Chapter 4: Centaur Isle.

It was sometime in the middle of the night when I was woken by Gabrielle, she'd got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and I was fast asleep in the chair, I'd been reading in. "Why are you asleep in a chair, how come you didn't come to bed?"

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked blurrily at her, "just thinking and trying to work something out!" I handed her the note, got up from my chair, made a vague gesture to the en suite and collected my stuff for a shower.

A few minutes later, I emerged in my pyjamas, and made my way to the bed. Gabrielle had the note in her hands and had a thoughtful look in her eyes. "I know this, it was something that was taught in our History of Magic class at Beauxbatons, but I can't remember it just now!"

I took the note from her and placed it on the bedside table, "well, by all means think about it; but I wouldn't say the name with that in your hand, I don't want to turn up in my night clothes several hours early." I leaned across and gave her a kiss and we both cuddled together in the bed.

I awoke several hours later to find the bed empty and cold, I could hear the shower running, and indeed Gabrielle came out a few minutes later, rubbing her hair in a towel. "So, you're finally awake sleepyhead. It's nearly nine, I was beginning to wander if you were pregnant as well; the amount of sleep you seemed to be needing. I managed to remember the name of the Greek Goddess of Magic this morning. I thought we'd go down to breakfast and then take a walk outside, we can portkey from outside the hotel so the muggles working here don't see any unnecessary magic!"

I nodded in agreement and made my way to the bathroom, to give myself a shave and get ready for a day in New Sparta, I really had no idea what to expect, but I at least wanted to look presentable, not some unshaven lout.

I emerged wearing a pair of trousers and a shirt, no tie, I hated those things with a passion and I never wore them if I could avoid it, didn't even bother at work, most of my colleagues just wore wizard robes; I found as well that a smart but casual look was better for meeting the parents I visited, a tie seemed to make me appear like a stick in the mud, stuffed shirt kind of person, I only used 1 tie; black for funerals.

Gabby and I made our way down to the main dining area and took our time over breakfast and eventually made our way from the hotel around 10.30 to find somewhere to leave from. We made our way to a small grassed area; that seemed to be deserted and not be overlooked by cameras. Gabrielle took the letter from her bag and handed it to me, keeping hold of it herself as well. Checking to see we were both touching the letter, she said "Hecate!" in a clear and determined manner.

I braced myself for the usual portkey feeling of being yanked through the air by my belly button, but instead I felt like bubbles were popping all over me and then I was somewhere else, obviously the centaurs had some different way of portkeying.

I looked around at my new location; we appeared to be on a small sandy beach with no one else in sight. The beach gave the impression that it was hardly the best place to get to, not on the main tourist routes anyway. Was this some sort of joke, we were on a deserted beach in the middle of nowhere and no visible means of returning to our departure point?

Suddenly Gabrielle gave a gasp and pointed out to the sea, there seemed to be some sort of disturbance out beyond the bay. The water seemed to be being sprayed up by something. As it came nearer to us, we could see a centaur running on the water towards our location. He pulled up to a stop on the beach in front of us. "My apologies, Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, I should have been here to meet you. I hope you are ready to see the centaur isle, or the state of New Sparta, being its newest name. The way to the island is a little disconcerting to the uninitiated I must warn you; one of the drawbacks of the charms my ancestors put in place to hide it in the first place."

I looked at Gabrielle, and could see the excitement in her eyes; she was looking forward to this as much as I was. "I think we're ready, what do we need to do in order to get there?"

He nodded and turned back to face the sea, "if you would each take one of my hands and walk with me. Don't think about what you're about to do. Everything will be fine." I took his left hand and Gabrielle his right and we began walking towards the sea; before I had time to think about the fact, we were walking on water. "There's a special charm on the water here, it acts solid to any centaurs and their guests." He released our hands, "once you have been to the island the charm will work for yourselves as well, unless it is decided otherwise."

