Chapter Text
Jayce was fully prepared to die.
In all honesty, there were a million thoughts whirring through his head during his supposed final moments, but the idea that he might survive never once crossed his mind. It seemed impossible— The whole event had a sense of finality to it. This was the end of his story. No more Hextech, no more Viktor, no more Jayce.
Surprisingly, that didn’t upset him too badly. It seemed like a pretty decent way to go, holding onto Viktor as if nothing else in the universe mattered. Nothing else did matter. It was just Jayce and Viktor and those thousands of unconscious souls floating around in the endless abyss of time and space. Extremely romantic.
The point was: Jayce was dying. No level of intense homoeroticism could save him or Viktor. Believe him, he tried. But just as Jayce took a shaky breath he thought would be his last, the weightless and floating sensation surrounding him transformed into wind whistling around him as he fell through open air. This was swiftly followed by a feeling that Jayce was unable to describe, but that felt remarkably as if he just fell through a roof.
The breath was knocked out of him as he landed. Looking up, Jayce found that he had, in fact, fallen through a roof. There was a comically human shaped hole in the ceiling above Jayce. He slowly sat up, rubbing at his eyes as he looked around.
Large, towering stone walls surrounded him, covered in paintings and an assortment of trophies and strange looking objects. A red bird sat on a perch, a gradient of yellow and orange feathers covering its body. Tall bookshelves climbed up the walls behind a large desk, with stairs leading up to a great archway. There was a strict looking woman dressed in emerald green standing next to the desk, staring at him with an expression akin to horror. A man with a snow-white beard sat behind the mahogany table, his expression concealed behind half-moon glasses.
Jayce had never been a particularly religious man. He liked to believe there was some sort of higher power out there, but in the end it had been largely wishful thinking. Now, he was regretting not being more religious. What was one supposed to do in a situation like this? He had died. Jayce knew that. Was this the afterlife? He’d heard that people often hallucinate or relieve their memories in their final moments, so maybe this was something like that?
“I would greatly appreciate it if you could please remove yourself from atop of Dolores.”
Probably not a memory. A hallucination felt more likely, except this was so unbelievably vivid. It took an embarrassingly long moment for Jayce to process the man’s words. He then glanced down to confirm that he was, in fact, laying on top of a woman— Dolores, presumably. She was wearing a quite frankly hideous pink sweater, and her skin appeared unnaturally pale. Jayce blanched, before quickly pushing himself off of the woman, trying to ignore the way her head lolled to the side as he did so. He stumbled backwards, before knocking into something on the floor beside him. Jayce glanced down to see Viktor, who was glaring up at him with an impressive amount of malice.
A rush of emotions flooded through Jayce as he spotted his partner, the most prominent of which was relief. He was glad that if he had to be stuck in this strange place, he’d have Viktor with him. Viktor looked significantly less relieved to see Jayce, but Jayce could see the hint of relief in Viktor’s expression as well. He extended his arm towards Jayce expectantly, and Jayce, realising Viktor was missing his cane, quickly fumbled to assist his partner in standing up.
In the back of his mind, Jayce noted how much younger Viktor looked: his long balayage had vanished (much to Jayce’s disappointment), instead replaced with his short brunette hair. Only his right arm and leg remained that deep purple, streaked with lines of metallic gold and silver, the gnarled limbs peeking out from beneath the Academy uniform that Viktor was sporting. Jayce felt different too— he assumed they had been switched to some sort of younger versions of themselves. Why, Jayce wasn’t exactly sure of.
Jayce could’ve easily spent forever just standing there, just appreciating the fact that he and Viktor were alive . Unfortunately for him, it appeared the other inhabitants of the room had a different idea.
“ Immobulus! ” the woman declared, pointing a… stick? towards Jayce and Viktor. A bright white light shot out of the end, and Jayce suddenly found himself frozen in place, unable to move. His knees locked, and Jayce watched helplessly as his body went crashing down to the floor.
