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Dumbledore sat behind his desk, studying the strange child in front of him. She was looking around his office with a look of awe and wonder on her face, as if she’d never been in the office before. When he’d first spotted her, he had assumed he knew her. Granted, she wasn’t as old as he figured she’d be, but she bore an uncanny resemblance to the child he’d met in 1943.
He was beginning to suspect she wasn’t the same child. Her behavior was much like Calliope Riddle’s when Dumbledore had first met her, but she was American. Riddle had been British.
No, she wasn’t Calliope Riddle.
But, the resemblance was uncanny.
“You have never met me?” he asked again.
“I saw the top of your head once.”
“But you’re from the future?”
She nodded.
“Yeah. I am. From the year 1998,” she said. “It was May 2, 1998 when I left. If I left. Did I leave, since I was in the same exact spot, just a different point in time? It was a Friday when I left, but by the time the Battle really got going it was Saturday. It’s not Saturday, is it?”
Dumbledore frowned. “It’s not Saturday. It’s early Thursday morning.”
“Bah,” she said, flapping her hand at him. “I’ll need a new birthday, then. I don’t fancy the idea of turning eighteen when I’ve only been seventeen for six months.”
She smiled, looking eerily like a combination of the two students who had brought her to his office.
“I think wizards have time travel all cocked up. But, I don’t think I really traveled back in time. I think I was moved to an alternative universe, like a parallel dimension. Or something. I don’t know what Malfoy was doing when I came across him. He looked to be in a lot of pain. And he was acting more ferret like than usual.”
Dumbledore nodded. “Mr. Malfoy might have attempted some sort of…time travel. Tell me again, please, what you exactly saw him doing?”
The girl, who called herself Atlanta Black (which only lead to more bizarre ideas regarding her appearance), leaned back in the chair and bit down on the right hand side of her lip, knitting her eyebrows together. Dumbledore, who spent a great deal of time observing his students, knew that face. He’d watched a certain werewolf make it for the past six years. He was sure the werewolf’s friends called it Think Face.
“I chased him from the Great Hall up to a corridor filled with suits. I got distracted, but when I found Malfoy again he was on the floor. He had his eyes closed and the air around him was kind of strange, but I still approached him. I didn’t see anything funky in the air.”
“Was anything sitting next to him?”
“Yes, actually. He had this black box, a piece of parchment and a glass vial that was empty, which he’d just dropped when I rounded the corner. I ran at him, screaming his name, then WHAM I was here. In September 1976. And it was freaking cold. Like Alaska or something. Don’t you have heat?”
Pressing his fingers together to make a steeple, Dumbledore studied the girl. He had an inkling what this Draco Malfoy had done. He had heard of Dark Magic that could send things into the past with potions and incantations. If Dumbledore was correct (and he often was due to being more clever than the average human being), Draco Malfoy had sent this girl, the only near human soul, back in time with him.
Atlanta Black presented a curious and rather complex Gordian knot.
“Central heat has not been installed,” Dumbledore offered. “It seems to me, Mr. Malfoy did not wish Lord Voldemort to win the war.”
Atlanta sat up straight in her chair, mouth hanging open.
“You mean, Draco Malfoy changed sides? Seriously? I’ve known him since he was four and he’s always done what his father told him.” She curled her lip as she spit out the word “father.” She shifted in the chair and sighed, casting her eyes to the ground as she gripped the arms of the chair. “I knew he was doing something stupid because he was acting more ferret like than usual, but I didn’t realize…that’s what he must have done. Time travel. I wonder when he went back to?”
“He’s not alive now, is he?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. He’ll be born in 1980. Along with me. Or not.”
“Why do you think you won’t be born?”
“Well, I never got a clear story out of my birth father, but from what I understood he and, uh, his boyfriend were, well, in love with one another. Madly. Like that long term, soul mate stuff. It was strong. And, uh, from what my birth father told me…he’d been in love with… this guy since third year. I looked into his eyes tonight and saw…well, not what I used to see. When I first met the guy and then saw the two in the same room, it was so obvious. This means, uh, things are different here.”