We walked beside him for maybe a couple of hundred yards or so, and then he stopped. "This will feel a little strange, maybe even uncomfortable, but please don't worry; you will come to no harm." He snapped his fingers, there appeared to be some sort of barrier in front of us, a shimmer in the air, "please step through, you'll find yourself in New Sparta." I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and stepped through the shimmer. I felt as if I was walking under water for a moment, then so cold I could hardly breathe and then I was standing on a small beach similar to the one we had left a while back, but this beach was not as isolated. There was a stone building of similar construction to one's I had seen ruins of on the television, stone columns, a huge stone roof above; there appeared to be a trident carved over the main entrance.

"Ah! I see you've noticed the Temple of Poseidon; we still worship the old Gods here in New Sparta, although mostly we have a secular society. We believe that religion should have no place in running a society, that's why we managed to get that into the original constitution, and as well, we wanted no interference from someone trying to change our religion."

"For a state that no one in Europe seems to have heard of, you seem to have had a lot of input into the affairs of the United States!"

"Well you can blame much of that on the ridiculous piece of Legislation; you call the Statute of Secrecy. Not only did it stop your non-wizarding population from learning about the wizard world, but it stopped them learning about anything that concerned any type of magic at all. So a state that was mainly occupied by centaurs, a mythical magical race was also removed from all knowledge. The thing that surprises our state legislative body most of all was that yourself, the non-magical relative of a wizard would be involved in our own magical history. Understand that when the prophecy of a bewigged pig was made about our eventual reconciliation with wizarding Europe was made, it was seen as saying it would never happen; I mean whoever heard of a pig wearing a wig; no offence meant of course!"

"None taken! In fact I disagree slightly with my cousin, who incidentally was the one who called me a pig in a wig, the appellation should have been whale in a wig, I really was grossly overweight. It was only through magical intervention of another sort that made me realise a lot of things about myself."

"Really! Do go on, this is most interesting!"

"It was in the summer that my cousin and I were 15; that a pair of dementors were set on my cousin and I; my cousin saved me from the dementors, which got him into a lot of trouble. The point is, however, their effect on me. I began to see myself as others did; a fat, ignorant bully. That and the headmaster of Harry's school telling my parents that they had been abusing me, I began to realise I needed to change. I hope I've managed to do a good job of it!"

"Hmm! From what I've heard from Principal Abbot at the school in Massachusetts, you seem to be a very polite and interesting specimen of English wizardry, born a Muggle as they reckon things, found out a lot of things about their so called history; managed to learn their magic through a most curious route and gotten yourself a Wizard Patent of Nobility. On top of that a member of our race has spoken with you about peace between his own and wizard kind. What are your thoughts on obtaining peace in this instance?"

"At this point, I really don't know, most wizards still seem to be stuck in some kind of rut, anything that is not pure-blood wizard is beneath contempt in their eyes. It's only recently that they've allowed the goblins to invest in muggle banking, at my suggestion, but I know from something's I've heard that this is seen by some as allowing sheep to graze in the same field as cows, just animals interacting. They have no real concept of equality, and regard the centaurs as animals, despite from what I've learnt, even as a muggle. Centaurs are mentioned in Greek mythology, which predates their version of history, but this is ignored, the centaurs have to eke out a hunter gatherer existence in the Hogsmeade forest, living in crude mud huts, seen about as important as a horse; no offence meant of course!"

"And what is your ideal solution to this problem, if you could have it of course?"

"I would see goblins and centaurs given full rights as citizens of the magical community, other types of magical creature having the same rights as well. A colleague of mine wants this as well for all magical creatures, but unfortunately I begin to see a problem with how she operates, not that I'll ever tell her that! She can be relied on to find out any amount of information from many a diverse source, but can't make the logical leap on HOW to make a change. A simple case in point was the issue of house elf clothing, quite by accident I managed to solve that, by letting a house elf make its own clothing, admittedly I haven't managed to work out some other of their conditions of employment yet, but I'm working on it. As for how to get equality for centaurs, I really am in the dark at the moment; we need to find some way first of getting the wizard community to acknowledge their intelligence and uniqueness as a species, not as half breeds. I have the information from the interview that Firenze had with me, but no way to divulge it to the population in general, they would have no idea what it all meant and most likely see it as fiction any way!"

