13
"Troy?" Gabrielle struck and knocked at the wall with the flat of her hand. "Chad?" She felt around for an opening and looked around as her eyes accustomed to the extreme darkness. She seemed to be in the catacombs under the foundations of Hogwarts, maybe as far as a hundred feet underground. All she had was a vestige of light from around the corner. The end of her wand illuminated and she used it to light the way. She was in a long corridor only about three feet wide, empty crypts about every so feet for the burial and entombment of the dead. A veil of spider webs blocked her path and she pulled it down as she headed into the light. The side passage seemed to lead into a room at the far end. She slowly inched along the way and subsequently found herself into a round chamber resembling a small amphitheater lit by torches with four stairways leading up into darkened passageways. Directly before her was the Mirror of Yensid resting in an alcove of some importance. It was surrounded by an audience of levels displaying cups of every metal, style and substance sitting side by side with crystals both large and small. She found geodes and crystal statues, cups of gold and bronze. There were large crystals resting on angles and a few with flattened surfaces to rest upon. Here and there was a rogue wooden statue less than a foot high. This looked like it could be the Hogwart vault used to hide away every object of importance to Hogwarts history. If Sharpay was here, she was nearby. Gabrielle turned round once and noticed a crystal statue and a sparkling silver goblet sparkling with diamonds and blue, green and red gems. This room was a treasure hunter's dream. It made her feel like a princess to be in their presence. A soft smile came to her face as she admired one of the crystal objects, but as she turned around, she realized she was not alone. A cloaked and hooded figure came from the passageway before her and startled her. She stood her ground as her nemesis reached to pull back her hood to reveal her identity.
"Alex?!" Gabrielle recognized her cousin. "But that's… What are you doing in Hogwarts?"
"There's a secret tunnel under the school from Honeyduke's Candy Shop." Alex confessed. "I heard about it from my new best friend, Sharpay. I've been telling her a lot about you, Gabrielle, and she's got plans for you."
"But…" Gabrielle shook her head confused as Alex strutted threateningly to the mirror. "You're not supposed to be here. You're supposed to be at Wiz-Tech! I'm so confused."
"What's there to be confused about?" Alex looked back to her cousin. "I hate your guts! My entire life, all I ever hear is: "Alex, why can't you be more like Gabrielle?" "Alex, why can't you stay out of trouble like Gabrielle?" "Alex, why can't you wear underwear like Gabrielle?" All I hear is Gabrielle! Gabrielle! Gabrielle!!!" Alex screamed the name over and over trying to forget it, hissing under breath, clenching her teeth into a vicious snarl and her eyes ablaze with furious hostility then slowly and gradually abating her temper. Gabrielle looked at her and trembled.
"But… but…" Gabrielle shuddered with fear and backed away from her. "But we talked about boys, and went to the mall with Harper, and looked at the stars from the balcony…"
"I also pushed you off the balcony seventeen times, and you blamed yourself seventeen times!" Alex hissed in her cousin's face. "Gabrielle, you are not that clumsy!!" She turned away rather than watch her emotional cousin crying. "But then I heard about this theory about other worlds where different versions of myself existed and how there was this mirror that looked into other them, and I realized there had to be a world where you didn't exist! The problem was… it was located here at Hogwarts and the only way I was going to see it was to get transferred from Wiz-Tech to Hogwarts, but then you got a full tuition to Hogwarts and I had to get it, but no!" Alex pushed Gabrielle off her feet and stood over her gloating. "You just had to take it! You see, my annoyingly little cousin, I stared into the mirror and I finally found the person I'm supposed to be." She turned and pressed her face obsessed to the mirror. "Her name's Selena Gomez, and she's this big time actress and singer in another universe. She's got millions of fans and movie stars for friends. I'm going to replace her, and take over her life. They'll all love me instead, but to do it, I need the Crystal Key!!"
"So, it was you who broke into Gringotts…" Gabrielle realized. "You did it when you skipped those classes at Wiz-Tech to come here. You gave Hagrid that dragon egg to learn how to get past Muffin. Sharpay helped you, didn't she?"
"She sure did." Alex grinned at that accomplishment. "She helped me elude Snape, showed me the secret shortcut down here and helped me get expelled from Wiz-Tech. I had to blow up half of that stinking school until they finally expelled me!" She paused with a satisfied grin. "Gabrielle, here's your chance to help me. Where's the Crystal Key?!"
