Chapter 4

London: 12 Grimmauld Place

Elizabeth Parker Evans woke up in her husband's arms, the sunlight streaming through the window into the dark bedroom. She looked at Max's face, smiling as she remembered the night before. It was as if she was meeting Max for the very first time, though she'd already known him for two years. But, right now, he didn't seem alien. He just looked like a man that had just consummated a marriage that was long overdue.

Then she remembered. The flashes.

Liz had changed. She didn't know how she knew it, she just did. She knew that Max had somehow changed her very cells. She knew that she was just like him now. Her close association with Max and already awakened some strange, disconcerting abilities. She had always thought it was just their unique bond. But now, their sexual, spiritual union had awakened some new, dormant ability that all humans possess. Hadn't they been told that Max, Michael, and Isabel's alien bodies were human and that their powers originated in the pineal gland? It was the trio's souls that were alien, then - essences implanted in cloned human bodies by their own technologically advanced race.

If someone were to put Liz's blood under a microscope today, they would see the same thing that she had seen in Max's blood in the chemistry lab back at school- square, green cells, not the normal human, red blood cells that they would have seen in her yesterday. It was the only part of the body that connected her friends to their alien heritage. The scientist in Liz knew this. Had Max changed her soul, too? Was her essence no longer human?

But, the part about Grindelwald. She knew that they would need to tell Dumbledore about that. It was a clue to what he'd been investigating since 1947. Grindelwald had been secretly helping Kivar, who had usurped Max's throne and unsuccessfully tried to subvert a mission to save the Royal Four, one of whom was now dead. Grindelwald must have allied himself with Kivar in order to get something, but what that was, Liz didn't know. Whatever it was, he didn't succeed in that either.

She would have loved to have a lab right now, in order to study the new kind of human they'd come in contact with. She wondered if Wizards were any different in their cells and if their abilities originated in the pineal gland, too.

Liz got out of bed, careful not to wake Max. She slipped on a robe and slid out the door quietly. She tried the other two rooms, but found that everyone else had awakened. God, what time was it?

Liz went down the stairs and heard the sound of voices coming from the kitchen. When she entered she saw that her friends were already eating breakfast with some teenagers she didn't know, while Mrs. Weasley moved back and forth from the stove, intent on keeping their plates full.

"Oh, good morning. How was your night? Cup of coffee, dear?" Mrs. Weasley greeted her as she sat down at the table, which was groaning under the weight of every breakfast item in the known universe, but then again, she was discovering knew universes all the time, it seemed. She took the cup of coffee that Mrs. Weasley handed her, but declined breakfast. She was feeling very lightheaded and somewhat feverish. A person's body structure can't change without some side effects, she realized, and she was probably lucky to be feeling this good. She couldn't wait to get to a lab.

"What? Why are you all looking at me?" Liz had just noticed that her friends were staring at her, waiting in silent amusement. The strangers at the table looked from Liz to her friends and back again, obviously confused.

"Yeah, Liz. How was your night?" Kyle asked as the other Roswellians nearly rolled out of their chairs. The strangers were looking more confused than ever. Mrs. Weasley rapped Kyle across the arm with her towel. He flinched, still laughing. She looked at him sternly.

"It was a valid question..." Kyle mockingly whined, still unable to keep a straight face. Mrs. Weasley put a finger in it.

"Now, you leave those two alone, hear? It's bad enough that they had to spend their first real night of privacy in a house full of people, without you youngsters pointing it out." Mrs. Weasley stared Kyle down, just as she had done to Michael the night before.

"It was fine, Kyle." Liz snapped. "Hey, Isabel…Maria…Michael? Is anyone gonna introduce me?" There was a tall boy with glasses and dark, messy hair sitting next to Michael across the table from her. He stood up and reached over the table to shake her hand.

"Hello. I'm Harry Potter. You're Liz Evans. I know because you and your husband were the last two left to come downstairs. And… Kyle called you Liz." They shook hands. "This is my best mate, Ron. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley are his parents. His sister, Ginny…and our friend, Hermione Granger." Harry pointed around the table. Ron was easily identifiable, as was his sister, by their flaming red hair, just like their parents. Hermione had been deep in discussion with Isabel, the pair hitting it off wonderfully.

