Harry Potter and the Veil of Time

Chapter Twelve: Yggdrasil

By Cybergades


The sensation of traveling through this gate was nothing at all like the one Harry had previously experienced. Where before there had only been the darkness and the quiet, so quiet and so dark that it was easy to lose track of how long you had been traveling, here there was light all around him, a great rushing tunnel of light that he could barely keep track off as it pulled him along. And where before there was only silence, so quiet you were afraid to disturb the peace with a thought, here there was a great whining scream, like he was a human fingernail being dragged across a cosmically vast chalkboard. It was like an acceleration without end, his stomach sinking lower and lower in his body until he was sure his body must be at least ten feet long, all floppy skin and terror holding himself together while his stomach steadfastly tried to vacate the premises entirely.

The sensations were so intense that their sudden absence was almost as traumatic as anything they did. Harry suddenly found himself whole and back to reality once again, curled in a fetal position on a cold metal floor, having been apparently ejected there by the gate behind him, which gave one great whoosh!and fell silent, its duties discharged. Harry lay choking on the floor for several seconds before he realized that he wasn't breathing, and sucked in a great lungful of air, which quickly devolved into a frantic retching coughing fit.

Shivering with the cold of both gate-travel and the sterile room where he now found himself, Harry rose to his feet uncertainly. His stomach was nestled once again in his abdomen where it belonged, but it was quivering like a frightened animal, and as Harry blinked and stumbled it threatened at any moment to make a break for it, and to take Harry's dinner with it. Harry actually had to sit down again to avoid throwing up, seating himself on one of the steps leading up to the gate and taking deep breaths.

"Why the hell didn't you tell me about that, Merlin?" He hissed between gasps of air. The empty room offered no response on Merlin's behalf, and Harry simply remained on the steps, staring at the floor and panting until his body felt somewhat normal again and he was able to rise to his feet.

The chamber he was in housed only the Stargate, which now stood silently behind him, the seven symbols still faintly glowing. Harry noted that on the arch in the Death Chamber there had been a multitude of symbols, whereas this gate possessed only the seven. Perhaps this gate connected only to the one in the Room of Requirement? The room's features were muted, with dull metal walls and rounded corners, two small bars of light running along the walls at floor and ceiling level. There appeared to be two hallways branching off from the room in either direction, to the left and right of the Stargate. Harry looked from one to the other, but there appeared to be no indication as to where either of them led. Scuffing his feet on the ground for a few seconds, he finally shrugged and began down the rightmost passageway, trailing a hand along the cold metallic wall. The strips of light ran along the length of the hallway, providing the only illumination and giving the atmosphere a sense of coldness and sterility. The hallway turned sharply after a few dozen feet, continuing to a large metal doorway that appeared tightly locked and sealed. Harry stepped up towards the shiny portal, reaching out with a hand to brush along its smooth surface. Three huge bolts sealed the door to the walls, barring Harry's way forward completely.

"Now what?" the boy wizard sighed. He looked over his shoulder, thinking of the opposite passageway. What if it featured a similar locked door? Had Merlin sent him to a sepulcher instead of a salvation? With a lurch of fear, Harry wondered if he would even be able to reactivate the gate to return to Hogwarts. His rapidly darting eyes fell on a small panel of buttons, however, and he raced to it, covering the ground in two large strides and letting his eyes rove over the device. It was a display of runes he could not read, a language that was too ancient or simply too foreign for him to decipher, although superficially it seemed to resemble the runes he and the other Hogwarts students had studied (or not studied, in many cases). Reaching out with a finger, Harry tried pressing one of the illuminated buttons. Immediately a holographic interface like the one that had displayed Merlin's message in the Room of Requirements sprang to life, this time displaying a brightly lit marquee of indecipherable words across the doorway. Harry couldn't help himself, and took a startled step backwards before returning to the panel, muttering to himself as he tried to get the portal to relinquish the way forward. He tried pressing a few other buttons, with no results, until one caused a whirring sound to emit from the walls. With the labored sound of metal on metal, the three massive bolts began to retract from the walls, freeing the door from where it had remained sealed for Merlin only knows how long. With a final creak and the hiss of depressurization the door popped loose on its hinges, swinging outwards slightly as the air from inside the hallway rushed into the next area. Harry reached out with one hand and gently pushed on the door, which swung outward.

