After a little longer to watch his healing, it looked like it was going to take at least the rest of the summer before we were going to be able to get Sirius back into a semi-healthy state.
Because of that, we actually visited Holly a few weeks later without him for her Birthday. She was incredibly surprised to see all of us along with Ginny, Hermione, and even Neville Longbottom and Hannah Abbot in front of her house that morning. Luna had come back from her trip for the party and Ginny had invited Neville and Hannah. I hadn’t really spent any time with him, but apparently they were a little closer than in the books, probably because Neville was already a little more confident, being 14 instead of 11 when he started school.
Obviously she wasn’t exactly eager to show everyone her ‘home’ so we actually moved off to visit a theme park for the party. As it turns out one of the more famous theme parks in the UK, Thorpe Park, was in Surrey England and only a dozen miles or so from Holly’s home.
Seeing as I had vague memories… or something… about theme parks with roller coasters up the wazoo, I was a little disappointed with the roller coaster offerings in the mid 1990s. However, they still had two coasters along with two water slide rides and a log ride.
What surprised me was that Ginny was absolutely amazed with the offerings and ingenuity of the rides while Neville was simply overwhelmed. They both were raised in full Wizarding homes and probably rarely if ever would have visited a place like this so I really should have expected their culture shock.
Conversely, Luna and Hannah both seemed not only happy with the trip but comfortable with the excursion.
Once again, that made me a little worried about the ministry of magic when the daughter of the department head in charge of Muggle items was less comfortable in the Muggle world than two other random witches around her age.
Then again, I didn’t remember if Hannah was a half blood or a pure blood and Luna traveled the world with her father, so maybe they had more experience or something… it was still pretty bad.
I also was thrilled to see my Family also really enjoying themselves as well. I wanted them to be happy, and living next to dementors all the time was pretty much the opposite of that.
It was as the day was wrapping up and as we all gave Holly a few small gifts, mostly books and some quidditch equipment before we started to wrap up and head home, that I decided that I really wanted to offer to help her get a little revenge.
I mean, I watched as Holly tried to keep her composure at finally… probably for the first time in her memory, having a birthday party of her own. All of it complete with gifts, cake, and friends and her not knowing how to deal with it all that I really thought about what the Dursleys had done. Just seeing Holly overwhelmed with a few gifts, sweets, and a small prizes from the park made me angry.
Really angry… yet as I started to think about ways I might be able to kill them, I caught myself and took a step back.
Was I really going to kill them? Obviously they needed to have some sort of consequences, it was almost criminal that no one bothered to do anything at any point other than Hagrid giving Dudley a pig’s tail, but did I really want to jump to killing?
Was that going to be my response for just about everything? Piss me or one of my girls off… off with your head. Inconvenience us… bullet in the back.
No, I wanted them to understand what they did was wrong, not just put them 6 feet under.
As I started to consider different ideas, we waved goodbye to Hermione, Ginny, Luna, Ahri, Dinah, Neville, and Hannah. All of which headed home on the knight bus, but not before Luna and Dinah gave me a little nod in confirmation. Apparently they approved of my plan… which I hadn’t even made yet… “damn precogs” I muttered fondly.
That left Sabah, Amy and Taylor who came with me as we followed Holly home. It was obvious that Holly wasn’t particularly comfortable with us seeing her home, but as I had said I wanted to make sure she got back safely, she let us. Well, normally she might have insisted on going alone, but with the birthday party I suspected that she was too worn out to put her foot down.
As we reached the door, I spoke up. “Holly, you know that we know a little bit about your childhood. But you need to understand that we care about you and we won’t let you go back if you are in danger. So please, I would like to ask you to be honest with us when we ask about your living situation and what you are going to do.”
Her nod was slow and hesitant, but I took it as agreement so I kept talking. “I do not think it is appropriate for your relatives to just… get away with it. So I want to ask if you would want to get some sort of revenge if you could.”
Holly swallowed and looked around before she slumped. “Yeah, I… I want them to at least realize what they did. I mean, I realized years ago that what they were doing wasn’t normal or even healthy, that they should probably go to jail for what they did. But it would be my word against theirs and… I just don’t want to go through with that.”
I winced, but I wanted, no needed, to know roughly how bad it was if I was going to help get her revenge. “I know you don’t want to go into details, but I just want to confirm. They didn’t beat you did they? Or starve you? Or … touch you, right? Because if they did, then I am not sure if they really deserve to live. I don’t want to just kill them, but I am not sure if I could tolerate child abuse that bad.”
Holly’s eyes widened before she shook her head. “No… No… well, I was sent to bed without dinner quite a few times… and they would lock me… in my first room sometimes. But they didn’t really do anything else.”
