Updated: 3/5/2023

The Valley

Harry woke up invigorated like he couldn't remember. Though hunger clawed at his belly, a weight was absent from his mind. He had escaped the burden of destiny. Both his holly wand and the Elder Wand were sat on the bed stand next to a pair of earrings, a jeweled necklace, and a tiara. Hovering his hand over the wands, he hesitated. Harry grabbed the knobbly darkened one. Kicking off the comforter, Harry hurried to the washroom and drew a steaming hot bath. It was odd, using the unfamiliar wand for his morning routine. It was longer than his wand, and felt different when he flicked it in the air. But it was no less responsive. Just as he was familiar with, the mythical, covetous wand leapt to serve him.

"Tempus," he muttered. Instead of the string of digits he was used to, a complex astronomical diagram appeared. A digital readout displayed the day as March 5th, gave the lunar phase, and the solar position in degrees from the horizon. -19 degrees. 5:13:12.57 A.M. Curious. He pushed out of the tent. The frigid air chilled his wet hair. It was predawn, the sky a dim grey. Harry took a moment to gaze at the sky, the stars just barely fading away from the sun's rays.

With a snarl, an enormous wolf leapt towards Harry. In the dark, the only warning he got was the glimmer of starlight off exposed fangs. Harry stumbled backwards, falling on his back in the deep snow. Saliva dripped from its muzzle, hot, stinking air breathing in his face. Adrenaline dumped into his body so fast it hurt. Harry kicked out, but his feet met nothing. His palms stung against the frigid, icy snow.

Heart racing, he tried to crawl backwards, but the snow was too deep. His arms sank straight to the elbow, and resisted his efforts to scrabble away from the colossal predator. A thudding noise rushed through his head as he frantically scrabbled for his wand. The night obscured the ground, and he could barely even see his hands, much less a thin stick of wood sunken in the snow. All four paws landed around him. The wolf straddled him, eyes boring menacingly into his own. The snow was too deep to crab walk backwards, his wand was lost somewhere in the carpet, hidden from his eyes. Feet scrabbling on the ice beneath the drifts, he was completely immobile. Fangs lowered to his exposed neck.

The desperation for a wand was overpowering. Fuelled by adrenaline and desperation, magic surged forth in his body, but without a wand, it was like shaking a soda can. Power fizzled under his skin, screaming for an outlet. Harry lashed out with his arm, shoving at the enormous wolf with a wordless shout.

It went flying backwards, a dozen feet in the air. "Accio wand!" Harry cried. Immediately, his fingers closed around a long, thin profile. The wolf landed easily and charged him down. Harry knew from the hateful look in the thing's eyes that it would not be playing with its food. One bite and it was over. He raised his wand without any true purpose, no spell on his lips. They formed words anyway, unprompted.
His fingers manipulated the elder wood in a darkly familiar pattern without thought."Avada Kedavra!" Harry's lips murmured.

A cold, menacing tide of magic rushed from his heart to his fingers, as powerful as any patronus he'd cast. A viridian glare lit up the valley. Harry threw his left arm over his eyes as the harsh glare illuminated everything in sight. The veins in his eyelids stood in stark relief. Then, it faded away.

Harry took great gusty breaths, his hands shaking uncontrollably. He glanced at his right hand to find a terribly familiar knobbly shaft of dark wood. The Elder Wand. I didn't do that. Harry regarded his hand, and the innocent-looking stick it held with revulsion. At his feet, the massive wolf had slumped into the snow, its eyes wide open and unseeing. It looked exactly as Cedric had: faintly surprised, without a hint of fear.

It was too easy. That was Harry's immediate thought. Before, the bear-sized wolf was a terrifying beast. With two absently uttered words, it had been reduced to the pitiful thing before him, staring vacantly.

In the time afterwards, Harry could not stop thinking about it. What had happened. Though he stuffed the corpse into his tent to eat, its vacant eyes seemed to follow him. The moment replayed itself over and over in his head as he packed the tent, stuffing it in the rainbow tote bag he'd stuffed the other expanded bags and tents in, and slinging it over his winter coat. Every treacherous step he took in the predawn light, the green light of the killing curse reflected in his eyes. In his gloved hand, the Elder Wand sat unmoving, identical in every way to a matched wand. Harry didn't believe it for a second.

He camped on top of a craggy ledge a few dozen feet from the peak of the next mountain, a blade of barren stone and permafrost. On the way to bed, he ignored Phineas's snide baits into conversation. Compared to the terrain he was traversing, hiking in the forest of Dean felt like vacation. Those last meals he'd managed to eat before Voldemort's arrival at Hogwarts felt like a dream, a fleeting interlude to the year of sparse meals and petty grocery store robberies that sustained him on the run with Ron and Hermione.

Harry began to convince himself that heading towards civilization was stupid; what if it was a thousand miles away? He had no reference points for apparition besides what he had managed to walk on foot. What he wouldn't give for his Firebolt right then. But, he had to be at least a little careful. If the Statute of Secrecy was in effect here, cruising across the sky was a recipe for getting arrested and tossed in whatever nightmarish wizard jail this world had thought up.

Considering what he 'owned,' was odd. The term was nebulous. It obviously encompassed his Gringotts vault, though he had not seen much of any artifacts in it. As far as he could tell, it was just a pile of gold. Where did the artifacts come from? Was there another vault under his name somewhere? Phineas Black's familiarity with the astrolabe suggested he also got everything Sirius willed to him. For all that he had two rich families' vaults' contents, he hadn't found a single broom yet. Bottles of wine, yes, spoiled food, yes, even a fair stock of common potions. Cutlery, the silver goblets Mundungus Fletcher had been trying to pawn off, paintings and portraits and kitchenware and piles of bedding, and a boggling amount of furniture. Evidently everything in Number 13, Grimmauld Place counted.

Packing everything up was probably the least careful inventory anyone had ever taken. Harry knew in the vaguest sense what he could expect to find, but with so much junk and the expediency of the Pack spell, he only had basic terms. Summoning 'unspoiled food' yielded a lot more than he expected. Harry had never been involved in wizarding food preparation beyond watching Mrs. Weasley manage a tornado of whirling knives, pots, and ladles. He hadn't any idea how or if the wizarding world preserved food. The Herbivicus charm instantly grew mundane plants, perhaps they simply grew everything on demand.

What he found, Harry tossed in conjured sacks and dragged into the tent he was living in. He used the best preserving spell he knew – from potions with Slughorn – which stalled a brew in time. It was supposed to be difficult, but Harry managed it well enough. Phineas gave him a disdainful look while he worked.

"Am I to understand you are using the duratempus charm to preserve food?"

"Yeah, why shouldn't I?"

"I suppose a dullard like you might enjoy recasting the charm every time he wishes to retrieve an item."

"D'you know a better one, professor?" Harry asked mildly.

Phineas looked offended. "Of course. What substandard education have you received? Clearly, the muggle-lover's standards are abysmally low."

"Dumbledore was a brilliant headmaster," he defended hotly, without thinking.

"One who neglected to teach you this critical charm," Phineas said snidely.

"He's hardly in charge of teaching individual spells."

"Flittick, then, wasn't it? The goblin one. Proof creatures ought not be allowed to carry wands." A surge of anger raced through Harry.

"Professor Flitwick was brilliant, too."

Phineas regarded him disdainfully. "Then perhaps, the fault lies with you." Harry looked away. He rarely put all his effort into school. Considering the subject of stasis charms, he vaguely remembered a lesson on the topic, though the name and incantation eluded him. Harry flushed. Had he not enough on his plate to be getting on with? When he needed spells or they were from Defense Against the Dark Arts, a field which he was talented at, he learned them diligently. So what if he forgot a few inconsequential spells. Even as he opened his mouth to deliver his excuse, he closed it before so much as a syllable escaped. It rang hollow, even to him.

