They were released early the next morning, and Harry, Hermione, Ron (with wounds expertly healed), and Frisk all headed back up to Gryffindor tower to change into fresh robes and clean up before the day's field trip.

"Where were you last night?" asked Neville as she returned to the common room from her bedroom. "I wanted to talk to you about the trip today."

"I was getting something for Lupin," Frisk told him, "And on the way back I was attacked by dementors away from where they were supposed to be." True, as far as it went. She didn't really like lying, even by omission, but how was she supposed to explain she helped a convict escape?

Neville seemed to be aware something more was going on. "Harry, Ron, and Hermione all spent the night in the hospital ward with you. That's not the whole story, is it?" he asked. "The three of them always seem to get up to something at the end of term."

"No," Frisk admitted. "But I'm pretty sure Dumbledore wouldn't want me to talk about it. So I don't think I should," she said, apologetically. "Anyway, I'd like to go down to breakfast. Would you like to walk with me?"

So they clambered down through the portrait hole down to the great hall. Neville wanted to ask more about Asriel's persona as Flowey, which Frisk understood, even as it made her uncomfortable. "Do you think he'll remember you?" he asked, shooting the portrait of Sir Cadogan a dark look as they passed the fifth floor.

"He'll remember me," Frisk predicted. "I don't think he'll forget what happened. He followed me the entire way through the underground. I just hope he doesn't think he has to hide from us." She'd had several nightmares last night, probably from the dementor influence. Flowey hiding from them in shame, never seeing his soul, had been one of them.

"That's good, I guess," Neville said. "That he'll remember you, I mean. Is everything else is ready?"

"It is, as far as I know," Frisk confirmed. They'd reached the Great Hall, which was much emptier than normal. Most of the students were sleeping in, or packing. Frisk would deal with packing when she got back.

Ginny, Ron, and Harry were waiting for her at the table. "Hermione said something about wanting to talk to Professor Vector before we left, since we have no idea how long we'll be gone," Ginny told her. "Everyone else is down here already."

Frisk looked moodily at the breakfast options. She had butterflies in her stomach, and wasn't really feeling hungry, though she knew she normally would be.

"You should eat something. It's important to go into a game having had a good breakfast," Harry told her, who must have been trying to do a voice that Frisk didn't recognize. "Sorry," he said, giving her a sheepish grin. "That was my Quidditch captain, Oliver. You should have seen him on game mornings, trying to convince us not to be nervous while being a wreck himself." He looked at Frisk's raised eyebrows and looked around suddenly. "He's not behind me, is he?"

"No," Frisk said, finally laughing. She picked some eggs and toast, realizing how hungry she actually was. "Thanks. I needed that." After she ate, she looked up at the staff table. "Dumbledore's not here... he must be still in the office. I think I'll head up there a bit early, I wanted to ask him about last night."

"Lupin's alright," Ron pointed out. "He's there eating breakfast."

Ron was right, Lupin was there. But Professor Snape was missing, and that was bothering Frisk.

"Still, I want a chance to talk to the headmaster before everyone gets up there," Frisk said. Taking her last bite of toast, Frisk stood. "See you in a little bit," she said, heading towards the staff table. "Professor Lupin, are you okay this morning?"

Lupin favored Frisk with a wan smile, "I'm as good as can be expected, Ms. Dreemurr. Thank you again for last night, and good luck on today's endeavor."

Frisk smiled, and headed up to the second floor to the headmaster's office. She gave the password to the Gargoyle (bounty), and climbed the spiral stairwell. The professor's office hadn't changed much. The devices scattered around the room were still whirring, clicking, and spinning. The portraits of the previous headmasters still snored in their frames. The bowl on the desk, however, had been replaced with two red plastic discs with holes in the center. They actually resembled nothing more than mundane flying disc toys.

"Ah," Dumbledore said. "You're here a bit early, Frisk." He rose from his chair, folding his newspaper. With a momentarily disgusted look, he threw it on the chair behind him, and approached Frisk, standing with the desk between them.

"I wanted to ask about Professor Snape, sir. You said he mistook me for a ghost last night, and he wasn't down at breakfast. Is he okay?"

