Taking stock I realized I was pretty screwed here. I was surrounded, outclassed, and alone.

Looking at the Triumvirate and Contessa, along with another nine capes that I didn’t immediately recognize, I was utterly and completely screwed.

I took a deep breath before I squared my shoulders and asked. “What do you want?”

Alexandria’s eyes narrowed as she took a step forward and I had to stop myself from taking a step back.

I didn’t have my magic at the moment and while I was wearing my armor and even had my bullet ward hat, without the magic in the air I suspected it would be a lot less effective. All while being confronted with a discount superman, a man that could fire lasers strong enough to destroy buildings, and a woman who was best described in cannon as ‘I win’.

Alexandria’s smile got wider as she seemed to be reading my body language and how uncomfortable I was at this point. She seemed to have realized that I didn’t really have an answer to this ambush and was obviously pleased at the turn of events.

Honestly I wasn’t sure why she was this angry. I had literally saved her world and all of the other Earths in this reality. They didn’t have a way of stopping Scion and I had given them the answer.

My thoughts seemed to have been visible on my face as she flew suddenly towards me before grabbing my throat and lifting me up by the neck making me grab onto her arm to hold myself up. Her voice was gravelly and obviously furious. “Why the hell are you confused? Your reckless and stupid emails caused millions of deaths. Not to mention kidnapping Panacea causing thousands of cape deaths, right when we needed them most. Turning her into one of your little slaves.”

I reeled at that before something caught my attention. I had only publicly left information with the PRT, the Guild, and Dragon. “What are you talking about? I sent that information to the Guild and the PRT, no one else. Any information leak would be your fault. Not mine. Plus Panacea is not yours. She was 19 in an emotionally abusive home and so came with me willingly when I gave her a way out. I didn’t kidnap anyone and I am not controlling any of them!” Taking a breath I continued despite Alexandria’s narrowing glare. “Plus I literally handed you Bonesaw on a silver platter. She would have been able to do anything Amy did as well.”

I was angry, but underneath I couldn’t help but flinch as she touched on one of my deeper fears. That I was enslaving these girls to stay with me and they wouldn’t even give me the time of day without the bond. Yeah, it didn’t quite make sense as Sarah and Hermione had no connection to me, but I couldn’t help but worry.

There was a moment where I wondered if she would just kill me here as she didn’t like that. She didn’t like that at all. Oh damn, she was pissed.

As I saw her eyes narrow something in me told me to run but another part felt like I needed to stand up for myself here. I wasn’t going to take the blame for their screw up. The world was ending and I had given them a viable plan to save it.

Even if I hadn’t solved every problem, it would have helped. Deciding if they were going to treat me this way I was going to say my piece so I kept talking. “Hell, we even managed to take out the slaughterhouse 9 and avenge your friend, ‘Hero’, by killing the Siberian.

Her hand squeezed and I felt my windpipe start to close and blood flow cut off as her grip tightened. Now actually choking I managed to wheeze out, “I gave you the information to save the world, what more did you want?”

Alexandria scoffed and threw me back down to the floor in a heap. Coughing I rubbed my neck as I looked back up at her. I could tell her eyes narrowed even behind the mirrored visor. “You chaotic and reckless plan caused more problems than you could possibly understand. Yet we are generous enough to give you a chance to make up for it. You are going to fix Contessa’s powers by removing any blindspots she has before you are going to leave this world and never return.”

I swallowed painfully as I looked at Contessa who looked back while crossing her arms across her chest. Swallowing again I grit out, “Why would I agree to just do whatever you wanted?”

Scowling Alexandria turned and grabbed some sort of tinker tech remote from Armsmaster.

I hadn’t noticed him in the corner and I couldn’t see more than a little bit of his mouth below his visor, but he was scowling at me as well. Remembering that Dragon was often in constant communication with Armsmaster in the book I realized that she might have known this was being set up…

I felt the crushing disappointment as I realized she had betrayed us.

She had arguably been one of my favorite characters in the books. Why would she do this to us? Was she the one who told the Protectorate capes where I would be?

Yet before I could get overly worked up about it, I paused and thought about it. If she actually wanted to betray us, why would she give us her sister? That didn’t make sense. There would have been much easier ways of tracking us. Ways we probably wouldn’t have even been able to notice, small tinker tech radios slipped into our clothes and none of us would have been the wiser. Plus, why would she have apologized at the end if she was actively betraying us.