It was an utterly humiliating experience that was only heightened when he looked beside him to see that Viktor had not been subjected to the same fate as him. Instead, Viktor looked a second away from bursting into laughter as he looked down at Jayce. The woman looked caught off guard to see Viktor still able to move, but she didn’t seem deterred by this. She flicked the stick again, “ Incarcerous!”
Rope sprung into existence, wrapping itself around Viktor to immobilize him. The rope coiled around his body, catching him off guard and causing him to also tumble down on the floor, landing beside Jayce. Jayce was suddenly compelled to make some sort of bondage joke, but the glare on Viktor’s face made him think better of it. The woman kept the stick trained on the two men, though Jayce wasn’t exactly sure what threat he and Viktor could be in their current position.
“Uhm.” Jayce replied intelligently, trying to figure out the best way to explain their predicament. “I can explain why we’re here. My name is Jayce. Talis. And this is Viktor. Viktor—”
Viktor chooses this moment to shoot Jayce a glare that seemed to scream ‘ Don’t tell them our real names, are you insane?’ and Jayce immediately backtracks. “Viktor— uh— Herald.”
“Herald?” the woman asked, skeptical.
“Herald?” Viktor asked, horrified.
“Yes!” Jayce said, with a level of conviction and finality that almost managed to convince himself, “Viktor Herald.”
“And you—” she began sharply, before the old man sitting behind the desk cut her off.
“Minerva,” he said, gently yet sternly. She pursed her lips, but fell silent nonetheless. With that, he turned to face the duo, scrutinising their appearances, “How did you get in here? We have security measures, you shouldn’t be able to apparate into Hogwarts.”
“Apparate into Hogwarts.” Jayce echoed. That didn’t sound like a dead-people thing. That didn’t sound like anything Jayce had ever heard of. A glance to his side showed that Viktor was equally as confused. That in itself was a bit alarming— Viktor always seemed so sure of himself, it was one of the many things Jayce had always admired about him.
Jayce looked around the room some more— really looked. Stone walls that looked like some sort of medieval castle. Portraits covering said walls, paintings of different people that were somehow moving . Paintings of people that looked important but none of which Jayce recognised. A large map on the wall, detailing places Jayce had never heard of before. And just as Jayce made eye contact with the painting of the dark haired woman who was doing an impressive job at trying to eat her quill, everything clicked.
“The Hexcore,” Jayce muttered, before spinning to face Viktor, “The Hexcore! Viktor— the rune—”
“The acceleration rune.” Viktor finished, eyes widening, “Of course! The wild magic had the ability to send us to other universes; it’s entirely plausible that the rune could work as a catalyst of some sort— instead of us dying and, eh, for lack of a better word: disintegrating, the reaction enhanced by the acceleration rune could have— That would explain why we seem to have reverted to younger versions of ourselves.” Viktor mused, “If we can find a way to harness that power….”
“I think you’re getting a bit ahead of yourself, V.” Jayce huffed, a small smile on his lips, Viktor didn’t seem to have heard him, already muttering to himself about the logistics of completing cross-dimensional travel, “Let’s work on getting out of here first. …Wherever here is.”
Jayce suddenly remembered the presence of the two other people in the room with them (if the fact he was still tied up on their floor wasn’t reminder enough), who were watching with a surprisingly impressive level of calm for such a situation.
“You’re from another dimension?” the man asked, a note of curiosity in his voice, “I can’t say we have many interdimensional visitors around here.”
“Albus, surely you don’t believe them.” Minerva said, exasperated, “They just killed a woman,” — Jayce looked beside him again to find the woman he had landed on was, in fact, dead. Did he do that? He didn’t remember doing that. He’d feel a bit more guilty if he wasn’t still half convinced this was some weird hallucination, — “You can’t truly believe they’re telling the truth. I feel you’re acting unnaturally calm about this— even for you.”
Albus shrugged, a ghost of a smile on his lips as he straightened his glasses, “Once you get to my age, my dear Minerva, you start to trust your instincts. I’m sure these two young men don’t mean any trouble, do they?”
