Chapter Text

----

Sean, Hogwarts

Minutes after the narrative disruption

----

I stood in Dumbledore’s office. He was with Madame Pomfrey, no doubt coping with the loss of a student and a Dark Arts professor. Hermione stood outside- she was desperate to know what was going on, but I couldn’t be the one to tell her about her classmate’s death. Had they even had time to grow close enough that they could be called friends? I tried not to think about it. Somewhere out there is a new narrator and I have no idea where the story of this world is going now. Would they show up soon? What would they want? How did one pick up a dropped fanfiction that, to my knowledge, was never published? The gizmos and gadgets scattered around the headmaster’s office whirred and chirped quietly. I tried to ignore my racing mind.

When Dumbledore finally swept in, Hermione in tow and in tears, he looked exhausted. He took the chair behind his desk with three long strides and collapsed into it, looking utterly deflated. “I have relayed to Ms. Granger the circumstances of her friend’s death. For her sake and mine, Mr. Peakes, I hope you can elaborate on them.” There was a hard edge to his voice, and I bristled at it.

“I can. Do you really want me to? Really ? Not everything I say is going to cast you in a good light, Dumbledore.”

He leaned forward and placed both hands on his desk, no wand in evidence. “Miss Granger, can you agree that nothing said here will leave this room? Sean has… information, that we must keep in strictest confidence.” She nodded, still sniffling. I really wanted to comfort her but- did I have any right to?

I refocused on my anger. “The short version is that Voldemort was alive, he was living in the back of Quirrel’s head, and he attacked me. I knew he was there and I’d have told you but-”

He held up a hand. “He was there in the original story, and things worked out. What caused the narrative shift?” Hermione was whipping her head back and forth between us, eyes wide.

I did. I couldn’t say it. “He- I’m surmising that the plot that was supposed to happen was that he captured me, and Draco rescued me, and probably something like his love for me shielded me from Quirrel’s touch at the end of the year and that was how I knew it was real. The story was ridiculous, Albus. It was a school romance written by a teenage girl who didn’t have the first clue how people operate! I couldn’t follow through with it.”

He looked at me evenly but I felt something in that gaze. “I told you once, when you came here, to consider what happens when a man who is not the main character arrives and begins to upset the balance with foreknowledge. Have you considered?”

He was threatening me. I hissed at him, “I recall you also told me not to get involved with the students, jackass. Which I was working very hard to do when the arch-nemesis you let sneak into your school by hiding under a turban fired a death beam at the man that you emotionally compromised, and Harry threw himself in the way because they were beginning an affair that you were perfectly aware of. The way you run this place-”

“STOP IT!” Shouted Hermione, standing between us. “Just… stop it. You’re both awful. How can you fight like this? He’s- he’s dead and you’re in here attacking each other! He’d be ashamed of both of you!”

She was right, goddamn it. I could see that Dumbledore felt it too. “Miss Granger, I apologize. You are absolutely correct. Now is not the time to apportion blame- we must survive the days to come, first. Sean…” he regarded me, and I stared right back at him. “I cannot apologize for my actions, to you. Can you find it in you to work with me anyway?”

I really wasn’t sure I could. “You suspect, as I do, that I am your new best hope against whatever’s to come. The fact that you are even asking means you probably have some idea already of what the twist is. But I learned magic without you. I learned the secret without you. I am not entirely convinced that accepting your… assistance … will get me anything other than manipulated. I want to understand you, Albus. I want to believe you are working in the best interests of the world. Convince me.”

He sighed. “You have learned a secret, and a powerful one it is. Do you suppose it is the only one?” Hmm, a fair point, but if he thought I was going to take a bribe- “I think it would be easiest to explain to you. How much do you know of the history of Tom Riddle, of Grindelwald, of Atlantis?”

“In order- more than you do, I’ve had an overview, and nothing except fan theories,” I answered, still feeling fairly hostile to all of this.

