The snowy owl Hagrid had bought for his birthday present, which he'd ultimately named Hedwig, wound up having an almost-immediate payoff.
August had been a transition in more ways than one. Avoiding Obadiah, Harry had stopped accompanying his aunt to the Stark Industries office. His local school friends were aware that he was going off to boarding school rather than joining them in middle school, so the few times he got to hang out with them, there was a palpable sense on both sides of letting go. Not many friendships survived the end of elementary school even if you wound up at the same middle school.
So he had a lot of time to himself. He'd like to say it was all devoted to study, but realistically most of it was topping himself up on movies, TV, and video games for the months he'd have to spend in a world without modern technology. Still, he managed to read enough that he hoped he wouldn't seem completely ignorant compared to the kids that had grown up on Vanaheim.
The trouble came close to the end of the month, when he needed to figure out how to get to school. Aunt Pepper had talked a very big game about flying to London with him to put him through to the Hogwarts Express, but Harry knew she was fooling herself. There was no way she was going to free up the couple of days that trip would require for her to get there and back unless she could somehow schedule Tony for some kind of business in Britain the preceding weekend.
He'd considered trying to figure out how to just cut through the goblin market, but the traveling runes Hagrid had used were beyond him, and there were a lot of metaphysics about using the alley to travel rather than just to shop at and return that meant he might not even be able to use that path at his age if he could get the runes down.
At least he wasn't an Asgardian. There was a note in one of his books about how more-godlike beings had trouble "fitting" through the night roads and usually had to use the Bifrost to travel between realms. He was kind of looking forward to his cosmology class to explain all of that.
Regardless, unless he could find a night road to Vanaheim or at least London that he could somehow manage with a couple of weeks of book theory, he was looking at Aunt Pepper dithering until the last second, and, best case, sticking him on a ten-hour flight with some hapless Stark Industries intern to mind him. Worst case, Tony would have some crisis and she'd be super guilty when she found Harry still at home days after school had started.
Which was where Hedwig came in.
The spells woven into Vanir post owls were amazing, or perhaps the familiar bond with Hedwig made her even smarter than a normal post owl. Harry had asked her to deliver a letter to Master Wong, a local sorcerer he'd met exactly once, and she'd nodded and headed off without a problem.
Of course, he included his email address and phone number, in case the Masters of the Mystic Arts weren't as technology-phobic as the wizards of Vanaheim.
The email beat Hedwig back: they'd be happy to pick him up on Sunday afternoon, the last day of August. Aunt Pepper was simultaneously impressed and hurt when Harry revealed that he had a ride to London that he'd worked out himself. That night, she had to admit to herself, that he wasn't wrong. Tony had decided to go to a technology show in Vegas that weekend (he often went to shows in Vegas).
So it was just Harry at home at around four in the afternoon on Sunday, August 31, 2008, when the furiously-sparking tear in space opened in the backyard of 5730 Encino Avenue and a bald white woman in saffron-colored robes stepped through. She took in the relaxed California neighborhood with an inscrutable-but-vaguely-amused expression, and knocked on the back door.
Harry had been expecting Wong, or at least someone else Asian, so he opened the door for his guest and his mouth, opened for a greeting, instead finished his thought, "...but I guess they recruit from the whole planet."
"We do indeed, Mr. Potts," she smiled pleasantly, not upset at the non-sequitur. He was just thrilled that she'd used the last name that he signed on his correspondence, rather than his Vanaheim name that everyone at the market had insisted upon. "Including yourself, if you decide to return to Earth after Hogwarts."
"How many do? Oh! And, please, come in," he gestured for her to enter the house. "Something to drink? We've got teas, sodas… OJ I think…"
"Thank you, but I'm fine, if you're ready to travel," she said, entering the kitchen and taking it all in with a sweeping look, seeming to learn all there was to know about young Harry from the layout of his abode. She stopped momentarily as she spotted the entertainment center in the living room through the open plan. "Perhaps half?" she answered his first question. "Few sorcerers from Earth have the opportunity as it is, and many decide they like it there. Still others wish to return home, if only for the access to human technology."
"I have some plans on that front," Harry told her, conspiratorially. "Anyway, yeah, I'm all ready. Thank you for the help. But why are we leaving today and not tomorrow? It's instant, right?"
