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twilitty · 3 years

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Moonlit ch.2

This is the second chapter in my new fic Moonlit, it will be posted on Tumblr, ao3, and ffnet. New chapters uploaded every week and a half. Message/comment to be added to my tag list.

3.9k words

previous chapter

big thank you to my beta reader @effervescentlyirrevocable who has given me the absolute best criticism and helped make this chapter so beautiful :)

Bella Swan is introduced to a possible new friend and receives a gift. The doctors new family may not be as well adjusted to small town life as Charlie would like.

Chapter Two

The next morning I wake up to a growl of thunder beating against the inside of my skull. I had a night of thankfully restful sleep for once, only waking up to get a glass of water. My hands are clasped against my chest, fingers knotted in annoyance as I hold back what likely will be a spill of expletives. Why must there always be noise? Why can I not sleep soundly and awake soundly, just once?

I open one eye experimentally, hoping the sun has already arisen and I won’t be missing out on any leftover sleep. My room is shrouded in darkness. The expletives, swear words crude enough to make a priest gag, spill out in a muttered breath and my hands squeeze against each other once more before reaching for my alarm clock. The red numbers blink back at me and it takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the light before I read the time. Nine in the morning. I look back to the window where my blinds are drawn closed, but still no light, even filtered through the canopy of clouds, peaks at the edges.

The thunder, which had gone quiet after waking me up initially, rolls again for a moment before silencing itself. Only, was it thunder? It sounded heavy, like machinery but with a deeper growl. Was there construction nearby? I didn’t recall any on my few trips up and down the street, and I question why there would need to be any construction anyways. It’s not as if this is a booming neighbourhood with a subdivision being built.

Charlie knocks against my door, quieter than yesterday. “Bella, it’s time to get up.” You’d imagine that with my age being nearly twenty and my status as a legal adult I’d be allowed to choose my own time to wake up. My annoyance dies down quickly when my thoughts bounce back to Phoenix, waking up early each morning to drive Mom into her early morning classes. Nine in the morning really isn’t that early, in fact, it allows me time to get some chores done before class. “Someone has dropped by.”

My lips contort into an annoyed pucker. Who would have stopped by? Mom had warned me before the move that nothing but rumours and nasty mold comes from Forks. Apparently her quick marriage to Charlie, and even quicker pregnancy with me, was enough gossip to fuel conversations for years. I remember a trip to Forks at eight years old, a woman had stopped my mother in the grocery store and asked her over for coffee. “They just want the inside scoop,” Renee had told me afterwards, “Give them anything and they’ll find a way to make it ugly.”

My bare feet brush the ground and a flash of cold spreads up my shins. Apparently, even in spring, the weather is dangerously cold. I tell Charlie I’ll be downstairs in a moment, pulling on a pair of jeans and thermal socks. I was hoping for a relaxing day alone, just me, my sweatpants, and the laptop. I compromise on the socks, regardless of who is downstairs, my toes will not be cold today.

I pull the blinds open, the lawn stretching out beside the house is bathed in shadowy darkness despite the morning hour. The forest that lines our property, secluding us from the neighbours, is eerie and mysterious. The green tones that I initially found alien and too bright are now gone and replaced with navy. I wait a moment, staring into the trees, my thoughts rambling into fairytale imaginations.

My brain conjures an image of a man, tall and insidious, stepping out of the tree line, long claws attached to his fingers and a nasty grin revealing pointed teeth. His shirt is ripped in the front, a long tear reaching from throat to navel and from inside the shirt tufts of hair stick out. No, not hair, fur. He growls menacingly.

I close the blinds quickly and blink against the pictures my brain throws at me.

The landline rings downstairs and startles me, a jolt of anxious adrenaline surging through my cold feet and up into my heart. Maybe one of the reasons I enjoyed Phoenix’s barren, plain landscape was that I would not be subjected to such terrible thoughts. I remember being twelve and watching Scream with my mother, she was on a horror movie kick and had rented a whole stack of DVDs for us to watch. That night when I was tired but my eyes refused to close as I didn’t want to imagine what could be lurking outside my bedroom window. Crawling into my mother’s bed, she ran her warm palm against my forehead and hummed a song until I calmed down.

