Hey guys! As a little Christmas present (for those of you who celebrate Christmas - otherwise, it's a little Wednesday present), I thought I'd put up the next chapter. Enjoy!

(Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.)

Chapter 30:

Madison's Madness

"'I DON'T CARE!' Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. 'I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANYMORE -'
He seized the table on which the silver instrument had stood and threw that too. It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions."

"You WHAT?" Madison screamed at Mackenzie, who was cringing and holding Molly's Transfigured book.

"I know it doesn't sound good," Mackenzie said.

"But…" Madison said, hopefully. "There has to be a 'but' somewhere!"

"No, that was it," Mackenzie said quietly. "I know it doesn't sound good. End of sentence."

"Yeah, no kidding!" Madison said. "You just messed with our entire objective - and what's worse, you might've disrupted the space-time continuum! The whole world could implode! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE - AND BELIEVE ME, IT'S GONNA HURT!"

"I know," Mackenzie said. "But there was no other way to explain it."

"So where's Molly now?"

"In the hospital wing -"

"WHAT?!" Madison cried. "In the HOSPITAL wing? Has the space-time continuum malfunctioned ALREADY?"

"No," Mackenzie said. "She went to the dementor lessons with Harry and fainted. Professor Lupin told me."

"Well, do you know WHY she fainted?"

"Probably the dementor," Mackenzie said. "I mean, that is what a dementor does. It makes people faint - that's kind of its thing."

"But usually they just wake right up once it's gone," Madison said. "Why hasn't she woken up?"

Mackenzie bit her lip.

"WHY HASN'T SHE WOKEN UP, MACKENZIE?"

Mackenzie gave the slightest shrug. "I honestly don't know."

Madison was still for a second, floating in midair. She looked at Mackenzie with icy eyes. "Solidify me."

"What?" Mackenzie said.

"SOLIDIFY ME!" Madison shouted. "Did nobody show you the spell?"

"No, I've never seen it," Mackenzie said.

Madison rolled her eyes. "Well, you take your -"

Out of instinct, she reached in her pocket for her wand. To her surprise, she grasped and drew it from her pocket.

"Well, that's new," she said. "Alright - Deposio Spiritus!"

The change happened, very slowly. "Okay, so that's good to know," Madison said. "So if I cast a spell, it takes longer to do. So if we have an actual emergency -"

The spell finished, and Madison fell to the ground.

"- somebody else will have to cast the spell," she said as she got up. "And I'd assume that if I cast a spell in solid form, it'll take a more normal amount of time. Alright - punching time!"

She ran to the wall and slammed her fist into it as hard as she could. It shattered into a million pieces - Mackenzie called out "Protego!" to protect herself from the shards flying in her direction.

Madison let out a guttural scream, and using her mind and her muscle memory, the shards flew back together into a still-clenched fist, which attached itself to Madison's arm.

"You should probably take a step back," Madison warned. "This feels good."

Mackenzie nodded and bolted out of the bathroom. Just before she left, she could see Madison run into a wall, shattering her entire body. With a scream that seemed to come from nowhere, she reappeared, bit by bit, in the center of the bathroom.

"THIS IS AMAZING!" she shouted as she ran towards the wall again.

"MOLLY!"

Her eyes weren't open, but she could feel the sweat drenching her body.

"Molly, come on, wake up," someone said - Molly couldn't figure out who it was, but she knew it was a girl.

A soft groan came from her as she tried to open her eyes, to no avail. She tried again, but she felt as if cold metal weights were holding down her eyelids.

The girl let out a soft gasp. "She's awake! She's waking up!"

Finally, a ray of light, about the size of a needle's point, pierced her world of darkness. Slowly, Molly opened her eyes to see Stella and a bunch of other students - Mackenzie, Ava, Jonah, Beatrix, and Zoë - looking down at her, along with Madam Pomfrey.

"How long was I out?" Molly whispered.

"A day," Madam Pomfrey said. "You collapsed in Professor Lupin's classroom on Thursday night. It's Friday - classes just ended for the day."

"Is there any work I need to make up?" she asked.

"You need not worry about that," Madame Pomfrey said. "Just try to get better."

She left Molly's line of vision. After a few seconds and the sound of a closing door, the children erupted in questions.

"What were you doing?"

"Were you at Lupin's dementor class?"

"Was Harry with you?"

"Do you need a bit of chocolate?"

Molly gave a small smile. "Some chocolate would be nice, thanks."

