Remus emerged from the darkness of Apparition into a nighttime scene scarcely brighter, in the shadow of a tall stone wall broken only by a set of wrought-iron gates. Tucking James's Invisibility Cloak closer around himself, he drew his wand and laid its tip against the stones, concentrating on what his own magic could tell him about the warding spells that guarded Malfoy Manor.

"We've got an advantage on our side when it comes to studying magic, cub," his father's voice sounded in the back of his mind. "Fire's always changing, and it changes whatever it touches as well. Could say the same about magic, no? Long as you stay in control of it, and don't let it gain power over you, you'll be a wizard to reckon with, no matter what else you are…"

Slowly the interlocking series of spells, cast by generations of paranoid purebloods, revealed themselves to Remus's searching gaze. They were, as he'd expected, heavily reliant on the bonds of blood and marriage, and a part of him wished Sirius were here. Being the first cousin of Malfoy Manor's present lady might have given his friend a thread to tug within the tangled web.

Or it might not. Don't get distracted, Moony, you've got enough to deal with already.

A new addition, shiny with freshness, caught his eye among the snarls of spell-lines. He coaxed it upwards to see what it might be.

"The Dark Mark, hmm?" He traced the lines of the familiar, detested skull and serpent with his wand. "So anyone Marked can come and go through these wards. Or—oh, now isn't this interesting. Equivalent declaration of power…"

Two seconds later, he realized what that clause might mean.

The Unforgivables. Curses with so few possible uses for good that even the trace of one on your wand can send you to Azkaban for life. And the only way through these wards, since I'm neither a Malfoy nor wearing the Dark Mark—

Releasing the spell, he backed away a few paces to think.

No, was his first thought, stark in its simplicity. I won't do it. Those spells are outlawed for a reason. Even being in the frame of mind to cast them is destructive. I can't possibly justify this, no matter what's at stake.

Oh, can't you? murmured a different mental voice. Imagine you're standing on the street, with a man in front of you about to attack a woman and a child. He's warded against all standard spells, so you can't Disarm him or Stun him to make him stop. Would you use the Imperius or the Killing Curse, take that guilt upon yourself, to save those two innocent lives?

Yes, but—

The part that matters is 'yes', the second voice overrode his automatic objection. Also, lest we forget, the object in question here is not a human being. It's a wall. And the people at stake are not just any woman and child, but—

"Enough," Remus said softly, and leveled his wand at the wall. Gathering all the helpless fury and horror of this night, he channeled it into a pair of words he'd been certain he would never speak in his lifetime.

"Avada Kedavra!"

With a roar of wind and a flash of green light, the wards around Malfoy Manor parted before him. Remus stepped up to the wall and traced an archway in the stones, walking forward as they reshaped themselves to his will, then allowing them to return to their original locations once he had passed through them.

A tiny snap nearby brought his head around. "Who's there?" demanded a woman's voice, as a beam of wandlight stabbed through where he was standing. "Show yourself!"

Thank you, James. Remus stroked his fingers along the inside of the Invisibility Cloak, fighting back the tightness of grief in his throat. Mourning for his friends would have to wait until he'd brought their son safely home.

Avoiding Narcissa Malfoy with care, he set out to do precisely that.

A side door half-concealed by bushes gave Remus his entry point, admitting him into a narrow, dark hallway clearly meant for the use of servants. Touching his wand to the wall, he spread out his magic into the fabric of the house itself, calling up a floating map of its interior, visible only to him.

Hominem revelio, he enunciated clearly within his mind, and two rooms lit up with the glints of human life. A single spark shone on the ground floor, while a small cluster occupied a well-warded chamber on the first.

"That's it." Remus moved his wand's tip to the room where three glowing orbs overlapped one another. "Show me how to get there."

A line lit up at his feet, stretching away down the corridor. He paused long enough to dismiss his map and lay a hand on the wall in thanks. Then he was moving, all his attention on keeping his footfalls silent, his breathing under control. A flight of stairs went by, a paneled door opened and shut, giving him access to a much broader and grander hallway.