"Lupin advised me that Professor Snape took a rather powerful blow to the head last night," Dumbledore explained. "And while he is much too proud to ask Madam Pomfrey to check on him, I have asked her to approach him to see if he is suffering from a concussion, or anything worse."

"Thank you sir," Frisk said, "I had one other question. Who was Lily Evans... the 'ghost' he mistook me for?"

Dumbledore looked wistful. "Harry Potter's mother, and for a while, Serverus's best friend." He studied Frisk's concerned face. "To be fair to Professor Snape, you remind me of her. Checking on his condition, and this personal quest of yours are both things Lily would have done." His eyes lowered to his desk for a moment. "Are you aware what happened to the Potters?"

"They were killed by the dark lord," Frisk said, remembering the intrusive thoughts from the night before. Then Frisk was struck by a thought of her own, "Do I look like her, too?" she asked. She almost didn't want to hear the answer.

"No, I'm afraid you do not," Dumbledore said, "I'm sorry, Frisk."

"It's okay," she said. "I just wondered. Thank you, professor."

They made small talk over the next few minutes, and soon, all seven other people that had agreed to help Frisk made their way up to the office, even Neville was on time. Harry Potter arrived with Ron and Hermione. "I hope I'm not intruding, headmaster," he said. "But I wanted to support my friends, even if I couldn't help directly."

Dumbledore favored him with a grandfatherly benign smile. "I expected nothing less from you, Mr. Potter." He looked at the group of assembled students. "I believe you are all introduced to each other, correct?" he asked. There was a murmur of ascent.

"How will we be getting there?" asked Neville, "The Knight Bus?"

"A good guess. But no, Mr. Longbottom," the headmaster said. "If all goes well, you will be returning with two children you didn't arrive with..."

"Two?" asked Ginny.

"Yes, two," said the headmaster. "While the questions will be raised eventually, I wish them to be asked on my terms. So, as convenient a way the Knight Bus would be, I had to find another mode of transportation. Who here has heard of a portkey?" he asked.

A few of them had. Hermione raised her hand, as if she was still in class. "A portkey is a temporarily enchanted object, designed to take whoever is touching it at a precise moment to a single specific location."

"Very good, Ms. Granger," Dumbledore said. "I have set up two portkeys, these discs, that will bring all ten of us to the cave entrance to Mt. Ebott, where the barrier was. It cannot take us any further, due to magical interference from where the barrier used to be."

"Even going in?" Frisk asked. "I was told the barrier prevented things leaving, but not going in."

"Physically, yes. But the barrier prevented magic from crossing either way by absorbing it into itself." Dumbledore said. "And it will take some time for that enchantment to dissipate." He checked a timepiece on the wall. "Our two guides should be there now." He waved his wand over both of the two discs in turn. "Portus," he said. The discs glowed with a bright blue light for a moment, and then returned to their normal red color. "You will need to take hold of them at about the same time," Dumbledore explained. "So I need five of you," Frisk, Ginny, Opal, Luna, and Steven stepped up, spreading themselves out around the ring. "So on three. One... two..."

And on "three", all five of them took hold of the disc. Frisk felt a wrench in her stomach, followed by a feeling of being out of sync. It was the same feeling she had in King's Cross. After a few moments, she was able to open her eyes again, and found herself standing with the others on the plateau just outside 'Home'. The plateau was covered in bright sunlight from the sun above their heads.

"We should have timed this better," Frisk told them. "When I came out of the underground with my friends, the sun was just rising. It was beautiful."

"It's still a pretty good view," Steven said, looking toward the distant human civilization. "What was it like for them? Were they seeing it for the first time?"

"They were entranced. We stood there for probably at least five or ten minutes," Frisk replied. "Asgore and Toriel might have seen it before, but I think it was the first time for most of them."

"it certainly was for me," said a voice behind them.

Frisk spun around, spotted the skeleton, and dove at him. "Sans!" she called, catching him in an embrace.

"heh, heh. good to see you too, kiddo. what happened? didn't you see me skull-king there?"

Any groans the others may have gave emitted at the bone pun was obscured by the crack heralding the arrival of Dumbledore, Harry, Hermione, Neville, and Ron. As they took a second a moment to get their bearing, a second person emerged from the cave. "Good to see you, headmaster," Kurt Kairos told him, one hand holding a large bag.

