A/N: Ladywolf asked me for a fic, and somewhere as we brainstormed ideas it stopped being silly crackfic and turned into something serious. I own no rights to Criminal Minds, the characters therein and anything else. Several characters from other shows might be mentioned later, I don't own them, either. No money being made. Set in the latter half of season 5, any and all episodes up to there are fair game.

Feedback is very much appreciated.

Chapter 1

It is never too late to have a happy childhood. ~Tom Robbins

"Well." Rossi looked around the room, closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose and opened them again. The room didn't change. "Explain to me again what happened."

"We went out to check out the building the bodies were found in, you know that." The police chief explained, "Your team went in first. There was a bright flash of light and when we came in we found- them. Like that. We brought them here. They, uh, appear to be unconscious."

"I can see that." There was a migraine coming on, really there was. "And there was nobody else there?

"No sir." The police chief was about to say something else, when a new voice intruded on the conversation.

"Did anybody get the number on the truck that hit me?" A boy, maybe 14 if Rossi was any judge of children's ages, sat up and rubbed his head. "Shit. Rossi?" He looked around. "How's we get back here- and-" He touched his throat. "What the hell's wrong with my voice?"

"Morgan?" This was several kinds of impossible. "You know who I am?"

"You're Dave Rossi, we work together." The boy nodded. "It's 2010, we're in Missouri on a case, why do I sound funny?" He looked down. Then he looked up. Then down again, then to the left and the right, spotting the rest of- well, he assumed it was his team, because otherwise some crazy asshole had dressed a bunch of kids in their clothes. "What the FUCK is going on?"

"We were just trying to review that, actually. Chief Matthews says you entered the building?"

"Yeah. It was an abandoned building, you when where the dead kids had been found?" Four so far, three girls and a boy, all under the age of 13, all sexually assaulted and strangled. Rossi had stopped at the police station to set up with the rest of them started from the dump site. "There was some kind of smoke inside, and someone shouted something I didn't really get, I'm pretty sure it wasn't English, and then it all went very bright for a sec, then nothing and I woke up here." Morgan decided he'd best shut up, as his voice was freaking him out. The rest of it didn't bear thinking about, really. "Um, are those-?"

"I think so." Rossi nodded, sitting down. One of the girls- the dark haired one, so he guessed Emily- was stirring and sitting up as well, looking at them all strangely.

"Ugh. My head." She put her hand up to her hair and froze, feeling its newly goth-spiked 'do. "The hell?"

"Emily?" Morgan tried, frowning.

"Yeah." She looked from Rossi to him and did a double take that would've been hilarious in other circumstances. "Who're you?"

"Morgan. Em, look down a sec."

She did, and Rossi could swear he saw the physical reaction as the fact of her own body- roughly Morgan's age, he guessed, maybe a bit older- hit her. "Shit- where are my b- what happened to us?" She recognized this body, the feel of that hairdo, but why- and how? "Oh god. Are those-?" She gestured at the others, who were started to open their eyes.

"We think so." Rossi nodded.

"Huh. JJ was seriously cute as a kid."

"You can tell her that when she wakes up."

"Yeah. Maybe not."

An hour later they were all awake, past the initial explanations and reassurances that they were all themselves, knew the year, the name of the president, what they'd learned in school and generally retained their complete memories up until that morning. The fact that they were all, for all intents and purposes, children, remained unexplained. Reid sat on a hard chair by the main conference table, swinging his legs and squinting. His contacts had disappeared somewhere, and his emergency glasses weren't the right prescription anymore. One of the cops had gone to try and find him a pair, since of course he remembered the relevant prescription from an earlier age. The others sat at the same conference table, more or less freaked out.

"I'm going to call Garcia in." Rossi started.

"Why?" Hotch, who was pretty sure he was about 15 now and was clearly having a hard time not being livid about it, spoke for the group.

"Because I'm going to need all hands on deck to find this unsub and undo what he did to you, and your ability to be in the field or conduct interrogations has pretty much been cut down to nothing." He needed a Tylenol, badly.

"We can continue with the profile, work from here, we don't need to drag Garcia out." Morgan said decisively.

"You're just worried she'll start cooing about what cute kids we all are." JJ snickered, a sound much better suited to her younger self than her adult persona. She appeared to be about 11, with her blond hair in a messy braid and unexpected freckles. That put her and Reid, who'd disappeared into the bathroom and reported he was roughly ten years and two months old when he returned, at the youngest range of the group, with Hotch and Prentiss roughly fifteen and Morgan fourteen or so.

