Pandora's Box

Harry2 sat at the kitchen island with his Charms homework spread out before him. The hand where Ember Death rested ached dully, but he was used to it. Ember Death used to burn white on his skin, stark and burning at impossible temperatures that only his fire demon body could withstand before it finally cooled down and he could revert to his human form. That had been amusing, flitting around Hogwarts with scarlet runes of flames imbedded in his skin with his eyes burning and his hair little more than living fire that danced upon his scalp. Harry2 rather enjoyed the look on Draco’s face when he first appeared, to say nothing of how Professor Snape stayed as far back from Harry2 as he could possibly get away with while teaching Potions.

Harry2 paused in his homework to grin at that thought. Hermione had rather liked him near; she usually kept the cauldron perched on his head because he could control his body temperatures to a certain degree (literally and figuratively). Harry2’s grin disappeared into a frown. Of course, Fred and George, with their roasting sticks and packages of marshmallows, took matters a little too far . . .

With a resigned sigh, Harry2 went back to doing his Charms homework. In the background, he could hear Marcia singing an off-tune bawdy song as she splashed about in the bathtub (no doubt playing with the Rubber Ducky set Dumbledore gave her for Christmas two years ago). Harry2 dipped his quill into the inkwell before resuming his Charms paper for Professor Flitwick. After a moment of writing, he opened his Charms book and sifted through it quickly for a reference. As he went back to writing his paper, there was a gigantic splash and Marcia’s singing ended in an abrupt, outraged scream.

“THERE’S A NAKED MAN IN MY BATHTUB!”

Harry2 jumped in surprise, more from what Marcia had proclaimed to the entire house rather than the volume. He quickly stood up and took two steps to the direction of the scream before he heard his mom laugh.

“All right! My very own boytoy! C’mere you!”

At the sound of that, Harry2 instantly reteated to the table to grab his school supplies, and hurried from the premises. There was a loud crash from the bathroom and Marcia’s laughter's filled the air. Harry sat down on the front doorstop and settled down to finish his homework away from the noise.

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“M-my Hawwry!” Harry shuddered as the hands continued to pet, hug, and otherwise touch him with a mixture of love and disbelief. “No’ dead!” The person laughed joyfully and patted Harry’s face. “M-my Hawwry ish n-no’ dead!”

Harry did not know whether to laugh or to cry at the person’s clumsy display of overjoyed affection and wonder. “I’m going to be very soon though,” he grumbled finally as he decided to opt for a nasty mood. The person flinched at the tone and Harry nearly apologized.

Nearly. “That woman is going to make me a vessel so Voldemort has something to come back to. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t believe there is enough room in my body for two of us so one of us will have to go--most likely, me. I don’t know where I’ll go though, so I might wind up being dead.” He sighed and relaxed suddenly. The tension in his body floated away with the haze the numerous candles created. “I want to get out of here,” he whispered softly as he yanked uselessly at the bonds around his wrists.

The person sniffled and patted Harry’s arm. “I’s get you ou’,” the person said. The person tugged continuously against Harry’s bonds, all the while crooning like a small toddler who was trying not to forget what his mother had just told him. “I’s get you ou’. I’s a g-good boy.” Harry watched as twisted fingers jerked and tugged at the shackles that held his hands and feet securely to the cold slab of stone. Well, that solved what gender the person was. Harry still had the sneaking suspicion that he did not want to know who the person was, but he knew he would learn if he ever got away.

When he got away. Harry had to keep an optimistic view here; otherwise he would be too depressed to try running away.

“I’s get y-you ou’.” The fingers tugged at one of the shackles and they opened beneath his insistent fingers. “S-see?” Harry could not help but pat the pathetic little man on the head with his free hand for the show of delightfulness gained from succeeding. When that was done, he quailed the urge to rub his hand across his bare leg to clean it, and then began to work on the other.

A large shadow loomed above them. Harry froze. The pathetic little man squeaked and stumbled backwards. He hastily crawled over to the green woman’s legs and hugged them. “Are you a bad boy?” she asked gently with a pat on the head. The pathetic little man nodded once and whimpered. “Well, I did not sssay you ssshouldn’t releassse him, ssso it wasss my fault, I imagine,” she said. The man pressed one finger uncertainly to what Harry supposed was his upper lip. Harry wanted to scream and run as far away from the woman as he possibly could or, if that was not successful, give himself a heart attack and die on the spot. He did not like her. She felt wrong, like a person who was dying from cancer felt wrong.

“And asss for you . . .” The woman, very gently, wrapped her gigantic fingers around Harry’s arm and drew it back to the spot it had been shackled. Ignoring the searing of flesh inflicted upon her from touching Harry’s skin, she swiftly secured his hand and then gave his cheek an affectionate pat. “I would be most disssappointed if you ran away,” she said lightly. She frowned down at the pathetic little man who still hugged himself against her legs. The man flinched violently, and whimpered again as he wrapped his arms around her legs. “You sssee,” the woman turned back to Harry and smiled as she crossed her huge arms before herself, “you are our guessst of honor! We cannot bring back the Massster, my Voldemort, if you are not here!”

She smiled. Had she been anyone else, with normal peach-colored skin, hair, and non-snake-like eyes, she might have seemed innocent. Yet the inhuman qualities she possessed gave Harry the impression she was something akin to a smiling insane homicidal maniac who playfully hid a very sharp axe behind her back. “Sssoon,” she promised as she stepped away.

The pathetic little man whimpered as she once again left the room, and then threw himself across Harry’s body as he frantically scrambled to undo the shackles. “Gotta getcha ou’!” he sobbed as he touched one of the shackles. A spark of lightening leapt off the shackle and slammed against the man’s flesh. The man howled and fell backwards. He scrambled away from Harry and sucked on the blackened area thoughtfully. “Gotta getcha ou’,” he said again. He moved close to Harry again and tentatively touched one of the shackles around Harry’s left foot. That zapped him too.