“No,” Jayce nodded, “We’re just— trying to get back home.” he said, trying to ignore the way Viktor frowned beside him. He’d bring up whatever that was later. Right now, he had an old man to convince. “You wouldn’t happen to be able to tell us where exactly we are, would you?”
“We’re in Scotland— more specifically, Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,” Albus said, and suddenly the strange stick that Minerva was holding made a lot more sense. Jayce had no clue what ‘Scotland’ was, but that didn’t come as too much of a surprise— different universes were bound to have different locations, after all.
“Wizards? You use magic, then?” Viktor asked curiously, that familiar spark in his eyes that made it clear he was planning something, “Runes?”
“Wands, mostly.” Minerva spoke up, waving her wand after a silent conversation with the man beside her. Jayce was incredibly thankful when he regained control of his limbs. He pushed himself into a standing position, getting an intense feeling of deja vu as he turned to help Viktor stand up from the ground.
“Runes are less common, but still used.” Minerva still looked wary of the duo— and rightly so, considering they had spawned out of practically nowhere. Personally, Jayce found Albus’ calm demeanor a bit alarming.
“If we could somehow combine their two forms of magic, it's possible we could recreate the anomaly that brought us here in the first place.” Viktor muttered to himself quietly, fingers drumming absentmindedly against Jayce’s arm. Viktor’s brow furrowed the way it always did whenever he was deep in thought. Jayce did his best not to be distracted by it.
“Any supplies you may need in order to return to your home, Hogwarts is likely to have,” Albus offered, “ If you need, we’d be more than willing to assist you.”
“Really?” Jayce asked, ecstatic. Viktor, on the other hand, looked far more skeptical.
“You do not wish to question us? Make us give you something in order to receive access to your supplies? Pay you back?”
“It is rather inconvenient that you killed Dolores,” Albus agreed, “Now I have to go and find a new teacher to fill her post.” Albus sighed, clasping his hands. He looked up, a glimmer in his eyes, “Actually, I do have an idea of how you could pay us back.”
“Absolutely not.” Viktor cut him off, eyes narrowed, “We are far from qualified to teach at some magic school.”
“I mean,” Jayce began, “You were Heimerdinger’s assistant at the academy, right? Surely you must’ve picked something up.”
“You cannot possibly be agreeing to this, Jayce.” Viktor spoke sternly, and Jayce felt quite a bit like a child being lectured, “And you,” Viktor started, turning his gaze to Albus, “How could you believe that hiring two complete inexperienced strangers from an alternate universe— who very well could be lying about that— to teach your students could ever be a good idea?”
“Viktor, can I speak to you for a moment?” Jayce said, shooting a nervous glance towards Albus and Minerva as he gently pulled Viktor aside, placing his hand on Viktor’s back to support him.
Once he was sure the other’s weren’t listening— or, at the very least, were pretending not to listen, Jayce spoke in a hushed tone. “He’s offering us access to the resources we need to get back home, and all we have to do is teach a couple of kids. This is the easiest possible way out.”
“Exactly,” Viktor hissed, shrugging off Jayce’s hand, “This is too easy . Nothing should be this easy. Does this not scream ‘trap’ to you?”
“Maybe he’s just trying to help us out,” Jayce defended, “People can be nice, you know.”
“Nice?” Viktor scoffed, “Name one person who was ever ‘nice’ without it ending badly. Everyone has an ulterior motive.”
Jayce frowned, but didn’t argue the point, “Look, what other choice do we have, V? This is the best shot we’ll get at going home. It’s worth a try.”
Viktor hesitated, golden eyes scanning over Jayce’s face. After a moment, Viktor sighed, frowning, “Fine. But if this goes wrong, I will be blaming it on you.”
“When do you not?” Jayce grinned, turning back to Minerva and Albus and— yep, they were definitely eavesdropping.
“We’ll do it.” Jayce said, lifting his chin, “We’ll take the job.”
Albus clapped his hands together, nodding, “Wonderful. Now, first order of business: let’s get rid of the body, shall we?”