Halfway down the length of this hall, the line of light turned sharply and passed through a door painted with intertwined snakes. Remus circled his wand around the doorknob and frowned. Just a standard Locking Spell? I would have thought—

"Never interrupt your enemy while he's making a mistake," Alastor Moody's voice growled in the back of his mind. "Take advantage and be thankful."

Smiling, Remus tapped his wand against the knob, turned it, and stepped into the room beyond.

GG, seated on the low sofa which decorated one side of the nursery, looked up from the pair of drowsing children in her arms, her eyes widening at the sight of, apparently, nothing. "Who's there?" she asked in an urgent undertone. "This isn't funny—"

"It's me." Remus shut the door and pulled off the Cloak, sliding it into a side pocket of his jeans (the ability of the Cloak to compress into a surprisingly small bundle had kept it from being detected by Filch on numerous occasions). "Are you hurt? Harry?"

"No, we're both fine." GG exhaled a long breath. "I'm so glad to see you. Thank you for coming."

"I'd never leave someone in danger that way. Least of all y—" Remus cut himself off, but enough of the word had already escaped.

"You know, it's the funniest thing, Remus." GG smiled one-sidedly. "What you said to me earlier tonight, there at Aletha's door? You only beat me to it by a second or two." She stood up carefully, her eyes steady on his. "You're not the only one who's been having dreams."

Remus stared at her for three seconds, then got a hold of himself. "We can talk more about that later," he said, crossing the room to her side and taking Harry from her arms. The little boy roused briefly, saw who was holding him, and made a sleepy noise of contentment before snuggling down onto Remus's shoulder. "Now let's get out of here." He cast a disinterested glance at the other child GG was holding. "Set that one back in his cot and we'll go."

"Are you sure?" GG reached up to disentangle a small set of fingers from her hair.

"What do you mean, am I sure?" Remus shook his head. "This is his home. It's where he belongs. We can't just walk out of here with him, that's not how this works—"

"Look at the way he's holding onto me." GG stroked her finger along the tight clasp of the child's hand around the collar of her dark blue blouse, then caressed the back of a pale-blond head which was pressed trustingly against her collarbone. "Children this age are usually shy of strangers, but he grabbed hold of me as soon as I picked him up, and he hasn't let me go for an instant. That tells me he's starving. Not for food or warmth or anything like that, but for touch. A basic human need, which isn't being fulfilled." Her brown eyes met his green ones again, bearing a trace of challenge in their depths. "Besides, if the police aren't here any minute now, or whatever you people call them—"

"Aurors. For something this big, it'd be Aurors." Remus looked towards the door, then back at GG. "You're saying damn the legalities, he'd be better off with us."

"I'm saying I don't have the heart to leave a child somewhere he's clearly being neglected." An impatient hand jabbed at the luxurious fittings of the room. "Neglected in splendor, maybe, but do you really think he cares? Besides." Her lips twitched into a gamine grin. "If we try to pry him off me, he'll scream. And I thought the point was to get out of here quietly."

Remus hesitated for one more second, then sighed deeply. "What the hell. I've already used an Unforgivable curse today. Broken into a pureblood manor house, performed magic in front of Muggles without intent to Obliviate. What's a little kidnapping among friends?"

"Friends?" GG's grin twisted to one side. "Is that all we are?"

"I said later, and I meant later." Taking her arm, Remus led her towards the door. "Let's get out to the hallway at least. There's an extra set of wards on this room, and Side-Alonging three is going to be difficult enough already."

"Side-Alonging?"

"Apparition. Going from one place to another, no in-between about it. It's fast, but this many passengers makes it complicated, so try not to distract me, please?"

GG nodded, and Remus turned the doorknob and stepped out into the corridor beyond.

A brown-haired woman in red robes whirled around, her wand coming up to bear.

Remus held up his hand, stopping Alice Longbottom's cast in mid-motion. "We're not here," he said, indicating himself, his companion, and the child each of them held.

Alice sized them up, then inclined her head to him and pointedly turned her back.

Putting his free arm around GG and the little boy in her arms, holding Harry close to his side, Remus concentrated on the alley into which he'd already Apparated once tonight. His entire mind was humming with the repetition of a simple, impossible sentence.