"It is, but you are, unfortunately, caught in the growing bureaucracy of the United States, and registered as attending school in Britain. If you simply disappeared here and appeared there with no records of a flight, governmental agencies might notice. Or any latent observation your Mr. Stane might have set up before he forgot about you. We like to keep a low profile. So we've faked your travel, but we can't fake the time it would take… well, not as easily as simply allowing you the morning to tour Kamar-Taj."
"Morning? Oh, right, time zones," Harry nodded.
"Indeed. In fact, the records will show that you are just about to leave LAX for a plane trip that will have you in London just in time for your train to school. I suggest you go ahead and put your phone in airplane mode so no cellular towers will give lie to your statement."
"Let me just text my aunt that I'm on my way," he did, then shut down the phone (a cutting-edge Starkphone that would likely be obsolete by the time he could use it again). He chose not to comment on how impressed he was that an older magic lady seemed to understand how cell phones worked. Without hair, it was hard to tell. Maybe she was younger and more tech-savvy than she looked. "I'm ready to go when you are!"
"Then lock your house and let us away," she said, using her arm to casually spin open another blazing hole in space once he'd locked up and rolled his trunk out onto the lawn.
"Meet me at Hogwarts, okay, girl?" Harry asked Hedwig, where she perched on a spindly-but-hardy California tree in the backyard. Then, with only the slight difficulty of rolling a large steamer trunk across the lawn, he stepped to basically the other side of the planet.
Early morning in Kathmandu, overlooking the sprawling city with the mountains in the distance, was a heck of a cool way to get a first look at Kamar-Taj.
Dozens of students were already hard at work doing martial arts katas in the courtyard of the immense temple that seemed to be partly-hidden within a couple of blocks of the bustling city below. Seamlessly, their hand movements began to trace orange fire through the air before them, straight lines spinning into wheels full of geometric designs.
His guide explained as they walked along the raised walkway, the rumble of Harry's trunk offsetting her description that, "Our methods are not so different from the casting gestures Hogwarts teaches with wands, so pay attention to how you can train your body for precise movements. As you can see, we favor involving the whole body, so spells can blend with martial arts. Hogwarts tends to slack a bit on the more physical side. On Earth, we often need to resort to purely physical methods of combat when in front of those unaware of magic."
"Good morning, Ancient One," said a tall, dark-haired man that they'd come upon watching the training from above. He had an accent that Harry thought was maybe some kind of German or Swedish. "I didn't know we took students so young."
"Mr. Potts is merely getting the nickel tour on his way to Hogwarts, Master Kaecilius," she introduced them. Harry couldn't tell if the guy was really clueless or just making a dad joke.
"Ah, would that I had known of that place when I was a boy. Those that start young have so many fewer bad habits to unlearn," Kaecilius replied, sizing up the small young man before him. "And less pain driving them into our employ," he smirked at her, obviously an old argument. "We hope to see you in due time, Mr. Potts," he finished with a slight bow, as they continued on their way.
"You're the Ancient One?" Harry asked. "I read about you in some of my books!"
"I've had to work long and hard to rate any mention at all in the literature of Vanaheim, so I'm glad to hear it," she joked. "And it's my prerogative to meet the new talent myself. When the famous Harry Potter contacted us for a ride…" she answered the unasked question of why the Sorcerer Supreme herself had come to get him.
"I'd rather not be famous just for not dying with my parents," Harry complained as they entered the building proper, trailing through hallways built of beautiful wood that had likely stood for centuries.
"It was a dark time for Vanaheim," she shrugged. "Secret members of a death cult. Mind control. Assassins in the night. When Asgard tried to help, the enemies would vanish like smoke. When we tried to help, they would turn public sentiment against us as outsiders. It was a war on the soul of the culture. You wound up as a symbol that the bogeyman can be beaten."
"I guess I'll see how it goes," he replied.
They stopped in front of a small, spartan bedroom and she gestured him in, "I suggest you take a nap. You have several more time changes ahead of you before you can sleep at Hogwarts. We'll come get you for lunch."
No 11-year-old wants to be told to take a nap by a grownup, but Harry had to admit it made sense and he dozed a bit until hunger woke him not long before a familiar face showed up. "Master Wong!" he greeted the burly Asian man. "Thanks for the help getting to school."
