"WHAT?!" Amelia asked with a shout, shocked by what her brother-in-law had said.
"Oh yes. Other than him telling us to come out of hiding even though it hadn't been safe yet, I'm of the belief that he's the one who cursed us into insanity, not Bellatrix like everyone thinks." Frank said in explanation before Victoria went into the story of how they'd come to in the first place.
'It was a little-known fact that Victoria was a natural legilimens, preferring to keep the information close to her chest and only allowing her close family and friends to know. And while she knew it was an invasion of privacy to delve into someone's mind without permission, she couldn't help but to try and help her friend in any way she could.
As soon as she was inside, she noticed a deep darkness that she had never seen before in any mind, but had read about before in an ancient book in her family's library.
The blackness was the result of a very dark curse that was used to make a person mentally unstable. By clouding their mind from everything around them, the person didn't even realize what was happening around them, stuck in their own minds until they die, or someone helps them get out.
She started walking until she felt the curse, she then put both of her hands on the virtual wall of darkness, and started chanting the counter-curse.
"Frangere tenebris maledictum, quod confunds mens" (break the dark curse that confounds the mind).
The dark wall broke like a glass wall being hit by a ball, allowing Victoria to move past as soon as it had crumbled and walk inside Frank's mind.
"Frankie, where are you?" She called out, continuing on until she heard a reply from a very familiar voice.
"Vickie?!" Frank said, surprised to see his childhood best friend walking towards him with a relieved smile on her face.
"Where are we? And how long have you been awake?" He asked, confused by his surroundings. The last thing he remembers was talking to someone, turning his back on the man for a second to get a glass of water, before everything had gone black.
"We are in your mind." Victoria said, coming to hug her friend tightly.
"I've missed you, Vickie." He whispered, hugging the woman that was like a sister to him tightly.
"What happened to you, Frankie?" Victoria asked quietly, as they started walking towards the edge to get out of his mind.
"I was talking to…" he trailed off, eyes widening as he realized who had done this to him.
"It was Dumbledore! What exactly did he do?"
Vic gasped in horror at what he had just told her, before she explained the spell he was under.
"How long has it been affecting me? And what happened to Alice? And Neville?!"
"How long have I been in a coma?" She asked back, wanting to know what he last remembered. And while Frank didn't know the reason behind the question, he answered anyway.
"About a month?" He said, his words sounding more like a question at the end when he saw the look on Victoria's face.
"No Frankie, it's been ten years." She said quietly, feeling tears well up in her eyes at the look of devastation on his face-+.
"It's been…my son is almost eleven now. He'll be going to Hogwarts soon, if he's not already there." He said, voice cracking at the end of his sentence at that revelation. He stopped walking, and his tears started falling silently at that. "I missed so much."
"We both did. Freddie and Georgie are thirteen now, and Hen is eleven too."
They both cried silently at the lost years with their children, before they straightened in determination.
"We'll make it up to them. We have to." Frank said with his head held high.
"Yeah, we will!" They both laughed at their words before they moved forward with more confidence in their steps.
"What about Ally?" Frank asked, dreading the answer but knowing he needed the information.
"She was hit with the same spell I think."
"We've got to get her back Vic."
"We will." Victoria said in comfort.
They continued walking until they came to the broken wall, Frank looked at it in both awe and horror, before they moved past and opened their eyes to find themselves in the Janus Thickey ward.
Victoria then did the same thing with Alice, which took a lot less time from how much she was in a hurry to see her husband and son.
As soon as she was back to being herself, the three sat on a bed together and started talking quietly to each other. Not noticing that Alice and Frank were reverting back to how they should look at Thirty one and Thirty three respectively.'
"Merlin, that's sick." Amelia said in disgust and anger.
"I always blamed him because he's the one who told you it was safe, but I never thought he was the one to actually do it." Augusta explained, face contorted in rage as she tried to stop herself from storming into the man's office and blasting him to kingdom come.
"Which is why we need to ensure he loses power. Not just because he did the worst to Frank and Alice, but he also tricked everyone into thinking Evans is Henry's mother, and ended up sending him to her awful sister." Victoria said in conviction, getting a nod from everyone. "So, here's my plan."
"I have good news everyone." Healer Goldstein said brightly as he entered the ward hours after Amelia had arrived and they had begun discussing their plan. Before Amelia's arrival, the man had given the three ward residents check-ups and had gone to see the results. "You three are quite healthy and can leave whenever you can. I came to just give you the release papers."
"Oh, thank Merlin. Thank you very much, Healer Goldstein." Victoria said in relief as her twins, who had woken up an hour ago and had been listening to everything in both shock and awe -shock at the fact that their headmaster had turned out to be as bad as a dark lord and in awe at seeing their mother talk to those gathered like a general discussing plans with their inner circle- even though she kept running her hands through their hair. The two cheered at the news, happy to know that they'd never have to go back to living with the Weasleys.
Augusta took the papers from the Healer and thanked him herself. It was time for them to go home.
