First things first, I AM SO SO SOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSOSO SORRY FOR NOT UPDATING MORE QUICKLY!

secondly, I hope this answers everything

and thirdly, I cheese

;)

so here's the new chapter and I hope you enjoy it, I can't believe this story is drawing to a end, sniff sniff:(

virtual cookies to everyone who RnR's

and I also wanted to thank EVERYONE who has stuck with me all the way through this epic, everyone who has reviewed and favourite-d and alerted or simply just read my story. THANK YOU SO MUCH YOU GUYS.

last but not least, another massive thanks to Imogen for beta-ing this fic for me. Without you, Mo, the spelling would be appalling.

The Fishbowl Between The Worlds

"The fishbowl between the worlds, I like that."

"I thought you would," I grinned.

The four of us were sat in four chairs (one each though Sirius had offered to share) in the Headmaster's office. The long fingers of dawn were stretching in through the window and bathing us in a gentle light. Dumbledore was not sat at his desk, nor was he quite at the window, instead somewhere in-between, stood by the ornate bird stand where a beautiful phoenix stood, gazing at me with its large golden eyes.

After I'd watched my father walk away from me I'd begun to swim. I'd swum for a very long time, considering how shallow and light the fish bowl had seemed. It had been further in the end than I'd ever imagined, further than swimming from the deeps of the Black Lake though, strangely, I didn't seem to tire. I swam and swam, for hours it seemed until my entire world was an endless sea of clarity and yet utter, well, nothingness, and it seemed I was the only breathing, living thing in all the universe.

I'd wanted to turn back, wanted to let myself sink back to the bottom of the bowl. Wanted to believe that I could see my father again, just once more. And I almost did turn back. But every time I would still, I would think about the people I would leave behind. My mother, my friends, Sirius. Apollo who I had yet to meet, who would never know me if I never returned, who I would never see grow up. So it was little Ollie who I fixed my thoughts on as I rose.

And then, when I'd almost given up even hoping I'd ever see the light of day again, my head broke the surface and then I was just here. Back in Dumbledore's office. I honestly can't describe it any better than that - one moment I was blinking water out of my eyes and the next I was sat in a comfortable chair, fully dry, in front of a quizzical headmaster.

"So nice of you to drop in." Lily had said, drolly from her own seat. "We've been back ages."

"Oh yeah?" I had challenged, "How long have you been back?"

"About a minute and a half." She replied, completely unconcerned.
I rolled my eyes.

Dumbledore had been stood behind his desk, his eyes on the blood red bird stood on its perch by the window but when I dropped in, figuratively (and literally) speaking, he had tuned to face me and smiled.

"Now you're all back," Professor Dumbledore said, "I think it's time to explain everything."

So James told our story, with Lily chiming in with the parts that James didn't get completely accurate, and Sirius chiming in with the parts that James didn't make heroic enough, and me chiming in with the parts where James left gaps open perfect for a joke. And when he was done Dumbledore sat down at his desk and surveyed us over his steepled fingers.

"Sir? Sir, what was Voldemort looking for?" Lily asked.

He didn't reply for a moment, instead gazing at the far wall where a tall bookshelf stood, and a ruby handled sword - the one Bellatrix had armed herself with - that was encased there.

"Did you know Lord Voldemort asked me for a job?" He said, finally.

Lily shook her head, confused.

"Yes, he wanted the post of Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Well, you can see how the position would have appealed to him, young, impressionable students. But I always felt that that was not his first objective. And last night's events have strengthened that opinion in my mind. He wanted the Sword of Godric Gryffindor."

"But why would he want a sword Professor?" I asked, "I mean, hasn't he got better things to do than break into his old school?"

"One would have thought so. But from here on, we must delve deep in the pool of speculation and guesswork and I may be completely wrong but..."

"But you don't think you are though, do you sir?" I smiled.

"Naturally, no, but someone of, excuse my rather greater mental capacity is just a liable to make mistakes as the next person. Rather more so, actually, as my incorrect guesses tend to be on rather a larger scale."

"So what's your guess Sir?"

"I think that world domination is only a part of Lord Voldemort's plan, enslaving the muggles , rounding up the centaurs, murdering the Muggleborn children, that is all very well and good but what is the point if one cannot be around to enjoy these privileges? I believe, and as I say, I may be completely wrong, that Lord Voldemort is engaged in a piece of dark magic that will help him to achieve immortality."

"And you think this sword would have helped him. How? Why? It's just a sword, goblin made and very nice, but still just a sword." James queried, frowning slightly.

"That," Said Dumbledore, "Is the question."

He smiled but did not continue, instead standing and crossing back to the window and staring out in the sunlight. I glanced at Sirius who shrugged back then, timidly as I didn't want to interrupt his thought, I asked:

"Professor? What was the spell You Know- I mean, Voldemort, hit us with? The one that made me see my father?"

Dumbledore did not answer for a few moments, continuing to gaze out of the window, and then he broke into speech again.

