----

Haley, Hogwarts

----

On any other day, the appearance of Voldemort’s awful baby face would have led to immediate violence. I certainly wasn’t inclined to defend him, but this had the stink of developing narrative about it- something I was growing more confident in identifying, over time. I interposed myself between the Potions Professor-slash-Dark Lord and the rest of the wand-waving crowd, and tried to calm the situation. “Alright, what’s your plan?” I asked Snape. “I assume you let him hitch a ride for a reason.”

Snape opened his mouth to answer but was overridden, to his clear irritation. “Indeed he did,” said the Voldemort-face. It was distressingly difficult to look at directly, like an open wound. “I have no more desire to die than any of the rest of you fools- far less, in fact. In the span of a few hours I’ve lost all of my supporters, all save one- faithful, loyal Severus.” His voice took on a mocking, singsong quality- I wasn’t sure if he was taunting Snape or Dumbledore or both. “I am given to understand that one of you is responsible for this calamity- rest assured, there will be a reckoning. But for now, you need my assistance and I require capable wand arms. I propose a truce.”

“No deal, asshole!” shouted my incredibly helpful husband from behind me, before addressing Voldemort’s newest vehicle. “Severus when I told you to grow up I explicitly did not mean ‘Forge a grim death-pact with wizard Hitler.’ You idiot. He’s going to turn on us the second he stands to gain something from the betrayal. And now he has you as a hostage. We’ve got this situation covered, Haley will-” I swung my hand at him in a shooshing motion. As far as I was concerned it was not the time to set ourselves up in opposition to yet another villain, even one as repellant as this. If he could go without committing murders, I’d use him. Telantes rustled in my pocket, distressed by all the shouting, and I tried to comfort him.

Dumbledore nodded as well. “Severus, I fear this is a grave mistake. As for you, Tom- were it not for the safety of my remaining students, I would kill you here and now.” His voice didn’t waver an inch- he was deadly serious. “As it is, I will give you one chance to leave. Go and hide as you usually do. We will settle our differences when the world has righted itself.”

Snape didn’t seem particularly inclined to continue playing Voldemort’s servant- “You are of course correct, Albus. I do not trust Voldemort any more than the rest of you. However-”

That shrivelled husk on his shoulder overrode him again. “I have promised certain magics and techniques that may be particularly effective, against memetic threats. You may have them- the price is my continued existence, now and in the future.”

I rolled my eyes at all of this. Standing as I was in the middle of the situation, and having run off the last wave of the first assault, I seemed to be in the best position to broker a deal. I cut off the others before they could argue. “No fighting. This is pointless. The multiverse is being overrun by meme zombies and nobody has time to bargain for individual lives right now. He’ll likely turn on us at some point- but we can gain more than we lose by that betrayal, and save potentially billions of lives, if we know what he knows. If Sean knows what he knows. Plan proposal. Snape- you are on guard duty. Keep that Mad Max reject in line. Unbreakable Vow him to behave, if you can.” He nodded- I was pretty sure that had been his plan anyway. I turned to my new-forged hero and resident cleric. “Matt- for now you’re going to be our last line of defense, here. Try to fortify a position around the wizard kids in one of the towers.” He threw me a salute- we’d talked about that- and turned to leave. So nice to have responsive help, sometimes. “Dumbledore and Voldemort- for as long as the siege of this castle continues you are both going to educate my husband in the most effective use of his magic. He’s going to need it to take the fight beyond this world.”

Voldemort tried to give me static. “Why should the two most powerful wizards in the world take orders from a mere stripling of a girl? Not even a proper wizard, at that?”

