Harry Evans's Fabulous Multidimensional Adventure

by androidrainbow

After dying in the forest, Harry is offered the chance to help other children of prophecy. Adventure ensues. Vol. 1: Inheritance Cycle

5. The Spine

Updated: 3/5/2023

The Spine

Henry was a genial man and looked young as the dead tended to. He had black, untamable hair like Harry's, yet he had blue eyes and a facial structure a bit less aristocratic than James's. Henry Potter reminded Harry a bit like Charlie or Bill Weasley. Rugged and youthful, with a lot of worldly experience under their belts.

The novelty of raising the dead was a bit less poignant with a relative he had never known or grown attached to, but the way the Resurrection Stone seemed to draw a living being out of nothing was astonishing. Without squinting or touching, Harry could scarcely tell Henry was more akin to a spirit like the pearlescent, white, transparent ghosts of Hogwarts.

Henry did not linger long, naming the title of his personal journal and briefly explaining the enchantments he'd invented for creating interactive, live maps. Immediately, Harry made the connection that this was the man who made the Marauders' Map possible.

After his departure, Harry tracked down the mentioned journal and a ream of blank parchment from the seemingly endless pile of unused school supplies accumulated from dozens of generations of Hogwarts students.

Henry had indeed discovered a suite of mapping spells which would make the Marauder's Map possible. If anything, after reading through most of the journal, Harry was a bit disappointed by the final product's detail. The one huge, impressive feat the Map boasted was that it tracked every occupant no matter what disguises they wore. There was a mention of a spell Henry believed would compile locations of inhabitants within a certain wardset, but it was mentioned to be untested and presumably not very useful if it could only be used on a warded building. Essentially, it couldn't really track armies across empty landscape, which seemed to be the intention Henry had when inventing the particular spell.

Far more impressive was how easy it was to produce a detailed map. Henry detailed two methods of inputting data. Of course it was completely unnecessary to physically draw anything. Active and passive mapping both took in data from his surroundings–anything from topography, temperature, terrain, landmarks, oceanic currents, atmospheric data, and floorplans–and added them to a hidden dataset within the target map. And the map itself was not just ink on parchment, it was all the information ever gathered, everywhere the map had ever been with passive mapping enabled, and all actively mapped regions. That was why the Marauders' Map inked itself in upon opening; there was more than just Hogwarts on it, and the data was ensconced in the enchantments on the parchment. Every time it was opened, the indicated region was redrawn. The Marauders' Map likely did extend past Hogwarts and into Hogsmeade and the Forbidden Forest (though it would not track people beyond the boundary of the castle's wards) but the region set to be drawn only encompassed the castle and grounds.

Harry had tried out passive mapping inside of Ristvak'baen and the fresh parchment he was using immediately filled in everything within eyeshot of the map. He had tested, and it was the map and not him. He could peer around an unmapped corner with his head while holding the map back and the corridor would not fill in. Likewise, if the map went first, it filled in before he saw around the corner. When he switched to active mapping, instantly, a huge area of the map filled in.

It seemed as if anywhere he had been and was familiar with was drawn out of his mind and added to the parchment. The whole floor plan, including the basement workshop he had not visited with the map, had been filled in, and the compound outside was likewise added. Outside the walls, the mountain terrain was represented in artistic contouring and labeled 'The Spine.' Using the suite of spells to adjust what the map showed, Harry could follow the map down a wide, filled-in area down to the shore of 'The North Sea,' and a much more comprehensive corridor of ski routes leading down to the detailed village of Carvahall. The rest of the parchment was blank.

From what Harry could tell, it didn't count any physical range but rather his line of sight. Mountains always filled in all the way up to a ridge, then the map vanished until some further peak stood high enough to reach over the ridgeline. Harry imagined broomsticks would be very convenient for filling in the blank spots, but oddly enough, he was having much more fun skiing than he'd have initially thought.

Harry enchanted up a crude backpack with an expanded pocket. Making it intuit what he wanted to withdraw and put it near his hand was beyond his skill, but simply making a slightly bigger pocket was simple. He stuffed in the rolled-up map, a moldy old broom just in case, and enough packed food for a week under preservation charms – the proper ones this time. His food situation had improved dramatically. While he wasn't able to get his hands on most ingredients, the seeds he'd gotten in Carvahall yielded old staple european foods with the herbivicus charm. Before departing, Harry found and cast an alert ward over the compound. If Brom entered the grounds, he'd be alerted, no matter where he was, and could apparate back to meet him.

It was pleasant out. Cold enough to demand a jacket, but the one Harry wore was enough to feel perfectly warm, even though his face was uncovered. He was unsure if it ever got warm enough for the snow to completely melt, but the powder felt wetter than usual, and the valleys would certainly melt within a few weeks.

