How about the next chapter! We get to see Dumbledore for real this time! And more Purebloods! And a bonus right near the front!
Really heavy on magical theory. I hope y'all enjoy it. I'm not quite throwing certain concepts that become "magic" in my story, but the groundwork is there, hopefully. My idea with this is to explore magic with my readers rather than just dumping it in all of you. If it pisses you off, skim it, I guess.
Note: (October 4th, 2012): www. fanfiction dot net/ forum /A-Split-in-Time-and-Space/119550/ - forum to discuss things! Yay!
Kaleidoscope
Alchemy. This was the focus of her existence, why her husband hadn't passed like the other mortals into oblivica.
In the cold light of the moon, her lover, her greatest enemy, she carefully transmuted the iron into a pure, beautiful platinum. It was an elementary exercise, but one that she loved all the same. There were principles, old principles in this exercise which fueled her thoughts and changed her mindset about magic every time.
This was true magic, a wizard's magic. It was such a pity. The Mages were so deadly, so powerful, but they simply chose a path that put them at odds with the divinity that lived within them.
Perenelle longed to meet someone who understood. She stopped short at this thought. Nicholas did understand, to a degree, and he was powerful. Kischur understood too, to the same degree, a degree that was militaristic and strong, but incomplete. They appreciated some of the beauty of the magic but simply didn't see the rest.
There was Albus, but he was too concerned with his mortality, too concerned with the unimportant things to shed it.
She drew a mirror into the air in front of her and stared at her reflection. Perhaps it wasn't some greater understanding, but a terrible, terrible vanity.
Departed…
"Please leave us," said the man who could only be Professor Dumbledore. He wore half-moon spectacles, extravagant robes that he had either created himself or bought for an extravagant sum of money and he sat in a very uncomfortable chair. His beard reached the edge of the table.
McGonagall nodded shortly and left immediately. Dumbledore raised a bushy brow at Lupin, who suddenly realized that he had meant both of them and quickly descended the spiral staircase.
Dumbledore drew a long stick which hummed with magic, what could have only been a magic wand of some sort. Harry took a step back and felt the red haze slide before his eyes.
"Relax, Harry. I do not mean to harm you."
Of course, Harry didn't move.
"This, Harry, is a wand. It is a tool of the large majority of wizards you will meet in these formative years of your adolescence. It is both a thing of power and a crutch."
Dumbledore waved it at the stuffed sofa opposite of him and it changed slowly into a pig, which started to dance a clumsy jig. Despite himself, Harry smiled. It was a wondrous process. He could see the intention, the perfect control, the lack of any wasted movements in the flick of the Professor's wrist.
"But the wand has its limitations. It can help control some aspects of transfiguration, which I have just shown you. It certainly makes a charm among the easiest branches of magic." It was obvious that he was referring to the fact that the pig had, well, danced for them.
"But in terms of spells that require more brute force, the destructive ones, the truly miraculous ones, a wand gets in the way."
Dumbledore put his wand down and drew his right hand behind his head into a fist. A surge of sheer force grew in the room to the extent that Harry felt his hair stand on end and his eyes screamed at him to leave as soon as possible, preferably through a window. Harry stayed put.
The old man threw the formless, colorless bolt of power that Harry knew only his eyes could see at the pig, immediately changing the beast into a statue of a luminescent metal.
"Silver, Harry. This is alchemy at work." The free magic in the room slowly pulled itself into the pig, changing its nature in a way that he didn't understand. Harry let the red haze recede to examine the statue. There was no difference to his naked eye and he frowned.
"Oh yes. You see it, don't you? Silver has the very, very useful ability to discern the motion of magic in an enclosed space. Alchemized silver, in truth, is pure silver which is missing the free atmospheric magic that naturally formed silver consists of, so it functions as a drain on the unbound magic in a system. We call this Ptolemy's Third Law. Due to the Third Law, Radical-free silver, or newly alchemized silver, can drain all the magic from liquid or gaseous mediums, thus eliminating magical poisons or wards that aren't inscribed into solids."
"Can it block magic from being performed?" Harry spoke for the first time in what felt like hours.
Dumbledore smiled at this. "It can block directed magic, but it is very limited. You'll learn more about the difference in directed magic and passive magic, but it is safe to say that your silver must be created with exponentially more effort than it took to cast the curse or charm directed at you to successfully absorb the attack."
"Curse?"
"A curse is a spell created to harm others. All spells that you will learn in Hogwarts with the obvious exception of self-study is on an arithmantic scale of one to thirteen. Transfigurations are multiples of two and spells are always odd. Curses occupy the space of thirteen."
Harry nodded.
"Now, this is quite enough magical theory for the day," Dumbledore decided. "We must get to discussing less important things that affect you far more importantly."