Dumbledore nodded. “You don’t believe he might have been hiding it? The eyes might be a window to the soul, but you can put curtains up.”
“Why would he hide it? Sirius isn’t. It’s obvious Sirius isn’t into girls.”
Dumbledore raised an eyebrow. She’d been rather careful to leave out names of her birth father, his lover, and the names of her parents. The only name she’d dropped (other than her own and Lord Voldemort’s) was Draco Malfoy, who at some point had been a good friend, but their difference in opinion seemed to have gotten in the way at some point.
“So, you don’t believe that Mr. Lupin is in love with Mr. Black?” Dumbledore asked, trying not to chuckle. He smiled a small smile at the girl when her eyes went wide.
“Remus isn’t in love with Sirius,” Atlanta quietly admitted. “Sirius is in love with Remus, though, I don’t think he’s realized it yet exactly. But, he acted different around Remus than Ha-James. His body language changed.”
“That doesn’t mean Mr. Lupin still won’t come across your birth mother,” Dumbledore quietly told her. He watched her for a moment, wondering what the full story behind her origins were. From his understanding, she had four sets of parents.
“He won’t,” Atlanta replied in a matter of fact tone. “Remus is a loyal, faithful guy. I got the feeling, after I figured out he was my birth father— and that my mother wasn’t even my birth mother— was that Remus’ short lived relationship with my birth mother was…rather out of character for Remus.”
The girl blushed and looked away. She fidgeted for a moment, wringing her hands together tightly.
“My life is a mess. I sound like a soap opera,” she muttered. “And only one ‘parent’ is still alive.”
The girls eyes filled with tears suddenly. She tried to wipe them away, but a few leaked down her dirt streaked cheeks.
“Sirius died like two years ago. He was like a combination father/brother figure. He was the one who figured out who my actual father was. And shouted it loudly and over dramatically after acting strange for several days.”
She paused, an odd expression on her face as she remembered. She shook her head.
“I never got the story off my mom because she went and died on me before telling me the whole story. But, I guess my actual birth mother was my father’s sister. She got together with my mom and they came up with this plan to pass me off as…well, Remus is a werewolf, right?”
Dumbledore nodded.
“Right, so is my mother.”
Dumbledore’s eyes went wide.
“I’m not a werewolf. I’m just kind of wolfy. Anyways, my birth mother was a total mess. She didn’t think she could get knocked up and actually carry to term or something. Anyways, so, my mom pretended to be pregnant and then passed the kid off as her own. Hence my last name of Black. I’m part of the House of Black, the American branch of the family. Yeah?”
“I do follow.”
“All right. So, I found out the guy who tutored me when I was a kid before I started school at Dibonien was my birth father after my third year. My dad sent me to the Triwizard Tournament at Hogwarts and…bad stuff happened and Remus freaked out for some reason. He didn’t want me there, in England any longer. This was the first time I had actually met Sirius, who was freaking me out by staring. A lot. Long story short, Sirius noticed I looked kind of like Remus and put together with his reaction, jumping to the conclusion I was Remus’ kid.”
Dumbledore raised an eyebrow.
“Yada, yada, yada, all hell broke loose in England and my mom dies. She left a note in her will about who my donated me DNA, which I got to open because I’m seventeen. Thank god I was seventeen, as if I’d been underaged, Daddy could have opened it and he would have had me thrown out of the family.”
“Ah, the American Blacks do that as well?”
She snorted. “Yeah. My actual mother had already been disowned for being bitten by a werewolf, which was what lead to her being in England and coming across Remus.”
“Interesting.”
“My life is Muggle soap opera,” she grumbled. “And now I can add time travel to my cracked out life! Brilliant!”
She flopped backwards in her chair, looking haggard. She picked at the dirt encrusted on her t-shirt.
“There’s no way back, is there?” she whispered. “Not that I’m gunning to go back.”
Dumbledore nodded gravely. While he did not know a great deal about time travel, he did know one was almost always stuck in the past. It was usually a one way trip.
Though, maybe…
“Have you traveled to the past before, Miss Black?”
Atlanta frowned at him. “Uh, no…”
Dumbledore frowned, lowering his hands. He gave her a long study before asking, “Are you sure?”
