I've heard it described like being pulled from your navel a bunch of times, but I wasn't prepared for the sensation I got when, dizzy, I found myself standing in a random yard and before I could even adapt to that, I heard Declan say, "Hold onto me!" and he wrapped his full body around me and there was a jerk like being caught on a fish hook.
I felt spun about in a dark place. This is what clothing feels like in the washing machine. Vertigo incomparable to anything I've ever felt before threw me and I clung onto Declan like my life depended on it and I was sure it probably did. I was squeezed, stretched, spun and a myriad of other uncomfy sensations and suddenly felt hard ground under my feet and Declan's grip loosened on me.
I spun 'round like a tourist at Six Flags and threw up.
"Oh c'mon, not on my shoes!" Declan said.
I clutched my knees, unbalanced, staring at the sick, staring at the grass, my stomach still whirling about. I was sooo getting a migraine later...
"Tergio," Declan said, and I noticed he had a wand poking out of his shirt sleeve. The sick was gone, sneakers clean as new, and he sighed, reaching down and patting my back. "Sorry, I forgot you said this happened. I should have warned you."
I looked up at him with a long-suffering expression.
Declan offerer a sheepish grin.
It took a minute for me to gather myself together, for the spinning to stop, and I stood upright, now disoriented for another reason.
We were most definitely not in Nashville anymore.
I stared around as my brain tried to wrap around what happened, what logical thing he might have done.
"Where the hell are we, Declan?" I asked.
He let me look around for a moment without answering, then he pointed up.
I looked.
We were on a street corner in a residential area, but it was definitely not anywhere in East Nashville - the shape of the houses were all different than I was used to in an unexplainable way - just different. And it was all perfectly manicured, grass cut just so across all the lawns that patchworked down the road, the houses all perfect and alike aside from variations in color. Like a row of perfect teeth.
Above us hovered a street sign, lit by illuminated lamps that reminded me of Narnia, marking the intersection of PRIVET DRIVE and MAGNOLIA COURT.
I stared up at it wordlessly, then turned and looked for numbers on the houses. A brown brick one two down from where we stood sat quiet and still, and I could barely breathe. I looked at Declan.
Declan checked a watch on his wrist - old and leather, the band was very worn - and he said, "Let's see... We've actually hit the timing rather perfectly. Look at that!" He held up his arm for me. His watch was scratched on the face, very old. "... and if I'm not mistaken... I mean, if I remember correctly..." Declan led the way across the lawn of Number Two and we stopped on the sidewalk between the two houses. "Don't stare," he whispered, "But if you glance at the bushes - about halfway up the car park... Just wait and the street light will catch his eyes when he moves."
I glanced, whirled back around to face Declan, gasping. "Is that --"
"Yes, it is."
I was shaking. "This cannot be real."
"Ah, but it is. And you'll get used to it eventually. We've done a lot of seeing."
"You keep talking past tense," I pointed out.
Declan smiled sadly, "Well, a lot of what we do I've already done. If that makes sense."
"Not really."
"It will eventually," he answered.
"Alright." I didn't think it would. I looked over my shoulder at the magnolia bushes again, the barely visible form of the shaggy black dog showed through the bush, a shadow slightly darker than the true shadows. My heart tugged in my chest and I suddenly didn't care if I was being pranked somehow, if this was an elaborate trick of film and illusion. I was throwing myself into the emotion of it and it was the strangest thing.
I could almost feel the things that dog was feeling.
Or - no, not a dog, I reminded myself.
Sirius Black.
Declan's hand gently closed around my wrist. "C'mon," he whispered. "Show's about to start. Out the back, remember?"
"Show?" I stammered, too caught up in staring at the dog in the magnolias.
Declan pulled me after him, keeping on the neighbor's side of the hedge row, ducking below the line of the fence, keeping us from being seen from Number Four's windows or the backyard as we came into the back and peered through the cracks in the fence at the back sunroom/deck.
