Reaping Time

17.

Dudley Vernon Dursley has never run this fast in his life.

He has never been forced to be this sneaky, too, slinking and hiding every so often instead of strutting with confidence and taking whatever he wants.

And, dimly, he realises that, if he were not feeling so distant and pressed right now, he would have sobbed the hardest and most genuinely in his life.

He just… doesn’t want to think about what could make him do so. Nope. Not right now. He can’t, or he’ll stop and do it and – no.

`The freaks, I must get to the freaks. Maybe go after Harry after that?`

He’s not sure the freaks will let him in, let him live, but that’s fair. He just has to get there with these pipsqueaks, see them cared for by good people, then they can do whatever they want to him.

After all, he willingly trained to be a freak hunter, and didn’t even stop to think if the “freaks” specified in the contract would include babies.

Mum was horrified when she found out. She hadn’t even liked Harry but still taken him in, because he’s a baby and he’d be hunted down and killed or turned against his own blood if not, and now her Duddy did it.

Turned out, though, he couldn’t back away and out of this programme.

When he tried to resign, a squad came to fetch Mum for “protective custody,” and she fought back.

It was self-defence, the squad said.

The Commander relocated Dudley to prison duty for the freaks, then, and the wardens there were just as isolated as the prisoners, so he was really a prisoner himself.

But a prisoner who got to snoop and make a map of everything, occasionally.

And now here he is, herding kids who are at most a decade younger than he is out of the prison, out of the little island the prison sits in hopefully, and back into their freaky world.

For Mum. It’s all for Mum.

18.

Erny “Ernest” Shunpike is a simple man. He tries to do his best for his family and the wizarding world at large, even if it’s by becoming the driver of the Knight Bus for decade after decade. He even took his technically-not-nephew Stan back, after the loudmouthed boy got jailed for boasting emptily of all things – though he maybe shouldn’t have been surprised.

The Knight Bus itself is important for those who can’t apparate or portkey or floo or ride on a broom or carpet from place to place. It began as Knight Carriage, long ago, for witches and wizards laden with children to escape death by muggle.

And, nowadays, it – and therefore, Erny – serves that purpose again.

Case in point, somebody is hailing the Bus right now.

It’s across the water, though. Not good, that. The Bus can’t skip over or under water.

Except when there’s a bridge – however small, however accidental, however not-bridge-like.

So, maybe he could hitchhike on that flat-topped ship? And maybe one of the passengers could make a bridge with a long, long, long roll of yarn? The island the hailer is standing on doesn’t seem far away from this well-guarded pier the Bus is currently parked on. Erny has checked, both with and without his wayfinder specs.

So he makes use of the gangplank the ship is tethered to to skip up to the flat top, asks the passengers to donate the yarn, and gets Stan to levetate one end of the yarn to the hailer.

This, he knows Stan could really boast about, though strangely the boy never does. Maybe the silly thing thinks helping his mummy pick herbs from windy cliffsides by levitating her is “unawesome”?

Well, anyway, the point is: The yarn gets to the hailer unbroken, and the hailer smartly ties it to some stone post, so now the Bus can skip over.

Time to get the magicals and skip away.

All the magicals.

Then away to… follow the Boy-Who-Lived, maybe. Erny doesn’t bother about it. He is a simple man, after all.

19.

Working with goblins to earn profit has been both necessary and a pain, in one Bill “William” Weasley’s experience and opinion.

Working with them to go to another universe entirely is just as much of a pain, he is finding out, and probably technically not necessary.

He refuses to hand over anything or anyone with even a shred of magic to the vicious muggles that keep hunting and killing and kidnapping them, though, including the goblins, hence the cooperation.

Eh, not even Dad does, after seeing with his own eyes how the muggles grabbed a young family right from their home and rained numerous hot metal pellets on the would-be rescuers on high speed, shredding them.

It’s a nightmare come true, really. No more burnings, no more stonings, no more dangerous rumours in a village of ignorant muggles. It’s instead rapid and violent response to words spoken by traitorous – or maybe just broken – folks who were kidnapped earlier, or sightings of individuals trying to go as muggles.

