See chapter twelve for AN.

Chapter Thirteen – Awakening

"Dude…this doesn't leave the court!"

Ash The Beta (v. 2.0!)

"My name's Hermione Granger."

Lia kind of stared at the bushy-haired girl for a moment before replying. "Um…okay." She glanced at Kaori, who shrugged at her.

The two girls pushed through the crowd until they reached the stairs, and climbed to the top floor.

"How can I help you?" Lia asked Hermione. "Are you having problems with someone, or something? I'm not a peer mentor, but I have a friend who is, if you need to talk to one."

"Er, no, that's quite alright…I, er, noticed you in the halls a few days ago with another girl, and again at that funeral—"

Lia froze at the word, and before she could think, she was replying. "I'd rather not talk about that."

There was an awkward silence, complete with Hermione nervously twirling a finger around a lock of her hair.

"Sorry," Lia said quickly. "It's just—"

"So painful to talk about someone you've lost. That's what I want to talk to you about."

Lia blinked in surprise. "Eh?"

"A few weeks ago, my friends Ron and…and Harry—we were…." She stood immobile with fear, or pain. "We were traveling with my parents," she continued finally. "Harry went for a walk, and…."

The curly-haired teen waited as Hermione composed herself.

"He never came back," she finally squeaked.

"Do you know what happened?" Lia asked her, concerned.

"Oh, they think he was hit by a car, but the person who hit him had no record of living."

"What, like doesn't exist?"

Hermione smiled wryly. "Something like that."

Lia suddenly realized that the girl had no idea what her name was. "Oh, jeeze, I'm so sorry. My name's Lia. Lia Florence."

"What an unusual name!"

Lia snorted with laughter. "You think my name's strange? You have a girl-ified version of the name of a Greek god!"

Hermione looked insulted for a moment, and then seemed to realize that Lia was right. "I'm sorry, Lia."

"Besides, my full name is Lianne—a very common name. It's just spelled differently than most, so I'm able to take the name Lia without looking strange."

"I know what you mean—my friend's little sister is called Ginny, but her full name is Ginevra."

QoC: Don't ask me where I found this little fact, 'cuz, quite honestly, I don't want to share my sources!

"Now, that's an unusual name!"

The two girls shared a laugh.

"Now, Ron was it?" Lia started.

"Pardon me?"

"Ron, your friend who was kidnapped by non-existent people?"

"Oh, in one way, yes. But that was Harry that I was talking about," Hermione corrected her.

Lia blinked, and then roared with laughter as the joke made sense. "I'm sorry, yes, Harry. Did they ever find his body?"

"He wasn't killed. He was sent to a hospital…St. Michael's, or St. Mary's, or something like that."

Lia felt her blood run cold. "St. Christopher's?"

"Yes, that's it."

"And the person, you say—they didn't exist?"

Hermione frowned. "I forget how they put it…my mother said that he'd left with a group of Mug—er, teenagers, but the car was registered to a family that doesn't exist."

Lia was confused for a moment. It was more than obvious that this 'Harry' character that Hermione was talking about was their very own Zack. How many other Brits who are hit by cars could there be! But it didn't make sense that the car wouldn't have been registered to any living person.

The bell rang, making a good excuse for Lia to get away from this newest mystery and to go to her first period class.

"Look, come by at lunch and we can talk some more," Lia told her, then telling her how to get to the table. "You should be able to find us pretty easily."

"Right. Thank you, Lia. It's nice to be able to talk about Harry with someone who doesn't know him as much as my friends do. He's—er, he was sort of famous in Britain."

Oh, God, Lia thought in horror as she descended the stairs. I've kidnapped a prince, or something!

Zack awoke on the floor the next morning, his geometry homework half finished, and Chris standing over him with a mixed look of annoyance and amusement on his face.

"I don't know what they taught you back in Britain, but we don't sleep on the floor. Especially on a school night!"

"What time is it?" Zack said. His voice cracked with disuse, causing Chris to smirk slightly.

"Late enough. We're waiting for Jack to pick us up."

Zack murmured a few choice swear words and then picked up his homework. "How much time do I have to get ready?"

"Enough to change and grab some food. Oh, and don't forget that Health project."

Zack groaned. "I completely forgot about it!"

