Chapter 3 ยป Beyond the Mirror
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They spent the next day as planned, buying Hermione and Ron's school equipment while Fred and George wandered off to buy some essentials for their latest merchandise; Machiavellian Muffins. They were apparently doing a very good mail-order business while they saved up the last few hundred Galleons to buy a store, and it showed in the way they strutted around ticking their purchases off a shopping list in an exaggerated manner.
They joked and talked together, discussing the Malfoy trial which was occurring in two days, and NEWTs; Harry gave in to temptation and wolfed down a sundae with the pair in Florean Fortescue's; and finally they returned to The Leaky Cauldron, Ron and Hermione burdened down with school equipment and Harry effortlessly clasping a small packet of Floo Powder, which he intended to keep for emergencies. It had been surprisingly cheap.
The Weasleys left late in the evening, Ron promising to meet his friends at the station, and Harry and Hermione were left in Diagon Alley. Harry wasn't entirely happy with the arrangement - what was he meant to say to her, after last year? It was different than writing letters - but he could hardly ask her to leave, and she was his friend, anyway.
For that reason, he spent the next day with her, pretending the last week of school had never happened and that Ginny wasn't (dead) gone.
He felt guilty though, after she had left; not because of anything that he'd done while she was there, but because when she had exited into the Muggle world to be collected by her parents, he had felt as if a sudden weight had been yanked from his shoulders. An overwhelming warmth and relief had overpowered him, his energy suddenly springing back to the fore and - though the next day was decidedly overcast - he still felt considerably bright and chirpy.
There was another letter from Gringotts, informing Harry that while they had been sorting out the paperwork of the London house he would be renting out, they had discovered that money from renting out several other houses of his had been sent to a separate vault until the inheritor had taken responsibility for his property. Harry dashed out a reply to them, asking them to put the money in his main bank account, and to continue to do so, gave it to Hedwig, and then dashed out before even the Daily Prophet arrived.
Partly because he wanted some Muggle clothes, partly because he wanted to avoid the early crowds in Diagon Alley, who were nattering away discussing the Malfoy trial that day, Harry left The Leaky Cauldron by the door that he hadn't used yet during these holidays - the door into Muggle London.
The sky was a grim, despairing grey, and there was a nasty, biting chill that tried to gnaw its way into Harry's bones; he wrapped Dudley's old coat around him a little tighter and scowled at how cold it was for this time of the year. A new coat was definitely going on his list.
Luckily, The Leaky Cauldron was placed perfectly for Muggle shopping; designer and high-street stores intermingled in this area, selling everything from clothes and electrical goods, to entertainment and food. Harry had already changed a good amount of Wizarding money to Muggle, though he had no idea what Muggle clothes cost. Instead, as he dodged the already-growing crowds of tourists and employees on their way to work, he picked a random store that looked as if it had good quality casual clothes and slipped inside.
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The day, needless to say, went well. Several Muggle tops, trousers, jackets (and trainers) later, Harry moved on to some luxuries: he picked out two coats, because he couldn't help himself; a long Winter one, and one made of dark brown leather - he wouldn't have bought it if it hadn't been on sale, he told himself - a cap to hide his scar if he wanted to go out as Harry minus the scar, and a more mature, steel watch which he could sometimes wear instead of his magical one. He picked up some batteries for it, as well, as they were simple enough to work in Hogwarts.
As he wandered the immediate area, surreptitiously shrinking and lightening the bags one by one when no-one was looking, so that he could carry them with no trouble, Harry found himself down a road that looked astonishingly familiar, and he knew why.
Toriceso Books was situated in almost the centre of the row of shops, still looking old and musty, though the bottle-green paint had been freshened up somewhat since Harry had last been here. The wooden sign was exactly the same (if a little more dusty), the name even now written in curvy, loopy writing that rendered the writing indecipherable to the quick-moving eye.
