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Lily chuckled as she looked away from the cake and up at her son who was floating at about eye level. “Do you even know how old you are mentally?”

“Twenty, give or take?” He wasn’t actually sure how many weeks or months he’d spent in loops that he’d discarded while stealing goblin secrets and various other magical secrets from the dead. Most of the time he’d reset an hour or two at a time to test something or ask goblins or people questions that he didn’t want anyone remembering him asking but he’d also occasionally tossed entire weeks at a time if something had gone wrong since the last save. It all added up to him not being sure exactly how old he was mentally as he hadn’t exactly paid attention to how much time he was resetting.

“In that case, just think of each candle as worth a decade.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the adult here?” Harry asked curiously.

“I’ve got another couple of weeks of being an irresponsible witch before your sister is born and I have to be a responsible adult again.”

Sirius stuck his head into the kitchen. “Don’t believe her, she was never irresponsible.”

Lily shook her finger at Sirius. “I’d hex you but that would be irresponsible and set a bad example.”

“And you left your wand in the living room?” Sirius asked with amusement as he walked over and carefully picked up the tray the chocolate cake was on.

“That’s the main reason,” Lily admitted.

“Let’s get the party started before the Dirty Dozen decide to sneak in here and steal the cake.”

Lily shook her head. “You shouldn’t encourage them.”

“I blame the other Sirius, he’s the evil twin.” Sirius smirked as he walked back into the living room. “I have liberated the cake from the kitchen monster!”

Harry shook his head then followed Sirius. It was finally sinking in that this was his life. Despite the fact that he was twenty and trapped in the body of a two year old, he was happy or at least mostly happy with how things had turned out. The dirty dozen were a lot of fun to run around with, both around Godric’s Hallow and in Diggle Hell which was one of the best ways of blowing off steam that he’d ever found.

The only thing that kept things from being perfect was that Hermione wasn’t there with him, well that and having two save slots would be really nice. The twice monthly trip into London to a certain playground was probably the best and worse part of his life. Seeing Hermione reminded him that his Hermione was gone but at the same time he could see traces of the girl she would become or at least some of her better qualities. He wasn’t sure why he kept torturing himself other than the smile on her face every time he showed up. He pulled himself out of his bleak thoughts as he flew over and sat between two of the Nymphadoras on the couch. “Ready for cake?”

Nymph laughed. “We’re always ready for chocolate cake, especially your mums’ chocolate cake.”

James gave the various Nymphadoras mock suspicious looks as he put his hands on the other Lily’s shoulders and gave them a light squeeze. “One of these days, we’re going to have to get name tags for the dirty dozen.”

“It wouldn’t help, we’d just swap tags,” replied one of the other Nymphadoras.

The Nymphadora on Harry’s left glanced back between the two Jameses and the two pregnant Lilys. “We could say the same about you.”

The Lily on the chair said, “We’ve considered rolling dice to see who gets to go with their middle name but we decided not to worry about it for the moment.”

One of the Siriuses said, “It’s more fun this way.”

“Not to mention more confusing.” Harry gestured at the candles and used a touch of magic to light them. “Let’s see, hopefully I can blow the candles out.” He winced slightly at Sirius’s off key singing that got a lot better after both Lilys glared at him as everyone sang happy birthday to him.

Both Lilys said, “Make a wish Harry.”

‘I already have it, a happy safe family.’ Harry floated over and blew the candles out and floated back to his spot and sat down.

The group of Nymphadoras shouted, “Cake!” at the same time.

The James that wasn’t giving Lily a shoulder massage picked up a knife and started cutting the cake. “Happy second birthday, second decade or happy cake day...” he trailed off as the fireplace blazed and a slightly older Nymphadora tumbled out of the fireplace. “Just in time, I thought you weren’t going to make it.”

Dora picked herself up off the ground and dusted herself off. “Sorry, I had to rewrite an essay about why it’s not polite to prank annoying old people.”

“Did you learn anything?” one of the other Nymphadoras asked curiously.

“I learned that old people don’t have very good senses of humor.” She glanced between the various adults in the room. “With a couple of exceptions.”

James snickered as he cut Harry a piece of cake and put it on a plate. “She has a point.” He handed the plate to Sirius who put a scoop of ice cream on it then handed it to Harry. “Happy birthday.”