The entire family was sitting there. I couldn't see them too good, through the fencing and also through the glass of the sunroom we were looking through, only forms of the three adults and two boys. I shifted and my breath caught in my throat when I saw him.
His hair was messier than Daniel Radcliff's had been, a bit longer, so it hung over his forehead he way mine sometimes did. But even from where we were, even through the tiny cracks between fence panels and the glass, even in the dark, I could still see the flash of his vibrant green eyes and I covered my mouth with my palm. He wore a too-large t-shirt that hung on him loose and was a cherry-tomato red and a pair of jeans that were torn at the knee from use, not for fashion's sake, and he had on a pair of Converse sneakers. Trainers, they called them in England, I reminded myself. His black wire frame glasses were circular - a detail too iconic to have gotten wrong in the films, I suppose - and he was looking down at his plate, not speaking or being spoken to... just trying to keep to himself, to be unnoticed, while simultaneously being the only one at that table that drew my attention.
Harry Potter.
I looked at Declan.
He smiled and the flush to his face... Was it pride? Admiration? I don't know. I couldn't tell.
I didn't know Declan well enough yet.
My attention had been drawn from Harry Potter (the Harry fucking Potter, guys), but it was long enough.
It happened just like I always imagined in the books.
I scrambled to get the pen out of my pony tail (that's where I always store my pens) and scribbled furiously in my notebook as I watched the scene unfold.
Suddenly, back door had burst open, spilling light across the yard in a sharp golden streak, but a strange shadow was cast in the middle. A very large, very round shadow... and it was growing by the second.
I gasped so loud, it's a wonder the Dursleys didn't hear me.
And I could see the flash of yellow eyes in the magnolias across the yard. Like us, Sirius Black had run around the house just in time to see as Aunt Marge made her aerial debut.
Sticking out of the door was a pair of extremely swelled up legs, which were attached to an even more swelled up body. The hippopotamus-sized woman was floating, inflating like a giant hot air balloon, wedged in the doorway, shrieking with panic as she waved her fat arms and kicked her fat legs and her blouse buttons were bursting, pinging about like tiny bits of shrapnel. Vernon Dursley stood in the doorway, desperately clutching the woman's hands.
"I'VE GOT YOU MARGE!" he bellowed.
"VERRRRRRRR-NON!" she was screaming the name repeatedly, though her cheeks and lips had swelled up so much that the words sounded muffled as her face became more and more indistinguishable from the rest of her.
And then the most wonderful moment of all.
All of the kicking that Marge was doing had managed to dislodge her and she tumbled heels over head, a rolling ball of flesh and wind, bouncing twice on the grass before rising up and starting to take flight.
"VERRRRRR-NNNNNNNOOOOOOOON!"
Vernon ran as fast as anyone so large could possibly run, took what must've been a great leap for him (though all high might only managed to nudge him a few inches from the grass), trying to latch onto the woman's hands.
"MARGE!" he cried, "MARGE!"
"VERNON!"
A squash faced dog was barking desperately (Kipper? Was that his name? No- wait it was Ripper!), his whole body trembling with each yap, staring up into the air as the woman called Marge slowly spiraled through the air like a balloon lost by a child at a parade when the strings become broken. She spun and spun, higher and higher, screaming all of the way, the sound of her slowly fading the further away she got.
Vernon was on his knees in the garden, bellowing her name as Ripper the dog continued to bark, and Petunia ran out into the back yard, horror struck and clutching her cheeks in absolute terror as she stared up into the violet sky as Marge flew away, not much more than a tiny dot on the horizon.
Declan laughed and turned, running manically for the front of the house whose yard we were watching from. "Come on, your moment's about to happen. Around here."
"Wait," I said, "They end up on Magnolia when he sees the Grim - not on Privet."
Declan stopped and clapped his hands, "Yeah it does! This is why I need you, I would've gone 'round the wrong way just now." He turned back and followed me around the back of the house and out onto the cross road of Magnolia Crescent.
