Anon reviewer: Answer placed in the forums under the thread "Uncertainty".

Might be one of the longest chapters I've ever written. I daresay I'm quite proud of it.

Kaleidoscope

Harry let his thoughts run over a conversation he had with Dumbledore one November evening, as he sought to forget the disappointment in himself.

"In Mahayana Buddhism, there is the postulate that nothing exists outside of your internal reality, which we know is patently untrue. But there is a specific lesson that we can learn from this thought experiment. If there is nothing outside of internal reality, then there is an infinite amount of external realities which can be realized. Do you understand why that might be the case?"

Harry thought for a moment. "Well, if nothing else exists, then we make what's real, right? When we do that, anything that we make in our heads can be true and it can be anything."

Dumbledore beamed. "Exactly. Now, we know that other people exist for certain. Otherwise, we could easily assume that magic would consist of pointing and thinking. There are enough objects in the world which make no conceivable sense to two different men and this is something we can never breach as one person with one set of possible thoughts."

Harry didn't follow, but usually when he answered correctly, Dumbledore was surprisingly lucid, so he waited.

"What we call the Fractal is a concept based off of Alaya. There is something inherent to our ability to access magic - let's call it the sum total of all magic. This is what mages refer to as the Root. There are many theories, that the Root is actually Fate and magicians are simply tools of Fate used to correct imbalances created by other entities in the world. There are some people believe that the Root is a battery of unlimited power which can be harnessed for better or worse. Those are somewhat juvenile views."

Harry tried to connect Dumbledore's lesson together, but it was clear that he was missing some portion of it.

"Over the years, we've come to understand that there are five major aspects to the root. We call them Creation, Kaleidoscope, Materials, Truth and Remove, words which mean nothing to most and the world to some. These are all pieces of the same Fractal. Tell me, do you know what a fractal is?"

Harry shook his head. "No, not really. It's some repeating image, I think."

"It is our bodhi tree."

"What is a bodhi tree?"

"It is synonymous with the path to enlightenment, or more wisdom."

Harry nodded. "So anything we hear on the path to this wisdom, we reflect. We reflect on? At any rate, whatever our path is, however we treat ourselves, we need to make sure that we're always thinking, always following the path of wisdom?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Words to live by. Now, let us speak in tongues and espouse a somewhat different view. Bodhi is fundamentally without any tree, the bright mirror is also not a stand, fundamentally there is not a single thing - where could any dust be attracted?"

"So, Alaya?" Harry guessed.

Dumbledore's expression convinced Harry to think about the topic a little more.

"Okay, so if we're fundamentally nothing, if everything's all inside us, then this tree is just abstract. And there is no mirror. It's all in our head."

Dumbledore nodded as Harry proceeded cautiously.

"But we know that Alaya isn't real. That there is really a tree, that there really is a mirror, right?"

Dumbledore nodded again.

A Hero At Last

Dumbledore's hand ran through his beard in a gesture of discomfort. "Well, this is a rather interesting predicament we have gotten ourselves into, old friend," Dumbledore said, completely understating how dire the circumstances were.

Flamel let his eyes wander from one face to another and his heart sank.

The situation had gone from quite inconvenient to downright terrible straight to apocalyptic.

In the far left field of his vision stood Trhvmn Ortenrosse, once a man, now a monster. Perhaps he had always been cursed to be this in-between existence known as a Dead Apostle. Once, he was a magus who waited on Zeus-on-the-Golden-Throne at the gilded tables of Mount Olympus, but after that so-called God passed, Ortenrosse had become the White Wing Lord, his hair bleached from the years and years of magical experimentation that a glamour could not hide. He was the King of these things which were gathered before them.

And he had a bone to pick with this one specifically. Ortenrosse had some history with his dear Perenelle. The White Wing had raped her before he was even born and she had stolen his manhood from him - with it went his libido and any sense of morality that the vampire could have possibly had. Flamel had desired this confrontation for very many years, but he had wanted it on his own terms. Ortenrosse would have been surrounded by his pledged anyway, but nothing quite so dire as what lay before them now.