For old times sake, in memory of how Techno-Magic had changed his life - and saved it, too - Harry found himself pushing the old door open, hearing the old creak of the hinges, and the old jangling of the bell enthusiastically announcing its visitor. The old books, the old shelves, the old carpeting and old darkness; everything was the same, but for a newer-looking book here and there -
And the man behind the counter.
Harry paused, then - as the man looked up questioningly, scowling at this interruption of his reading the newspaper - stepped over to the teak counter. "Excuse me," he coughed, a little unsure of what to say. "Is Mrs Rowles around?"
The man scowled deeper. "'Oo yeh whant?" he wheezed, despite being only middle-aged.
"Mrs Rowles," Harry repeated. "She owns the shop?"
The man spluttered out a gasping breath of dust, which seemed to be attracted to him like fireflies to a lamp. Perhaps he hadn't moved in a while. "Dunno no Missus Rowl-ers," he rasped, eyes returning to his paper. "I own this 'ere shop, 'ave dun fer free yehrs. 'Oo buyin' enyfin'?"
Harry took a few moments to translate the man's words before he understood what had been said; that he knew no Mrs Rowles, and he was the owner of the shop; had been so for three years.
Now Harry frowned. "That can't be right. I was in here last year, and Mrs Rowles was the owner then."
The man rolled his eyes, shook the paper to stop it flopping over. "Look, mate, I own this 'ere shop, an' I bloody well set i' up. When'd yeh come?"
"July last year - late July," Harry remembered.
"Definitely not," the man (owner?) scoffed, shaking his head slowly. "Closed for repairs then. Needed the roof doin' yeh know? All the tiles weh comin' off. Needed tah get 'em stuck on good an' proper. Closed fer a month, I recall - cost me a fortune." He then turned all his attention back to the racing odds as though the matter was closed.
Harry was a little dazed by trying to keep up with what had been said, but he knew something was wrong. Firstly, the shop hadn't been closed when he had visited, that he was certain of. Secondly, it had been owned by Mrs Rowles, she had set it up - not this man, who said he had never even heard of her.
"Sorry - wrong shop," Harry muttered, and fled the building.
Where was Mrs Rowles? It didn't make any sense - Ron had seen her too, Harry had bought the laptop from her in its attractive box; and besides, the Dursleys had had her over for dinner with her husband. She had talked about the shop then!
What was going on? Was it some kind of joke? Had Mrs Rowles sold the shop, and for some reason the new owner was trying to make it appear as if he had set it up? Why?
But then Harry paused. Rowles (if that was her name) hadn't expected Ron to enter, anyway; the reason Harry had gone in was because she had mentioned the shop at dinner. And what were the chances that in all of London, Harry would happen to pass that shop - and even notice it! It was hardly large or eye-catching, after all.
There was something decidedly fishy going on here. The Rowles had never come round the house again afterwards, and indeed, the Dursleys had lost contact with them just a month after having them visit. It was almost as if...
No. That was stupid. Wasn't it?
Harry frowned and considered the idea some more. It was as if they had specifically wanted to get Harry into the shop somehow, unsuspicious - for what reason? She hadn't hurt him in any way, nor threatened him; the only thing that came of their meeting was the laptop.
But didn't Techno-Magic choose who wielded it? Harry tried to get some order in his mind. So what? Were they working for someone? Were they androids like Levina, or some kind of... manifestation... of Techno-Magic?
He groaned, and set off back to The Leaky Cauldron, deciding he didn't want to stand around on the street any more, before he was mugged. Okay - so let's say that whoever she was, she had got in contact with Harry so that he would become a Techno-Mage. Why? And if so, why wouldn't Levina tell him - unless of course the reason that she never told him anything was because she got a kick out of it. Harry would personally prefer the idea of kicking her if she knew why, but that wasn't important at the moment.
He dragged himself up the stairs to his room, having entered The Leaky Cauldron barely realising it; the Daily Prophet had come, so he flicked through. The headlines were full of the usual; Draco Malfoy's trial (which should be going on right now, actually), some scandal in the Ministry, a celebrity's tour of Britain; nothing spectacular. No sightings of Syneeta or Leone, no attacks by Dark Wizards, no more physically-impossibly spur-of-the-moment eclipses.