"Forget about it for a little longer—if Jack gets here and you're not ready, she's going to be really, really pissed."

Daniel was silent for the entire car ride back to his house. His mother was torn between anger and relief that he wasn't in trouble. He had been cleared of all charges; there was no way that he could have attempted to kill Jack, seeing how the man that had been killed at the police station earlier in the week had turned out to be just a normal person. The thing that confused Daniel the most was that he hadn't even looked anything like himself—the only similarity between the two men was that they both had sandy hair.

He thought once again to the conversation that he'd had with Pyro the day before—he knew what he had to do, but he didn't know whether he had the courage to do it.

"You'll be late to school," his mother told him as he wolfed down his bacon, eggs, and toast (he hadn't eaten since before practice the day before). "I've got a note for you—just tell the wing ladies that you had a family emergency."

Yeah, Daniel smirked. My own little emergency! After finishing his breakfast, he grabbed his book bag, the note that his mother had left on the counter, another piece of toast, and headed out to his car to go to school.

Lia doodled on her French worksheet, dimly hearing what her teacher was saying about the newest tense they were learning. It bothered her that she couldn't think of why Hermione Granger's search for the people who took Zack—rather, she now realized, Harry—came up with nothing. It's not like they didn't have a record of who I was, she said to herself, furrowing her brow. The bell rang, announcing lunch, and she gathered her things up.

We gave them all of my information, she thought to herself. She walked down the stairs through the hoard of people, each fighting to get to his or her destination. After only having to use her prep-maneuver twice, she finally got to the lunch table and sat down. It's not like we're not listed in the phone book, anyway.

She looked up and saw Hermione and a redheaded boy approaching the table, and then she realized her error.

"Oh, shit!"

"She said a bad word."

"I know. But why?" Kirsten scratched her head, collecting some of her ringlets behind her fingers and pulling them taunt. They sprang right back into place, something they never did in the Real World.

"I don't know," Inad answered. "That Hermione girl didn't seem bad, or anything. Hey, that's a really unusual name. Where do you think it came from?"

"Probably England, or Greece, maybe."

"She doesn't look Greek."

"She doesn't look anything but Caucasian, Inad."

The two girls sat silently, watching as, in slow motion, Hermione approached the table and Lia got up to move away, almost as though in fear. "What did she figure out, though?"

"I don't know—but I think we're going to find out."

Zack's headache hadn't abated at all, and the incessant yelling of the students didn't help at all. Maybe one of the girls will have something, he thought to himself. They always seemed to have pain medication for one thing or another—including cramps. He wrinkled his nose up. He didn't have cramps, but he hoped that they still had something that would work.

He rounded the corner, and the commons came into view. It still slightly intimidated him, for reasons unbeknownst to him. Eighteen hundred people milling around shouldn't be that different from where he went to school…could it?

He tried to picture what his school looked like, and the only thing that came to mind was the pretty girl that he had identified as Hermione the night before. Who was she? Why was she so special that she seemed to be in so many of his memories?

And why was she the one that he remembered first?

He gazed around the commons, trying to locate the table that the girls and Chris had chosen to eat at that day. It was hard, but he eventually located Lia's curls and made his way over to her.

The events from the other day had made her extremely wary of him, as though he were a snake about to reach out and bite her. He didn't know what had happened, and the memory that he'd remembered in the moments before the…the thing—what could he call it, he wondered? It wasn't much of an accident, and therefore couldn't be called one. It was an incident, but surely there was a better word for it…?

Ah, forget it, he told himself. I'm beginning to sound like… he tried to think, but no memory came to him that applied to the thought.

Things were beginning to get strange, he decided.

As he got closer to the table, he saw another girl approaching—one that he didn't recognize; yet she seemed familiar. Whatever it was about her, she seemed to unnerve Lia, for she cursed loud enough that, even through the din of the cafeteria, he could still hear her. She stood up, and began to back away from the table, only to run smack into Chris. Chris opened his mouth to say something, but she looked down at the floor and again tried to get away. This time, before he could remove himself from the situation, she rammed right into Zack, bowling him over into another table of preps.

There were squeals of pain and annoyance, and the girl that Zack didn't know came around to the other side to help Lia up.

"I'm so sorry," she said, her British accent lilting over the gibbering preps. She helped Lia to her feet, and then glanced over to Zack. Her brown eyes went huge, and she stopped in her tracks.