Sighing I slumped. “So it was only full-blown emotional… well abuse. That's… no I can’t say good as it is still pretty horrible”
The 17-year-old Holly still winced at the word ‘abuse’ but I continued. “Well, from your reaction you don’t want them killed.” There was some frantic head shaking so I gestured behind me. “Amy and Sabah here didn’t exactly have the best home life either and they can confirm that it leaves its scars. Trust me, they know. Please feel free to open up to them if for no other reason than to have someone to talk to who understands.” I looked at her, with Amy and Sabah behind me looking especially sympathetic.
Seeing as everyone was looking uncomfortable, I reached out and patted Holly’s shoulder. “It is part of the reason I admire all three of you… but there are still things we can do to make sure they don’t get away with it, and I just had an idea that I think you might like.
Everyone looked curious, so I smirked. “What you probably don’t know is that most of the reason your Aunt is so emotionally distant with you is because she is incredibly, horribly jealous.”
That made Holly look up suddenly as the thought finally started to work through her mind. “What…”
I smiled for a moment. “I can probably guess what you are thinking. You are confused and angry that was all it took for a woman to neglect a child.” Then I grimaced. “Look, don’t get me wrong. Nothing would really excuse making a child constantly feel neglected or inferior and you are certainly permitted to feel angry at her. ”
She frowned and then sighed. “So, what exactly are you saying?”
This time I smiled in a way that made it look like butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth. “You already know most of our secrets, but this is another one. I know you are working on your mind defenses but we really do not want you to mention this to anyone, at least not yet.”
I took a breath, this was the big moment which could paint an even bigger target on our back, but it was for a good cause. “Basically, Amy and I can… well we can probably fix your aunt’s magic so it works… well, at least a little as she won’t ever be powerful. In fact she will be little more than a squib.”
I wasn’t about to mention that I suspected we might eventually figure out how to make any wizard into a Muggle or a Muggle into the second coming of Merlin. Better to describe it as us fixing a squib a little bit.
That made Holly’s eyes go wide before she looked confused. “How would that be getting back at her?”
I smiled, but this time it was a bit vicious. “Oh, two things. One is she is going to have to learn to control it and in so doing realize that by trying to make you suppress your magic she nearly got her family and your entire town killed if your magic ran out of control. The second is that every single time she uses it from now on, she is going to have to remember what she did to you, but she won’t be able to stop. She has wanted to have it for too long. So, we get her some basic training and forge a transcript or two, and she will be able to use the basic household cleaning charms, levitation spells, etc … nothing big or complicated… and ever single time she does she is going to remember how horrible a person she was to you and your mother and that guilt will never, ever go away. Hell, it would probably destroy her perfect little marriage on top of that. All from something she desperately wants.”
Holly slowly blinked for a few moments before her smile grew predatory. “Yeah, YEAH I like that.”
I smiled. “Ok. So we have some preparations to make before we can do it, but ask her and if she agrees we can be there this weekend to make the change. Then you can walk her through Diagon Alley to get her wand yourself or you can send one of us. We can get her a tutor we swear to secrecy and soon enough she will be one of us and never able to forget it. I just want you to be the one to offer, as the revenge will be especially effective if it is you that is the one to arrange for the cure in her eyes.”
Holly smiled before she looked sadly at the home. I suspected that I knew what she was thinking. She probably was wondering if she might have had a childhood worth remembering if we had arrived sooner.
I then turned to her. “We also wanted to give you an update. We found the dog we talked to you about. We are healing him as best we can in a safe location, but it is slow-going with how messed up he is. Still, we hope to be able to let you visit him before school starts.”
Holly looked at me and I wasn’t able to parse the numerous emotions running across her face. “Thank you…”
We parted ways there and headed back to our home to continue to try to figure out how to cast the Patronus charm seeing as that was the only thing that could actually keep a dementor away.
It wasn’t going well.
Turns out the charm that had specifically been described as difficult to cast, was in fact extremely difficult to learn to cast. All of us had managed a small weak mist that formed a tiny shield, but that was it. Nothing we did seemed to improve it and it only got worse if we tried to cast while in our backyard where we could feel the dementor’s effects.
I might even have considered moving us out of the town if we hadn’t found a warding scheme in one of the books we found in the room of lost things that promised to be able to ward away dementors. It was a little difficult to set up but after carving the protection rune into the 4 walls and casting the ward we could be mostly safe from their aura while inside our home.
We thought about offering the ward to others, but by the time we figured it out it seemed the other residents had figured something out or temporarily moved away.
I also was paying attention to the Muggle news, but Lara Croft was apparently riding the wave of success from discovering Yamatai Island and was apparently too busy to safely contact. I didn’t want to send an owl with all the people she was around, my Muggle post letter didn’t get answered, and I doubted showing up out of the blue would be appreciated.
