Pandora's Box

It was about this moment Professor Snape realized there was something going on that did not quite fit into the conscience-tests-person idea his ‘conscience' had sold him on. Professor Snape tried to grab his miniature self out of the air, but when his hand passed through himself, he opted instead to grab the miniature Harry next to the eggs.

"What is going on here?" he demanded softly. Harry's head was the only thing that stuck out of Professor Snape's fist. His eyes were wide behind his glasses.

The miniature Draco shook his fist at him. "Put him down or you'll be sorry!"

Dumbledore placed a gentle hand on Professor Snape's shoulder. "Severus, do put him down."

Professor Snape struggled with his desire to snap at Dumbledore, but when the miniature Draco leapt off the desk onto the floor and attacked him with a needle, he decided Harry was not worth getting prodded continuously in the ankle for. He dropped Harry on the table next to the other . . . ?

Professor Snape studied the odd little creature that looked almost exactly like Harry. It defiantly glared back (or perhaps squinted up) at him.

Dumbledore turned from Professor Snape and looked down at Francis, who was trying to clean himself of the egg's muck. Dumbledore leaned close and looked at Francis over the frames of his half-moon glasses. Francis, when he realized that Dumbledore's eyes were trained intently upon him, fidgeted nervously.

"Are you Francis Potter?" Dumbledore asked.

Francis nodded. "Yes, I am." He unconsciously fluffed his robes and smiled placidly at Dumbledore.

"Didn't you die when you fell off your broom?"

Francis' smile disappeared. He was quiet for a long moment. "It happens," he said after a while. "Very often," he added as an afterthought. "I could go into the long story of what happened for my to be here, but I'll just say that I'm reality-jumping at Pandora Pott--um, Snape's orders to find a good Tom Riddle." He riffled through his pockets. "I have this letter to you from, well, you, to explain this situation."

The soggy mass of what paper becomes when it makes prolonged contact with something very slimy and moist was all that remained of the letter Dumbledore had written for Francis. Francis ogled it for a long moment, and then sighed. He tucked the mess of paper back into his pocket. He fiddled with his goggles as he looked upward at Dumbledore and Professor Snape. "I'll have to explain it the long way," he said. "But first . . .!" He riffled through his pockets a second time to find and bring forth his wand. He waved it around in a singlewide circle with a look of glee plastered on his face. "I had time to think of a counter charm in my egg. Aboleo Mutatio!"

There were small claps of sounds as the reality-jumpers' original sizes were restored immediately. Dumbledore's charcoaled desk could not put up with the strain of holding the combined weight of Harry, Harry2, Francis, and a small pink egg, and collapsed. Draco knocked Professor Snape over when he shot up so fast that the top of his head rammed into Professor Snape's jaw. Professor Snape stumbled backwards and fell over a hesitant little figure whom no one had noticed earlier. Cousin Quigley fell over beneath him.

Severus immediately descended upon Cousin Quigley. "You!"

"Eeep!"

Severus grabbed Cousin Quigley in a tight choke-hold. "You're not going anywhere!"

Harry, amidst the rubble of what had once been Dumbledore's desk, looked at Harry2. "I feel sick," he muttered as he pressed one hand over his upset stomach. Harry2 nodded his head in agreement as he took a few deep breaths to settle his own upset stomach. From far away, Francis had looked awful. Larger now because of his restored size, he was a neatnik's worst nightmare. His robes were slimy while his hair stuck up in sticky clumps. Francis looked down at the pink egg.

"Who's this?" he asked as he jabbed his thumb at it.

"Possibly Black," said Severus from where he was choking Cousin Quigley. "Fawkes ate him too."

Dumbledore cleared his throat loudly. He studied Francis for a long moment, and then smiled. "Please excuse me if I do not greet you with a hearty handshake and clap on the back," he said.

Francis shrugged. "I won't hold it against you."

"Now, I must admit I'm confused. When you said you were reality-jumping, I assume then you are not the Francis Potter I know."

Francis smiled self-consciously as he fiddled with his goggles. "I suppose not. I am Francis Potter, but the events that shaped me may differ from the events you knew your Francis Potter went through." They stared at each other for a moment; Dumbledore studied who Francis was, and Francis tried to appear as harmless as possible since, all things considering, Dumbledore always did tend to be very powerful in every reality and was overly protective of whom he knew or felt responsible for.

Harry and Harry2, on the floor as they were because of their swimming stomachs, said nothing. Harry was content to remain still just so his stomach would stop jumping around in his ribcage. Draco squatted before them and studied their green faces intently.