“Thanks,” Harry replied as he took the plate in both hands. He looked over at the ‘unaltered’ Nymphadora who firmly claimed that her name was Dora or Tonks but never Nymphadora. “Thanks for coming Dora.”

Dora smiled at Harry. “Thanks for inviting me and for the delicious chocolate cake.”

Lily snickered. “You’re welcome anytime Dora.”

“Thanks.” She grinned as she walked over and sat down next to a pair of her sort of siblings/cousins/mad science experiments.

Harry made a mental note to pull Tonks along for at least a couple of Diggle adventures to see if it would help her clumsiness as he dug into his cake.

0o0o0

Harry yawned as he rushed over and picked up the telephone to stop it ringing before it woke up the munchkin patrol otherwise known as his sisters. He snapped, “Do you know what time it is?”

“Harry?” Hermione asked nervously.

“Hermione? Sorry, Mione, it’s just early… and I expect you to be the one calling, is something wrong?” Normally he called her on her birthday rather than the other way around at least that had been the case for the last couple of years and she called him on his and at Christmas.

“That depends on if you think Ron snores or a dozen other things I could ask…” she trailed off unsure of what to say now that Harry was actually on the phone. She’d woken up with two sets of memories that conflicted. In one she’d never had a real best friend then she’d went off and learned how to be a witch and picked up a best friend and a lazy friend that drove her sparse, in the other much shorter set of memories she’d had Harry as a best friend for as long as she could remember. He appeared when she was blue, built snow castles with her and wrote her letters that always managed to brighten her day.

“You remember?” Harry asked with hope mixed with equal parts desperation. On the one hand he knew that none of his parents or the Nymphs would put Hermione up to this because he’d probably kill them but at the same time, he’d been stuck without her for almost six years.

“It’s sort of jumbled together but I remember Hogwarts. I remember how much I don’t like being called Mione and yet, I want to giggle when you call me Mione. You did that on purpose didn’t you?”

Harry ignored the happy tears in his eyes as he snickered. “It was how you introduced yourself when we first met in this world.” Never mind the fact that she’d been a toddler. “How? I mean why now? You were gone six years...” he trailed off not sure what to say.

“I’m not sure, I’m still trying to sort through everything, my older alternate had a lot of random things stuffed in her noggin. I should get off the phone before I ring up too much of a bill but you’ll be here for my party, right?”

“Wild dragons couldn’t stop me Mione,” Harry replied firmly.

“I love you Harry.” Hermione blushed as she quickly hung up the phone. ‘Okay, Mione, get a grip, leaving everything a jumbled mess won’t help.’ She turned and headed back to her room to try to sort through the other Hermione’s memories before Harry got there for her party.

Harry stared at the wall as stunned as if he’d been hit in the head by a bludger for a couple of seconds as he tried to put his thoughts in order.

Lily yawned as she walked into the living room in her robe. “Who was on the phone?”

“Hermione.”

“It’s rather early for her to call, is everything okay?” Lily asked in concern, normally the eight year old was pretty good about calling at a reasonable time. She frowned as she noticed her son had been crying. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying? Did you say something you shouldn’t have?”

Harry shook his head. “Nothing, she said she loves me and she remembers Hogwarts…” He smiled brightly despite the tears falling from his eyes. “She remembers Hogwarts… she’s back…” He quickly reached up and touched his nose. “Save game.”

The ethereal voice said, “Game saved.”

“I’m not alone… sorry, that didn’t come out right.”

Lily grinned as she walked over, picked Harry up and pulled him into a hug. “I’m glad that she’s back. Any idea why?”

Harry hugged his mother, too happy to complain about her hugging the stuffings out of him. “No clue and I don’t care right now.”

The other Lily playfully swatted Lily’s behind as she walked past on her way to get some coffee. She stopped at the door to the kitchen and looked back at the two of them, “Is there a reason you’re crushing the life out of Harry?”

Lily grinned as she set Harry down. “Because Hermione remembers Hogwarts and apparently she loves him, they grow up so fast.”

The Lily in the kitchen grinned at Harry. “Way to go.” She looked up at James as he walked down the stairs. “Who had Hermione saying I love you when she got her memories back?”

Harry sputtered, “There was a pool?”

