Chapter 16:

"Sixteen Shards. Sixteen gods spread across this… cosmere. Based on the letter, the notes in her journal, and Gellert's own recorded observations from his torture sessions, this is what I have learned. I believe I can confidently identify at least eleven. Imagination and Equality, one alive, one dead, both here on Earth. How a god can die, I do not yet understand. Is it that the mind dies, but the power remains? For surely if Equality had died as the notes claim, then the Magical Art associated with her, Enchantment, would have ceased functioning too?"

From Albus Dumbledore's Notes; 20th Century, Earth.


When Harry woke up, there was no shackle on his arm. He rose wearily, observing for any sign of Dumbledore, but the old man seemed to be absent. Mak condensed from silver-blue smoke on the bed beside him.

"We've been moved somewhere. I don't think we're in Hogwarts anymore."

They were certainly not in the Hospital Wing. In fact, the room reminded him of ordinary human hospitals. White walls, beeping machines, white sheets, a window on the far side, drawn closed, and… yep, a hospital gown.

Hesitantly, Harry slipped out of bed and pulled open the curtains… revealing ordinary human buildings. It was night, so the streets were dark, but the five-floor townhouses looked just like ones he could find in Ealing or Wembley.

The door slammed opened with a soft 'click'. Harry spun around, a lightning bolt charging along his forearm. His visitor was a tall man with blonde hair and blue eyes. He wore fancy looking black wizard robes, with a silver pin at the collar in the shape of a set of scales. His chin was so perfectly straight you'd think it had been carved.

"Mr Potter. You're awake." His voice was gravelly and brisk.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Anattas Greengrass. My daughter Daphne contacted you with my request to represent your interests in the trial of Sirius Black, or any other legal areas you might yourself facing conflict in." Spoken like a true lawyer.

Harry let the electricity slip away as Mak nodded softly to him. The man was telling the truth.

"Nice to finally meet you, Mr Greengrass." Harry said, offering the man his hand, which he shook firmly. "I take it this is some sort of Wizarding hospital?"

"Indeed," Greengrass said, stepping up to the window beside Harry, "St Mungo's they call it."

Harry took a deep breath and turned back to the window.

"Do I have you to thank for my lack of confinement?" he asked.

Greengrass smirked. "Indeed. My daughter, and Miss Weasley, appraised me of the situation, and I've taken the liberty of filing an injunction against the Headmaster and contacting Director Bones of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Amelia deemed the Headmaster's confinement of you unlawful, hence the absence of the chain on your wrist. Dumbledore hasn't answered any of my Owls, but I plan to catch him in person after Black's trial tomorrow."

"I wouldn't thank me yet, though. Dumbledore will have the injunction vanished before it even hits anyone's desk. The man is nothing if not meticulous."

Harry snorted in agreement.

"I'm here, firstly to advise you as your lawyer not to walk out the front door, as there are about a hundred reporters from across the globe camped in the lobby." Harry groaned, banging his head against the glass window. "Secondly, to give you this." He pulled a rolled-up newspaper from within his robes and handed it to Harry, who unrolled it. Mak landed on the parchment and giggled softly at the headline article.

Harry Potter: The Most Powerful Wizard in the World?

By Rita Skeeter

Below it was a shot of Harry and Mak, summoning the storm.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Harry muttered, before continuing to read.

The photo above was taken last night at the first task of the Tri-wizard Tournament, showcasing the young hero Harry Potter literally summoning a storm to combat the fiery inferno that engulfed the stadium.

There remains no definitive news on just how the blaze was started. Still, it doesn't take a mind like Professor Dumbledore's to determine the most likely scenario: that, in the chaos of the attack, a Dragon got loose and set the arena afire. What is clear, however, is that the legendary Headmaster of Hogwarts school attempted a spell to control the flames just as Mr Potter did, but failed. I heard the admission from Professor Dumbledore's own mouth that he, "attempted a storm enchantment, but the flames grew too fast…" to control. And yet, Harry Potter succeeded where the Headmaster failed. Does this mean that Harry is, in fact, more powerful than a wizard widely considered the most adept sorcerer since the days of Merlin?

This comes on top of the shocking news I have managed to glean from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Harry was actually being kept restrained and at Hogwarts against his will by Professor Dumbledore! Such claims seem preposterous, but Aurors rarely lie.

Harry has already proved his magical prowess since his return to the Wizarding World, demonstrating his combat abilities by subduing ex-Auror Sirius Black without a wand, then uncovering the man's innocence and unlawful incarceration. He also has some power over other magical beings, as he has not one but two Veela hanging on his every word, is apparently friends with Hogwarts half-giant groundskeeper Hagrid and can summon angels to his side at will. If Harry can do all these things now as a teenager, imagine what he might be capable of when he is an adult?!

This reporter will undoubtedly be watching closely as the Saga of Harry Potter continues to unfold.

"Well," Harry said, crumpling the paper in his hands, "At this rate, I'm going to be considered the wizard-messiah before Christmas." This was just getting ridiculous now. The Saga of Harry Potter. Bah!