I was rendered breathless all over again by the sight of Harry Potter when he came moving down the sidewalk, dragging his school trunk and muttering to himself. I tried to copy down what he was saying, but Declan reached over and stilled my pen, pulling me quickly behind a short row of hedges and down to our knees in the grass. He made a shhh sign, then nodded for me to look.
I peered out.
The shaggy black shadow was slinking over the grass of Number Two's lawn, sliding among magnolias and flower beds, belly low to the ground. Yellow eyes stared through the darkness, staring at Harry Potter. From the angle we were at, we were in absolute shadow while Sirius Black lay in semi-shadow and Harry was in the full glow of the street lamp.
It was so surreal, watching, seeing this play out in front of me.
I remember the first time I ever went to a concert about a billion years before and having this moment of realizing the posters on my walls were pictures of real people, that the band I adored was not make believe, that I was in the same room, breathing the same air. They'd seemed as impossible and fantastic as Harry Potter had seemed not even an hour ago.
But now.
I could have reached out and touched Sirius Black's back, he was so close.
And again I could almost feel the heart ache, could almost taste the tears that stained his doggy face, as though they were rolling across my own cheeks, over my own lips and chin. It hurt so much - seeing that little reflection of the life he'd had once, the life that was now passed.
God it ached.
And I saw the moment he thought about just going and telling Harry the truth. I saw the determination in his eyes, saw the tremble of the step...
Harry turned, made a sound of surprise not unlike a honk, snd stepped backward, tipping over the curb with flailing arms.
Both Sirius and I panicked slightly when Harry tripped and fell down in his shock... Declan grabbed onto my elbow to keep me from springing forward to help him.
I wondered what held Sirius back in the split second before the Knight Bus appeared with a violent CRACK. The moon shone on the violently purple bus, the smell of slightly burnt rubber from the tires and the popping exhaust smoke wafted through the air...
It was all so vivid, so real.
I have got to be hallucinating.
"Do you think Harry would listen?" Declan asked quietly.
"You mean if Sirius talked to him now?" I asked in a breath.
Declan nodded.
"I dunno."
"What if we talked to him now?" Declan asked.
I looked at him.
"We could, you know. If we wanted to. It could change the timeline. Part of it."
I looked at the dog and the boy, at the trunk, at Stan Shunpike calling him Neville and ushering Harry onto the Knight Bus.
Declan looked over at me. "We don't alter it from here, though. You told me we didn't. But I've wondered before if we ought to have done. Maybe it would have been enough."
"Enough? Enough what?" I blinked. "Why would we alter it?"
Declan laughed, "Why would we alter it??? Hannah -- come now."
"No really. I'm confused."
"Because we could change the outcome. We could save them."
"Save --"
"Sirius. And possibly - possibly Remus, too." Declan had paused there, as though he'd hesitated to say Remus Lupin's name.
The Knight Bus was gone, the dog had backed off, sunken in deeper than ever in the shadow before disappearing...
"Why didn't we then?" I asked.
Declan paused. "Because, this wouldn't change what we ended up deciding to try to change. This isn't the right moment. I guess that's why."
"It's not?"
He shook his head.
"What do we decide to change?" I asked.
Declan smiled. "Everything," he said.
"Everything? What's that mean?"
But instead of answering, he looked at his watch and suddenly he yelped, "Oh shit I forgot. You reminded me and I almost forgot!"
"I reminded you? Of what?"
"Yes - future you! Of the Floating Muggle Recovery Board!" He leaped up from the grass and bolted across the lawn, back toward Privet Drive.
"The Floating Muggle Recovery Board??" I asked, confused.
"HURRY!"
"Declan! Wait!" I got up and rushed across the grass with him, picking my steps carefully so I wouldn't slide on the damp grass in my stupid flip flops. Of all days to have worn flip flops. "Next time you do this to me, please make sure I have time to change my shoes."
"Next time?" Declan laughed, "That's the spirit. I like your new attitude."
