In reply to the user Mithrilandtj: Who says that the only way into Diagon Alley is the flue, apparition or the wall? It is absurd that the entire wizarding population of Britain can only use a single physical entrance to one of the most prestigious magical locations in the world.

All of the characters except for my own handful of originals, as well as locations, names, titles etc are and remain the property of JKR and I hope you like it.

Principles such as Splicing are mine. I give users permission to use them, but only if you reference me in your work.

Review please; this might well be a LONG work in progress.

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Chapter 10: Preparation and Steam.

Harry spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon with Tonks. He purchased a ten-galleon bag that held five times as much inside as the outside size suggested. He filled that bag with books on every subject from transfiguration, charms and combat magic. He had found that there was a book documenting the history of the Potter Family and promptly purchased it along with another titled, Lineage and Lives: An Examination of the Great Houses of Britain.

He insisted on buying lunch for Tonks and she led him into a side-street off Diagon Alley where they ate hot, rich Indian food served by a man wearing a turban, long moustaches and whose skin was dyed a deep, iridescent blue.

The air was hot and thick inside the small restaurant and the heavy scents from burning incense made Harry's head foggy. They discussed the wizarding world of Britain and touched on the magical civil war that was ravaging China, the time she had spent in America and the recent resurgence in ancient Aztec magical practices in South America.

'What's Hogwarts actually like?' Harry asked, mopping up the last of his curry with a shred of naan bread.

'Amazing…' Tonks said wistfully, she had inadvertently ordered the hottest thing on the whole menu and her hair standing on end, a violent shimmering red colour.

'What's Dumbledore like?'

Tonks sobered a little, chewing her lip. 'He's… a little scary actually. Everyone rants on about how he's the greatest sorcerer and transmogrifist of the last age, Supreme Mugwump and all that, but the students don't see him all that often, he keeps to his office most of the time, dealing with that fool of a Minister for Magic and the running of the school. He gives a speech at the start and end of each term, attends the balls and feasts and beside that he's not often seen. He did turn up at one of my apparition lessons last year after the old Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher was killed by that dragon and he seemed pleasant enough, but he's so powerful and makes everything look so easy that he's not actually that good a teacher. He has no time for failure. I remember one boy; Kai Robinton got splinched halfway through the class, Dumbledore got really irate, whipped out his wand, knitted Robinton's arms back on and ordered him to do it again, better.'

Harry's eyes went wide. He'd read about the apparition or the ability to move instantaneously between places and it was a very powerful ability but hard to learn. The distance was only limited by a magician's own power. Legend held that Merlin, the most powerful Druid – and magician – in history had been so wise and powerful that he had been able to traverse the length of Europe in one go, travelling between Ancient Britain and Rome instantly and at will.

'Can you apparate?' He asked.

Tonks nodded, 'Got my license and everything. I'm still getting used to it right now and can't really manage more than a few miles with any kind of accuracy, but I'm getting there. I've not tried taking anyone side-along with me yet though, that's a big step, last thing I want to do is splice with someone.'

Harry grimaced, 'That's when…'

'When two people apparate together and aren't able to separate properly when they emerge from the astral plane. They either get fused together or come out two people but mixed together like odd arms or odd halves of faces.' Tonks shuddered.

'Nasty. I can't wait to get to school.' Harry said, putting thoughts of being pulled apart and haphazardly put back together with half another person's parts.

'Me too, you'll love the Hogwarts Express.'

'The train that takes us to school?'

Tonks smiled, 'I keep forgetting you've read that book about the school. I never bothered myself.'

'Why not?'

'Think about it, I grew up around wizards. I already knew loads about Howarts before I ever got on that train.'

Harry shrugged, 'I guess so.'

Tonks sat back in her chair. 'I can't eat any more of this, it's just…' she paused and steam blew out of her ears.

Harry laughed as Tonks waved to the waiter. Harry paid and they left, emerging back into the clean air.

They walked back into Diagon Alley, finding that the hubbub about his appearance had turned into a rumour that buzzed in the air. Everyone was talking about a sighting of The-Boy-Who-Lived and on more than one occasion a few people stared at Harry for a few seconds before shaking their head and turning back to their conversations.

The third time this happened, Harry frowned.

'What's the matter?' Tonks asked.

'No one realises who I am.' Harry answered. 'I guess people can't imagine that the boy who saved the wizarding world would be as small and pathetic as me.'

'Shut up. If everything you told me about your muggles is correct, then you'll fill out in no time. You're young too, you'll definitely be taller than me and your parents were pretty thin themselves, so it stands to reason.'