Harry had to shield his eyes from the brightness of daylight as the great door yawned open with a metallic groan. He stepped out into the midday sun of this strange new world, looking upwards towards the cloudless sky in wonder. A sun like Earth's hung in the sky, but next to it, a smaller and redder star burned as well, accounting for the radiance pervading the outer area. Harry appeared to have stepped into what was, or rather once was, a great metropolitan construction, with steely spires all around him stretching into the sky, magnificent towers of metal and glass catching the light of the two suns and reflecting it, until it seemed there were half a dozen suns or more twinkling in the air. But as Harry looked around him, he noticed signs of neglect, disuse and disrepair creeping in on the shining metropolis. What must have once been well-cultivated verdant areas were now overgrown, strange vines creeping across once-pristine streets and walkways, and massive trees left to grow for far too long, some of them poking branches through the window-panes of nearby buildings, others toppled over entirely onto structures around them. Thankfully the atmosphere was not all deathly quiet; Harry could hear a healthy breeze rustling the leaves of the plants, and in the distance, the warbling call of some kind of bird or other native life.

Moving further away from the gate room, Harry wandered the streets of Yggdrasil, occasionally poking his head into a doorway or window, only to find the buildings deserted, darkened, and dormant. He came upon a fountain of crystal clear water which bubbled merrily, its droplets forming a thousand shining points of light as they shot into the air and descended as sparkling rain on the pool below. Wondering how the device wasn't completely overgrown with algae or clogged with fallen leaves, Harry dared to taste a drop of the water caught upon his outstretched fingertip, and found to his delight that the water was crisp, almost effervescent. Harry was shocked that everything was as well-kept as it was, given that it didn't seem like anyone had lived anywhere in the city for hundreds of years at least.

Cautious of wandering too far, Harry remained close to the gate building, which seemed to be one of the only ones with working lights or other systems. He even ventured into one of the towers, hoping to find some sort of panel like the one that opened the first door, but he found only darkened hallways and sealed doors, with not a spark of life or power anywhere. The darkness of the abandoned buildings wasn't so much of a problem, however, as Harry found that his wand still functioned perfectly well even a world away from Earth, and he was able to generate his own light whenever his curiosity brought him somewhere the light could not reach. Still, he quickly grew tired of poking around in deserted buildings, and started to become frustrated with Yggdrasil as a whole.

"So where is everything, Merlin? What the hell is this place, a welcome center? An abandoned interstellar museum? Where's the help you said would be here?" Merlin offered no reply, and Harry felt a touch of despair creeping over him. Had Merlin been wrong? Had the Ancients simply died out without leaving a useful legacy behind? Harry had arrived too late, it seemed, only in time to marvel at the skeleton of a once-great people while he awaited the destruction of his own. Growing ever more downtrodden, he made his way back to the relatively centralized location of the gate building, crossing a mostly-overgrown square, tall tufts of grass bursting through the cracked roadways once so meticulously laid out.

Making his way back through the open door into the structure housing the Stargate, Harry walked past the gate, traversing the other hallway instead. He found himself faced with another door, similar to the one that had granted him access to the outdoors. And a similar lit panel awaiting his input. He struggled to remember which symbols had been successful at opening the door, and after one mishap where he managed only to set off some sort of high-pitched klaxon, Harry was able to get this door to swing open as well. Instead of revealing another outside area, however, this hallway seemed to lead deeper into the structure, into a darkened room. Harry stepped through the door, jumping at the series of loud clicks that echoed through the sizable chamber as various overhead lights flicked on at his entrance.

The room appeared to be a situation room or staging ground of some kind, designed to house dozens or maybe even hundreds of individuals at various terminals, readouts, and round tables. A host of illuminated screens popped on throughout the room, regaling Harry with tickers of unreadable information and flashing graphics. One of particular interest showed a model of some foreign solar system; judging by the binary star system at its center, Harry inferred that it was a map of local space, and hoped that the green cross hairs indicated on the holographic display represented the location of this place. Studying the map, he noted that there appeared to be numerous planets, all of which had some sort of note or description, as well as several other orbiting bodies, large asteroids or perhaps synthetic stations, scattered throughout the system. A series of colored lines connected the various points to one another, curving elegantly through the emptiness between planets as they all slowly rotated around the central suns. Occasionally a planet would move too far away from another, and the lines would shift slightly, cutting off access between some locations and opening between others. Harry tried to wrap his mind around everything the map represented; a completely foreign solar system, full of planets like Earth and its neighbors, planets never before witnessed by human eyes. Abruptly, however, the map dissolved away, leaving only empty air behind, until lines of blue light started to fill in that empty space as well, a holographic projection constructing itself line by line in front of Harry until it resembled a fairly rudimentary humanoid face, its eyes empty hollows, its mouth an impersonal tight-lipped gash.

