Last time...

"I was wondering if that was something you could heal too." He admitted, turning his head away in shame. "I've been abandoned by my own family-"

"I can't." She blurted out before he could continue, and his hopes were dashed. "I don't think…I didn't mean…"

"It was too much to hope for, I guess, but figured it couldn't hurt to ask." Henry shrugged, trying not to let it show how much it bothered him. She was just a kid, and it wasn't fair of him to just expect her to be able to heal him as she had others. She sighed, so he guessed his attempt wasn't as successful as he'd hoped, and stepped closer to his bed.

"I can't right now. I don't know enough yet." She spoke quietly. "Those other things? I knew enough. You know of Severus Snape?"

He did; that man had a reputation as a revered Potions Master and paranoid bastard.

"I'm apprenticing with him, and a cure for Lycanthropy is considered a personal challenge for that man." She informed him, causing him to perk up with interest. "If you want to give me your contact information, even if it's just an address where you can accept owls, I can keep you apprised of the progress we make. It's not much, and it sounds a bit superficial and empty now that I've said it out loud like that, but-"

"It's more hope than I've had in ages." Henry rushes to thank her, already scribbling down his address. "I'll take it."

Chapter 81

Rowan Hawks steps into the room and fullstops as he's hit by a wall of noise. People are walking around that shouldn't be, and by that he means they really shouldn't be able to but clearly are. Various orderlies are trying to get them to sit down, to at least figure out what happened, but the patients themselves don't look like they want to do that. There's a lot of objections, shouting, and just general restlessness mixed in with a bit of obstinance and childish rebellion. He's going to get a headache at this rate, and there's really only one thing to do.

"ENOUGH!" He shouted, causing instantaneous silence and every eye in the vicinity to turn to him. "Now, would someone like to explain to me just what in Merlin's aftershave is going on here?"

The shouting starts back in earnest.

…

They were almost out of the hospital. Snape was leading them, as Hera hadn't been really aware of what she was doing so much as bludgeoning her way through when she entered this place, and it probably wasn't a good idea to do that on a regular basis. There was a lot of blind panic she'd been working through, and not a whole lot of paying attention. Snape had offered to lead them out, as he had to get back to Hogwarts anyway. They'd almost made it to the 'exit' when a door behind them slammed.

"YOU!"

They all tense and turn around. Standing in the doorway was a rather frazzled looking hospital attendant…Maybe that wasn't right; the robes were different. Whoever he was, he looked like a person of authority. As the man approached, Hera noted that he was not much taller than she was. He was a bit on the hefty side, probably due to his bone structure simply not allowing for him to even attempt to be the kind of thin that society put so much stock in.

"In my office." The man ordered. "Now!"

"Uh…I don't work for you?" Hera pointed out, more than a little confused already.

"In my office." The man repeated, all but lowly growling out the words. "Now."

Without preamble, the man turned around and stomped back towards the door. Only once did he turn around, glaring at her when she didn't immediately follow. Looking to the others yielded no help. They didn't know what was wrong. So she followed the man, knowing that the others were following after her.

"What did you do?" Snape asked, his voice barely audible, once next to her as they walked.

"Nothing!" She insisted, keeping her voice just as low. He glared at her, but she was clueless as to what the man could be angry at her for. "Nothing!"

When everyone entered the office and was seated, the man sighed before asking. "Is this hospital a joke to you?"

"I don't…I don't understand?" Hera admitted, floundering. "What?"

"I have been tracking your magical signature for over an hour, trying to figure out who you were, and how the hell you did what you did." The man continued. "Of course, you would be Hera Potter."

"Look, I apologize for wandering around the hospital, but I got lost!" Hera insisted. "I didn't mean-"

"You…You think this is because…" The man trailed off, looking at her like he'd never seen the like. "Lady Potter, I didn't spend over an hour trying to figure out who in Merlin's name was wondering around my hospital because I wanted to ream them out for getting lost."

