Harry waited for a reply from the leader, hoping that one of the others did not decide to jab a spear into him or let loose one of their three-foot arrows in the meantime. He studied each of the people's yellow eyes in turn, noticing that each of them recognized Harry's form. They were familiar with humans. Their stares were not directed at Harry's figure, but rather at the mode of his arrival, the trail of fire that lead into space, and the crater in which Harry still stood. Harry didn't blame them. He was pretty sure that if he were over there with them, he would be staring too.

"Jake!" a female voice cried, pushing through the thick, strange vegetation. A female of the same race as the group confronting him now came into sight and moved to quickly stand beside the leader, who had still not answered Harry. The leader was named Jake? The female turned her questioning glance from the leader, Jake, and towards Harry. Her eyes looked skyward towards the trail of fire, and then down around at the crater, the splintered wood, and then back to Harry. She turned to Jake and said something in their language. It sounded like a question to Harry. Jake just shrugged in reply.

Harry was about to say something else when a boom interrupted him. Looking skyward, he saw a fireball raining down from the sky. With a curse, Harry clambered out of his crater and yelled at the blue people to get back. Jake translated his order and the group moved away from the crater. They ran fast and gracefully, easily outpacing Harry as they took cover behind trees and rocks. Harry dove over a fallen tree trunk just as another detonated bomb rocked the jungle. Debris flew over the top of the downed tree Harry was lying behind, wood chips tinking off of his glasses like small ricochets.

After the fragments of wood and clods of dirt settled Harry peaked over his tree bunker to see a wooden chest sitting in the now deeper crater. Harry climbed carefully over and stared at the trunk, at the crater, and then up to the sky at the second trail of fire. He was right. He would stare. "That is pretty shocking, isn't it?" Harry said aloud, and then realized that the silent Jake was now standing beside him.

Jake turned his head away from the trunk and down at Harry, who immediately felt like a little kid. "What is that?" His voice was deep and commanding, toned from years of leadership. Dumbledore could sound the same way when he needed to.

"It's a trunk," Harry said, "Probably mine." Hopefully it would have some of Harry's possessions inside.

"A trunk," Jake said. "You traveled all the way here from Earth and somehow dropped out of your ISV without any equipment except for a rebreather, in the middle of the jungle, and remembered to bring your trunk?"

They were all looking at Harry again. Harry noticed that one corner of his trunk was smoldering slightly. "I didn't bring the trunk," Harry said. "I suppose someone remembered to send it along after me. And I don't know what an ISV is, but I came here from Earth directly without any equipment. What's a rebreather?"

Jake looked incredulous, and Harry couldn't blame him. He didn't quite have a grasp on what had happened either. He consulted the female, who Harry guessed was his wife, and then turned back to Harry, "Open the trunk, but don't touch anything inside. I want to see what is in it."

Harry obliged. He was also curious of the trunk's contents, since his memory of his before-life was completely devoid of details like what he had last packed in his school trunk. Harry unlatched the hinge, opened the top, and stepped back for Jake to take a look. Off from the side he could see school robes, both clean and dirty, books, parchment, potions supplies, and, best of all, his Firebolt and invisibility cloak. "Wicked!" he shouted as Jake pulled the last two items out.

"What is all this?" Jake asked. He seemed genuinely confused about what he found inside Harry's trunk, and turned a questioning look towards Harry. For the first time it was not hostile or cautious, but baffled.

"That's my old school stuff," Harry replied. "Do you mind if I have the broomstick and that cloak? They're rather valuable."

Jake handed Harry his Firebolt and cloak. "You are not employed by RDA."

"Who?"

The female spoke up then, "You are not here to retake our planet? You are not part of the company who tried to destroy the Na'vi?"

"No way!" Harry said, appalled. "I just met you guys. Why would I want to do anything like that?"

"Neytiri?" Jake said.

The female, Neytiri, shook her head. "He is barely out of childhood," she said. "I believe him." Harry let out a sigh. It looked like he wasn't going to get impaled after all. "But we still do not know why he is here."

Jake nodded his agreement. To Harry, he said, "We're going to take you to the avatar compound where the other humans are. They can help you set up there. It's a few hours from here, so I suggest you take out of that trunk what you want and leave the rest." Jake delegated two other Na'vi to help Harry, who chose to take all the books and most of his clean clothes, leaving the parchment and potions ingredients. School was out forever, and if he didn't have to write another essay it wouldn't be soon enough. He still hated them, even after all the years (he thought they were years) sitting in the color swirl in his journey from Earth.

