The Years of Adventure: Atlantis
Chapter Four – Bermuda
Disclaimer: Harry Potter = not mine.
Author's Note: This chapter is kinda set around Letters Home Part II, I will mention when the responses are written. Sorry for the short length, the next one will definitely be longer.
Harry was currently ignoring the pile of letters he had just read, he needed time to digest them, he also decided that even though he said he wouldn't, he should probably reply. So, that was why he was currently laying on the edge of his boat, hanging so far over the edge that he probably could have touched the water if he wanted. He had noticed little tiny creatures swimming around in the water and had dropped sail to study them closer; they were bright blue, had some sort of organic, fluid surfboard, extremely mischievous expressions on their faces and were laughing and pointing at each other. He just stared at them. They were...well, he had no idea what they were but there was about twenty of them. He didn't remember seeing them in any of his books but he hadn't memorised all of them cover to cover so he carefully slid himself back on to the boat and pulled out his Mid-Atlantic creatures guide, it was pitifully small and filled mostly with conjecture, but it was better than nothing. He flipped through the guide until he found a short passage that said 'It has been rumored that there are small, fairy-like creatures that play in the water but no confirmed sightings have been recorded.' A grin spread across Harry's face. Found em! Or, something like them, that description is not exactly very specific... He cheered in his head as he grabbed his sketchbook which he had inventively named 'Magical Creatures of the World #3'. A few well-placed waterproofing charms later and he was happily draped over the side of the boat again, drawing what he dubbed the Surfer Imps. A half hour later he continued on and as afternoon was turning into evening, he saw the island of Bermuda appear on the horizon. As he approached he saw a large rock just off the shore that seemed to have some sort of ward on it, Bill's words came back to him 'Break some curses for me, okay?' Well, maybe he would give it a go. He figured that it would be best to check out the main island before dark and then he could go back later, anyway, he still had to reply to those blasted letters.
Harry noticed that the part of the island that he (and the warded rock thingy) was closest to, was covered in hundreds of Muggle-repelling charms. Hmm, I'm going to guess that this is Magical Bermuda... So, he changed his shirt, dropped anchor, apparated to shore and went in search of people.
People in town gave him funny looks because he wasn't dressed in any sort of traditional wizard or Bermudian attire. He had thin khaki pants which, while not tight, were slim fitting, and a loose white shirt that hung open at the front, shoes seemed to have been optional. Some of the kids pointed and asked why there was a pirate in town, Harry laughed and said that he was just a sailor, not a pirate. When asked why he wore clothes that made him look like a pirate, Harry said that they were comfortable. The more he answered their questions, the more kids gathered around him. Finally, he gave up trying to politely excuse himself and sat down on a barrel to talk with them. Two hours and many stories later, Harry had finally finished explained how being a sailor was different from being a pirate, he had also been coerced into telling of some of his adventures. When he looked up, he realized that it was not just children listening to him anymore, many of the town's older inhabitants were eavesdropping on his impromptu story time. One of the old women came up to Harry and asked if he would like to join them for the evening, apparently it was a family tradition of hers to have all guests over for a bonfire when they arrived, inviting the rest of the town was just common courtesy.
That night, Harry had a great time, there was food, singing, dancing, fire play, games and finally fire-side tales. Harry, as the guest of honour, got to start off; he told of the raging Arctic storm he had sailed right into when he was going around Greenland, everyone laughed, gasped, clapped and cheered at all the right points. The next to go were the elders, they each told one story, some were like Harry's, dramatized true stories, and others were myths and legends. Harry really enjoyed listening to the many tales about the lost city of Atlantis, when the oldest woman started telling of the boy who went searching but returned with nothing, Harry felt another tug on his magic, it wasn't very strong, but it was there, it was calling him out to sea. He mentally told it to wait a few days, that yes, he would go but no, not right now.