No, she was probably compromised in some way. It made sense that Contessa would have found a way to control her. It did make me realize I needed a way to find out if Thea was compromised as well. Who knows what could have been slipped into her programming. I shouldn’t just trust Dinah when she said everything was alright. That raised the question of why Dinah hadn’t warned me…

I shook my head to clear it. This was not the time to think about that.

I took a few steading breaths as my eyes turned back to Alexandria who was glaring down at me even more firmly now holding the remote Armsmaster had given her in front of me. “You are going to assist us because if you don’t then I will press this and then the Hebert, Dallon, and Alcott homes and everyone inside them will cease to exist.”

I felt my eyes widen and my mouth go dry. Was she really willing to kill everyone just to ensure that I complied? Yet even as I asked that question I realized that, yes, Yes Alexandria was very much willing to do that if it meant getting what she thought she needed to protect the world.

Outwardly I felt the blood drain from my face while inwardly I felt my angry spark. These were my girls, my FAMILY, and no one was going to take them from me.

These people were supposed to be heroes and they had ambushed me and threatened my family to get what they wanted. They didn’t even have to do that as I might have helped willingly if they had just asked.

Instead the authorities, the good guys, the HEROES… were threatening us at metaphorical gun point.

Multiple soul fragments inside of me squirmed and I realized that this was why I hated authority figures. Gritting out I glared at them even harder. “What the hell type of heroes threaten people’s families, people who were trying to help, with literal bombs just to solve a problem, a problem I might add that other people in this world could probably solve for you as well. Damn hypocrites the lot of you. Rules for thee, but not for me.”

Thinking about it, Dumbledore had been a pleasant surprise, but blindly trusting in the “good side” was foolish at best and catastrophic at worst. How many worlds were stuck in corruption and crime all the way to the very top causing unknown levels of suffering. War was never fought by senator’s sons after all, only the common man’s children would die for powerful men’s plans.

Feeling the anger rising I grit out. “You… Bitch!”

There was a pause where no one moved before, in a blur, Alexandria stepped forward and her arm flew out, almost as if she was swatting a fly, and utterly shattered my elbow.

There was a moment before the pain hit, but after that single second I felt my world nearly go white with the pain and I screamed.

Yet only a few moments later a stoney faced Contessa stepped forward and jabbed a needle into my arm.

The pain which had been nearly overwhelming nearly instantly settled down into a low throb.

Alexandria smiled, but it was not a kind smile. “You will keep a civil tongue or you will lose it. You were judged to be a villain with the amount of casualties you caused. You and your slaves have signed kill orders waiting for you if any of us see you attacking in any way. So yes, the bombs stay.”

Gritting my teeth I tried to think of a way out of this, but I really didn’t have one short of abandoning this body. Any attempts to open a portal to leave would just let Alexandria inside our home. Yet now that I knew about the bombs in my girl’s family homes I couldn’t just cut and run either. No matter how fast I was at getting in my Hogwarts body, the radio receiver in her remote was faster.

I thought about trying to pull this entire house into its own pocket dimension where the radio receiver wouldn’t be able to send out the needed signal to detonate the explosives. Yet even if I somehow blocked their own portal makers, all it would have taken was setting up the bombs to explode if the signal was cut off in a standard deadman switch.

There was literally nothing I could think of to do here.

I nodded slowly. “I will sever her connection with the entities. She will be weaker for a while, but there will be no inherent limitations or blindspots and she can grow stronger with practice.”

Alexandria narrowed her eyes at me, obviously judging me, but slowly nodded.

I watched as Contessa stepped forward again and I reached out with my left hand now that my right was shattered.

The process took a solid 30 minutes where we all stood around awkwardly waiting.

I momentarily thought about either destroying her powers or trying to brainwash her to our side, but I didn’t really know how to do either and I knew Contessa and Alexandria could probably read my body language the moment I tried.

In the back of my mind I tried to figure out how they had found us so easily before I realized where I was. This was Worm. A place famous for where everyone was probably dancing to the tune of a dozen or so postcogs, precogs, or genius thinkers. Of course they would have known that I would search out my first home. They probably knew just about everything about me at this point. True I had gained magic, but I wasn’t in that body and while my personality had changed, it probably hadn’t changed enough to make any of their predictions wrong.