"It is a very rare peace of magic known as a peace charm, though that is rather misleading. I assume you realised you were in an illusion, a hallucination, a fantasy created by your own mind and soul to show the thing you crave, something that will show great joy and terrible agony. The peace charm would drive you mad, your mind trying to dispel the delusion and yet, if you hadn't the strength to walk away, you would have torn yourself in two, both trying to live the lie and to follow the truth. The peace charm would be individually powerful and it attacks the most important parts of you, as a person. The head and the heart. They are irreversibly linked, one cannot do anything without consulting the other. To tear them apart would kill you eventually. This is what I believe Voldemort to be trying to achieve.

"For a man who has never known love Lord Voldemort cannot ever hope to understand how the mind and the soul work together, he sees only the weakness of the connection and the pain and indignity of acting against what he knows is logical. Love is not logical, but it is what makes us human.

"And on that note, I think it is time for breakfast."

I stood, realising that this was our dismissal and though my head was still swimming, everything felt clearer. Well, as clear as mud anyway, but after all, that was an improvement compared to the solid blackness with an extra helping of dark on the side that I had been previously battling to get my head around.

I was the last one to leave the office, having hung behind to fiddle with my shoelace, Lily had caught my eye but she knew me well enough to realise that I wanted to be alone and had linked her arms through Sirius's and James's arm to pull them away. When the office door swung shut behind them, I straightened up.

"Miss Di Angelo, what can I do for you?" The headmaster smiled at me and I knew I could ask my question.

"What happened to Lynette, Sir? I never heard what happened to her after everything with Grindelwald and I just wondered...I mean, I know she's my grandmother but..."

He smiled sadly, the twinkle dying in his eyes. "She married your grandfather right out of Hogwarts and had Ian, your father, but her husband died very soon after his birth. It was not a happy marriage by all accounts, we were regular correspondence throughout most of her adult life, and I know she married him to have someone to protect and look after her. She had no family herself and had been alone in the world for so long I think she turned to him in a desperation to find her place in the world. When he died she took her infant son and moved to the south of England, to Cornwall to be precise where she met, fell in love with and eventually married a muggle by the name of Benjamin Peterson."

My mouth fell open.

"Yes," Dumbledore answered my unspoken question. "He was your childhood friend Ben's grandfather. I don't know why Ian hid the fact his mother was still alive from your mother but I believe he was trying to protect them both. By this point Lynette's mind was beginning to fail. I know after the battle with Grindelwald she never swam again and I believe that this affected her mentally. But she was also in danger, Grindelwald had had a great many supporters and if it had ever been revealed who was the cause of his downfall - and I do not take credit for winning that duel, without Lynette's warning I could never have hoped to have succeeded - not only Lynette but her entire family would have been at risk."

"So all those years," I murmured, "All those years I saw her when I was with Ben, and I never knew. She never told them. And Ben was my cousin?"

Again, Dumbledore nodded, "Lynette and Benjamin had two children, Ian's half siblings, but I do not think she ever revealed her magical heritage to her second husband. In any case neither of her children had any magic."

"But why should she not tell him, if she loved him-?"

"Again I can only guess, but I think that after the war of '45 Lynette wanted no more to do with magic. Her best friend had been killed in the battle and I know she felt, in some small way, responsible for not finding out about Grindelwald's plan sooner. I suppose she felt that she could have saved more of the casualties. I think, for the same reason, she stopped using her water magic. She had been abandoned by the world, her parents had been killed in a magical explosion and I know she lost her only sibling to a werewolf attack when she was very little. Magic, to her, had become something that only caused pain and suffering and she wanted nothing more to do with it."

I frowned slightly, then asked. "But if you knew all this, why did no-one ever tell me? That I had an entire family somewhere and that I...that I, I mean that my magic might one day..."

"Kill you?" Dumbledore finished? "Because it was not my secret to tell-" He began to walk me towards the portrait door. He held it open for me and I stepped through onto the staircase. "-Arty, we all have choices in life. Good choices. Bad choices. Lynette made the best of what the world had thrown her and I believe she was happy, especially in her later life. She could watch you and Ben playing together each summer and, when Voldemort murdered that un-named family of Muggles four years ago, she died with the people she had chosen to be with, the people she loved. What she did may not have been good, but it was right. She didn't chose to sink, she swam. Differently from how you chose to do things perhaps, but she swam.

"Now, breakfast." He smiled at me. I chewed thoughtfully on my bottom lip and was about to go when he spoke one last time. "It does not do to dwell on the past Arty. The past is dead and we cannot change it. Look to the future, something we can change. It is our choices that make us who we are. And, I believe your family would have been proud of you. Yes," He added, on seeing my face, "All of them."

He stepped back and the office door swung shut. I sat down on the top step as it began its descent. When it finally ground to a halt I stayed there for a few moment, listening to the sound of my own breathing, then, as suddenly as if a pocket watch had shrilled an alarm, I sprang to my feet and began to run after the retreating backs of my friends.

So there we go, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

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