♫ heroes

- peter gabriel

"Oh, we can be heroes..."

✧

Priscilla stirred again for the second time that evening in a chair in the Headmaster's Office. The room was filled with familiar faces - the Weasley's, Nitara, Amos and Cedric, Harry and Hermione, and... her parents.

"You," she grunted, and everyone turned around. She was glaring at her parents madly. "Have some fucking explaining to do."

James and Angela Roberts were standing next to Dumbledore wearing sorrowed expressions. James was balding with an unfortunate receding hairline backed by a wisp of blonde hair. He had on his usual black sweater and blue jeans, matched with destroyed chucks he's somehow had for as long as Priscilla was alive. Angela's blonde hair was pulled into a tight ponytail on top of her head and she had dark black eyeliner smudged around her eyes. She wore a brown trenchcoat matched with a dark purple sweater and black jeans. They definitely looked a little young to be parents of an almost seventeen-year-old.

"Priscilla Anne, really? Now?" James scolded.

"Priscilla Anne," George repeated to Nitara, Ginny and Cedric in a whisper. They all tried to conceal their laughter from the tense situation. Fred elbowed his brother to be quiet.

"Yes, now. Where the fuck have you been?" Priscilla said, rising from her seat. Fred moved by her side to check if she was okay, then let her go to continue on, standing close behind her in support. "You send one letter in an entire year. I was alone for an entire year. I used to do everything to get your attention. I got into Wampus, I got the best grades, I didn't argue at being transferred to Hogwarts, and the second I get here, you disappear without a fucking trace. By the way, you should thank Amos, Molly and Arthur, they housed me during the holidays when you couldn't, and don't even think about me coming back to America with you this summer -"

"Priscilla, about that..." Angela began.

"You're not going back to America this summer, dear. You're staying, erm," Molly said, looking to Arthur for help, who just shrugged in response.

"Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on?!" Priscilla shouted, enraged by her parent's presence. Fred rubbed her back reassuringly, and it helped her calm somewhat, but she was still too pissed off in that teenage angst sort of way at her parents for deserting her. It was completely justified behavior, of course, but it still freaked Fred out a little bit to see Priscilla so angry.

"Is he your boyfriend-" James began but was shushed by everyone as Fred had to hold a now fuming Priscilla back.

"You might want to sit back down," Dumbledore warned. When Priscilla didn't move and Fred didn't move either, Dumbledore sighed and continued. "It is no question that you have a rather extraordinary gift, Ms. Roberts. You were able to cast spells that do not exist, existing spells at levels of strength never seen before in history, and you were even able to reverse the killing curse, something never done before, with a spell only Heirs of Hufflepuff are able to cast."

"So that makes me... Wow, I need to brush up on my family history," Cedric whispered at the back of the room.

"Yeah, what about it?" Priscilla grumbled. She wrapped her arms around herself, not liking where this was going.

Dumbledore paced over to her slowly, her parents watching with matching frowns. "The truth behind your abilities, as we now come to understand it, is due to an alteration in the very fabric of our reality."

"A paradox," Hermione added, unable to contain herself.

"Your father and I were never meant to live this long, sweetie," Angela said, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. "We were meant to die three years before you were born, out on the job in America. But something happened, someone stopped the explosion that was meant to kill us."

Priscilla blinked in shock, unable to comprehend what was happening. Nitara rushed over to her, unable to hold back anymore, and held Cilla's other hand that wasn't being held by Fred in support.

"When you were born, you became... A paradox child," James continued slowly. "You were never meant to be born, therefore you have these abilities."

"You're a hero, love," Fred whispered, tucking a blonde strand of hair behind her hair and kissing her temple. Priscilla's mind was going a mile a minute, but that kiss helped ground her.

After a moment of silence for her to collect her thoughts, Priscilla beat on. "So... you were never meant to be parents?" Priscilla asked. Angela and James exchanged a glance before nodding.  "Makes sense," she muttered to herself. 

"So when I was a kid, and you never told me about my powers, what, was it because you were scared?" Cilla sputtered, desperately trying to understand. "Did you hope I was a fucking squib? A hoax? Did you want me at all?"

"Timeturner babies are the reason why Timeturners are so regulated across the Wizarding World. It had only happened once before years and years ago, we learned about it in Auror's training. Somewhere in this timeline, a wizard must've gone rogue," Angela added.

She was changing the fucking subject, and it was going to drive Cilla insane.

"You... you're from the past then, aren't you? His hairline was worse when I left for Hogwarts," Priscilla asked, unable to use her parents' names.

James sighed deeply in shame, rubbing his head. "Yeah, yeah that's right. We were given a special time turner to make greater jumps through time. We had to come to this time to stop Crouch before he could hurt you."

"The one I used last year was only for a couple of hours at most," Hermione whispered.

Priscilla's brain was beginning to hurt. "So how the fuck did you even know that Crouch was going to hurt Harry and I if you haven't even lived to see it? How much have you two jumped in time?"

"This is the first time, we promise," Angela said with haste. "We received a letter in the owl mail to come to this exact time, stop Moody, and tell you everything. It was sent with a time turner."

Cedric looked down on the ground. He was thinking about the dress and Vader. He knew he was wrapped up in this somehow.

"That isn't all," Dumbledore said. He walked to the side of his office, and with a wave of his hand, a cabinet opened and his Pensieve glided out of the wall. "When you cast your spells using your paradoxical magic, you see glimpses of the future. However, when you look into the Pensieve, you can see the original, unaltered timeline. You can only do this after the events have transpired. The timelines run parallel to each other, you see."

"So we can see Cedric's death? The original one?" Harry blurted. Amos whipped out his handkerchief at the very mention of it and dotted his eyes.

Dumbledore sighed. "Yes, you can."

✧

Everyone cleared out of the room, save for Cedric, Nitara, Harry and Priscilla. Amos was too shaken up by what happened earlier that evening to watch what could've been. Fred kissed Priscilla on the forehead and smiled at her before leaving, and her parents looked at her with an undecipherable expression before being ushered out of Dumbledore's office.

"R-ready?" Priscilla stuttered at her friends. She was so overwhelmed by it all; she let her tears fall freely now that her parents had left the room.

Nitara reached out and held her hand, trying to control her emotions. "Ready, Cilla."

"Me too," Harry said after a moment, holding Cilla's other outstretched hand.

The three turned to Cedric, who after some reluctance, summoned his strength and held onto Harry and Nini's outstretched hands. "Reckon I have to be, huh?"

Priscilla's tears leaked into the Pensieve, and the vision of the true reality came to life in the murky, mystical green waters.

For the most part, it was the same chain of events. Harry and Cedric run through the maze, fighting Acromantulas and other beasts, then grabbing onto the Goblet together. The whiz of a portkey, the cemetery from Priscilla's vision...

"Kill the spare!"

Cedric shuddered as he watched his body fall to the ground and Harry scream.

Harry looked away when Voldemort toyed with him and duelled him. The others watched on in horror at what Harry had to go through after seeing his friend get killed in front of him. By the time visions of Harry's parents and Cedric bloomed from Harry's wand, the tears were flowing from all four of them.

Finally, the vision ended on Harry and Cedric falling back through the portkey, and Amo's screams were the last thing they heard.

They stood in silence for a while, crying and squeezing each other's hands in shock of what they had seen. Harry felt awful having to relive it all over again, and Cedric's eyes hadn't moved from the waters of the Pensieve. He was struck with the realization that now he had to live a life he was never meant to live, and he had no idea what to do with it.

"Why... wasn't I there?" Nitara asked softly.