"You're not the only one who's been having dreams…"

"They started in the spring of last year, for me," said GG when they were safely back inside Aletha's home, that lady having excused herself to the music room, where she'd set up a cot for Harry. Neenie was still sleeping on the couch, and the Malfoys' son (whatever his name may be) had his head pillowed on GG's shoulder. "Warnings, urgent ones. Don't be home on this day. Something terrible will happen. So I wasn't. Except…" She swallowed. "Something terrible still happened on that day. It just happened to my parents. And I was left to take care of Neenie, and to wonder if it wouldn't have been better to undergo that pain myself. Until I started dreaming again, but differently." She raised her eyes to meet his. "This time they were about other people."

"People like me?" Remus sat back on the couch, careful not to jostle the sleeping girl.

"Well, yes and no. It's complicated." GG pressed a fist to her lips, thinking. "The new dreams began with my looking into…the future, I suppose," she said after a few moments. "Seeing people like myself, people who were suffering terribly, whether from their own mistakes or through the cruelty of someone else. And somehow I had the power to speak to them, ask them a question, without them ever knowing I was there." Her eyes gazed into the distance, unseeing. "What would you tell yourself, if you could reach into the past? What warning would you send, what would you try to change, if you knew what you know now? And when they answered me…I could get their message through. Or at least I could try."

"Aletha's dreams." Remus glanced towards the hallway. "The ones she mentioned to us, the ones that made her keep after Sirius until he told her the truth. You caused those."

"I did." GG nodded slowly. "Or I think I did. There were so many. So many questions to ask, so many connections to make. Some people made those connections on their own. Others closed their minds against me. But eventually I came to one who was different. One man who didn't know what to tell his past self, because nothing he'd done had caused his world to collapse. He'd simply been living his life, and then in a single night, everyone he cared about was gone." She met his eyes with a shy smile. "So instead of sending a warning, he asked if his past self could meet someone who'd lived through pain like his. Someone who'd lost their entire world, or nearly so, but still saw a reason to go on, and might be able to teach him how and why."

"And you fit the bill." Remus reached out his hand, and marveled at the strength in the slender fingers which closed around it. "I thought, all this past year, that I'd imagined you. Dreamed you up, either as pure fantasy or as a warning to myself. Even last night could have meant I was making a promise to go on with my life, no matter what else happened. But now you're here. You're real, just as real as I am. And…"

"Yes. And." GG stroked a fingertip along his knuckles. "I like the man I've been getting to know, over this past year," she said softly. "He's kind, funny, sweet. Intelligent, thoughtful, and strong. Much stronger than he gives himself credit for being. I could learn to love that man." Releasing his hand, she looked away. "Judging by last night, I already have. But I'm not exactly an uncomplicated choice. There's Neenie, for one thing. And now this." A little shrug of her shoulder indicated the blond child sleeping in her arms. "It's a lot to take on. So if you don't want to, if you're not ready—"

Remus held up a hand, stopping her. "My mother used to say, if you wait till you think you're ready, you'll likely be waiting your whole life," he said. "It's a big decision. You're not wrong about that. But I've got my own share of complications, so that doesn't scare me. And besides." He reached over, recapturing her hand. "How often will I get the chance to meet quite literally the girl of my dreams?"

GG's smile was beginning to warm her eyes when a loud crash shook the foundations of the house. Neenie startled awake and began to cry, and the little boy in GG's arms opened his eyes, looking around in bewilderment.

"Don't panic," Aletha called, hurrying into the front room, Harry on her hip, as Remus reached out to lift Neenie into his lap (to his surprise, she came without protest, tucking her thumb into her mouth once more as she settled against his chest). "That's just—"

The front door flew open. "What the hell, Letha?" demanded Sirius, striding into the room. "Since when do your wards fling people back out of them?"

"Since you not listening to me nearly got your godson kidnapped, that's when!" Aletha snapped her wrist, shut the door with her wand, and sent one of her armchairs skidding across the floor just in time to catch Sirius as his knees stopped working. "Oh, don't look like that. He's fine. Here." She plopped Harry onto his lap. "And the person you need to thank for rescuing Harry from the Death Eaters is right over there, by the way."

