Wannabe (a Hogwarts Hero)

“—looks so much like her—“

”Could be a ruse, though,” Severus mumbles, though he sort of doubts it.

”Everyone has a doppelgänger somewhere,” Filius argues.  “It’s a crowded planet, after all.”

”Much less probable that they’re both witches,” Minerva offers quietly, still squinting through the door at the girl where she’s pacing around the time-tampered bubble that’s currently keeping Albus nearly frozen in time.  “She’s like a dark-haired clone—“

“No,” Severus breathes out, again studying the girl with pursed lips.  “She’s really not,” he grumbles.  “Just… save your speculation until you’ve spoken with her.”  That statement has both Minerva and Filius studying Severus with equal parts surprise and curiosity and Severus pretends not to notice.

Maybe it's my physiology, finally born into a life in a body that's always felt perfect.  It's always felt just... right.  It took me a while to realize there was a reason for it-- it's mine; it's my original body and spirit and now it's traveling through the ether with me for the first time ever.

I’ve always known there was something in the ether, have felt ‘other’ as I was guided from one reality and the next again and again as I've moved from one fated life to another, but this is the first time I’d felt one latch on, but then... this is also the first time I've had my body travel through the ether along with my soul and my magic. Before I really have time to even think of how to drive it off and away, my destined portal is opening.

Fantastic.  A demon.  A leech.

..... Shit.

Okay, so... this is a bit of a pickle, since demons need an actual living victim... or does it?  Maybe in this new world it could last-- aaaand yup, there's the knowledge that often comes with my tasks in a new reality.  (Thanks fate!)  This demon can last without a host, but not for long.  It’s also (maybe, with some practice) crafty enough to go unnoticed, but just destructive enough to eventually flatten entire countries if left unchecked.

No matter how many times I've been freshly tossed into a new world or a new life, (usually into a new infant or child's body entirely,) now that I've got my original body back, I can officially say it's never become less jarring.  I land on hands and knees, my fingers sinking into damp grass, thick earth, bits of shale, clay and gravel.  My head, already reeling from the seemingly endless journey through the ether, is suddenly overfull and overwhelmed while the demonic essence grapples with my will, simultaneously trying to dig it’s talons deeper into my brain and claw its way to full freedom and—

“Well,” I choke out, my head still spinning like a top, my mind trying to juggle both a suppression of most of the (now useless) active memories of my last life (Bye Mom, love you, thank you.) and trying to pry the demon's mental claws out of my mind.  “This isn’t good.”

Yeah.  Understatement.

And what the hell is wrong with my voice?  I know my voice and this isn’t it.  Unless... it is?

I crack my eyes open and find warm sunlight and green grass and a big ass chunk of stone, stabbing tall out of the ground before me and resonating with energy and another beside it, and another and... okay.  It’s a stone circle.  (A stone dance?) Just a smallish one.  So... this is a first, but… 

But it’s everything else I see not with mere eyes, but spirit and mind and it’s magic.  It’s magic that’s horribly familiar and I get the sudden feeling I know why I’m here.

And I am here, holy hells.  I turn my head to confirm it and there is the castle, towering high over the lake, over the forest Gawyn and I used to play in—the castle I used to call home still pulsing with power and I’m not ready to face this yet.  I thought I would be... but I’m not because the only reason I’d be back at Hogwarts is to finally rectify some of the mistakes of my first life and that, fate had promised on day one, would be my final journey and final task.  After all these thousands of years, fate has finally sent me home.

I take a few, precious seconds  to mourn both what’s gone and what's sure to come, letting old grief and painfully detailed memories spill back in, truths and lies that will finally be unearthed and exposed and I feel raw and a little hollow and once acknowledging it, I grit my teeth, cram those emotions inside, lock it tight, and shove it back and down for just a bit longer because there’s more pressing issues and one of them is raking claws down my psyche and before I can even begin to register that sort of pain, it’s swelling, blooming, drowning me in an effort to—

Everything goes dark.

***

There's disjointed flashes of sounds, images, sensations and scents, all there and gone too quick for my mind to fully register them.  I think I spoke?  Or maybe let out a psychic yelp--

Don't touch me. 

