Chapter 4
Devanye, Severus, and Carson saw Mr. Spock out, and then Disapparated inside the snowglobe. Inside, everyone was milling around, some more frantically than others. But it wasn’t the panic Devanye had anticipated resulting from 16.1 million people suddenly finding themselves … well, in the situation they were in. The Jews in the interior might not realize at first that they had been relocated, but those outside of the modern borders of Israel, those she had relocated from the Diaspora … they didn’t seem nearly as panicked as she would have expected.
“Mrs. Hansen,” greeted a voice Devanye didn’t recognize, and she turned to find herself facing a young man with blue eyes and curly locks of hair at his temples under his black bowler hat that framed his neatly trimmed beard. He wore simple black wizards robes with gold Davidic star buttons at the collar. “Dr. Beckett. Mr. Snape.” He held out his hand. “Shalom. Please come with me.”
“Who are you?” Devanye frowned. “I’m sorry, there may be timey-wimey shenanigans ―”
“I am Isaac Goldstein, the Israeli Minister of Magic,” he told her, a twinkle in his blue eyes. “And you did warn me we will not have met yet. Please, come. Yala.”
Devanye frowned. “Aren’t you a little young to be Minister of Magic?”
He smiled, but his eyes were sad. “We have all aged beyond our years since 2023.” He held out his hand more insistently. “Yala.”
Casting a confused look between Carson and Severus, she reached for his hand. “This place blocks Cedric,” she reminded herself, and she reached for her husbands, who grasped her other arm just as her fingers closed around Minister Goldstein’s. They Disapparated with a sharp crack! and she found herself in her own living room. A version of herself twenty years older looked up from her knitting.
“Honeys,” this older Devanye called, “we’re ho-ome!”
Footsteps thundered down the steps, and a pair of twenty-somethings careened into the living room, their fathers following behind them at a more sedate pace.
“Awesome!” breathed the young woman, Layla Beckett. She had her father’s black hair and blue eyes, and freckles over her mother’s nose. Judah (who was a carbon copy of his father, but with a neatly trimmed beard and a yarmulke in Slytherin colors) tilted his head curiously, but said nothing.
“I imagine you have questions,” the older Snape said, and the older Carson invited, “Please, sit!”
They obliged, taking a seat on the long Slytherin couch, bracketed on either side by their adult offspring while the older Severus and Carson sat on another emerald green couch with Isaac Goldstein.
“What day is it?” Devanye wanted to know.
“November 22, 2026,” the older Devanye (henceforth referred to as Mrs. Hansen) handily supplied.
“So … the day after twenty years to the night that I started enchanting my mezuzah? Rosh Chodesh Kislev.” Devanye asked.
“Correctamundo,” Mrs. Hansen nodded.
“It’s Thanksgiving,” Devanye realized, blinking. “Where I’m … At my baby shower. It’s Thanksgiving.”
“Yes it is,” Mrs. Hansen grinned.
“In 2020, did y’all have anything to do with time-turning shenanigans?” Devanye frowned.
“A very small part,” her counterpart qualified.
Devanye got up to pace, wringing her hands. “Cedric didn’t try to kidnap me and kill Severus because he saw us all alive and well and together. He was always going to do that. He saw us alive and well and together after we set him loose to waltz into his own death, after he knew Carson survived his attempt on his life, after he found out about my faith ― oh, I could scream!” And, much to her own embarrassment, she started to cry. “This is all my fault!”
“I think you’ll find it’s very much Cedric’s fault, mom,” Judah put in gently.
“But he’s only doing it because he knows I’m Jewish ― I wasn’t careful enough ―”
“This is bigger than that and if you’d sit down and think about it a little, you’d realize that,” Layla assured her, getting up to make Devanye sit down. “You did good, mom. The best you can, given the circumstances. Cedric is capitalizing on tensions that are already there. He always has. He didn’t come up with the kind of antisemitism that would wipe the Jews off the face of the Earth by himself, you know.”
“But he did plant incriminating evidence from his eugenics work in China in Israel, didn’t he?” Devanye sniffed, mopping her eyes.
“Yes he did,” Isaac confirmed. “Which means we have that work for you to examine. Twenty years ahead of schedule.”
“No time like the present!” Devanye eagerly agreed, getting to her feet.
“Sit down and let us just report our findings,” Mrs. Hansen chuckled. “Get a hot toddy in you. Come on now.”
With a wave of her wand arm, she floated a teapot and brandy bottle from the kitchen, along with an assortment of teacups, pouring hot toddies for everyone. “Homebrewed by Judah himself,” she boasted proudly with a wink at her blushing son, “and dealcoholized the Muggle way with vacuum distillation, but he added terpenes to take some of the edge off in a healthy manner.”
Devanye took her teacup as a spoon stirred the non-alcoholic brandy, sipping politely. Her eyes lit up. “It’s delicious! Great job, Judah!”
“Thanks, mom,” he smiled.
“You mentioned a baby shower,” Minister Goldstein prompted. “I take it Judah and Layla have just been born?”