To the King's left were the White and Black Knights, Fina-blood Svelten and Rizo-Waal Strout. They were known to the world as bodyguards, of a certain princess who he would have declined a fight with on her own. But they weren't bodyguards as much as lords in their own right. There was precious little he knew about their powers or their abilities - nearly no one had survived them. There were dark whispers about some inclinations that Svelten possessed and both Astrid and Blue had done battle with Strout, winning even. But both had failed to kill him the last time they had met, not further than a fortnight previously. Strout was clearly recovered from his humiliation at their hands. Nicholas was sure that he had different tricks this time around.

But more worrying a prospect as fighting Ortenrosse with two of his greatest retainers was fighting his daughter.

He had two, two that he loved so much, or at least pretended to. Arcuied and Altrouge were both prodigal, but while the former had only threatened to kill her mother once in a while, Altrouge was the one he wished he had never birthed.

Most outsiders who could get away with it - namely Zelretch, thought it was funny when he claimed that his daughters had daddy issues, but considering the vast scope of their magical prowess and their sheer love of blood and war…

Nicholas sighed heavily. Altrouge was the product of infidelity. The only time he had strayed, when he had blamed Perenelle for raising a daughter who followed the teaching of the Crimson Moon, the teaching of humanity's worst enemy. The Crimson Moon that his oldest friend had given everything in this world and the next to kill.

She looked at him now, forever stuck on the cusp of adulthood, with a body that was maintained by the sacrifice of virgin girls in the prime of their innocent beauty. Altrouge was playing her hair, a soft and glossy black silk he had brushed several centuries ago.

Her hand lingered on a ribbon that his own hands had tied.

"I've never asked you before. Do you like my dog, Father?" she asked, her voice carrying over the wind rather earnestly.

The dog in question was the source of all their tactical troubles. This was the Murder of Primates on a leash, named for its birth - a desire by Gaia to eliminate these humans who had damaged her so. This was everything that Homo Sapiens Sapiens had ever run from in the evolutionary cycle. A monster that his daughter had taught to drink the blood of humanity. If this weren't all a game to Altrouge, the scores of wizards and witches which surrounded them on the ground would have been dead the moment this host of Dead Apostles had arrived.

To his eternal shame, Nicholas contemplated leaving for a moment. Zelretch would be fine, a pocket dimension or even the next world within his grasp at the speed of sound. Albus, despite being the personification of humanity, had the Blaze, an arcane power which could hold off the Murder until he left by wings of his Phoenix.

But that would be two hundred and fifty heads on his silver plate, two of them being the most promising students whom Albus ever had the pleasure of teaching. One of them, this boy who had ensured the ritual's success, had even taken to his branch of alchemy as though the boy was born to learn.

Perhaps Svelten would keep young, impressionable Harry Potter as a toy in his castle. The boy would be raised under the loving thumb of a creature that would bring out the worst in him. Harry would spill the secrets of his craft, passed down so lovingly and guarded so jealously.

"You should let them go, Altrouge," he decided. "You don't have a quarrel with any of them." He smiled reassuringly. "We can have a talk at a later date. Or even now, if you prefer. Just the two of us, like how it used to be."

Altrouge smiled at him and a chill ran up him spine. This was more than the rictus painted on the face of a predator. This smile had a deliciously sexual overtone to it that made him wish he were anywhere but here. Her fangs were visible. "Well, Father. Don't you think we're so much more happy when…" Something in the smile changed - perhaps it was the addition of unbridled hatred. "When the entire family's around?"

If the process of inappropriate commentary had a patron saint, it would be Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, but even he was silent and serious. The man pitied Nicholas and there was no time when the pity was more visible than now.

Nicholas walked forwards slowly, his hands hanging on his sides non-aggressively. "Altrouge," he murmured, every inch the loving father. "I've wronged you. I know it. Take out your anger on me. You can hit me if you wish. You can hit me once - I promise I won't retaliate. You've always wanted to."

Two could play a game.

Altrouge's face twisted into a myriad of emotions, some faked, some genuine. Abruptly, she started crying, her beautiful black hair swaying back and forth as she stomped on the ground and shook her head. Nicholas wanted to capture this moment forever - when his younger daughter acted the age she looked.

