When Worlds Collide

Chapter 3: Continuing of the Same

"Ginny! Bludger!" Fred's call spliced the air in warning, as his sister manoeuvred her broomstick to narrowly miss the offending missile.

Ginny frowned and mentally scolded herself for not paying attention. Her mind had been too preoccupied with the absence of Harry, Hermione and her brother to be keeping a close watch for an elusive silver-winged golden ball. But someone had to step in for Harry in the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Lee Jordan had said that despite the incident of the kidnapping -or whatever it was - "life goes on". 'Life' obviously included Quidditch. Ginny wished Lee hadn't said it quite so much as if her brother and her friends were already dead. She knew that with Harry's position of Seeker on the team up for grabs, Ron would have been almost sick with excitement at the possibility of getting it. Only of course, he was gone too.

Swallowing grimly as she was reminded of this again, Ginny soared higher over the pitch. Perhaps she'd have a better chance at keeping her mind on the game if she kept moving in an active search for the snitch.

Then, with an almost imperceptible flash, she saw it. The sun had glinted off the shiny surface of the ball so quickly Ginny almost wasn't sure if had really been there, but as she dived quickly down in chase the snitch came back into view, it's fine silver wings moving so fast the ball appeared to be levitating. Ginny fixed her eyes on it determinedly, so as not to loose track of it. The ball was skipping in all directions, apt to change without warning. Ginny knew Harry would have easily captured the snitch with his reflexes as sharp as they were, but after all, she wasn't Harry.

The challenge of reaching the snitch and catching it became a secondary concern as the new Slytherin Seeker flew suddenly alongside her, brutally nudging her aside. Of course, with Draco also mysteriously gone, Slytherin also had to have a new Seeker.

Although the disappearance of Draco was appreciated by the Gryffindors, the Slytherin team addition of James Forscythe didn't make much of an improvement. He was in the same year as Ginny, and sported the attitude of Draco Malfoy minus the polished air. Ginny had heard that his uncle had recently died, although just how he had, eluded common gossip. Rumour had it that his uncle had been a Death Eater, but James had smugly refused to indulge information about this. Regardless of the size of the tragedy, it was near impossible to feel any form of sympathy for James - if anything, the incident had made him even more unpleasant. Draco would be proud.

James sneered at Ginny through his unkempt brown hair that had a touch of Snape-greasiness, before pulling ahead slightly. Ginny urged her broomstick onwards as fast as she could, gaining a few inches so she was once again in league with James. If Ginny didn't know better, she'd have thought the snitch was maintaining its distance just to tease her. Closer...closer...

She reached out her arm and teetered a little on her broom. Closer...almost there...

With a feeling of excited elation, she saw the space between her fingertips and the golden ball decrease, until she felt the cool surface skimming the very edge of her fingertips. The next moment, the feeling of a cool smooth surface was replaced by a feeling like that of a blade crossing her hand. James had reached forward also, and with a lunge, had managed to grasp the snitch in his grimy hands, as he'd raked his nails hurriedly across the back of Ginny's hand. The tiny ball fluttered its wings as if it could tell just how atrocious the creature attached to the hand that held it was.

Ginny slowed her broom before dropping to the ground disappointedly, fighting back stinging tears as the resounding groans of the Gryffindors echoed around her head at their loss - so very nearly avoided.

She wanted nothing more than bury herself in her pillows and try to forget the humiliation. As it was, she had to hold her head up as the rest of the Gryffindor team walked over to her.

"It's ok, Ginny," George reassured her. "We know you did your best, and you were really close."

Despite his words, Ginny could see the disappointment etched into his eyes.

"Gryffindor really shouldn't be surprised that they lost," a nasty hoity voice rose to meet Ginny's ears and she glanced over to see a group of Slytherin girls loudly talking amongst each other, with the obvious intention of having the Gryffindor team hear them. "Their team has too many Weasleys to be any good."

"Don't listen to them," Lavender Brown whispered to Ginny. "They're just trying to aggravate you."

"Well it's working," muttered Ginny in reply.

"Ok, but don't let them know that."

By the time Ginny had reached the Gryffindor Common Room, her concern had shifted from the comments of the Slytherin girls, once again to the disappearance of her friends. She sunk into an armchair near the unlit fire, despondent.

"What are we going to tell Mum?"

Ginny started a little at the voice, and looked up to see her two brothers - Fred and George - looking down at her with worried expressions. George raised his eyebrows in silent prompting for her to answer his question.

