Chapter Text
"At any given moment you have the power to say: This is not how the story is going to end." – Christine Mason Miller
Chapter 1
“Ron,” she said for the third (and definitely last) time. “Whatever game you’re playing, it’s not funny any more. In fact, it wasn’t funny the first time.” She was wearing her angry eyebrows, but Ron kept looking at her with that combination of witlessness and exasperation that used to make her refuse to do his laundry for weeks.
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he said. He had his arms crossed, but it was hard to tell whether that was defensiveness or just obstinacy; you never knew with Ron. “Maybe you’ve got me confused with some other bloke whose best friend is called Harry.
Ah. Aggrieved. Her favourite.
It had been just one of too many points of contention between them during six months of endless, tortured dating; Hermione’s eagerness to discuss the bright ideas of other wizards drove Ron crazy, and Ron’s lack of interest, in both the ideas and the brightness therein, left Hermione bereft and furious—an unhappy combination. That one Severus Snape made cameo appearances with growing frequency and enthusiasm on her part did not help her cause in the least, never mind her insistence that Ron ought to just shut up and be grateful.
She and Ron managed to not actually kill each other, but it was a close thing.
Never mind. Severus had known precisely what she had been talking about, as he so often did, and had been furious on her behalf that Harry failed to show for their monthly lunch date. He’d shifted from indignant to broody when her efforts to Floo-call Harry resulted not only in no response, but in a snotty, “No such location” recording from the Floo-witch in charge, accompanied by a suggestion to articulate her directions more clearly in future.
“No such location!” Hermione paced circles around Severus’s lab. “How can the Floo-company lose Harry Potter?”
Severus raised an eyebrow and stirred his potion precisely four times, anti-clockwise.
“I’ve sent my Patronus twice, and nothing. It’s not like him.”
Severus nodded, sprinkled ground mugwort root onto the surface of the potion and stepped back. Hermione frowned. There was no invective. No commentary on the capriciousness of Potters from generation to generation, or that inconsiderate is as inconsiderate does.
There was only silence. Just. Silence.
The vague unease in her gut turned into a knot.
Fuck.
“What is it?” she asked.
“What is what?”
He didn’t meet her eyes. Double fuck.
The knot in her stomach rose to her chest.
“You’re keeping something from me,” she said. “Severus, what is it?”
He turned on his heel and walked out of the lab into the sitting room just beyond, Hermione right behind him. She sat on the sofa and waited while he rearranged the papers on his desk and scowled at the owl post he’d neglected to send out that morning. In years past, she would have hounded him, but a decade of friendship, first wary, then warm, taught her that where Severus was concerned, patience yielded far more fruit than shouting at the tree.
She could barely hear him when he finally spoke.
“I can’t reach Draco.”
Hermione let out the breath she’d been holding.
“Draco’s gone, too?”
He nodded. “It would appear so. It’s Lucius’s birthday next week, and I sent an owl to arrange dinner plans. He’s always been easy enough to contact. When the owl returned with my message still attached, I Flooed him. I received the same response you did when you tried to fire-call Potter.”
“How does the Floo-company lose two—”
“Hermione.” Severus’s voice was sharp and it cut through the head of steam she was well on her way to building up. “I checked in at the Ministry and then at Hogwarts. Nobody had any idea whom I was talking about. In fact, nobody could repeat back either name when I said it.”
“You mean, nobody at the Ministry or Hogwarts knows who Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy are?”
“That’s precisely what I mean.”
“That’s impossible.”
Severus laughed. “From your mouth to—” He gestured vaguely upward.
“As if you believe in a deity,” she scoffed.
“Who says I don’t?” He actually had the nerve to look affronted.
“Oh, come on, Severus. I’d have noticed.”
“Belief? You’d have noticed belief?”
“I’ve never known you to go to church; you thoroughly ignore Christmas and Easter, and you tossed the article I brought you about the ‘God Potion’ into the hearth.”
“Just because I don’t subscribe to organised religion doesn’t mean I don’t believe that there is something… hmm… larger than ourselves out there. Somewhere.” His expression was sour, as if the larger something had failed him over and over again, as well it had.
“So, what are you saying? That Harry and Draco have been swept away by a vengeful God?”
“My word,” he said. “I had no idea that your concept of God was so harsh.”
“Stop it,” she said, and she could barely keep the shout out of her voice. “Aren’t you worried? Both of them gone at once. Doesn’t it matter to you that nobody else has noticed?”
The knot in her chest rose to her throat. Her heart pounded in her head. Severus’s expression was frozen, and she had a momentary flashback of the moment just before he realised Nagini would strike. Pain and confusion and a sort of fierce need warring for dominance.
“Am I worried, Hermione? Does it matter?” His voice actually broke, and she didn’t stop to think—in a moment she was at his side. “You have no idea what is happening here. It’s not simply that we can’t reach them or that we can get nobody to discuss them with us,” he said. “I checked every relevant book. Every record I could access in the wizarding world. There’s nothing. Every last trace of them has been wiped away. It’s as if they never existed at all.”
~~~***~~~
“Have you found us shelter yet, Potter?” the little prince asked again, as if Harry had some singular way of divining the location of the nearest bedsit.
“Shut up, Malfoy,” Harry said, from his position under the tallest tree, just a few yards from a sign warning, ‘Trespassers W’. They’d done a circuit of the area twice already, and a third round was unlikely to reveal anything more than a garden with a hole dug deep into the earth, and a chestnut tree with a door perched just above a high branch. After the sun came up, he reckoned they’d meet the inhabitants, but Harry wasn’t about to knock on doors or peek his head into holes in the ground in the dead of night. Besides, if he was right about where they were, the residents of these particular hidey holes had a proclivity towards the anxious and grumpy, especially when surprised.
“Go to sleep.”
“I’m not sleeping in the dirt, Potter,” Malfoy said, kicking at a mound of soil just beyond the tree. “I’m not a Muggle.”
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it, the pang of disappointment heavy in his chest. He’d managed to largely avoid Malfoy over the years, despite far too many anniversary balls and Ministry meetings. But he’d been given to understand that the other wizard’s views about blood purity had evolved with time.
“Charming,” he muttered. “Suit yourself.”
He shook his head; silly to feel let down. What difference did it make to him how Malfoy viewed Muggles and Muggle-borns these days? Besides, he didn’t even want to know what sleeping on the ground had to do with Muggles. He’d had enough twisty and unlikely scenarios for one day.
Harry settled himself on the softest part of the ground he could find (which wasn’t saying much, to be honest). Even months of camping had come equipped with a cot. Thankfully, he managed to drop off before he could see whether Malfoy decided whether sleep trumped pure-blood protocol.
Morning came none too soon, and was accompanied by the unsettling presence of a distressed pig, a confused bear, and an anxious rabbit standing in a lopsided semi-circle around them. Three animals made of fabric and stuffing, as animated as if they were flesh and blood, stared down at Harry and Malfoy (who had apparently lost the battle for wakefulness and ended up asleep, wedged between a medium-sized tree and a very large rock).
“Good morning,” said Harry, struggling to simultaneously sit up and brush the dirt out of his hair and finding that he didn’t have quite enough hands to manage the manoeuvre.
The pig squeaked and jumped.
“Piglet,” said the bear, “don’t worry. They don’t look dangerous. They look like two very large sized Christopher Robins. Remember, we like Christopher Robin.”
“Perhaps we should call Christopher Robin. The real one, of course,” said the rabbit, hopping here and there, examining the men from all angles. “We’ve never seen such large Robins before.”
“I’m not a bloody robin, I’m a wizard,” snarled Malfoy from behind his rock.
Harry snickered and turned to address the animals.
“We’re quite a bit like Christopher Robin, actually,” he explained.
“Do you know him?” asked Piglet, eagerly. “Is he your friend?”
“You could say so,” said Harry. His only friend for years, actually, he thought. Living in a cupboard under the stairs, he had claimed the dusty Winnie-the-Pooh collection discarded there as his own.
“Owl will know what to do,” said Pooh, already turning towards the very tall tree that Harry had slept beneath.
“Did that furry beast say something about an owl?” asked Malfoy, now sitting on top of the enormous stone and sounding far more awake than a moment ago.
“That ‘furry beast’ is Winnie-the-Pooh, Malfoy, which you would already know if you’d paid a lick of attention during Muggle Studies.”
“I didn’t take Muggle Studies, Potter,” he said. “And a good thing, if it involved—” He waved at the assembled creatures with a moue of disgust.
“Didn’t anybody read stories to you as a child, Malfoy? Oh, never mind. They were too busy teaching you how to curse Muggle-borns.”
Malfoy flinched and Harry felt a pang of regret. It had been many years since the days when Muggle-born witches and wizards had been herded together like animals and carted away. The wizarding world, including (presumably) Draco Malfoy, had come a long way since then.
“Of course my mother read me stories, Potter. Real ones.” He stood up and made a futile attempt to straighten his robes. “Babbity Rabbity and her Cackling Stump, The Fountain of Fair Fortune—”
“Yes, yes,” Harry interrupted. “The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I know them.”
Malfoy raised his eyebrows, and Harry suppressed the urge to punch him. Later. First, they had to figure out how they’d ended up smack in the middle of the Hundred-Acre Wood, wandless.
Ignoring Malfoy for the moment, Harry turned to Rabbit.
“Rabbit,” Harry said, careful not to speak too loudly or move quickly lest he spook him. “Didn’t Pooh suggest we speak with Owl?”
Rabbit nodded gravely, his long ears flopping.
“I think,” said Harry, “that would be a really good idea.”
~~~***~~~
It reminded Hermione of the hours and days after the war, when she and Ron and Harry would sit huddled in a ball of misery, together in an uppermost room of the Burrow, all the unspoken words spooling up between them until someone would spring up and bolt from the room, returning with red eyes and blotchy skin. Then two would make way again for three, small patches of skin touching skin as if to remind them all that their bodies were still warm and blood still thrummed in their veins.
Hermione didn’t remove her hand from Severus’s arm, not even when they made their way to the sofa. That he hadn’t pulled away spoke volumes about his own unspoken need. The disappearance—no—eradication of Harry Potter from the universe was devastating to her. She could only imagine what it meant to Severus, and what Draco’s obliteration might mean to him, as well.
So many things she didn’t know. She shifted in her seat, disquiet tingling on her skin.
“Severus?”
He turned his head and made eye contact.
“Do you have a copy of Hogwarts: A History?”
He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath.
“I do.”
“I was just thinking,” she said, and he laughed, a short bark of humour laced with no small amount of affection.
“You were thinking that we might want to see what the eradication of Harry Potter has done to our history.”
With Severus, she sometimes wasn’t sure why she bothered to speak out loud.
“Yes.”
She glanced at the door and shivered. What would she find on the other side of the threshold? Would she be safe: A Muggle-born witch in this wizarding London? She’d long considered Severus’s home a safe place. Never more so than in this moment.
Severus stood and made his way to the corner bookshelf. He pulled out a large, worn book and opened it.
“No, wait!” Hermione said. “Do it here. Next to me.”
He looked up and tilted his head, quizzical.
“It’s the sort of thing best done… not alone. You know?”
He paused and then nodded, but his hesitation reminded her that the worst events of his life had been endured alone. Survived alone. All but the last, really, but this wasn’t the time to mention that.
Once he’d settled in beside her, she slid even closer as he opened the book.
“The Second War.” He flipped through the pages until he found the spot towards the end where the story of their Hogwarts years and the final battle were told. He skimmed the pages and snorted, handing the book to Hermione. She laid it on her knees and scrambled to find the passage. Severus leaned his head back against the couch and burst out laughing.
“What is it? Severus?” But he was overcome and so she looked down at the first section, where the story of ‘The Boy Who Lived,’ Neville Longbottom, was told. “Neville?”
Severus shook his head until he could catch his breath.
“He is the other boy to whom the prophecy could have referred,” said Severus. He cleared his throat and reached for a glass of water. “And in the absence of Harry James Potter, who else?”
“Neville.” It was rather hard to imagine, despite Neville’s heroic behaviour their seventh year, and at the Battle of Hogwarts. “What about Draco,” she asked. “What changes happen if he never was?” She swallowed hard. “Now that he never was.”
Severus shook his head, abruptly sober. “So many,” he said, and Hermione flinched.
“Is Dumbledore still alive?” she asked. Her thoughts raced, one tumbling over the other. Questions with no answers. Not yet. If Draco hadn’t been set up for the job, would Severus have been in the position to kill the Headmaster? Would he have become headmaster himself? And, most importantly of all, if Dumbledore had not been killed, would Voldemort had obtained the Elder Wand, ultimately setting his snake on Severus, believing him the wand’s true master?
Severus turned the pages until he found what he was looking for. Hermione watched him and tried to decode the micro-expressions on his face. The twitch of an eyebrow, the quiver of his lip, to anticipate what this reality held for him.
“Dumbledore was killed on the astronomy tower at the hand of Severus Snape,” he read, “after being disarmed by Zacharias Smith. Snape served as headmaster of Hogwarts in the year after Dumbledore’s death. He was subsequently attacked by Nagini in the Shrieking Shack during the Battle of Hogwarts and rescued by Hermione Granger who administered anti-venin… bla bla bla… and transported him to St Mungos preventing him from dying of his injuries. Snape was later exonerated when it emerged that Dumbledore had ordered him to perform the killing.”
“Nearly the same, then,” she said, relieved, ignoring his cavalier recitation of what still rated as the most anxiety-provoking night of her life. She tentatively put her hand back on his arm. He let her, and she breathed a sigh of relief. “Another student replaced Draco in the history, but the string of events is mostly unchanged.”
“Mostly,” he agreed. “Although I suspect many subtle details will have shifted.”
Hermione nodded. “What do we do now?”
She didn’t want to be the one to say it. Not considering his history there.
“There’s only one thing to do,” said Severus. “Only one place to go if we’re to have any hope of finding answers.”
Hermione nodded. She’d known from the moment the reality sunk in that only one place in the wizarding world might hold the key to finding Harry and Draco. She owed Professor McGonagall a visit, anyhow.
“Hogwarts, it is.”
Chapter Text
Chapter 2
The pit is popping with energy, just the way he likes it. Not even Visual Effects could have come up with better conditions for showing around a new intern.
“This is the heart and soul of the operation,” says Rupert, the broad sweep of his arm indicating work stations as far as the eye can see. Clusters of pods pepper the floor in an undulating pattern that makes him dizzy whenever he looks at it for too long.
Each pod is properly occupied by a sturdy chair and a desk, empty coffee cups and biscuit crumbs. Heaps of discarded paper and leaking pens obscure the shiny keyboards and monitors that somehow manage to need replacing every year despite getting far less use than expected; It drives him to distraction that the muses still insist on outlining by hand when the department supplies them with the very best technology. They would be so much more efficient if they would only use it.
While Rupert has been woolgathering, his charge has lost himself gazing down the long chain of pods. He’s swaying back and forth, and his eyes are a bit crossed.
“Come along, then,” Rupert says, intruding on the younger man’s trance. “Over here is the centre of activity for ‘Heroes and Journeys’. This level is all ‘Action’, as you know. Wouldn’t need the padded walls, otherwise.” He chuckles, but the other man’s expression doesn’t shift. Rupert clears his throat.
“Down this corridor we have ‘Murder and Mayhem’.” He points to an alcove whose cushioned walls are pocked with bullet holes and stained with red and purple streaks of indeterminate provenance. “‘Tricksters and Tramps’ sit in that corner, there.” He gestures to the end of the room where a raggedy clump of muses sits on the floor, writing and drawing longhand, a couple with laptops on their outstretched legs. There’s a patch of lighting where random bulbs have burnt out, creating a jagged pattern of light and shadow over the group. Only the regular thwunk of the vending machines along the wall behind them suggests the appeal of this corner of the room. Amazing what a bit of chocolate can get you.
“There’s a rota patrol to sweep their area for explosives and traps. Ask George for the sign-up sheet later. It took us a hundred thousand cycles to get them into the corner, but it was well worth it; makes it infinitely easier to keep an eye on them.” He winks, but again, the new boy, Romulus, maintains his solemn expression.
Naturally. Romulus. Ridiculous name. More suited to ‘Myth and Legend,’ frankly. Why do they insist on sending him the ones without any sense of humour?
He pauses at the coffee maker and fills an enormous mug without offering even a drop to Romulus. It’s oddly satisfying.
“Downstairs is ‘Rogues and Romance’ and ‘Angst and Agony’. Or did they move upstairs during the last reshuffle?” He waves his arm vaguely, careful not to spill his coffee. “Never mind. I’ll have Alice fetch you a map. You can find a copy of the Division plan in the vestibule,” he says, pointing vaguely back to a mural they’d passed on their way in. “I’ve never been able to make head nor tail of it, but you may as well give it a shot.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Rupert nods, but he’s moved on, transfixed now by the scene playing out on the screen of the muse at the work station in front of him. Lights flash. Old stone is blasted to dust. Men and women wave sticks around and howl Latin phrases in voices saturated alternately with malevolence and desperation.
Ah, yes. Magical world. War.
All right, then. He puts his half-empty cup on top of a filing cabinet and gestures to Romulus to come along. This should be a good teaching exercise.
“Jack, what have we here?”
“Potter, sir, and Riddle, obviously. Peter, Lazarus, Gwen and I are networked. Lance and the others are in synch, more or less. We’re approaching the climax,” says Jack, pausing just then to waggle his eyebrows and flash a wide, cheeky grin at Romulus.