“Why can’t we use magic?” Harry finally asked.

The man was still for a moment before he went into a fit of violent shaking. “N-n-n-n-n-n-nooooo!”

Harry ignored him. He twisted his head to look at the shackles around his wrist. He knew it was possible to do magic without a wand, as there were several times in his youth where he was able to perform some magic without knowing he did. His hair, the glass window at the zoo just before he turned eleven, blowing up Aunt Marge . . . He stared at the shackles and concentrated fiercely. Uncle Severus would have been proud of him.

“Aloha--” BZZAAAAPPPP!!

Harry’s body bucked beneath the huge shock and pain triggered by the heavy flow of blue lightening that sizzled from one end of his body to the other. Muscles contracted and spasms wracked his body. Each nerve came alive to acknowledge the endless sweep of red-hot agony. Time was stretched into forever in that moment. That crushing pressure when he had been trapped between two realities was only a pinprick compared to this impaling.

“Nah, ah, ah!” The woman’s voice drifted through the air. “I sssaid I would be disssappointed if you tried to essscape, and sssince you decided you would rather not lisssten to me, you ssshall be punissshed.”

His chest constricted and refused to expand. Harry fought against the wave of blackness that threatened to overwhelm him from the lack of oxygen. He felt his heart give one final thud before quitting. Arched against his constraints, his body reacting to the onslaught of pain by trying to escape it, the only things that seemed to move were his fingers. They clenched and unclenched, shook with painful tremors, and gripped the edges of the stone slab until bone showed through the shockingly pale skin.

Harry stared into the endless darkness above him. Take me, he thought desperately to it. Take me now! From here, away, please!

Even as he desperately sought to flee the torrent of pain, even as his vision swam and multi-colored spots danced in his vision, even as his body jerked from both the pain and dire need for air, he felt his conscience firmly anchored to his body. He clawed frantically to break free of the anchor, hoping against hope that he could perhaps reach Harry2, or even the dark man whose power was beyond anything he knew.

In his swimming vision, he beheld a soggy vision of the Bloody Baron and Cousin Quigley. White mist flowed about the two figures. It obscured and distorted certain features. Overlaying them was a pair of masculine hands that hovered over and caressed the scene. It distantly reminded Harry of how Professor Trelawney waved her hands over her crystal ball.

Harry watched with detached interest as Cousin Quigley straightened four ribbons. He twined them through his fingers before he pulled them taut between his hands and held them out to the Bloody Baron. The Bloody Baron studied the ribbons for a moment, and then stepped back. His sword appeared in his hands. Cousin Quigley visibly gulped and screwed his eyes shut. His hands shook slightly from fear. The Bloody Baron snorted and slashed downward with his sword. He sliced directly through the four ribbons, and the hands that overlaid the scene froze. The fingers flared wide and then the hands moved to blot the vision out.

Strength flowed suddenly through Harry’s limbs. He heaved against his bonds and, one by one, they shattered. The flowing electricity stopped as Harry toppled off the stone slab, knocking over more than a dozen candles. Molten wax splattered on his super-sensitive skin. As he hit the cold floor, Harry managed to tuck and roll. When he came to a halt, his body shuddered with the after-tremors of pain. He barely had time to register what he had just done when the pathetic little man descended upon him.

“Go!” the man cried as he tugged at one of Harry’s limp arms. His voice seemed to have lost a little of the simple tone from earlier. “Go n-now!” He pulled Harry to his feet and they stumbled together to another part of the cavern, away from the door that the woman had exited through both times. Harry’s head rolled lethargically about as he struggled to gain his footing. His muscles refused to obey him. His harsh breaths, small groans of pain, pounding heart, and footsteps, were all he could hear above the high-pitched ringing that filled his ears. He clutched desperately at the man’s shoulder and whimpered.

A dull roar filled the otherwise silent exterior. The man Harry leaned against whimpered and quickened his pace. Harry squinted into the darkness. At least he had his glasses, which he supposed it was something to be grateful about since they were not broken. He could see the outline of the wall of the cavern room looming ahead. The lines and seams where ceiling met wall met floor stood out with a slightly darker color.

The roar grew greater as they stumbled to a corner. “C-careful,” the man said as he wrapped his arms firmly around Harry’s waist. The man stomped his foot twice on the floor. The floor beneath them gave way. Harry squeaked and seized the man’s arms as they fell downward.

They hit moving water feet first, and plunged beneath it before bobbing to the surface. Too surprise to even breath when he was submerged, Harry drew in a painful breath.

That was when the surrounding stench hit Harry, much like Severus the ghost’s cauldron had over the heads of the attackers at Hogwarts.

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Francis watched as Severus tossed the bodies and the individual body parts Draco had hacked off in his battle frenzy out the room’s one window to the lake below. They both chose to ignore the scream of those persons whom Severus had conked over the head with his cauldron as they awoke to find themselves a surprise dinner to the giant squid that still lived in the lake. During the entire time, Severus muttered something about how he knew this student would never have amounted to much; he could hardly expect more from this student after he blew up his cauldron in his seventh year; this student definitely possessed a poor enough taste to join the dark side; this student was always a bit pathetic anyway; and dear God, this kid’s mother had been a student whom Severus had ardently hoped would get her tubes tied to prevent breeding!