“Of course there was a pool,” James flashed both Lilys smiles as he reached the bottom step, “it’s tradition. As for who won the pool, I seem to recall Rose betting that Hermione would say I love you when she got her memories back.”

“Please tell me she’s not a divination prodigy,” Harry muttered.

James laughed. “No, she’d just watched too many disney movies that week.”

“That’s a relief.”

Lily only showed a hint of a smile as she shook her head, “I blame Sirius for corrupting our daughter.”

The other Lily laughed. “I’ve seen her play cards, I’m fairly sure it’s the other way around. She cheats more than he does. We should have named her Rose Holiday.”

Harry smiled as he thought about Rose, she was pretty fun for a five year old, other than her habit of zooming around on a toy broom like a lunatic. “We should probably start breakfast.”

The Lily near the kitchen said, “You’re welcome to help.”

“Sounds fun.”

The other James yawned as he walked down the stairs. “Blue mage needs coffee badly.”

Lily shook her head. “I should never have taken you and Harry to the arcade.”

James laughed. “Oh come on, it was fun.”

Harry spoke up, “Arcade games aren’t going away anytime soon.”

“Let’s start breakfast for the horde.” Lily turned and headed into the kitchen. She was just glad that when they’d rebuilt the cottage they’d put in a large basement and enlarged the rest of the house so they had enough room for everyone.

0o0o0

Harry blinked as his frizzy haired friend opened the door then promptly pulled him into a rather tight hug. “Ah, hi.”

“I missed you,” Hermione replied happily.

“Help, help, I need to breathe,” Harry replied playfully as he gave her a tiny squeeze, being very careful not to squeeze her too hard.

Lily snickered as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. “If you have enough breath to talk then she’s obviously not squeezing you hard enough.”

Hermione let Harry go. “I’m glad that you’re here Harry.”

“Harry birthday.” He pulled a narrow box out of his inventory and handed it to her.

Hermione stared at the box Harry and conjured from somewhere then opened it and stared at the excellently crafted wand. “Is that?”

“An actual magic wand? Yeah, I made it myself,” Harry replied with a touch of smugness.

“And it works?” Hermione asked in disbelief.

Harry mock pouted as he put his hand over his heart. “Ouch, you wound me my lady.”

Hermione picked it up and gave it a wave and was rather surprised that sparks came out of it. “It actually works.”

“Of course it works, I wouldn’t be much of a wand crafter if it didn’t work.” Harry pulled a package that looked like a book out of his inventory. “And this is the present I was going to get you.”

Hermione put the wand back in the box. “Where did you conjure that from?”

“My inventory,” Harry replied with amusement.

“You’ll have to show me how to do that,” Hermione replied eagerly.

Lily sighed. “Sadly, we haven’t actually figured that part out. If you find, out, I’d love to know.”

Rebecca Granger walked into the living room and smiled when she saw Lily. “I’m glad that you could come, I trust the drive wasn’t too horrible?”

“About as bad as it ever is.” Lily was just glad that she didn’t have to make the drive to London all that often because it was a pain in the neck. She much preferred flooing to the Leaky Cauldron, tossing up some disillusionment charms then flying the rest of the way now that she’d figured out Harry’s trick for flying without a broom.

“Come in and take a seat, I’ll grab my booklist. We can give the kids a chance to talk before her grandparents get here and everyone else arrives.”

“Sounds good.” Lily smiled as she headed to the living room with Hermione and Harry. She liked Rebecca Granger, they’d gotten to know each other over the last few years and traded book suggestions when they met up for lunch so that Harry and Hermione could hang out. It had been a bit odd at first but she’d explained it as having to make the trip into London for work, thankfully other than some polite questions about antiques, she hadn’t made an issue of her ‘job’. The amusing part was that her lie had actually turned into an actual ‘job’ when she’d started selling some of the art objects Harry and the girls had recovered from the dungeons he liked to explore. The lunch dates were a nice bit of normal in an otherwise interesting and busy life involving magic.

Hermione waited until her mother left to grab her book list before she whispered, “Can I drop by later?”

Lily handed Hermione a small compact then whispered, “It’s charmed to link to a mirror that Harry has so that you can talk to him.”

“Thanks, this is easier than dealing with long distance bills,” Hermione replied in a whisper.

Harry asked, “So… now what?”