Hell they might have even killed Bonesaw knowing that I would come to investigate. In fact something told me that was probably what had happened. What better way to drag me back here besides killing one of the capes I had taken an interest in and making sure Amy’s family was crippled.

I decided to mutter my realization as I was finishing up. “You killed Bonesaw and Crippled New Wave just to get me back here, didn’t you?”

No one said anything, but the silence was damning enough.

Now thoroughly disgusted, I slowly pulled back from Contessa, having put nearly as much effort into this as I had with my own girls and I had tried to make sure Alexandria knew it too. Looking back and forth between the two women, I waited.

Alexandria looked at Contessa, obviously waiting for a status update on her powers. Contessa paused and mumbled a few things before nodding. “No blind spots even if my limit seems to be about around 130 steps at the moment.”

They both looked at me and I shrugged, defensively. “Your soul is the one powering it now, I suspect it might increase if you grow stronger though.”

There was a pause before Contessa’s face froze and she paled. “I need to go now! Door to Mexico City!”

A glowing doorway appeared to her right and she nearly jumped through before it snapped close.

Holding my broken arm to my side I eyed Alexandria. “What now?”

Alexandria narrowed her eyes at me. “Now you leave and never return. You have five minutes.”

I swallowed but glared back. “I need time to collect my girls and their families.”

Alexandria’s scowl deepened. “I am not asking. You have done enough, you are lucky I don’t break every bone in your body for what you did.”

That was not enough time.

Anger boiling I actually took a step forward. “You mean saving your asses. Your plan was stupid. I came to help when all you were doing was needlessly causing more suffering and…”

I blinked as Alexandria’s face screwed up in fury and between one moment and the next she moved.

I blinked again as I realized she was now standing directly in front of me, arm outstretched.

I blinked a third time as I noticed that her arm was extended forward.

Looking down my mouth fell open as I realized she had punched right through my chest, right below my rib cage.

I tried to take a breath, but I couldn’t as my diaphragm muscles were ripped apart or gone.

Already starting to feel light headed even before the pain hit I felt my legs buckle, now being held up only via the hand through my chest. Either that or my brain could just not process what had just happened and I was already in shock. Noticing this Alexandria tilted her arm so I slid down, off of her arm, before with a wet squelching noise I fell bonelessly to the floor at her feet.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

She smiled with a vicious smile. “Looks like you only have about three minutes left.”

I noticed that Legend gave her a disappointed face, but didn’t stop her either. Some tiny part of my mind seethed. Damn him too. He was supposed to be the moral one, but just like in the story he hadn’t actually stopped them when he found out, just giving the monsters a ‘disappointed Dad stare’.

As I felt my consciousness slipping I watched as the ‘so called’ heroes walked through another portal that appeared to my left.

I was just about to pull my soul portal close and abandon this body when I saw Contessa appear one more time. She only looked at me for a moment before she looked confused and then surprisingly worried. “I will delay them if you promise to not come back.”

I am not sure why she made that deal and I am not sure what she saw on my face, but I didn’t have time to think about it. Bracing myself I pulled my soul out of that body before, as quickly as I could, I pulled myself into my younger Hogwarts body.

Once I was in, I opened my eyes wide and tried to sit up. Ready to scream for everyone to get inside our pocket home. Yet before I could, I realized there was a note that had fallen off of my eyes and onto my lap with two words on it. ‘Hermione’s Time-Turner’

With new hope I jumped to my feet as quickly as I could but before I could even get up the stairs, I noticed Hermione nearly running down the steps towards me already pulling her Time-Turner out. Looking at me she asked. “How long?”

I wasn’t sure how she had known, but was not the time to ask questions like that. Looking at the clock I realized it was 11:16 am.

We had arrived at about 8:50 am and I didn’t want to find out what would happen if we tried to go back three hours. At that point this home was in a completely different reality and something told me that would end very badly so I turned to Hermione. “We only have time for two turns.”

Nodding she looped the chain around my neck before starting her spins. No one had been down here so besides watching my body get back on the bed and stay there, nothing else happened until the surprisingly disorienting feeling passed.

I frowned looking down at the artifact wondering how it worked when I noticed that a large portion of the sand was now gone. I frowned. “I don’t think we should do that again in such a low magic world.”

