Hi All, wow it's been awhile! But now school's out for the year and I can try to get stuck into writing! As always this is unbeta'd - anyone up for the challenge *hopeful*
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter (JK Rowling) and no infringement is intended.
Previously: While Enna was absorbed in daydreams, Voldemort had decided he had had enough. Coincidentally, the body-bind he was in had worn off, finally. And so he decided to find some form of reflective surface to survey his new appearance in, and of course, being the idiot he was, he just walked out from behind the barrier without a care.
Harry was the first to spot the Dark Lord and did a double take. Voldemort had a nose. Now that was scary. He spent several minutes staring at him suspiciously; then dared to look at the rest of him. And as a result, his brain froze; spontaneously combusted then rebooted. He looked again, and burst out laughing.
Voldemort, the darkest of Dark Lords, was wearing nine inch stiletto knee high black boots, a pleated grey skirt, a white shirt that was half undone, and a loosely knotted green and silver tie. Around his neck was a cross necklace and he was wearing lots of smoky eye shadow and wine red lipstick.
"What?" the Dark Lord snarled, his malevolent look not fitting his current image.
"You might want to look in a mirror, hun!" Harry gasped out, causing everyone else to look in his direction and consequently go through the same process Harry's brain did: freeze, combust, reboot, stare, shudder…and eventually burst out laughing. Even Voldemort's most loyal followers were laughing behind their hands.
Following Harry's advice with a confused but furious look, Voldemort screamed in indignation as soon as he caught sight of his reflection. "Put me to rights at once, you filthy…" He paused, realising that he didn't know if the red headed demon was a Weasley like he'd originally thought, or something else entirely. Proving his lack of a functional brain, he stood there for several minutes contemplating what slur to use. Compounding the opinion that he was defective in the matter of brain development, even his followers were starting to doubt him.
Hearing Voldemort cussing at him had broken Enna out of his happy daydream about Sonorus charms, red lipstick and his annoying brothers. "Oi, I'm not a filthy anything, I'm a very well-constructed AI, thank you very much," he said, hands on his hips. It seemed that Voldemort had sparked the famous red-head temper. "Hmph! Commuto caesaries! That will fix you," he cried, then looking at the results of his spell, burst into giggles. Everyone else laughed as well, when they saw that Enna had lengthened Voldemort's hair and charmed it into two high pigtails, making him look rather like a girl, or at least less as if he had encountered an accident while cross-dressing.
"Okay, Enna, enough! Stop molesting my descendant," Tessera called, his voice cutting through their laughter like a hot knife through soft butter.
"Fine!" Enna pouted. "You take all the fun away, Tessie!"
"And stop calling me by that detestable nickname! Menace!" Tessera growled, pointing a glowing finger at his forehead.
"Alright, calm down, calm down. Enna, put Tessera's descendant back to his former state, and Tessera! For the last time, threatening Enna with mind control is not appropriate!" Thio interrupted their argument before it could come to blows. "No matter what you might think!" he added, when it looked as though he would be met by protests.
"Oh, but Thio, it is such fun to tease him and watch him jump." Tessera said calmly; ignoring the warning written plainly on his brother's face. "And for your information I was merely going to tweak his nerves a little bit." A wicked smirk spread over his face.
"That's even worse!" Thio exclaimed, a look of complete disgust on his face. "Save that for our enemies, not our allies." While Thio berated Tessera, Enna returned Voldemort to his previous snake-like visage, then flounced over to Harry, and plopped down onto the floor; quite obviously sulking.
"You realise that thanks to your antics, we have not yet explained their situation to them?" Tria said, his deep voice filling the chamber. Enna looked up with a sheepish expression; his mouth forming an 'o' of surprise. "I thought you had forgotten, Enna; but I wouldn't have expected you to, Thio; or you, Tessera."
"Sorry Tria," the three brothers chorused.
Tria smiled, "Do not apologise to me. Apologise to them and then start your explanations."
