Chapter Text
“Right. Up you get, there’s a good lass. On to the next station, alrigh’?”
Blood pounded in my head. I squinted at the man keeping me upright by the tight grip he had on my upper arm, but nausea forced me to shut my eyes. The light stabbed at my eyeballs. What the heck was going on? I swear I was… wait- how did I get here?
The man waited obligingly until I had my feet under me before letting go, and pointed me towards what looked to be a temporary first aid station. One hand massaging my forehead, and the other clamped around the soft blanket that was half draped around my shoulders, I stumbled over to the woman waiting impatiently beside the bed.
Everything felt slightly wrong, like the floor was jumping up to meet every step I was taking. I focused on my feet. My pyjama pants hung off me like balloon pants. Something wasn’t right. I didn’t feel right.
“I swear we’re turning out more kids than the boom after the war,” the woman muttered to herself as she helped me up onto the bed.
“Um… what’s going on?” I asked, coughing midway through. My throat clicked as I swallowed harshly; it felt like I hadn’t had anything to drink for days.
The woman ignored my timid question, briskly stepping closer and grabbing my hand. She didn’t bother to explain what she was doing, and as the throbbing in my head decreased, I could keep my eyes open better and see more of what was happening. A sting from one finger alerted me to the fact that I should probably take advantage of that right about now.
“Um, excuse me. What are you doing… exactly?”
The woman didn’t pause as I snatched my hand back, and it struck me that she hadn’t introduced herself.
“Checking your blood. Identifying you. Filling out your papers,” the woman said in reply, the short, terse statements firing like shots.
“O- oh,” I said, like an idiot, before asking, “what for?”
She turned and looked at me like I was an imbecile. I shrank back into my blanket, clutching tightly at the fabric. It was just a question, and not even a stupid one, I didn’t think. One minute I was watching the third Hobbit movie on TV, cosy under my blanket, and the next I was waking up with a pounding headache in an undisclosed location. This reeked of a cover up. Was there- I don’t know, some kind of conspiracy happening in my street or something? All witnesses abducted-and-put-into-witness-protection type of crazy?
I blinked as several sheafs of paper were shoved into my chest, one hand coming up automatically to secure them. The still unnamed woman chivvied me off the bed and pointed in the opposite direction from where I had come.
“Follow the corridor, there’s another station set up a bit further down.”
Meekly, I followed her instructions. You didn’t see the lady; she was immaculately dressed and had the killer glare to match. I wasn’t saying no to that. She said go, I skedaddled.
The next station along the curved corridor looked much the same, with the addition of two comfy armchairs, and the disappearing back of someone who looked just as bewildered as I did (the Michael Jackson pyjama pants and lack of shirt kind of gave it away).
Wait a minute. Was this- was this a processing line? How many people did these guys kidnap?
A frazzled looking man jumped up from one of the armchairs, shuffling forward with an almost expectant expression. He held out his hand, and I stared dumbly at it for a moment before it occurred to me that he probably wanted the papers I was carrying. Papers I hadn’t even thought to peek at. Damn. Jerkily, I handed them over, and was motioned towards the other chair as he sat down again. Muttering to himself, the man quickly rifled through the sheets, eyes flicking back and forth.
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.
Suddenly, the man snapped the papers and sat back, eyes jumping to meet mine. “Alright then,” he declared with a grin, “I think I know where to put you.”
Alarm flared through me.
“Put me?” I echoed, fingers clenching. I glanced around surreptitiously, attempting to locate any nearby exits. The walls and floors of this place were covered in dark, glossy tiles, and I frowned. Who would do that? It gave the whole corridor a dark kind of look. I wondered how much they paid to light this place if it was all like this.
“Oh, yes. We don’t have a lot of time here. You need to- Oh bollocks,” he swore, cutting himself off, “I forgot to do the introductory shite. Alright.” He cleared his throat. “Miss Longbottom,” he began, and I blinked.
Miss what? That’s not me. Who do these people think they have in custody?
…am I in custody?
This place was getting weirder by the moment. I peered more closely at the man opposite. He was wearing dated business wear under… a dressing gown? Surely not. Maybe it was a, I don’t know, cloak?
“…I am Unspeakable Bode,” he was saying, and I refocused on him (finally someone who introduced themselves!). “You are currently in the Department of Mysteries after experiencing a trans-dimensional relocation ritual designed to return you to your original place and time. Soon after you were born, your parents, who were part of a select group of Unspeakables, decided to place you somewhere outside the bounds of space and time of this dimension, in order to keep you safe from the war which was ravaging the country at the time.”
