Chapter Text

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Sean, At Hogwarts

Hallow’s Eve

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Once I’d made personal contact with my magic, the wards in the castle didn’t seem able to muffle it anymore. Or perhaps the muffling effect was so minor that we no longer noticed it- and it felt like a “We,” like a partnership. I worked with my magic until both of us were at the point of exhaustion every day. I even began attending classes as part of my accelerated education- a turn of events so wild, I was a bit afraid that my reputation would never recover. Within a week I’d asked Dumbledore to move me from the introductory courses- unsurprising, given how much they slow-walked their lessons for young students. I was reasonably confident that I was far beyond second or even third year already.

I could feel the edges of the students’ magic as I worked around them. It was distressing- they had it all wrong! The wands, the words, they were training tools- they drew patterns from the plane that magic seemed to operate on. Demonstrate them a few times and your magic, when unconstrained, would grasp your intent and work with you, jumping through the hoops you laid out for it or even performing the spells without your direct intervention. But Hogwarts and, I assumed, every other wizarding school, trained students to force their magic through the patterns, like a reluctant animal. It was… hugely damaging. The magic adapted eventually, but so much potential was just lost, shaved off forever. The magic of the older students was a sad thing, broken and lifeless. It was a tragedy they couldn’t even see- I resented Hogwarts and Dumbledore a great deal, for arranging it.

In contrast to the extremely conservative lesson plans, I was a wild man. I ignored most of what the instructors taught and blew through the lessons anyway, much to their chagrin and my classmates’ anger. My magic responded instinctively and powerfully, adapting itself to situations in ways that nobody else’s could. And it was showing me new spells, as well. In second year Charms when we were instructed to cast Aguamenti, the kids were barely getting sprinkler-like emanations out of their wands when I dipped mine and accidentally let out a stream so powerful it blew the door open.They asked me how I’d done it, and my magic helpfully recreated the pattern it had assumed, allowing me to trace it- and it was reproducible. The pattern that worked for me could be taught! None of the others managed as much force, but they were getting substantially more than they should have by the time Flitwick called a halt and tried to have a serious talk with me about “The dangers of unlicensed magical improvisation” afterwards. Of course that was a regulated thing.

Draco tried to challenge me to duels through proxies on two separate occasions. I knew it was him- why else would random Slytherins come up during lunch and begin dropping unsubtle hints about my parentage? But I wasn’t in the habit of beating up children, even if I did want to test some of the things my magic was coming up with- something new every day, it seemed. I told them to cram it or held them upside down by their ankles for a few moments and that was the end of it. If he wanted a fight he was going to have to pick it himself.

A second month passed before I knew it, and then it was Halloween. I had less use for Snape’s drugs now, but I had arranged a final get-together between him and Harry as part of the troll escapades that I knew should be coming. That was the end of my participation, as far as I was concerned- the whole thing really bothered me, even if I knew Harry was behaving nothing like an actual eleven year old and we were all ultimately dancing on the narrative strings of a horny teenage girl. I’d informed Severus in general terms that there would be a disruption, and that he would have some time as the classes were ordered back to their dorms to find Harry and take him aside. I, meanwhile, would intercept the troll and help Hermione out. This seemed somewhat disruptive of the trio’s bonding and the original narrative but I figured they’d find the time elsewhere. We awoke in Hufflepuff hall that morning to the smell of baking pumpkins and I smiled- for once, everything’s going according to plan, I thought.

Even if I wouldn’t let the narrator do it, I really knew how to screw myself.

It didn’t take long before things began to go off the rails. I was still lounging about the common room, blowing off classes to read one of the few books on transfiguration that didn’t make me want to hurl it across the room, when there was a tremendous racket at the doors. The paintings informed me that it was a young Gryffindor girl in some distress- they gave me quite stern glares, even after I protested my innocence. It was Hermione, of course. After the disastrous charms class where Ron’s insults should have sent her to the second floor girl’s bathroom for most of the rest of the day, to sulk until her fateful encounter with the troll, she’d come to me instead. Story: altered.

“What do you need?” I asked, with a sick twisting beginning in my gut.

