A/N: Thank you, Mark Wells. :)

"Look, kid, I'm not so sure this is a good idea."

Henry watched Emma's grip on the steering wheel tighten. "It'll be fine, Mom. I know she's mad at you, but I think I can help her."

"It's a little more than 'mad,' " she muttered as the car slowed to a stop in front of Regina's house. "Any trouble, you give me a call, okay?"

"Okay. Love you, Mom."

"I love you too, Henry." She mussed his hair and watched with her lips pressed together as he climbed out of the car with his backpack. He waved at her through the windshield and made his way up the walkway of his other mom's house. As he reached the door, he looked over his shoulder to see Emma still watching him.

For a second he wondered if he should knock, but then he remembered that he was her son, too, and reached for the key she kept hidden in a plant next to the front door. Her door was never unlocked, at least nowadays.

He pushed the key into the doorknob, turned to wave one more time at Emma, and walked inside. His Mom didn't greet him like he assumed she would. In fact, everything was very quiet, apart from a low murmuring of voices in the sitting room.

Henry edged toward the voices behind a closed door, tiptoeing on the wooden floor. Of course he trusted his Mom now, even though she was really mad at his other Mom, but he was very curious, and he knew that adults had a nasty habit of stopping their important conversations when children were within earshot.

"…can be anything?" That was Mom.

"Anything within the laws of magic." This voice, however, was unfamiliar; deep, silky, and male. Henry pictured a thin, mustachioed man with dark hair and bushy eyebrows.

"I'm assuming the laws are the same in Agrabah as they are here?"

Agrabah? Henry wondered. Like…Aladdin? But that wasn't in the book.

"I cannot kill anyone-"

"A pity."

Henry's blood ran cold. Her voice was dry with sarcasm, but she could be serious. Did she really want to kill Emma?

"-make anyone fall in love-"

"Even more of a pity."

Robin Hood.

"-bring back the dead, or change the past."

"Ha! That's already been done enough for my liking."

Henry wondered at this man telling his Mom the rules of magic. The words "I cannot" registered in his head as significant. Did his Mom have some new servant who only operated under magical law?

Then it clicked. Agrabah. Magic laws.

Genie.

It had to be. Was it the Genie? It didn't sound like it. The man's voice sounded anything but kind or funny like the Genie from Aladdin was, but then again many of the characters he thought he knew were very different in real life.

How had his Mom found a genie?

"I can't help but see you are disappointed at the laws."

She sighed. "I've always been, but there's no point in trying to change them."

A pause.

"Ah, so you are a sorcerer as well."

Henry could imagine his Mom crossing her arms to go with the tone she was using. "Some might call me that."

He could hear the smile in the genie's voice. "Just between you and me, then…" The next part was spoken so softly that Henry had to press his ear to the door. "There is a way to change the laws of magic."
Mom huffed. "Impossible." A moment passed, in which Henry was sure she was recalling what he was; how Zelena had opened a portal to the past. "How do you know?"

"I've done it," he hissed. "I have brought the dead to life, made people love me, killed people with just a whim."

Henry backed away from the door a little. He decided that he didn't like this genie.

"I can tell you how to do it."

"How?" she demanded.

"I will tell you how, once-"

"I command you to tell me now!" Mom yelled.

Henry pictured the genie hesitating, but being unable to stop the secret from coming out since his master had commanded it. "You will need this bottle, and the genie inside of it. There is a book in Wonderland that contains the spell."

"You want me to go to Wonderland?"

"Of course not. You can merely wish it, and the pages will be in your hands."

Henry didn't waste a second. He couldn't let his Mom have those papers and change the laws of magic. Settling his backpack on his shoulders, he crept back across the floor and opened the front door again quietly, only to close it hard a second later. Everything went very still for a couple seconds before Henry walked conspicuously across the wooden floor and pushed the sitting room door open to see his Mom standing in the middle of the room alone, her brow furrowed in confusion.

"Hey, Mom."

Her face lit up with a bright smile. "Henry!" She ran forward and squeezed him in a hug. It was hard for him to hug her back after what he had just heard, but he took the opportunity looking over her shoulder to see where she might have hidden the lamp. Nothing. She was good.

Mom pulled away and put her hands on his cheeks. "How are you?"

"Good, Mom." He tried to sound enthusiastic, and hoped it was working. "I wanted to come spend the day with you. Is that okay?"

A flash of annoyance in the back of her eyes. He just barely caught it before it went away. If he was with her all day, she couldn't make the wish.

"Of course it's okay!" She hugged him again. "You can come spend time with me whenever you want, you know that, right?"

"Yeah, I know."