“Focus, Jack,” Rupert says, careening between desks until he can get a view of the screen. “Crucial to get this right. There aren’t any second chances.” He chuckles. “The lads over in ‘Vampires and Vamps’ think they’ve got one over on us, but we’ll show them, won’t we?”
“Yes, sir, sir.” Jack smiles again at Romulus and licks his lips. Rupert glares at him until he turns back to his work station and pounds with an entirely unnecessary intensity on his keyboard. Always overly enthusiastic, that one.
A muffled curse from across the aisle distracts Rupert again.
“Still having trouble, there, Peter?”
This lot, from the Potter world, have been particularly difficult to manage, even when compared to the countless magical universes that have threatened (and failed) to run wild under his watch. Rupert wonders for the thousandth time if it’s a unique quality of magical constructs, or if the ‘Biography’ and ‘True Lives’ divisions run into the same problems.
Peter grunts and bears down on his keyboard as if banging harder will make the characters do as he says.
“I have it under control,” he tells Rupert, “but it’s just short of convincing. The firewall is holding, but I’ve decided to make some minor modifications to the back story. I’m fairly sure it works.”
Rupert nods sharply.
“Just remember who’s in control, here, Peter,” says Rupert. “We write them, not the other way around.”
“Of course, sir.”
A cheer sounds down the aisle, somewhere in the cluster of pods that each manage, somehow, to be bigger on the inside. Everybody pauses. The absence of clicking keys is jarringly loud.
“Sounds like the Doctor did something cool.”
“Doesn’t he always?” grumbles Peter. Rupert makes a mental note to address his resentment later, after this arc is complete. Jealousy between muses will simply not do.
“I could use him over here, actually,” mutters Jack. “For just a few minutes—”
Nor will crossovers. Boundaries are important.
“We’ll have none of that,” says Rupert. “We have a battle to write.”
Jack lowers his eyes to the keyboard. Rupert chooses to ignore the mutinous expression on his face in favour of his compliance.
“Yes sir.”
Rupert nods sharply.
“Oh, hell.”
“What is it now, Peter?”
“I’ve got a rogue,” he says, frantically typing.
Everybody gasps.
Rogues happen. Rarely, but they do. Everybody knows it. It’s the sort of thing whispered about in the canteen and referred to obliquely in all-staff memos. Even so, the spontaneous appearance of rogue characters in fiction goes against virtually every theory about the order of the universe and the definitive nature of the storytelling hierarchy.
“I thought that was impossible,” says Romulus. He’s pale, and he’s swaying again.
Holding contradictory possibilities in mind at all times is a vital attribute in a successful muse, but it’s nigh on impossible to teach in the classroom. They learn from the time they’re baby muses, capable of inspiring nothing more than a silly song, that their place in this world is to plant ideas and bring them to full flower. Nonetheless, the day-to-day realities on the floor can overwhelm even the strongest and most motivated.
Best distract him, then.
“You have, of course, completed your coursework on genre and style, boy?” asks Rupert.
“Of course,” says Romulus, standing visibly taller, bright spots of colour blooming on his cheeks. “And I got a First in ‘Character and Conflict.’ It’s how I got my choice of internship.”
Just so. Rupert smirks in satisfaction. Six months in ‘Fiction’ and six in ‘Non-fiction’. The well-rounded training every aspiring muse seeks. For his part, Rupert has always been sceptical about the relevance of the distinction in the day to day work of cobbling out stories. As far as he’s concerned, the Architect and Cartographer at the top of the tower can battle it out.
In the meantime, he has a rogue to rein in.
“I can’t—” Peter slams his hands on the keyboard and falls back in his chair. “Dammit.” He won’t meet his supervisor’s eyes.
Rupert leans over and scans the screen. His jaw tightens. This is decidedly Not Good.
Characters, living or fictional, must stay where we put them, thinks Rupert. We write it, they live it, full stop. In this, the ‘True Lives,’ ‘Memoir’, and ‘Biography’ muses are very much in agreement with the ever-proliferating fiction divisions. We write them, not the other way around. People, fictional or otherwise, exist only as an embodiment of the stories muses spur them to imagine and the ones other muses encourage them to tell about themselves. It’s the cornerstone of the work they do, and he’ll be damned if he’ll let some rogue defy it.
“Just keep it off the page,” Rupert says at last. “We may not have a way to prevent rogues from showing up in narratives from time to time, but we mustn’t reward them with screen time.”
“Yes, sir,” says Peter, visibly relaxing. “No, sir. No screen time. Got it.”
Not a single paragraph. Not even a line.
Everybody not currently occupied with choreographing the ending to the Harry Potter story arc huddles together. The muses responsible for the dénouement of the tale rapidly key in code and coordinate an intricate set of commands. They operate like a finely tuned instrument, and Rupert is pleased. The action rises and falls and rises again only to stutter to an ending that causes most of the observers to fidget and glance at the floor. Ah, well. At least it’s complete.
Peter leans back in his chair and wipes away the sweat threatening to drip into his eyes.
Finished.
“Congratulations,” Rupert says to the men and women who, no matter how they feel about the ending, have just successfully completed a seven-book arc. “Well done.”
A moment for congratulations, and Rupert walks away, Romulus trailing a few steps behind him. The murmurs of the muses are loud enough for snatches of conversation to reach him.
He turns to look, but only innocent faces look back.
It goes without saying that the line between fiction and non-fiction is very thin indeed. ~~~***~~~
No time to fret over that. Right now, he needed to get them out of this tree house before Malfoy succeeded in pinning Owl to the ground and attaching a letter to his leg.
“Enough, Malfoy,” shouted Harry, his voice barely audible above the cacophony of high pitched squealing, cries of, ‘Oh, my!’ and, of course, indignant hooting. “He isn’t that sort of owl.”
“Shut up, Potter,” said Malfoy, trying one last time to grab Owl’s spindly legs. “You’re doing nothing to help get us out of here. Someone has to take charge.”
“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, dear,” fretted Piglet. “Whatever shall we do, Pooh?”
“We must call Christopher Robin,” said the bear of more brain than he generally gave himself credit for. “He’ll know what to do.”
“Please,” said Harry. “Call him quickly.”
Owl nipped at Malfoy’s fingers again, this time drawing blood. The wizard finally gave up and collapsed into the nearest chair.
“Who is this Robin chap?” he asked.
Harry slumped in the chair opposite and looked him in the eye for the first time all day.
“Hopefully the one with the ticket out of here.”
~~~***~~~
The sight of the walls of Hogwarts rising up from the rock never failed to give Hermione butterflies in her stomach. Even when the walls had fallen to rubble, bodies littering the parapets and the grounds, the castle had still maintained a wounded grandeur.
“Have you been back?” she asked, though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
“Twice since the trial,” Severus said and fell silent.
With the collapse of the Ministry, Hogwarts had hosted the hearings of a stream of alleged war criminals. At the time, Hermione had been grateful not to have to face the chaos of the Ministry even though it meant wading into the wreckage of her first home in the wizarding world.
“You still haven’t spoken to him?”
Severus shook his head. He’d had no choice but to be present at his own trial and acquittal. Hermione had been there, too, leaving his hospital room only hours before he had.
“I wonder if he—”
“I haven’t the slightest interest in speaking to the portrait of Albus Dumbledore,” said Severus.
“He might know something.”
“He might not.”
Hermione stopped short, halfway up the winding stone stairway that would bring them to the doors of the castle. It took Severus a few steps to realise that she was no longer by his side, and he stopped, turning back to glare at her.
“Stop acting like a child, Granger. We haven’t any time to lose.”
Hermione clenched her teeth at his tone but stood her ground.
“What’s the hurry, Severus? Harry and Draco are gone. Never even existed, as far as anybody else knows. Where are we rushing to?”
He crossed his arms and stood. Waiting.
“I want to talk to Dumbledore’s portrait,” she said. “He may be a manipulative arse, but he knows things about the wizarding world that we can only guess at. He might have information, Severus.” She crossed her arms, too. “And since we’re in such a hurry, it seems to me that we’d save a lot of time by talking to him first.”
“You’re assuming that the Headmistress will fling open her doors to accommodate us, Granger.”
Enough was enough.
“Stop it, Severus. I’m your friend. On your side, remember?” Calling her ‘Granger’, indeed. Did they have to go through this every damn time Severus got the least bit tense?
They stood looking at each other for a long moment. Hermione held her breath.
“Apologies,” he said in a clipped voice, but it was the fact that he took a step towards her that clinched it.
“Accepted. Now,” she said, linking her arm with his. “Did you have another game plan in mind?”
She would never find out what Severus’s plan had been (or if he’d had one at all) because at that moment Neville Longbottom himself emerged from behind the castle doors as if he’d been personally alerted to their arrival.
“Professor Snape. Hermione. Welcome. What on earth are you two doing here?”
Chapter Text
Chapter 3
The ‘True Lives’ divisions incessantly complain that they have an unfair load, narrating the worlds of non-fictional characters 24-hours a day, seven days a week. The Fanfiction groups (predictably) bristle every time the issue comes up in staff meetings.
“You have no idea,” they say, “how many ships and OTPs and genres and fests and challenges, not to mention exchanges get written every damn day.”
“Nights, too,” shouts a Fanfiction muse from deep within the shadows of the room.
This can reliably be expected to devolve into a debate between the canon continuity repair monitors and the Fanfiction division about the integrity of canon and the fluidity of storytelling. At this point, the ‘True Lives’ muses typically roll their eyes and sit back, smug, pull out their Blackberries, and tap out self-righteous messages to their Brain Care Consultants in the building next door (who are never allowed in all-staff meetings). (Ever.) (Not since Dougie let one of them provoke a Vogon until he destroyed yet another version of Earth. That was one hell of a mess to clean up.)
Today the Boss has assembled every Director across divisions in an unprecedented attempt to address the anomalies multiplying across the Citadel in recent months. It’s not just the proliferation of Dystopian series (requiring an extension to the Fantasy and Young Adult Divisions spanning an entire floor and a half), but also the alarming increase in poaching between departments that has resulted in a sort of lurching work flow.
Nobody begrudges young muses the opportunity to move up and over to more exciting (if depressing) pastures. But this has reached levels even beyond the exodus after the completion of Paradise Lost. More importantly, some works require constant vigilance, preferably from experienced muses, and the Potter series is most definitely one of them.
“Rupert, please catch us up with the Potter situation,” says the Boss from his perch in his enormous spinny chair.
Where even to begin? With the encroaching of Fanfiction and the ever eroding boundaries between Fanon and Canon characterisation? With the build-up of pressure before the culmination of the story arc followed by rapid deflation when the tale is complete?
“We had a steady rate of attrition even before the Potter series finished,” Rupert finally says, “but since canon closed, the numbers have skyrocketed.”
“That happens to all of us,” says Wil, Director of Staged Plays. “A story ends, a play closes. ‘But that's all one, our play is done, / And we'll strive to please you every day...’” he recites. “What’s the problem?”
“I’m not sure,” says Rupert, and he can’t help but squirm a bit. It shouldn’t be a problem. Canon is inviolate. Yes, it needs periodic repairing—entropy is unavoidable—but the integrity of an original text is thought to be unquestionable, though never unquestioned. It’s not just the drifting staff that’s the problem. It’s the stability of the original stories that’s at stake.
Well, at the moment, one story. “We’re having some difficulty keeping the original Potter narrative intact.”
Everybody sits up at that. Only the most ancient texts are thought to be prone to this sort of deterioration, and even they have adherents who will tell and retell their version of the source narrative until it stabilises for a while. For a recently completed canon to be unstable is unheard of.
“I’ve been saying for years that we need to move Fanfiction to the satellite office,” says Adam, Director of Biblical texts. “Give them their four cubits but don’t let their proximity degrade the original.”
Everybody jumps as a fist pounds against the table top. “Must we go through this again?” snaps Haroun, Director of Mythological Tales. “How many times do we need to review the principles of The Fluidity of Narrative and The Inexhaustible Nature of the Sea of Stories?”
More than one head thunks against the table. How many times, indeed. It’s like having a secondary school teacher in every damn meeting. The Boss clears his throat and most of the heads rise.
“Is anybody detecting structural instability that can be definitively tied to encroaching Fanfiction?” asks the Boss.
Whispers skitter around the table. There are a few shrugs and a bit of chatter about the sorts of minor issues that keep everybody from dying of boredom. On the whole, though, there’s consensus. Nobody else is running themselves ragged trying to keep two of their main characters in line. Hell, nobody else is over budget on overtime trying to keep their title character and his adversary in the goddamn text.
“All right, then,” says the Boss. “The problem isn’t the Fanfiction.”
Haroun shoots Rupert a dirty look and Rupert nods a half-hearted apology. It was worth a shot, but the Fanfiction division has been around long enough now that scapegoating them tends to come off as sour grapes rather than a cry for integrity and protection of the original storyline.
“All right, Rupert,” says the Boss. “Spill it. What parts of your story have gone rogue?”
Everybody sits up straighter, and the faint snoring from the far end of the table stops abruptly. Rogues are nothing to be trifled with. That they should in any way be connected to staffing and work flow is alarming.
Rupert stands and points to the schematic diagram that materialises on the white board behind him.
“Gwen and Lance have written the title character and his nemesis since the origin of the series,” Rupert says, pointing to green and red crisscrossing lines, bright even in a sea of overlapping colour. “Of late, though—” He pauses and flicks his wrist, and a second slide sidles alongside the first. Here, the intricate pattern looks almost bereft, as if someone has come by with an eraser and gone wild. Wide swathes of red and green are missing from the schematic.
Maybe the group will figure it out for themselves. Maybe he won’t have to actually say it out loud. But the muses just stare at the two slides, side by side, in silence. A few mouths hang open, but nobody speaks. Rupert grips the table and wills himself to say the next bit as quickly as possible.
“Lance and Gwen have run off together and taken the source files with them.”
Gasps circle the room. Source files are the building blocks of story. Character quirks, plot points, back story and narrative arcs are all contained within the lines of code and pixels that comprise the source files every muse uses day to day.
“Where have they gone?” asks the Boss, raking his gaze across the enormous table. “Gwen and Lance?” He leans forward. “Rupert?”
“Their work stations are completely clean,” he says. “There’s no hint of where they could have gone or why.”
“Why don’t you just assign another muse to rewrite them?” asks Frank, Director of Pulp Fiction. “Fill in the blanks and move on.”
The room roars again.
“Characters are not interchangeable, Frank,” says Jonathan, Director of Literary Fiction. “You can’t just plop one in place of another and expect nobody will notice.”
Before the rest of the Directors pile on, the Boss puts up his hand and the volume in the room subsides. “More to the point, does anybody know where Gwen and Lance could have gone?”
Director muses turn to one another, whispering, pull out their handhelds and scroll through the record logs. Nobody speaks. The silence stretches like warm toffee, but with less anticipation of a happy ending.
“Do you mean to tell me that two muses have gone rogue,” the Boss growls, shattering the silence, “taking two characters with them—one of them your Title character—and nobody else noticed?”
Those who had still been watching the Boss stare at their handhelds, shoulders hunched. Nobody looks up.
Into this awkward silence, someone raises a dainty hand. The hand belongs to an even daintier woman with silky blonde curls and piercing blue eyes that would appear nearly violet were they not illuminated by fluorescent lights.
“Yes, Mary?”
The Fanfiction Director for the Harry Potter universe rises to her feet. Most of the men in the room (and a handful of the women) sigh.
“I have no idea where Lance and Gwen have gone, though of course I wish them well.” She smiles, and her eyes lose their focus.
“Very kind of you,” says the Boss, impatient when it becomes obvious she is lost in reverie. “Was there anything else?”
“Ah, yes. Of course.” She runs her index finger along her lush lower lip. “I just thought you might be interested to know that every work of Fanfiction involving either Harry Potter or Draco Malfoy has completely disappeared from extant archives, journals, hard drives, and Tumblrs. Even hard copies have disintegrated. It’s a terrible mess.” She pauses as if to consider less the magnitude of the chaos and more the cost of the cleaning bill. “It’s as if neither one of them ever existed.” She flutters her improbably long eyelashes and lowers them over those enormous, impossibly coloured eyes.
The room is absolutely, positively silent.
“Does that suggest that the source files have been destroyed?” asks Rupert in a quiet voice.
Directors look around the room, but still nobody speaks.
“Oh, for Plato’s sake,” says Rupert. “Is there nobody here from IT?”
The room explodes in a cacophony of sound.
It would appear that there is, in point of fact, nobody here from IT.
The Boss scowls and slams his hand against a button on the underside of the table. “On their way,” he says.
Finally, Rupert thinks. Somebody who can sort out this mess. Someone who isn’t me. ~~~***~~~
It wasn’t enough that he’d been whisked away from his own life—not that his own life was anything to crow about at the moment—and unceremoniously dumped in the middle of nowhere. Oh, no. He had to be abandoned in the middle of nowhere with Harry Fucking Potter. And then, to add insult to injury, he’d fallen asleep face first on the cold ground, leaving his body exhausted and filthy.
It was obvious. Potter was determined to humiliate him. It must be a childhood dream come true.
It was the only possible explanation for this. This, of course, being his presence in a tree house, covered in owl scratches, facing a stuffed bear for whom refusing a spoonful of honey was apparently the world’s worst insult.
“It’s very good honey,” said the bear in an unmistakably hurt voice. Draco shuddered. “The very best. A gift from Kanga. I would have collected it myself, but it’s awfully hard to fool bees, you see. I once pretended to be a small black cloud and used a balloon to trick them. Christopher Robin walked beneath me with an umbrella. I sang a little song and everything.” The bear sighed. “It didn’t work, and I had rather a lot of scratches in the end. But then Kanga brought me honey and made it ever so much better.”