Why, if he was determined to thrust himself into mortal peril, did he insist on halfheartedly learning the tools that might save his life. Now every dry, technical lesson he ignored while passing notes felt like a critical missed opportunity. It occurred to him that Phineas Nigellus Black, as a headmaster of Hogwarts, was likely better educated, and could perhaps answer some of his questions.

"Will you teach me a relevant charm, professor?" Harry asked contritely.

"I see no reason to waste my effort teaching a student that is only half-interested in what I have to say at best."

"It's not as if you've got anything better to do," he blurted before he could stop himself. Horrified, Harry clenched his mouth shut.

Phineas eyed him drolly. "You are not very convincing, Mr. Potter. Prove to me that my efforts will not be wasted, and I shall teach you. Else, begone and do not bother me."

Harry trudged up the side of a steep mountain, navigating carefully through the trees. It was the eighth day of exploration he'd been on. Somewhere past the first set of ridgelines, Harry grew certain he was being watched. He had never seen anyone or any sign of it, but he was convinced, nevertheless. Harry had picked his way through the foothills and treacherous crags. Somehow, the combined wealth of several ancient families had not one broom between them, so learning to make one was now at the top of his list. No, higher. The conjured sneakers he wore were not mountain climber gear, but they were the footwear he was most familiar enough with. Luna had told him all about this horrible infliction called 'bunions' and how walking on foot through Sweden, she'd contracted this horrible disease. Harry was positive the disease was a Luna-ism. Oh how wrong he'd been.

The wildlife in the mountain range was enormous and vaguely terrifying. If he weren't a wizard, he'd steer clear of the deathtrap that was the mountains. Enormous wolves padded silently through the trees, stalking game. Watching a megawolf tear into a fallen deer, struggling to regain its feet sent a pang through his chest. Harry had intended to call Lily with the Resurrection Stone, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. The new world he was exploring was exciting and beautiful, in a wild, primal sort of way. The only nature he'd experienced before was the forest of Dean, a much more cultivated sort of woods. His time camping there was colored by the Horcrux hunt, bickering friends, and the oppressive weight of carrying two horcruxes around for days on end.

He decided to call her that evening in the tent. Perhaps she would like to work on a broom with him. Finally, three hours later, Harry came across a familiar sight. Two enormous mountains towered over the forest, eastward from the rest of the mountain range. From the forest below stretched an enormous sheer cliff, topped by two craggy peaks. Harry didn't know what kind of wacky tectonic shenanigans had to have happened to form the breathtaking sight, but he was certainly going to take advantage of it. The point-me charm pointed up there, and so there he would go.

Deeper into the mountain range, wildlife flourished, enormous carnivores gamboled about, and quality lumber was abundant. The ground also crunched oddly beneath his feet. On a whim, Harry levitated off the layer of snow carpeting the valleys, and dug his hands into the thin soil. What he found horrified him.

Skeletons, in some places as thick as three deep, littered the ground. On each corpse was a red tunic, embroidered with a twisting golden flame. He shivered as he recalled those grinning bleached skulls, staring up at him in a mockery of a smile.

After finding the site of that unknown massacre, Harry selected routes as far away from there as possible to pursue, skirting around peaks in the general direction of whatever his magic defined as 'civilization.'

Upon reaching the base of the sheer cliff, Harry conjured a pair of icepicks for himself, and sunk one into the stone. He couldn't vocalize why he chose not to apparate to the visible ledge on top, nor hunt for a moldy old broomstick in one of his bags. It just seemed like the right thing to do. The conjured metal bit deep into the cliffside and held firmly. Harry tested his weight against the hold by hoisting himself up by his arms. Satisfied with the security of the gear, he began the ascent.

Despite the brisk spring mountain air, Harry was soon sweating as he pulled himself up again and again. He tried to remind himself not to look down, but the instinct proved too powerful to ignore. The cliffside, while daunting on the ground, felt positively enormous while he was hanging from it by naught but a little hook of metal that hadn't existed half an hour ago. As he continued his ascent, Harry worried over the picks, imagining them vanishing out of his hands, back to the void they came from. It felt good to put challenging, physical work into a simple task.

He panted as he stopped right beneath a particularly tricky overhang which would require him to climb backwards, away from the relative safety of the cliff and out over open air. For all his confidence with the arresto momentum spell, the prospect of a fall was heart-stopping.

Harry glanced down and swallowed. The ground looked worryingly far away. It was peculiar that when on a broom, he was positively fearless, yet here, with no safety net, no Madam Pomfrey to patch him up, no professors to catch his fall, if he fell it could spell the end. All that might separate him from a Harry-shaped puddle on the ground could be his hasty casting of a spell he was not overly familiar with. The tops of the trees below stabbed upwards menacingly, like enormous green spikes, threatening to impale any foolish climbers.

Sweat beaded down his brow. His hands were getting slick, and threatened to loosen his grip on the icepicks. Then, in a glorious conflagration of white flames, Hedwig appeared, singing an uplifting song which seemed to vitalize and strengthen. With iron will capable of throwing off the Dark Lord's Imperius with ease, Harry set his face and reached out.

Clink, Pull. Clink, Pull. Each step he made, the task seemed less daunting. Eyes straight ahead, he avoided looking back or down. When Harry finally crested the lip of the overhang, the rest of the way seemed much easier. He scaled now with the agility and surety of one who had passed their greatest challenge. The ascent seemed less daunting now, the near 90o angle of the cliff.

Arms burning, Harry finally threw his arms over the lip of the cliff, and hauled himself exhaustedly over, onto flat rock. Spread eagle facing up to the sky, he felt around for thick cool grass. Triumph burned in him. He had summited the cliff with his hands and mortal tools. The wind howled about, unobstructed by terrain, the full force of the sky tearing and flapping at his heavy jacket. A few paces in front of him, a tall stone tower stood.

Harry's wandtip lit up with a mere thought. The inside of the tower was ringed by a spiraling staircase. It was dark inside, yet his wandlight revealed dull glass fixtures in brackets. He supposed they could be gas lights without gas. There were deep, slashing scores in the stone, and blood splatters on the ground. Someone had fought there. The place reminded him of the house Horace Slughorn had squatted in. Furniture was overturned or broken, one of the gas lights had exploded, leaving a scorch mark over the whole wall.

He emerged on the roof to eerie quiet. The howling wind had vanished. It was as quiet as the Astronomy tower at midnight. In the center of the tower rooftop lay a splayed skeleton, leering up at him. Harry glanced down at his wand. "Point-me, civilization." The wand spun on his palm for a moment, then, quivering, pointed off the edge of the watchtower to the south. Harry plodded over to the edge, skirting the skeleton and peering over the crenellations.

The mountains plunged away below, sloping down to a deep valley. Surrounding it, the range was laid out before him, magnificent peaks arranged around a bowl of sorts. Nestled in the middle, Harry spotted a little village. His heart sank. It was a medieval one.

Little wooden and stone shacks were arranged together like postage stamps on a tan background. They were not the sturdy, multistory homes and shops of Hogsmeade, or the quaint village-esque homes of Godric's Hollow. They were squat, one story affairs surrounded predominantly by acres of what Harry presumed was farmland. The nicest house was two storeys, standing atop a hill next to an open hut that let out a wisp of smoke. The rough, worn trails in the grass could barely be called roads, but they were all the village had. No train tracks or pavement, and no obvious signs of magic.

Resignedly, Harry began descending into the valley. Peasants or not, he wanted to know things about the brave new world he found himself in. With apparition to serve as checkpoints, Harry did not worry about having to climb back up. Though he supposed he could use arresto momentum to survive taking the fast way down, Harry was not eager to test his idea. Instead, he conjured a great skein of thick rope and fastened it around a tree.

