Author's Note: Two updates in two days? Can it be? Could I be on a roll?
This drama is far from over. Huge reveals this chapter.
An "iteration" in relation to a Fractal, is how complex a fractal gets. So if a fractal stretches to infinity, the infinite iteration would be the point where it repeats itself to infinity. The first iteration is the first shape that the fractal takes before it repeats itself in some way. (This will become relevant a little bit later, as a segment title.)
Kaleidoscope
Nicholas and Kischur were two sides of the same coin - or perhaps closer to two sides on a five-face die.
So when they met, there was usually good natured ribbing about the other's path in life from at least one of them.
"When you're around for an eternity, you begin to value little more than the knowledge in your brain, I think," Nicholas said, placing his words carefully.
Kischur, still a general at the Mage's Association and still a collector of trinkets of immeasurable power, scoffed.
"Is there really anything that you have to use something as boorish as a sword or a staff for?" Nicholas only carried a wand because it reminded him of the days when he walked the halls of Hogwarts and the long-dead friends he made in the institution.
They had this conversation once every decade or so. "I like pretty things. So do you." Beautiful, deadly, powerful - those were the things Kischur liked. That was his standard for 'pretty'.
Nicholas frowned. His face could not be called pretty, except in the phrase 'pretty average'. He wore no glamours, didn't age beyond a very average forty years of age and walked as though he were as old as he looked. "My wife is not a thing."
Kischur thought the man would take offense and he did, so he chalked it up to a victory. "I hear you placed a hit on Albus Dumbledore."
Nicholas guffawed. "If I wanted to hit Albus Dumbledore, I'd do it personally, as would you. And he would probably escape. That student of mine was the most slippery of the lot."
Kischur blinked. "You told them that he had one of the Keystones."
Nicholas nodded. "He asked me to. He has held the Wand of Elder for long enough so that a Third of the Fractal we call Materials is burned as a straight line onto his back."
"Body modification was never really my thing."
Nicholas nodded again. "He still possesses the Blaze."
Kischur looked distinctly uncomfortable about the idea of that. "I still don't understand how the flesh of a man could be passed on. It's disgusting. I hope I never have a student dedicated enough to cut off a slice of my arm after I die and implant it in his own."
"Merlin always did things differently."
Nicholas was among the few living beings who had seen the Sorceror of the First Fractal, so Kischur didn't question him.
"He's always been proof - proof that even a single circuit of magic, used properly, could be just as possible as the pools and pools of power spread all over our bodies. Dumbledore is the consumate wizard. He is a wise man, who won't walk the path of a Magus and mutilate his morality for more knowledge."
Kischur's shrug was more expressive than Nicholas', but it still conveyed the same sort of tiredness which the other man held. "I'm convinced that, in the end, the only way to find where it starts is to possess all Five of the Magicks. Merlin is dead, so that's one secret we might never unravel. No matter how many people are born with my rune, no one since has learned to traverse the Kaleidoscope. An man in the millions can unite the Hallows, but none of those men are foolish enough to do so - your student included. A man in a million can understand Alchemy, but even fewer choose to study your art. And that little chit who holds the Fifth in her palm lost her mind before she was even an adult."
"Pessimism is unbecoming. Someone will come along. It's not written, but probability is a persuasive argument. We've looked, in our own way, for longer than two thousand years, combined. It has to happen, at some point."
"I'll believe it when I see it." And Kischur had seen very many things.
Blood Runs Deep
Draco Malfoy walked into the Headmaster's study with that ever present sense of unease which had plagued him since his father's death.
Someone else was in the office, a woman he recognized was sitting where he normally sat.
Astrid Greengrass scooted to the right and conjured a rather comfortable looking chair for the boy.
"Mr. Malfoy," she said gently.
"What it is?" he finally asked.
"You're hear to discuss my father." His eyes hardened and his breath quickened.
"Astrid has retrieved your father's weapon," Dumbledore said.
Draco's shaking hands took the canestaff from the woman.
"Did she?" he started almost with a hint of nonchalance, but then his voice shook and a sob very nearly broke loose from his throat. Draco quelled it by biting down on his lip, hard. This staff was something he was never allowed to touch.
Dumbledore drew in a sharp breath. "Fifteen hundred years ago, Sir Gawain of Arthur's Court sired a child during his trial in the palace of the Green Knight. The child was assumed to belong to the Knight until he grew hair in his third month. The white-blond heritage was an especially powerful gene that even magic could not hide and the mother of the child was executed in the name of honor. The child was sent to France, where he grew to be a man strong of arm and strong of magic. His ancestor returned to England in the Battle of Hastings, firing an arrow into the eye of King Harold the second. Several generations down the line, the Malfoy family reacquired an old heirloom that belonged to St. George, a forefather of Sir Gawain, the Serpent Staff, which you now hold in your hands."