"The Dursleys," Harry said carefully.
"Yes, we shall discuss them. Since I don't want to hold you here in my office for hours - there will be quite enough time for that during the school year - let's quickly create a list of things we shall discuss. It is, as our non-magical brethren would say, your call, Harry."
"The Dursleys, certainly. I would like to learn a bit more about magic as well," Harry decided. "Particularly about my eyes." He said the last bit with a slight wince. While he didn't trust the man in front of him, the sheer knowledge and power that was at the man's command proved that he could learn something from him. Harry resolved to learn enough to forget the need of others.
"We will discuss all of those things, but I would like to start with the Dursleys."
Dumbledore stood up and paced for a moment, the well-worn habit of a man who had too much on his mind.
"Why did you leave, Harry?"
"They were not the best caretakers. But you probably knew that, if you knew how quickly I had gone." The accusation was sharp on Harry's tongue.
Dumbledore let out a heavy sigh. "I would have taken you into the walls of the castle had I known how it would turn out."
"But you didn't." The accusation grew sharper.
"Tell me, Harry, what do you know of our world?"
"Next to nothing."
Dumbledore chuckled. "Well, I do suppose that is entirely my fault, as in, the blame falls squarely onto my personage. In short, there are factions upon factions in this world who disagree on the pursuit of power. Before the High Statute, we mixed with the nonmagical folk. Just over seven hundred years ago, it was signed and we had gone, in fifteen years, from buying produce, selling cure-alls and practicing in large towers to hiding ourselves away. Our great antagonist at that point was the Church. Over the years, in a long and rich history you will undoubtedly hear from the heirs of our magic, our enemies changed."
Dumbledore took a deep breath. "In short, treaties were made, artifacts changed hands, lives were lost and the honor of both the Light and Darkness defended. Then came Nineteen Forty One. It was the year of terrible things. The scion of Merlin's line was lost to the wand of Gellert Grindelwald, the Church had assassinated two very powerful mages that were allied to us, completely unaware of the consequences and the infighting in our government, the Wizengamot had reached a fever pitch."
Harry nodded along, committing the names and dates to memory.
"So in the space of four years, we forged new alliances, we did battle, and we won. Anticlimatic, but you can read more about it in history books than I am willing to tell you at the moment, Harry. There are some memories that should only be experienced," he finished rather cryptically.
"Yet the battle wasn't done. In the shambles, I was the most powerful representative of our portion of the world, and I had to go through the terrible process of hiding our decimated world from even our former allies. I had to cut away teachers, friends, forget schoolboy rivalries, to lead a nation who hated and feared my achievements as much as they demanded my protection. I declined the highest seat of power in our government in order to teach."
Harry frowned.
"Of course, that only provides context for what would happen next. While I was away fighting a war on multiple fronts, I neglected to see the threat growing in my own school. A young boy had found secrets not meant for him through interactions with his ancestors and his pursuit of deeper and darker magics. He would become the next great power to arise, a homegrown one that I had to deal with, completely without any help. In Nineteen Eighty One, he murdered your parents. He cast the Killing Curse at you and you reacted rather violently, reversing the curse at him and banishing him."
"So he's after my head?"
Dumbledore shook his head. "I do not believe he is constituted enough to pursue you, or even contact anyone with the abilities to breach the defenses of this castle. But inevitably, he will be back. I spent my time ensuring that you didn't fall into the control of the various factions that plague the Wizengamot, or even worse, the factions that plague the larger world."
"Firmly in your control," Harry said distastefully, unable to hold back.
At this, Dumbledore took a little bit of offense, his eyes dimming and lines of anger appearing along his chin. "Well, clearly not, with the mess you made with your relatives."
"Where do we go from here?" Harry asked after a pregnant pause.
"You are free to wander the grounds of the castle and pick up knowledge at least this summer. I have procured your schoolbooks and a small sum of money for you. At some point, I will take you to Diagon Alley to see Mr. Ollivander for a wand."
Harry nodded.
"Do not waste this time, though I highly doubt that would be the case. Now, a final conversation before you need to leave my office and leave an old man to his memories. I will discuss magic with you at other points during the school year. Your eyes."
Harry nodded again.
"Do you feel any drain from prolonged use of them?"
Harry shook his head, confused.
Dumbledore looked verily alarmed. "No drain? No headache, the Root forbid, blood dripping from them?"
"Nothing."
Dumbledore stared into his eyes. "Lily's were a little further along when she was here, though I had only discovered of their existence in her fourth year. The Blood runs Deep, they say."
He drew his wand. "Now, just a quick exercise. He created a similarly shaped stick from thin air and handed it to Harry. Try to mirror my movements."