"You're too fair, Daddy," she complained, her face a mask of indignation. "Why can't you ever show me your passion? Why can't you ever love me like you love Arcueid?"

She drew closer, her tears wiped away, the indignation bleeding into a type of seduction some Faerie folk would have envied. "Why can't you love me like you love my mother?"

They were inches from one another.

And then she pounced. Nicholas wondered if he had made a terrible mistake for a moment and he was going to pay for it with either his life or his freedom, but all she did was slam her fist into his stomach with no strength whatsoever.

If anything, his daughter believed in equivalent exchange.

She was sobbing once more, so Nicholas wrapped his arms around her and she buried her face into his chest.

Like a real daughter would.

She rubbed her cheek against him like a cat in heat. "Daddy. Can we please just go somewhere? Can you choose me? Over my sister? Over mother?"

Nicholas wondered if he could spirit her and her mean dog away in a bout of deception, but he knew that Altrouge recognized this farce for what it was.

Because this was their charade. This was something they did because they needed to feel again, they needed to seem normal. Because pretending to be human made their half of the family happy. This was the real reason Nicholas liked drinking wine straight from the bottle and gulping down barely-fresh pieces of supermarket sushi. This was why Altrouge had stolen a lock of her sister's equally beautiful blonde hair to play with whenever there was a full moon.

"Why can't you come home instead?" Nicholas wondered, dragging the game out. He could do this for an eternity. Altrouge knew it, but for the sake of good drama, she always curtailed it. "Why can't you give up on this foolishness?"

"You don't understand me, Daddy." Some of her real emotions leaked out - not too different from the character she pretended to be in this one act play. Nicholas sometimes wondered if Altrouge knew the difference between fiction and reality any longer. "You never understand me." She was a teenager who's parents were strict about drinking. She was that little girl denied a pony. His heart clenched and unclenched and clenched and- "Daddy, you could become one of us! Even mommy could become one of us. And if I feel generous, maybe my sister as well." She smiled like she was sharing a secret with him, then gestured. "We have proof it works! Look at Uncle Zelretch!"

Zelretch continued to look away pointedly as though the entire scene was poisonous to him in some way.

Perhaps it was. Nicholas knew that he had loved both Arcueid and Altrouge as though they were his own. It was as much a blow to the humanity left in the man that even this little pleasure he had in life was corrupted by the Dead Apostles into the abomination before them now.

"Altrouge…" Nicholas trailed off, sure that the hurt he felt was real.

She drew away, suddenly cognizant that she had perhaps bared a little to much of her heart in front of her colleagues and corruptors. "Well, Father. If you don't…" Her voice changed yet again, into that crazy tone that Flamel hated with every fiber of his being and that was the Truth so help him- "I'll kill all of them. And then I'll hunt you down."

Oh and the sexuality was bad and why was this world so wrong and-

"And I'll kill you."

The anger.

"And then, I'll have you at last."

It was a million times worse when she stated it outright. Her tone then took a lascivious turn.

"Maybe I'll have you before I kill you. And punish you like you punished me for so many years. You could have been mine, Daddy. If only you had wanted me just a little."

The anger overtook her again and she was now very clearly more and less than human.

"This will end one way or an-"

Time froze.

Nicholas turned around in a snap, confused. Then he saw Blue in a deeper sort of concentration, her eyebrows drawn and a tempest of bluebells in her eyes.

"Okay," she tested, wondering if she finally had built up the concentration to speak. "Okay," she confirmed. "I can only keep this up for two minutes. Stopping time is against the nature of this world and is actually more difficult than time trav-"

Zelretch cut her off in a hurry. "I'll fight with Ortenrosse and my little niece. I've traded blows with both of them in my time and Ortenrosse is a one-trick pony-"

"Yes, the trick is to be the best horse he can be," Flamel could not resist interjecting. He was still emotionally raw from the exchange that he had just had.

"How droll." Zelretch rolled his eyes. "Somebody has to fight Primate Murder. Nobody human can fight it. The way I see it, I have to trade off with you to take its blows, assuming it hasn't gotten faster over the ye-"

"It has," Astrid confirmed. "In this century, the Princess with her Dog by the side is considered a larger threat than the Crimson Moon himself - to humans at least."