Draco tightened his grip on the staff.
"Throughout history, the Malfoys have supported efforts spearheaded by those who wished to continue Salazar Slytherin's legacy of honoring the pure of blood. Before the name was taken, however, the family championed causes that spoke to the better nature of humanity."
Draco frowned.
"My dear friend Abraxas, may he rest in peace, saw the light and attempted to convince the members of his family to return to a tradition that was more open following the defeat of Gellert Grindelwald, allying himself with the likes of Edgar Bones and Charlus Potter. He was finally killed when his son slipped him a deadly poison. On what we call the Darkest Night, your father invited Lord Voldemort into his home and Abraxas summoned Edgar, Charlus and myself to do battle with one of the best students that Hogwarts has ever produced. Our combined efforts resulted in the first death of Voldemort, who was then still recognizable as my charming half-blooded student, Tom Riddle."
Draco's eyes widened in disbelief.
"In that night, Abraxas Malfoy summoned his legendary brand Fiendfyre as I summoned the Blaze and we burned Voldemort into ashes. Yet the battle was not done - Voldemort found a way to revive himself in the space of a month, proving to his followers that he was nothing short of immortal. How he cheated death is still beyond my knowledge," Albus admitted. "Edgar and Charlus both sustained wounds that were untreatable and all three of them succumbed to death within an hour of one another. Lucius Malfoy escaped the Manor with your mother and when Lord Voldemort returned, he rejoined the man who had all but killed his father. Perhaps that was his greatest sin."
Draco was now angry. "My father was a brilliant man, if not a good man. You don't have to tell me about what he did wrong."
Albus shook his head. "He became a good man. Following the most recent death of Lord Voldemort, he escaped Azkaban with his money and influence in the Wizengamot, leaving a large portion of his less well positioned comrades to rot in the prison. His finally act of carnage was ordering the slaughter of an entire family, two years after the death of the Dark Lord. And then, he found it within himself to repent. He married Narcissa Malfoy, who had born him a child that he had attempted to assassinate four times and became a family man. For the past ten years, he has done nothing, watching the tides of change wax and wane in the Wizengamot, choosing not to vote on the majority of issues. But tonight, he was challenged to a duel. The fourteen year old scion of the last family he had massacred rose from the woodwork and ended his life in a startling display of magical prowess."
"Who was he?"
Dumbledore shook his head. "Do you want to recycle revenge, Draco Malfoy?"
"For my father. Yes. I do," he spat.
It was Dumbledore's turn to be angry. "It pains me that the grandson of Abraxas Malfoy would choose a path of this sort, at the age of eleven. I thought better of you."
"You don't even know me."
"But I knew your father. And I knew your grandfather. They found it," Dumbledore paused. "They found it within themselves to let go. To let go of their bloodlust and honor their besmirched name."
Malfoy was cowed.
"For all my disagreement with the man, in the end, I learned to respect him for letting go," Astrid whispered, finally breaking the silence that had descended upon them like a tidal wave.
Draco stood up and walked out of the office, his emotions conflicted.
Dumbledore called out a final string of words which gave Draco pause. "Come back again, Draco. Come back to learn. I may disagree with your intentions, but it is my job to give you the tools, young Malfoy. It was my own mentor who had said that the strongest wand in incapable hands is still just a toy."
The First Iteration
Neither Daphne nor Neville truly enjoyed dueling much, though they had been brought up to understand how important a duel was to their culture.
Draco understood the duel as the focal point of his honor, especially following his father's death.
Harry's interaction was something different - similar to why so very many muggleborns were competent duelists. There was no baggage. There was no true appreciation for the history and culture behind the duel and there was no nervousness behind every motion taken, no family to disappoint, no parents to weep over a corpse on the platform. Even if this was just for experimental purposes.
So when Harry crossed his wand against Draco's old but shiny staff, he felt nothing but excitement. Daphne expression would not have been very different had Draco brought along a knife to a fist fight.
It was two in the morning and they were in an abandoned classroom. Neville had read about and managed to perform a silencing spell on the door and the walls, but it seemed as though he was exerting considerable amounts of concentration keeping the spell from collapsing on itself.
"Hold it," Daphne said. "Neville, the easiest shape to hold is a cone, or at least something triangular I think. There's a reason it's a Cone of Silence and not a Cube of Silence."
"I have never heard that phrase before," Neville said, bewildered, but as he twisted his wand held aloft, he was noticeably more relaxed.
"Don't miss too much and we won't get caught," Harry said, the barest hint of a smile on his face. Draco looked far too somber for such a good time.
