Author's Note: A little bit of magical theory from Dumbledore here. Some of you will love it, others, well, you don't have to understand all of it - but it'll make what happens a lot more awesome, I think.
Also: WOO 100k views!
Kaleidoscope
In the Fae Courts, there were debts which were spoken and debts which were unspoken.
And she owed nothing to Winter any longer.
It was Solstice night, a decade since she had been fifteen years of age and she could move on.
To greener pastures, to a less cold part of the uncaring universe.
To fulfill her ambition of killing Gellert Grindelwald.
"I was the daughter of Winter. I have regained my humanity, relearned my compassion. I am warm once more."
But she wasn't powerful, not yet. She had paid her debt of ten years of service to remove that terrible curse upon her body. She had paid her debt of wasting the Queen's time by running at Gellert Grindelwald as though her life was worth nothing.
But tonight, it was over. Tonight, she would hand in her application for study at the Clock Tower.
Tonight was a night of contemplation.
Who were the Fae to humanity? There was no conceivable way they could stay on this plane, that she was so familiar with, that she had missed for so long. They were anathemas to the balance in the world, even if they balanced themselves.
Gaia sent Counter-Guardians against the intrusion of the Fae once their borrowed power ran out. And very few could be used to continually slaughter men, women and children to keep them there. They drained the life of humanity in seconds, wizards and mages in minutes.
Ironic. Maya Rorkin looked no older than fifteen. She had probably borrowed ten years of her own life, but she didn't know it.
But tonight was a strange night, because there was a hint of power in the air, a hint of the Courts.
The one which was weakest at this moment. She might have been forty miles away from that little town where only evil reigned, but she could feel it even here.
She could feel the way that the Fae distorted the Universe, created a semblance of a different kind of order all together.
The ice in her veins which had not yet thawed screamed at her to fight whatever was here and screamed words of caution in the same tone.
There was something powerful very close by.
She smiled at the aide, pushing back her hair forever tainted to glow a midnight blue by light of sun or torch and flashed a smile at a rather attractive blonde girl waiting in line before her.
Gather
The wards in the home of Nicholas Flamel were airtight. It took serious magical ability to even realize they existed, so there was a small (and ever smaller) list of people who could appear in his waiting room.
Kischur always just appeared in his study, if he just wanted to chat. In the event of emergencies, the man had the nerve to show up in his bedroom. He had nearly taken out the man's eyes for the offense, but it had been justified that one time.
This was a signature he recognized, something as fundamental as he was. There was a measure of insanity, of the breakdown of sanity.
Well, he'd never said that the girl couldn't come calling, but he certainly didn't appreciate it.
"We have a guest," Perenelle said, though she knew he had known as quickly as she. "Will you greet her?"
Nicholas sighed heavily, wandering out of his sitting room. He was indulging in one of his favorite habits - wine straight from the bottle and cheap sushi from a relatively nearby supermarket. He particularly enjoyed it because Perenelle thought the entire business was disgusting, but did it with him anyway.
He almost laughed aloud at the sheer relief on her face.
"The Association probably wants you for something important."
He shook his head. "I'm sure they can wait. I mean, we don't get to do this often and we-"
"Nicholas! You have responsibilities!"
"Alright, alright," he grumbled.
As he expected, the girl waiting was the Blue, who seemed to have a terrible headache. "The Green told me to summon you."
Nicholas frowned. "You left her alone in a fight?"
"No," Blue said, playing with her hair. "Fight hasn't started yet. She thinks it's something really big. She's got a ton of Gaia's energy in-"
Nicholas was all business now. "Was she pulling from ley lines or was it from the Root?"
Blue squinted, thinking. "Hmm, it was hard to tell. There was a strong ley where we were, but she wasn't cloaked in it. It was more a part of her than anything. I think there were a bunch of people doing some power exchange ritual, but they probably botched it because it started to look like a summoning ritual."
"Today's the Solstice," Nicholas realized, paling. "We need to go now." Nicholas gritted his teeth.
"They're in a place known as Bones manor, in Aylesbury," Blue said.
His eyes widened. "Is Astrid mad?" he gasped. "There are things buried in Aylesbury. Secrets and lies and Astrid should know better than to be taking part in a ritual performed there."
Blue grabbed Nicholas by the elbow and they disappeared.
The Storm
Astrid was worried because the strength of the magic from within the center of the circle was rising exponentially every few seconds. She had expected a huge surge of power, evil to her, addictive and enticing to the participants including her daughter, but it showed no sign of stopping.
There was very clearly something within the circle and now she was doing her best to contain the power from leaking through space and time like some sort of beacon.
Because there were other things in the world that weren't wizards. She fought some of them.
There was a reason that Bones Manor was neutral ground.
