~~I still don't own any of the characters from the shows~~~

Illyria strode into the room, her eyes slid over the motionless humans in the room before they landed on Gabrielle. "You are running out of time."

Gabrielle sucked in a breath as she quickly glanced around the room filled with her motionless siblings. "We never have enough time, not when we really want it." She gestured around the room, "I'm guessing this isn't a social call?"

"I do not understand you, you plan to work a massive spell tonight, even knowing that it will push your precious mortality further from your grasp. And for what, a fictional character that came to life because of uncontrolled magic?"

Gabrielle brushed her fingers softly along Raisa's motionless face. "I believe the word you are looking for is compassion."

Illyria tilted her head slightly as she glanced around the room, "Beings such as us, have no time for such human things. Finish with your human concerns, complete your spell, then plan for what happens when you can no longer hide what and who you are. What will you do when your friends turn on you?"

Gabrielle sighed, "I don't know, but until then I'm going to enjoy the time I have with my family."

"And after?"

"Don't know." Gabrielle watched as Illyria turned and walked from the room. She muttered, "At least she could have shut the door."

Rose brushed her hair out of her face, "Just be happy she opened the door without smashing it."

Gabrielle blinked as she noticed that Rose was the only one moving, "Why aren't you frozen?"

Rose grinned, "Don't know, it could be that I'm too powerful for such simple magics to affect, or it could just be that she only froze the mortals in the room. With her who can say. She is wrong about something though."

"What's that?"

"I think I can speak for all of us when I say we aren't going to abandon you just because you aren't human."

Gabrielle sighed, "I'm as human as you are."

Rose chuckled, "Maybe you are but that still doesn't mean much. I mean hello, my mother is an immortal key to existence, bound to be side effects."

"Do you think she is right about the spell for restoring Dumbledore's youth and health?"

"Would it matter if she was?"

"I guess not, besides I was never overly fond of the idea of growing old and wrinkled."

Rose chuckled, "I don't think most people are. How long before the rest come out of it."

"Shouldn't take too long now that Illyria isn't in the room maintaining it. What are you going to do when they come out?"

"I figure we have enough time to finish the show then we had better hot foot it out to the casting circle."

Rose frowned, "Can I ask you a serious question?"

"I guess."

"Does… my playing with Trista… is it going to hurt our friendship?"

"We aren't friends, we're sisters… Just because you ninja'd her before I could, doesn't mean I'm going to hate you for life or anything."

"Just a few weeks?"

"Haven't decided."

"Would it make you feel better if you got Raisa first?"

"Marginally."

Rose quickly shut the door with magic as she noticed the rest of the people in the room start to stir. She sent a thought telepathically to her sister, 'Just make sure she enjoys it.' She smiled as she turned her gaze back to her youngest sister on the pool table.

Gabrielle was trying very hard to contain her giggles as she and Rose hurried as fast as they could without running toward the spell chamber.

Willow eyed the girls strangely as they hurried into the room. "You are almost late."

Gabrielle glanced around at the various spell casters, "Sorry we got caught up in our movie night."

Willow nodded, "You can tell me all about it later but right now you need to take a minute and pull yourself together, that is if you still want to help."

Gabrielle nodded trying not to let the excitement overflow. She knew that the only reason her and Rose were being allowed to participate in the ritual at all was because they had enough magical energy stored up between them to keep her mom from having to use stolen power or pull power from the earth. Taking the power from the earth wasn't really a good option as it would further bind the professor to the world. Not exactly the best idea when they were planning on sending him to a different dimension. It had taken everything the family had to convince the old white hat to go through with the ritual in the first place, they didn't need to cloud things with more complications.

Rose blinked her eyes a few times trying to get used to the dim candle light. She glanced around as her sister tried to calm down from her emotional rollercoaster. She took a minute to glance around the room. The candles spaced around the room gave the people a more fearsome cast than she was normally used to. Well, other than professor Snape, but he always looked a little bit scary to her. The large casting circle filled with white and black sand was brushed perfectly flat. The flickering candlelight did little to soften the look of the black stone walls nor did it ease the feeling of dread the star formed of black sand gave her. It was hard to believe that in just a few minutes this world would lose one of it's best wizards. She tried to push her thoughts to the back of her mind as Willow-mom cleared her throat.

