Jack blinked. And then blinked again. And then a third time, because what he was seeing was impossible.
"Guys, where are we?" Charlie asked.
"St. Mungo's," gasped Hermione, and her face broke into a grin. Fawkes chirped in agreement. Harry shook his head to erase that last image of Sirius' face. He must have imagined it, it couldn't be real.
"It's a hospital," Jack realized.
"For wizards," Ginny added.
"Are we still on the island?" asked Kate.
"London, actually," said Ron.
A stressed nurse bustled up to them. "Oh dear oh dear oh dear," she cried. "No phoenixes please," she shooed Fawkes away. He disappeared in a burst of flames. "And this isn't orderly at all, please please form a line over there," she waved and pushed them over. "Oh!" she exclaimed to Harry. "Are you –"
"Yeah," he cut her off, but it didn't work.
"Oh my!" she gasped. "Harry Potter! And all of his little friends!" she beamed up at the Muggles for an instant before staring at Harry's scar. "Right this way, if you please, right this way!" She conjured a stretcher for Sawyer, then led them through a pair of double doors, down a small corridor, and into a small white room with a table in the middle and an empty picture on the wall. "Someone will be right with you," she assured them. "Oh, Harry Potter!" And she shut the door.
"Do you always receive special treatment?" asked Sayid. Jack inspected the picture, and thought he could hear voices just out sight.
"I'd rather I didn't," Harry protested.
"I don't care if he does or not, I'm just glad to be off that stupid island!" said Kate. The others agreed.
"What about the rest?" asked Charlie. "What about Hurley? Eko? Claire and the baby?"
"I'm sure we can get someone to go back and rescue them," Harry assured him. Ron and Ginny agreed. Hermione looked down at her wand.
"Speaking of which," said Kate, "Sun will be able to have her baby in a hospital."
Hermione's head jerked up. "She's going to have a baby?" asked Charlie.
"No one told you?" asked Kate. "Gee, I thought everybody knew by now."
"Newcomers!" Hermione cried. "The newcomers are the babies! First Aaron, and now Sun's baby!"
"I dunno, Hermione," said Ron, "That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?"
"Oh only for a –" she began to argue.
The door swung open. Scrimgeour, flocked by two Ministry flunkies, had arrived.
"Harry," he said, adopting a friendly tone. Harry's own relaxed air vanished as he stepped forward.
"Scrimgeour," he said flatly.
"Been having fun these last five days?" he asked, maintaining that friendly tone.
"Hardly. My friends are hurt, and the rest of them are lost on an island in the middle of the Pacific. You need to send someone to pick them up before any more of them are killed."
"No, Harry, that won't do," Scrimgeour said as he entered the room. "You see, you've broken the Statute of Secrecy, and the Ministry now has to clean up another one of your messes." With a snap of his fingers, a piece of purple paper appeared. "'Send a squad of Obliviators to coordinates…'" he rattled off a few numbers. The Muggles were staring at him in disbelief. "'Erase the memories of the past five days of every single person on that island. By order of Rufus Scrimgeour, Minister of Magic.'" The paper folded itself into a purple paper airplane and whipped itself down the corridor.
"And now for your friends," he said. He and the two flunkies pulled out their wands and three voices said "Obliviate!" Kate's, Charlie's, and Sayid's eyes all glazed over as their memories were modified.
"NO!" Harry shouted, and Disarmed the Minister. Jack shot the Minister in the shoulder, but the flunkies modified Jack's and Sawyer's memories anyway.
"Take these back to their island," the Minister told the flunkies. Three St. Mungo's officials came into the room. Each person grabbed one of the Muggles and Disapparated.
Scrimgeour fled into the corridor and locked the door.
"They're gone," said Ron.
"It was so fast," cried Ginny, her wand hanging limply at her side.
They looked at Hermione.
"Well honestly," she said, "They were Muggles, you knew the Ministry wouldn't keep them here!"
"Well, they're not keeping us here," Harry declared. "We'll just have to go back ourselves." He blasted the door and stepped through.
"Obliviate!" a St. Mungo's official cast. He had been waiting for them in the corridor.
"Obliviate! Obliviate! Obliviate!"
a few days later
In the dark jungle, Jack and Kate turned a person over in order to see their face.
"Michael!"
a few days after that
"Hey, look at this," said Hermione. She pushed the Daily Prophet under Harry's nose. "'A plane disappeared over the Pacific two months ago, and has yet to be found despite the constant search. Although mostly Muggles, two wizards were on board…'"
"So what?" asked a slightly annoyed Ron.
"So it sounds familiar doesn't it?"
"Not really," confessed Harry. But a small voice in the back of his mind disagreed.
"Harry!" Ginny called. She shoved her way through a crowd of second-years. "Harry, I've got to talk to you."
"Not now, Ginny, I'm late for class as it is."
"This is more important than class." He exchanged a look with Ron and Hermione, then gave in.
"What then?"
She led him to one of the secret passages, then made sure there weren't any eavesdroppers. "I know where one of the Horcruxes is."
"What? Where?"
"Think about it," she said, enjoying the suspense. "If you were Voldemort, and you needed to hide something really important to you, somewhere no one else could find it…"
He just stared at her blankly.
"Somewhere only you could get to, seeing as you have to have a certain ability to get there…"
It clicked. "No way."
"Way," she said with a smile. "The Chamber of Secrets."
A/N: In case you're still a little confused about timeline and the familiar Sawyer scene: Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny showed up and leftbefore Michael comes back, but no one remembers anything that happened. To them, it was as if those five days never took place. The Sawyer scene makes sense when you think about the fact that the characters would react the same in similar situations, even if there happen to be wizards in one and none in the other. Does that make sense? Hope so, I don't know how else to explain it.
Also: I don't know the other half of the Prophecy actually. I never wrote it. But the Others know it. insert spooky music here All I know is it has something to do with, yeah, you guessed it, the babies. :D But it'd be cool if it happened that way...
Well, I hope you enjoyed it! Hopefully I can come up with something else to write this summer to entertain you again, but who knows? Also, my Chamber of Secrets theory, here at the end, yeah, I really believe that, it's totally going to be in the seventh book. :D Have a novel day!