A curse lies upon this book. Not of death, not of pain, but of knowledge. To seek this knowledge will be in itself painful, though it may save your life. The knowledge itself has the capacity to hurt, emotionally and physically. You must weigh the benefits of the unknown against the future you believe approaches. To accept the curse of knowledge, you must spill a drop of your blood on the cover of this tome.

Unspeakable.

Nobleman.

Warlock.

Soldier.

Mage.

Harry looked up from what he was reading, carved into the ivory cover of the book he had on his lap. It had been a few days since the night that Sirius escaped from Hogwarts, with his assistance, and in his desperation, had called out, aloud, to the night sky for help. The result had been a flash of light and a book, covered in ivory which was greatly decorated with art, and though he was no art expert, believed to be valuable.

For a few minutes, he balanced what he saw as inevitable. The return to a full body of Voldemort, Sirius continuing to be hunted by the Ministry, and if their attitude to a change in the case was any indication, ignoring the fact that the so-called 'Dark Lord' had returned. Silently, he reached into his pocket, where for the last three years, he had carried a Chatellerault switchblade. With only the slightest wince, Harry cut a thin line in the pad of his thumb and smeared the droplets of blood that gathered in the cut onto the cover of the ivory.

Slowly, he lost hope as nothing happened. Harry slumped at the foot of the normal willow tree he was standing by, tears of frustration beginning to slip down his face. Eventually, he threw the book to one side and allowed his head to fall to his chest, simply sitting there until darkness claimed him.

"I was surprised you took up our offer." said a mild voice; "I rather expected you to trust more in Dumbledore and the other assorted wizards who say they know what they're doing."

Harry opened his eyes, finding himself stood in a huge vaulted hall, lit by burning torches. Great tapestries hung on the walls depicted stories from mythology and great battles, while at the centre, sat a circular table with ten occupied seats, arranged in pairs, and two unoccupied.

"Where am I?" he demanded, switching his gaze from person to person.

Each of them wore a simple hooded cloak, hiding their features. However the clothing differed. The one who had spoken was puffing contentedly on a straight-stemmed pipe, wearing the sandy-coloured camouflage clothes of the British Army. Next to him was a woman, wearing a leather jacket, a white tank top, jeans and combat boots.

Next to them was a man who was swathed in mottled blue robes and cloak, a short axe thrust through his belt and a rapier in a sheath attached to a belt slung over the back of his chair. Sat in the seat next to him, in identical robes was a female figure, the pale digits of her hand resting on the hilt of a Saxon longsword.

Of the next pair along, the man gave a sharp contrast, wearing a modern blue suit, a white shirt and a red tie, leaning back with his arm wrapped around the shoulders of another female, who was clad in a purple v-necked dress, lined with intricate patterns in gold around her waist and the neck of the dress.

Around the table was a man wearing dark-green leather-like material in the form of armour, a bastard sword on its belt slung over the back of his chair. Resting her head on his shoulder was a woman in a dark-blue robe, laid over chainmail, a Dane Axe leaning against her chair.

The final pair were composed of a stocky male clad in chainmail that glinted dully in the firelight, with a black surcoat over it. On his breast was a coat of arms of a Jerusalem Cross with a Greek Cross between each of the arms of the former. His surcoat however, had at its centre, a naked sword, with a lion's head pommel and a serpent wrapped around it. Then on either side of it was a Maltese Cross of the Knights Hospitaller. Sat next to him was a woman in a simple dark-green dress, lined again with elaborate patterns.

"This is, essentially, in your dreams." replied the same man.

"Then, who are you and how do you control my dreams?" Harry snapped back, earning a rough growl of laughter from the man wearing the arms of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

"Who says we control them?" asked the soldier; "No, it is not a matter of control, it is taking your consciousness into a place of warmth and safety. Inside great stone walls, in the warmth of the fire. The matter of who we are I will leave to the esteemed man behind all of the enchantments that have drawn you here."

Slowly, the man in the mottled blue robe stood up.

"What I created, in conjunction with Unspeakable Fey, is a masterpiece of dimensional magic. Every decision we make, every step we take spawns another dimension, and the bigger decisions, the bigger the changes." he said, his voice no louder than a whisper but carrying just as well; "What I have done is created a piece of magic that reaches out to a bare handful of the more successful versions of myself and create what is essentially a copy of their souls, and their bodies at what magic judges to be their prime, drawing their memories with them. Thus each of the males sat here are essentially, me, though I myself am only a copy image of my own true existence."

Harry stayed silent, having read in the Daily Prophet of rumours about what the Unspeakables got up to, he wasn't going to write off this man as a lunatic quite yet.

"In my fifth year at Hogwarts, I entered the Department of Mysteries, breaking in with a number of friends with the intent to rescue someone close to me. At the moment I strayed into the room where they store the time devices such as Miss Granger got access to, infinite numbers of new and strange alternates opened up." completed the Unspeakable; "I myself had an accident with a Timeturner some years later, which resulted in an interesting jaunt through history and the companionship of Unspeakable Fey, who has stuck with me ever since."

"Unlike the Master Unspeakable, my divergence from the base form came in the British Library during the summer before my third year at Hogwarts when I encountered, in a book written by an Egyptologist, an antiquarian specialising in Ancient Egypt, the incantation for a curse to unite a fractured soul, and then banish it." began the soldier; "I held that curse close to my chest until I was faced with a reborn Voldemort. We duelled and through luck, I gained the upper hand for the moment it took me to utter the curse and destroy him. After that, I vanished from the wizarding world, being recruited aged not-quite fifteen by MI5. I too gained the companionship of a wonderful woman after around two decades of soldiering."