I started laughing.
“What?” I spluttered. “You- you can’t be serious. This a prank, isn’t it? This… it’s a joke.”
Mr. Bode looked unamused, and removed something from his… cloak thing (damn, it was a robe, wasn’t it?).
“I’m afraid not, Miss,” he said, and raised a- a wand at me.
I couldn’t help it, I flinched. It was just a piece of wood, but he- he looked like it would do something. The man peered at me for a moment before levelling the stick at the bed to our side, and-
-flicked a flash of light at it.
I blinked.
I blinked a second time.
The- the bed wasn’t there anymore. Instead, there was a pig.
“Uh…”
The pig snuffled and swung its head around.
I shrieked and shot up out of my chair, taking several large steps away. That was a fricking big pig. What the hell. What the- what was going on?!
“-are you listening?” the man asked.
“Um, nooo. I’m currently staring at this pig. Which appeared. In place of the bed. What.”
He sighed and flicked the- the wand, again. Before my eyes, the pig transformed back into the bed. Pink, leathery skin morphed back to steel and white fabric, its little hooves changing to become wheeled- wheeled-
My throat tightened. I sucked in a breath, but it didn’t seem enough. I shook my head, denying what I’d seen, before abruptly stumbling forward to slap a hand on the bed. It felt real. I ducked my head down.
Breathe in.
Out.
In.
Out.
Okay (not okay).
“Are you alright, Miss Longbottom?” the man prompted, stepping closer, but being careful to remain out of arm’s reach. I appreciated that.
I nodded wordlessly in reply to his question.
“Good, good. Was that enough proof for you?”
I stared at the wand in his hands. It was a deceptively slender thing; fragile looking and innocent. Nothing about it betrayed that it could- could just shoot out light and change things. What would have happened if he did that to me?
A bolt of ice shot down my spine.
“What,” I croaked, licking chapped lips. “What else can you do?”
“Need a more solid proof, do you? Well, no matter. Most of the others weren’t convinced after a single spell, either.” He smiled, and I most certainly wasn’t fucking comforted.
He levelled his wand at me.
“Wait!”
“Wingardium leviosa.”
My feet left the floor.
I screamed. I’m not talking about a little shriek here, either, I’m talking about terrifying-rollercoaster-oh-my-god-I’m-going-to-die kind of screaming. I screamed my lungs out at the highest decibel I could manage.
“Merlin, you’re loud. Silencio!”
My screams cut off. The silence rung in my ears. I could feel my throat still working, but no sound emerged. I stopped, and clenched my jaw so tightly my teeth creaked.
I stared at the ground and focused on my breathing. My stomach rolled.
Swinging my arms around, my body kind of… followed. It felt like anti-grav, and it would have been super cool if it weren’t for my heart jack-rabbiting in my chest. Holy shit. I was floating.
“Are you done now?” Bode drawled out, tone completely unimpressed.
I felt about an inch tall.
“Yes,” I said in a small voice, half surprised my voice worked that time.
He’s shaming me for freaking out? What the- really?! I’d like to see you adjust better than me after being translocated into an unfamiliar environment and hit with magic.
Though, if I remembered right, Unspeakables were meant to be ready for anything, right? In their line of work weird shit could happen at any moment. I thought of the scene in Order of the Phoenix with the Time room, and winced.
Oh god, I’m in Harry Potter.
Bode carefully floated me back to the floor and resumed his seat, flicking through the papers again.
“Right then, so now that you know magic’s real,” he said, looking up with a raised brow.
I nodded shakily.
He continued, “Your name is Henrietta Longbottom. In 1980 you were sent away from this reality, which was eleven years ago. It’s now 1991 and you are eleven years old. Is this right?”
“I… I’m 23.”
What- what is Henrietta? My name? Christ. And Longbottom?!
“Oh, dear. That seems to be happening with alarming frequency today,” he said, and scribbled something with a quill that suddenly appeared in his hand. “Most of the people who’ve come through have been older, but there’s been a not insignificant group who are at least a decade older than their physical appearance.”
“Their… what?” I choked out, and glanced down at my body.
My… my small body. Small hands.