Draco gritted his teeth and looked up at Potter who raised his eyebrows and grinned. All right then, a challenge. Fine.
“Thank you, erm, Winnie.”
“My friends call me Pooh,” said Pooh.
Now Draco raised an eyebrow, and Potter’s expression conveyed with uncanny clarity what he would do to Draco if he said one single word about the bear’s name.
“Ah, yes. Pooh. Thank you.” He reached for the spoon and brought it to his mouth. Sweet. Creamy. Just honey. “This is quite good,” Draco said, surprised, and the bear brightened. “Thank you. Potter’s face cleared and he gave a tiny nod.
He’d learned a lot about the world outside of his family’s hallowed circles over the last two decades, and worked every day to embrace this bigger world, despite often finding it rather grubby. Even so, he had not been the least bit prepared for dealings with non-magical, sentient animals who didn’t do what they were meant to. Who had ever heard of owls that didn’t deliver messages? Bears that tried to feed him honey? Pigs wearing pink striped shirts whose squeals sent shivers up his spine?
He took another spoonful of honey and the bear—Pooh bear—beamed at him.
And who had heard of a child who supposedly held the key to their salvation? Oh, wait. That he had heard of.
History did rather repeat itself. ~~**~~
“I don’t know how to find your home,” said Christopher Robin, a boy of about five years. “I’m terribly sorry.”
“Well, do you know whether there are any doors in and out of this place?” asked Potter in what must be his gentlest Auror voice. Draco had never heard this voice out of Potter and it surprised him. Kind and competent, both. It even reassured Draco.
“What sort of doors do you mean? There’s a door to Owl’s house, right here, and another beneath the sign on the front of Pooh’s house.”
“Oh, no. I don’t mean doors to houses,” Potter said. “I mean ways in and out of the forest. Passages that take you to another place altogether.”
The boy wrinkled his brow for a long moment, and then his eyes brightened.
“Oh!” said Christopher Robin. “Like when I go home for my bath and bed?”
Potter blinked. “Erm. Yes. Perhaps. Like when you go home to your bed. Can you show us?”
“Of course I shall!”
The boy scrambled down from his perch high on a stool and darted through the door and clambered down the ladder. Draco was relieved to see Potter following at a more sedate pace. Soon enough they were on the ground again, and Christopher Robin reached up for Potter’s hand.
“Let me show you,” the boy said, and Potter smiled and clasped the child’s hand in his larger one.
There was something about it, this simple gesture. Something intangible that made Draco’s chest warm and his eyes wet. Tenderness was not something his father had been known for, not even towards him. He’d learned to read the signals early, to assess the twists of the game he’d had no choice but to learn to play. With Lucius, being tough got him the most he could hope for—grudging approval—and display of need meant he would be shut out completely.
He hated Potter for his ease, and the child for knowing he could trust him.
It had been a very long time since Draco had admitted to himself that beneath the machinations, he wished for nothing more than a real connection to another person. Wanting it and obtaining it were different things, entirely.
The armour that had protected him as a child had long ago worn thin.
He could see his blood flowing beneath it if he looked.
Potter turned back to where Draco stood in the shade of the chestnut tree.
“Coming?” he asked and smiled, open and genuine. A first.
Draco’s heart lurched.
“Right behind you.”
Chapter Text
Chapter 4
It was awkward, actually. Sitting with a Neville who wasn’t really Neville. The Neville Hermione knew had changed a lot since their first year at Hogwarts, but this man wasn’t the same one she’d had lunch with just last week. For one thing, he didn’t quake at all sitting across from Severus, not even when he had shot him his most terrifying glare in response to Neville calling him by his first name. This Neville had just smiled and offered him more tea. No, this wasn’t the Neville Hermione knew, not with a lightning bolt scar on his forehead and this calm self-possession.
There was really no way to tell him that until yesterday, he’d been a formerly anxious boy whose name did not appear in history books until his heroic decapitation of the Dark Lord’s snake with one well-aimed swipe of the sword of Gryffindor. It wasn’t that she wished Neville ill or out of the position he currently occupied. Hermione just wanted things to go back to the way they were. How they’d been. How she imagined they were meant to be.
Based entirely on her definition of ‘meant to be’, of course. Neville might have a distinctly different view on the matter.
It was all just so convoluted. But fortunately, Hermione was familiar with navigating intricate situations. So was Severus, now that she thought about it.
“Headmistress,” she said. “And Deputy Headmaster.” Neville smiled. She had the impression that this was a relatively new role for him, but she couldn’t ask, could she? “I realise that this is an unusual request, but would it be possible for us to speak with Headmaster Dumbledore’s portrait in private?”
Neville looked at McGonagall, who raised her eyebrows.
“This is quite irregular, Hermione,” she said.
“We realise,” Severus admitted. “But you see, I haven’t spoken to him at all since—” He gestured vaguely and both Headmistress McGonagall and Neville blanched.
“Of course. Of course,” said the headmistress. “I wondered when you might finally be ready. Well. It has been nearly twenty years.” The headmistress cleared her throat. Hermione thought there might be a tear in McGonagall’s eye, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Indeed,” said Severus, glancing at the tea cup in his hands. Hermione admired his easy duplicity.
“Professor Longbottom, don’t you have a class to teach?”
Neville looked baffled and then sombre. “Of course. Yes, indeed. Herbology in a few minutes. Off I go.”
“I’ll see you soon, Neville, yeah?”
“Of course, Hermione. I’ll send an owl.” But Hermione had the impression that this Neville didn’t see much of her. She wondered who she had become in this version of reality, if not one of the best friends of The Boy Who Lived.
“The door will close behind you when you leave. Take as long as you need,” said the headmistress, gathering her cloak and tucking her wand into her sleeve. “I haven’t been outside yet today and the fresh air will do me good.”
“Thank you, Minerva,” said Severus. His voice was soft and for a long moment, they locked eyes. Finally, McGonagall cleared her throat again and nodded her goodbyes.
It didn’t matter that Harry and Draco didn’t exist here, or that Neville was The Boy Who Lived. The warmth that passed between Severus and Minerva would be tangible in any reality.
So would the delighted smile on Dumbledore’s portrait when Severus prodded him (perhaps more insistently than strictly necessary) with his wand to wake him up.
“Severus, my boy. What a pleasure to see you. It’s been a while, has it not?”
“Stop prevaricating, old man,” said Severus, but there was affection in his tone. “The last time I saw you was atop the astronomy tower at the wrong end of my wand.”
The portrait ignored him and smiled a vacant smile.
“Severus?” Hermione whispered after a silent minute passed with no movement from the portrait. “What’s wrong with him?”
“No idea,” said Severus through gritted teeth. Then, out loud, “We need your help, Albus.”
“Anything, anything at all, my boy,” said Dumbledore, rousing himself.
“You see, we’ve lost something. Something rather unusual, and we need your help to find it,” said Hermione.
“You’ve lost something? Have you performed a Summoning charm?” asked Dumbledore. “If I remember correctly, yours was quite a bit above average.”
“It’s not the sort of thing I can Summon, Headmaster.” Hermione looked at Severus.
“We have each lost something, Albus. Distinct, but connected, if only by the fact of their simultaneous disappearances. I believe the connection to be meaningful. Believe me when I tell you that we literally cannot describe the lost items.” Severus paused. “We have reason to believe that they have travelled some way away from here and taken all evidence of their existence with them.”
The headmaster wrinkled his brow and lapsed into what appeared to be deep thought. He was, after all, a veteran of secret keeping of all sorts. “The castle is said to have a room of lost things,” he said. “The elves speak of it regularly, and it is mentioned in the records left by the Founders. The room is also, if I’m not mistaken, where entrances and exits are created. Perhaps you should start there.”
“Entrances and exits to the castle originate in the Room of Requirement?” asked Hermione.
“Not only to the castle. To the world,” said Dumbledore. “The Founders chose the site for Hogwarts mindfully, you see.”
Hermione felt queasy. That phrase—entrances and exits—brought her back to the night of the Battle, to herself, squeezing through the passageway beneath the Whomping Willow that night nearly twenty years ago.
“Go on without me. I’ll catch up,” she’d said to Ron and Harry at the mouth of the tunnel. “I forgot something.”
She watched them go and, once they were finally out of sight, turned to crawl back through the passageway beneath the tree. It was a relatively short distance, and she’d just done it. But this time, it felt as if she were swimming against a strong current, almost sentient in its unspoken resistance to her intention. It must be that I haven't slept in days, she told herself. It was the only explanation for the pressure against her skin pushing her to turn around, to join Ron and Harry. To forget about Snape.
She shook her head, trying to dislodge the unwelcome impulses, pushing harder towards her goal. She crawled and crawled, hands raw and bleeding, knees caked with mud, until she reached the dusty and blood-soaked room where the Dark Lord had just set his snake on Severus Snape.
“Professor?” she whispered, hesitant to touch him. He was still breathing, but shallowly, and there was so much blood. Too much. She reached for him and wondered at how heavy her arm felt. Stop it, she growled at whatever unseen forces were thwarting her, and all at once, it felt as if a rubber band had snapped.
Free.
“Professor Snape,” she said more loudly as she leaned over him. “Please. Don’t go.”
She looked at him now as they made their way to the seventh floor, colour in his skin and meat on his bones. An arresting man and a powerful wizard. It had taken months of recovery and months more for his acquittal, but here he was, nearly twenty years later, hale and hearty, and most of all, free.
Severus looked over at her and quirked an eyebrow as if he knew what she was thinking. It was a mark of their friendship, hard earned and cherished, she thought, that he smiled and kept on walking. ~~~***~~~
“You know where we’re going?” he asked. The Room of Requirement, she’d called it. He’d heard the elves refer to a ‘come and go room’, and during his fateful year as headmaster he had been aware that many students had, thankfully, disappeared into an unplottable room that kept them safe. This must be the room Dumbledore meant. No surprise that he, Severus, in all his years in residence, had never accessed the one place in the castle—in all of wizarding Britain, in fact—that could satisfy his every need.
“I do,” said Hermione. “You’ve never been inside it, then?”
“No,” he admitted.
“It isn’t always easy to get it to open,” Hermione explained. “We may need to experiment a bit.”
Severus frowned. Magical objects with minds of their own were most definitely not his favourite sort.
“We’re here.”
Hermione had stopped in front of a large, blank wall. Across from it was the tapestry of the dancing trolls to which Lestrange had attempted to set fire their fifth year.
“The Room of Requirement.”
“Yes. We need to think about what it is we require and it should open for us,” said Hermione.
What did they require?
“Shall we try alone or together, then?” he asked. “You are the one with experience.”
“I’ve never opened it myself, actually,” Hermione said. “But we used it for Defence training in our fifth year, and then Neville brought us there right before the last battle. He and the others had been living in there for weeks and the room kept adjusting for them. It even made a passageway to the Hog’s Head so they could get food. As Dumbledore said: entrances and exits.”
Severus nodded and looked from the wall to Hermione. Strong, smart Hermione. Persistent Hermione. His heart lurched. He was grateful to have her as his friend; this was not the time for his unruly heart to speak.
Despite his best intentions, his voice was husky. “So, what do we require, Hermione?” he asked. Her eyes blazed and he was momentarily taken aback. She appeared to be silently answering a different question entirely—the unspoken one woven into his voice.
“From the room. What do we require from the room,” he amended, but if Dumbledore was right about this being the place where passageways opened, it had done so just then. Not as a tangible aperture for people to pass through, but as a newly forged link between them that would pulse with energy were it visible.
“The room. Right.” She looked dazed, and he couldn’t help but be pleased.
“Shall we think of Draco and Potter, then?” That ought to quench the fire he was feeling in his chest.
“Yes. All right.”
Hermione closed her eyes and concentrated. Severus took a moment to look at her while she couldn’t see. Fierce. That was the word for her.
“Stop watching me and focus, Severus,” said Hermione, and he laughed.
“I’ll never understand how you do that,” he muttered.
She smiled.
“Think about Draco,” she said.
Right. Draco. The child he’d held as an infant. The boy he’d failed to guide. The student he’d let down in the most profound ways possible.
The wall shuddered and then stopped.
“It’s not working,” said Hermione.
“Evidently not.”
“I suppose it was too much to hope for that we’d just think of them and they’d appear behind the wall,” she said.
“Right.” Severus reviewed what Dumbledore had said. “Lost things and passageways. Maybe we need to be less specific,” said Severus. “Ask it to provide us with the means to find what we’ve lost. Perhaps we could ask it to show us the path to find them.”
Hermione nodded. “That sounds better. Shall we?”
It took concentration to avoid thinking specifically of Draco. Instead, he focused on the empty feeling inside of him, the loss he felt not only now, but whenever he remembered the young man he had been and the child neither he nor Draco had really ever had the chance to be.
Nothing.
Hermione slid her back down the wall until she slumped into a crumpled heap on the floor, resting her head against the stone with a soft thud.
“What are we missing?”
Severus conjured a chair and sat down next to her.
“What?” he asked. She was laughing. “The floor is filthy.”
“Cleaning charm,” she said, eyes still closed.
“You did no such thing. Cleaning charms leave distinctive marks.”
“Master of observation, are you?”
“You see, but you do not observe,” he said with a smirk, an old joke between them. How pleased he had been to discover that she, too, had devoured the Sherlock Holmes stories as a child. He hadn’t had anybody to share that with for a lifetime.
The wall rumbled.
“I do so observe,” she said. “How do you think I made it through third-year with a Time-Turner? I had to pay attention to everything.” She paused. “I wish I could go back a week or two and follow Harry. See when he disappeared. How he did.”
The wall rumbled again.
Wishes. Needs. Aspects of themselves that felt real and good.
“Think about how you want things to be,” he said. “Tell the room we need help making things right again.”
Her eyes were huge, gazing at him, and she nodded.
He stood and turned to face the wall, pressing his hands against the smooth stone.
Bring us what we need. What we lost. What we long for.
The wall rumbled, once, twice, and then a soaring archway appeared in the centre of the stone, framing a panelled wooden door with enormous brass hinges and handle.
There. Who knew that you could ask and receive?
“Shall we?” Severus asked.
Hermione smiled and took his arm as they walked through the door.
Chapter Text
Chapter 5
Muses across divisions have been known to linger over long lunches discussing what it would be like to be the players on the stage rather than the inspiration behind them. Countless hours have been spent debating the relative merits of ‘Horror’ and ‘True Crime’, with unspoken relief that they embody neither, no matter how titillating it might be to imagine.
It’s all imagination, really. Only in the Tower do these debates carry real weight. There, in the topmost reaches of the Citadel, reside the Architect and the Cartographer. Most muses never have reason or opportunity to meet either one, though everybody knows where to find them. They’re like fairy tale characters with a postal code. Remote, yet real.
Rupert would just as soon keep them remote, not unlike the characters his muses write, and just as theoretical, but that’s no longer an option. He pushes the palm of his hand against the bright orange panel on the wall and a door slides open. He steps into the lift and pushes the topmost button. The doors slide shut and the lift begins to move.
Up, up, up to the top of the world. ~~~***~~~
“Where do the doors take you?” asked Potter as they approached the first one.
The boy looked confused.
“I’m only allowed through this one,” he said, pointing to a small wooden door with a shiny gold knob. “When I’m ready to come home for dinner and bath, I turn the handle and it opens for me.”
“For you?” Draco asked. This might be more complicated than it appeared.
“Well, yes,” he said. “Pooh tried to come along once, but the door opens only if I’m alone. Tigger sometimes pounds on them all, but the only thing that happens then is awfully loud shouting from the other side.”
Potter looked worried; not an encouraging sign coming from undoubtedly the wizarding world’s most dogged member.
“Maybe there’s one for us,” he said, and Draco snorted. “What?”
“I see you haven’t lost your optimism after all, Potter.”
“Why should I have?” He’d dropped the boy’s hand and stood, arms crossed, facing Draco.
“I’ve found that life tends to burn it out of you,” said Draco. “You were obviously born with a surplus.”
Potter looked stymied, which gave Draco a momentary jolt of satisfaction. All too brief.
“Oh, yes. My life was terribly easy,” snapped Potter. “Overflowing with love and comfort and assurances of my place in the world. I can totally see how this would lead you to conclude that I was given a surplus of optimism as my birthright.”
Potter turned his back and stomped on ahead. The door just beyond the small wooden one was spectacular. Enormous and arched, it appeared to be made of a solid piece of steel, intricate whorls embossed all along its surface.
“This one,” Potter said, shortly, turning back to glance at Draco. “Thank you, Christopher Robin, for your assistance.”
The boy nodded, looking between the two wizards with furrowed brows.
“Is this your door?” he asked.
“It is now,” said Potter as he grasped the curved handle and pulled. ~~~***~~~
“I have plenty of books at home,” said Severus, looking around at the stacks, and Hermione laughed.
The Room of Requirement was lined, floor to ceiling, with books. Every shape, size and colour crammed into the vaulted shelves. More, even, than the Hogwarts library. She was sure of it.
“Me, too,” she agreed. “So either there’s something here that neither of us has in our collections, or it’s not the books alone that we need to find Draco and Harry.”
“Hmm.” He was already distracted by a manuscript lying on the nearest table and didn’t look up.
Fine, then.
She lost track of time browsing the shelves. There was everything here, from Muggle romances to literature to the most obscure wizarding text. It was impossible to know for sure, but Hermione imagined that every genre and subset of fiction and non-fiction, magic and Muggle alike, was represented on these shelves.