Hermione frowned at the hourglass inside and curtly nodded.

Above us I suddenly heard a lot of talking. Listening closer I realized that we had just sent Taylor, Amy, and Dinah to each of their homes. That meant my previous self was about to visit Dragon. That would take several minutes as we didn’t leave our living room the entire time besides quickly stepping out to grab Thea.

That gave us time to plan. We needed to get the girls into the pocket home while I was walking around town. That wouldn’t give us a lot of time. I frowned as I realized something. “Hermione, I think we need to find that cat.”

She looked at me confused. “What do you mean?”

I frowned back. “The cat, she ran towards me and distracted me which made me delay even longer. If I hadn’t we would have had even less time to grab everything and prepare to leave. Hell, we might have even had only a single hour we could go back in.”

I turned and looked out while trying to remember where the cat’s soul jar was currently at. Following that portal was probably the only way I was going to find said cat in time. It was also something that we could do while my previous self hogged the pocket home.

We ended up walking through several different warehouses as I tried to remember where exactly I had dropped the soul jars off before I found the right one. Most of the mice and birds that I had placed inside them had been killed and so they were now stuck inside, but I didn’t really care.

Instead I focused on finding the single cat which wasn’t hard as she was very much still active. I opened a portal to where she was located before I spotted her. She hissed at me, obviously startled.

That was surprising as she had been extremely friendly, almost loving when I had met her before. True, after smelling me she seemed to be calming down, but she still only seemed neutral to me at best.

Hermione turned and smiled at me “Hold on a second, I will be right back.”

I blinked in surprise, but shrugging I knelt down and tried to continue to coax the cat out of the bush and towards me. I considered just grabbing it through a portal, but figured that was a good way to get claw marks across the face. Plus she seemed to be warming up to me slowly.

In the end, it took a few minutes before I had a skittish cat starting to rub against my fingers as I scratched her. Yet before I could wonder about where Hermione had gone she was back carrying a small bag.

As she dumped it out I realized that it was filled with cat food and catnip.

I felt like face palming. Of course she would be happy to see me if my other self had been feeding her catnip before this. Hell, she was probably half stoned when I had apparently thrown her at my previous self.

Shaking my head and feeling a little better that I hadn’t been controlling the cat more than maybe a light affection, I tried to focus on what we needed to do.

That was crucial as sitting here alone had let my mind start to slip back to the simmering anger at the heroes and this entire damn world.

No, Focus! I could worry about what, if anything, we were going to do about it later.

Turning back to look at Hermione, I stood up and laid out the plan. “We only have an hour and a half or so where I need to internalize their powers before we need to pop away.”

Hermione nodded her head before adding her two cents. “Based on what you said the Triumvirate here would do, I think we need to leave immediately. I don’t think it would take more than a few seconds for them to realize that no one died in the explosions if what you say about their powers is correct. We should also assume they have ways of attacking a pocket dimension.”

I paled but nodded. “Let's get started even if we can’t start loading everything up quite yet.”

The first home we visited was Dinah’s. Yet I was not at all surprised when I realized that she was sitting and waiting for us on top of what was clearly her parent’s suitcases.

My exasperation must have been clear because she winced hard and shrugged sadly. “I didn’t have enough questions to figure out everything, but I knew you would be attacked and we would need to leave in a hurry. However, trying to change anything just got the PRT even more angry.”

I felt a wave of frustration build up but after a moment I just blew out a long drawn out breath. Again, I needed to tell myself that she didn’t know everything. She must have guessed how it went based on the fact I was in another body, but determining what would happen from limited questions was difficult.

Still, I needed her to tell me these things. “Look, we can talk about this later, but I would rather you tell me something, even if it is just simple. ‘I saw something, but I can’t tell you the details’.”

Dinah nodded, chastised and a little apologetically before she turned and introduced me to her parents. Mr and Mrs. Alcott were a little weirded out to see me in my younger body, but they didn’t have time to gawk as they quickly returned to frantically pulling the last of their possessions they wanted to bring with them into boxes and suitcases.

Frowning, I turned to leave saying we would be back in 30 minutes to pick them up before I saw Dinah hand me a note for Sabah. I blinked surprised before I carefully placed the note in Sabah’s pocket on the end table in our pocket home where I knew she would see it.

