Be Careful
31: What You Create
By Anne B. Walsh
Draco was still snickering when he joined Ray and the rest of the usual crowd in an empty classroom on the fourth floor, Abby bouncing along behind him. They're just about to attack the castle… and then they get arrested. Doesn't make a twig's worth of sense, but it's brilliant.
"Out," Ray said to his little sister, pointing at the door.
Abby pouted. "I never get to do anything."
"You can come back when we have it working. I don't want to have to answer questions while I'm trying to do new magic."
"Can she stay if she's quiet?" Draco asked.
"Is that possible?" Hermione said skeptically.
Abby clapped both hands across her mouth.
"We'll stand over here together," said Luna, beckoning the littler girl to her side. "If we want to whisper, we'll do it quietly enough that we don't bother you."
Draco gave Luna a thankful smile. She's always so thoughtful…
Quickly, he censored the following thoughts and edged into the small crowd around the table that Ray was bent over. "What's up?"
"Opposite of down," Ginny quipped. Harry tweaked a bit of her hair.
"We're trying to see if we can't get a look at what's going on in your world," Hermione said, waving at the bowl of water sitting on the table, surrounded by runes and complex strings of numbers. "We were able to build on the spell we used to send you that message back over the summer, but actual real-time seeing requires a focus point with more bilateral congruence."
Draco frowned. "Say that again in English."
"They want to use you to try to get a line on your world," Meghan translated.
"Oh. Why didn't you just say so?"
"I did." Hermione scowled. "It's not my fault none of you bother to learn the proper terminology."
"Why should we bother?" Ron said, grinning. "We can just ask you."
"I won't always be around, Ronald!"
"I thought that's what these were for." Ron tapped at the broad gold ring on his left hand. "Or do you want a divorce already? I can't give you the house, we don't have one yet, but I suppose I could—"
Hermione shut him up firmly. Ray and Ginny exchanged an exasperated look, while Harry, Draco, and the rest of the group snickered.
"We got most of the build on the spell done already," Neville put in. "Professor Flitwick's letting it count for the start of our independent Charms project."
"Our? I thought these had to be done on your own. You know, independent."
"No, that just means it's not part of a class. We can team up." Neville grinned ruefully. "Good thing, too, with what I tend to do if I go out on my own. Remember Transfiguration last year?"
Everyone laughed.
"Enlighten me," Draco said, leaning back against the table.
"That's what I said." Neville assumed a stiffly upright pose. "And the next thing I knew, I was a candle, and my wick was just catching. Trouble was, no one knew which candle I'd been turned into, and there are thousands in the castle. By the time anyone could've found me, I'd have been burned right down the middle, but Harry snuffed all the fires in the castle right off, so I got away with a little scorched hair."
"Every fire?" Draco raised an eyebrow at the unscarred image of his rival. "Impressive."
Harry raised a hand and blew across his fingers. A flame sprang up at the end of each one. "Runs in the family," he said. "I don't suggest you try to surprise Lyssa in the shower. Last bloke to do that still walks a little wide from where she flamed him."
Every boy in the room winced in sympathy.
"I think it's ready," Ray said, standing up. "Draco?"
"Where do you need me?" Draco stepped closer to the table, looking over the layout of the spell. If he didn't focus too hard on any one part, there seemed to be a pattern to it that whispered that his place was… "Here on the left?"
"Yeah. How'd you know?"
"Looked right. And don't even start."
"Impressive," said Harry. "I've never seen anyone stop him from making a stupid pun before."
"You just aren't fast enough." Draco placed his hand in a clear spot on the tabletop. "Here?"
"There." Ray mirrored him on the other side of the bowl of water. "Now, if someone can get it activated for me, Hermione…"
"I'm coming, I'm coming, hold your thestrals," Hermione grumbled, sliding between Ginny and Meghan. "All right, let me see…"
The spell was non-verbal, but Draco could feel the power building in the room as though he were outside before a storm. The hair on his arms prickled, and cold sweat began to break out on his shoulders. Ray, across from him, was shifting from foot to foot uneasily, rubbing at the back of his neck with his free hand.