“Why would the room give us a universe of books?” she asked.
“A universe of books? Hm.”
She hadn’t actually meant to say that out loud, but it was just as well.
“It is, isn’t it?” She swept her arm in a half-circle and Severus followed it with his eyes.
“I suppose so.” He pulled a cauldron-shaped book with suspicious-looking steam puffing out of its spine from a shelf just out of her reach and sat back down at a reading table at the centre of the room. “I couldn’t say why.”
Hermione sat across from him and propped her feet up on the chair alongside.
“We asked the room for help finding what we lost. I can’t imagine that books will help us find them. Not in the usual sense, at least.”
Severus snickered. “You? Hermione Granger? Minimising the value of books in the investigation of a mystery?” He leaned forward as if to examine her for injury.
“Stop that,” she said, smiling. “The right book at the right time is, well… obviously it can make the difference between success and failure. But I’m not so naïve as to think that books are all we need.”
She thought back to the months she spent in this very room during her fifth year. Practicing spells. Learning defensive manoeuvres. Doing far more than thinking and reading. Not just going along with what was expected, but bursting out of the mould and doing what she believed was necessary. It was awfully like her decision to turn back and check on Severus.
She sat up straight and put her feet back on the ground.
“We have to stop doing that,” she said. “Put us in a library or a bookshop, and what’s the obvious result?”
They both looked at the books and parchment spread across the table.
“Right,” he said. “So what’s the non-obvious action? For us?”
Us. She shivered with pleasure. How many years had it taken before Severus had even deigned to refer to the two of them in the same sentence? She hadn’t known what she would find beneath his prickly mask, but this man, sarcasm and intellect and humour all, had been worth every minute of gentle, careful effort.
Hermione looked around. She hadn’t paid them much attention, but small tables were scattered all around the room. Each one held a cushion with a small object nestled in its centre.
“The non-obvious path for us? Staying away from the books,” she said, standing and making her way to one of the tables. It held a small blue cushion on which lay a long, narrow crystal vial. She raised it to the light. There was powder inside, granular and iridescent.
“Here’s a black one,” said Severus, handing another vial to Hermione, this one in a squat flask.
“I wonder what they’re for,” she said.
The hearth flared to life, and she jumped.
Oh.
“So it’s a sort of Floo powder, I assume,” said Severus. “To take us… where?”
Hermione was sure the room emitted an exasperated sigh just as a gigantic book tumbled off another shelf and hit the ground with a thud.
“It’s an atlas,” she said, once she’d heaved it from the floor onto a large table. Its binding was cracking under the thickness of the pages between its covers.
Finally she opened it, but it wasn’t inscribed with maps of cities and countries, nor rivers and seas. “Severus. Come here.”
He looked up from where he was examining the black powder under the light of his wand and came to see. Page after page was filled with diagrams; alternate arrangements of book topics, laid out this way and that, expanding with each subsequent page; subjects and genres, stories and encyclopaedias—the world of words and ideas spread out on pages of parchment, bound together and bursting apart.
“It’s colour coded,” said Severus, running his fingers across the crimson lip prints travelling across the romance section. “Here. Red for romance. Green for adventure.” He snorted. “Cliché.”
“Well, it gets a bit more sophisticated back here,” Hermione said, pointing to the pages towards the back of the book. “Violet for mythology, amber for science.” She looked up. “If you were Harry and Draco, where would you go?”
“You’re assuming they left of their own volition,” said Severus, running his finger down a cracked page. “No. I don’t think we can start by looking for them. I think we are going to have to find someone who can help us track them down.”
“That must be what the room is telling us,” said Hermione. If the answers weren’t at Hogwarts, where else in the world could they be?
Severus looked around the room, at all the books on the shelves, lining the walls and filling the air with the scent of parchment and ink, of fantasy and memory and hopes, filled and unfulfilled. He closed his eyes and smiled a small, old smile.
“The portal is here,” said Severus. “And I know just who I want to ask for help.”
“Who?” she asked.
Severus smiled and Hermione shivered at the glint in his eye.
“Exactly.” ~~~***~~~
A circular room, ringed by floor-to-ceiling windows (which is really saying something since the walls rise and rise until he can barely see the top). Between each window is a column of mirrors, some smooth and unbroken, others fractured and tinted like mosaics. Peppered along the circumference are plinths of varying heights, each one holding a giant multi-faceted crystal. There are circular ones and ovals, triangles and diamonds. There are even a few that look as if they’re shards of ice, tied in a knot. Each crystal captures the light flowing in from the windows and refracts it until the entire room is bathed in rainbows.
At the centre of the room is an arrangement of cushions and low tables, the occasional sofa edging the perimeter. A bottomless pot of tea is steaming on one of the tables, and a man and a woman Rupert hadn’t noticed step forward and gesture towards one of the plush cushions.
“Join us, please,” says the woman. “I am Architect Nix.”
Rupert nods and sits. “I’m Rupert—”
“We are well aware of who you are,” says the man. “I am Cartographer Ford.”
“Yes, of course,” says Rupert. “A pleasure to meet you both.” He blushes a beet red. “I mean to say, these aren’t the most fortuitous of circumstances under which to meet, of course, but still, it’s an honour.”
“Not the most fortuitous of circumstances, no,” says the Architect. “Quite unprecedented, in fact.”
Rupert squirms.
“We’ve never seen anything like it, actually,” says the Cartographer, pouring tea into the delicate china cups. “An upsurge in rogue activity followed by what can only be considered rogue activity amongst your muses.”
Indeed.
“I can’t explain it,” Rupert says. “The Potter lot were particularly difficult to manage nearly from the start. Always going off on their own, having to be reined back into the storyline. And you should see the Fanfiction…” He trailed off, frozen by the cold looks in his superiors’ eyes.
“Every Division grapples with the same issues, Rupert,” says the Architect. “It’s your job to keep your muses on task and the story arcs intact.”
“Yes, of course,” says Rupert, a niggling disquiet growing in his stomach. “I don’t understand how I could have missed Lance and Gwen’s discontent. I’ve never lost a muse, not to mention two at once.” He leans forward and puts down his tea cup. “To be honest, I don’t really understand it. If you don’t mind my asking. Where could they possibly have gone?”
The Architect and the Cartographer look at one another. Their expressions are grim and Rupert feels a chill that he’s sure has nothing to do with the icy edges of the circular room.
“That’s precisely what you are going to find out, Rupert,” says the Cartographer. “We will supply you with a map, and off you go.”
“Off I go, to where?”
“To find them, of course,” says the Architect. “You’re going to find them and set the narrative straight. And then you’re going to bring those muses back.”
Chapter Text
Chapter 6
“Golf, Tango, India, we’re beginning our descent—” There was a screeching noise. “Oh. Hello. I was under the impression that we were enjoying a passenger-free flight today. How did you two get on board?” asked a grey-haired man sitting in front of an instrument panel.
“Erm,” said Harry. “Um.”
“What my very articulate friend here is trying to say is that we came through that door, there.” Malfoy gestured behind him and looked just as surprised as Harry to find no door there at all. At least not one made of steel, twelve feet tall, and embossed with vines and leaves. Only a small metal door separated what appeared to be the flight deck from the rest of the aeroplane.
Aeroplane? How in Merlin’s name did they get from the Hundred-Acre Wood directly into an aeroplane that, from the sound of it, was actually flying?
“You can’t be in here,” said the ginger-haired man in the other pilot’s seat. “Only pilots are allowed on the flight deck!”
“Martin,” said the first man with a drawl that forcibly reminded Harry of Professor Snape, “wouldn’t you agree that our priority ought to be finding out who these nice gentlemen are and how they got on our plane? GERT-I may be old and decrepit, but she is managing to fly at hundreds of miles an hour, thirty thousand feet in the air, no less. I don’t imagine they wandered in from a nearby cloud just to share the cheese tray.”
“Yes, well. Of course they didn’t, but regardless, they can’t be in here, Douglas.”
“Who can’t be in here, Skip?” asked a third man as he entered the increasingly crowded flight deck.
“We can’t be, apparently,” said Harry. “Hello.” At least the new chap looked friendly.
“Hello,” said the man. “I’m Arthur. Who are you?”
“I’m Harry and this is Draco,” said Harry. “Did someone say something about a cheese tray?”
“You can’t share our cheese tray,” said Martin. Harry thought he saw desperation in the other man’s eyes.
He put up his hands in a sign of surrender. “We won’t touch the cheese tray,” he said, backing up until he was flush against the curved wall behind the pilots’ seats. “We’re as confused as you are about how we got on this aeroplane, of all places.”
“What’s wrong with it?” asked a crisp female voice. “This is a perfectly fine aeroplane. My aeroplane, in fact.” The crisp voice was owned by a stern-faced, white-haired woman. “Who are you and why are you stowing away on my aircraft?”
“They’re called Harry and Draco, Mum,” said Arthur cheerfully. “But don’t worry. They won’t touch the cheese tray. They promised.” He turned to the two wizards. “You did promise, didn’t you?”
“We did,” agreed Harry, baffled at their protectiveness over the cheese tray, but unwilling to rock the boat.
The plane shook from a bit of turbulence and Malfoy gripped the back of Martin’s chair. “What was that?” he asked. His face was rather too white, and Harry thought that, on the whole, this wasn’t the best time to explain aerodynamics to a wizard.
“You'd better sit down,” said Arthur. “I vomit sometimes when we hit too much turbulence, but luckily I haven’t eaten an entire pot of pasta and red sauce today.” He opened the cabin door and steered Malfoy towards it. “Have you had any?”
Malfoy opened his mouth, then closed it.
“Only honey,” he said. He turned a bit green at the memory.
“Honey. Huh. That’s funny. Not ‘haha’ funny. Odd funny. Well, at least it wasn’t red. The Skipper had the hardest time getting it all out of his hat. Would have been better if it’d been his hair. Lots easier to wash.”
“OUT!” shouted Martin. “All of you. Get out. Out, out, out!”
Arthur shepherded Malfoy into what Harry presumed was the main cabin. He’d never actually been on an aeroplane, but he’d watched enough telly to get the general gist of the thing.
“So,” said Douglas as soon as the door swung shut, “what do you say you tell us who you are and how you got on our aeroplane.”
Harry looked at the dash, filled with blinking lights and levers. He’d always wanted to be in the flight deck of an aeroplane, to see it, even to be in the pilot’s seat. Maybe it was an expression of his natural desire to fly and his comfort in the air.
“I love to fly,” he said, almost to himself.
“Of course. You would be a pilot,” said Martin glumly.
“No. I’m not, actually. Not exactly,” said Harry.
“Then you enjoy being a passenger?” asked Douglas. “I understand some do. Can’t fathom it, myself.”
“Not really,” said Harry, wondering if the Statute of Secrecy applied in a situation like this. Was there even precedent? Steeling himself for the sudden entrance of an owl with a summons to court, he reckoned he had no choice. Besides, it would be a relief if somebody from home found him… them, and brought them back. He’d brave the bowels of the Ministry for that. It would be worth it.
“My name is Harry Potter,” he said. “And I’m lost.”
“Well, that much is obvious,” said Martin. “But how did you get onto this plane without anybody noticing?”
How, indeed? He just pulled open the door and walked through. He needed to get away, and… Oh.
“Whenever I’m upset, I go flying,” said Harry. “I guess this was the closest thing to it.”
Martin bristled. “I’ll have you know that GERT-I is flying quite well at thirty-thousand feet—”
“Yes, yes, Martin. We know,” said Douglas. “But I don’t think that’s what he meant. Was it, Harry?”
Harry shook his head. “No. It wasn’t. See…” He paused, glancing at the windshield and hoping that a wizarding owl wasn’t about to go splat against it. “I’m a wizard. I came through a magical door and ended up here.”
Both men were silent. Then Martin erupted.
“You know, if you think you can come up here and take the mick out of us, you… you… you—”
Harry never did find out what would happen. “No!” he shouted. “I’m not. I would never do that.”
They say that desperation can generate spontaneous magic in wizards. Harry never had got the hang of wandless magic, but desperate he was.
“Accio, hat!” he shouted, summoning the first thing he laid eyes on. Martin’s hat sailed through the air and landed neatly in Harry’s hand.
“Hey! That’s mine! Wait. How did you…?” Martin seemed torn between snatching his hat back and examining Harry to discover the trick.
“It’s a spell,” he explained. “A summoning spell. Let’s see if I can do it again with something further away.” He cast his eyes around the cabin. Ah. A lemon. Why was there a lemon in the flight deck of an aeroplane? Never mind.
“Accio, lemon!” It flew across the room and Harry caught it as smartly as any snitch.
“Travelling lemon, indeed,” muttered Douglas, but Martin just stared with his mouth hanging open.
So far, so good. No owl going ‘splat.’ He’d count that as a win despite the fact that it meant no easy way home.
“Wizard, eh?” Douglas looked at Harry as if he might devour him whole. Harry took a step back, squishing himself back against the wall again.
“Wizard. Yes. I don’t know how we ended up back in the Muggle world, but then again, we were originally lost in the Hundred-Acre Wood, so what do I know? Also, neither of us has our wand so we’re a bit handicapped,” Harry said.
“Yes, well, all this is quite entertaining, but we need to land soon, or we’re going to run out of fuel,” said Martin with a glance at the gauge.
Douglas pushed a button and spoke into a microphone. “Golf, Tango, India, preparing for landing.”
The speaker crackled and a voice filled the cabin. Muggles did have their own types of magic, didn’t they? “Golf, Tango, India, cleared for landing.”
Harry hoped that Arthur had showed Malfoy how to strap himself in. Speaking of which.
“Where should I go?” he asked.
“Oh. Right. Go back into the cabin and buckle up,” said Martin. “We’ll be on the ground in a few minutes.”
The less said about the landing, the better. ~~~***~~~
“Are you sure this is it?” Hermione asked.
“Of course I’m not sure,” Severus snapped and immediately regretted his impatience. Even for a Muggle-born witch who had already once assimilated the idea that a hidden world awaited her, the idea that they could Floo to speak with a fictional character was a bit much.
“Do you suppose we do it the usual way? Call out his name the way we would a regular destination?” she asked.
He nodded. “I expect so.”
“Is there anything else I need to know before we go?”
He’d filled her in as best he could, but who knew which version they’d encounter, if they could find him at all. Even if they did, who knew if he could or would help?
“I think you have the main bits down,” he said. It had taken the better part of the evening. Years of adventures soaked up in front of his tiny black and white telly had poured out of him. Hours and hours of joy in the midst of the grimness all around. It had been a very long time since he’d thought of those days, but there had been a time when those memories sustained him—held him—when it was hard to believe that there was any good magic in the world left or any heroes to use it.
The hearth was blazing, flames spitting red and orange sparks, as if it was eager for them to move on. Severus unstoppered the bottle and passed it under his nose. It smelled like Floo powder even if it was blue. He poured a bit onto his fingertips and rubbed them together. It had the texture of Floo powder.
“Should we both take some?” Hermione asked.
“Couldn’t hurt,” he said, pouring a handful into her palm and then into his. Pausing for a moment, he tucked the bottle into his robes.
“Ready?” she whispered.
He nodded. Together they flung the powder into the flames. The fire glowed blue, deep as the twilit sky.
“The Doctor,” said Severus, loudly and clearly.
“The Doctor,” echoed Hermione, and they stepped into the fire side by side. ~~~***~~~
“Portals, portals. One and all.” The Architect gestures to the prisms and mirrors all around. “Choose your poison,” she tells him before melting into one of the mosaic mirrors.
“Use the map first, though,” adds the Cartographer. “You’ll be more likely to pick up their trail and less likely to end up in the belly of a whale.”
The belly of a—
“Wait! Who am I looking for?” asks Rupert, before he walks away. “Lance and Gwen?”
“Find Potter and Malfoy and you’ll find Lance and Gwen,” says the Cartographer. “You haven’t a shot at it the other way around.” He pats Rupert on the back and turns to go. “Good luck,” he adds, over his shoulder.
The Cartographer approaches an enormous triangular crystal, puts his hands around it and blows along its surface. The faceted glass shimmers, and the Cartographer smiles before he walks right into the crystal as if it were a doorway, no matter that it’s only the size of his head.
“Goodbye,” says Rupert. “Thanks for. Um. Well. Erm.” He clears his throat and looks down at the map. The crisscrossing lines are undulating. If he stands very still, he can just make out demarcations beneath the moving vectors. “Hmm.” He sinks to the floor, grateful for the profusion of cushions.
He’s seen maps before, of course. The Tower with so many arms and extensions protruding from its solid torso requires a map lest one become hopelessly lost in the bowels of ‘Lost World Adventures’ the way Elmer had five narrative cycles ago. Over time, genres have spawned sub-genres and offshoots until the twists and turns of the citadel have come to resemble the Labyrinth itself.
This map, though, is something else entirely.
It’s a cube. Layer upon layer, folded in upon itself, so that the juxtaposition of ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Mystery’ no longer seems random, but essential in its organisation.
That’s it, he thinks. He has to understand the way the stories are organised if he’s to find the missing characters. Lance and Gwen may have done the impossible and found a way out of the citadel and into the world they’d written, but they would have had to leave via an exit that made sense. He scratches his head and settles down to work.
He has a puzzle to solve. ~~~***~~~
“Drink it,” Harry insisted. “It’ll help.”
Grudgingly, he did, too nauseated to spar any more.
“This isn’t bad at all,” he said, surprised that a Muggle drink tasted so good.
