Thanks to: Zekrom1010101010, The Richmaster, Letah.
Zuko Potter and the Philosphical Rock is DONE, FINISHED, FINITE, OVER.
#flops down onto the nearest surface# holy crap, I didn't think I'd actually finish it, but I did.
Also, before anyone has a bitch-fit: I've been dropping hints and foreshadow for this since 'Zuko takes a train (or two)'
Interlude with Katara: Second Star to the Right
It had taken time, for the foreign Spirit to find a suitable candidate for Katara's plan; it required someone of the same gender, of just the right potential affinities, in just the right place, and the right time.
When at last a candidate was found, Katara had to spend every moment from then on, with the foreign Spirit, waiting for that one instant when she could pass through.
It came during the depths of winter.
The young family strolling home from their relatives' place, a light fall of snow starting.
"Katara, it's happening!" The Waterbender nodded, removing her robes and accessories, stepping daintily into the Spirit's viewing pool. The foreigner stepped in beside her, placing her hands on Katara's shoulder's as they waited.
"Just so you know, I don't know that this will work, it may fail completely, you may arrive but loose your memories, it could work perfectly, or any combination there of."
"You've said that before."
"It bares repeating."
Nerves made Katara's hands shake, she needed to keep her mind occupied with something other than whether this plan would work.
"Why was I allowed to save Hermione?" She'd been curious, but never enough to ask before now.
"She's important." Katara blinked, she hadn't been expecting an answer.
"Why, how?"
"The Chosen One is the Sword and Shield, Hermione is the Codex, the key to the knowledge that reveals the path; whether she knows it or not, she has the answers, she always has the answers. That is her Role, her Destiny."
"And Neville?"
The foreign Spirit, gave Katara a small, sly, pleased smile.
"What of him?"
"He's important too, somehow."
"Do you sense it?"
"I think I might."
"Neville is the Chosen One."
"I thought Harry Potter was the Chosen One."
"He is, they both are. It might be hard to comprehend, but both boys are the Chosen One, together, at the same time. Schroedinger's chosen," Katara scrunched her brow in confusion. "One might play a showier role than the other, but only with both of them can Destiny be fulfilled; only after everything is done, will we know which is which."
In the image of the pool, distorted by their bodies in the water, a single snowflake twirls to land in the baby's nose.
The foreign Spirit summoned an instant of potential, and for a few seconds, the baby has a future much larger, and brighter, than before. The cold flake melts on the infant's nose, it scrunches its face and laughs.
The foreigner pushed, Katara fell, water closing over her, and she fell further.
She's flying... or maybe she's still falling, the sound of the baby's first laugh in her ears. She flies/falls for ever, tumbling and twirling.
She looses track of everything, it takes her a moment to realise when she changes from a flurry of snowflakes, into a person again.
Golden dust faded around her, she peered out at the multitude of faces surrounding her from the branches of the tree.
"Hello," they all called to her.
"Hello," she smiled back, she'd made it, the plan had worked. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, feeling her spirit settling into her new body, the aches of her bare soul's slow demised ebbing away.
A gasp rippled through the crowd, a whisper of 'Queen Clarion' as a light drew near.
It halted nearby, transforming into a beautiful woman with a dress made of golden dust.
"Born of laughter, clothed in cheer, happiness has brought you here."
She felt something change inside her, like a door opening, an immense expanse on the other side, waiting for her.
"Welcome to Pixie Hollow, I trust you found your way alright." The Woman's presence was warm, comforting.
"Well I did make it, so I think I must have." She couldn't help smiling at the woman. Queen Clarion smiled back.
"Alright then, let's see about those wings." The woman floated over to her, drifting behind her. A gentle touch made her realise she could feel her wings, lying limply on her back. The Queen lifted them with great care, the new fairy could feel her new wings come to life under the touch.
Clarion took her hand, and she let instinct take over, the newly awakened wings fluttering delicately, lifting her off the ground.
A laugh escaped as she flew about, never straying too far from the Queen. Clarion laughed as well, beckoning her back.
She hadn't noticed when she'd woken, the spiral pattern on the floor which now glowed with light, as some kind of flat topped mushrooms grew from nothing.
She looked around as other fairies flew over, leaving things on the mushrooms. One of the fairies, blonde hair and a green dress, felt familiar somehow. But couldn't have been, she was only minutes old after all. No, that wasn't right. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs trying to grow there.
There were all kinds of different items on the mushrooms.
"What are these for?"