"I don't know," Ginny said wearily. Surely George couldn't have expected any other answer. "We can go to talk to Dumbledore about this."

Fred shook his head. "We did that already," he said, motioning to his twin. "He wasn't very helpful. He basically told us that Harry, Ron and Hermione were still alive." His face grew almost disappointed as he added, "Well, and Malfoy too. But we're not worried about him."

"Is he doing anything about getting them back?" Ginny asked hopefully.

"Well, that's the problem," George said. "He doesn't know where they are. They must be covered by a Concealing Charm."

Ginny's eyes widened. "So you mean he's not doing anything?"

"Well," George said nervously, "he's worried that You-Know-Who has something to do with it, and so since he can't track Ron or the others, he's watching You-Know-Who closely to see if he makes a move."

Ginny's eyes had widened perceptibly at the concept of Lord Voldemort having taken her brother, and although she'd already assumed this, hearing the words spoken aloud just made it that much worse.

"He knows that Mum will go ballistic if she found out," Fred added, "so he told us not to say anything to her. At least, not until we know what's happening, or until they're all safe."

"He must know that she's going to find out anyway," Ginny said despairingly. "I mean, Dad will hear about it at the ministry - especially if You-Know-Who is involved - and of course Mum will hear about it then."

The twins' sombre faces admitted that this had occurred to them too.

"We'll just have to hope that she doesn't know for as long as possible," Fred said.

Ginny sighed. "Which surely can't be very long."

~<>~

"This is it?" Harry asked, as Tony pulled her car over to the curb outside a heavily glazed building sporting pictures of people with perfect teeth and flawless skin proudly wearing fashionable glasses and looking good in them. The words 'Eye Deal' were written in silver script above the window.

"Yeah, this is it," Tony said, undoing her seatbelt. The six people scrambled out of the car to stand in the sunlit street outside the optometrist's.

"Getting what you need in there may take a while," Trina said. "So how about I take these three for a walk around here, and you can go with Harry, since you're the one with the wallet."

Tony could apparently not imagine Draco being co-operative in the store any more than Trina could, as she agreed and led Harry inside.

Harry swallowed past the lump of nervousness in his throat. Everything was just so overwhelming. It wasn't as if he'd never seen this sort of Muggle environment before - after all, he lived with Muggles - but knowing he was halfway around the world from home in this strange place seemed to put a heavy distasteful lump in his stomach.

He gazed around him at the various glasses on display, and watched as Tony strode confidently up to the desk at the back to speak to the person behind it. She was a woman in her late thirties, Harry guessed, with impeccable hair and make-up. She obviously took great care in her appearance. He didn't hear what the words being spoken were, but he saw the woman at the desk raise her eyes to him, smiling almost amusedly. Harry nervously reached up to pat down his hair over his forehead, just in case the woman had seen the scar through the concealer. The woman turned back to Tony to say a few a words before she came out from behind the desk and approached Harry with a reassuring smile.

"Good morning," she said, reaching her hand out for Harry to shake it. "I'm Hannah. So, you're wanting new glasses, then?"

Harry took a moment to orientate himself and find his voice. "Uh, yeah..."

"I supposed you'd often get hassled for having such a Harry Potter look, hmm?" Hannah said teasingly as she beckoned Harry and Tony through a door near the back of the store.

Harry flushed a little, and he saw Tony trying to cover an amused grin with her hand.

Once they were through the door, Harry found himself in a small room with a table and a few comfortable chairs.

"Wait here and I'll get a box with some frames for you to try," she said. "And we can try some contact lenses too, so you can decide your preference."

Her words hung in the air behind her as she breezed out, leaving Harry and Tony in the quiet cream-coloured room. They sat down at the table and waited in silence - the only sound coming from the lightly ticking clock on the wall.

Harry didn't know exactly how much glasses and contact lenses costed, but he was sure it was a sizeable amount. He felt bad for not being able to help out - after all, all his money was in wizard gold, and that wouldn't get them far in the Muggle world.

A few minutes passed before Harry broke the silence. "Isn't this going to cost a lot?"