“I need you to teach me.” she said, tears of frustration and anger in her eyes. “You use magic better than anyone else in first year, and you completely ignore the teachers. They say you’re the next Dumbledore. You’re better than me! You know something they don’t, or you’re taking some potion, or- or whatever. I don’t care if you’re breaking the rules, I want in.”

Now, there was an easy remedy for this. If I just blew her off she’d probably go right back to her original pattern. But… she was a child in distress and she wanted to learn. Her request cut right to the heart of who I was, the real me, not Sean Peakes the first year Hogwarts student. I found myself struck with uncertainty. I shook my head, laughing at myself. We’ll fix it later. Tell her what you can. “Ah, well, I’ve never been much of a teacher but I’ve always wanted to be a wizened old wizard dispensing secrets. You might as well come in.” I opened the door and let her inside. She marvelled at the greenery of the Hufflepuff common room- I supposed the kids really didn’t get to see the others very often. The whole system’s designed to give them artificial tribes, separate them and set them against each other early. Is it just British-ness or is there something more going on, even there? “It’s not much of a secret, to be honest. I have one advantage you can’t replicate, but you’ll get there in time.” I’m just straight-up older. “For the other- it just involves a… different way of using magic.”

She sat in one of the big arm chairs and whipped out a parchment and quill. Where was she even keeping those? “Tell me everything.”

I sighed and settled into a chair across from her. I was about to drop into a lecture, and then I thought better of it. “Ah, well- Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. I don’t know if it’s something I can tell. Let me address it plainly. Your magic is alive, it’s a part of you, and Hogwarts is teaching you, incorrectly in my opinion, to force it to cast spells, instead of training it as you would another creature.” She frowned at this, puzzled. “It’s going to be harder to teach you in here, because there’s a ward on the castle that keeps you from feeling it. But- well, maybe a demonstration.” I pulled out her wand and had her perform the spell from that day’s charms class- Wingardium Leviosa. She did it perfectly of course, forcing her magic through the forms with mechanical precision that made me wince, but her quill did float quite handily at the end. “Now, try it again, but this time wave your wand and say the words, but that little push you do, in your mind, when you make your magic run through the forms… do you know what I’m talking about?” She nodded eagerly. “Don’t do that part.”

She looked at me curiously but did as instructed. Nothing happened, of course. I could see her magic in my mind’s eye- it saw the spell coming and flinched away, already anticipating the harm that might be inflicted on it. She huffed in frustration. “Nothing.” We went through the exercise several more times, and I had to talk her down from that push by the end.

“It feels like nothing, but your magic is learning that you won’t force it, that you are a willing partner. Your magic is very much an animal, with its own emotional life. It’s just based on your emotions, so you have an advantage in understanding it.” She clearly understood me, but she wasn’t quite believing it. “Here, let me demonstrate.” I cleared my mind and thought of my loved ones, then waved my wand wordlessly through the steps of Expecto Patronum. My magic leapt eagerly to the task, and the silver-white light billowed out and took the form of a dragon, sailing around our heads. “Hermione, let me introduce you to my magic.”

She stood in awe, following it around the room. “Oh, it’s beautiful! Can I learn how to do that? I’d love to meet my magic.”

I chuckled. “Well I think it’s something they’re supposed to teach you in third year, and I actually needed a number of drugs that I wouldn’t give a child to tap into mine, but maybe we can get outside the castle in a bit and practice.”

She nodded politely, still absentmindedly following the dragon, and I realized I’d mentioned drugs and really hoped she hadn’t noticed- no such luck, this was Hermione we were talking about. “Wouldn’t give a child?” then something occurred to her. “Wait, so you did have Draco putting something in your food, then? Is it illegal? I don’t really know if I want to cross the law but-”

I cut her off, standing up as I did so. “What.” That sick feeling was back.

She turned back, puzzled. “Draco’s been putting drops of potion in your meals since you both got here, didn’t you know?”

