• Previous
• The Waiting Game The Last Horcrux The Rite of Sealing The Chronicled Worlds The New Neighbors The Guided Tour The Best Case The Vital Questions The Worst Case The Truest Friends The Next Steps The Wakening Powers The Secret Desires The Known Names The New Arrivals The Hardest Choice The Last Beginning The Unasked Question The Power to Choose The Enemy Revealed The Final Elements The Just Deserts The Story Continues
• Next

"Roll-call!"

Legendbreakers converged from all directions, flooding into the main room of the cottage, currently dominated by its enormous Christmas tree. The tall, dark-haired wizard standing by the tree with a scroll in his hands watched them come, nodding as each new singleton or couple found a place to sit.

"All right, people," he said when everyone was settled. "We are officially masked, so just this once we're going to be able to use former names. This is the last time, though, got it? As soon as I get done reading everybody's new names off here," he tapped the scroll with one finger, "that's what we're known as from this point on. Everyone clear on that?"

"Yes, sir," "Crystal," "Got it," "Roger that," floated back from various corners of the room.

"Well, then." The man grinned. "May as well start with the best. Patrick Black, formerly Sirius Black." He raised his free hand. "Present and accounted for."

"Present, certainly," said the dark-complexioned woman standing beside him. "Accounting for you is a great deal more complicated than that."

"Very funny. Carrie Black, formerly Aletha Black, present but minus her sense of humor." Sirius dodged the slap aimed for the back of his head and continued. "And their children. Henry Black, formerly Harry Potter…"

Harry saluted from the couch, using the arm which wasn't currently wrapped around Ginny.

"And Meghan Black, our very own Pearl, who needs no alteration."

"Because I'm perfect," said Meghan sweetly, batting her eyelashes. "Just the way I am."

"We'll debate that point later," said Sirius dryly, as Draco rolled his eyes and Ron pretended to gag. "Moving on from there, we have Meghan's… good friend, formerly Neville Longbottom, now…" He looked down at the scroll and raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"May I see?" asked Neville, holding out a hand. Sirius tossed the scroll over, and Neville skimmed down it and nodded. "That's right."

"With all the names in the world, you decided to pick…" Sirius grimaced. "Well, your funeral. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce Mr. Newton Fenwick."

The Pride turned as one to look at Neville. Neville returned the looks blandly.

"Should we even ask?" Draco said after a long moment.

"It's close in meaning to my original, and it explains why I'd rather go by my nickname." Neville grinned suddenly. "Besides, it means no one will ever doubt that my parents gave it to me, because why would I pick that name for myself?"

"You have a point." Draco shrugged. "Not much of one, but it's your life. I'm guessing 'Captain' is still the order of the day around here, though."

"If you'd be so kind."

"Depends on how I'm feeling."

"Moving along," said Sirius in a tone which suggested he was attempting not to laugh. "Henry's girlfriend—"

"Fiancée," Ginny corrected.

"Very true, I beg your pardon. Henry's fiancée Jenny West, formerly Ginny Weasley, and her brother Rich, formerly Ron."

"And still Lynx and Redwing, for everyday use," Hermione put in. "Possibly even for some places in Inner Time, if we do what Jason and Reyna were suggesting."

"It did sound like fun," Ron agreed. Then his grin turned wicked. "Especially some of the outfits Reyna was showing us pictures of."

Hermione scowled. "I am not dressing as a pirate wench. Not that kind, anyway. Real female pirates wore the same things as the male ones did…"

"Behave over there," called Danger from her place on the hearth, next to Remus. "Go on, Sirius, get to the twins."

"My lady's voice has spoken." Sirius bowed in Danger's direction. "Engaged to be married to Mr. Richard West and currently having a pleasant little discussion with him, we have Miss Jean White, formerly Hermione Granger-Lupin, always Neenie; sitting back to enjoy said pleasant little discussion is the lady's twin brother, Reynard White, formerly Draco Black, still our Fox; and beside him the lady of his own heart, Phoebe Moon, formerly Luna Lovegood, the once and future Starwing."