“It was a really short pregnancy,” Devanye laughed nervously.
“I have heard,” Goldstein’s eyes twinkled. “When is the brit?”
“The day after the week of festivities concludes,” Devanye informed him brightly. “Right before training the delegations from the Kingdoms of the Andals and the First Men and the Free Peoples of Middle Earth ensues. You are, of course, absolutely invited.”
“I would be honored.” He took one last sip from his teacup, and set it down. “But we have kept you waiting long enough. Between the years of 2020 and 2025, we received reports of mysterious disappearances of Jewish people around the world; vagrants and the very poor at first, then Jews with considerably more influence. We tracked these disappearances to a facility in China where Cedric Hansen-Snape was making unstable magical hybrids from two strains of magical DNA, werewolf DNA, and Wraith DNA. The purpose of the werewolf DNA, once mutated with the Obscurus-prone and Wraith DNA, was to make the combined retroviruses communicable. Early in the year of 2026, he released his hybrids into the tunnels Hamas constructed from Palestine into Israel, and we spent the next eleven months performing trying to get the invasion under control. As you know, the only substance that can be used to kill a werewolf is silver, so while the Muggle authorities wanted to bomb the tunnels, we knew that would not work against werewolves, which is why it took so long. By the time we got it under control, a dozen countries had footage of the hybrids attacking Muggle civilians and our staunchest enemies released this footage to the public and launched attacks.”
“I don’t understand, Minister,” Devanye frowned. “I rescued Remus Lupin and confiscated Cedric’s supply of hybridized retrovirus. He shouldn’t have been able to do this.”
“And we thank you, but there are more werewolves than just Remus Lupin,” Minister Isaac Goldstein pointed out. “Willing werewolves, at that. Fenrir Greyback saw a bit of his blood in exchange for his freedom as a bargain.”
“So … he’s escalated from revenge against Lupin, then,” Devanye worried, fidgeting with her rings.
“Yep,” Mrs. Hansen confirmed grimly.
“I’m … sure you know that Elf DNA neutralizes Wraith DNA, Carson,” Devanye ventured, addressing Dr. Beckett.
“We do,” he agreed. “And it modifies werewolf DNA as well, so that werewolves with Elvish DNA can control when they turn, and retain control of their faculties and actions during the transformation. But Cedric has been working on this a long time, and he has proliferated his work globally. We are on the back foot, and on this scale, we may be there a long time.”
“Then we’ll get on the front foot,” Devanye decided. “We’ll put a stop to this while Cedric is incarcerated. We’ll go to 2020 and ―”
“We’ll do nothing of the sort,” Mrs. Hansen denied gently. “Devanye, Cedric’s eugenics are only a small part of the big picture. You can’t stop World War Three ― and you don’t want to. It has to happen for Starfleet to happen. For Spock and Scotty and Jim and everyone; for Data and Garak and Kayla.” She reached across the coffee table, clasping Devanye’s hand. “You saved the Jewish people from annihilation, that’s all you need to worry about.”
“Then …” Devanye frowned, “why tell me all that about what Cedric’s going to do? Why give me a look at the work he’s done?”
“So we can all set the record straight when we get to Starfleet,” Mrs. Hansen smiled. “There’s a lot they don’t know about World War Three. You did good. But we aren’t the only ones set to be wiped off the face of the Earth; you still need a plan for the magical world.”
“I have a plan for them, actually, it involves a portal in Spinner’s End to Lily Aaron’s reality,” Devanye filled her in. “There are way fewer of them than there are Jews, so it should be …” She trailed off at the look on her counterpart’s face. “It’s not going to work?”
“It’s going to work a little too well once Cedric’s hybrids catch wind of it,” Mrs. Hansen told her. “But Dumbledore already told you that, didn’t he?”
Devanye hunched her shoulders. “I can’t stand being in the same room with him. If he had never …” She raked a hand through her hair. “None of this would have happened.”
“You’re probably right,” Mrs. Hansen conceded. “You have the power to bring a version of him who never met you back from the dead. Granted, the version we already have is infinitely more familiar with Cedric, and that could be helpful as you thwart his plan to bring the non-hybridized Wraith to Earth. Because that plan is still firmly in place and where I come from, you’ve kept your hands pretty full with them.”
“This is bigger than me, I know ―”
“No, mom, that’s what we’re saying,” Layla insisted. “You are infinitely important. You have to survive the next twenty years or none of us will.”
“We’re saying you’re on the right track, luv.” Dr. Beckett added.
“And not to get distracted chasing Cedric,” Mr. Snape put in urgently. “He’s going to try to bait you into trying to stop World War Three, and you need to remember that you are Queen Devanye Rangaerwen, Queen of the Kings of the Andals and the First Men and the Free Peoples of Middle Earth, and how you came to be that person. You have been thwarting Cedric for a long time, you have a method and it works. You are not in the business of preventing death, you are in the business of preserving life, and that distinction is important to millions of people.”
Devanye nodded, taking another sip of her delicious hot toddy.