Chapter Text
Crossing was never graceful.
The tear in space sealed behind me almost as soon as I passed through it, light bending and snapping back into place like it had never been disturbed at all. For a fraction of a second, I felt weightless. Then the world reassembled itself around me, matter rushing in to fill the absence I’d left behind.
I landed on solid floorboards.
Newt was slightly startled. Not much, just enough that his chair scraped softly against the wood as he jolted in place. Several parchment pages fluttered, and he caught them instinctively before they could slide off the dining table.
“Oh-” He looked up, then exhaled. “You could knock. You know. In theory.”
“I could,” I said. “But where’s the fun in that?”
His mouth twitched despite himself.
He was seated at the table, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a neat but extensive spread of documents laid out before him. Permits, inspection forms, correspondence stamped with seals I recognized and several I didn’t. He’d already signed half of them, his handwriting scratchy but precise.
“Wasn’t sure whether you were going to stop by before you left,” Newt said, setting his quill aside. He looked up at me with a small, knowing smile. “You do have a habit of disappearing.”
I scoffed, tugging my coat from my shoulders. “Please. I disappear professionally. There’s a difference between that and just not saying goodbye.”
He hummed, clearly unconvinced.
“Do you honestly think I could vanish for an entire school year without saying something dramatic and unnecessarily sentimental?” I went on, pressing the back of my hand to my forehead as if the very idea might undo me. “I have a reputation to uphold.”
Newt let out a quiet laugh, shaking his head as he rose from his chair. “I’d be more surprised if you didn’t make a spectacle of it.”
The familiar warmth of the room settled around me as he crossed the space between us. Newt’s home always felt lived in. Magic threaded through it in ways that favored comfort over spectacle. The sort of place that didn’t need to prove it was extraordinary.
He stopped in front of me, all ease now, whatever faint surprise my arrival had caused already smoothed away.
“It’s good to see you,” he said.
The words landed heavier than they had any right to.
I smiled. “You too, Newt.”
His eyes flicked, just briefly, to the place where I’d appeared. An old habit, I suspected, before returning to mine.
“Hogwarts again?” he asked.
I tilted my head, considering him. “You say that like it’s a bad habit.”
Newt’s lips twitched. “It’s not. I’m just saying that it is a habit you seem to have.”
“What like I’m a regular at a bar?”
“No, because then you will start comparing us to cheap pub food.”
I laughed, leaning back against the table and watching him gather the documents he’d been reviewing into a neater stack. “You saw the update, then.”
“Yes,” he said, a little sheepish. “It arrived just before you did. Very thorough. Dates, parameters, how undercover you will be…” He hesitated, then added, “You’ve gotten rather good at that.”
“The last thing I want is for people of the wrong mind to reveal who I am to those I am trying to help.” I said. “Unfortunately going undercover to the extent I do is purely out of necessity.”
“Hm,” he hummed, clearly unconvinced that of my true intent, but he didn’t argue it. Instead, he glanced up at me again, eyes bright with curiosity. “Late nineteenth century, this time.”
“September of 1890,” I confirmed.
“That’s… ambitious.”
“You wound me.”
He didn’t answer right away. He didn’t need to. The look he shot at me must have been enough, because his smile widened just slightly.
I smirked at my friend before continuing to debrief him.
“All the arrangements are already in place,” I said, shifting back to business. “Records, associations, classes. I’ll blend in well enough. The goal is minimal disruption.”
“And the student you’re… replacing?” Newt asked carefully.
“I’m not,” I said. “There isn’t one.”
That made him pause.
“In this version of the world,” I continued, “the student who should have been there never existed. No correction. No substitute. Just a hole where something important should have been.”
Newt’s brow furrowed. “And without them?”
“The timeline drifts,” I said simply. “Slow at first. Then faster. Fate doesn’t like loose threads.”
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “Like the—” he hesitated, searching for the right label, “—the ring-bearer situation?”
I huffed a faint laugh. “Yes. Sort of like that.”
His expression softened with recognition. “Wasn’t your alias Laurelyn Baggins?”
I groaned. “You promised never to say that name out loud again.”
He ignored that entirely. “You stepped in because… was Frodo his name? Cause he never existed in that world? Or…”
“You’re right,” I said. “He was never born. Parents still drowned. No Frodo. No one else in that circle who could carry what needed carrying. So I went instead.”
“And walked the same path?” he asked gently.
“More or less,” I said. “I didn’t try to untangle it. Didn’t save Boromir. Didn’t… fix Gollum. I just made sure the world didn’t collapse before it could become itself.”
Newt studied me for a long second. “So this will be the same.”
I shook my head. “No. That’s the problem. This time isn’t the same.”
He tilted his head. “How so?”