"Oh, you're not? She'll take blackmail pictures."

"We still have an unsub to catch, people." With his voice not quite settled into an adult register, Hotch sounded less authoritative than usual. "I don't think there's a lot we can do about this tonight, though. Maybe we should sleep on this?"

"How are we going to explain this at the hotel, exactly?" Emily was more obviously upset by the change in all of them. The others were as well, but she was showing it more clearly.

"We haven't checked in yet and I didn't give them our ages. I hope they won't give us any trouble." JJ shrugged. "How're the locals taking it?"

"They're freaking out." There was no other way to describe it. "This isn't exactly anything that's happened before."

"We knew the unsub was using occult elements." Reid piped up, then made a face. "This sucks." He cleared his throat, inwardly cursed the hated braces he'd been forced to wear at that age and which were making a very unwelcome repeat appearance, and continued. "Anyway, the unsub was using occult symbols and writing things on the victims' walls that looked like- well, spells, for lack of a better word. D'you think maybe-"

"Magic, Reid? Seriously? Get real." Morgan crossed his arms and Prentiss scoffed, and Reid hunched further into himself but didn't back down.

"I am getting real, Morgan." He protested. "Or can you think of another reason why we're all kids?"

"We need to find him." Hotch said, frowning. "And make him undo this, however he did it. But we should really sleep on it and get used to things again." They were all shorter, with a shorter reach and shorter legs, and they'd already found themselves stumbling and walking into things. "Maybe it's a temporary effect and we'll wake up normal." He didn't sound optimistic. Beyond everything else, he was worried about Jack- he was fifteen now, but he still had his son to worry about. If they couldn't undo this soon…They were all holding panic off , but only just. "Dave, can I have a word, before you call Garcia?"

"Hotch, come on!" Morgan glared at him.

"No, he's right. We're going to need all the help we can get here, and I don't want to do this over the phone." Hotch stood up. "Get your things, we'll leave in a few minutes." He tilted his head towards another, smaller office, and Rossi followed him there. "Dave, this could be real, serious trouble."

"More trouble than it looks, you mean?" Rossi raised an eyebrow. He had an inkling of what Hotch meant, but wanted to be sure. "How so?"

"We're assuming that the unsub did this- if he did this and it's not an elaborate shared hallucination or something else entirely- to neutralize us."

"Yes."

"Then there's a reason we're all the ages we are. I mean, beyond the teenage hormones which are already affecting us, and I've forgotten how intense this age is. Everything's a lot...sharper. Harsher." he hated feeling so out of control. "But think of where we are now. Morgan's fourteen." Hotch remembered Carl Buford and what he'd done, and Rossi had read the case file, despite still having been retired at the time. "Reid's the age he was when his dad left. And- JJ was eleven when her older sister killed herself. They were pretty close, she took it hard."

Rossi sucked in a breath through his teeth, and nodded. "I know what happened to Emily when she was fifteen, but it's not my story to tell." He paused, his eyes narrowed a little. "What about you?" Hotch shrugged, tight and distant, his face blank but it was clearly taking an effort. "Isn't your brother fifteen years younger than you?"

"Yeah." One word, but it was enough. Rossi'd trained Hotch, knew him better than any of the others. Enough that he could've guessed his reaction, knowing there was a new baby in the house who might go through what he'd gone through. Rossi nodded.

"Ok. So if those memories surface, if you start to revert-"

"We already are a bit, haven't you noticed?" Funny how he could sound so unlike himself one moment, then entirely adult the next.

"Yeah. You're angrier, Morgan and Prentiss sullen and Reid's trying not to flinch away from people but it's not really working." This could be very bad. "He's trying to put you completely out of the picture."

"And if it lasts- if it doesn't go away by tomorrow, or the next day- if we never find him-" Hotch's voice wavered and he looked away, mortified at this lack of reserve he just couldn't control. Rossi squeezed his shoulder.

"We'll find him, and we'll get you all back to normal." He tried to sound confident of that. "I'll get Garcia here, she's, uh, good with kids. Better than I am, anyway." Through the glass doors he could see Prentiss and Morgan playing monkey in the middle with Reid's bag, and Reid did not look like a willing participant in the game. "Aw, hell." He glowered at Hotch, "Why are the pessimists always right?"