Hands that are tiny, body’s tiny, close to the floor, clothes are baggy don’t fit right oh my god what the hell- things are wrongwrongwrong-
“Don’t have time for this,” Bode muttered from his seat, and another light flashed.
I felt something bubbly and light come over me, washing away the growing hysterics. I blinked slowly at the other man.
“What.”
“Low-powered cheering charm,” he replied succinctly, eyes back on the papers. “Works better than a calming draught in some situations and with none of the finicky potions matching to do. You wouldn’t believe what a calming draught reacts with…”
I stared at him. Did he just…?
“Anyway,” Bode continued, fishing out a particular sheet, “here’s what you need. Your documentation for the Processing and Release Division, and your introductory pamphlet for this dimension,” he handed me another folded sheet, before stepping over to a filing cabinet I hadn’t even noticed against the outer wall (or well, it had the larger curve, so it was on the outside of the curved wall? You know what, ignore me-), and started digging around inside.
“Ah, here we go,” he brandished a red envelope victoriously. I hesitantly accepted it, the deep red colour giving off a nagging familiarity.
Bode glanced at his watch, brows jumping to his hairline. “Well, that’s not good,” he said, looking at me, “we’re out of time. Time for you to move along.”
A stone dropped in my stomach. “W- what?” I stuttered, standing at his prodding, and barely managing to keep a hold of both the paperwork and the blanket. One corner of it was dragging against the depressingly polished surface of the tiled floor.
“It’s time for you to go!” Bode told me, with a near-condescending grin, before shooing me further down the corridor. “I’ve got my next appointment waiting.”
I could hear the muffled slap of bare feet on tile, and glanced down at my own feet, toes wriggling in thick socks. How many had Bode… processed… already, today? When he pushed again at my back, I didn’t protest, shuffling along quietly.
“The howler will open after a few minutes once you’ve reached the foyer!” Bode called after me, before speaking a quieter greeting to whoever had taken my place.
I shuffled along in a stupor, not paying attention to where I was heading until a door rose up in front of me. The end of the corridor. I reached out one hand only for the door to swing open. Jumping back at the (unnatural) display, I shivered as hairs prickled along my arms. Hurrying through the now open doorway, I barely took notice of the décor – same dark tiles in black and green, huge fireplaces along one wall, several cushy armchairs placed – because there were people.
“Another one’s come in!” cried a dark-haired girl in a t-shirt long enough to serve as a dress. I frowned internally, why hadn’t we been provided with proper clothing? The fireplaces were lit, but I could see several boys in just their ill-fitting boxers. I suppose no one had come through naked, yet.
The girl next to the speaker looked up and blinked owlishly, peering in my direction. Her eyes looked- odd. Unfocused. She had red marks on each side of her nose, I noticed as I came closer, and it clicked. She must have glasses, but it didn’t look like she had them now. Not wearing them when she- came here? However the hell we got here.
“Hello,” I said abruptly as I reached the pair. “Would either of you know what I meant if I said a Drarry fic?”
Not something I’d read often, but it was the most popular pairing in the fandom.
Their eyes lit up.
“Oh my god, yes!” the first girl said excitedly. “It’s my favourite-”
The other girl elbowed her in the side.
“Everyone here is from the same world,” the second girl said, squinting at my pyjama pants. I sat down.
“How do you know? The multiverse theory has just been proven, after all. We could be from similar, or completely different worlds that just have Drarry fanfics in common,” I pointed out.
“True,” she acknowledged, one shoulder lifting in a lazy shrug. “But I asked Unspeakable Bode, and he told me that the ritual only grabs people from the one reality. That we’d all been sent to the same place with the original spell. Or ritual. Whatever. I wonder how many of us are Harry Potter fans?”
The girl next to her giggled.
I blinked, before straightening. “Shit, sorry. I’m- well. Apparently I’m Henrietta. Kind of a stupid name, right?”
The half-blind girl shrugged again, blonde hair falling in her face. She pushed it back with a huff. “It’s not a bad name. You could have gotten Maud.”
I waited, but she didn’t elaborate.
“Is that- is that the name you… got?” I’m sure my expression was a sight.
She cracked a small grin. “No. My name’s Emily. Same as before, actually.”
I groaned, “Lucky.”
“I’m Winnifred now, but you can call me Winnie. Cute, right?” the dark-haired girl piped in.
I nodded. “Nice to meet you both.”
“Have you-” Emily began, but was cut off by an acrid smell.