“Bella,” she had said quietly, the nurturing lilt of her voice expanding my heart, “We live in a desert. You can see for miles and miles and miles, if some bad man was coming we’d see him from forty minutes away.” I giggled quietly into the comforter, our bodies pressed against each other in near sleep and my mother’s hands maneuvering through my hair with expertise.

Now, I look out at the grassy lawn from a crack between the blinds. It resembles the set of a slasher movie, the forest borders it with every possibility my imagination can muster. I can see a man from four seconds away, not forty minutes.

There's a chorus of male laughter from below and I sigh, assuming this is my cue to go downstairs and meet with whoever has stopped in.

Charlie is sitting in the living room, facing me and his back to the television which is decidedly blank. On the couch is a head of glossy, black hair. Beside him is a wheelchair with an older man sitting in it, a mug clasped between dark hands. I curse whatever forces brought these strangers into the house so early, I am not in the mood for interaction. I was hoping for a bowl of oatmeal and a quiet morning.

“Hey!” Charlie braces his hands on his knees and pushes out of the armchair. His face is split in half with a grin. I can’t recall him smiling this large in the past week of my stay. The two men turn, facing me with warm smiles.

One of them is older, perhaps Charlie's age, his mouth creased with smile lines and his eyes wrinkled with sun damage. His skin is a warm russet brown, his eyes deep-set behind pronounced brows and a large smile. Bright white teeth stare back at me as my brain picks over his features, how do I know this man? I know almost immediately that he’s Quileute, from the Reservation to the west of town. I vaguely remember trips to the beach with Charlie and eating hotdogs over fires with some of the children from the area.

“Do you remember me, Bella?” He asks in a deep, commanding tone. His voice transports me back to the beach, collecting colourful rocks with the other kids and being called to dinner. Billy Black. He lives in a small, red house with a large kitchen perfect for gatherings. He’s older than I remember, but my last time being here for any substantial time was nearly four years ago.

“Dad, c’mon,” the boy says with a sarcastic eye roll. He stands from the couch, his height towering mine by a few inches and his broad shoulders slumped forward happily. I wonder how tall he’d be if he stood to his full height. His voice is deep, not as deep as his father’s, but still an indicator of the family resemblance. Where his father is strong and sure, this boy is aloof and casual. Jacob Black. “She hasn’t been back in ages, she probably blocked your nasty attitude out of her memory.”

I bite back a smile, but Billy laughs and shoots Charlie a look that says, kids, am I right? I step forward and extend my hand to Jacob, who takes it gratefully in his own and gives a soft shake. His hand covers mine and is most definitely a few degrees warmer than I am. “Jacob Black, we used to make mud pies together.”

“Best in town,” Charlie adds in from the back of the room. I smile.

“No, no, I remember you guys,” I tell the Blacks. “It just took me a moment.” Charlies sits back down in his chair and motions for me to take a seat.

“Billy and Jake just stopped by,” my father explains. I sit beside Jacob on the couch, a cushion between us. But, even with the provided space and the lack of physical contact, I feel heat come off of him in waves like a radiator. I wonder if he’s sick. “Jake here is a mechanic.” A furious blush settles under the boy's brown skin as his mechanical skills are brought up, this is my first time hearing of his expertise. I remember his sisters being twins, both tall and beautiful with matching smiles. They were almost two years older than me, Jacob had followed closely behind and was only born in the same six months as me. Of course, now that I try to remember, the date falls short in my memory. It’s possible he has a career as a mechanic somewhere on the Reservation, but he mustn’t work in Forks. I hadn’t seen a single mechanics garage in town.

“No, no,” he looks between me and my father with an apologetic smile, “it’s just a hobby. Something for fun.” Billy tsks at his son, shaking his head in a way that makes me believe this conversation has occurred before.

“Hobbies can bring in money, hobbies can turn into jobs,” the older man says with a scolding tone. Jacob just shakes his head crookedly, not responding. Charlie takes this as his cue to interrupt the trajectory of the conversation, and I’m grateful. I haven’t spoken to these men in nearly four years, that last place I want to be is in the middle of a family feud.

“Well, now, there was a reason I brought up Jake’s skills,” Charlie interjects with a wave at the large boy next to me. “Bells, go take a look outside.” My fingers twitch anxiously in my lap at being thrust into the center of the conversation. I was hoping I could slide under the radar here, not end up in the middle of it.

