When Worlds Collide

Chapter 1 - The Accidental Summoning

~<>~

First, there was silence. Only silence. Harry wondered how long it would last. The crunching of gravel underfoot had ceased as Harry and his two best friends came to an abrupt standstill outside the castle after lunch. A more relaxed part of Harry's mind relished feeling the sun on his skin and the feeling of having a full stomach, but in the confines of his mind there was a ticking clock, like the countdown to a bomb. Soon, surely, the peace would run out. It was the way it had always been. He was Harry Potter, after all.

"Harry, how could you?!"

Boom. There it was. Harry counted twelve seconds - he wondered if Hermione had just made a new record since the week prior.

"Hermione, I'll finish the homework soon," Harry said. "Not every one is like you, you know."

"We were given the assignment a week ago! You're going to get in trouble!"

"Oh, c'mon, Hermione," Ron said, in an effort to defend his best friend. "It's not as if he hasn't started it. And besides, he been far too busy defending the Quidditch cup, right, Harry?"

"Yeah," Harry agreed. "There's time to finish the assignment."

"I'm not letting you copy any of mine!"

"Hermione!" Harry said, feigning shock. "I wouldn't depend on that! I'm perfectly capable of finishing it by myself. It's just that Quidditch is important too, you know."

"Oh, I don't know why I bother!" Hermione said, exasperated. "You're determined to make everything harder for yourselves. Well, if that's the way you'd like it, there's nothing I can do." She crossed her arms in finality.

"That's not to say she'll stop trying though, is it?" Ron said to Harry, rolling his eyes.

"As much as I hate to say it," Harry said, giving an apologetic look to Ron, "I probably should finish the assignment. The last thing we need is more points taken off Gryffindor."

A snide laugh came from behind them, but none of the three turned around. They all knew who it was, and quite frankly, seeing him in no way justified the effort of turning around.

"Some things can't be helped, Potter," the snide voice said.

Harry wasn't sure of anything after that. Maybe Draco Malfoy had hexed him? All he knew was that he felt incredibly disoriented, everything was blurry, he couldn't feel the comforting presence of his wand in his pocket, and it was cold.

And dark.

~<>~

"Oh, man," Trina said in mock anguish, collapsing onto a berth in her friend's room - a caravan outside the house. "Why did I even ask? I should have known you were doing something that's related to 'Harry Potter'-" Tony looked up from her computer and opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off by Trina's quick amendment, "-or to be more specific, Draco Malfoy! For goodness sake, you're 20 years old!"

Tony smiled, momentarily at a loss for what to say. After all, she could hardly deny it. "And you're 21. Your name is Katrina, and you maintain your hair is blonde, even though everyone else thinks it's too dark. It's so great that we're getting to know one another!" she finished with faux enthusiasm.

"What is it with you and the bad ones?" Trina asked, rolling her blue eyes and pulling a piece of hair in front of her face to reaffirm to herself it was 'dark blonde'. "You always go for the bad characters!"

Tony grinned and poked her tongue out at her best friend. "Maybe they're just more interesting."

"Poor you," Trina said, in mock sympathy, "Having the love of your life existing only in your head, and his means of protection and life-purpose dependant on a stick." She ducked a flying cushion.

"He's not the 'love of my life'!" Tony retorted. "And at least he has a better name than the boyfriend of yours in your head - 'Bon-Bon'." She said the nickname as if she were speaking of some foul-smelling, terminal disease. "What's the deal with that? It sounds like a troll's first word!"

"Well, it's better than 'Ron'," Trina defended herself, "and I don't much like 'Rupert' either, so the actor's name's out. I had to call him something else."

Silence descended over the caravan. Even the small fridge by the bed shuddered a little and went quiet. Seconds passed before Tony spoke, with a small smile.

"We're really pathetic, aren't we?" She couldn't help the smile broadening at the idea, "Our 'boyfriends', as we playfully put it, are book characters some woman on the other side of the world in a train made up, and we still squabble over them."

She dissolved in laughter, which quickly spread to Trina.

"Well," Trina responded, chuckling, "at least since we know they're not real, we can work it how we want, and have a happily-ever-after ending."

"Yeah, add a few years on the guys... because as it is, the age gap is kinda gross."

