FROM EDEN.

in a corridor, draco stood—lost in thought—beside one of the walls. reading the daily prophet earlier in the day had put him on edge. a time clash. the year was 2024, which meant that he had somehow been thrown into the future. brilliant. as if he needed more problems to worry about. the feel of something soft touching his ankle pulled him out of thought. he looked down to find a fat cat rubbing against him. disgusting. he jerked his leg away from it. “who does this ugly beast belong to!?” he shouted angrily.

“a discman?” hugo had no clue a discman was. it sounded like absolute gibberish to him. he knew discs were real, he had a few cds and dvds back at home, but what in the hell was a disman? some type of robot made from discs? no, that wasn’t possible. if she truly was from 1996, there wouldn’t be any advanced type of robots. she had to be joking around with him. he gave her a suspicious look. “are you messing with me? is that a real thing?”

“i’m named after my grandmother who is currently still in the hospital,” alice corrected her. the fact that her grandparents were permanent residents in st mungo’s sounded unfortunate, especially since they were already residents before she was born. her friends have told her about how their grandparents would give them pocket money or bake pastries for them and alice was a little envious but who was she to blame her own grandparents? they did not ask for it and how they ended up now was the result of bravery. on the brighter side, at least they were still alive. “actually i’m named alice longbottom the second? neville’s my dad and hell no, i ain’t married just yet.”

At Alice’s defiance, and the realization that this was Neville’s daughter, Hannah tried to loosen up just a bit. She tried to take it for what it was and being in the company of Neville’s daughter ( who had quite a bit os spunk ) wasn’t the worst thing that could’ve happened. Hannah forced herself to relax a bit, taking a few deep breaths. “I apologize for ....” Hannah made a round motion towards herself, “ and EVERYTHING. I think we got off on a little bit of the wrong foot but you must be lovely if you’re Neville’s daughter. I actually visited your grandparents a few times.” It was part of her own treatment while she was in inpatient for a short while, to interact with some of the permanent residents & help them out. “It’s good you’re not married yet. My mum used to always say I shouldn’t be married until I was 30, at least. I’m Hannah, by the way. ‘M not sure if I’ve already said that.”

“Thank you. Yeah, that would make sense, seeing as I’m a Ravenclaw.” She smiled. She took it as a compliment, she preferred having compliments about her intelligence than her appearance. “Okay. They’re probably related to me in some way then. Nice to meet you. I’m trying to see if I do have children in the future, and if so, I’m trying to find them. I mean, if there’s three generations here, and we’re stuck here, there’s definitely a good idea to hunt people down. What about you? Do you think you’ll find your future children here?”

While Hannah did usually buy into house stereotypes, she’d met a few Ravenclaws who weren’t smart, but decided not to comment on the matter as she didn’t want a fight. Plus, the other girl seemed perfectly civil, incredibly nice, really.  Hannah’s anxiety went down a bit, and she smiled at Alecto,“you think it is? To hunt people down? They must be related in some way, though I’ve not talked to them too much over the years. They seem to keep to themselves, which isn’t always a bad idea. Oh Helga, I sure don’t know what I’d do if I met my future children, HONESTLY. It’s all so much, you know? It’s just a ... lot. I’m not even quite sure what I’ll do after school and children? Blimey, that’s --- bonkers. I’d love to meet my brother’s children though, if he has any.”

Ron had never really had anything to do with Hannah. He knew however that she was one of the Potter Stinks people and from there Ron had been really apprehensive around her.  “I’m sorry I’ll try to be more accommodating to people who say my best friend stinks.” It was Ron’s turn for sarcasm and rolling his eyes. “Pity party? How is ignoring you a pity party?” He said this with a slight smile though glad that Hannah and him were on the same wavelength with the whole meeting thing.  Although knowing her she would probably step in and try to run the whole thing. “Exactly. Did you know that death eaters are here? In teenage form.” Ron said Ignoring the last comment he turned towards Hannah. “Yep so torturous don’t know if I can survive it.”

“As if I hadn’t apologized for that multiple times or anything,” she shot back, not backing down entirely, at the very least defending herself for what she could. “It wasn’t the whole ignoring me, that’s fine, the whole ‘I am part of Dumbledore’s Army too’ bit that was a little .. you know what... NEVERMIND. It’s fine. We’ve got more important things to talk about.” Rise above Hannah, rise above, she tried to tell herself. She understood where he was coming from to an extent but sometimes it got to her but she was on alert the minute he mentioned the Death Eater in Student form. Hannah’s eyes widened, “which ones? That’s really really scary, Weasley, d’you think Bellatrix Lestrange is here? Barty Crouch Jr.? It doesn’t really matter now, we’ve got to go look for the others. You said Hermione might be in the library?”

        “i have to say, i’ve never feared my brother… he’s indeed a bad guy, but he never hurt me. not more than i needed to be educated & trained, of course…”   seven knew most people were actually   very   afraid of his older brother, but he was not one of those persons. the boy tried to see the best part of everyone, they all had their perks, after all.   “the sacred 28… okay… got to research it later, but i’ll end up understanding everything you just said one day.”   seven chuckled, frowning his brows softly. he still didn’t know that much, however, learning was his duty.   “yes, my old, grumpy, rude & scary bro fen… don’t worry, he’s as bad as the stories tell actually… just wonder what happened to him to make him like that… he never allowed me to ask him that. good part, i seem to have the brains… he’d be much worse if he had it.”