The lip of the cliff was an overhang, thus Harry could not rappel down until much further below. With the relative safety of a sturdy rope in his hands, he held no fear of the dizzying drop below. Wrapping the rope about his legs and stepping to clamp it between his feet, Harry let the coarse rope slide between his jeans, gliding slowly downward. A few hundred feet down, the cliff transformed into a slope. Harry rappeled until he reached fluffy snowdrifts, which he began to glide over with transfigured snowshoes. As tempting as it was to try skiing, he doubted Hermione started out on a 45 degree, ungroomed incline. It was an awkward descent that saw Harry trying out skills he had never tried, but he managed to figure out snowshoes and rappelling well enough by nightfall.

Harry camped out on a fairly flat spot when it grew dark once more, lighting a big fire with wood he had diffindo'ed off the tall pine trees. It had taken a continuous, hot stream of fire to ignite, and poured light grey smoke, but it gave off enough light and heat that Harry hoped he would not have to deal with another megawolf.

Phineas gave him an amused look of superiority when Harry found that removing anything from the food sacks forced him to replace the stasis charm. Sitting at the wooden table in the kitchen, Harry fiddled with his ring. "Lily Evans Potter." The cool tide of magic that rushed through him felt very similar to when the Elder Wand nudged him to cast the killing curse. A formless white mist appeared spontaneously, coalescing into a foggy, person-shaped cloud which quickly resolved into the features of his mother. Though Harry did not have the presence of mind to enjoy Phineas's shock, he still smiled.

Lily was barely transparent, more solid than even the pearly white Hogwarts ghosts. She was colored almost exactly as he had seen her days before, her hair a deep red and her eyes vibrant green. "Hello, mum."

"Harry," she grinned. "How are you?"

Harry tried to encircle her in a hug. A sharp pang went through his chest when his arms went right through her. Compared to meeting in person, Lily's spirit felt ephemeral. She had no scent, either. Harry suddenly understood why Cadmus killed himself. Harry had to remind himself that he could leave at any time and meet her, and composed himself, surreptitiously wiping his cheek with a sleeve. She looked like something straight out of the Mirror of Erised, sitting on the high-backed chair at the tent's kitchen, wearing a red cardigan and a sincere smile.

"Don't you know how I am?" he joked. Lily smiled wanly, acknowledging his tear with a sympathetic look.

"What is that ring?" Phineas demanded from his portrait. They both turned to look at him. Harry figured Phineas wasn't going anywhere.

"The Resurrection Stone."

"Of course," he mocked. "Any other legendary artifacts you'd like to declare?"

Suppressing a weak smile, Harry shrugged and lofted the cloak and wand. Phineas's eyes narrowed. "Hmm."

Harry deliberately turned his back on the portrait, asking clearly, "Mum, do you happen to know a stasis charm for food that I don't have to reapply every time I open?" Her green eyes sparkled with mischief.

"Servetus is the typically used household charm," Lily agreed. "The wand movement is only loosely linked, an encircling motion around whatever you want to preserve. But most wizards use refrigerator analogues that cast the spell for you. This place has one, itself."

Harry knew what she was talking about. He had not used it because it was warm inside. When he raised the concern, Phineas sneered. "Of course it's not cold. Why would we need to refrigerate things when magic all but stops time for our food. A fresh, warm meal will taste just as good a year later. Muggles must deal with crude, reheated and stale food."

"So if I stuffed the giant wolf I killed in the fridge, would it stay fresh?"

Lily tilted her hand back and forth. "It won't fit in there, for starters, but the servetus charm isn't a true stasis charm like the one you learned in potions class. The wolf will no longer count as freshly killed even under it, which is important if you wish to make use of its vitality."

Harry had never heard of the term. "Does that matter?"

"Only if you're an aspiring necromancer or dark wizard," said Phineas, watching Lily shrewdly. "And a foolish one. The Egyptian concept of the soul is superior to the Celtics or the Anglo-saxons. The five-part soul is more accurate-"

"And less useful unless you're evil," Lily interjected. "Your conceptualization of the soul affects your magic. I chose an inviolable model to make my protection stronger." She turned to Harry. "This is something you'll run into often at the highest levels of magic; the less defined the rules are, the more flexible they are, because magic operates closely with belief. The reason wands and common spells are so rigid and inflexible is because virtually every witch and wizard out there has certainty that the incantation and wand movement will yield the same exact result. Students can say Wingardium Leviosa and swish and flick without knowing anything about the spell, and it will still levitate feathers. But the most esoteric spells are defined by the beliefs of their casters since the rest of the world doesn't know enough to contradict your beliefs. The beliefs you base your magic off of will be reinforced, often closing off other avenues of magic to you. Tom Riddle could never cast as invincible a soul protection as I did because he has pursued the Egyptian model of the soul which is not inviolable. Likewise, I could never make a stable Horcrux because my model of the soul is. Just be careful, Harry. Not all decisions can be easily taken back."

Harry considered. "So if I make up an incantation, as long as I have a clear idea of what I want it to do, I can make spells for anything?" Lily nodded.

"That's how spells are usually made in the first place. Many ancient ones came from early wizards vocalizing their intent in their native language. Those words or effects caught on and became a sort of collective for the idea that the spell embodied, and eventually, we come along and borrow their experience when we use them. The Romans were famous for their magic, and the bastardized Latin they used is practically a staple of our magic, today."

"And the wolf?"

Lily laughed gently. "Doesn't matter today. Though I do have suggestions for better spells to butcher it."

It was odd, speaking so familiarly with Lily, sitting in the Black family's wizarding tent for 'slumming it.' The perfected version of his mum that he'd built up in his head was being broken down into something infinitely more valuable, infinitely more real. Lily had a habit of folding her fingers, touching her thumb to each one in turn, forming random patterns. She used a different vocabulary to him and Petunia. It was less posh and refined, more genuine. Harry enjoyed seeing her for who she really was, warts and all.

She coached him through a much easier stasis charm with simpler spells. Harry found them easy enough to apply, and set about putting dinner together with rendered wolf parts from his earlier kill. He figured if he had already killed it, he might as well use the meat instead of wasting his kill. Phineas often interjected with snide comments about doing 'House-elf' work. The portrait did not have a high opinion of the little elves. Apparently, neither Kreacher nor his predecessor Retchid were well-liked among the Blacks.

Fed up with his barbs, Harry demanded angrily, "Do you have nothing better to do?"

Phineas sniffed. "As a matter of fact, I do not. Evidently none of my family were in their Grimmauld frames when you absconded with our family's wealth and artifacts."

"I am going to move out as soon as possible," Harry declared.

"The tower, perhaps?" Lily suggested. She circled a divot in the wooden table with a not-quite-opaque finger, tapping it quietly.

"Er, yeah." Harry's heart sank. He did not particularly want to live in the bloodstained final resting place of the bundle of bones atop the stone tower. Still, anything would be better than listening to Phineas bother him endlessly.

"You can always renovate," his mother suggested. "Your father would be thrilled to teach you transfiguration."

With that attractive idea in his head, Harry agreed. Privately, he thought he'd be lonely without at least the portrait whenever he couldn't call Lily with the Stone. It was just his rotten luck to be stuck with the odious former headmaster.

In a word, Carvahall was smelly. Harry had heard the term 'unwashed masses' used for commoners. The medieval village very poignantly embodied the term. People had dirty and messy hair, smudged, scarred skin, and clothes that smelled like sweat and dirt. There was obviously not a sewage system, and it seemed that the only tolerable places to be were near fires where woodsmoke overpowered the odorous villagers.