"I don't know!" Gabrielle cried out with tears in her eyes.
"Don't give me that!" Alex yelled at her. "Sharpay said you knew exactly where it was! Now, where is it?!!!" She sounded obsessed and psychotic.
"Alex," Gabrielle was crying with large tears running down her fragile face. "You're scaring me!"
"Oh, I'm sorry, Gabrielle…" Alex suddenly sounded remorseful. "I'm sorry, let me help you up…" Gabrielle extended her hand to her cousin to be lifted up off the floor, but Alex instead spun her round by the arm and held her by the neck, squeezing her throat and windpipe as they both stood before the Mirror of Yensid looking at their reflections. Her cousin started choking for air and clawing at her neck for relief. Alex had gone mad. She was desperate to find that mystical object. "Where is that key?!!!" She looked at her face in the mirror as her cousin's face turned red. Behind her, everything appeared dark and lackluster in shadow but for one crystal with a flat bottom. It was glowing with a light brighter than anything else in the room. Both of them noticed it and realized what it had to be.
Tossing her cousin aside, Alex spun around and raced to the crystal and took it up in her hands. It was barely bigger than a baseball, and there was a small hollow spot in the bottom of it. Resembled a large diamond, she took it up and advanced on the mirror. Crying her eyes out on the floor, Gabrielle looked up as Alex pressed the flat of the crystal to the mirror, the glass glistening like reflective silver liquid reflecting her cousin in front of it. Laughing giddily, Alex jumped up and down like a little girl and started pushing her way through the mirror. Looking around once, Gabrielle realized she had to get her back and suddenly found her spirit renewed with a second wind. Clenching her teeth, she leapt to her feet and reached through the mirror to grab Alex around the waist and bring her back…
In another reality with a not-so-evil Alex Russo…
"Okay…" Jerry Russo stood in the secret wizard's lair of his Waverly Place sandwich shop with his three kids. His son, Justin, was drawing science-fiction scenes in his notebook, and his younger son, Max played a palm-held video game. At the end of the sofa, the Alex of this reality had shorter hair and was reading a fashion catalog as her father tried to teach them wizardry.
"A-hem…" Jerry tried to keep their attention. "Today, I'd like to show you kids some basic transportation spells. These are very useful for when you can't get a taxi or your wife wants you to do disgusting chores. Now, who did their required reading last night?"
The door to the portal in the lair crashed open from two figures crashing through it, and the kids jumped to attention. Jerry watched what looked like a large gem skidding across his floor and another copy of his daughter pulling the hair out of another girl. He looked to one Alex and then to the other. What was another boring magic lesson was getting to be interesting. Gabrielle screamed as Alex pulled a chunk of her hair out then pushed her against the sarcophagus in the room. Justin looked confused to see two copies of his sister. Max was laughing and cheering on the fight.
"Melissa?" Alex thought her counterpart was a clone of herself she had known. "Is that you?"
"Crap and a half!" Evil Alex kicked Gabrielle to the floor and looked around the lair. "Wrong stinking world!!" She punched the other Alex to the face and pushed her out of the way looking for the Crystal Key on the floor. She pushed Justin out of the way and flipped over the sofa looking for it.
"Uncle Jerry!" Holding her chest, Gabrielle forced herself to stand. "Don't let her get that key!!"
"Uncle Jerry?" Jerry reacted confused. "Do I know you?"
"Is this what you're looking for?" Max found it behind a trunk. Evil Alex and Gabrielle looked at ach other and lunged after their extra-dimensional cousin. Max tossed it up and dived out of the way as the two feuding females dived for it. Feeling it on the tip of her fingers, Gabrielle tried to hold on to it, but it spun a bit in the air as Alex reached for it. Upset about getting punched, the other Alex started fighting her evil counterpart. The Crystal Key meanwhile hit a chair in the entranceway and rolled over the edge for a more cushioned landing.
"Dad," Justin stood confused with his arms folded before his chest. "Where'd other Alex and that girl come from?"
"I don't know…" Jerry pulled Max out of the way. "I didn't do my homework either."