Hermione heard her father’s footsteps. “I believe we left off with a literary discussion of the Hobbit. We should have enough time to finish that discussion before my grandparents get here then people start trickling in. ”

Harry tried to relax as he chatted with Hermione about one of her favorite books while they waited for her family to get there. He could tell she had questions but by the time they’d said hello to Hermione’s father, her uncle had shown up and then a couple of cousins and from there, there just wasn’t a good chance for her to sneak out of her own party.

0o0o0

Hermione set her book down on her nightstand then picked up her compact and opened it. She spent a couple of seconds looking at her reflection then whispered, “Harry.”

Harry jumped slightly as he heard Hermione’s voice come from his nightstand. He reached over and picked up the mirror. “Hermione.” He smiled as the image in the mirror changed to show Hermione’s face. “Hermione.”

“Harry, thanks for coming to my birthday.”

“I wouldn’t miss it even if I had to drive twenty hours through a blizzard,” Harry replied with amusement.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Please tell me that you didn’t actually drive.”

Harry shook his head. “Not this time, normally we just floo to the Leaky Cauldron then fly to your house after disillusioning ourselves.”

“What do you do with the brooms?” Hermione asked curious where they’d stashed them.

“I put them In my inventory.”

“You’re going to have to explain that ability now that we can actually talk.”

“If I knew how it worked, I’d tell you. I woke up with it after I got sent back.”

“How are your parents still alive? I’d meant to ask but I didn’t get a chance earlier.

“The last thing I remember before waking up in a void was getting hit by a bus.”

“I remember trying to push you out of the way then nothing,” Hermione admitted.

“After that I woke up in a black void with the words “Game Over” floating in the air. I thought it was a joke at first.”

“You dreamed that you were stuck in a videogame?” Hermione asked in amusement.

“It wasn’t a dream or if it was it was an extremely detailed dream. Either way, because I hadn’t saved my game before, I had to start over.”

“You’re telling me you were stuck in a videogame?” Hermione asked in disbelief.

“Or something like it.”

“Did Sirius put you up to this?” Hermione curiously.

“Even his sense of humor isn’t that bad… okay, it might be but he doesn’t have enough experience with videogames to come up with the idea.”

“I guess you have a point,” Hermione admitted.

“I checked the options and fixed a couple of things then started a new ‘game’.”

“Options?”

“Things like background music and PG mode… which is probably what got us killed the last time around.”

“Oh?”

“It promised, elder brothers, overprotective mothers and buses to keep everything squeaky clean.”

“Buses? You’re telling me that we died because of a stupid politically correct setting?!” Hermione asked in a harsh whisper.

“That’s certainly one way to look at things. Either way, I could have tried to live through a computer game, complete with random monsters and other less sane events or I could try again with nothing to show for it. I picked option C, Champion mode.”

“What did you get for Champion mode?”

“An inventory feature that lets me put things into an extradimensional space that freezes things in time and a save feature which lets me restore everything other than my memories and spell knowledge to the point when I ‘saved’ the game.”

“That’s crazy Harry… if you were anyone else…” Hermione shook her head.

“It gets better,” Harry replied with amusement.

“What do you mean?”

“I’d enabled the tutorial in the options menu which meant that for a little while the world acted like a video game.”

“Meaning?”

“Basically the tutorial explained skills and saving my ‘game’ and my inventory. Technically I was probably supposed to learn about my inventory then go to sleep ending the tutorial and resulting in my parents’ death but I figured out how to get out the window and explore the cabin.”

“Did you find anything interesting?”

“You could say that, I found stars that gave me interesting magical powers.”

Hermione shook her head. “Now I know you’re joking.”

“I’m not, I had health and mana bars and everything. It took a while to figure out how to get out of the room but I managed. I picked up enough stars to get the ability not to take damage from falling and eventually learned how to fly. So, I explored, long story short, I figured out I could glitch the tutorial and get more stars than I was supposed to. I found a set of wizard keys that opens a door to an extradimensional vault. Inside the vault was a portal generator that creates portals.”

“That sounds familiar for some reason.”

“Either way, I went splat in the dungeon and had to load my save game.”

“Harry!” Hermione hissed.

