Chrestomanci Arc

Before Beginning:

This is a fusion between J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and Diana Wynne Jones Chrestomanci series. It's not necessary to have read DWJ to understand the story (I'll take care of explaining things), but if you haven't, you really, /really/ should. Because they're fabulous...Harry Potter of 20 years ago, like.

Relative ages: If we use Harry as the base (set at 0), the rest are as follows--

Rowena: +14

Philip, Gregory: +17

Cressida, Lily, James, etc: +20

Chrestomanci: +45

Dumbledore: ????

*****

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When Rowena Chant was four years old, she threw Time all out of order. It was an accident, of course, and fortunately, it happened in controlled conditions, where it could be sorted out again without any really serious consequences, like the end of the world. It was simple, really. It was Tuesday, and Rowena's older brothers and sister had to go off to school, so she had nobody to play with. Her father was busy doing Very Important Things, and her mother was off visiting relatives until the weekend. She tried to get the housekeeper Igraine to play with her, but was told to run off and find something to occupy herself with. Next she tried Beth the maid and Colin the gardener, but finally found herself sitting alone in the treehouse feeling miserable and lonely.

"I think it should be Saturday," she said.

And just like that, it was Saturday. The world reeled as though it had been kicked, and trembled from the shock of suddenly losing four days at once. Her father appeared immediately, from whatever Important Things he had been in the middle of, sounding rather cross.

"Rowena Chant!" he called up at her. She was trying to hide very deep in the treehouse. "Put the days back where they belong right this instant!"

Rowena burst into tears, because she didn't know how.

"Just tell it to go back the way it was," he said, more gently this time, because he knew it was an accident.

Rowena sniffled. "Go back to being Tuesday," she told the world. There was another great rock and shift, and a sound like a thousand gears and wheels creaking heavily.

"Much better," said Papa, looking up at the treehouse with a rather odd look. "Come down now, Ro, we need to have a talk. And some tea."

An old man in wizard's robes and a tall pointy hat came huffing up to him then. Rowena recognised him as a friend of her papa's, who sometimes brought her candy and silly little toys from someplace called Hogsmeade. He had a funny name--Grumbly-door, she remembered, because it always made her think of the gargoyles standing guard at the castle gates. Much funnier than Chant. "I say, Charles, what on earth happened there?"

"I'm just about to find that out myself," Papa said mildly. He was always at his most mild and vague when he was very worried, or thinking very hard. "I said come down, Rowena."

Still sniffling, she made herself stop crying, because it was hard to climb and cry at the same time. As soon as she reached the ground, she wrapped herself around Papa's leg. "I didn't mean to."

"Of course you didn't." He reached down, gathered her up, and started to carry her back to the house. "Nobody thinks you did. But it was very dangerous, all the same, so I need you to tell me exactly what you did before it happened."

She felt considerably safer, snuggled into his arms, and less likely to cry again. "I just said that I thought it should be Saturday," she mumbled into his shirt collar. "Because I had nobody to play with."

"Ah," Papa acknowledged, gently rubbing her back. "Well I want you to be very careful about how you say things from now on, because if you tell things to happen, I have a feeling they are going to. And while you're being careful, I think we'd better start you on wizardry lessons."

"Really?" That was even better than school! Rowena was not sure why she was being rewarded for setting time wrong, but she decided not to correct them. She was too young to understand the adult point of view that it was far safer to start teaching magic early than to let her wander around making things happen without supervision.

She let her eyes droop shut and her head loll against Papa's shoulder. Mr. Grumbly-door was chuckling into his long grey beard. "So she's the one, then? Yes, there are nine, aren't there, I can see them now. Very convenient, Charles, I must say. A bit young for an enchanter. I admit I wish it'd taken a bit longer to come out."

"So do I," said Papa, "and not just because I'm going to have to start scheduling lessons for her, and trying to keep her paying attention. "I've got three other children, remember, and Cressida won't even start at Hogwart's for another year--how am I supposed to explain to the rest of them that Rowena gets to learn magic before they do?"

Much of what they were talking about, then and after, did not make very much sense to the suddenly very sleepy Rowena. She hadn't been tired before, but perhaps sending Time out of joint and then putting it back took a lot of energy. But that part, about learning something as grand and important as magic before her sister or brothers did--that she cherished, and cuddled the thought as if it were a very warm and cosy blanket.

The scene that evening was every bit as bad as Papa had predicted it would be. Cressida, as the oldest and the only one yet to reach an age that included two digits, was furious to be denied her rightful place as the first Chant child of this generation to learn magic. The twins, Gregory and Philip--who were seven, and as beastly as it was possible for little boys to be--threw a screaming fit that made the ghosts in the attic float downstairs to see who was being tortured, and if they'd be allowed to help. They were quite disappointed to find it was only the children. In the end, Papa had to agree to find a tutor for all four of them to learn magic at once.