Zelretch rolled his eyes. "This world isn't built on power levels, girl." Astrid didn't seem to know what a power level was, but Harry got it from his times watching Dudley play video games. It was certainly the wrong time to snicker, so he carefully arranged his emotions to neutrally negative.

"Only me and Nick can fight Altrouge. Otherwise she'll swing her dog around and have them annihilate them. Actually, Nick, don't fight her. I don't like the comments she made about fucking your corpse."

There was silence.

Zelretch let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. "I wish we had the sense to bring Perry along. Ortenrosse is still scared shitless of her. Too late. We have a game plan."

"I'll go for round two with Strout. I don't think like the fact that he knows what I can do, but it's not like the Fifth Magic hasn't been studied for hundreds and hundreds of years," Blue said, wondering if she'd escape to rub this fight in everyone's faces. "That leaves Svelten."

"Hold it," Astrid said. "I can fight the Murder. Professor Dumbledore can take Svelten and Strout with Blue. And that leaves both High Zelretch and High Flamel to deal with the Princess and Ortenrosse."

Dumbledore protested immediately. "You cannot think you can even stop it without dying. See some sense, Astrid-"

She shook her head. "Oh, I know. Either I will die, or everyone here has a very slight chance of living. This is a choice that we must make for the Greater Good."

Dumbledore winced and Harry winced with him.

"I'm not you, Albus. When it comes time to make the choice between what is right and what is easy, I will always pick the path of least resistance in defending my daughter. This is probably the easier option. Maybe the stars have decreed that we should all die here as heroes and that Harry will be lost to the goodness of humanity forever. But I can't let it happen. I will see my daughter live."

Dumbledore was stunned by his grief, a physical weight on his body.

Astrid turned to Harry, who had been silenced by the weight of the events which had unfolded around him. "Take care of my Daphne, harry. If you hurt her," her voice turned ominous. "I swear on the Root itself that I will come back to haunt you for eternity."

She smiled, but there was no laughter, there was no charm left. Astrid was as scared as he was.

She sat on her heels, her palms placed on the earth, looking to the west, where the sun had set just several carefree hours ago.

"Sing!" she shouted, her voice with a timbre of confidence that everyone knew she did not have. "Sing me the song of the Root!"

The energy that she had gathered already - Harry knew it instinctively from the similar pattern it took in his vision - surged to the forefront of her existence, painting two bold, identical blood red horizontal marks under her eyes.

She began what Harry understood to be an Aria. He was completely unprepared for how complex, beautiful and impossible it was.

"In the pasture of this world, I endlessly push aside the tall grasses in search of the bull. Following unnamed rivers, lost upon the interpenetrating paths of distant mountains, I feel my feet grow weary and my strength failing for my vitality has been exhausted and I have not seen hide nor hair of the bull. I hear only locusts chirping through the forest in this darkest of all nights…"

Thin lines of pigmentation which resembled the veins of leaves ran over her face and hands.

"Along the riverbank under the trees, I discover footprints. Even under the fragrant grass I see his prints. Deep in remote mountains they are found. These traces no more could be hidden than one's nose when looking skywards. I hear the song of the nightingale and the sun is warm."

Blue who had been struggling to hold the lapse in time, seemed to have found a second wind. Her face had become determined rather than strained.

Astrid had stopped, for whatever reason, though neither the green veins nor the blood red lines had faded from her face or hands.

"Such, such a beautiful world," she whispered in a lament that rang of finality. She had begun to cry, singular droplets of her tears running down her face and dripping onto her robes.

She had begun again. "The wind is mild, willows are green along the shore, here… here, no bull can hide! What artist can draw that massive head, those majestic horns?"

Astrid's head snapped around wildly in a trance. "How can one remember what it was like before she met the bull?" Her voice choked.

Something in her was dying. It was putting up a fight and Harry wasn't sure what it was.

"I seize him with a terrific struggle."

The energy around her surged, the lines were more apparent. Whatever had been dying was losing ground fast. This energy that she had gathered was close to what had been building in the summoning circle.