Harry set off down the north slope, heading east when the terrain allowed. He felt like he was betraying his Firebolt just thinking it, but skiing was as close as anything could get to flying on a broomstick without magic. And without opposing players and bludgers to work around, skiing actually approached being as fun as flying. The wind in his hair, the feeling of barely being in control, dodging and weaving between trees and rocks until he reached flat, low ground and apparated to the top of the next peak.

Flying on some ancient broom held less appeal to him when he considered that it would likely amount to drifting over the valleys aimlessly instead of the heart-pounding natural obstacle course of each descent. He could not in good conscience actually ride a Nimbus 2 from 1945 after being accustomed to the Firebolt. Following any defined path was more or less impossible; Harry could barely spot the tracks of his last descent from the next mountaintop, yet the map kept a record of the areas he needed to fill in. Summiting mountains gave a burst of new information each time, and from there, Harry plotted his next descent, which would further map the the blindspots of cliffs and ridgelines he put behind him.

It reminded Harry of a map in a video game, progressively filling out the more he explored. He was not as obsessive as Hermione per se, but he had certainly found a new goal in mapping out most of the range.

Harry followed a set of huge footprints down a thin game trail and spotted a bear the size of a dragon eating one of the massive, bear-sized wolves off to the left. He steered well clear of the encounter and headed down to the right, curving beneath a thicket of impossibly tall pine trees. Under their damp green boughs, a herd of deer bolted at the sight of him cruising between the trees.

By the time the sun had set, Harry had traveled the breadth of three mountains vaguely north-west. He set up the cabin tent on top of a protruding rock halfway up a slope that he'd flattened by shearing off the jagged top with a cutting charm. There was no way to get the corner spikes into solid stone, so Harry made use of sticking charms on the bottom and called it a day. His thighs burned and his cheeks felt red and chapped. He ate a ravenous meal and went to bed. Sinking into the soft mattress and pulling up the warm covers, Harry melted into a deep and easy sleep.

The next morning, Harry's legs protested so much just getting out of bed that he spent the first half of the day lounging by the enchanted window and reading Henry's journal. Mapmaking was only a part of it, and most of the rest of it was given over to his experiences during WWII, or Grindelwald's War. Charlus had already been born and had just finished Hogwarts when the whole thing blew up, and Henry detailed feeling stuck at home until Charlus moved out of the Newcastle manor. Previously, he had trekked up and down the length of the British isles in search of the pockets of wild that hadn't yet been encroached on by muggles. Without several-month long chunks of time where his son was away at school, he and Euphemia felt they couldn't really up and leave him alone for months at a time.

Henry admitted in the journal that he did not keep up with politics enough to take a hard stance during the early era of Grindelwald's campaign – the Dark Lord hadn't done anything so evil as to turn the international community against him yet – but the moment he brazenly attacked New York City, he wanted to be in the thick of the adventure.

The way his great-grandfather wrote, Harry got a clear picture of Henry as an adventurer. He liked being in the middle of great events and thought mortal danger was fun. His life as an adult was markedly similar to Harry's in Hogwarts. During the war, Henry received a suggestion from the Dumbledore of his time, Sirius Black I. The old Black was a bit morally deficient and more than a little underhanded, but he unquestionably had Britain's best interests at heart. Henry had described him as "reliable for ensuring the interests of the nation he all but owned." Sirius Black I had asked if Henry was willing to map central Europe, specifically the Franco-German border in anticipation of a military campaign. Since adventuring was essentially what Henry already did, he wrung a few concessions out of the old Black and set out to produce a map that would hold the title of most accurate in the world until satellite imagery really got off the ground.

Henry chronicled his adventures through the alps in what read as very realistic depictions of how everything happened. During that time, Harry learned that the muggle world had not yet grown so much as to have mastery over the whole of the wild. Especially in a raw, primal area like the alps, magic and her creatures held dominion over the snowy peaks. Henry wrote about yetis, giants, Longhorn and Ironbelly dragons, and a variety of hermit wizards living deep in the mountain range.

After eating a quick lunch, Henry's journal was just the kick in the pants Harry needed to get off his arse and stretch his sore legs out on the snowy slopes. On the way through, Harry kept in mind those encounters with a sharp eye for something out in the Spine. Old towers, mysterious caves, hidden villages, or such. The map had not yet labeled anything obviously demanding exploration, but a few hours in, Harry did manage to spot a cave near the top of a steep cliff face. It was placed in such a way that an overhang would have sheltered it from view from the peak, yet ascending the cliff looked like suicide. Fortunately, Harry had spotted it and did not actually need to reach it physically to apparate to the top of the ledge. He unstuck his skis, stuffed them in his backpack, and apparated.