That was how Mr. Pinns was introduced into the family. He was their magic tutor; a frail and nervous wisp of a man with a soft, mild voice who was always looking over his shoulder. He was very patient with Rowena, however, and gave her lollipops when she caught on to something exceptionally well. He was not so patient with Philip and Gregory, but they were inclined to go about using magic for inconvenient pranks whenever they could get away with it--summoning the butter dish while they knew Papa and Mama were having tea with Important Guests, or charming the big Turkey carpet in the study to make it fly. He was also patient with Cressida, which was a bit of a miracle really, because Cressida had heard somewhere that it was fashionable to have romantic fixations on one's teachers, and she followed him around with big blue doe-eyes and sighed dreamily whenever he looked at her.

Mr. Pinns, being an altogether sensible gentleman with no romantic interest whatsoever in ten-year-old students, thought it best to just ignore the behaviour until it went away, or at least until Cressida was shipped off to Hogwart's and met boys her own age.

That came soon enough, and the following Autumn Cressida was hugging her sister and brothers goodbye, dressed smartly in black school robes with her things packed in a trunk; Mama had taken her shopping in Diagon Alley and let her pick them out, along with a wand and a very pretty white owl.

"Be good love," she whispered to Rowena when she hugged her. "Be careful, and don't let anything happen to you!"

Rowena thought it grossly unfair that the girls would now be outnumbered at Chrestomanci Castle by two to one. Besides that, she didn't mind much that Cressida was leaving, because Mr. Pinns gave her a chocolate frog for being so good about it, and not crying.

They got letters back from Cressida quite regularly by owl. She was having a grand time at Hogwart's, and told of her adventures in detail, even though Philip and Gregory and Rowena did not know what she was talking about most of the time. She told them she'd been sorted into a house called Gryffindor ("Gryphons?" Philip asked, puzzled. "Does she mean those lion-eagle things? I didn't think they lived in houses"), and was taking classes like Potions and Transfiguration and Arithmancy. She was ahead of most of her class, but that was to be expected, because she'd been learning longer. She'd made friends with a girl named Lily Evans, who became the most prominent figure in her letters for the next several years.

Eventually Philip and Gregory went to Hogwart's too. Mr. Pinns gave her another chocolate frog, and they had a wild romp through the garden trying to catch it. Rowena was half tempted to let it get away, but decided in the end that if one put up that much of a fight trying to get something, then one deserved to eat it. She had lessons all to herself now, and though it was more lonely without the twins making rude remarks or funny spells, she found she was learning a lot more, too. She had never gone to a regular school like the others; Mr. Pinns taught her math, history, and writing just as he did magic. She was not ever sure when this decision had been made, but she didn't mind it. She knew that she'd be going eventually, to Hogwart's like everyone else, and in the meantime who needed a silly village school with pointy-faced teachers and noisy children who threw things and tormented each other? It didn't occur to her that other children, normal children, might be afraid of her. After all, she hadn't done anything really dangerous or awful since accidentally making it Saturday. And she certainly wasn't going to do anything like that again!

When her letter finally came--she was almost eleven--Rowena realised she was much more sad than she had expected. With the final Chant child leaving for Hogwart's, Mr. Pinns would have to move on and find some other children to teach magic to, and she would miss him. She would miss the castle, with its crotchety old ghosts and sneaky mirrors, the treehouse that was just in the right place for picking chestnuts; she would miss Igraine and Beth and Colin, and Mama and Papa. But it was an adventure, too, she could feel that in her blood, and besides, Mr. Pinns came along with her and Mama to Diagon Alley, so he wasn't gone /yet/.

They bought books and robes, neither of which interested her too much. The books were mostly newer versions of things she had already read, the robes were simply not very interesting.

"Standard Book of Spells, Grade One?" she read incredulously, holding up the spine for her mother and tutor to see. "Come off--how to make a feather float in the air? I did that when I was four!"

"Then you should be very good at it when they ask you to do it," Mr. Pinns said mildly.

"Ro, love," Mama explained, "most of the other children haven't had tutors, you know. For some of them, this will be their first time learning magic. You might need to help them out some." She did not mention that most would just be witches or wizards, and not enchanters. Rowena nodded seriously. She was well aware by this point that learning magic as early as she and her siblings had was highly irregular. She knew that it was because she had nine lives, and most people didn't, and that meant more raw magical power, and that she was going to be the next Chrestomanci--whether she liked it or not, so it was just as well that she didn't mind.

