"Here we are!" Marcia declared happily as she and Pandora finally entered the dimension of their destination. They stood shoulder to hip on the Quidditch field. Pandora leaned against Marcia and eased herself around to see Dumbledore standing expectedly before them.
"Ah. You're just in time to learn that it is all over," Dumbledore said.
"Where were you?" Pandora asked him in a soft voice. "While the others battled, you were not among them."
Dumbledore's eyes glinted with something that reminded Marcia too much of the Lord of Chaos when He was plotting something. "Watching," he said finally, "and waiting for the outcome. If the outcome was good, which it is, I would have accepted it, which I did. If the outcome was less than that, I was prepared to do something about that."
"Ah." Pandora's eyes narrowed as she slowly dropped her hand from Marcia and stood on her own accord. "Lucky us for having you as a backup." She muttered something dark under her voice that sounded suspiciously like, "You conniving bastard, you."
"Someone had to be."
"Naturally."
Marcia tugged on Pandora's sleeve. "If you don't need me, I'll go looking for the others." Pandora said nothing, but she gave Marcia a terse nod. With that confirmation, Marcia Jumped to where her son was. Harry2 and Harry Potter leaned back against back. Harry2's head drooped tiredly while Harry Potter laughed and babbled to himself, perched on the edge of insanity. Pandora's power protected him only so much, and the recent affects of Voldemort in his mind and the death of Sirius had weakened him. Marcia tried to follow the line of his words, but they swept around and around in convoluted circles that only served to make her feel dizzy.
"Hallo, Mom," Harry2 said without looking up. Marcia crouched down and pressed a hand against his cheek. A rune flowed momentarily at her touch before it faded away. "I had to use it." He grinned. "It was great!"
Marcia smiled. "Are you hurt anywhere?"
"If I am, I'm too numb to feel it." Harry2 was silent for a moment before he twisted and craned his neck to look at his other self. "How's the egg of Sirius that Francis gave you?"
"Last I seen, he hatched."
"Oh?" Harry2 looked hopefully at his mother. "How is he?"
"Repaired, somewhat."
"Good, 'cause this Harry sure could use him." Harry2 jabbed his thumb at the other Harry, who fell silent in his babbling. "He lost his Sirius through a veil."
Marcia's eyebrows shot up. "He lost him? That took some doing."
"Lost, as in Sirius is dead when he went through the veil. It's all confusing to me too, but the Sirius in the egg sure needs a Harry, and I don't want him."
"He has to go with Lupin then, since they came in a pair."
"Fair enough." Harry2 held his hand out to Marcia. "I'm willing to go home now."
Marcia looked uncomfortable. "Um. Yes. About that. We have a problem."
Harry2's eyes narrowed behind his glasses. "Problem? We? Are you implicating me again?"
"Hey! You're the one who decided to help the other Harry. You were gone for two years, and there's no way we're going back to the point we left. I said no time traveling when you and Hermione decided to play that with Timex and I meant it."
Harry2 thought about that for a moment. "Mom, if I was gone for two years, why didn't you ever come looking for me?"
Marcia sat down on the floor beside Harry and pushed her glasses up her nose where they had slipped down. "Followed now and then," she said, "but you just kept moving further and further into the future, and you never seemed to be in any trouble and you weren't moving through time by your own accord, so I left it at that. Despite," she continued bravely before he could interrupt, "how everyone was blaming me for your disappearance."
"Did you tell them what I was doing."
"Nope; said you were off on some special training." That would work, considering how she had explained Harry2's disappearance during most of autumn of his fourth year at Hogwarts, only to have him come back in his full demonling form. "So we've got two years to give me that special training," Harry2 mused.
"Yup." Marcia looked around. "I'm thinking of staying with the Harry you were Jumping with, and that Francis. But not the Draco," she added as an afterthought. "You can go to school so you don't miss those two years, give you that training, and then we can go back to our dimension."
Harry2 sighed. "It's a warzone," he said.
"Yup."
"I'm not going to want to go back after two years. And it's going to be hard for the other dimension to accept two Harrys, let alone the other Draco and Francis, who's supposed to be dead."
Marcia looked thoughtful. "If Sirius and Lupin have to go together, can we add Draco?"
Harry2 glared at his mother. "Absolutely not!"
She pouted. "If you really want him, you can come out and say so. I'm getting mixed signals here."
"I don't want him! But neither does this Harry!" He pointed at the subject of their talk, who had drawn his knees to his chest and was rocking back and forth on his heels, muttering demented things under his breath. "He has enough problems as it is without adding Draco into the mix."
"Hmm." Marcia frowned thoughtfully. "Saaaay, where is Draco?" she asked.
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"Nooooboooody knooooows, the trouuuuuble I've seeeen! Nooobooooody knoooooows my sooorrooooww!" Draco paused in his singing and glanced down through the branches. The hounds all lounged around the tree trunk. Some looked bored while others slept. The Hunter himself was sitting cross-legged and facing the tree Draco had somehow shinnied up to the uppermost branches that were strong enough to hold his weight. The Hunter made a fist and shook it at Draco, and he stuck his tongue at him. "As soon as enough strength to Apparate, I'm sooo leaving you deadbeats behind!"
The Hunter gave him the finger.
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Eight months later.
"You'll not be rebuilding Dinsmore?" Dumbledore looked at Pandora in surprise as they walked together over the hillsides of upstate New York, USA. Pandora's hair had turned half-gray due to no longer being near the healing properties of her family, and she still limped and leaned heavily on her cane for support.