It was because it was surrounded by the magical equivalent of a no-fly zone.
"Harry, listen to me and listen to me now. This is extremely important. When whatever the hell that is arrives, we're all going to fight with it. It's going to be very powerful and it's going to have the ability to contaminate you with something that even magic can't cure."
Harry nodded.
"There's a concept known as Alaya. I can't explain it, but just know that it means that you have to pretend nothing but you exists. At best, only four other people are going to show up besides you and I. You are going to need to pretend that nothing. But. You. Exists. Not me, not Daphne, not anything else. Everything is a product of your mind. The stability in the circle- it's breaking."
There was no flash of light, no keening wail. There wasn't anything quite as dramatic as Harry would have believed. If he had been watching with his eyes activated, he was sure that he would have seen some sort of change, but the clarity of magic was only as exact as another wizard's without them.
A girl that was Harry's age sat in the circle, almost a mirror of Daphne in her little green dress. She had the purest white hair that he had ever seen and when she looked up and scanned the crowd, Harry realized that it was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his entire life.
"In this scenario, there's nothing to do but strike." Astrid's pupils turned into slits and a miasma of pulsating green energy appeared around her like a cloud. She disappeared in a flash of blue and white and was suddenly in the circle, behind the unhumanly beautiful girl. She threw her palms outwards and there was an explosion of light and sound which knocked everyone down.
Harry was driven down to his knees by the sheer suffocating presence of this wild magic.
His eyes activated involuntarily, cutting through the flying clods of dirt. He watched with a sinking heart when he realized that Astrid and the Faerie were now locked in some sort of contest of will. Astrid was now several meters from the Faerie, a trio of beams of light extending from her fingertips. The beams appeared to be tunneling through some sort of mirror of the magic which surrounded Astrid, in a burning bright orange and red.
Abruptly, Astrid dropped as though her strings had been cut and she crumpled to the floor. Her magic receded.
"How very amazing," the girl said. Harry felt a tremble of something through him, some strange rewarding sensation which forced his heart of hammer, at the sound of the voice. It was as pure as a summer breeze.
It was very warm for winter-time.
"I haven't met anyone who's thought to challenge me on my own grounds."
Astrid shifted and groaned.
"No matter, that power is too dangerous for any mortal to have, even if it belonged to my court. Perhaps, if your achievements in this life were great enough, your soul will continue to exist on the Throne of Heroes."
It was clear that something the girl had been channeling was complete, because there was a mournful note and she raised her hand. Harry knew she was to eliminate Astrid.
"No!" he shouted, but the Faerie paid him no heed.
The heat increased by amazing proportions, then the Faerie let some spell fly.
It traveled through the air, burning into Harry's consciousness forever.
And then there was a flash of flame and a song more beautiful than Harry had ever heard, of death and rebirth and the struggles of humanity.
Albus Dumbledore had arrived, between the trajectory of the spell and Astrid, in robes of midnight blue and dancing stars, in his hand a wand that Harry had never seen before, a cold and dark majesty of power. Around his neck was a cloak of shimmering silver which changed his very nature into something more secretive.
The bolt of light impacted with the cloak and the cloak absorbed it. Dumbledore barely reacted to it, but Harry saw the strain in the wildly fluctuating strands of his emotions.
Astrid had managed to struggle back to her feet.
"Can't kill it, Albus. We have to seal it and send it back."
Dumbledore agreed. "I'll hold it off for a while. See if you can recover a bit of your strength for now."
He turned around. "Blaze of the First Fractal, attend me!" he cried and the afternoon sun rose into the sky. His left sleeve burned off in its entirety.
There was a strange current of anger in the Fae that Harry would not have realized without his eyes.
"You are of Summer," Dumbledore said. "Wear not a false face."
Whatever glamour the girl was wearing had fallen away and now she was a woman, her eyes mocking and devious in a way that could not possibly be confused for human. Her beauty was an afterthought by this point, put aside by her wild, unchecked power.
But Dumbledore was not afraid, though even Harry could see the divide, the gulf between them.
"You will be an interesting man to kill, Albus Dumbledore. You possess not the strength to rework the world, but you have no traits of weakness whatsoever."
Dumbledore staggered under the weight of her words, judging him so plainly, but he never fell.
"This is your great ability, your concept, so to speak. Desperation. But not the desperation of thought. The desperation of soul. No matter how many times you are taken to the floor, you will rise yet again to do battle once more."
His expression was still serene, but Harry could see the maelstrom of emotions encompassing the man.
"Livius chose very well. You are the true inheritor of his True Chords, a little human thing which rivaled even your stolen power."
"Did you know my teacher?" Dumbledore spoke, his voice not very different from a tone of curious politeness he would have adopted during a tea-time conversation.
