a/n: Don't really have much to say in this here author's note except you might need your teddy bears in this chapter. (hugs her large stuffed duck, because she likes ducks better than bears) Don't say I didn't warn you…(squeezes duck until the stuffing starts to pop out)

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, or Ron Weasley, or Hermione Granger, or Nearly-Headless Nick, or Professor Flitwick, or Justin Finch-Fletchley, or Cho Chang (if I did own her, I would quickly disown her…probably by means of throwing her off a cliff or something…hehehe…), or Cornelius Fudge, or Hagrid, or Albus Dumbledore, or Rita Skeeter, or Dudley Dursley, or Angelina Johnson, or…(voice fades out)

Chapter 27: Meanwhile Back at the Ranch

A few nights later, Claire found herself yet again on the way to the Quidditch pitch to watch the Gryffindor practice. If she had had it her way, she would be shut up in her dormitory with her head safely under the covers of her four-poster right now…but alas, she wasn't running the show any more. She sighed as she remembered the events of the previous evening…

She had been sitting in a corner of the common room with Robin, practicing changing mice into mittens for Transfiguration while having a hushed conversation about their plans to repair the nearly destroyed Harry Potter books, when Harry Potter himself approached them in their corner.

"Hey," he said, smiling a little nervously.

"Er—Hi, Harry," Claire said, trying to smile but not sure her face muscles were working properly. She was always very nervous talking to him these days; you never knew if the person sitting next to you was going to drop dead just because you said hello to Harry. "What's up?"

"Well, I was—erm—just wondering," he began, "if you were—if you were busy tomorrow?"

Claire swallowed hard. She could see out of the corner of her eye that Robin was determinedly not to looking at her, but instead seemed to grow very interested in examining Claire's half transfigured mouse, which had a tail where the thumb of the mitten should have been and squeaked when you tried to put it on.

"B—busy, Harry?" she managed to get out.

"Yeah," Harry continued, the color rising in his cheeks. "See, we've got Quidditch practice, and Ron is coming along—I told him he could try out my new broom if he wanted and I was—er—well, I wanted to know if you wanted to—to come and try it out too? I mean, you don't have to if you're too busy," he added, his face furiously red now. "Just—just thought I'd ask."

"Um—"

Claire chanced a glance over at Robin and saw that she was writing something down on her Transfiguration essay. Upon further inspection, Claire noticed that she was in fact drawing a skull and crossbones in the margin, with the word "GO" written largely above it. She narrowed her eyes at Robin, and turned back to Harry, smiling.

"Sure, Harry! I'd love to!" she said truthfully. She was going to get the chance to ride a Firebolt!

"Really?" Harry said happily. "Great! Um, do you want to meet us down at the pitch around seven…?"

The hard wind hitting her face brought her out of her thoughts. She sighed, hoping against hope that nothing was going to go wrong, that she would just get to ride the best broomstick in the world (her heart skipped a beat at the thought), thank Harry, and then go back to the common room before anyone else accidentally snuffed it…

She stopped suddenly and spun around. She had the curious feeling that she was being followed…but decided that she was just being stupid, and proceeded onto the Quidditch pitch, looking up to watch seven scarlet blurs soar in and out of the goal posts, passing the quaffle and shouting to each other.

"Harry, I'm letting the Snitch out!" Oliver Wood called from the ground, where a tiny golden ball soared out of a wooden trunk and off into the evening air.

Claire spotted Madam Hooch and Ron sitting on the other side of the stadium, watching the practice happily from afar. Not really feeling like socializing, Claire chose to sit alone in a row right next to the entrance of the pitch. She drew her cloak around her tightly, watching the Gryffindor team with interest. She clapped and cheered along with the them as Harry caught the Snitch a few seconds later. As soon as he released it again, he looked down at Claire and waved, who smiled and returned the greeting.

"Alright there, Claire?" George Weasley said as he soared above her, smacking a bludger with all his might towards his twin.

"Hi, George!" Claire called.

"What about me!" someone shouted from across the field. In this moment's lapse in attention, a bludger seemed to hit them. "OW!"

"Hello to you too, Fred!" Claire laughed.