He nodded. “Let us begin with the third, then. The standard history holds that ten thousand years ago, magic was wild and potent. Wizards stalked the earth as gods, shaping both the land and the non-magical as they pleased. We know very little of this time, except for scattered scraps. What was known as Atlantis might have been a city but more likely it was a world, or a universe. It does not matter- it was shattered, in a magical apocalypse. This world we inhabit now is the lifeboat, all knowledge of that time erased save for rumor and conjecture.” Standard stuff so far, I made a hand gesture for him to get on with it at which he chuckled. “Yes, a cut and dry backstory. I thought so myself- which is why I went digging, in my youth. Long after Atlantis, four wizards were able to come together and raise this castle, a feat that all of Magical Britain could not replicate today. The merest cobblestone from that time can grant life eternal. This wand,” he gestured at what I knew to be the Elder Wand, “a relic of the descendants of Atlantis, is one of the most powerful weapons in existence.”

He turned and looked out the great glass window at the back of the office, avoiding our eyes. “We ran off the edge of the map, Grindelwald and I. I wonder now if we wandered into areas that the originator of our story had never considered. Areas left muddled enough for something… else to take hold. Something other. It called itself the Coordinator.” I felt my blood turn to ice. No. The thing from the phone call? “It spoke as though it was part of a collective, something from outside space and time. We guessed that they were Atlanteans- it certainly allowed us to believe that.” We thought it was an alien or something. “It told us that our world was the disaster. That Atlantis had leaked away, through the cracks between dimensions- that it wasn’t in our past, that it was our present, an alternate version that could never be, now. That there was no reversing the loss of magic, but we could save what was left.”

I knew where this was going. “It told you that the entropy was coming from certain people, that you needed to kill them to stop the drain,” I said, with a voice like lead.

He turned toward me, eyebrow raised. “Yes. It taught us magic, secrets like the one you seem to have discovered quite on your own, and it told us we would need to eliminate the people whose stories were draining magic from our world. Though I didn’t do what it asked, I never questioned the truth of its assertions when I was younger. I found the notion of mass murder abhorrent, didn’t trust the creature I was speaking to, even after we performed many tests and verified the truth of what it claimed- that magic was diminishing, gradually. Grindelwad thought my sentiment was foolish.”

There are things beyond our stories, you know. You don’t want to know what happens when they get involved. Randall Flagg had said that to me, back in Wonderland. I’d seen it for myself on my journey between worlds. He’d also said they had eaten God. I was starting to worry that he’d meant that very, very literally. I finished Dumbledore’s thought. “Grindelwald worked for it, took power from it. Whatever his other motivations, he was ultimately working for that thing. Spreading death.”

He nodded. “You’ve encountered something similar. What choice did you make? And what did it offer?”

That was true, but- “In my version it told us that the narrators were summoning magic, and chaos, into our world. That the rise of strange magic systems was due to the cracks in the world caused by our recent catastrophe, that we would need to kill them to stop it. It implied that it had granted the powers that my wife recently acquired. But she turned it down- refused to kill them.” And then Flagg killed me. To piss her off, force her to forget that? “There’s a greater game being played here.”

Dumbledore sat back in his chair. “She is a true hero then. If you live long enough you will learn one thing- there is always a greater game being played. Wheels within wheels. One being, seeing both sides of a dimensional divide-”

I gasped. “It might not even have been lying. If it really was trying to seal off the transfer of entropy between worlds, it might have looked like that. But why murder? What would it gain by the death of so many? And why would it be trying to force a false equilibrium with high magical entropy in some worlds and low in others?” I was starting to see the shape of something but I couldn’t tell what it was, yet.

Dumbledore didn’t seem to know either. “Regardless- those were the powers, and the instructions, that it left with my companion. And later, I suspect, with Tom Riddle. To rid the world of these narrative leaks became their grand crusade. In opposing them I learned many of their secrets, but not all. Never all.” He was staring into the distance again. The man did “Haunted by the Ghosts of His Past” better than anyone I’d ever met, that was for sure. He continued. “Hogwarts was founded by people who had touched the same entity that I had. Their solution, and the path I chose to continue, was to limit the use of magic. To restrict it through limited education- in the vain hope that a limited society would not produce killers capable of ending all muggle life, and in turn might use up our draining reserves of magic at a more sedate pace. That is the role of Hogwarts, and my sin as a teacher. It is a bastion of ignorance to save a dying planet.”

Hermione was growing increasingly frustrated. “Normally I’d be furious that you weren’t educating me, but what does any of this have to do with Harry being killed? Are there other students in danger? Why did the world skip a beat, and why was Sean right next to me when it started up again?” She just wouldn’t be deterred. I glanced at Dumbledore and he nodded.