"They'll help you find your Talent."
'But I already know,' she didn't say, taking the few steps to the mushrooms with the water globe and the snowflake. The two items, right next to each other glowed, drifting together and toward her. The globe of water with the snowflake inside, glowed so bright she couldn't look directly at it.
When it died down there was silence, interrupted by a smack.
She looked around startled, a fairy in deep purple with long dark hair had one hand plastered to her face, beside her sat the blonde fairy in green looking very excited. Then the ripple of applause started
Queen Clarion sighed, it felt like she was trying not to say 'here we go again,' but the woman was smiling so she thought it was alright.
"I'm sorry?" She felt the need to say regardless. The Queen floated beside her and wrapped one arm around her.
"It's alright dear, lately, more and more new Talents and sub-Talents have been appearing, we'll be in for an interesting time is all."
She blushed, and nodded her understanding.
"Now," a wave of the Queen's hand had the mushrooms disappearing with the unused Talent items. "We've never had a fairy who picked two Talents, so we'll have to figure out who you'll want to live with."
"Water Fairies, Frost Fairies, come meet the newest member of your Talent guilds-"
"Katara," The Queen choked back a gasp. The fairies coming to meet her stopped mid-air.
"But the Queen names everyone," one of the fairies stage whispered. Katara startled.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I'm actually... you see... it's a really long story..."
"Water Fairies, Frost Fairies, come meet the newest member of your Talent guilds, Katara." The Queen repeated.
Katara gasped, the feeling of a door waiting open inside her shifted, like she'd been nudged through. A sudden sense of the world around her swirled inside, connecting her to the land.
"And I would love to hear your story," the Queen smiled warmly at her.
"That is an unusual tale indeed, and far too odd to make up." Clarion considered the young fairy's story and nodded. "I believe you Katara, but there are some things you must know. No doubt you wish to leave Pixie Hollow, and Never Land as well, to be with your friend."
Katara nodded, around the stage, fairies let out upset noises, to loose a new friend so soon, even if they hadn't become friends properly yet, was sad. Clarion held out a hand for silence.
"There is a reason we have shifts of fairies, why none are allowed to stay on the Main Land for more than a single season at a time. We are connected to Never Land, part of the very fabric of it's existence. A Fact. Fairies who stay away from Never Land and Pixie Hollow become sick, they... change."
Clarion shut her eyes, trying to fight off the memories, she'd been there to witness the last fairy to leave for good, the horrifying transformation into mindless being.
"They loose higher reasoning, they loose their longevity... they loose their Talent." A horrified gasp swept the area, Clarion wished she didn't have to share this truth with her fairies, but Katara needed to know, and there were secrets enough in Never Land.
"You may go to your friend, but you must return to Pixie Hollow, or you will lose yourself."
"-and we can build you a house nice and close to the Winter Woods if you'd like, but still near water, since that's your Talent. Oh, we'll need to get you some more clothes too, but don't worry about that, the Talent guilds provide a few sets of new clothes for you, and you have two guilds, so that should be fine."
Tinker Bell ushered Katara inside the small house in Tinker's Nook, taking the tools and materials her friends, Bobble and Clank, had left for her, and fixing it into a second bed in mere moments.
Katara clapped, a little awed at the speed and skill Tinker Bell displayed.
"Thanks for all this, Tinker Bell."
"It's no problem, really."
The Tinker fairy offered her some water and cakes, Katara ate her first meal as a fairy with gusto.
"So Tinker Bell?"
"Yeah?"
"How come Queen Clarion sent me home with you, and not a Water or Frost fairy?"
"Oh, that. Well Queen Clarion mentioned how there are new Talents and sub-Talents appearing?"
Katara nodded.
"I was one of the first to really display, see, when I first arrived I didn't want to be a Tinker fairy at all, it just didn't feel right." Tinker Bell laughed, "but I am a Tinker, through and through; it just took a while to realise that I'm also a Lost Things fairy. I have a habit of attracting the strange, unusual or lost. Not just things, but fairy Talents too."
The blonde fixed her hair unselfconsciously.
"There's a saying in Pixie Hollow: Something weird is going on? Better find Tinker Bell, she's probably near the source."
"Really?" Katara's voice came out a little incredulous.
"We'll there's a few variations but that's the most basic. I tend to bring out latent sub-Talents in fairies, too. My friend Fawn, an Animal Talent fairy, she's always had an interest in the slightly scarier animals, but after hanging out with me too long, she actually started being able to communicate with them like she does with normal animals."