Hermione's wand tip traced two graceful curves and a circle in the air, then jabbed forward. Draco felt a sudden jerk, as though a hook had caught in his robes and pulled him towards the bowl of water, and Ray stumbled a half-pace inward but recovered before he took his hand from its place on the table. "Is that it?" he asked his twin.
"That's it." Hermione was breathing heavily, but her eyes were gleaming with satisfaction. "I think it's working. Take your hands away and see what happens."
Draco lifted his hand from the table. Ray shook his out and transferred the motion to the rest of his body, shaking like a wet dog. "It'd better not have that kind of side effect every time we use it," he said. "Otherwise no one's going to want to get near it."
"I think it was just a first-time thing—" Hermione broke off with a gasp, and Draco couldn't blame her. He'd jumped back a pace himself.
The table was changing shapes.
Without spilling the water in the bowl, without even rippling it, the sides of the table folded down, the runes and numbers shifting their places, until what stood before them was a tall podium, the bowl perched on the left side of its slanted top with the outline of a human hand beside it.
"Is it done?" Abby whispered.
"I think so." Hermione approached the podium cautiously. "I hadn't thought it would look like this, though. How would you even use it?"
"Overthinking a bit, Neenie?" Ray slipped around his sister and laid his hand against the outlined one on the podium's top.
The water in the bowl flashed once, then began to shine with steady light.
"There," Ray said in satisfaction. "It's working."
Hermione looked over her twin's shoulder. "Brilliant," she said dryly. "We've created a transdimensional mirror."
"What?" said Draco.
His voice echoed out of the bowl an instant later.
"That's not a real test, though," said Harry. "Draco's here, so it won't have any trouble finding him. What about the other me? What's he doing?"
"I don't know." Ray frowned at the outline of his hand. "There are runes by each of the fingers, but I'm not sure what they say…"
Draco crossed behind his friend to have a look, glancing into the bowl along the way. His own face looked back at him, with a thoughtful expression that surprised him.
Funny how little I look like Lucius when I do that…
"The one for the thumb is speech," he said after a moment's examination. "The forefinger is growth. I don't think I know the others. Hermione?"
"Middle finger is two crossed," Hermione reported after a moment of examining it. "Sight and growth together. The ring finger is time, and the little is backwards."
"Now if we just knew what it meant," said Ray, still watching the image in the bowl.
"Am I really that interesting?" Draco said. "You could just look up at me, you know."
"I'm trying to see how much lag time it has. It'll be interesting to know if we're seeing what's happening as it happens, or if it's already happened…"
"Can I see that sight and growth one?" said Harry, coming forward to look at the runes himself. "How is it crossed?"
"Why don't you just try pressing down on one of them?" Ron suggested.
"Without knowing what they do?" Ginny turned on her brother. "Are you stupid? No, wait, forget I asked, of course you are. It's you."
"Maybe sight and growth means the picture will get bigger," Luna suggested from her place beside Abby. "So that we can all see it."
"Worth a try." Ray depressed his middle finger.
A picture sprang to life in the air in front of the podium. Draco stared at himself. Himself stared back.
Should I say it? I don't know if I should say it. Maybe I'll say it anyway…
"Do these robes make me look fat?" he asked, echoed a moment later by his doppelganger.
The girls all laughed, and the boys snickered appreciatively. Draco grinned and finger-combed an errant bit of hair back into place.
"So middle finger makes a picture we can all see," said Ray, examining his hand. "Probably because everyone knows what that means." Another round of snickers greeted this. "Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week."
"Won't your feet get tired?" Abby asked cheekily.
"Quiet, you. So just plain growth would probably…"
Draco's face in the picture grew until it filled the whole space, glowing peachy-pink.
"Do you mind?" Draco demanded.
His voice did not echo. The picture's lips moved, but no sound came from them.