It was clear to Harry now. Astrid was dying. Not her body, not even her mind. But whatever made Astrid despite all of that…

Harry began to bleed from his left eye - he knew it because his vision cleared even further and he could see the strands of those emotions in the only woman who had ever been motherly to him leave her, plucked out by this influx of magic from the world, magic from nature - one at a time.

Harry did not deactivate his eyes - he didn't even squeeze them shut. This was his tribute to her.

"His great will and power are inexhaustible. He charges to the high plateau far above the cloud-mists, or in an impenetrable ravine he stands."

And Dumbledore was now kneeling, his face in his hands. Zelretch looked more grim and old that he had ever been. Flamel held a mask of apathy, but Harry could see from the clenching of his fists that even he was affected.

Blue, like Harry, was crying - her willpower had been extended and she was having no more trouble keeping the dilation in time aloft, a strength born of sorrow and desperation.

And then, when the last strand disappeared, Harry knew that Astrid was dead. She was no more alive than those things which were confronting them.

"The whip and rope are necessary, else the Bull might stray off down some dusty road. Being well trained, he becomes naturally gentle. Then, unfettered, he obeys his master."

Astrid's expression had found a peace no living human being could possibly know.

"Perhaps we will spend our lives, forged in the fire known as enmity. But when the day is done and the last battle is had, we wish to end in serenity," Harry quoted, from Sweeting yet again, as though the man's words were a prayer.

Dumbledore nodded solemnly and stood up.

Astrid nodded at Blue to drop her spell and the barrier dissipated into the wind.

"-other," Altrouge finished - it had been an eternity since she had last spoken, and perhaps the vampires sensed that something was not right, because the girl had paled.

"Counter-Guardian!" Ortenrosse screamed, throwing himself to the floor. Svelten and Altrouge, too, were quick enough, but Murder of Primates, the target of Astrid's spell, and Strout, who had turned his head in response to his liege lord, were instantly incased by cocoons of plant matter.

Astrid's eyes met Flamel's and Harry knew that something important had been exchanged between them, because Flamel raised his hands into the heavens.

"This is the Truth as spoken by the Lord of Philosophers. Today, the Murder of Primates was restrained by the Counter-Guardian, a Caster known as Astrid Greengrass, in an exchange of her existence on the mortal plane, for as long as it took her former friends and family to defeat and escape the might of those who forced her to make her sacrifice."

Harry knew that the blood-red glow coming from within Nicholas Flamel's chest was the Philosopher's Stone.

"The exchange is confirmed to be equivalent. The Truth is written!" he roared.

The cocoon dragged the Murder of Primates into the good Earth and literally crushed Rizo-Waal Strout, sending dark black ichor everywhere.

Even as Dumbledore raised a shield to prevent the liquid from touching any of them, Astrid Greengrass was taking her leave.

She had vanished into nonbeing - that is, to say, everything.

Hemorrhage

It wasn't often that a battle between titans was put on hold.

Strout had been destroyed, at least to Harry's eyes, in a never-ending shower of that disgusting black matter.

Even Zelretch looked completely uncertain, as if he didn't understand why Strout was destroyed rather than released.

Harry could see the others running through this Truth that the Philosopher had written in their minds.

Altrouge, who was decidedly immaculate compared to the other vampires, scooped up a small amount of the rapidly disappearing Rizo-Waal Strout with an errant finger.

She smiled, then flicked it away. "Weak. And quite lacking in personality. He was not a good guard," she said, in a tone that one would take when commenting about an unpleasant occurrence to a distant acquaintance.

Altrouge walked over to Daphne Greengrass and picked the girl up. It had happened so suddenly in context that no one had done anything to stop her. She cradled Daphne gently.

Harry refrained from screaming, allowing his eyes to widen just so slightly.

"To think, that we've lost the greatest advantage we've had in generations due to a concept as ridiculous as love." Altrouge paused, tilting her head slightly. Her hair cascaded over Daphne's still form. "Can you seriously believe that something like that would have even come out of my mouth?"

Daphne stirred.

"What's your name?"

"Don't tell her!" Harry shouted, believing that it would be some sort of folly, but the girl had already mumbled into Altrouge's arm.