Claire really enjoyed watching them practice, and even cheered up enough halfway through to join Ron and Madam Hooch. Ron greeted her happily and they spent the remainder of their time on the bleachers discussing all of Gryffindor's excellent moves and the beauty of the Firebolt.

Eventually practice ended, and as the rest of the team happily trooped back into the locker rooms Harry landed on the soft earth. Ron and Claire had already leapt over the stands and onto the field, each eager to have their turn on the magnificent broomstick.

"Well, Ron seeing as I promised you first…" Harry said, grinning. "Here you go!"

Ron whooped with delight, mounted the broom, and shot off into the sky. Claire laughed, watching him zoom around the goal posts. She caught herself right before she started singing "Weasley is Our King" and contented herself in humming it instead. Harry looked at her and chuckled.

"You're a funny kid, Claire," he said quietly, kicking at a bit of grass.

"Well, I aim to please," Claire replied, smiling up at Ron as he rolled over in midair on the broom. "You guys did a good job! I think you're going to do really well on Saturday."

"Thanks," Harry said, smiling happily.

"You can really tell how much you love it, you know," Claire felt the need to add. "Just from watching you fly."

Claire turned to look at him, and saw that he was staring off into space, the grin slipping slightly off his face.

"I guess I get that from my dad," he said thoughtfully. "The love for the game, I mean. He played Quidditch when he was at school, you know."

"You don't say?" Claire said, pretending like this was news to her and trying not to smile at the image that had popped into her head of a boy very much like the one standing next to her rumpling his hair underneath a beech tree, gazing at a group of girls across a lake in hopeful interest.

"Yeah," Harry replied, still lost in thought. "Apparently he was pretty good."

"Well, so are you!" Claire said with a laugh. "I guess that's where you get it from! He'd be proud of you!"

Harry shrugged. "Well, I'll never know that for sure, will I? Seeing as I've never spoken to the man before…"

Claire frowned at his icy tone and said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

But Harry let the comment pass with a wave of his hand.

"It's not your fault," he said, continuing to watch Ron. "It's just—I don't know, I can't explain it. But you understand, right?"

Claire puzzled over this before she remembered that she, too, was an orphan in this world.

"Oh!—Oh, yeah, I understand," she said quickly. "But, I was a bit older than you were when my parents died, wasn't I? So…I don't know. I guess it's different for everyone."

It was quiet for a minute before Harry broke the silence.

"How do you do it?" he asked, sounding slightly exasperated.

"Do what?" Claire said, taken aback once again by his change of tone.

"Deal with it!" Harry replied, as if it were obvious. "I mean, I can hear them dying when the dementors get close to me! I can hear it as clear as if they were standing right next to me. And you—you've been there before, too right? And not only do you live life as though you've had as normal a past as the next kid, you've actually become mates with the girl who's parents did it!"

Claire didn't know what to say. Now she understood why Harry hadn't been so pleasant when they had talked about Robin before; he knew what her parents had been and what they had done to assist Voldemort's cause.

So that was what Robin had meant about being in the books! She had triggered Harry's extreme hate for Death Eaters and Voldemort supporters a year earlier than J.K. Rowling had intended it; Harry was supposed to go into the Pensieve and learn about what had happened to the Longbottoms and then his extreme hate for the Dark Arts was supposed to develop even more. But, Harry had become friends with Claire and as soon as he learned about her character's tragic past, he had begun to hate the people that had ruined her chance of a normal life, just like he was supposed to start hating the Lestranges for destroying Neville's family. It was something so simple, yet it had really altered Harry's personality.

Once again, it all came back to the fact that Claire should never have tried to befriend Harry in the first place. Once again, it was all her fault…

"You know, Harry," Claire said, her voice as hollow as her insides, "Robin isn't a bad person. I know her parents supported Voldemort but that doesn't mean that she—What? What's the problem?"

Harry was giving her a strange look.

"You—you just said Voldemort's name," Harry said.

"As did you," Claire stated obviously. "It's just a name, Harry. It's not a big deal."

"I still don't get how you deal with it," Harry went on, sounding amazed. "I can't even remember them and I still can't move on."