He spent the next day writing out replies to the letters he had received, and being stupid by talking with Bill. That evening he and the townspeople had another bonfire and there were more stories but Harry knew it was time to go.
Before he left Bermuda he hopped in his rowboat and headed over to the large rock he had seen on his way in, as he approached he saw a bright light flash and he couldn't go any further. He opened his eyes to the magic like he had learned in Nevada as saw a thin net of gold and purple encircling the rock, he had no idea what the gold and purple lines meant just that they stopped him from getting through. He rowed around the rock until he saw a point where all the lines seemed to come from, it was a small, gray stone under the water. Lovely. I'm going to get wet. He grumbled to himself as he stripped down to his pants. He transfigured a piece of driftwood into a pair of swimmers and switched them with his pants. Then he measured the depth, it was just barely shallow enough for him to stand and have his head out of the water. So, he hopped out of the boat and into the warm sea. He paddled over to the stone, cast a bubble-head charm and then sat on the ocean floor in front of the gray stone, the ward stone, as Bill had called it. Harry looked at the swirling blue and gold, the two colours were flowing perfectly in sync with each other. Upon closer inspection, Harry saw that the blue was coming from the left side of the stone and the gold from the right, there was a bright white line that ran through the stone, connecting the two coloured lights. Right in the middle of the stone was what looked like a tiny diamond, it seemed to be the source of all the magic. Maybe if I get the diamond out it will all stop? Nah, I'd have to break the stone and I don't want to do that. Finally he decided to try and surround the diamond with his own magic, maybe it would stop the white flow enough to break the wards. Strangely enough, this worked; once he had completely filled the diamond with his own emerald magic, the white, purple and gold simply collapsed. Huh. I wonder if all wards are that easy? He asked himself.
When Harry got back to the surface he saw that where there was once a rock, now there was a tiny shrine-like structure with a golden statue inside it. Harry looked at the whole thing with his magic but all he could tell was that the golden statue was imbued with a deep purple magic, something told him that touching it would be a very bad idea. He looked at the statue, it seemed to be a warrior of some sort, it had a spear in one hand and a shield was resting against it's leg, it's free arm was thrust forward as if to warn people away. Harry guessed that this was some sort of protection or something and decided to let it be, he also decided that he should probably hide it again, he had no idea how to do this but figured if he just followed the same pattern as was there before, things would probably work out alright. He replaced the bubble-head charm and went back to the ward stone, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get it right. He could shape his magic into the gold and purple colours, it felt the same but he couldn't get it to have the same effect as before. Damn it! He yelled at himself. I've never created this kind of ward before! How the hell am I supposed to do it? Harry knew how to make simple wards, he could tie down common house wards, hell, he could even make a weather ward but they were all a single type of magic! All the wards he'd heard of didn't have this two colour thing going on, but that wasn't saying much because he really didn't know much about wards at all. Still, a single ward stone with a diamond (something he'd never heard mentioned in warding before) powering two colours of magic which weaved together to create a single net. He simply couldn't get two versions of his magic to come together like that.