They went on shopping, getting the rest of her school things. She had never used--or felt the need for--a wand before, but she found one that seemed to like her all right. It was long and swishy, made of holly and a whisker from an Asheth Temple cat. Mr. Ollivander, who sold the wands, said he'd had a feeling about that one.

They didn't buy her an owl, because Cressida already had one, and there was no reason all four Chant children couldn't manage to share, or send their letters at the same time. Just before the twins had gone, they had asked how come they couldn't send things by regular post, the way they did at home.

"Post doesn't go to Hogwart's," Papa had explained. "It's in a little pocket world of its own, you see, and you have to be some sort of wizard to even see it."

Philip and Gregory and Rowena had all nodded. They understood about worlds. There were hundreds of them, though some ignorant people tried to say there were only twelve. The worlds each started out as one, but when a major event occurred, like a very big battle, they would split apart, to allow for both possibilities to happen. So in one world Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo, and everybody spoke French except in India; in another, America was actually called Atlantis, and in another the Titanic had missed the iceberg entirely; and in another, there was no magic at all and people didn't ever grow up to be wizards or witches. (They were all quite grateful not to have been born in that world.) There had once been two worlds that had not split apart all the way when they should have, and very strong magic had to be employed to meld them back together. Almost everyone had other versions of themselves living in all the other worlds, living out all the possible different lives that they could have had. The exceptions were very, very rare--people like Rowena, and Papa, didn't have any other versions of themselves. For some reason or other, no counterparts managed to be born, and the lives they would have lived all concentrated together in the one version that did. They had nine lives, and were always enchanter-level wizards. Papa had said once, offhand-like, that people with extra lives seemed to be invariably more careless with them than most people.

You had to be a very powerful enchanter to get between the worlds. The gate was in a garden in back of the castle, and it led to a place called World Edge, or, if you weren't being formal, the Place Between. The children were absolutely not allowed to go there, ever. Rowena had stumbled into the Place Between by accident once, in her sleep, when she was having a particularly strange dream. She knew it looked like a rocky sort of valley, with a lot of doors in it that you could walk through. She did not walk through any of them, but she'd seen the thin membrane of spell-fabric that covered them, and that separated the worlds from each other. So it made sense, when Papa explained about Hogwart's being in a pocket world of its own.

It was a bit disconcerting, when she got there, to find that electricity didn't work in the pocket-world: lights, watches, cameras; there were no televisions or computers or telephones at all. Rowena thought it strange, but when she mentioned it to the girl walking next to her into the Great Hall, the only response was a quizzical look and, "What? Aren't those Muggle things, anyway? Who'd want to use /them/?"

"Well I would rather like to know what time it is," Rowena returned petulantly. She had never heard the term 'Muggle' before, but she was clever, and it didn't take a genius to figure out what it meant.

A tall, imposing woman, even more imposing than Igraine the housekeeper, called off each of the students' names, and one by one they had to go sit on a stool and put a worn out old hat on their head. The hat would call out of the name of a house, and that was where they would live for the rest of their years at Hogwart's. That cleared up what Cressida had been talking about, anyway. Philip and Gregory had gone to Gryffindor as well. Rowena crossed her fingers that she would end up there with them.

She didn't have to wait long--it was fortunate sometimes, having a last name so near the front of the alphabet. As soon as she heard "Chant!" she marched up to the front of the hall, picked up the weather-beaten old hat, and plopped it onto her head.

It waited barely a second. "RAVENCLAW!" it called. She saw people in blue scarves cheering on one side of the room, and her brothers making disappointed gestures on the other. She felt a sudden, profound loss, and it almost doubled her over--she really wasn't going back to them. It hurt.

For a moment, it felt like the hat was going to apologise and take back what it had said. She felt it pondering, and she knew that with the tiniest nudge, she could be a Gryffindor, too. But it wouldn't be right, and the hat probably knew what it was about, anyway. If it said she'd make a good Ravenclaw, well then, so she would. She wasn't going to lose her whole family over a stupid house cup. //It's all right,// she told the hat, and took it off again, and waved to Philip and Gregory as she marched over to join her housemates.

It turned out to be a good choice, in the end. People were sorted into Ravenclaw because they were clever and liked to learn things, which suited Rowena quite well. Each House had something its people were good at. Hufflepuffs (she liked them, but thought it a hopelessly unfortunate name) were loyal and devoted. Slytherins were crafty and cunning, though not so cunning as Ravenclaws, who learned things just for the sake of knowing them. The Gryffindors were a flashy bunch, and she liked them well enough, though she did get a little tired of girls mooning over how handsome her brothers were. They were only handsome from a distance, and once one got up close to them, they were as beastly as ever. Cressida was very popular as well, but she had gotten nicer over the years instead of nastier, so sometimes she didn't mind if Rowena tagged along with her and her friends.