He was staring determinedly at the opposite goalpost. Claire patted him on the shoulder somewhat awkwardly.

"Harry, no one ever said you had to forget them completely," Claire said, trying to be soothing (her guilt seemed to be coming into her voice without her meaning it to). "That would be a very hard thing to do. They're still alive in you, Harry. They're alive in your love for Quidditch and your love for your friends and—well, they're alive in all the people that knew them during their lives, too."

She had teetered on saying "Sirius" for a moment, but then remembered that this wouldn't be a very comforting thought to Harry at the moment.

"Look," she said, trying to think of something else she could say, "I know this all sounds horridly cheesy, but it's true, you have to believe me. They're still watching out for you, I know they are."

"How do you know that?" Harry said skeptically.

"Well, I—I know that they…" Her thoughts strayed back to a man hiding out in a mountain in Hogsmeade. A man who would do anything to avenge the two best friends who had died at the hands of a traitor, including commit the crime he had been wrongfully accused of thirteen years ago. A man who would be content with the world if he could just walk down the street in the sunshine and talk to his godson…A man she might have been able to save if she hadn't dawdled about in other matters, screwing up the lives of the characters she loved.

"Well, I just know," Claire finished lamely, a lump growing in her throat. "Sorry I can't be more of a help. I tried."

He had no idea how sincere that apology really was. She turned away, angry at herself beyond belief.

But no sooner had she spun around did she feel a pair of hands grab her shoulders and spin her back. Harry was staring at her, as if sitting on the fencepost about a decision…

"Harry, wha—"

She didn't have time to finish her sentence, because Harry had leaned down and kissed her.

A horrible silence hung in the air. Harry was looking at her, red as a strawberry. The sounds of Ron flying overhead had ceased. And, maybe Claire was imagining it or she had done it herself, but someone had gasped.

"What was that for!" she said, heart thumping like mad. What had just happened? Where did that come from? And since when was it in Harry's personality to just kiss a girl for apparently no reason!

Harry had opened his mouth to say something, but was interrupted but kind of a muffled scream and the sounds of someone jetting away from the Quidditch pitch. Claire spun around in time to see a mane of flaming red hair whip out of sight. The mystery of who had been following her was solved.

"Ginny!" she said, sprinting after her. "Ginny, no! Wait! You don't understand! I can explain! Ginny—!"

Her feet were flying underneath her as she darted across the grounds. There was only a single thought on her mind as she tried desperately to catch up to the girl running away from her:

I should never have come to Hogwarts.

"Ginny, stop—ARRRRRRRRRRRGH!"

Her feet were still flying underneath her, but in quite a different manner—as her legs continued to pump forward, she was floating higher and higher into the dusk of a sky, literally running on air.

"NO! HELP! HELP!" she screamed, panicking. Her arms and legs were flailing all about her as she spun in all directions into the great beyond. She was higher than the tallest trees of the Forbidden Forest...higher than the tallest turrets of the castle...the lake looked like a miniscule speck in the distance. She closed her eyes, yelling fit to burst, wishing it would stop…

THUMP.

She had stopped falling—but how? And where? Somewhere soft…somewhere that smelled and felt awfully familiar…

"I was beginning to wonder where you had got to…"

Claire opened her eyes and gasped in surprise. She was sitting on her bed—not the bed in the Hogwarts dormitory she had called home these past few months, but her real bed, in her own room, in the real world.

"Surprised?" said a voice from the doorway.

Claire looked up to see her great-grandmother hobbling into her room, leaning heavily on her walking stick and wearing a light pink bathrobe over her nightdress.

"Grandma!" she exclaimed, her pulse rocketing in her moment of realization. She had left Hogwarts! How was she going to fix everything? How was she going to save Harry now?

As the old woman lowered herself down to sit on the edge of Claire's bed, someone else came bounding into Claire's room, looking worried.

"Claire!" her father said, sticking his head in the doorway. "Are you alright? Your mom and I heard yelling—"

All she could do was stare at him. How was she supposed to explain to him what was wrong? And…why didn't he looked surprised to see her there? Had she not been gone for the past several months…?