An eerie howling sound echoed from the mountain wind gusting past the dark cave entrance, shrieking like a tortured flute. Harry peered behind him down the cliff. It was a sheer and dizzying drop down to dagger-like green pines pointing up at him. With the perspective of someone actually standing on the ledge, Harry found that the treacherous stone lip was actually expansive enough for one of those house-sized bears to come and go through a cleft that led out to what Harry assumed to be the far slope. Brush and bushes clustered around both the route out and the entry to the cave, which was crushed like something big had stepped on it.

Rocks skittered along the clifftop and into the void. Motion caught his eye off to the side behind the brush. Harry squinted at the petrified bluff, but all he could make out were the horns of a mountain goat. He hoped it got out of the way, for its own sake. Whatever lived inside, he doubted a goat was prepared to deal with it.

Padding forward, the brilliant daylight suddenly vanished. Harry blinked in the darkness, eyes adjusting. Low illumination permeated the cave as it twisted downwards. He winced at every footfall. Placing his feet more carefully made him sneakier, but the hard stone echoed every minute bit of noise he made. Harry was sure if whatever was inside was awake, it knew he was coming.

Three turns later, no sunlight penetrated deep enough. After a moment of internal debate, he kept ahold of his holly wand. The air grew warm and somewhat putrid. The odor of offal seemed to emanate from everywhere at once. Harry chose his steps carefully now. There were…things all over the ground. They felt too light to be rocks, and some were still warm on the toe of his boot. He wanted to light his wand badly. Silently, he thought lumos, and fed it the barest whisper of power. Dim, he demanded of the spell. His wand obliged, emanating scarcely enough light to see by.

Harry's heart nearly stopped. There were bones everywhere. Big ones. Large enough that whatever killed their previous owners, Harry doubted a stunner would stop it. The wind seemed to whisper in and out of the cave. A soft, cool breeze, then a very slightly warmer one. The light was too dim to make out anything but vague shapes. The cave had a huge shelf that covered maybe a third of the floor space, and a couple of truly enormous mounds on the floor took up most of the rest of it. Harry crept closer.

For a heart-stopping moment, he thought they were dragons. But when he moved another foot closer, he was proven half-wrong. They were dead dragons. Very carefully, he backed away. He did not want to be present when whatever lived in the cave came back.

He took one step back, then another when…

Snap.

The quiet sound of a bone being trodden on. It was a quiet noise, but in the eerie tense silence, it may as well have been a gunshot. Harry nearly cursed. The air was getting hotter and more humid. He turned to back away when there, staring out of the darkness, were two yellow eyes the size of tennis balls, glaring malevolently out of the black.

He shouted in alarm and whipped his wand around. The point was almost aimed at the mysterious face when Harry screamed in pain. Something colossal had slammed into his side. It felt like the sky had fallen on him. For a moment, he was weightless. Then several ribs shattered with a sickening crunch, and the wizard went skidding across the cavern floor, colliding with the opposite wall. Harry's head cracked off the wall, pounding with every rabbit-like heartbeat.

His wand skittered over the ground. If he weren't about to die, he would have laughed at the exact same set of circumstances. "Lumos maxima!"

Suddenly, a titanic bear was staring at him, jaws agape, saliva dripping from teeth the size of his skull. Harry gasped, pushing his back over the stone and away from the monster. It was so big, Harry could only really comprehend the head the size of a car. Behind it was a wall of dirty white fur. The bear's head cocked sideways, its jaws widening, and made to lunge.

"Stupefy!" Harry shouted. The red stunbolt momentarily eclipsed even the light of the Elder Wand, crackling like a lightning bolt crammed into a tiny stone bottle, and sank into the bear's fur. The entire thing actually staggered and for a moment, Harry actually thought it might go down. But the white monstrosity shook itself like a dog.

Unbidden, a coldness crept from his heart and down his arm. Harry knew what the Elder Wand was trying to do before the tip even started glowing green. He dropped the stick like it was burning. The green lit tip faded. The bear looked like it was about to try again when a huge, horned man came out of nowhere and bellowed something.

The grey-skinned man charged with outstretched arms. Deafening bellows and war cries rang back and forth, echoing painfully in the enclosed stone dripped from the bear's gaping maw as it grappled with the humanoid. He was at least eight feet tall with bulging muscles and tough-looking skin. Great horns spiraled from his head, jutting forwards with razor sharp points.

The humanoid dove and rolled beneath the beat's front legs to avoid a snapping bite. He may have been enormous, but the bear was a behemoth. The monster bellowed in anger and tried to stomp the wily man-creature. Harry watched, taking sHallow breaths, as the ram-horned man grabbed a fistfull of fur from the side of the bear and dragged himself up the side.

It didn't like that, and roared again, stomping and bucking in circles, trying to shake its attacker. Stalactites shook and fell, shattering against the ground. The cave itself was shaking with the force of the beast's fury. Every buck and twist threw the attacker like a ragdoll, but he held on tight with an iron grip, crawling towards its head.