"The thumb is like a mute button," Hermione announced. "It turns the sound on and off."
"Great." Draco scowled at the picture. "Can we please shrink me back down to size? I don't look good this close up."
"I bet you're gay," said Harry.
Draco turned to him indignantly, about to snap back, then recognized the line from the film he'd just finished watching and answered Harry's grin with one of his own. "Am not."
As if his image had been listening, it shrank back to human size, then farther, until there was a picture of the whole room hovering in front of the podium.
"So that's what the backwards is for," said Ray. "When you add it to growth, it makes the picture smaller, so you can see more."
Abby waved at herself.
"What about time?" Ginny asked. "Does that let you see the future?"
"I doubt it," said Hermione. "That's really tricky magic, and I don't think we could have done it with something this simple. But maybe if you use that with backwards… that's it! Ray, try that!"
Ray pressed his last two fingers down. The scene froze, then began to move again, but this time the tiny people in it were moving backwards. Draco watched as the podium uncreated itself, as Hermione and Ron unkissed, as he walked backwards out of the room and up the hall, Abby behind him all the way—
"Let up on it, Ray," Harry suggested. "Let's see if it goes normally."
Ray released the pressure. The scene animated once more, Draco walking down the hallway and grinning, occasionally turning to say something to Abby.
"Try pressing the time finger once," Neville said. "See what that does."
Ray tapped his ring finger against the wood. Draco and Abby froze in place.
"It's just like a video player!" Abby exclaimed. "There's play, pause, rewind, mute, even zoom!"
"Abby, I think you just named this thing," said Ray, lifting his hand from the podium. The picture vanished. "The TVP."
"TVP?" asked everyone in semi-chorus.
"Transdimensional video player." Ray grinned. "Always assuming the other part of it works. Harry, would you do the honors?"
"Gladly." Harry stepped up to where Ray had been and placed his own hand against the outline. The bowl flashed once more. "Where do I press—ah, here."
Another picture glowed to life—a tall, dark-bearded man lying unconscious on a forest floor.
"What the—" Harry snorted. "Ray, I think you dropped a decimal somewhere. That's not me."
Draco leaned forward, peering intently at the face. "I know him," he said. "I've seen him somewhere before. I think he works at the Ministry…"
Then he spotted something that hadn't been there an instant earlier. "Harry, zoom it in. Get it close on his face. I think I know what's going on."
He allowed himself a second for amusement at his unthinkingly authoritative tone—to Potter, of all people—as the picture blurred, then reformed around a huge set of dark, threatening features.
"Oh!" Abby gasped. "I see it, Draco, I see it, I do!"
"What?" said Hermione, turning to face her sister. "What do you see?"
"The scar!" Abby pointed. "Remember, the very first day we met, Draco told us Harry in his world had a scar, and look, that man has one in just the right place!"
Everyone turned to look. Very faint on the high forehead, the thin line of a lightning-bolt scar could just be seen.
"Did we see into the future somehow?" said Ginny, though she sounded doubtful.
"Let's have a look around," said Harry, wiggling his fingers. The picture shrank, revealing that the man was not alone. A woman, small and plump, and a mousy man with blood soaking his robes lay beside him.
"Ouch," said Ron, looking at the bleeding man. "What d'you reckon happened to him?"
"Splinched himself," said Neville in the tones of an expert.
"You would know," said Harry. Meghan and Ginny smacked him from opposite sides. "Ow. Shall we try backing it up and see if we can't tell who they are?"
"You can if you want to see what happened to them," said Luna, coming forward with Abby. "But who they are is easy. It's Harry and Ron and Hermione, from Draco's world, and they're under Polyjuice Potion. If you look, you can just see their hair starting to change back."
"That's me?" Ron sucked air through his teeth. "That's going to hurt in an hour or two."
"You're right," said Hermione in a fascinated tone, staring at her other self. "They're the other us. But what happened to them?"
"Only one way to find out," said Harry, and pressed down with his last two fingers.