I hadn’t, but suddenly his muttering in the forest made a lot more sense. As well as my inexplicable continued attachment to the little shit, and the strange tentacled beast that had so grievously wounded the emotional core of me, had attacked my love for Haley. Love potion. He’s been gradually poisoning me with love potion. “No, I guess I didn’t,” I bit out, trying to constrain the roiling emotions. My magic, flying about the room in Patronus form, screeched and turned nearly feral. I could feel it going out of control and I reached out to stop it, but before I could that connection across dimensions clicked once again and I wasn’t looking at my magic, but at my wife.

She fell to the ground without incident and stood back up, the glowing white outline fully human again save for the horns and eyes. She looked hurt, bandages covered her torso and a large and bloody gash ran across her back. She looked around in a panic. “ Sean send me back I can’t be unconscious send me back right now” I stepped towards her hand outstretched, but it was too late- she must have found a way to end the magic from her side, because she winked out and the room was momentarily plunged into darkness.

Hermione looked taken aback- “W- who was that? Do you have another person living in your magic?”

I didn’t even have time to answer her before all hell broke loose. A painted figure ran through the frames to us, panting, as if he’d come at a dead sprint- one from the headmaster’s office, I thought. “Dumbledore- huff- wants to see- huff- both of you, right away.” Shit, he’s probably going to be peeved if I start subverting the secrets of magic in a more general way. But we didn’t even make it to the door before a second figure ran up- “AHEM- TROLL IN THE CASTLE. All students return to your dorms and remain there! ” I blinked, nonplussed. It’s barely past noon, isn’t that far too early? Is Quirrel stepping up his time table?

Regardless, things were going to be afoot. I turned to Hermione. “I’ll answer your questions when this is done but you need to stay here. Things may get unsafe.”

She looked indignant. “Well what about you? We’re the same age!” That last was shouted through the closing door of the common room. I pulled my magic tight about me, ready to use an undetectable charm or whatever else I needed to slip through the corridors. I didn’t have the Marauder’s Map, more’s the pity, but my magic was able to tap into the Hogwarts wards to a limited degree and tell me roughly where staff were headed. Most going to the gauntlet, or shepherding the students, then. I decided I’d head for the second floor bathrooms- canonically, the Troll had showed up there somehow, perhaps things would get back on the rails enough for it to happen again.

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Things didn’t get back on the rails. I stood in the second floor girl’s bathroom, most conspicuously devoid of any trolls, and tried to ignore the bawling of Moaning Myrtle, the resident ghost. I wasn’t picking up anything from this wing of the castle on the wards- I had no idea where the damn thing could be.

As I stood there and pondered, I should have been watching my back- the door slammed open and Quirrel strode into the room, hitting me with a Petrificus Totalus so lightning fast that I didn’t have time to react. Voldemort, of course. It confirmed one of my suspicions at least, as I fell to the ground paralyzed. His magic was dark and ragged and raged like a rabid beast, but he cast like I did- instinctively, the magic flowing like water to carry out his intent. But I think his might actually fear him. I’d not taken Quirrel into consideration at all, but apparently he hadn’t missed me.

“Mr. Peakes, was it?” He asked, in his high reedy voice but without any of the stuttering or timidity he reserved for the public. Guess he plans to kill me. “My master thinks you may be a threat. He thought a precocious young thing like yourself might go seeking the Chamber of Secrets during this time of upheaval, and here you are, on the very threshold! Why don’t we carry you across?” Even as he spoke I heard a second voice, undoubtedly that of Voldemort’s creepy baby-face underneath his turban, speaking in Parseltongue. The sinks of the bathroom slid away, revealing the passage to the chamber, far too early for the narrative. I’d genuinely forgotten that this was the same bathroom- you’d think someone would have noticed after the troll wrecked things in the original timeline, but that was wizards for you. He definitely plans to kill me.

Applying all my magic, I could barely loosen the magical bindings holding me tightly. I used my freedom to speak- “The… troll…”

Quirrel snorted contemptuously as he levitated my entire body and began carrying me before him like a sack of grain. “A distraction- originally planned as a play for the Sorcerer’s Stone, but now? It will do quite nicely to keep them all occupied while my Master makes a leap to a new host. He thinks you’ll be more powerful- he suspects you might even be Harry Potter himself, and the half-wit playing footsie with Snape an unwitting dupe. A masterful play by Dumbledore, to be sure.” Oh shit, he wants to ride me like a rented mule. Harriet, I dislike the way your mind works. I honestly didn’t have the first clue what that would do. I assumed I’d reject any overt control, but- this had a feeling of “Just desserts” to it, as well. Not even Hufflepuffs can fly as high as I was without drawing attention- especially not Hufflepuffs, you idiot.