Sirius turned his head, and shock, chagrin, relief chased each other across his features. "Moony," he said hoarsely, his arms going around Harry. "Thank you, so much, though that doesn't nearly cover what I need to say to you. I'm so sorry, I've been an arse to you these past few months, how could I ever have thought you were the spy—"

"We didn't know who it was. None of us did." Remus shook his head, able without much trouble to see how this night could have played out. "If you hadn't told Letha about the switch in Secret-Keepers, I'd still be thinking it was you. And if you'd tracked Peter down before you let anyone know what you were doing, or why…"

A flash of comprehension dawned in Sirius's eyes. "That's how," he breathed. "That's how it could've happened. Merlin, it all makes sense now." Shaking this off, he looked down at Harry, who was leaning trustingly against his arm. "I've got spells out looking for him," he said, bouncing his godson a few times on his knee. "Peter, I mean. But once I find him, once that part of it's over…" He shook his head. "What the hell were James and Lily thinking? This is too much for me. I can't do it."

"You're missing a word there, Padfoot." Remus glanced over at Aletha, who had her arms folded across her chest, then at GG, who was nodding in encouragement. "Alone. This is too much for you, alone. You couldn't do it, alone. But in case you haven't noticed, you're not alone." He circled two fingers around the room. "None of us are. Not now."

"And if you were planning on following through with that note you sent to Dumbledore…" Aletha sat down on the arm of Sirius's chair. "I'll help you with anything, Sirius, you know that. But you have to ask me first."

"Good point. Both of them." Sirius reached across to catch Aletha's hand in his. "So, er, help? Please?"

"With?" Aletha prompted, starting to smile.

"Hiding Harry." Sirius cuddled the little boy against him with his free arm. "It came to me while I was bespelling that baby doll, the one I sent with Hagrid. Pretty much everybody thinks you dumped me and left us all behind, that you're in America and have been for years. Why couldn't you have met somebody there? Got married, had a kid around the same time as James and Lily? All it'd take is a couple of glamour spells and a name change, and there we are. Normal little family. Nobody'd look twice."

"It's not a bad idea." Aletha glanced over at GG and Remus. "But it leaves a few people out of the equation. And after what happened tonight, I think they deserve to be included."

"Yeah, speaking of." Sirius raised an eyebrow at GG. "Not to be rude or anything, but who are you, exactly? All I got earlier was 'an old friend of Letha's', and that could cover a lot of ground." His eyes traveled downward and to one side. "Also, that's new. What's with the little blond brat?"

"Spoils of war." GG lifted her chin as Sirius's gaze snapped back to her face. "His father's the one who tried to kidnap Harry. I thought it was only fair we should return the favor."

"I should mention, also," Remus added, since Sirius's mouth had dropped open. "GG's the one who spotted Lucius Malfoy when he was here, and got there in time to grab onto him while he was Disapparating. If she hadn't, we might not have realized Harry was gone for hours, much less what had happened to him or where to look. So isn't there something you should be saying right about now?"

"Yeah." Sirius laughed shakily. "How about, if I didn't have a kid on my lap, I'd come over there and kiss you?" He paused, looking from GG to Remus and back again. "Scratch that. If I didn't have a kid on my lap, and if I wasn't pretty sure it'd make Moony punch me in the nose."

"Kiss your own woman, Padfoot." Remus drew GG closer to him. "But speaking of kids, there's something I wanted to ask you about this one." He reached across to stroke a finger down the soft blond hair. "What's his name?"

"Other than 'Malfoy'?" Sirius snorted. "How should I know?"

"Because he's your cousin?"

"With as many cousins as I have, I only keep track of the ones I like." Sirius blinked once or twice. "Hang on a tick. Are you telling me you stole this kid and you don't even know his first name?"

GG snorted, Aletha snickered, and a moment later all four adults were laughing helplessly, Harry catching the mood and clapping his hands. Neenie roused at the noise, looked around at the grownups doing strange grownup things, and went back to sleep, while the little boy in GG's arms blinked warily at them.

"It's not like it really matters, to be fair," said Aletha when everyone had calmed down enough that she could be heard. "Since traditional purebloods tend towards the more unusual names, and we're going to need bog-standard ones if this is going to work."