Tony turned back to the screen of her laptop, that she had warming her legs as she browsed various 'Harry Potter' sites for what had to be the umpteenth time that week. She noticed she'd opened a site that had a peculiar address, which looked to be in a foreign language. Latin, perhaps. She didn't know how she got there - just followed a link, she supposed. There were too many windows open to know which one.

"Hey, look at this," she said to Trina. "Some mystical site here is saying that 'if you have the faith to voice the impossible...' yadda yadda... oh, and then click this icon here, '...the aforementioned impossibility will show itself as a concealed reality'." She couldn't help the wry smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

Trina blinked. "Okay," she said, in a tone effectively communicating her opinion of the ridiculous notion. "Really, what some people will believe these days..."

Tony agreed, rolling her eyes. "Is someone saying that everything people think is impossible, is actually real, if they say they think it's fake, and then click a button on a conveniently-available website?"

"When you put it like that," Trina commented, "it sounds even worse! If stuff like that were real though, it would be creepy. I mean, imagine if Hogwarts was real, and the Harry Potter series was a biography or telling-about-the-past thing."

"Historical reference?" Tony guessed.

"That's what I said," Trina responded with a perplexed look, as if her friend had just repeated what she'd said down to the tone of her voice.

Tony laughed. "Yeah, that would be cause for concern. I'd hate to think the Big Bad of the world was a wizard who named himself something sounding like a bad cheese! Vol...de...mort..." she slowly dragged the word out as she contemplated what the like-named cheese would look like.

Her face grew curious and she said, "I wonder what would happen if we click on it...maybe there's an animation or something."

"It'll be one of two things," Trina said. "One - absolutely nothing whatsoever will happen, so people would just sit there and click it until they realised just what they were doing, and that their life was very tragic. Or, two - you'd get a subscription form to fill out, so you'd actually have to pay to hear that rubbish."

Tony smiled in amusement. "And the correct answer is..." She paused for dramatic effect, before clicking the icon. "...drum roll, the envelope please..."

The computer grunted a little as it worked, before new words appeared in the now-black browser window.

"What does it say?" Trina asked, expectantly.

Tony's voice was distinctly unimpressed as she recited from the screen.

"What have you done,

O, foolish one?

Your voice not heard

still spoke the words

That brought your conjured doubt to be

Brought into reality.

...But now it's here you'll tell yourself

To next time wish for something else."

"What crap," Trina broke the silence that followed. "It's like a try-hard Goosebumps poem! Someone has too much time on their hands."

"The rhythm sounds a bit mucked up too. Still, it has an element of creativity. And a least I didn't get a banner congratulating me for having faith and 'therefore have just won this great and fantastic item for five easy payments of $199.99'."

"Yeah," Trina said. "You've been online for too long, anyway. It's getting really late now - your family went to bed ages ago I think; all the lights are out in the house. Now, where's your sleeping bag in this mess? I need to make my bed up on this thing." She motioned to one of the side berths in the caravan. "Hey, throw me a couple of your pillows, will you?"

Tony was still musing over the amateur yet slightly amusing poem while she got ready for bed, and climbed between the warm sheets. Her mood was soon brightened with Trina frivolously making idle talk, and composing a short, funny, improvised story entitled, "Bon-Bon and the Order at McDonalds".

Even after the red numbers of the nearby digital alarm clock flicked to '12:00', they were still talking and laughing...until a confused, young-sounding, British voice outside loudly exclaimed, "Where are we? This isn't Hogwarts..."

Tony and Trina stopped abruptly, in mid-laugh. By the bright moonlight filtering down through the caravan's small skylight, they could see each other freeze, listening. The only sound that came was of the bitter wind, and of an empty cardboard box from a storeroom over the road, as it was being blown roughly down the street, the hollow thuds protesting loudly to the treatment of the wind.

"You did hear that, right?" Tony asked, tentatively. "Not the box. Before the box."

Trina paused a little longer, before responding, "I thought I heard a voice... Yeah, yeah, I did. But you know what? It was probably some idiot from across the road being a dolt. Nothing interesting." As if to emphasise her point, she drew Tony's sleeping bag further up around her shoulders, and rolled over.

'Hastings Youth Centre', a building for general socialising for young people, could be seen from Tony's end window when she drew back the curtain. A few lights from the ending concert of local talent inside were winking through the waving boughs of nearby trees. Several silhouettes could be made out by the main entrance, accompanied by the sound of a skateboard being noisily dropped to the ground, and the occasional disruptive cheer rising noisily into the air.