We made our way down the dank stone passage to the sewer-vault or… whatever it was that the chamber was supposed to be. Again that sibilant hissing came out, and I heard the rumble of the great basilisk moving away, in the distance. I dearly wished I had thought of a way down here- to gain Slytherin’s secrets would have been an enormous coup. As it was, I’d be lucky to get out alive. I tried to gasp out an objection. “Voldemort… know things … can’t… take my mind…”

Quirrel brought me close and cuffed me. I still had the body of a small child- the blow set my ears ringing. “ You will not speak his name. My master will take what he wants, fool child. You merely confirm his suspicions. Now hold still while I prepare the ritual.” He left me bound and hovering as he strode off, no doubt going to fetch whatever ingredients he was about to need for a mind-transferrence ritual.

The second he was out of sight my magic was joined in worrying at my bonds by someone else’s. I fell to the ground, still partially bound but no longer levitating. Whoever it was couldn’t seem to cancel the Petrificus but I had enough freedom of movement to wriggle like an inch worm towards the source of my salvation- a cluster of rocks near the entrance. I leapt at the opportunity- well, more realistically, I shoved my face across the jagged, rocky ground at the opportunity. A tremendous amount of exertion and a good number of cuts and scrapes later, I made it behind the rocks, only to find Draco. I sighed internally.

His eyes were wild with fear and alarm. The part of me that didn’t understand it was fucking poisoned was touched, before I realized he’d probably been stalking me all morning if he’d managed to follow me down here. “Peakes! What is Quirrel up to? Why did he bind you, and what is- this place?”

At least my mouth was fully recovered, if not the rest of me. I lay on the floor and glared up at him. “Thank you for the rescue, and fuck you for everything else, you little asshole. Quirrel is playing Body Snatchers with Voldemort and this is the Chamber of Secrets. Help me out of these bindings and let’s get out of here.”

He gave a start and an evil look came into his eye. “You know, I’ve just realized, you’re talking awfully tough for a bloke who’s pretty much paralyzed. Why, it seems-” his hands began to wander down to my robe- “I could do pretty much anything. I. Wanted to.” With each pause he leaned a little closer until our lips were nearly touching.

“ God damn it this is life or death, and I’m not interested in little boys, you idiot! What’s it going to take to get that through to you?” I hissed in my loudest, quietest voice ever. I could hear Quirrel coming back from the other end of the chamber.

He just grinned at me. “You’re not, eh? Prove it.” And then his lips locked with mine. I think it was supposed to be a moment of sublime romance, where I finally realized something about my true nature and so on. It wasn’t. It was scary molestation by a shitty little sociopath in a dungeon with very certain death lurking just on the other side of a rock, and I was fucking done with this narrative. Something in me went click, and my magic ripped through the bindings and flung Draco away just as Quirrel gave a shout of fear and anger- no doubt discovering that I’d left my hiding place.

Draco screamed as he was flung, hard, against the wall near the door. I practically levitated upright. “Harriet, no. This is practically rape and I have had it with this story. You haven’t got the first idea how romance works. Children cannot consent, they aren’t mature or developed enough, and everything about this- me and Draco, Snape and Harry- is severely fucked up. It might seem like a harmless laugh from the outside but you try fucking living in it. I’m done. I’m done and I’m out.” Draco just looked at me, bewildered- I suppose from his perspective I’d lost my mind. But then something happened.

Even as Quirrel’s masked rider ordered him to “Pursue and kill them before they reveal you” or something to that effect, I really wasn’t listening anymore, Draco spoke- and it wasn’t his voice. “You’re ruining everything. You and Draco are star-crossed! It’s so perfect! Why can’t you just let it happen? How are you even arguing with me? You’re my character !” He said in the tones of an angry young woman. It was Harriet, speaking to me directly. He looked absolutely horrified and clapped his hands over his mouth, and I was so stunned I almost missed the third awful thing to happen in as many seconds. When she spoke- the very instant she intervened directly- the world lurched, and I felt it. In some dimension I was privvy to, it was like an earthquake was happening. I think it really may be coming apart.

