Saving Hogwarts

The Sorting Hat must have just grazed Andrew's head before announcing, "You have some quality material with this pair, Headmaster. All is well."

Only Draco's House sorting was over that quick, so maybe the ancient artifact works fastest with blonde guys, who knows. The process took so little that I didn't even get the chance to worry about the state of my boyfriend's heart before it was all over, and we were both confirmed for the trials ahead. No pressure whatsoever. We just had to help save the mirror world in which my apparently not-fictional idols Harry, Ron, and Hermione resided from a threat that lay dormant for the past 600 years. A crazy powerful witch that would have made Voldemort look cuddly by comparison (Harry's words). Unfortunately, Sinestra was wide awake now and hell-bent on finishing what she started in the Middle Ages—the obliteration of mankind, both Muggle and magical. I was still wrapping my head around all this.

Andrew takes back his seat next to me, a weird look on his face.

"Are you alright, baby? Did the Sorting Hat tell you something upsetting?"

Before he gets the chance to reply, portrait-Dumbledore resumes talking.

"Marvellous. We can begin then. Harry, if you could please lead Anna and Andrew to the Pensive."

"To the Pensive?!" The legendary object was said to be even older than Hogwarts itself.

"Yes, my dear. To my knowledge, the Ether has not been performed for centuries. However, Nicholas and I have theoritised that in order for you to channel memories of love powerful enough to raise a cathedral of light that repels Sinestra's darkness, you would be best served to revisit said memories ahead of time. For practice and thorough remembrance. Now, you may only have a few minutes before Charles returns with the next pair, so use them wisely. Harry will provide vials for collecting your chosen memories."

To my right, Andrew looks stunned. I guess it was one thing to play along and another to have your innermost feelings out there for the whole world to see. Especially for a private person. But he's forgetting something.

"Baby, we're not on camera now, are we? Nobody's watching us on screen, like we did back at home. This is real. Our memories will be our own. We'll just—you know—use them to save the world."

Overhearing my words, Harry is quick to chime in. "Yes, of course. You'll each pour your memories into the basin and then look by yourselves, in complete privacy. Here are six vials. They should suffice."

Mollified, Andrew snaps out of his weird mood and gives me a shaky smile. "Want me to go first?"

"No, I'll go. I'm much more familiar with all this, albeit not from the front-row seat. And I'm dying to rehash our history in 3D."

Eyes blazing with warmth at my impromptu declaration, he lifts my right hand and brushes it with his lips. "I won big with you. Go on then. I'll wait for you here. Maybe even find something to eat."

I raise from the couch and let Harry guide me to the same black cabinet he exited when we first got here. Probably getting in some practice of his own. Meanwhile, Ron (the original, not our cat) was leading Andrew to another part of Dumbledore's oval office, presumably to food.

With a reassuring smile, The Man Who Lived handed me three vials and closed the door behind him, leaving me alone with my memories. Now, which one to pick? I've known long ago that Andrew was the one for me, so the leading guy in my story was no mystery, but the situation per say. My surroundings didn't provide much in the way of inspiration, mainly because the cabinet was extremely narrow, allowing just a small podium which held the whispery Pensive and around 4 square feet around it. I wasn't claustrophobic, but the tight quarters combined with the staleness of/in the air didn't count as a particularly relaxing environment. No matter. I needed to dig within anyway. Taking a last look at the sole source of light—the basin itself—I close my eyes and take a deep breath.

Firsts. Let's think about firsts. Our first meeting almost four years ago cannot be construed as a memory of love, but the first time we said "I love you" certainly can. Especially since it was so darn cute (and goofy—like us). We were alone in my parents' kitchen, four months into our relationship. We had just finished breakfast and were about to head out to work when I could not keep those three little words bottled up any longer. They were on my mind for some time, but a fear of abandonment urged me to stay silent. Until that moment. I blurted them out without any preamble whatsoever and after one second of shocked silence Andrew swept me in his arms and said in a mock-offended voice that that was supposed to be his line, one he was saving until he was sure that hearing such a powerful confession would not scare me off. Of course, having him say that only made me love him more.

Memory chosen, I put a vial near my right temple, hoping it would extract it even in the absence of a wand. Afterall, Dumbledore said that magic ran deep within us—it just manifested differently than in their mirror world. To my delight, it took just a moment for a silvery tendril to slip inside the vial, lighting the glass from within.

For the second memory, I choose the time when I knew that Andrew would make the perfect dad. We had recently adopted Ron Weasley the cat and the little rascal had decided it would be a good idea to inspect the toilet—from the inside. Considering his ginger coat was streaked with blue from the toilet freshener a bath was unavoidable. Watching my 6foot2 boyfriend wrapping 3 months-old Ron in a towel while murmuring sweet nothings to calm him down was a sight to behold, making my heart grow impossibly larger.

Two down, one to go.

Yes! Valentine's Day, two years ago. I was still on the mend after a nasty burnout that forced me to take a three-months sabbatical. Highly necessary in order to pick up the pieces of my broken self and realign them into a sturdy foundation. To bolster my spirits, Andrew took me to a fancy dinner in the most romantic bistro, complete with a sax player that serenaded us all night long. It wasn't the delicious food, the comfortable setting, not even the sultry music. It was him, in his entirety. My rock in the storm, who saw me beautiful and whole, who believed me worthy of happiness. The sturdy anchor who wore his heart on his sleeve and never failed to make me feel loved and secure, even during my darkest days. It was such a powerful, perfect moment that I didn't need to touch the vial to my temple. The memory just floated away on its own, leaving behind the faintest echo of a sax playing in the night.