"You're welcome," Wong nodded. "Happy to help you get to my old alma mater. Ready for lunch?"
"Sure am," Harry's rumbling stomach agreed. His watch told him it was after 10 pm, LA time, and he hadn't thought to grab an early dinner before leaving. "You went to Hogwarts?" he asked, as they started to navigate the hallways of the temple.
"How did you think I knew Hagrid? I was in Hufflepuff," the sorcerer responded, making Harry wince a bit at his uncharitable belief that was the lame house. "And, no, I graduated before your parents started, I think. But my cousin started last year: Cho. She's in Ravenclaw house."
"Is it a big family thing?" Harry asked.
"Sort of," Wong explained, leading him downstairs. "We're more likely to find children with the potential early enough to send them if they live near here or one of our sanctums. So Nepal and India, Southeastern China, Britain, and New England are over-represented. We've got a couple of sisters here right now that are your age and heading over with you, in fact."
Harry couldn't help but immediately pick out the Patil twins on sight as the ones Wong had been talking about, Padma and Parvati, and had no trouble telling them apart: Parvati was the talkative one. "Isn't this neat?" she asked, as they were sitting down to lunch. "You came all the way from California?"
Harry nodded, hungrily tucking into the simple but filling meal. "Sure beats ten hours on a plane."
"For real," the ebullient girl agreed. "It would be even longer from our city. Worth the shorter trip here. How'd you get found? They said they only located us because we were so close to Kamar-Taj, and because one of our grandfathers had a bit of magic."
"My parents went," Harry shrugged.
Padma rolled her eyes and pointed out to her sister, "He's Harry Potter, which you'd know if you read your books."
"Potts, please," Harry tried, hoping to give the vibe that he wasn't interested in the acclaim.
"Are you a wizarding celebrity?" Parvati asked, not really picking up on it. "Do they have celebrities? None of the schoolbooks wanted to talk about pop culture. You can learn so much about a culture from its teen magazines, you know?"
Padma, the more perceptive of twins, mouthed, "Sorry," at Harry, but at least Parvati seemed content to talk rather than dig as they worked their way through lunch.
With the rest of the afternoon to kill and the building not taking that long to see, the three kids found themselves auditing a seminar for some of the younger adults that were starting to learn sorcery, without the benefits of a foundational Hogwarts education. The imposing British black man, Master Mordo, who was leading the class was explaining the rudiments of how sorcery was all about opening channels to other dimensions, and how there was always some kind of price to be paid for magic.
Harry's hand was up and he found himself nodded at by the slightly-amused master of the mystic arts. "Is that true on Vanaheim too?" the boy asked.
"The Nine Realms are… different," Mordo sighed. "As I understand it, the other eight exist in galaxies so far away from here that the 'universal' constants of science begin to break down. Places where life can evolve from fire or ice. Planets made of dark matter and lit by a black hole, or somehow forming as a disc instead of a globe. Realms where the souls of the dead can continue to exist in some form.
"And Vanaheim, which is in many ways more like the dimensions we draw magic from than it is like Earth. The constants there are such that electricity functions oddly, rendering most technology useless, but mystical energy is free for the taking. While you are there, you will learn not to conjure energy, but simply to shape what is already present in the very air."
"How can we go there, if it's so far?" Padma asked.
"While it's possible to fly there through space, the nature of the cosmos means that it's folded and, with a proper convergence or night road, we can step through without much more difficulty than we travel on Earth through portals or enter into other dimensions. It's part of why Earth is as important as it is, magically: no other alien planets have such a wealth of connections to other worlds that support life. Our sorcerers learned much by comparing notes with the mystics of the other realms, throughout history."
"So we… don't have to worry about a price for magic on Vanaheim?" Parvati tagged in.
"There is always a price to be paid," Mordo insisted. "Don't let your teachers there tell you otherwise. At the very least, what you learn there is much less effective anywhere else, except as a primer. Whereas our arts work anywhere in the multiverse. The price may simply be reliance on the magic of Vanaheim."