"Perhaps you could explain why you wanted to speak with my apprentice then?" Snape suggested, though it sounded more filled with disdain than a polite inquiry aught.

"Of course, Master Snape." The man agreed with a nod to Snape, before turning his attention back to her. "How? How did you heal those people? What spells did you use? Do you even know why they were in that specific ward?"

"I believe mentioning I was lost before." Hera reminded him, feeling a bit sheepish. "I don't even know what ward you're talking about."

"I found most of those who'd been healed were in Spell Damage." The man continued. "They were cases where it was more about managing their comfort than it was about trying to cure them any longer."

"Oh…" Hera trailed off. That'd been near where she found Neville's parents. "I didn't mean any harm. Was anyone hurt by what I did?"

"No. That's what I'm trying to tell you. You cured things that…" The man tried to explain, looking frustrated. "What did you do?"

"Could we walk through the hospital again?" Hera suggested. Everyone looked at her like she was insane. "Without revealing patient information, you can't ask me specifics, and I can't tell you what I did without it. Walking you through the hospital patient by patient is really the only thing I can think of as a compromise. You don't have to tell me anything then, and I can point to each one and tell you what I did."

This is how Hera ended up walking with the man, who she now knew as Rowan Hawks, throughout the hospital; trying to recreate the path she'd done to get lost, much to the frustration and bemusement of the others. Once she'd done that, she began on the path she'd taken as she began healing people. She explained what she did; going over what she'd sensed was wrong with each patient, before then covering what spells she'd used to heal what was wrong with them. Healer Hawks looked stunned as she described it all, but not once did he interrupt or object; in fact, he'd made it a point to record her words with floating parchment and a dicto-quill.

She didn't think she'd done anything ground breaking, but the more she talked, the more that look seemed to make its home on his face. The spells she used were simple, things he'd seen everyday, but it was obvious he'd never thought to use them the way she had. Tony looked so proud, a look she was still trying to get used to seeing directed at herself; so, of course, she started blushing in embarrassment as she continued explaining what she'd done. Rhodey just looked on with fond amusement, like this was behaviour he was used to seeing with Tony; no matter that he didn't understand what she was talking about yet. Hera didn't dare look at Snape to see what his reaction to all this was, as it turned out he'd been right that she had done something after all.

"I noticed you skipped the Longbottoms." Healer Hawks noted, and she froze.

"Er…Technically, I didn't?" She admitted with a grimace. "It's just…what I did was sort of experimental, and I'm not sure how long it will take to work."

"What did you do?" Tony asked, curious as always.

"I…Well, I…putawillowispintheirbrains." She rushed, before trying again. "I summoned a will-o-wisp, and put it in their brains."

"You put a hinkypunk in their-" Healer Hawks gapped, overcome with anger and shock in equal measure.

"No. A will-o-wisp. A hinkypunk is a variant of a will-o-wisp, the more mischievous and more documented variety. The will-o-wisps got lumped in with all the stories, because while it wasn't seen as often, it was seen trying to lead people. Except people got it wrong. A will-o-wisp doesn't care about where you want to go; It cares about what it wants to show you, what it thinks you need to see." Hera snapped, cutting him off, cross. "In this case, the Longbottoms are trapped in a maze of their own minds; a maze that got accidentally joined together when I reached for them."

"You-" Snape began.

"It was an accident!" She snapped, cutting him off too, glaring at the man now. His expression was unreadable. "Alice took a hold of my hand, and I saw the maze. In my excitement, I forgot to let go before checking Frank. It connected their mazes. I called Jareth, because I panicked, thinking I'd made it worse. If there is anyone who knows mazes, it's him. I knew I could help them, I was just too panicked to remember how. He helped, calmed me down enough that I realized what I needed to do."

"What's it supposed to do?" Healer Hawks asked, a bit more calm now.

