It took the rest of the night for my magic to become relatively stable. "I'm going to take the paralysis charm off." Aunt Poppy with a flick of her wand made my body tingle then sink into the soft cushion of the bed. I breathed a sigh of relief and smiled broadly. "I want you to stay here for the rest of the day." She said this as I looked out the window, and saw the brilliant red sun rising over the tree tops of the forbidden forest.
"Did I ever tell you," Remus was awake. I had been up for two hours now, and had watched the sun fully rise into the sky. Today was going to be a brilliant day. "How your Grandfather confronted me about my being a werewolf."
"Yes," I said in a small voice. "It is one of my favorite stories."
"Well, I guess you can then tell me what you are doing here," Remus said with a light chuckle.
"We all have a role to play Uncle Remus, and mine just happens to have a little more confusion then most." My answer was not what he was looking for but it was all he was going to get out of me. After all he was to know only so much.
"What is my role?"
"Isn't that what we are all trying to figure out?"
He let out a wolfish laugh at this and I couldn't help but laugh too. "I guess you are right. But at least I know he lives."
"Uncle Remus," I say softly.
"That is going to take some getting use to," he retorted back.
"I need your help." Uncle Remus got out of bed and carefully made his way over to my bed. He sat down on top of the covers, as I scooted over, and carefully scooped me up in his arms. "I just didn't think they would be this way." I let the tears that were stinging my eyes to fall. "They are just so different from the parents I know."
"What do you mean?" I could tell Uncle Remus was trying to understand and comfort me at the same time, but he was doing a horrible job at it.
I took a deep breathe, held it for ten seconds, and then exhaled, but before I could continue Aunt Poppy appeared from around the curtain again. She didn't even seem angry at catching Uncle Remus out of bed instead she seemed cautious. "Headmistress McGonagall would like to see you now that you are awake and somewhat stable."
"But you told me to stay in bed for the rest of the day?"
"I know what I said," she didn't even snap as she spoke, but instead she seemed to deflate. Aunt Poppy had just called Professor McGonagall by her new title something she rarely even did in my time. I understood that something was suspicious in the castle of my being here. "She also said you would need this," Aunt Poppy handed me my bag of tricks.
Clearing my throat I said any word that came to mind and felt my bag click open. Rummaging around I found exactly what I knew Professor McGonagall wanted me to use…my Dad's invisibility cloak along with the marauders map.
"Well, if I had any doubt I don't any more," Remus let his hand slide over the liquid fabric of the cloak. He then opened the map and said the magic words. Blank ink lines began to spread all over the parchment, and in green ink at the top were different magic words but more powerful in meaning. "Gosh this map sure does get passed around."
"It will go to the twins when I leave school," the faces of my twin brothers came swimming into view. They are identical in every way, and a complete mixture of each of my parents. With dad's hair, mum's eyes, and dad's nose coupled with mum's lips.
"Who do the twins belong to? Ron?" Remus's face was smiling at the thought of Ron being tortured like he was tortured by Uncle Fred and George.
"No, they are my brothers…Mike and Adam. I should get going." I grabbed the map, swiped it clean, and threw the cloak over my head as I stood up. "Bye Uncle Remus," my voice whispered into the wind.
Walking the halls was fairly easy remembering the password Uncle Hagrid used to open up Professor McGonagall's office was another matter entirely. I didn't even beginning to name off anything for I was lost in complete thought of what it was.
"You are expected," The gargoyle growled annoyingly at me as it had been standing open the entire time I was lost in my thoughts.
"Um thanks," I had never heard it speak before.
The stairs wound their way to the top landing and as they did I could hear voices. Those voices I knew so distinctively that I actually flinched as my dad raised his voice at Professor McGonagall. At the top of the stairs the voices became unable to overhear.
"Who is she Professor McGonagall?" My dad asked sounding oddly tired.
"No witch has that kind of power. Nor should they," My mum edged in her say in the matter at hand. "Plus she just invented a way to heal, HEAL, werewolves. That is advance, strong, powerful magic. Even Dumbledore couldn't have done that."
"She knows things," I was startled to hear Neville in the room along with my parents. I wondered vaguely who else was there but Neville continued on. "She said her parents knew my parents, and I asked my Gran. They didn't. Plus Gran had never heard of Madam Pomfrey having a sister or brother."
"Listen to me," McGonagall spoke up for the first time. "Just listen to me. I can not give you what you want to hear. I was sworn to secrecy and I am bound by my word. All I can tell you about Jillian Pomfrey is that she did a noble deed by saving Remus from his horrible curse. How she did it and why? Well you are going to have to ask her, but for now you have classes to attend."