The villagers were also unfriendly and suspicious. They eyed his modern-looking jacket and jeans with suspicion, and their gazes seemed to follow him wherever he went. They spoke a language unfamiliar to him. The only thing they got across that he did understand was that he was not welcome. It seemed everyone had some sort of holdout weapon on them, though Harry couldn't blame them too much; after all, he carried not one but two wands, which could certainly be more dangerous than a sword or bow.

Harry stopped for food at what he figured was an inn. It was a noisy place, though the patrons were all clearly familiar with each other. Though he couldn't understand what they were saying, their familiar postures and glances made it quite obvious they were gossipping about him. Harry let the noise wash over him. Pasting on a brave face, Harry walked up to the bar and took out a few sickles, sliding them across the weathered wooden surface.

Behind it, the smelly bartender took them with wide eyes and exchanged them for a plate of food and a drink. Harry wondered if he'd overpaid. He shrugged and decided that it didn't matter. He had so much gold that unless he went around buying countries, he'd never, ever run out. "Thanks," he muttered, eyeing the crudely carved wooden spoon that came with the plate. The bartender's brows met for a moment. Shrugging, he said some unfamiliar phrase and turned back.

The wooden spoon was probably about to rot, and Harry didn't believe for a second that it had ever been washed properly. The plate lacked a knife, too, despite the steak that rather resembled the sole of a leather boot. Grimacing, he drew out his wand and twirled it about. A set of silverware fell into his hands. Statue of Secrecy be damned, it hadn't even gone into effect during the medieval ages.

Harry glanced up to see that the bartender's eyes were moving between his wand, the silverware and his face. His expression was closed-off and wary. "What, never seen a wizard before?" He asked mildly.

"Vitki?" he asked cautiously.

"Er, sure?" Harry cut into the food with his magicked utensils. It was surprisingly not awful. The meat he had correctly identified as tougher than leather, but the mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas were perfectly serviceable. He took a sip of the beverage and spat it out in horror. It tasted like gasoline and dirt had an ugly, deformed baby. He glanced up at the bartender with a grimace, flashing an apologetic expression. "Sorry, it's not really my thing." The man looked a bit nervous, attempting to hide his offense beneath a weak smile.

In for a sickle, in for a galleon, Harry supposed. "Evanesco," he murmured. A couple flicks, and he poured crystal clear water from the tip of his wand. Almost as an afterthought, he cast the bubblehead, breathing the fresh air deeply. He ignored the goggling expression. "I don't suppose you know anyone who speaks my language?"

Brom the Storyteller creaked his way to Morn's tavern, walking like he was a good deal more infirm than he was. Rumors had been muttered, circulating quietly about a lone, unarmed stranger, a boy with bright green eyes and a curious red scar on his brow. Brom the Storyteller wanted to speak with him, perhaps learn a tale or two. But that was not all Brom was.

Morn's creaky door swung open, and the thirteen separate speakers began to give Brom a headache. Mentally, he filtered out the noise. Gossip, tall tales, the weather, the soil- oh. Now that was interesting. Sharp eyes locked onto a dark-haired young man wearing unfamiliar clothing. He was speaking a language none in Carvahall should but him.

"Sorry, it's not really my thing," the man apologized to Morn in the Ancient Language.

Brom rested his left hand casually at the bottom of his ribs and adjusted his grip on his staff. A man who spoke the Ancient Language was nearly always a magician, and none of the elves would give themselves away with such confidence as the man before him seemed to. His suspicions were borne out a moment later when the man tapped his cup with a stick, murmuring an unfamiliar word which did not sound like the Ancient Language. A flare of magic accompanied the action.

Brom goggled when water poured out of the stick. He had conjured water out of nothing! Unless the man was Galbatorix himself and thought to indulge his most wasteful whims, no living magician had the strength to fill a whole tankard with water from nothing. Hesitantly, as delicately as absolutely possible, Brom reached out with his mind to brush against his.

"-don't suppose you know anyone who speaks my language?" Brom made the most fleeting contact. Instantly, the man stiffened. A flash of red blasted out of the stranger, instantly on his feet. Morn collapsed to the ground bonelessly behind the bar. Shouts of alarm came from the other patrons. Brom caught only a fleeting impression of fury before he was shoved away.

The stranger whirled on the room, a knobby length of wood in his arm, pointed out accusatory, sweeping around the room. His features were as described: vibrant green eyes of the shade only elves and their magic wore, a youthful face, and a red lightning bolt scar upon his brow.

"Who do you think you are?"

"What've you done to Morn!?"

"You-!" Villagers shouted over each other. The man eyed them warily. Brom slipped a couple fingers beneath the fringe of his vest, touching the hilt of his hidden knife warily. That shade of red magic was darkly familiar…

"I can't understand you," he protested in the Ancient Language over the villagers. "Who the fuck is messing with my head?" Brom read genuine confusion in the stranger's face and posture. Mentally, he shrugged. It looked like Brom the Storyteller was needed.

"Hello?" Brom called. The stranger immediately turned to him, relief in his eyes.

"Thank Merlin," he muttered. "Why is everyone so mad?"

"I imagine because you've attacked Morn." Brom injected some wariness into his tone, schooled his face into one of mild concern. The man's brows met in confusion.

"What? He's just stunned- oh. Er, he'll wake up in an hour or so. Actually-" The stranger turned and leaned over the bar, pointing his stick down. Instantly, that bedamned kid Odger crept up with a bared knife in hand. "Ennervate." A groan came from behind the bar.

The others in the tavern seemed disinclined to stop the kid from attacking, content to watch the kid creep closer. "Boy," Brom warned harshly. Odger glanced up at him for only a moment. The stranger began to turn around. Right away, the boy stabbed down. He must have caught the glint of steel or something, for the man had instantly turned, shouting "Protego!"

The knife turned away from the glowing blue barrier like it had struck stone. Odger gave a cry of pain and alarm at his twisted wrist, looking up in abject fear. Quick as a viper, the stranger's wand flicked out and a similarly red jet of light struck the boy in the chest. The knife was ripped from his fingers, sailing into the air end over end. His hand snuck out and folded around the grip with practiced ease.

"Stop!" Brom demanded angrily to the villagers. What a bunch of fools they were. "I'm sorry, stranger," he said in the Ancient Language. Technically true, he was sorry the situation had escalated, and that there was a strange magician to threaten his cover in Carvahall. "Odger is hot-blooded. I would be grateful to host you at my home, if you leave him be."

The stranger dropped the knife on Morn's bar, behind which a head was slowly emerging as the bartender got to his feet slowly. So he hadn't killed the man. Good. Brom rather liked the tavern-keeper. No one else around Carvahall made good alcohol.

"Yes please," he said, a grateful expression on his face. "Why the hell are these guys so twitchy?"

Brom grumbled and led him out. Why indeed?

Harry settled into the armchair the old man who had introduced himself as Brom offered. He wasn't quite old, but certainly getting there. His face was weathered and lined, and his hair was more grey than black, yet poorly-hidden vitality lurked under his affectations of crotchetiness. Contrary to everywhere else in the village Brom had named Carvahall, the house smelled inoffensive. Like a cross between Hagrid's hut and the Hogwarts library, the smell of old books and a faint accent of woodsmoke lent the impression of a medieval scholar's home. The written word absolutely littered every surface of the living area. Even the chair upon which he sat had been hastily cleared of a pile of scrolls atop two stacked books. The haphazard placement of loose paper near the open hearth made Harry cringe. He had seen more than one Gryffindor lose an assignment to the fireplace in the common room.

Brom knelt down next to the cold hearth with a flint and steel, striking at it grouchily for a moment. Harry reclined in his chair to watch. After a moment, the old man said "Fire," like a curse. Harry felt a flash of magic, and the hearth roared to life.

"You're a wizard," Harry noted with a smile.

"No, I'm not." Brom gazed at him with an inscrutable look.