"Yeah, about that." Sirius craned his neck to look up at her. "Are you saying we should go into hiding together? Like, all of us?"

"Why not?" Aletha motioned to Remus and GG. "They've got somebody to hide now too. And if we're ever found out, another wand could be the difference between life and death. Not to mention, who exactly is going to do the cooking in this household you've got planned? I can boil water, but that's the extent of my kitchen skills, and you're not even allowed to do that anymore."

"He burned a hole through her favorite cauldron when he let it boil dry," Remus explained quietly to GG. "She was furious."

"Whereas GG likes to cook, and she's quite good at it too." Aletha nodded to her friend, who blew a kiss across the room. "I really think it could work."

"Yeah, but won't that mess with the whole point of being in hiding?" Sirius twisted a bit of his robes between his fingers. "Most people want a flat or a house of their own, just them and their family. Having the whole bunch of us together? That's bound to draw some attention. Not that I don't like the idea," he added hastily. "I do. It'd make everybody's lives easier, especially with three kids to take care of."

"Four," Aletha corrected, a slight smile touching her lips.

"Okay, four kids." Sirius nodded. "Not quite sure where you're getting that, but—" He stopped short. "Wait. No. You're not saying—"

"Oh, but I am." Aletha took his hand in hers and laid it against her belly. "I'm pregnant, Sirius."

"Talk about everything happening at once," said Remus, since Sirius seemed only able to stare at Aletha in stunned delight. "Congratulations, Padfoot."

"And hiding together might not be such a bad idea as all that." GG shifted her position on the couch, swapping the little boy to her other shoulder. "With most people, if you give them a story they like, they'll fit any odd things they notice about you into that story somehow. So if we tell everyone that we're two pairs of good friends who happened to marry each other, and we're sharing a house because we can't afford one by ourselves, they're much less likely to realize that some of us aren't precisely who we say we are…"

Present day

"And from there, it was just a matter of working out the details." Ryan laced his fingers together over his head and stretched. "Helps that most of what Gigi suggested that day was actually true."

"Setting aside the tiny detail that none of us were married at that point," said Thea dryly. "But we fixed that once we got where we were going."

"The biggest thing we had to decide was what we were going to be called." John smiled reminiscently. "I suppose it might have been smarter to come up with something fresh for all of us, but let's be honest. Who really knows most of their friends' middle names? And the most unusual one, we lopped off short," he said to Ryan, who bowed. "Altered your surname a bit, borrowed my grandmother's maiden name, and there we were. Whereas for the boys, we just worked backwards for one of them, and for the other…"

"It seemed a little too mean to leave him without any trace of his former self." Gigi's eyes went momentarily dark. "Though I'm not exactly proud of what I did that night. Why did I believe I had a right to take a child away from his home, away from his mother? No matter what I thought his behavior was telling me, that was a horrible thing to do." Her hands tightened around themselves. "I would have deserved it if she really had died."

"Hey." Ryan reached across the table to thump his hand lightly against Gigi's shoulder. "None of that, now. I knew Cissy, which you didn't, and even I would never have predicted she'd go as far or as fast as she did. Hell, I was expecting her to get arrested herself, which would've cut her off from Mal no matter if she wanted him or not!"

"And if she'd waited long enough for that owl we sent her to get there, she'd have had the choice." Thea circled her fingers as though presenting a pair of options. "Contact us and get her child back, or tell us to keep him and go on with her life. We all made choices that night, Gigi. Some of them were good, some were bad, but we have to live with them no matter what." She held out her hand to her husband, who took it. "I don't think we ended up with such a terrible outcome, myself."

"Yeah, about that." Ryan frowned. "I've always meant to ask. Why'd our dreams swap over the way they did? We started out with warnings about the future, stuff we were or weren't supposed to do, but we mostly figured those out, didn't we? How come they all shifted into 'here's what would be happening right now if you hadn't done what I said'?"

"I couldn't tell you that." Gigi gazed at her hands, folded together on the table. "My active involvement with these dreams ended the night I met all of you."