“Think of it as broadening your horizons, Malfoy.”
“Draco. Could you just—” Potter’s eyes widened. Draco blanched and took another sip, risking another glance after his stomach had settled again.
Potter nodded, thoughtful. "All right, then."
It would be a relief, Draco told himself, to be on casual terms given the circumstances. They could revert to hostilities when they were home again.
“Now what?” asked Carolyn from the doorway. “I’m torn between a vague and frankly unsettling feeling of responsibility for your well-being and a far more familiar desire to shoo you out the door so I can go to my hotel room and sleep. To be honest, the urge to shoo you out the door is winning by a wide margin.”
“Mum! You can’t just send them away. We’re in Prague. I don’t think that’s where they’re from.”
Harry raised his eyebrows.
Carolyn threw her hands in the air and sat in one of the ratty chairs around the table. “Fine. Obviously MJN Air is destined to be not only a home for lazy, lazy pilots, but also a courier service for refugees from Renaissance Faires.”
Renaissance whats? Draco never would have imagined that he could be grateful to have Potter—Harry—around. But for navigating the Muggle world, he had to admit it was a relief to have someone here to translate. But Harry just shook his head and glanced at Draco.
“Where will you go?” asked Martin, discomfort at their predicament radiating from him. Or maybe it was just his discomfort that they were wizards. That revelation had been Harry’s decision, and to be honest, the lack of an owl from the Ministry made Draco more nervous than not. Something was obviously absolutely, massively wrong. At least as wrong as it had been when they were stuck in that forest. Probably more so.
“Maybe we just need to open more doors,” said Harry, half seriously.
“Maybe we should just get on an aeroplane to London and go to The Leaky Cauldron,” said Draco, only remembering once the words were out of his mouth that he had no gold, or whatever passed for currency here.
Harry dropped his head into his hands and groaned.
“Draco,” Harry said after taking a deep breath. “Why not just imagine ourselves there. We asked for doors and they appeared in the trees. Maybe if we imagine home behind that door, it will be there.”
Draco was sceptical, but it was a low-risk experiment.
“Which door?” asked Martin, curious.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Harry. “That one.” He pointed to a nondescript door with a faded, ‘Employees Only’ sign scrawled with purple Sharpie in four languages.
Fine.
Draco got up and stood in front of it and imagined home. Harry stood just behind him, and Draco wondered if Harry’s vision of home matched his, and whether that was a problem or not. Maybe this was like the Room of Requirement, and you had to be clear with it, make your thoughts specific enough for the magic to work.
“Ready?” Harry put his hand on the doorknob. Draco nodded.
Harry pulled and pulled (and even pushed, just in case), but the door refused to open. He tried magic, but evidently he wasn’t desperate enough and the door didn’t budge. He gave it a kick and stalked off.
“It was worth a try, I suppose,” said Douglas. “Though in my experience, these things are rarely so simple.”
“You have experience with magic?” asked Martin.
“Well, not strictly speaking,” said Douglas. “But close enough.”
“I don’t even want to know,” muttered Martin. “So, what will you two do now?”
“Absolutely no idea,” said Harry, pacing along the back wall. “Not one.”
“Wouldn’t it be great if The Doctor was here?” asked Arthur, apropos of nothing.
“The Doctor?” asked Martin. “You mean, Doctor Who?”
“'Course, Doctor Who,” said Arthur. “Who else would I be talking about?”
“Arthur, this may have escaped your notice, but Doctor Who is a made-up character,” said Martin. “Fictional. You do know what fictional is, don’t you?”
“I know what fictional is, Skip. But still. Wouldn’t it be great if The Doctor was here?” asked Arthur. “He could answer all sorts of questions! And he has the TARDIS!”
“Yes, Arthur, he has the TARDIS, but he’s not actually real,” said Martin.
“He’s real to me,” said Arthur.
The click of the door echoed loudly in the pause after Arthur’s words. The locked door, the one that none of Harry’s efforts had budged even an inch, cracked open suddenly, a shaft of light inviting them in.
“Oh,” said Douglas.
“Well, that’s promising,” said Draco.
“We’re off then,” said Harry, peering through the crack. “Draco?”
“Can we come, too? Please?” asked Arthur. “We’ll be back in time for the flight home, Mum. Can we? Please?”
The crew of GERT-I were speechless, staring at the half-opened door and the brilliant shaft of light shining from behind like a personal invitation.
“I’m going,” said Martin suddenly, and Draco recognised the look of a man longing for something. He’d seen that expression in the mirror often enough.
“Not without me, Skip!” said Arthur. “All right, Mum?”
Carolyn looked at her pilots and her son and shook her head. “I’m not going to be able to stop you, am I?”
“Nope,” said Douglas. “We’re going. Assuming the Doctor is, in fact, on the other side of that door, what pilot could possibly resist the opportunity to fly on the TARDIS? Come on, boys!”
“Oh, all right. Just be back in time for our flight tomorrow.”
“Why don’t you come too, Mum?” asked Arthur. “Girls are allowed on the TARDIS. Aren’t they, Douglas?”
Douglas smiled. “I appreciate your confidence in me, Arthur, and your certainty that I am an authority on all things Doctor. It so happens that I’m not, but from the little I do know about Time Lords, they are not averse to women.”
“See. Douglas says so.”
“So it must be true,” said Carolyn. “Obviously.”
“Let’s find out, shall we?” said Harry, turning to the group. “I hope he has some food in. I’m absolutely famished.”
Chapter Text
Chapter 7
“Ignore him,” said a slim redheaded woman. “He’s still crabby about the bet I won.” She stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Amy Pond.” She waved a second man over. “This is my husband, Rory.”
“Mrs Pond. Mr Pond,” Hermione said, reaching out her hand.
“Oy!” said the man. “Not Mr Pond.” He turned to Amy. “They always do that. Think I’m Mr Pond. Is it something I do? The way I stand? What is it?”
“I’m so sorry,” said Hermione.
“Never mind him. Call me Amy.” She was brusque, but warm, and Hermione relaxed.
“Hermione Granger.” Amy shook her hand.
Severus stepped forward. “Severus Snape.” He didn’t reach out his hand, but Rory nodded and Amy followed suit.
“Good to meet you. We’ve been waiting,” said Rory.
“How did you know we were coming?” asked Hermione.
The Doctor waved at a blinking gadget on the dash. “It’s my timey-wimey, wibbly-wobbly… thing. It dings when there’s stuff.” All four sets of eyes were wide. “Oh, come on. You know. Stuff. Like travellers from another universe. Haven’t you been paying attention? Must pay better attention, you two.”
“Another universe,” said Hermione and looked at Severus. As far as she knew, unlike theirs, Doctor Who’s was a fictional universe.
“I know what you’re going to say,” said the Doctor whirling around and leaning against the railing circling them. “It's what they always say when they come through that particular portal. That this is a fictional universe.” He smiled and pushed himself off the railing. “Of course it is. Every universe is, you know. We can hardly avoid it.”
Hermione didn’t even know what to say, but it didn’t matter much because Amy stepped in.
“You never thought to mention this?” she snapped, and Hermione was as surprised at her tone as at her easy acceptance of the Doctor's radical statement.
“I thought you already knew!” The doctor appeared confused.
“How could we possibly know?” She had her hands on her hips and looked spitting mad.
“Well,” he said, taking a well-considered step back, “considering that we've been flying around space and time in a blue wooden police box, dropping in on historical figures and all types of aliens, I thought it might have been blindingly obvious.”
“You. You, just. How can you?” Amy sputtered. Rory took her by the arm and gently moved her away from the Doctor. A good thing, too, thought Hermione. She looked about ready to sock him one.
“Could you elaborate on your statement, Doctor?” asked Severus, as deferential as she’d ever seen him. “You’re suggesting there are many universes and they are all fictional?”
“Infinite universes, yes. Obviously.”
“Not obvious,” shouted Amy from across the room, where Rory was attempting to distract her with an object that resembled a violently orange starfish.
“In this case, I must agree with Ms Pond,” said Severus. “Please define ‘fictional’.”
The Doctor sighed, punched a few buttons and pointed to a newly lit up monitor screen.
“See there,” he said, gesturing to a shadowy mountain range topped by an enormously high tower ringed by low buildings. “It all starts there. Where the muses live.”
“Where is that?” asked Hermione.
“Don’t know, really. Haven’t been able to get the TARDIS to land there. Every time I try, it gets pushed off course and ends up somewhere with no running water. Terribly inconvenient.” He shuddered.
“How do you know what’s there, then?” asked Severus.
“Aha!” said the Doctor, clearly pleased. “Excellent question! Jack Harkness told me the last time we got drunk together. Well, he got drunk. I don’t get drunk. Worth it, even though you’ve got to watch out for roaming hands when he’s in his cups, that Jack. Naughty, but he does spill the juiciest information.”
“Jack who?” asked Hermione.
“Harkness,” the Doctor said. “You know. Immortal. Time traveller like me, sort of. Mostly human apart from the immortal bit. Omnisexual. Watch out for him when you meet him, by the way. He'll flirt. He always flirts." He was waving his arms around now. "You know. Jack.”
“She doesn’t know about Jack,” said Severus, “but I’ll fill her in.”
“Excellent,” said the Doctor, though he looked sideways at Hermione as if she’d missed an important lesson.
“What happens there?” asked Rory, who had been paying more attention than was evident from his position across the room. “Where the muses are?”
“They write,” said the Doctor.
“What do they write?” asked Amy.
“Us. All of us,” he said. “Obviously.”
“You’re going to have to be clearer, spaceman,” said Amy.
“Please,” added Hermione, but Amy just stood there with her arms crossed until the Doctor rolled his eyes and sighed.
“Oh, all right. All right. Sit, all of you.”
Cushy chairs just beyond the railing were soon filled with confused humans and an impatient spaceman. Only Severus looked eager, as if this world was as exciting to him as the wizarding one he’d joined as a child. She must remember to ask him about his idolising of the Doctor. As far as she could tell, the Time Lord was completely barmy.
“It’s simple, really, when you break it down,” he said. “We are all creatures of narration. Our own, or our muses’. We exist because our stories are told. Does it really matter who tells them?”
“Of course it matters!” shouted Hermione. “I’m not some passive thing written into existence by… by what?” This made no sense. She was real. Flesh and blood and bone and magic. “I’m real,” she said. “So is Severus and so are Harry and Draco, even though we can’t find them.”
“Of course you’re real,” said the Doctor. “Where in the worlds did you get the idea that you’re not?”
“You just said so. You told us.” She was flustered.
“I just told you that we all exist because we tell our stories or our stories are told,” he said. “Mostly the muses do the work, but that’s because most creatures are lazy or just young, I suppose. Not every creature walks and talks in the first week of life like the Krillitane do. The most energetic life forms usually take over on their own at some point. The muses don’t approve, but there you have it.”
“Why do you call us fictional, then?” asked Amy. “It’s offensive.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes again. “Some stories are more codified than others, that’s all,” he said. “No need to get huffy about it.”
Hermione turned to Severus. His eyes were bright, and she wondered what was going on in that mind of his. Later, she thought. She had so many questions for him. There would be a later containing just the two of them—he’d make sure of it. Now there was only one question that counted.
“Severus, what do you think this has to do with Harry and Draco going missing?”
Severus was immobile. His thinking posture. Hermione waited. Thankfully, the others followed her lead. Finally, Severus’s eyes regained their focus and he turned to the Doctor.
“Doctor,” he asked, “what happens when something muses have written is erased?” ~~~***~~~
It’s not the map that’s the problem. It’s the decision.
Where in all the worlds would Gwen and Lance have gone in their flight from the Citadel? And is it the same place they took Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy?
“Where are you?” he mutters.
He sighs. This simply won’t do. There’s a reason he’s in management.
Rupert reaches for the map and unfolds it until he locates the intersection between ‘Mystery’ and ‘Adventure’. He traces the thickest of the arteries, certain he can feel the surging of characters, plots and tropes beneath his fingertips. Slowly, carefully, he follows the thread to its source.
There.
The spherical crystal on the plinth across the room begins to glow.
Rupert smiles. ~~~***~~~
“I’m sorry if I’ve startled you,” says Rupert. “I’m looking for Sherlock Holmes.”
The tall man raises his eyebrows as if he were expecting this as his due.
“I’m Sherlock Holmes,” he says.
“Excellent. I am in need of your help.”
The shorter man—could this be Dr John Watson?—hasn’t moved despite Holmes’ obvious interest.
“Fine,” says Holmes, elbowing his way past Watson and gesturing to a chair not occupied by a pile of books. “Hurry up, and don’t be boring.”
“Sherlock,” says Watson. “This bloke blinked into existence out of nowhere, and you’re just going to stand here and offer him a cup of tea?”
“Oh, right,” says Holmes, waggling his fingers vaguely in the direction of a room across from where they stand. “Tea. Would you mind, John?”
Watson looks as if he is going to argue and then stamps off to the kitchen, muttering under his breath. Rupert takes a moment to look around, eager to take in the trappings of the nineteenth century London he’d imagined for years.
He frowns. Laptops and cell phones weren’t part of turn-of-the-century London.
“You are Sherlock Holmes?”
“Of course I’m Sherlock Holmes. Who else would I be?”
The man paces with a nervous energy reminiscent of the Holmes tales his father told him at bedtime for years. Tall, slender, dark-haired with intense eyes, rapid speech, and an arrogant air. He certainly looks like Holmes, and he definitely sounds like Holmes. Rupert nods.
“Tell me what you want,” says Holmes.
Yes, of course.
“I’ve lost something. Erm. Someone. Well, to be completely candid, I’ve lost several someones.”
Holmes sighs with what Rupert considers unnecessary emphasis.
“I said, don’t be boring.”
Had Rupert elected to become a Sphinx instead of choosing human form when the time had come to become corporeal (but the human form had been popular at the time, and even now, most muses choose human), his feathers would most definitely be ruffled right about now.
“I’m hardly boring, Mr Holmes. How many men have you seen materialise in your front room before your very eyes?”
“My point, exactly, Sherlock,” says Watson, entering the room with a mug in each hand. “And you had me make him tea.”
“It’s only polite,” says Holmes. “You keep going on about manners, and when I use them, you complain.”
Watson hangs his head and sighs the sigh of a man who never, ever, wins an argument. He puts a cup of tea in front of Rupert, who is surprised to discover he’s actually thirsty, despite the pot he drank just an hour ago.
“Thank you.”
Watson nods and sits in an upright chair with his arms folded across his chest.
“How did you appear out of nowhere, Mr… ?”
“Rupert. Call me Rupert.”
“Just Rupert?”
“Yes.”
Watson smiles a tight little smile. “Appearing out of nowhere, then? Yes?”
Ah, yes. He really hadn’t thought this through, had he? Then again, nothing the Cartographer or the Architect said led him to believe that he is restricted from telling the truth. There is no precedent for this—muses entering fictional worlds. But now that Lance and Gwen have run off, the rumblings of the other muses have increased to the point of widespread alarm. Everybody is waiting to see who might run off next. There is virtually nothing to lose.
“I will warn you, you may find this difficult to believe, Mr Holmes, Dr Watson,” Rupert says.
Sherlock Holmes flashes a grin at his companion and leans forward, a combination of scepticism and eagerness written all over his face. The good doctor leans his head against the back of his chair and groans. ~~~***~~~
“It’s the truth,” says Rupert.
Holmes hasn’t said a word. He is sitting, eyes closed, palms pressed together, fingertips against his lips. Thinking. This, Rupert thinks, is the Sherlock Holmes he’d conjured in his mind hundreds, if not thousands of times. Pensive, intense, and most of all, unwilling to discard a possibility before all the facts are in.
No matter that this man has a laptop computer on the desk behind him instead of pen and ink. No matter that he and his companion call one another by first names and bicker like children. He recognises this man, and his companion, too. Rupert doesn’t remember hearing about this particular Holmes pastiche, but in his opinion the muses in ‘Mystery’ have done well with this one.
“Can you show us?” Holmes asks, his eyes springing open.
“Show you?”
“If you want my help, you’re going to have to take me to the scene of the crime. The workspaces of Gwen and Lance,” he says. “In order to do so, you’re going to have to show us this Citadel and the muses who, you say, narrate this universe.”
“And others,” interjects Watson. “He did say that this is one of many universes. That even we are one of many versions of ourselves.”
“Yes, yes.” Holmes waves his hand as if fanning away an annoying waft of smoke. “String theory. Multi-verses. This is hardly new, John. I wouldn’t expect you to be aware. Given your internet history, it’s evident your reading preferences don’t run to the erudite.”
Even Rupert flinches.
Watson clenches his teeth and breathes deeply. “I know about string theory, Sherlock. And if you’d stop acting like such an arse—”
“Well, can you show us? Bring us there?” asks Holmes, his implicit inclusion of his friend a subtle but apparently effective apology if how Watson’s shoulders relax is any indication.
Can he, though? Rupert doesn’t know the rules governing muses creating anything new in narrative space. He’s never done it. No reason to believe it shouldn’t work the same way as any other time. Imagine it and, voilà, it exists.
What will it mean to bring fictional characters into muse space? He shivers. It’s revolutionary. Who knows what will come of it?
“It’s never been done,” says Rupert. “But we shall attempt it.
Holmes leaps to his feet. “No time to waste. John, let’s go.”
“Let’s go. Let’s go, John,” Watson echoes. “Let’s go into another dimension entirely with a complete nutter. All right, Sherlock. Just hang on a tic.” Watson turns to grab his jacket and phone.