It takes great restraint for me to get up from the couch and not stumble over my ankles in the act, my clumsiness reaches new heights when I’m being watched by a room of people. Even if there are only three people in the room. The window at the end of the room is open, the curtains pulled to the side, and when I reach it my gaze falls on a group of kids biking down the street with a rainbow of helmets. Apparently, the dark sky doesn’t scare them the way it does me.

They pedal quickly, little screams of delight just barely audible through the thick glass of the living room window. They pass the porch and disappear behind a large red truck parked out front of the house. I blink. It’s still there, rounded fenders and shiny door handles, long bed, ancient grill adorning the hood. It’s beautiful. “Is that your truck, Billy?” There’s a chorus of laughter behind me, the men’s baritones mixing and producing a flaming blush starting at my neck and creeping up into my face. I turn to look at them, my stomach clenching as I turn away from the beautiful vehicle. “What?”

“It’s yours, Bella,” Charlie tells me. The breath I was holding leaves my lungs through my gaping mouth, I struggle to close it and take an experimental inhale. “Bella?” I turn and look back out the window, the glorious truck still sits there staring at me from across the dark lawn. I can only imagine how beautiful it is in the sunlight.

“I- it’s mine?” I ask. Another series of laughs echo through and then footsteps come up beside me, Jacob stands looking out the window. “You made it?” I question, looking up at him.

His shoulders shake silently and his lips press together as he tries to compose himself, I’m not sure why he finds my comment so funny but it reignites my blush. “I fixed it up, yeah. But, don’t get too excited. The thing runs at sixty miles max, push her further than that and you’ll be walking home.”

We all go outside quickly, me leading the pack with an excited skip in my step. It’s a miracle I didn’t fall on my face or stumble over my words as I spoke my thoughts aloud. “It’s so pretty, I love it! Jake, I have no idea how you could make it look so perfect.” The truck sits against the curb, its red paint flaking in places around the tires, but even more perfect than I could have imagined.

The sky is a disturbing shade of grey, a fact that irritates me more outside than it did in the house. Why does the weather have to ruin such a perfectly good moment? But I spend the majority of my time on the vehicle, petting its sides carefully like I might damage it. Finally, seemingly having had enough of me quietly admiring the vehicle, Billy tells me to hop in and check it out on the inside.

Jacob produces a set of keys, no automatic locking mechanism, and twists it in the truck's door handle. He holds the door open for me, producing a hand to help me in. I take it gratefully, stepping up into the driver’s seat and letting myself sink into the seat. Jacob closes the door on me, but my thoughts are lost and focused only on how much I love this truck.

“So,” he says after opening the passenger door and climbing up next to me, “You ever driven a truck before?” I shake my head, fingers curving experimentally around the thin steering wheel. I can see myself now: driving down the empty highway, the sun blinding against the dry pavement, window down and hair blowing, radio blaring. It’s exactly what I needed, a way for me to get around without needing to borrow the cruiser (which, yes, is illegal) or have Charlie drive me around.

“I can give you lessons,” Jake offers, fingers clasped in his lap, drumming a tune against the opposite knuckles. “If not that’s cool, but she drives a little funny.” “She?” I ask, eyes leaving the steering wheel momentarily to watch his face. He notices, the serene expression dropping from his face and replaced with a quick upturn of his lips.

“Uh, yeah.” He palms the back of his neck roughly and seems almost apologetic. “I have a thing for cars, y’know, so naming them is kinda part of the deal.” I can barely make out a faint red tinge over his cheeks. “Wait, hold on,” I can’t contain the giggle that slips out but firmly press my lips together before trying again. I can only imagine the toothy smile I’m giving him, a girl all too excited over some old truck. Only, this is the perfect old truck. “What’s her name?”

“Betty,” he responds sheepishly, his hand still massaging the back of his neck. “But if you tell anybody that I’ll have to kill you.”

“That’s okay, Betty is our secret.”

And, just like that, I now have a secret with someone. Does this make us friends? Regardless of whatever it makes us, my heart sings happily from within my chest, excited to think that maybe Forks won’t be as lonesome as it’s been this past week. Maybe Jacob and I will become friends and bond over Betty and I won’t only have Charlie and school and books.