"My name will be good for the sort of thing you mean too, Hermione," said Luna, shaping a round object in front of her with her hands. "For the opposite reason from Neville's—his seems a little silly so everyone will think it's real, and mine seems a little silly so everyone will think I picked it out, that I'm trying to use a fancy name and fancy dress to hide that I can't do what I'll say I can do." She smiled. "Except I really can do it after all."

"And last but not least," said Sirius with an air of relief. "Mr. John White and his lady wife Gertrude—" He frowned. "You're keeping that? After all the complaining you've done?"

"I get to keep the nickname too." Danger grinned. "Even if dropping the last name means it might be a little hard to explain, because nothing says I have to. I'll let everybody guess how I got it, and the only thing I'll ever tell them is that they're wrong."

"Fair enough. John and Gertrude White, formerly Remus and Danger Lupin." Sirius let the scroll roll back up. "And I do believe that's everyone."

"Everyone in this domain," Harry corrected. "Some of the neighbors need a mention as well."

"Do they?" Sirius frowned. "Why would they—"

Harry pointed towards the ceiling.

"Oh, right." Setting the scroll aside, Sirius shook his head. "Seemed pretty obvious to me," he muttered.

"Yes, but we see them face to face." Remus kissed Danger on the cheek and got to his feet, stretching. "It makes a difference. Just from a description on a page, it might be difficult to tell that Miss Eve Clay was once Lily Potter, or that Miss Suzie Rioghan began as Susan Pevensie, Queen Susan of Narnia."

"I have my suspicions about Lin as well," said Aletha with a faint smile. "But that's another story."

Sirius grinned. "Literally so. And then we have our newest neighbors—" He stopped, frowning. "How'd you get hold of them, anyway, Moony? Our Chronicler finished Be Careful a while back, but she—she?" he asked Hermione, who nodded. "She hasn't even started What You Wish For as far as I'm aware, and you were right in the middle of that."

"Special permission." Remus crossed the room to look out the front window. "I'll be interested to see how she handles my arrival when she does start Chronicling that one. It was…unceremonious." A small choking sound brought his head around. "And the peanut gallery may keep its comments to itself," he informed Danger, who had both hands over her mouth.

Ron snickered. "So what's this make for him, then?" he asked. "Three different worlds he's lived in? He started out in our ridge as Snape, then jumped to the Be Careful otherworld at the end of the tell, and now he's here, calling himself Russell Evans—yeah, that's three."

"And let's not forget, he borrowed that name from yet another version of himself," Ginny added. "From The Point of No Return." She frowned. "But then why—"

"The real Russell Evans wouldn't have had enough in common with the Lily who became Miss Eve," said Luna with assurance. "His world became too different, too early, when Lily and Petunia's parents adopted him."

"I suppose that makes sense." Ginny nodded. "And Mrs. Evans is Cecilia Black from Be Careful. Later Cecilia Snape." She made a face. "That still sounds so strange to me."

"Not nearly as strange as their kid, the one they have now." Draco leaned back on the couch and propped his feet up on the low table in front of it. "Lucas Daniel Evans, age four. Formerly known as, and harboring something of a split personality of, Draco Malfoy. The particular Draco Malfoy who disguised himself as a Hufflepuff kid who looked like Tonks, got his world's Hermione to help him fix the Vanishing Cabinet in his sixth year, and then pitched a fit because she was angry that he'd lied to her."

"And he ran away through the Vanishing Cabinet when the Reality Cops invaded his world," Hermione took over from her twin. "Which took him not to Borgin and Burkes but to Outer Time, because we and the RC's were already softening the boundaries of the world and because he was so frightened that all he wanted was to get away from everything, to go somewhere that the RC's couldn't find him. But once he got to Outer Time, and started to understand how it worked, he realized that he hadn't exactly been acting on his own when he asked my counterpart to help him."

"Be fair." Harry held up a hand. "It wouldn't have happened if the possibility wasn't there in the ridge that Malfoy actually does admire Hermione and want to be her friend, but can't admit it even to himself. But in any case, it got exacerbated because you two," he pointed to Ron and Ginny, "had been placed in that world, and you knew what these two," the finger now indicated Draco and Hermione, "ought to be. The resonance of that knowledge along the Pride-bond started affecting the world, turning it into a bit of a spin, and the most susceptible person to those changes, because of all the other pressure he was under, was Malfoy."