There's a final flash of the front courtyard, my talons receding, intense and dark eyes wide with surprise--

Again, everything goes dark.

***

I wake to murmured voices and even before my eyes are open, I know everything is already going wrong because my head is one giant ache, but I'm demon free.  Shit.

“—knows something, and we need her awake and talking.”  The voice is male, slightly nasal, and laced with a hint of authority and an undertone of barely hidden worry.

“And she obviously needs this rest or she’d be awake already,” comes a woman’s sharp reply that’s laced with judgemental stubbornness.  “I’m a healer, Severus.  As long as she’s in my care, I’ll care for her as best I can.  She’s just a child and you know the Headmaster himself would put her health before his own.”  Her feminine tone carries a note of regret, but no less firm in her decision.

But also— What?  They can't be talking about me, because— child?  I’m thirty-seven, thanks, even though I can pass for mid-twenties, easily. (Shifter genetics are frequently awesome like that.)  I can only assume I look like a child because I’m meant to look like a student and come on... really fate?  I used to teach at this school, not attend it.  Well, not exactly.

On the other hand, if school's in session with me looking student-age, I’ll blend in that much better.  Yay?

But, first thing’s first.  With little more than a half-formed thought, I rise to and conjure a mirror and— good gods, I am a child. 9 years old? 10 or 11 maybe?  I look sickly exhausted (which is fair, because I certainly feel it), heavy circles under my mossy green eyes, my long black hair frizzing half out of its braid and I shake the rest loose, vanish the mirror with a hand wave, then shadow-blink myself to join the pair by the door.

It's probably as much the dark, shadow-like, flame-like trails of smoky mist, appearing and vanishing in a blink, that come along with this kind of teleportation as much as my sudden appearance that has them both jerking with surprise.  I offer a slight smile to the aging blond woman in healer’s robes and then the man with a curtain of shoulder length black hair, newly familiar dark, intense eyes and a hooked nose wearing simple black robes while they both gawp back.

“Thank you for your care, but I’m done resting for now,” I tell the woman with a kind smile, then turn to the man whose eyebrows can’t seem to decide on whether to be unnerved, surprised, or angry; my guess is the latter.  “I take it the demon jumped to the first person who touched me?  I need to see them, if they’re still here.”  When they both simply stand there blinking at me for a few seconds too long, I add: “Now, preferably.  If it jumps again and makes it off school grounds, there’s a good chance we’ll never see it again but for the extensive body count and destructive chaos it will leave behind.”

The woman begins spluttering indignant confusion now and knowing just how exhausted I look, I just know she’ll try to argue me back to bed and really, that’s just a waste of time, so I focus on the man with the fascinating nose and more worry behind his dark eyes than he's probably comfortable conveying.

“Time is really not on our side," I explain.  "The longer it stays with a victim, the more damage it will do to their psyche.  Few ever fully recovers from a possession, and what healing that can be done can sometimes take decades, depending on both demon and victim.  Deliberately standing here doing nothing is deliberately causing another person additional mental, physical, and spiritual harm, so... will you take me to them or shall I hunt them down on my own?”

“Do you have a name, Miss?” He finally asks, nasal voice both curious and annoyed.

“Jacklyn Devons, fate assigned assistant. Some call us fatemakers, which is just… a dumb name, honestly, since we don’t make anything.  Shall we go?” I ask as patiently as I can.  When he just gapes for a few seconds more, I purse my lips a bit, nod once in a ‘very well’ sort of way, then shadow-blink around him to the hospital wing entry door that no doubt leads to the Grand Staircase while the pair of them squawk behind me.  I knock twice on the thick wood of the door before addressing it.  “The location of the possessed person, please," I say clearly.

For a second, there’s nothing, like the castle magic hasn’t recognized the instruction (and how has that come to pass, I wonder?  It's a deep-set, built-in feature of the castle magic's very core).  Then, the stone of the walls, the shingles of the roof, the wood of the door all scrape and creak in a surprised sort of way but the door obligingly opens with a rusty sound and I push it wider while offering a mental 'thanks big guy' with a soft pat to the wood of the door.  The pair behind me both suck in sharp breaths when I step through to where neither had expected the hospital wing entry to now lead.