"I had hoped to find another way, but any other way I can think of touches too much on the dark arts."

Snape shifted slightly uncomfortably as she mentioned the dark arts, he had been the main push to find a different ritual once he found out what his roll in this one would be.

Albus smiled looking at Snape for a second before returning his gaze to Willow, "While I do not think I'll enjoy the ritual I am looking forward to being able to explore new worlds. What is a little pain next to the chance of a lifetime?"

"A particularly Gryffindor outlook if ever I have heard one." Snape rolled his eyes.

Albus chuckled weakly, his smile turned into a frown as his gaze turned to the girls, he had been against including them, wanting to spare them the pain of seeing the ritual, he still felt bad that in a moment of weakness he had allowed Willow to sway his resolve. He was just glad that the girls hadn't had to see Snape hack his arm off after a rather grueling spell sealed the corruption inside of it. "Perhaps, we should start the ritual."

Willow nodded, "Albus, if you would be so kind as to get into the center of the circle and lay down."

Gabrielle watched as Albus carefully lay down on the sand face up with his arms spread wide and his legs spread to line up with the star. She couldn't help but take took notice of how his sleeve lay flat giving testament to him having already lost his arm. She just hoped that nothing ever did enough damage to her to warrant cutting off her own hand. She pulled her self back from her gruesome musing as she noticed that Willow-mom and Rose had both already stepped up to their spots. She stepped up a brief second before Snape finally stepped up to his spot.

Snape's gaze lingered on the empty spot across from him. Willow was at the head of the star while the girls were at the base. His own placement wasn't a complete mystery, though he wasn't sure if his placement was more because he had to stab his friend in the heart or for some other arcane reason. He guessed in the end that it didn't matter. They had gone over the basics of the ritual many times over the last several weeks so he wasn't overly surprised that each of the girls were clutching something in their small hands. He knew that each of them were offering a sacrifice of something personal to help power the ritual. He wasn't used to practicing magic like this but after what she did to his dark mark he wasn't about to voice his reservations.

Willow took a deep breath then let it out slowly, "Spirits of death, spirits of life, please except our offerings." She carefully slipped her pocket knife out of her pocket and carefully nicked her thumb with it. She let two drops of blood fall into the sand. "Blood for death."

Everyone felt the chill in the air as a voice so low as to be almost unheard whispered, "Heaven."

Rose carefully let a blood soaked handkerchief fall to the sand, "Blood for innocence lost."

Gabrielle smiled briefly as she dropped a blood covered dagger on the sand, "Blood for mortality lost."

Snape hardly even paused as his dagger bit into his hand, "Blood for friendships past." Several drops fell before he placed a cloth over the wound to stop the bleeding.

Albus could feel Willow's magic settling over him, his pain filled limbs slowly grew numb as the magic washed the pain away. His vision was growing dim around the edges. It took all of his willpower just to clutch the phoenix tail feather tightly in his one good hand as Snape finished his speech. While in that moment he wanted nothing more than to let the darkness take him, he instead summoned up the last of his strength as he heard Willow ask if he had any last words. He had already written letters to everyone he could think of, the only thing he could think to say was, "Lemon drop?"

Gabrielle briefly wondered if Professor Dumbledore had said that to make it easier for Snape to stab him. She figured it couldn't have hurt as he had with one quick motion plunged the sword into Dumbledore's chest before stalking toward the door. No one had been really sure how long it was supposed to take for him to come back, so it was more than a little surprising when his body burst into flames a mere five seconds later.

Snape stopped as his hand was about to rip open the door to leave. He turned and watched as flames died down revealing two naked youngsters, one a boy with long flame red hair who would have looked right at home in one of his first year classrooms and a young red headed girl of maybe five curled up next to him sound asleep. Snape was more than a little shocked that the ritual worked in the first place. While he hadn't really doubted her power he was fairly sure there were few if any wizards or witches that could have pulled off such a massive spell as to return an old wizard to his youth as well as regenerate a limb completely. His normally brilliant mind failed him as he worked back over the ritual and everything he had learned about it trying to figure out what had gone wrong. "Who?"

Willow smiled, "The only girl he ever loved, what's the point in immortality if you have no one to spend it with."