"Yeah, probably," Tony agreed, watching the tops of several heads just visible over the fence next to the driveway. The heads grew bodies as they walked across the driveway entrance in full view, swinging their arms or fiddling with cellphones, still talking jovially. People from the Youth Centre would still be trickling home for the next half hour, Tony guessed.

A streetwise-looking girl in the group that had just walked by turned back, an amused grin on her face. She accompanied her friends in a mocking laugh, which was blatantly directed at several figures still behind the fence.

Tony drew the curtain back and lay down, listening to the snippets of energetic conversation from various homebound youth.

"-and then I just told him where to-"

"-check out this text-"

"-maybe someone botched a spell-"

"-there's a party at Danny's-"

Hang on, Tony thought, sitting up again suddenly. That spell comment's not supposed to be there...

Trina had evidently come to the same conclusion, as she'd sat up too, an equally puzzled look on her face.

"Is there a Wiccan out there," Trina began, "or someone who's been exposed to more damaging Harry Potter radiation than us?"

"I don't know," Tony replied, listening for more of the strange conversation now that the bulk of the noisy youth had moved on.

"-just go up to any place and knock, or something," came another British voice.

"Oh, and say what?" came the mocking reply, in an arrogant drawl. " 'Excuse me, Muggle, but we've been transported to the middle of a great big nowhere, we don't know how or why, and we want to go back to all the other nice witches and wizards and other magic things'?"

Tony incredulously turned to face Trina and whispered, "I'm going with the damaging Potter-radiation theory."

The heated discussion outside continued.

"Look," a voice piped up. This one sounded female. "It may be none of our faults' that we don't have our wands - as we don't know how we got here, maybe they were deliberately kept back by the person that sent us."

An indignant scoff interrupted her before she continued, "So we can't get the Knight Bus. But unless you three want to stand out here and freeze to death, we're going to have to ask for help."

Silence followed the girl's speech. From the silence, Tony gathered that although the rest of the group hadn't liked the idea, they didn't appear to have much of an option.

Trina faced Tony with a sombre expression and whispered seriously, "We can all learn a lesson from this..." she paused for dramatic effect, poised as if she were giving a speech to a class. "...Don't take drugs."

Tony couldn't hold in the loud laugh that escaped her at this, but she hurriedly clapped her hand over her mouth, wondering if she'd alerted the group outside. The last thing she needed were hallucinating teens banging on the windows.

"There," continued the feminine voice. "There's obviously someone awake in there."

Tony silently cursed herself.

For a few minutes Tony heard no more - no talking, no approaching footfalls - and she hoped the group had moved on.

Thud, thud.

The knocks on the caravan door echoed dully around the interior. With her hands still clapped tightly over her mouth, Tony stared wide-eyed at her friend, who was looking back with an expression that had, 'Now you've done it', written all over it.

Tony was glad that she'd finally got into the habit of locking the caravan door at night. When you had plenty of electronic equipment and lived in the centre of town, in view of a rowdy Youth Centre, you couldn't take too many chances.

The girls stayed quiet, wondering if the visitors would go away.

"They're not going to answer," someone said, worriedly.

"Excuse me, in there," the girl quietly called. "We really need your help. It's really cold out here and we have no where to go."

Silence.

The girl continued, with a note of desperation now.

"I'm sorry to bother you so late at night. But I know you're in there - I can see you sitting up, through a chink in the curtain-"

Tony lowered her hands from her face, and made a mental note to give herself a good kick in the head, in the morning.

"-if you could only tell us where to go, or anything that could help us."

The voice stopped.

"You know," Trina said resignedly. "They sound almost genuine. Why not help them out a little? You could point them towards a...police station, or something."

She hesitated, and then added as an afterthought, "Besides, if they're bad, you could just do Tae Bo on their asses." She grinned at her defence plan.

Tony rolled her eyes, although she doubted Trina could see it. "It's an exercise regime, not a kick-butt one."

Trina smiled, "Yeah, well. Whatever works."

Tony pushed back the duvet from her bed, and slowly brought her legs around to the side of the mattress and stood. Already her legs, knees peeking out from under her oversized Te Papa Museum t-shirt with a giant thumbprint on the back, were starting to get goosebumps.