"Pleasure to meet you, Liz." Hermione said, smiling. She had shoulder length, wavy brown hair, and had a book open, showing her new friend, Isabel, an entry on how to make a potion for lipstick that would change color by itself, depending on what the person was wearing. This, of course, interested Isabel greatly, as she used her powers to change her lipstick color dozens of times a day. Harry started where he left off a second before.

"You'll meet Ron and Ginny's twin brothers later. Fred and George own a joke shop in Diagon Alley called 'Weasley's Wizard Weezes'. They would've come earlier, but apparently they had an accident with a customer who tried to chew too many Puking Pastilles at once. Not a pretty sight." Every wizard in the room doubled over in laughter, except Mrs. Weasley, who was shaking her head and mumbling very sour words at the pancakes she was making.

"Puking Pastilles?" Maria asked.

"Yeah!" Ron snorted, "If you want to get out of class, you just eat one half and put the other half away. When the professor gives you permission to go to the hospital wing, you just eat the other half when you get out into the corridor to stop vomiting and then go do whatever you want. Brilliant, really. Unless you eat too many."

"Uhhhgg!" Isabel made a face. At that moment Max's face appeared in the doorway.

"Morning, everybody. What's the matter, Is?" Max yawned. Everybody nearly fell out of their chairs again. "What?" Max still looked dazed from sleep and was clearly not getting the joke. Liz made a mental note for her and Max never to get up last again.

"If you sleep late, you miss everything, Maxwell." Michael said through his gales of laughter. When the laughter subsided into tiny fits of sporadic giggles, Liz introduced him to the wizards, just as Harry had done for her.

"Nice to meet all of you." Max said, laughing along with his friends and helping himself to eggs and sausage.

"Why, Fearless Leader, I haven't seen you laugh like that since…since…we well…hatched?" Michael teased his friend. "Must've had a good night…" This time the laughter practically shook the table. Mrs. Weasley looked as if she was about to sprout two heads.

"Now, really!" she said to the eggs, since she was finished with the pancakes.

The conversation eventually turned more subdued as everyone started to get full. Mrs. Weasley was apparently happier, evident by the fact that she was now talking to people instead of the food.

After breakfast, Max signaled the Roswell group into the living room. It was a dingy living room that smelled of mildew and dust. No matter how spotless Mrs. Weasley had gotten it, the room seemed doomed to belong in a haunted house. Maria and Liz both sneezed as they sat down in the armchairs. Liz jumped. The one she had just sat down in muttered a "uuh!", as if she had just punched it in the gut. The Wizarding world was going to take a lot of getting used to.

"Everyone here?" Max asked. The teenaged wizards had followed them into the living room.

"Is it all right if we join you?" Harry asked. "We don't want to intrude, but we already know who you are and what happened to you. You really should have seen Ron's face when he found out that aliens really do walk among us."

Michael looked aggravated, but then again, that didn't take much. Everyone else seemed to be okay with the idea. The Roswellians thought that it was almost obligatory to let them stay because they probably wouldn't be alive if it weren't for the wizards in the first place. Max began to speak.

"Sure. All right. Here's the deal. You all know how Liz and I get flashes whenever we…uh…get…um…intimate?" Max said, uncomfortably. Everyone smiled a little as they flashed back to the scene in the kitchen. "Well, last night, Liz and I had flashes, but not the normal kind. I mean, obviously, we got really intimate last night, right?"

"Right…" the Roswell group said in impatiently in unison. The wizards stood around the room, waiting. It was certainly obvious to everyone how intimate newly married couples get.

"Well, these flashes were different. They changed Liz, for one thing. She's just like us now. I think we're a new Royal Four."

"What!" Isabel and Michael explained. "What do you mean, 'just like us'?"

"Wait, wait, wait." Hermione stopped the exchange. "Explain what you mean by flashes." Liz took up the explanation.