She scoffed at him. "So deliciously innocent. As if I didn't know it already. I just wanted to hear the words issue from her own lips. Daphne. How nice." She sounded almost sincere. She turned suddenly and looked into the sky. Harry allowed himself to see the threads and currents of intentions simply moving through the air. There was something in the air.

"I believe there's someone important coming," she said, looking meaningfully at Ortenrosse, who paled ever so slightly.

It wasn't in the air - it was in the wind, Harry could see as much.

The saturation increased and a slight breeze began to pick up.

And then the wind was howling.

"Ortenrosse!" the wind screamed.

And the battle was joined.

"Ortenrosse is mine!"

Flamel began to fire his spells, choosing to purposefully avoid Altrouge as Svelten began to summon some kind of power to bear.

Zelretch worked in tandem with him, utilizing a galaxy of mystic codes to disrupt or distract Svelten from whatever he was trying to do.

Altrouge took a step back and that was all it took for Harry to lose all calm. "Daphne!" Harry shouted, running into the fray and masterfully jumping over a burst of sweeping white light that Ortenrosse had released with just the twitch of his finger.

Harry stared at Altrouge, who he was rapidly approaching. She looked back at him with no small amount of contempt.

Harry fired a curse at her from several meters off, but though he was sure it was aimed perfectly, it went wide by a fairly large margin.

"My, my. This isn't very intelligent. Aren't you supposed to be a magus and not some sort of street fighter?" She made a movement with her forefinger and he pitched forward into a nasty fall. He picked himself up and glared at her.

"Give her back!" Harry shouted, his eye still bleeding.

Altrouge just glided over to him slowly, strangely unaffected by the chaos around her. She looked at Daphne. "What exactly is so special about this girl, to inspire such loyalty? Especially from someone like that woman?"

"Her daughter," Harry said, a tad coldly. "But you knew that?" His voice changed to something more uncertain. He was genuinely confused.

Whatever that Harry had seen in her shifted. "Isn't it nice?" she remarked offhandedly, "to have a mother who loves you enough to die for you?"

If the question had been intentionally loaded, Harry had been played like a fool, because he reacted rather violently. He fired yet another curse at her, but it, too, swerved out of the way.

"How about this. I'll let you have her back if you tell me what exactly you had met in that Containment."

Harry didn't think lightning could strike twice, but it appeared as though today was a good day for these types of deals.

"A Faerie," he answered honestly, trying to reconcile his emotions about that thing which had called herself Aurora.

She sneered at him. "Do, please, be a little less specific than that."

Harry took a deep breath and responded with his own glare. "A Faerie. She claimed that her powers were weakest today and that her name was Aurora. She wanted me to tell her a story. And I did."

Altrouge's mouth opened in some sort of faux surprise. Harry looked with some trepidation at the abnormally sharp canine teeth. "To think, I was going to kill you and let you die slowly in little Daphne's arms. I would have made the Summer Lady very upset at me, indeed."

Harry swallowed, his anger abated by the sudden realization of how dire his situation was. From what he could glean of that Zelretch's tactics, this was the most powerful of the vampires here and he was currently stuck behind the others, who were holding off his mentors and the other three powerful mages on his side.

Altrouge floated closer and leaned over to whisper in his ear. She was only a tad taller than him.

"Are you afraid, Harry? You can tell me the truth," she said, an odd timbre in her voice making him pause.

Harry nodded almost without realizing he did, wondering how she had learned his name.

She gave his cheek a peck. "Now, you don't have to be afraid, you know. You're Dumbledore's student, right? And my daddy taught him. So you can think of me as a big sister of sorts! Or maybe even some older girl you can have a crush on," she teased, her voice mischievous.

Harry was sure that the girl was insane.

There was another roar of wind, this time a lot louder, and Harry was off his feet and on his back. Even Altrouge had been driven several steps back. The multitude of participants of that terrible Solstice circle were sent flying.

Yet another person he had never seen before had appeared in the clearing. Zelretch looked up at her and snorted. "How nice of you to conveniently show up when we already have the situation under control, Lorelei," he grumbled. His voice could be heard through the suddenly silent clearing.