"You two all right?" Draco asked as he reached out and pressed one hand against individual foreheads.

Harry2 weakly waved him away. "Go away before I puke all over your shoes."

Harry managed to squint his eyes and focus on his uncle, who held on to Cousin Quigley by his throat and muttered continuously of what he was going to do. He sighed and let his head roll back onto Harry2's shoulder. He watched Francis and Dumbledore out of the corner of his eye.

Dumbledore twisted his arms to pet Fawkes and looked at Francis over the rim of his glasses. "Well," he said. "Why don't you explain all of this to me in the kitchen over a nice snack?" Francis took out his wand and tried to clean his clothes with a cleaning charm. "One moment." Dumbledore walked over to the other side of the office to a small, unnoticeable door. He opened it and entered. As they waited for Dumbledore, Professor Snape studied Severus the ghost.

"What, exactly, are you?" Professor Snape asked.

"I am exactly what you'll be if Voldemort ever gets really upset with you."

"A ghost." Professor Snape's words were flat, but he did not look sad. The fierceness he had been radiating since he learned his conscience was not really his conscience faded away to reveal a person tired with life. "A ghost with curls." He massaged the bridge of his nose and spoke to himself. "How much worse can this get?"

Cousin Quigley weakly waved his hand. "The hair," he gasped, "is n-natural!"

Severus shook him. "You be quiet. I've got some questions for you, Father."

Professor Snape stared at Cousin Quigley. He walked over and sank down in Dumbledore's chair, which had somehow escaped the damage inflicted upon Dumbledore's desk. "I'm too old to go through this," he muttered as he massaged the skin between his eyes. He looked at Severus the ghost and Cousin Quigley before he looked over at Harry and Harry2. "Let me guess: both of you are Harry Potter." His eyes shifted over to Draco. "And you are, most unfortunately, Draco Malfoy."

Draco crossed his arms before himself and returned Professor Snape's sour look with a tight-lipped frown of his own. "You make that sound as if it's a bad thing."

Professor Snape's eyes narrowed further. He straightened in the chair so his back was ramrod stiff and his hands were folded genteelly in his lap. "As far as I am concerned, I cannot possibly live with two Dracos and three Potters. When are you going to leave?"

"As soon," said Francis from where everyone was ignoring him, "as possible."

Harry's hand waved weakly in the air. "Does anyone realize Dumbledore stepped on Pandora's Box?" Harry2 nodded in agreement.

The looks the others gave him differed from person to person. Francis looked disbelieving, Cousin Quigley was turning blue, Severus the ghost had his full concentration on Cousin Quigley, and Professor Snape just looked puzzled.

"What are we going to do now?" Francis asked.

Cousin Quigley squirmed and tried to say something, but his breath was thoroughly cut off by the hands clasped around his throat. Dumbledore entered the room then from the door he had disappeared behind. In his arms were canary-yellow robes. "Here we are," he said as he walked over to Francis. "Hold your arms out," he told Francis. Francis obeyed, and Dumbledore cleaned them with a quick wave of his wand and a few muttered words. He dropped the robes on them. "There you are." He smiled. "If you need some privacy to change, you may do so in my quarters." He pointed at the door he had come out of.

Francis looked self-conscience as he walked over to the door. At it, he paused and turned around. "Severus," he said, "how is it possible for one ghost to choke another?"

"I do not know," Severus the ghost said without lifting his eyes to look at Francis. "How is it possible?"

"It isn't," Francis replied. With that, he entered Dumbledore's quarters.

=========================================

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

In a world where nothing remained, something twitched. Among ashes of what had once been a dark, twisted forest, next to a pond of scummy and stinky water, something moved.

Matter cannot be made or destroyed, only changed.

But sometimes the most unnatural of matter can never change.

=========================================

Severus glared down at Cousin Quigley, who grasped weakly at Severus' hand. "What did he mean by that?" Severus snarled as his grip around Cousin Quigley's throat tightened. Cousin Quigley gasped wordlessly and weakly banged the floor with his open palm. Severus' eyes narrowed dangerously. "I'm not letting up until you speak," he whispered in a dangerous voice.

Draco draped an arm over each of the Harrys' shoulders. "And the poor sod," he said softly to them, "can't speak until the Professor lets up on him. Kind of comes to a draw."

Dumbledore stepped forward and dropped a hand on Severus' shoulder. It passed right through him, but Severus still looked over his shoulder at the Headmaster. "Yes?" he asked politely.

