The Third Time is a Charm

Posted 20 October 2009

Chapter 36: Becca’s Big Secret

The day after Christmas there was pandemonium at the publishing company. Everyone wanted the book and no one could get one because the kiosk (or vending machine) was confiscated by the ministry. The employees were suppose to be on holiday but all the elves and other employees had decided the book was too important to their world so they came into work when they saw the Prophet article. About an hour after the first machine was taken by aurors, another was magically transported in its place. Secretly they were all excited that it had been even more of a huge success than they were hoping for. Everything was working out fine until Remus’ elf, Valet Nixy, came and handed Severus a message.

Severus gathered the family with Regulus and Shashi in the sitting room. Doc was there also, as he was checking on Becca because of the pregnancy. Severus read the note that Remus had sent.

Severus,
I have been contacted by some friends to attend a meeting in ORDER to discuss a book recently published. I have also given my friends a new children’s book for their upcoming addition to the family. Please let me know if I may have some time off so I may accept the invitation.
Remus.

This message was obviously coded as Remus kept his own schedule and really didn't need to ask for time off; he was supposed to be on holiday too.

“Obviously he has been asked to attend an order meeting to see what he knows. I would suggest that we let him tell them something but not who we are or where we are. We need to decide what is alright for them to know and what is not to be known.’ Severus started off the informal meeting.

“We knew this could happen” said Becca. “It was just a matter of time. I was hoping that it wouldn’t start till after the first of the year. Do you think we can trust him to keep our secrets? Maybe we should get him here and see if he knows anything else about what they will ask him. Of course this is Dumbledore we are talking about so we should take some precautions. We don’t want to lose a valuable employee.”

Severus shouted “Valet Nixy”

When the little elf popped into the room, wearing his uniform of black and white with the Prince crest on his left breast Severus immediately asked him to bring Remus to them. Remus appeared in the room a few minutes later and looked around at the people gathered there.

“I guess this little meeting is in response to the parchment I sent?” Remus stated with a question as he looked around the room. “I didn’t know if you wanted me to join the meeting or not.”

Severus then said, “We have discussed it and feel you should go to the meeting. You may tell them about the werewolf cure and about the werewolf fund to help them with education and business as this is what you do, keeping in mind you don’t give them our names…”

“Wait a minute Sev. Why don’t we give them your name? At least your name Severs Masterson Prince, you’re from Germany and a legal tourist in the UK looking to expand your business ventures. It has no bearing on why we are located here and they can look for the company in Germany .” Harry was the one who interjected this comment. Severus thought about it and nodded, agreeing with Harry. It was a Slytherin move, giving them some information to throw them off the trail. He went into the bedroom and got the papers from the German Ministry of Magic and then returned to the sitting room.

“Alright, this is what you may tell them. I am Severs Masterson Prince; here are my papers from the German Ministry of Magic. Read these over carefully because Dumbledore may try to use legilimency on you and you can think about these. You may tell them about Regulus, the werewolf cure and that you are cured and working with the werewolves and that you don’t work in publishing or distribution. We also want to give you a portkey to bring you back here in case something happens at the meeting. If you don’t have to use it, you should keep it anyway for emergencies. I have a feeling this is not going to be the last time we hear from either side. Are you ok with this so far?”

“Why would you think anything would happen if I am with Dumbledore? It’s true he does not really have time for me in his order as a werewolf but now that I am cured I could be of use on the light side.”

“Let’s just say we are going to take all the precautions we possibly can and leave it at that. There may be a Voldemort spy in the group that no one knows about. I own the company and you don’t work in distribution or for the printing press so that should be all the information they might need. If they get testy in wanting more facts you can tell the truthfully you don't work in that department and then use the portkey.” After discussing a few other details, Severus cut the meeting short and thanked Remus for his time and for informing them about the order meeting.

Severus looked at Becca and asked, “Do you think you can make a portkey like the others you made for the elves, an ascot that can be worn with the robes that would not be detectable as a portkey?”

“NO,” Doc shouted and then looked at Remus. “The pregnancy is making her powers unstable; I can do it for you.” Then Shashi came with one in his hand and said.