Neither of the combatants could cast silently, so Harry had the distinct advantage of being able to read Draco's lips by flashing his Kaleidoscope, however incomplete it was. He had decided that he wouldn't play with Draco's mind, which was far too easy.
It was as though the strands of the other boy's emotions were calling out to him. There had been something intoxicating about commanding the assassin in Dumbledore's office, which Harry knew he shouldn't get used to.
Lost in thought about a policeman he had nearly sent out into the street to be hit by a car before he discovered Hogwarts, a jet of light clipped him in the shoulder and sent him sprawling.
"That staff is marvelous," Daphne remarked, realizing that Draco was doing his best to keep his magic in check and use playground-fight spells. "I can't believe you're not paying attention, Harry."
Harry could scarcely believe it either.
The boys traded several rounds of decidedly non-lethal spells, before Harry had a rather brilliant idea. If Albus Dumbledore could conjure a wall of iron, why couldn't he do something similar?
Harry pointed his wand at Draco and gave an experimental slash.
Draco looked at the phoenix-feather implement pointed at him, a tad confused, before his hand smacked into a clump of nondescript scrap metal and he dropped his staff. Harry tagged him with a bunch of sparks as the boy grabbed for his staff on the ground.
Neville nearly dropped his cone of silence as the chunk of metal fell to the ground with a thud rather than a clang, narrowly missing Draco's foot.
"What the hell was that?" Neville asked, clearly impressed. "Was that alchemy?" he asked.
Harry shook his head. "No. Well, yes. Sort of. It's more like… summoning something that doesn't exist. But it's not really conjuration, because I'm not making it. It's pulling it from what I believe metal to be, but it's not converting air into metal either."
They had stopped casting spells at one another.
"Where do you think it comes from, then?" Daphne wondered, inspecting the metal. "Finite Incantatem!" she cried, putting quite a bit of feeling into the spell. It splashed off the metal, as it tended to splash off non-magical objects.
"It's solid and real," Draco said, barely believing his eyes. "This is totally alchemy," he said, with some sort of awe.
Harry shook his head again, for once incapable of explaining the spell process. "It's not. Alchemy takes one thing and turns it into another. Conjuration takes something from my mind and turns it into something. Alchemy wouldn't be affected by the de-spell, a conjuration would. This metal comes from somewhere, just not my mind and not from alchemy or transfiguration."
"But it didn't move through space. So you didn't summon it. I think it's safe to say that there was never a slab of metal exactly like this in this spot, during any point in history. So you didn't summon it through time."
The three boys looked at Daphne like she was insane.
"What?" She asked, suddenly uncomfortable. "My mom does crazy things with her magic. And she says there's a ton of stuff that bends space and time in the department of mysteries."
Harry took it in stride. "So it came from somewhere. I don't know where I summoned it from. And it just winked into existence. I know I didn't spontaneously create it - that's impossible. Absolutely impossible, it violates nearly every law of magic." Harry paused. "That I know of," he added as a corollary.
"Of course you didn't. You would know if you were Merlin, I think," Daphne said. "But it had to come from somewhere, right?"
The four of them wracked their brains. Neville even let the cone of silence drop, miming a shush motion to them.
"My Father," Draco began, looking sorry to say the words, "used to say that the Executioner's Veil, which they killed Loxias Black and Godelot Lestrange with- He said that it didn't kill people but dropped them into another world."
"Parallel worlds?" Daphne asked, with something akin to humor. Her voice took on a strange pitch out of imitation. "Where do vanished things go?"
All three of them, being fans of the Unicorn Tamer Havelock Sweeting, a warrior of the Light and a philosopher on the side, got the reference, and chimed, "Into nonbeing, that is to say, everything!" with the proper campy cheer.
Daphne shook her head. "What if the Vanishing spell just dumped your object into someone else's world. As if whatever we vanished really wasn't our problem. So at some point, someone vanished a hunk of metal. And then Harry summoned it."
She contemplated this, then shook her head. "No. Too complicated. Far too complicated. This doesn't need parallel worlds to exist at all. Someone could have, over the course of history, or even just a moment ago, vanished a bunch of metal. Harry just remade it instantly."
Harry nodded. That seemed right. That seemed to be something that happened, sort of. He was still more sold on the parallel worlds theory than he'd argue with Daphne.
"Which brings us to the conclusion that you're doing something as impossible as creating it from thin air. How the hell are you doing it?"
Harry looked from Neville and Daphne, who had been friends with him since the beginning, to Draco, who had quickly grown to fill a space on the short list of people he cared about, then sighed.
"A light please?" There was a very low level of illumination from a bunch of ever-burning oil lamps, because the classrooms usually relied on daylight. The hallways used torches.
"Lumos." Draco's staff lit up in a pleasant white glow. Neville had the presence of mind to cast the cone of silence yet again.