Holmes smiles and bounces on his toes, waiting. He watches his friend with undisguised affection, but fixes his features into a more serious expression when Watson turns back to face him.
“Shall we?” Rupert steps forward and lays his hands flat against the entry door to the flat. It’s been a while since he narrated a story. Years ago, he would have thought it a small thing, to create a doorway. Not now. “The three men stood at the threshold, preparing to enter the Citadel,” he says out loud. “All they had to do was walk through the door.”
He grasps the door knob, turns—and pulls.
“Aha!” The sounds of clicking keyboards and random gunshots fill the air. “Looks like this corridor will take us directly to our destination,” said Rupert. “Action.”
“Sounds familiar,” says Watson, peering past the door jamb.
Holmes flashes a smile and walks right through. ~~~***~~~
“Is this it?” he’s asking, walking around the desk Gwen occupied for fifteen narrative cycles. He peers beneath the chair, then plops himself down on it and spins around. He rifles through the standard texts that line the cube, humming to himself. “Where’s the other one?” he asks, springing up again.
“Just opposite,” he says. “They were friends. Worked closely on a long-term project.”
“Obviously,” mutters Holmes. Watson looks apologetic as he follows him.
“Both desks look like they’ve been wiped clean,” says Watson.
Holmes snorts. “That’s what they intended you to think, John. Observe!”
He leans over the keyboard to turn on the monitor. Once alight, he taps in some lines of code and hits ‘Enter’ with a flourish.
“There,” he says, satisfied.
The screen fills with a list of names.
“What?” asks Watson. “It’s a list of…” he leans closer. “Titles?”
“Muses move from project to project, I assume,” Holmes says to Rupert.
“They do. We try to keep them in the same division when a project ends, but of late we’ve had quite a bit of migration.”
“Um, hm.” Holmes scrolls through the list of titles.
“Can you track which muses have worked together on prior projects?”
“We can,” says Rupert. “There’s a central database in the Citadel Tower, but I need special clearance to access it.”
“Never mind,” says Holmes. “I don’t need it. John, go to Lance’s workstation and enter this password.” He hands Watson a word scrawled on a scrap of paper purloined from a nearby desk.
The muses in the pods all around have stopped working and are craning their heads around corners to watch Sherlock Holmes in action. Nobody (yet) has asked how or why he’s invited two fictional characters (from ‘Mystery’ no less) to the ‘Action’ floor. He’s hoping nobody gathers the courage to question him before Holmes finishes his work, and Rupert smuggles them out again.
“I’m in, Sherlock,” shouts Watson from across the aisle. “I’ve got a list of titles here, too.”
“I presume La Morte de Arthur is towards the bottom.”
“Hmm.” Watson scans the list of titles. “Yep. Second to the last.”
“As I expected. Rupert, is there a way for John to send me a copy of that list so I can compare?”
“Of course.” Rupert taps a few keys on Watson’s keyboard.
“Thank you,” says Holmes. “Aha.”
“What is it?” asks Watson, leaning over Holmes’s shoulder, now.
“They didn’t work together for many years after their first project. Each were given different assignments until the early 20th century when they were partnered again on Winnie-the-Pooh. They were then separated until Lance asked to be assigned to this Potter series.” He pauses. “It’s undergone a name change. Now it’s called the Neville Longbottom Series.” He looks at Rupert. “Did you know?”
Rupert blinks, but John interrupts.
“They didn’t write Winnie-the-Pooh,” says Watson, horrified. “A.A. Milne wrote it, and nobody is going to tell me any different.”
Holmes chuckles. “Don’t be so literal, John. Milne physically wrote it, but Lance and Gwen inspired bits of it.” He turns to Rupert. “Am I right?”
“Yes. Well. Hm. Technically, yes. In a manner of speaking.” The metaphysics of universe creation is a bit beyond his ken. There’s a reason he’s in management.
“So that’s where they’ve gone,” says Holmes.
“They’ve popped off to visit Winnie-the-Pooh?” asks Watson incredulously. “Of course. Obviously. ‘Hello, Pooh-bear. Sorry to pop in without ringing first. We’ve been working ever so hard. We thought we’d come by and have a visit over some tea and honey.’ Right.”
Holmes looks up and smirks. Right.
“But, how?” asks Rupert. “It’s never been done. Not that we know of, at least. Leaving the Citadel. Entering a fictional creation.” Until now. After all, he did it, himself.
“Why not?” asks Holmes. “Where better to go than into one of your own creations?”
Where better, indeed?
“We still haven’t even determined why they needed to run away,” says Watson. “Rupert, what do you know about their private lives?”
Rupert squirms. “Until they ran off, nobody knew that they were. Erm. Well, Gwen is married to someone else. Was married, that is. Divorced now, of course, but, well.” Rupert sighs.
“Don’t tell me,” says Watson. “Her husband was called ‘Arthur’.”
“How did you know?”
Watson covers his face with his hands and shakes his head. “I’m ready to wake up now,” he says, his words muffled.
“Enough of that, John,” says Holmes. “We need to follow them. They have a full day’s advantage already. Rupert?”
He ignores all the muses watching. So many muses who have spent their lives in cubicles, narrating lives—fictional or otherwise. Their eyes are wide. Some frightened, but most excited. To leave the floor, to enter the worlds they invent is usually no more than a joke. A fantasy. Sometimes, it becomes the subject of a story until the muse in question works it out of his or her system. But to do it. To actually do it. Twice?
He could get used to this.
Chapter Text
Chapter 8
Hermione thought about all the words she had erased over her decades of schooling and working, and imaged them all existing somewhere else. Thoughts and ideas and images that transiently came into being and never completely disappeared.
“What happens to them, then?” asked Hermione. “People change their minds all the time. Or write something and erase it. What happens to those ideas or characters—”
“People,” corrected the Doctor.
“People, yes. Fine. What happens to them?”
“Don’t know. They exist somewhere. No idea is ever wasted, you know.” He hopped up and went to fiddle with some levers and buttons. Hermione wondered how much was for show and how much actually did something useful.
“Our friends are missing,” Hermione said. “They vanished. Every trace of them is gone. All the records and books that mention them. They’re all gone.”
“Famous friends, then?” asked Rory.
“Yes. Rather,” said Severus.
“Hmm,” said the Doctor, still fiddling with buttons. “Extracting the source code is unusual. Never seen it done before. Fascinating.”
“People, remember, Doctor?” Hermione recognised the signs of the scientist fascinated by an anomaly. But this was Harry and Draco, not some source code. They weren’t bits of data to be extracted and shoved in an alternate universe, somewhere.
The Doctor looked up and raised both eyebrows. “Of course. People!”
He tapped a few more buttons and twirled a lever that looked a bit like a spinning top.
“Come on, then,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?” asked Amy.
“We’re following their trail,” said the Doctor, opening the door to the TARDIS.
“Whose?” asked Rory.
“Oh!” said the Doctor. “Looks like I wasn’t the only one to pick up their scent.”
Behind the door, standing in the shadow of a large wooded area, were three men. One, tall and lean and dark-haired. One, shorter and sandy-blonde. Another just a bit taller than the dark-haired man, with salt-and-pepper hair and horn-rimmed glasses.
“Who are you?” asked the dark-haired man. “And what are you doing in a police box?” He peered through the door and his eyes widened.
The shorter man’s eyes grew wide and he smirked. “Bigger on the inside, is it?”
“How did you know?” asked the Doctor with the air of someone caught wrong-footed, accustomed instead to newcomers being awed and confused.
“The Doctor, I presume?” the shorter man said, ignoring his companion and reaching out his hand.
“Yes,” said the Doctor. “Should I know you?”
“John Hamish Watson, at your service.”
Hermione felt Severus stand taller and heard his sharp intake of breath. Could it be? Did that mean? Oh, my.
“Sherlock Holmes?” asked Severus, stepping forward to address the tall man.
“The one and only,” he said.
“Hardly,” muttered the Doctor, but they ignored him.
“And you are?”
“Severus Snape.”
“From the Neville Longbottom series?” asked Dr Watson.
“The Neville Longbottom series?” Hermione stifled a laugh, but Severus nearly growled. She could hear it now. Twenty years of spying. Risking his life again and again. Saving Harry over and over (but Harry didn’t exist now, she reminded herself, only Neville). Nearly dying. All for the sake of ‘the Neville Longbottom series’?
“Wait. Severus Snape dies at the end of that story.” Watson turned to Rupert. “Are we meeting them halfway through or something?”
Rupert cleared his throat and fiddled with his glasses.
“Not exactly,” he said.
“The war ended twenty years ago,” said Hermione. “And obviously, Severus Snape didn’t die. I saved him.” She reached out her hand to his and to her surprise, he took it. It was surprisingly warm and her hand fit neatly in his.
Watson looked back and forth between the two and snickered. “What did you do about Ron, then, Hermione?”
Taken aback by his familiar address, Hermione bristled. How odd for him to know so much and, at the same time, so little about her.
“It’s none of your business, actually,” said Hermione. “But if you must know, Ron and I dated for a few months and decided we were better off friends. It was horrible,” she added in an undertone. “The dating, I mean.”
Severus squeezed Hermione’s hand and turned to Holmes. “You’re not quite what I would have expected, either,” he said. “No cape or pipe. And where is your deerstalker?”
“The hat! The Sherlock Holmes hat!” Watson looked inordinately pleased, but Holmes was smouldering beneath no hat at all.
“That was never my hat. It’s a stupid hat. An ear hat. And pipe smoking is vile. I prefer cigarettes, but who can sustain a smoking habit in London? Miserable.” Holmes looked petulant. Hermione leaned against the wall of the TARDIS and burst out laughing.
“I love multi-verses!” said the Doctor, waving his arms and spinning in a gleeful circle. “So much fun!”
“What are multi-verses?”
Eight heads turned to the voice, and Hermione squealed.
“Harry!” She ran across the deck and flung her arms around him.
Behind him stood Draco and three other men, one of whom was bouncing on his toes, looking like he might actually burst with joy. A white-haired woman with an exasperated expression stood behind them all.
“It would seem we found them,” said the Doctor. “Or, to be more precise, they found us. Fantastic!” ~~~***~~~
“Can’t we sit outside?” asked Hermione.
Severus didn’t blame her. He could use a bit of fresh air, himself. Finding Draco and Potter—or, to be more accurate, being found by them—was a tremendous relief, but he could almost hear the wheels in Hermione’s mind turning. They weren’t done here. Not by a long shot.
“Let’s,” said Severus. “Where are we, Doctor?”
“One of my favourite vacation spots. The Hundred-Acre Wood.”
“Not again,” moaned Harry.
“You’ve been here?” asked Hermione.
“It’s where we were dumped,” said Draco. “In the middle of the forest, in the middle of the night.”
“Ouch,” said Amy.
“You should have seen the animals. Merlin. So annoying.”
Severus listened to his former student with amusement. He would have loved to see Draco confronting animated soft toys. In fact, he realised, he might still have that opportunity.
“Outside, it is!” said the Doctor and flung the door open again.
They’d landed in a clearing in the midst of the wood. Long grass waved in the wind and the scent of wildflowers and warm earth was a relief after the stuffiness inside the TARDIS. Hermione pulled out her wand and conjured sofas and chairs, and they all settled into the oddest front room Severus had ever seen.
Fourteen clumsy introductions later, and there they were, refugees from four universes—five, if you counted Rupert, and how could you not?—stranded in a sixth.
“So,” said the Doctor, turning to Rupert. “How’s Jack, these days?”
Rupert groaned. “How do you know Jack?”
“I thought everybody knew Jack.”
“Who’s Jack?” asked Holmes, obviously peeved to be out of the loop.
Severus smirked. Apparently, not everybody knew Jack, or, for that matter, all of the story. Which reminded him. As fascinating as this all was, something, somewhere, had obviously gone terribly wrong.
“Rupert.” He used his best professor voice and was gratified to see spines straightening and wandering eyes focus. “Please explain how two of my former students disappeared not only from wizarding London, but from their own histories.”
Rupert cleared his throat and everybody leaned forward.
“Yes, well. Erm.”
“London is a wizard?” asked Arthur, eyes wide.
“No, Arthur,” snapped Carolyn, “Wizards live in London. And I can’t believe I just said that.”
“Wonders never cease,” muttered Douglas.
“What do you mean we disappeared from our own histories?” asked Potter.
Hermione looked at Severus and then at Potter. Ah, yes. They’d neglected to mention that part. She mouthed, ‘Sorry,’ and gestured something meant to convey that she’d explain later.
“How does one disappear from one’s own history?” asked Holmes, gesturing towards Draco and Potter. “You exist, or you don’t.” He raised his eyebrows, conveying without words that, obviously these two existed.
“It’s not quite so simple, Mr Holmes,” said Rupert.
“Apparently not,” said the Doctor, leaning back in his cushy chair and crossing his legs. “Take your time.”
“But do hurry up,” muttered Holmes.
“All right,” said Rupert. “Fine. This might help.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cube made of what appeared to be parchment. It reminded Severus of that cursed map that Potter had. The one his father had made in school. This one, though, was more complex, an intricately folded structure striated with what appeared to be flowing arteries of colour.
“It’s a map,” said Rupert.
“Of what?” asked Martin, leaning so far forward Severus thought he might just tumble from his seat.
“Of everything,” said Rupert. “All the universes. Every story ever told, and all the ones yet to be told. Every creature’s lifeline and how it intersects with others. As I said, everything.”
Everything.
The first to move was Holmes, reaching for the map as if it were the key to his own personal universe.
“Sherlock!” Watson was right behind him.
“Can you imagine, John? What we could do with this? Every story! Every person! It’s the end of boredom!”
“But it’s not ours, Sherlock.” Holmes stopped when Watson grabbed his arm. He looked at Watson with an impossible need in his eyes, begging.
“I need it. Get it for me.”
Watson shuddered and pulled Holmes away from Rupert and the brilliantly coloured cube. Severus recognised the look in Holmes’ eyes—the look of an addict who has discovered a new substance, one with infinite potential.
“No, Sherlock. No.”
Holmes looked at his friend, blinking as if to clear his vision. “No?”
“Come,” said Watson, guiding him back to their seats on the sofa. “It won’t be boring. I promise.”
At first Severus thought he was imagining it. But no, it was real. Hermione was leaning up against him, her arm threaded through his, her hand still folded inside his larger one. He felt more than heard her sigh as she laid her head against his shoulder. He never knew what made Holmes look up just then, but the detective and the former spy caught one another’s eye in a long moment of understanding. Holmes glanced over at his companion, and his lips twitched in a way Severus completely understood. Affection and gratitude and frank bemusement that he, of all people, merited this companion. This wondrous companion.
Severus inclined his head and Holmes smiled. Maybe Hermione noticed, maybe she didn’t, but it was certainly not his imagination when she slipped her arm from his and instead wrapped it around his waist and squeezed. ~~~***~~~
She heard them before she saw them. Chattering and rustling in the trees. A pounding noise that, to be honest, made her a bit nervous—heavy footsteps trudging towards them.
“Who’s there?” asked Amy, springing to her feet. “We’re armed!”
“We most certainly are not,” said the Doctor, standing next to her.
Watson looked at the ground, and Hermione raised her eyebrows. She and Severus were armed, too, but she wasn’t about to announce it.
“I told you, Tigger,” said a low, sad voice. “There is a party here, but nobody thought to tell me.” The voice was followed by the entrance of a large, grey donkey whose long ears and droopy tail were as sad as his voice.
“Let’s ask if we can play, too,” said another voice, higher and far more cheerful than the first. “They’ll definitely want us to join them. And maybe one of them will even be a tigger!” In bounced a brightly coloured tiger, striped black and orange and bouncing—literally—into view.
“Oh, joy,” muttered Douglas. “A creature more hyperactive than Arthur.”
At that, Arthur looked up. “Hello!” he said. “It’s not a party, but you can still be here, if you like.”
Tigger smiled an enormous smile, and Hermione was grateful that those teeth were made of cloth and stuffing.
“We have some important issues to discuss, though, so please do keep it down,” said Hermione as gently as she could.
“Can the others come, too?” asked Tigger. “None of them are tiggers, but they’re quite friendly anyway.” Indeed, right behind him were the rest of the inhabitants of the Hundred-Acre Wood: Pooh and Piglet and Rabbit, with Owl flying stiffly behind them, his wing feathers bent a bit out of shape.
“Apparently so,” said Severus.
“Eeyore said something about a party,” said the small pink pig. “Are piglets allowed at the party?”
There they stood, creatures that, as far as Hermione knew, should be impossible, all of them looking at one another and thinking the very same thing.
“Of course it includes piglets,” said Harry, leaning down to reassure the small creature. “Please stay.”
Six pairs of button eyes looked at Harry in adoration.
“So which of us is real?” asked Martin, voicing the question they’d all been thinking. He was looking around with frantic eyes, not sure who, precisely, was qualified to answer.
“If I may,” said Rupert, standing up, with his hands clasped behind his back. “I’d like to explain.”
Martin looked unsure, but finally sat back down, as did all the stuffed animals. (Hermione was relieved that they did not require chairs.) Like children listening to a bedtime story, they all turned to Rupert, waiting for him to begin.
“Once upon a time,” he began, “before the first moment of recorded time, came the spirits and their imaginings. From the fertile soil of their minds came creatures of every conceivable shape, and universes of every possible constellation. These muses gave birth to other muses, and together, they populated the cosmos with their dreams.”
“And their stuffed toys,” muttered Draco. Hermione heard Severus snicker and then stifled a laugh when Harry smacked Draco on the arm, earning a smirk in return.
