Time in the Heart

By: Wilona Riva

Disclaimer: I don't own Danny Phantom.

Live life to the fullest... think of all the people on the Titanic who passed up chocolate dessert.

Blue Flower

"Danny, hand me the drying towel, please," Maddie asked without turning around.

"Sure," he replied, handing it to her.

Maddie dropped the dish she was holding and pivoted around so swiftly, she'd put a ballerina to shame. "D-d-danny? When did you come home? I didn't think we'd ever see you again." She hugged him tightly.

"Mom, air," he begged. He looked almost human with his white hair and glowing green eyes.

"Stay, here," she told him, before running downstairs to shut off the ghost alarms which had begun blaring. "Jack, it's just Danny!" she called out.

The man could move fast when he wanted to do so. "Danny's back? I thought he was staying in the ghost world since he's their Crown Prince and all?"

Danny shook his head, for as Jack had been saying that last sentence, he'd moved within range of Danny's hearing. "Yes and no, Dad."

"So you decided to remain a human?" Jazz asked, coming downstairs to see what the commotion was all about.

"No," Danny replied, shaking his head. "Eventually, I'm going to become full ghost, but my Master decided to let me live in the human world for a few more years for my journeymanship. I have been told that there is another halfa like me, who has been given guardianship of me."

"He's going to help you learn your powers, you mean," Jazz stated. "You're just here to say good-bye, aren't you?"

Danny shook his head. "Nope," he replied. "The other halfa is moving here instead, so we can still be a family."

"But if you'll be under the guardianship of this other halfa," Maddie said, voicing her thoughts out loud, "then that means you'll have to move in with him."

"Wrong again," Danny answered. "Only on the weekends will I be staying with him for training. Plasmius is a Fruitloop; I met him on the way home."

"Oh," Jack replied, then his face brightened. "Do you know the name of his human half?" he asked.

Danny shook his head. "We're not that formal," he replied, then grinned mischievously. "He did teach me a neat trick though."

Maddie, Jack, and Jazz watched in amazement as Danny returned to his normal human form. "Pretty sweet," Jack told him.

"Are you going to call Sam and Tucker?" Jazz asked.

Danny shook his head. "I'll see them at school tomorrow."

"Danny, do you want to try one more time to locate your birth parents?" Maddie asked.

The halfa shook his head in negation. "They were there," he whispered. "Mom, did you ever know a girl named Sarah Wright?"

"We went to college together," Maddie answered, thinking back to her friend's strange disappearance fifteen years ago.

"She's learning ice magic in the Far Frozen with my soon-to-be step-father Clan Leader Frostbite," he told her. "She's got a pet rabbit named Pietr, that can change into a temperamental nanny goat at will."

Maddie and Jack digested this bit of info, while Jazz asked him, "What about your real father?"

"He's the Fright Knight," came the short reply, which brought a hiss of recognition to Jack's lips.

"What?" Danny asked him.

"Nothing," Maddie replied, shooting Jack a warning look.

"Plum want a plum!" Danny's pet said, popping out of the blue.

"You really know how to ruin a moment, don't you?" Danny grumbled.

"Danny dance with Ember," came the retort.

Maddie, Jack, and Jazz watched curiously as Danny turned red with embarrassment.

"PLU-UM!"

Meanwhile, in the Ghost Zone...

"You really should have told the boy, Clockwork," Pariah Dark complained.

"He wasn't ready to know the truth about his past," the Time Master replied, adjust another loose knob on his chronometer.

Pariah Dark sighed. "All is as it should be," he repeated the TIme Master's favorite phrase.

"Indeed," Clockwork said, adjusting a viewing portal showing three Fentons laughing, while an embarrassed Danny fired green ecto-rays at a rapidly tesseracting plum with golden porcupine quills around the normal human kitchen.

"All is as it should be," Clockwork murmured to himself.

Author's Note: It has been quite a journey with Danny and his little pet hasn't it? I deliberately left the story open-ended; there will be a sequel-I'm working on the first chapter as we speak.