Harry felt a stab of fear when its enormous head twisted around on its neck, snapping its scything fangs inches from the giant's head. It proved futile as the enormous man deftly pulled his head back before crawling the last bit along the beast's head and wrapping his colossal meaty arms around the bear's thick neck.

Harry looked on incredulously. As big as the guy was, his hands barely reached halfway around. He was also apparently unarmed. It was clear what he was trying to do as he held on for dear life. Minutes passed as the ram maintained his brutal choking grip. Harry could not imagine his reach was enough to actually choke it, but the sinister nature of his attack became apparent when incrementally, he managed to use the bear's white fur to get his arms a little further around. There was no way he could get his hands to meet, but if he got close enough, the guy just might not have to. The bear had tried everything, bucking, twisting, charging, but it couldn't shake its relentless attacker. Harry was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the beast put in a last ditch effort. All four limbs crouched as powerful muscles tensed and coiled. With a bellow, it jumped straight up, crushing the man between the ceiling and its matted fur.

The guy shouted in pain and collapsed bonelessly. The bear stared hatefully at the puny man who'd nearly defeated it. She had weathered four hundred and twenty six winters, hunted the fiercest shrrg's in the Spine, and felled three dragons. She was not about to die to this stupid two-legs-curly-horns hunter. Eyes promising naught but pain and death, the bear prowled towards the downed creature. She raised her paw to strike…

And collapsed, dead.

Harry's left hand was slick with blood, clenched around his side. His right hand had a white-knuckle grip on a slim wooden stick, green light fading from its tip. Harry gasped and limped over to his unknown ally.

The horned man was unconscious, his head twisted oddly. The top half of his left horn was gone, replaced by a jagged break an inch or from his skull. Harry cast the petrifying curse in a vague hope that it would act like a neck brace and keep his spinal cord safe. His head pounded like there were bludgers trapped inside and his vision was doubled. He had no idea what was left in the cave, and decided to take everything. Dumping his backpack on the ground, he opened the main pocket and swept the Elder Wand in an arc. "Pack!"

Scores of full skeletons, bones, teeth, and the great corpse of the felled beast floated through the air and into the bag. The bear got stuck on the opening until Harry shot an engorgio at it. Grasping his fallen ally's meaty forearm, Harry spared a desperate hope that he could apparate while concussed. Bracing himself, he twisted his body to the right, wrenching the horned man through space by the arm.

Squeezing blackness overtook the pair. The agony in Harry's side had flared to an unbearable level. All he could do was wait, trapped in the long rubber tube of apparition.

Harry collapsed as soon as the apparition stopped supporting him. The horned guy's head thunked off the floor of his workshop, bleeding dark red blood over the concrete floor. Through his concussion, Harry managed to sweep everything off his table and levitate the guy onto it. His arms and legs dangled off the sides, dripping blood onto the floor. At some point, his own clothes had grown damp with blood.

Through his headache, Harry realized he was of no help to the man if he died before he could heal him. "Vulnera sanentur, vulnera sanentur," he mumbled. He had no idea if it worked, but threw in an Episkey. Harry briefly prayed to every deity he knew that Lockhart had the words right. He brought his entire will to bear and allowed no deviation in the spell as he traced his ribs with the tip of the Holly wand. "Brackium Emendo."

Harry gasped. His ribs flared white hot beneath his skin, then ice cold. He felt a nauseating shifting under his skin as ribs slid and slotted themselves together, cracks mending and bones repairing. It was as good as he was going to get for now. He turned his attention to the man on the blood-slicked table.

A cursory glance revealed that half-arsed miscellaneous healing spells would not be enough. The guy's skin had been grey during the fight, Harry thought, hadn't it? It was probably not supposed to be black. It almost looked like he'd been burned. But he could think through the thunder in his skull. He pointed the pale wand in his hand at the horned man, his mind devoid of any thought but heal.

If Harry had been holding his holly wand at the time, he might have managed to work some sort of instinctive magic on the dying humanoid before him. Perhaps something similar to the golden fire which had defended him from Voldemort would have answered his desperate plea.

But he was not holding his holly wand.

Words began to spill past his lips without prompting. Incantations and chants he had never heard of fell from his tongue like a computer running text-to-speech. Different colored lights fell out of the Elder Wand and poured into the dying ally, trussing his wounds in white bandages, pulling the internal bleeding back into his arteries, repairing crushed organs and mending fragmented bones. His lungs were cleared of blood and sealed, and his heart was shocked back to work.

Harry's vision faded to black, the wand falling from numb fingers and clattering on the concrete next to his limp form.

---

Garzhvog woke to much less pain than he expected, if indeed he was to wake at all. The Kull forced himself to sit up laboriously. His coming of age trial, he chose to slay the Urzhad that had hunted near his village for centuries. No weapons were allowed, so he set off bare chested and bare handed to slay the beast. It was his ill-fortune to chance across a stranger who woke the beast before he was ready.