“In that version of the Lord of the Rings dimension,” I said, “my job was to replace an essential missing piece of a puzzle to complete the picture destiny already painted. This time…” I hesitated, then admitted, “this time, I’m going to try to change things. To save people who weren’t originally supposed to be saved.”
He exhaled slowly.
“Well,” he said, attempting levity with only partial success, “I suppose if anyone were going to insert herself into a doomed timeline for the sake of a school, and then decide to improve it while she’s there, it would be you.”
“High praise.”
He snorted softly. “You’ll be careful?”
“I always am,” I said, which was true. Just not in the way people wanted.
He studied me for another second, then nodded once, decisive. “Bunty’s downstairs,” he said. “Tending to the crups. You might want to warn her before she hears about your plans secondhand.”
“I was going to,” I said, already turning toward the stairs. “I’m not that cruel.”
He smiled at my back. “You say that now.”
I waved a hand in response and headed down into the basement, the familiar hum of magic growing stronger with every step.
The air changed as I descended. Denser, sweeter, threaded through with the rustle and breath of too many creatures to name. Newt’s basement had never felt like a basement to me. It felt like stepping into a pocket of the world that had decided to be kinder than most of it.
The crups were the first things I saw.
A small litter of them occupied one of the nearer pens, all knobby legs and too-big ears and anxious little whines. They looked worse for wear. Thin, matted in places, tails wrapped protectively around themselves despite the gentle heat of the lamps overhead. Of course Newt had found them. Of course he was patching them back together.
Bunty knelt among them, sleeves rolled, hair pinned back in the way that always meant she’d been working for hours. She was murmuring to one of the pups, rubbing its chest in slow circles. It made a soft, sleepy sound and relaxed.
“Traitor,” I whispered at it.
Bunty’s head snapped up.
Her face lit. “M!”
I barely had time to laugh before she was on her feet and crossing the space between us. We collided in a hug that was more momentum than coordination, both of us laughing and talking over each other at once.
“You came!”
“Such little faith from the both of you!”
She squeezed me tighter, then leaned back just enough to look at me. “I just saw your update,” she said, mock-scolding. “Thought you might come running down here begging for my vast and unparalleled expertise on all things Wizarding World.”
“Obviously,” I said solemnly. “I came because I needed advice on cauldrons and chimeras.”
She thumped my shoulder lightly.
“And to say goodbye,” I added. “Before I vanish deep undercover for… about ten months.”
Bunty winced. “Ten?”
“Mm-hm.”
“That’s longer than usual,” she said, still smiling but with a crease between her brows.
I shrugged, gesturing around us. “I’m familiar enough with the Wizarding World to make it easy. It’ll be fine. Besides, it’ll feel like a blink for you. Because, as always, I’ll just Cross back to this time for you guys.”
“Conveniently so,” she said, then nudged me with her elbow. “Still. Ten months.”
We stood there for a moment, just breathing in the warm, creature-filled air together. Then she tilted her head, evaluating me.
“So,” she said, “how much are you changing?”
I blinked. “Personality-wise?”
“Appearance,” she clarified, grinning. “Are we keeping all of your beauty, or are we completely revamping your look?”
I glanced at a loose strand that had fallen forward. “Stark white isn’t exactly common among schoolchildren in the 1890s,” I admitted. “I’ll probably shift it back to brown. My original color before the exposure.”
She made a sympathetic little noise. “Shame. I’ve always liked the white.”
I arched a brow. “Personal experience talking?”
She just smiled, too innocent to be believable.
We both laughed.
“And no,” I added, “before you ask, I don’t need your expertise on the Wizarding World. If I did, I’d go to Newt. He’s actually from here.”
She snorted. “Rude.”
“Accurate.”
She squeezed my hands once more, then released them with a sigh that was half fondness, half resignation. “You’re really doing it, then.”
“I’m really doing it.”
Her gaze softened. “Then don’t forget to come back.”
“I won’t,” I said, chuckling at the absurdity.
Behind us, one of the crups yipped, demanding attention. Bunty turned back toward them automatically, and I stood there a second longer, watching her work, gentle, steady, familiar, and let the weight of leaving settle where it always did, just under my ribs.
Bunty finished checking the last crup’s paw and straightened, brushing straw from her skirt. For a moment we just stood there in the soft glow of the lamps, the pups settling back into a loose pile of sleep.
“So,” she said lightly, without looking at me, “why this one?”
I blinked. “This dimension or this time period?”
“Both.”
I picked at a loose thread on my sleeve. “To learn more about Ancient Magic,” I said. “And to keep the place from sliding too far off the path of fate.”
That earned me a small, very pointed silence.
I glanced up.
Bunty wasn’t saying anything, but she didn’t have to. Her eyebrows had done all the talking for her. It was a look I knew very well: That is technically an answer, but it is not the whole one.
I sighed. “What?”
She only tilted her head.
“Fine,” I said. “That’s not… all of it.”
