Unplottable Island

Chapter 19: Back at Godric's Hollow

By Raquel

Laura woke up slowly, her mind foggy and blurred. Her body ached, and she wasn't so sure where she was. She was sitting, and she was warm as she had not been in days. A soft golden light caressed her face, and a gentle breeze played on her exposed skin.

She opened her eyes, and her jaw dropped.

Instead of her cell, she was sitting in the middle of a playground. Laura looked around, blinking furiously. There was a slide, a tire swing, and monkey bars—even a fireman's pole so that you could descend from the slide's platform another way. She looked down at herself and wished she hadn't—Laura was wearing a pink baby doll dress, white patent leather Mary Janes, and tiny socks with ruffles on them. Her feet dangled above the ground from the seat of the swing she was sitting on. She grabbed at her head to discover her hair in pigtails at the top of her head. Laura held her breath and jumped off the swing, giving a relieved sigh when her feet connected with the ground. Tentatively she walked through the playground. Everything was so big! Was she smaller?

Her answer arrived in the form of a small boy. He was asleep in the tire swing, wearing jeans with holes in the knees, a red shirt, and suspenders—his feet were bare. His dark hair looked as through he had cut it himself with pinking scissors in the black of night, and his face was pale and shy looking.

"Snape?" she asked, and jumped. The voice that came out of her mouth seemed too high and thin to be hers. "Is that you?"

The boy opened his eyes. "Potter?" He began to laugh and stiffly climbed down from the tire swing. "You should see yourself."

"You don't have much to speak for, Suspender Boy," she replied. "How do we get out of here?"

"I don't know." Snape looked around. "This is really weird."

"You're telling me. Tell me, do you know if Voldemort smokes? Drinks? Shoots drugs?" Hesitantly she placed her hand on the support beams to the monkey bars. "Because you'd have to be pretty sick to think of something like this."

The little boy looked up at her from studying the baby fat above his elbows. "I have no idea. I only drink when under stress."

"If I walked out of here now, I would be a steady drinker," Laura confided. "This is…"

The dirt shook beneath her feet, sending her bottom-first onto the ground. "Hullo there!" A large hand picked her up by the back of her dress. Laura kicked her feet in vain, twisting to try to and see her captor. It wasn't Voldemort's voice. The hand was firm and hard on her back, lifting her up the ladder to the slide.

To her great surprise, the boy-Snape was already at the top of the ladder. "Snape!" she whispered. "Do something!"

The boy raised his dark eyebrows and raised one shoulder. "What do you want me to do?"

"Anything!" she hissed. The hand placed Laura down by the slide, and she whirled to see her captor.

It was James Potter.

~

Biana was standing in the middle of a corridor with the cold prick of steel on her throat. She didn't move, but looked hard to see who it might be. Could it be Dumbledore? No—she didn't think he would do such a thing. Slightly beneath her shoulder level she saw movement.

"Malfoy, what're you doing?" Harry was asking.

"Stopping something unlawful," the voice replied. "What'll Dumbledore say when he finds out his pet Harry smuggled a dangerous creature into Hogwarts itself?"

"I'm not smuggling. Dumbledore knows she's here."

"What about the school governors? I bet they don't know that you've got a vicious man-eating creature here." The boy was pressing the blade harder and harder into her windpipe. Biana had to do something about it, because one more push and he would break the skin. Not to mention the fact that she couldn't breathe.

She caught the hand holding the knife, feeling him recoil from her scaly hands. "I am not particularly viciouth, nor do I eat humanth," she said coolly, turning herself to face him. He was about as old as Harry (how old, she couldn't guess—mortals did not age as she did), with a pale, sharp face and cold gray eyes. He was holding a short, poorly made sword in his left hand.

Harry smirked. "You could always ask her yourself, Malfoy." Mockingly he bowed. "Draco Malfoy, may I introduce Biana Razi? Biana, Malfoy."

"Itz a pleazure," Biana said. The other boy looked more annoyed than terrified.

"What're you doing here?" Draco Malfoy blurted.

"I'm here to—" Biana paused. She was here because she'd been brought here. Not the best of reasons. She stuttered. "I'm here."

"Really," remarked Draco, turning to Harry. "Okay Potter, spill it."

"She's here to give us some combat lessons," Harry jumped in. "And to teach us the finer use of Dreki weapons." Draco raised his pale eyebrows. He reminded Biana of Ju. She shivered convulsively.

"Don't think I won't tell the governors about this," he warned as he stalked away.

Harry sighed, and he and Biana continued down the mercifully empty hallway.

Biana entered the room Harry led her to, choking back a comment of disbelief. The room was so—full. Dreki in general tended to prefer open, unobstructed space. Her old bedroom had contained a hammock for sleeping in, a few shelves for clothing and other knickknacks, and a floor rug beneath the hammock. This room was not even half the size of her old room and it was crammed with a huge curtained bed, a clothespress, a huge desk, a bookcase, and a big squishy armchair. It was soft and fluffy and overcrowded.

"Oh my," she murmured into the silence. Pleased to note that her English was slowly clearing of accent, she sat down on the bed. It was too small for her—obviously, considering the size of the other occupants of this castle.

Biana bit her lip. What would happen to her?