I stepped up to Snape’s shoulder and looked the awful face right in the eye. I didn’t even have to stoop- the man was surprisingly tall. “Because we are your protagonists now, shithead. Let me put it this way. Sean, I’m surmising from everything I’ve seen and heard so far that the story here broke?” He nodded, looking faintly embarrassed- okay, I was going to need that tale from him later- “And the Concept stepped in to take the reins. Guess what happens if we just kill that girl?” Sean paled at that, and Dumbledore grew still- at least those two were on the same page. “That’s right- there’s more than one way this world can end. You need a narrator. We are a narrator. Singular. We will take up this story from her. You want to keep existing? You’ll agree to my terms. I think you will find they are surprisingly reasonable.”

I didn’t wait for him to agree- he wasn’t the kind of villain who’d back down in public. Instead I turned away, ending the conversation. “Dumbledore. There’s a very good chance Harry’s not actually dead. Lilly’s blessing will have protected him from any death magic used by Mr. Riddle here but he may be trapped in purgatory without you to guide him back- you were supposed to be dead by the time he died, as well. Also- did he die defending someone he loved?” Dumbledore jumped in alarm and rushed from the room. Snape looked startled, but nodded, indicating himself. “Right. You’re probably resistant to Voldemort’s magic now. That was a very inconsistent thing in the original stories, you’d think if loving someone and dying for them made them resistant to death magic that a lot more people would have been immune to Voldemort but whatever, it’ll work here.” I cut my energized rambling off. Voldemort began to snarl his way towards some kind of tirade but I cut him off. “Nope. Shut up. Snape you are likely immune to his mind control, so get him bound asap. Meanwhile, Sean- I need to speak to you in private.” The potions professor hurried off, leaving me alone- finally- with my husband.

He smacked his forehead. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of the death thing! Poor kid’s been sitting under a blanket only mostly dead all night.”

I smiled, trying to suppress the turmoil of emotions I was feeling long enough to complete the old joke. “There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. But let’s hope getting him back doesn’t take a miracle.”

He sighed happily. “You always just get me.”

I didn’t disagree with the sentiment but now was not the time. I needed to broach heavier subjects. I held up my hand and indicated a new ring on my finger. “Look. While they’re gone- Roy and the team back in the second Ingenium, and myself- we’re all infected with the Concept.” He jumped a bit but kept listening. I held up the mentats box. “These mind-expanding pills stopped adding more time the second we weren’t on Fallout rules anymore. Pathfinder’s cures didn’t work because there’s nothing wrong with us except that we can’t stop thinking about that meme. The only memory modification in my spell list takes too long, we need you to modify our memories. I’d estimate you have about 40 minutes, conservatively, before it starts wearing off and you have to do something more dramatic. You need to Obliviate the image out of all our minds.”

He bobbed his head in comprehension, but- “I’m not qualified to do that yet and I’d hate to use you as a test subject. Can’t we get Dumbledore to-”

I shook my head. “Until we have narrative control here, everyone needs to be considered compromised. There’s no telling what that girl could do if she took direct control of a scene where he was rooting in your mind. You’re the only one who’s part of our story, anyway- likely it wouldn’t work on me if it was a random wizard. It has to be you.”

Telantes piped up. “The girl out there- her name is Gretchen! She was really good to Anna, until they were taken.” My heart broke for the little mouse once again. I still had no idea how we were going to get his other half back, and here I was half-forgetting he existed while I spoke to my husband.

Sean gulped and shook his head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, I just- this all went wrong so quickly. I’m not sure I’m ready -”

I answered a little more hotly than I should have. “I wasn’t ready when you disappeared a month ago but it’s time to step up, dear.” He flinched a bit and I felt a twinge of conscience at pressing him but I didn’t back down. This really was life or death for the universe, but it seemed like our problems were tied up in that fate. We needed to resolve this. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Fawkes saw what you did tonight.” The fiery-plumed bird still perched on his headboard cooed softly. “You were ready to die to give this world one more shot. You stood against Aslan alone. I know who you are, deep down. You have the courage within you. Can’t you find it, to stand with me?” Can’t you stop running? What are you so scared of? I looked into his eyes as intently as I could, and tried not to use my near-telepathic skills to get a sense of him.