Garzhvog took in his surroundings. An enormous room bigger than the largest building he had ever seen, the hall of the Urgal king Kulkarvek. Grey stone made up the enormous floor, entirely smooth like it had been carved from a mountain by the finest dwarven miners. A strange smooth white material composed the walls, a texture and color no wood or stone Garzhvog knew. Strange were lights dangled on cables from the scaffolds holding up the ceiling. Beneath the blood-slicked table he laid on, a pile of shattered things laid for which he had no names.

He stood and got off the table, casting about for his mysterious ally. The boy was human for certain, and a small one at that. Why would a human save his life? Garzhvog himself may not have saved the boy were the roles reversed. The village chanters often wove tales of evil and corrupt humans, laying waste to each other and the Urgralgra in their insatiable greed.

Garzhvog located the tiny human underneath the table he had woken upon. The man (for now he was upon slaying the mighty Urzhad) was drenched in blood, both the dull human color and the much darker Urgal blood of his own veins. He had to be a magician. No normal healer could fix what the urzhad had broken. Garzhvog was completely healthy save for a horn broken off near the base.

Carefully , he lifted the tiny magician and laid him upon the table. Garzhvog was no healer, but he knew enough to bind the man's wounds with strips of bloodstained white cloth torn from his overshirt. A strange white bird watched him intently while he went about ameliorating the human's wounds.

His sharp yellow eyes picked out a serpent curled up on a flat stone, head resting against the surface. It too was watching him with an unblinking stare. Garzhvog limped over to a human sized chair and crouched down upon it. It would be dishonorable to leave an ally in arms to die after sharing battle.

---

Harry woke to find his wounds bandaged. The horned warrior must have done it after he'd passed out. Harry glanced around the workshop. The enormous man was sleeping perched awkwardly in the corner on a chair far too small for him. He suppressed a grin and heaved himself off the table, wincing at his tender wounds and pounding head.

The sound of the wizard's footfalls woke the big man. His singular enormous horn rose as he glanced up. The warrior shuffled on the tiny chair. Harry stuffed his fist in his mouth to hide a grin, engorging the chair into one more suited to the man's size.

The ram said something in a harsh guttural language. Harry looked on blankly. He changed tack, speaking haltingly in another language that Harry recognized as the one most of Carvahall spoke.

Finally, he tried one more language, clearly the one he was least comfortable with. Gesturing with a thick finger at Harry, "Save, Garzhvog… why?"

Harry looked querulously at Garzhvog. "Why wouldn't I?"

The man looked surprised at the choice of language. "Urgralgra hate humans, humans hate Urgralgra."

The wizard shifted awkwardly. "Well, I'm new around here. What were you doing fighting that bear anyways?" He shot back. Harry wasn't averse to people knowing he wasn't from this world, but he probably owed it to Brom to be the first to hear it.

Garzhvog definitely noticed Harry's not-so-subtle change in subject. He struggled for a minute to come up with the words. He said a word in his own harsh language before switching to English. "Trial…Adulthood."

Harry parroted the strange word he had spoken. Garzhvog corrected him, saying the word with exaggerated slowness. I guess I'm learning the language, he mused. Odd that I learn this one before Carvahall's.

Between the Urgal's broken English and much gesticulating, the brothers-in-arms managed to have a conversation. It went something like this.

"Why did you save my life?"

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Humans and Urgals hate each other idiot, where have you been to miss that?"

"Don't worry about it. Subtle change of subject: why were you fighting the bear?"

"It's a coming of age ceremony among my people. What did you do with the kill?"

"Oh, right, one moment, I left it in my bag."

Garzhvog looked at him dubiously.

"It's a- uh, really big bag?" Harry scratched his head. The urgal's eyes bulged when the space around the knapsack seemed to bulge and stretch, disgorging the colossal beast onto the floor, still fresh.

Garzhvog stared in awe at the slain mountain bear. It was unmarked, yet unbreathing, as if poisoned.

The little man withdrew a small stick from his sleeve and gestured towards Garzhvog. He spoke an odd word and the gods seemed to hand him a white cotton shirt large enough to fit him. Garzhvog accepted it curiously. It felt exactly as he expected. After donning it, the magician led him up a tall flight of stairs, away from the bear corpse staining the concrete floor red.

The top of the stairs emerged in a modest cabin with some of the finest decoration Garzhvog had ever seen. Mirror-cut marble countertops and nigh-invisible glass windows featured among soft, embroidered furniture on thick carpets whose images moved as if alive. The floor was as level as a still pool of water and sturdy as a dwarven dwelling. Garzhvog had to duck slightly to keep his horn from scraping the ceiling, but the fact that he could fit inside the tall rooms without crawling was a feat in and of itself. Kull such as himself often were forced out of the village dwellings and into nearby caves. The effort to house such enormous Urgralgra was immense, and rare were the dwellings built with those of the old blood in mind.