Still, while I wanted to talk to her again and maybe get a second chance to look at Sam’s soul, it could wait. I doubted anything would happen too soon.
Two weeks later we got the call, and performed the soul surgery to make Petunia Dursley Nee Evans a witch, albeit an extremely weak one.
It was satisfying for everyone and especially Holly to see her aunt look so happy and then look at her niece and visibly pale. I was starting to think this might be the best kind of revenge.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. A part of me wanted to see them emotionally and maybe even physically broken, but I pushed the thoughts away. I didn’t want to end up a murder hobo cutting his way through the multiverse and so I was going to put the effort into finding better revenges when I could.
Really, watching her get her own wand and then realize that she was now one of the ‘freaks’ was incredibly satisfying. Hell, a part of me was certain that her marriage wasn’t going to last the year based on the uncomfortable face Vernon was making as we performed the ‘Ritual’. The ritual in question was making her drink several of the most disgusting potions we could find followed by a lot of muttering and wand waving to disguise the modifications that Amy and I were making.
Her wand didn’t have a trace on it since we had forged a few papers while Holly had purchased a tutor who we had then sworn to secrecy.
After that, Holly just packed up her things and left. I was also just as certain that she would never return. I mean it made sense, the school year was only about 3 weeks away and next year she would be 18 and Dumbledore had warned the protections would fall that summer. I was curious why it was 18 here instead of 17 when the blood protections would end, but I didn’t have the magical knowledge to understand universal differences like that.
What I didn’t expect was her request to stay with Sirius, although I really should have. Her counterpart had practically jumped at the idea of living with anything he could call ‘Family’.
However, I wasn’t sure that was such a good idea just yet. Sirius was still not talking although he was looking more and more mentally present each day that passed. Hell, he only spaced out while staring into the void once or twice every few hours and he was actually bathing and eating by himself now.
I just didn’t know if it was a good idea to give him something else to focus on. Seeing Holly around the house could help pull him out of his head… or it could give him something new to stress about.
So, just like every time I didn’t know what to do, I turned to my girls. “What do you think?”
Amy only paused for a moment before she gave her medical report. “His body is as good as I can make it, he is probably the most healthy 42 year old in the world. Hell, even without magic he would probably live until he is at least 120 if he took care of himself. I just don’t have any idea what to do about his mind.” She paused and sighed. “He is like my fath… Mr Dallon. I can’t really do much for the depression and self-loathing without some serious work and I am still… worried about potentially changing who he is if I change him too much.”
Luna frowned and stared into the distance.
Dinah started muttering. “Somewhat likely to medically harm Sirius for Holly lives with him full time. Somewhat unlikely to harm Sirius for Holly to live with him if she occasionally leaves him alone. Unlikely to harm Sirius for Holly to visits during the day but sleeps somewhere else.”
I couldn’t really know for certain, but I supposed that could make sense. Sirius might not want Holly to hear his nightmares, as all of us found the sight heart-wrenching and we didn’t even think of him as family. On the other hand seeing his friend’s daughter each day would probably raise his spirits faster than just the baths and relaxing in the countryside would.
Luna bit her lip, but after some tense silence simply nodded instead of saying anything. That was a little strange, but now wasn’t the right time to discuss their visions.
Holly wasn’t happy when we explained the plan for staying with Sirius, but she agreed. In the end, she stayed with the Weasleys for the last two weeks of the summer, but wanted to spend every day from breakfast to dinner visiting with Sirius. I suspected she was asking him for stories about her parents growing up.
The complication was we still didn’t want everyone to know about the pocket dimension so we actually went out and purchased another tiny cottage in Iceland. One that was hidden several miles into an old private forest, then paid some warders to make sure it was secure and fix it up. A little work from Dobby to keep it clean and it was a perfect little three bedroom retreat from the British wizarding world, albeit without phone lines or even electricity.
Finally, the last two weeks brought us around to what we would do about Bakuda and Squealer.
We had put them in the equivalent of a magical coma and pulled them along for almost two and a half years. Yet now we finally had a tentative plan on what we would do with them.
I had pulled the entire family together for this as we walked down into the basement of our pocket home. Sirius, Holly, and Lin were all gone, just in case, so it was only my Family who would be here when they woke up.
I had obviously pulled their powers into their souls when we had popped away from Earth Bet with them. I definitely didn’t want the giant space worms tracking us down somehow, but according to my girls the transfer also got rid of the conflict drive. So hopefully they would be a little more willing to talk with us.