The small band set out, Harry, Jake, Neytiri, the two Na'vi carrying his books and folded clothes effortlessly, and a few others. "How did you come here?" Neytiri asked Harry. Her accent was thick and she used simple English, unlike Jake who Harry was pretty sure was just as fluent as himself.

Harry decided to be completely honest. A new start with no secrets, and no lies was more than he could have wished. He wouldn't squander it. "Magic," he said simply.

Neytiri turned to Jake for an explanation, obviously not understanding what the word meant. Jake, for his part, haltingly explained the concept, looking at Harry with new concern. Concern for his people or for Harry, he wasn't sure. After he finished his explanation, Jake said, "Magic doesn't exist."

Harry expected that. "In that case then I honestly don't know. I believe it to be magic. How else did I survive all this way without any machinery helping me? How did I even survive the fall from space? How did my trunk, for that matter? I can't give you a better explanation then magic."

"The doctor will take a look at you when we get to Hell's Gate. I would suggest that you keep that to yourself if you don't want to be under constant observation." Harry nodded. Perhaps it was better to keep his revelations about magic to himself and write off things like his arrival and his bubblehead charm to ignorance. Besides, he didn't even have a wand anymore, and even though he hoped that his salvaged books may help him in that regard, he couldn't be sure.

Neytiri, unwilling to be hindered, had another question for Harry. "Why are you here?"

"For that," Harry replied, "I have no explanation. Coming here wasn't my choice. I just knew that there was nothing left for me back on Earth."

"Is it that bad, now?" Jake asked.

"For most people it is just the same as it's always been, but for me… I had no one else."

"What about the environment?" Jake asked, "How is the world reacting to the Unobtainium shortage?"

"The what?" Harry said. Then a small, previously unrecognized worry crept up in his mind. "What year is it?"

"Last time I checked with Norm, it has been eighteen years since the RDA left Pandora."

"But what year?" Harry asked, panicked.

Jake quickly did the math, "2172."

Harry stopped walking with the Na'vi, staring straight ahead. "I've been traveling for 180 years."

*

They arrived at Hell's Gate with a minimum of conversation, and Jake and Neytiri went ahead to speak to the other humans. Harry didn't care. He was still trying to wrap his mind around everything he had learned. He had been in the nothingness for close to two centuries, in a conscious stasis, with nothing to do but ponder himself into oblivion. At first he thought Pandora had been a gift, from some unknown source, but now he was unsure. What was his purpose here? The Na'vi seemed to be doing well for themselves, surviving first contact with a superior species and succeeding in ejecting them from Pandora, so what was Harry supposed to do? Was this his paradise? To be left alone on a planet where he had no place to stay? How was that better than the muddy hillside that was Voldemort's throne room?

Harry looked around the compound called Hell's Gate, and his fears were confirmed. This was not home– this was an on-planet exile. The people who lived here were intruders upon the jungle, and had to maintain the unnatural cement structures, fences, and even defense towers in order to stay alive. They were not part of the planet, but rather a blight that had carved out an impenetrable niche. Hell's Gate was a deceiving name, for it was not the entryway to hell on Pandora, it was hell itself, surrounded by beauty. The ones who named the compound were blind to the value of the nature around them, and they huddled in the festering sore that Pandora wished to eradicate.

Jake and Neytiri believed him to be crazy for believing in the role magic played in his journey to Pandora. To them it was much easier to accept that he had knocked his head, forgetting that it was some technology unknown to them that had brought him down safely. He didn't blame them. Their language didn't even have a word for magic, so why should they bother even believing?

The humans were coming over, lead by the Na'vi leader and his mate, and Harry realized they wouldn't be any better. They were scientists; people who knew of technology two centuries beyond Harry's understanding, who comprehended machines they could send them from one star to another through the blankness of space. They would think he was crazy as well, but they had the power to make his new life here even worse than it was already turning out to be.

The man introduced himself as Norm, shaking Harry's hand and marveling at his "new rebreather design." The Na'vi left after handing off Harry's possessions to the scientists and having a few more words with Norm.

"Stay safe," said Jake before walking back into the jungle with his group. Neytiri and the others said nothing.

"So," Norm said, patting Harry on the back, "Let's get inside and find you a place to stay. All the other stuff can wait until after you're settled."

Harry nodded his acceptance and moved towards the airlock of the main building, his mind racing across the possibilities of escaping Hell as quickly as he could.