I grabbed him by the robe and my magic levitated him until I could haul him off his feet and up the stairs, with Quirrel now in hot pursuit- only the steep curve of that staircase kept him from blasting us in the first seconds. I transfigured the surface of several steps to ice as we raced upwards, and heard a crash and cursing below that told me that at least one of my traps had paid off in a little more lead time. As I ran I continued my argument. “Harriet from my perspective everyone here is a real person. Harry is a little kid who’s spent his life being abused in a closet. He’s been free for less than two months and you think he’s ready to fall in love? I’m a hundred and thirty years old, and happily married. You are trying to get me to romance an eleven year old poisoner who thought my total paralysis was the perfect time to cop a feel. You can’t force this on me and I will break your story if you try.”

We burst out of the bathroom. Snape and Harry were standing alone in the hallway over the corpse of the troll, locked in a passionate kiss. Draco, still flailing and looking around wildly, spoke in that smug, totally disconnected voice. “Oh yeah? Break that.” The story lurched again, jarred heavily in some other dimension, and I didn’t even slow my roll.

I flung Draco’s nearly-massless body so that it floated helplessly around the corridor, then turned and pressed myself behind the nearest statue, calling out to them. “Heads up, jailbait! Voldemort’s walking out of that door in about two-” and then he was on us. The door blew off its hinges and nearly levelled Snape, throwing him off balance. Quirrel flew into the hallway in a snarl of robes and flashing magic, levelling a green bolt of murderous intent at his fellow professor. Careful who you’re assuming is the bigger threat there, Voldemort. I threw my magic into an instinctive Protego that took the hit near-effortlessly and then began returning fire with stunners that manifested from mid-air at a machine gun pace- the misses showering him with brick dust and the hits forcing him to throw up shields. Snape, no slouch himself, recovered his wits and shoved Harry behind him, lashing out at Quirrel with something that looked a lot like napalm.

Quirrel was still juiced by Voldemort though, and he wasn’t going to be a pushover. He spoke some word of power that made the hallway shudder and the flames were blown back at us, along with my stun bolts. We dove in different directions and came up ready to fight again. I yelled at Snape as we did so. “Severus, you asshole- you were supposed to talk to him! If you think I’m not telling Dumbledore about this-”

Snape shouted back from the other side of the fray- “We were just talking ! And then the troll showed up, and I- I-” Yes, I have a pretty good idea how it went down. Harriet notwithstanding, you’re still an asshole. You could have said no.

I deflected another death bolt- they really weren’t that hard to stop when you saw them coming, I didn’t understand why the wizarding world was so scared of them- and said very seriously “Look, you’ve had a messed up life, I get it. But you can’t take that out on your students. You love him? You can wait for him. What’s the age of consent around here, 16? Good god man, have some self respect! What would Lily think?”

He seemed chagrined as he threw something that seemed to quintuple the gravity in the local region around Quirrel- I took note of that pattern for later use. “I… you’re right. I feel like my judgement’s been clouded. This isn’t me.”

The scream that came from Quirrel then was so loud that it drove us both to our knees. My magic recoiled and tried to block it but it was useless. I couldn’t tell if it was him, or Voldemort, or Harriet, or some combination of the three. “ NO! STOP IGNORING ME! YOU’RE RUINING EVERYTHING!” In a flash, he turned and fired another Avada Kedavra at Snape and this time, neither he nor I was in a position to block it.

But someone was. “NO!” shouted Harry, and threw himself between the shot and Snape. That’s not supposed to happen until seventh year- was all I had time to think before their magics made contact. The resonance between Harry and Voldemort, the interaction of the protections bestowed by his mother and Voldemort’s killing spell, was too much. Quirrel’s head erupted like a Roman candle, all of Voldemort’s magic detonating at once and spraying my side of the hallway with gore. Harry absorbed the shot and was blasted backwards, bowling over Snape.