Harry shrugged.

Tonks stopped and turned on her heel in an attempt to be graceful but toppled over. Harry helped her to her feet as her face flushed scarlet.

'Well Harry m'dear. It's been a pleasure but I have to be getting home now.' She said, giggling as her hair flushed a dull mousy brown before returning to its shocking bubblegum pink.

'Nice to meet you Tonks.' Harry said picking up a book that had toppled out of her dungarees and handing it to her.

'Cheers Harry, see you on the train!' Tonks turned on her heel again and vanished with a loud cracking sound.

Harry smiled, 'I love magic.' He said to himself and turned himself, walking toward the elevator.

He travelled back to the car park and waited in the warm afternoon sun for the Dursleys.

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Harry decided that the best course for starting Hogwarts was to arrive as well equipped as possible. Upon returning home from Diagon Alley with his new haul of books, he started immediately upon The Most Glorious and Honourable House of Potter, locking himself in his new bedroom away from the noise of the Dursley's eternally screaming television set. He swept the rest of his books into his trunk, separating the ones he'd already completed and sat at the desk staring at the embossed leather cover.

There was a coat of arms on the front of the book, of a great stag that looked left and right while resting between its great many-forked antlers shone a gleaming five-pointed star. Deciding that the need to know what he was going into more than what he had come from, he put the book aside and picked up The Ninth Age of Britain, Volume One and opened the cover.

The magical history of Britain, it turned out, was roughly divided into nine Ages. The First Age had been Pre-history, before the Celts had arrived and people had raised incredibly powerful and mysterious artefacts such as Stonehenge.

The Second Age was the time of the Celts and the people considered to be the native British. That age had ended with the destruction of Ynys Mon or Anglesey by the Roman invasion.

The Roman, or Third Age was the briefest and saw the greatest upheaval in magical Britain with the fading of the Druids power and the rise of Christianity and endured until Rome's retreat from Britain.

The Fourth Age lasted a little over two-hundred years and covered the time between Rome's retreat and the Saxon conquest of Britain, leaving only Wales, Cornwall and some parts of Scotland untouched.

The Fifth Age was the resurgent rise of Christianity, which saw the suppression of British gods and traditional magical ways of life which lasted until the Viking invasions ushered in the Sixth Age around the year nine-hundred.

The Sixth Age was a time of great power for Britain as the introduction of the Norse gods to the islands awoke great power in the land, to the degree that great wizards and witches learned to survive the Christian oppression of magical talent and formed their own small societies, culture and safe havens, one of the most noteworthy and famous in the modern day being Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The Seventh Age began with the Norman Conquest of Britain and the almost simultaneous and complete separation of magical society from muggle.

The Eighth Age was bought about by the discovery of the New World and the secession of malcontents who fled both the magical and muggle worlds to embark on finding a new place to call home and raise their children and own societies. This is most commonly referred to as The Second Dark Age.

The Ninth age was started after the destruction of Nazi Germany, the first war that had truly affected magician and muggle alike since the Romans had started their war of conquest against the whole world. So much magical blood and power, mighty artefacts, great teachings and knowledge was lost during the Second Dark Age that the Ninth Age had been one of steady decline. Magicians of the twentieth century know less about the universe around them and its laws than had been known by the meanest, most ignorant hedge-wizard and huckster almost two thousand years ago. Even the most powerful witches and wizards of the last two centuries knew less about the wider world of magic and its history than some muggle scholars had known in their time.

Harry read until his eyes would no longer focus on the print and he slumped down on his bed without removing his glasses or putting the book down. It seemed to him that over time, magic which was by its very nature a wild and unpredictable thing had been pulled and cinched into a semblance of order by the people in power at the time. Before Rome had gained dominance over Britain, it had been the most magically potent island in the world, enjoying more magical traditions, gods and routes to power than could be found anywhere in the world. Similar could be said for places like ancient Persia, Greece and China, all of which had fallen under the force of new, upstart nations that wished to enforce their own rules over the world.

That explained places like Diagon Alley, the reason wizardkind chose to live hidden from muggles and the decline of pureblood magical families that he had read about in A History of Magic: after centuries of war, strife, bickering and religious oppression, the will of magicians to carry on the struggle against a world where they were the extreme minority had waned. Many magicians chose lives where they lived disguised as muggles, in their cities and towns.