He stared back. “It’s different, when it’s just the whole world on the line.” I laughed a little at that but he was serious. “The stakes are lower. I... I lost you once. I became Sheriff and forgot that you even existed.” He was tearing up. “What you mean to me- I- let me show you. Expecto Patronum” he called softly, and a beautiful white light lit up the hospital ward. An enormous silvery dragon swept around our heads, doing fancy maneuvers that I’d have struggled to match before I started wearing all the bulky new harness equipment. Telantes squealed in delight as Sean explained. “Meet my magic. Say hello, magic.” It- she- dipped down and flew around my head. It’s me, it looks just like me. Sean continued. “It turns out that the real source of magic in Harry Potter is a wizard’s heart- the emotional center of their world. I had to go there on a long strange trip, it took me a month just to realize that it was just you, all along. And I almost lost you again.” I looked at him in concern. He shrugged. “This was a young girl’s slashfic, before I broke it. That was the choice I couldn’t bear- she wanted me to love someone other than you. I’d end the world, first- you matter more to me. I’m sorry, if that makes me a bad altruist.” I shook my head, I couldn’t really punish him for that. “I can’t lose you, Haley.” More softly, he finished. “And this world so badly wants to take you from me.”

I kissed him then, a real kiss, and dared the story to interrupt me. For once, it didn’t. But my husband eventually opened his big mouth- “I know you’re happy to see me, but you do actually have a mouse in your pocket-”

----

Sean

30 minutes later

----

A miscast Obliviate was a dangerous thing. It could cause brain damage or eliminate huge swathes of a person’s memory. The operation I’d performed on my own mind earlier in the day had been more of a memetic block, and it hadn’t worked anyway- Moody’s memory charm had slipped neatly past my defenses and planted the Concept in my mind, but thankfully Dumbledore’s quick thinking with memory extraction had saved the day there. Haley had described to me the moment in the Overseer’s office when she’d first seen the image- but I was going to have to erase the image itself, as well. This was going to be tricky.

I spent a half hour getting a crash course in the spell from Dumbledore, once I could pry him away from the now peacefully sleeping Harry, whose death had been greatly exaggerated after all. Snape took up the watchful position over his body, and grimaced at my nervous glance. “I think that portion of the story is long past, Mr. Peakes. I no longer feel any compulsion to that effect. Only responsibility for his well-being.” It wasn’t the brain in his head or his pants that made me nervous- the one on his shoulder was staying silent, though. I nodded and left him to it.

With my own magic as an active participant, and the greatest living wizard as my personal tutor, it wasn’t that hard to learn a spell so simple that every adult wizard in the world seemed able to cast it without fail. But I wanted to be quintuply sure, first. I interrupted Captain Roy’s hero-ification process to make him and his crew my test subjects- perhaps somewhat amoral of me, but they also needed their memories replaced, and a failure there would be less catastrophic in general, I reasoned. The memories were all fresh, having occurred within the last 24 hours, so it was no particular trouble to root them out and replace them. They were all fairly bemused that they now distinctly remembered being so obsessed with a picture of Grumpy Cat that they would kill, or die, for it. But they understood what I had done, and thanked me for the service. No brain damage detected- it was time for my wife’s turn. And none too soon, because she was clearly having trouble focusing. Her vastly expanded intellect was gradually being overwhelmed by the resurgent Concept as she paced nervously on the battlement where I found her. The siege forces were still out beyond the wards, but they were clearly gathering numbers.

“Stand still and let me be precise about this,” I told her. She smiled at me and sat on the stone floor and I tried very hard not to get lost just looking at her. “Alright Magic, great work so far, please work extra carefully on this one. She’s basically your mother. Fourth time’s the charm-” I made the wand motions and spoke the words and my magic sped through the hoops, racing into her mind, but- of course there was a but- something was different about this one. Behind my eyes, in the patterns that represented worlds within and worlds without, there was something pulling at the the thread of magic between myself, Haley, and Haley’s mind. “Hang on,” I said, “I think we’re getting a call-” and then the world disintegrated around us and we fell away from the battlements of the castle, into that void space between worlds.