Frisk released Sans, stepped back, and introduced Mr. Kairos from the department of mysteries and Sans to her friends. Before she could tell him how bad an idea it was, Steven stepped up and offered Sans a hand to shake.

Frisk covered her ears. The eyes and wincing of her classmates suggested she had been right to do so.

"I see what Frisk has said about you is right," Dumbledore said mildly, after Frisk uncovered her ears. He was smiling, though.

"From what Sans has told me this morning," Kurt said, "We ought to get moving before this Flowey creature realizes we've brought a number of people down here and does something about it."

"Is Flowey likely to have noticed, Sans? I thought he was staying in the room under the hole on the peak," Frisk asked urgently.

"he had been," Sans said, "but he's noticed when I come into the underground. and there's lots of us here now, so i'm pretty sure he'll realize people are down here again. so, good idea. it's not that far to where we've set up the machine," Sans said. "shall we go?"

The underground hadn't changed much since Frisk had been there the last time. They walked down the corridor she'd fought Asgore, Nightmare Flowey, past the spot where she'd woken up after trying to get Asriel to come to his senses, into the large throne room. It was still covered with golden flowers, maybe even more so now. One throne was sitting, gathering dust, in the center of the room. The other, still covered with a large white cloth, was still alongside the back wall. The machine, resembling a small helicopter without the blades, was nestled in one corner of the throne room.

"finally got it working," Sans said, "thanks to kurt over here. didn't think i'd ever see it. you ready, kiddo?" He looked over at Frisk. "ah, you'll be fine. just be like me. nothing ever gets under my skin."

"But you... oh, for..." Ron said, groaning.

"Ms. Granger?" Dumbledore said, chuckling politely. "I need you to take this," he handed a holly wand to Hermione.

"Is that the wand Mr. Kairos found in the 'Sunlit Room'?" Hermione asked, turning the stave over in her hands. "It looks a lot cleaner, but it seems to be."

"Good memory," Mr. Kairos said, "Though it isn't... yet. Your headmaster commissioned that wand from Ollivander two weeks ago." He set down his bag and began to rifle through it.

Frisk felt her head to starting to hurt, but Hermione looked excited. "I get it, we need to take it into the past so he can find it again to settle the professor's bet. Does that mean..." she smiled at the large doll that he'd pulled out of the bag that had to have been too small for it. "We'll have to take that back with us, too, right?"

"Precisely," Dumbledore said. "I hope that this wand is sympathetic to your efforts. Hermione, you will need to transfigure that doll into a close enough version of Ms. Chara for it to fool Toriel, and you will need to hide that wand somewhere in the transfiguration so it is not found. Good luck, ah, and don't worry about using magic yourselves. The barrier will keep the trace from finding you."

"there's, uh, one last thing you need, actually," Sans said. He held up a large jar. Frisk wasn't quite sure where it came from, but she certainly recognized it, she'd seen six others just like it. "got this from the king's storeroom. heh, was supposed to be yours, guess it is now."

"You didn't have to put it like that," Frisk said, slightly unnerved.

There was no point in waiting any more. Frisk took the healer's doll from Mr. Kairos and the jar from Sans while Hermione took the wand in her hands, turning it over in her hands, and tucking it into her robe. They climbed into Sans's machine to the chorus of well wishes from the others. There was a display, with one set of LED lights showing the current time (which Frisk copied down), and one showing the destination time, which had been preset for them. Then it was simple exercise to close and lock the doors, and push the button marked "engage".

Frisk heard the engine rumble, faster, and faster. The scene behind the windows faded into white. Various dials and gauges began to spin, madly. But just as quickly, they settled. Hermione and Frisk looked at each other, and climbed back out of the machine.

It wasn't just the lack of people that convinced Frisk they'd gone back in time. Both thrones were in the proper place, and they were polished to a golden shine. The floor was covered with carpet over the dirt, and there was no hint of any golden flowers.

Frisk retrieved the jar from the machine, and felt Hermione grab her arm.

"I think someone's coming," she said, pointing down the hallway that led to the currently intact barrier. Frisk and Hermione hurried down to the corridor that led to the long hallway, eventually connecting to the home above. They peaked around the corner, watching.

"That's a child?" Hermione whispered. And it was true, it wasn't the child that Frisk remembered that was carrying a small body down the corridor, but Asriel's larger form, the one she'd fought for control of the time line.