“Well, before you accept her turn the keys,” Jacob instructs. I oblige, setting the keys in the ignition and giving them a gentle twist. A roar of mechanical thunder envelopes us. I nearly leap out of my seat in surprise, the loud rumbling of the engine settling in my ears and blocking out all other noises. Jake says something but I can barely hear him from over the thunderous growl of Betty. I turn the keys back and the truck dies down with one last rumble. “She’s loud,” he says obviously.

“She’s perfect.”

Jacob hands me a spare set of keys after we get out, telling me that he’ll be back the day after tomorrow to give me my first driving lesson in the truck. Charlie was all too excited with that idea, even though I already have my license and know how to drive. In fact, other than illegally borrowing the cruiser with Charlie’s permission, I have never committed an illegal act involving a vehicle. If memory serves me correctly, Charlie has two speeding tickets from his youth.

But, I don’t argue against Jake's offer. In fact, I thank him profusely and promise to pay him for the lessons. “Bella,” he says in an exasperated way, as if we’ve known each other for years and I always say such supposedly outlandish things. “Why would you pay me for something I’m offering to you?”

We’ve stopped in front of the Blacks vehicle, a large brown and beige truck which seems to only be a decade newer than the red one. This isn’t saying much for the brown vehicle as the red one could be from the fifties. Billy is wheeling his way down the driveway with Charlie walking beside him, laughing emphatically at something his friend had said.

“That’s crazy,” I respond with a shake of my head. “That’s like me not paying you for the truck.”

“Yeah, I know.” I take pause at this, the words welling up inside my brain and the meaning lost to me for only a moment. Then, like finally finding the missing puzzle piece under the table, I understand what this means and the picture is clear.

“You- I- This truck isn’t free.” The words stutter out of me, the first two the beginnings of messages I abandoned immediately after starting them. This truck, though old, is not cheap, and neither is Jakes’s skill. I should pay him for labour if nothing else, but I know he doesn’t want to include that in the bill. He doesn't want to send me a bill.

“It’s a gift,” he states simply with a shrug of his wide shoulders. Billy pulls up beside me, slapping away Charlie's hand as he tries to adjust his chair for him.

“Careful, Swan,” the older Black warns with hostility. “I have more muscle in these arms than you do in your entire body. Touch the chair and you’ll get what’s coming to you.”

Jacob helps Billy into the passenger seat, folding up the wheelchair and securing it into the truck bed with quick hands. Charlie stands beside me, shooting fiery threats back and forth with his friend until Jacob climbs behind the wheel. “Storm coming through,” Jacob says with a wave towards the dark sky. “If you need any help with anything, tying stuff down or moving let me know.” Charlie thanks him for the offer and I lean in to thank him again for the truck and the lessons. I also assure him that the argument over billing is far from over and that he’ll get an earful the next time we meet.

The rest of the day is spent restlessly. I log into my online classes but my attention is continuously claimed by my truck in front of the house. The sun never shows itself, content with hiding behind the cloud coverage. I’m sitting in the living room when Charlie gets home for dinner, my book discarded on the couch somewhere beside me. I reach for it once I see his cruiser pull into the driveway, deciding it would be better to look busy than to look like I’m obsessing over my new means of transportation.

“Bella?” He calls, the door shutting behind him with a creak. At some point I’ll have to oil all the hinges in the house. It’s that or I go clinically insane from the constant noise.

“Yeah, just in here.”

He comes in bearing a brown bag with the Forks Diner logo written on the side. “I brought dinner, it’ll be on the stove.” I nod and thank him, telling him that we can eat together once he’s down and out of uniform. “Well, actually, I won’t be eating until a bit later.” His moustache twitches irritably and he disappears into the kitchen to drop the food off.

“Are you meeting with Billy?” I ask, knowing this isn’t the case. It must be an issue with work causing him to feel stressed. And when he comes back into the living room from the kitchen I’m able to see the tension holding his shoulders in place. “Did something happen at work?” “It’s nothing to worry about,” he assures me, but his words do anything but. So much for police chief being a boring job. “Just those new kids in town, the doctors children,” he waves a hand in the air as if trying to gather his thoughts. “Kicking up trouble in their first week here, something about racing.”

“Oh.” I pull my knees under me and turn to face him fully, my arms hanging over the back of the couch like a child.