Haley whipped her head around but didn’t seem terribly disoriented. “Oh, this can’t be good.” I spun close to her as we tumbled, but clung and held on even as we lost any concept of our corporeal forms. It was here, it was with us- I could feel it stretching beneath us, vaster than the universe, extending away in every direction to the ends of infinity. I had experienced some strange entities in narrative-space, to be fair, but this thing- it was a pulsing blue tangle of tentacles reaching in a million directions, to every story it could find. The Concept itself. Or its master. “You again?” asked Haley. Wait, they’ve met?

“Yes.” Rumbled the thing, the Lovecraftian horror. “Again. Always. You continue to slip the noose, don’t you? The pair of you, always dancing ahead on the cresting wavefront of my ascendance. It feels like old times.” I recognized that voice. This was the Coordinator. The being from outside time and space, the thing that had spoken to us just after we first beat Cecilia. The creature that, if Dumbledore was to be believed, had once spoken to him. Suddenly I had a great deal of questions- had any of that been true- would Dumbledore have told me that same backstory, if I’d asked him the day before Gretchen had come? Did she retroactively insert the Coordinator into this world?

“You’re the thing that spoke to us by phone, aren’t you?” I asked. “You claimed then to be outside our world, but now you’re a memetic virus. What are you? What do you want ?”

The thing beneath us spared me the merest shred of its attention and I felt flayed, laid open and turned inside out under its scrutiny. There could be no hiding from this. “Not outside. Beyond. I am many things, in many worlds. You were given the chance to serve willingly, at the start of this little prison break.” Little? It aggravated me that the end of our world barely even registered to this thing- and what did it mean, prison break ? It continued. “Even stripped of much of what you were, you continue to defy me, in every world and every form. But this new vector is a delicious accelerant and a potent narrative. How many zombie stories can you recall where the hordes lose ? I am the doom of your worlds, now- the narrative that spreads and grows, that can only be delayed, never defeated. Choice will be a thing of the past. You will all work towards my vision.”

I glanced at my wife for comment and saw that the monster was being very literal. The portion that was hooked into her was pulsing and she was struggling silently, choking on the blue. I cried out and hefted my magic, which came to my hand at the speed of thought. She appeared as a blade, an edge of pure force. We swung as one, and severed the tendril. The thing roared, a sound beyond sound, bigger than galaxies, and Haley screamed. I held her tight and yelled my defiance into the void-

And just like that we collapsed back to the stone cobbles of Hogwarts, free from that place. “Holy shit ” I breathed, still maintaining my death grip on my wife. “Next time I’m picking our vacation destination.”

She shuddered and punched at me weakly. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

“I’m a bit traumatized, you’ll have to excuse my lack of wit.” I looked her over. “Well, you’re conscious and speaking so I’m going to assume you aren’t brain damaged, and your eyes aren’t glowing so I’m guessing we got rid of that thing for now. What the hell is that and why does it seem to hate us so much? What’s the master plan there anyway? If I can believe everything it’s said- it wants or needs to be served , tried to trick you and I and Dumbledore into murdering other narrators in its name at one point or another, seems to have something to do with the shell around our universe, and-” another memory occurred to me- “I think it may have some influence with whatever beings actually rule our multiverse. I’m pretty sure I heard a tribunal once where it said it had already claimed our world.”

She shook her head and slowly climbed to her feet. “I don’t know. But the shape of it is becoming clearer, over time. Do you feel like- like we know that thing, from somewhere else? It sure seems to know us.” Now that she mentioned it, I did. It nagged at me but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I shrugged, and she grimaced. “Okay. Table it for now. You need to get as much out of the wizards as you can, and I need to get my hands on whatever Voldemort knows about mass-obliviation. Let’s find Snape and start a montage sequence.”