She waited.
“I’m also,” I continued, searching for the right word, “treating it a bit like an experiment.”
Her mouth twitched. “There it is.”
“Don’t,” I warned, but I was smiling.
I leaned back against the low fence of the pen. “Peter and I played Hogwarts Legacy while we were stuck at the Peizer Estate for a long project. On and off. Not all the way through. He kept playing without me and then I’d play without him, so we lost track of where the other one was.”
“So you know the general story,” Bunty said slowly, “but not the details.”
“Exactly,” I said. “I know the big shape of it. I know how it’s supposed to end. I know what the fifth-year was meant to do, and what it will cost them.”
Her expression softened. “And you think you can spare them the cost.”
“I think,” I said carefully, “that a lot of the obstacles were… optional. Detours. Narrative conveniences. If I’m careful, I can move things along the same track faster. Cleaner. And if I can save a few good lives along the way.”
“You’re going to try,” she finished for me.
“Yes.”
A beat passed.
“There was a couple deaths at the end,” I admitted quietly. “I don’t think that had to happen. Not really. I want to see if I can change that.”
Bunty let out a slow breath, folding her arms. “M.”
I met her eyes.
“Be very careful,” she said, and there was no teasing in it now. “You can guide a path. You can mend a tear. But tempting fate—”
“—is dangerous,” I said, waving a hand. “You know, you sound like Charles.”
“Someone should,” she said gently. “And he got it from Alissa, so you should listen.”
I shrugged it off more easily than I felt it. “It will be fine. I’m only nudging things. The dimension wants to heal. I’ll just… help it along.”
Bunty didn’t argue further. She only gave me that look again. The one that said she loved me, and also fully expected me to make questionable choices anyway.
The crups shifted in their sleep. Somewhere deeper in the basement, a creature called softly, low and musical.
“Fate doesn’t like to be managed,” she said at last.
“Neither do I,” I replied, and tried to make it sound like a joke.
It didn’t quite land.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs before either of us spoke again.
Newt appeared a moment later, ducking slightly under a low beam out of habit, a small box tucked under one arm. He paused when he saw the two of us standing there among the crups, then smiled like he’d walked in on something he didn’t want to disturb.
“Ah. There you are.”
Bunty straightened a little too quickly. “We weren’t hiding,” she said, then immediately looked like she wished she hadn’t said anything.
Newt blinked, pleasantly baffled. “I didn’t say you were.”
I bit back a grin.
He crossed to one of the shelves, set the box aside, and rummaged through a collection of tiny, labelled drawers with the kind of focus usually reserved for life-or-death situations. After a moment, he made a satisfied sound and turned back toward us, something small clasped carefully in his hands.
“I nearly forgot,” he said, as though this were a grocery list item and not a ritual. “I meant to give you this before you left.”
He held out a slim glass phial, no larger than my thumb. Inside, fine, iridescent dust shimmered faintly, catching the light in colors that didn’t seem entirely committed to existing.
“Occamy eggshell,” he said. “Ground very finely. Not terribly useful, to be honest. Not in your line of work. But…” he hesitated, suddenly awkward, “…I thought you might like something to keep with you.”
It was such a profoundly Newt thing to say that my throat went tight for no good reason at all.
I took the phial carefully, like it might bruise. “Thank you.”
He shrugged, pretending it wasn’t a big deal. “It’s very stable. Won’t react unless you ask it to.”
“I wasn’t planning on feeding it to anything,” I said.
“Good,” he replied mildly.
Bunty laughed under her breath, then reached out and tugged me into another hug. This one was quieter. She pressed her face into my shoulder for a heartbeat longer than before, then stepped back and pretended she hadn’t.
“Ten months,” she said. “Blink of an eye.”
“For you,” I said. “For me it’s homework.”
She wrinkled her nose sympathetically.
Newt shifted his weight, then offered his hand like the gentleman he always accidentally was. I ignored the hand and hugged him too. He made a soft, startled sound and then returned it, careful and warm and slightly off-balance.
“Do write,” he said when we stepped apart. “Or… whatever your equivalent is.”
“I will.”
He nodded, then looked at me the way he looked at injured creatures. Not pitying, just measuring what it would take to heal. “Be kind to the world,” he said gently. “And to yourself, if you can manage it.”
“I’ll try,” I said. It was the closest I could get to a promise.
The moment stretched, then settled. The basement hummed around us, alive and full and utterly itself.
I glanced once more at Bunty, at Newt, at the crups curled into a small, trusting heap, and then I reached, inward and outward at the same time, for the place where reality thinned.
The tear opened like a seam being pulled apart. Light bent. Sound folded in on itself. For an instant, I felt the familiar drop in my stomach, the sensation of falling without moving, of being unstitched and rewoven in the same breath.
I stepped through.
The world snapped closed behind me.