"This cold is insane," she commented. Trina only sighed. Tony knew she felt the cold easily, and that it probably wasn't nearly as cold as she made out - a fact which Trina constantly felt the need to remind her of.

She switched on the fairylights, bringing a soft colourful glow from the several sets of Christmas lights around the room, as she crossed it to switch on the heater before turning to the door. When she'd switched the lights on, footsteps that had slowly began to trudge away stopped suddenly and quickly returned.

Tony reached for her keys and unlocked the door, holding her breath as she pulled the handle down to push it open.

Tony took in the sight of the girl standing in front of her.

She had a thick mane of brown hair, being blown about roughly by the relentless wind, as she struggled to keep it out of her face. She pulled some back just in time to feel a fat drop of rain land unceremoniously on her nose. She looked skyward, a little worried.

Why anyone would come outside in this cold was beyond Tony.

"What, are you crazy? Or just..." Well, according to her, there was no alternative, "...crazy?"

Behind the girl stood two boys. Tony guessed them to be about 15 or 16. But then, she was never very good with guessing ages.

One of the boys had unkempt black hair, and round glasses. He looked as if he'd just been ordered to march into battle and he had no idea just what he was supposed to be fighting. Tony almost smiled at this.

Next to him stood a tall red-haired boy, with a spattering of freckles and a wary look on his face.

At first that appeared to be all of them, and Tony was about to speak to them when she noticed another.

He was standing further back, as if he was trying to disassociate himself from the other three as much as possible, without actually dooming himself to having to spend the night in the cold. He had white-blond hair, which Tony could see had been gelled back, although the wind had loosened it a little. His expression was surly, and he looked as if the world had just done him a personal injustice.

Strangest of all were their clothes. They weren't regular clothes at all. They each wore cloaks, and the surly blond in the back was clad in black from top to toe, so he almost blended effortlessly into the shadows.

Rather intimidating, really.

"We just need a place to stay. Can you tell us where? Or give us something to keep warm with?"

Tony's mind snapped back quickly to the situation as she realised the girl was talking to her.

A boisterous laugh and a voice projected over Tony's shoulder.

"Oh, man, you're joking, right?"

Tony turned to see Trina behind her, and to her confusion, Trina appeared to be addressing her.

"What?" she said, dumbly.

"You got some friends of yours to dress up as Harry Potter characters and come down here for a joke," Trina surmised.

At the mention of the name, the boy with the round glasses coloured slightly. He looked downward, and reached his arm up to his glasses to wipe away the raindrops that had landed there.

"I don't come out in the cold to freeze to death for someone else's amusement," stated an unimpressed drawl. The blond at the back had stepped forward to speak, and now had a frustrated and impatient look on his face.

"Now, you could stand there and question our existence until we're quite dead from our blood freezing in our veins," he continued. "Or you could do the decent thing and let us in were it's presumably not raining, and holds some semblance of warmth."

The other three looked suitably flustered and embarrassed at his blatant rudeness, and they appeared to be tensing in anticipation of the door being slammed shut.

Instead, Tony's face drew into a frown. She stared at the blond for a moment, with apparent disdain, before taking a few steps backward to allow for them to come in.

Apparently, this was all the invitation they were to get.

It was invitation enough.

All but the blond boy gratefully scrambled inside, automatically gravitating towards the heater.

"Feel free to stay out there if you like," Tony offered. "But this heater isn't going to heat the whole of Hastings, so you have 10 seconds to get in here, if you're going to. 10...9...8..."

Despite his previous confidence, the blond looked unsure. He had a choice.

"...7...6...5..."

Sacrifice his pride, or sacrifice his health? Apparently it was worth thorough consideration.

"...4...3..."

He looked almost longingly into the dimly lit caravan with the heater.

"...2..."

Decision made, he quickly approached the door and pulled himself into the caravan, just before the door was shut on, "1".

The four newcomers had sat on Trina's sleeping bag, with the fan heater pointing up at them. Initially Trina looked a little resentful, but had to admit there was nowhere else for them to sit.

"Before you comment on the state of this room," Trina defended herself, "let me say that it's not mine."

Tony looked incredulous. "And I might add, then," she said, "that hers is usually worse."

She leaned down to the other berth that was laden with clothes and paper, and with a one-armed flourish, swept it all on the floor under the table.

"And that's how we clean up around here," she stated, as if giving a formal presentation.