Looking at Squealer first I noticed that Amy had long since removed the heavy caked on makeup she had been wearing and had moved her into simple jeans and a tanktop. It emphasized her somewhat huge breasts, but no one in the room besides Luna and Dinah had anything smaller than a large B cup so it wasn’t exactly shocking. Her dirty blond hair was tied up in a pony tail and her face showed the wear and tear of her self-destructive lifestyle on top of a somewhat average face.
Poking Squealer awake first we waited as she blinked for several seconds before she focused on us. “Who the fuck are you? Where the fuck am I? Where is my Skiddy? You mother FUC…”
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Amy didn’t have to wait for me to ask her, and simply shut Squealer up by removing her ability to talk.
Only Hesitating for a moment, I decided to try, even if I didn’t have much hope at this point. “Squealer. We captured you and brought you with us when we left Earth Bet to give you a second chance. We believe that you might be both redeemable and helpful so we wanted to give you an opportunity to…”
I didn’t even have to wait for her to consider it as she instantly started shaking her head ‘no’. Sighing, I then grimaced as I prepared myself to play hard ball here. Reaching forward, I slapped her across the face which seemed to shock her enough to shut up her silent babbling and get her to pay attention again.
“Look, we really aren’t giving you an option. Your vehicles killed people… a lot of people. From what we could tell your vehicles killed dozens of civilians with 5 of those dying in three separate incidents while you were the confirmed driver. In most civilized worlds that would give you a life sentence in prison. That doesn’t even touch how many people overdosed due to your drugs…”
I sighed again as I watched her visibly roll her eyes at me and I turned to Amy and Taylor. “She isn’t going to change, is she?”
Taylor’s eyes had gone hard and she was scowling while I could hear some bugs buzzing in the background. That gave me a little pause where tried to understand why she had gotten so angry. When I did, I had to bite back another sigh. I had nearly forgotten, but in the story Taylor could be a little judgy with people she thought of as villains.
Finding out about her own possible future had softened her a little, but the knowledge that Squealer wasn’t sorry she had killed people in car accidents, car accidents like the one that had killed her mom, had probably pushed her into her previous opinion of the woman, namely that of outright disdain.
Realizing the direction this interview was going, I was a little disappointed that she wouldn’t join us long term, but I wasn’t about to anger my girls by forcing someone they didn’t like into the family. Especially one that was as unrepentant as this.
Looking at Amy again, I sighed. “Looks like we don’t really have too many options. How long was she with Skidmark?”
Amy, realizing what this meant, slumped. “About three years, I think.”
Nodding, I pulled out my wand and leveled it at her face before focusing and carefully, but forcefully stating “Obliviate!”
I nearly collapsed at the required strength to erase the previous three years. Honestly, I suspected that I wouldn’t have been able to do it if she hadn’t spent those years in a drug fueled haze, thus making them a lot less impactful to her mind and soul than if she had been awake the entire time.
Waking her up, we began questioning her for round two. “Hello, what is your name?”
Squealer looked around confused and a little glassy eyed, as she was obviously still under the suggestibility side effect of the obliviation. “Uh, its Sherrel, uh… Sherrel Bailey.”
Nodding, I then asked. “What are you going to do now?”
There was a pause before she replied. “I am going to look for someone who needs work done on their ride, so I can get a couple blunts and somewhere to sleep, then head further north.”
I frowned and then asked. “What is the last thing you remember?”
She replied quicker, this time in the same flat voice. “I left Georgia and was moving around, trying to find a place to lie low, somewhere I could tinker in peace away from my bastard sperm donor.”
So she was a druggie with some sort of daddy issues… sad but almost cliché. Thinking through her new life story in my mind I only paused a moment before I started explaining. “Sherrel, we found you in Brockton Bay where you had gotten into a little bit of trouble with a gang. We pulled you away and are going to give you a second chance on a new Earth away from Earth Bet. You will be safe, but before we trust you we are going to put you under a power enforced oath not to hurt anyone. Would you accept this second chance?”
We watched as the woman stared blankly out before she slowly nodded. “I agree.”
I was tempted to try to use the suggestible state to influence her more, but in the end I simply stated. “You are sorry about all the problems you have caused and people you hurt. You want to get away from all of that and are grateful for this chance.” That much was probably true if we had reverted her back to before her villainous career had gotten started.
Still tired, I took a few minutes to recover as Amy put Sherrel back to sleep before we decided to talk to Bakuda.
Bakuda was very obviously half Japanese in terms of skin tone, but still had surprisingly bright blue eyes. She was only a little over 5 feet tall and had long straight black hair. Honestly, she might have been slightly above average in terms of looks, but that didn’t mean much compared to my girls. Honestly, to me she just looked like any other college student you might see on a university campus.
Surprise, surprise, it started out pretty much the same with the same questions as the girl woke up. “Who are you? Where am I? What the hell is going on?”