"You expect me to ignore the fact that you just used magic?"

"That'd be nice," he grumbled, turning to fetch a pipe. He tamped some sort of weed into it and lit it. "I'm a magician. There's a difference, boy."

"Don't call me boy," Harry said automatically.

Brom eyed him. "Fine. Now, who and why are you here?" The genial old man before him hardened into a dangerous, if elderly, magician. It was like watching Dumbledore get serious. Abruptly, the symptoms of age became warning signs indicating great experience and power. Harry's fingers sought the comfort of his wand up his sleeve.

"I'm Harry-" he hesitated. "Harry Evans. I'm Harry Evans. Here to make a new life, and probably fight the forces of evil or something." He offered Brom a weak grin.

"Do you serve King Galbatorix?" Brom pressed.

"No, who's that?"

"The forces of evil. Do you mean harm to anyone in Carvahall?"

Harry crossed his arms. "Not at the moment. If I find out who was trying to get in my head, I'll probably give them a stern talking-to. But no one else." The thought occurred to him that perhaps as the only known wizard he'd seen so far, it was probably Brom who had done it. "If it was you, I guess I'd say that it's a gross violation of privacy, and fair indication that said perpetrator was somewhat aligned with the forces of evil."

The old man smiled humorlessly, puffing on his pipe. He relaxed back into his chair. The smoke he exhaled smelled dank and unlike tobacco. "Perhaps you hail from a kinder land than Alagaesia, Harry Evans. Here, we use what tools are available to us to stay safe. A word to the foolish; keep your magic to yourself if you find yourself traveling. Galbatorix forcefully conscripts magicians to his Empire."

"A word to the foolish?" Harry asked bemusedly.

"Well, you're certainly not wise."

Harry didn't quite have a response for that. "I'm not looking to go exploring, yet. I'm currently homeless. Though I think I'll remodel a tower I found in the mountains overlooking this valley."

Melancholy recognition flashed in Brom's eyes. "The Place of Sorrow." He dragged heavily on his pipe, sighing a burst of smoke from his lips. "I suppose it's not in use. I should warn you. You're likely to see a visitor or two, if you choose to live there."

"I'm sorry for your loss," Harry muttered. "I'll bury the guy who died on top of the tower."

Brom's eyes were far away. "His name was Vrael. He was a great leader, and the world is poorer for his absence."

"It's not like I'm not going to visit here often," Harry told him. "Probably to buy food, until I can use magic to grow it."

He raised his eyebrows. "You've no mount, and the mountains are treacherous. That's a long journey to make often."

"I'll be fine," Harry dismissed.

Brom hummed. Harry got the feeling he was humoring him. "It seems as though you intend to depart, so I shall give you this piece of advice; if you receive a trio of visitors with pointed ears, you ought to ask them if you may be tested. If they are suspicious – which they will be – tell them the Half-rider sent you." Harry was struck then by the expression of sorrow on the old man's face. It had the same flavor of devastation he had seen in Dumbledore on rare occasions where the genial headmaster had lost his composure. "And be wary of going too deep in the Spine," Brom added. "It is home to more than beasts."

Harry agreed easily enough. He fancied himself a reasonable judge of character, and upon leaving Brom's suspiciously well-built home among its less splendid reflections, Harry decided that Brom was a good man, and if he wasn't, he wouldn't have so transparently led him to his death. He would give his suggestion thought.

"James Potter." The Resurrection Stone's cool facets chilled in reaction to the tide of death magic which raced through Harry. Within seconds, a smiling man stood before Harry, identical to the wizard he had seen only in photos and before that, in an ancient and mysterious mirror.

"Dad," Harry murmured.

"That's me," James nodded with a wide smile that hinted at mischief and humor. Harry took a long, greedy look at him, drinking in his father's features. More so even than with his mum, Harry was struck dumb. There were so many things he wanted to say, so much he wanted to hear, questions he might ask, the avalanche of desperate curiosity crushed any single thought, and Harry was left bereft of anything to say at all.

James nodded understandingly. "I know something of what you're feeling," he said kindly. "Let's start with transfiguration, and see what happens."

Harry felt the million burning questions in him bubble up, pressing against his skin with such force he thought he might burst. Yet he could relieve none of it. His mind blanked every time he reached for something to say. There was just…too much.

"I admit, coasting through McGonagall's classes is something of a Potter tradition. Not everyone can be as fabulously talented as us," he bowed with his arms out to the sides, smiling. "But you did miss your seventh year, and I'm rather good at transfiguration, if I do say so myself."

They started off with review, insofar as the mostly barren mountain peak lacked wombats to transform into water goblets. One-on-one tutoring made a colossal difference. James immediately intuited what Harry had done wrong whenever one of his transformations came out slightly misshapen, or stubbornly clinging onto some property of its initial state. Often, his tips were followed up by something like:

"We used this to make loads of Christmas baubles that sang carols on the trees in the Great Hall. Horribly. They all did different songs at once – even Flitwick couldn't pretend to like it."

"Moony managed to make a jinx out of this one. It turned your hands into flippers, made holding onto your wand a right pain."

The more Harry heard from his father, the more he came to realize that James was a completely different person from both the bully in Snape's pensieve and the idol from Sirius's stories. Perhaps he was picking and choosing what he told Harry, but he didn't get the feeling that James had the disposition to be crafty in what he told him. The way he spoke of the Marauders' pranks, it was rather clear he took the most pride in those that inspired whimsy and awe, rather than retaliatory incidents against a select group of Slytherins. Like Lily, he was a complex person and it was impossible to understand who he was without meeting him.

It also struck Harry how painfully young James was. He had always imagined him to be like Sirius and Remus, both of whom were ten years older when he first met them and wore the trials of their difficult lives heavily. James looked not much older than Oliver Wood, the last Harry had seen of him. Harry pushed away his discomfort. Once he had warmed up, that was when James really started up.

"Have you got any ideas or plans in particular?"

Harry shook his head. "I was thinking of turning the tower into a sort of small compound. Maybe a cross between Hogwarts and log-cabin style. I want modern conveniences." He nearly surprised himself when he came up with the style. It was true. Even though Phineas Nigellus Black was unpleasant to be around, the wizardliness of the tent and its rustic charm felt personable and nostalgic, like a window back in time to the cheery, magical and carefree Hogwarts of before the war.

James rubbed his hands together eagerly. "Then let's get started!"

Whatever expectations Harry had for magical construction, James blew them away in moments. Muggle life and exposure to non-magical construction led Harry to believe even simple buildings like houses took months if not a year or two to put up. Transfiguration cut the timescale down to days if not hours. It was truly awe-inspiring to use transfiguration on the scale of buildings, to feel the surge of his magic connect him to the shifting landscape and stonework, shaping and changing under his command. It was also clear that James was an artist with Transfiguration. Harry could see assessment in his eyes, calculations and decisions that went right over his head. He'd give suggestions on color palettes or remind him to incorporate elevations or a million other little things that invariably ended up making whatever he was transfiguring beautiful.

Harry was careful to preserve the graceful tower's character, even as he cleaned and renovated it. Scouring charms scrubbed away years of ice and dirt, revealing unremarkable grey stone beneath. He shored up slashes and stabs in the rock with repair charms where he could, transfiguration where he couldn't. The tower transformed from the sorrowful abandoned spire into a livable home.

The interior, Harry took much more license with. The curved walls reminded Harry of the Rookery, so he took some inspiration from it. James coached him through making mosaics and adding windows without compromising the tower's structure. The same charms were able to let homes like the Burrow exist with their blatantly structurally-unsound shapes. Harry scrounged around the Spine for lumber as well.

"Transfigured stuff is usually a bit odd. It's not that it's so different from normal stuff, it's just got some quirks you've got to work around, especially if you're planning on using more magic on it later. Wherever possible, use real material. Sirius used to complain often about how much harder it was to charm bits we'd transfigured."