She went back to her bed to sit on it and Trina resignedly sat on the other berth, all the while eyeing up the sleeping bag the four were sitting on, as if by staring at it hard enough it would give them an electric shock so they would get off it.

"So what's the story?" Tony said, leaning back against the window and putting a pillow over her feet. "You're here because...? Well, who are you first?"

She had to admit an uncanny likeness to four of the Harry Potter characters, but presumed that to be a deliberate show, as Trina had guessed.

The boy in glasses opened his mouth to speak, but Tony had beaten him to it.

"No, wait, let me guess," she said.

Trina glanced questioningly at her friend. Tony gave a subtle shrug back, motioned to the computer, and raised her eyebrows in silent speculation, before returning her attention to the newcomers.

She pointed to each of them in turn, as she surmised, "You're Harry, you're Hermione, you're Bon-" She was quickly cut off by a loud cough from Trina, accompanied by a warning glare.

"I mean," Tony amended, "you're Ron. And I'd assume that the arrogant, loud-mouth, Dracula-wannabe here, is Draco Malfoy."

The blond looked particularly indignant. The remaining three looked at each other, unsure.

Trina spoke to her friend, "Tony, just how do you figure that the computer thing actually worked, and this might actually be them? Isn't that a little far out?"

"It's far out no matter how you look at it," Tony justified. "It's far out that four strangers would dress up to such extremes and brave the cold just for kicks and confuse a couple of strangers."

She could see Trina weighing up the possibilities in her head.

"Ok," she finally said. She addressed the four, looking somewhat expectantly at Hermione. "Then answer me this - if you're who you say you are, you should know about this stuff: What is an Abatwa?"

Tony looked at her in surprise.

Hermione piped up almost immediately, sounding glad to be able to prove herself.

"They're the tiniest creatures in human form," she explained. "A peaceful race that live in the anthills of Southern Africa. They're very shy and only reveal themselves to children under four year old, or wizards, or pregnant women."

Trina relaxed. "Good enough for me, Hermione."

Hermione looked visibly relieved.

Trina stood, and Tony approached her and mumbled, "You know what Abatwas are?"

"No idea, myself," Trina responded with a smile.

"Then how do you-"

"It was in a story you started to write a while ago, remember?" Trina prompted. I remember you researched it so you could use it in that story. Even though you never finished it. It'd be just like Hermione to know what you were going on about."

Tony smiled as she remembered. "Ah, gotcha."

"Now," Trina said seriously to the Hogwarts students, "considering what's happened here, it's hugely important that you don't just sit there."

"Because someone bad knows where we are?" The red-haired boy, Ron, asked fearfully, his voice nearing a squeak.

"No," Trina responded. "Because I want the sleeping bag back."

And with a sudden vicious pull, she yanked it out from beneath them, sending them falling unceremoniously to the floor to land on their behinds.

Trina stepped into the sleeping bag, and pulled it up around her shoulders with a loud rustling, in an effort to stay warm until the heater had sufficiently warmed the room. Small popping sounds could be heard on the roof as the occasional raindrop loudly hit.

Tony leaned back against the window and watched in silence as Hermione and the boys tried to disentangle themselves from the flurry of cloaks caused by their quick transition from the seat to the floor.

This was not supposed to happen, she thought. They're not supposed to be here...why couldn't they have stayed only in our heads...they're not supposed to be here and make things complicated...someone tell me this is not happening...

She knocked her head backward on the window in her confusion and frustration, sending a hollow bang reverberating around the caravan. Trina and Hermione were looking at her questioningly, but she made no efforts of explanation. She was now more concerned with how to explain what the three boys were looking at in apparent...disbelief? Disgust? Surprise? Maybe even a mixture of all three.

From their place on the floor they'd looked up, and of course, seen the row of cupboards lining the length of the caravan. Tony knew it wouldn't be long until their attention progressed from the cupboards, to see similar scenery around the rest of the caravan.

The object of their attention now occurred to Trina, and she looked at Tony with an expression that could have either been shock or amusement - Tony couldn't tell which.

Of course they'd find it a little...eccentric.

Tony's room looked like all the characters and scenes of the 'Harry Potter' movies must have been packed tightly into a fist-sized ball, before being placed on her bedroom floor, where it had apparently exploded, saturating the whole room with its Potter-dom.

