Chapter 48 – A Super-Circle

Hermione, Barb, Odin, and I deliberately plotted Apparation courses, which deviated from straight up at angles away from center, which would launch us in the figure of an opening four-petaled flow bud. We still didn't know how long an Apparate was needed. We would feel for obstacles and then extend our destination what we felt was an additional fifteen-hundred feet. For safety, we were astride our brooms, so that we could immediately right ourselves and fly to maintain altitude.

I started to mentally reach for my first possible Apparation destination. I knew I had to go at least twenty-five hundred feet, so I focused on what seemed to be that distance. I was shocked that my desired landing point was obstructed. My sense of Apparating distance was off. I tried for a point which I hoped would be twice as far away. I felt myself traveling along my chosen path. I was upside down and needing too much effort to get atop my broom. I finally managed to haul myself upright and start flying in a loop. Breathing was difficult. I was too high and the darkness was disoriented. The moon above said I was right-side up.

If I was having this much trouble, what shape was Hermione in? I messaged her through the Stone.

Help, I think I'm flying upside down.

"Light your light tube. I'll find you." I searched below me. She wasn't in front of me. I turned my broom in a semi-circle. There she was! Hermione was below me and a thousand feet away in the direction I was flying. I swooped towards her, ordering her "pull up on your broom and try to gain just a little altitude, I'll be at your side very soon."

I also reached for Barb, quickly explaining the problem.

I see her light. I'm on my way. I'm a little farther from her than you are.

I pulled up too much. I'm stalling and afraid I'm going to slip off my broom."

"Almost there, just hand on. Think hard about moving forward and up."

I was at her side. I used one arm to pull the nose of her broom down so she was level, then I got right beneath her and pushed up my shoulders. Barb had arrived. I saw her grab Hermione's shoulder and pull in a way which rotated both the broom and Hermione. I changed my support to pushing both upward and in the direction of rotation. I saw Hermione trying to lean in that direction. She was good! "We'll fly beside you for a little while, so you can catch your breath. Night makes this tough, the air is thin and I'm not sure how far above the mountain we are. This was dumb!"

We decided to fly in very tight circles and slowly lower our altitude. It should start to be light within an hour. Secrecy was no longer the number one objective; survival was. We knew we were near very tall mountains, we just didn't know how far from them we were or what direction they were. I tried to slowly lead the center of our circle a little in the direction from which I had come when we set out to rescue Hermione. We all rehearsed the drill: if we were about to crash, Apparate upwards and backwards, then cut speed.

I was soon comfortable flying in our tight little circles and concerned that I couldn't use the viewer once the sun came up. "I'm going to use the magical viewer. Please watch me so I don't fly off course."

Barb was instantly flying on my outer edge and guiding me. I saw the bright rose-pink of magical energy almost as soon as I looked through the viewer. It was several thousand feed off to one side and far below us. I assumed, but wasn't sure, that I was seeing the magic as it left the ground, which would make that point ground level. If that was true, we could just fly to that point. I asked Hermione if I were correct.,,

"I... think so. I'm not certain. Let me think for a few minutes. I'll try to contact Yggdrasil." We continued flying in our tight little circles for several minutes. I realized that we knew there was no mountain between us and the magic, or I couldn't see it as I did. I mentioned this to Hermione.

"I think it is safe to start drifting our circles in the direction of the magic. You lead the way and we'll follow. I'm still thinking."

We drifted closer to the source of magic. I stopped our progress about five hundred feed away and a hundred feet above the source.

"Yes! I agree that we should try to land there. So does Yggdrasil."

We stopped flying in circles and I led us very slowly toward the source. We were flying slower than possible to maintain level flight, which was fine because it was my intention to slowly descend. As soon as we landed, Hermione pulled out her radio receiver and began to search the surface. "We have to hurry. The transmitter only had enough power to transmit at full strength for about twelve hours. After that, our chances of finding it go down fast. That twelve hours is also just an estimate. It is now a little over ten hours since Aagog started up the shaft with the transmitter."

Hermione led us in ever-widening circles, as she tried to pick up what I knew would be a very faint radio signal. After we had spent an hour in this unsuccessful pursuit, I spotted a man approaching us. He carried a long gun. I stopped, but Hermione urged us on "time is fleeting, he is coming to us. Let him come. I need to cover more ground."

I walked after her, halting only upon the command, in Greek "Stop! What are you doing here? This is my property and I didn't give you permission to be here."

I was very glad that I had refreshed my Greek, before setting out upon this expedition. "We're just hiking, not causing problems."

"Liar! You aren't hikers. Hikers don't walk about in circles as you are. You're treasure hunters. I've seen your kind before. Your presence is a nuisance and a problem. Come with me, I'm going to call the police."

