Magic Knows No Boundaries Chapter 49 (Patreon)

Chapter 49:

The New Teacher's Troubles

***

Remus closed to door behind Hermione as she entered Lily's private office. With two faculty members there they didn't need to have a house elf, ghost or portrait present to listen in, and of course Lily had her private quarters warded against all three.

Still, it was possible to listen in, so she exploded at her apprentice for the sake of appearances.

"Where do you get off sexually assaulting a teacher?!" Lily roared at Hermione.

Hermione cowered in the seat opposite Lily in her office. But this was out of fear, not guilt. Her crossed arms and stern upper lip testified to the fact she felt zero shame or guilt for her actions. Real anger came into Liliy's voice when the girl crossed her legs and had the gal to raise her chin in defiance.

"Do youy know you could be expelled for this?" Lily warned. " Or worse, gotten him sacked? Thankfully professor Morrigan is neither pressing charges nor is he doing the stupid thing in reciprocating your hormone fueled feelings?"

Hermione did actually slacken her defiant expression at the prospect of "Hadrian" losing his job. But she then smirked at the idea of "Hadrian" pressing charges, and Lily worried she might need to have a talk with her apprentice about consent within relationships, but that would be a little hypoctritical of her. After all, she felt fully entitled to James, but they were married. That whole 'becoming one flesh' thing meant she owned every part of his body down to the last microbe in his stomach. Such an outlook did not apply to absconding teenaged couples.

"Okay, ward is up." Remus said.

Finally! Lily switched gears.

"Talk. How did you know Romulus was Hadrian?" She asked.

Hermione looekd at Lily like she was insane.

"How could I not?" She asked rhetorically. "I could smell his shampoo and deoderant from across the great hall. He even runs his hand through his hair the same way. All of those little nervous tics of his. I only now realize they do both always have the same sense of humor though."

She then thought on it for a second.

"But Romulus wasn't pretending to be professor Morrigan before. Definitely not the same person. So why now?" She asked.

"He's not pretending. He is and always has been Hadrian Morrigan." Remus said. "The Hadrian Morrigan who has been teaching you was a time travelor. Our Romulus, from the future."

Hermione glared into space, the way she tended to do while taking apart a problem in her brain. She eventually nodded.

"That explains just about everything, yeah." She decided. "Except his appearance. Why does he look like yours and Mister Potter's lost son all of us sudden?"

"Because he is our lost son." Lily said.

Hermione looked unconvinced, recrossing her arms and legs.. She turned that borderline glare on Remus, then Lily, as if she couldn't decide who to be mad at.

"Please start from the beginning." She pleaded.

Lily sat down and sighed.

"Okay. So you know htat whole story of me performing an abortion on myself and completely mesing it up?" Lily asked.

"The botched abortion ritual that left you barren and your monthly cycle completely screwed up?" Hermione asked rhetorically. "How could I forget?"

Screwed up didn't even begin to describe how her cycles had been these last seventeen years. For a quarter of the month she had morning sickness like she was still pregnant, another quarter she could barely stop herself from jumping James' bones, and the other half was on and off bleeding. Heavy bleeding. None of these things were continuous.

"Well, that may have been a white lie." Lily said.

"May have been?" Hermione asked.

"What I actually botched was a surrogacy ritual. With Remus' wife." Lily said.

Hermione glanced at Remus.

"I didn't know you had a wife." She said.

"Had." Remus said sadly.

Hermione glanced back at Lily.

"Okay, so. At the time both James and I were a target. And word got out that we were expecting. Remus and Mary* had suffered misscarriage just a month earlier." Lily explained. "So, we did a surrogacy ritual in secret. Transporting my baby to her womb. We still don't know what went wrong, but our best guess is Mary still had some remnants of her own son left, or because she was a wereolf, it tried to swap our wombs. It was bad."

Hermione nodded along intently.

"But... your son merged with her son then?" Hermione asked.

"More like... you know how a fetus can absorb another fetus?" Lily explained.

"What, like a vanishing twin or a chimera fetus?" Hermione asked.

"Exactly!" Lily said. "But the process was more magical than biological. Like I said, we still have no idea how it happened.