"Opponent Retardus!!!" Evil Alex sent her the other Alex of this world flying across the room and smashing into the wall then scrambled to catch up with Gabrielle. In the outer restaurant, Gabrielle skidded to a stop to meet her aunt making sandwiches in the world, but then Evil Alex crashed into her on purpose and pulled her back by the hair screaming. Reacting confused and unprepared, Theresa and the three customers looked up to see the two girls fighting for the large crystal just as Alex tripped Gabrielle from behind and grabbed the Crystal Key laughing. Before Theresa could stop the other girl beating up her daughter, Gabrielle sprung up chasing her cousin and pursued her up into the loft upstairs.
"Where'd Michayla go to?" Her hair mussed and her clothes torn, Alex raced from out of the lair.
"Up… stairs?" Theresa reacted confused.
"No one punches me in the face and gets away with it!!!" Alex raced up the stairs in the restaurant to catch up with the other two. As she reached the top, her duplicate pressed the crystal to the mirror on the far wall and was pushing her way into it. The other girl raced after her and tried pulling her back, the mirror sloshing and stirring like liquid silver just before they were both pulled into it. Watching the whole spectacle, Alex skidded to a stop just a few feet from joining them.
"Okay…" She adjusted her ripped top and blew her hair out of her eyes. "Something tells me that wasn't Michayla…"
Yet another reality…
Corrie Willows looked a lot like Gabrielle Russo, and her best friend, Mary-Margaret Dawson, looked a lot like Taylor McKessie. They were both friends of Maddie Fitzpatrick, the cute and attractive hard-working candy girl of the Tipton Hotel whose only similarity to Sharpay Evans was her looks. They entered the hotel lobby just past Zack and Cody Martin going out and headed straight to Maddie reading her Harry Potter book.
"Maddie, look at this…" Corrie laid the paper out. "There's been another sighting of Super-Blonde!"
"Really?" Maddie sounded skeptical. "And who are they saying she looks like now?"
"Jessica Simpson."
"Maddie…" Mary-Margaret actually suspected the girl flying around Boston in the Supergirl costume was really Maddie, but she couldn't prove it. "Are you sure there's anything you want to tell us?"
"Like what?" Maddie reacted or pretended to be ignorant.
"Another Jessica Simpson…" Corrie was sometimes a bit slow. "It be so cool if a girl that looked just like me appeared with special powers." At that moment, hotel maintenance man Arwin Hawkhauser was wheeling a partially unwrapped mirror to replace the one Zack and Cody had shattered in the Grand Hallway of the hotel, but it suddenly felt heavy and Gabrielle Russo rolled from out of it with the Crystal Key sliding across the floor from her left hand. Climbing over her from the mirror in this seemingly unending quarrel, Alex crawled over her hated cousin after the sliding crystal shooting between the legs of London Tipton.
"It's mine!!" London dived for it.
"Not if I can help it!!!" Alex pulled out her wand. "Portento Carranza!!!" She hissed and turned London into a small yipping black poodle. Hotel manager Marion Moseby screamed at the sight of that transformation. Gabrielle meanwhile lifted herself to her feet right in front of Corrie and noticed how much they looked alike, but they had no time to talk. The Hogwarts sweetheart pulled out her wand before Maddie and Mary-Margaret watching in disbelief.
"Wingardium Levoisa!!!" She levitated the Crystal Key just as Alex grasped empty air, the mystical key between worlds flying up into the air for herself to catch it. "Asportanto reversa!!!" She changed London back into a human being. Evil Alex hissed with her teeth together and eyes aflame at her hated cousin.
"Rictusempra!!!" Alex screamed another incantation, and the two sofas in the lobby flew up into the air with people falling off them. They smashed into the crystal chandelier as Gabrielle looked straight up ready to be crushed underneath, but something raced across the lobby and pulled her out of the way. She was there one minute and gone the next. Mary-Margaret noticed Maddie had suddenly vanished at the same time. The two sofas and chandelier came crashing down right where Gabrielle once stood. Restored to normal, London Tipton scrambled out of the mystical war zone confused and scared for her life with Mr. Moseby ready to collect her.
"Gabrielle, I want that crystal!!!" Growing more hostile by the minute, Alex screamed through the alerted hotel lobby for her cousin as Gabrielle and Maddie popped up from behind the potted plants near the front entrance. "Poltergeista!!!" Gabrielle and Maddie looked at each other briefly as allies as Alex levitated the shattered concierge's desk into a horde of flying objects and debris hurling themselves at her. Gabrielle shielded Maddie and extended her wand.
