Author's note: I only write this for fun, and do not claim ownership of any of these characters. If you've read my other stories, you know that Draco and Pansy are my favorites and I like to do unusual things with Ron and Harry as non-essential characters. Enjoy.
Sam didn't take the train.
Colin and Rose were mystified why she wasn't changing at Reading. There weren't many people, and certainly no teens.
"Do you think she took an earlier train?" Rose asked.
"There was no way she could have made an earlier one. They are hours apart," Colin said. "She had to be on this train…unless…"
"What?" Rose asked as they took their seats on the train for London. They had a while before they would be at Waterloo station.
"Unless she took a bus. I don't know why I didn't think of that!" Colin said, hitting the chair in front of him, and startling an old lady who was sitting in it. "Sorry," he said.
"We know she's headed for St. Marks, and looking for the Leaky Cauldron. She might not find it and we can stop her before she gets into any trouble," Rose said. "If the Ministry finds out about her, who knows what they'll do. I don't want her to get another mind-wipe and get even worse."
Colin nodded as they rode the rest of the way in silence.
Jack felt like he'd been turned inside-out. One minute they'd been standing in a poor excuse for a doll shop, and then the next, Pansy was pulling him into a fireplace and then he was in a dark tiled corridor of multiple fireplaces that looked like a terminal of some kind. The place was deserted except for a blonde-haired woman at a reception desk, dwarfed by the ridiculously high ceilings and long, curving hallway.
"Hello, What can I do for you, Love?" The woman asked as she filed her nails. Jack thought she could use training on how to greet people with a little more attention and professionalism.
"I need to talk to Harry Potter," Pansy said. "It's urgent."
"Harry Potter, head of the Aurors? On a Saturday night? It's not going to happen, Love," the woman said, not looking up from her nails.
"Oh, it's going to happen, Love," Pansy said. "You either make the call, or I am going to set this place on fire until he shows up, do you hear me?" She held her wand at the ready, the tip glowing red hot. "I will start with this desk if you don't get him right now. Tell him Pansy Parkinson needs to talk to him now."
Jack watched the woman plug a headset into an ancient switchboard. It looked like it was last used after World War I. The cords were covered with braided cloth and the plugs were enormous. There weren't many lights for what seemed to be a large building and Jack wondered why they just didn't have telephones.
"Reg," the woman said, with an amount of disdain, "I have a nice lady here threatening to burn up my desk if I don't get her Harry Potter right away. Name of Parkinson. Can you see about him for me?" and after a pause, "thanks, Love."
"Please take a seat. It might be a minute," the woman said. "I would appreciate you not arsoning the place right away,"
Pansy and Jack walked to a wooden bench, like a black church pew that was against the wall on the far side of the corridor. Jack was sure that the woman couldn't hear them so far away.
"Were you really going to set her desk on fire?" he asked.
Pansy gave him a half smile. "I was sure it wouldn't come to that, but it would be an easy fix. Now when Harry gets here, let me do all the talking. He'll know what to do, and how to keep this quiet. I'm not sure how welcome you are here at the Ministry as a muggle, so I plan to make this short and sweet and get us out of here."
"Where is 'here' exactly?" Jack asked. "This place looks crazy."
"On a regular workday, this room is packed with workers. They leave home to toil here in the only magical government building in the country. Enforcement to welfare, politics to transportation, it all happens here. This is the Floo network," she said pointing to the now quiet fireplaces, "and they are connected to almost every home, business and building in the magical world."
"This is how you travel?" Jack asked, imagining people stepping into a fireplace to come to work.
"One of the ways," Pansy said, squeezing his hand again. "There is a lot to learn,"she said trailing off as a nearby fireplace flared up. "Ah, here he is."
Jack watched a man step out of the fireplace and brush himself off. He looked incredibly normal to Jack, no clashing colors or crazy patterns to his clothes. He looked like someone you would see crossing the street.
"Hello Pansy," Harry said with a smile and he held out his hand. "How have you been?"
"Fine, Harry," she said. Pansy didn't like talking to Harry, didn't want anything to do with any of her old classmates, and if this wasn't so important, she would have preferred to be anywhere else.
Jack noticed Pansy's discomfort and the way she tightened up when Harry approached. He sensed her insecurity, and remembered the stories she told him about her time after school, being shunned for seemingly picking the wrong side.