"Right, right! Okay, so, basically…" Enna paused, taking an exaggerated breath, "God went a little bit mad, wanted to impose unfair restrictions on humanity. We disagreed, escaped, created our brothers and our children, then locked up the Gates, then sent ourselves into a 'sleepers mind-link' timed to wake us exactly one year before the Gates would unlock. You know, to give us enough time to train our descendants."
The descendants, and companions, merely blinked at him.
"Enna, you need to explain it better than that!" Thio said, a fond frown forming on his brow. Turning to their descendants, he continued, "It goes something like this; when God created humans and the other sentient races. He took some to the Base Plane, some to the Middle Plane and kept a few with him on the Upper Plane."
Tessera cut in to elaborate. "The Base Plane is the Earth as humans know it, the Middle contains the majority of the magical races, with the exception of the small populations of natural born wizards, and the Upper Plain is where God resides, and where we lived along with the Angelus, or what you would call Angels. And you neglected to mention the Lower Plane, which holds the Demoniac, the Demons – the Legions of Hell."
"Of course you'd pick up on that one, Tessera. You're the one who commands them, or at least you used to. I wonder if they'll still answer to you!" Enna said scornfully. Tria tutted and raised an eyebrow as if to say 'Keep going'.
"Anyway," Thio said, "A few centuries after humanity had settled into the Base Plane, God decided that He wanted to control them, we were told to create 'Mediators', or really, beings charged with controlling the race. We remembered when he created the race, He said that He wanted them to make their own decisions, their own mistakes and their own society without any interference from Him. We are still unsure what changed His mind on that matter, but it wasn't the only change we had seen in Him. We decided that it would be best if we left, locking the Upper realm away from all the others until we could find a solution."
"We knew it would be seen as treason if we went against His wishes, and that if we were caught we would be Unmade. The magic that holds us together and runs through our veins in place of blood would disintegrate our very souls," Enna continued. "But you must remember that we were there at the very beginning. We watched as He created the very beginnings of the Base Plane, created the flora and fauna, then the other Planes and finally the sentient races. His last creation was the human race. We watched him fall into the ultimate trap of power, hubris."
"After we received our orders to create the Myraen, the Mediator race, we instead created our brothers and fled, locking the Gates behind us. We were the only beings with that much power, but we were given that for a reason. We are connected to the Heart of this planet. We put her before everything else, even our former God." Thio said with a small, sad smile on his face.
"Tessera and I awoke in a warded pocket dimension that our brothers had created. With haste, we created our offspring, children we would release into the world, or all of the Planes accept the Upper. When they had left, we sunk ourselves into 'sleeper's mind-link'," Thio said calmly, unruffled.
"A 'sleeper's mind-link' is essentially a melding of 2 or more minds in a state of natural slumber. It allowed us to stay connected and learn from each other and the planet's heart while we waited out the Millenniums. I set the mind-link to break one year before the Gates opened to give us enough time to find our descendants and train them properly. We had planned to teach them to take over God's role, ruling the 4 Planes of the Earth."
"You mean, you're making us royalty?" an incredulous Hermione spoke for the occupants of the room.
"Yes, along with the descendants from the other Planes, you will form a coalition which will help keep order on this planet."
"Um, but what about us. Me and Hermione, I mean?" Ron said. "We aren't descendants, or at least, I don't think so."
"The descendants will need advisers and people to help referee their arguments. You and others we meet in our travels will fill that role." Tria's voice rumbled through room, silencing any protests. "Now, it is getting late. We shall take you to the pocket dimension for tonight. You may contact your family and friends to notify them of your anticipated absence tomorrow."
Wow! I can see where this is going now, my slightly strange one shot is evolving into a proper story. Hopefully the explanation wasn't too tedious and this chapter fits with the rest of the story.
If anyone wants to have a go at drawing Voldemort in drag, you welcome to! Send me a link and I'll attach it to my profile. That being said if I have time/inspiration I want to have a go myself.
A quick note, and a bit of a teaser: Voldemort's lack of higher brain function is due to the Horcruxes. Ripping apart your soul is never a good idea. Don't worry we'll fix it and he'll become a valuable, if argumentative member of the team.
~ Yin