"Protectus patronum!!!" A shield formed from her wand around her and Maddie as the shattered desk struck and turned into useless splinters flying around them. There was something about Maddie that made her special. She could not get hurt, but Gabrielle had no time to figure that out.
"You've got to get her out of here before she kills someone." Maddie told her.
"I know." Gabrielle heard Alex's voice screeching impatiently as her hated cousin matched her spell for spell. The demented sorceress looked around the terrorized lobby of scared hotel guests and looked straight toward Corrie, her cousin's counterpart in the reality. She lifted her wand at her.
"Rictusempra!!!" She levitated the entire candy corner up behind Corrie to crush her in effigy. The girl looked up in terrified fear as the crushed and stirring counter and candy rose up inside a small tornado off the lobby floor, but something grabbed her and pulled her out of the way, she skidded to the floor twenty feet into the gallery from the wreckage smashing into the floor.
"What… how?" She looked up and noticed Maddie near her. "Maddie?? You saved my life!!"
"Yeah, I did…" Maddie's face and body turned away from her best friend, holding a rip in her hotel uniform to hide the big red "S" on the costume under her clothes.
"Give me that key, Gabrielle!!!" Alex chased her cousin from the lobby. The Hogwarts cutie dashed away from her cousin into the ladies room trying to lead Alex back to Hogwarts to be punished. She pressed the key's flat edge to ladies room mirror as it turned into a portal. Alex was right behind her.
The previous reality somewhere near Albuquerque….
"So, Gabrielle…" Taylor McKessie and Gabrielle Montez were students at East High School. "Is Troy taking you to the Winter Formal?"
"I think so… as long as nothing funny happens." Gabrielle looked up as they headed to their regular table in the cafeteria where Kelsey was waving them over. As they strided across the floor, a large crystal slid across the floor on its flat surface in front of then and across the lower cafeteria from the nearby ladies room out in the hall. At another table, the object attracted the attention of non-wizard Sharpay Evans from talking on her cell phone. She didn't know what it was, but she wanted it.
"Gotta go, mom! The biggest diamond I've ever seen just slid by me!!!" She turned off her phone and raced after it bouncing under the chairs and tables.
"Hey!" Senior Chloe Harridge screamed from the hallway. "There's two girls beating the crap out of each other in the bathroom!!" Alex raced out of the bathroom first followed by Gabrielle.
"You've got to be kidding me!!!" Alex screamed. "Poltergeista!!!" She enchanted the janitor's trolley to explode as cleaning supplies, mops and brooms exploded everywhere. Gabrielle ducked and grabbed the closest broom out of the air, clenching it tightly and riding it across the room over her counterpart's head trying to get the key ahead of Alex. Before them both, the Sharpay of this world found the key and lifted it up admiring it just as Alex reached her.
"If there's one thing I don't need, it's another Sharpay!!!" Alex clobbered her with a food tray over the head then plucked the crystal out of the air as Sharpay dropped, but Gabrielle flew over them both and clutched it to herself. Holding the crystal to her chest, she pulled the broom up to the air and soared up to the second floor from the cafeteria. Flying through the school to find another mirror, a door opened in front of her and knocked her out of the air.
"What the?" Drama teacher Mrs. Darbus adjusted her glasses as the girl and broom were knocked from the air. "Who?" She thought she knew the girl. "Miss Montez, what's going on here?" Her long cape flapping like a set of huge black wings, Alex was flying after her cousin and coming on her own broom toward them. The air briefly knocked out of her, Gabrielle quickly recollected the Crystal Key and jumped the broom again to shoot past Alex into the other direction. Looking behind her, the Waverly Place villainess smashed into the upstairs trophy case in front of her, a photo of basketball star Troy Bolton bouncing off her head. Mrs. Darbus meanwhile stood completely confused by what she had seen.
"Gabrielle," Troy and Chad entered the confused and alarmed East High School cafeteria with the rest of the basketball players. "What's going on? Someone said you were flying on a broom?"
"It wasn't me, Troy!!!" Gabrielle was confused and hysterical. "It was another girl that looked exactly like me!!!"