"Come here, please," Dumbledore said kindly. He gestured over to the chair that Professor Snape was in. "I want to see you standing next to each other." Dumbledore began to pull Severus over to Professor Snape, but stopped when he realized Severus was dragging Cousin Quigley along rather than releasing him. Dumbledore sighed. "I can already see how very much alike you two are," he said. "Do I dare inquire as to what this man ever did to you?"

Severus' lips drew back in a grim, humorless smile. "Besides abandoning me on the slums of London?" he asked. "Besides leaving me in mankind's worst created hell on earth? Besides destroying my faith in mankind? Besides twisting me into something vaguely human, because to be human was to suffer?" Severus looked at Dumbledore's pale face. "I suffered and survived rapes, beatings, starvation, and freezing. Need I continue?" he asked in a soft voice.

Another voice spoke. "Since I had to listen to you, it's your turn to listen to me: released him."

Severus did not look at Professor Snape. "Why should I?"

Harry, Harry2, and Draco turned their heads to see Professor Snape lean forward. He propped his elbows on his knees and steepled his fingers as he gazed at Severus the ghost. "Don't let a pathetic imbecile hold you back from moving on."

Harry looked over at his ghost of an uncle. "Grandmother Pandora," he began in a shaky voice, "told me to tell you to ask Cousin Quigley where you two met each other in the slums. She said you two knew other before Dinsmore." The dark purple color Cousin Quigley was drained away into a chalky white. Severus' eyebrow arched elegantly at the sight of Cousin Quigley's sudden lack of color. He opened his hands and Cousin Quigley's body crumpled into a miserable heap. Severus slowly crossed his arms before himself and glared coldly down at the ancestor.

"Um." Cousin Quigley's eyes rolled about in his head as he looked from Severus, to Harry, to Severus, to Professor Snape, to Harry, and then back to Severus again. He grimaced as his shoulders hunched forward. "Um." Severus' eyebrow went slowly higher, and this time, Professor Snape joined his other-reality counterpart with the intimidation routine. "Um." Cousin Quigley looked over at both Harrys and Draco, but the looks on their faces made it clear he would not find help or sympathy from them. He looked at Dumbledore, but the stormy look in his eyes made Cousin Quigley immediately look in the other direction. "Oh dear." Cousin Quigley deflated like a balloon whose air was released. "Would you believe me if I said that I didn't really want to do all of this?"

Severus' glare deepened. Cousin Quigley cringed at the sight of it. "No?" Cousin Quigley sighed again. "Well, if I have to tell everyone where we met at the slums, will you tell them about your godson?"

Severus choked and attracted the interest from the others immediately. "Why I--that is--I won't--" He made a sound much like a whistling tea pot as he clenched his hands tightly into fists. "There will be no negotiations!" he snarled viciously. The others flinched back at the sound of his voice. The only ones who were not affected were Cousin Quigley, who merely sighed, and Professor Snape, who was probably immune to his own nastiness.

"Very well then." Cousin Quigley sniffled as he climbed to his feet. He looked out of sorts as he rocked back and forth unsteadily on his feet. "I never completely abandoned you," he said to Severus as he studied the floor intently. "I did help you further your ability to read." He sighed. "I wanted to teach you, but someone else helped you before me." He shuffled his feet nervously as Severus stared at him with swiftly dawning realization.

"You were the beggar who traded reading lessons for whiskey," Severus said in dismay. His hands fell slack to his side. "Y-you was the one I was with when Voldemort attacked my troop of gutter rats!"

Cousin Quigley nodded guiltily. "Yes, that was me. And you lived, only to be killed later by the very man you survived."

Severus gritted his teeth. "What was the idea behind abandoning me to the slums to begin with? To protect the Snape legacy? What of all the other Professor Snapes whom we met? Are they all abandoned children from the past as well?"

Cousin Quigley glanced to the side. Next to the door Severus, Harry, and Draco had left through on their way to find Dumbledore, was Pandora's Box. Harry remembered not seeing Severus carrying it after Harry2 and Fawkes went one-on-one.

"I thought it broke!" Harry whispered to Harry2.

"It couldn't." They looked at Cousin Quigley as he walked over to the desk. He stopped at some pointed shards of silver. "It was the Mirror of Rebounds that was stepped upon."

The door on the other end of the room opened and Francis hurried through it. "Back up there," he said. "What do you mean the Mirror of Rebounds got destroyed?" His hair was still gunked up and he had pushed his goggles down around his neck while his glasses were on top of his head. He only wore the trousers of the robes Dumbledore had given him, but he clutched the shirt and heavy over robe in one hand and his wand in the other. Across his abdomen was the long, smooth scar that had once been the wound that nearly took his life. "These walls are paper-thin," Francis said to no one in particular. "I can hear everything clearly." He squinted at the others as he attempted to clean his hair with a charm, and nearly hexed himself bald. "Is there any way the Mirror of Rebounds can be repaired?"