Throughout the day, Victoria had been slowly gaining her magical and physical strength back, so that even though she had woken up in the morning unable to stand on her own, she was now almost back to how she was before the accident. And because of that, she was able to side-along apparate her and the twins to the outer edge of the Weasleys family home.
"Alright boys." Victoria said as the three walked towards the front door. "We're just going to go in. I'm going to talk to Molly while you two pack up your things, including the invention lab I'm sure you two set up." The two stared at their mother while rubbing the back of their necks sheepishly.
"Oh, don't give me that look. I'm not mad at all, I actually thought we'd set you two up in the Potion's Lab in the Manor when we go home."
"Wait, are you serious?" The two said in unison, shock colouring their voices at her easy acceptance and support.
"Yes I am. Oh, don't look so shocked." Victoria said with a laugh. "Did you think your father and uncle didn't do the same? They might have been Senior Aurors, but they were still pranksters at heart, and made inventions in the potions lab on the weekend, just like you two." This surprised the twins immensely, as even though they knew that their father and uncle had been pranksters during their youth, they hadn't thought they were inventors as well, or that they'd continued their pranks after Hogwarts, as they'd been told by their aunt that their father had become serious after graduation and had forgotten all about his inventions after he had gotten into the Auror Program, which had apparently been another lie she'd told them.
"Thank you!" The two said at the same time, hugging their mother tightly. The woman smiled brightly at their reaction and hugged them back.
They then made their way towards the front door, and knocked when they were finally in front of it. The twins took a deep breath to calm themselves at what was about to happen as they waited for someone to open the door. A few seconds later, the door opened and Percy Weasley gaped in shock at the sight of his supposedly comatose aunt at the front door, smiling warmly at him.
"Hey Perce." The twins said at the same time, smiling at their cousin. Percy smiled shakily at them, eyes filling with tears at the sight of his aunt just standing there. When she opened her arms encouragingly, he immediately surged forward and crashed into her. The woman hugged her nephew tightly, relishing in the fact that at least one of her nephews remembered her.
"Auntie Vickie." The boy said in between his sobs, as he'd missed his aunt extremely. The woman had been one of the only people who had supported him, especially after he started noticing his mother's toxic opinions, and he realised that his aunt had been a better mother to him than his own mother had ever been, and so he had been devastated by the woman's loss.
"Oh, Perce." Victoria said as she hugged her nephew, tears streaming down her face at his reaction. It seemed the twins weren't the only ones who had been affected by her coma, and she wondered what Molly had done to her children as well as Victoria's twins.
"Come on in, Aunt Vickie." Percy said after he'd let go and wiped his tears, smiling at his aunt as he gestured for her to get into the house.
The four walked in and headed towards the kitchen, and Victoria smirked at the woman who was standing there, gaping at the sight of the actual Head of House Prewett, awake and aware and walking towards her with a smirk on her face as her twin sons ran upstairs to get their stuff.
"I'm back~" Victoria said with a smirk on her face, relishing in the look of shock and fear on her sister-in-law's face.
"Auntie Vickie!" Ronald Weasley, the youngest male of the family, said with a bright smile on his face, going over to give his aunt a hug, as she smiled at him warmly. While he didn't really remember his aunt that well, he did remember her for being a warm and loving person who'd take care of him whenever his mother didn't want to. The woman hugged him with a warm smile. "Hey Ronnie."
Ginny was confused, while she did know that the woman was her aunt, she didn't understand her brothers' reaction to Victoria being awake, as she had been born after the woman had gone into a coma, and so didn't remember her at all.
"And you must be Ginny." The woman said with a smile on her face, giving Ginny a short hug, to not make the girl uncomfortable.
"It's nice to finally meet you Auntie Vickie." Ginny replied with a soft smile. Her voice seemed to have snapped Molly out of her stupor.
"Victoria. Um…glad to see you awake." The woman said shakily, still staring at Victoria.
"Thank you. Now I believe we need to talk." Regent-Lady Prewett said as she walked towards the woman elegantly, taking Molly by the arm and steering her towards the back door.
The twins came downstairs at that moment, and only heard the two talking, without hearing the actual words. They heard Molly screaming something before it went completely silent as they assumed Victoria put a silencing charm around the two.
"So, you two are leaving?" Ron asked the twins, looking at the bag the two had with them as they stood by the stairs.
"Yeah, Ronnie. Since Mum's back, we don't have to stay here any longer." George explained, as Fred discreetly sighed in relief at the fact.
"Do you think Aunt Vickie would allow me to come with you guys?" Percy asked quietly, looking at the twins with hope and hesitation.
"If you go pack now, I think so." Fred said with a comforting smile at his older cousin, knowing how much he'd suffered from Molly's harsh criticisms about his aspirations and sorting, as he'd ended up happily in Ravenclaw.
The boy immediately smiled and went up to get all his things. It was time for him to follow in his brothers' examples and leave.