As Harry looked at the stitched words facing him, he heated under his collar, but an icy layer of sweat misted his skin. All time slowed down and those words took front and center in his attention.
Harry Potter. I'm waiting for you.
I'm waiting.
I'm waiting.
She was waiting for him? He couldn't begin to fathom what that meant, let alone accept the fact that her photograph was as aware of him as he was of it.
Yet there she was. Still holding the tambour frame, with her baby on her lap.
"This can't be real." He spoke aloud. "It's some kind of spell."
Jipsy placed her hand on his arm. "It is a spell, but that doesn't mean it's not real."
"How can she see me? How did she know I'd be here, looking at this? Can she hear me?"
"As best I can figure, sir, her magic is searching for you. And yours is searching for answers. You have found one another in the photograph. Together, you meet where your magic meets."
That explanation left him feeling a bit overwhelmed. This was unknown territory. Nothing he had ever learned at Hogwarts even suggested this was possible. Even his dealings with Tom Riddle, wasn't quite like this. She's dead, how could she be looking and waiting for him? Was this dark magic?
He looked at Jipsy. "Did you know this was waiting for me? Did you know?"
Jipsy shook her head. "I knew of her pictures. I knew that you would like to see them, but I didn't know that she could speak to you from the other side of them. They have always been ordinary pictures to me. They are not cursed."
He tried to breathe a little easier, but it didn't help. If Jipsy didn't know what was going on, would she be able to recognize a threat? Questions and hesitant confusion clouded his thinking as Eileen stared intently at him. He knew what he had to do, he just didn't know how and he didn't feel comfortable having to treat this photo-person as if she were real. But there was no turning back. He couldn't if he wanted to. A part of him was set to rush in after answers, but he grabbed that part by the shirt and said no, something's very wrong here. Photos never do this, not even in the wizarding world. Even when he went through Ariana's portrait, Dumbledor's sister, he stayed on a very real and solid path carved in the wall on the other side of it. At no point and time did he ever share her world. It can't be trusted.
It took another second before he made up his mind. Eileen put down the hoop and nestled her baby against her. She kept her eyes on Harry.
"I have to do it." He reasoned, building his courage. He asked Jipsy, "Can your magic get me in there? I've never encountered a spell that could get me inside of a picture. But just tonight, you made some crayon portkeys. Right? Your drawings for Draco?"
She lowered her eyes as if she'd disappointed him. "I made the paper portkeys because I built a path from Grimauld to the paper. I have not built a path from Madam Eileen to here. She is deceased and I cannot go where she goes. I know of no one who can. Sorry, sir. My magic can do many things, but I don't know how to get you into her picture, or bring her out."
There it was. A mountain of hope, shattered in the next instant. "There's got to be a way," his automatic mantra insisted.
"Sir, can you try speaking to Madam Eileen. Perhaps she knows."
That's right. He hadn't attempted talking to the image once he'd seen it talk back. He knew why. As much as the photo was a treasure he'd gone on about, he was now terrified of it. What else could she do from her side of it.
He spoke a little louder than necessary, probably. "Um, Mrs. Snape. Ma'am. I see you. I understand, I think. Nice to meet you, sorry if I seem rude. I'm not used to pictures being this aware of me, or waiting on me, or caring very much."
He didn't quite know how to say it. "If you want me to come inside your world, I don't know how."
He barely finished his sentence when she turned her stitching to face him. This time, she didn't use her needle and thread. The threaded stitching simply rearranged itself, forming the words: You have more magic than most. Use your magic.
So she could hear him just fine. "I don't know any tried and tested spell for that. This is unknown territory for me."
From the boarders of her picture, Eileen made a face. A rather rude one. It clearly told him she wasn't buying it. It occurred to him that she was closer to his age in this photo, and simmering with sarcastic contempt on her freckled face. This had a different effect than thinking of her as someone's long dead mother. In her impatience, she looked exactly like a bossy girl. A mean Ravenclaw. Her thick wavy hair, let down in all its glory, reminded him of one of those tall, skinny seventh-year girls who disdained people who were not as versed in encyclopedic spellcraft as they were. They lived and breathed books, a lot like Hermione, but without the interest in jumping full-bodied into physical adventure. They wanted to do everything with their minds and counted knowledge among the most superior quests. Moreso than intellect, bravery, money, or kindness.
Those girls always seemed to be standing off to the side critiquing what could've been done better, with wayward hair cloaking their shoulders and providing the only hint of their impatience with average, conforming, under achieving, popular students around them. Kinda like Snape. Oh no, she wasn't going to be like him, was she? Or he'd been like her?