Harry reached into the space where he kept his darker emotions and the world sharpened into strands of red and black.
His three friends gave a start.
"Are you a vampire?" Daphne wondered, looking clearly scared despite the conviction that Harry would never harm her was held fast.
Harry shook his head. "No. My eyes aren't actually just red. Look carefully. There's something about these, which just allows me to… do what I just did. I don't quite understand the process, myself."
Draco shone the light into his face, but the harsher glare didn't even come close to bothering him.
"There's a bug in your eye," Daphne said, looking vaguely sick.
Harry scowled. "It's not a bug. Look closely."
"It's a patch of color or something. Looks like a comma," Neville remarked.
"Professor Dumbledore calls this the Kaleidoscope. This person who was a friend of my mum, his name's Remus Lupin, says that my mum had it when she was in school and that it was more developed than mine. The Headmaster says that it's probably hereditary, and that no two have the exact same effect."
The other three were clearly fascinated.
"I knew that it wasn't a trick of the light," Daphne said, probably referring to times in which she could have sworn Harry's eyes had taken on a sinister color. "What can you do with it?"
Harry looked solemn. "I can sort of understand things better and read really fast. Most of all, I get why things happen from seeing it. It's hard to describe. If I've ever felt something before, and I see something, I'll get some sort of what the Headmaster calls an emotional print. I've gotten hurt before, so I can see that Draco's staff has hurt a lot of people. But things that I haven't done or felt or seen before, they make more sense to me when my eyes aren't activated."
Harry took a heavy breath. "And… I can kind of control people's minds."
"What?" Daphne shouted, her voice a squeak, looking from Neville to Draco. They looked equally horrified.
Harry misunderstood, believing that they were afraid of him controlling them rather than reacting to the social stigma of mind controlling curses and substances. "It's really obvious when I do it, though. You can't not notice."
Daphne groaned. "That's really, really wrong. You can't just… take someone over."
Harry looked confused. "I wouldn't do it to just anyone. There was an assassin in Dumbledore's office today who had me at wandpoint. I told him to get off of me and go for Dumbledore's wand, so he didn't end up hurting me."
"There was an assassin in Dumbledore's office?" Daphne asked, before remembering the stories her mother told about the man. "You know what? Never mind. Carry on."
But Draco looked contemplative. "Can you resist it?"
Harry shrugged. "I've never tried it on anyone who could probably resist it easily. There was this one bobby. Err, muggle auror, that is. I told him to leave me alone and he… kind of nearly walked into traffic."
Daphne gave a giggle that sounded a little bit like breaking sanity and a little bit like concern.
"Try me," Neville said. Draco looked as though the other boy had beaten him to the punch.
Harry stared. "What? No!" he cried out. "It kind of makes you crazy. For a long time."
Daphne's giggling sounded more horrified. "I think you really are a vampire and you're tricking us. Maybe my mom's going to have to kill you after all." Harry wasn't sure if she was completely joking or just half-joking.
Neville set his jaw emphatically. "I don't believe that, Harry. You may be the Boy Who Took a Killing Curse at the age of one, but when I was the same age, I was tortured with the Cruciatus. My mind is strong. Do it."
Harry stared at him long and hard, but it seemed as though the reasoning had won over both Daphne, who was too curious for her own good, and Draco, who decided that cowardice was key to continued sanity along the way.
"Just a little, then. I'm going to force you to… uh…" Harry grinned, "pick your nose."
This was the first time that anyone had known he had this power, and the first time anyone had actually resisted him.
The strands were immeasurably tighter than even that of the assassin's. The policeman was no comparison even to that.
Neville's finger rose to chest level, then he looked as though he had forgotten something important and put it back down. The hand came up again. He put it down again.
Neville glared at Harry, both of them trying harder and harder.
"Stop it," Daphne said, ever the voice of reason. "Mental strain can hurt you. Whoever wins at this point, it's guaranteed to be ugly for whoever loses."
Harry nodded and eased away he hold on the strands, which felt like metallic wire digging into his consciousness at this point.
Neville let his arms rest slowly. They trembled a little. "That was really strange. It was like I wanted to do something really bad, but I knew I didn't want to do it actually. Some sort of tug-of-war."
Harry nodded. "It is. I see your emotions as strings or something, made of light. I can pull on them and you can pull back."
"If they were strings, they could probably snap," Draco said, certainly not anticipating Harry's wince.
"Yeah. So, uh… the muggle auror. When I told him to leave me alone, I kind of snapped his strands by accident."
"And?" Daphne said, fearing the answer.
"Well, he kept repeating 'nothing to see here,' to everyone who saw him, over and over again. And he did walk-"
"Into traffic."
The four of them were rather silent after that. Harry let the magic fade from his eyes.