She opened her mouth to voice this very question when her grandmother cut her off.

"She's fine, David, she's fine," the old woman said with a wave of her hand. "She's just excited about the birthday present her great-grandma just gave her!"

"Grandma—" Claire started to say.

"Wow, Claire!" Mr. Woods said, smiling at her and looking down at her clothes. "Aren't those from those one books you're always reading?"

For the first time, Claire looked down to see what she was wearing and gasped once again. She was still wearing her Hogwarts robes.

"Well, I just wanted to make sure everything was alright," Mr. Woods said. "Good night, then!"

"Yeah…yeah, 'night Dad…"

He shut the door behind him. Claire stared at the old woman sitting on the edge of her bed, who was staring back at her, though with a more curious expression than the disbelieving one Claire was wearing.

"What is going on?" Claire burst out before she could stop herself. "Why did I leave Hogwarts! I can't leave yet! It's not my time to go! And—and how come you're still here! I've been gone for months!"

"The world of Hogwarts is a fictional place, my dear, therefore the amount of time you spend there does not effect the time of the real world. To everyone here, it was as if you never left." The old woman sighed, clutching her walking stick tightly between two wrinkled hands and said, "To answer your other question, Claire, if you got my note the first day you arrived—I sent it with Aquinas—you remember I told you that you would be sent home, when and only when, you knew it was time for you to go…"

"BUT IT'S NOT MY TIME!" Claire exclaimed. This lunatic didn't get it! If she wasn't there at the end of the book to help Robin save Harry from the dementors….

Her grandmother sighed again, looking weary.

"I'm afraid you rather missed the point of your trip to Hogwarts, my dear," she said with a shake of her head. "Rather missed the point, indeed…"

"Well, what WAS the point then!" Claire said angrily. It felt nice to be able to blame someone else for all the problems she had caused. After all, her great-grandmother had sent her into the story in the first place—shouldn't she have known that Claire wouldn't be able to resist the temptation of meeting Harry and his friends and getting involved in the story!

"The point!" said the old woman, looking at Claire as though she had never seen her properly before. "My dear child, the point was to teach you a valuable lesson! The point was to give you the treat of a lifetime, a chance to be a part of the world you love and have your own adventure, but all the while to teach you that some parts of a story, whether we like them or not, have to happen for the good of the plot! Like the death of Sirius Black, my dear, like the death of Sirius Black…"

Claire gaped at her, not willing to let her off the hook so easily. After all, it had felt so good to be able to put the blame on someone else for a change.

"Well, what adventure was I supposed to have if I wasn't supposed to get involved in the story, huh!" Claire shot at her, certain she had her cornered. "Explain that one!"

But the old woman merely shook her head, looking wearier than ever.

"My dear, have you forgotten the secret rooms you found in the dungeons of Hogwarts?" she asked. "Have you forgotten the keys that you had to unlock them and explore what was inside?"

Claire said nothing. If she was being truthful, in the excitement of the trying to save Sirius and Harry she had completely forgotten about the secret chambers she had found during her detention. But she wasn't about to admit to this apparently foolish lapse of memory.

"My dear child, the point of giving someone the Gift and letting them experience the story they love is not so that they can meddle in the affairs of the characters and change the plot," her grandmother explained. "The point is so that you can have your own adventure, and appreciate the story for precisely what it is:a well-written tale and nothing more. You were supposed to realize that, almost all of them do before they run off doing anything foolish…"

"But I don't understand how finding a whole bunch of dusty old founders' rooms was supposed to change my mind about saving Sirius!" Claire said stubbornly.

"Don't you see?" her grandmother went on. "Don't you see that you would have had your own little secret about Harry's world? You and you alone, would have been able to experience this amazing detail in the story. You had friends and a life of your own in the world of Hogwarts, and were given the necessary tools and put in the necessary circumstances to make your own story, known and special only to you, the Bestowed. That, my child, is the point of the Gift."

Claire blinked at the old woman, trying to take in what she had just said. None of this was adding up.

