Disclaimer – So my second exam is physics, and you'll be treated to a physics disclaimer this time. I only own Harry Potter under the following conditions:

A cannon that applies a force of 100.0 N to propel a cannonball 21.0 m due north in 30 seconds, disregarding air resistance, possesses a power of 100.0 Watts.

And now I will prove that I don't own Harry Potter—

Givens: Displacement: 21.0 m, F: 100.0 N

Unknown: Power

Equations: P:W/t, W:F(displacement)(cos theta)

W:(100.0 N)(21.0 m)(cos 0)

W:210.0 Joules

Substitution: P:210.0 J/30 sec.

Solution: P:70.0 Watts

See? If I had owned Harry Potter, the power would have equaled 100 Watts, proving that I don't own Harry Potter.

A/N – That is definitely the strangest disclaimer that I have done. Anyway, thanks to all my reviewers—

Nimbirosa- Thanks! But Hermione and Ron aren't dead—maybe you read the earliest draft of the prologue. If you'll read it again, they escaped before the shrine crumbled. I'm honored that you would consider this a good idea, especially since you are an excellent writer yourself.

Geminia- Hopefully the plot is developing a little for you with the newest chapters.

japanese-jew- You'll find out.

Lamentit Eternum- Thanks, but there's already been an HP/HDM crossover called Ron Weasley and the Subtle Knife in the HDM section.

Never Odd Or even- The reposts are done; on into completely new material! What do you think of this chapter?

Anyway, it's like 11:00, and I have to go to bed...I'm posting this fast.

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Unto Dust Shalt Thou Return

Chapter Three – The Republic of Heaven

Harry suddenly felt himself grow weak. His legs seemed not to support him anymore, and he fell to the floor, his mind a jumbled mix of half-formed thoughts, nothing seeming to make sense. Albus Dumbledore, alive? And not only alive, but in a parallel universe? Harry wanted to greet his former headmaster exuberantly, to have a long talk with the man to whom he owed so much.

But that wasn't possible, thought Harry suddenly. Because the man in front of him, no matter how much he looked or acted like Dumbledore, was definitely not him. He was the product of a different universe, a different man entirely—Eric had already told him as much. It wouldn't do to get his hopes up.

So Harry simply stared at the long white beard and twinkling blue eyes of the man sitting in front of him. "Erm—hello, sir," he managed to say, pulling himself to his feet. Eric lingered anxiously behind him, waiting to see if he needed any assistance before returning to his place at Harry's side.

"Hello, Harry," repeated Dumbledore, his face impassive, and Harry once again felt an enormous pang of longing for not only his dead Headmaster but the world that he had left behind.

"I can see by your reaction and your thoughts that you had a relationship with my counterpart in your world, and I am sorry for not realizing so earlier," said the Dumbledore before him, and Harry struggled not to think of the man as his own headmaster. The blue eyes twinkled behind the half-moon spectacles. The long white beard flowed down periwinkle robes. Everything about him seemed the same as the Dumbledore Harry knew, and yet he was so completely different in this reality. For one, he was the Elder of a race of magical humans so powerful that they could perform the most complex spells Harry's world had invented without even using a wand, and yet he would not raise a finger to help Harry on his quest to defeat Voldemort.

But he still found it impossible to dislike Dumbledore—his eternal politeness gave him a somewhat grandfatherly air, and Harry had always felt great affection towards the man who had strived to protect him, although some of his efforts had been misguided.

"That's okay, sir. I suppose that you want me to tell you how I came to be here? Oh—you've already read that in my mind, haven't you?" said Harry, somewhat embarrassed for not having realized it sooner.

"Indeed I have, Harry," said Dumbledore, looking at Harry curiously from behind his spectacles. "And yet it is not a tale that one hears every day. You have had a dark wizard after you for your entire life, and you seem to be something of a celebrity in your world—and yet you remain very down-to-earth and humble. You have lived with an abusive family for seventeen years, and yet you show no signs of wanting revenge, beyond the obvious wishing that your parents had never died." Harry shuddered at the amount of information that this Dumbledore had been able to extract from his mind. "You are a very remarkable young man, Harry. And yet there are many things that you do not know, many things that you need to know to defeat this Voldemort. And while we are a peaceful race, I see no harm in giving you information, as it is obvious to me that this Voldemort is the one in the wrong. I shall pull you up a chair so that you may be more comfortable," said the bearded man in front of him, waving his hand and creating one of his trademark poofy armchairs.