"So he started thinking about Hermione while he was working on the Cabinet in the Room of Hidden Things," Meghan piped up. "And because it is still the Room of Requirement, and because the Pack-magic was working on her too, it eventually brought her to him. He disguised himself as Mal, and they actually did make friends. But their friendship started with a lie, and he never apologized for that." She grinned. "Not then or there, anyway."

"And he decided that clearly everything was our fault," said Neville, tweaking one of Meghan's braids. "Since it was the Pride-magic, and the Pack-bond, that got him 'requiring' Hermione to the point where the Room responded. So he found a spin of our particular tell that our Chronicler wasn't watching very carefully, and he recruited RC's—or did he make them?" He frowned. "I don't think I know how that works."

"It can be either." Luna brought her hands together gently in the air. "Some RC's are characters who gave up their individuality for a chance to 'fix the worlds'. The dark side of Legendbreakers. Others are magical, or scientific, constructs who only do what they're ordered to do. Rather like Inferi, only they were never alive to begin with."

"And he came barging in and grabbed us all, and started 'rehabilitating' us." Ron scowled. "Which is what started the whole thing off in the first place, and what happened to him with his world's Hermione was his own damn fault in any case!"

"No one has ever accused Draco Malfoy of being a particularly penetrating thinker," said Ginny. "Draco Black, on the other hand…"

"Nice recovery," said Draco appreciatively. "I may have to rethink leaving that bee in your bed."

Harry leaned around his fiancée to look at his brother. "Bee?" he inquired in the friendliest possible tone.

"I never said I'd done it, I said I was thinking about it!" Draco glowered at him. "Lay off the death glare, will you?"

"Visitors," Remus announced from the front window. "Best behavior, please."

"Or at least not worst," Danger added, joining her husband. "They are, after all, family. Of a sort."

"Not the sort I ever wanted," said Sirius under his breath. "More like the sort I ran away from…"

Aletha tweaked her husband's ear, getting a yelp from him. "We'll have to unmask the domain when they get here, won't we?" she asked. "Go to new names for everybody, speak in code if we're discussing Inner Times, and so on and so forth?"

"Well, that depends on a number of factors." Hermione sat up, dislodging Ron in the process. "Whether or not we're being Chronicled—which, yes, we are, I can feel it—but this Chronicle is only ever being published in one of the safe areas, so we could only get in trouble if we started talking about worlds whose Chroniclers don't allow anyone else to Chronicle spins or tells of the ridges they've seen. Which, I posted the list over there last week, everyone should have read it by now." She pointed to the scroll, with its dozen or so lines of neat handwriting, which adorned the wall beneath the wide selection of Pack photographs. "But, on the other hand, it's probably best if we start getting used to our new names as soon as we can, since they're going to be ours for a long time." She smiled. "Since one of the ways Outer Time is different from Inner Time is that in Outer Time, once you find the age you like best to be, you don't have to keep going."

"All in favor of swapping over to new names right away, then?" said Remus, looking back from his place by the door.

Slowly, by ones and twos, hands went up. Sirius, with a small sigh, was the last. "I'll miss being able to make those puns," he said. "Even if you did have me limited to one a year."

"Oh, don't worry." Danger winked at her brother. "I have it on good authority that our Chronicler will find some way to sneak it into any story we influence. Yours and mine both."

"Yes!" Patrick Black punched his fist towards the sky. "Victory is mine!"

Carrie sighed. "What am I going to do with this man?" she asked her children.

"Love him and hug him and love him some more?" Meghan suggested. "And feed him lots of tasty food and listen to his stories?"

"Deflate his head every once in a while," was Henry's contribution. "To keep him from floating away over the trees and scaring all the birds."

Neenie giggled. "I remember that!"

Fox pursed his lips and whistled a bird call, and it was to the sound of answering laughter that John and Danger White opened the door of their family's home to greet their guests, Eve Clay, Suzie Rioghan, and the Evans family, Russell, Cecilia, and dark-haired Luke, who was holding something carefully under his bright green winter jacket.