Francis said nothing as he turned his eyes from the blood-drenched area of the room to the wall on the other side where the woman he had stunned lay on her side. She had come to a few moments before the retreat was called, but Francis froze her with a handy little spell that he knew would keep her still for a long while, yet not cause any long-term damage. Not that he was sure it would do any of them any good once Severus finally noticed her. She watched all that took place with wide, round eyes. Francis himself was unsure of what was going on. He decided it was best to ask Draco what he thought happened. It was obvious this had been a surprise attack, and one Draco was currently winning.

As if to add emphasis to Francis’ thoughts, there was a gigantic boom from another part of the castle where another of Draco’s many traps was sprung by some misshapen attacker or rat. But why was there a retreat called? It seemed to Francis that, if this Queen Snake Bitch was truly as horrible and ruthless as Draco claimed, then she would not have called a retreat merely because of two people (well, one person and a ghost) were retaliating in what Francis had thought to be rather magnificently.

And that was all and well, but perhaps this may have had something to do with Harry, as Francis was sure, since everything had something to do with Harry. Still, Francis did feel that something was very, very wrong even if Harry was not back yet, and he said so to Severus.

“This entire place is wrong,” Severus replied as he gathered together the potion ingredients that had been scattered in the fight. “There isn’t a single thing that is right. Too many things have been changed, and the time jump from this reality and the last reality is off, so something happened in our jump to have knocked us off the path.”

Francis had thought of that as well, when they first met Draco and he had tried to think of a reasonable explanation as to why Harry had not followed them through the Mirror of Rebounds. Though the place felt wrong, Francis believed they were still on the right track. The Mirror of Rebounds seemed to have a mind of its own (or at least something with a mind was controlling it to the point of leading the others where that mind wanted them to go, whom Francis supposed was Pandora), and if they were here, then he supposed this was where they were supposed to be.

Francis again looked over to the spot where the woman still was. Severus did not seem to notice her, and he wondered if he should speak up. If he mentioned it, then Severus would probably fling her out the window as well. As Francis contemplated the matter, Draco, huffing, puffing and drenched in blood and sweat, entered the room through the new hole in the wall.

“They have never attacked here before Voldemort died,” Draco snarled. “If it weren’t for the fact they’ve always bitten their tongue off and bled to death before I could get information from them, I’d have known why the Bitch Queen’s people attacked us.”

Francis looked across the room at the woman again. Her body was as stiff as a board and he knew she was incapable of biting her tongue off. “Maybe you can get her to talk,” he said as he pointed at her. Severus and Draco frowned at the sight of her.

“No good,” Draco said finally. “The only way we’ll get her to talk once that spell wears off is if one of us casts the Imperius Curse and, well, let’s just say I have no desire to stoop to their level.” He glared daggers at the woman. “We’ll just kill her,” he said finally as he began to slide his sword out of his scabbard.

“Wait.” Severus floated towards the woman, picked her stiff body up, and leaned her against the wall. “I think . . .” He studied her for a long moment as he stood directly in her line of vision. His overpowering presence clearly intimidated the woman. Sweat began to bead at the line of her forehead.

Severus the Ghost became, once more, the Potions Master of Hogwarts Dungeons and the Bane of Existence To All Longbottom-like Persons Everywhere. “Yyyeeeeesss.” He drew the word out slowly as his eyes narrowed and his head bent forward. Even with his errant curls and the fact that he was transparent, Professor Snape still managed to convey the sense that he was superior to this genetic accident of a miscreant. “Alice Kuderoy, Ravenclaw, left in 1989.” He tilted his head to the side as he regarded her closely. “Blew up her cauldron as she tried to create a simple laughing draught in her first year, poisoned half her class in the second year, caught shagging the Head Boy in her fourth on my desk, and was finally expelled in her sixth year for cheating. One of the Sorting Hat’s many jokes, I am sure.” He waved his hand at Francis and Draco without looking away. “Leave her to me,” he said ominously as he folded his hands behind his back. The woman’s eyes grew fractionally wider as Francis and Draco swiftly retreated through the hole in the wall.

“You know,” said Francis casually, “I am very glad I never had him for my Potions instructor.”

“Well,” said Draco just as casually, “it’s not so bad if you were a Slytherin. Since he was our Head of House, he generally overlooked many of our, ah, transgressions.”

Francis’ brain automatically translated that to spoiling the kids utterly and completely rotten. They leaned against the wall beside the hole. Not a sound was heard from the room they had vacated at Severus’ request, and silence seemed to loom above them like a lurking beast.

“Sooooo . . .” Francis sought to find something to discuss. What’s the weather like? was a rather unsuitable topic. “How did you and Harry, uh, um . . . When did you and Harry first start getting along?” he asked finally after stumbling over his words and memories of one certain reality where Draco Malfoy had been carrying on a duo fling with both Harry Potter and Severus Snape.

Draco looked at Francis with amusement apparent in his eyes. “It all happened in our seventh year here at Hogwarts,” he said finally with a wide flourish of his hands. “We got into a fight in Potions, spilled each other’s cauldrons all over each other, looked into one another’s eyes, and knew, at that moment, we were made for each other.” Francis stared in disbelief. “Of course,” Draco added offhandedly, “if we hadn’t been brewing love potions on account of it being the day before Valentine’s Day, there might have been a different story altogether.”

A scream came from the room. Francis flinched, but Draco did not even blink. After another moment of silence, Francis nervously cleared his throat and turned back to Draco. “So that was all?” he asked. “A simple love potion?”

Draco shrugged. “Professor Dumbledore decided it was the perfect occasion for the two of us to get to know one another. Personally, I thought he saw it as a chance that maybe we might learn to get along.” He frowned. “Of course, that was before we learned of the betting pool going on with the teachers.”

“What sort of betting pool?”

“They were taking bets on when we’d actually do it.”

“Do what?”

“It.” Draco looked pointedly at Francis.