Such pushy girls could barely tolerate people who were not as mentally rapid as them, and that's where he began to really see her resemblance to Snape. Then he reminded himself that she was a Slytherin. He didn't know that for sure, but look at her. She seemed too assertive to be a Ravenclaw, and her stare assured him she wouldn't have any problem taking over this situation if given the chance. Right now, she didn't look like she was above bullying him.
She made the letters spell out: You defeated Voldemort. You can do anything. Don't fear me.
He got the sense that this was costing her magic that could not be sustained. That's why she needed him inside with her.
"I'm not afraid of you. This just isn't normal."
You're skittish.
"I'm not. Let me think. Just give me a minute." He wanted to tell her to just say what she has to say, but something told him it was more complicated than that. When he really thought about it, he didn't want to go inside her tiny picture. Such a huge reality leap would bound to have unnatural effects on his body. He couldn't anticipate what his magic would do and he'd feel a lot better talking to someone who's done this before. He wondered if Hermione had ever heard of such a thing. She'd be the one to ask.
Eileen waited for him to make a decision. Her face pointed at him, her eyes listened to something that only she could hear. She held her embroidery up again.
Thella.
Harry blinked. Thella? "How do you know Thella?"
That sounded absurd even as he asked. She couldn't possibly know…
Thella teaches.
He pulled back from the picture, withdrawing his attention. This wasn't right. It was like she was pulling information from his mind…
Oh God. She was using occlumency. A photograph was using occlumency on him. And doing it so uninvasively, so quietly, that he couldn't feel her walking around in his mind. She didn't disturb anything, unlike her son, who overturned his thoughts the way someone overturns tables. Snape had ransacked his mind to prove that he could and Harry thought the act of occlumency came with violent discomfort when it was involuntary.
If she could see his thoughts, even the ones he wasn't consciously thinking, then maybe he could see hers. Would she block him if he tried?
He went for it. Instead of waiting for him to enter, her most dominant thoughts reached out and grabbed him.
It was a split second of fusion, her mind and his, but everything bottlenecked on her side. He felt himself drawn into her space, but met with a slick, chemically plastic barrier. Paper and not paper. Her feelings moved against it, bumping and pushing it out of shape because she was eager and boiling to get through to him. Her energy pushed on that invisible barrier between them. His head wanted to go through it, like it could stretch and tear a hole for itself. He actually felt her space bending around him, around his head and shoulders. But it was too literal to work. It was exactly like being trapped by a film of old photo paper, only he could see her distorted image on the other side of it, with no way to puncture into her reality. Their two worlds were incompatible.
With a snap, that cellophane resistance released him. He fell back next to Jipsy. He checked over his body to make sure all of him was unharmed. He now had a clearer idea about their limitations of communication. Eileen had offered up her thoughts, but there was too much distortion between her present state and his. Even though some part of her was obviously alive and willing to talk, it couldn't all be translated through a photograph. He rubbed his head as it began to throb. He had a stronger impression that she held exactly the information that he wanted, and he'd need Thella's help to get it.
In fact, the pressure above his eyes that he now felt, was nothing more than information, energetically passed on to him, that he couldn't translate well enough to comprehend. His feelings tried to show him, giving him the sense of being underwater and not having the correct equipment. If he wanted to go inside Eileen's photo, he'd need the right equipment, like diving equipment, only different. Something that could let him adapt.
Jipsy patted his arm. "Sir, you're not hurt, are you?"
He looked from her to Eileen, whose expression practically willed him to his next step. He knew what he had to do.
"Jipsy, I have to go see a friend. Only she can help. I shouldn't be gone more than an hour." He watched Eileen while speaking to Jipsy, who nodded.
He felt like he was forgetting something, but he had to act fast. The hour he'd given her was provisional. He didn't know how to contact Thella and even though he knew he could portkey to her country, he didn't have the ring on that Bicksby had given him. And even if he had it, he'd never used it before, so there was bound to be a learning curve. After debating with himself over whether or not to take Eileen's photo with him, he decided he really ought to. He hated risking any damage to it, but the detour to Thella felt like it was going to cost him valuable time, and he promised himself to have a wizard copy made and put in his own vault as a precaution.