“How did you do that?” The man demands, already on my heels and pushing past me into— oh.  One of the dungeon classrooms?  Specifically, my old classroom?  In the soft lantern and candlelight, it’s easy to see all the lab tables and stools have been pushed back to crowd the walls to make room for a circle of bound protection, a dome-topped and impressively layered braid of a spell that’s more than capable of keeping the demon within... well, in.

The hook-nosed man hurries forward to check that the spell is still holding (it is, and very well, I see) and peering worriedly at the long-robed man within who’s resting on a short cot.  The man himself is almost radiating power but his face is also disturbingly both blank and not, as if it’s only between expressions.  Still, he’s staring up at the ceiling without blinking, seemingly un-breathing but.... on closer inspection, he’s doing both in slow-motion.  I crack open my higher sight just a bit more and a quick peek down shows a time tamper spell built into the protective braid.  

Oh, that’s honestly kind of brilliant.  When time is of the essence, this is actually as good as it gets to minimize the damage on who or whatever is within.  Or, at the least, to stall them or what affects them until you can find a better solution.

“Nicely done,” I murmur softly, slowly approaching the circle and mentally sort through the layers of magic to better see the victim.  He’s elderly, but not ancient with a full, tapering beard that falls to his waist and half-moon spectacles still perched on his nose, if a bit crookedly.  Beneath the layers of body, his magic shines brightly, even as the demon within feasts in equal slow-motion, already preparing itself to skip away at first opportunity.  And it would, of course, because the man’s power level is almost fully fueled by his will.  And his will, like my own, is formidable.  But unlike me, this man’s power can’t burn the demon out with continued exposure.

“Don’t get too close or—“ the man begins snapping, but I cut him off with a knowing nod.

“Or the time tamper spell will pull me in,” I finish. “I know.”  I stop at the spell’s edge to really study the problem at hand.  “What is the time ratio differential?  A hundred twenty-five to one?” I ask, walking the very edge of the circle while I think.  There’s surely a way to drive the damned thing out without killing him, right?

When the man doesn’t answer, I shift my sight back to 'normal' and look up to find him studying me with narrowed eyes like I’m a baffling, impossible puzzle.

“Ratio?” I ask again because when it comes to time manipulation, the physics of magic warp just enough that I can’t fully read the magic like I otherwise could.

“One hundred fifty,” he finally says.  “How on earth does a child your age know—“

“Because I’m no child,” I interrupt calmly, but his confusion as he eyes me up and down, remains and-- okay, yeah, the dark green leggings and matching tunic I’m in are huge rather than the semi-snug I’m used to, though my belt and all my usual necessities (my cell phone from twenty-plus years in the future won't do me much good here) are missing.  With a sigh, I grip the bottom edge of my tunic and jiggle-tug it smaller and smaller until it feels right, then repeat with my leggings and a quick stamp of my feet resizes my shoes perfectly.  I leave my hair long and flowing, enjoying the familiar weight as it spills back over my shoulders.

“Fate sent me to this reality to fix what’s gone wrong or to prevent something new from going wrong.  It’s rare that it’s altered my physical form for a task as opposed to letting me grow from an infant and finishing my assigned task as I simply live a complete life.  This time it’s apparently de-aged me.  I can only guess that whatever my task, it might take more time than I have before school classes resume, whenever that is.”

The man blinks, surprised and I quirk a half-smile back.

“I'm older than I look,” I assure him, then add a bit wryly:  "A lot older."

“That’s all well and good,” the healer huffs from near the doorway that still leads straight to the hospital wing, “but can we focus, please?  With school resuming in two weeks, it would be best if our Headmaster is healthy enough to run the school.”

I nod sharply, then double-take.  “So he’s the Headmaster?”  Well, that explains the power level.  “I’m not surprised the leech jumped him— he’s got quite a bit of personal power for it to feast on,” I murmur.