Francis had an embarrassing flashback of multiple realities and all the rooms he, Severus, and Harry made the mistake of entering without knocking. There were several times when he remembered How Mother Knew Best, and Manners Could Save Your Life. He rolled his eyes upward. Somewhere, in some reality, he was sure his mother was laughing at him. Yes, he could imagine the old bat rocking in her chair, laughing herself sick over the messes Francis always seemed to get into. Aware of how much Harry possessed the Potter features, Francis glanced uneasily at Draco out of the corner of his eye, and carefully edged away from him.

“A knut for your thoughts,” Draco said when he noticed how warily Francis moved away from him.

“It sounds too easy,” Francis said suddenly.

“Hmmm?”

“Your getting along. It sounds too easy. From what Harry told me, you two hated each other. And along comes a simple love potion and you two fall for each other?” It sounded too much like Snapes’ and Harry’s relationship in about three or four of the realities they had skipped through earlier. “And Severus does not seem to be the sort of person to have a class of hormonal-charged teenagers make love potions. That’s a recipe for disaster!”

Draco blinked. “Well, I did try to poison Harry the first day, and he tried to push me off my broom the second, and the week following that we were both in denial, and the week following that, we were siccing each other’s friends on one another, and then Dumbledore locked us together in a closet until we managed to find one nice thing to honestly say about each other, and then another week of denial passed before we were locked in the closet again to honestly say a dozen nice things about one another. And then we were chained together in Transfigurations and the only way the chains would fall off is if we managed to work together as a team, and as soon as they did fall off we attacked each other and I managed to sock Harry one when McGonagall tried to pull us apart and in the scuffle we somehow managed to tear her skirt off so the entire class saw her in her very outdated knickers.” Draco took a deep breath. “From there, we worked together to avoid her the best we could, and that was when we started to get along.”

Draco fell silent then, which was just as well because Francis remembered a time when he saw Minerva McGonagall in her knickers and not much else, and it had been when he Transfigured the door to the girls’ shower room into a feather to prove that he could, and that had been when Minerva was getting ready to take a shower.

She had not been a very happy person. Neither, for that matter, was Pandora when she learned. Francis had a rather vague recollection of her crying about how he had cheated on her and they hadn’t even gotten married yet. It earned him visits from both Cousin Quigley (who cried at having to bother Francis) and the Bloody Baron (who threatened him with all sorts of bodily harm in one moment, and laughed in the next moment at the idea of Minerva McGonagall being caught, quite literally, with her ‘trousers’ down).

It was at that moment, which Francis was quite grateful for, that Severus drifted through the wall. “I have found what I wanted to know,” he said smoothly as he refrained from saying anything about how quickly both Francis and Draco backed away from him. “The idiot in the other room--or rather, the idiot who was formally in the room but is now swimming with the squid--attacked Hogwarts with the others because Nagini, also known as the Queen Snake Bitch, decided that it was time to finally squash the pestering little rebels who annoyed her. The reason why she called them back was because the Bitch sent out commands along the mental link everyone shared with her. Most of the people lost it in the heated frenzy of the battle, but due to our lovely Miss Alice not being caught in that, she heard the command loud and clear. The Queen wanted everyone to be gathered close for a ceremony to bring Voldemort back. Apparently she has found a suitable host.”

Color drained from Draco’s face. “She found a suitable host for Voldemort? We can’t let him come back.” He whirled around on his heel. “We have to stop her!”

Francis and Severus hurried to catch up with Draco as he stormed through the castle corridors. “I’ll outfit you two,” Draco said over his shoulder, “so you can fight with me. We’ll get Black and Lupin together to help us, and if we launch a surprise attack, we should be able to distract the Snake Bitch long enough to either kill or run off with the host.”

“Um, isn’t that a suicidal mission?” Francis asked. Draco stopped and turned around to face Francis so quickly that Francis nearly ran into him and Severus floated through both, a chilling wave of cold that caused Francis’ hair to stand on end.

“Well, you’re supposed to be dead,” Draco said evenly. “And Professor Snape here is dead. I hardly see the difference it makes. Besides, everyone knows that the heroes always come out alive in the end of suicidal missions.” He placed his hands on his hips and grinned widely.

“They do?”

“Of course. It’s all apart of being a hero, especially a redeemed evil guy like me.” Draco turned and sped down the hallway again. “Watch the trap!” he yelled as he pointed at a flagstone and leapt over it.

“Actually, I always thought that concept to be a bit more along the line of cheesy,” Francis grumbled as he hurried after Draco. He made sure to avoid the trap Draco warned against.

“You mean our entire adventure isn’t cheesy?” Severus dryly asked behind him. “It fits well with the pattern of our life.”

“And what, pray tell, is that pattern?”

“Someone High Up is mucking about with our lives and laughing the entire time.”

“Ah.”

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The Bloody Baron cocked his head to the side. “That sounds about right,” he said.

Cousin Quigley stared mournfully at the vinegar drink the Bloody Baron had mixed for him so he could be weaned from alcohol. “What does?” he asked as he cautiously spilled the drink behind himself when the Bloody Baron was not looking. “Mucking about with their lives or laughing at them?”

“You do all the muck-ups.”

“And you’re the one who laughs.”

They stared at one another before looking away. “You know, that son of yours is uncanny when it comes to learning of such matters,” the Bloody Baron said bemusedly.

Cousin Quigley shrugged and gave a forlorn sigh. “He takes after his mother in that aspect.”

“Before or after she ran off with the Muggle neighbor’s scalp?”

Cousin Quigley choked. “White Rabbit did what?”

“Hmm? Oh. You really were not to learn of that.”