The night was spent listening to Tinker Bell recount the messes she'd gotten into, and the changes in the Talents she'd seen since her arrival.
Her house was at the edge of the Winter Woods, by the river that flowed through all the lands of Pixie Hollow, Tinker Bell introduced her to so many fairies Katara was surprised she remembered them all.
Katara spent the rest of the winter season learning about her Water Talent, very similar to, but so different from, her Waterbending.
Once winter finished Katara made her very first trip to the Main Land, as part of a detail of Water fairies. Unlike the rest of the Water fairies, Katara only stayed a few days before returning to Never Land, to learn about her Frost Talent, from the Frost fairies of Winter Woods.
Her teacher Periwinkle, it turned out, was Tinker Bell's sister. The duo were the only siblings amongst the fairy population, they'd been born from the same laugh, a very rare occurrence.
Over the season and a half she spent in Pixie Hollow, Katara was involved in three altercations with Pirates.
The most annoying part of the altercation was meeting 'The Pan,' a young boy named Rufio, who according to Tinker Bell had been killed by the Captain of the Pirates, only to be restored to life by Never Land itself.
Rufio himself was brash and energetic, not the most annoying person, but there was something about him that reminded Katara of Zuko, she just couldn't put her finger on what though.
"So, why did Never Land bring you back to life?" Rufio was perched casually in a tree, snickering as Hook swam for his life from a crocodile. He stopped to look at her.
"The same reason it keeps Tiger-lily and the Darlings. To find a way to remove Hook, and his crew, from the Fabric of reality that makes Never Land."
"What do you..."
The Human boy huffed and rolled his eyes.
"Look, fairies? You're meant to be here, Fairies were part of Never Land from it's first dawn. Humans... not so much. Years ago, Hook found the Heart of Never Land, he figured out how to put himself inside it, him and his crew. They can't die, but they don't belong.
"Before me there was another 'Pan,' Peter, he became part of the Heart by accident... until he went away. He left us behind, the Lost Boys, and he came back again, but he took them all with him, the others. And suddenly, there was no one left to stop Hook from corrupting the Heart of Never Land.
"So it chose me, it found hearts of people who longed for this land, to protect it, and it bound them to it. Bound us..."
Katara regretted asking as a cloud of sadness passed behind the boy's eyes. A yelp sounded from the water and they turned, Hook had been nipped by the crocodile.
Rufio let out a loud, raucous laugh, falling from the tree, pixie dust induced flight the only thing keeping him from the ground, he rolled about, laughing mid-air.
A quiet, solemn presence behind her, had Katara turning. Zarina.
"It was my fault." Katara reached for the Alchemy fairy, taking her hand gently. "I showed Hook how to make pixie dust and fly, I let him know about Never Land. I didn't know it would lead to this, but..."
"Don't blame yourself," Katara wrapped the older fairy in a hug. "People like that always find a way, and who's to say - if it had happened another way - that it wouldn't have hurt more people? You didn't know, so you can't blame yourself; besides, you're trying to make up for it even now."
"I know that, everyone keeps saying that but... I was a little in love with him. I was angry, and I thought he saw me, saw me and cared about me and he didn't, I was just-" the fairy sounded bitter.
Katara hugged the girl tighter, running a hand through her hair.
Katara gestured, and a flurry of cold and ice crystals swept over Periwinkle, chilling the over heated girl, as she pulled the Frost fairy from the lantern.
A Pirate yelled, running towards them. An arrow flew from nowhere, pinning the pirate to the ship, metres away. The fairy duo looked over, Tiger-lily gave them a grin and a nod, dropping her bow in favour of her knife, when one of the pirates got too close.
Near the wheel, Rufio and Michael fought Hook for control of the ship, Tinker Bell and three other fairies running rampant amongst the crew.
Wendy cut the net holding the mermaids, Tiger-lily covered her with her bow, Rufio and John held off the pirates while Katara, and several other Water fairies, raised a pillar of water for the mermaids to escape into.
Hook shrieked in rage as his latest captives escaped back into the sea, his special net destroyed.
Hostages rescued, the Never Land team retreated, leaving behind some very irate pirates.
Safe again the group laughed at their foes, recounting details of their fights with exaggerated re-enactments.
"Hey Tinker Bell?"
"Yeah Katara?"
"Why is Hook always trying to capture people?"
"Hmm? Oh, he's stuck here, he can't just sail away, and we're not going to help him get out; can you imagine, an immortal pirate crew pillaging the Mainland? Urgh."