He couldn't simply apparate out of the vault, so he let Jipsy escort him out. When it was clear, he popped in back home, landing in his and Draco's bedroom. It was empty and gave him time to dig the ring box out of his drawer. The insignia's gold sheen caught a bit of light and flashed at him handsomely. He tried not to think about the prestige Bicksby indicated that came with it. Either it was going to be useful or nothing at all to him. Before pressing his thumb nail into the back of the band for three seconds, one of the few pointers he remembered, he went to the door to check on Draco. When he couldn't see him from the crack, he ventured further out into the hall. It was after midnight, and looked like he was going to be even later than he thought, before returning for good. The television was still going, lighting up an otherwise dark living room. He heard classical muggle music and followed it to Iece's room. There, he found Draco folded under the bed tent with her. They slept with a toy radio tuned to grown up arias and historical theatre. He took a moment to charm a note, made from Iece's coloring tablets and broken crayons.
Be back much later than I thought. Sorry. Love, Harry.
He thought better of explaining himself. The less he said, the less of a chance he would further confuse Draco. If he mentioned portkeying to America on such short notice, that wasn't going to go over well. He didn't even know how it was all going to work, so he had to get moving.
He bent over them, stealing a kiss from each. He left.
Using the mechanism of the ring, he found himself at a hub of international travel. It was pretty obvious from all the people passing by him, standing in lines, and the size of the place. Cavernous, like an airport, people from all walks of life and nationalities moved around him. His ring had been programmed to convert speech and text into his native language, so that he could navigate his way to the right information. He wanted to contact Bicksby and ask for more specific instructions, but he also wanted to hide his intentions for as long as possible. He knew his movements could easily be tracked by the ring, so it wasn't like he could really hide anything for very long. If the CIUM had a problem with him taking liberties so soon, surely someone would show up to stop him. Now was the perfect time to test his privileges. He wondered briefly if the ring could be tracked if he were to go inside a painting.
He tried not to get distracted by the people around him. Bicksby had warned him that wizards and ordinary humans are not the only sentient human-like people on the planet. His handbook held a brief chapter on the most common lifeforms he was likely to encounter in his new job. He'd only skimmed it. Most looked like people with odd traits, slightly larger eyes, wider apart, disproportionately long arms, double rows of teeth, things that might be explained as possible abnormalities or genetic mutations. The really different ones didn't let their true forms show. It was illegal to cause a public disturbance by allowing civilians to see and react to lifeforms that compromised historical integrity. No different than denying a werewolf to walk the streets in his or her animal form, or requiring that vampires stay licensed and registered for live blood distributions instead of hunting, even though breakthroughs in medicine meant they didn't have to kill anymore. An unprepared public had to be protected from their own ignorance. And as long as people were still fighting over something as childish as skin color, the world at large was not ready to know who their neighbors really were.
So he kept his eyes forward, scanning for information, and tried not to stare at all the variety of faces and what might be called, things, passing around him. He tried. He definitely saw blue people. A family of them, in all shades of blue, from dark cobalt to powdery pale like the shell of a robin's egg. They looked to be several generations, immigrants by their badges. There were elderly among them, and two very young children, a girl and boy in appearance. They both had jet black wavy hair and their cheeks, round with plump baby fat, had a milky-blue pigmentation. Other than their coloring, they looked and acted like a close-knit extended family just arriving in a new country. Uniformed staff escorted them and guided them through a set of roped off sections, behind a curtain that said, New Citizens/Adaptations and Orientation, above it.
He couldn't help but notice the people who were twice the size of most. They too seemed headed for a different destination. What stopped him in his tracks, as he looked for an information desk, more than once, were the crocodile people. Brownish green scales, walking upright in clothes that more closely resembled wizarding robes than modern suits, their heads were covered by hoods but their elongated snout stuck out, showing chaotic teeth and all. He had to admit, his heart threatened to stop the first time he spotted one, and beat faster upon realizing they were all around him. They traveled more in pairs than groups, but they were real and this wasn't fucking Halloween, and he just wished he had time to get a closer look to make sure those weren't fucking masks. Maybe that's why he bumped into one while looking at another one.
The impact knocked him back. The surprise of it, knocked him on his ass. When that thing looked right at you, so that you could see razor slit pupils in its wet, murky eyes, you knew it wasn't make-up. You knew those raised scales were real, like thick armored sleeves of puckered skin around the sockets. It blinked, a membrane wiped diagonally across the gelatinous lens, faster than Harry could process. In that split second, an odor wafted between them and Harry understood that it wasn't angry with him, just confused. Then came greater comprehension. It suddenly knew that Harry had never seen anything like it before, and forgave him on the spot. It couldn't help its appearance, which would naturally be interpreted by humans as aggressive, without modification and it was not convenient to modify itself at that moment. It was going on vacation to be away from humans and to appear natural, not fake. Its posture allowed Harry to take his fill in curiosity.