I supposed it was my turn to explain, if I could. I tried to tell her about the nature of stories and the world she was living in. It wasn’t easy going, but she grasped the principles quickly enough. Eventually it came time for my own confession. “I came from outside your story, to learn magic. I had a disagreement with your narrator, and I pushed her too far. She left, and your world almost came to an end. But you got a new narrator, somehow, and I don’t understand who or why. Dumbledore, have you seen her? You seem to think she’s a threat.”

----

The doddering old professor gestured towards a mirror which was resolving into an image. A girl no older than Hermione was walking up the path from Hogsmeade. Her eyes were sparkling in the evening gloom- almost glowing. No, they were glowing. “She just arrived. Already she’s taken most of the town.”

“Taken?” Sean asked, but then he saw- behind her, the villagers of Hogsmeade shuffled out of the gloom. Their eyes were glowing as well. The shuffling gait, the vacant stares- they triggered recognition for him. “She’s… a zombie? The new narrator is a zombie? ” How was that even possible, he wondered? Outside, Gretchen giggled to herself.

“Yes, memetic, I believe. Some kind of image that spreads but does not completely incapacitate.” Said Dumbledore, still watching the mirror, practically lost in thought. “In particular it doesn’t seem to impede their magic- not entirely. I suspect that they’ve already apparated new vectors to every magical town and city. Hogwarts is, of course, warded against such things.”

I glanced at Hermione who also seemed a bit puzzled by how calm he was being. She decided to broach the subject. “Uh, professor? You’re taking all of this very well. Do you have a plan?”

“Hmm?” He said, then seemed to realize we were still there. “Oh, no, not well at all. Quite upset.”

----

Wait a minute. “You were sharp as a tack right up until you started talking about her. If she’s your new narrator… she’s got some influence on your behavior. Is she actively describing you as easily distracted and prone to long-winded reminiscence when it suits her? Has she been stalling me for time? ”

----

Dumbledore smiled apologetically at the silly, scared boy. “That seems like a distinct possibility, Mr. Peakes. I’m afraid you may be quite on your own on this one. I’ll resist where I can, but even for a trained Legilimens it’s difficult to know when one’s mind is not entirely under one’s own control, especially when the thoughts run down pathways that-” but the boy wasn’t listening anymore. He bolted for the door, shouting to Hermione as he passed.

“Try to get him to set up wards against memetic images! If anything distracts you from that, you’ve got to fight it! Can you do that?” But Hermione was just a sad little girl, not even out of her first year. How was she going to-

----

I saw her wavering and I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Hermione. Whatever she’s saying about you, I don’t think she can make you entirely untrue to your character, and you are the most reliable person in this school. In another world, in a different set of circumstances, you were the greatest witch of your generation. You still have that within you. I don’t need you to save the world tonight- just keep him on task.” Her back straightened and she nodded. I patted her once and smiled, then took off. Hopefully if they were out of frame for me, they’d be harder to screw with for my counterpart.

A duel of narratives seemed to be in the works. For some reason the girl outside wanted to give this world over to a meme. I reviewed my options as I raced through the corridors. Magic, can you block an image in whole or in part? Practice on the house crests- if I look at Hufflepuff I want to see, I don’t know, a smiley face. I felt it doing something with my eyes- this was extremely risky but I felt like I was out of time. There’d be consequences later, no doubt, but what choice did I have? I put it out of my mind- or maybe it was put out of my mind quite literally.

Seconds later I glanced at an armored suit as I ran and stopped- wait, why did someone engrave a smiley face on the- I reached out to touch it. It felt real. Was this always here? Did I- I must have done something anti-memetic as a test. And I can’t remember what might even have been there before. Can’t even think about it. I hope it wasn’t important. Okay, Magic, whatever you did- do it again when you see the images those zombies are going to throw at us. I raced onto the training grounds and grabbed a broom, heading for the Forbidden Forest.

----

The wards weren’t tuned to stop ordinary people from Hogsmeade coming to the castle, or even to stop most spellcasting, not without activation. Gretchen was able to walk right onto the grounds without any problems- until the first of the Hogwarts professors arrived. Professor Sprout swept down on a broom, dropping entangling vines, immature mandrakes, and other non-lethal contraptions on the crowd. Professors Snape and McGonagall rode right behind her, throwing potions and transfiguring traps- anything to slow the crowd without killing them.