Rupert rolled his eyes and continued. “In time, the cosmos flowed with tales of all sorts, even tales about the tellers of tales, until, finally, the Architect stood at the pinnacle of the tallest tower and spoke in a voice loud enough for every living being to hear. She said, ‘Creatures, you and your tales are too precious to lose to the chaos that our worlds have become. Let me build an even bigger tower and a citadel to organise you and your stories. We will inspire and direct them. We will build a home to contain them all.’
“And the creatures were confused and disorganised. So, when the Architect began to build her citadel, they just watched and wondered. And then, when the structure was nearly complete, the Cartographer stood on the peak of the highest mountain and spoke in a voice loud enough for every living creature to hear.
“He said, ‘ Architect, your Citadel is beautiful, but it is static. Let me show you the map that I have made of all the stories and the tellers of tales, and how they move and grow along with the stories, spawning even more stories.’ And so, the Architect invited the Cartographer to join her in the Tower, and together, they brought the spirits—muses—into that space and together they continued to tell the stories.”
“Wait, wait,” said Harry. “Stories?”
“Stories,” said Rupert. “Inspiring the tales and narrating the lives of everybody in every universe.”
“Big job,” said Carolyn.
“The biggest. Indeed,” said Rupert.
“You haven’t answered my question,” said Martin. “Which of us is real?”
“I don’t know about you, Martin, but I’m certainly real,” said Douglas.
“Me, too!” said Arthur.
“I’m sometimes not sure if I’m real,” said Eeyore. “Especially when it’s raining and I haven’t got an umbrella and I get all wet as if the rain doesn’t know that it’s landing on me.”
“You’re all real,” said Rupert. “In a manner of speaking.”
“What about you?” asked Severus. “What are you?”
“I’m a muse. A manager.”
Douglas snorted. “Of course.”
Martin pursed his lips. “Ignore him. Douglas has no respect at all for authority.”
“I just don’t think that somebody who isn’t working on the front lines has any business talking about what’s real.”
“It’s easy to forget,” said Severus, and Hermione wondered what he was remembering.
“How did Harry and Draco get forgotten?” asked Hermione. “They disappeared, Rupert. Like they’d never existed at all.”
“Yes, well. Technology is both wonderful and terrible, isn’t it?” He fiddled with his glasses. “Stories, characters—”
“People,” interjected the Doctor.
“People, forgive me. People, all of it, is created and stored in source code kept in the network that runs beneath the Citadel.”
“Isn’t it backed up?” asked Watson. “Basic rules, you know.”
“Yes, well. There are new systems in place. We have procedures for system crashes, of course. But. Hmm. The muses who write Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy disappeared a few days ago.”
“When Harry and Draco disappeared?” asked Hermione.
“Yes. They appear to have taken their source code with them. We have no backup for that.”
“But they’re right here,” said Hermione.
“So they are,” said Rupert. “But I’m afraid I have no way to reinsert them into the storyline unless we find Lance and Gwen and the missing code.
“You mean the pretty girl with the blonde hair and the man with the sword?” asked Winnie-the-Pooh.
“Indeed,” said Rupert, looking hopeful.
“They came through here yesterday,” said Rabbit. “They had a funny silver box with them, but it fell in the lake. She was very angry, but he told her that it didn’t matter. That it was all make-believe, and that all that mattered was… something about carrot love.” Rabbit looked irritated that his beloved carrots could be in any way connected to such trouble.
“Courtly love, I presume,” said Holmes. “And the machine?”
“Storage device,” said Rupert. “Portable.”
“Containing the source code,” said Severus.
“I’m afraid so.” Rupert wouldn’t make eye contact, choosing instead to study the blades of grass beneath his feet.
“But they’re here now!” said Hermione, feeling desperate. “Obviously the source code doesn’t matter. They’re here.”
Rupert shook his head. “They cannot return home. They would be strangers there.”
“So why can we see them, why do we recognise them?” asked Severus.
Rupert frowned. “I’m not sure, actually.”
“Honestly.” The Doctor sprung to his feet. “Have you learned nothing in ten millennia of storytelling?”
“Explain,” said Amy, cutting through the silence.
The Doctor whipped out an instrument that was nearly, but not exactly unlike a wand. It was long and silver with a light shining from its tip. It had buttons and levers on it, like a mini dashboard.
He walked over to Harry and Draco and passed the instrument over them. It was silent, and he frowned.
“Odd,” he said. “Let me think.”
Everyone was silent as the Doctor paced, muttering to himself. Back and forth, back and forth, until Hermione thought she might scream.
“Aha!” he said at last. “Silly of me not to realise. The source code,” he said, walking over to Severus and Hermione, “is right here.” He tapped the not-wand on Severus’s chest and then waved it up and down along his body, and then along hers. The gadget beeped and buzzed and the Doctor smiled. “There. It’s just as I thought.”
“How is that possible?” asked Rupert. “The source code should exist only in the systems and storage devices of muses.”
“You two, how are you connected to these men?” asked the Doctor, ignoring Rupert.
“He’s my friend,” said Hermione. “One of my best friends.” She smiled at Harry and he smiled back. He was real. He existed. Not only could she see him, she could feel him, too.
“What about the other one?” The Doctor pointed at Draco, who waved. When did he get cheeky?
She looked at Severus, and he was blinking rapidly. How to explain who Draco was to this stranger?
“He was my charge. My student. The son of my good friend. I care for him.”
The Doctor nodded. “As I thought. They are connected to them. Emotionally, I mean. It would be very inconvenient if they were literally connected. Though, on second thought, maybe that would have helped when they disappeared.” He paused, lost in thought.
“Doctor?” Rory prodded. “Source code.”
“Ah, right. Sorry. The source code is inside each of them. They don’t need your muses or your gadgets any more. People exist because they are known and loved.” He pointed his gadget at Rupert, who flinched and took a step back, falling into his chair. “They exist because they are seen by someone who cares for them. Full stop.”
Hermione’s eyes filled with tears. She couldn’t help it. Severus sighed, and turned to her.
Look at me, he’d begged Harry, that night so long ago. Harry had looked, but not closely enough. Not as carefully as Hermione had when she chose to turn back, to check on him, to see if he could be saved.
“Then we don’t need you any more,” said Hermione. “We’ll take them back and everything will go back to the way it was.”
“Possibly,” said Rupert.
“Definitely,” said the Doctor. “They carry the source code. It will repopulate when they bring these two home.”
“Good,” said Severus.
“Just as soon as we have a talk with the Architect and Cartographer,” said Hermione.
Chapter Text
Chapter 9
“I’m not going home until I’ve had a word with the Architect and the Cartographer,” she repeated. “Didn’t you hear me the first time?”
“They rarely listen,” said Holmes. “Especially when you’re saying something really important.”
“So I’ve noticed,” said Carolyn. “She’s right. We can hardly go back to the way things were without a conversation with those people. Muses. People, whatever. Whoever they are. The ones who presume to determine our realities.”
“Exactly,” said Hermione.
“We can’t just go barging in to the creators of the universe and tell them we want a word,” said Martin, his voice just a little bit squeaky. “Can we?”
“Why not?” said Arthur. “They’re just people, right?”
“Maybe one of them is a tigger!” said Tigger.
“No!” Rupert was firm on this point. “Neither one of them is a tigger.” Rupert pinched the bridge of his nose and then continued.
“One does not just simply walk into the Architect and Cartographer’s Citadel,” said Rupert. “I’ll just send you all back to where you belong. You may send a message back with me, and I’ll—”
“I hardly think so,” interrupted Carolyn. “I’m not going anywhere unless it’s to this Citadel.” She stepped forward until she was standing next to Hermione.
“We certainly can’t go home until we have our Alpha Dog back, can we, Martin?” asked Douglas.
“I don’t believe we can operate without her, Douglas,” said Martin. He stood taller. “Fictional or not.”
“Agreed,” said Douglas. “And I, for one, would like to get to know this young woman a bit better before heading back to the ho-hum life of a air-dot second officer.” He smiled at Hermione. Oh, my.
“That won’t be necessary,” said Severus, before Hermione could respond. “This powerful and brilliant witch will be occupied with far more important matters.”
“I can speak, Severus,” said Hermione, but she was pleased and amused at both his possessiveness and his admiration.
“I’m spoken for, Mr Richardson,” she said, glancing sideways at Severus, tickled pink at his satisfied expression. “And busy. Though you’re welcome to tag along if you like.”
Severus snickered and Hermione felt warmth bloom in her chest. They were a team. A unit.
“Is there room for us all?” asked Watson, looking around the clearing at what had become a rather large crowd.
The Doctor scratched his head. “In theory,” he said. “Some of you could go to the library. There’s an Olympic sized pool on the second floor if you’d like to take a dip.”
“Can my friends-and-relations come along, too?” asked Rabbit.
“No!” said Draco.
“We don’t need the TARDIS,” said Rupert. “I can open a portal.”
“No!” said Arthur. “I want to go on the TARDIS. Please? Can we go on the TARDIS. I’ll even make the noise.” He paused and made a low, grinding sound.
“The TARDIS makes its own noise, Arthur,” said Martin. “And if Rupert says we don’t need to go that way, then we should listen.”
“Why do you have to listen?” asked Hermione. “Why is he in charge? Rupert, can you open a portal so that the TARDIS can land inside the Citadel?”
“I’ve not been successful at landing the TARDIS at the Citadel,” said the Doctor. “We’ll need that portal.”
Rupert looked at Martin for support, but the man was staring at Hermione. “I suppose. I’ve never actually. Ahem. Well, there’s nothing to lose by trying.”
He looked around. “Best go inside first, I think.” Yes. That would do. As the assembled filed into the police box, while Hermione waited outside with Severus, watching.
“I suspect he’s breaking quite a few rules,” said Hermione, eyeing Rupert.
“Hmm. Should make you feel right at home.” Severus smirked.
“It would,” Hermione agreed. “Though I’m out of practise these days.”
“It’s a bit like riding a Thestral, I’m told. It’ll all come back to you.”
His eyes were glinting, almost mischievous. Her heart pounded in her throat. It was so wonderful to see him this way, so open—playful, even. When was the last time he’d had some fun? Broken some rules? Rocked the boat? Come to think of it, when was the last time she had?
“Time to make some noise,” said Hermione, grabbing his hand and turning to make her way into the TARDIS. ~~~***~~~
“I know he’s fictional, but I can’t help it. I want to ask him questions,” said Hermione in a whisper. They’d taken one table, and Mr Holmes was engrossed in his reading at another.
“You’ve not listened well to the Doctor, Hermione. Or to Rupert, for that matter. He’s as real as we are.”
Hermione’s eyes darted between Holmes and Severus. “It’s disturbing, you know,” she said. “That John Watson knew about me. About us. Who we are. And not because he’d read the papers or lived through the war.”
“No more disturbing, I’m sure, than the fact that we know all about them. Or about some version of them, at least.”
“I can tell you’re talking about me,” said a deep voice from across the room. “Much more efficient to talk to me.”
Hermione covered her face with her hands, her cheeks beet red.
“Would you like to join us?” asked Severus.
The detective didn’t answer, just got up, book in hand, and flopped onto a chair at their table.
“Philosophy?” asked Hermione, peeking at the spine of the book he’d just laid on the table.
“Of course,” said Holmes. “The nature of reality requires endless study.”
“I think, therefore, I am.” Severus leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “Simple enough.”
“But are you what you think you are? Who you think you are?” asked Holmes.
“What does it matter?” asked Hermione. “I only care about being in control of myself and my fate. The idea that some muses, somewhere, created me and decide who I am and what I do is repellent.”
“Do you believe the people who live in non-fictional universes have more control over their fates? Aren’t we all subject to the world around us? No matter how irrational it is, it’s true.”
“Sentiment, Sherlock?” Watson stood at the end of the stack abutting their table. “Who would have thought?”
“It’s not sentiment,” said the detective. “It’s reality. No man is an island. People can’t help but be influenced by one another.”
Severus studiously avoided Hermione’s eyes. He could feel her gaze on him the way it tended to be when such topics arose. He’d grown adept at sidestepping it, and the dangerous topics it accompanied. Avoiding discussion of relationships, attachments, of caring had generally served him—though not well. Nonetheless, he could not deny, at least not to himself (not any more), that lack of discussion had in no way prevented the development of the very thing he feared.
He looked up. Hermione was smiling at Watson and he smiled back. A bit sad. A bit resigned. Sharing a moment of understanding. Holmes looked puzzled, eyes darting between his friend and Hermione, over to Severus, and back to Watson.
“Sentiment, again?”
Watson sat down next to Holmes. “Sentiment, yes. Quite a lot of it, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Oh.” He shook his head. “Waste of time.”
“Don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it,” said Hermione, and Severus felt her fingers twine with his. “In fact, I think I’ve had enough of waiting for fate to have its way with me.”
Severus’s heart leapt in his chest. “That’s more frightening than you know,” he said, but he laid his hand on top of hers.
“Less frightening than being a sitting duck, I reckon,” said Watson, and Severus did not like the look on his face and the matching one on Hermione’s. No, he did not like it at all.
The two smiled at each other, witch and doctor, soldiers, both. Survivors, determined and stubborn, and Severus caught Holmes’s eye.
“Should I be concerned?” asked Holmes.
Hermione giggled. “I would be, if I were you,” she said, grinning at Watson.
“Remember, Sherlock. I used to be a soldier.” Watson smiled a wicked smile at his companion. “Soldiers know how to make the most of every moment, and it’s about time I got back into practice.”
The TARDIS shook as it leapt from one infinitesimal spot of reality to another, shuddering as it made the transition from one moment in time and space to another that was at once primeval and altogether new. ~~~***~~~
The cavernous space of the room at the top of the Citadel starts to feel cluttered as the passengers clamber out, scattering around, some hunched over with nervousness, others bounding about with glee at this new adventure. Such a ragtag group. But Rupert feels a surge of affection for each of them.
“Where are Lance and Gwen?” asks the Architect, eying the disembarking passengers. “You appear to have retrieved everyone else, but them.”
“Lance and Gwen are gone,” says Severus, stepping forward. “The source files they stole were destroyed and they ran off.”
“I expect they’re wandering around in ‘Le Morte de Arthur’,” says Holmes, sounding bored. “If you’re still interested in finding them.”
“Why didn’t you bring them back?” asks the Cartographer. “As per your instructions.”
Rupert steps forward, but it’s different this time. He’s not as awed as he had been, not so very long ago, and he’s far less inclined to grovel.
“We had other priorities.”
The Architect stands. “Your priorities are the ones we set for you. None other.”
“Apparently not,” says Hermione, a sharp glint in her eye. “Surprise. He has a mind of his own. As do we all, in fact.”
“Illusion,” says the Cartographer, waving his hand dismissively. “The hubris of a wooden puppet who longs to be a real boy.”
“Hubris?” Severus’s voice is soft and deep, and, as always, it stills the room. “You have the audacity to talk to us about hubris?”
“These are simply the facts. You exist at the whim of the muses who write you. We could destroy your source files and be rid of you at any time.” The Cartographer’s lips are white and his nostrils are flaring.
There’s a soft, ‘Oh!’ from somewhere next to Severus, but Rupert hasn’t time to wonder what for.
“You will not. You cannot.” Hermione pushes her way to the front. “You and your stupid muses couldn’t stop me from saving Severus, and you’re certainly not going to control any other aspects of my life. Not any more.”
The Architect lifts a small electronic tablet and taps on it. Her forehead wrinkles. “Rogue,” she mutters, and looks up.
Rogue. That’s it.
“It was you,” says Rupert, turning to Hermione.
“Me?”
“You went rogue. At the end of the Longbottom series.” What had been the Potter series.
Severus flinches, but Rupert ignores him.
“I did no such thing.”
“You were supposed to follow Ron,” says Rupert. “But you turned back, didn’t you?”
Hermione nods. “I couldn’t leave him there to die. Especially not alone.”
“Fictional characters are meant to follow the instructions of their muses,” says the Architect. She points a sharp finger at Hermione. “You broke the rules.”
“Nobody told me the rules,” says Hermione, fury crackling around her in sparks of light and magic, “and furthermore, I never agreed to them. Nobody tells me what to do. Not now. Not ever.”
“And what is it that you want to do?” asks the Cartographer. “What is so important that it justifies going rogue?”
Hermione takes another step forward, Severus right behind her. Rupert is standing alongside them before he realises what he’s done. Her words fuel him.
“She’s a rogue only because she was capable of resisting us,” says Rupert. “Not because she did anything wrong.”
“Actually,” says the Doctor, popping his head up from the book he’s been reading, “the fact that she went rogue is what allowed them both to hold on to their memories, even after the source files were destroyed. They’d each already gone off script, you see. They were free to deepen their attachments and create their own source files.” He smiles and puts his head back into the book.
“It’s our job. It’s our job to ensure the smooth running of the multi-verse. We can’t just let—” The Architect waves her arm vaguely at the group.
“Let us, what? Make our own decisions?” Holmes narrows his eyes. “I don’t take well to bossiness.”
“He doesn’t,” says Watson, nodding. “Never goes well at all.”
“No, it certainly doesn’t, as my brother will attest,” says Holmes. The two smirk at each other, and Rupert marvels at how vibrant they all are, each one so much more than ink on paper.
“What do you say about muses who run off, then?” asks Harry. “We’re supposed to follow instructions. What are they meant to do?”
Rupert could answer that question. They are meant to obey the strictures of their position. To follow the laws of storytelling and narrative structure.
To hell with that.