"Can we speak somewhere more private?" Pansy asked, inclining her head to the receptionist who was now paying attention to everything that was being said.
"Sure, follow me," Harry said as he led them towards a small meeting room off the hallway. "Hello, I'm Harry," he said extending his hand to Jack.
"I'm Jack, pleasure to meet you," Jack said as they entered a horribly lit room with birch paneling that was designed in the forties.
"Welcome to the Ministry," Harry said. "I'd offer you a tour, but I sense that this is something urgent?"
"Harry, I think his daughter found the Resurrection Stone," Pansy said. "Long story short, Jack and his daughter crashed into the Forbidden Forest a couple of months ago. Neville had them stay at Hogwarts for a few nights, and then I wiped their memories. Something happened to Sam, his daughter, and she started remembering things. Two students went to visit her, and now she's here in London trying to find the Leaky Cauldron, probably because the partial memories are making her crazy. Jack's resident ghost told me of a rock that Sam had, and when she turned it over in her hand, made her dead mother appear. To me that sounded a lot like one of those Deathly Hallows that you used to have."
Jack had a hard time following the thread, but he focused on one thing. "Sam is going crazy?" he asked.
Pansy patted his hand to comfort him. Harry repressed a smile, happy that his old classmate had found someone to break through her shell. He had no hard feelings for her, and hoped that she could find someone and finally be happy. "Ok," Harry said as he thought about the Resurrection Stone. Sure, people knew all about his story after one of Ron's drunken binges, telling tall tales that weren't completely untrue. It was all he had left after his contentious divorce from Hermione. Who would have ever thought that she would have found someone that was a much better match? "If your daughter has the stone, we need to get it back before other people find out about it. There are treasure seekers that looked for the pieces of the Elder Wand and the cloak as well. It won't be a good idea to have its whereabouts known, or that it even really exists."
"So you did leave it in the Forbidden Forest?" Pansy asked.
"Yeah, " Harry said. "It was a tough day. Maybe I should have kept it, who knows? I do know that it makes people crazy too. So if your daughter has it," he said, addressing Jack, "and has a memory wipe gone wrong, we probably need to get her to St. Mungo's, a very good hospital, quickly. Let's get to the Leaky Cauldron, and find your daughter, shall we?"
While Rose and Colin were in a coach headed for Waterloo Station, and Jack and his magical escorts were leaving the Ministry, Sam was in the exact place where she wanted to be.
It was weird, she thought. There was something that she could almost see between an old shop that looked like it used to sell plumbing supplies, and a butcher that must have closed due to numerous health violations. It was like the air flickered and there was something that made her want to walk away. She felt the pull to leave the area, and she figured that it must be some sort of magic that kept trying to confuse her, but it wasn't quite working. Actually the clearest view she had was when she was holding onto the rock that let her talk to her mother. She'd been up and down the block and felt sure that this was the place. She stepped across the darkened street and stood in the shadows and watched. People dressed in strange garments walked towards the place she was watching and disappeared. She knew what she had to do.
There was a man, about her father's age with a head full of fine, blonde hair. It wasn't blonde really, it was white. He was dressed in a smart suit and looked rich. Very rich. Sam stepped out of the doorway, and as the man got close to the spot where all the others disappeared, she grabbed onto his arm and walked with him.
"Hello, what's this?" the man said as The Leaky Cauldron revealed itself.
Sam stared at the faded sign and the darkened doorway and paid little attention to the man whose arm she held until he spoke again.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"I needed to find the Leaky Cauldron," she said absently.
"Why?" he asked.
"I'm, I'm not sure," Sam said. She was overcome with emotion at finally finding proof that magic does exist.
"Well, you couldn't have picked a better escort, young lady, for I am the proprietor. Let me introduce myself," he said and stuck out his hand, "Draco Malfoy."
"I'm Sam," Sam said as she automatically stuck out her hand and realized that she was still clutching the rock. She fumbled with it and Draco caught it as it dropped.
"No worries, I've got it," Draco said cheerfully as he caught the stone and examined it. He knew exactly what it was the moment he saw the remnant of the engraved letter over the crack. He looked at the muggle girl he'd just met and wondered how in the world she had come into possession of the Resurrection Stone. "Why don't we step inside?" Draco said, taking her arm. "I'd love to hear where you found this."
Sam followed him into the Leaky Cauldron, and they disappeared from the street, out of view of any other muggles that happened to be passing by.