"Thank you, Head—sir," said Harry as he sat down, still used to calling the bearded man sitting in front of him 'Headmaster'. "I assume that you have read in my mind the story of the Horcruxes and me and my friends' search for them?" Dumbledore nodded at him politely as he steeped his hands in front of him, and for an instant Harry forgot that this Dumbledore was different and wanted to shout at the man and demand that he remember Harry.

"Well, I thought I was the last Horcrux," said Harry confusedly. "But Voldemort is still alive. I was dying there in the Shrine, and I had destroyed every other one of his Horcruxes as well. So why hasn't he died yet?"

"It is very simple, Harry," replied Dumbledore. "Voldemort has other Horcruxes, Horcruxes that you don't know of. You must not have been the last one; that is why he did not perish when you sacrificed yourself to destroy Ravenclaw's book."

"Well—yeah, I'd thought of that too, a bit, sir," said Harry. "But why was I sent here, then, after I failed to kill him? How did I get to this world?"

"That, too, my boy, is simple," said Dumbledore, "and yet it is the most disturbing part of your most interesting story. Lord Voldemort must have found a way to use magic to travel between the worlds."

"W—what?" asked Harry. "Oh, no..."

"I am afraid so. This is grave news, as I am sure you must have surmised, because not only does Lord Voldemort have the ability to travel between worlds, but he must also possess the knowledge of the great number of worlds and the eccentricities of each. You see, there are some worlds that contain weapons beyond any that your world has ever experienced—I assume that this is Lord Voldemort's intention as we speak."

"Then we have to stop him!"

"I am sorry, Harry. The Magi are—"

"Yes, yes...sir. I know. A nonviolent people. But you have to help me somehow! There must be something that you could do!"

"We are helping you as we speak, Harry, in the only way we know how. By telling you everything we know."

"So tell me how to stop him!" shouted Harry, finding a familiar anger towards Albus Dumbledore rising to the surface.

"Very well," said Dumbledore, a slight coldness creeping into his voice. "I have been trying to tell you, Harry. Apparently he has scattered Horcruxes across not only your world, but others as well. This is why destroying the seven Horcruxes in your world and yourself was not enough to stop him. You must find these Horcruxes, Harry, and then kill Voldemort himself yet again, if he has managed to return to a body yet. If not, his spirit will still pose a threat, as it can possess others and will not perish until you destroy all of the fragments of his soul."

"But how do I find all of these soul fragments? There are an infinite number of different worlds out there. I can't search all of them!"

"You need not search every world, Harry. I have detected a large disturbance of magic in Alethia, a world that is quite similar to yours and yet very different in certain ways. Your Voldemort has most likely traveled there."

Harry felt an enormous gratitude towards Dumbledore suddenly—there were too many worlds for him to search, and yet Dumbledore had pinpointed Voldemort's exact location immediately.

"Once you locate him, your job will be somewhat easier. With the destructions of all of his other Horcruxes, Voldemort is most likely gathering all of his remaining soul fragments in order to ensure that they are not found. However, he must have sent you to this world, instead of the one that he was transported to, on purpose. Luckily for you, he did not realize that we in this world have the technology to travel to others."

"So you can—sir—you could send me to this world?" asked Harry, hardly daring to hope.

"Yes, Harry," confirmed Dumbledore, and Harry felt his spirits soar. "But first I must inform you about the world you are about to enter. The inhabitants of this world are all born with a physical representation of their soul, the daemon. Not demons as you have heard of them, but a lifelong friend, a part of yourself, your conscience and guide throughout life. Everyone, every creature in every world that exhibits sentience, or the capacity for free will, has a version of the daemon, and every human has an actual animal representation of it."

"My—my soul?" asked Harry, confused. "But—what does that have to do with anything?"

"Are you aware of the story of the Bible, Harry?" asked Dumbledore, and Harry found himself, if it was possible, more confused.

"The Bible?"

"Yes, Harry. The first humans, as you know, are said to have been named Adam and Eve, and they lived in the Garden of Eden, a paradise beyond human comprehension, until they were hoodwinked by a serpent into eating the forbidden fruit of the apple tree in the center of the garden. When this occurred, they reportedly Fell, and were banished from the Garden of Eden for all eternity."

"But what does that have to do—"

"If you will have patience, Harry, I will be happy to answer all of your questions."