This pleased Rowena especially, because she had quite a hopeless crush on one of Cressida's friends.

There was a whole group of them, and they would have picnics on the grass, and sit together for Quidditch games. Cressida and Lily were still best friends, and somewhere along the line Lily had taken up with a boy named James Potter, which meant that they now invited /his/ friends too: Remus and Peter and Sirius. It was Sirius that Rowena was in love with, and had been since the first time Cress had brought the group home for a party once, between terms. The twins were being their usual horrid selves, and none of Rowena's friends had been able to come. Sirius was the only one of Cressida's friends who didn't try to pretend she wasn't there, so as not to have to deal with her. It got better, once she was in Hogwart's herself and had things to talk to them about. They knew she was smart, and good at magic, and they paid attention to her. But the tall boy with dark, puppy-ish eyes had done it first, which in Rowena was enough to inspire total devotion.

Not that she would ever have let on, of course, or that she expected he would ever return it. She had a wonderful daydream, one winter, in which he asked her to the Yule Ball--but at the time, he was seventeen and she was eleven, and she knew things did not really work that way. So, she wasn't terribly upset when he went with a sixth-year girl named Evangeline Pilgrim instead.

Once they graduated, they stuck together, and still came over for holidays, or everyone would meet in Hogsmeade for a bit of eating and shopping and mischief-making. (The boys especially were great at mischief. Philip and Gregory fairly idolised them.) Lily Evans got married to James Potter (with Cressida as the maid of honour and Sirius as the best man), and they had a big summer wedding in the castle gardens, because it was the only really good place anybody could think of where wizarding types and Muggles could both get to and enjoy themselves easily. The only embarrassing moment was when Peter Pettigrew tried to sneak off with some of the centrepieces, and they started screaming "I belong to Chrestomanci Castle!" as soon as he got outside the reception area. But it was just a prank, and cleared up quickly, and everyone had a good laugh.

While all this was going on--not the wedding itself, but life and Hogwarts and mischief--there was a powerful enchanter from Slytherin House, named Voldemort, who turned to the Dark Arts and went around killing people. Sometimes he did worse things than kill them, things that nobody was supposed to talk about. This made Professor Dumbledore and all the Ministry of Magic very busy and troubled. It made Papa troubled too, and should have made him busy--but it didn't, because there was a problem nobody in the Ministry had bothered to fix.

Papa's real name was Charles Chant. His title was Chrestomanci. It was an old, respected title, and nobody would ever dream otherwise. It used to be that whoever was Chrestomanci was responsible for making sure Dark wizards and witches didn't take over any of the multiple worlds, that they didn't go around taking advantage of Muggles, and generally regulating the use of magic in the multiverse. This was why Chrestomanci had to be an enchanter with nine lives--they had more power than most people, even other enchanters, and regulating magic in a hundred or more worlds was a very tiring job.

But this world had formed the Ministry of Magic, and made a lot of rules and regulations of its own, and told Chrestomanci (long before Charles' day) that they could take care of themselves just fine, and he ought to concentrate on the rest of those worlds and just use this one for a rest. Chrestomanci, at the time, had not seemed to mind. He made a promise--a Wizard's Oath--to stay out of the affairs of this particular world unless he was asked by a particular method to help, in which case he said he would always be willing to. It was his job, after all.

It would have been a good time for the Ministry to remember this, and ask for Papa's help. It was /exactly/ what he was there for, and a nine-lived enchanter would be very, very helpful against Voldemort and his Death-Eaters. Unfortunately, the Ministry apparently did not remember the bit about the Oath. So they did not ask Papa, and he was unable to help them directly. He tried--he sent messages to Professor Dumbledore about what they ought to do, and how to protect themselves. He made subtle suggestions to Rowena for charms she could do to strengthen the defenses at Hogwart's and books she could find ideas in. Mostly he made absolutely sure that Voldemort could not ever reach the Place Between.

"Oh, why don't they just /ask/ him?" Cressida grumbled one summer afternoon, tossing herself into a great crimson armchair in one of the parlours. "They've probably forgotten how, great blazing idiots. It's not that hard of a spell."

"If they have forgotten," said Rowena, "that's probably why. Too simple. They're used to having to fill out forms and requisitions and things."

