Chapter 4: Audience with the Queen

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All right, the three references were: Larceny, Lechery, and Luna Lovegood by Rorschach's Blot (tentacle monster, the name Foxes, and their mark to a certain extent), Death's Pride by Paladeus ("Mush!", just too funny not to use), and A Black Comedy by nonjon (the obscene caricature of the Dark Mark that was used by Harry and Sirius as the Death Eater Bandits). Damn, nobody got them all, so I guess I'll just have to eat all these cookies myself. I'll see if I can fit in another round of references in a later chapter.

Disclaimer: Did Dumbledore manipulate Harry, even after his own death? If so, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whoever else she sold the rights to.
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"Luna, it looks like you will have to do it. Voldie used my blood already, so I have a pseudo-Horcrux. Make sure you aim at the scar, though, just in case."

She came up to kiss him passionately, followed by Hermione. Then she stood back, her face scrunched up as she gathered the necessary emotion. When her eyes opened, he flinched at the intensity of the hate she displayed in his direction, even as he knew none of it was for him. She raised her wand and took careful aim.

"Avada Kedavra."
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Harry had died twice, and each time was a different experience. The first time he died at the end of Voldemort's wand, and the lying old goat had met him in Limbo, which looked remarkably like King's Cross Station. The second time he had technically died was when they were transferred to this new time stream, and he hadn't waited anywhere, but simply woke up. Now, he was in a forest glade.

He looked around, seeing nothing past the trees that marked the boundaries of the circular clearing. Once again he was nude, so he imagined a soft robe and put on the one that appeared. After he had dressed, he noticed something very wrong with his location: there were no sounds. No birds, no insects, not even any wind rustling the leaves. His wand was gone, but that was expected, so he instead primed a wandless Protego shield in his left hand. Wandless magic was difficult, and he could only use a half-dozen or so spells in that manner, but the Shield Charm was thankfully one of them.

A snapping branch broke the silence directly ahead of him. Out stepped a woman, but one unlike any other he had ever seen. She possessed a slight figure, covered with a slip dress of innumerable shades of green. Her eyes and hair were as blue as the sky, set in a tanned face, and her ears—

Harry stared, for no human had ears that long, thin, or pointed.

"I certainly didn't expect you to visit me so soon, my champion," the woman said, and Harry was distracted by the undertone of her voice, like hundreds of silver bells, before he comprehended the words she spoke and identified her.

He clumsily bowed. "Y-your Majesty, I had no idea I would come to your realm. We were just destroying a Horcrux, the one in my scar, and the only safe way to do that was the Killing Curse, so I was actually expecting to go to Limbo or somewhere—"

Her laugh interrupted his babbling. "I did not mean to sound displeased, Harry James Potter, I was simply making an observation. Come, sit with me." A pair of mushrooms sprouted and grew to be large enough to sit upon comfortably, and Harry took the one closest to him. "Now that we are situated, please continue."

"Er, that was everything. I'm not sure how I got here, exactly."

"You came because I wanted to speak with you. I know what happened in your original timeline, and I apologize for the stress I have caused you moving you to the one you are in now."

"There wasn't much stress; we were more or less spinning our wheels where, when we were. We should actually be thanking you, your Majesty. Um," Harry paused, not at all sure how his question would be received, "what should I call you?"

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