Harry sighed and fell backwards onto the bed, wondering whether Dumbledore knew yet that Harry had made his way to Diagon Alley. probably so; and if he hadn't, than the Weasleys would surely have told him by now.
He'd have to perform the spell soon, he decided; the sooner Syneeta was off wherever she - it - had come from, the sooner he could stop worrying about daemon attacks whenever he picked up the newspaper.
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As it turned out though, 'soon' meant just six days. It was the night of Thursday the twenty-second when the time was right for the spell, the Moon perfectly full. Harry set up the floor of the room as the instructions said, candles, herbs, twine and all - in the centre of the design was the onyx-framed mirror (which Harry had set atop his school-trunk, so it was the perfect height to kneel comfortably).
He had already memorised the incantation with he help of the laptop, reckoning the spell would take perhaps six or seven minutes to perform before - poof! no daemon!
Unwilling to disturb any of the other rooms' occupants or to bring an enquiring Tom upstairs, Harry started muttering the invocation as quietly as he could, shivering slightly in the cold. As he did so, he dribbled oil made from crushed lilacs along the mirror frame, focusing on their banishing powers while keeping his eyes fixed on his reflection.
The words kept coming out of him; Levina's name as the owner of the Myrrh Cage, and Syneeta's as the daemon; the Ancient Greek pouring out of his mouth the second his mind told him to cast the spell.
Frankincense and sandalwood next , rubbed into the mirror - and was it him, or was the glass turning a dull, misty black? - and the words kept coming, coming, he only understood a few, but it didn't matter, it would work anyway - and yes! the glass was frosting over with black ice, black as the onyx frame, creeping out and covering his reflection - and he had just two minutes worth of the spell to go now, just words and there was no chance that anything could go wrong -
Oh bugger, Harry thought as Ajax swept in through the window without a care in the world and then spotted Harry casting, tried to stop, and ended up slamming into the mirror -
Why'd I have to think that?
Harry had all the time in the world to think, and none to react in. He watched, seeing everything in excruciating detail, as Ajax's body slammed into the side of the mirror, shoving it slightly, and as it slipped, slipped, so slowly and so quickly over the edge of the trunk -
As it tumbled lightly, gracefully through the tiny drop to the floor, spinning once, twice in the air -
And as the mirror hit the thick carpet, well, it couldn't break could it? It hadn't dropped far, and the floor was soft, and the frame would take the damage -
Except that it didn't.
Because, an eternity of an instant after Ajax had performed his clumsy stunt, the moment at which the mirror landed noiselessly on the warm floor, the spell was broken. Harry's chanting had stopped, and - perhaps it was Ajax hitting it, or perhaps when it had fallen or spun or hit the floor, or a mixture of all of them - the midnight frosting that had coated the glass like ice in the Arctic cracked - deeply, in three places, jagged lines running out from the frame to the centre in a way that had to be impossible...
But the deed was done; and as Harry could finally move again, he pounced forwards to grab the mirror. There was nothing he could do of course, to stop the splitting of the thick coating, or to prevent its sudden shifting, like watery ripples running out from the centre...
Harry turned to Ajax to ask what was happening, even though he knew he should be running as far and fast as he could, just as Ajax was doing right now - dragging his wings out and heading straight for the window, saving his own feathers; but why bother? It was too late, and Harry knew that by the prickly, heated sensation that washed over him, tugging all over his body the same way a Portkey tugged at his navel.
The spell had gone seriously wrong. Something seriously bad was happening.
And it was all that bloody bird's fault.
Harry was spared any attempt to follow the Ajax and show him exactly what he thought of him, because two seconds later, he was no longer in The Leaky Cauldron. In fact, there was a nice neat circle three feet in radius around where the mirror had fallen, where there was now only thin air.