It /was/ an astonishingly simple spell. You simply said 'Chrestomanci' three times, and no matter what world you were in, he would be instantly called away to you. The fact that the Ministry of Magic could not seem to manage the ridiculously easy task of repeating a man's name did not impress the Chant girls much at all.

"Oh, let's not deal with it anyway," Cressida said, jumping to her feet again. "Let's go down to Hogsmeade, Ro, and find presents for Lily and James. They're having a baby, we need to get them something nice."

"All right," Rowena agreed. Hogsmeade was fun, and the fact that Cress was inviting her somewhere gave her a little thrill. She wondered if there would ever be a point when the six years that stretched between them would not seem as big as it did now that she was fourteen and Cress was twenty, when the age difference wouldn't matter so much.

When they were all grown up, she supposed.

Cressida asked Mama for the car, and they got themselves to the village. Most wizards didn't have cars--they Apparated, or traveled by fireplace, or used broomsticks. Philip and Gregory were quite keen on broomsticks, because they were also keen on Quidditch. Cressida and Rowena agreed that brooms were fun the way horses were fun, you rode them, and you did tricks and enjoyed yourself, but they weren't really /transportation/. All four did race around the gardens sometimes. Gregory usually won, if they were just going for speed. Philip was a Seeker for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and could do all sorts of wonderful maneuvers in the air--James had taught him most of them, because he'd been the Seeker all the way up until he graduated. Rowena was more interested in figuring out how to do spells and complicated things while riding. Cressida was somewhere in between them all.

They spent a pleasant afternoon looking for baby things for the Potters. Cressida found a blanket that would snuggle around a child and make sure it didn't fall out of its crib. Rowena thought it might rather have something to play with, and bought a teddy bear that could mimic the parents' voices, so it could soothe a crying infant back to sleep without the mum and dad having to get out of bed. They bought some gingerbread men for themselves, and when they'd finally wrestled the little creatures to the counter and eaten them, they were feeling quite pleased with themselves.

"Well, well, it's both the Miss Chants. Afternoon, Cressida, Rowena. And you've got gingerbread on your face." The voice could not decide whether to be friendly or nasty. Neither could the person it belonged to. There was Lucius Malfoy walking with Severus Snape. Malfoy was used to being nasty to people, but he was always polite to the Chants. He respected old wizard families with lots of power and money, and he respected Chrestomanci and his family as having all these things. He had also been in love with Cressida for most of their school years.

"Hello, Cressida. Cat," said Snape. He always called Rowena 'Cat,' with a little curl of his lips as if it were an insult. It was because she had nine lives. He didn't understand that she didn't mind being called it at all. Her great-great-grandfather had been called Cat (though his real name was Eric) for the same reason, and he was one of the greatest Chrestomancis in history. But she knew that while Snape didn't necessarily /mind/ her, he didn't like her enough that he would keep calling her Cat if she told him she preferred it, so she kept that to herself.

She did wipe the crumbs off her face with her sleeve, though.

"Out shopping?" Lucius Malfoy asked innocently.

Cressida nodded, holding up her bags. "Baby presents for Lily and James."

Malfoy nodded, acknowledging. He had something he desperately wanted to say; Rowena could see it trying to burst out of his lips while he was trying to find just the right way to let whatever it was out.

"How about you?" Cressida asked politely. "Just wandering?"

That was a good enough opportunity for Malfoy, apparently. "Oh, just spending some time with the fellows, before it all has to stop. I'm getting married, you know."

"Really?" asked Cressida, and there was a little note of relief in her voice. "Congratulations."

Malfoy nodded again. "Do you know Narcissa? We're getting married next week."

Cressida paused, as if she wanted to point something out, but wasn't sure it was polite. She did it anyway. "She's your cousin, isn't she?"

Malfoy's eyes narrowed. "That hardly matters...it happens once or twice in /all/ the old families, I'm told."

Cressida just nodded. It had happened once or twice in the Chant family as well. "Well, congratulations. I'm sure you'll be happy." She sounded so sincere that Malfoy actually looked surprised, and he thrust his hand toward her awkwardly.

"Well, thanks."

They shook hands, and then they all stood there looking at each other awkwardly before Cressida jumped up and said, "It's later than I thought! We have to get the car back so Arnold can wash it--" and dragged Rowena off, everyone looking relieved that the conversation was over.

"Imagine!" Cress snorted as they climbed into the car. "You know what he's at, don't you, marrying his cousin like that."

"Of course," said Rowena. She was a Ravenclaw and a Chant after all, she knew a lot of things. "Cousins having children doubles the chances the children will be enchanters. Especially in old magic families like Malfoys." And Chants. Great-great-grandfather Cat's parents had been cousins, too.