Eager to relieve everything through the Pensive, I spilled one by one the three vials in the basin and watched the strange, swirling substance calm down and turn from gassy to liquid, rehashing each beautiful memory in detail before my eyes. Although I didn't get sucked in the memory like shown in the books (one more thing Rita didn't accurately share with Rowling), the re-enactment was a feast for all senses. Sight was accompanied by smell, hearing, touch, and even taste. Feet firmly planted on the cabinet's floor, I was relieving Andrew's laugh, his perfume, the yummy desert from our Valentine's dinner, the staccato beat of his heart beneath my hand after we first confessed our love—everything and anything in between. Such a high will certainly ruin me for watching a movie in IMAX ever again. How could they ever compare?

It was hard to leave behind all those wonderful sensations, but time was of the essence—as Charlie warned us from the start. Besides, my memories were living inside of me. Always.

The scene that greets me outside the cabinet makes my heart do another double-flip. Ron was showing Andrew how to play wizarding chess, while his furry namesake tried to abscond with the pieces, to no avail. Every time the furball made a swipe for one, it just jumped out of the way before resuming its position. Which, of course, made the men howl with laughter. Kindred spirits those two. Meanwhile, Harry and Hermione were looking outside, deep in thought. Since Sinestra's spell affected only humans, at least there were a few birds flying around, disturbing the too-still setting.

"See you two are having fun," I said before picking up Ron just before a knight threw its shield at him.

"Hey! Why did you do that for? He was perfectly safe."

"No doubt, but we need to make a move on, don't we", I said looking pointedly at Harry and Hermione's backs. "I see that Dumbledore is taking another nap, so I must have taken a while."

"Not that much, to be honest," supplied Ron. "He's just..."

"Old, yes. You mentioned that."

"Well, he is, 'innit? But the missus is right, mate, you should get going. We'll finish this another time."

"Well, thanks for showing me how to play wizarding chess," replied Andrew on the way to the cabinet. "And for the shepard's pie. You gotta give me the recipe."

Shaking my head with barely suppressed laugher, I walk Andrew to the cabinet's door and give him a quick peck on the cheek. "It'll be alright, you'll see. It's a pretty amazing experience."

"Thanks, honey. See you in a bit."

A few moments later, I was sitting at Andrew's vacated seat, devouring Ron's shepard's pie and feeding tiny morsels to our fluffball. I'm not a big fan of lamb, but you could hardly taste it among the explosion of taste coming from the roosted vegetables and mashed potatoes. To my shock at finding such a complex meal available, Hermione explained that while it was indeed impossible to make food out of nothing, they just had to summon the ingredients from their own home, before preparing everything here with the many instruments available in the office. And, of course, magic. It seemed that Ron has blossomed into a responsible adult and an amazing cook, being the sole responsible for food in their household, and the one who put together the pie now. It was beyond amazing to see all three of them as grown-ups. The ultimate epilogue. Despite the grim circumstances, it was easy to tell they were still close friends, and that Ron and Hermione's marriage was a very happy one, even it¬-at the moment-childless. They balance each other perfectly and have really come into their own. Harry was the most reserved of the three, which was not that surprising. He was never that exuberant. At least in Rita's version, he seemed to have found love. Here he wasn't lonely exactly, but there was a wariness to his posture, a slight droop that hinted at deeper troubles beside the current ones. I was dying to find out more about his life but didn't want to pry.

"You know that Neville will have your head when he wakes up, right?" the subject of my thoughts told his best friend.

"Why you reckon?" answered a bewildered Ron.

"Because you used up half of his herbs for your fancy foods. We could have eaten something simpler, but no, you insisted on hearty meals. Good for morale, you said."

"Well, that's right. You can't save the world with a bloody sandwich, do you? Don't worry, I'll buy Neville's weight in herbs when we get out of this."

"Umm, sorry, but what does Neville have to do with this?

"Oh, yes. You have no way of knowing. Neville is the headmaster, so these are all his," provided Harry.

"Neville? The headmaster at Hogwarts?"

"Indeed. Has been for the past two years, ever since Professor McGonagall retired."

"She's not dead, is she," I asked in a small voice.

"Goodness, no. Said she was growing tired of today's youth and chose to spend her retirement on the grounds, acting as an un-official advisor to Neville. He's young for a headmaster, of course, but with the whole staff behind him and the breakthroughs he had with the dittany herb he was a shoe-in. The Board of Governors had no choice but to go with it."

"Oh, good for him. That's amazing."

"He and Luna had just left the office when the spell hit, so they must be very close."

Neville headmaster at Hogwarts, conquering the wizarding world one herb at a time, with Luna at his side. I had the weirdest notion to open the door and see how close they really were when a loud bang resonated in the room, making Ron jump from my lap and scurry under the sofa. Smoke was billowing in the middle of the room, engulfing various objects, from a harp, to a magnetophonon, to a set of armour that creaked ominously.

Smoke... Did Sinestra's spells break through somehow?

***

To be continued

Dear reader, thank you for continuing on this journey with me. A Potterhead's New Year's Day initially started as a stand-alone story created for Return Of The Barn Owl challenge. But my muses had other plans. I had so much fun with this universe that I decided to expand it into a short series. If you didn't get a chance until now, you can check out the first part here.

Stay tuned for what's in store for these motley crew of canon and contemporary. And with seven couples needed to perform the Ether it means we still have to meet a bunch of new characters. Excited? Hop on board and hit the Subscribe button to be in the loop. Always.

Love and light,

A.M. Radulescu