Ajax finally pulled his head out from under his wing and sneaked a glance in the direction of Harry's latest mishap, said an extremely rude word, and continued to the window as fast as his wings could carry him.
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It was just over sixty-eight miles away that someone - or something - experienced exactly what Harry did, at exactly the same time as him.
Leone, who had moved back as soon as her daemon let out a shriek of panic, now stood staring at the spot where her pet had clawed at the air in fury and - vanished.
She stood just a few seconds before wetting her suddenly dry lips and narrowing her eyes. Something had just happened, and something had to be done.
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Harry felt his body burn with a ripple of cold that swept from his chest outwards. There was nothing around him - just the intense, unnoticeable black that one saw behind the eyelids. A dull roar in his ears was the only thing he sensed, and strange shivers up his spine, though that may have been from the cold.
Time passed.
He drifted, oblivious to everything except the aching cold, the muffled sound and his own occasional lazy thoughts which tended along the lines of wondering detachedly where he was, as though it were a vaguely interesting question.
Beyond the roar, there came intermittent sounds; someone's voice? and then - another? and now - someone was calling? Calling his name? A man, speaking softly ('Harry! Harry Potter!') and a woman's pleading sobs ('No! I don't want - I don't - please! I don't want to l -') and suddenly
Harry's eyes snapped open.
There was someone leaning over him, face obscured by the shadow. As Harry squinted up in bewilderment, the face moved back, and a white-hot Sun took its place.
Harry's eyes snapped shut. His hands instinctively leapt to cover them. "Shit!" he hissed, white dots dancing before his eyes. Someone laughed quietly. "Funny for you," Harry snarked, "You're not bloody blind."
"You get used to it," the voice assured him. "And you won't have to put up with it much longer, anyway." The voice was male, adult and cheerful. Had he heard it somewhere before? He couldn't remember, could barely think about it - he was still a little chilly, though he was being warmed (and blinded) by the Sun, and his head was spinning and-
Wait - white-hot Sun?
Harry peeked through his fingers.
The Sun was unusually white.
And slightly larger - closer? - than usual.
He closed his eyes, counted to three, and opened them again.
It was still the same.
He thought for a moment. "That's not my Sun," he announced.
"Nope," the voice merrily agreed.
Deciding that staring at such a close, bright, non-Earthly Sun was doing nothing for his eyes, Harry took a breath and dragged himself forwards until he was sitting down. He was most definitely not in The Leaky Cauldron anymore - and he was damned if he was going to make a Wizard of Oz reference at a time like this.
He was in the middle of a long, rolling plain. That wouldn't be so bad - he could just have accidentally Apparated, perhaps - except for the fact that the grass was a lacklustre dust-grey, which was certainly not a natural colour for grass - at home, anyway.
Harry swallowed the lump that had suddenly appeared in his throat.
"Where am I?" he gulped, eyes fixed firmly on the horizon of the never-ending grasslands.
The man behind him scoffed. "Come on, kid! Haven't you ever played guessing games before?"
Gritting his teeth, Harry forced back the impulse to jump up, swing around and punch the man's lights out. "Yes. I don't, however, think this is a situation where playing games would be a good option. Where. Am. I?"
"The First Sanctum of the Realm of the Dead. Note the many capitals, if you please. It doesn't do you any good to disrespect Elysium."
Harry heard it, but he didn't really take it in, because he'd just realised where he remembered the voice from.
"I'm going to turn around," he heard himself say, "and you're not going to be Tom Riddle. Okay?"
"I'll try," Riddle promised, "but it'll be damn hard."
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After Harry had turned around, gave a furious, frustrated yell and demanded answers, Riddle was only too happy to acquiesce. Harry, he explained, had been unconscious while he Shifted (travelled between Realms, he clarified), which had meant Harry nearly ended up in the Shifting-version of being Splinched.
He had woken Harry up - which you should be grateful for, if you didn't want to be scattered across a few dozen Realms! - because...