"Here's she comes again!!!" Ryan Evans was fanning his sister as the mystical Gabrielle came soaring back on her broom being chased by Alex. Pushing her broom down, Gabrielle shot through the watching students and jumped to her feet clutching the Crystal Key coming right at them. Alex getting closer and closer, she was racing back to the ladies restroom but to do so, she had to race right between her counterpart and Troy's.
"Hey!!" Troy stopped her by rushing into her way. "Who are you?"
"In a hurry!!!" She kissed him and spun him around to get into the bathroom with them right behind. As her friends' counterparts watched, she pressed the crystal to the mirror and made it turn into liquid glass then climbed over the counter and through it. Alex charged through them to kill her cousin.
"Give me that key, Gabrielle!!!!" Alex screamed as the mirror sloshed and undulated from her going through it then calmed to solid glass. Taylor put her hand to it, but it was solid again.
"Whoa!" Taylor reacted from that magic trick.
"What is in the water in this place?!" Chad couldn't believe it.
Still yet another school in still yet another reality…
"Now…" Professor Charles Xavier was a rather brilliant teacher confined to a wheelchair who taught American Literature to the special children of his school for the gifted. "We were discussing the book, For Whom The Bells Tolls. Now, who can give me some insight into the main character?" He spoke softly and grandfatherly within his Westchester County estate. Student Kitty Pryde immediately raised her hand while right next to her, young Corrie Willows suddenly reacted from a vision of her favorite teacher getting hurt. Jumping to her feet, she rushed to save him.
"Professor!!!" She wheeled his chair right out of the way of the girls coming out of the reflection in the front windows. The twelve students sitting on the floor scattered as Gabrielle charged forth lost and confused from her third world. Gritting her teeth out of hostility, Alex clotheslined her cousin with a movement to the neck as her counterpart in this world, Gwen Alvarado, jumped to stop her.
"What are you looking at?!!!" She tried to punch her to the face, but Gwen's mutant strength made her as hard as steel. For Alex, it was like breaking her fist on solid concrete. As she reacted from smashing her fingers, the other young mutant children ganged up on her. Coughing and choking, Gabrielle struggled to raise to her feet, but someone with powers less than her own was reading her mind. She looked to the bald teacher in the wheelchair.
"Gabrielle…" Xavier was speaking to her telepathically. "The key you are looking for slid under the table in the front hall. Get it while you can." Gabrielle and the kind humanitarian exchanged a lifetime of thoughts in that moment, but Alex was seething with rage. She wanted that key!!!
"Trinorma dredrae!!!" Alex sent the class flying off her and into the walls and took off after her cousin. Clutching the crystal, Gabrielle looked briefly at her and raced past teacher Ororo Munroe whose own powers unique to this reality allowed her to summon and control the elements of storm. Her white hair drifting in the breeze being whipped up, she conjured a torrent of air that blew Alex into the wrong direction. The young girl was knocked off her feet and backward by the gust of air, but she still had her wand to use against this experienced mutant.
"Elemental transformus!!!" Pressing the tip of her wand to the floor, she turned the floor to quicksand and both Ororo and Alex fell through the floor, seven feet of solid cement and crashed into the concrete floor of the sub-basement. Having received the telepathic messages of their mentor, Scott Summers and the loner named Logan spun round to the attack. Alex looked up just barely as an optic blast from Scott's eyes blasted her off her feet. Sharp claws sprung from Logan's hands.
"Scott, becareful!!" Ororo screamed. "She knows magic!!!"
"Terminus projectra!!!" Alex blasted the Jason Marsden lookalike off his feet with a projectile blast of energy but raised her eyebrow to the other guy for looking like Hugh Jackman. "Nice claws…" He tried to strike her, but she levitated him and used her wand to throw him toward Ororo. Exhausted and tired, Gabrielle reached for the Crystal Key near her as Alex took it from her.
"Once again, you see…" Alex looked down on her. "There is nothing you can possess that I can't take away."
"Bobby, stop her!!!" Bobby Drake and the girl known as Rogue came running after her; Drake was trying to freeze the wily sorceress with his temperature-based powers, but Alex used her wand to enchant her own breath and blow it back on him. At her feet, Gabrielle grabbed Alex's foot to stop her, but Alex stomped her arm with her other foot. She quickly dashed into the nearest room and slammed the door. It looked like an medical room with an examination table and a lot of medical equipment and supplies, but best of all there was a small mirror above the scale just big enough for her to get through. A brief spell to wield the door shut, she raced to escape to the next world as Logan's claws started carving open an entrance way.