I decided this time I would simply wait for her to finish her questions, as she hadn’t been nearly as confrontational.
When she finished her panicked questioning, I decided to answer. “We grabbed you as we were destroying the ABB. We took you with us instead of killing you like we did to Oni Lee and Lung because we hoped you might feel a little regretful of what you did now that we removed the drive for conflict from your powers.”
Bakuda paused for a moment before she looked around, obviously realizing that we knew who she was and that there wasn’t really any chance of escape. She swallowed and then actually seemed to take stock of what she was feeling.
Slowly she nodded and I smiled, relieved.
Oh, I was fairly certain she was currently willing to lie, cheat, steal, and maybe even kill to make sure she survived, but that was what the unbreakable oath was for. If she hurt any of us, she would die, simple as that.
Again, Bakuda slowly nodded and I smiled wider. “Great. Now I would like to know more about you, especially your name, and what you would like to do. Know for now we have removed you from Earth Bet. You have a smaller subset of your powers but said powers can grow slightly as you practice them. We also have ways of empowering you further, but we would only consider doing that if we get along.”
I paused for a moment then smiled a little while narrowing my eyes. “Keep in mind that Amy will be monitoring you to ensure you don’t tell any lies.”
She swallowed carefully, obviously still a little confused, and then started talking. “My name is Sarah Fujio… call me Sarah”
We all listened as she started explaining how her parents always made sure she had to be the best in everything. How they didn’t have money so she had to make sure she kept her scholarships, no matter what. How she finally got into the electrical engineering degree she always wanted, one that would finally make her parents happy, only to have a professor delete her final project and fail her. Destroying her scholarship which would have forced her to drop out of college. Worse, she found out that he did it just because she hadn’t wanted to go out with his nephew and he had ties to the E88. A part of me was annoyed on sheer principle… damn Nazis.
So, obviously she snapped as she triggered. She said it felt like she was in a red haze and just HAD to get back at them. Yet she had been clear that she had only wanted to kill the professor and the nephew even if she had been perfectly ok with others being seriously injured. Yet after it went down and she was labeled a villain she realized her life was over. They knew who she was and she really didn’t have any options left.
I winced at the unrepentant first two murders, but trigger events were always messy. Yet it was a good sign that once the conflict drive was removed, she seemed disappointed in how things had turned out.
Yet as much as I really, really wanted to find someone like her because we really, really needed some technical skills before we headed into a tech world, I wasn’t about to bind anyone to the Family unless I was sure they would all get along. It was why the girls gave the final vote to admit anyone new.
Clearing my throat, I asked, “Well then, let's talk about the metaphorical stick and carrot then.”
Sarah grimaced at me, but nodded slowly.
Leaning back, I started firm. “Let's talk stick first. You will be magically…” seeing her face I rolled my eyes and waved it away. “and yes magic is real and will prove it and then will teach you soon enough, but for now think of it as a Parahuman power if you want… Anyway, you will be magically unable to hurt us or anyone else. Failure to obey this oath will see you dying instantly and irreversibly. We will be keeping an eye on you and if we don’t like what is going on, we are going to wipe your mind like we did to Squealer.” I said, pointing to the woman next to her.
Bakuda looked over to examine Sherrel, before turning back to look at us with a little more concern.
“The carrot now. If you earn your place with us you will have access to Amy and myself. That means biological immortality and any physical changes you may want, albeit on her schedule since it is her power and her time. On the other hand, I am able to do two things. One, I can give you new powers and two, I can bind your soul to an object like a gem or to the rest of us. The first will let me revive you if you are killed and the second should let us revive you even if said gem is destroyed as long as someone in the Family survives.”
Sarah opened her mouth and closed it several times before she scoffed.
Taylor, probably already done with all of this, stepped forward. “It is true, I took a shot through the heart, bled out, and was revived a few minutes later… still hurt though.”
I didn’t like reliving that and apparently neither did anyone else as she immediately got several different side hugs with the rest giving her sad looks.
I think Sarah was more startled by the show of support than she was about the resurrection.
I then decided to finish up. “Two more things to know about joining the Family. One, we try to help people as long as it doesn’t risk permanent harm to the Family. And two, if you join then it is forever and all of your priorities need to be to the Family first. And yes while you don’t need to sleep with me or any of the other girls. We don’t allow attachments like that to anyone outside the Family.”
I could see the implications hit Sarah and then the question came. “Are we just your Harem then?”
I could hear the accusations and I sighed. “Everyone here, excluding Luna and Dinah, is 4-7 years older than they look… well Ahri is a fox spirit and older than all of us put together… but I only sleep with the girls that want me to. You should also know that it is the girls that will decide if you join us.”