Taylor’s house was the next one we visited, only to be greeted with the same sight. We watched as Danny Hebert was frantically grabbing things and throwing them into boxes, this time with help from Taylor.

I noticed that Taylor’s face was blank and it was clear that this reunion had been tense, but I was glad he was coming. This was not a kind world and I knew that Taylor would be happier now that she knew he was away from danger.

Once realizing this would take some time I opened up another portal to the Dallon household to once again see a large pile of possessions being collected in their living room. Several people jumped as I arrived and a woman that must have been Carol glared at me fiercely, but I didn’t stop to be intimidated.

Instead I opened a quick portal to the Pelham’s home to coordinate with the rest of New Wave. Once we got past the jumpscares and basic introductions, I realized there were four new people in the Pelham’s home I wasn’t expecting.

The new faces turned out to be Amy and Vicky’s cousin, Crystal’s boyfriend and said boyfriend’s sister and their mother. There was also Crystal’s brother, Eric, and his boyfriend, which surprised me, as Eric being gay it wasn’t mentioned in the books, but that didn’t bother me any, obviously.

I had to admit I didn’t even try to learn their names as I realized how many people I was going to have to help get into our pocket home in just an hour.

Worse, I noticed some additional tension in the Dallon household and deciding I didn’t want to be anywhere near any of that I turned and focused on getting the three magical tents set up in our living room for each of the three new families who would be joining us.

It was while I was setting them up that Vicky walked up behind me and poked me in the shoulder before rubbing her own. “Hey, uh, Max?”

At her exhausted and frustrated tone I nodded a little warily at her to go on.

“I think it best if you don’t put my parents and my cousins in the same place right now.”

I looked at her and then at the tension between the families before I cursed. “Ah, Bloody Hell!”

I had forgotten that it was hinted that Carol had cheated on her husband with her brother-in-law. From the awkward looks the kids were giving each other I realized they had all apparently just found that out.

I felt like slapping my forehead at the sheer dumpster fire of issues this family had.

Adjusting my plans I decided that Danny Hebert would just have to stay in the tent with the Alcotts. Checking my watch I realized my previous self was gone from the pocket home. That would let me open the portals. My first portal moved vertically up around all of their possessions they had stacked in their living room, essentially moving the entire pile in one fell swoop. The exit of each of the portals was already inside each of the wizarding tents, but I left the portals open, just adjusting the angle so it was like a door to their temporary accommodations. That way they could just throw any remaining possessions through the portal when they packed them.

I sighed and realized I needed to track down Sabah. She had left me a few minutes ago-equivalent in the previous timeline and while I had just handed her a note I had only noticed that it had something to do with Vista, I hadn’t bothered to pay attention to the details with how frantic I was to get these families loaded up. That meant I would need to figure out where she was the indirect way.

Focusing on the portal her soul was using to operate her body I quickly found her about a mile or two towards the docks. A quick portal found her sitting in a room I had never seen before.

As I stepped through I noticed she was collecting stuff from a blond haired girl in a wheelchair. It took a few moments before she turned and saw me looking at her. A tired smile made me realize this was Vista.

I nearly blurted out “What happened to you?” before I realized that was incredibly rude and wasn’t even what I wanted to know. Obviously she had been paralyzed, but I had wanted to know why she looked so… melancholic before I remembered that actually going out and being a hero had been the one good thing in her life. She didn’t have many friends, her parents hated each other and were constantly dragging her into their fights, she had even hated the PRT and their restrictions.

After an awkward moment where I tried to figure out how to start the conversation, she spoke up “Yeah, it is me, Vista, but I go by just Missy now.”

Her voice sounded so bitter as she continued, almost like Taylor and Amy in the beginning. “Krieg broke my damn spine and I have been stuck in this wheelchair ever since.”

I grimaced but nodded. “Sorry…”

Vista’s frown somehow turned even more bitter, but shook her head. “It isn’t your fault. I chose to ignore your offer and stay here… stay in a town that never took me seriously. Always treated me like a little kid… right up until they needed me to fight.”

I swallowed and turned around before calling out through the still open portal. “Amy!”

Amy came jogging through before she spotted Missy and froze. A moment later she jumped forward and without even asking, started healing the bitter girl.