Tony appeared not to have heard him, as she kept staring unfocusedly at the wall in front of her. Harry thought perhaps he shouldn't have asked the question, and just as he resolved to keep quiet, Tony replied, "It will be a sizeable amount, yeah..." She must have noticed Harry's guilt-stricken expression, as she added in a reassurance, "But we'll be bypassing America. I mean, when Trina and I had planned our overseas trip, we were going to stop in the States to see some friends - and of course, America is a fair distance out of the way. So if we're no longer going there - at least, not with you four, on the way to Europe - that's extra money saved. Extra money that would more than cover your glasses, so we're not going to run out of money on the trip..." Her brow furrowed in thought. "...Unless one of you people eat a lot - now that Trina and I are covering for four more..."

The start of a smile tugged at the corner of Harry's mouth, but he was saved the trouble of coming up with a suitable response by the hurried entrance of Hannah, brightly smiling and brandishing a blue box, which she set in front of them and opened to display a selection of glasses frames.

She pulled the remaining chair from the table and sat, still talking happily to Harry, and she showed him a catalogue of various contact lenses.

Harry glanced upward from the array to see Tony glance momentarily at her watch, before settling back in her chair to wait.

~<>~

Draco had been only too keen to get away from Harry and the optometrists', Ron noticed unimpressed. He supposed that Draco would consider waiting for Harry to be a serious breach of justice. As the group of four had walked through the paved area in the centre of town, stopping occasionally at stores Trina wanted to go into, or at small caravans selling hotdogs or ice-cream, Draco's nasty demeanour had slipped a bit. He was still relatively negative of course - after all, Draco would always be Draco. And Ron would always hate him for it. Perhaps it was because Draco had finally realised that he wouldn't be getting home any faster by playing the sultry bully, or perhaps it was the grandeur of the adventure - either way, Ron had been shocked to see what he was sure had been the start of a smile on the blond boy's face.

"Oh, we have to go in here," Ron was pulled out of his thoughts by the sound of Trina's excited voice, as she strode into a shop that was painted an overwhelming blue, with large golden coins pictured on it. Ron raised an eyebrow at the place, disbelievingly. He didn't think even Diagon Alley had shops that looked as tacky as this.

'The $2-Shop', a bright gold-coin was painted to be saying. Ron following the others inside, and noted that Draco was looking around with some disgust. Ron wasn't too surprised at this. Although he wasn't familiar with Muggle money and their values, he got the impression that $2 wasn't very much - and it appeared that everything in this store costed exactly that. The shop didn't appear to specialise in anything in particular, but rather was a collage of everything. As he glanced half-heartedly over the large room, he saw wrapping paper, letter-writing equipment, candles, toys, things that looked like they worked with electricity - batteries and the like - that he knew his father would love, and countless other items on sale.

"Oh, look!" Trina exclaimed, and Hermione and the two boys looked up at her. She was wearing a strange headpiece - a band that had two alien antennae sticking out of it. "Tony's been wanting to get one of these for ages," she continued.

Ron's incredulousness at seeing the strange headband decreased as he heard this information. He could easily imaging Tony wanting something like that - she seemed to have the same level of seriousness as his own brothers, Fred and George.

This reminder of his family back home brought a cold feeling to his stomach. They wouldn't be trapped here forever, would they? Surely not. Dumbledore wouldn't allow it, and after all, Trina and Tony had offered to take them back to England. Hermione must have sensed his sudden discomfort, as she looked to him with an expression of empathy.

Draco was inspecting a large and all-too-real-looking plastic spider - much to the terror of Ron - when a sudden beeping made them all look up. The noise seemed to be coming from Trina's carry-bag. Trina rummaged around in her bag before retrieving the source of the noise - a small black object that she lifted to her ear and proceeded to talk into.

Ron disinterestedly looked through the various items in front of him as he listened to the snippets of conversation on Trina's end. "Hello?...Oh, okay...so did you tell them you needed it right away?...ok, we'll find something...ok, bye."

Trina put the small black object - her cellphone, according to Hermione - back in her bag before addressing the others. "Getting the glasses ready is going to take a while, so Tony gave them the hurry-up - but we'll need to find something to do for the next couple of hours."

"Couple of hours?" Draco repeated, incredulous.

Trina tilted her head slightly in thought, before asking, "Do wizards have movies?"

~<>~

Hermione had of course been to movie theatres before, so the experience wasn't new to her. All the same, she found it enjoyable - that is, the parts when Draco wasn't making derogatory comments to Ron about his rate of popcorn consumption, which even Hermione had to admit, was quite high.