"That shouldn't be the question you should be asking, Albus Dumbledore. That question is whether or not you really want to attract the attention of the Faerie who killed him."
And then, Astrid was recovered. "Seal her, Albus! The Six Sutras of the Platform, do it! We have three points!"
They formed two legs of an awkward triangle around the Fae.
"Harry, remember. NOTHING!" Astrid shouted, her voice sounding with a hint of the cause being lost.
Harry burst into motion, running towards them and Dumbledore had already begun to chant.
Harry felt the magic push through him and he let it go.
"Nothing, nothing but the magic…"
But it was impossible, for there was suddenly the presence of not one, not two, but three extremely powerful forces in the area, forcing his attention to their arrival.
His eyes were drawn at first to a grizzled old warrior with strongly Germanic features and a connection to him which he could not truly understand.
He knew instinctively that this man was similar to him, that he had done great things, had understood… understood the turns of the- Harry didn't know what it meant, he didn't understand himself, much less someone else and that little word was beyond him. What did the man understand? What was he supposed to understand?
The operation of-
The multitude of lights and color and sound in the k-
No, still nothing. He wasn't ready.
NOTHING. He must pay attention to nothing. Nothing at-
And the girl, with her long red hair and almost elfin features, who had dipped her toes into insanity, into the the collapse, into the oh-so-blue sea of-
NOTHING.
But his teacher's teacher was here. This was Nicholas Flamel, the sorcerer of sorcerers, the grand forefather of alchemy, the legend of the Philosopher's Stone, who was the Void, the Truth of all things, the-
NOTHING.
He could have nothing!
The girl stood between him and Dumbledore. The graying man had taken the spot between him and Astrid. Flamel was across from him in this strange circle.
NOTHING.
THERE WAS… NOTHING.
But nothing was slipping. This was too interesting.
Harry felt a pang of shame. He could not fail them, would not fail them. They were legends, legends he had seen and met or heard of or even legends who were to be.
HE was a legend, he would be a legend. If he survived this night and if he were to survive this night he would have to make a contract with his interest, to hold it off until later.
NOTHING.
And there were other presences there, suddenly, presences which also shook the world. They were strange, alien, anathemas, which Harry could not or would not understand, things that hurt to look at. He was sure his eyes were bleeding once more.
He tried to pull the magic away but the misery that saturated the air was too much.
He tried to think. He tried to be nothing. He wanted to be one with the collapsed people all around him, their magic all seeped away to keep this ritual going.
NOTHING.
No, he mustn't.
But unlike the other, more skilled, more practiced magicians and wizards and sorcerers around him, he could not keep up the illusion of nothing.
"Well, they're all here, ready for the taking, aren't they?" a harsh, voice crowed.
"We can have vengeance. Vengeance for the Lord!" Another voice.
Darkness.
"Do not." A commander. "Strout. Svelten. Welcome to my lands. Well, let me reiterate. Welcome to the only portion of my lands which I do not have full control over. Welcome to Aylesbury."
The harsher voice again. "Those two. They nearly killed me. I will have my own, sweet vengeance as well!" This must have been Strout. "You're too grounded in what's proper and what's not, Ortenrosse! We can destroy them - look, they don't even realize we are here."
The other voice, Svelten. "Except for that young boy. That beautiful young boy. What is he doing in this circle of six points? I count legends." His voice became almost reverent, but certainly mocking. "Albus Dumbledore, the head of the living Wizards. Two primary Colors of the Mage's Association. The Philosopher. And the Kaleidoscope himself."
And then it came to Harry. That was the word. This was the meaning. This man, and he, shared something called the Kaleidoscope. He knew it, but what was it.
"And this boy is distracted. A student perhaps? Do go back to not being distracted. I'm very sure that, despite it all, none of us truly wish to see whatever you are holding back."
But this Ortenrosse character knew that he was only making it more difficult for Harry.
Harry screwed his eyes shut. It was easier when no one was addressing him.
That way, he could pretend that the voice from within the circle, the voice speaking to him and him only didn't exist.
Too late.
He had acknowledged it.
Odysseus had heard the sirens. Odysseus was untied.
He was swimming towards the sound. There was sound. There was no more silence.
And the world was crashing in on him.
He kept channeling the magic, but Astrid's warning should have been heeded better. He was contaminated by whatever spiritual entity, a Faerie?
"Oh, I see it. You're so cute. You were able to hold it together for so long."
The voice was musical. The voice was perfect. The voice was teasing him - power that could be his. Understanding beyond his wildest dreams. War, excess, potential!
"This is upsetting. Your companions seem strong enough to keep me contained despite the loss of your concentration. This is Solstice Night and this is the night when I am at weakest, of course. If this were Midsummer's, you would be the reason they all burned."