Harry stopped trying to recreate the ward from before and instead worked on finding a different source of magic to put through the stone, his own obviously wasn't working. He strengthened his magic sight and looked around; there was the magic from the statue which he could probably stretch down to the stone if he worked very carefully and...there was a tiny amount of a dark amber magic embedded in all the rock. If he squinted he could see it even under the sand, flowing back to the main island. Hmm, that could work. He thought. Harry gently grasped a thin strand of purple from the statue with his magic and moved it till it was touching the right side of the ward stone, then he did the same with a strand of the amber. When the two colours were both touching the stone, Harry poured a bit of his magic into the diamond to connect them and then let go. The result was staggering; both colours brightened to the point of being blinding and a wall of pure magic sprung up around the statue, but that wasn't the amazing part. The amazing part was when the strands of amber magic in the ground brightened and thickened, seeming to grow stronger, then a thin line of purple magic from the statue raced along each strand and spiraled around it. Harry then watched it spread all around this end of the island, it was as if the magic now surrounded the island. Oh Merlin, what have I done? He stood up and looked at the island, each and every blade of grass, tree, house, rock, everything now had a tiny strand of amber and purple running through it. As it got closer and closer to the edge of the Muggle-repelling wards the strands got smaller and less frequent, then they disappeared altogether. Harry thought about the magics he had just tied together, the purple was from a statue which seemed to be protecting something, and the amber was from the ground... Holy shit, I just put a protective ward of unknown strength around all of magical Bermuda! There was no other explanation for it, protection from a statue of unknown age, and magic from the ground. The statue was protecting the magic area and the ground was, well, the ground. Ancient statue, natural magic. Well that's not a recipe for disaster. He took one last look at the ward stone; deep purple magic came from the right side of the stone and amber from the left, they were connected by a thin line of green which came from an emerald diamond set in the very centre of the plain, gray stone. For a moment, Harry panicked, HIS MAGIC was powering the ward! Despite the fact that he didn't actually know what kind of ward it was, he knew that no one could hold up something like that for any substantial period of time. But when he checked his core he didn't see any sort of drain, he wasn't actually connected to the ward. How the hell does that work? A ward has to be powered by something, I drained the white from the diamond and replaced it with my green, shouldn't I be supplying the power? Arg! I will never understand magic! But still, this was kinda cool, he had just put a ward over all of magical Bermuda, albeit one he didn't exactly know what was.
Harry realised that playing with unknown magic probably hadn't been the smartest thing to do, but he hadn't exactly been making smart decisions in the last few days (cough, Bill, cough cough). He then decided to sign his work, he wanted credit for breaking the wards, the fact that he had put new (or possibly very old...) ones up was a bonus. So he went back under and carved his tree, he was very careful and used an extremely high powered magnifying charm to add the details. Then, as an after thought, Harry carved 'For Bill, my inspiration', in a cursive script curving around under the branches of the tree. Just like he knew he shouldn't have kept Bill's letter next to his bed, he knew he shouldn't have put the words there, but he couldn't help himself. Anyway, it's not like anyone would ever see it, you can't find what you're not looking for, especially if it's even smaller than the other stuff you're not looking for.
His last thought as he sailed off into the Atlantic was, I hope I haven't just made a huge mistake.
Far beneath the streets of London and alarm went off in an underpaid goblin's office. This particular goblin was tasked with monitoring ward creation; every large-scale ward that someone wanted to put up had to be registered with Gringotts, it was Lazylink's job to make sure no one created one illegally. It was highly unlikely that someone would do so because the only beings with enough knowledge on ward creation, as well as the resources to make new wards, were the goblins themselves. Still, he had to sit around every day and watch a map of the world, theory was (and this had never been tested) that the map would slowly zoom towards the area where the ward was put and Lazylink would then contact a higher-up and they would do something about it. When the alarm started blaring and the map zoomed to Bermuda, Lazylink nearly had a heart attack.
In less than two hours, there was a team of five goblins standing on floating platforms around the island of Bermuda. They were completely shocked to see such an ancient protective ward, no one knew how to make these wards anymore, mostly because the ward-stone was so unique; it had to hold three types of magic, the warder's magic (Harry - green), an anchor magic (the ground – amber, natural) and a purpose magic (the statue – purple, protection). This type of ward, at this magnitude would be almost impossible to break, especially because the anchor seemed to be the earth itself. The ward was also too consistent to identify where the ward stone was, it being anchored in the ground meant the the stone could very well be under the island. The goblins recorded as much data about the ward as they could and decided that because all it seemed to be doing was protecting the magic on the island, they wouldn't worry about sending in the curse breakers. There wasn't much they could do anyway.
Author's Note: Yes, another filler-ish chapter, sorry. I'm still typing up the actual city part but hopefully I will have it up by tomorrow. Please review!