"Not fast enough…" Alex placed the mirror on the floor and started pushing through it. By time the clawed mutant had the opening carved, she was almost completely gone from that world with Gabrielle now rushing to catch up to her. She was getting away! In the next world, Alex pushed forward from a make-up table. On the other wall was a movie poster for "Princess Protection Program" and another for "Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie" Posters of herself with movie stars littered the walls. This was it! She found it! Gabrielle could have the key now! Alex began laughing to realize she was home!
"Yes!!!" She started entering this world laughing. "Yes!!! Yes!!! I'm home!!!" Something stopped her. Gabrielle's arm reached around her and pulling her back.
"Oh no, you don't!!" Alex clutched the end of the table. "Keep the key! I'm home now!!! Let me go!!!" There was someone at the door of this dressing room. Selena Gomez started to enter but was stopped by a question from David Heinrie. Gritting her teeth, Alex clutched at the table pulling herself free. How in the world could Gabrielle hold on to her like this, and then she realized the truth, back at Hogwarts, Troy and Chad was holding on to her!!!
"Hold on to her!!!" Troy called to her from the Hogwarts catacombs. He and Chad were in their world leaning into the mirror, Alex was half out of another mirror in another reality and Gabrielle was in between both worlds. They had watched her chasing Gabrielle from world to world in the mirror waiting for it to open for them and when Alex used it again, Troy reached forward to grab Gabrielle, and Gabrielle grabbed Alex at that moment. Kicking and screaming, Alex was moments upon reaching her actress counterpart if only her co-star would just stop talking!!!
"No!!!" Alex tried pulling herself forward. "I ain't going back!!! Let me go!!! You can't make me go back!!!" Gabrielle was clutching her tight around the shoulders, Troy grabbing Gabrielle around the waist. Either the table, Alex's grasp or Troy and Chad's grip on Gabrielle was about to give up.
"I'm not going…" Alex was pulling herself and her cousin forward into this bold new reality slowly as Troy and Chad were pulled deeper into the Mirror of Yensid. She saw a tabloid magazine linking her to the Jonas Brothers, a magazine telling the story of Selena Gomez and a compact music disc with her face on it. Wrapping her moment of dialogue, Selena was about to enter the room. Reaching to take the Selena Gomez CD with her right hand, Alex was jerked back suddenly into the mirror…
"Gabrielle?" Troy and Chad crashed into the floor of the Hogwarts vault. "Gabrielle?" She was nowhere to be seen. They had lost the both of them in the mirror!
Upstairs in one of the classrooms, Gabrielle and Alex spilled from the mirror on the wardrobe in the Defense of the Dark Arts Class. Entering the room reading a book, Professor Lupin looked up as the two young ladies hit the floor; the Crystal Key sliding over to him to be picked up. Screaming her head off disgusted and angry at the world, Alex punched her cousin in the face several times trying to kill her out of revenge then noticed Professor Lupin with the Crystal Key. She dropped Gabrielle to get it.
"Give me the key!!!" She ordered him with her wand drawn.
"Young lady…" Lupin was not scared of her. "That is not how you speak to your elders."
"Alex!!!" Her nose bleeding, her left eye swollen shut and face bruised, Gabrielle coughed, trembled from her wretched and frail pain-filled body and reached up with a deep breath, opening the wardrobe and ducking out of the way. The boggart raced out to meet Alex taking the form of her worst fear… the skull-faced specter of death known variously as the Grim Reaper, the ferryman of the Styx and the harbinger of the end. It appeared in the guise of Thanatos, the Greek angel of death in long tattered robes pulling out the symbol of human mortality, the scythe! Alex screamed at the sight of it and dropped her wand out of fright.
"Expecto Patronum!!!" Professor Lupin cast it back into the wardrobe with a spell as Alex screamed and reverted into a little girl. Forgetting about her, the kind teacher rushed over to help Gabrielle.
"Well done, Miss Russo… Ten points, Gryffindor…" He cradled the fragile and tired girl in his lap, the two of them looking over to Alex… crying and hysterical like a tiny little girl hiding under one of the classroom tables like a scared little diva knowing she was in trouble...