It started as a warm breeze that blew some loose hairs out of Ginny's braid. Ten seconds later, it got warmer, and was a wind that made Draco's cloak stream out behind him. In under a minute, Luna had to brace her legs to stop herself from blowing away as a hot wind came over them all.

A small tornado swept them all up.

"Hermione!" Harry shouted over the wind. He could see her silhouette through the dust.

"What?" she yelled back.

"Is this supposed to happen?"

"I think s—"

She was cut off by the wind. Ron clutched her arm ("To keep her from worrying," he said later, but everyone figured it was to keep himself safe.) and said, "Hold on tight!"

OoOoO

"AAAAAAGGGGH!"

The tornado dumped the group into a field somewhere in another universe much like their own, only it was… different somehow.

"Did we get the right universe?" Draco moaned, as he rubbed the bump on the back of his head. "Because this looks a lot like ours."

"Hmmm…" said Hermione. "Let's take a look around."

After magicking themselves into clothes that would help them blend in, the group walked around. They appeared to be in a large city, due to the amount of people and traffic. Hermione looked in the distance, and saw a statue of a woman holding up a torch. The Statue of Liberty.

"Guys!" she said. "We're in New York City!"

"October 9, 2011, to be exact," added Ron, looking at the Jumbotron. "We somehow moved forward in time."

"Do you think Ebony's creator lives here?" Luna asked.

"I suppose it's possible," Harry said with a shrug, passing a bookstore. He glanced in the window, and then paled.

"What's wrong with you?" Ron asked.

"Look under the 'Classics' sign," Harry said blankly.

On the shelf under that sign, there were the usuals—Jane Eyre, the Wizard of Oz, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, and… Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

Ginny's jaw dropped, then she hurried into the store, grabbed the book off the shelf, pickpocketed some money from a guy who wasn't paying attention, bought the book, and went back out to the others.

"Let's read this thing," she said.

OoOoO

"Here's a good, inconspicuous place," said Hermione, as they approached Central Park. They sat down in the grass, and, pulling her jacket tighter around her, she began to read, "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number 4 Privet Drive were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much…"

OoOoO

"I'm going to have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer… The end," Luna finished. Hermione's throat had begun to get sore after a few chapters, so they'd all taken turns reading.

"I don't believe this," said Harry. "All this time… we've just been characters in a book?"

"But… it all seemed so…" Ginny said, obviously shocked.

"Real?"

"Yeah."

"Well," said Hermione, "in our universe, it is real. It's only in this one that it isn't."

"I was wondering," Ron said, "why they changed the Philosopher's Stone to the Sorcerer's Stone. Otherwise it was word-for-word."

"I feel sick," Luna said, dropping her head in her hands, despite the fact that she wasn't the books just yet. "Say, where do I show up?"

"Well, we met you in Harry's fifth year," Hermione reasoned, "and these books seem to follow him, so I'd say…"—she checked the list in the back of the book—"…that you'd show up in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix."

"But I don't see how Ebony would fit into the story," said Ginny with a shrug. "She's not from our universe—she doesn't belong there!"

Hermione smiled. "Well, this universe does have one thing we haven't got."

"What's that?"

"The internet."

OoOoO

At the nearest library, they all crowded around one computer (The librarian began to say, "One person per computer!", but Draco confunded her.) as Hermione searched for "Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way."

"Fan… fiction?" Luna said, confused.

"I guess it makes sense," said Harry, "since we're not real in this universe."

"Well, click on it, whatever it is," said Ron. "I wanna know the origins of Ebony."

"This is too long to read here without drawing attention to six kids around one computer," said Ginny, glancing at how many chapters the story was.

Hermione pulled out her bag of wizard money, and muttered, "Circumare." The Galleons changed to dollar bills. "I hope this is enough," she said worriedly.

The others donated money to the cause, and soon, they were back to Central Park with a stack of papers, ready to learn the horrible truth about fanfiction, Evony Way, and Tara Gilesbe.