw an array of false, wooden smiles in response. Those donations had been coerced, in some cases, and in others all but extorted. The Purebloods did not part with power, even a fraction of theirs, willingly. But part with little fractions they had, and individually it might not seem to them like such a big deal. They could grin and bear it…
None knowing exactly how many of their fellows were in the same position. Nobody wanted to share their private humiliation.
"But the kinks were worked out, the merits debated ad nauseum, the funding obtained, the building purchased, inspected… All of the little things, all surprisingly troublesome," she continued, tacitly acknowledging the many, many things the Purebloods did to stall her progress. "Here we are. Everything is in order. The collection is thriving, and growing by the day. The security measures, measures to rival any magical building in Britain, are in place. I introduce to you…"
She turned and slashed her wand down, a cactus and Hydra affair much like her first. The red ribbon that had hung all night parted with a loud crack, and the wooden barriers all over all four floors of the building vanished as one.
"Welcome to Magical Britain's first and only public library," Taylor announced, a proud, victorious smile on her face. "Tonight is browsing only, no checkouts, but tomorrow we'll be fully operation. Enjoy!"
It was just like his mum to combine her love of books with a massive, politically-charged project that had successfully stripped the Pureblood faction of one of their greatest advantages: exclusive knowledge.
All four floors were lined with bookshelves. Thousands upon thousands of magical books, arranged and sorted by the newest methods for Muggle libraries combined with magical advancements. Security systems to prevent theft or defacement of the library's books. Chunks of Pureblood collections from almost every family in Britain, and many more outside of Britain too. The entire Black library made up only a small fraction of accumulated knowledge…
And it was free to access for anyone, from the newest Muggleborn to the highest-born Pureblood in the country. It rivaled Hogwarts in the subjects Hogwarts covered, and outstripped every book collection in the country in those Hogwarts did not cover, including all of the vaunted Pureblood collections.
It was knowledge, and when it came to magic knowledge was power. Power his mum had just made freely available to everyone.
Harry couldn't be prouder.
Pros: Obviously, a lot of the outcomes are good. The jobs for Harry's friend group, Ginny and Hermione, the Molly Weasley thing, the library idea. Also, and this is a meta pro, that I only knocked this thing out to have a vague idea of what I intended to write for the epilogue.
Cons: Oh god. That whole rooftop scene is bad, insulting, and just… Whole other can of worms. We don't address Voldemort. We don't address Dumbledore. It's horrifically short. It's just… Yikes! So bad. Again, I am very happy this was never intended to be the actual final version, I would be mortified if that were the case.
Solution: Fix everything. Elaborate. Keep the base ideas, but up the execution from 'not even trying' to genuine effort.