“I already have one. It is my emergency portkey but I can get another one later.” The elf then handed Remus the small scarf with a smile and an anxious look toward Becca.

After one last word with Severus, the former werewolf was whisked away by the house elf back to his apartment. His office was located there as well. He did most of his business in the field in meeting the other werewolves or former ones at their location. It was easier and more comfortable for them. He wondered about their cautions with Dumbledore. They all seemed to know something about him and he couldn’t help the feeling that he was missing something. He sent a reply with an owl accepting the appointment time and settled down to work knowing he would figure out what was going on sooner or later, but for now he had work to do.

Doc was sitting next to Becca with a thunderous look on his face. “You did not tell them, did you?” He nearly shouted in a menacing tone at the young woman. “No one is moving out of this room until these two know exactly what is going on. You had better start talking young lady or I will.” His face was thunderous and he was not in the mood for any prevaricating.

Becca sort of winced and started to say something before Severus, who was clearly puzzled about the outburst asked, “What didn’t you tell us?” He had felt that she was keeping something back, but what could it be that would prevent her from making a portkey and cause that reaction in the normally carefree and jovial doctor?

“I don’t have a lot of power to do difficult types of magic.” Becca whispered into the room full of people, almost so low you couldn’t hear what she was saying. Everyone looked in her direction thinking they could not have heard correctly. Becca cleared her throat and tried to speak a little louder. “When I was born, I didn’t have any magical power and my magical core was almost nonexistent.” She further explained.

“How can that be? You did a fetus transfer and you apparate everywhere and put all this together and sent us from one time to the next. I don’t understand how you could have gotten us this far without tremendous amounts of power.” Severus looked at his counterpart’s great granddaughter with confusion. “How did you manage everything? How did you hope to do this and raise the infant if you had limited power?” More importantly, Severus thought, how did she hope to go up against Dumbledore with such limited power?

“Actually, I didn’t do a lot. I did the planning with help from the founders’ portraits and had a list of things I needed before I left home. My great grandfathers did most of the work.” Becca then changed her mind in how to approach this and said. “Let me start at the beginning.”

“My mother and father were captured in a raid at the apothecary in Diagon Alley.It was one of the few places still open as most businesses had long been closed or destroyed due to the war. Voldemort had found he could tap into an infant’s power when pulling magic from the dark mark on the mother so he didn’t immediately kill my parents. He forced them to take the dark mark and then proceeded to drain them of all their magical power along with mine. My father was killed when they found out he could speak parsletongue and could remove his mark. My mother could not do anything about the mark because she was not a parslemouth. Voldemort somehow had found out I was the seventh child of two seventh parents and he knew that would mean great power and he wanted it. Both my mother and father are seventh born. My father was Evan’s seventh son. Before we were rescued he had drained my mother, and me by proxy, so much that the magical cores could not regenerate.’ Becca paused and called for a house elf to bring some tea.

“My family never gave up on me. They searched and spoke with healers from all over the world. Doc was found and he wanted to help so they paid for the research and Doc finally came up with something he thought would work so they tried it. That was when he found the information on sound wave therapy. It was used by muggles to treat fatigue and depression but the theory was good and my grandfather decided to try it. It took a few years but my magical core was at least functional. I still require help from time to time and my room is sound proof so you don’t hear the sound thrumming from the bed as I sleep. It’s not the best situation, but it does let me function as a witch instead of a squib. My personal elf Assistant Millie has been with me since I was a little girl and she does what I can’t.”

“But how do you apparate from place to place or do spells and how did you transfer that fetus from me.” Harry wanted to know, he at least looked more worried than agitated like Doc was.

“I do have some magical power, it is just limited. It does not take magic to use a portkey only to make one. This necklace,” Becca then pulled at the jewelry around her neck, “is not just for decoration." It was beautiful, made of all different types of stones and gems cut into runes all the way around her neck. "I never take it off and in fact, it can't come off. It was constructed by goblins, on my great grandfather’s orders. It is a portkey with several predestined locations. I cannot apparate.” Becca informed the group and watched as they all stared at her, still not understanding. She sighed and continued.