I had no intention of following him, but Hermione dropped a weighted scarf to mark her spot and willingly marched along behind the irate property owner. The rest of us followed. He was leading us to a house with a small out building. He led us into the house. It was just us, him, and his wife. "Did you call the police?"

"No, I was waiting for your signal."

"Do it now!"

As she reached for the phone, I performed a silent 'Off!', first on her husband and then on her. Barb grabbed the gun and unloaded it.

"I feel certain that the shaft is beneath one of these buildings," Hermione sounded more hopeful than certain, but I had learned not to doubt her. "Is there a basement? Look for a door down."

We quickly found the door, it being in the kitchen, where we were standing. "Barb and I will check the basement. You explore the out building. I should have packed two radio receivers. It would have been much more efficient."

There was a big lock on the outbuilding door. Odin pointed his finger at it, and the lock shattered.

The building was storage for gardening tools and equipment. A largish tractor sat in the middle of the room. I wished I could start it and drive it out of the shed, but Mr. Granger hadn't gone into that much detail in his Muggle Studies course. Odin's hand gesture moved me to the front of the tractor. He then did the Godly version of 'Leviosa' and walked the vehicle out onto the grass. It didn't seem like he had even exerted himself.

"Okay, we search the floor. This reminds me of the place Voldemort hid Jaden. There was a large basement underneath a small building like this one. We must be very careful. That particular shed had more magical traps than I have ever seen in such a little space."

The tractor had rested upon a large piece of canvas cloth. It was plausible, as the cloth bore many signs of oil leaks from the tractor, but I was certain that the cloth hid a trapdoor. I closed the shed door and viewed the cloth through my detector. As soon as I put the detector to my eyes, rose lines jumped out at me. "This is it!"

I handed the viewer to Odin as I messaged Hermione that I had found our target. I told Odin that we must wait for the others. This could be dangerous if we didn't move slowly and carefully. I handed the viewer to Hermione as soon as she stepped through the door.

"You have very good instincts. This changes a lot. The shaft is being guarded by a magical person of significant skill. I didn't expect to find our target magicked." She walked all around the cloth, getting a close-up look through the viewer. "The magic is coming from beneath the cloth; it isn't attached to the cloth, itself. I think it safe to simply vanish the cloth, but it's foolish for more than one of us to be within range of whatever bad might happen, when the cloth disappears. We're in another land and we don't understand their magic. I'm not even sure this is Greek. Phaedra certainly showed no hint of this sort of skill. The rest of you get well clear of this shed and I'll do the magic."

"No, I'll do the magic," Barb objected.

Odin sent us all away. When he called us back, the cloth had vanished and a trap door was revealed. "I was good and didn't lift the door. I can do it, while you go back to a safe distance. Well?"

"No," Hermione held his arm. "I think our next step must be to learn what we can from the man with the gun. First, one of us has to Apparate back and fetch Phaedra and her phoenix. Bring back Fawkes, as well, please." She was looking at Barb, who was the obvious choice for the job.

Phaedra looked at the man and his wife. "I met him once. His name is Androcles. I had no notion he lived in these parts. I don't know the woman. Androcles isn't an active member of our community." I asked her to take the two birds and wait outside, while we made an initial attempt to question Androcles. I wanted to know what he would say, when he didn't know that we knew he was a distant part of the Greek magical community.

The man didn't want to talk. Spiked Veritaserum helped a little. I told him "There's no use pretending. We know you're magical. We've been in your shed. We saw the magical energy through our viewer. we found the trap door under your floor cloth."

That bit of news made him even more silent. I feared so strongly that the man was about to pull a Lucius Malfoy, that I urged him "wait! Don't do anything rash. There is soeone outside whom you need to meet."

He recognized Phaedra, but he couldn't stop staring at the two phoenix. I seized the opportunity. "This is Phaedra's bird, one of a very few magical creatures in this part of the world. The other phoenix is Fawkes. He was Professor Dumbledore's bird, but Dumbledore left him to Hermione. All of us are magical. Hermione, Barb, and I are British. This gentleman is the major god Odin, who also was an ancient Greek God. He is from another world - Asgard. I'm Ginny. I'm the Mother of the Future. Hermione is my Muse. We are on Quest. As I think you already know, there is an ancient magical circle almost exactly underneath you. We are trying to repair and re-start it. It is sputtering along now. Surely you've felt the change in magic. I think we are friends, so please cooperate and answer our questions."

"My wife? Is she harmed? She isn't magical. She knows nothing of my activities."