"I'll get some," Jonah said, rushing out of Molly's sight. A few seconds later, he was back with a bar of chocolate.

"Thanks," Molly said as she snapped a piece off of the bar and nibbled on it. While she still didn't feel that much better, she felt a bit of warmth flow through her body.

"Molly, what happened?" Stella said. Molly couldn't help but notice that her hair was a bit more unkempt than usual. "Were you at a dementor class?"

It took all of Molly's strength to nod.

Whispers darted through the group of children, Stella being the only one to stay calm.

"And the Patronus didn't turn out the way you expected it to, I assume," she said. "What did you see?"

Molly shook her head. "Not right now," she said.

The room turned somber once more, the children understanding that whatever Molly saw, it wasn't something she wanted to relive.

"We wanted to do something for you," Mackenzie said softly. She reached behind her and took out Molly's raggedy copy of the first book (the American copy, which Stella had been disappointed about). "Do you mind if we...you know...read it to you?"

Molly smiled - a bigger smile than she had smiled since waking up. "I'd love that," she said.

Mackenzie smiled, turning to the other children. "Who wants to read Chapter 1?"

"I will," Ava said. She took the book from Mackenzie and opened to the first page.

"Chapter 1: The Boy who Lived," Ava read. "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

And as quickly as a time-traveling thunderstorm, Molly was brought back into the peace of the year of the Philosopher's Stone.

Molly was on bed rest for the entirety of the next week. Every day, after classes ended, the time travelers would visit her, give her the scoop on what was going on at Hogwarts, and then read some of the books.

On the last day of her bed rest, Molly was sitting in her hospital bed, trying to catch up on a packet of Divination work, when the others walked in - alongside a tall boy with Gryffindor robes and bright red hair.

"Fred," Molly said. "What are you doing here?"

"He knows so much," Mackenzie said. "We figured we'd tell him everything, so he knows what must be kept secret."

Molly nodded. "Where's Madam Pomfrey?"

"There's a Quidditch practice," Stella said. "We convinced her to go down there - make sure the Dementors didn't bother Harry again."

"And if they did," Ava said, "she'd be there to take care of him."

"You didn't actually send Dementors down there?" Molly asked.

Zoë shook her head. "So she'll just be down there, waiting for an accident that'll never happen."

"But doesn't Fred have Quidditch?" Molly asked.

Fred nodded. "But I pretended to fall and break my ankle in the common room. Works like a charm every time."

Molly stifled a smile.

"We also have some news," Jonah said. "Lupin's dead."

Molly's eyes widened. "WHAT?" she said. "That's, like, four books early!"

"Wait - Lupin dies?" Fred said. "Oh, that's a bummer. I rather liked him."

"But yeah, he's dead," Beatrix said, trying to suppress a smile. "Madam Pomfrey killed him."

Now Molly was just confused. "Madam Pomfrey...actively murdered a teacher?"

"No," Stella said. "But she did yell at him."

"It was pretty funny," Zoë said.

Molly breathed a sigh of relief. "You guys can't worry me like that!"

"But it's fun," Ava said. "You get so cute when you're worried."

"She is right," Fred said. "Your eyes get all wide and your forehead scrunches up -"

"Okay, okay, I get it, I'm adorable," Molly said. "So...let's tell him. Fred - you're going to want to sit down."

Fred nodded and plopped down on the side of Molly's hospital cot. "So when did this all start?"

Molly looked around to see who wanted to begin the story. To her surprise, nobody opened their mouth. She realized that they were all looking at her.

She sighed. "Okay," she said quietly. "Here goes."

She turned to Fred. "So I was with my parents in Disney World when somebody knocked on the door of our hotel room."

"Who was it?" Fred asked.

Molly shrugged. "I don't know. The only sign that anyone had been there was a letter at the door. I opened it, and it was a letter from Harry Potter."

Beatrix nodded. "We all got the same letter. I have mine right here."

She pulled it out of her pocket and handed it to Fred. "This...is not Harry's handwriting," Fred said. "His is a lot messier."

Molly smiled. "But for me, I had no idea how messy his handwriting could be. So I went to Universal like the letter said, and that's where I met all of them."

"And you all just happened to get there on the same day?" Fred asked.

"I guess," Molly said. "We were all standing around, wondering what to do, when it started to rain - really hard."

"And it wasn't like the forecast had called for rain or anything," Stella interjected.

"Although it is Florida," Jonah said. "They pretty much have rain every day."

"But anyway," Molly said, "we all huddled together, and I closed my eyes - and when I opened them, we weren't in Universal anymore."