Just say something, anything, by way of explanation, Tony mentally said to herself. It'll sound fine.

"Uh..."

Oh, way to go, you gigantic freak...

"What she means to say," interjected Trina, and Tony was grateful for the rescue, "is that she has a problem."

Okay, not grateful now.

"I...just really like the movies," Tony said, suddenly aware of the sheer number of the images surrounding them. "You knew about the movies, right? And the books?"

Harry looked back from the image-lined cupboards, looking slightly embarrassed.

"Yeah," he said, as if he was regretfully admitting to a fault. "It wouldn't have happened, except..."

Trina slightly raised an eyebrow in silent questioning.

"I hate that Rita Skeeter!" Ron said suddenly, slicing the quiet with his flaming words.

"Okay..." ventured Tony. "Explain?"

"It was her ultimate revenge," Hermione enlightened her. "She knew she was going to be banned from the British wizarding community. It was because of Harry that she was banned - which is a good thing," she added, turning to reassure Harry, who had been beginning to look almost guilty.

"So she set out to do what she does best," Hermione continued. "To publicise every last fact about Harry, in a final showdown."

"But how did she do that?" Trina asked. "How does J. K. Rowling figure into that theory?"

"Wouldn't you think it a little unusual," Ron surmised, "if a fully thought-out and detailed character, along with its past, just walks randomly into your head while you're sitting on a train looking at trees whizzing past?"

"Well," Tony admitted, "I had thought it rather...fortunate."

"The night before Rita Skeeter was to leave England," Hermione explained, "she turned into her animagus form-"

"A beetle, right?" Trina said.

"Yes, a beetle. And she entered the home of an English writer. While she was there, she cast a Dream Recollection charm on the writer - Jo Rowling - and told her the whole story. When Jo woke up she didn't immediately remember, but over time - a short amount of time - all the facts spilled out into her memory. And she made the book series about Harry."

Tony looked at Harry pitifully. "Bummer for you." She looked puzzled as she continued, "but surely Rita Skeeter couldn't have been in every place that was detailed in the books. If it was all reported, it would have to have been done by some sort of omnipresence."

"Onmi-who?" Trina questioned blankly.

"Someone who was everywhere at once."

"Oh."

"Well," Hermione said, "it seemed Rita was more influential than we gave her credit for. She wouldn't have gotten all the information herself, but I assume she had contacts around Hogsmeade, the school, and even our own homes."

"Which is creepy..." Ron said with a shudder.

"So there were traitorous teachers at Hogwarts reporting to her?" Trina guessed.

"I'm thinking it was probably the occasional loud-mouthed portrait or ghost," Tony interjected.

"Right," Hermione affirmed, nodding at Tony.

Draco had been sitting in a corner, keeping unusually quiet, but still maintaining his unimpressed signature scowl.

"So now Boy-Wonder has fans all over the world," he stated, with obvious disgust.

"Well, so do you," Tony added. "Haven't you seen any of your many websites out there?"

His expression grew puzzled. "Web-what?"

Ron was looking particularly wary about the phrase, bringing with it images of large, scary spiders.

Hermione looked abashed. As her parents were muggles - non-magic people - she was well familiar with their technology such as computers and the Internet.

"I...haven't told them about the websites," she said.

"I knew they were out there," Harry stated. "But Dudley was furious that I became so popular, so he became extra mean and defensive of his things, so I was never able to get near the computer."

Draco looked rather proud, now that he knew people around the world admired him.

"A lot of people think you're hot," added Tony.

"Actually," Trina amended, "they think he's hot." She motioned to an image of 'Draco' lounged in a black leather couch of the Slytherin Common Room movie set. "Tom Felton. He's the guy that played your role."

Draco looked at the unmoving image with a disdainful sneer.

"I have that, pretending to be me?" he said, incredulously.

"So the slicked-back platinum hair would imply," Trina said sarcastically. "You're catching on."

"But he doesn't look anything like me!" Draco looked as if someone had just committed a huge offence against him, which according to him, they had.

Tony looked back and forth at Draco, and his portrayed movie character.

"Yeah, you're right," she concluded. "He's much hotter."

Judging by Draco's speechless and indignant reaction, this was the wrong answer.

Ron found this blatant hit at Draco's ego highly amusing, not surprisingly. All those familiar with Harry Potter and his life, courtesy of Rita Skeeter and Jo Rowling, knew of Ron and Draco's animosity.