Well, he had admitted, that was a little harder to explain.
"You see," he mused as Harry watched on emotionlessly, arms crossed. "This is the First Sanctum; which means it's the place between the First and Second Gates -"
"Gates?" Harry frowned. "I read something about those somewhere. What are they?"
Tom shrugged. "Okay. I guess I'll have to go into a bit more detail. Basically, this is the Realm of the Dead, officially known as Elysium, okay? Anyone snuffs it, their soul or whatever ends up here. Okay? Good. Well, this Realm is divided into ten sections, which are called Sanctums. Between each Sanctum is a Gate, which acts like a barrier; not a physical barrier, a metaphorical one. So between the Realm you come from and this Realm is the First Gate."
"And you can only pass through the First Gate if you're dead?" Harry deduced.
"Got it," Tom grinned. "Anyway, you die, you pass through the First Gate easily enough, and you're in the First Sanctum. That's where we are, by the way. Between here and the Second Sanctum is the Second Gate; easy enough?"
"Pretty much," Harry admitted. "Why are they divided up?"
Tom shrugged again. It seemed to be his favourite motion. "I don't know why it was made like this - if it was made in the first place. What I do know is that everyone who dies ends up in the First Sanctum. From then on, it's a sort of journey - you find your way past all the Gates and through all the Sanctums until you finally reach the Ninth Gate."
"And then?"
"And then - nothing. No-one ever comes back. No-one knows what goes on at the other side, except the gods - and they aren't saying. Reincarnation, Heaven, Hell, something else; I have no idea. That's the big mystery about Elysium. Even in the Realm of the Dead, no-one's entirely sure what happens in the eternity after you die! Some can't cope with that - they stay on in one of the Sanctums, never go beyond the Ninth Gate. Their choice."
Harry puzzled over this for a second. "Wait - if the Ninth Gate leads on to the Ninth Sanctum; whatever that might be - what about the Tenth Gate and Sanctum?"
Tom's face dropped. "Yeah, that..." he muttered, rubbing his forehead. "Okay... this is a bit weird. The Tenth Gate is accessed from the Eighth Sanctum, just like the Ninth Gate. Except only daemons pass through it; the Tenth Sanctum is where all the daemons are imprisoned, where they're Summoned from, banished to... it's their home. And it's also completely off-limits to everyone; not that you'd want to go there, anyway."
"Damn right," Harry shuddered. Syneeta was bad enough - at least he'd banished her to that place; if the ritual had worked, of course. Well, it wasn't the time to worry about that, anyway. Mainly, he should be worrying about -
"Oh holy," said Harry, followed by a highly offensive word pertaining to certain acts of the Human body. And no, I'm not saying which one. His face bleached of colour, his breath suddenly short, he barked out; "Do you mean I'm dead?"
The man gave a snort. "Don't be daft. You think I'd have been sent to meet you if you were just another lost soul?" He thumped his chest. "Me? I have a divine job to do, here. Get you safely back to your own Realm, where you belong. That little ritual you cooked up decided to pull you along in the backlash - serves you right for not setting up wards to stop any interruptions, if you ask me."
Harry scowled. "Yeah, well, no-one is asking you." He pulled his jacket closer about him. "My trunk's here?" he noted, eyebrows rising in surprise. Tom tilted his head towards it.
"Yeah. Not much good to you here, though. Best option would just be to shrink it and carry it back with you. It must have got caught in the backlash with you." Tom reached lazily into one of his robe pockets, and brought out a small, perfectly-formed diamond. "You're lucky the spell wasn't powerful enough to take you all the way to the Tenth Sanctum; there's no way I'd have gone to look for you there."
"Thanks," Harry snarked, drawing his wand and shrinking his trunk with a flick. "SO, who sent you? And where are we meant to go?"
"We're going to the Eighth Sanctum," Tom explained readily. "The people who sent me will give you a shove through the Ninth Gate - that'll put you 'where you belong', and being alive means that it'll stick you back in your own Realm. Nice and quickly as well; they don't want living people messing around in Elysium. As for who sent me - well, I just hope you're not an atheist."