“I can BORROW magic from another person or the very ground we stand on if the situation calls for it, but it is unstable and I cannot hold onto it. The fetus exchange was necessary and I was desperate so I borrowed magic from Severus by holding on to his shoulder, he just didn’t realize it. I can only assume it was similar to a muggle lifting a car off a child in an accident. It just needed to happen and the adrenelin rush boosted my strenth. Everything around you has energy; you just need to know how to access it. You will get to learn that when you start training.”

“And what about the time travel? How did you manage that?” Severus did not look happy and he was having a hard time believing what he was hearing.

“That room was built by you and Harry, I mean your counterparts. It took a great amount of power, time and research but it draws energy from all the time lines it is connected to. One only needs know how to make the time spells work, not to be able to project people in time. I only did the spells to activate the room and it sent everyone. And I know you didn’t notice, but as I was doing the spells, I was touching the floor to channel a little power while doing the incantations. I, uh, had no shoes on.”

“And the parsletongue?” Regulus asked. “I thought you had to be very powerful to do that.”

“It is true that most people who are a parslemouth are powerful. But parsletongue is just a language, and more mind magic than core magic. A strong mind is a discipline not a power. I inherited the snake language from my father and his father before him. Just as in everyday magic, you need to focus, but because the focus is so strong, the ability is strong. It is not a power but ability. There is a difference.”

“What about the dark mark?” Harry asked.

“The whole universe and life itself has basic rules that must be followed. The wizarding world has forgotten that. It does not take great power to dispel one of the dark marks. You only need to know what to say to it. I merely told it that it was a squatter. The rough definition of a squatter is one who resides on a property without permission. Permission for the mark to be on the property or in this case your body is obtained through lies and deceit. It therefore did not obtain the permission from the property owner or yourself to reside through legal means. All that has to be done is to cancel an illegal contract. In any legal transaction, you have a contract, as soon as the contract is discovered to contain false information, the contract is void. But it has to be spoken in the language it was created in, in this case parsletongue. It is perceived to be powerful, because no one knows the language. Perception is a very powerful tool.”

Regulus couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You mean to tell me, you remove the mark by telling it we were lied to and it has to leave? Just like that? The Dark Lord made such a big production about it when he gave it to me and you undo all that by saying ‘you are a squatter and you have to go’?”

“That about sums it up, sometimes it puts up an argument but it always has to leave in the end. But only if the person it inhabits wants it gone. If the Death Eater in question wants it to stay and is a spy for Voldemort then it will not leave and you know that person is not a true defector.”

“What about all the other stuff?” Harry asked.

“In reality, Harry, I have brought nothing to you but your own work and knowledge. Knowledge and authority are two powers that can overcome almost anything. They are the only powers muggles have and some of them use it very well. That’s the reason Rowena was so powerful although she did have a lot of magical power too. But knowledge does not translate into a powerful magical core. Both of my great grandfathers used a good amount of power to provide me with portkeys and the means to do what ever else needed to be done. They wrote the Voldemort book that was distributed. The name Tempus Spiritus was used on all the books that were written by the family. We were a family that stayed together, kept our magic together and protected each other. We were strong because of it, and were constantly attacked because of it. True magical power comes in staying together and using your knowledge, authority and magical power as one, not in fighting, rebelling and doing your own thing within the family. The only book I wrote was the children’s book based on stories my aunts told to me and some manuscripts that were found in the Chamber from my time period.”

“And what about all the elves?” Severus chimed in “Why did we bring all the elves from Hogwarts in our time?”

“Harry, a long time ago, promised ON OUR FAMILY'S MAGICto always do what he could for the house elves. We needed workers to be able to get the business up and running and we could not give them a guarantee that they would be safe where they were. I gave them a CHOICE on whether they wanted to come or not. We did not really take all the elves, about a hundred or so did not come as they had families that were indentured with other people and they wanted to stay. All the elves that were with us in the chambers came, and Hogwarts had too many elves to begin with. It could afford to lose some.”

“What about the wards at Grimmauld Place when you picked up my Kreacher? He told me you were a strong witch and knew pureblood ways.” Harry asked next.

“The wards were blood magic, not to do with a magical core but the blood of the person resetting them. The wards threw those people out, not my magic. Blood magic is a pureblood thing and designed to protect the family with the residual magic in the property. I didn’t build the wards only manipulated what was there to throw out those that didn’t belong. Again knowledge and authority is its own power.”