"Hmph. He's hoping for more than that, I'll bet you. He wants their baby to have nine lives, too...he'd love to have the next Chrestomanci in his family." Cressida sounded more and more like she simply did not approve of Malfoys.

Rowena shrugged. "But it won't matter, will it? There are never that many nine-lived enchanters in one world at the same time. He can try as hard as he wants, and it won't make any difference. Besides," she added, her face breaking into a wicked grin, "that's my job, and I'm certainly not going to give it up to some squalling stupid messy baby, even if it /did/ come out with nine lives somehow."

Cressida laughed, and drove them back home, where they spent until dinner finding fun things to wrap the presents in.

They eventually gave the presents to Lily and James, who even more eventually had a baby named Harry. Voldemort and his Death-Eaters continued killing Muggles and wizards and anybody else they felt like killing. The Ministry still had not remembered to summon Chrestomanci.

Then Voldemort made his final move.

Everyone with so much as a sliver of witch-sense knew it was happening. The ghosts knew. The gardens knew. The cats knew. Rowena wondered if it was too late to write "Say this three times: KRES-TOH-MAN-SEE" on a piece of paper and conjure it up in front of one of the Ministers of Magic, when Cressida burst into her room, waving a letter wildly in her hand.

"Ro! He's gone after Lily and James, help me find them!"

"What?" She was more than willing to help, if Cress would explain very quickly what was going on. And Cress did. Lily and James had gone into hiding, and used a Fidelius charm to keep their location a secret--which made it a secret from everyone, including Cressida.

"But he's going to find them--I was playing Patience with the divining cards, just to keep my mind off things--I have to get to them first so I can help!" She slapped the paper down onto Rowena's desk. It was a thank-you note for the baby presents, to which Lily and James had each carefully signed their names. "/I/ can't sneak past it--normal people can't, even enchanters, that's the point of the whole thing. But you or Dad could I think, only /he/ can't because he's still sworn not to get involved unless they ask him--you're not though, because you're not Chrestomanci yet, so here's their signatures, FIND THEM!"

Rowena set her hand down purposefully on top of the signatures. Under regular circumstances, it would have been an easy matter to locate anyone this way, but the Fidelius charm lay like a thick wool blanket over them, protecting. //A wool blanket, hm? I can get around that.// Rowena narrowed herself to a point, like a tiny magical invisible needle, and got to work as fast as she could, unraveling a little hole in it. //Just for me,// she told it firmly. //Nobody else can use this, not even on this exact same letter--just me.// It would not do any good for her to reveal the Potters' hiding place to the wrong people before she even found it herself.

And finally she did. They were hiding in their house. She did a very quick patch job on the hole in the charm, and stood up from the desk. "All right then," she said. "I've found them, I'm going."

"/You're/ going?" Cressida repeated. "You bloody well are not, you're staying right here. I said find them and tell /me/--"

"Well I'm not telling you," Rowena answered crossly, "because you'll follow me. Look, if they're in as much danger as you say, then I should go--I should anyway, because just like you said, Papa can't, so I'm the only nine-lived enchanter left in the world. I can spare one or two fighting him, and you can't."

It wasn't that she wanted to go fight Voldemort, or that she was really as free with her lives as she made it sound. She would, if she really felt in her heart that she had a choice, barricade herself in her room in the well-defended Chrestomanci Castle and wait till it was all over. But she couldn't. It was something she /knew/, very deep inside herself, that it was going to be her job for the rest of all her lives to protect people from Dark Wizards, and even if she was only fourteen, it seemed she was being called to duty a little ahead of schedule.

"All right," Cressida said after a moment. "I hate to admit it and let you go put yourself in danger, but you're right. Go on then." Her lips were tight and tense, and there were lines around her eyes. She was very, very worried. Rowena pulled on a sweater and conjured her broomstick right into her hand. She threw one blue-jeaned leg over, and pushed off from the ground, and went soaring out the window.

It was dark, almost too dark to see where she was going once she got off the castle grounds and left the garden lamps behind. A light spell was pointless, since in order to make it bright enough to actually see far enough ahead to navigate, she may as well paint a big glowing sign on her back: "SHOOT HERE."

Her fingers curled around the broomstick handle. She told it that it was a very clever broom, and would not run into anything or get lost. The broom, eager to show off its new intelligence, zipped off even faster into the darkness. Rowena hung on tighter. It was cold, this high, and the wind in her face made her eyes dry out.