“Are you telling me it’s eating his magic?!” The woman rasps looking horrified while the man sucks in an equally worried breath.  She turns to the man with a no-nonsense expression.  “No more arguments, Severus.  I need to contact either the Ministry or St. Mungo's.  We cannot do this alone,” she urges.

As much as I really don’t want more people here to get in the way (or discover my fated position), the healer might be right. A dozen heads are better than three and as far as magic for this reality goes, I’m a bit out of practice.  With my head still pounding in time with my pulse, I'm not running on all cylinders yet.  Still, I’ve only just begun trying to think up a solution that isn't the most obvious and risky one.

“Could I have an hour before you send for them?  On the off-chance I think something up before there’s genuinely too many cooks in this kitchen?  I used to be a magical fixer.  Finding reasonable and time proficient solutions was my bread and butter.”

The woman looks dubious but the man looks considering.  “Half an hour,” the healer says sternly.  “It’ll take them another half to get here and up to speed with how this even happened.”  I nod back and she turns to go, then pauses to aim a hopeful look at me.  “The door... would you mind switching it back once I’ve gone through?”

“Oh, um... it’ll change back when you close it.  It should work for any of the public rooms or classrooms in the castle, if you need it again.  Just knock twice, state your destination and let the castle do the rest,” I explain.  At their surprised expressions, I add.  “It doesn’t hurt to thank the castle when you’re done.  It likes to be both useful and appreciated.”

As soon as the healer has vanished and the door shuts behind her, I focus on the... professor?  Maybe?  Probably.

“So what should I call you, then?” I ask.  “I’m assuming you’re a teacher here?”

“Professor Snape,” he supplies and there’s something flinty in his eyes, curiosity and calculation.  “Potions Master.”

Lucky guy got my old title along with my old classroom, then.

I nod and for the next little while, pace around the circle in silence, letting as much magical memory flood into my mind as I can, ideas and calculations bouncing around my brain until I’m interrupted by the professor suddenly standing in my path.

“— you even hear me?” He demands, looking irritated.

“Sorry,” I say, finally blinking back to reality to see the Healer’s back and standing near the door along with an older, statuesque woman in tartan-trimmed robes and a smaller, older man who looks to be part elf, part human with a pinch of something else-- sporting large ears and a kind, aged face.  Still, it's Snape I answer, since he asked.  “Major problems equal a one-track mind.  I didn’t hear you at all.  My apologies.”  At this, the man looks like he’s straining not to roll his eyes but doesn’t get to answering before the Scottish woman marches forward.

“I asked,” the woman repeats slowly, as if to keep her accent to a minimum, if not to keep from snapping impatiently, “who you are and how you know anything about this.  The Ministry and their healers will be here soon and it’d be best if we had answers to give them.”

I nod once.  “Jacklyn Devons, older than I look, and a fate-assigned fixer of problems.  This one,” I say, waving toward the near-frozen man on the cot, “is a problem fate and I inadvertently caused when fate portal-ed me into this reality.  I came through the ether and the demon latched on at the literal last second and came with me.  All the beings of the ether are essentially starving because they eat magical energy.  A demon in this reality might not be a worse-case scenario, but... it's not far off.  Yet.”

“A demon,” she repeats flatly.  “And fate.”  I nod.  It’s obvious she has doubts. “You expect us to believe that?”

“Believing or disbelieving— it actually doesn’t matter because right now, the outcome will be the same.  In time, it’ll devour every last drop of magic in your headmaster, and with how much of his magic is embedded in his soul, by the time it's done munching, it will either kill him or drive him mad.  For the sake of this reality, we’d best hope for madness because his death will let the demon loose to find someone new to nibble on.  It’s clever and knows how to hide, so once it begins jumping to new victims and eventually leaves the school grounds...” I let the thought complete itself.

The way her face pales a bit tells me she believes it just enough.

“Ideally, it’d be best to separate them as close to a portal as can be managed.  The ether is magically null, hence the starving beings that reside there.  The imbalance will draw the demon back in, by force.  But if it’s still latched into him too deeply, the ether will draw your headmaster back in, too.”