Cousin Quigley bent over and picked up one shard of glass. He continued to address Harry and Harry2. "The reason why you reacted against the released power as you usually did when Pandora's Box opened was because the Mirror of Rebounds stored the power. When Dumbledore stepped on it, the stored power was released." He paled suddenly and looked at Professor Snape and Dumbledore. "You two must be very puzzled," he said.

"Oh, think nothing of it." Dumbledore smiled tightly at Cousin Quigley. Professor Snape shrugged.

"Yes. We are hardly bothered with the fact that we don't know what is going, what to expect, or even if we should trust you all or not."

"We'll explain later," Francis told them without looking at them. He secured his wand between his knees long enough to pull the shirt over his head. "Right now, I don't want this conversation to lose track." He tucked his shirt into his trousers, then grabbed and waved his wand vaguely at Cousin Quigley's direction. "You seem to be acting a little less . . ." Francis searched for a polite word for pathetic, " . . . dismal than usual."

" ‘Tis all Uncle Hector's fault," Cousin Quigley said with a shadow of a pout. "I haven't had anything to drink but water and vinegar since last week."

Francis' eyes sharpened. "And why would you need water and vinegar any more than you would need alcohol?"

Cousin Quigley shuffled his feet again and refused to look Francis in the eyes. He bent over and began to pick up the mirror's pieces. "I have always found it strange," said Francis thoughtfully, "that a ghost like yourself would need substance." Cousin Quigley's shoulders tensed as he grasped one particularly sharp shard of glass. His hand closed tight around it. "Very strange indeed," Francis whispered to himself. "And yet," his volume rose to normal speaking levels, "you are seem to be solid and real at times. I know you to be a ghost, and you have an astonishing ability to understand what is going on even when you are drunk." Francis pulled Dumbledore's over robe on and resumed his earlier attempt at cleaning his hair. "You acted as if the Snape ancestral portraits still existed, though they can't when their original frames were destroyed. You have little problem following us through reality through reality through reality. Lastly, you look astonishing well for someone who drank himself into his grave. I can hardly see any harsh affects of so much alcohol."

Harry looked at Cousin Quigley as the man trembled. He remembered how Cousin Quigley had looked older at one time, with his sallow skin and stringy-gray hair, versus the podgy, younger appearance of now. Harry slowly stood up, but had to pause while still bent half-over in order to keep his stomach from expelling its contents. "Cousin Quigley," he said, "why does Pandora always refer to you in present tense?"

Blood dripped down Cousin Quigley's hands to the floor. The sound of each droplet of blood hitting the stone floor sounded like strikes of metal against metal in the quiet room. Cousin Quigley slowly straightened and looked over at Severus. His body trembled and his eyes watered up with tears as he stared for a long time at his son. At Cousin Quigley's feet, silver shards and wooden splinters trembled. "I'm s-sorry," he said finally. His jaw trembled. "I never d-did mean t-to hurt you. I-I tried." He shrugged clumsily and rubbed at his eyes as tears fell. "Any r-reason I w-would try to give you w-would never justify what I did. N-never. It wouldn't make you my little b-boy again, it won't bring back my White Rabbit, i-it won't undo anything that has happened. I do wh-what I have to d-do." Cousin Quigley licked his lips as something changed in his eyes. Regret and sorrow took a slight turn into bitter resentment. "I never had a choice."

"We all have choices," Severus snarled softly. He wrapped his arms around his shoulders and gritted his teeth. "We all have choices, to agree or disagree. If you made a mistake, it's all your fault because you could have chosen differently."

Cousin Quigley hissed. Uncharacteristic anger flashed across his face. "But I never had a choice. Not from the day I was born. I saw the destruction of the Snape family." He flung his arms wide and nearly smacked Francis in the nose with the back of his hand. "And the destruction of the Snape family fell with the entire world itself. I couldn't what I saw. I was made to see it even if I didn't want to. My choices were always made for me. I saw it all before it happened." His anger disappeared and he deflated once more. Any strength Cousin Quigley might have shown disappeared until he was his old, normal self of hunched shoulders and regret. "Voldemort destroyed the Snapes, and then he destroyed the world. For the want of a horseshoe, the entire kingdom was lost. For the want of a single family, the world was lost."