From the floor, Harry awoke to the realization that the odor coming from the creature, was a chemical transmitter. It had been stimulated upon shock, and now that it was in the air, it affected Harry by plugging him into the creature's feelings. It wasn't telepathy, because he couldn't read thoughts like book pages, but he could feel that the creature had no ill will and actually felt a little sorry for him, that its face was, apparently the stuff of nightmares for him. It hoped, by letting Harry stare for a minute, to lesson the world of prejudice, and even offered a clawed, four-fingered hand to help him up.
Try as he might to reciprocate the friendliness, he was a little slow, and embarrassed himself. There were no secrets in the gases of the this creature, so he apologized as the other pulled him to his feet. The talons around his hand were large enough to easily clip it off, but they grasped him gently. Padded fingers beneath, felt like human skin, calloused many times over, but softened by lotion or ointment that made its thick cells as smooth as processed hide. The pads of its hand was warm, not cold, and reminiscent of human contact. It creeped Harry out, and again he said, "Sorry," because he knew that the creature could feel his reaction and be insulted by it.
He very clearly heard, "You'll get over it. We all do." The thing slapped his arm and stepped around him, not looking back. He stood there trying to figure out how it had talked when its muzzle never really moved or opened to shape words. All he could figure, was the odor made communication possible between them and the ring somehow translated it. Either way, he felt like an ass for being so clumsy and obvious. He came from Hogwarts, after all. He'd battled trolls, talked to snakes, spiders, animagi and werewolves. See one new species and he freaks out. It was just a shock, he told himself. He wasn't used to seeing these people in the open like this. It actually impressed him more than it bothered him, so he gave himself points for that. It's okay if he was going to have to adapt to this new environment. Hell, it made his and Draco's curse look like the kiddie end of the pool.
He had to clear his head of the absurdity of the thought and keep moving. The night was getting away from him. He finally focused on an information desk and found that he'd been passing them. They weren't desks, they were poles with tiny lasers. Some stopped to speak directly into them. Others held passes and paper work in the line of the laser. They were then instructed on their next steps. When he located an unused post, he held his ring out for the laser. A lovely, female programmed voice replied,
"How may I assist you, Agent Potter?"
Agent Potter? Really?
"I… I want to go to America. I need help with finding someone."
"I see, would that be North America, the Continental US? Section 00782 of the Global Configuration Grid?"
"Um, yes. I think so."
"And do you know the address of your destination?"
"I don't. But I have a name." Then he remembered that he only had a first name. "Thella."
That sounded lame, but he fought to remember more information about her. "I don't know her last name, but she has a fortune telling business."
"I see. I'm searching the global network for a Thella fortune teller. Can you provide any more information about her?"
Oh, maybe this was helpful.
"I think she lives where they have all the swamps and voodoo. Louisiana?" Her murals had been of eerie mansions floating in wet marshes, in the moonlight, with lit windows and people moving behind shades. Like some kind of haunted swamp.
"She's very distinct," Harry provided. "She's got a skin condition that sets her apart. Her public name is Mama Midnight." Was that right?
"I've located a Mama Midnight in the Lower Business District, at the corner of Chalmette and Mereaux. Building number 3255. Shop license is registered to a twenty-eight year-old, Thella Louise-Collette Majorie."
He was thrilled. "Yes! That's her. Has to be. How do I get to her?"
"If you are ready to relocate now, please step back and stand in the footpath provided for your safety. You will arrive at your destination in thirty seconds after initiation. Would you like to send a notification call ahead of your arrival?"
What? Just like that? "I don't know her number."
"That information is on file and an automated call will be made for you. There is no guarantee that the receiver is available or will respond. Do you still want to travel?"
"Yes. Yes, I do."
"Then take your position. Look into the mercury decible above the laser and your journey will be over shortly. Remember, should you have questions or encounter a problem, the nearest service post can be located with your credential insignia or the proper registrations. Thank you for your cooperation in the Global Configuration Grid."
What she called a "mercury decible" was apparently a little diamond of a mirror at slightly above eye level. It appeared holographic, with changing patterns inside. By the time he stood in the spot where the floor lit to indicate the placement of his feet, and noted the colors changing in the hologram, it all vanished and he found himself standing in a downpour on a residential street with traffic passing behind him. As rain pelted him, he stood facing a two-story house with a huge wrap-around porch and a terraced balcony. A sign was nailed to the foundation of the porch, Mama Midnight's Taro and Life Readings. The large house sat framed between two ancient weeping willows that were blowing in the storm. And it was a storm. Powerlines whipped as the rain blew sideways. Water stood in the street, splashing him from the few cars that braved it, until he got past his shock enough to move away from the sidewalk and up the steps into the yard.
