"Hermione, do you believe in God?"

"What Harry?" She looked up from her book "...Oh. I don't know really. Why? Have you been thinking about it recently too?"

"Yeah, hard not to really... After what we've just been through" Harry said. "What about you Alex?"

"Oh, me?" The slinky American girl with black hair lying on the bed lazily answered, "My parents are Catholic, but I really don't care one way or the other. I just know I'm never going to let any more creepy old assholes with long white beards boss me around, trick me, or spy on me ever again..." Alex's mood shifted without warning and she sat right up with a scowl on her face,

"I am so OVER that shit!" She finished vehemently. Harry and Hermione both started cracking up. They all rather felt the same way. But then Alex had another thought to round it out.

"And I don't care if they call themselves God or not. After the kind of powers we've seen... we've become! Really?"

Harry thought he rather agreed. But still, something gnawed at him.

"Yeah, I know what you mean Alex. That's sort of how I feel too. I just finished reading this..." Harry plonked a fat book on the table in front of Hermione with frustration. "And it makes no sense at all. Look, your parents are Anglican right? Help me out. You must know something..."

"I only know what my parents and other people believe and what other people wrote Harry. I don't know if God exists or not..."

"But this thing... this Demon that we fought... the one in this book. Why would anyone have ever thought he was God to begin with? He's a bloody genocidal maniac that would put Voldemort to shame... Him and his psychotic pet, Abbadon."

Hermione considered her words very carefully. She had been doing a lot of reading herself...

"If God exists Harry, it isn't in that Book..."

"...it's in us." Alex said quietly. "Mr Lovegood said it. We have the power to Create stuff out of nothing now. Doesn't that sort of make us like... good demons or something? I thought he said that deities and demons were both the same... because they could Create, but one was good and the other one was evil?"

"Maybe..." Hermione was non-committal, "But whether or not God is a deity or a demon is another matter altogether. The Gnostics more or less got that demiurge bit right... that Thing we fought definitely was NOT God, just a Demon with really good press and a lot of influence over the last 6,000 years. God could be something far greater than any of us could ever know. Larger than the Universe, or... wait, I know. Hang on..."

Hermione perked up and began excitedly rummaging through a number of books on the table and found one with a picture of a kind looking man on the cover who reminded Harry a bit of Mr Weasley.

"He's a muggle scientist. Or he was. He died some years ago now. But he was brilliant. Here... look..." Hermione opened the book and found the first page of the first chapter. Underneath the chapter number was a quote.

"The Cosmos is within us; we're made of Stardust. We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself."-Carl Sagan

Harry liked that. He didn't have to believe anything to know you were made of stardust, and he didn't have to believe anything to know that the "Cosmos" was alive with magic. Harry had never liked people telling him what he should believe... He just wanted to know.

Authors Note: This is fiction. :P Flames about what certain wizards think about muggle religions will be tossed in the E-Dustbin where they belong.

This one-shot takes place shortly after the events which take place in my crossover fan-fic Harry Potter & the Wizards of Waverly Place: the Tears of the Dragon.

Though this piece is technically a crossover, it works just as well as a regular fan-fic as Alex is never explicitly portrayed as being part of another fandom in this short.