“Anyways, no big deal I’m sure they’re just used to city life or something.” But, my fathers tone indicates that he most definitely does not believe his own words. In Charlie's books a bad apple is always a bad apple, and he’s probably dreading all the other trouble these kids will kick up. “I’ve just gotta go check-in with them, make sure it doesn’t happen again.” His hand moves towards my arm, as if to pat me goodbye but it stutters midair, falling back to his side awkwardly.

I pull my bottom lip into my mouth, biting on it as he mutters a goodbye and leaves through the front door without looking at me again. I wonder when this will get any easier.

Renee left Charlie a year into their young marriage, taking me away to live with her in Arizona. She had given me partial reasons over the years for her leaving, talking of them being too young, the weather too wet, how she wanted a life where she could be free from responsibilities. I’m not sure whether it dawned on her that a child constitutes a responsibility, but she took me to every yoga class and rarely left me with a babysitter.

My mother was never too keen on Forks, not that I fault her for it, the weather leaves much to be desired and there’s virtually nothing to do. But, because of her disliking I rarely visited my father, my first extended visit being when I was twelve and stayed the entire summer as Renee travelled with her then-boyfriend. I came back to a scrapbook of kissy photos and pressed leaves from her travels, all I had to show for my trip was a runny nose and a strong distaste for hamburgers. One can only eat so many burgers before the novelty wears off.

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#twilight #edward cullen #bella swan #jasper #the twilight saga #carlisle #twilight saga #smeyer #2008 #twilight renaissance #fanfic #jacob/Bella #Bella/Jacob #Jacob x Bella #Bella x Jacob #twilight fanfiction #twilight fanfic #mine

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the-lady-bryan · 5 years

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HP AU Idea: “The Wizarding World” game simulation.

Inspired by the Red Dwarf episode "Back to Reality". (If you haven't watched the show - holy mother of Cloister you are MISSING OUT ON A SMEGGING FABULOUS SHOW! If you're in the US, it is totally worth the $6.99/mo for Britbox. Also, it's got Classic Doctor Who on there, too so, y'know, that's also worth it. Moving on....)

Note: For anyone familiar with the episode - Totes not going to bother with the fascism world because I honestly have no interest in it. But the Red Dwarf simulation game machines? Fucking genius. The tech that ran them? Dude played Wormtail so of my brain ran off in a weird direction after remembering that.

Now on with the idea....

Modern world (like, our world) but a bit more advanced. And no, I haven’t spellchecked any of this garbage.

M-Corp, the leading game developer in the world, has unveiled the next greatest thing! Move over common Virtual Reality/Altered Reality and make room for Fully Simulated Living! Want to be a pirate? You and all your friends can sign up and play the Pirates of the Caribbean Experience! Want to go on an epic quest to stop evil and bring about the dawn of a new age? Well get eight of your best friends together for the fully immersive War of the Ring! Fight monsters, save elven maidens, and build a kingdom! Or be a tiny little thief and a band of dwarves. Whatever your heart desires. Or are you more of a spacefaring espionage kind of guy? Well in that case you'll want to sign up for the Red Dwarf Experience and play as Arnold J. Rimmer (just be careful not to end up playing the prat version all the way through like the beta tester did...)

"You haven't truly lived until you've died! But don't worry, you can always play another game!"

There is one game though.... one game that hasn't left the beta testing. And no one at M-Corp thinks it ever will. It was the first game they tried to make with the new tech, before all the bugs had been worked out and the safeguards had been put into place. They had stopped sending people into the game ten years ago when some of the beta testers hearts just... stopped. Coroners couldn't figure out what happened or why. Aside from mild dehydration the programmers who had volunteered to help test the game they had made just... died. James Potter and Lillian Evans were the last casualties of M-Corp's biggest failure to date... and they couldn't just unplug people either. The last person they did that to... Well... To this day he still believes he's a wizard who rebelled against the Dark Lord, the villain of the game and insists he needs to destroy some enchanted locket. Beta Tester Reginald Blackmoor was never the same after experiencing "The Wizarding World" game.

And so they have to wait for the testers characters to die in the game and hope that whatever had happened to Potter, Evans, and a handful of others, doesn't happen again.

Seventeen years ago a team of hackers made it known that they had a theory, but couldn't test it out unless they were plugged into what the underground and pirating circles called "The Lost Game". A game so deadly it literally killed people who played it. So of course, adrenaline junkie and all around smart ass known only as "Son of Prongs" and his right and left hand, "Bookworm" and "Garbage Disposal" had to do everything they could to get into this impossible game.