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Harry2 had made a great deal of progress in his Potions homework. He had moved from drawing inane, sloppy little doodles of Professor Snape dying very bloody deaths at the hands of a few of his violent and animalistic relatives (at least, the ones who were very violent and more animalistic than the majority since the family was, of course, made up of demons and druids and miscellaneous unmentionables), before he moved on to actually reading his assignment. To be honest, he only did so because he ran out of red ink.

He jumped in surprise as the kitchen door behind him swung open and Marcia stepped up beside him. Her faded pink bathrobe was wrapped close around her diminutive body. She held a Dore carefully in one hand. “You know,” she said as she held the Dore out to Harry2, “it just occurred to me that it might not be an entirely good thing that a naked Remus Lupin fell into my bath when he stepped on the tuned Dore I gave Harry.”

She looked worried, though hardly sheepish. Any other mother informing her son of the impromptu naked man who appeared in her bath would have been embarrassed, especially of said mother took great liberties with said man, but not Marcia. She did not know the meaning of embarrassment any more than she knew the meanings of tactfulness, discretion, diplomacy, prudence, or subtlety.

And Marcia may have wondered why Harry had so readily gotten her a dictionary for her birthday.

“That is to say, I don’t mind that a naked Remus Lupin fell into my bath, but if Harry dropped the Dore, then it’s not a good thing because that means he would have had to lose it through sheer clumsiness or an accident or some unforeseen mishap. Frankly, I’m worried at any rate, and I know you can take care of yourself, so you go ahead and look for him. I fully expect you to help him if you need to. And as for me . . .” Marcia grinned and turned around to walk through the kitchen door as she eagerly rubbed her hands together. “. . . I have a werewolf to finish ravaging.”

“Mo-om! . . .” Harry2 looked at the Dore he held, and frowned. “Don’t you mean ravishing?”

“There is that too.”

Harry2 smacked his forehead and silently cursed she-demon hormones. He set his homework off to the side and stood up. Ember Death blinked thoughtfully as he twirled the Dore through his fingers. He stepped back into the kitchen where there would not be the stray chance of a Muggle accidentally seeing him use the Dore. He tossed it at the base of the wall and watched the Dore break apart like shattered jello. Each droplet spread outward and flowed up in a wide sweep to create a door with a rounded top.

Harry2 knew Marcia got the Dores from her adopted mother, but he was not sure of what sort of magic created them. The realm his family mostly dwelled in possessed magic that was neither light nor dark, nor could not be explained by anyone in the wizarding world. Harry2 had a sneaking suspicion that his reality’s Voldemort had found some of the magic somehow. He could find no other explanation why Voldemort had a power that was not only foreign, but also immensely stronger than what was found in the wizarding world.

Each reality was different because of something or someone. In Harry2’s reality, there was a rampage of demons, which was one of the reasons why Marcia settled in it instead of just staying with Harry2 at the Frozen Hales with her family.

Well, that and yes, Dumbledore, I’ll bring him back to Hogwarts to go to school because, well, it’s apart of his heritage and who am I to argue with heritage--oh, you be quiet, you ugly grease ball, you. You’re in no need to make fun of me when I’m the only reason you aren’t dropping twenty stories on your head, and if you don’t stop making fun of my small stature, I’m going to feed you to my Aunt Elizabeth’s mutated cabbages, and I do mean that, and no, Dumbledore sir, I do promise to raise little Harry to respect the adults. You sure I can’t drop Professor Snape here? A bump on the head might do him some good.

Harry2 stepped through the Dore to the reality beyond.

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Francis, weighed down by enough weapons that he was sure he would trip and do himself very serious injury, hurried to keep up with the fleeting form ahead of him. Draco zipped through the forest silently, moving over rocks, fallen trees, limbs, and roots effortlessly. He glided as smoothly and as gracefully as Harry flew on his broom. His sword was withdrawn and tucked under an arm with the cutting side pointed downward, a steady stream of silver that flowed behind his ghostly passing.

And speaking of ghosts . . .

“Well, misery loves company, and you have to admit, we are quite a miserable lot,” Cousin Quigley said cheerfully as he floated behind Severus, who trailed behind Francis and steadied the man’s balance each time he tripped. The Bloody Baron said nothing as he brought up the rear. He merely glowered at both Cousin Quigley and Francis as he continuously ran his finger along the line of his blade.

Francis did not know if he was chasing after Draco or running from the Bloody Baron. Either way, he wished Pandora was here to protect him or, at the very least, play peacemaker. Between Severus, who snarled at Cousin Quigley (“We’re going to have a long discussion when this is all finished, Father.”), who burst into tears (“I tried to be a good father! Honestly! *sobsobsnifflesob*”), Francis was beginning to feel suicidal to the point where he tempted to deliberately fall on the Bloody Baron’s sword.

Draco stopped suddenly up ahead just as Francis tripped and barely escaped skewering himself on what Draco had called a dagger and he called a bloody gigantic broadsword that only Attila the Hun was probably strong enough to swing. Rather than climbing to his feet, Francis slithered on his stomach over to where Draco knelt at the edge of a steep slope and overlooked a little ghetto. As soon as he reached Draco, a wind stirred and blew a ghastly stench into their faces.

Francis gagged and turned green as Draco, apparently unaffected by the stench, pointed at a place in the ghetto where a pipe large enough for a grown man to stand upright in spewed forth water that looked slimy even in the full moon’s bright light. “That,” Draco whispered, “is the sewer pipe to the Snake Bitch’s fortress. That’s what Black uses to sneak in and out of on his spy missions. We’ll use it to enter her fortress, and if we’re really desperate, we’ll use it as an escape route.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone absorbed this information (or, in Francis’ case, tried very hard not to violently lose his dinner). It was the Bloody Baron who spoke, and no one missed the Slytherin Sarcasm, except Francis, who was still trying not to be ill.