She did not find Lily and James Potter before Voldemort did. She did, however, find them before anybody had been killed, though the Dark Wizard, it seemed, was just about to blast a very large hole in the front door. Rowena and her broom flew careening downward toward him. She was suddenly very, very afraid. What had seemed, an hour ago, to be not only noble but necessary, now appeared rash and foolish--but still necessary, and that steel part inside that said she /had/ to do it had not weakened at all. She hooked her leg around her broom so she wouldn't fall off even if she lost her balance, and pulled her wand out of her sleeve.

She leveled it carefully at Voldemort, who wasn't looking at her, and murmured a word. Light flashed out of the tip of the wand with a noise like a great growling tiger and slammed into the Dark Wizard from behind. He toppled, lost his balance, started to fall--but he was up again a second later, and firm on his feet, and now his attention was focused on the dark-haired girl on her broomstick instead of the Potters' front door.

"Children, now," he muttered. "Go away, run back to your mother before you get hurt." He waved his hand, and Rowena's wand broke with a loud *snap*. Little blue-white sparks spattered and sizzled out of the broken place.

Rowena felt anger rising in her chest. Ever since she was four years old, people had taken her seriously--or at least her power, even if they weren't always sure her mind had caught up to it yet. She did not like the way the Most Evil Enchanter Ever turned his back on her as if he wasn't worried. He /should/ be worried.

She let the wand drop to the ground. She didn't need it anyway, wands were something they taught you to use at Hogwart's because it helped you to focus, and added something to your power. She didn't need focus, and her raw power was quite formidable when it wasn't being channeled through a small rod of holly.

//You are not going through that door,// she told Voldemort silently. He waved his wand at it, irritated that something seemed to be blocking his breaking it down. //You will not go through that door and you won't kill anybody else.// She didn't put the rest of it into words, just gathered all the magic that was flooding through her into a great ball and launched it at him, out of her hands. It knocked him down this time; he fell with a clatter and a great loud whine against the wall of the Potters' house. His hands came up to his head, and he was without his wand for a moment.

"Brat!" He screeched. It seemed to hurt his throat to say. He shook his hands at her--he didn't need a wand either, but the effect was opposite--where her power was stronger without being channeled, his was weaker without the amplifier. Rowena ducked from the bolt of energy aimed at her chest, and lost her balance. She was hanging upside down by her leg on her broomstick now, and it was an entirely odd angle to be watching from. Voldemort looked smaller, upside down. He was going for his wand. He thought he'd bought himself time, that she would have to climb back up and sit properly before attacking him again. She didn't. Another great burst of magic--shot out of her mouth this time, because she was holding on to her broomstick handle. It didn't matter where it came from. It slammed into Voldemort just as he retrieved his wand, and he crashed against the house again. She could see he was weaker; it was in the way his image shifted before her eyes as if he were made of water. She felt triumph rising in her throat, magic coursing through her body. He was weaker, but she was not. She could keep on throwing magic at him, again and again, until he stopped moving entirely or somebody showed up to help her out.

He didn't get up this time, but remained crouched against the side of the house, on top of Lily's crushed bed of pansies. He was still moving, so Rowena knew he wasn't dead, but she took the moment to clamber back upright on top of her broomstick. The blood was rushing to her head and she was getting dizzy, upside-down.

When she looked at him again, he had his wand pointed at her, and was mouthing two very evil sounding words.

"Avada Kedavra."

There was never a counterspell for the Killing Curse, or any way to shield from it. It hit Rowena in the side of her neck.

She thought it would hurt more, dying. It didn't. She saw it coming at her, had time to almost finish a thought of //well I weakened him at least now Lily can fini--// and then she just /wasn't/, anymore. Wasn't conscious, wasn't moving, wasn't breathing, wasn't alive. Her fingers lost their grip on the broom handle and she toppled backward, then her body fell to a crumpled heap on the ground twenty feet below.

Eventually, she woke up. It was still dark, and the whole place smelled like blood. Something very tall and bulky was standing nearby, making shadows loom where it should have been too dark even for shadows. Rowena stood up, very slowly. She was sore.

The bulky thing turned, and she very nearly shot magic at it, but realised in time to stop herself that it was only Hagrid. He was holding something very, very small in his arms.

"What--who is it?" He sounded angry, and very ready to kill her if she ended up being the wrong person.

"Lumos," she murmured, and the place lit up even though she didn't have her wand.

"Student?" Hagrid sounded confused, until he got a better look at her when she moved closer to retrieve her wand. It was in one piece again. Perhaps a wand with a whisker from an Asheth Temple cat had nine lives, too. A low rumble of acknowledgement came from his chest. "Rowena Chant. Might've known. You all right then?"

She nodded, and slid the wand back into her sleeve, and patted herself over. For having fallen off a flying broomstick and being hit with the Killing Curse, one might say she was doing remarkably well. "Fine. I've never died before," she admitted. "Is it all over, then?"