"You really do seem to know quite a bit and have some interesting ideas, but as you say no way to get them sorted out. The state of New Sparta would be willing to assist you in the quest, but as your wizarding society has cut itself off from us with their Statute, there is no way for us to communicate this to them. Any communication from us would be seen to be blank, because that ridiculous piece of legal rubbish would stop them from acknowledging the existence of a sentient centaur. Your only real hope is to get that law abolished, there really is no need for it any more. The existence of their magical world is put in more danger because of it; indeed our calculations say that if more interaction with the muggle world does not happen, then the pure bloods will breed themselves out of existence in about 200 years.

"You mean there'll be no wizards in Britain in a couple of hundred years?"

"No! I mean there will be no pureblood wizards in Britain or indeed most of Europe. What they perceive as magical blood is no more than a genetic quirk of fate, similar to red hair say, constant inbreeding is weakening this gene in their descendants; they will need fresh blood to bolster their viability. You see it even now, most pureblood families only manage to have one child of magical ability, if they manage to have more children, then the possibility of what they call squibs arises. Of course if a so called squib marries a pureblood, the problem is still there, too close to the gene pool, but marrying a muggle can help to boost the genetic propensity for magic, so the ability will usually surface after a couple of generations. Then you have the muggleborns where magic occurs spontaneously from no discernible source; it's really random mutation, like two perfectly normal parents having an albino child, it can happen anywhere!"

During this conversation we had been following our host and guide through the dunes, inland, suddenly the view changed. There was a city before us, but different from any city I had ever seen, there were no skyscrapers, in fact no building over one storey tall, they were all examples of what I suppose would be called classic Grecian architecture; the roads between the buildings were simple grassed pathways, not the usual tarmac and concrete that I was used to. All in all it was breathtaking in its simplicity and its beauty; it seemed to grow naturally from the surrounding countryside.

"Welcome to Metropolis, the State Capital of New Sparta and the oldest city in the new world, its original infrastructure is nearly two millennia old, built on first arrival after we had warded our home from prying eyes. New Sparta is the second largest state in the union at 594,740 sq miles. (A/N Alaska is 1st at 663,267 sq miles; Texas 2nd at 268,580 sq miles according to Wikipedia). When the island was first discovered it started a few hundred metres off what is now the Florida coastline; was bordered to the north by the nearby island now called Bermuda, and the Azores in the east. We made the island unplottable, covered it being missing with illusion of ocean, and protected from invasion, but somehow our spells managed to tap into the power of the Earth, so the area is slightly out of phase with the rest of the planet. I believe that muggle conspiracy theories call it 'the Bermuda Triangle'."

"Bloody hell! The Bermuda Triangle is real, and you're saying centaurs are responsible."

"Unfortunately, yes. In years gone past, the technology of the muggles was simple and couldn't be affected by the spells we placed here to hide ourselves. When such things as satellites and electronics interact with the magical wards around New Sparta, they go wildly wrong. I understand that the island isn't even visible on some site on the internet; what is it now, giggle earth or something?"

"It's Google Earth, and I understand what you mean, I've looked on it. There's open sea in the area you occupy! What happens when a ship or something tries to sail through the island? That must be a problem!"

"The ship is diverted, they actually travel round it, the journey takes the same time as it would due to an extra charm we put into the unplottable wards; time aboard said vessel is altered so there is no change in journey time, unfortunately has another side effect, the island is slightly out of sync in time with the rest of the world by about half a second, yet another thing to our dismay."

"Why should that affect you personally?"