“The ether,” she states, “is a theory.  It’s never been proven to actually exist!”

“Fate’s been yanking me through the ether from one reality to the next for a long, long time.  It’s real,” I counter firmly.  “Though, considering the dangers that go along with opening portals of any kind to anywhere, it’s probably best to let it remain ‘a theory’.  Officially, at any rate.”

She gawps for a second, either outraged by my willingness to challenge what she sees as fact or— well, no.  Her spirit is strong and largely benevolent.  She’s just worried and can’t not let it show in one way or another.

“A time tamper spell, Severus?” The smallest man inquires, pacing along the spell's edge as I had, his focus fixed on the man within.

“An uncalculated bonus,” Snape says dryly, dodging the small point of pride to his timely solution.  “Most of the ingredients were already laid out while I was running a few... experiments; that’s when I heard the racket outside.  He was acting just irrational and erratic enough to be a danger to himself as well as others.  He blasted half the roof off the covered bridge by... well, snarling at it.  Didn’t even touch his wand and insisted that I bind him.  I twined him with a full body binding and he hit his head on a bench on the way down.  He was dazed, but still rational enough to demand again that I bind and secure him, in his words: ‘before it gets away’.”

“Well, that certainly is luck,” the smaller man agrees.

“That’s fate,” I sigh.  “It’s trying to help fix it.”

I shrug lightly at all three when they turn back to me.  “It’s pretty much what fate does.  It either assists or meddles by supplying good and bad luck where it’s needed.  Very little happens without a reason.”

“A well-respected headmaster of the finest magic school in the world is now possessed ‘for a reason’?” The woman demands, looking outraged.

“Please don’t shoot the messenger,” I sigh back, but let my sincerity show.  “Everything that can be done can be undone.  Well,” I self-correct, “nearly everything.  Somehow I doubt fate intended for him to be completely stripped of his magic, which, although very slowly, is exactly what’s happening to him now,” I finish, waving my hand back to the circle.

“Well then,” the small man says in his near-squeaky, energetic voice, “let’s put our heads together and rid Albus of his unwanted passenger!”

***

No amount of enthusiasm, however, can make a solution on it’s own.  It’s another two hours of the three professors (and I, though I mostly listen and pace) brainstorming ideas over multiple cups of tea and still came up empty of a solution.  I know there is a solution, but all the options I think of (unvoiced, of course) involve the death of their Headmaster in the process of portal-ing the demon back to the ether.

“And why hasn't the Ministry sent their healers yet?” Flitwick demands, standing to stretch while checking his pocket watch.  “For Albus, I’d think they’d be invested in the outcome of all this.”

It’s now that Snape straightens, like he’d forgotten entirely. (He probably had.)  Curious myself now, I aim for the closest pillar, half-blocked by a lab station and lean around it to reach, getting an instant view of the owlery in the north tower and even heading for nightfall, it's full of dozens of deeply sleeping owls, including three with urgent messages still strapped to their legs.

“Probably,” I sigh, turning back to pass on my findings, “because they never got their messages.  The school owls are sleeping, messages still attached.”

“And touching a pillar supplied you with that knowledge?” McGonagall inquires, frowning dubiously.

“Touching bare skin to the castle did, yes; it should work for you, too.  But," I continue, waving a hand, "everything on school grounds is essentially different portions of one mind and it’s basically self-sustaining.  Nearly all of humanity could be wiped off the earth tomorrow but the school will remain.  As sanctuary and safe haven, it was built to withstand just about anything and that’s best done when it’s invested in its own existence.  It likes being a school.  It wants to help, when it can.  If the owls are still here, it’s likely because the school thinks it’s helping.”

“How could you possibly know that?!” McGonagall all but explodes with exasperation.

And boy howdy, the answer to that— is something I can’t begin to explain.  Literally.  I open my mouth, close it, then twice more while the professors look on with something like concern that I'm soon sharing, though mine is based off the spell that I've been overlooking and daaaaamn but it's a doozy.

“In my past lives,” I say slowly, "I've run into more than one spell that is meant to hide certain truths; so, as much as I’d like to… I can't say."