Harry nodded distractedly. "Levissima," he murmured. The conjured iron ingot resisted the spell minutely before conceding and allowing him to lift it on the tip of his finger. "Why?"

James hummed, poking at the iron bar. "The smart folks say some hogwash about magical interference and incompatibility and the like. Transfiguration is all about ideas. Micky G teaches you to use platonic ideals; essentially making a chair by drawing on the perfect concept of a chair. My completely unfounded belief is that transfigured stuff is actually too real to be easily affected by further magic. The perfect concept of a chair has a certain amount of mass, a certain amount of friction, and so forth, so changing those properties with charms is working against the transfiguration."

Harry pondered that for a moment. "Then do I have to use platonic ideals?"

James blinked. "They're…foundational to the discipline."

He hummed. "You said concepts of a chair. Why does it have to be the perfect concept of a chair? It's just an idea. Can't I form my own idea to use for transfiguration?"

His father opened his mouth and closed it. A slow smile crept across his lips. "I don't see why not."

"I reckon, -fors is the typical suffix for transfiguration incantations," Harry mused. He drew his holly wand for a control test, and scraped up a shard of ice, placing it on his gloved palm. He visualized changing it into a hunk of shaped iron with four legs, a flat bit, and another flat bit perpendicular to that. Harry carefully omitted any notion of the target being a chair. "Omnifors."

The tiny bit of ice grew immensely heavy, ballooning out into a rigidly-shaped but still recognizable chair. He reached out and touched the surface of the seat. It vibrated, then popped back into the shard of ice. "Oh," Harry said disappointedly. "Why?"

"The platonic ideal is a sort of database, I think." James peered at the crystal. "Everyone contributes their knowledge of what a chair is to that matrix, and when you use it as the focus of your transfiguration, that data is available for magic to draw upon. Try again with something simpler, something you can keep every single detail of in your mind."

Harry nodded and closed his eyes. He imagined an iron bar. It would be small enough to reach his fingers around, rectangular, and with a trapezoidal cross-section. He fixed the shape in his mind and committed it to his memory. "Omnifors."

The bar barely finished forming when it fell apart into dust. Harry undid the transfiguration with a finite and began again with a new chip of ice. The shape was not enough. Harry formed the ingot shape again, then added more. The surface would be smooth and cool. It would be strong, and would bend before breaking when it finally yielded. It would be very heavy. His mind felt overly-crammed, trying to split his focus between every different trait the bar would have. "Omnifors!" he rushed out, as if saying it quickly would finish the transfiguration before the many properties in his head slipped away like sand through his fingers.

It became a warped shape, as if observed through a funhouse mirror. One side was larger than the other, and the color and sheen were slightly off. It was too shiny to be real. But it held its shape. Harry held his breath. James watched with keen, excited eyes. When ten seconds passed, he let out a gusty sigh. "Not bad."

Then the iron bar fell apart into silt.

"It's not quite right. It's really difficult to keep everything in my mind at once."

James frowned. "Why are you doing that?"

"What?" Harry was bewildered. "What do you mean? How else am I supposed to guide the transfiguration?"

"Are you trying to give all the instructions before casting the spell?" James laughed. "Merlin save me from overachievers. You don't need to cast the transfiguration in an instant. This time, when you speak the incantation, don't just let it go. Hold it and feel around the magic."

"You can do that?" Harry cast his mind back to watching his classmates practice in class. Their objects didn't change immediately, did they? It took them a moment. He had assumed they were mustering up the power or something. Excitedly, he summoned up another chip of ice and fixed the idea of a bird in his mind. Carefully and without fully committing, Harry incanted "Avifors."

An extra sense bloomed was added to his mind, like an overlaid filter on his vision, except more. Like some sort of preview mode, Harry saw a ghostly bird transposed over the palm of his hand where the chip of ice sat. Only, seeing wasn't quite accurate, it felt too narrow a sensation for what Harry was experiencing. He prodded at the concept with his mind. It felt quintessentially avian in a way that even Hedwig could not hope to capture. It was unspecific, and if he looked at it from a different angle or considered it in some alternate manner, it changed. One moment it was a falcon, then an eagle, then a sparrow or perhaps a hummingbird. It couldn't be pinned down, and the more he tried to draw a definitive answer out, the more it eluded his awed gaze.

"It's amazing," he breathed. Suddenly, the spell slipped away from him and the bird archetype disappeared. "Avifors."

This time, Harry gave it instructions. Canary, he told the platonic ideal. The countless possibilities narrowed down to a single canary. Harry could tell that if he released the spell, it would produce a generic yellow male canary. He tweaked it further. Female, he instructed, orange. Two. The image split into two. He released the spell. Two orangeish canaries took wing, flitting about the warmed courtyard atop the mountain.

Excited, Harry turned to look up at James. He was smiling proudly. "I'm so proud to see you finally growing into your magic. It's easy to take magic for granted when you're surrounded by it. Don't let Voldemort steal the whimsy away from you. It's more than just combat, Harry." His eyes were suddenly far away. "I thought Hogwarts needed more of that during the first war. I think that's what drew me towards the idea of the Marauders, really. Sharing magic with everyone, exploring what it can do. You make me so proud, son."

Harry nodded. He was too choked up to trust his voice. James faded away. He looked down at the stone on his ring. It would be so tempting to call him back. He would not begrudge Harry, he knew. But it would not be healthy. Harry was alive. He could not live well by clinging to the past. He'd made his choice to turn away from the afterlife. It would be waiting. James would be waiting. Today, he would live.

He refocused on building. Without guidelines for transfiguration, he had the freedom to change anything into anything. There were certain drawbacks to the technique, which he had termed free transfiguration. Purely by himself, he could barely conjure base elements, even with the building method where he cast the spell and added detail before releasing it. He had to add weight, density, texture, reflectiveness, color, and shape, or else it would lose cohesion after a few seconds and either revert or collapse into dust.

The big breakthrough came when Harry realized that the platonic ideal of materials could be swapped in easily. He still used the incantation omnifors, but by focusing on the idea of wood, rather than its actual physical properties, it was challenging – but doable – to incorporate advanced materials. It reminded Harry of nonverbal spells; he had to reach for a set of information without a verbal keyword.

From that point on, the decorations and aesthetics Harry incorporated got increasingly ridiculous. He refrained from using transfiguration for structural parts, but everything else was fair game. He raised walls out of the ground, shaping them from the drab grey stone of the mountaintop, then decorated them with fake brickwork and limestone trim. He leveled off the entire peak with cutting charms, shaving it down into a wide, flat surface.

Harry raised a larger house around the base of the watchtower made from lumber he'd cut down in the Spine, chopping down massive trees with a single diffindo. Floating entire massive trees around with no effort really hammered it home to Harry how huge an advantage magic was over muggles. It took him seconds to fell trees with meter-thick trunks, and seconds more to move it with the plethora of options he had to make hauling it trivial. It took hours instead of weeks to quarry massive, mirror-smooth blocks of stone from the mountain. He would gouge a hole into the ground with defodio, neaten it with cutting charms, then send one scything cut along the bottom of his hole. A few carefully-placed cutting charms on the surface, and he could levitate the massive stone blocks free.

James eventually returned to the afterlife and Lily returned to coach Harry through space-expansion charms. Harry found that he had an affinity for them. He employed them modestly throughout the place. Lily also taught him charms to alleviate the bite of the cold atop the mountain. Harry made trips out to the valley to collect loads of dirt and squares of sod which he packed along the ground inside the compound. He learned how to inscribe runes into pipes that made them conjure an endless stream of water or vanish whatever liquid entered it, and used the magical plumbing to make a little creek to irrigate the transplanted soil. He grabbed a cutting of an oak tree from the valley and accelerated its growth with the herbivicus charm.