"Dinsmore is the home of the Snapes," Pandora said as they paused beneath the shade of a two-hundred year old oak tree. "The Snapes are no more." There was sorrow in her eyes as she turned and looked over her shoulder at the picnic the others had set up at the edge of the hill. The sounds of voices, the words indistinct, drifted up to them. Marcia and Draco were arguing over who got what piece of chicken while Francis was trying to mediate and Riddle only laughed at all three of them.
"What do you intend to do?" Dumbledore asked as they continued on. Pandora was breathing too heavily to answer as they finally managed to scale the hill. She remained silent for a few moments as she surveyed the surrounding green acreage.
"I've always wanted to have a school for unwanted children," she said. "Ever since Severus entered my life, I've had to wonder how many other abandoned children were there out there in the world who had magical capabilities being wasted. Just think," she said as she looked at Dumbledore, "of how it would be to always wonder why you were different, never truly being fulfilled as long as an integral part of who you are and what you can do is never made known. And if it is made known through some absurd accident, you begin to wonder about yourself, about reality. Francis and I decided that's what we should do. We'd use the funds to rebuild Dinsmore to instead build a school for these abandoned and orphaned children."
"Yes, but in the United States?"
"And why not?" Pandora waved her arm to indicate their surroundings. "The United States is a quaint place, proclaiming itself the country of freedom and dreams, the perfect place for abandoned children to grow up and learn of their actuality."
"They also have four schools of witchcraft and wizardry."
"But my school will not just be for Americans, but for children all around the world. It is the perfect country for a melting pot that is a school, and I understand we have interesting neighbors just beyond this holler. Although I will admit there are other reasons for choosing this country for a school besides its ideology." Pandora pressed a finger against her lip as a faraway look came to her eyes. "Great Britain has too many memories for me," she said, "and it's changed too much for Francis to find acceptance in himself. The United Kingdom bears too many scars from Voldemort, and both Draco and Tom have been isolating themselves more and more. Even my Severus has many problems with life and Hogwarts in general. We must start anew, and the American Bureaucracy of Magic has less red tape to cut through in regards to establishing a school than other English-speaking countries."
"Ah." Dumbledore nodded to himself. "This is beautiful country for a school," he said. He smiled benignly at Pandora. "So you would be taking my potions professor?" he asked. "I do admit he is the best."
Pandora shook a mocking finger at Dumbledore. "You already have a ghost for a professor!" she said with a bright smile. "I'm fairly sure that two somehow exceed Administration rules!"
Dumbledore opened his mouth to reply to that, but remained silent when a droning hum filled the air. With a high-pitched foooom, something materialized overhead, and the jet sailed onward, slowing down before its descent became a landing beyond the trees and curving hills. Dumbledore's eyebrows shot to his receded hairline. "You mentioned interesting neighbors?" he asked.
"Ah, yes." Pandora nodded to herself, hardly surprised at the machine they had just witnessed. "I believe it's the Xavier School for Gifted Children. I have a premonition that interaction may be simply marvelous."
Dumbledore looked over his shoulder at where the jet had landed. "Yes," he said, "marvelous."
Down below, Harry paused in mid-bite of his potato salad. "What time is it?' he asked Harry2. Without pausing in wolfing down his potato salad, Harry2 pulled a digital watch from his pocket and shook it fiercely before handing it to Harry. Harry gingerly held it before two barbeque-sauce smudged fingers and looked at the watch face. Cousin Quigley stared at him resentfully where numbers should have been. "What time is it?" he asked.
"It was time for my nap," Cousin Quigley said with no small resentment at being disturbed in such a rude manner.
"Your fault," Harry said lightly. "Should have thought of haunting something other than the watch Marcia gave Harry for Christmas. Now what time is it?"
"Mine! You got the last piece of chicken!" Draco held the chicken leg behind him, beyond Marcia's reach as she waved her hands and tried to pull his arms toward her.
"It was a small wing!" she complained.
The Hunter grabbed the chicken leg from Draco and gave it to one of the hounds that had plopped itself across Riddle's lap and growled whenever Riddle tried to shift the heavy weight. It slobbered on the chicken leg and began to wag its tail eagerly, its end hitting Riddle on the nose repeatedly. He tried to shift his sleeping legs beneath him, but the tail suddenly stopped wagging and the hound growled as it twisted to look at Riddle. Draco glared resentfully at the Hunter. "I wish you'd go back to wherever the hell you came from," he muttered darkly with one nasty look sent Marcia's way. She stopped waving her hands and hunched her shoulders without looking at anyone.
"Wasn't my fault," she said firmly.
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author's notes: Woooow! All done! And it only took me TWO YEARS to finish this story! Well, it's not really quite finished. I still have editing to do to the entire
story in regards to plot continuum, dialogue, characterization, grammar, and all the mild little details that mean nothing by a single self but add up to a great deal of
quality when considered as a whole. I do not plan to continue this story, although I may add little sideline bonuses of scenes I had to cut given the length of the story,
or some misadventure of the school Pandora plans on creating.
Now, some may wonder why I leave the ending as I had, with some gaps here and there and some unanswered questions. Some may say because I became very
tired of writing this story. (This is not true; I love to write the story, although I have few regrets of leaving it behind.) I simply feel that a story never truly begins or ends;
a story is simply something that spans between Point A and Point B, and continues on in both directions. I selected a part of the story I wanted to tell, and then leave
it up to you, the reader, to imagine what takes place then.
Or a person can just say I was lazy and tired and just wanted this darn thing to fricken' end already. =)