Ahri seemed to decide to cut off Sarah’s disbelief about her fox status by spreading out her tails and waiving them around.
Amy interrupted me before I could say anything else. “Don’t tip toe around it. We are here because we like you, Max. We like the sex, it is pretty great already and you are still getting better. We like visiting the places and getting the powers. There are lots of reasons to stay and the only real requirement is to put the Family first and help us help others when we can. Just keep in mind that if you piss us off bad enough, not only will you not get in, but you will lose the powers you have. Hell, I would threaten to give you cancer, but if you actually betray us the oath will kill you before I can.”
We watched Sarah realize who was talking to her, surprised. I mean, having the world’s greatest healer, Panacea, offer to do work on you was probably a little shocking only to find out she was sandbagging the entire time. Yet, I think she also finally realized the body modifications were real as she studied Amy’s face. Amy didn’t wear a mask and most people knew what she looked like. Since Earth Bet, Amy had given herself C cups and a skin treatment that took her from a cute nerdy or mousey girl-next-door look to a near supermodel figure and face. That got her to actually look at the rest of us.
A minute later Sarah agreed.
In the end, we woke Sherrel up and brought Sherrel and Sarah out of the basement before performing the body and soul surgery needed to give them magic. Then we immediately pulled out Sabah’s wand who witnessed while I made them swear the oath.
The oath we had decided on was actually pretty simple. “You will not physically hurt any member of the Family on purpose through action or inaction in any way that is not an accident or requested. You will keep our secrets as best you can until we tell you otherwise. You will avoid hurting anyone you can in any reasonable way, and avoid maiming or permanently hurting them if you can’t.”
The exact words themselves were less important than you might think because in the unbreakable vow magic from the witness of the oath, in this case Sabah, would be the one to judge if the oath was broken.
It made sense because if it wasn’t the oath was basically useless. All it would take was someone else performing a memory charm or compulsion to get out of the oath. For instance, if we had made her take an oath to ‘not kill any people’, then all she had to do was decide the humans around her for whatever reason weren’t ‘people’ to make the oath useless. Now the witness was the one to judge the oath.
Part of me wondered if that was why there were three people required for the oath even in the books, but I shook off the thought. We had more important things to do in order to get ready.
At first, I considered making both of them go through school again, but I suspected that Squealer, now Sherrel, wouldn’t actually do the work for any of her classes, so it would be a waste of time. Worse, I didn’t think she was mentally stable quite yet. Yeah, wiping away most of her time at rock bottom would help, but in the end I simply apologize to Lin and gave her another patient to look after. While I hoped the purification waters would help, I actually suspected that living a safe and somewhat relaxing life in iceland would do significantly more to heal her mind.
Sarah, on the other hand, had surprised everyone by instantly agreeing to be de-aged in order to attend Hogwarts.
I mean, I guess it made sense… she cared enough about her academic studies to trigger.
Even if she seemed to understand deep down that putting all that focus and self-worth on schooling was unhealthy, she didn’t seem to be able to help herself. Thus, we took the 22-year-old girl and de-aged her down to just shy of 15 again before making sure she produced some accidental magic, getting her a letter, and buying a wand and school supplies.
The sad thing was, after she had her letter, she asked if she really had to stay this age or if she could be aged up just a tad bit more. That made me want to facepalm as it wasn’t like they checked our ages any point after the initial Hogwarts letter. Even with Holly’s changes to make our hormones levels match those of young adults, it barely reduced the annoyance of going through puberty again. Hell, I was tired of being a short and thin almost 16-year-old.
So, after a little brain storming, Amy made a few modifications so everyone except Luna and Dinah would have a bit of a growth spurt this year. That way, by the end of the year, we would probably look and feel 18 or 19 instead of just shy of 17.
The various preparations took up most of our remaining break, but finally the night before school started, realizing that we weren’t going to get the Patronus charm working in time, we decided to focus on the advanced locking and reinforcement charms for the train instead. In the end, it was a bit of a stressful night but we got them mastered just in case.
However, while we were working, we were amused to see Lin starting to fret over us all. We had all noticed that she was behaving more and more mother-like as the summer went on. Strange when you knew her character in the movie, but I supposed that was what happened when you had an actual child to take care of on top of two traumatized adults.
In the end she woke us all up so we could be early down to the Hogwarts Express. As stupid as it was, we needed to take the floo down to the King’s Cross station in London so we could travel with the rest of the students via train right back up to the Hogsmeade station… a station less than a mile from our cottage home… in around eight hours of travel.
Yeah, it didn’t make any more sense now than it had the end of the previous school year.