“You use that to sneak into the fortress with, and all you’ll have to do is stand upwind of everyone long enough for them to pass out from the stench before you can grab the host.” Or perhaps it was not sarcasm. Cousin Quigley himself was looking quite ill, and everyone believed him to have the strongest stomach of all from his years and years of drinking.

“Shall we go?” Draco asked as he pressed himself close to the ground. “I’m worried that Lupin didn’t answer to the horn when I blew it, so we should move in and out as quick as possible. You all know the plan. Follow my lead until we hit the area where the ceremony’s going to be held, then I and the ghosts will distract everyone while Francis grabs the host, we’ll all make a wild getaway, and from there, we’ll react come what may.”

Francis stopped gulping as he finished recovering from his bout of sickness to reply to Draco. “You do realize of course that the chance of our succeeding with such a risky mission and a sketchy plan is, of course, very provable to being equal to that of, say, a bottle of gin surviving one of Cousin Quigley’s drinking binges--no offense, Cousin Quigley,” Francis hastened to add as the ancestor squawked in protest.

“Now I’m worried,” Severus muttered darkly.

“We’re heroes, so there is nothing to worry about,” Draco said blithely as he slipped forward on his stomach and slid down the slope.

“That’s what I told Pandora the day I set my father’s fighter plane’s rotary blades in my workshop sort of as a souvenir and she expressed worry about the children playing with it. ‘It won’t hurt anyone,’ I said, and a decade later, it’s the very thing that nearly cuts me in half!” Everyone ignored Francis’ quiet grumbling as they snuck over to the pipe. Draco leaned against the sharply angled precipice beside the large pipe and quickly looked about for anything that might have spotted them, or may in the very near future. Francis pressed one hand over his nose and he breathed through his mouth to cut down the amount of heavy stench in the air.

He watched the slimy water pour from the pipe’s mouth into the slimy-looking lake of rather icky water. Francis knew he was going to have nightmares about this adventure in the years to come.

Draco leaned towards the pipe and reached out to grab the edge of it before he froze. Slowly, suspiciously, he backed away from the pipe. The three ghosts and Francis looked at him oddly. “Something is coming,” he said. All five of them backed slowly away from the pipe and hid in the bushes. A few moments passed, and then a dull roar filled the air. Rushing water was heard and the sound of something heavy sliding against wet metal. Out of the pipe slid two large objects. They hit the slimy lake with a giant splash, went under, and then bobbed to the surface. The smaller object sputtered and gasped for air as the larger one patted it and said, “S’okay. Ever’thin’s okay.”

“That’s Harry!” Severus the ghost exclaimed loudly as the same time as Draco moved forward and said, “That’s Black!”

Severus looked at Draco. “Black who?”

Draco watched the two persons make their way out of the water. His eyes were wide and bright. “Harry?” he asked softly, ignoring Severus’ question. He took one hesitant step forward. “Harry?” He pointed at one of the figures and turned to a very nervous-looking Cousin Quigley. “Is that Harry Potter?”

“Um.” Cousin Quigley did not answer. His eyes darted around the area wildly, as if something very big was coming and he was not sure how to handle it. Draco noticed, but did not care. He slowly walked over to the persons. The one dressed in rags he ignored. A small part of his brain acknowledged that the person who looked like Harry and even sounded like him to a certain degree was not wearing any clothes. It did not seem to matter to him, since the person who stood dripping wet before him was the person who had captivated his sense of awe, admiration, and loyalty through simply being the person he was. How different could this Harry be from his Harry? Aside from the fact one was dead and the other was not, of course.

Harry straightened upright before the blurry figure before him as the person in rags pulled him out of the water. His glasses were missing and he blinked a few times to focus his eyes at the person; he was not sure if the person was threatening or not, but he heard Francis in the background speaking rapidly to Severus on something about how something was going to happen. Harry opened his mouth to say the strange woman with green skin and no hair was coming. He felt it as surely as he felt his scar burning.

And that was when Harry found himself fiercely hugged by the person standing in front of him. “Oh, Harry!” breathed the male voice. The hair on the back of Harry’s neck stood on end. He knew that voice and he knew where this sort of hugging led--last time resulted in a very unexpected near-loss of his virginity in the men’s bathroom. “I missed you so much!” Harry blinked his eyes as he tried to gather together shards of his whirling thoughts. The arms that held him tight tensed suddenly and Harry was hastily shoved away. He stumbled and nearly lost his balance.

“Err, maybe not that much.” Draco covered his nose and grimaced. “You smell!”

“Oh great!” Harry rubbed his eyes and squinted at the person. “Let me guess, we’re lovers in this reality.”

“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing!”

“Umm.” Harry heard Francis speak as he stepped near. “I hate to break up this lovely little reunion, but something really big is coming, and when I say big, I mean really, really big.”

“It’s that woman,” Harry muttered. “She wants to use me to bring back Voldemort.” He shivered and wrapped his arms around his naked body. He felt very vulnerable at that moment. He was wide and open to whatever horrors were capable of doing him harm. He wished fervently for his glasses, because at least then he could see what was going on. He threw his senses outward and tried to feel if the woman was around. He saw the blurry shape that was Draco suddenly wheel around and face a direction. Silver flashed and metal rang against leather.

“I’m going to distract the Snake Bitch,” Draco said coldly. “You guys get out of here.”

“Is there any other known way to stop her?” Francis asked.

Harry glanced from blurry person to blurry person. “You all seem to be handling this well,” he said.

“It’s not as if we should rather be running around here like a chicken with its head cut off,” said Francis evenly. There was a slight pause, and then Francis said, “Sorry. My mum’s saying. She had a lot of them.”