It was crazy. It was unethical and honestly not in the company's best interest... but when the offer was made it was M-Corp's desperation that drove them to accept.

It's been 16 years since the three hackers were plugged in immediately following the download of data from one of their hardrives directly into the game. During that time they lost quite a lot of testers, especially in the last three years. The first of the mysterious deaths had been beta tester Cedric Edwards. The next was Bartholemew Tenant. Unlike most of the mysterious deaths, he seemed to have died of absolute fright while in the machine. The deaths afterwards were rather... steady. Then, one day, there was a mass system failure and they lost half the tester and programmer team. Some they were able to pull out before the cascading feedback could turn them to vegitables. As this was happening, many of those unaffected would give pained grunts or twitch in their stations. One young man spontaneously combusted right in his seat. Thankfully they were able to put him out before it spread to others, but the man did not survive.

Of those who had been brought out of the game during the system failure and survive, it was... unsettling to watch them in the recovery rooms. Many kept freaking out and demanding to know "where is my wand!" while others kept shouting at them about being something called a "mudblood" or somesuch.

One man, part of the original team with James Potter and Lillian Evans sat in silence. Periodically he would reach up to his throat and then look at his forearm in disbelief. When he finally did speak, while staring down at a name badge with a picture of himself on it, only 20 or so years younger, his voice was quiet and slightly uncertain. "My name. It is... Steven Prince?" "Yes, Mr. Prince." "And I... have been inside of an illusion-" "A simulation." "A simulation. For twenty years." "Yes." "And all this time, my family did not wonder where I was?" "You signed a NDA and a waiver. M-Corp is not responsible for-" "There is no Dark Lord." "No. There is not. Magic is not real. You cannot break the laws of physics by saying a few words here and there." "What... Lily. Was Lily real? Is she here, too?" "Your fiance.... died, Mr. Prince. Sixteen years ago. We do not know how or why it happened. She and design specialist James Pot-" "I believe I understand, thank you." And he has not said anything since.

It's a full year after the event the survivors of the system failure call "The Battle of Hogwats" before the game is finally, finally shut down and those still plugged in are able to be removed. Most of those removed during the "Battle of Hogwarts" have regained their memories and attempted to assymilate back into the real world. Many still have trouble and some, such as Remmy Wulfric, are in and out of institutions. One man, the lead project developer who had been able to leave the game before most of them, Brian Dumbledore, never recovered and is a permanent resident in the same wing as Reginald Blackmoor. This was after he was found robbing corner stores dressed in outrageous wizard costumes from the halloween stores, and demanding they hand over all the lemon sherberts "for the greater good". It was all over the news. And clips from security cams made it to youtube, where he further made it to fame on "World's Dumbest" styled funny clip shows.

The last three to emerge from the game are "Son of Prongs" "The Bookworm" and "Garbage Disposal". The three of them have no idea where they are or how they got there. According to one of them, he was just about to get married to the love of his life, Ginny Weasley.

And that's when the three of them are handed each a suitcase and the original hard drive with written instructions and are escorted to a recovery facility.

It doesn't help that one of the first people they saw was the Care Tech, Peter Paddington, who went around to make sure everyone's nutrition sacks were refilled and their fluid lines still clear and running correctly. And, when the need arose, dealing with "waste disposal". It wasn't Peter's fault that his best mate James decided to sneak in a cameo into the game for him since his mind couldn't handle the load of the simulation. Otherwise he would have been in there with him and their other best friends.

Anyway, in recovery the three hackers open their suitcases to find clothes and notebooks and a disk each with the words "watch me alone". Once the three of them have gotten their memories back, or rather, convinced others they have gotten their memories back and are released, they follow the directions written in one of their journals in a code that they recognize as having been used during the "horcrux hunt" - which they now know never happened. They find a storage locker and after doing some snooping they learn that it's been paid up every month automatically from a bank account bearing the name "Sybil Trelawney". It was a code name, according to Bookworm's notebook, that they used when talking amongst themselves about their theories about The Lost Game.