"Digital timing young man, the rest of the world is so in sync with itself that time is measured accurately to the pico-second, (AN pico-second=0.000 000 000 001 seconds, the amount of time a pico-second is; is from Wikipedia, the accuracy of computers etc is my own conversational understanding, no reference to current specs etc), this means certain things, like the internet won't work on the island, as our clocks are all wrong. Any correspondence etc. from the mainland has to come via the bridgeway, the old fashioned way! It's a major headache for us as a society, one we have been trying to address for years without success."

"Fascinating! Can't you use fibre optic or something and run a cable from the mainland?"

"Won't work. The cable and signal would be in sync with the outside world, when it came through the barrier it would either be in sync with that world and not connect to the island or in sync with our time frame and not connect to the mainland."

"Crikey! You do have problems! Makes my little conundrum in Britain seem petty, I only have to convince a group of pureblood hypocrites that centaurs are a unique race and get them to accept them as equals. You have to overcome quantum physical laws."

"Don't worry yourself, we'll find a solution, the latest attempt looks as if it may be successful, we're planning on having our own satellite launched in the near future by NASA, with several atomic clocks and re-routing programs on it, the tests look promising so it may solve that problem; you on the other hand are a problem of a different sort!"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, from what we have been given to understand you were born a muggle, were around accidental magic by your cousin and showed no signs of magic of your own. If you were a squib as they call it, then you would have stayed that way; however, I believe you were to interact with magic in your last year of schooling and indeed later perform magic. This should be impossible, no squib has suddenly developed magic before; therefore, you are unique!"

"But, but...why me?"

"As to why, well I personally have a hypothesis based on what I have learnt about your later interactions with magic. Magic is not just the simple waving of a wand to get something to happen, or the quirk of genetics I spoke of earlier. The ability to do magic of any kind is the ability to influence one of the fundamental aspects of the world through will. This field of energy of you like, somewhat similar in nature to say electromagnetism or gravity is interactive with wizards and to some extent; or so centaurs believe it is sapient. Magic has a controlling consciousness, which we call Hecate, the Goddess of Magic. I believe she wants you to be a force for change in the British Wizarding World?"

"Bloody hell! Nice way to break it me, 'Magic itself wants you to change the world. Makes me understand what Harry's told me about his life."

"What do you mean by that statement?"

"All his life he's been mistreated; by myself and my parents he was treated as a freak and an outsider, shown no love or affection of any kind. The magical world saw him as 'The-boy-who-lived; their personal property and saviour from the dark wizard who was threatening their world. Every move he made in that world was subject to intense scrutiny. He was a hero one minute and the next potential dark lord the next, he couldn't do anything without it being publicised and analysed by the press. If it ever got out in Britain that Magic itself wanted me to change the wizarding perception of the world, I'm sure my life would be just the same."

"I begin to see, I hadn't made the connection, your cousin Harry is actually Harry Potter, the wizard who finally managed to do away with that nutter, Voldemort, who was terrorising magical Britain; it seems there is more and your family than meets the eye. Let me think, your cousin is a half-blood, son of a muggle-born witch and a pure blood wizard, which means potentially you were never a squib at all, maybe you were a wizard all along but so potentially so magically weak that you couldn't attend Hogwarts; your increased magical potential could be a result of your interactions with the dementors and your year in hiding, so to speak."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Your attack from the dementors was the first time you felt in real danger of your life, that is usually one of the causes of first use of magic, that or the intense desire for something you've been denied. Would you mind if I did a magical scan on you? It wouldn't harm you or anything, just satisfy my curiosity a bit!"

"Err! Ok!"

He proceeded to wave his hands over me for a few seconds, muttering under his breath in what I assumed was Greek. "well, Mr. Dursley, I can find no sign that you were born a wizard or a squib, 100% muggle, about 15 years ago you were first affected by magic, and then around 10 years ago, you developed a sensitivity to magic, possibly because of the dementor attack, although again that is practically unheard of. Then just over a year ago, maybe a bit longer, you suddenly became a fully fledged wizard, I don't know how, although there is a slight indication of blood magic involved."