He'd reached the door ahead of me and had already knocked before I reached the walking stones and arrived at his side on the stoop. The door opened and there was a boy with a round face, some sort of sticky sauce stuck on the corners of his mouth, a napkin tucked into the neck of his shirt, smeared with finger prints in that same sauce. The boy stared at us, a dumbstruck look on his face. He took in Declan's hair with suspicion and then looked at me. Choosing to address me, rather than Declan, he said, "Who're you lot?"
I didn't have any idea how to answer, so I stared dumbly at him, my mind wrapping around the fact that - standing in front of me, in real actual life and so very different than the poor kid that played him in the movie, was who could absolutely be nobody else except Dudley Dursley.
"Good evening young man," Declan's voice was very official and even - a tone I hadn't heard before. He did a funny little bow. "My assistant and I are here from the... Floating Muggle Recovery Board at the Ministry for Magic. And we're here to deflate your... Aunt Marge, is it?" A wicked grin grew on Declan's face. "Now stand back, son, the recovery and deflation process can be quite messy, but we'll have her shrunk down in no time!"
"What are you doing?" I hissed, following Declan as he pushed past the boy-who-was-Dudley and stepped into the house.
Declan looked over his shoulder at me, grinning with amusement. "Getting the inside scoop," he said.
The house smelled like dinner cooking and an overly sweet scent that had to be some sort of floral spray air freshener. There was a dog barking frantically and two different televisions running with volume blaring from each, different channels competiting. There was shouting voices in the back yard, a woman's higher pitch tones and a deep rumbling baritone of a man's voice. I looked around, eyes wide, taking in the house, seeing the outline of the door of the cupboard under the stairs, my stomach lurching with it's significance. I felt almost dizzy from it as I trotted after Declan through a sparkling clean kitchen, onto a back deck framed by beautiful climbing flowers and ivy, a table with a full spread of dinner barely touched...
"Careful for the glass there," Declan called, "With those ridiculous shoes of yours - don't need to be slicing open your toes..."
I stepped around it, in awe. It was the glass Harry had shattered with involuntary magic. Brandy stained the carpet beneath it.
"Oh my God," I whispered.
I was so busy staring at the brandy soaked carpet and the glass that I nearly walked directly into Petunia Dursley. She turned around in surprise at my proximity, her eyes lined thickly with brown kohl, clutching a strand of pearls that hung about her neck anxiously. It really was longer than the usual neck, I noticed. Her long fingers painted pale pink at the nails, dark red-brown hair short and curly, framing her face. Panic flitted through those eyes as she took me in and then wheeled to look at Declan, who had stepped up to an absolutely enormous man who was kneeling on the ground several feet away, arms upstretched over his head. Far off in the sky was a little black dot like a balloon lost by a child at a picnic.
"Get her down! Get her DOWN!" the man was bellowing.
I swear I've never seen better casting in my life than they'd done for Vernon Dursley in the films.
Declan said, "No worries, chap. I'll have her down in just a moment." He turned to me and cleared his throat, "Miss. Martin, care to assist?"
I stared at him, "I - Assist?" I stammered.
"Who ARE you?" Petunia asked, voice pitchy with rage and fear.
Declan looked at me to answer.
"The um, we're the Floating... Muggle ...erm, Rescue... Committee?" I said, trying to remember what Declan had told Dudley in the hall.
"Floating Muggle Rescue Committee?" Petunia repeated.
"Board, darling," Declan corrected her.
"Board," I corrected myself.
Petunia looked between us, then up at the spinning speck of a woman as she looped about through the air. "This happens often enough you need a board?" she asked, incredulous.
Declan laughed, "You'd be surprised how often!"
Petunia clutched at her pearls all the more.
"GET HER DOWN!" Vernon Dursley shouted, having managed to get himself up from the ground and waddled over from where he'd been. "GET HER DOWN THIS INSTANT!"
Declan grinned. "Yes sir!" And he drew his wand.
I stared at it with wide eyes.
Despite everything, seeing the actual wand in his hand - pointed high to the sky... I still couldn't fully believe what I was seeing.
"Accio Auntie Marge!"