Even I could tell that the discussion had come to an end. Pressing myself against the wall I watched as Neville, Ron, and my mum and dad left. "Come in Jillian," As soon as Professor McGonagall was sure they had truly left I was summoned into the office.
With a twirl of my wrist I had taken off the invisibility cloak. She watched as I appeared out of thin air and smiled slightly. "I think we have a problem."
"Yes I think we do," I said as I sunk into a chair facing the quidditch pitch. Fawkes gave a trill of agreement and I smiled at him. "So this is where you are hanging out now? Nice of you to inform me seeing as I could have used your help last night." Talking to a phoenix was not getting me very far in venting my frustrations.
"Jillian, your parents are smart and they will figure out that you are not who you say you are. And they will figure this out soon."
Sighing, the sight of the quidditch field outside the window did nothing to calm down my racing mind. It was so hard to figure out how much I changed history. "I wasn't," My voice cracked as I spoke. "I wasn't supposed to heal him. Cure Uncle Remus of his disease was not something I was to do."
"What do you mean?" Professor McGonagall's sharp eyes made me bring the world back into focus as I stared at her.
"Professor, I just changed history." She took in a sharp breath at my statement. "I was suppose to go into the hospital wing and take out all the silver in his system, but I tapped into the Potter magic that lay dormant in him."
"Potter magic?"
"Along with becoming animagi Uncle Sirius, Grandpa, and Remus did another sort of protection to help Uncle Remus…they became magic brothers. So Uncle Remus had some Potter magic within him. When I performed the purification charm I accidentally tapped into that magic to help me push out the silver in his blood stream. Grandpa must have been very powerful for his magic took me over, and it pushed the entire curse out of Uncle Remus." My voice got really tight at this statement, "I'm sorry."
"How much does this change the course of history?"
"I don't know," I said honestly. "It all depends on choices."
"Choices," At this Professor McGonagall's voice went oddly quiet and had a hint of sadness to it.
"I was once told be a wise man that `it is our choices that show who we are far more than our abilities.'" My eyes moved to the wide awake portrait of Headmaster Dumbledore.
"I couldn't have said it better myself, my dear." He beamed down at me.
"You told me that when I first came up to this office in my first year here at Hogwarts."
"Never gave better advice then that. I believe I once told your father that." Dumbledore looked thoughtful as his eyes twinkled.
"Yes in his second year here." Pausing I looked at the sword that my father took out of the sorting hat his second year at Hogwarts. "Professor, why didn't you tell him the truth?"
Rarely had I heard my parents raise their voice at each other and I had never ever heard them argue. So this was a first for me as I walked into the deserted common room to find my parents in the throws of a yelling match their faces only inches from each others and really, really pissed off.
"Okay Miss Know-It-All," My father yelled at my mother. "Then who is she if she isn't my mother?" My breathing hitched in my throat and I stumbled back against the stone wall of the portrait hole. My father thought I was Lily Potter, a high compliment but one that would bring grief when he realized I wasn't who he wanted me to be. "She looks exactly like her. I have pictures so don't tell me I'm wrong."
"She CAN'T BE Lily," My mother yelled the middle two words as if to push them into my father's skull. I heard her let out a sigh and then someone plop down on one of the overstuffed arm chairs by the fire place. "Just listen to me for one minute before you explode again." At this I heard another body plop onto another chair. "Do remember n our third year when I had that time turner." Dad let out a snort at this, "Good, well did you ever wonder why I didn't go forward in time. Like to get a head start on my work?"
"You are Hermione and that would be considered cheating," I could tell my dad was grinning as he spoke. We all knew that Mum did not condone cheating of any sort.
"Well yes but there is another reason…you can't travel forward in time."
"Why not?"
"Because you can't go to some place you've never been before. Time travel is very sensitive in its nature. Going back alone is hard enough with all the rules you have to follow but going forward is impossible. You don't know where you are heading to and what you are going to be met with when you get there." She was in her full blown lecture tone now. The same one she used whenever she taught the twins and me more complex magic over the holidays. "So you see Harry she couldn't be here because it is impossible."
"Then why does she look so much like my mother?"
"Oh Harry," I peered around the wall I was hiding behind to see my mother holding on to my father who looked like he was holding the last bit of the world in his hands, and his hands were grabbing my mother fiercely.
Witnessing my father's meltdown made me feel older somehow and yet smaller at the same time. I made my way back to the hospital wing. "Jillian, you didn't need to come back here," Aunt Poppy said as I entered the wing.
My eyes were beginning to blur, my head felt fuzzy, and something was completely off with my heart. I took a racking breath and tried to focus my eyes on Aunt Poppy. "Something," I said with a wheeze. "Is….wrong," I felt a current taking me under and my body slammed into the floor just as I succumbed into unconsciousness once again.
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