"They're usually like that, though. They'll settle down. We're still adults, Dave."

Somehow, neither one of them was reassured by that.

"We're going to need to go shopping tomorrow." JJ said. They'd gathered in one of their hotel rooms- hers, since it was the largest, to review their situation and eat, having picked up some burgers on the way. "What I'm wearing is not age-appropriate, and nothing else I've brought with me fits anymore." It was true- she was wearing a shrunk-to-size skirt-suit, and heels, both appropriate for an FBI liaison but not for an 11 year old. In fact the only one of them who looked remotely comfortable was Morgan, in a sweater and blue jeans. "I don't even have anything to sleep in. I know we should concentrate on the case, but we need to…fit in better, I guess?"

"That and not wear the same clothes two days in a row." Emily nodded.

"Ok, we'll start with that tomorrow, I guess. Hell, you two are going to need adult supervision, aren't you?" Rossi looked over at JJ, on her bed, and at Reid who'd curled up on a couch, unusually quiet, and sighed. "Garcia's flying in early in the morning, she said she'll join us here for breakfast. I'm sure she'd love to help."

"That's what I'm afraid of." Morgan groaned, but he had to admit he'd need a clean shirt, and everything was too large for him. It was true he was pretty well developed, as an athlete, but he was still a good head shorter than his full adult height. "Let's- review the case, ok? I need a distraction."

"Good idea." Hotch needed a distraction as well. He was worried about the team, and about the case, and about himself. "We've profiled a white male aged 25-40. He's been killing kids, no gender preference, all four have been assaulted and strangled, and they were all found in the same building two days ago."

"M.E. said they didn't all die together- from what he's found, they died about a week apart over the past month." Morgan added. "And there are no missing kids in this area who fit the description, and no ID on the kids yet."

"We know it's not his primary site, just the dump site." Prentiss continued smoothly. Kids or not, they still functioned as a team. "Without an ID on the kids, creating a geographical profile for the abductions has been pretty much impossible so far."

"I had Garcia extend the search for missing children in the right age group to the surrounding states." Hotch said. "We'll see what she had tomorrow morning."

"Speaking of the age group…Not to be morbid, but now, after today? Reid and I fit right in that group." It wasn't that JJ was worried, exactly, but it was something to keep in mind. Reid made a small, strangled noise in his corner, but when the others all looked at him he had his eyes closed and was doing his best to fade into the couch.

"Did you have anything to add, Reid?" Hotch asked, and the younger agent flinched and shook his head. "Ok…" There was something else going on there, but none of them were at their best so Hotch let it slide. "We should probably get to sleep. Long day tomorrow."

"I think we should double up tonight." Rossi said. "I know we're paying for six rooms, but just in case there's something going on here that we don't know about yet, with you guys," he barely stopped himself from saying 'kids', "I don't want anybody alone."

Reluctantly, Prentiss nodded. "Roomies, Jaje?"

"Yeah. Go get your bag?" Luckily the beds in their rooms were actually two singles put together, and could be separated. "We're gonna need a hand separating these. How're you guys splitting up?" That was a very good question. Rossi looked at Hotch, who shrugged.

"I'm old enough to have a room of my own." Rossi almost laughed at the stubborn look on his face.

"Yeah- you're with me, Hotch. Morgan and Reid, you two are together. No exceptions, Aaron, I'm sorry. If anything happens during the night you need to be with someone." At least he wasn't putting him in with other 'kids'.

"Fine." Hotch straightened his shoulders. "Ok. Let's get some sleep. If nothing changes over the night, we meet for breakfast at 7:30." He stood up. "Dave, I'll move my bag over to your room?"

"Yeah, here's the key." Rossi handed him the key card. "I'll be there in a sec. Morgan, can I have a word?" As Prentiss and Hotch went to collect their respective stuff, and JJ started tugging at the beds, trying to separate them, he drew Morgan away from them a little. "Be careful tonight, ok? No teasing." Morgan frowned, questioning, and Rossi nodded towards Reid, who was still on the couch, looking pretty lost. "Reid's too quiet. I don't know whether it's shock or what he was used to in terms of not drawing attention when he was younger, but just…be careful, ok?"

"I'm always careful." Morgan promised. He knew some of what things had been like for Reid at school, and the last thing he wanted to do was scare him.