Just when Hannah thought that mass time travel was going to be the most shocking & crazy thing she’d heard that week, it really was something else to meet someone who was Fenrir Greyback’s ‘brother’. Especially hearing that he’d never feared him, which, didn’t make sense to her but she figured she’d at least ask as they didn’t seem to be too private. “Well, I suppose we’ll be able to teach each other things, then? I can teach you about all of that Sacred 28 nonsense, anything else, and you can tell me more about yourself? Are you his actual brother? He’s rather old, isn’t he? Though, my brother’s EIGHTEEN years older than me, so, I guess I can’t say much about that. Why aren’t you scared of him?” 

“What I meant, was I know time travel is possible. I mean, how else would this have happened? Time travel on this scale is very rare, it happens once in a blue moon. There’s been occurrences of it before, but that was with smaller groups. It’s common for one person or it to happen to groups of under 20 people. Well, not common exactly but more common than this kind of situation. It’s the kind of thing which you only believe if you’ve experienced it.” When she heard the other girl mention it was 1996 for her, she took in a shocked gasp of air. So it wasn’t just her generation and the 2024 people, there’s another lot of people too. “Blimey. Wow. There’s three generations here? I thought nothing could surprise me, I guess I was wrong. So if I had kids in the future, they’d be here.” She thought for a couple minutes trying to decide whether she wanted to know if she had kids or not. She decided to entertain her curiosity and ask. “Do you know anyone from 1996 who has the last name Carrow? I’m trying to see if my brother Amycus or I had kids in the future. I’m Alecto by the way. What’s your name?” 

“You’re really intelligent, aren’t you?” It wasn’t an insult & she hoped her tone reflected it, it was just an observation as Hannah couldn’t process everything she had said in one fell swoop. Between the explanation, the revelations, the questions, Hannah’s mind was spinning. She wasn’t sure which information would be good to take in and which she needed to throw away mentally, and she knew that their conversation called for her to answer immediately. It was all tiring as her sense of anxiety heightened, though she desperately tried to piece through it & self soothe. “Um, there’s a Hestia and Flora Carrow?” Hannah wanted to push out more to say, but she focused on taking deep breaths, and thinking about who the girl in front of her was. Carrow. Sacred 28. Most likely blood purists. “I’m Hannah Abbott, are you hoping to find your future children here?”

hugo gave a playful eye roll with a smile on his face. she hadn’t been the first person to talk about time travel. it could’ve been a possibility, they did live in a world with magic after all, but he didn’t want to believe it. he couldn’t. “don’t worry, the glass ceiling is perfectly intact. you’re not the first person to tell me.” a lightbulb went off in his head. if she truly were from the past, she could give him some answers. straight from the source. “so if you’re from 1996, do you not know what iphones and netflix are? wait—” he held up a hand, stopping himself. “are you a halfblood? muggleborn? i ask because they’re more likely to know muggle gadgets and such.”

         ❝ DESERVINGLY. you missed the part where we win the cup ‘cause we deserve it. plus we don’t win it every year, i think that’s a bit of an exaggeration, didn’t you guys win a couple years ago? ❞ frank paused, realisation hitting him that he didn’t know who she was either. ❝ i’m frank, by the way. frank longbottom. from 1977, if that clarifies anything, since we’re apparently all from about THREE different decades. what about yerself? and yes, thank you, i do like to think i have a pretty good head. ❞

     “Well, I NEVER said you didn’t deserve it. That’s not an exaggeration, not with your house being bloody Gryffindor. You’re like bred winners from birth.” Hannah wanted to laugh at herself, and did a little bit, because he was right about her exaggerating -- even if it wasn’t about the House Cup wins. His name though, in addition to the year he was from ( was this the new greeting, now? name and era? ) made Hannah’s jaw literally drop. She sputtered for a second before a nervous laugh escaped her, “Hannah, Hannah Abbott of the year 1996. You’re one of my good friends father though, allegedly. Bloody hell, I was going to say you were cute too but that’s a little weird now, isn’t it?”

“Well don’t blame me blame the house elves for not cooking enough and the many more Weasley’s that they have to feed now.” Neville pretended to be annoyed. “Maybe we could sneak into the kitchens later.” Neville was not one to suggest something like that but he figured that with the teaching staff all teenagers themselves that they should be able to get away with it. “Maybe they could make it the Greater Hall. either way they’re going to have to do something there is no way everyone can fit at the tables.”

“I’ll never blame the house elves for anything, they’re too precious & deserve better. But, really though, I thought we had a lot of Weasley’s usually -- this is ridiculous.” Not that she minded the plethora of Weasley’s but they were a good unit of measurement like Neville had said. “The Brilliant Hall, The Fantastic Hall, it’ll have to be something better than Great,” Hannah laughed,  “but yeah, I’d love to sneak into the kitchens. I hope we’re the only ones having that idea and we don’t run into like, a LINE of people trying to sneak in. That seems likely at this point. Are you holding up okay?”