"There are worse things to be known as," Greengrass noted, clearly trying to contain his humour at Harry's predicament.

"I want to go back to being homeless. It was so much easier," he muttered. Then he turned to Greengrass, a dark look in his eye. "I need paper, a pen, and an owl. Now that the bloody shackle is off, I can finally send word to my friends."


Daphne stood in an elegant silver dress with her hair done in an intricate bun outside the Courtroom with Ginny Weasley – not exactly something she ever thought she'd be doing. Like, at all.

"What's taking so long?" the Gryffindor asked, wringing her hands together behind her back. She wore her school robes. They were apparently the only nice clothes she owned – though they looked newly purchased instead of the threadbare drab she'd worn before Harry had come to Hogwarts.

Daphne shrugged. "Could be a bunch of things. Trials are fickle things." Ginny looked up at Daphne – the red-head was a good foot shorter than she was – her brows knitted tightly together.

"Yes, because the legal system is somewhere you want as much ambiguity as possible."

"Hey, I don't make the rules, I just live by them. You're just lucky my Dad is a good lawyer, or you probably would have gotten yourself thrown in Azkaban." Ginny winced, and Daphne immediately regretted her words. Ginny's testimony had, realistically, been precisely the type of recount a teenager could be expected to give. Focussed more on the emotional side of the event than the logic. There was no way around it, though. Ginny was a first witness to Harry's interrogation of Black and exposure of Pettigrew (Daphne was too, but no one knew that except Harry, Gabrielle, the Weasley twins, and Ginny herself). It had taken all of her father's exceptional talent to keep the prosecution from probing into her checked past.

Finally, after hours of waiting, the black tiled door swung open, and Cornelius Fudge and Barty Crouch stormed through the door, and judging by the way their faces were contorted, she'd wager the result hadn't gone in their favour.

She caught a glimpse of Black being led from the manacled interrogation chair by St Mungo's nurses before Harry stepped out with her father, the door closing behind them.

"Well?" She didn't like the way her father's lips were pursed.

"Not exactly what I was going for, but we won," her father said.

"What do you mean?" Ginny asked, tugging on a lock of hair she'd been chewing before.

"Sirius has been acquitted of all charges, and compensation for his years in prison is going to be delivered to his personal Gringotts Vault on the 'morrow," Harry explained, running a hand through his hair. "He's been reprimanded into the doctors care for now, until he's fought all the effects of the Dementor exposure from his system. He would have dispersed it on his own apparently, but it would take time and be painful. With the Doc's help, his mind should be relatively healed in the next month or so, and the Ministry is going to pay for all of it."

"What I don't get is why Lucius Malfoy sent his wife, instead of coming himself," her father said, scratching his beard.

"He missed the whole thing?" Daphne asked aghast. He hadn't been there when Ginny was being interrogated (the only time Daphne had been allowed in the room, as she was supposed to be the girl's chaperone), but to not show up at all…

"My thinking exactly. And considering the fate of the Black estate is in play, he should at least have lobbied Fudge for access right then and there. As it stands, the fate of the funds will be settled once Sirius has his faculties back between him and Narcissa, Lucius wife and Sirius cousin. Sirius' mother's will states that the estate goes to Narcissa, but his father's will says that is should go to the eldest son, which is Sirius."

They remained in silence for a few moments, before Harry clapped his hands and slung his arm around Ginny's shoulders.

"Come on. Ice-cream's on me."


Harry sat in his room, staring at the documents on his desk for what had to be the 100th time. He'd grabbed five pages from Dumbledore's office that night, and now he wished beyond anything that he'd grabbed them all.

If these notes were accurate – and Harry had no reason to think they'd be false – there were sixteen gods scattered across dozens of planets, and two of them were on Earth; one alive, one dead. One of the pages, as Harry had noted when he took them that night, was a map. In the centre was the inverted Europe. The continent itself was marked 'The World Sea'. Between it and Great Britain – which on the map was called The Sea of Shadows – in the place normal maps would call the English Channel, was the Valley. The map had served as a jog for Mak's memories, and she'd confirmed that the locations on the paper were accurate. Two arrows had been drawn, pointing to two different areas in the Sea of Shadows. The first, in the south, was marked 'Imagination's Perpendicularity. Location: The Vault of Dreams.' The second pointed at Scotland. 'Equality's Perpendicularity. Location: The Chamber of Secrets. WARNING: UNSTABLE-DO NOT USE!'

The Chamber of Secrets. The place where the shade of Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, had taken Ginny. She had, reluctantly, described it to him. Dark, slimy, dank, waterlogged, covered in snake statues. And in the centre of the chamber, beneath a statue of Salazar Slytherin, was a pool of light. It made Harry feel sick just thinking about it. Ginny hadn't said anything about what Voldemort had wanted with the pool, and Harry hadn't asked.

The map was filled with more sections, some more detailed than others. Some corresponded to planets, others to objects, or, in the case of 'The Dor,' apparently giant cosmic storms of magic.

Aliens. Dumbledore apparently had proof of aliens. Not only that, but this map indicated that one could use the Valley to travel between planets. Mak had even confirmed it long before they'd seen the map. She'd told him that the faeries were fleeing across the sea. He'd naively assumed that was a body of water, not space.