"But if the point of the Gift is to get me to realize all this and have my own jolly good time," Claire said, "then why did you send me into the story knowing full-well that I meant to save Sirius and get involved with the plot? Why did you send Aquinas—HEY, that's another thing!—Aquinas showed up after a week or two and told me that you said I needed to get more serious about my task! That I need to grab the bull by the horns and start thinking about the bigger picture, so that I could change the story! What did you do that for if that wasn't the 'point of the Gift' or whatever? Why did you send Aquinas to help me if I wasn't supposed to get involved in the story at all!"

The old woman sighed once again, staring at the wall with a forboding expression on her face.

"Some of that was an old woman's foolishness," she began. "Yes, when I sent Aquinas into the story, I told him to tell you to get more serious—but I didn't mean more Sirius, as in the character, Claire, I meant more practical about the decisions you were making. I sent Aquinas to keep an eye on you because you were getting far too close to the Weasley twins, and I could tell you were going to end up far too close to Harry. But I can see now that Aquinas…well, he doesn't always make the best decisions, that boy...got a bit of a bumpy history with these things, if truth be told…However…"

She cleared her throat. Claire cocked an eyebrow at her. She would have wondered more about what her grandmother had just been mumbling if she did not have her own problems to worry about at the moment.

"Anyway, dear child," she went on, "Aquinas was supposed to help you stay out of the story as much as possible, and help you to find your way to your own adventure that had been set up and was merely waiting for you to stumble across it. But obviously, once you had had a taste for what being a part of the lime light was like, you weren't willing to go digging around in dungeons and hang about with Ginny Weasley and her friends…"

"You still aren't answering my question!" Claire interrupted, growing more and more aggravated. "Why did you send me in there knowing what I wanted to do! If you hadn't then things—"

"I, no doubt, claim some of the responsibility for myself, my dear, no doubt I do," she said. She looked older than Claire had ever seen her and she immediately decided to stop her shouting. "It was a team effort, what we've done…a team effort to destroy the Harry Potter books…"

"Destroy the—what!" Claire said, astounded by this new news.

"Clearly you are not familiar with how things like this work, my love," the old woman said with yet another heavy sigh. "Did you not notice when your father came in here that he did not know who or what Harry Potter was? He referred to robes as part of those 'book you read.' Did you notice this, dear?"

Claire's mind began to spin. It had been her father who had comforted her when she had been crying about the death of Sirius, the first time she had read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix It had been her mother who had bought her the newest book for her birthday what seemed like a lifetime ago. Both of her parents knew that their daughter's life as good as revolved around Harry Potter—why all of a sudden was her father acting like he had never heard of it before?

"Yeah…yeah why is that?" Claire asked, worried.

"Because, my dear, Harry Potter is not as popular as it once was," sighed the old woman. "You see, dear, when a Gift is bestowed upon a child, only the child, the Bestower, and administration that carefully follows all of these such Gifts has any recollection of what was changed. All other readers of the book will only have a vague gist of what was there before—sort of like de ja vu. They'll read the book, and think things like, 'Didn't it say this here before? I guess not…" or "I could have sworn this happened here, but maybe I'm wrong'…"

"Yeah!" Claire said, thinking hard. "Yeah, I've done that before when I was reading the books! But it was never anything major, just little humorous sentences or comments just sort of—I don't know—sort of weren't there any more. So you're saying the only reason for those feelings is because someone with the Gift altered the story?"

"Yes," she answered. Claire felt the color drain out of her cheeks. If those people had changed minor things like that…then what had she done?

"So…so, what does that mean? For me?"

"Well," her grandmother continued. "The books aren't as highly praised as the once were, my dear."

"What do you mean?" Claire asked, confused.

The old woman went on, "The critics loved the first and second books, but by the third…well, in a nutshell, they felt that your character was too abrupt. You have to admit, you did sort of jump out of nowhere and took away from the main point of the novel…"

"But—"

"Claire dear, don't you understand?" she said. "Harry was distracted from being worried about Sirius attacking him because you were in the story. Harry was very intrigued by your character. You were unlike anyone he had ever met, had horrors in your past similar to that of his own, and seemed to love life in a way he had never been capable of before. You were like a hero to him; he didn't understand how you could live with your past. Obviously, he didn't know that you secret to dealing with these horrors was that you hadn't lived that life at all."