"You were in London," Fred guessed. "In 1991."

"July 31st," Mackenzie said. "It was the day that Harry learned he was a wizard."

"So we went shopping, we got our wands and our textbooks, and then we got a room at the Leaky Cauldron," Molly continued. "We stayed there for about a month - and one of the days, you came in."

"I remember that," Fred said. "George and I talked with Jonah about playing pranks on our siblings. You told me about glueing your sister's unfinished Rubik's cube to the ceiling."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that," Jonah said. "That was fun."

"And on September 1st," Molly said, "we met again at King's Cross. Stella and I sat with Harry and Ron on the train, and I think I saw you and George come in - asking about Lee Jordan's tarantula?"

Fred nodded. "I still don't know why he decided to bring a tarantula."

"None of us did," Jonah confirmed.

"So then," Fred said, "what was the first thing that wasn't the way it was supposed to be?"

"Madison's death," Stella said. "She came over to me the day you guys magicked the snowballs to fly into the back of Quirrell's head, and she told me that she wanted to get a picture of Voldemort on the back of Quirrell's head - expose him early, maybe improve Harry's life a bit. And she knew I had a camera that she could use."

"How did she know that, again?" Molly asked. "I never saw you with a camera, Stella."

"Opa stole it," Jonah said. "You were in Flourish and Blotts, reading everything you could get your hands on, and Opa flew into Stella's bag and stole the camera. It took us hours to track it down."

"We had to go into Knockturn Alley to find it," Mackenzie said. "I'll be honest, it was a little scary. We saw the cabinet, the necklace, a lot of things."

"Not even going to touch that," Fred said. "So Madison snuck in with the camera...but how did Jonah end up at the scene?"

"As soon as Madison left, I ran down to the Slytherin common room and told Ava to have Jonah supervise Madison," Stella said. "I didn't want her getting into trouble - obviously, that didn't work out as planned."

"And when we were down there," Jonah said, "Madison got the picture, but it was just loud enough for Quirrell and Voldemort to hear. They put me under the Imperius Curse and forced me to kill Madison and her owl."

"I remember when Beatrix came in and announced that," Fred said. "But that turned out alright - with Madison becoming a ghost."

"Right," Molly said. "And other than that, first year went pretty normally. Second year had a few differences, too, but not too much."

"Well, there was the whole Madison thing that time, too," Ava said. "And the thing with the letter."

"Oh, yeah," Molly said. "So at some point in first year, Stella sent a letter to Lin-Manuel Miranda. He's a songwriter from our time - he wrote the musical Hamilton."

"Wait - didn't Stella -" Fred began, but Zoë motioned to him. Don't bother, she mouthed.

"And she got a letter back," Molly continued. "It was from 1992-Lin, but it was still cool. He was very excited - he said, 'I finally have proof that Hogwarts is real.'"

"But then I realized," Stella said. "The Harry Potter books didn't come out in America until 1998. I looked at the letter and the letter we got from 'Harry Potter' - and they were the same handwriting."

"So whoever sent you the letter from Lin also sent you back in time," Fred said.

"Exactly," Ava said. "And right after we realized that, things started changing again."

"Opa - Madison's owl - was Petrified," Zoë said. "And right after that, she opened up Tom Riddle's diary and got blackmailed by it."

"This is the same diary that Harry found?" Fred asked.

Molly nodded. "After Justin and Nearly Headless Nick were Petrified, she left her unicorn socks at the scene and hid in the Room of Requirement. Hermione and I figured out everything, but by then, Madison had been found out, and she was forced to Petrify us."

"That was the triple attack," Fred realized. "You two and Penelope." A small smile spread over his face. "She and Percy are still going steady, by the way."

Molly shook her head, still smiling. "It's too young," she said. "I could never imagine dating someone at this age. I'd be too immature."

"Don't worry," Fred said. "Immaturity doesn't go away when you're older, either. You get a big, strong body and the mind of a toddler. It's brilliant, the way we work."

"So anyway," Stella said, "Jonah and I went down to save Madison and make sure the future stayed intact."

"Did it work?" Fred said.

"Are we sitting here, talking with each other, or has Ginny unwittingly Petrified the entire school?" Jonah said snarkily.

"Okay, that's fair," Fred said. "So what about this year? Has there been anything out of place - other than my discovery?"

"Just Molly's thing with the dementors, but Harry's still on track with that," Mackenzie said. "I checked in with him the other day. He did seem worried about you, though."