“Ah.” Draco waved his hand. “Go on,” he said again. “Get out of here. I’ll fight her, and since I’m the hero, I’ll get away.”

“You are so mixed up,” Francis muttered.

Draco looked at Francis. His expression was somber and subdued. This surprised Francis, because the older man had always accustomed this reality’s Draco as being very passionate--Ack! Wrong choice of words! Bad mental image! Bad mental image!--as being very, ah, avid with his emotions. “Magic isn’t going to work well with Nagini. She’s much too powerful. For whatever reason, she seems almost impervious to anything we throw at her, which is one of the reasons why she’s worse than Voldemort. The only one capable of fighting her physically is me.

" I know I’m not good, but I can put up a fight well enough to distract her from Harry. He’s more important than me, and you have to get him out of here. It’ll have to be me.” He grinned suddenly, once more the expressive young man that Francis had come to know. “Besides that, since I’m sacrificing myself here, I’m bound to get out of this mess alive!” He looked across the distance. In the dark-gray of whirling storm clouds forming overhead, a massive chunk of darkness that hurtled towards them. Menace wrapped around the chunk of darkness as evil pulsated and anger rumbled.

Harry felt his great-grandfather circle a cautious arm around his shoulder. “Come on.” He tugged and Harry fell into pace with him as they hurried away.

“Hawry?”

“You come along too,” said Francis to the soggy little man wrapped in sludgy rags.

“That is Sirius Black?” Severus floated behind them. He pointedly stared at the soggy little man. “He’s a whipped pup!” A sigh of regret came from him and his voice came in an unaccustomed pouting whine. “How come I wasn’t around to see it happen?”

“Don’ like you,” decided the soggy little man as he pulled back one of the strips wrapped around his face. Whipped pup well described the man who had once been known as Sirius Black, though the words, “a bewildered lost child who never knew what was going on in the first place” was a more apt description. Even as he glared at Severus, Sirius looked innocently perplexed in general, as if he possessed only a vague sense of who he was, and little else.

Severus harrumphed and cast a nervous glance over his shoulder at Draco, who was hurrying forward with his sword held tightly in both hands. “Assuredly the feeling is quite mutual.”

Harry clutched at Francis’ robes. “What’s going on?” he asked. “I can’t see! . . . What--” Harry’s hands blindly roamed where they should not. Francis squawked indignantly.

“Get your hands off that!” Francis frantically slapped away one of Harry’s wandering hands as his voice soured several octaves higher than it normally would. In the distance, Draco whirled around.

“Harry! You stop trying to get yourself debauched! That’s my job!” The ground beneath him bucked and heaved suddenly and he lost his balance. He nearly skewered himself on his sword as he fell over.

Harry ignored them all. “That is one bloody big knife you got there!”

Francis’ face flushed red, but he assumed Harry was talking about the sword Draco had given him. It was safer that way. “Don’t I know it? Watch your step here, we’re going up a small hill to the woods beyond it and maybe, just maybe, we can hide in the trees--where are you going, Severus?” He stopped and looked over to the side where Severus was quickly flying away.

“To help Draco. The witless nimrod has been hanging around with Gryffindors too long to realize discretion is the better part of valor and, damn it all, he’s a Slytherin with Snape blood!”

Francis did not say anything. Sirius remained quiet. Harry still desperately wished to see what was going on. Beneath his bare feet he felt the ground quivering softly. A chill wind seemed to make the wet sheen of water covering his body from the dip in the slimy lake turn to ice. He shivered violently and wrapped his arms around himself. Francis, noticing then how Harry was stark naked, looked around for something to cover him up with. Harry’s arms tightened around himself and he shivered harder as Francis let him go. Francis struggled out of the overcoat Draco forced him to wear over his rumpled robes.

As Francis got his arms tangled in the material, a gigantic boom behind them caused the world to rock precariously. His arms tangled and his feet never quite steady, Francis toppled over against Harry. Both of them together fell over on Sirius. Above the echoes of the boom, they heard a strangled war cry and the sound of metal hacking at flesh. Francis did not have to look around to know Draco was attacking in his wild abandon.

“I’d give him points for ferocity,” said an exceedingly familiar voice in the tree branches above their heads, “but his execution, style, and defense leaves a great deal to be desired.” Francis jumped in surprise as a lithe, much more muscular Harry, whose tattoo of a black dragon swirling along the length of his bare arm from wrist to shoulder, jumped down to the ground. Sirius squinted at him, and then looked at the naked Harry who leaned against him. Francis peaked out from the folds of fabric he was entangled within.

“Harry2?” Harry asked as he blindly reached for the other Harry. Harry2 squeaked and jumped out of his reach.

“Watch where you put those hands of yours--where are your clothes?”

“Don’t ask,” Harry grumbled as Sirius sniffled and latched himself to Harry’s arm. He looked at Harry2 with watery eyes.

“Ah.” Amidst the sounds of Draco hacking at Nagini and Severus yelling at him to get out of this mess before he hauled him out of it by the seat of his shorts (to which Draco grinned at and said, “It’s bum to the breeze, Professor! Wanna see?” and nearly got decapitated by the monstrously large sword Nagini wielded), Harry2 quickly searched his pockets. Francis quickly untangled himself from the overcoat and had Harry pull it on.

“Ah hah!” Harry2’s hands emerged from one of his pockets with an eyeglass pouch as Francis buttoned the overcoat up. “Mom always makes me carry extra glasses in case I lose mine, but I think she wouldn’t mind if I let you borrow these. Well, you did lose your glasses, and since you are me, then I would be using them since I lost them.” He handed the glasses to Harry, who slipped them on. “And this.” He handed Harry a wand. “The Bloody Baron gave this to me when I first came. He said it slipped loose when the reality walls slammed together.”