"But then how was he a werewolf?" Hermione asked. "Her being a werewolf shouldn't have been a problem. It's not passed down from mother to child without a bite, right?"

Both Lily and Remus shrugged.

"He wasn't a werewolf." Remus said. "He was like a facsimile of a werewolf. One that only partially transformed, didn't turn feral, and wasn't contageous. It's like the ritual tried to make him one, but failed."

Lily watched as Hermione massaged the side of her head. Yeah, it still hurt their brains too.

"My best guess is that common side effect of the surrogacy ritual where the child inherits eye, hair or skin color from the surrogate mother tried to instead pass on her lycanism." Lily said. "And so he became a false werewolf. He isn't one anymore, and never will be again."

"So you guys finally managed to reverse the ritual?" Hermione asked, before beaming. "With the time anomoly! You didn't just reverse the rituals effect, you undid it. It never happened now?"

Lily beamed right back at her.

"That's right. Both Harry and I are back to the way we should be."

"Harry?" Hermione asked.

"That's Romulus' real name." Lily said.

"Oh god, three aliases. I'm already losing track." Hermione said, massaging her forehead again. Then her brain caught up. "Wait, you said both you and him?"

Lily smiled wanly and nodded slowly, before patting her stomach.

"James and I are already trying for a daughter." She told her apprentice.

Hermione squeeled and jumped to her feet, grasping both of Lily's hand in hers.

"Oh my god! Congraulations!" She said.

"for what? We aren't pregnant yet." Lily said. "I'm older now, it takes a few tries at my age. But I'll let you know when it happens. Don't tell Harry."

"You mean Romulus?" Hermione corrected.

"Right. No! Hadrian! He's Hadrian to you for the foreseeable future. You will not blow his cover." Lily warned.

Hermione returned to her seat and this time at least pretended to looke admonished.

"You will be dropping his class and avoiding any club or extracurricular activities he is part of." Lily ordered.

"I'm not taking his class, I only ever sat in. And what about the werewolf sanctuary?" She asked.

"Harry will not be running that, we will be until his older counterpart returns." Lily said.

"Riiiight. I forgot the older, wiser, hotter one was still missing. And we kind of need him." Hermione said, chewing her inner cheek.

Lily shuddered in disgust at anybody finding her son "hot", but she supposed it was a good thing for her future daughter in law to like how her son looked.

"You will also be spending detention with me for the next month, during which time you'll be catching up on my teachings." Lily continued.

Hermione danced a little jig at the prospect. It really wasn't a punished, so much as it was them pretending to punish her.

"Now get a move on and, I'll say it like I haven't said it a hundred times before, you are FORBIDDEN from persuing any romantic or sexual relationship with my son!" Lily roared.

-

The rest of Harry's first week of teaching went by rather smoothly after that hiccup on the first day.

He was a bit out of his depth in trying to manage the clubs, but they turned out to not need him.

"Awww, you made yourself a leetle boy again?" The Veela he had been warned about teased.

"And I bet he doesn't even remember us." Cedric, who he knew personally and was trying to hide htis fact, joined in.

"I will soon, I'm sure. I have two alchemists working to change me back." Harry told them.

He was dismissed from his duty as gamekeeper after that. A role that Hogwarts was desperately trying ot refill now that Madame Hooch was a terrorist! Seriously, how did that happen?

Anyhoo, this left him an unbelievably amount of free time. He used this time wisely, burning through every book on divination he could find. Both in his older self's study, and in the library. He had already swallowed the official textbooks, or most of them anyways, under his mothers instruction. But based on the past essays students had turned in for extra credit, his older counterpart liked to go way off the beaten path. He preactically disregarded the official material.

This made his job of teaching more difficult, unless he opted to just go back to teaching from the textbook. But older him set such a stellar example that he wanted to stick to it. He wanted to keep inspiring wonder and awe. He had succeeded with that first assignment, now he just needed to come up with something equally clever for next week.

But then Friday came along, and nobody was ready for the announcement Dumbledore had in store for them.

"Good morning everyone." Dumbledore greeted. "I am pleased to announce that classes are canceled today."

This was news to the staff, who glanced confusedly at each other as the students cheered.

"Instead we will all be taking a little trip to Hogsmeade. There, you will all witness a historic event that will be remembered for millenia." Dumbledore said.