Garzhvog glanced out the clear glass windows and did a double take. He was familiar with the location of the cabin. He'd crossed the ridge looking for the trail of the great mountain bear naught but a couple months ago, and found nothing but undisturbed snow and trees. How had this little man excavated such an enormous room below ground and constructed such a sturdy building in so little time? For that matter, how on earth had he moved Garzhvog from the bear's lair to the strange cavernous room without succumbing to his wounds?

The ram was fascinated as the wizard set about preparing them a meal. He opened a pair of tall metal doors to a deep cavity with racks and drawers. Most off a shrrg sat on the shelves in various pieces.

The man chatted steadily in the Ancient Language to Garzhvog, though he caught few words among them. He knew some words of power, and picked out a few meanings, but not enough to understand his speech. As he spoke, the magician grabbed a pan and set it upon a strange stovetop with no lower section for burning fuel. He cranked a dial on the side of the counter and ghostly blue flames leapt from seemingly nowhere, licking at the underside of the pan. Outside, the sun began to set.

Soon the kitchen was filled with the sizzle of fat burning and the aroma of cooked meat wafted from the stove. The man withdrew ceramic dishes and silver cutlery from drawers and cabinets around his workspace and directed them through the air towards the table. Two settings arranged themselves on opposite sides of the modest sized table.

The wizard must have realized Garzhvog would not fit in the human sized chairs, for he gestured with the strange length of wood. At his command, one chair grew far larger, the other just higher. The table itself grew upwards. Again, Garzhvog marveled at the consideration this human was showing him. He knew very well what the other races thought of Urgralgra, and only Dwarves surpassed humans in their hatred of his people.

The unlikely pair dug into the prepared meal ravenously. After feasting on the delicious shrrg, the human led Garzhvog up the stairs again to a hallway with several doors. In the first door on the right, he gestured and expanded the bed until Garzhvog would easily fit on it. Bidding him a good night, the magician left the room and crossed the hall to the opposite door, slipping in and closing the door behind him.

Garzhvog explored his room. A large window looked out upon the mountains at the foot of the bed, and a skylight was installed on the roof, gazing up at the stars. Two doors led deeper into the suite. One had racks and hangers for what must be clothing. The other led into a room reminiscent of human latrines. Garzhvog fiddled with the sink and appreciated the indoor plumbing. Curiously, he entered the large stall and twisted the dial upon the wall. A stream of hot water shot from the strange metal device mounted high above the dial and soaked his new shirt.

An indent in the wall held bars of soap and bottles of strange liquids, so Garzhvog shrugged and discarded his wet clothing, cleaning himself thoroughly.

When he emerged, Garzhvog felt like a different ram. His skin felt smoother and stronger than he could remember, and the strange feeling of true cleanliness felt incredible. He dried himself with great fluffy white towels softer than the finest woven clothing of his village. Regarding his bloody trousers, Garzhvog made an effort to clean them in the sink with the soap. They weren't quite immaculate at the end, but no longer did he feel like dressing would obviate the shower.

Garzhvog crawled into the luxurious bed and clambered under the bedding. He fell asleep stargazing through the window to the sky.

---

Harry woke feeling refreshed and energized. He found his guest already sitting in the chair Harry enlarged for him last night. The Urgal's skin had lightened several tones and he looked like a different person with properly clean hair and gleaming polished horns. The wizard set about preparing breakfast (ugh, more meat,) after greeting his guest.

The ram ate his meal without remarking, and followed his host downstairs. Harry attempted to pose the question of what Garzhvog wanted to do with the kill they made together. After all, he only needed the hide. It was the whole point of the excursion, and Harry could last for many more weeks on just the three wolves and did not need the meat.

Through charades, Harry learned that it was tradition for the ram to present his kill to the village so the elders would judge if it was adequate to be considered a man. He supposed it was reasonable, but this meant he had to either skin the beast now and deface the kill before its presentation, or he had to go with Garzhvog to the village and skin it after its presentation.

They arrived at the decision that Harry could accompany the Urgal to his village if he swore never to reveal its location to any others. Garzhvog did not even need to extract a new oath; Harry seemingly spoke only in the Ancient Language, and he owed the man his life. He would take him to the elders for the presentation before helping him skin the beast.

The two of them prepared to leave in their own ways. Harry went about grabbing his warmest clothing, conjuring a new, clean bag and expanding it a bit to fit another week of food, strapping his skis across his back, and bundling up. Garzhvog simply drew his clothing tighter about himself and seemed ready to go.