“Yeah, I know, I wasn’t being as careful as I probably should have been. I’ll give you the full story later but fast forward a bit and I was caught exploring when I should have been napping and locked in the living room with a younger version of Nymphadora. She gave me a quest, pick out my favorite book and she’d read it. I saved the game like an idiot so I could grab the right book only to realize I was stuck in there and things advanced once I handed her the book.”

“That was…”

“I believe the word you’re looking for is stupid,” Harry admitted.

Hermione smirked. “I was trying to be polite.”

“Either way, I realized that I could work on my pickpocketing skill by trying to ‘steal’ books off the shelf. I figured they were going to get destroyed anyways… so I work on this for a bit but every time I get caught Nymphadora steals all of the books back, including the ones in my inventory. I realized that I might be able to keep them if I stuck them in my vault, so I borrowed a couple then transferred them to the vault. Eventually, I managed to clean out the shelves. That was probably the start of the insanity…”

“Insanity? What did you do?”

Harry shifted uncomfortably. “I figured… that if I could take books and items, I could take people with me.”

“Harry, you didn’t…”

“I had a save game, I figured I could just reload things if anything horrible happened. I grabbed Nymphadora’s pant leg and used my keys and it worked… mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“The second she appeared she stopped acting like a game character and I could talk like an adult so I explained that I had a magical dungeon and time loops and I needed her help. I got on her shoulders, equipped the invisibility cloak and we went looking for trouble.”

Hermione rubbed her nose. “You’re going to have to give me the rest of the story at some point.”

“I know, I’m sort of starting in a weird place but there’s a reason for that… so we manage to make it through the diggle dungeon by hook and by crook… mostly because of my cloak. We make it out, we chat for a bit and I grab the book I need prepared to meet my fate. I leave the vault and see Nymphadora sitting on the couch in front of a full book case. I jump back to the dungeon and Nymphadora is sitting on a stack of books exactly where I left her. The game had reset…”

“You have more than one copy of her library?”

“Oh yeah… so there was a star in the closet so I just back, run over and sure enough it’s in the closet. I grabbed the star and used it… then looted the books again.”

“What about Nymphadora?”

Harry blushed slightly. “I grabbed her as well… and found out I now had two Nymphadoras.”

“Two of them?”

“Yep, I explained things to the ‘new’ Nymphadora then saved the game and went back into the dungeon then repeated the process a few times…”

Hermione asked, “How many times?”

“I lost count but I stopped grabbing Nymphs one I had a dozen,” Harry replied with a mix of embarrassment and amusement.

“What happened to them when the tutorial ended?”

“Nothing they were in my vault.” Harry smirked.

“You copied her a dozen times?” Hermione asked in disbelief.

“Yep, I also copied my mum, dad and Sirius… so I have two of each of those.”

“Right, start at the beginning and don’t leave anything out… I’m going to want to see the dungeon at some point.”

“It’s on the list as soon as we can find a good time to kidnap you for a day. Before I get to that, how much do you remember?”

“Everything up to the summer before seventh year then I’m missing some bits and pieces… I remember dancing with you, I remember Ron being an idiot, I remember wearing the damnaged horcrux for some reason… have you taken care of those yet?”

“Yeah, Voldemort has been dead for years.”

“Add that to the list. I remember the battle… after is a bit sketchy, after that I remember heading to the hotel to have some ‘fun’ and then the bus.”

“In other words, no idea how we ended up back here.”

“Nope, sorry. Thanks for being my friend in both worlds Harry. Now spill.” Hermione smiled at him.

“Right, let’s see…” Harry went back through his story adding various details as he could remember them.

0o0o0

Harry smiled at Hermione as she stepped out of the fireplace. “Welcome to the madhouse.”

Iris waved from where she was sitting on the back of the couch then turned and shouted, “Mione is here!”

Hermione raised an eyebrow as she noticed Harry’s five year old sister was dressed up in old quidditch pads and had a small wand holster strapped to her forearm. “Pads?”

Rose walked in, dressed much the same as her sister/cousin. “Mum’s orders, if we’re going with you and Harry then we need armor.”

Iris giggled. “This is going to be awesome.”

Hermione turned to look at Harry. “I thought you said the dungeons were dangerous.”

Harry said, “They’re extremely dangerous if you don’t have invisibility and moderately dangerous with it. I wouldn’t take them if I didn’t have a save feature. The main problem with the dungeon is that they’re random which means there is always a chance that the diggle king spawns which means that we can’t create time loops while in the dungeon as I really don’t want to try to kill the boss unless I have to.”