Still, we were probably going to get a chance to meet Lupin. I still really liked the character in just about everything… except his marriage to Nymphadora ‘just call me Tonks’ Tonks. I was still firmly of the opinion that a man who would run away from his wife and unborn child didn’t deserve them, even if he eventually returned.
Actually, thinking about it, I was a lot more angry about this than I should be… like it was personal…
I tried to remember.
It felt like maybe… I had had a father figure leave us…
I felt a sharp stab of pain before another memory took its place where I DID have a father figure… but…
I nearly jumped as Amy touched my arm while looking at me, worried. Shaking off my spiraling thoughts, I and walked through the fireplace to arrive at the King’s Cross Station. Yet, as we arrived at platform 9 ¾ I looked around to realize we were maybe a tad too early.
We had wanted to be able to pick a cabin close to Professor Lupin who should pick the last cabin on the train. However, before we could say anything else we watched as Lin sniffed a few times before smiling as she walked over towards a bedraggled looking older man walking towards the train.
Was Lin flirting?
No wait, was Lin flirting with Remus Lupin…
I blinked. I mean foxes and wolves did probably seem a little similar… I guess.
Shaking my head, I didn’t say anything. She could do what she liked. If she wasn’t going to join our Family then I had no say over who she did and did not associate with.
Plus, she already had a daughter, so I supposed it might actually work out. I mean, in the books the biggest issue seemed to be not wanting to potentially pass the werewolf curse to his child and that wouldn’t be an issue here since she already had a daughter.
Then again, we had still never met her so maybe this Tonks wouldn’t want kids, or maybe she wouldn’t even like Lupin in the first place… or maybe Tonks was the kind of woman who would be even more interested if she knew he was already dating another woman.
Shaking my head, I dismissed the thought. As cool as Tonks was in the movies, we weren’t going to run off to find her when we had so many other things to do.
In the end, we waved good by to Lin as we boarded the train and she smiled and waved goodbye back. I mean we would see her around both via portals and because we had actually bothered to get our Hogsmeade permission slips signed this year. (Even first years could visit the village, probably because of the age differences)
We ended up picking up our own cabin two from the end and got out our books, cards, and games to wait.
Apparently the golden trio had taken our warning on what might happen seriously as they also arrived early and quickly picked the cabin next to ours. Obviously none of them could cast a Patronus either, but all three knew at least the basic locking spell and I suspected Hermione knew the advanced one better than we did.
A few hours later, right when I was wondering if maybe we would be able to avoid the dementor encounter, I felt the train begin to slow down and the windows outside begin to fog up in the cold.
Shaking my head, I stuck my head outside my compartment and yelled. “Dementors! Dementors are getting on the train. Lock your doors!” Before obviously shutting and locking our own doors as firmly as I could.
Next door I could hear the trio doing the same thing.
I knew that not everyone would have been able to hear my announcement, but I only really needed it to have reached professor Lupin. I just wanted to say it in a way that didn’t make everyone suspicious.
I mean, yelling ‘Professor Remus Lupin, cast your wolf Patronus and drive the dementors away’ would have gotten what I wanted… before I was then hauled before Dumbledore, probably to have my mind invaded and all my secrets torn out.
Yet it was enough because it only took Lupin a few seconds to realize what was going on. Thus, just as the dementors began to close in, all of their fear aura was washed away as we watched a golden wolf rush past our door, driving the dementors back.
I couldn’t help but let out a sign of relief. Next to me I noticed that every single girl around me did the exact same thing. I knew that all of them had a past that made them vulnerable to the dementors. Hell, several of them were probably about as or maybe even more vulnerable than Holly. Yet the uncomfortable truth was I also had been having a bad reaction. I couldn’t remember what it was… but something told me they were doing their best to drag it to the front despite the modifications done to my mind.
It was only a few moments later that I heard a click as Professor Lupin unlocked and opened our cabin door and stuck his head in to check on us.
As the wolf had passed us so quickly, none of us were doing too badly and we had even pulled out some pieces of chocolate, so he just smiled. “Smart ones, aren’t you?” Before we could potentially answer the rhetorical question he turned away starting to close the door as he prepared to check the rest of the train. “Just relax for now, they won’t be back for a while. And good work, if the school year had started I would have awarded points.”
As Lupin walked away, I saw him give Ahri in her cat body a second glance, but he didn’t say anything and just left. That was something we would have to keep an eye on. Maybe his experience with the Animagus ritual had tipped him off. Conversely, maybe he sensed something about her fox nature through his inner wolf. Maybe we all just smelled like the woman who had been flirting with him.
It would be something we would have to pay attention to, but for now we had to get changed for the opening feast.
That was actually easy, as none of us were going to take our clothes off under our robes, so it wasn’t like anyone actually needed to leave the cabin. Hell, I was essentially married to most of them anyway.