That thought was still rattling through Harry's mind when they were finally led down into the ancient stone basement of the temple, luggage in tow, and into a densely-warded room with a chest-high (for the children) pedestal in the middle featuring an eye-shaped finial that somehow called to Harry. But they were past and through before he could think too hard about it, walking through a pair of double doors out into an immense foyer with morning light streaming in.
"Welcome to London," Wong told them. He introduced them to a man with short, curly salt-and-pepper hair and beard in ornate robes, "This is Master Rama, protector of this sanctum."
In addition to the master of the sanctum, two other children their age were standing around: a skinny black boy and a girl with bushy brown hair.
"We thought you'd all benefit from meeting one another and learning the neighborhood," Master Rama suggested to the five 11-year-olds. "While the inner sanctum of Kamar-Taj isn't meant as a highway, it's useful to know that you can get between it and the London, New York, and Hong Kong sanctums if needed. Especially because you enter Vanaheim from near here, we want you to know how to reach this sanctum if you are stranded in London."
After a very brief tour of the London sanctum, Wong and Master Rama led the kids out of the entrance, pointing out that it emptied onto Whitehall street and stood right next to Whitehall Gardens, basically right across the street from Charing Cross station. As they hit the streets in a slightly-ungainly parade of rolling trunks, the bushy-haired girl took the lead as if she was familiar, and introduced herself in an English accent as, "I'm Hermione Granger and my family's from here and didn't know about magic at all until Master Rama explained it to us. This is Dean Thomas, he's from America, and I don't think his family's magical either?"
Master Rama, who'd removed his robe to reveal modern street clothes before leaving the sanctum, had subtly put up a privacy ward so none of the other pedestrians nearby noticed the excited girl giving away deep magical secrets. He shared a wink with Wong. It was the same every year.
"My dad might have been?" Dean suggested with his strong New York accent. "We never really knew for sure. But, yeah, I didn't find out until Master Drumm found me."
Parvati introduced herself and Padma, and pointed out, "And this is Harry Potts, he's from America too. California right?"
"Oh, I thought they wouldn't really be able to find someone that far from a sanctum, or at least that's what the Primer on Midgardian Sorcery suggested," Hermione wondered, looking askance at Harry.
"My parents went to Hogwarts, but I was raised on Midgard," Harry shrugged, trying to explain it without making it a big deal.
"Harry Potts," Hermione worked it over, and then lit up, "Oh! You're Harry Potter! I read about you!"
Before she could put her foot in her mouth, Padma, ever-observant of the boy's body language, suggested, "I don't think Harry wants people to think of him as a celebrity."
Caught before launching into a full gush, it visibly took a moment for Hermione's brain to switch gears, but then she managed to get out, "Did you three get to meet the Ancient One while you were at Kamar-Taj? Only I read that she's probably as old as some of the Asgardians…"
Unfortunately, the walk was so short that Hermione couldn't quite explain everything she'd learned about the Ancient One before they were into Charing Cross station and next to the wall to the right of platform 6. As they stood, morning commuters barely seemed to notice them, but they watched a few other children drag trunks or luggage racks into the corner behind a stand of brochures and simply fade into a ripple within the air.
Master Rama explained, "Hogwarts, even with such a small proportion of students from Earth, has found it useful historically to schedule its terms around the regular convergence between this spot and the station in Vanaheim that sprung up around it. Fortunately, these periods are extremely reliable and rarely vary by more than a day or two, but the conjunction is only for a few hours. Typically, around 11 in the morning, the convergence ends and you will need to seek alternate means to enter Vanaheim. The train leaves shortly thereafter from the other side."
Wong waved to a pretty Chinese girl in the crowd who shared a family resemblance with him and seemed only about a year older than the other kids, "Ah, there's my cousin. Cho, can you help these new first-years get through and situated?"
"Of course, Uncle," she said in an interesting accent, as if she'd learned to speak English from a Scottish tutor. "If you'll all follow me."
Bidding farewell to the two masters, who apparently didn't want to risk getting stuck off of Midgard even though it was much earlier than 11, the parade rolled their trunks through the barrier into another world. It helped that Cho clearly treated it like she had no fear of crashing into the brick wall. But each of the children had to marshal their courage to believe they wouldn't wind up just smashing into unyielding stone.
But, with a run to get started, each charged the barrier and watched it fade to mist, the next step taking them onto another planet.