“I’d rather have an easy first run,” Hermione admitted.

Rose snickered. “Our first run was awesome, the adults went in front of us and blasted everything that moved.”

Iris grinned. “That was the best birthday ever.”

Hermione glanced between Rose and Iris. “Ah, how many times have you been in the dungeon?”

Rose looked at Harry. “Harry has taken us in there a couple of times with just the Siriuses. This will be our first time without an adult.”

Hermione blinked as two blue haired teenage girls that looked a lot like Tonks walked in. “Nymphadora?”

“Or Nymph or Sexy,” the two girls replied at the same time.

Hermione looked over at Harry then back to the blue haired girls. ‘I think Harry left out some details in his story.’ She smiled at the two girls. “Right, so are you coming with us?... wait, shouldn’t you be at school?”

Nymph smirked. “We are, we just slipped through the vanishing cabinet for the weekend.”

“How?” Hermione turned and looked at Harry.

Harry said, “We bought the vanishing cabinet in Borgin’s shop then moved the other cabinet to a secret passage that Dad and Sirius knew about that Filch didn’t.”

The other Nymphadora said, “The best part is we get to come back on the weekends and blow up monsters, it’s awesome.”

“Aren’t you bored of monster hunting yet?” Hermione asked curiously.

Nymph smirked. “You wouldn’t ask that if you saw how much gold the diggles drop.”

Harry shrugged. “What can I say? It pays extremely well.”

Iris looked at Rose. “I bet she’s picturing how many books she can buy with a stack of gold coins.”

Rose snorted, “I’m not taking that bet.”

Hermione smiled at Rose to let her know she was right not to take the bet because she was thinking about building a library with the gold she could get. “So… how do we do this?”

Harry held out his arms. “You walk over and grab my arm and I pull everyone into the vault.”

“Where are the cloaks?” Hermione walked over and grabbed Harry’s arm.

The two Nymphadoras walked over and grabbed Harry’s shoulders as his siblings walked over and grabbed his free hand. “I think we’re good.”

Harry activated his wizard keys and grinned at the surprised look on Hermione’s face. “You thought I was joking didn’t you?”

Hermione glanced around at the large piles of books. “The thought had crossed my mind.”

“I wouldn’t do that.” Harry reached up and touched his nose. “Save game.”

The ethereal voice said, “Game saved.”

Hermione spun as she glanced around. “Who said that?”

Harry blinked a couple of times. “You heard that?”

Iris asked, “Heard what?”

“A strangely musical voice said game saved.”

Rose shook her head. “Didn’t hear anything.”

“You seriously didn’t hear that?”

Harry sighed. “You’re the first person other than me that can hear the voice, you’re also the first person other than me to come back so that probably has something to do with it. We’ll have to run some tests later.”

Hermione nodded then glanced over at the portal device. “How does the device work?”

“I punch in random characters and we get a portal to a random diggle world then we put the cloaks on and go blast some nasty and evil penguin like monsters for gold and magical items.” He walked over and typed in smile then hit enter.

Hermione blinked as the doorway lit up with red and black motes of light or not light in the case of the black. “That’s a little spooky.”

Harry cast muffle on everyone’s shoes then pulled three invisibility cloaks out of his inventory. “I’ve muffled everyone’s feet, try not to talk until we know the first room is cleared unless you need to mention a problem.” He handed two of the cloaks to Nymph. “You two can take Iris and Rose, I’ll take Mione or she’ll take me since she’s taller.” He handed Hermione the third cloak. “Here.”

Hermione put the cloak on then stepped closer to Harry. “Now what?”

“Now we walk through the portal and take a couple of steps so the others can get through.”

“What happens if there are monsters?”

“We kill them or die and reset things,” Harry replied absently as he slipped under the cloak with Hermione. He smiled as he walked through the portal with Hermione. He waited several seconds then tossed a ball of fire at the single sleepy Diggle he could see.

Hermione blinked as the diggle died and dropped a small stack of what looked like gold coins. She glanced around to make sure nothing else was around.

Harry whispered, “Okay, that should be everything, let’s walk to the door and scout the next bit while the girls pick up the coins.”