The Ninth Age of Britain, Volume One spoke at length of the damage that had been caused to the earth in the Eighth Age during the industrial revolution. Mankind had always made greedy use of the world's resources, taking what they wanted with little regard for the wider consequences, but industrial automation had allowed mugglekind to rape the world at speeds and to degrees never before seen. The world had suffered and the amount of wild magic, the raw stuff of wonder that was the lifeblood of every living thing, that magicians tapped into every time they used magic had become weak, intermittent and in some places, dead. In areas stripped completely bare of nature, poisoned and corrupted, magic became physically strenuous for magicians to achieve and larger effects could even cost them their lives as their bodies tried to fuel the magic that would normally have been drawn from the world around them.

It was with these thoughts buzzing through his head that Harry slept, the great tome on his lap. He saw the great endless forests of Britain and the world being torn down, replaced with countless acres of crops which in turn fell to the grey and black of cities, crisscrossed by cancerous veins of roads and motorways. He felt the sorrow of the earth as she struggled to breathe, as her airs were choked with poisonous fumes from factories. The world shuddered and coughed while Harry became aware of a single figure standing on top of one of the factories, his great meaty fists resting on the vast circumference of his waist. The figure was laughing great wet bellows and Harry saw how his fat, jowly face jiggled with each exhalation. Vernon Dursley stood laughing as the world died. Harry screamed as the surface of the world shuddered.

He turned from Vernon, but everywhere he ran was filled with factories and towers topped with bellowing, greedy men and women. He ran until bought up short by a figure lay on the ground before him. He walked closer and saw that the creature was a man whose skin was slick with blood. He stared up at Harry and his face was pale. A pair of great antlers grew from his forehead. His mouth moved but no words came out so Harry knelt down beside him. The man's breath smelled like fresh pine needles and the earth after summer rain and his words sounded like the wing beats of birds and the booming rush of waves on the shore.

'The world is dying, Harry Potter.' He said, the last word turning into a sigh.

Harry looked back into the eyes which were green and dead. The face wore glasses and had a lightning bolt shaped scar on the forehead. Harry screamed.

He screamed as the body rotted before him, the eyes turning to liquid and the flesh falling off the bones which then fell to dust.

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Harry woke with a start, slaked in cold sweat. The memory of a dream hung at the edges of his mind but the details evaded him. All he could remember was Vernon Dursley laughing and something about antlers.

The sun was thin outside his window, still ruddy with the glow of dawn. Suddenly and completely awake, Harry rose and dressed quietly. Uncle Vernon would be up soon for work and Harry wanted to be away before that. He silently unlocked his bedroom door and crept down the stairs. He took some of the magical sweets and pastries he'd bought the previous day and stuffed them into the bag that held several of his books and a large picnic blanket. Then he deactivated the house alarm, opened the front door and slipped out.

He walked along the street which was damp from a small rain that had fallen in the night and headed out onto the nearby fields where he knew that if he waited, his friends would come.

He set himself up in the shade created by a dead tree that had been struck by lightning before he was born and took out The Ninth Age again, continuing from where he had left off.

The book mainly concerned itself with Britain but did include interactions with other wizarding nations. In the wake of the Second World War, the events of which in the wizarding world had hinged around the actions of Nazi mysticism and a powerful dark lord named Grindlewald who had eventually been defeated by none other than Albus Dumbledore.

Following World War Two, Britain had been served by a long series of inept, weak or just apathetic Ministers for Magic. Ever since Harold Bastable, the first post-war Minster for Magic, the interests of the magical folk and creatures of Britain and the Commonwealth had become side-lined by politicians who were more interested in advancing the interests of growth at all costs than the health of the world.

The International Confederation of Wizards had the remit to make significant changes in the world but instead busied themselves with increasing the invisibility of wizarding kind to muggles and undermining the work of campaigners who fought for reintegration.

The British Wizengamot had, since the fall of Lord Voldemort, concerned itself exclusively with the pursuit and destruction of dark magicians all over the land, their impressive potential powers diverted from ruling wizardkind to a paranoid persecution of and obsessing over the nature of dark magic. They had, since the Eighth Age, fallen from being the arbiters of British magical justice to the level of bureaucratic box-tickers more interested in avoiding investigations than actually achieving anything that could enrich wizardkind.

Harry continued as the sun climbed, drinking a bottle of pumkin juice and eating a sausage roll apparently made with meat from razortusk boar, a rare magical version of the wild boar that was reduced to small pockets in wildest Cornwall and otherwise raised on farms.

He took the last sip of his juice and jumped as something ran over his leg. He looked down to see a pair of tiny diamond-bright eyes staring at him.

Nidhogg had retuned.

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