Our 'Off' was reversed and his wife sat up and rushed to him, a puzzled look upon her face. They hugged, her standing, he seated in a chair. "I'm sorry Melina, I've kept a very large secret from you. I thought I could keep you safe by not telling you about myself. I'm a Wizard. I can do magic. I guard a very great secret. That has been the job of the eldest son in my family for many generations. All of these people are magical. Those are magical birds. Please sit and listen calmly. All will be explained."

I explained the role of the Mother and her Muse. Odin explained the sacred and self-abnegating nature of Questing. He explained that he was from another world, had lived thousands of years, possessed very strong magic, had traveled to our world many times in the distant past and had, in fact, been revered as Zeus. He said he had designed and led the construction of the magical circle, almost beneath our feet.

I could tell that Androcles and, especially his wife, did not believe much of what we had told them. They had to accept that we had strange powers, since we performed magic in front of them: lifting objects, creating corporeal patronuses, even doing a bit of simple transfiguration of their furniture. Perhaps they were not so much disbelieving as utterly terrified.

"Let us show you the cavern and circle," I suggested, holding out my hands to them. Barb and Odin grabbed their other hands and Hermione completed the chain. "You are going to feel a churning in your stomach," I warned. "It will only last about a second, and then you will be in the magical cavern. We may appear a foot or more off the ground and even tilted, so try not to twist an ankle. The person to your side will steady you. Okay, on three - one, two, three, go!"

I did very well Apparating us. Our circle was flat and the highest person was just a foot off the ground. More important - no splinches.

They were impressed by the circle and the cavern, but I'm certain what really sealed the deal was seeing Elves, Goblins, talking Acromantula spiders, two Centaurs, and a Unicorn. They stared, mouths open, and then seated themselves, clinging to each other's nearest hand. "I believe you. I'm willing to answer your questions. I am the Keeper of the Shrine and this probably is the biggest part of the shrine. What do you want me to tell you."

"You're the Keeper of the Shrine. What does that mean? What do you do? How long has your family done this. We also are Keepers of the circles in Britain, but your role must be different, if you've never seen this cavern before."

"Yes. My father told me - we are all trained by the prior Keeper - that he thought a lot of what must be done and the knowledge and skill to do it was lost over the centuries. My family has had this sacred duty as long as family history and tradition are remembered - certainly for many, many centuries. We Keepers have been mostly male, but when there wasn't a son, there was a female Keeper. When there were no children, and this has happened, the title shifted to another part of the family, a sibling and his children. This is where a lot of memory was lost. Some Keepers who lacked children remarried young women in an effort to continue their line. For a Keeper not to have children to assume the title was considered most shameful. Some Keepers only trained their eldest son, so that when that son failed to have children until late in life, he often was very slow to train his brother or his brother's son. Much of our lore is written down, but much is oral and when a sonless Keeper was laggard in training a successor, oral lore was lost. Protecting the written records and passing on the oral lore are the biggest part of the Keeper's duty.

"We also know a little magic, which is used to protect the entrance to the shrine I will show you. It is protected by a false magical floor. As I tried to do with you, a Keeper must guard this ground and keep adventurers at bay. You are the fourth group or individual I have been required to confront. That is the dangerous part of being Keeper. You attacked me, but didn't harm me. That hasn't always been the case."

That last comment piqued Hermione's interest. "I'm going to show you some pictures of individuals we've had, umm... let's just say difficulties, with. Do you recognize any of them?"

I was interested to see which pictures Hermione would choose and watched intently as she laid them out: Voldemort, Umbridge, the former Lord Montaigne, Bruce, Narcissa Malfoy, Lucius, Vili, Frijjo, Gna, Miomor, Draco, Rowle, Thicknesse, Barty. I wondered how she had acquired some of those pictures.

"Those two came together." He pointed at Frijjo and Gna. "I think I succeeded in protecting the shrine. They clearly stunned me and I must have told them a little. They found the trapdoor and stole what I salted there. I probably told them where to find that. I can't remember. It was false and it was worthless. It could only mislead them to believe I protected nothing of value. I don't recognize the others... now wait - him." He pointed at Thicknesse and then at Barty, as soon as Hermione put their pictures in front of him. "I think it was probably a good thing I didn't have time to fetch my gun. My wife and I were walking the grounds when they approached and we convinced them that there was nothing of importance here. We served them lunch, let them stroll around, even managed to show them the shed, when they asked how I farmed such a large area. I still had the goats back then."

When we Apparated us back to their home, they served us lunch and then showed us what lay beneath the trap door. There were several ancient-looking paper scrolls and a gold medallion. Significantly, the only other item in this hiding place was a wand. "A magical person from your part of the world would expect to find a wand, wouldn't they? We don't use them, never have. Now for the real secrets..." He went to the work bench at the end of the shed and picked up a largish and obviously severely worn whetstone, which must have sharpened multiple generations' farm implements. "It's magicked. Just watch."