“Is that smoke?” I asked, frowning.
“Oh. You still need to listen to your Howler.” Winnie observed, pointing to the red envelope by my knee.
“Shit. Okay. I guess I better get this before it starts yelling…”
Hesitantly, I picked up the envelope, wisps of smoke coming off it and everything, and carefully cracked the wax seal. It immediately flew out of my hands to float at eye level, paper folding origami-like to reveal a somewhat feminine looking paper face. Memory sparked, and I recalled the Howler sent in Harry and Ron’s second year, after the debacle with the flying car.
“To whom it may concern,” it spoke.
“This is an obligatory message sent to all recently dimensionally trans-located individuals on the 23rd of May, 1991. Greetings, and welcome to the Department of Mysteries. We are currently working on contacting your families and providing believable backstories that will allow you to seamlessly re-join Wizarding society.”
The voice was female, bland, and sort of soothing in that answering-phone recording way.
“You are of Wizarding kind, which means that you have magic. After your physical self turns eleven years old, you will receive a letter inviting you to attend Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. If you wish to control your magic and avoid crippling your magical core, you will need to attend, or organise attendance at another Wizarding school.
“We are aware that some of you possess knowledge of the future, which is forbidden to be shared with those of the present. Do not worry about affecting the timeline, as we have taken the necessary precautions to prevent you from sharing your knowledge of this timeline with anyone who is not in the same situation as you. To repeat, you can only speak of future-knowledge with children who were also sent to the other world. If you attempt to communicate with anyone else, or even speak in the earshot of other people, the Binding Magical Contract you have been placed under will prevent you from speaking. You will not be able to communicate via speech, writing, thought, or any other method to get this information across. Please do not try.
“Your families have been made aware of the situation, and know of the restrictions placed upon you. They will be arriving sometime within the next twelve hours, so please read the information packet provided to familiarise yourself with this reality, and have a nice day.”
With that, it tore itself up. Ragged confetti floated to the floor in smoking pieces, where they slowly turned to ash.
“What.”
(I feel like I’m saying that way too much, today)
“I know, right? This is unreal!” Winnie squealed. “We get to go to Hogwarts! And they didn’t say anything about not fixing the timeline anyway, or saving people, or anything – just talking about it. This is gonna be great!”
Emily looked dubious. “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy, Winnie. They probably have something in place that stops us from fucking up the timeline too much, but if we try to do something that only tweaks it, then we could maybe change something…” she trailed off, thoughtful.
“Hell yeah, I want to save so many people.”
I jolted at the word. People. The characters from the book were people now. Shit. This was going to be an adjustment.
“Right,” I mumbled.
Grabbing my pamphlet, I unfolded it, then paused in amazement as it unfolded to be a lot bigger than it looked. It was a thick wad of paper now. Mentally filing that under ‘ridiculous but also really cool Wizarding things’, I flattened the paper and looked at the first page. It was a table of contents. Alright, I’ll admit that that’s helpful.
“It looks like it’s got some preparatory history, cultural, and societal notes in here to get us ready for everyday life. It’s pretty thorough,” Emily said, sounding impressed, “so I’m confused as to why the Ministry is portrayed as so incompetent in the books.”
“Oh, it’s not the Ministry,” Winnie replied as I listened with half an ear, busy scanning the lines of text. “It’s actually the people. The higher-ups are threatened by competent people who look like they might steal their jobs, so they shunt them down to low-level administerial positions to keep them out of the way.”
“Huh,” Emily said. “That makes sense. What’s the chance that these people are Slytherins, you think?”
“Hah, no guess even required. Definitely snakes. It’s even a good strategy, if it didn’t neuter your competent workforce. It’s just our luck that we got someone who’s both good at their job and invested, otherwise we could have been stuck with some one-page rag detailing how to fit into Wizarding society in the vein of those pamphlets during the Second War. Oh, need protection against the Dark Arts?” Winnie chirped, affecting a cheerfully fake tone. “Why, you need John Brainiac’s All-Purpose Defence against Legilimens, it’s only fifty galleons apiece. No price’s too high to pay for your safety after all. It’d probably be some sexist joke telling women to try and snag wealthy husbands, because obviously we’re not good for anything else.”
I sniggered, and looked up. Winnie had her nose thrust in the air and was sneering obnoxiously. Emily was trying to keep stoic, but her lips were twitching in badly repressed amusement. For a second we just stared at each other, before collapsing in mirth. It really wasn’t all that funny, but… I think we needed it. Humour was a good deflection tool to keep attention away from the real problem, after all.