"Ok, good." Rossi nodded. "Go get settled in, I'll check on you later." Morgan looked inclined to argue with that, so Rossi raised a palm to stop him. "I'm checking in on everybody tonight, got it? It's not because I don't think you can handle yourselves, but you have to agree it's a bit of a shock."

"You can say that again." Morgan pursed his lips. "What if we can't change back, Rossi? I mean, my mom might be happy to take me back, and I don't want to go through it all again. And the others don't have family that's up for this kind of thing, Hotch has Jack, and-"

"Derek, calm down. You'll all be fine. We'll catch the unsub and we'll fast-forward you back to adulthood. You'll be legal again in no time. We just need to focus, ok?" Rossi put a hand on his shoulder and ignored it when Morgan shrugged away from him, looking uncomfortable.

"It's a lot harder than I remember. Teens have a really hard time, don't they?"

"So I'm told, yeah. Fortunately it looks like we all forget it eventually. You will as well- again. When we close this case." He hoped he sounded confident enough for both of them. "Go get your stuff and move to Reid's room, ok?" Morgan nodded and left, and Rossi helped JJ move the two beds apart. "You going to be ok tonight, kiddo?"

"Not really a kid, Rossi." She pointed out, but she was smiling a little. "I'll be ok, I think. It's freaking me out- I mean, how am I going to explain this to Will? I'm suddenly all of nine years older than our son? He didn't sign up for this." Her smile threatened to turn into something else entirely, and she sat down on the bed, looking at the carpet.

"Hey…" Rossi sat down next to her. "Don't think like that. We're going to get the guy who did this and you'll all be ok."

"We should look for missing adults." The words, very low and hesitant, made both Rossi and JJ look up sharply. Reid leaned back into the couch and adjusted the glasses the people at the police station had found for him.

"Why?" Staying very calm, Rossi didn't move but turned his full attention on Reid.

"If the unsub did this- to us, I mean- he could've done it before, to others. Maybe he wants to take away their power as adults, or he's too weak to subdue anyone bigger and stronger than a child. Maybe he's a sexual sadist who chooses adults but prefers to assault kids." Now that Reid noticed them listening to him he warmed up to the subject, growing more animated. "That could be why there are no missing kids- because they aren't kids."

"We'll definitely look into that tomorrow morning." JJ was grinning again as Rossi nodded. "Good work, Reid." The boy beamed at him. "Magic. I thought this was the FBI, and none of us are working X Files."

"Actually, the X Files department doesn't exist." Reid corrected him, sheepish. "I checked. Twice."

"You would." JJ giggled. "If it existed we wouldn't have been told anyway."

"Probably true." Rossi smiled at them both. "Reid, Morgan's in your room tonight, ok? If anything happens, call me immediately. Clear?"

"Uh huh." If Reid looked a little less pleased by the idea of sharing than Rossi'd expected, he at least didn't protest it. "I'll go there?"

"Yeah, go ahead." Rossi wanted a word with Emily, and caught her in the corridor as Reid started in the other direction. "Prentiss, hold on a moment." She stopped, giving him a guarded look. "Let's go back to your room for a moment." He didn't want to risk being overheard.

"What?" She asked as soon as the door closed behind them. She looked defensive and aggressive at the same time, her behavior perfectly matched to her younger body, but a far cry from her usual calm under pressure.

"You're fifteen, you said." He did her the favor of not pussy-footing around the issue. "What you told me, a few years ago- are you before or after that?"

Her defiance seemed to crumble and she took a moment to swallow hard before answering. "After. Really soon after, I think." She looked away. "It- I'm sore. Like I was right after. And it's really hard not to snap at people. I'm really scared, Dave." Admitting that cost her, Rossi knew, and he respected her courage.

"Will you bite my head off if I hug you?"

"N-no." He drew her into a hug, surprised that she let him and freaking out a little by how much shorter and slighter she was. "Those few weeks right after were hell. Really really bad." Her voice was muffled by his shirt.

"I'm sure. You'll be ok, Emily. We'll get him and you'll go back to normal, you all will. In the meantime, take an Advil so you can sleep." He kept holding her until she pulled away, not very long at all really but longer than she'd ever allowed. "Ok?"

"Yeah. I think. I'll be ok." She gave him a shaky smile. "I'll be nice to JJ, she doesn't deserve my moodiness."

"Good. Go to sleep, we'll all have clearer heads in the morning." God, how he hoped he was right.