"That would be Harry adopting me as his brother, he made a cut in both our palms and we agreed to be brothers formally, legally and ritually, I think," I looked at Gabrielle. "Is that right Gabby?" she nodded at me.

"And fifteen years ago? What happened then?"

"Let me think, fifteen years; I think the incident you could be referring to was when my cousin finally got his Hogwarts letter; the school sent a half-giant called Hagrid to hand deliver his letter and take him to Diagon Alley to pick up his school supplies. Hagrid hit me with a spell that caused me to grow a pig's tail; I still have the scar from the operation to remove it."

"I see, that one incident may be important, if you were attacked by magic and the resulting 'damage' treated by muggle medicine, then it is entirely possible that you were 'seeded' with magic. Inherited the ability to interact with it, so to speak. Removing the tail with magic would have let you a normal muggle, but having it removed surgically left you scarred with magic, indeed in a way, this Hagrid fellow could even be considered a wizarding guardian to you, in that he caused you to become a fledgling member of the magical community."

"Bloody hell! Err! Pardon my language, but do you mean I could use that fact to have Hagrid as a half-giant recognised as a full wizard and through him, all giants by association?"

"You'd probably need to get some of those ridiculous laws in your country changed, I don't know if you're aware of the fact but your lovely wife, being part veela is not seen as a full witch by your authorities, just some half-breed."

"I seem to remember being told something similar by her brother-in-law, a full blood wizard!"

"Indeed Mr. Dursley you really seem a remarkable individual and given your magical history, seem to be someone who will affect change within said society; I truly believe that you will be the person to end our long exile with most of the wizarding world. Excuse me for a moment!"With that last remark he seemed to fade from our vision for a moment, but at the same time he was still in full view, albeit 'slightly out of focus', just perceivable from the corner of your eye. I glanced at Gabrielle as he snapped back into focus and began to speak again in an oddly choral voice. "Mr. Dursley, it is the contention of the State Legislature of New Sparta, that you be appointed our representative to the British Wizengamot and ICW. At such time in the future as you are able to contact us and make formal requests for diplomatic relations to be opened, they will be honoured." Our host then shook himself and spoke in his normal voice, "Gods, but I hate it when that happens, congratulations Mr. Dursley you have made history today, our first ambassador to England in several hundred years. I would suggest that you look up your magical and muggle history texts to sort out some legal aspects of what you have become. In particular, in regards to your present monarch, this will be of assistance to you in the future."

I looked at Gabrielle, shocked awe on my face, "Err! I understand the honour just done me, but how do you mean about the Queen; how does she affect wizarding Britain?"

"As I said, look into everything pertaining to both societies, certain obligations to the monarch are inherent in what you will be doing in the foreseeable future. I am unable to say anything more on this, my understanding of your legal and legislature is limited at best; you need to find it out for yourself! Now that the formalities are sorted, how about I show you around our State and you can play tourist for a while?"

Gabby and I nodded at this and following our host we undertook to spend the rest of our visit seeing around oldest state of the New World as only tourists can...

AN I apologise to all my readers and followers of this story for the long delay in the posting of this latest chapter. I do know where this story is going and have major points in the story plotted out, just sometimes it's hard to put finger to keyboard (pen to paper), that and problems with work and the health of a family member have delayed my working on this story; for this I offer my humble apologies. I will endeavour to be quicker with updates but I'm not making promises.

AN2 The title of this chapter is a slight homage to author Piers Anthony who amongst many other series has written several books about the magical land of Xanth; one of the volumes in his story is called 'Centaur Aisle', but he postulates a slightly different way that the centaur isle exists. If you enjoy a good laugh while reading magical fiction, I recommend them, as being full of humour, look out for 'copy-cats', 'cat-a-pults' and several other PUN based bits of humour.