If that had been the end of it, it would have been tragic, but salvageable. I stood shakily, casting around for Draco, who was cowering at the far end of the corridor. Snape knelt in the hallway, cradling the Boy Who Lived No More, the smoking hole in his chest testament to that. But then he spoke the words that we would all come to regret, in later days. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.” He turned his head skywards, overwhelmed with anguish. “IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS! I die, he lives! This isn’t how it goes! ”

And just like that, the narrative, already strained to the breaking point… simply broke. I heard her, from down the hall, speaking through Draco one final time. “Then I guess you can figure out how it goes on your own, because I quit! Honestly, characters writing themselves, who ever-” she gradually faded out, muttering angrily to herself.

And as she faded out, the world… drained. Life. Light. Purpose. I saw it leaving the eyes of Snape and Draco. It felt like color was leaching from the walls, leaving them greyer than they’d been before, though they were exactly as vibrant as they’d been before. I stood, paralyzed for a moment, until I realized that the others had stopped moving altogether. They no longer blinked. They no longer breathed. Snape held the body of his… of Harry, and Draco hunched in on himself down the corridor, but they were statues now. The world was a freeze-frame. This is what happens. Randall Flagg warned me, about things beyond the stories. We’d wondered what happens when an author and a narrative can’t reconcile. I think… I’m finding out. What happens to stories without their narrators.

I ran, then. Fleeing aimlessly. I could still feel my magic around me, but- I couldn’t feel anyone else. The whole of the castle, of the planet, was likely as lifeless as the little tableaux I passed while running. I found other students still hurrying to their dorms, all stuck in mid pose. Teachers with wands out, on guard against any further attacks to their charges. They couldn’t guard against this, I thought. I found Dumbledore and a trio of other wizards in serious-looking black suits, hurrying down the steps from the floor where he kept his office, no doubt rushing to the Chamber to see what the disturbance was. Always one step too late aren’t you, Dumbledore. I didn’t begrudge him that. This time it was my negligence that had caused the disaster. Just like- my mind shied away from that topic, the moment on the hill when I’d lost my best hope of sticking by Haley’s side. This was looking like it might be a repeat. But what was I supposed to do? Romance a little boy? Let Snape molest an abused child? Walk away, you idiot. You were supposed to make a cameo, get what you needed, and walk away. I couldn’t stop blaming myself.

My run slowed to a walk, and then a shuffle, as I realized where I was going. The Hufflepuff common room. The portrait hung open, but I dreaded what I would see inside. Hermione. Stuck among a crowd of other students she still stood out- books spread in front of her on one of the study tables. She was still trying for a forceless Wingardium Leviosa, by the looks of it. And there, on the tip of her wand, almost impossible to see in the gradual dimming of both color and light- the faintest glimmer of a spark. My first student, lost in the moment of her first breakthrough.

It can’t end like this. It can’t. I’d tie myself to the story here, if I had to, to breathe life back into these characters. If only I knew how. “Please,” I said, speaking into the gathering gloom. “Please, someone, take up this story. I can’t have killed a whole world.” I fell to my knees. “Please. I’m sorry. I’ll… I can play along. If I have to, if this is the alternative.” There was no response. I didn’t even know how to leave, it occurred to me- I supposed I could just step back through the void. Or maybe the void would come here, now. The world continued to dim, light fading until darkness claimed me. “Please.”

“Sean?” I realized I had closed my eyes at some point. That’s Hermione’s voice. I sat up. The room was… animate again! What, who? She was looking at me with concern. “When did you get here? You’re covered in- is that blood? ” She shrieked and jumped up, startling the others in the room. I just grinned- they were alive.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “Whoever you are- thank you.” It wasn’t Harriet. Something felt different, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

And down in Hogsmeade, at the train stop that only saw activity six times a year, an engine made an unscheduled stop. A single passenger disembarked. She’d been a bit delayed, this year, but had finally managed to make the journey. “At last,” she said, and smiled like a kid at Christmas.



It was the strangest thing, though- everyone who saw her could swear that her eyes were glowing, faintly blue.