"Stuck here?"
"Yeah. The only way out is to fly; the ocean goes on forever, and just winds up back here. I mean you can sail in, but you can't sail out."
"Huh, so that's it. … Tink, can I ask... uh, you and Wendy..."
"Oh that, yeah, it's pretty complicated. Peter brought her to Never Land a long time ago, she was supposed to be a mother for the Lost Boys... it didn't work out that way. It's said that fairies are so small, we can really only hold one emotion at a time, Hook was trying to exploit that when Wendy came. He used this medallion, which made fairies more prone to negative emotions... I almost killed Wendy, but she almost killed me too, so we figure we're even, it's just... still awkward to be around one another.
"Hey! You said you were having trouble locating your friend when you looked, last time you were on the Mainland right? Maybe Wendy can help, she and her brothers run a travel thingy, so they know lots of people, one of them has to know something."
"That's a great idea Tink, I'll ask her right now."
Katara already knew Wendy knew Zuko, or at least his cover identity, she just hadn't had time to ask the woman, nor had she quite known how.
When Katara asked, Wendy informed her that she knew the boy Katara was looking for, and would actually be seeing him in another week and a half, to take the students back to London.
With Queen Clarion's permission, Katara accompanied the Darling siblings back to the Mainland, to see where to meet them on the day of the trip.
The time in between saying goodbye to them, and meeting back up with them, and Michael, was spent preparing, Tinker Bell and Terance gave her a specially designed bag filled with pixie dust to last just over a week.
The first day with the Darling siblings was spent taking their train to a station at a village called Hogsmead, they slept the night on the train so they could be ready first thing, to take the children home.
Katara spent almost the entire time riding around, in the folded material of Wendy's cowl-neck shirt. Officially it was to 'conserve pixie dust.' Unofficially, it was to get the fairy used to it, so she could stick with Wendy on the train ride back to London, without being seen by to many people.
John had brought up a good point, that the people of Wizarding Britain were used to the vapid mutations the Never Land fairies became, when they left Never Land for too long, and might have tried to hurt her or capture her, thinking her a mindless, magical bug.
As Wendy made her way down the train, delivering snacks to students, Katara could feel the thrumming of her connection with Zuko, it seemed to get louder and surer.
Then, Wendy seemed to stumble, turning away from the cabin doors she ushered Katara from her hiding place.
"Found him, want to do a dramatic entrance?" To nervous to speak Katara nodded, letting Wendy place her on the edge of the snack cart.
Wend poked her head through the cabin door where Zuko sat; Katara tried to control her breathing.
'I'm going to see Zuko again. I'M GOING TO SEE HIM AGAIN!'
The sound of her heart beating drowned out the words of Wendy, and the people she spoke to, suddenly she was moving aside and sliding the door open and-
"Katara." For an instant she thought she saw his true face beneath his borrowed visage, both faces looked surprised (awed, shocked, pleased, relieved) to see her. She smiled at him, and waved.
The 'this is also for Zekrom' 'ZuPo' Out Take/Flash forward.
Zuko found the girls laughing in a corner of the library.
"Hermione, Katara; I think we're going to need to-" their laughter, which had ebbed at the sound of his voice resurged, the duo bending from the effort. "Why are you two laughing?"
"We're sorry, hang on," Hermione tried to control herself, fanning her face with her hand. On a stack of books, Katara pressed her hands over her face to calm herself.
Zuko waited for the duo to regain composure.
"So, what was that all about?"
"Sorry ZuPo, we were just-!" The girls slapped their hands over their mouths, looking at one another, aghast.
"ZuPo?" He raised an eyebrow and waited.
"Uuuummmm... we may have been talking about you... and the Other Harry, and you before you were Harry, and it got a little confusing on which person we meant so we... errmmm... dubbed you Zuko Potter and portmanteau'ed it to save on syllables..."
The girls looked contrite, but Zuko wasn't buying. He was even less inclined to believe they were sorry, when they started snickering again.
"Aaand we're done here; never mind, you two just, go back to what you were doing. And don't ever call me that again."
Hermione and Katara gave up trying not to laugh.
Zuko sighed heavily and left.
Here ends Zuko Potter and the Philosophical Rock
Thanks to everyone who reviewed, fav'ed or followed.
Thanks to everyone who stuck with me, who offered me advice or just a positive comment.
I have done what I set out to do: I have finished a multi-chapter story, I bid you all now a fond farewell.