“Ah, hah, okay,” I said after a minute, gasping for breath. “Seriously, though. What are we going to do? What’s the situation here? Is our little group here going to be supplementing or replacing people at Hogwarts? Shit, it’s 1991, right? We’ll be in Harry’s year.”
Briefly, I glanced around the room, taking note of new arrivals. Several people looked shell-shocked, and quite deservingly too. This was a shit kind of day. Awe and wonder and overwhelming confusion… yeah. I was going to need some time to process.
The boy I saw earlier with the Michael Jackson pyjama pants had picked up an ill-fitting sweater from somewhere, and there was a small pile of quilts near the fireplace. Huh. I guess they didn’t want us freezing to death, then. Not everyone here would be used to a cold climate, and I pitied anyone who had come from somewhere in the height of summer. These tiles just seemed to suck the warmth out of you.
“I don’t think we’re replacing people,” Emily was saying as I tuned back in. “I don’t recognise any of the people here, either from the movies or from the, quite frankly, lacklustre descriptions in the book series. Rowling really wasn’t good at keeping consistent.”
I nodded. That was true enough, though not so much with the characters, I’d thought.
“What do you mean?” Winnie said. “That’s a good thing, right? We don’t have to conform to expectation.”
“It depends, I think, on what families we belong to,” I admitted, “I mean, if someone’s in a family loyal to- to Voldemort,” I stuttered, the name hanging in the air for a moment like a bird on a precipice, poised to take flight, “then that could be bloody dangerous.”
“Oh.” Winnie sounded a little subdued at that.
Emily nodded. “Exactly. I mean, imagine having to live with the Malfoy’s or something, with what happens in their Manor?”
We all shuddered at the thought.
“Well, at least I know I’m not going there,” I said, relieved.
“Oh?” Emily jumped on the idea. “You already know what family you’re, uh, from, in this world?”
“Mmm, yeah. Bode called me Miss Longbottom. What did he call you guys?”
Winnie blinked. “He didn’t call me anything, really. He was in a rush for me, and hurried me along as fast as he could. I didn’t even get the chance to ask questions, really. I saw my name on the paperwork. Missed the surname, though.”
“MacDougal, for me,” Emily said. “I don’t even remember a MacDougal family. Do you?”
“…not really,” I admitted. “But then, I’m not so good with names outside of the main characters. Could there have been a background character of that name?”
She shrugged. “I suppose. I guess I’ll have to wait and find out.”
“At least you two know,” Winnie piped up. “I didn’t think to ask. Oh, now I’m nervous, what if it’s a Dark family? I don’t think I could take it with what’s coming.”
“Hey, hey, don’t worry,” I said. “Even if you are stuck with a Dark family, I’m sure you can ask Dumbledore for asylum at the end of Fourth year. You’d probably just have to stick at Hogwarts until the Final Battle.”
Emily shook her head. “No. Hogwarts gets taken over, remember? Snape’s Headmaster. Even if he wants to protect the kids, I don’t think he’d countermand Voldemort asking to see a runaway kid of one of his followers. Who knows, he might do what he did to Draco and brand the poor kid.”
I shivered. That sort of situation… I’d probably end up dying, to be honest. I wouldn’t have to guts to stand up to Voldemort, or follow through in killing someone, and I’d probably end up on the wrong end of a Killing Curse after a refreshing round of the Cruciatus. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even the brat Draco was for the majority of his years at Hogwarts. I mean, he was still a kid, years younger than I used to be (and technically still was) when he got the Mark and his family’s survival dumped on his head.
Taking a closer look at Winnie, I wondered what family she might have come from. The dark hair didn’t really call any to mind except the Blacks, and Winnie didn’t have the pale skin or ice blue eyes that seemed prominent in that family. Maybe she came from a smaller Pureblood family (Bode had hinted that the children were all Pureblood, or Halfblood at the least) that wasn’t in the Harry Potter books. Rowling couldn’t have listed them all, and I doubt the Wizarding community in Britain would be anything less than 10,000, despite the suspiciously small student population.
Letting the conversation lapse into silence, I picked up the information packet again, pushing my glasses up my nose to see better. The other two did the same. Hitching my blanket more securely around me, I settled in to read about the fantastic world I'd found myself in.