"What I don't get," Draco said as they were walking out of the theatre, in a tone as if reporting someone's stupid mistake, "is why that girl with the weird mark on her arm-"

"Tattoo," Trina interrupted in correction.

Draco scowled at her before continuing, "-didn't just fight that guy who got the powerful necklace in the end. I mean, she'd gone through heaps to get it - it was stupid that she gave it over to him."

Trina hesitated for a moment before looking over to him and replying, "People are what they are - sometimes against their wishes. I'm sure the guy didn't want to have to rely on a gem on a chain to live, but that's the hand he was dealt. As for the girl, well, sometimes it takes a more courageous person to accept that they're less important than someone else for something."

She looked at Draco with particular interest at the last sentence, but Draco was determined to look unaffected - although his animosity with Harry Potter was undoubtedly going through his mind.

"Being courageous didn't stop her from dying though, did it?" Ron stated. "She needed the necklace too."

"That's beside the point!" Hermione censured. She may have continued the thread of conversation, had Trina not called out and raised her arm in a wave to two people a block away, walking towards them.

Hermione gasped as they drew to meet the two - who were Tony and Harry, having emerged from the optometrist's.

Tony was looking fidgety, as she was exclaiming over the long uncomfortable wait she went through in there. Harry looked, well...different. He looked at them almost shyly, trying to gauge their reactions. His wind-swept black hair wasn't concealing his forehead, which still had no appearance of a scar, and his deep green eyes looked at them, waiting. Hermione hadn't noticed just how vivid his eye colour was until there weren't any glasses in the way.

"You got contacts!" she said excitedly.

"Well..." Tony began, reaching a hand up to nervously smooth one of her eyebrows.

Trina recognised the gesture and said exasperatedly, "Oh, you didn't!"

Tony shrugged sheepishly.

"Did what?" Ron said, confused.

"She shopped Tony-style," Trina said. Then elaborated, "When she can't decide between two things, she gets them both! You got him glasses as well?"

"Well, we're not going to the States now!" Tony said, trying to justify herself. Seeing this explanation wasn't adequate enough for Trina to accept, she added, "Besides, he might get irritated by wearing contact lenses for too long...or something."

This reasoning sounded more plausible to Trina. "Where are the glasses?" she asked.

"In my bag," Tony responded. "Along with his old ones."

Ron was still looking at Harry as though trying to judge if it was really him, but Hermione reassured Harry by telling him they looked really good.

Harry smiled, which made his eyes seem even more dazzling.

"They look like eyes," Draco said, unable to see what all the fuss was about. His expression changed to one of mild shock and disbelief as he felt a sharp smack to his head.

"Sorry," Tony said, not sounding sorry at all. "Muscle spasm. No control over those things, you know." She turned to Harry, who was making no effort to conceal his glee over seeing Draco's expression, and said, "Harry, here are my keys - you four get in the car. I just want to talk to Trina for a few minutes."

Harry started off toward the car with Ron and Hermione, Draco grudgingly falling in behind them.

~<>~

"Now where are we going?" Draco said, impatiently.

Tony looked at him in the rear-vision mirror and said brightly, "We've shopped for Harry - now we're off to get you the finest hair products money can buy to make you more comfortable..." Draco brightened considerably at this. "...Right after we make world peace and harmony between Voldemort and the Muggle Queen."

For a moment Tony was glad she was looking at Draco through a mirror - the glare he gave her rivalled that of a basilisk on a bad day.

"Where are we really going?" Hermione asked.

"You'll be staying with us," Trina said. "One of the privileges of being a girl." She chose to ignore Draco's mock-gag response. "But the guys can't stay with us. They're not so conspicuous now, but there's still the issue of room."

Before the back-seat passengers could question her further, Tony had pulled up outside of a building marked, 'Parkvale Motel'. Draco didn't appear to be very impressed with this.

"You're putting us in a motel?"

Tony unbelted herself and turned in her seat to look at him levelly. "Well, they're going in the motel..." she motioned toward Harry and Ron, "...but I know for a fact the gutters have a heavily discounted rate. Now here's the part where I give you the luxury of choice. What'll it be?"

As Draco sulked back in his seat, Trina laughed quietly and said to no one in particular, "Sometimes he shouldn't say words."

~<>~

In the dark of night in the dilapidated building in a quiet nook of England, Lord Voldemort smiled - a frightening grimace that faded into the night and dispersed as quickly as it had appeared.

Voldemort knew what he would do.