When it reached a respectable size, Harry finally buried Vrael underneath the shade of the tree, in a hole in the stone beneath the dirt. He wrote out a headstone just like Dobby's.

Here lies Vrael

A great leader

It felt impersonal and lacking, but that was all Harry knew of the man. Perhaps he would invite Brom up and ask him what the inscription ought to say. At least his bones weren't left strewn on the roof where he'd died.

The miscellaneous tent was crammed absolutely full with everything that wasn't a book or coin. Harry took a deep breath and cast a space-expansion charm as hard as he could manage, sweeping the Elder Wand in a wide circle. The walls of the tent plummeted away. A massive, uneven floor stretched for hundreds of meters in all directions. The flap of the tent was up the warped hardwood floor at the top of a bowl-shape. Little hills and gouges in the floor formed from where the charm had been applied unevenly. Evidently, the space-expansion charm did not form flat surfaces automatically. The mountains of stuff slid over the floor, scraping and tinkling and creaking over the rough surface and filling in craters and valleys.

Harry moved to the far end of the tent and tried again. This time, he visualized a flat surface and sharp, 90 degree corners. Obligingly, reality reordered itself according to his whims. With a deep breath, Harry flicked the Elder Wand. "Pack!"

Mountains of stuff leapt into the air at once in a cacophony, crashing into each other, flinging themselves every which way. Furniture hurtled through the air in unwieldy arcs, silverware and lampshades dodging nimbly throughout. Clothing and bedding billowed overhead, arranging itself into piles. Harry winced. A pair of couches had rammed against each other, snapping off one arm and tearing the cover with a tremendous ripping noise. A woosh prompted him to duck violently underneath a careening desk.

A couple minutes later, when the last bangs and crashes petered out, Harry peeked between his fingers and let his outstretched wand lower. A grid of neat piles had formed, quite unlike the Room of Requirement's haphazard mountains of junk. Couches were stacked in a neat pallet next to chairs, tables, beds, and every other bit of furniture. A dozen separate stacks of clothing had formed out of neatly folded and pressed garments. Everywhere Harry looked, chaos had been wrought into order. Where the moshpit had been, only a few hundred items remained, those which were charmed against movement by magic. A sizeable pile, but nothing compared to the valleys of everything imaginable piled together.

Harry examined the couches and armchairs. There were many of them, far more than he had seen in Grimmauld Place and what rubble was left of Godric's Hollow combined. He recognized one with a particularly awful fleurs-de-lis design on barf beige, and a cigar burn on the arm which Molly Weasley had torn into Mundungus Fletcher for leaving. Harry dragged it out anyways.

He wound up with piles of stuff in the bare skeleton of the house, nothing more than a big wooden box. There was so much stuff it was like shopping, except everything was free. Harry picked out a dozen sets of silverware and a load of ceramic dishes, shrank and carried out three beds and accompanying bedding, snatched up a lamp in the shape of an animated owl, and went back out.

The structure was finished and technically weather-proof, though that was a generous term considering without magic, it would absolutely not be weather-proof. Either way, it was cozy enough. Harry dragged a bed into the middle of the large, empty room. It resembled more of a furniture warehouse than a home. A dining table was pushed up against the rough horizontal log wall, a pile of silverware and stacks of dishes next to a couple lamps and a stack of three books and some conjured paper he'd taken notes on – Hermione would be so proud. Lily had recommended those specific ones for protecting the house from the weather.

The next morning, the dawn sky lit up a glorious conflagration of purples, then oranges, before brightening into a deep azure. Sparse clouds raced along miles overhead, propelled by the gusty mountain wind.

Crawling along the gabled roof, Harry summoned bark and transfigured it into shingles. With the superstructure of the cabin finished, Harry felt more confident using transfiguration for detail work. He threw up floors supported by wooden beams. Planks made up the ceiling of the floor below, whereupon he poured an inch or so of crude, crumbly homemade cement along the wood and smoothed it over, before covering it with another layer of planks. The technique gave the illusion that the floor and ceiling were the same layer, but stopped light from bleeding through and eliminated any squeaks the floorboards might make when he trod over the less supported parts.

Harry took the creative license transfiguration granted and ran with it. A porch grew out of the front door, covering the whole face of the cabin. He extended the eaves into a proper awning which he supported with pillars at the corners and flanking the steps down to the ground. He spent some time tweaking a carved door to grow from the wall. At a gesture, windows grew from the walls around the doorframe.

He flicked his wand at the underside of the awning, conjuring a basic light fixture he linked to an enchanted switch. After a moment of consideration, a low railing flowed from the floor, connecting the pillars. The wooden beams seemed to be missing something, so Harry added a thicker masonry base to the pillars. He liked the aesthetic and extended the cobblestone masonry into a trim around the bottom edge of the cabin, where the walls met the ground. Harry flicked through colors for the shingles, before settling on a very dark green, bordering on black.

A patio flowed out the back of the cabin like an expanding puddle, before shaping into a generous rectangle. Harry transfigured the plain concrete surface into a Herringbone zigzag pattern of bricks, the exterior border simply a single length of jumbo bricks one by two feet large. He tried a few different kinds of stone before settling on limestone.

Finally, the building looked complete. It lacked the unique character that Hogwarts had, but Harry didn't have much hope that he could bottle lightning like that. Certainly not alone. The old castle had such an attitude to it, a joyous, mischievous, wonderful mish-mash of four great wizards' and witches' ideas that clashed in the best way possible. Harry was very sure that Godric's castle or Helga's or Rowena's or Salazar's would have been very different, and lesser for it.

Harry rapped on Brom's door sharply. He waited thirty seconds, then rapped again. After another thirty seconds, he rapped once more, ready to turn away when the door was yanked open. "Hvað?" the old man demanded crankily. His eyes fell upon Harry. "Oh. It's you. Well, I suppose you can come in."

Brom immediately set to smoking his pipe. "Is that marijuana?" Harry demanded.

He perked up. "Oh you know of it?"

Harry snorted. "It's illegal to have in the UK. Of course that doesn't stop anyone."

The old man took a deep pull of his pipe, exhaling the vaguely dank-smelling smoke, a fleeting look of amused horror on his weathered face. "Who'd make something so wondrous illegal?" Harry wrinkled his nose. "The smell lingers, doesn't it," Brom said knowingly. "I admit, I've never heard of Yookay, but they must be a sad place if pipeweed is outlawed." He waved the smoke away with his hand and beckoned Harry through the entryway.

Brom settled in an armchair by the hearth. He made no pretense of kindling the grate, rather commanding fire with a pointed finger from his seat. "Why are you here?" He asked directly.

"I can't exactly buy food from people I don't understand."

"Sure you can," Brom disagreed. "Hold up some coins, grunt, and gesticulate."

Harry flushed. "I'm not a caveman. Besides, I don't know what kind of currency they want."

"Coppers, silvers, or golden crowns," Brom listed, peering at Harry as if evaluating if he was stupid. "What've you got?"

Harry withdrew a knut, sickle, and galleon from Hagrid's mokeskin pouch and leaned from his chair to plonk them in Brom's outstretched hand. "The little one is bronze, not copper, and they're stamped differently."

The old magician shrugged. "Maybe they won't like the bronze instead of copper, but the galleon is huge. It'll be worth probably four or five crowns. Be careful how much you carry with you."

"I also wanted to know about-" Harry searched for the name Brom had mentioned. "-Alagaesia."

"Why do you think I know anything?"

"Aren't you a storyteller? Tell me a story."

"Will you be paying me?"

Harry rolled his eyes and fished out a handful of galleons. "That's got to be like what, forty or fifty crowns?" He mimicked Brom's gruff voice.