"So eat up, and then proceed to the gatehouse and take a carriage to hogsmeade. Students of age may use a staff floo." Dumbledore advised. "Be sure to wear your hats and school robes.

Eat up, they did. Harry had never seen students eat so quickly, nor Slytherin purebloods do so with such poor manners.

Remus leaned over to Harry.

"We should probably hurry to our offices." He said.

And hurry they did. Making it just in time to let the first batch of sixth and seventh years inside. He supervised them as they flood either to the Hog's head or the three broomsticks. When the last student went through he waited ten minutes for any last stragglers before locking up and going through himself.

He exited the fireplace of the Hog's Head to find a pair of Aurors standing guard. He recognized them as the pair that usuallyguarded the entrance to diagon alley.

"Please proceed to the pavillion behind the train station and join the other students." One auror said.

Harry let it slide that they assumed he was a student. He did look one. He did as they said and a short, thirty minute walk later had him in front of the train station. There, the last of the carriages with students were delivering their payload.

And behind it, visible even from the front, was a giant projector screen. The kind you would see at a drive in theater. Harry was even more confused than before.

He followed the students around the building to find the field behind the station was covered in chairs, with most already taken. His coworkers were seated at the front. Typical of him to be last to arrive.

In front of them was what looked like a newscasting van with a satellite dish on top of it.

He found a seat saved for him betwen his mom and Remus. Once he took it he saw a Muggle, electric projector set up on a table, under which was a generator. So that's why they needed to come all the way out here! Yeah that thing would fry if it was any closer to Hogwarts.

"What's this all about?" Harry asked.

"You got me." Said Remus with a shrug.

Dumbledore was nowhere to be seen.

Nobody, not even the faculty, felt brave enough to approach the Muggle newscasters and their Auror guard to ask. So they all just sat their uncomfortably while they got the projector working. It was an overcast enough day that, when it finally worked the image it projected onto the giant, white screen the image quality was perfect.

It was showing a neescaster at her desk who was currently speaking, but there was no sound.

"Just in time. Now let's get those speakers up and running." Said the man who had been tinkering with the projector.

Oh right. There were big, black speakers against the back wall of the train station. He'd somehow missed that. His mind confused them for vending machines, which would have been just as odd to see in Hogsmeade. It was early, and he was still sleepy.

The speakers were soon up and running, barely audible over the sound of the multitude of generators powering them and the other electronics.

"We now go live, to the emergency UN meeting where we are told there will be an important announcement regarding the disaster in London last week."

Harry shared excited glances with his coworkers. He knew they must have been thinking exactly what he was. What kind of cockamimie bullshit were they going with for a cover story? An alien invastion? Hallucinogenic gas explosion? Animatronics? Time traveling cyborgs? Whatever it was, it was gonna be good.

The video feed did indeed change to the UN chamber.

There, at the head podium, was a man who the caption declared as Razali Ismail of Malaysia, President of the fifty first and a half United Nations National Assembly. Long title.

"We are here today after only two weeks since our last meeting. But today we are not here to discuss our resolutions to ban nuclear testing or to cooperate in space. Today, we are to reveal the cause to the catastrophe in London nearly two weeks ago." The translator for Ismail said after a slight delay from the Malaysian's own words.

"Every world leader has been working overtime over the last two weeks to make this moment possible, and everyone in this room has been briefed." The speaker continued. "But I am not the best person to explain. Which is why I will be giving the floor to my new colleque, head chairman of the International Confederation of Wizards, Albus Perceival Wilfric Brian Dumbledore."

Harry felt his jaw drop at the mention of the ICW, and pinched himself at the sound of his Headmaster's full name. But when the man himself melted into reality behind the podium, dispelling his disillusion charm, in full wizarding robes and hat, he realized this was really happening.

"Hello world." Dumbledore greeted. "As you just heard, I am Albus Dumbledore. It rolls off the tongue faster than my full name. And if you couldn't tell from my appearance and title, I am, indeed, a wizard."

-

* I think I mentioned the real name of Remus' widow in an earlier chapter, but I can't find it. Calling her Mary for now. If anybody remembers where that info was, please let me know.