"Yeah…" Claire said, her thoughts straying back to the events at the Quidditch field. "Yeah, he had just been telling me that…"

It was hard to believe that less than half an hour ago, Harry was spinning her around and kissing her on the Quidditch field. She hadn't meant for him to like her, hadn't meant to hurt Ginny…No, she hadn't meant for any of this to happen. How could she have let it get so out of hand?

"He grew to respect you and care about you a great deal," she said. "All the awkward times when you were upset about changing the books, he thought that you were upset about the dementors, or worried that something had upset him, or—oh, I don't remember all the excuses he came up with but you can see them all for yourself." She pointed to the Prisoner of Azkaban book, left open on her bed from when she had been sucked into the story what seemed like so long ago.

"But, Grandma," Claire began, "Harry survives, right? Harry and Sirius survive the dementors? Right?"

The old woman merely replied, "To some extent. Many things changed, Claire. Many, many things…"

Claire was standing up, shaking her head, refusing to accept it.

"I have to go back!" she cried. "I have to go back right now! I have to fix this, I've ruined everything! Please, Grandma isn't there some way—could I go back and try and fix things! Please, we had a plan! We were going to try it, please!"

Her great-grandmother looked as if she had been about to deny her request, but she saw the desperate look on her face, the need to repair her mistakes, the desire to make wrong right again.

She sighed heavily for what seemed the thousandth time.

"The Gift is supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, my child," she said sadly. "I'm afraid I'd be quite out of line to send you back into the story."

"But, Grandma!" Claire exclaimed, clutching her shoulder in desperation. "You loved the books too! Surely you don't want to see them change like this! We had a plan, Grandma, a good plan! We were going to fix it! Please, just let me try!"

Her grandma stared at her thoughtfully, looking as one often looks when trying to make a difficult choice.

She stopped thinking suddenly, looked at the floor, closed her eyes and mumbled to herself, "May this burden rest solely with me and me alone…"

Then she looked up at her great-granddaughter and said, "Alright, Claire, come here."

She knelt down in front of the old woman, who for the second time placed a wrinkled hand atop her great-granddaughter's head, concentrating…

"There," she said after a moment. "It is done."

She stood to leave the room and Claire seized the Prisoner of Azkaban book lying on her covers.

"Grandma?"

The old woman turned around. She looked so weak and tired.

"I won't let you down," Claire said. "I promise."

Her great-grandmother managed a feeble smile and said, "We are bound by our promises in this lifetime, my dear child. Be careful what you wish for…"

With that she turned about and hobbled out of the room, leaning, if possible, even more heavily on her walking stick.

Claire turned her attention back to the book in her hands, riffling through its pages until she came to a chapter near the end. She sat down neatly on her bed, flicking some dust off of her robes and read the following lines:

"THE DARK LORD LIES ALONE AND FRIENDLESS, ABANDONED BY HIS FOLLOWERS. HIS SERVANT HAS BEEN CHAINED THESE TWELVE YEARS. TONIGHT, BEFORE MIDNIGHT…THE SERVANT WILL BREAK FREEAND SET OUT TO REJOIN HIS MASTER. THE DARK LORD WILL RISE AGAIN WITH HIS SERVANT'S AID, GREATER AND MORE TERRIBLE THAN EVER HE WAS. TONIGHT…BEFORE MIDNIGHT…THE SERVATNT…WILL SET OUT…TO REJOIN…HIS MASTER…"

She began to fell very sleepy, leaning back on her pillows, the book resting in her hands. Before she could count to ten, she was falling, flying through time and space into a fictional world she had nearly destroyed…

She was going back.

a/n: DUN DUN DAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaa! whew That was a really hard chapter to write—too many loose ends that needed tying! Anyway, questions! What is Claire going to do now that she has a second chance to repair her mistakes? Is the fact that Claire isn't supposed to be in the story any more going to cause her some additional problems? Will Aquinas still be there to help her? Will Robin still have the plan ready to go in time? Well, just hug those teddy bears, my dear readers, and you'll have to wait and see…