"It will act as a beacon. They need to see their way out, so that's what it will show them. After they make their way out, it will vanish back to where I summoned it from. I doubt I'll need to reapply the magic I used, but I might. There's always the possibility that it could vanish halfway through leading them." Hera shrugged, looking away, crossing her arms in front of herself. "Was there anything else you needed, Healer Hawks? I and my family would like to get going, if that's alright."

She sounded hollow even to her own ears, but he nodded in understanding regardless, and she guided both Tony and Rhodey back to the entrance. If Snape followed after her, she wasn't aware of it. One of the things she wasn't supposed to do was talk back to him in public, and that's what she'd just done. He'd be well within his rights to end the apprenticeship for something like that. Tony, seeing that she was upset, tried to talk to her, but she just shook her head.

"I shouldn't have been mucking about the hospital like that, messing with people's treatments while I was upset. Who knows what I could have done to them had my emotions got the better of me?" Hera insisted. "I follow my instincts without a thought, but that's the problem. I follow them without a thought. Professor Snape is always reminding me that I should be more careful."

"From everything you told us, you were." Snape stated quietly, from somewhere behind her. Hera whirled around in surprise, and saw the man calmly walking up to them. "I hope you know I just had to fight off Healer Hawks for you. He was insisting you apprentice with him instead."

The statement was so ludicrous, that Hera couldn't help but snicker at it.

"Now, are you quite through causing chaos for the time being? I have things I need to do back at Hogwarts before I can relax for the holidays." He continued. "I can take you all back out first, if you like."

"Can you take me back to Hogwarts with you after?" Hera inquired. "I sort of left Fen and Jör there."

"Best get to it then." Snape agreed. "I don't want to know what trouble those two will get into without you."

Once back at the hotel, after Hera had gone…

"Let me see if I have this right." Rhodey began, because clearly this needed to be discussed. The man had a lot to work through, after all. "Your sister is a genuine legitimate princess; and that's on top of being a witch powerful enough to just randomly heal people with things actual trained professional healers hadn't been able to touch, having a madman after her since birth, a recent apprenticeship to an Honest to God Potions Master, and an unbelievably good streak of luck that is impressive considering how life threatening and harrowing her life has been?"

Tony nodded in amusement, watching as his friend absorbed everything.

"And not only can she forgive the man who got her parents killed, but he's her Potions Master now, and she's working on turning the madman who'd been after them in the first place to her side?" Rhodey continued. Tony nodded again, grinning wider. "Man, if I ever needed any evidence that she was your sister, that'd have done it."

Hera had given Rhodey a sort of overview of her life, starting from that first year at that school. She'd had to kill her first man at eleven years old; a teacher that had attacked her when he realized the jig was up. She'd found something as cool sounding as the Chamber of Secrets – something Tony definitely wanted to see later – which is where she found Jör. She talked with beings that scared most people, and risked her life for a rival that was now one of her shield brothers. Not only could she teleport, she could create illusions and copies of herself at will, something that had made Tony burst out laughing as soon as he saw her prank Rhodey with it.

His face went through some kind of struggle to not react as she described this past year to them. Tony had already heard about the rescue at the World Cup, and interjected when Hera tried to downplay it all, citing her very protective friends as sources she couldn't dispute; Snape adding his own notations when it looked like she was going to try anyway. Potter Watch had been particularly amusing for him; an effort on three schools of students coming together to give her the best alibi ever even when they knew it wasn't going to work. It had lead to theorizing with the Ravenclaws, comfort and kindness from the Hufflepuffs, a great show of friendship from the Gryffindor, and gambling den in the dungeons of Slytherin; along with flying lessons from a Quidditch professional, and magic cooking lessons from the French. He'd watched Rhodey's face as she described talking to a dragon, telling it to set her on fire, and the look of smug satisfaction on her face as she described the state the judges had been in by the time she and the dragon were done with their little prank; Rhodey had looked at him in awe and panic, because dear God there were two of them now.