"I've always thought…" began Thea at the same moment John said, "I have a theory…" They looked at each other and smiled, and John motioned for Thea to go on.

"Perhaps it's selfish of me." Thea looked around the room, meeting her friends' eyes in turn. "But I've always believed that we have those dreams to remind us how precious our lives really are. So that we'll never take them, or one another, for granted."

"I feel the same way." John laid his hand against Gigi's arm, and smiled when she covered it with her own. "When life is good, it's worryingly easy to become dissatisfied, to forget how far we've already come. I know I always believed that love was out of my reach, simply because of who I was, until I met you."

"Which brings up one of my favorite bits from that night." Ryan grinned broadly. "Watching her tear you to pieces when you brought up your furry little problem as a reason this wouldn't work. We'd been trying to tell it to you for years, but somehow it never sank in."

"As they say, Padfoot, it's not the content, it's the delivery." John turned his hand over to hold Gigi's. "My love? Care to indulge the furry reprobate with a repeat performance?"

"If you insist." Gigi got to her feet, crooked one arm as though carrying something, and fixed John with a fierce glare. "I may be just a silly little Muggle," she said in a cool and carrying tone, "but I do know the difference between the phases of the moon. Why, some of our calendars print them right there on the page! So unless you're going to tell me that you could suddenly start changing at new moon, or three-quarters—no?" She paused for John to shake his head. "Well then, there you are. It's not like it's going to sneak up on us!"

Thea and Ryan were already snickering. Gigi grinned towards them and continued. "And if it's the children you're worried about, observe. Children are portable." She motioned towards her imaginary burden. "We can take them here." A few steps to the left. "We can take them there." More steps to the right. "We can take them out of the house entirely on your transformation nights, and I can go with them! Or are you going to say that a safe room with a locked door and two adults in full control of their magic aren't enough to deal with you?"

Laughing, John applauded along with his friends as Gigi bowed. "Your last point is what really hit home to me, that night," he said. "My entire life, I'd relied on either wards and walls or the company of my friends to keep my transformations under control. It hadn't occurred to me until that very moment that the combination of the two meant full moons would actually be safer with all of us together."

"As a great many things have been." Thea chuckled once. "I've always wondered, Ryan. What exactly did you write in that note of yours, the one you tucked into the wrappings on that baby doll?"

"That's a good question." John pulled out Gigi's chair for her. "You may be one of the only people in the world who ever got Albus Dumbledore to change his mind. How did you do it?"

"Mostly by not giving him an option." Ryan snickered. "If I recall correctly, it went something like this…"

Dear sir—

I appreciate your care for my godson, but I'm afraid I don't like the idea of handing him over to someone else, even for a little while. Call me superstitious if you like, but I've got this terrible feeling that if I say goodbye to him tonight, it'll be an awfully long time until I see him again. Besides, he's my responsibility now, and it's time I started living up to that.

Towards that end, I'm enlisting the help of a mutual friend of ours, one with plenty of experience hiding in plain sight. Our enemies can't hurt what they can't find, right? By the time you get this, we'll probably be gone. Take care of yourself, and we'll get in touch as soon as we can.

Thanks for understanding,

Padfoot

P.S. Please check over the traces of the Fidelius at the Potters' place carefully. There was something we never told you about it.

P.P.S. Please also apologize to Hagrid for me, and ask him to hang onto the bike until we meet again. It may take a while, but I'm sure we'll be back eventually…

(A/N: And there you have it. The events which shaped the alterworld, and the reasons behind them. How much of it were you expecting, O readers, and how much caught you by surprise? Chapters 13, 14, and 15 might be worth revisiting to see things from other perspectives…

I should note that as of last chapter, I've written more of this story in 2022 than I had in 2015, and it's showing no signs of slowing down. I might actually finish it this time, and wouldn't that be a surprise! A small side story has also begun to show itself to me, though I can't talk too much about that without getting very spoiler-y. Let's just say I hope you'll like it, even if you might not like the reason why it was written.

Next time: we return to the gray world and catch up with what everyone's been doing there, including some characters I'm pretty sure you've all wanted to see together. Hold onto your pointy black hats, and don't forget to review if you're able!)