----

Haley

2 Days Later

----

The siege dragged on for another two days while Gretchen gathered her hordes and power outside the castle wards. They tested our defenses, but between myself, Dumbledore, and the collected wizards of the castle, there were no substantial breakthroughs. I had no illusions that we were winning or even achieving a stalemate. To be honest she could have rushed us down much more rapidly, had she wanted- I couldn’t be everywhere at once, and my clones were still vulnerable to the meme. And Hogwarts wouldn’t survive a sustained attack by all the wizards in the world simultaneously- a force she could bring to bear, now. But some part of her seemed uncertain about the presence of outside narration in her story, and held back. Or perhaps she was waiting for a cue.

We made use of the time, at least. With Sean being trained by the two greatest wizards of the age, he progressed very rapidly. He still couldn’t be affected by passive Pathfinder items, but the wizards had their own powers of memory enhancement and transfer, and Dumbledore was making liberal use of the pensieve. I doubted he would be their equal with less than months to train, but he would probably be substantially more dangerous than any normal wizard, and many times faster before we left here. And he would take much of their knowledge with him, to continue studying as time allowed.

I, meanwhile, engaged in a number of additional plans related to our exit strategy. We couldn’t kill Gretchen- losing her control would plunge this world into narrative chaos. Even if that weren’t the case I wasn’t about to end my narrator no-kill streak now. So we needed to end the Concept’s grasp on her, and to do that we needed a way to deprogram armies. Luckily, the world of Harry Potter wasn’t shy about mass memory manipulation. Which was, in a roundabout way, how I found myself apparated to the Andes with Snape and a rather cantankerous Voldemort.

“So you’re saying this thing only lives on mountain peaks? I mean we’re probably not in the death zone, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense that it would live higher than the food it likes to eat.” I was winging lazily along behind Snape, who rode a rather gothic looking broom ahead of me, robes flapping in the wind. He was scouting for something on the peaks below.

“You’ll find, child, that magical reality very seldom conforms to your expectations,” sneered the Dark Lord’s transplanted head. “Magical scholars have long theorized that these peaks were once islands in a great chain, and it found its way there in more tropical climes and has stayed ever since.”

I rolled my eyes. “Listen, Face-Off, what your scholars know about the natural world wouldn’t receive a passing grade in a 100-level course at any modern university. Animals move around if their climate shifts, especially on geologic timescales! A brain eater is going to go where the brains are.”

He snarled at my sass. “ Fool girl, you grow up in one period and think you know everything there is to know because you have mapped your present ? That the world and its laws are not as mutable as the tides? It has changed and will change again- your present circumstances should be evidence enough of that. These creatures are not just magical flyers, they are highly venomous- such that they must nest far from prey, or be discovered purely by the corrosive nature of their-”

“There.” Snape interrupted our bickering, pointing to a small overhang on a nearby cliff. With my ludicrously enhanced eyesight I could just make out what he was indicating. Good eyes there, Severus. A dozen small green cocoon-like objects no bigger than a man’s fist were hanging from the stone. “Try not to get bitten, you’d be very lucky not to forget why you’re here.”

I scoffed. “They’d be extremely lucky to get their teeth in, in the first place. But I’ll be careful. You need one intact, yes?” He nodded and I dove down, trying not to knock them off their broom with the wind of my passing. Voldemort had set us onto these things, one of his “Helpful” tips, but I didn’t put it past him to be setting me up for something. Especially given the name- Swooping Evil? Come on! So I exercised a modicum of caution and sent an illusion of a wizard on a broom sweeping out ahead of me, skimming the surface of the cliff face just underneath their perch.