She told of her finding out she could turn blue, which she demonstrated for a quick moment before getting back to the story, how they'd had to call Tony because she'd panicked and blocked off the bathroom with a wall of ice. She told of talking with ghosts and fighting with mermaids, of rescuing hostages and making allies of said merfolk she'd fought before. She told the story of the maze, what happened in the graveyard, and her offer to the parents of her new friends. Rhodey frowned in contemplation the more Hera talked, each time when she offered redemption or healing instead of revenge and retribution, not that there weren't plenty enough stories of the later; her telling of 'where are the bones, professor?' was still pretty chilling.

Hera hadn't quite explained how she'd come by Fenrir as a familiar, not where it was so close to her secrets, but Rhodey hadn't asked for more once she admitted that. This latest story of being willing to offer the one who killed her parents a chance at redemption was just another incident of such an event. Snape had stayed while Hera had caught Rhodey up on things, but he looked to Tony in silent inquiry when she didn't add Fenrir's part to things. Tony shook his head, so Snape didn't press it either. He agreed to take her back to Hogwarts, knowing full well she could get herself back to her brother now that she knew where he was staying, and they'd disappeared.

"So how's he handling everything?" Hera asked, appearing out of the blue.

The puns inside his head are hilarious, and he would not budge on that.

"Surprisingly, out of everything, he's stuck on you being a princess." Tony informed her.

"Really? Out of everything?" Hera asked with disbelief, as she walked by. "That's what he picked to get stuck on?"

To his delight, Tony sees the moment Rhodey notices Fenrir and Jör, and it's everything he thought it would be. Jör is wrapped around her waist, with his head peaking through her hair and his tail wrapped around one of her legs. Tony knows he can shrink and grow himself, so he knows that Jör is absolutely trying to be as large and intimidating – while still being travel sized – as he can get. Fenrir is doing the same, only he's doing it before Rhodey's very eyes, staring him down from a rather impressive height, before shrinking back down to the size of a fully grown Caucasian Ovtcharka again and plopping down in front of the fireplace. Hera snorted when Jör moved to join him, but she waved her hand to ignite the fire for them.

"Big babies, the both of them."

"Uh…Tony?" Rhodey calls out.

They'd gotten on the plane easily enough – taken off and everything – but now he was seeing Hera grow nervous, and something told him that didn't bode well. It had started with her white-knuckling the arm rests to the point where they bent and twisted under her grip. It had progressively gotten worse when the turbulence hit, and she'd closed her eyes when the lightning started to streak across the sky. This lead Fenrir and Jör – and of course she would love mythology the way Tony did, to give her Familiars names like those – to sort of become living blankets. He still didn't know how on earth a…whatever Fenrir was…could withstand the amount of force Hera had used to bend the arm rests of an air-plane seat without so much as a wince. Tony is in the restroom, because of course he hadn't listened when both Rhodey and Hera told him that that super extra spicy dish he'd decided on was going to make a dramatic exit and not in the fun way, so Rhodey was going to have to figure out how to calm down a teenage girl with enough power to start her own country.

"You're not scared of a little lightning, are you?" Rhodey asked, trying for a smile of reassurance. "After everything you've seen?"

She chanced a look out the window as another lightning bolt streaks, and grimaced. "I'm not overly fond of what follows."*

"You talk like an old soul." Rhodey noted, surprised when she stiffened. "Part of the secret, I take it?"

She didn't answer, but looked away and nodded.

"I won't pry. With magic, I'm not sure I'd understand right away anyhow." He admitted. She smiled a touch at that. "So…what's it like to do real magic, and not the stuff people see in magic shows? I listen to Tony talk science all the time. I'd like to hear about magic too, if you're willing. Tell me you broke his brain the first time he saw you cast a spell."

She's still tense, still holding onto Fenrir's fir with a super strong grip, but she smiles just a little. He's willing to count that as a win.

AN: Couldn't resist the Avengers quote.