Hagrid nodded.

A broad smile broke across Rowena's face. "Oh, good! I couldn't finish him off, in the end, but I did knock him down a few times--thought that would be enough for James and Lily to take care of the rest on their own--" Something in his face stopped her, though, and she took a closer look--with witch-sight, of course--at the blood covering the place.

She got very, very quiet for a moment. "They're dead though, aren't they?"

Hagrid nodded again. She took a closer look at the thing in his arms, too, and realised it was the Potters' baby. /He/ wasn't dead, at least.

"That's Harry, isn't it?" Another nod. "Can I...?" She began pleadingly, and after scowling for a moment, he nodded and passed the baby into her arms.

Harry Potter was not a happy looking baby at that moment, but then she supposed that was to be expected. His face was scrunched up as if he really wanted to cry but couldn't remember how. He had wispy dark hair sticking out of his head. And right in the middle of his forehead, he had a lightning-bolt shaped mark.

"Don't know what happened," Hagrid explained with a long tired breath. "He got James, and then Lily, but when he tried to put the curse on the boy, it turned right back on him and hit him good."

Rowena stifled a moment of very uncharitable jealousy that this tiny creature had been able to defeat Voldemort and she hadn't. She discarded it immediately, ashamed to have had it at all--but checked very quickly and carefully, just in case, to make sure he only had one life. He did.

He was, however, most definitely a powerful enchanter.

"Special kid," she said softly, brushing little Harry's hair closer to his head. As soon as she said it, it came flooding over her that 'special' was not going to be nearly enough to make up for everything that had, and would, happen to this baby. And as strong as that was the realisation that Lily and James were dead. Her sister's best friends were dead.

She might have helped, weakening Voldemort the way she did. But she'd failed Cressida completely, in the end.

She handed Harry back to Hagrid. "I have to go home," she said. He didn't say anything, and she climbed back on her broomstick. It was still clever enough to find its way home--apparently, her dying hadn't broken that, anyway. She didn't try to sneak in, just went through the front door. Papa and Mama were there, looking worried and desperate and sad and a little proud. Cressida was there, looking hopeful.

"Ro--" It was a question, even if it wasn't more than a syllable.

She shook her head. "Eight, now," she said. "And baby Harry's still alive. He's the one who got Voldemort in the end."

Cressida understood, but needed to make sure. "Lily...?"

Rowena shook her head again. Cressida threw both arms around her, and slumped to the floor, and burst into tears.

***

In the end, Rowena decided people didn't take her seriously enough after all. They certain didn't listen to her.

She said that the Chants ought to take in baby Harry, since he didn't have any other wizarding relatives, but Dumbledore was determined to send him to his Muggle aunt and uncle. Cressida and Rowena had nothing against Muggles, but they'd heard awful things about Vernon and Petunia Dursley from Lily, and didn't think Harry ought to have to live there. He went anyway.

She said that Sirius Black hadn't betrayed James and Lily Potter. She /knew/, deep down in the bottom of her gut, the same way she knew when she was ten that she was in love with him. Nobody believed her. They had evidence, they said, and they didn't consider the way she said she /knew/ to be evidence.

They knew it was traumatising, they said. They were sorry she had to go through all this, and that she'd died. They sent Sirius to Azkaban anyway. They did say they were sorry they hadn't remembered how to call Chrestomanci sooner, but that was in quiet embarrassed voices. Cressida was not ready to forgive them yet. She believed Rowena, though that might have been just because she wanted to, because Remus had disappeared and Peter and James and Lily were dead and she was losing all her friends at once.

//I know you didn't do it,// she told Sirius, when they were walking him away. He glanced up at her, as if he'd heard. She didn't get a chance to make sure, because Severus Snape stood up at that point, and his great tall body was blocking her line of vision. He looked down at her, and took in her stricken glare, and actually looked sympathetic for a moment as he put a hand on her shoulder before he walked away.

"I know it's not easy on you." Dumbledore was sitting in front of her, and he'd turned around to pin her to her seat with his eyes. He really was sympathetic, even though he didn't believe her /knowing/ either. "It's been very trying, very trying for everybody. But it's over now, and it really is for the best."

It wasn't over, and they both knew it. He was trying to make it seem like this was as easy to fix and put behind as re-ordering a few days out of the week. It wasn't. She turned around without saying anything and watched as they finished dragging Sirius away, even though he hadn't done it, and not taking her seriously, just like Voldemort.

It was not the same kind of death as the first one. It didn't cost a real life, in the physical sense that the first one did.

But it hurt so very much more.