Gretchen knew that was silly. The crowd were happy to die, if it meant spreading the Concept. They would walk right through fire- how could half-hearted defenses stand up against that kind of determination? And while the professors battled in ones and twos, the Concept could fight as a collective. All around the crowd, wands joined together and huge flickering pictures sprang up- the image of the Concept were practically alive in the magic of this world, changing and morphing as rapidly as it shifted in the minds of its casters. Gretchen stared at it- it was so beautiful! Mcgonagall and Pomfrey looked directly at the pictures and were so stunned by how fascinating they were that they fell lifelessly from their brooms but were caught by waiting wands below. Snape had a more suspicious nature, and shielded his eyes when he saw the other two fall, retreating back the way he had come. It didn’t matter- the Concept was spreading out, covering the whole world. He’d see it eventually.

They were well and truly on the grounds of the castle now. It would not be possible to apparate, but the Concept had more than enough people to cover every inch of the halls and rooms of Hogwarts. At the towering front doors stood a frail old man in white wizard’s robes, with a young girl right behind him. Dumbledore was coming to the defense of his school. He saw Gretchen in the lead and tried to meet her eyes, but she was cleverer than that and wouldn’t meet his gaze. He began to blather, as if it would do any good. “You come to take our world, then- but you use the minds and bodies of our friends and families. You think that they will work with you towards that purpose, but you are wrong. This is not the sort of story that ends well for you.”

Gretchen grinned with delight. She hadn’t even been here a day and already Dumbledore was acknowledging her! The parts of her that weren’t fully focused on the Concept were excited about that, though she couldn’t remember why. She knew she needed to respond, though. “Nothing has to end here. I always wanted to come to Hogwarts, why do we have to fight about it? We have something to show you and then things can go on the way they always have, if you want. You probably won’t want that though. I know I didn’t.”

He shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry, young lady. My words weren’t addressed to you.” What a crazy old man! There was nobody here but Gretchen. Just Gretchen and the Concept, forever and ever. Wait- the Concept- she shook her head, momentarily puzzled. No, it wasn’t alive. It was just an idea. A wonderful, perfect idea that needed to be shared with everyone everywhere! She waved her hand and the crowd began placing their wands together to project those beautiful images in every direction.

But there was a horn, from the direction of the forest. What- she hadn’t said that would happen! It was that boy, the one with Dumbledore earlier. Who was he? He wasn’t part of the books that Gretchen remembered. He was certainly no Harry Potter. But here he came riding with… centaurs and spiders? Was he telling stories too?!?

----

“Thank you, Firenze- remember, incapacitate but don’t kill if you can help it.” The centaur nodded and I leapt from his back, letting my magic catch me as I got the broom back under myself. We’d only encountered one another briefly in the forest, but I’d made sure to respect his territory and that of Aragog the giant spider. Some hasty bargains tonight had helped secure their aid against this existential threat. As they charged I watched the crowd attempt to project those illusions a second time, only to see them fizzle. Hermione did it then, she got him focused on warding the place.

I swept low over the charge and felt rather than saw Snape and Flitwick forming up alongside me. I was running low, exhausted after such a long day. But my magic was a fine thing, always ready to do her part and I leaned into her now. We made a sweeping low pass, dropping stunners and flashbang spells as we went, breaking the line for the charge of the centaurs and spiders while dodging return fire of every description. The back of my broom took a glancing hit and caught fire- I slapped it out and winced as I burned my hand. Flitwick went down but I saw Dumbledore recovering him to the castle battlements even as he dueled with a dozen wizards simultaneously, flattening them one after another with nonlethal spells. I longed to watch him work- needed to be down there, to learn what he knew.

The charge of centaur and spider alike broke over the wizards like a wave and they began to fall back in good order- those that weren’t simply slapped unconscious then and there. I shouted to Snape over the rushing wind- “Obliviate the ones we capture! Strip the memory of tonight out of them and they might be alright!” He nodded and peeled off to relay the word while I deflected shots that were tracing up after him. Finally my eyes settled on the target I had been looking for. The girl with the glowing eyes wasn’t quite at the front anymore- I swooped down and leapt off the broom at her.