They set out to the south, marching through valleys and ridges. As they traveled, both worked to learn each other's language. Urgalish made Harry feel like he had to cough every few sentences, and finding common ground to convey vocabulary was difficult when Garzhvog knew little and Harry knew none. Despite his unfamiliarity, Garzhvog seemed to intuit what Harry was saying in English before he did much charading, but struggled to reproduce the sounds faithfully. Grammar wasn't even a twinkle in either of their eyes.

On downhill slopes, Harry glided easily next to the Urgal, but uphill, Garzhvog drew from seemingly endless stamina and ended up having to wait for Harry to crawl up to him, panting and on his knees. Not only did Harry have to detach his skis every time they reached an incline, the difference in their stride lengths was just blatantly unfair. Every step Harry took he was forced to vertically extract his shin from the deep slush. Garzhvog tended to simply bulldoze the snow with his enormous legs. He clearly had experience with snowy mountainous terrain and navigated the treacherous trails confidently.

For having spent only a day learning the language, Harry was able to very roughly comprehend what his companion was trying to convey. He didn't have much hope of being able to do more than point and guess, but Garzhvog's intuition was good enough that he could clarify his way to understanding.

When they broke for the evening, it was a much more familiar pair that erected the campsite. Harry conjured a bowl and a few spits over which he lit a bluebell fire. From his dwindling supply of prepared meat, he laid a cut of chicken over the flames and salted and peppered it. From his bag, he pitched the wizard tent.

After eating, Garzhvog told a dramatic story about a dam who wished to be beautiful to catch the eye of a ram she had her sights set upon, and the capricious goddess who granted her wish for a blank cheque. Harry managed to parse together the meaning from context clues and the ram's gesticulations. The gist of the story was familiar enough that the details filtered through, and Garzhvog's animated storytelling compensated for lost wordplay.

Eventually, the bluebell fire dimmed and the chicken was consumed in quiet. Harry laid back on the hood of his jacket and stared up into the night sky. The stars were different.

"Do you know any constellations?" Harry wondered, shuffling himself a comfy spot in the snow.

The ram was silent. "Ranma's cradle," he said, then repeated a phrase in his language. He reached out a finger and traced some pattern in the sky. "Erdu's hound."

Harry listened quietly. He did not want to sleep in the tent. The night sky was so much brighter than he had ever seen, it seemed a crime to hide from it when the snow was as soft as a mattress, and his jacket, as warm as the hearth.

"Do you want to sleep outside?"

Garzhvog hummed. "Clear sky. Beautiful. Not so cold."

Harry grinned and made himself comfortable. "Me too."

An hour later, when the one-horned Urgal's breathing had evened, Harry wondered who might be watching. For all that he had left the afterlife on its welcoming mat, he knew his parents could see him.

"Hey mum, dad. I'm not sure what I'm doing anymore, but I reckon that's what most people's lives are like. I met this guy, Brom. The Half-Rider, he called himself. A bit of a smoking gun, really. I assume his dragon is dead. He's pretty nice, though. I'm lonely, I think. Phineas Nigellus Black's portrait is poor company. I met someone new yesterday, too. Er, I hope your afterlives aren't too boring."

Harry rambled quietly for a bit, offloading his thoughts and worries into the air. He thought maybe the reason the Resurrection Stone was a covetous object wasn't necessarily just because he could speak to the dead. It was proof that something came after, and that his loved ones were waiting for him. It was such wonderful news, he wanted to shout it from the rooftops. It sucked that Carvahall's rooftops never went higher than two storeys. Overhead, the stars and those beyond them listened to Harry unburden himself.

Unbeknownst to him, Garzhvog had not quite fallen asleep. He listened as Harry bared his soul into the air. The nature of the Ancient Language meant even if he didn't understand the words, the meaning came across to him. He got impressions of a weary man who missed his clan. The strange little wizard was speaking to the dead with an absolute certainty of conviction that they could hear him.

Garzhvog drifted off to sleep thinking that perhaps humans were not so different from Urgralgra after all.

The pair broke camp in the morning and set out briskly southwest. The mountains seemed to grow even grander the deeper they traveled. Garzhvog indicated they would reach the village within the next three days. He seemed to navigate by both the sun and stars for they camped later each night. Harry's endurance was pushed to the limit and he more than once considered apparating to the tops of the peaks to keep up with Garzhvog.

Somehow, the Urgal had enough breath left to talk. He spoke of honor and glorious combat, impressing mates with tales of great prowess in battle and saving villages from groups of murderous humans. One long story in particular caught Harry's attention enough that he managed to put the pieces of broken vocabulary together and learn how the Mad King Galbatorix sent a great force of soldiers through the Spine in an attempt to drive the Urgralgra to extinction, and how those same soldiers were defeated.