“Uh, yeah. I think I’d notice if I time traveled before,” she said, shifting a bit. She looked at him if she thought he was a bit off his rocker.
He locked eyes with her and knew she wasn’t lying.
“Interesting.”
“Why?”
“No matter. I believe the best thing to do now is to figure out where do you want to go from here. Do you have a story worked out in your mind? The few time travelers I’ve come across always have a back story.”
“Well, I guess I need to finish school. I just finished my sixth year. Literally. I turned in my last exam four hours ago,” she went on. She stopped twisting her hands in her lap and began to chew on her pinkie nail.
“Would you like to start your seventh year?” Dumbledore asked. “You mentioned you were seventeen?”
“No. That wouldn’t make much sense,” she informed him, dropping her hand. “The Marauders are all in sixth year right now.”
Dumbledore cocked his head to the side. “Is that what they call themselves?”
Absentmindedly, Atlanta nodded her head.
Dumbledore did not believe she was in an alternate dimension or parallel universe. Her basis for the theory was flawed. Dumbledore had seen how Mr Lupin looked at Mr Black when he thought no one was looking and Dumbledore was quite sure Mr Black was more attached to Mr Lupin than he was aware. Mr Black wasn’t a deep thinker, so more than likely he failed to realize what was going on and so he continued to throw himself at his fellow female students as that was familiar and required not deep thinking.
Mr Lupin was likely in denial about the entire thing.
The Black in front of Dumbledore was a deep thinker. She had been quietly thinking for almost a fifteen minutes, not moving a muscle.
“I think I’ll do sixth year over again,” she announced. “If I’m honest, I don’t think I really gave it my all last time around. I was slightly distracted by the fact there was a massive war going on in England while I was trapped safely at school in Colorado.”
“You never have attended Hogwarts?”
The girl shook her head, wrinkling her nose in confusion. Sighing, Dumbledore shuffled parchment around his desk before speaking again.
“Would you like to be a transfer student? Or exchange?”
“Exchange student,” she replied. “It’ll be like study abroad! People do that their junior years in the Muggle world. Since the wizarding world doesn’t have universities, I guess it could be….yeah. I’ll be an exchange student.”
“From your own school?”
“Yes, from Dibonein. I’m related to one of the founders so I know all about it no matter what time period I’m in…well, except before 1865. It didn’t exist before 1865.”
“I think, even though you’ve already met three students, we ought to change your appearance a bit. Just in case you’re born in this timeline,” Dumbledore offered.
The more time he spent studing her, the more alarmingly Black/Lupin she appeared. He knew the other students, especially Black and Lupin, would notice. There were also quite a few others who would take note. It’d be best to hide her key Lupin features. Frowning, he realized a name change was out of order. He was sure Sirius Black had gotten her real name off her.
“I’d suggest we change your name, but I’m against wiping the minds of my students and three already know your name.”
The girl bit her lip. Think Face again. “You’re right. They had a map that told them my name. I can use a different middle name, though. I don’t think that strange paper showed that.”
She pressed her lips together for a moment. “Dorothy. Since, as a kid I had a friend who called me Toto and I’m kinda of in Oz here.”
She smiled fondly.
“And I think changing my face a bit would be fine. Just in case. Sirius looked at me funnily quite a few times. Also, I’ll need a back story. I doubt I ought to go around telling people I’m the third kid of the Head of the Black Family in America. Seeing at the moment there’s only two known ones. Altair and Siria Black. My mother and pretend father.”
Dumbledore noted this information, filing it away for later. Dumbledore was already familiar with Altair Black. He was married to the famed Potions Mistress Circe Hilderbatch and had two children. Before Lord Voldemort had moved fully in the open, Altair Black had been attempting to enter British wizarding society. However, because his father was in charge of the family still and thought Lord Voldemort to be a crazed lunatic, Altair had gone back to America a few years ago. Dumbledore did not expect the man to remain in America after his father died and Altair took charge of the family. He wanted access to the power, influence, and wealth the British Blacks commanded.