"Oh," she breathed finally.

Lia grabbed Zack and hauled him to his feet. He looked at the new girl, and she looked back at him. Out of his peripheral vision, he could see Lia looking back and forth between them, biting her lip.

"Um, Zack, this is—"

The girl didn't give Lia the time to introduce who she was, for she practically leaped for him, throwing her arms around him and, to his surprise and astonishment, began to sob onto his shoulder.

"I thought we'd never find you, but here you are, among Muggles, of all people! We've missed you—how come you didn't write us? Are you angry?"

"I'm sorry?"

She pulled away, her expression looking as though he'd just slapped her. He scanned her face, trying in vain to figure out why she was so familiar.

"Don't you recognize me?"

"I'm sorry, I—" Blinding pain suddenly flashed in his head, and he cried out. It flared in a peak, and more pain erupted somewhere in the vicinity of his knees; he belated realized that he'd collapsed.

He could dimly hear Lia gasping, and the girl screaming before the world went black once more.

Jack sluggishly walked to the lunch table, listening to the students yelling and laughing and talking around her. Nothing had been the same since Daniel had broken up with her. It had been painful enough to have her two friends die. Losing her boyfriend made her want to end her life. If it weren't for the mundane tasks of getting up, going to school, going to swim practice, doing homework, and then repeating the whole routine the next day, Jack thought that she might have tried to kill herself by now.

"Jack!"

She turned, hearing her name, and was surprised to see Daniel running towards her.

"Jack, I need to talk to you!"

She turned away again as tears sprang to her eyes. She felt a hand on her shoulder: Pyro had grabbed her, and was gently pushing her towards Daniel. "It's worth it," she said to her. Jack gave her a pained look, but turned back to her ex-boyfriend and began to walk.

"I just…" he began, and then ran a hand through his hair. "Jack, I want to say I'm sorry."

"You're sorry," she repeated, a little confused.

"I'm sorry for not trusting you. I'm sorry for walking away from you when you needed me. I'm sorry for being a horrible friend."

"What?"

"I'm sorry for breaking up with you, because I still love you."

Jack felt like he could have had the same effect by throwing a brick at her stomach. He still loved her. He loved her. "Daniel," she said, hopelessly. "I just…" The tears she'd been trying to keep from her face filtered down without her permission. She angrily tried to wipe them away, but Daniel's hand had beaten her to it. She felt his thumb gently caress her cheek and he dried it, and Jack knew she was gone.

"I completely understand," he said, "if you don't want to get back together. But I would like a second chance. You deserved a second chance. I wish that I had been there that night instead of Chris, but I wasn't. I would like to make it up to you, if you'd let me."

She opened her eyes, and looked straight into his. The blue of them, although light, almost like ice, were warm and inviting. She closed her eyes again, and grabbed his hand with her own.

"I'd like that."

The peace of the moment was broken by a fear-stricken scream that ravaged the commons.

He felt the darkness as keenly as he had three months ago. This time, the tickle that had been on the edge of his mind was now pressing in on him from all sides, trying to destroy his memory. He fought against it with all his power, and when a pinprick of light appeared in the distance, bidding him to come closer, he did not.

"I won't go! I won't!"

"But you must," said the voice, a throbbing, musical voice of a young woman. "You must if you are to win against the evil that contains you."

"I will only go if you return to me that which you took." His green eyes pierced the darkness, and it cleared to show a woman who could have been his twin: her hair, dark like a raven's, curled around her. Her skin was pale and unblemished, her blue-white eyes so clear that the magic that was in them pulsed within his chest.

"You wished all your life to be special to someone, for someone to love you. You world changed dramatically that night, in the hut on the rocks. From then on you wished only to live a life of peace and quiet, uninterrupted by the man who killed your parents, and your friend. Are you truly ready to go back into it?"

"I wish to return to my remaining friends," he told her. "I need their love. I do not belong here, no matter how welcome these people make me feel. I need their love.

"And they need mine."

"You believe what your heart tells you," she said, a sad smile playing on her full lips once more. "Promise me you'll be careful…Harry."

The bright light roared in his ears.

He awoke to the warm, cinnamon eyes of the one girl that mattered most to him in the world.

"I love you, Hermione Granger."