Selina has her eye on a one-of-a-kind jewel.
The museum it's in have no idea what kind it is, just that it was a leftover result of an attack on Earth by some dimension called the Infinite Realms.
And, well...it's really very beautiful.
Diamond white and abyss black and frosty blue, constantly shifting colors, emits cold, constantly generating frost so that it's shimmering in the lights.
It's unique. It's stolen from another dimension. It's gorgeous.
She wants it.
So; she takes it.
She...can't really bring herself to take it to a magic user to return it just yet.
Mostly, she keeps it in a glass, temperature controlled container in her apartment.
Harley and Ivy think it's pretty, but they don't really experience the same draw that Selina does.
She resolves that she will contact the Infinite Realms to ask if it's something they want back in...a week.
One week turns into one month.
One month turns into four months.
Four months turn into a year.
For that year, the beautiful jewel sits in it's protected case, and Selina ogles it when she's a bit too stressed. Every day, it seems to get brighter and shinier.
She isn't driven by compulsion, no-she knows herself too well. She knows damn well she's being driven by greed.
Then one day, as she's staring at it-the jewel starts to glow. The glass case shatters. A form begins to shape out of frost and-possibly-space.
And then there is a teenager, sitting bewildered in her apartment. All wild white hair and wide green eyes, shock written into his very expression.
He stares at her.
She stares at him.
"...So, not to be weird, but why are my instincts telling me you're my mom?"
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Headmaster Dumbledore is sure that the ghosts of Hogwarts were hiding something. He’d be the first to admit that he’s nosy when it came to things like these, but he simply doesn’t have the time. Whatever that lingered these halls, he’s sure does not mean Hogwarts any harm. The ghosts would not protect it if it did.
Albus Dumbledore Hummer around a lemon drop as his quill scratched over endless parchment paper.
His wand glowed green for a brief second, an acknowledgement, and settled down into its current owner’s hold.
——
Danny Phantom hadn’t thought the castle he found during the summer months in this universe would be… so full of life. Not when there were ghosts, floating around like the castle were their own home.
Magic.
They were ghosts made of magic.
His core struggled, at first, to survive. Then, it took the magic and thrived.
He floated, invisible amongst the glittering candles beneath the imitated night sky, and watched students file in.
Quite different, from his own entrance.
He had floated into the tower, having felt a hint of resistance that he knew now were the castle wards. The ghosts, what he thought were ghosts before he realized ectoplasmic ghosts existed, stopped dead. Hah.
The shades dancing and whirling and conversing froze as he entered the tower. Life and death, and the beings that walked the line, stopped at the arrival of the One Who is the Line. The boy king wreathed in black and green glanced around.
“Hello. I’m Phantom.”
“The High King,” a ghost whispered. “Our king.”
“He’s an American?” Another one asked, scandalized. Danny, surrounded by those who he recognized as his, cracked the first smile he’s had in a while.
“Who cares? He’s…” The knight sunk to his knees, bowing with his ghostly sword in front of him.
The ghosts bowed. Danny floated in further. “Can you tell me where I am?”
“Of course.”
——
Now… he’s watching the children get Sorted. Weird, for a hat to decide your classmates, but whatever.
Harry Potter’s name is called, and the whispers broke out. He doesn’t know why, but Danny couldn’t ask the ghosts. They barely know the current headmaster, as the dead generally care only for their own times.
Danny decides to visit the lake octopus. Lake squid? Something like that. The mer people beneath the waters liked him, the last time he went. The Sorting is put out of Danny’s mind. He’s dead now, too. The only thing he cares about now is to explore the vast halls of Hogwarts and the occasional visit to the kitchen to steal some food for his living body.
(Thank the Ancients he found a house elf who knew what seasoning was.)
(Sometimes, Danny flew to where his home would have been and gets comfort food at the nearest town. He missed it, but he can’t go back.)
The ghosts know by now to call for Phantom should they need something (“I’m American,” he joked at the ghost. “We’re not big on kings. You can just call me Phantom.”)
——
The third year he’s there, Danny feels the effects of Clockwork’s power. When he investigates, it’s the red headed girl he once saw leaving the library, paper clutched in her hand.
She helped save one of his subjects, so he owes her. Plus, if she’s using Clockwork’s powers, this Hermione has potential.
And… she’s using it to study.
She reminds him of Jazz.
——
A wave of ice crackled and froze the fleeing rat and the feral wolf man.
“What?!” Harry screeched to a stop, eyes wide at the ghost child in front of him.
Danny turned, and landed gently on the ground. Snape snarled at him in suspicion. Danny allowed himself to become living again, black hair and blue eyes and tan skin replacing the white, green, black thing his dead form had.
“Who’re you?” The red-headed boy, Ron?, asked him through gritted teeth.
Danny smiled at them, dimples appearing. “A friend.”
Before the trio and co. could say anything, Danny whips his head around, palm coming up.
“Stop.” He orders. The creeping sense of cold and dread shuttered to a stop. “Go over there,” he said, and the dementors, hovering at the edge of his periphery obeyed. Danny turned back to the mildly terrified and flummoxed group.
“Let’s go. You’re all going to catch a cold, if you don’t move it. Especially you, scrawny and greasy.” He pointed at the godfather and Snape.
——
“Hey, Danny?”
“What, Harry?”
“Why’d you help us? I mean, you said you didn’t want to involve yourself in stuff like that.”
Danny hummed, wisped tail curling up against him as he soaked in the sun’s rays. “Because you reminded me of myself. And in the end, you died.”
“You literally brought me back,” Harry deadpanned, remembering the place between life and death, and how the angry Danny was when he stormed onto that train platform. The King had taken him by the scruff of his shirt collar like a particularly incensed mother cat, and dragged him off away from a puzzled Dumbledore.
“You were being stupid. You’re too young to die.”
“Like you?”
Danny snorted. “Nah. I didn’t have a choice.”
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Prompt 214
“I did an oopsie.”
Clockwork paused in his work, gaze turning from his work towards his ghostling (it didn’t matter if he was an adult, he’d always be his ghostling) who was smiling nervously, avoiding his eyes.
“Oh?” He kept his tone light, even as he worked on untangling a time knot. Honestly at least Danny was immune to any effect of time, even if he couldn’t look into his timelines in exchange. It came with being the other half of Infinity.
“Yeeah… you know that corner of the multiverse you told me not to go to because you’re working on some time problems? I might have stumbled into one of the worlds in the corner…”
He stopped his machinations, fully turning towards Danny- Space, his Core whispered and quivered in utter delight at having an Equal in power- with a raised eyebrow, leaning on his staff and silently telling him to explain.
Danny poked his fingers together, giving a nervous laugh. “So uh, I was just exploring right? Well me and Ellie, you know how she gets when she can’t wander, and um… I er, we might have messed with some things in the creation of it… I didn’t know it was part of that universe, I swear! It was so far at the fringes and halfway into the Zone and I couldn’t just let a universe die before it began and-”
Oh- Oh! His ghostling (and his grand-ghostlings it sounded like) had claimed his first universe! He could put off these time knots, this was a grand milestone for any Ancient, nevermind such a primordial force as one of theirs.
And this is how a DC world came into being with humans evolving with more avian traits. Like wings. And claws. Look, Dan thought it’d be funny if they gave baby humanity wings and Ellie started rambling about how much farther they could travel if they had them and Danny thought it could be cool. Oh well, time to keep an eye on their itty baby world now…
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