"You're... me?" asked Harry, staggering into a chair.

"Aye." growled the man with the arms of Jerusalem on his breast; "My divergence came in the Department of Mysteries, when I hurled Tom Riddle through the Veil of Death, but as I walked through the building, a stray curse blasted me into a cabinet full of those thrice-damned Timeturners. I landed in Eleven-Seventy with a name worth damn, but fought my way up as Henry the Second's Siege Master in Ireland before sailing for the Holy Land aged nineteen. I married my wife there, and returned to England in Eleven-Ninety-Nine. Not a good time for peace as the country was torn apart by rebellious barons, invading French, but it was fertile grounds for a warrior, and good times for a good fight."

"In my case, my world was rather different to your own. Geographically, it was the same, but while most of Magical Italy was ruled by a somewhat democratic government, the Papal State maintained its own magical rule, who also had a certain amount of power over most other western nations, save Britain. Everything south and east of Croatia to fifteen miles east of Istanbul was still ruled by the Magical Byzantine Empire. Germany, Austria and much of Eastern Europe was under the Holy Roman Empire, while the Ottomans ruled from the borders of the Byzantine Empire to the Middle East." explained the besuited man; "The Mages of St. Peter were tasked with keeping the peace. Britain did not acknowledge the rule of the Court of St. Peter, so I was recruited covertly and extracted from England. After a few years of training, missions and secret rendezvouses with the Byzantine Crown Princess, I married her, led an army on Voldemort, and with the permission of Queen Elizabeth, overthrew the Fudge Administration."

"Finally, I too had a nasty experience with time travel, with a curse corrupted by some magic cast by my own hand. I made my way as a warlock, making war on anyone who did evil, treading the line of darkness very closely until I finally joined the creation of the school you know as Hogwarts. Like all of us, I too am married, it keeps me in the light." chuckled a cynical voice from the last of the men, the one wearing dark-green leather armour; "I called myself Templecombe. The change is that I returned to my own time, with my wife, and tore a bloody swathe through Tom Riddle's army, before ending him myself."

One by one, they threw back the hoods on their cloaks. The soldier had a long scar from the corner of his mouth to his neck, and a second on the other side, from his sideburn down to his jaw. The others were simply more mature versions of himself, except the one who called himself Templecombe, who had a broad white line down one cheek and the noble of Jerusalem, who had a long-healed scar across his throat that could account for his gravelly voice, hair greying, and a second jagged cut barely missing his right eye and carrying on down to where it met a small beard on his chin and lip.

Then the women lowered their hoods. Unspeakable Fey had jet black hair descending in gentle waves down her back, pale green eyes and marble-white skin. And the smirk she wore, seemingly without noticing, was one that inspired fear. The woman next to the soldier was of Mediterranean skin-colouring, a deep olive, and with brown hair so dark it was nearly black, tied back in a ponytail. The Byzantine Princess had lighter, longer hair, and a greyer skin-tone, and observed him with a friendly look, opposed to the smirking Fey, or the blank mask of the woman next to the soldier. The woman sat next to Templecombe also had brown hair, between the two in colour, a rich brown, and dark blue eyes regarded him thoughtfully, though the thoughtful look was offset by the Dane Axe resting against her chair. Finally, the woman next to the noble of Jerusalem lowered her hood to reveal golden blonde hair, a slightly tanned face and grey eyes.

"May I introduce, Unspeakable Fey, Morgana le Fay, not to be mistaken for Morgause, whose reputation has been cast upon the Lady Morgana." growled the noble of Jerusalem; "Next to the Colonel is Miss Ziva David, with Cardinal Mage Potter is Princessa Georgia Constantina, while Templecombe's companion is Lady Rowena Ravenclaw, and of course my own Lady, Countess of La Bana, Maria de Lusignan, and former Princess of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Most of us either go by Harry, or in my case, Hadrian."

"Whoah, so you're saying that all of you are attached to alternate versions of each-other." Harry's brain crawled to a halt, throwing cogs and jets of steam in every direction.

Hadrian of La Bana snorted irritably.

"My dear count, you forget that the Harry before us is still a teenager." Ziva rolled her eyes; "His mind and body are an internal orgy of hormones and unbalanced mental signals, what do you expect?"

"So why have you brought me here?" Harry asked after casting an insulted look at Ziva.

"You brought yourself here." Rowena laughed; "Yet I think this is something you should explain Unspeakable Hunter, as it your magic that created this... place and its capabilities."

"Indeed." huffed the Unspeakable; "The artefact we call the 'Book of Self-Possibilities' has the capability to transfer the consciousness of one pair to the living world and fashion bodies for them, identical to theirs at their peak. It is a choice only you can make. Only I don't recommend Templecombe because he's a psychopath. Or the Cardinal, because he's lived in Italy too long and will just spend his time drinking wine. Or the Count, because he'll try and conquer Israel in the name of the Pope, or Ireland in the name of the Crown. Or the Colonel, because he's a sarcastic git. Or me because I'll get bored and try and re-breed my fifteen-foot wide pet amoeba with stinging tentacles, a gaping maw of jagged teeth and the ability to spit venom. Or try and breed another Megalodon shark."

"You just wrote all of us off..." deadpanned Morgana.

"Something like that." Unspeakable Hunter nodded.