Dumbledore began with easy swishes and flicks that Harry picked up. The intentions, the next movements, they were simple to him, easy to understand.
Then there were unexpected things, little precise corkscrews, jabs that could have put eyes out, a multitude of emotions that the old man associated with each handling of the wand.
Harry lost the Professor several minutes along and politely put the wand back on the table.
"Imperfect recall relative to the difficulty of the movements. Were you reading intent?"
The sharpness of the man's mind astounded Harry. "Yes. I lost you at the more complex emotions."
Dumbledore nodded. "You, a boy of eleven, who hasn't known true desperation or certain losses of humanity, wouldn't be capable of the divination of certain motions. This can be dangerous. You should try to increase your repertoire of thought. Read some of the more philosophical works and do try to go out into the world more often. You have my permission to explore London when you aren't in class. Do remember that this isn't license to personally commit crimes in order to understand darker natures. There are better ways to experience the divinities of the Darkness than to get your hands on it." His face turned stormy. "I will put you down if you hurt a single one of my students in a manner that isn't justified."
Harry nodded. It was a long leash, but it was a leash nonetheless. He would break free in time, and Dumbledore knew it.
"I cannot police you, and I refuse to do so. I believe that the growth of magic is correspondent to the freedom of the mind. I just sincerely hope you won't take the paths that will make you a monster. I wish to, at some point, tell the world that I was proud to introduce you to the world of magic."
"Is that all, Professor?"
"Yes, that is all. Go forth and set the world on fire, Harry Potter."
Burn Brighter
Astrid Greengrass wove magic in far too many ways to count. She was educated at Hogwarts and finished at Clock Tower with the Mage's Association, astonishing her peers and earning herself an honorary spot in the Mage's Council as the final descendant of Merlin, despite being a product of his daughter's line.
Today, she wove magic at a piano, playing through the long chords and resonant cadences of the Baroque era and the sharp, precise clarity of the Classical era.
Daphne knew her mother expressed her emotions through the playing of music and when her mother played Beethoven, it was a response to the hardship of decisionmaking.
The clear, unassisted appregios of the third movement of the Moonlight Sonata rang through the sitting room.
A clear chord strike. Anger.
The struggling legato of the technically difficult chromatisms and the single notes that bloomed into a refrain of the appregiations. Fear.
Her mother didn't fear much.
A last cadence. Finality.
"Daphne."
"Mother?"
"They have asked me to take a position unoccupied since the death of my cousin."
The Cousin. He wasn't a Greengrass, but an Emyrs. The last living Emyrs, a proudly homosexual man in the age of the greatest discrimination, the Nineteen Forties. An American. Daphne's grandfather had never spoken well of the man and her mother had never even known the man, but he had lived for nearly a hundred and twenty years, his face unchanged from the ruggedly handsome and young aristocratic imprint that followed his ancestry.
He had lost his life in a duel with Gellert Grindelwald, as a Primary Color of the Mage's Association. The man's death had catalyzed such a reaction from Albus Dumbledore that the trappings of a politician were lost in an instant.
"They want me to be the Green."
Blue, Green and Red, the three Primary Colors of the Mage's Association. There were legends that surrounded them. The requirements for the job were a nomination and a simple majority, yet the position hadn't been filled for fifty years. In a disastrous battle, all three, and two of the four Great Generals were defeated in tandem on the edge of Gellert Grindelwald's wand. High Flamel had resigned his position and High Zelretch, the remaining Generals, whose accomplishments stretched into a time before the Statute, kept their lives through sheer willpower.
"The expectations are high."
Astrid Greengrass never spoke of obligation, but that only impressed the intensity of the situation upon her daughter.
"Of course, I will leave the dealings of the Wizengamot to your father and take the position."
"You don't have to, mom."
Astrid smiled at the naiveté presented before her. "Oh Daphne. You don't say no to a simple majority of the Mage's Association. Not unless you're Albus Dumbledore."
Daphne nodded, a frown marring her features. "What's so great about Albus Dumbledore anyway?"
At this, Astrid laughed. "Merlin defeated Summer itself. Flamel invented the Philosopher's Stone. Zelretch dropped the moon on the king of Vampires. Dumbledore defeated a monster in a duel."
Astrid played a scale. "The Blue has been nominated as well. She's going to be a fourteen year old girl from the East. I can only imagine how brightly her star will burn."
"And the Red?"
Astrid frowned. "If the Blue is the resident Siegemaster and the Green is the resident Spymaster, the Red is the most powerful fighter and assassin of the Association. The Red's spot is unfilled. I can only think of four possible candidates at the moment, and they all have positions as generals or function as Headmasters in Hogwarts."
Daphne laughed at this and hugged her mother.