Regulus upon hearing this wanted to know why she was able to do that. But Harry was the one who answered him. “You died in the cave, your mother a few years later and Sirius died protecting me in my fifth year. Belletrix hit him with a curse and he went through the veil at the Department of Mysteries. He had named me his heir. All this was in the other time line so we will try to prevent it here.”

Harry started to speak again but Becca interrupted, “Didn’t you and Severus go over everything in the war room? All this information was there so I didn’t realize you didn’t know about all this stuff.”

“I guess there were some things we missed.” Harry said sheepishly. He remembered finding some journals but was distracted by Sev at the time and didn’t go back to read them.

”The information we have on Prince Conglomerate took over fifty years to accumulate and build. Everyone in the family has contributed to it and been instrumental in one idea or anther, some of the family contributed more than others but everyone pitched in from time to time with their own special talents. We are building a business in a few years, which took the company a few decades to accomplish. This is why we needed the help of the elves and they were happy to come, most of them with their families. We so far have over a year’s worth of work established in a few weeks but have a lot more to go.” Becca looked around the room at the faces in various states of disbelief and awe.

"I was raised in the magical world, but was sent to a muggle girl’s boarding school. The family wanted me to be able to survive no matter what happened in the war. I graduated with honors and received several Master degrees in Computer Science, Business and Marketing as well as Finance. Of course I used a time turner and took classes on the computer in a time displacement room, much like the war room." She paused to nibble a biscuit and continued. “It was what I brought to the company. Some of the technology here is not going to be developed for another fifty years and in my time it is still obsolete.”

“It isn’t easy keeping all this hidden, that’s why the company is mostly in the muggle sector, but using employees we can’t control is a risk we can’t afford to take. So we use the elves. Do you guys know that the company is registered in the muggle world and not magical? It is one of the reasons wizards won’t be able to find it. They don’t acknowledge the muggle world unless forced to. And even though we call it Prince Conglomerate, most of the muggle companies have other names so that they are subsidiaries of Prince Conglomerate.” Becca looked around the room again and continued to explain some of the business concepts with them. After about an hour she then stated, "I am sorry gentlemen, this afternoon has been a little much. I think I will leave you now."

Severus looked at Doc as Becca was leaving the room and asked, “Is she going to be alright?”

Doc nodded his head and replied. “She will be fine, but she tires easily nowadays. Quite a bit of her magic is going into growing the baby and when she sleeps she needs to be in her bed to keep her core generated. She has been really good about getting the proper amount of sleep to sustain her good health and the baby’s as well.”

“She fell asleep on the chair and I brought her to bed the other night but didn’t know to activate it. I guess she needs the sound therapy on a nightly basis. I wish she had told us.” Severus told Doc worriedly, he was not mad at Becca, but very concerned about her.

“Don’t worry about it, the bed activates about five minutes after she lies down. She wouldn’t have missed her nightly dose of sound waves.” Doc assured him with a smile. He knew they were worried about her but she was really going to be alright.

"How many more surprises are we going to have from that young lady?" Severus commented with a smirk.

Doc answered him "With Becca? You never know." He was chuckling as he left the room.

As Becca started to lie down she was thinking, that didn’t go as bad as she thought it would, but she hated to think about the overprotection she would now have to endure. It was one of the reasons she hadn’t brought up the subject. Too bad Doc happened to be there today, she was sure the others would not have told the two soulmates about her problem. She started to drift to sleep and could hear the pleasant thrumming of her bed that lulled her into a deep restful slumber.


A/N Sound therapy and the use of sound waves for treating depression is a real concept. If you use a search engine and use the words sound therapy you will find a multitude of information about it. It is based on the same theory that makes us use different music to dance and exercise and relax. I don’t recommend someone try treating any illness including depression without the help of a qualified professional.

Thank you to all my reviewers from the last chapter. kaasan, Kim, qwerty, MrsCakeAkaJane, and nari-chan and everyone else that is reading this story. We are up to over 8500 hits. Thanks so much for reading this and encouraging me to continue. Next Chapter will be this coming Friday.