"Um…hello?" Harry said, bracing himself to feel foolish once more in the face of a recording.

The face's mouth twitched open to reply, with a short, curt-sounding emission, but either the systems it used to project its voice were malfunctioning, or Harry had run into yet another language barrier.

"You're not a recording, are you?" Harry asked. The face responded with a rapid-fire series of statements and observations. It seemed to jitter around, changing its angles and proportions slightly as it viewed Harry from multiple angles.

"I can't…I can't understand what you're saying," Harry said. He realized he was speaking slowly, like trying to reason with a daft person, and felt stupid. Why would this thing be able to understand him any better if he spoke slowly, when he was still speaking a language from light years away? Still, Merlin had been able to understand him…

The face remained silent and still for a few seconds, before it began displaying more glowing runes. Harry held up his hands and shook his head.

"Yeah, no, I…yes, I've seen your language, but I can't read it anymore than I can understand you when you speak it." The face babbled at him, and Harry though he detected a hint of impatience somewhere in the electronic monotone of its synthetic voice. Harry felt a sharp pinch on the back of his neck, and whirled around to see an electronic arm clutching one of his hairs daintily.

"What the-?" he began, but the protrusion quickly retracted into a nearby wall, while the voice droned through some sort of explanation. It's voice turned up at the end, and it started at Harry plaintively, clearly asking him for something.

"I don't know what you want," Harry said half-apologetically, but unable to keep the impatience out of his voice. "Look, Merlin sent me? He said there would be stuff here, information or power or something, anything I can use to help my own planet."

The hologram chattered some more at Harry, before it deconstructed itself swiftly, the light stripping away until only empty space remained, and the flat white plane that seemed to emit the various holograms into the air dimmed. Harry sighed, leaning forward on the projector and glancing from mystery to mystery within the room. Slowly an idea dawned on him and his face cracked into a smile.

"If these symbols look so much like ancient runes…" he thought aloud. "Just maybe…but I'll need Hermione."

Walking to the door, Harry turned once and looked back into the chamber. So much information lay within, just out of his reach. Would he be able to figure it out in time to make use of it?

The gate stood silent sentry over the embarkation room as Harry entered. Glancing across the featureless walls, he saw no immediately apparent way to reactivate the gate, but he didn't let fear set in. Stepping back and rubbing the side of his head, he struggled to think, searching for some key piece of information Merlin had no doubt secreted away in his subconscious. Sure enough, as he focused his mind on getting back to Earth, he heard the grinding of machinery as the gate's outer ring began spinning. Not to be bowled over again, Harry took several safe steps backwards, and maintained his composure when the gate's energy erupted outwards. Was Yggdrasil able to read his mind? he wondered to himself. Just how powerful had the Ancients been? Taking a breath and wincing in anticipation of the cold, Harry plunged forward through the gate and into the howling tunnel of light.

The Room of Requirement was still empty when the gate deposited him back on its floor. Coughing and shivering, he took a few minutes to warm himself back up again before he dared to crack the door and check the hallways. His little excursion had lasted most of the night, he realized, and Hogwarts was now wrapped in the foggy half-light of dawn. With a small groan, Harry recognized that he was going to be unable to get more than a few minutes of sleep. Wrapping the Invisibility Cloak around himself, he swiftly wound his way up to the portrait of the fat lady, jumping at every corner, expecting to find Artemius or Filch leering about, searching for him. He wondered if Artemius would try to single him out tomorrow, perhaps even arrest him outright if he had the authority. He shuddered to think at what the rumor mills might produce if the Hogwarts student body saw him carted away by Unspeakables at breakfast. But Artemius had no proof, and even Snape's inevitable support would be insufficient to get Dumbledore to allow such a thing. Even outside the loop the headmaster could be very useful, probably more so than if he were brought fully up to speed.

Whispering the password to the half-asleep portrait, Harry slipped inside the deserted common room and crept up the stairs, avoiding the distinctive creaky step near the top of the staircase. He closed the bedroom door gently behind him, the soft creak of the hinges muffled by the rhythmic droning stores emitting from Ron's bed. Carefully slipping into his own bed, Harry soon drifted off into what was to be only a short nap, plagued with fitful dreams of the future's dark offerings. Voldemort's face hung over his slumber like a dark omen, flanked by the swimming terrors of the unknown, and it was almost with relief that Harry opened his eyes a few short hours later.