The woman had vaguely pretty features that most people would pass in the street without truly noticing, but there was a certain sort of presence which Harry felt to be unique in perhaps her stance.

He knew that she was the one who had summoned the wind on the battlefield.

It appeared that Dumbledore recovered quicker than anyone else, because he had found his opening already. His switched his wand to his left hand and a globe of red-orange light erupted from his fingertips, bathing Ortenrosse and Svelten in the strange color.

Flamel and Zelretch were clearly familiar with the spell, because they too did the same.

In Dumbledore's other hand, his wand danced along with Flamel's, while Zelretch's light continued to increase in intensity.

Ortenrosse and Svelten were instantly transfixed by the light, which seemed to blend with their presences. They seemingly phased out of existence itself, leaving behind unmoving wraiths.

"Well, this is a little inconvenient," Altrouge said. "I'd hate to fight my way out of this. But if I had to, I'm sure little Harry here would die first."

"You believe you can escape me, Apostle?" It was the woman, Lorelei, who had spoken.

Altrouge smiled back, every inch nobility granting a boon to her subjects. "Now, now. I was speaking to the adults here. Would you prefer to live or die, Harry?" She smiled at the boy, now several steps in front of her.

Harry glared, realizing that he had been used to insult that woman.

Altrouge turned back to Lorelei. "Now, look at yourself, scion of Barthomeloi. Do you truly believe you register on the scale known to me as 'threatening' here?"

She gestured at the trio of Flamel, Zelretch and Dumbledore, their faces screwed up in concentration as their wands stayed outstretched, binding Svelten and Ortenrosse in space-time.

"These are the giants of modern magic, the Lord of the Kaleidoscope, the Lord Philosopher and the Lord of the First Blaze. You may be one of the talents in your generation, but compared to my father you are just another spark in the long night."

Harry didn't think he had ever seen someone as insulted as Lorelei of Barthomeloi, but the anger seemed to have been born of acceptance rather than just pride. It was Albus Dumbledore who had always said that it was far more difficult to forgive someone for being right.

"Now, I believe we can come to a deal here. My Knights and the White Wing Lord are lost to me already. But I am royalty and I refuse to leave without my dues. I'll be taking this girl and-"

Harry's mouth opened, but it was not his voice that refuted the claim.

"You may not leave with Daphne Greengrass. It would be highly responsible for me to allow you to take my partner's last legacy and Astrid would haunt Harry here forever."

Harry made a brief note at the surprise on Lorelei's face, but his focus was sucked into the vision of madness and ecstasy that came with the casting of particularly powerful magics in Blue's expression. This was someone he didn't know - that he had only seen on Dumbledore's face when the man performed feats of alchemy in demonstration.

Altrouge, who was the only person more insane than Blue in this gathering, looked her up and down. "As cliche as this sounds, who are you to stop me? You have extremely imprecise control of the Fifth Fractal. You'll be threatening in ten years if I don't deign it necessary to put you down like a dog or give you the pleasure of writhing under my body, but…"

Altrouge smiled at Harry and he flinched. "The same could be said for little Harry here."

Blue nodded slowly, her breath coming in heavy waves as she exhaled magic in her speech. "You're right. But you're going to let her go anyway." She sounded so sure, so crazy that it scared Harry to the bone and he knew it was so. "Because if you don't, I'll be using my… extremely imprecise control to take me back to a time before this all began. And damn you all to the shifting of the Root. I'll go back to a time before English was spoken. Before my mother tongue was derived from Chinese. Before Ortenrosse was licking the feet of Athene."

She grinned, a wolf's smile. "My sister did always say that only someone human could possibly believe in such monstrous genocide. But I'm willing to take my chances. And if it'll only take me ten years to be threatening…" she trailed off, her smile widening into a split of that terrible ecstasy and some branch of Zen. "Then you'd better believe that by the time you're born, I"ll be able to wipe away your existence with a stray thought."

And Altrouge smiled back. Harry thought her smiles ranged from strange and strangely seductive to angry and angrily conniving, but he was wrong. She looked truly happy in this moment, in this little conflict that defied all logic. "It appears that I have found a worthy opponent in you. Take the girl."