Brom swept up the coins. "Show some respect for your elders. Do they not do that in Yookay?"

"The UK, and yeah, kinda, I've just not been very impressed with their elderly leadership recently. Besides, you're barely old. Like a poorly-aged forty or something."

"Shut up." Harry opened his mouth. "If you want to learn something from me, you've got to let me talk. So be quiet." Mulishly, Harry sank into the armchair.

"Alagaesia does not refer to all that exists on this plane, but I know nothing beyond the coast of Teirm west of the Spine, nor what lands lie beyond the Endless plains to the east, Du Weldenvarden to the north, or the Beors in the south. Within these bounds, I know many legends and tales. It is home to five glorious, major races, one terrible minor one, and a multitude of creatures besides. The land has been called Alagaesia for as long as anyone remembers, and the dwarves to the south have remembered things for eight thousand years."

Harry whistled lowly. "That's not bad."

Brom shot Harry a quelling glare and continued. "Eight thousand years ago, dwarvish records say the only native, sentient species in Alagaesia were they themselves and dragons – majestic rulers of the sky with glorious scales of every color, fierce and mighty, who held dominion over most all of the land save what parts dwarves carved out for themselves."

"Dwarves are short miners?" Harry checked.

The storyteller snorted. "Sure, if you like. Now be quiet. For thousands of unremarkable years – this is a simplification, the dwarves had plenty of internal wars and wars with dragons – this status persisted until an ark emerged from the western coast in 5217 A.C., or after creation. It bore many elves from a land they called Alalea, which they claimed to be fleeing from because of a great and terrible mistake."

"Also short, floppy ears, like serving humans?"

Brom gave Harry a very strange look. "If you are so fortunate to meet an elf, never describe them as such. They are called the fair folk for their incredible beauty and grace, and they possess superhuman strength and speed, and the ability they all share to use magic. Do you want to hear the rest or not? You'll have to keep your mouth shut and your ears open."

"Right. Carry on, then."

"I said Dwarvish records record only themselves and dragons. They are known to be incomplete for the presence of a mysterious race of 'grey folk,' who are now extinct or in hiding. Elvish records of the time are poor, and their existence is known only by their singular, legendary deed. They are responsible for the nature of magic in Alagaesia. They bound the language we speak to the world itself so that its words became the concepts they represent. Through this, magicians such as I can focus the power of our minds through a word such as fire," Brom gestured at the fireplace, "and impose our will on reality."

Brom seemed to pause as if waiting for interruption. Harry stubbornly kept quiet and let him speak. The man gave an exasperated look of approval and continued. "Logically, the grey folk had to exist then and have met the elves for us to know of their deed, yet no specific legends survive today about them. For the sake of brevity, their contribution to history can be summed up as 'did one amazing thing, and probably lived deep in Du Weldenvarden so the dwarves never met them and the elves did.' Back then, the elves grew into the lands the dwarves had not, mostly the relatively flat heartlands and the fringes of Du Weldenvarden, an apparently endless forest in the north. They constructed the city of Ilirea which lies in the center of today's Broddring Kingdom, now called Uru'baen. In 5291 A.C., an elf foolishly hunted and slew a baby dragon, sparking Du Fyrn Svell, a bloody dragon/elf war that dragged on for five years until broadly speaking, the establishment of the Dragon Riders marked peace between the races."

"I'm sorry, did you say Dragon Riders?" Harry demanded incredulously. "As in, elves who rode on massive, spiked, hostile fire-breathing reptiles?"

"Humans, too," Brom laughed. "It is an absurd notion, isn't it? But it happened. A pact was made between dragons and elves only at first. It was made possible by the nature of the pact. The strengths of each race were shared with the other. Dragons gained the ability to learn language and communicate verbally with their minds. Elves, who used to be much closer to humans in strength and lifespan, gained eternal youth and superhuman strength."

"They're immortal?" he clarified.

Brom nodded. "If not killed by violence, poison, incurable disease, and the like, then yes, they will never die."

"But humans were – are?– Riders too. Are you immortal, too?"

"Humans in general are not, though individual human Riders are. We were added to the pact much later – it is theorized that were it not for the verging extinction in dragons, given enough time, we would gain the dragons' eternal youth as well. If you can keep quiet long enough for me to tell you?"

Harry swallowed his questions and waved Brom on.

"Humans briefly debuted in 5596, traded with the dwarves at the port of Reavstone, which is on the south coast of what is today Surda, then departed. It was two thousand years before we came to stay in 7203, when King Palancar brought his entire nation on a fleet of ships to settle off Teirm and eventually in this very titular valley. King Palancar was a poor king and immediately declared a series of wars against the elves, who at this time already enjoyed immortality among other advantages, and gently rebuffed the laughable attacks upon the fringe of Du Weldenvarden. To sum up centuries of history, King Palancar was peaceably deposed and replaced with the Broddring Kings who spread to fill the arable land west of the Hadarac desert, and along the way, humans were added to the Rider pact.

"The last of the major races is the Urgralgra, who are like men with much greater physical strength, grey skin, yellow eyes, and ram's horns which grow from their temples. They too came from the west, yet it is not known when exactly they arrived. The tales I have heard place their arrival after King Palancar's, but before or soon after the first Broddring King. They live deep in the northern Spine, distrust humans, and possess a culture which glorifies combat and unfortunately seems tailored to breed out the peaceful Urgralgra among them. Most humans, especially in this area, hate them for raiding human settlements. I'll not defend them – they certainly do – but they are not quite the monstrous animals you'd think from the villagers' descriptions.

"All this to say that the majority of minor battles since King Palancar's deposition and before the Fall of the Riders was between humans and Urgals. The dwarves occasionally fought internal clan wars, but they rarely ever spilled out from the Beors. You see, the Dragon Riders took it upon themselves to be peacekeepers. Ordained with extraordinary power, they sought to mediate disputes between races and nations and keep the peace. It is called the Golden Era, where raids and squabbles between Urgals and others were the worst violence Alagaesia saw for centuries."

"And?"

Brom sighed. "Galbatorix killed them all. Every dragon and Rider fell at the hands of him or his servants. Today it is commonly accepted that dragons are extinct."

"Do you accept that?" Harry prodded.

Brom shrugged. "Who knows? There may be more across the sea, north beyond Du Weldenvarden, south beyond the Beors, or east beyond the Endless Plains. But in Alagaesia, it seems there are no more." He leaned back and dragged on his pipe. "I am a storyteller partially because I wish to keep these legends alive, but I admit it is disheartening to know and long for that Golden Age which the Black King has ended. Perhaps a young wizard will topple him and usher in a new Golden Age," he grumbled. "Best of luck to you, then. But I would not hold my breath."

Standing, the storyteller stretched, cracking his spine and bending back. "Does that answer your questions?"

"Well, I don't know where the places are that you referenced," Harry decided. "And you left a lot out."

"Of course I did," Brom snapped. "Eight thousand years of history do not fit in a single evening." He stooped over and shuffled through a pile of scrolls. "A map, then, to put a picture to the names. I want it back. You may have paid a handsome sum for a story, but elvish maps are worth more than mere gold."

Then why give me an elvish one? Harry wondered. Brom caught his look. "You think every old map is written in Liduen Kvaedhi? The Ancient Language has declined since Galbatorix's relentless recruitment of magicians. The elves are the only nation who speak it fluently anymore. They just happen to be the best map makers."

Harry stood to leave when the instinct to make an offer struck. "I cleaned up the Place of Sorrow, if you want to visit. I can take you with magic, if you don't want to make the hike."

Brom laughed. "I might not think you're my enemy, but I sure as hell don't trust you yet. I'm glad to hear it, though. Come by again, Harry. I've missed speaking in an honest tongue."