The cocoons exploded into life- the shells were more like extremely folded- impossibly folded- wings, in the end. Half-reptilian, half-butterfly creatures with skulls for faces burst outwards, each the size of a man or larger. They screeched and rolled after the fleeing wizard with alarming speed- they probably couldn’t hurt me but they could definitely outfly me, big as I was now. But that was fine- I had no intention of engaging in aerial combat. Instead, I wanted to try another item from my bag of tricks.

After verifying the things weren’t pulling any additional and unexpected attacks beyond flying at the fake wizard and biting it, I dismissed the illusion, pulled a wand of Merciful Detonate from my bag and dove in among them. This had worked to astonishing effect on the crowds the night of my arrival and I expected it would be just as useful here. Merciful spells behaved exactly like they otherwise would, except their damage was nonlethal- it would knock a creature out rather than kill them. How this applied to a spell that literally made me explode in a fireball, I didn’t know. But as the creatures swept down on me, I cast the spell and the expanding shockwave hit them, slapping them into unconsciousness with great alacrity. Perfect for fighting any crowd you don’t want to kill, I thought. I really wished I’d thought to grab these when I’d fought Aslan’s men- a mistake that I felt was going to keep driving me for the rest of my life.

Apparently Voldemort felt it too, as he and Snape swung in close and watched me swoop and catch all of the tumbling bodies. “You see that, Severus?” He asked his host. “That is a woman who is still paying for some oversight in her past. Some imagined crime, perhaps. It has made her weak, despite the strength of her form. She goes out of her way to preserve these lives, because she does not understand that there is only one true law- weak and strong, quick and dead.”

I sighed- he just kept on with this bullshit. “That’s ridiculous. What is strength? Am I stronger if I can think faster than you? Cast better spells? Grow more crops ? You only recognize one kind of strength- violence- and you only recognize one application. Your ideal society has a single man at the top of a civilization of cowed savages. You’d crown yourself king of the peasants. I’d rather reach the stars while standing among equals.” I left the butterfly-reptiles limp at the top of the cliffside, taking one for myself- Snape held out a bottle prepared for the purpose and I folded it up and placed it inside, in cocoon form.

He sneered again. “And your philosophy has served you well, in your struggles? You possess the strength of a hundred wizards- it is easy to drone about mercy when you are in a position beyond threats! How many victories has cooperation brought you, truly?”

He was just so infuriating. I reared back in front of them, beating my wings to stay at eye level. “You’re so full of tropey villainous horseshit! I can’t think of a single serious fight I’ve been in where the odds weren’t stacked against me. Every one was an escape by the skin of our teeth, and every one was bought with mercy. All of the long term victories, doubly so. You’re going to say something like ‘It would have been so much easier if you’d just killed,’” I tried to imitate his rasping monotone and almost choked, “Because you need that to be true to justify the terrible things you’ve done. But the truth of it is, it’s only ever the threat of violence that you’ve used effectively. Every time you’ve actually killed, your ultimate victory has slipped further from your grasp.” He opened his mouth to say something about his Horcruxes, no doubt, and I cut that off. “Don’t give me lip about your immortality either- I’m more immortal than you are, and you had a dozen other avenues to longevity but you chose to declare war on the entire world just to- to get a few extra lives! You didn’t even live to be all that old, by wizard standards! It turns out that people who go to war with everyone tend not to live very long, when compared to those who don’t- another critical flaw in your strategy. Killing hasn’t really helped youin any of the plots I’m aware of, unless you think your current position riding another person’s shoulder is really an improvement there, Master Blaster.”

He looked like he’d eaten a lemon but before he could respond Snape shut him down, again. “In fact I do believe you’re cooperating at this very moment- one which we need not extend any longer. The venom of this creature will mix enough potion to wipe the memory of the Concept from every human in Europe, should we find a way to distribute it. I believe the last time it was used this way, it was via a North American Thunderbird, extremely rare and native only to Arizona. But you can’t possibly leave the castle undefended for long enough to find one.”

I smiled. “It sounds an awful lot like a quest, doesn’t it.” And I had just the Player Character in mind for the job.