----

The annoying boy landed right in front of her and shot her a grin. “Well you made me play the centaur card so congrats for that. But this ends here.” He deflected a stunner from someone in her crowd and fired one of his own back, barely even moving his wand- he was as fast as Dumbledore! He didn’t even give her time to talk, firing a wide array of spells so quickly that she had to drop to the ground and roll just to avoid them. This wasn’t right, she definitely wasn’t telling him to do any of this!

But it was okay, she had her own tricks- she knew all the best wizards in the world from the books and she’d already picked up several of them for her bodyguard. A man stepped up to shield her and his wand moved even faster than the boy’s- he had a wooden leg and a prosthetic eye swivelling madly to see everything at once. The boy looked alarmed- “That can’t possibly be-” but it was, and Mad Eye Moody began an attack so furious that he was thrown off his feet and blown backwards. Her other protector stepped up and put a hand on her shoulders. He hadn’t been touched as heavily by the Concept as most of the others, and could still speak. “We’re going to have to fall back if we want to keep you safe,” said Grindelwald. “We can’t spread the Concept here, we will have to starve them out.”

“ No!” Said Gretchen, furious that she might have to wait to get into Hogwarts again. “I won’t let him keep me out! Moody! Put it in his mind directly!” The wild-eyed man grinned, taking her meaning, and turned back to his extremely short-lived duel. This will all be over soon, she thought.

----

I couldn’t possibly fight Moody. This wasn’t even Barty Crouch playing at being Moody, it was the real deal, and he was lethal. All my speed in spellcasting was no match for his experience and trickery. I abandoned any attempt to reach the girl and focused on survival- even that was a losing game, and within seconds I was in full flight backwards as he pursued. Lucky for me, the zomboid crowd was going in the opposite direction, clearing the gates and pulling back to the far edge of the grounds, so I was able to cross into the no-man’s land between the warring armies before he finally got me. It was a false memory charm, and the memory was simple- the spell earlier with the memetic illusion had worked, and suddenly I remembered in great clarity and detail the image it had projected. He grinned nastily and swept away as I fell to my knees. So much for my antimemetic inoculation.

The image was indescribable and overwhelming. I couldn’t not think about it. It was occupying every corner of my mind and it was all I could do to stay conscious. I struggled against it, looking around the battlefield. Seeing that memory charms worked, the zombies had stopped falling back. The centaur charge had disrupted them but wizards were tough, and lethal. The horse-men and spiders were being killed or driven off swiftly now. The tide was turning back, the pressure towards the gates resuming.

The part of my mind not consumed by the Concept was still racing. I need an epiphany, or a rescue. Something of my own making. But what? All I had made of this world was a mess, I thought as I watched Dumbledore encounter Grindelwald at the castle gates. His old friend and greatest nemesis. I kept trying to understand the nature of our worlds from an analytical perspective, keeping myself removed from these people. I could have been doing my job of learning magic while finding some way to help Harry and discourage Draco that didn’t involve outright shunning them until it was too late. Save the people around you, save the world. My wife’s words rang in my head, battling with the blue. I wished I’d understood what she meant by that earlier.

Someone was nearby. I looked blearily, through blue-tinged eyes. Snape. What was he- no, I recognized that spell. He had a grim cast to his face and he was summoning Fiendfyre. “No,” I croaked, trying to get his attention. I half crawled, half stumbled, until I was clutching his robes. “No,” I said again. Everything was blue. It was all blue. But this wasn’t blue speaking, it was the last vestiges of Sean- I couldn’t let him do this.

“There’s no choice, Peakes!” He shouted, as the spark came to life in his hands. “We can’t spare their lives- we have to defend the students.” He said, more softly- “We failed.”

“No,” I got out a third time. I summoned everything left in me that wasn’t already thinking of the Concept and tried to express one final thought. “They’re not dead. There’s still hope while they’re not dead. Mercy. Mercy.” Give them another chance. Even if it kills us. I saw in his eyes that he understood, and then I collapsed to the dirt at his feet.

----

She saw the boy fall at the feet of Professor Snape, and then a flash- two flashes. What was going on over there? A burst of fire and light, and then there was a glorious bird riding on his shoulder, made of flame and joy- a phoenix? She seethed with jealousy, and then anger when a second burst of fire happened and the bird and the boy both vanished.