She dropped Daphne to the ground unceremoniously and cast a clinical eye on the other combatants. "I'm sure Svelten will weasel out of this mess, somehow. Give my regards to dear Trhvmn. Perhaps he'll have better luck in the next life."

Harry blinked and Altrouge was gone.

Blue looked over Harry with a worried eye. "Perhaps it'd be best if you lay down and slept, Harry. We'll deal with it from here."

Harry was pretty sure no magic had been cast on him, but the compulsion to do so was stronger than any he had ever felt before. He walked over to Daphne and lay on the oh-so-green grass besides her and closed his eyes.

The Message

Harry realized he had been propped up on a chair haphazardly when he woke. Though he was no stranger to waking up in a seated position after long nights of study, the practice made his aching back no less annoying.

For just a moment, he hoped that it had all been a dream, that he had hit his head during his stay at Neville's place and imagined those terrible events which had unfolded.

He let this fantasy continue until his finger came up to the left side of his face. He scratched off a small amount of dried, caked blood that had run down his cheek and examined the earthen color under his fingernails.

Harry looked around. Though he had already ascertained he was in Dumbledore's office, he had not expected to see Daphne several scant inches away from him, in her own seat. She was still sleeping, and in danger of falling out of her chair.

"Daphne."

The girl shifted to a less precarious position, waking. She turned to him, drinking in the disgusting sight of battle and glory and the dead littered over his face in blood and emotion.

"She's dead."

Harry couldn't say anything, so he didn't speak.

"To be honest, I expected it." Her words were cold, her eyes were warm and her fists were clenched.

There was a sort of smugness to her tone, as though she had been proven right yet again. "I laughed. I laughed at her because I knew she was powerful and I laughed because I knew she was foolish. The great texts of our forefathers, about the sinking of Atlantis, those terrible lines from Sweeting, they're not wisdoms but warnings."

Daphne was feeling an emotion quite complex, one that Harry had not encountered. He was horrified.

"Every night since that night in the Great Hall, I dreamed the same dream. That Dumbledore would interrupt dinner to tell me that my mother's died. Undoubtedly, it would be some great glory. A princess of vampires, by the side of legends which had watched the world turn. And when she died, the world would have stopped."

Her anger was so much like Draco's, but so different. She grinned.

"And she made the world stop. But she died for it. I gave her a hug, you know, that night. She didn't know why I was laughing. I didn't know why I was laughing. When she took the Color. Because she was the color. The master of spies in the Mage's Association is the master of magics that should only be seen through a little peephole. They should never be used. But when it came time, she was the one beholden to use them. And she paid with her life."

This was beyond Harry now. They had all studied the lore of the world, especially he, but now he was out of his depth.

"And now, she's passed into the empty night. Leaving behind what? A boy she never really liked and a young daughter that she cared too much about."

"A legacy." One of the portraits which lined Professor Dumbledore's office had spoken. "Green is a good color. Green is the color of wisdom and humanity and nature. And of equal measure."

Daphne turned to glare at the portrait, a man with features which made him seem monkey-like.

"Do you recognize me, girl?"

Daphne shook her head.

"You wear my colors. You wear the green."

Harry knew then that this was Salazar Slytherin.

"Mages are a dime a dozen. Cowardly, pathetic, obsessed with their own power. To be a magus, it is said, is to walk the path of one who writes the code for this Universe and the next. This is a path fraught with slow burning cold and empty nothings, which ultimately leads to death. It is to stare on a lonely road stretching out into infinity and to look on as your mind breaks from this stress."

Salazar Slytherin was more than just a mage, but it appeared as though he had gone back to his rest, closing his eyes to indicate that the conversation was over.

But it was not truly Salazar Slytherin, just a shadow of the ideals that wove him. Daphne knew his words as well as the portrait, but she did not repeat them to herself.

She turned to Harry again, a challenge on her face. "And it is to wake up one morning and know that those you love won't be walking with you any longer."

Will you walk the path with me, Harry Potter?

If Astrid was alive, she would have pitied her daughter.

But she wasn't and Harry could not. "Her name. The woman who killed her. Her name was Altrouge."

"She will fear me."