A/N: And here's the continuation. Poor David is a bit out of his depth with all this magic business.

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A couple hours later David's head was throbbing from Regina's descriptions of all the magical tricks and tools she had explored and then systematically eliminated as potential solutions to their hat portal problem.

In addition to his headache, something strongly resembling despair was starting to take up permanent residence in his chest. How were they ever going to get Snow and Emma back? He may not have always approved of Regina's methods, but she was a master of her craft. If she couldn't solve this puzzle, who could?

"And then all you'll have to do is say 'Bippity-boppity-boo' while hopping on one foot in the town square with nothing on but blue body paint and they will be instantly transported back to Storybrooke," Regina said at the end of her restoration spell lecture.

"Huh?" David said, confused. "I have to do what?" He looked over at Regina and saw her familiar critical gaze directed at him, but with a twinkle in her eye. "You're teasing me," he said.

"Just a little," she admitted with a small smile. "It seems that this has been enough for today."

"Yes," David said, resigned. He wished he had more stamina for this information. He wished he could help on this side of the problem. He felt so useless, so inadequate. What good was his sword in this situation?

"Hey," Regina's voice was soft and suddenly much closer than he realized. Sometime during his musings, she had stopped pacing—she paced as she explained complex issues; the woman was a force of nature, even when discussing the geometry of magic—and had sat next to him on the couch.

"We are going to get them back," she assured him. Her tone was not pitying or placating; it was calm and certain.

She tentatively reached out and grasped his hand. "I know this is discouraging, and, believe it or not, I can imagine what you are feeling right now." Something about her tone made David carefully observe the expression on her face. It was . . . wistful?

"But, David," Regina continued softly. "Don't give up. You can't give up. Henry insists that true love is the strongest magic there is, and he may be right about that. But, there is another fundamental force upon which successful magic relies."

She waited until she was sure that she had his attention—that he hadn't retreated into his own mind again.

"Hope, David," Regina said simply. "You must believe that you can achieve the outcome you want. You have to believe it with everything in you. To the point where that belief transcends into certainty and feels like knowledge. You have to have faith. You have to know that the enchantment or spell or whatever it is we wind up doing to get your family back is going to work and is going to put them both back in your arms."

Her quiet conviction startled him. "Why do I have to believe? You'll be the one doing the magic."

"Actually, David, I'm pretty sure that, when the time comes, whatever magic we do will have to be performed by you," she said.

David's despair was instantly transformed into apprehension. "But I don't know anything about magic," he protested. "I couldn't even listen to you talk about it without feeling like a cleaver had been taken to my skull!"

"Thanks," Regina deadpanned.

"You know I didn't mean to insult your explanatory ability," he chided her without missing a beat. "There is no way I would ever be as powerful as you—wouldn't it make more sense for you to do whatever magic needs to be done? You said yourself that dimensional travel requires a lot of power. What if—"

"David," Regina said firmly, cutting him off. The prince was working himself into a frenzy, and she didn't want him to hyperventilate. She wasn't sure she had any paper bags in the house.

"What?" His eyes had taken on a glazed appearance.

"Please stay calm. I know that this is scary, and this is outside the scope of anything we've previously discussed as far as magical options for retrieving your family, but you need to trust me. If you need to do magic, I will teach you what you need to know to do it properly and safely. And you will fully understand the risks associated with whatever it is we decide to do."

He nodded in comprehension, if not necessarily acceptance.

"And," she elaborated. "Power was always going to be a problem. But, Grumpy, Snuffy, Sleazy, and Hairy—oh, whoever they are!" She mentally congratulated herself when she got the desired smile from David at her mangling of the dwarves' names. "—will find the diamonds, and we will use them to amplify our spell. I'm sure I'll even be able to give you my power directly." His eyebrow went up at that. She would do that? She would trust me with her power? For Snow and Emma?

"Magically speaking," she continued. "Power is an easy problem to solve."

"The tricky part of our problem," she explained, "is that, once we fix the hat, it will be difficult to know how 'fixed' it is."

"You see, the rule of traveling through that hat is simple, but deceptively constraining." David did not like the sound of this. "The same number of people that go through the hat have to come back."

"That doesn't sound like a problem," David responded. "Snow and Emma went through, so Snow and Emma come back. Simple."

"Yes," Regina said. "Simple. But not easy. How will they know where to come back to? If the hat hadn't been damaged, it would have been relatively straightforward for Snow and Emma to effectively tell the hat to retrace their steps and drop them back in Storybrooke. But, even if we fix the hat, we can't be sure this retrace will work. And, neither Snow nor Emma has experience with that kind of dimensional travel and navigation, so we are going to need something, or in this case someone, to help them find their way back."

"You mean me?" David double-checked.

"You seem like the best choice," Regina confirmed. "As Snow's true love and Emma's father, we should be able to, to 'broadcast', for lack of a better term, your relationship with them across the dimensions and essentially pull them back to you."

"Wow," David said.

"Indeed," she nodded.

"That sounds like really serious magic." He was intimidated, and, in this instance, he preferred for Regina to know it. She needed to know that coaching him to perform any magic, let alone magic of that magnitude, was going to be an undertaking.

"It is," she told him. "But you'll be able to handle it." Her calm confidence was back, and it reassured him.

"Okay then," he said. The whole idea of doing magic still made him nervous—his encounters with magic had never been good—but if Regina said he could do it, he had to believe her.

"Besides, do you think I'd let a student of mine fail?" she quirked an eyebrow at him. "That would be embarrassing. I have a reputation to uphold, you know," she told him with an exaggeration of her proud queen expression.

He chuckled, appreciating her attempt to lighten his mood. "Of course, Your Majesty. I would hate to be a disappointment."

She smirked at him and stood. "It's getting late," she observed. "I guess it's probably time to think about dinner."

He nodded, but otherwise remained motionless, looking at his hands.

"David," she said. "We will get them back. We will."

He stood up and met her gaze. "Okay," and this time his resolve was back in place. It was almost as if he felt Regina's natural authority could extend across dimensions. If she said they could get his family back, he believed her.

David had the sudden urge to do something for her. She had torn apart her house researching their magical dilemma —it had been his alone, but somehow it had become theirs—and now she had spent the better part of an afternoon patiently explaining properties of various magical enchantments to help him feel involved as well as restoring his faith in their 'quest,' as she had so aptly described it not too long ago.

"Why don't I have Ruby drop Henry off here? The three of us could have dinner together," David blurted out suddenly. His spontaneity was rewarded by the hope that leapt into Regina's eyes. "That is, if it isn't too much of an imposition."

Regina shook her head as she scrambled to find her voice, surprisingly affected by his offer. "No, it's no trouble."

The she looked around her living room and back at David. "But maybe you could help me clean this place up a bit?" She shot him a wry smile. It was quite a mess. "At least put all of the dangerous objects out of Henry's reach?"

His gaze swept over the room as well before meeting her eyes. "We better get started."

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A/N: Thanks to everyone who has made it this far with me. I hope you're enjoying the story.

Chapter 7: Henry's coming over! I'm excited; I hope you are too.

Reviews are appreciated (a lot).