There was a moment of wonder when I saw Missy slowly stand up on her own for the first time in what might have been over a year, before the angry scowl I saw on her face dissolved and we were left with the 15 year old balling her eyes out while holding on to Amy and Sabah.

Not knowing how to approach this I simply grabbed some of her boxes and pulled them into Amy's room. That seemed to be the right move as Amy gave me a nod over Missy’s shoulder.

The problem was Missy really didn’t have many possessions and all too soon I was done. Seeing as Missy was still sniffling, I decided to give them a few more minutes and checked on the other girls. Seeing as just about all of New Wave had super strength their packing was going quickly. That just gave me a few minutes to help Taylor before rounding back to check on Missy now that she had a chance to let it all out and recover.

The explanation of what I was doing to her powers got me a curt nod from Missy. Thus a few minutes later, we were done and Missy walked through the portal, leaving her past life behind without a second look.

Seeing as that was done and New Wave was wrapping up packing their things I started calling them forward to start internalizing their powers as well.

It was while I was working on Crystal that I realized that it was time to distract my previous self with the cat.

Pulling Hermione over I opened up a portal, not too far from where I knew I was at this point in time. I almost looked for my own soul portal before a wave of vertigo hit me and I felt my entire body shutter…. Ok, so they weren’t joking when they said you needed to avoid interacting directly with your past self.

Despite the near miss, soon enough Hermione had thrown the cat at me before getting the cat back a few moments later. That made me realize the Hermione I had seen before through that portal had been this one making me wonder in turn where the previous Hermione had been.

That question was answered when Hermione told me she hit herself with a compulsion to talk with Thea and not to leave that room. She then locked the door to the formal dining room slash library to make sure no one interrupted her.

As the time ticked upward towards 11 am, I realized I needed to leave myself the note on my face down stairs which I opened the door to the Library and had the previous Hermione do for me after making sure her current self was out of the way.

Finally, I pulled the last power from New Wave into their soul. Neil Pelham was that last man and he stood up and nodded to me while I heard a jet engine winding down outside the house. Obviously everyone got nervous at the sudden noise before we spotted Dragon’s suit powering down through the window.

I stood up and looked through the door before I spotted none other than Lisa walking through the front door, albeit a little hesitantly, but with a face that still screamed ‘tattletale’ smug. She had bleached her hair to regain her blond looks but she was obviously still in her hispanic disguise along with Brian and Aisha Layborn behind her. I would have to ask them if they wanted to return to being while and black respectively later.

Looking around Lisa noticed Amy, Sabah, and Taylor walking up to stand behind me and her eyes widened. “Huh, wow, you actually managed it. Multiple girls around you and they don’t mind at all.”

Then Sarah walked around the corner, apparently helping with moving the Hebert and Alcott boxes and Lisa smirked. “Well, you managed to make a somewhat healthy harem with a few of the women, at least.”

The members of New Wave looked uncomfortable with that along with Taylor’s Dad, but none of my girls denied it. I suspected that Amy and Taylor had been forced to knock some sense into their families before I arrived because they hadn’t even brought it up.

Then again, I was probably going to be interrogated later. Still, it probably helped that even Taylor, being the youngest of the girls I was actually sleeping with was now nearly 20.

So, already a little annoyed at tattletale, I was about to explain we didn’t really have time for this when Lisa again spoke up, face going almost pure white. “Oh, OH… so we are about to be attacked again. By… wow, the Triumvirate. Damn, Damn!?” I watched as she threw her bag through the portal before nearly running to find a place to stay inside the pocket home.

I rolled my eyes and glanced at my watch again. 11:14pm.

I spoke up. “Ok, so we have two minutes before they kill me the first time and I portal back here.” Everyone looked a little shocked at that, even Dinah.

I looked around the group. “If you have any last second concerns about coming, this is your last chance to stay. I don’t think we are coming back… If not, get inside, I am closing the portals now.”

There was a chorus of ‘no’s and head shaking as everyone got inside and I shut all of the portals, mentally preparing for us to jump away.

Once again looking at my watch I saw it was now. 11:15. One minute left. In the quiet I had to admit that I considered any of the dozens of ways I might make Alexandria pay. My darker soul fragments nearly cheering at the thoughts while even my good fragments seemed vindictive.

Regardless, one minute later we all heard a thump and squeak as my previous self got up from the bed downstairs. Then some quiet talking as my previous self told Hermione how many turns they needed to go back for.