Then Snape snarled, and thrust his wand skywards- the newborn Fiendfyre he’d been summoning whooshed up in a column of deadly flame into the air, where- what on earth was that? Gretchen was completely lost, now. She was certain she wasn’t narrating any of this. The deadly flames disappeared into a hole in the sky! And out of that hole flew-

“Whatever that stuff was, I’m glad I’m immune to it. Was that fiendfyre?” Rumbled the great golden dragon, winging its way down to the battlefield as even the wizards of the Concept looked on in awe. It was the size of a battleship- hundreds of feet long, and it had some kind of harness wrapped around it- enough rigging for a hundred men to ride comfortable. Instead, strapped in at the top was a single man in full plate armor, wielding a hammer and glowing with some kind of holy aura.

The dragon thudded to earth in a shower of dirt, knocking half the combatants off their feet and dragging the whole battle to a halt. Then it spoke in a remarkably pleasant voice. “Uh, hello everyone, looks like you’ve all been having zombie issues as well. Has anyone seen my husband?”

Things fell apart rather rapidly, after that.

----

I woke up in a bed in the infirmary with Fawkes the phoenix, Dumbledore and my wife leaning over me. I’d been restored to my adult form, at some point. Behind them stood- it looked like some caricature of a Paladin, an absolute beef tank in overly elaborate platemail with a giant hammer. He looked like he felt as awkward about this as I did. “Okay, guess I’m dead then,” I muttered. “Glad my next afterlife’s going to include you though,” I said to my wife. She smiled but I saw the tears in her eyes as she leaned down to hug me. She still had that absurd strength going for her, I noted blearily as my bones creaked.

“I’m glad to see you too, you idiot. What is it with you and trying to get yourself killed during climactic moments? I’m so mad at you, god I love you.” She laughed and I smiled weakly in apology at Dumbledore. Wives, right? He shook his head in polite bewilderment. Oh yeah, confirmed bachelor.

With her present in the world, I felt a tug on the thread of my narrative control. Wait, I thought I had my own story now? Hold on, had I just been- “Haley, have we been telling different parts of the same story this entire time?” She nodded, having guessed the same thing. I fell back against the bed, mind blown. I can’t even begin to guess the implications of that right now. There was too much pressing for me to stay silent and enjoy the moment. “So, why am I not a zombie, and why are the rest of you not zombies, and- oh yeah- how are you here?” I asked her.

Dumbledore held up a vial with something blue-glowing and swirling inside it. “In answer to your questions- we were able to extract the memory from you with the Pensieve technique, your wife rather decisively ended the immediate battle with an astonishing display of firepower and demonstrated immunity to spellcraft, and- I have no idea.”

Haley still hadn’t let go of me but she spoke as well. “Once my other self brought it back to me and we finally merged for good, I took Matt here and came through using Lord Asriel’s portal device.” From Golden Compass? That was definitely going to require further explanation, later. “They aren’t just here Sean, they’re spreading all over the multiverse. Anywhere they can find a door into. For now they’re back beyond the castle wards but it’s only temporary. We’ve taken and deprogrammed as many of the citizens as we can but they have the whole world out there. This is a siege situation. This may be one of the only safe places left. Anywhere.”

Dumbledore nodded. “Luckily, Hogwarts is well equipped for a siege, and they won’t find us so easy a target for a second pass. We may have some days.”

Days with Haley sounded like heaven, to me. But this was a hard situation to find silver linings in. “How are we going to antimeme the entire world? More than the entire world? Don’t tell me you’re thinking about taking a trip to the SCP universe or something.”

She shook her head. “No- the Concept likes to spread using local tools and techniques because they’re more effective on story denizens. We’ll have to fight it the same way. Don’t worry- I have an idea.”

Fine, fine, be cryptic, my lovely wife. “Okay, last question. Did Severus always know how to summon Fiendfyre?” Sure couldn’t remember him throwing that one around, in the books.

A rasping voice spoke up, from outside the curtain of my little infirmary bed. “Indeed not. But help was offered, from a most unexpected source.” Snape stepped into the room and for a second I was concerned that my eyes might pop out of my skull.

He was still cut and battered from the fight. But his right shoulder was bared, and on it was the horrifying, shrivelled face of Lord Voldemort.