Behind Cousin Quigley, the shards of glass and splinters of wood were drawn to one another like magnets. They flew together into a jumble of broken pieces that stuck to one another. "I try," Cousin Quigley said softly, "and I try, but I never really seem to get anywhere." He dropped the shard of silver glass, which flew to join the others. Cousin Quigley turned about and extended his bleeding hand over the pile. The blood dripped onto it. "I never had a choice," he repeated quietly. "I could never move beyond seeing that destruction. The world is heading in that direction, and I do not have the means or the makeup to change the path. I could never run from the Mirror of Rebounds, because there were always the visions, always the knowledge of what would be. I could never escape the slaughter, the misery, or the pain. The Mirror of Rebounds reached across space to me, because I was never strong enough to block out its call."

Draco stirred from where he watched the blood drip off Cousin Quigley's hand. "Couldn't you have told anyone?" he asked. Cousin Quigley lifted one shoulder in a listless shrug.

"No one ever believed," he said. "I was always the pathetic, degenerative, flighty, embarrassment of the Snape family. They said it was impossible that the Mirror of Rebounds could show the future. They said I was just a selfish little boy looking for attention, that I was cheap and shamed the family as such." Cousin Quigley looked crestfallen. "I always winded up shaming the family no matter what I did. It's not as if I asked to be placed in Hufflepuff. For years I had to wonder what the point of everything was, and so I decided that what would be would be, for who was I to argue? I was never important or meant to be great."

He opened his cut hand to reveal that gash that ran across his palm. He pressed his other hand over it to still the flow of blood. "I'm weak; I'll be the first to admit that. I don't think I'm a coward, but I suppose I am on many levels. And if I had told you all that you would have to travel through different realities in search of a good Tom Riddle, someone who would save us from Voldemort, would you have believed me?"

The blank stares the others gave him (or glare, in the case of Severus the ghost) were enough to clearly say no, they would not have believed him.

"Well," said Francis helpfully, "you did help dig your own grave through your drinking and behavior. It's not as if you tried to make yourself believable or trusting."

Cousin Quigley looked down at the Mirror of Rebounds. "I hate this thing," he said. "But what can I do? I'm trapped as effectively as Pandora." He tried to glare menacingly at it, but Cousin Quigley and aggression did not communicate and thusly translate on the same level, much less exist in the same proverbial universe together. "Hyacinthe the Druid created the Mirror of Rebounds from the Universe. He used all four physical elements, and all four properties of existence. It was supposed to direct people in the survival of the Universe. And then along came me, a convenient little puppet for it to direct going-ons, and then along came Harry, the great gift of so many circumstances built on top of one another!"

Cousin Quigley tried to smile brightly at Harry, but the look Harry gave him wilted the smile away. He hunched over again and jammed his hands into his suit's pockets. "I tried," he said again.

The Mirror of Rebounds snapped together. The pieces tightened as they pressed forward to the center. A mighty crack of sound resonated through the room as pieces were absorbed together and fitted with their counterparts in a rapid mish-mash of jigsaw puzzles that free-fell into place. In just a few moments, the Mirror of Rebounds sat upon the floor once more, whole again. It pivoted wildly on its hinges, circling so quickly that it was just a dark blur. "Severus?" He looked over his shoulder at his son. "Your real name was Dominic."

Severus drew away from Cousin Quigley. "That is my middle name."

"I know. I asked Pandora if she would give it to you." He sighed. "She did. She always had a slightly better understanding of the situation than other people. And if you ever see me in a saloon somewhere in New Mexico, I don't know you." He held one hand up. "I really don't know you." With that, Cousin Quigley leaned close to the pivoting Mirror of Rebounds, and his form was sucked into the mirror like a Venus Fly trap closing around an insect. The mirror slowly spun to a halt.

Severus gritted his teeth. "He ran away again. Without answering a single question."

"Hmmm." Francis pulled his goggles up and over his ears to secure them on the top of his head. "He has a talent for evading questions. For all that he said, he didn't really tell us that much."

All in due time. Everyone jumped at the wispy sound of Cousin Quigley's voice. It floated insubstantially in the air. There's only so much I can reveal without upsetting the Universe. Oh, and Francis?

Francis peered around. "Yes?"

The Mirror of Rebounds contains all that has been. The portraits can and did survive. Their existence depends upon the Mirror of Rebounds because a remnant of their past frames exists within. Cousin Quigley's voice faded away. Harry thought he saw Edwina's (or perhaps it was Anastasia's) face flash quickly across the surface of the Mirror of Rebounds. Her lips were drawn back in a happy smile and her eyes twinkled. As quickly as she was seen, she was gone.

Professor Snape stirred in Dumbledore's chair. "Now will someone explain what's going on?" he asked.