“No, you are right. Altair Black is already known here, though he’s gone back home. So, orphan? Do you know your own family tree well enough to assign yourself to someone who is dead?”
“YES!” she shouted, sounding excited. “Grandaddy had a younger brother who died, like, ten years ago. He was a bit…eccentric and didn’t have much contact with the main branch of the family. So you could leave the Black features and hide the…uh…”
She went a bit red for a moment.
“That will work. Now, let’s put a few strong glamours on you. We’ll change the eye color first. Your eyes…”
Dumbledore faded off, looking at her eyes. They were a telltale sign if you knew what you were looking for that the girl had werewolf blood within her veins.
He studied the girl in front of him a bit longer from over the top of his half-moon glasses. “Your eyes are very…unique, so we’ll make them a little less.”
Dumbledore waved his wand and gave her green-grey eyes, a color more likely to be found on a Black. He changed her hair next, making it straight, rather than curly (he also cleaned it a bit). He lighted the color, so it was no longer midnight black, but rather a deep shade of mahogany. He tackled her face next, making her mouth a bit fuller, cheek bones a bit more pronounced and her nose a little longer and round. With another wave of his wand, he conjured a mirror, which he handed to her.
“Is this to your liking?”
“Fab,” she breathed, studying herself. “I guess I can get away with it due to all the dirt. I bet I’ll look even more different after I take a bath.”
“Likely. We begin classes tomorrow,” Dumbledore offered. He swept behind the seated girl, heading for the shelves behind her. “Too bad you didn’t appear earlier. You could have joined the first years in the Sorting.”
“No.”
“Hmmm?” Dumbledore turned around, stopping his reach for the Sorting Hat.
“I don’t want to be Sorted. I’d rather…well, as an exchange student, I’d rather not be associated with a single house. I’ve watched how the House System plays out and works for the past four or five years and I don’t like it. They don’t unite together and they all keep to themselves. Gryffindors hate Slytherins just because they are Slytherins and vise versa. It’s stupid. I want to be able to eat at whatever table, talk to who I want to without the scorn of being attached to one of the houses.”
Her green-grey eyes suddenly began to glow a bit as she got excited and ideas formed in her head. Dumbledore frowned, but let her continue.
“Yes! I’ll just need guest quarters. I’ll wear my own uniform from Dibonein.”
“Students spend a lot of time socializing in their Common Rooms,” Dumbledore informed her.
“I know. I’m sure if they are relaxing, they’ll invite me along,” she said, shrugging. “That’s how it works at Dibonein. We don’t have Houses like you do, we have Halls, but they are mostly just where we sleep at night. It’s just a hallway, with a name and animal associated with it. We have common areas all over the school to socialize in, no matter what Hall we live in. We do have competitions in the halls, but nothing to do with school work or anything. Just friendly ones. It’s just different, not right exactly. But, I think I’ll just float around this year.”
Dumbledore didn’t know what to say to her. She was basically singling out and ostracizing herself.
“I understand how the whole house thing is good, Headmaster, but I know too much about what is to come of the people at this school. I know this is an alternative reality or whatever, but if I can…well, be able to speak across House lines, I think it’ll be good for what’s coming. As the Sorting Hat does say in times of need, we all need to unite together.”
She gave him a knowing smile, so he nodded his agreement.
“What else do you need?”
“A robes to transfigure into the Dibonein uniform. A shower, soap and shampoo that smells like violets. Uh…I guess I need a trunk and books for school. Though, I might be able to borrow some from somewhere. I don’t have any money, as I don’t exist yet. Mostly, I need a shower.”
She sagged and glanced at him, all her early excitement and force leaving her.
“Of course,” Dumbledore agreed. “I’ll show you to the guest wing. Are you sure I couldn’t convince you to join a house?”
“Headmaster, I’ll put that Sorting Hat on next year when it wakes up to sort the new first years,” she said. “Right now, I want to be able to cross house lines. I think this is a turning point kind of year. Time can be rewritten.”
Dumbledore pondered her last statement long after he’d shown her to her room and given her what she’d asked for. The same sentence was the last thing he had heard Calliope Riddle shout at Tom Riddle before she went missing.