Draco settled for darting a deep scowl at her, and silence again fell over the room, save for the popping-sounds on the rooftop.

"Ok, this is gonna sound really weird considering what's happening here," Trina finally said, "but, where is everyone sleeping? Coz it's late, after all, and any of your issues-" she cast a look at the four new entrants, "-can be solved after I've had a good sleep. Whoever sent you away, if they did, probably won't be expecting you back soon."

"Six people can't stay in a 15-foot caravan!" Tony stated. "And how would I explain it to my family if they woke up and saw us all in the house?"

"Well, you have a large bed-" Trina started to say before Tony hurriedly interrupted.

"I am not sharing my bed!" she exclaimed. "I think opening my room up to these guys in the first place was a bit of an overshare! The bed is mine."

"Well how about we sleep inside the house," Trina suggested, "and they can have the caravan? That way you won't have to actually sleep next to anyone."

"Oh, so I'm expected to leave these people in here with all my equipment, and with my underwear drawer?!"

Trina looked sceptical.

"Do you have any other suggestions?" she asked, more rhetorically than anything else.

Tony's glum, resigned expression effectively portrayed that she didn't. "Fine," she said, walking over to her folded-out table. "But I'm taking my computer!" She proceeded to unplug the network cable, and folded up the power cable to take inside with her.

"I'm keeping this sleeping bag," Trina said possessively, pulling it tighter around her shoulders.

"I'll bring some sleeping bags and blankets in from the house," Tony said. She gathered up some pillows from her bed, getting ready to shift into the house.

"C'mon, Hermione," she continued. "You can come with us. If we need to, we can explain the arrival of one friend my parents have never seen."

Trina gathered her things together and headed toward the door, Hermione and Tony in tow. After Tony passed out of the door, she turned back and said she'd be back soon with blankets.

"And Harry," she added, "don't let these two bust anything." She looked pointedly at Draco. "And Harry, you can sort out between you who's sleeping where, but he's not going in my bed."

Her eyes held an amused glint as she looked at Draco through the doorframe.

The last thing she heard before the door creaked shut was Draco's muttering retort.

"He's not hotter than me..."

~<>~

The moon filtered in through the net curtains of the lounge, casting a soft silver blanket over the room and splashing each dark corner with its white liquid fire. As tired as Trina was, she had still managed to fall asleep rather quickly, despite Tony's refusal to close the drapes over the net curtains. Tony had insisted that if she was to be bored lying down quietly to stare at the ceiling, she was going to be bored with a view. Even if the view included an ironing board still folded-out from that afternoon, the blank TV and her father's video editing equipment, and the two other sleeping bodies sprawled haphazardly over thin mattresses on the floor.

On the couch, Tony restlessly shifted inside the sleeping bag belonging to one of her sisters, causing a rustle.

And again.

Silence.

And again.

"Stop it..." a sleepy voice fought its way groggily through the thick night air. Trina had been dragged to consciousness just enough to project these words, though Tony knew that she was still asleep more than anything else. Still, she thought it best to stay still before that voice, which had held an edge of annoyance, grew to be accompanied by conscious thought. Which would make for a not-happy Trina.

Tony sighed. She watched the VCR clock switch its thin, green, digital numbers to 01:13am.

Wow, she thought. Has it really been only just over an hour since they came? Since my life was made a World of Weird?

She replayed what had happened, in her head. She contemplated the heavy expression of the green-eyed boy in glasses; amusedly recalled Ron's face as she remembered Trina's nickname for him; admired Hermione for her ability to hold the waylaid group together; and thought bemusedly of the platinum blond egotist.

I can see why nobody likes him, she admitted to herself. I mean, sure I go for the platinum thing he's got going, but a girl's gotta have her standards.

He was rather deceptive, to look at. Initially, he gave the impression of being weak. Although he had strong, piercing grey eyes, his skin looked pale and thin, and he looked as though it wouldn't take much to overpower him. This impression lasted as long as it took for him to open his mouth.

"He looks like something dead..." Tony quietly muttered into the room.

"I don't think he'd be too happy to hear that," an equally quiet voice came through a pillow.

Tony started a little in surprise, as she realised Hermione was still awake. Although, if she'd just appeared on the other side of the world with no explanation and no way of defending herself, she didn't think she'd be prone to sleep either.