It’s a nightmare especially for him and his siblings, after a lifetime of listening to Dad and Professor Dumbledore natter about poor muggles.

`Good for the old man, he’s dead and can’t experience a wake-up call like this,` he thinks uncharitably, for the… however many time it is.

This thought was born and had its first few scores of steps while he was trying to convince various beings and villages to move with him, following Harry Potter’s trail, as unofficially requested by the Minister of Magic. It has been kept alive thus far as the effort continues and he is liaising with the goblin nation for the move while also making sure important sites such as Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest are ready for transport, even if Hogsmead might refuse to move.

It doesn’t help that ICW has declared rule over the Wizarding Common Wealth, given the Ministry’s incompetence.

It also doesn’t help that, whenever Bill is home, he is faced with the nearly catatonic George and Ron, the lack of Fred, the morose Ginny and Percy, and his weepy parents. Charlie and Fleur are the most ordinary sights there, but they are now gone: Charlie back to the preserve to tender his resignation and say farewell to the dragons, and Fleur similarly to try to convince her parents, little sister and veela community at large to move with them.

The world will be much less magical soon, one way or another, he reckons. And, even now, he can’t help but pity the muggles for that eventuality.

20.

The Department of Mysteries study the various mysteries in the universe, yes, but it also keeps abreast of the non-mysteries happening throughout the Common Wealth and the world at large, both the magical and the mundane.

The reason is simple, really: continuity.

Ministers may change, Wizengamot members might bicker endlessly and pass stupid laws, but the Department of Mysteries run like clockwork on its own laws. It also stores and consults meticulous records of everything, and, most importantly, make sure that there are various plans to safeguard the magical side should the mundane one turn hostile again.

There is no division between blood status here, although research has been done to find out where muggleborns truly came from. There is only research, testing, brainstorming, and then research again for further information based on the results of prior brainstorming.

Well, back to the mysteries of the universe, the Veil of Death is one such mystery that researchers keep coming back to. It has been proven a misnomer down the centuries of research, actually, but none bothers to amend it.

Officially, that is.

Unofficially, it has been termed the Gateway.

From what the collective research has gathered, this phenomenon began as a tiny, probably natural crack in reality. It was thought – and later proven – to lead to another dimension, another layer of reality – sharing this world together with the one living humans live in, one which is strange and full of rubbish but otherwise empty, causing individuals who come into it to die immediately or soon after, hence the name. But later – much later – research showed that, at certain alignments or facilitated by certain rituals or items, this crak leads to another universe entirely, complete with planets and stars and galaxies.

The initial discovery of this feature was totally accidental. The crack got bigger and bigger the more it was used as execution method, so its keepers built a runed stone arch standing on a runed stone dais carved as one unit to contain it. And, during the finishing touch, one of the rune carvers tripped into the thing, bringing her tools and gadgetry with her, including a shrunken version of the same arch, this time for two-way transport.

She did her analysis, and managed to return home by the twin of the transportation arch held by her husband, leaving hers behind. A few of her more recklessly curious or otherwise disbelieving coworkers immediately barged past the arch, seeking the new universe, but they were locked away on the other side because the alignment had shifted.

Since then, many trials were conducted and many errors were committed, and many people as well as equipment went missing in the course of this experiment. The research grew ever more expensive in that way, and also funding-wise, so it was terminated in 1911.

However, the records stay, both in the Department of Mysteries’ keeping and the libraries of the backers.

The knowledge was used as intended, even, recently, by the heir to two of those backers.

And, even more recently, Selene Lovegood’s child, apparently quite sensitive to the fluctuations of the Gateway, somehow transported herself and the Minister while under duress to the right universe without any assistance.

But, maybe, because the Gateway had been so recently opened to that place, it became easier to traverse? The records say that it became easier and easier down the centuries, at any rate.

Given the current sociopolitical climate in Great Britain, however, which threatens to spill everywhere, this path needs to remain open as long as possible but only to magicals or dorment magicals.

Just so, the plan that involves the Gateway, which used to be at the very back of the back-up plans, gets punted to the fore.

And, if a big price is needed?

Well, if the alternative is being the muggles’ research toys, not a few magicals would willingly pay it, no doubt.