"Well, ever since Max saved my life and we started getting really close, we became almost like the same soul whenever we kissed or whatever. I would see images from his childhood…feelings he'd had…things like that. He would also do the same with me. Eventually, the chain reaction that started when Max healed me startd to surface and I started to develop powers, mostly Clairvoyance and Telekinesis, but I melted a phone once, too. I would always look like I had green electricity around me. But, my new abilities were always insignificant, not to mention uncontrollable." Liz cued Max to continue.

"Until last night." Max said. "Last night, we both felt her change. It's almost like her soul vibrates at our frequency now or something. Now, if the Special Unit were to get a hold of her, I think she'd have the same unusual blood sample as us." Max stopped to let this startling revelation sink in. Everyone ambled and paced around the room in thought.

"I'd have to get a microscope to find out for sure, though. And there was something else." Liz said. "Something I really need to tell Professor Dumbledore. In the flashes, I saw Grindelwald plotting with Kivar. Oh, sorry. Kivar is the enemy who took Max's throne and tried to kill them." Liz added in an aside to the wizards, who had no clue who Kivar was. "It's the clue that Dumbledore's been looking for."

The two groups of teenagers were ambling or standing around the room deep in concentration. Mysteries of this kind were nothing new to Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Ginny. But, it felt good to help someone else with their mystery for once, without worrying about figuring it all out before Voldemort appeared around the next corner to kill them.

"Okay, so let me see if I've got it right…" Ginny said, rubbing her chin. "So this means that Liz is now the Queen of some planet and this Grindelwald bloke was plotting against you with this Kivar bloke. Have I got it?"

"Technically…yeah." Liz answered.

"So this means that if Grindelwald was plotting with Kivar, then there must have been a plot against the Wizarding world as well." Hermione furrowed her brows, concerned. Her friend Ron's body seemed to be shaking with nervous tension and his voice came out squeaky.

"Well, Grindelwald's dead…right? So it's not like he can hurt anyone now…I mean, he can't be plotting with Kivar now. His plans are all ruined." Ron suggested nervously. Hermione sighed in the big sister like manner she used whenever she had to explain the big picture to Ron.

"No, Ronald." She groaned. "All it means is that Grindelwald is dead. We know nothing about his followers. Just like You-Know-Who, he probably had people going in hiding after his death. For all we know, You-Know-Who's supporters are the children and grandchildren of Grindelwald's followers. The plot against both our worlds could actually be ongoing." This worried everyone. Hermione was right. There had to be a connection between Grindelwald, Kivar, and now - Voldemort. Max put his head in his hands, wondering how he didn't see it. Obviously, he was going to have the advantage of Hermione's brain, as well as Liz's.

"Oh, my God!" Maria exclaimed. "We aren't even safe in this world!" Max gave a sigh. Well, it's not like they weren't used to this. Apparently, these wizard teenagers were used to this, too. He was feeling really bad for Harry. Harry had it only slightly worse than Max did, because at least Kivar was in some remote galaxy – or so he believed. Harry's enemy lived in the same country. Max straightened, and walked forward with an air of finality.

"The first thing we need to do is get a hold of Dumbledore. We really can't do anything right now about Grindelwald or Kivar. All we can do is concentrate on Voldemort and wait to see what Dumbledore finds out." Max decided. Ron and Ginny had both shivered at the mention of Voldemort's name.

The other Roswellians nodded. The wizards thought that this behavior must be normal for the group. They talked about problems and then left it to Max to make a final decision. After all, he was - or had once been - their king. The thought that they were talking to the king of an entire planet was giving the wizards a very odd feeling. But, Max didn't seem king-like at all, which made this even stranger.

It was almost the same scenario with the wizard group. Harry wasn't a king, but he was the one with the most at stake and the others, called Dumbledore's Army, followed his lead. He was almost like an elected president. Being with the teenagers from New Mexico made this meeting seem almost like a foreign policy summit. Harry walked over to Max and put his hand on his shoulder. Max turned around and faced him.

"Let us know what we can do to help, Max. Anything at all. We're used to dealing with dark wizards. And you have the help of the Order, as well as our own group." Harry offered. Max nodded his thanks.