Harry accepted it. “But I had it when I came here,” he said. “How could I have lost it between the walls?”

Harry2 shrugged as he looked after the sound of Draco’s battle.

The large green woman blocked Draco’s two-handed swings with one arm, bloody from where his blade had sunk into her flesh. She swung a sword that was easily as large as the very wilted Sirius Black. Draco ducked beneath one of her swings and chopped at her exposed sword hand. The blade sliced through her bone. The woman screamed as her hand was severed free and flopped to the ground. It twitched and gripped the sword handle tighter. Draco dropped and rolled beneath her other arm as her fingernails suddenly expanded in length.

Overheard, a magical storm was brewing amongst the deep gray clouds Nagini had ridden upon. Flashes of purple and deep orange lightening bolts leapt from cloud to cloud and from cloud to ground in frightful swirls of overwhelming masses of power. Mutual scars ached and identical hands flew to identical spots on their foreheads. An arc of lightening zipped through the air to earth and crashed to a spot where Draco had been standing only moments before. A wind howled fiercely and tore through the forest. Dirt flung into eyes and trees bent half-over from the ferocity of the wailing breezes.

“I don’t like the way this is happening,” Francis yelled over the howling wind. He clamped one arm down over his head to keep his goggles from being whipped away. He pulled them down his face and secured them over his glasses.

“What does it mean?” Harry asked as Sirius whimpered and curled against his side.

“Energies are being disrupted.” Francis ducked as a tree limb whizzed by his head. It smacked into Harry2’s head and snapped into two upon impact. Harry2 rubbed his head with an annoyed look. “Magical energy of humongous levels is warring against immense natural energy, and their battling it out with natural elements. This normally doesn’t happen unless the magical energy is trying to rip apart reality and bring in something that doesn’t quite exist.”

“Which means?”

“Well, we really should try to stop it.”

“How?”

Francis shrugged. “We’ve got to get rid of the instigator, the one who’s mastering the magical energy.”

Harry2 pointed at Nagini as she slashed wildly at Draco with her nails. “She’s the one,” he said. “The power is flowing from her.”

“Well,” Harry grabbed his glasses before they were blown off his face, “can anyone do something?” He looked expectedly at Francis and Harry2.

Francis shook his head. “I’ve got it on good authority--well, maybe not, considering how he appears to be trying to get himself killed--that Nagini is worse than Voldemort. Given that and the fact that Draco and Severus both seem to be having a problem fighting her, I really don’t think we should get in their way.”

“So, we just hide?” Harry asked dryly. “That’s not very Gryffindor-ish of us. We do have to do something! Aren’t there any spells?”

Francis shrugged. “Well, Severus is right: discretion is better part of valor, and there is a time and place for bravery. Harry, I don’t like it any better than you!” He pulled out his wand. “We could, of course, attack from behind, hope Nagini does not duck so our spell instead gets Draco--who, by the way, seems to be the only one capable of handling her--and then flip a coin as to who’s going to be foolish enough continuously strike at Nagini, since apparently she seems to be impervious to magic.”

Harry2 sighed and rolled his eyes. “Given that plan, we’ll all wind up dead and Mom will have a fit. Heck, she’d even come after me to give me a piece of her mind for dying on her!”

Francis shrugged. “Regardless, we need to do something, even if that something is running away.”

“Fine then.” Harry2 brushed past them. “Let me handle this,” he said confidently.

They watched as Harry2 strode purposefully across the heaving terrain. As he stood within throwing distance of the now one-armed Nagini and Draco, he held the arm with the black dragon tattoo above his head. The other arm waved irritably at Severus the ghost, who stared incredulously at Harry2.

“Get him out of the way!” Harry2 yelled as he pointed at Draco. Red color flooded the dragon tattoo and turned the black twisting creature of graceful deadliness aglow like a living flame. Along the line of his arm, the dragon began to swivel from side to side. Heat waves danced around Harry2’s form as Severus did exactly what he had threatened Draco he would do.

As Draco lifted his arms to stab his sword viciously at Nagini’s remaining arm, Severus slipped a single ghostly arm down the back of Draco’s open robes and yanked the young man backwards. Shock and surprise that came from being abruptly manhandled by something frightfully cold swept across Draco’s face.

Nagini paused a moment in her swing to see what had happened to her walking piece of mince meat and saw Harry2 standing directly before her with his tattooed arm upraised and hand clenched in a fist. The heat waves that surrounded him darkened. The grass at his feet withered brown and, in a few places, burst into flames. The heat waves leapt high and twisted into a dark form. A dragon towered above and behind Harry2. Flames wrapped around the dragon. It’s two glowing red eyes opened to peer hungrily at Nagini.

Nagini stood frozen by the vision. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was open in stunned shock. The dragon continued to darken until it was blacker than the shadows in the forest, blacker even than Harry2’s hair. It swiftly lifted itself further into the air. Harry2’s shoulders shook with deep breaths. Sweat broke out along the line of his forehead. The gigantic jaws of the black dragon snapped open and shut once. Rearing up above the trees, the dragon arched around and crashed downward at Nagini with its jaws wide open. The dragon flared white, and Nagini managed to scream before flames, so hot they burned even the light, engulfed her.

Even from where they were standing, the wave of heat that rolled over Francis, Harry, and Sirius was hot enough to singe their eyebrows and hair. The twisting body of the descending dragon sunk further and further into the ground Nagini had been standing on, until it finally disappeared. The ground bubbled red as lava. Harry2 took one final deep breath, and collapsed.

Draco whistled as he saw the blackened remains of the forest behind Nagini. “Now that,” he said to no one in particular, “was impressive.”