They find computers inside, and it's Bookworm who has to operate them because neither Son of Prongs or Garbage Disposal remember how. When she loads the first one from her own suitcase, it's got all three of them in the shot. And they're all in the storage locker. They seem to be having some sort of argument between them. "No, I'm telling you, that game changes people! Look! Reginald Blackmoor came out honestly believing he was some... some wizard named Regulus Black!" "so it made him insane. Honestly Ronny anything that messes with the human psyche and perception-" "Then explain how he managed to kill the pub owner by just pointing a stick at him!" "The pub owner was old and his medical records showed-" "Yeah?! What about the strange deaths, huh?! For fuck's sake, Henry's mom died because of that game! Don't you two want to know how or why?!" "Of course I want to know! The fuckers covered it up and said it was something else but I KNOW it was that stupid game!" "Then what are we waiting for? We've tested the program over and over. We know it works. If we can just get it and ourselves in there-" "We've tested it in a controlled environment, Ronny. That's not the same as uploading our patch to the M-Corp servers. There's every chance that it would be corrupted the moment we're plugged in. We may even lose ourselves like Blackmoor did." "Fuck off, Jane. It's Henry's project, so it's Henry's decision."

The second disk, from apparently Ronny's suitcase is the three of them again. This time laying out the plan. "If we can just get to your mom's fiance... he has an editic memory. We can use that." "The day Steven Prince willingly helps me is the day hell freezes over. He hates me, and you know it." "Why though?" "Fuck if I know." "Maybe he's just pissed that you're proof someone else got to your mom first." "dude." "What? I knew a guy like that. Right bastard he was. Made his girlfriend give her kid to her ex, even though the dude was a fuckin meth dealer." "That's horrible!" "Steve isn't THAT bad. Besides, she didn't even know who my dad was. Do you know how many dudes were at that frat party? Now enough about my dead mom's sex life and back to the plan..."

The last disk, from "Henry's" suitcase is Henry looking frantic and addressing the camera. He looks like he's in the offices of M-Corp. Behind him on cots are Jane/Hermione/Bookworm and Ronny/Ron/Garbage Disposal. Henry/Harry/Son of Prongs keeps running a hand through his hair and green eyes keep darting to a screen off camera. "Something's wrong. We plugged in Trelawney to upload the patch and... it looked normal. But... we're twenty minutes till plug in time and the data's corrupted already. I've tried to edit the code but whatever is in this game is vicious and intelligent. It's got tendrils everywhere. It's rewriting code at a rate I can't keep up with. I'm trying to write up a new function. If it works, then whatever this thing is... we'll be able to trap it on the hardrive, and then destroy it. We promised to anylize the code after we shut down the game from the inside but... that won't be possible without infecting other systems. But... there's more. I hacked into the personel files. I needed to see what... how my mom really died. Nothing. But when I looked through old surveilence footage I found something. Just before she died she was... glowing. Her and that James Potter bloke. So I dug through more files. It's strange. Everyone that died had something weird happen to them or near them just before they kicked it. I can't explain it... Just in case we don't make it, or somehow our minds are lost or, god forbid we end up like that Blackmoor bloke, whatever you do, don't hook that harddrive up to anything. Destroy it. And if possible, destroy the game, too. I think one of the original programmers did this but I can't be sure until we get inside."

Voldemort, it turns out, is a self-replicating virus (hence horcruxes and the problem of never actually being able to get rid of Voldemort completely) created by disgruntled computer programer Thomas Marvin Riddle who was fired from the project by Brian Dumbledore after he threatened to destroy a co-worker's career if she didn't lie and give him credit for her work.

Life goes on. The entire Wizarding World game is covered up and the equipment broken down. But there's a problem still... small groups of former beta testers and programmers who lived through the experience start meeting up in "support groups". None of them can really get over what happened to them. Especially when some of them start noticing they have had strange things happen around them... almost like bouts of accidental magic.

Henry, Jane, and Ronny run a message board under the names Potter, Granger, and Weasley. Their memories of their lives before the game never returned. They destroyed the harddrive without looking at it. Unfortunately for everyone involved, it did change them physically... and made them all real witches and wizards.

And unfortunately.... disgruntled programmer Thomas Marvin Riddle had a pirated game station hidden in the basement of his home and the harddrive wasn't able to catch quite everything linked to the Voldemort Virus...

#Harry Potter AU #Harry Potter #fanfic idea #idea #fanfic

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