~

James Potter smiled at Laura in a bemused sort of way. "Hullo, little girl—are you lost?"

"James?" she gasped. It was her brother, looking exactly the way she'd left him fifteen years ago. His polo shirt was slightly askew; his glasses smudged, and his black hair sticking up in the back. "Is it you?"

"I'll have to take you two home. Do you know where you live?" James continued as if he hadn't heard her. He kneeled and scooped one child up in each arm. ("This is degrading," Snape whispered to her). James sat down on the slide and placed one of them on each side. "Ready?" She nodded, and the three of them flew down the slide.

Laura landed with a thump on rough carpeting. The boy-Snape looked around, bemused. "Where are we now?"

"This is Godric's Hollow!" Laura whispered in shock. "This was our home!"

There was a thump on the door. James ran to answer it, his wand drawn. He bent to peek through the peephole, and then was thrown backward with a cry of pain as the door blew off its hinges and smashed James against the sofa. There was a woman's scream from upstairs, and a baby began to cry. The young man pushed the door off him and shot a bolt of light at the tall, hooded figure coming through the door. It bounced off and shattered a vase.

Laura found that she wasn't breathing anymore.

James tried again, shrieking an incantation that Laura recognized. Once again the bolt was deflected with a wave of a white hand. There was a cruel laugh, and a soft whisper. James' glasses flew off his face to shatter on the wall, narrowly missing the boy-Snape's head. Laura wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn't blink.

"James Potter," Voldemort said softly. "Where are your sons?" His voice was so soft and reasonable—and his red eyes were darkly mad.

James felt for his wand and pointed it at the air above Voldemort's head—he was practically blind without his glasses. "I'll never tell!" he shouted.

"Oh come now, my petty little Gryffindor," Voldemort replied. "Surely you'd want to tell, in exchange for your life—or maybe that of your darling sister?"

James smiled grimly. "She's not here, Voldemort, and she's gone somewhere where you'll never find her or my son." Seeing the rage building in the flat red eyes, James turned to the stairs. "Lily, take Harry and go!"

"Avada Kedavra!" Voldemort screamed in rage. James flew against the wall, his body almost instantly consumed in emerald-green flames. Laura screamed, but the figure in the room took no notice. Sometime during the short exchange between her brother and Voldemort, she'd been returned to her normal size.

Voldemort smiled softly and hissed something. The flames went out. With another whisper, the cracked and smashed glasses flew to his hands. He began to ascend the stairs, black robes trailing behind him. Laura was forced to follow—next to her she saw that Snape had been returned to his normal size too.

He forced the door open and entered the room, where Lily sat complacent on the bed, her face very white amid the tousled red waves of her hair. The crib behind her was deceptively empty. Laura was puzzled until she remembered that Lily had had an Invisibility Cloak as well—it had been a wedding gift from her elderly father-in-law.

Laura, tears still running down her face, was forced to watch as Voldemort presented Lily with the cracked and smashed glasses. Lily accepted them in two fingers, and then just as calmly hurled them to one side. The glasses struck Laura in the face, and she quickly snatched them and put them in her pocket. Deep down she knew this was all one big Illusion, but some childish nuance kept her from leaving the glasses on the floor.

Snape grabbed onto her shoulders in a sort of nervous jump as Voldemort began to speak: "Where's Harry, Lily?"

"He's not here. Laura took him."

"I know he's here."

Lily glared at him with flat green eyes. "You don't know everything, then, do you?"

Voldemort grabbed her by the front of her blue sweater and lifted her to his eye level. "I tire of your games, stupid girl. WHERE'S HARRY?" His angry yell shook the walls. Laura covered her ears, but that didn't really help. "TELL ME NOW!" A baby began to cry, invisible but still audible. Voldemort dropped the woman and advanced on the crib, ripping out all the blankets until Harry became visible. The dark haired baby stopped crying for a moment—maybe in confusion? –but resumed when he saw Lily crumpled on the floor.

Lily dashed between Voldemort and her son. "No! No, not Harry!"

"Stand aside you stupid girl! Foolish girl! Stand aside!"

"No, no, I'll do anything!"

Laura couldn't hear the words, but she saw the green light and the noise like a speeding train as Lily crumpled slowly to the ground, unmarred and still beautiful. Tears ran down her face as the room slowly faded around them, turning into a soft gray haze like heavy smog.

"They were very brave," Snape said softly in her ear. "I'm sorry that they died."

"I would have been proud to die in their place, but thanks," Laura replied. "What's happening now?"

"No idea," he shrugged. "And being dead rarely helps anyone."

An icy wind swept by, bringing a piercing cold that penetrated skin and bone. Laura began to shiver, and was relieved when the cold stopped and the fog began to fade. "I—" she began, turning to Snape. Her sentence died in her throat.

Snape was dressed in a polo and jeans. His hair was short and messy, and he wore a pair of glasses on his nose. The dark eyes in the white face were the same, but the face was different. Younger. Laura looked down and found herself in jeans and a blue sweater. The fog was slowly fading to become the inside of Godric's Hollow house, undamaged and whole. A dreadful suspicion began to rise in the back of her mind and she grabbed at her hair, praying that she was wrong.

It was red.

The door of the house creaked, and Voldemort stepped in. "Hello James. Hello Lily. Shall we try this again?"