“Can’t say or won’t say?” Snape demands, scowling and squinty-eyed.

“Can’t,” I repeat, shrugging frustratedly at my own helplessness because there's honestly not a lot of spells I can't get past and this one's a both potent and huge, reaching far beyond just the school grounds. “There's a heavy grade spell blocking… certain truths.  But I would if I could if only to save time.”

“Why wouldn’t the school want us to contact the Ministry?” Flitwick wonders.  "If this is an issue that could affect the outside world, both magical and muggle, one would think a school as... wise and well-respected as Hogwarts would welcome some help.”  There’s a twinkle in his eye that speaks of high intellect.  McGonagall straightens, lips pursing.

“Especially,” she continues, her own eyes flitting to the walls and ceiling and the tiny, smudged windows, “as it concerns the life and very health of it’s Headmaster.”

I grin quietly; they’re beginning to catch on.  For a long few seconds, it feels like the castle holds its breath.  Then it groans, stone and wood and glass all creaking, like it’s slumping.  A second later, it groans again only this time, there are echoes up and down the hall just outside of doors slamming and locking, one after another, though the potions door remains open still.

The professors all turn to me, wide-eyed and alarmed.  I would be too, because that could have a number of different meanings. I lean around the lab station and brush the pillar with my fingers again to see all the owls, including the messengers, are still sleeping deep, even with the tower windows wide open.

“Owls are still sleeping, but not locked in,” I supply, then mentally drift around for anything else that might’ve changed— oh.  “Um… It’s barricaded the entry doors of the Main Hall."  At their collective wide eyes, I add, "It's protecting us and itself, I think, by not sending the owls?"

“But we received ours,” Flitwick exclaims.

“True... But, you also live here for most of the year, yes?  It knows you,” I counter.  “Enough to trust you, at any rate.  But if there’s something happening at the Ministry that could potentially effect how Hogwarts is run...”

“How would it know anything about the Ministry?” Snape demands, arms crossing and doing a fair impersonation of a right-side up fruit bat (I fight back a grin at the sudden mental imagery).  “Or politics in general?” He adds.

Now I shrug again because it’s magic.  It’s sentient magic.  There’s no good answer for magic in and of itself, so who knows?

The answer, or maybe some of it, comes in the form of a newspaper dropping through the stone ceiling to lay innocuously on Snape’s desk, right in front of him.  Everyone blinks at it, then they deflate, one by one.  Of course the school would read the papers.  Why wouldn’t it?

“Ask and you shall receive,” I huff quietly, a bit amused.  But my barely heard words have all the professors first looking at me with surprise, then at each other.

“It can’t be that easy, surely,” McGonagall exclaims, but after trading uncertain glances with her colleagues, she gives the ceiling a cautious look.  “A school as well-versed as one who knows to read the papers very likely has thought up a solution to helping it’s Headmaster, wouldn’t you think?”

I can’t help but smirk mildly when one of the dozens of potions books on the shelves lining the upper edges of the room begins rattling itself forward, leaving it’s companions all behind.  The rattling continues until, of course, it falls with a thump to the floor, splayed out and open to a page near the back.  Snape storms over to scoop it up, frowning at whatever page it’d fallen open to.

“Well?” McGonagall demands after a silent moment.  “What does it say?”

Snape flashes her a tense, uncomfortable look before studying the book again.  “It’s a potion, and an antidote.”

“A potion for what, Severus?” Flitwick asks, voice level.

“One to strip and store a soul... and the other to free and restore it.”

"His soul--" McGonagall repeats, head shaking already. "That would kill him."

Before anyone can react, the closed door to Snape’s office begins to rattle, softly at first, then harder until I hurry toward it and crack it carefully open.  I catch the large stone that comes rushing out toward me hard enough to send me staggering back a few steps with a soft ‘oof’.

Then I see what I’ve just caught and freeze as the implication sinks in.  Cautiously, I turn to the others with the heavy, soft-polished chunk of soul obsidian held out for inspection.  “If there’s unique ingredients that are difficult to find that actually can be found here… pretty sure it wants us to strip his soul.”

***