"You see, Harry," said Dumbledore, his voice losing its edge in favor of a professorlike objectivity, "the inhabitants of this world have, until recently, been repressed by the tyranny of a corrupt Church. The Magisterium, as it is called, was obsessed with the nature of Dust, their name for a particle—like your physics—that surrounds all sentient creatures. When the people of Alethia go through what you might call puberty, their daemons settle on a specific animal shape. The leaders of the Magisterium noticed that adults, specifically people with settled daemons, have a much larger amount of Dust surrounding them than children before their daemons have settled. An arm of the Church, known as the General Oblation Board (oblation means sacrifice), set out to conduct—experiments—as to the nature of this relationship. They did terrible, terrible things, Harry. They severed the daemons of children from their humans, Harry—I believe it produces the same effect that you see in your world when a person's soul is sucked out by a Dementor."

"The Dementor's Kiss?" asked Harry, shuddering. Humans had done this to other humans?

"Yes. These people were eventually chased to their headquarters, a place called Bolvangar, and stopped by a twelve-year-old girl and her daemon. Their names were Lyra and Pantalaimon. She had traveled to the North in order to save one of her friends who had been taken and instead found herself leading her friend to his death. You see, her father, a man named Asriel, was conducting his own experiments, although very much in opposition to the Magisterium's. He found that the burst of energy released at the instant that daemon is severed from human is incomparable to any other form of energy generation. He used the immense amount of energy to open a window to another world from the Aurora Borealis, where the barrier between worlds was the thinnest. Lyra and Pantalaimon followed him into a new world, a world called Cittagazze, the City of Magpies."

"And magpies they were. They had built a tool capable of cutting through the barriers between worlds, and had used it to steal technology and ideas from all the worlds to build a thriving civilization. But a race of beings called Specters, which fed on Dust and the daemon, plagued its inhabitants. The only thing they feared was the Subtle Knife, the knife made from an alloy so powerful that no matter was impervious to its blade. But Lyra and her daemon did not know this. They only desired food and shelter, so they were especially surprised when they encountered a boy from yet another world. Your world."

"This boy was named William Parry. His father had found a window to another world, which in your world is called an Anomaly, and had sent the location to his wife, William's mother. Government agents, the MI5 in your world, were sent after the letters, and William had accidentally killed one of them when he pushed him down a staircase while trying to defend himself and the letters. He then ran away and, by chance, was led to a window near where he lived, in the Oxford of your world. He entered it and was transported to Cittagazze, where he ran into Lyra. Lyra told him of her adventures and asked him where she could find a scholar so that she could learn more about Dust. William led her to a particle physicist of his world named Mary Malone, who was doing research on 'dark matter', or Lyra's Dust."

Harry took a deep breath, trying desperately to keep all of this information straight.

"While Lyra was in William's world, a man by the name of Sir Charles Latrom stole her alethiometer, a device that is fueled by Dust and is used as a type of divination—one may ask it a question and receive the truth in return, hence alethio-, meaning truth. Latrom informed her that he would return the alethiometer if William would bring back the Subtle Knife of Cittagazze, which could only be accessed by one whose daemon had not yet settled. William fought an intruder for the knife and received the mark of its bearer in the fight, two missing fingers on the left hand. He was taught how to use the knife to cut into other worlds and then used it to regain the alethiometer for Lyra. However, Lyra's mother, who was a high-ranking member of the Magisterium, followed them and kidnapped Lyra, taking her into a cave hidden in the Himalayas of Lyra's world. While there, Lyra's mother, Marisa Coulter, fed Lyra a type of potion that kept her asleep, and while Lyra slept she dreamt of her dead friend who she had led to her father and a world of the dead where he was now. She vowed to save her friend, and when William rescued her using the knife she told him of her dreams."

"William agreed to use the knife to attempt to access this world of the dead. Accompanied by two Gallivespian spies, a race of miniature humans with poisonous spurs from one of the other countless worlds, William and Lyra entered the land of the dead, where their daemons were ripped from them, as daemons cannot enter the world of the dead. In this world they encountered the ghosts of each and every sentient creature that had ever died in all the worlds."

Harry was speechless. He did not understand much of the story, but if this was true then Sirius and his parents were languishing away in a world that did not sound a great deal like heaven.

"William and Lyra were left speechless by the sight of the ghosts, and while they were there Lyra had an idea—if William could use the Subtle Knife to create an exit from the world of the dead into another world, the ghosts could escape and be a part of the world and of Dust, as daemons did when they died. Do not fear, Harry, if you do not understand me fully," said Dumbledore, and Harry found himself taken aback by the sudden change of subject before Dumbledore continued, "William cut an opening in the fabric of the worlds and created an exit from the world of the dead into a grove in an unknown world. He then cut another window into the world where Lyra's father, Asriel, fought a war against the Authority, an angel who claimed—"

"An angel? Erm—sorry, sir."