She didn't know what to say to the meant-to-be-sleeping Gryffindor, so for several uncomfortable minutes she stayed silent, before venturing the words, "So you have no idea how you got here?"

She thought that perhaps Hermione had finally dropped off to sleep, but then the quiet voice sounded again.

"No."

There was a long silence, before she continued, "We weren't in Potions class, so it couldn't have been a potion made wrongly - unless it was one with a delayed effect."

Tony doubted that was the answer.

"But I doubt that's it," commented Hermione, bringing a smile from Tony.

For a moment, Tony thought about telling her about the incident with the laptop, and the mysterious icon with its instructions. But on reflection, hadn't thought that was a good idea. She didn't want the group being convinced she was the bad guy because she'd brought them here. But then, she didn't think that she had. What sort of regular muggle-contraption would be able to do that sort of thing?

No, it has to be the work of whoever was behind that site, Tony thought. I'll tell them about it, but not yet.

A thought occurred to Tony: Why would they be fully dressed in the middle of the night? She lay pondering that, until the answer came to her with such obvious clarity, she was slightly embarrassed for even questioning it. England was twelve hours behind New Zealand - it would have been their lunchtime when they were whisked over here. Suddenly Hermione's insomnia wasn't so surprising. She doubted the boys were sleeping either, which caused her some concern over what it was that they were doing - she hoped it wasn't an exploration of her underwear drawer. They were boys, after all.

"I can see why you and Ron would have come with Harry, as you three tend to be the Three Musketeers of Hogwarts..." Tony started. She hoped Hermione understood the reference. She appeared to, as she didn't ask what it was. "...but why do you think Draco was caught up in this location-warp with you?"

"I don't know," Hermione responded, and Tony detected a definite edge to her reply this time. Perhaps it was because she was tired, but Tony was more inclined to think that it pained Hermione to repeatedly say she was clueless about anything.

Tony was beginning to feel a little bad. If it had been her who was stranded in Hermione's situation, she wouldn't want to analyse it straight away. She'd be more inclined to curl up into a ball, close her eyes tightly, and hope that when she opened them she'd see her home again. She supposed that even for someone as sure-minded and sensible as Hermione, what had just happened had to have been at least a little scary.

"We'll get you home, you know," Tony assured her, although she wasn't sure quite how yet. "Somehow, we will."

In the dark, Hermione smiled past the tear running down her cheek.

~ <> ~

Commotion at the Gryffindor table that evening hadn't been much different than usual, moments beforehand. The disappearance of Ron, Harry and Hermione had grown to become a fairly recent occurrence with their adventures around the school, so the students now didn't question their absence, but only held curious wonderment.

Curiosity was replaced with concern as Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle had walked into the Great Hall, sans Draco Malfoy. The two cronies had looked disoriented and puzzled.

It wasn't as if the Gryffindors were concerned for Draco; on the contrary - most of them would consider it a wonderful gift if he was transferred away, or even just expelled. But the absence of Draco, coupled with the absence of the Gryffindor three, led them to believe that the Slytherin could be making trouble for them somewhere.

Lee Jordan stood, and strode confidently over to Crabbe and Goyle, confronting them by the Slytherin table before they sat down.

"So where's Malfoy?" he asked, although the question sounded more like an accusation.

Once Goyle had gotten over the surprise of being approached and spoken to by a Gryffindor, he formed a half-scowl on his face before muttering, "Why do you care?"

"Oh, I don't," Lee reassured them with a sardonic smile. "I just want to know what he's done to Harry."

The Slytherin two frowned.

"We don't know anything," said Crabbe, and Lee fought to keep from laughing at Crabbe's unintentional meaning. "We don't know where he is, or what he's doing."

"Not that it's any of your business anyway," Goyle added.

Some nearby Slytherins sitting at their lunch table looked over at Lee, and commented snidely, "Stick to worrying about commentating on Quidditch, Jordan. Keep your nose out of our business, or we'll make sure it ends up on a bludger."

Lee departed for the Gryffindor table, but not before casting them a resentful glare.

"They don't know where Harry is," he reported back to his housemates. "Or Ron and Hermione."

Neville Longbottom looked glum, and held sympathy for the missing three if they hadn't returned by the next Potions class. Professor Snape was particularly intimidating to Neville. But if his housemates weren't back soon, Potions class wouldn't be the only subject of concern.