A moment later the basement went quiet again and I breathed a sigh of relief, the loop was complete and we could leave,

Reaching through a quick portal to pick up a soul, I didn’t check which one, I prepared to pop us away.

It was then, when I thought we were safe that once again all hell broke loose. A sudden thud shook the entire house and I looked around widely only to see the edge of the pocket home warp and twist inward.

The color drained from my face as I realized that we were being attacked. I didn’t know if Alexandria had actually blown up the girl’s homes, but it was clear that she wasn’t pulling any punches as the small amount of yard around the house twisted and warped before I heard something snap in the pocket home’s foundation.

Yet even as I began to pop the soul I felt a horrible ripping sensation in the area around me and I felt the very bubble around us start to disintegrate. I felt instincts warn me and I snapped into action desperately grabbing the edges of our bubble, trying to hold it together.

I looked around to see that Luna and Dinah were already pushing people into groups away from the walls..

It was then that we passed out of the worm dimension and I screamed.

It was agony. Utter and complete agony trying to support the entire pocket home in the void between realities.

I felt my very soul start to pull apart with the strain of supporting such a large structure and so many souls without Lung’s help.

I couldn’t do it.

This was too much, I had to drop it, I was literally killing myself, tearing myself apart.

I had to drop it.

I could easily protect just my girls and myself. It would make the pain stop… yet as I looked towards Amy who was still trying to protect her sister and niece and Dinah who was holding onto her parents I realized I couldn’t.

I had to drop it… but I couldn’t…

And so the pain continued and I screamed again as I tried desperately to find a way to drop just the areas we didn’t need.

I thought about trying to warn them, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to say anything as my body was wracked with pain. Instead I just focused, needing to trust my girls where I could.

First I let the small yard around the house fall away, but that wasn’t nearly enough.

Then I dropped the roof and the attic which helped, but I needed more.

Finally I dropped Taylor’s bug room and my master bedroom. That was almost enough that I felt the tearing force on my soul slow and nearly stop.

It was now possible even as I realized I would lose more.

After a moment I lost most of the kitchen, the front door, and surrounding wall along with half of the library making me worry about Thea.

Wrapping what was left tighter, I tried to hold on when we finally landed, or more accurately crashed into a forested world and the rebound nearly tore me in two as the pocket dimension bubble dissolved completely.

There was a moment when I wondered if I had died, but I was proven wrong as the pain that I had only thought was bad, suddenly tripled.

I had no words to describe how much it hurt, it was utter and complete agony as I realized that my very soul was struggling to pull itself back together before, mercifully, I blacked out.

Interlude Lara:

Lara frowned as she looked through her mail for probably the hundredth time.

She hadn’t gotten any mail from Max or even Hermione for months.

They had said they were going to contact her and she wanted to find out more about what he knew only to receive radio silence.

She would have thought that maybe he had decided to cut ties or something if it wasn’t for the fact that Hermione hadn’t contacted her either.

Damn it, even her attempts to call the Grangers were unanswered and every time she tried to find them, they weren’t there.

Sam was acting weird and everyone seemed to be turning on her.

What the Bloody Hell was going on?

Interlude Contessa:

Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! Her power had really been broken. She hadn’t wanted to believe it, but with the blinders off she could now see how many consequences she hadn’t been aware of were happening due to her actions.

Then again she couldn’t actually see more than 108 steps ahead down this particular line, but for general plans that could still be years. Still she had managed to stop a dirty bomb from being released in Mexico City. Now she just needed to fix the cartels, stop the Yangband in China, and contain the Sleeper in Russia, stamp out the Nazis, all before heading to Africa. She couldn’t see it all, but she would do what she could.

One thing she was sure of though, as the information from Alexandia’s actions filtered into her power, was that Max and his family would be back. She would have to prepare as Rebekah didn’t realize just how big a mistake she had just made. She had gotten too used to be the invincible, invulnerable, hero, but Max and his girls wouldn’t forgive and forget.

A moment of indecision crossed her mind as for the first time it was her making the plans, not her power. Was killing with Max really the best option?

Sighing, she shook her head. If nothing else, she would warn Alexandria. Rebekah would probably start making contingencies to kill them when they returned, contingencies that might not work with how strange the powers he seemed to be gaining were.

She sighed, this was all a mess…