Chapter twenty-one: journey's end

It felt like being hit by a wall of concrete, except that concrete didn't swallow you up. The wave shoved Harry up, up the pyramid, and out the top. And then he lost his sense of direction entirely.

He already was straining for air, needing to fill his depleted lungs. It was like being under the last waterfall, except he had no idea what to do. There was no direction, no up and down. Only him and the crushing weight of millions of tons of water.

But still he fought; it was the principle of the thing. Stroke, kick, stroke, kick. He was going nowhere, perhaps even back down, but it didn't matter.

And then he was out, his head breaking the surface. Choking, purging the water from his lungs, he crawled up onto dry ground. Grass and dirt and trees, and sprawled across the ground a few yards away, Ginny Weasley. Her hair was slicked to her scalp, she was as wet as the water itself, and she was smiling.

"About time you showed up."

"I was busy."

"Give him a break," James sighed, from where he sat, leaning against a tree trunk.

"Looks like we're all here," Neville groaned, stumbling along the cliff face toward them. For that was what it was, the edge of the bowl. "Merlin's beard, Harry. You have the luck of the devil."

"Not all of us," said Harry, thinking of Mundungus.

"Look," James pointed. Harry looked back at Akator. Or what was left of it. The ruins had crumbled under the force of the water, buried beneath a roiling lake. He was just in time to see the remnants of the pyramid temple collapse in on itself, nothing more than rubble.

But from the ruins of the EL Dorado rose something all the more breathtaking. A perfectly rounded orb, rising from the water, untouched by it. Its surface was opaque and silver, catching the light, and seemed to flow like liquid. The orb hung there for a moment, and Harry felt a familiar buzzing at the base of his skull. And then it was gone, collapsing in on itself, imploding, until there was nothing left. No evidence of the visitors, of the lost city, of the birthplace of magic.

"They're gone," he said simply.

"Into space? Were they really aliens?" James questioned.

"In a way," said Neville. "They are transdimensional beings. Not form another world, but from another reality, another branch in the web of time and space."

"And we owe them everything," said Harry. "The visitors brought us magic made us wizards. Every one, pure-blood, half-blood, non-magical blood, is somehow descended from the Ugha, from their legacy." Once again he wasn't sure how he knew, he just knew.

"That's quite a legacy," said Neville, approvingly.

With a groan of exhaustion, Harry lay back on the soft ground. He glanced up at the others, saw how battered they were, still bleeding from countless scrapes and cuts. "I'd offer to heal you now, but I haven't got a wand."

"Just use that thing you did on the plant," James suggested.

Harry smiled, "Maybe later." He wasn't sure he would ever try to access that again. Raw magic was too powerful, to dangerous, a monster. Give him a good old stick of wood any day.

"Either way, that'll leave a nasty scar," Neville pointed at the bruise of James forehead, inflicted by Natasha back during the chase.

"It's not a bad place for a scar," said Harry, brightly.

"No," Ginny agreed, "it isn't." rolling next to him, she buried her head in his shoulder. "You're wet."

"Guilty as charged."

"So it's really over then?" James, asked, as Neville looked away discreetly. The boy scrutinized the ruins of the lost city, covered by the already calming water. This was his first time, Harry remembered.

"Yeah, I think so." He said. "But there'll always be some nutter like Voldemort or Dietrich or Natasha Lestrange. And do you know what else? I'll be there to stop them."

"No, you won't," said Ginny, her brown eyes burning into his with all the strength of the crystal skull, a corner of her mouth curling up in a smirk far more sinister than Natasha's. "We will."