"She's my best Christmas present ever," he informed the room as his mother unzipped the coat for him. "Her name is Bastet."

A half-grown black kitten lifted her head from Luke's arms and narrowed her green eyes at the new room filled with strange people. Neenie frowned in concentration for a moment and shrank into her alternate form. Hello, she said cat-wise, thrusting her whiskers forward towards the newcomer. Welcome to— She broke off with a little gasp.

Thank you. Bastet purred for a moment, then began to wash a paw.

A paw which, like the rest of her, glowed to Neenie's Legendbreaker-trained eyes with the unmistakable gleam of a Chronicler.

No, he doesn't know, the cat who was not a cat said silently, continuing her washing. None of them do, except you. Though your sister may suspect. We've always been close, she and I.

Why are you here? Neenie leapt up to the back of the couch and curled her tail around her paws, hoping this would disguise how hard they were shaking. Is there something wrong? Something we should know?

No, nothing wrong. Bastet squirmed in Luke's arms, and he bent to set her on the floor, where she trotted over to look up at Neenie. Several things right, in fact. And a request I have for you. But the true reason I've come…

Yes? Neenie asked when Bastet was silent for a few moments.

I wanted to apologize. Bastet's tail lay flat against the floor, her whiskers and ears hanging limply. It may not have been my doing that you and your family were put through so much pain, I only Chronicled it, but if I hadn't ever started that Chronicle all those years ago, perhaps it wouldn't have happened—it's nearly killed me a dozen times to write down the things I see, I'm so sorry that you've had to live through them—

Neenie jumped down from the couch, resuming her human form midway there, so that it was as a brown-haired, blue-eyed young woman that she bent down to offer her hand to Bastet. "We have each other," she said as the cat sniffed her fingers. "And now we always will. Don't ever apologize for that."

Well. Bastet began to purr once more. If you say so. One green eye closed in an unmistakable wink. Does that mean you consider your pattern good enough to be spun out to a ridge?

"Absolutely," Neenie said with a trace of indignation, then blinked as the implications of this dawned on her. "You—you mean—"

Check your bookshelves when you get a chance. Bastet's purr intensified. After the holidays, obviously. But yes, I have a number of different ridges I'd like you, and the Pack and Pride, to guide for me. Familiarize yourself with the world and its rules, find your closest counterparts in whatever stretch of Inner Time looks promising, then bring them together as best you see fit and let the fireworks begin. Do you think you can do that?

"I think we would be honored," Neenie breathed. "Can you tell me anything else?"

Bits and pieces, yes. The two I have in mind for you at the moment are located on the same world, but on different continents, at different stages of development. One is medieval-magical, the other a bit more contemporary. And of course I'm sure there'll be others. Bastet wrinkled her eyes in a cat-smile. There are always others.

"And they'll be ours to watch over and protect," Neenie murmured to herself. "As long as we all shall live." She glanced up to see Luke enthralled by a game of invisible catch which Redwing and Lynx had begun, and into which Starwing, Captain, Fox, and Wolf had insinuated themselves. "What about him?" she asked, looking back at the Chronicler-cat. "What will his story be?"

You'll have to tell me. Bastet rose to her feet and stretched. I look forward to finding out. Good luck, Neenie. Or should I say… She waggled one back paw. Break a leg?

And a moment later, Luke Evans's cat bounded away into the depths of the Den, only a cat once more.

"Hunt's luck, Bastet," Neenie whispered. "Thank you for everything."

Getting to her feet, she went to join her family in their Christmas celebration.

---

Far away, a different young woman sat at a computer.

"You're welcome," she murmured aloud as she typed. "For what it's worth."

The End

• Previous
• The Waiting Game The Last Horcrux The Rite of Sealing The Chronicled Worlds The New Neighbors The Guided Tour The Best Case The Vital Questions The Worst Case The Truest Friends The Next Steps The Wakening Powers The Secret Desires The Known Names The New Arrivals The Hardest Choice The Last Beginning The Unasked Question The Power to Choose The Enemy Revealed The Final Elements The Just Deserts The Story Continues
• Next