Hermione whispered, “You weren’t joking about the gold were you?”

“If anything we underplayed how much we’ll be making,” Harry admitted as they carefully headed toward the hallway and adventures that would last a lifetime.

0o0o0

Luna Lovegood blinked as she walked into the kitchen and saw her mother sitting at the table with a large yellow exclamation point floating over her head. “Mummy? Why do you have an exclamation point over your head?”

Pandora Lovegood turned to look at her nine year old daughter. “Has Xeno been making tea again?”

Luna shook her head. She had a vague sense that something was wrong other than the fact that her mother had a large glowing exclamation point above her head but couldn’t put her finger on why. “Not since he tried making tea out of Billywig venom.”

“Okay pumpkin, can you get the mail?”

Luna blinked as a floating translucent blue sheet of not quite glass appeared with black words on it.

Long Term Quest Alert, Finding the Forgotten.

Collect the mail for Pandora Lovegood and take the first step to recovering your memories.

Failure to accept quest may result in death of at least one parental unit.

Quest Reward: Recover lost memories.

Accept Quest Yes/No?’

Luna blinked a couple of times as she stared at the quest. She reached out and very carefully selected yes then blinked as the quest window vanished and the yellow exclamation point over her mother’s head turned into a grey question mark. ‘Okay, let’s grab the mail and see what happens.’

She walked out of the kitchen and down the hall toward the front door as she tried to figure out what she was supposed to do about getting quests. She couldn’t remember her Daddy mentioning getting quests though that would sort of make sense with all of his monster hunts. She checked the mailbox by the door that the muggle postman used when he had a package. She reached down and grabbed a letter and a leather journal in the box. The leather journal vanished as she touched it.

She blinked as she realized that she knew how to make the journal reappear. She focused on the journal and it appeared in her hands. She opened the leather bound journal and looked at the first page. ‘Finding the Forgotten, Luna’s memories have been scattered to the four winds, use this book to collect the scattered memories and figure out what happened…” Luna paused as she recognized her handwriting on the page. It looked slightly more polished but it was definitely hers. ‘Curious…’ Luna flipped through the blank pages then let the journal vanish.

She looked down at the tetter . ‘Two Pandora Lovegood, from L.L with love.... That’s my handwriting.’ She took the letter and walked it back into the kitchen and paused as she noticed that the question mark over her mother’s head was now yellow rather than grey. She walked over and handed her mother the letter then blinked the window that popped up.

Step one of Finding the Forgotten is complete, failure condition removed.

Pandora smiled at Luna. “Thank you Pumpkin. And ideas who L.L. is?”

“I’m not sure but I think it’s important.” She blinked as the quest window vanished.

Luna glanced down at a glowing photograph that had slipped out of the letter and fallen to the floor. “Did you drop something Mummy?”

Pandora looked down and around then looked back at the notes. “No, I’m just checking my work…” She was suddenly reminded of Lily Potter’s rather pointed comment a couple of years ago at a get together about the importance of checking your work and not testing new spells without someone to watch your back. She went pale as she noticed the notes in the margin in red that explained why her new spell would probably have killed her if she’d cast the final version. “I think we need to get ice cream today…”

Luna asked, “Ice cream?”

“Yeah…” Pandora pulled herself back together enough that her voice wasn’t shaking. “I don’t feel like working on my research today. Let’s get some ice cream.”

“Ice cream is good.” Luna waited until her mother turned and walked out of the kitchen to grab her coin purse then reached down the grabbed the glowing picture. She blinked as the picture vanished and she was swept away by a memory of her mother’s gravesite. She could suddenly ‘remember’ how shattered her mother’s death had left her father and her. She had brief flashes of a room in a stone castle with a trunk that she knew was missing things but she couldn’t remember what was missing. That scene changed into a memory of a bushy haired witch and a teenage male with emerald eyes and a lightning bolt scar looking at her mother’s gravesite with her. She blinked as she found herself back in the kitchen. She could almost remember their names and yet she knew she’d never seen them before. “Friends…”

The journal appeared in her hands then flipped open to show a picture of the bushy haired girl, a red haired girl that looked more familiar than the rest and the man with a lightning bolt scar. She wasn’t sure exactly what was going on but she knew that the answer lay in finding more photographs and completing her journal.

The End