Sixteen gods, and if the notes he'd stolen were to be believed, four of them were already dead. Including one of the gods on his own world. Equality. Equality was dead. He supposed that would explaina great deal. The axial tilt for one. The bizarreness of the blood prejudice in Wizard society as well. Even some of the problems in the non-Magic world could probably be connected back to that. He also didn't like the fact that Odium, the supposed god of hate, had been the one to do it. The metaphor that presented made Harry want to be sick.

And Imagination? According to the notes, he'd turned a blind eye. Hiding away in this Vault of Dreams while the outside world went to hell.

But what scared Harry the most was the final part of the notes he'd taken.

"I find myself working with the legendary Nicolas Flamel. He has apparently known about the cosmere for centuries, travelling it extensively. He has a plan, a plan I find myself agreeing with. If Odium or one of the Shards we do not know does come for this world, we will not let it fall, no matter what stands in our way."

What the fuck was this plan? What did Dumbledore and this Flamel guy intend to do if a fucking god showed up on Earth to kill them all? It had to be big. Scary big. And based on Harry's interactions with the man so far, he had a powerful feeling he was not going to like this plan one bit. At least it cleared up Dumbledore's words to him those months ago. "I have spent a great deal of time researching powers such as yours Mr Potter, and you will find that you and your brethren across the universe all share a similar weakness." Aluminium must be a common weakness of the magic these gods created when they arrived on a planet. Dumbledore had known that because of Flamel. If it stopped Harry from using his powers – which came from Imagination – he couldn't help wondering what it did to the people who got their powers from other gods; specifically, Odium and Ruin, whom to Harry's mind sounded the most dangerous. Or perhaps it had an effect on the magic of Equality – Enchantment – as well? One he could use against Dumbledore. The next time he went to Gringotts, he might just ask the Goblins if they could stockpile some of the raw stuff for him. It wasn't much, but having a knife made might not be a bad idea.

He turned back to the notes again and sighed.

Equality is dead. Killed by Odium, aka Hatred. He couldn't stop repeating those two sentences in his head. Each time he thought about it, he felt his brain spin, and his heart squirm in his chest. It was just something that you really did not want to think about.

What did it have to do with the voice he'd heard the night the Dementors attacked? Could that have been the voice of a god? One of these 'Shards'? It had sounded female, but Imagination was always referred to with a male pronoun. Equality had been a woman, apparently. Had she spoken to him? But how could she have talked to him if she was dead? Could gods see the future and send messages forward in time? If that was the case, what bloody chance did anyone even have? Or, and this was the thing he really didn't want to consider, was there another god on Earth, one of the unknown ones? One that no one knew about. With Imagination hiding and Equality dead, Earth was clearly vulnerable to these other gods. Had one already arrived and begun sowing discord? Or was it a benevolent deity that wanted to help them?

He couldn't tell the others about this. He barely understood it himself, and they had enough on their plates as it was. Their mission was still the same – rescue the faeries. Doing that would hopefully disrupt whatever plan Dumbledore and this Flamel guy had.

It made his head throb something terrible. He was a teenager for crying out loud. He shouldn't have to deal with magical gods and potential alien invasions. Who else is going to do it? That was the voice of his annoying logical side. He really hated that voice.

Harry gritted his teeth, opened his drawer, and shoved the papers inside. There was nothing to do about it now. Now, he just needed to get some sleep.


Albus sat in his office, staring at the items on his desk. The Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone and the Philosopher's Stone. Opposite him sat a tall man with dark hair, greying at the temples. He had a hard face, and his body was lean like one who was used to travel.

"Five Albus. We had five out of seven splinters. One more would have gotten us inside the Vault of Dreams. Now, not only are there two wild splinters out there, but you lost two of the five we had!" Albus flinched as if struck. He deserved that.

Flamel stood up, kicking over his chair, and began to pace.

"Two splinters in the past twenty years, whereas, before, they only broke off in intervals of a few centuries… The shattering is speeding up! We must get the missing pieces back! Our plan will only work if we have them all. If even one splinter is missing, the process will only start again. Imagination's strength must be waning. If it fails completely, and Equality is allowed to shatter permanently, we all lose our powers."

"I have a plan. The boy appears to be intelligent. If we explain the situation to him, he may agree to help us willingly. The fate of the world is at stake!" Flamel turned his eyes back on Dumbledore. As always, Albus was slightly in awe of the other man. He was hundreds of years old, thanks to the faerie he'd managed to imprison, creating the first and only Philosopher's Stone. There was a power about him. Colours seemed to warp around his person, becoming more vibrant in his presence. As the man stared at him, Albus couldn't help his gaze drifting to the man's belt. Three glass vials hung there, each filled with some solution Albus didn't know. Beside them was a dagger made of aluminium in a black sheath. This weapon Albus did know the purpose of, and he was undeniably and understandably terrified of it.

"And if the boy refuses?"

"We use the dagger and take the faerie ourselves."

"For Equality. For Imagination. For Gaea and Ourans."

"For the Greater Good."