"That is quite all right, Harry. Yes, an angel, who claimed to have created all other beings. Asriel sought to overthrow the Authority and create a Republic of Heaven in which all creatures were free and equal. The Authority was not the true Creator—in fact, he was only an angel himself, albeit a powerful one. Lyra and William entered this world in search of their lost daemons, but instead they encountered the frail Authority, who had lost almost all of his power to old age, and accidentally killed him. Lyra's parents banded together to put an end to his second-in-command, an angel known as the Metatron, and Lyra and William chased their daemons into a world of creatures who rode on seedpod wheels, creatures known as the mulefa."

"Meanwhile, the scientist that Lyra had encountered, Mary Malone, was being led by Dust itself, in a manner not unlike Lyra's reading of the alethiometer, to the same world. Lyra and William were led by the mulefa to Malone, and Malone gave food and shelter to the young travelers. That same night, she encountered the window that William had opened from the land of the dead, and a ghost emerging from it informed her that she should 'tell them stories'."

"Malone told Lyra and William of a time in her childhood when a boy about her age fed her a bite of marzipan. At that moment, Lyra realized that she was in love with William, and the next day, while she and William were searching for their daemons, she fed him a piece of fruit, just as Malone had informed her the boy had done to her. At that instant, the Dust, which had been seeping slowly out of the worlds and into the abyss, was attracted to the young couple and began to nourish the human race once again. But Will and Lyra's newfound love was not to endure, for mere days later they were visited by one of the highest-ranked angels, one named Xaphania. Xaphania told William and Lyra that the Dust had been exiting the worlds through the openings made by the Subtle Knife, and that the knife must be broken. The angels offered to close each window if William and Lyra promised only to allow one to remain open—the window leading out of the world of the dead. And so, after helping to save the worlds from impending ruin, William and Lyra were forced apart."

"Blimey," said Harry. "Those people saved all of the worlds from destruction?"

"Indeed they did, Harry. Their story is known, in some form, in all of the worlds."

"But I've never heard it, sir..."

"But you have heard the previous form of it, I assume? The story of Adam and Eve?"

Harry, dumbstruck, stared blankly at Dumbledore for several moments.

"Ah, as I thought. You see, Harry, Mary Malone's story tempted William and Lyra to do what they would not have done otherwise—fall in love. Mary Malone received a very curious message before she departed to the world of the mulefa, Harry—play the serpent."

"William and Lyra, young Harry Potter, are the second coming of Adam and Eve. By letting their love for one another become known, they suffered the Biblical Fall, thus being banished from the paradise of youthful innocence into the world of sentience and independence. The church, I fear, were correct in their first assumption—Dust is indeed original sin. But sin, in this case, is not necessarily a bad thing—it led the human race to gain their own free will and saved each of the worlds from imminent destruction."

It took a while before Harry regained his bearings. Mouth agape, he continued to stare at Dumbledore for several moments afterwards before looking away.

"And now, Harry, I shall exercise my power to send you to this world of daemons and armored bears, of witches and shamans, the world of Alethia. I am only sorry that you could not remain longer, but it has been an honor to meet you."

"A—an honor?" asked Harry curiously, remembering the adulation he received for having defeated Voldemort the first time and wondered why this Dumbledore, literally a world away, would do the same.

"Indeed," replied Dumbledore, blue eyes twinkling. "You see, you have your own destiny, too, and I have been lucky enough to bear witness to a part of your journey."

"What—"

But Dumbledore had already raised a hand, and now Eric was bowing deeply to Harry. "Goodbye," he said, his eyes losing some of their benevolent twinkle. "I shall be sorry to see you go, Harry Potter. It was extraordinary indeed to play host to you during your stay here."

"Thank you very much, Eric," said Harry truthfully. He then turned to Dumbledore. "And sir—thank you so much, for everything you've done. You have helped me a great deal, just like your counterpart in my world might have done."

Harry was barely aware of Dumbledore's voice responding, "It was nothing at all, Harry," before a bright white light leapt at him out of nowhere and the world around him spun away into oblivion.

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A/N – (Deep sigh) And that's chapter 3. That's 3,000 words in like four hours, so review!