"Aw, thanks," Molly said. "I'm glad we don't hate each other anymore."

"Me too," Mackenzie said. "That got annoying really fast."

"So how do we make sure that nobody else finds the books?" Fred said. "If somebody found them who wasn't as incredibly mature as me…"

Molly laughed at Fred's joke, but then the room grew serious.

"We can't talk about them in public," Mackenzie said. "We'll need to hide the books somewhere - but where do you put something you don't want anyone else to find?"

Ava perked up. "I have an idea."

"So why are we on the seventh floor?" Fred said as the time travelers - including a solidified Madison - walked by a brick wall with absolutely no adornments.

"I used this room last year to hide from Ginny and Tom Riddle," Madison said. "It's pretty secure - as long as we put the books in a decent hiding place, we should be fine."

"So how do we get in?" he said, staring at the wall.

"Just think about needing a place to hide the books," Zoë said. "It's absolutely critical that nobody but us can find them."

Fred nodded and looked at the wall, Zoë's words becoming his thoughts. He closed his eyes, feeling a little silly - but then again, there's a lot that I've done that's weirder than this, he thought. He held the books in his hand, clutching them so hard his knuckles turned white.

Suddenly, he heard a noise. When he opened his eyes, the bricks in the wall were turning and separating from each other, revealing a hidden room. The group of people walked in. Madison snuck a peek at the astonished look on Fred's face.

"What is this place?" he said, his eyes wide.

"It's the Room of Requirement," Stella said, her voice getting choked up. "I never thought I'd see it in person."

"Me either," Jonah said, his voice sounding similar to Stella's.

"It's gorgeous," Molly said.

"And it has a reading nook," Fred said, pointing to a corner of the room. There was a small table with comfortable-looking chairs, and a few quill-pen-themed bean bags (at which Molly was a little surprised; she had never expected to see bean bags in a place as prestigious as Hogwarts, but at least it proved that the Room worked). A small bookcase was in the corner, closed off by a glass door and a padlock.

"So Molly can still read me the books," Madison said. "And it might be a good idea for you to read them too, Fred. After all, if you didn't know everything, you might accidentally say something you shouldn't.

"That's a good idea," Fred said. "It'll be nice to make fun of Percy in a whole new context."

Molly smiled. "We'll leave you alone with your Percy jokes."

Fred nodded, set down the books on the table, grabbed the first one, and plopped himself down on a bean bag. Molly let out a small giggle as the time-travellers left the room, the wall closing behind them.

As the group dispersed, Molly found where Madison was going. "Hey," she said. "So, I finished reading the books."

Madison nodded.

"So what was that thing you were telling me about?" she asked. "The thing you can use to look into your past?"

"Oh, I had totally forgotten about that!" Madison said. She looked around to make sure nobody was listening, and she quieted her voice.

"The Time-Turner," she said. "I know where the accident happened - the one where my parents were killed. I can use something, like a Portkey or something like that, to go to the place."

"Then you can use the Time-Turner to go back in time, learn why you can speak Parseltongue -"

"And find out who my family is," Madison said, with a determined smile on her face.

Thanks for reading! Here are this chapter's behind-the-magic fun facts.

1) We get a little more world-building with Madison! I'm super excited for where her storyline goes next.

2) I love the Madam Pomfrey joke - I think it's a super-funny way of letting Fred in on the story of the books.

3) I wasn't sure whether to write out the whole summary of everything that's happened so far, but I decided to include it. We've come so far that it's nice to be reminded of where these characters came from, and how much they've already been through.

4) While I was writing the summary, I realized I hadn't wrapped up the Harry/Molly feud from Book 2, so I went back and wrote the "Food always helps" scene. That's one of the nice things about writing further ahead from where I'm posting - although I do need to write a lot more for this fan fiction.

5) Fred's "broken ankle" is totally a Brady Bunch reference.

6) I love Stella and Jonah's reaction to the Room of Requirement. It almost reminds me of Kristoff seeing Elsa's castle in the first Frozen movie. (By the way, I did go to see Frozen II - with Madison's inspiration - and it was awesome!)

And on a more serious note - to any transgender/nonbinary readers out there, I see you and I appreciate you. Just because recent developments have been connected to the Harry Potter books, doesn't mean we can't reclaim this world for ourselves. Thank you for continuing to support up-and-coming writers. In the words of Alex Brightman from the musical Beetlejuice, "I love you guys."

Feel free to review, but please no negative reviews or