Harry tried to tune out the voice again, but it was like some disease. He had caught it already.
"Hey. Pay attention to me. I'm not so terrible as to actually go through with that threat. You overestimate how much I truly care about this, Harry Potter."
No. Think of Nothing. Don't listen.
A pair of hands ran through his hair and he felt the Faerie's breath on his ear.
"You are a little young yet, but one day, you're going to need me. And you're going to want me."
Harry didn't know what could have made him stupid enough as to vocally acknowledge her. "No I won't."
"Well, whoever the boy is, he's the weakest link," the voice of Strout sounded. "He's cracked. I think Dumbledore's compensating for him right now."
"That bad?" Ortenrosse wondered. "There must be a Counter-Guardian in there. Or perhaps a Faerie. You never know. Judging from these people standing around - one of them is wearing Fate/Materials on his cloak, it could be anything."
"What if it were the Lord? What if they're holding back the Crimson Moon?" Svelten asked.
"Even if they were, we can't risk disrupting them. The backlash will kill everything, including our newly rebirthed Lord. That is, if it even is our newly rebirthed Lord."
"And it's not." A female voice. Sensual and strange. She was not identified.
"Hey, don't listen to them. They won't be able to hurt you, Harry. They'll probably fail at hurting Dumbledore and the Green as well. Both have a lot of experience dealing with those things after all. Let's have a little chat, Harry."
"I don't want to talk with you. If Nicholas Flamel is here to stop you, himself, you're probably something bad. And you've probably done things to hurt me already, that I don't know about."
"Don't be so childish, Harry. We both have much to gain from knowing one another. My name is Aurora." The voice was so pure, so beautiful. Harry felt a bit of liquid run down the side of his ear. He was bleeding. "Why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself? A story, if you will."
"That's all you want from me? A story. One story and you promise to go back to where you came from?"
His eyes were open now. And by god, he couldn't describe how beautiful she looked. Oh, if he had the words.
Aurora smiled. "Yes. One story. And a promise. That you'll seek me out and speak to me once again. And tell me another story. Whatever you want at that point, you'll want. But all you owe me right now are two stories. One told now and one later. And I'll leave you to be defended from some big bad bloodsuckers, one who would love to be touching you like I am now."
Her hands were running down his back, her face too close. Harry wasn't sure he liked it or not.
Harry sighed in relief.
"Okay. Let me tell you the story of Egbert, Godelot and Uric. Once upon a time, there was a man named Egbert Prewett, who had spent his life learning the ins and outs of the magics related to the manipulation of things he molded of the Earth. He was a good man and kind and he had a teacher who imparted upon him the secrets of a very powerful magic which travelled down the line of Merlin."
"The First Blaze," she whispered, her lips tickling his cheeks.
"When Egbert was not yet thirty years of age, a man named Emeric fought and killed his teacher for the possession of a very powerful wand, known as the Deathstick, or the Wand of Destiny. Emeric was known as The Evil, because he had committed some grave sins to magic which nobody could or wanted to understand. Egbert swore vengeance and received it, fighting Emeric to a standstill despite the wand - three times, before he finally killed the man by bringing down his fortress. Only the wand and a single finger could be recovered."
"But then Egbert rested on his laurels and took a student rather than continually improving his abilities, didn't he?"
Harry nodded, a stray strand of hair brushing against his nose.
"And one day, a young follower of Emeric, a man by the name of Godelot, Godelot Lestrange, decided that he would win the wand back. Godelot murdered Egbert as the man left a bank and stole his wand from him and tortured Uric into insanity. But Uric recovered in the arms of his beloved, Egbert's second child, a beautiful daughter with red hair. And he swore that he would recycle revenge upon Godelot."
"A cycle hot, a cycle cold, a cycle that will never end. Round and round and round and round - this is how you turn revenge." Clearly, Aurora had read Havelock Sweeting as well and she was just humoring him.
"And he did. He took his master's body, a man who would have been his father one day, and cut away the First Blaze and wore it for himself. And he was the only man insane enough to win the Wand of Elder in a duel."
"You would have made a good bard, Harry," she said. And there was a blossom of pride and something else, something so happy about the fact that he had pleased her in any way that it jumped up and down in his chest. "Tell your Headmaster that he might see me again, if he survives this coming battle."
And with that, she disappeared.
The quickest reaction was from Zelretch.
"Our fight is unfinished!" he shouted. Astrid immediately reached for Harry and pulled him back behind a line formed by Flamel, Zelretch and Dumbledore.
In front of them, several meters further than the softly moaning body of Daphne Greengrass on the floor was a collection of things that those around him seemed to recognize.