"Can we still call it 'Dumbledore's Army'? We're not exactly just fighting for the Wizarding world or Dumbledore anymore." Ron asked.

"What's Dumbledore's Army?" Isabel asked. Harry turned toward her, looking sheepish. He still wasn't sure he was comfortable with his leadership role just yet.

"Well, it's a sort of secret group of students that meets at Hogwarts. We train to fight Voldemort because we can't rely on our own Ministry to keep us safe. They're blind to everything. The meetings are for me to train other students in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Only Dumbledore and a couple of other professors know about it. We fought Voldemort and his Death Eaters at the Ministry of Magic at the end of last term." Harry turned toward his friend. "But, I think we shouldn't really worry about that, Ron. We have more important things to think about than what we name our group." Ron nodded in admittance, looking embarrassed about his useless question.

"Well, it's settled, then?" Max asked. Everyone nodded. As everyone was about to leave their room in little groups of two or three to mull over their current predicament, Kyle tried to lighten the mood a little bit.

"Congrats, Liz!" He said.

"What for?" she asked, looking confused. Everyone stopped where they were to hear the exchange.

"Well, you are now Queen Elizabeth of Antar. So, congrats and long live the Queen!" he said. Liz stared at him for a second, and as her eyes filled with tears, she stalked out of the living room. Everyone, wizards and Roswellians alike, gave Kyle a vicious stare.

"Nice, Kyle. Good job." Isabel said, following Liz out of the room to try and comfort her.

"What? It's true, isn't it?" he asked. Hermione came up to him. "I was trying to be nice! Why would that upset her?"

"Kyle, I don't think congratulations are really in order." Hermione said gently. He and Ron were obviously going to get along great, she thought. "How would you feel if suddenly you found out that you were the queen of some planet you'd never been to, and that your body is no longer the one you were born with, and on top of that – just when you thought you were finally safe – you find out that some other gent in the not-so-far past is just some other person trying to off your new husband? And all because you fell in love with the man who saved your life? Think about it, Kyle. That is what Liz has to deal with."

Hermione huffed and left to catch up with Liz and Isabel, leaving Kyle looking very embarrassed. Maria ran to follow, grabbing Ginny by the arm and pulling her along, too. It was time for a girl meeting, in her opinion. Let the little boys be stupid by themselves.

The two gender-split groups didn't come together again until lunch time. Kyle took Liz to the other side of the doorway to apologize. Everyone seemed all right, having let the tenseness slide. Max was the only one still feeling terrible. Hermione's lecture had really hit home with him. She was right. Liz was having a tough time, and it was all his fault. He didn't regret healing Liz at all – he could never regret that. But, it had turned Liz's life upside down. He knew she didn't blame him. After all, she was in love with him, too, but that didn't mean she wasn't going to stumble through serious life altering events and emotional turmoil.

Everyone had been talking and laughing, but Max hadn't noticed. He had been sitting in his own little guilt-ridden world.

"Hey, Fearless Leader." Michael whispered from Max's left. "It's fine, you know. Stop doing that Maxwell thing."

"What Maxwell thing?" Max asked, absent-mindedly

"You, sitting here in the middle of conversation being all withdrawn and moody. You do it all the time. Liz is fine. Everything is not your problem or your fault. If you need someone to blame, then blame Kivar. Blame Voldemort. Blame Grindelwald. Blame the Special Unit. They're the bad guys. Just, let it go, man." Michael patted him on the shoulder and got up to hand Mrs. Weasley his empty plate.

Max snapped out of it and looked over at his wife. Michael was right. She was just fine, talking and laughing with Maria and Ginny as if nothing was weighing on her mind at all. He gave his mind a mental shake. If Liz could handle it, then so would he.

Mrs. Weasley gathered all of the dirty plates and put them in the sink. With a flick of her wand, the dishes started to dance noisily in the sink, washing themselves.

"Now, then!" She said brightly, loud enough to be heard over the racket and put her hands on her hips. "Who's ready for Diagon Alley?"