He proceeded to scrub away the false bottom of his hiding place, rubbing the unworn side of the whetstone in broad swipes. The solid stone of the floor vanished. Out of curiosity, I halted him just before he completed his task. I tried both my Keeper ring and the copied Vanir pendant as scrubbing tools. Both worked. I found that most interesting and continued to wonder at the universality of the Keeper ring I had made for myself, using my Light Guardian knowledge.

We had to use battery-powered lights to light our way down the ladder to the space below. "Electricity in a shed like this, let alone getting it through the floor, would be a dead giveaway. Also couldn't have torches on the property - too many questions."

The room beneath the floor was only seven foot square, so only 2 of us, plus Androcles could fit comfortably. The center of the room held a wood covered dry well, two feet across, with stone walls built two feet high around it. As Androcles removed the cover and shone his light down the well, I could tell it was at least twenty feet deep and curved off the west at the bottom. This was encouraging, because the cavern lay to the west of us. We would return with other magical creatures small enough to explore this. There were narrow shelves at one end of the room. I recognized what seemed to be a quite primitive force viewer and what looked like copies of the ancient Goblin circle-tuning tools. I pointed at them, drawing the comment "they've been in the family forever. Father didn't know the purpose of most of them, other than the viewer. I do use that."

I left the scrolls for Hermione. She was down in the little room for a long time. I knew she was taking many pictures and reading what interested her most. When we left, I promised Androcles that he could help us re-tune the circle and assume the proper duties of Keeper. I Apparated Aagog, Catta, and Tendra to the shed. They made other trips of their own. After three days, the shaft was cleared and Tendra announced that the construction of the shaft was clearly Goblin, although the subterranean room had been built by humans.

Viktor and Cho joined us, with a half dozen trusted Durmstrang students and an auror, for the construction of the modern circle and for the tuning of the dual circles. The tuning was a little new and tricky for all of us. We kept the old and modern Hogwarts circles in fine tune and understood the problems of side-by-side circles, but this was the first tuning of a very ancient Odin-designed stone circle next to a modern. Once we got past a few errors caused by wrong guesses about how Odin's stone circle would change things, we finally completed the task with ease. Androcles had participated in the tuning, and we had explained everything step-by-step, using our shared rest times to explain the circles ourselves. Hermione left him with a detailed set of written instructions. I had a worry. "We didn't see any sign of children at your house. Who will carry on as Keeper after you are no longer able to do the work?"

"I have a married son, who lives and works in Athens. He has a son. I promise to train both of them. Don't worry, I know the perils of waiting too long. My son is already versed in the secrets of the shed."

"Sorry, I didn't know. We should have included your son in this project."

"No. It is proper that you didn't. That is my most important job of Keeper. You did your part in training me. I must train him. That will make me a true Keeper."

There was a completion ceremony inside the cavern. The cavern gleamed and was brightly lit. Tendra had recruited additional Goblin artisans to fully restore the cavern to its past glory. While this was a very powerful twin circle and a rediscovered sacred place for the Greeks, I realized that it had also become a new sacred place for the Goblins. The circles and their cavern were ready for their distinguished guests. Aristotle Archimedes hosted on behalf of the Greek community, Odin strutted, King Gobbledegook was his normal loquacious self, happily congratulating all of the Goblins who had helped on the project and discoursing on the technical skill of the ancient Goblins. Hermione, Androcles, and I were proud hosts. Tendra delighted in showing every little detail of this new treasure to her father. Harry, Mum, Dad, and Percy attended. After considerable discussion and dispute, we invited ICW Secretary Afshar. The Secretary was very pleased with the quality of restored magic in Greece. "This will also be of immense help to the surrounding nations. These are extremely powerful circles. I thank you for your efforts. Greece was once a place of great magic and I predict that it will be once again. Please help Mr. Tsieh. China also was once a land of great magic. I know that Mr. Tsieh tends to be very abrupt and pushy, but his people really are in great need."

Odin pronounced the Greek leg of our Quest "a great success! You helped a formerly great magical people and gave me the chance to rummage around in my own largely-forgotten past. I thank you for that. I have learned that you do still have important work to do on your own world. This was safe, productive, and... joyful."

The real celebration party was a feast back at Phaedra's home on Lesbos. It was a wonderful party, with great food, music, and dancing. Harry danced with me. We danced a lot. That was very un-Harry. We shouldn't have invited the Secretary. He lobbied Odin to make China a Quest stop. I could tell that Odin was wavering.