“We’re supposed to keep things neat and clean. Orderly. Isn’t that right?”
The Cartographer’s face is red and the Architect’s lips are white. Neither of them speaks, and then a crash across the chamber breaks the silence.
From behind a tall mirror set at the far end of the room tumbles a woman with a shock of blonde hair, followed by a muscular man in what appears to be a suit of armour.
“Oy, Lance, watch the sword,” grumbles the woman, scooting away from him.
“It’s still sheathed Gwen. Don’t get your knickers in a twist.”
“Fancy meeting you here,” says Rupert sharply. He might no longer be a stickler for the rules, but these two have caused more than their share of trouble for him.
Both look up. Rupert smiles his most shark-like smile. He could only imagine how they appeared. Characters—people—from across genres (and species, if you counted Time Lords and soft toys, and he does) looking none too friendly. Not even the soft toys.
“Oh, hell, Lance. I told you that door wasn’t a good idea.”
“On the contrary,” says the Cartographer. “We’re ever so pleased to see you. We’ve been wondering where you’d got off to.”
Rupert shudders. His empathy for the fishbowl experience of the others is increasing by the moment.
Lance straightens his armour and steps forward. He bows. He actually bows.
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” mutters Snape. “Don’t you know that the armour you’re wearing is from the wrong century?”
Lance blinks and looks down. “It’s what they had available.”
“It was just the way we wrote it,” says Gwen. “Except that it turns out it was way dirtier. Not the armour, I mean. The place. Camelot. The whole place was filthy. Reeked.”
“Had to get out of there,” adds Lance. “It wasn’t nearly as romantic as I’d imagined.”
“Funny, that,” says Draco in an undertone. Rupert smiles a bit at Harry’s sideways glance.
“It’s all so much more complicated, isn’t it?” asks Rupert to nobody in particular.
“You’re telling us that you ran off with character source files—the DNA of my friends—and came back because it was too dirty for your taste?” Hermione’s eyes are wild and so is her hair. He doesn’t remember her being quite this fierce in the story arc he supervised, but then again, he’s starting to understand that their work as muses is just the beginning. The tip of the iceberg.
“The truth is always deeper than it appears,” says Severus. “Always.”
Hermione winds her arm around his waist and pulls him close.
“The evidence is apparent to those who observe,” says Holmes, looking at Severus. “Apparently there are few in your world with the capacity.”
“Very few,” agrees Severus. “One, primarily.”
Hermione blushes.
“It only takes one,” says Holmes, glancing at Watson.
“If you’ve finished flirting, perhaps we could return to the problem at hand,” says the Architect. “Our rogue characters and muses.”
“I don’t see a problem,” says the Doctor. “Nobody is missing any more. Everybody can go back to where they belong, or to somewhere else if they prefer.”
“They ought to go back to where they belong, but the meta-structure has likely been damaged beyond repair. We haven’t had a breach like this in centuries.” The Cartographer has taken to pacing along the length of mirrors that line the room. His fractured reflection skitters along the wall.
“You can’t stop people from making choices,” says Draco. All heads rise, surprised. “Even if they’re stupid ones.”
“All good stories involve stupid choices,” says the Architect. “Though we generally expect them to be within the bounds of the story rather than perpetrated by either rogue characters or muses.”
“Why not?” asks Douglas. “I’ve always considered stupid decisions to be equal opportunity.”
Carolyn snorts.
“Good stories,” says Martin. “Also, I’ll have you know, you’re talking about our lives, not your entertainment.”
There’s a murmur of assent.
“What would you have us do? It’s easy to criticise. I’d like to see how you would handle things.” The Architect folds her arms.
“Are you suggesting that you would abdicate your positions and allow someone else to take over?” asks Rupert. The idea of it boggles the mind. “The Cartographer and the Architect have been in charge for a million cycles of narrative time. No one remembers how stories were told before them.”
“For good reason,” says the Architect.
“Though handing it over for a few cycles would be a relief, would it not?” asks the Cartographer. “We could explore the worlds. Go on holiday.”
“A holiday?” She looks intrigued.
“That’s a terrific idea,” says Watson. “Take a break and let someone else take the reins.”
“Are you offering?” asks the Cartographer.
“Hell, no,” says Watson. “But I think it’s a great idea.” He smirks.
“Are any of you offering?” asks the Architect with narrowed eyes. “So quick to criticise, yet so slow to offer help.”
There’s a noise like a spring coming unsprung followed by a whoop of joy.
“Tigger will do it!”
“Tigger will most definitely not do it,” says Carolyn firmly.
“Aww, mum, why not?” Arthur’s eyes are sparkling and he looks like he’d like nothing better than to join Tigger.
“Can you imagine?” asks Amy in an undertone. “Arthur and Tigger running the multi-verse.”
Rupert is strangely intrigued and oddly tempted.
“Eeyore can come, too,” says Tigger, bounding over to the donkey and poking him until he growls.
“Someone else needs to step forward or this isn’t going to work,” says Harry looking pointedly at Hermione.
“Oh, no. No no no.” She backs away. “I have work to do at home. Important work.”
“More important than ensuring the autonomy of people in universes everywhere?” asks Harry.
“Sounds like the sort of job you’d love,” says Draco, not meeting Harry’s eye.
“It’s the perfect job for Hermione,” he says. “And Snape, actually. You two should do it together.”
At that, Severus’s eyes grow dark.
“If you think I’m going to leave my lab for administrative work, you’re even more out of your mind than I previously believed.”
“Administrative work? Is that what you think we do here?” The Cartographer looks offended. “It’s the height of creativity.”
“Blocking creativity, you mean,” mutters Hermione.
“Tigger is creative!” He’s currently seeing how high he can bounce, measuring his progress against a mirrored wall.
“Oh, hell, Hermione. If you two don’t do it, the multi-verse is going to be stuck with—” He shudders.
Hermione turns to Severus. Severus eyes Hermione. She tilts her head in one direction and frowns a thoughtful frown. He wrinkles his forehead and scowls. She bursts out laughing, and he chuckles.
“I’m not going to run the place,” Hermione says. “I’ll consult. I think the muses and the stories can take care of themselves. Take it or leave it.”
Rupert smiles. The Architect nods. “Agreed.”
Severus turns to the stuffed tiger.
“Tigger, while I’m sure you would do an astonishing job, we believe it best that Hermione and I take over whilst the Architect and Cartographer are away,” says Severus carefully. “I trust you understand.”
Tigger stops bouncing for a moment, and it’s as if a light has gone out in the world.
“Don’t feel bad, Tigger,” says Eeyore. “Things like this happen to me all the time. We’ll go home and supervise something else.”
“We’d be happy to have you consult if you like,” says Hermione, reaching over to pat Tigger on the paw. “You know, if questions should arise.”
“If you find another tigger and need to know what he eats, you should find me and I’ll tell you.”
“Precisely,” says Hermione. “We definitely will.”
“So you’re going to stay here?” asks Carolyn.
Hermione looks around and shakes her head as if stunned. “It would seem so. Though I’d like to go home and get my things. Let people know where I am.”
“Unnecessary,” says the Architect. “Just write it and it will be.”
“Just write it?” It’s Martin, and he sounds as if the very idea is a revelation.
“Narrate the reality you choose and it will be so,” says the Architect. “This is how worlds are built.”
“With words?” asks Martin.
“With words and all they contain within them.” The Architect smiles. Just the idea of a holiday has already done her good.
“I believe I can manage that,” says Severus. “Words. Yes. Yes, indeed.”
Chapter Text
Chapter 10
Hermione can’t think of anything that could possibly make this space better.
“I’m going to check the crystals,” she says, and he nods.
“Tell me what you find, all right?”
She nods as she approaches the first one. Rectangular, about the size of her fist, it shimmers on its marble plinth and silver cushion. She passes her hand over the surface, waiting for it to become warm and clear. It has taken a while to get used to not using her wand. Even wandless magic never felt quite like this—as though images and sound (and words, so many words) are all exploding inside her. It’s paradise.
Through the surface of the glass, he’s visible. Somehow smaller than he’d been as a mere muse, but also more vibrant. He’s in a library (of course), poring over a manuscript. Three teens sit at the table with him, clearly researching something. He looks up, takes off his horned rimmed glasses, and smiles.
“Rupert looks happy,” she says.
“Perfect job for him, really,” says Severus. “Still management, but far more interesting.”
Hermione shudders. “I don’t think he would enjoy overseeing repeated episodes of that doomed romance.” Lance and Gwen. Forever composing iterations of their love for all eternity, but free, at least, to do so if they choose.
“No,” said Severus. “Although being a consultant is far less pressure than being in charge. Even when it concerns the fanfiction divisions.”
“Too true,” agrees Hermione.
“What’s his job called, then?” asks Severus, closing the book and putting it on the table.
“Watcher,” says Hermione. “Never heard of it, but it seems to be important work.”
“Nothing less for Rupert.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
She watches for another moment. The blonde girl is arguing with him about something, and Rupert is in his element. Arm waving, eyebrows furrowing, he’s explaining his point forcefully. He looks blissfully happy.
Hermione moves on. The next crystal is diamond-shaped. Sharply faceted, she could look at it from any angle and see something completely different. She passes her hand over a flat portion of the crystal.
In the facets of the glass, she can see them. Sherlock and John, running. They’re often running. She smiles. John is shouting something she can’t hear and Sherlock is ignoring him and so he shouts even more loudly until his face turns red. Sherlock grabs his hand and pulls him behind a skip and steals just one kiss (effectively stopping the shouting—she’s got to give him that) before they’re back to running again.
“John and Sherlock are doing fine,” she says. “More than fine, I’d say.” She can’t help the silly grin plastered across her face. “Though the muses who originally wrote them must be squirming right about now.”
Severus snorts. “I doubt that. There was so much subtext, Hermione. Even then.”
She laughs and walks over to an even larger crystal, circular with so many facets that it sends shafts of coloured light all around the rom. When she passes her hand over it, the surface glows red and then blue before it clears. The Doctor. He’s alone here, fiddling with one of his gadgets, but he looks sad.
“The Doctor is due for a visit, I think,” says Hermione. “He’s alone.” Has been since Amy and Rory— Her eyes fill with tears. Autonomy isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. She swipes her eyes with her sleeve. “We should pop over and suggest a visit to the Hundred-Acre Wood. The animals could use a bit of the Doctor, don’t you think?”
“They always seem to enjoy it,” says Severus. “And I prefer it to them coming here.”
Hermione laughs. “Rabbit’s friends-and-relations were a bit much, weren’t they?”
“Merlin.” He shudders. The room filled with beetles and birds and rabbits amongst the ever-present chaos of bear and piglet, tiger and donkey. “Speaking of chaos, what about the aeroplane crew?
Hermione moves to the next crystal.
This one is her favourite. It looks like water twisted into a knot, and she can stare at it for hours, sometimes. Once, Douglas spotted her in a reflection in the window and waved. Today, Carolyn is lecturing Arthur on something Arthur clearly considers unimportant, and Martin appears to be defending him. Most interesting is that the hat (Martin’s) is nowhere to be found, and he’s standing, shoulders squared, and looking about as confident as she’s ever seen him. Douglas sits behind him watching it all. Smirking like a proud father.
“Things are still going well with them,” says Hermione. “So funny how once Martin understood, he could change himself.”
“Insight is a powerful motivator,” says Severus, closing his book. “Closed eyes rarely make for interesting reading.”
Hermione raises an eyebrow. She’s been practising that one. Severus inclines his head. Touché. She sits back down and pours herself a cuppa.
“Have you heard from Potter?” he asks.
“Um hm,” she says from behind her cup of tea. “He’s fine, and so is Draco. We’re to expect a visit next week, apparently. They’ve apparently taken to meeting regularly for lunch.”
“Is that right?” Severus doesn’t look particularly surprised. “I did have the impression that they were getting on rather well.”
“Seems so.” She chuckles. “It’s strange,” she says leaning back against the cushion. Everything I ever believed suddenly feels completely untrue.”
“Completely?” The way he looks at her makes her shiver.
“Let’s just say that there are plenty of things I had hoped were true, but couldn’t bring myself to confirm in case I was wrong.”
Severus reaches over for Hermione’s cup and puts it gently on the table. He takes her hands and pulls her close, wrapping his arms around her.
“I didn’t know you were ever afraid,” he says, and his voice is warm and soft against her cheek.
“Rarely,” she agrees. “But I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. That would have been worse than finding out you weren’t interested in me… you know. Romantically.”
“Am I then?” His voice is softly mocking. He holds her at arm’s length and purses his lips. “Are you sure?”
She smacks him on the arm right before pushing him onto the sofa and lying on top of him.
“Pretty sure,” she says. “Though you’re always free to disagree.”
~fin
Chapter 11: Cast of Characters
Chapter Text
Worlds Enough, And Time: Appendix Our Cast of Characters
Hermione Granger
Severus Snape
Harry Potter
Draco Malfoy
Neville Longbottom
Minerva McGonagall
The Portrait of Albus Dumbledore
Inhabitants of the ‘Thousand-Acre Wood’:
Winnie-the-Pooh
Piglet
Rabbit
Owl
Christopher Robin
Eeyore
Tigger
Inhabitants of ‘The Citadel’ (Original characters informed by literary ones. ☺)
Rupert (Giles. Former muse turned Watcher.)
Romulus (Because Rome wasn’t built in a day.)
Alice (in Wonderland, who really could have used a map.)
George (Smiley, who is good at reconnaissance.)
Jack (Harkness, who else?)
Peter (Guilliam, who works hard to get it right.)
Laz (Lazarus. He sticks around.)
Gwen (Guinevere, formerly married to Arthur, ran off with Lancelot.)
Lance (Lancelot. He means well.)
The Boss (well, he is, isn’t he?)
Wil, Director of Staged Plays (Shakespeare, of course.)
Adam, Director of Biblical Text (First human if you can trust the Biblical text.)
Haroun, Director of Mythological Tales (Author of ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’.)
Frank, Director of Pulp Fiction (Homage to Frank Munsey, author of the first ‘pulp’ magazine.)
Jonathan, Director of Literary Fiction (Homage to Jonathan Kranzen.)
Mary, Director of Harry Potter Fanfiction (Mary Sue of the violet eyes and long lashes.)
Architect Nix (An appreciative nod to Garth Nix.)
Cartographer Ford (A similarly appreciative nod to Jasper Fforde.)
Inhabitants of the ‘Cabin Pressure’ universe:
Douglas Richardson
Martin Creiff
Arthur Shappey
Caroline Knapp-Shappey
Inhabitants of the ‘Sherlock’ universe:
Sherlock Holmes
John Watson
Inhabitants of the ‘Doctor Who’ universe:
The Doctor
Amy Pond
Rory Williams
drinkingcocoa on Chapter 1 Thu 07 Mar 2013 12:41AM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 1 Thu 07 Mar 2013 04:17AM UTC
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ChapBook on Chapter 1 Thu 07 Mar 2013 09:37AM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 1 Thu 07 Mar 2013 01:58PM UTC
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DoctorDonna (Guest) on Chapter 1 Thu 28 Nov 2013 01:32AM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 1 Sun 16 Feb 2014 05:43PM UTC
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janewestin on Chapter 3 Mon 03 Jun 2013 09:56PM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 3 Tue 04 Jun 2013 01:17AM UTC
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hisnhers (Guest) on Chapter 3 Sun 14 Jul 2013 06:40PM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 3 Sun 16 Feb 2014 05:43PM UTC
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hisnhers (Guest) on Chapter 3 Sun 14 Jul 2013 06:41PM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 3 Sun 16 Feb 2014 05:44PM UTC
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Spifflocated on Chapter 6 Sat 09 Dec 2023 12:41AM UTC
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Jessica (Guest) on Chapter 10 Fri 08 Mar 2013 02:33AM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 10 Fri 08 Mar 2013 02:44AM UTC
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Deweydecimateher on Chapter 10 Mon 14 Oct 2019 12:15AM UTC
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SwissMiss on Chapter 11 Sun 10 Mar 2013 03:22PM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 11 Mon 11 Mar 2013 01:18AM UTC
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JenniferEsther on Chapter 11 Wed 13 Mar 2013 04:32PM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 11 Mon 24 Jun 2013 01:13PM UTC
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janewestin on Chapter 11 Mon 03 Jun 2013 11:17PM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 11 Mon 03 Jun 2013 11:46PM UTC
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janewestin on Chapter 11 Tue 04 Jun 2013 01:01AM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 11 Tue 04 Jun 2013 01:39AM UTC
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janewestin on Chapter 11 Tue 04 Jun 2013 02:29AM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 11 Tue 04 Jun 2013 03:04AM UTC
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janewestin on Chapter 11 Tue 04 Jun 2013 02:37AM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 11 Tue 04 Jun 2013 03:03AM UTC
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Bonfoi on Chapter 11 Mon 24 Jun 2013 04:40AM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 11 Mon 24 Jun 2013 01:13PM UTC
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hisnhers (Guest) on Chapter 11 Sun 14 Jul 2013 08:35PM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 11 Sun 16 Feb 2014 05:45PM UTC
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MizukiYumeko (Guest) on Chapter 11 Wed 18 Sep 2013 06:23PM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 11 Sun 16 Feb 2014 05:45PM UTC
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bluelace (Guest) on Chapter 11 Tue 05 Apr 2016 12:55PM UTC
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Shefa (machshefa) on Chapter 11 Sun 31 Jul 2016 09:33PM UTC
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Spifflocated on Chapter 11 Sat 09 Dec 2023 09:04AM UTC
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