"That's him," she whispered. "He still has Chara's soul," but as she said that, they could see him laying the human child gently down in the center of the room, in front of the throne. A moment later, his body shimmered and vanished, and in his place sat the monster that had used the other human souls to break the barrier, wearing the same green and gold striped shirt that the human child was wearing.

"I'm sorry, Chara," they heard him sob. He coughed. "I couldn't do it. They deserve a chance too. If I took their lives, their souls... I'd have been no better than the wizards who trapped us here. They were just scared." He paused and wiped his face, coughing again, then caressed the child's cheek "Do you remember when you fell in Waterfall? You scratched your face... I'd never seen human blood before. It was good thing Mom had found those bandages. He coughed again, a distressing choking noise. "What's... what's happening to me?" he asked, and then gasped. He lifted his arm to look at his paw... and it was missing, dissolved into dust. "No!" he shouted. "I don't want to die! I just wanted to be a good friend, somebody..."

Now! Hurry!

"Help me!"

Frisk dropped the jar, and bolted from her hiding spot in the passage, to Hermione's shout of alarm. Frisk ran to try to comfort the monster child. But she was too late. Her arms closed around a large cloud of dust, his clothes falling limply to the ground. She instinctively brushed off her robes, realizing she was coating a large seed with Asriel's dust.

The souls, she had to find them before they shattered. She looked up, calling out for it with soul magic. There! It was hanging in the air, just steps from her, shivering in the open air. "No, no, it's okay," she told the silver, glimmering soul. She cupped the air around it, pulling Asriel's soul towards her own chest, to find safety with her own.

Her body absorbed the soul, and for an instant, Frisk felt a wave of power flow through her body. At that moment, she could have done so many things. She felt like one of the most powerful witches on the face of the planet. She could... she could...

Frisk...

She could finally bring Asriel home. She wiped the tears from her eyes.

"Is... is that a soul?" Hermione asked, pointing nearby. Frisk followed her gaze. She'd seen some souls that looked so different from the ones of her classmates, from the ones in King Asgore's bottles. A pink one, souls of mixed yellow and black. A soul that appeared to be whole, but empty. This soul was the strangest of all, it looked incomplete. It looked like most of a heart, but there was a large piece missing, and there were cracks that riddled the red, determined, soul.

"That's it, where's the jar?" Frisk asked.

Hermione had it, and she'd unscrewed the top, lifting it to catch the damaged soul. It floated up and down, apparently unable to leave the bottle after Hermione had put the lid back on. She hurried to store it in Sans's machine and retrieve the healer's practice doll, and placed it next to the human body.

Hermione tried, twice, to transfigure the doll into human form. Each time she got close, but it was very clearly not the human in front of her. "I can't do it... I'm not strong enough. I know the technique... but I can't do it!"

Frisk stepped next to Hermione. "Let me help you," she whispered, placing her left hand on top of Hermione's right. Together, with the power Frisk currently felt, and Hermione's skill, they completed the transfiguration, turning the doll into an exact replica of the girl who must have been Chara.

Frisk reached down to take the bandage from the real Chara when she was hit by a realization. "I didn't fall on her grave. She was never buried there." Frisk whispered. She called out a second time, and she could see it glimmering in the bandage that Asriel Dreemurr put on his best friend. A piece of Chara's soul. The piece that had been with her ever since she fell the very first time.

Pulling her hand back into her robe, she removed the bandage, carefully not letting it touch her skin. It didn't stick on the transfigured body very well, but that was okay. It needed to fall off under the hole, where she could find it... had she landed on it? She couldn't remember.

Hermione tucked the holly wand she'd been given under the duplicate's shirt. She was quiet for a second, then looked up in alarm. "I think I hear someone coming, Frisk, we'd better hurry."

Frisk picked up the still warm body by the legs, and Hermione took the arms. Struggling, the girls moved Chara's corpse to the machine, and fell in the now cramped cockpit between them.

"When did we leave?" Hermione asked, urgently.

Frisk read off the time, and Hermione set the destination. It would be not quite ten minutes after they left, as the machine only let them get precise down to the hour. Closing and relocking the doors, Hermione engaged the machine again. With any luck, they'd find themselves back in the present.