After doing that we decided to check on the trio and found that Neville and Hannah were in the cabin as well. That was actually a little awkward, as they had apparently started dating the previous summer and were snuggling in the corner.
Still, apparently both Holly and Neville seemed to be doing alright. Maybe the fact they were older helped. Or maybe the purification baths had soothed some of the trauma for Holly, while his girlfriend had helped Neville. Regardless, neither one ended up fainting like in the books.
As we arrived at the Hogsmeade station, we all filed out and stayed together until we heard the booming voice. “Firs’ Years, Firs’ Years, to me!”
Yet as we waved goodbye to Sarah I couldn’t help but smirk. She was wearing her, ‘I am better than all of this face’, but we had started to notice how much she was enjoying looking at all of the magic around her. It was pretty clear deep down she was just as excited as anyone else. Hell, I didn’t blame her. It was probably like a reflection of how we had looked last year.
Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t ready to trust her yet, but she had been remarkably well-behaved so far.
As we crossed along to the thestrals pulled carriages, I frowned. Obviously, my own girls had all seen and understood death even before arriving on this world. They had never been ‘horseless’ carriages to us. However, next to us I noticed that the trio had paused in shock at the carriages and I felt like kicking myself.
I mean, seeing a bat-winged version of a horse instead of a magical horseless carriage wasn’t really a big deal in and of itself. However despite the trio being 17, the same age that the original cast fought the final battle, I still felt like I had perhaps dragged them down into a world of death and destruction too soon.
I would probably have felt the same for Luna and Dinah, but with their seer abilities I was pretty sure they had seen worse…
…And wasn’t that something else that would probably keep me up at night now that I thought about it… damn it.
As we entered the great hall we spotted Lupin sitting at the head table before we headed to our chairs. However, there was something else that made me freeze up and my heart race… maybe it wasn’t too late to run.
Dumbledore was looking at my Family and while he was smiling, it didn’t seem to reach his eyes.
I swallowed… “Shit!”
Interlude Sirius:
Sirius felt his paw twitch… no, that was his hand.
What was he doing here?
He tried to focus on the newspaper in front of him, but it was so hard.
Lin had been saying he was improving but sometimes he felt himself being unable to stop himself from being drawn back into the empty void of his mind.
Lin said she had seen this before. She said the water soothed the trauma and corruption. Especially the corruption of things like dementors. However now that the ache of the missing emotions and happy memories were gone, it would be easy to lose himself in those empty spaces.
It was why she had encouraged him to think about his past and try to drag back every memory he could, even if they weren’t all happy ones.
She had also encouraged him to try to make new memories and why she had encouraged Holly to visit him. Something about being left alone, trapped in a place he hated filled with all of his painful memories being the worst thing he could have possibly done to himself.
That had sounded way too specific and he wondered why she had said it.
Shaking his head, he sniffed again.
The woman that had joined him here was apparently also recovering… something about drug use and a bad family situation…
He could understand that… Maybe… maybe he should go talk to her.
It couldn’t hurt… right?
Interlude Sarah: (Bakuda isn’t well explored. Hell, she doesn’t even have a real name in cannon. So I get to make her up. I am going for an egotistical narcissist who can become a better person eventually… if she actually decides to try)
Sarah was occasionally flabbergasted in how disappointed she was in these… wizards…
They were fat, stupid, and lazy… Their textbooks were awful and how the hell didn’t they understand the scientific method.
Despite the word scientific in it, it was just common sense to have a control group and make sure things were repeatable, yet these idiots couldn’t even get that right.
Her captors were only marginally better. She would have already gotten rid of them if…
No!
She took a shaky breath as she crossed under the mossy vines to the landing pier for the boats. It looked like they were almost there now.
Max and his Family had taken a chance with her. They had given her magic and helped her train with it and even treated her with respect… in fact, it was a lot more respect than anyone in Lung’s gang had shown.
Lung’s gang had feared her, but they hadn’t respected her at all despite it, theoretically, being an ‘Asian’ gang. Hell, she had felt more like a piece of meat there in the gang than she had felt in college where she was surrounded by all the boys in her engineering degree.
Sad as it was, compared with the ABB, this ‘Family’ had been outright kinda and respectful… albeit a careful and wary kind of respect despite the fact she couldn’t actually do anything to them…
Really, it would have almost felt good if she could just find a way to defend herself, yet every book she had checked out had confirmed what they said. Unless they released her from her oath she was unable to hurt anyone and especially not their ‘Family’.
Yet some of the stories they had told showed her that they would probably need her sooner or later, then she would get her revenge.
She would make sure they came crawling back on their hands and knees if they wanted anything from her.