Harry's jaw dropped. "Wait - divine mission?" he said, recalling Tom's earlier words. "Atheist?" He swore again, a word Mrs Weasley probably didn't even think he knew. "Are you telling me I'm being sent home on the orders of a god?"
"A god and a goddess," he corrected smoothly. "Who'd you think would rule the afterlife? But yeah, close enough. Are you ready to move? It's just that their castle is in the Eighth Sanctum, and unless you want to walk, I can get us there pretty quickly." He tapped the diamond. "Ready?" he asked again.
The boy grabbed the shrunken trunk and slipped it in his pocket. "Right. The sooner we get there, the sooner I get some proper explanations."
"And get home," added Tom jauntily. "Right, then - touch the diamond and we'll be there in a jiffy."
Harry took a final look around, imprinting the scene on his memory, before reaching out to touch the jewel that his old enemy held out. As he did so, the inside of the diamond lit up slightly with a pale blue glow - Harry felt a sudden lightness - and then a quivery, slithery motion over his body - and then, for the second time in the day, he was gone.
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This was turning out to be a relatively unusual day; slightly above average on the weirdness meter. And when you consider that Harry was so used to incredible revelations that he usually took them as a matter of fact within mere minutes, this was quite a big thing.
It went as far as to mildly startle Harry that he was now standing not in a widely-spanning field of grey grass, but in a majestic hallway, elaborate and elegant, yet over-powering in its grandeur and opulence. He could certainly believe this was the home of a god.
The room stretched on for a long way; Harry noted the towering double-doors on one side of the room and their huge windows; and on the other three sides, the tens of closed doors that (presumably) led off into other rooms and corridors. A breath-taking set of stairs rose up onto the overhanging floor; over the balustrades Harry could just make out further doors.
He settled on a simple "Wow," to sum up his feelings, while Tom just looked incredibly smug.
"Third time I've been here," he confided in Harry, leading him to one of the impressive doors. "And not many people get to come even the one time. Remember this!"
"I will," Harry promised, staring at the colossal chandelier that seemed to drip with rubies, carrying on the theme of the room - shades of red, from pale cherry to rich russets.
Tom pushed the door open, and Harry followed him down a long, brightly-lit corridor, their feet sinking deeply and silently into the thick carpet. "This," Tom announced, waving a hand around like a tour guide, "is the castle of the gods and goddesses. Very few actually live here, though - most have their own homes or even entire Realms. There's only a few actual residents; Naoze, Aisiivou and Ginyama."
Harry blinked twice. "Who?"
Tom elucidated clearly. "Nyowzeh - he's the most powerful of the gods. He's the god of psychics, prophecy and spirits - he also has the power to kill or resurrect anyone he chooses, though he doesn't do that very often. Essahvow is his wife. She's more powerful than her husband, actually - she's the goddess of death, magic, and of this realm; as well as having a hand in wisdom, visions and guidance. All the gods and goddesses are related to them in some way.
"Ginyahma is one of their grandsons - the god of hopes, dreams, ambitions; humour, encouragement, wit and want." He pushed another door open and led Harry down a winding side-corridor and up a back flight of stairs. "Very few of the gods actually have power over a single thing; the further down the generations go, the more focused their reign becomes. The elder gods are the strongest and most versatile."
"And they sent you to find me because people aren't meant to be here?"
Tom shrugged. "Living people, anyway."
Now they stood outside another door, one with a large silver knocker in the shape of a snake's head attached. "Naoze and his wife are inside. They'll answer your questions or just send you home - just don't piss them off."
Harry froze. "I'm - going to meet them?" he gasped.
Tom cocked an eyebrow, smirking. "Well, I suppose they can't just shove you through the Ninth Gate without meeting the first living person up here in millennia, can they?" And with that, he grasped the knocker and firmly banged it thrice against the door.