From what he gathered, the soldiers had marched tirelessly through the valleys, putting any Urgal village they found to the torch. Whether they did not notice the abandoned buildings, or were simply too caught up in their bloodlust to care, they were emboldened by the lack of resistance and charged ahead straight through a valley surrounded by two rows of tall mountains.

Khagra, the commander of the Urgals, had instructed his rams to lie in wait just below the snowy ridgelines on either side of the valley. When the entire column of the army was between their forces, he rang a great horn and the Urgals fell upon the army in a bloody massacre which left no soldier alive to spread the word.

"Never again has the Mad King entered the Spine," Garzhvog announced proudly. "The hornless, spineless betrayer would not dare lose the other half of his army, and we Urgralgra tell the story every year on the day. There is a great revelry, with chanters and wrestling and drinking."

That night when the two of them sat around the campfire, Harry thought he should share something in return. "I am not from this world," Harry started. "I come from one far more advanced than your own. Humans have thoroughly conquered the entire planet. All seven continents are occupied, including one we call Antarctica, a barren landscape so cold and dry it makes the Spine feel like a midsummer evening."

Garzhvog looked enraptured. Harry expected to be called upon to clarify words, but the Urgan never interrupted. He wasn't exactly a storyteller, but it was impossible not to have learned some things just by hearing the legends and speculation that surrounded his own time at Hogwarts. He tried to impress upon the Urgal the best of humanity, the muggles in particular. Describing London to a villager felt impossible to do properly. How could he get Garzhvog to see what it was like accurately, and still make him understand that it was not perfect? Self-consciously, and feeling a bit like Professor Binns, Harry explained the broad strokes of the Statute of Secrecy and the historical piece of magic that initially hid wizardkind.

The Statute of Secrecy plucked any and every mention of magic from the minds of every muggle across the world. They went to sleep knowing of the arcane and mystical, and woke to a less colorful world. Then he gave him a bit of background on why witches and wizards hated the Statute and how restrictive it was to live your whole life in hiding. Despite his distaste for purebloods and their politics, Harry could admit it was frustrating to have to play Quidditch low to the ground in the Weasleys' backyard so the muggles in Ottery St. Catchpole couldn't see. He thought he painted an accurate enough picture of the garden Voldemort plucked his servants from.

The prophecy came next, and when Harry told Garzhvog about Pettigrew, the huge Urgal nearly stood up in rage and disgust.

"Draijl," he cursed, followed by a string of incomprehensible Urgalish profanity. "He- is…pathetic," Garzhvog managed. "Outcast. To betray closest friends is…" he clenched his grey fingers in frustrated fury. "Never done. Worst possible."

Upon detailing the mechanics of the Fidelius charm, the ugly look on Garzhvog's face deepened. "I fucking hate him, too," Harry agreed. "He proved himself a terrible person every opportunity but once, and thankfully, that once was when it was most critical."

"You not…revenge?" Garzhvog asked in bewilderment.

Harry breathed out. "It's hard, but mercy is powerful. It's easy to want to kill Wormtail, and no one would blame me for it, but a wise man told me that it is my capacity to love and forgive that makes me a greater man than Pettigrew."

Garzhvog was not convinced.

Harry tried again. "I had the chance to let him die. Remus and Sirius were going to kill him if I did not intercede. I said he would face justice. The government would try him fairly. He ran and immediately went and resurrected Voldemort."

The Urgal nodded. I told you so, his face seemed to say.

"But Wormtail and Voldemort both knew Wormtail owed me his life. And when it really, really mattered, Wormtail gave me the inch I needed to save my friends' and my own lives from certain torturous death." Harry still felt he had not done the idea justice. The way he said it sounded transactional, like he knew Wormtail would eventually betray Voldemort in his darkest hour. He thought that undermined the point of mercy. It wasn't transactional. By definition, it couldn't be. It had to be undeserved and freely given. And the truly crazy thing was: Harry would do it again, even knowing how it blew up in his face last time.

It was hard; it sucked and he hated doing it, but in his heart of hearts, Harry knew it was what a good man would do, and that was the kind of man he wanted to be.

"Sirius?"

Harry rocked back, exhaling through his teeth. "Sirius would have killed Pettigrew without hesitation if their paths crossed."

"You owe Sirius." Garzhvog said firmly. "Sirius lost most. You lose home, he lose tribe, freedom, family."

"Yeah but-" Harry cut himself off. "I- guess so. I shouldn't have stopped him if he was killing Pettigrew for himself, but he wasn't." Harry was almost reassuring himself. "He said it was for me. I didn't want Sirius to become a murderer in my name."

"Not murder. Vengeance…justice."

"Killing not in self-defense is always murder." Harry would not budge on that. "Maybe your culture sees it differently. Merlin, even other humans here probably see it differently. If there is any other way and you don't take it, it's murder."

Garzhvog obviously did not agree, but nor did he argue. "More to story?"

"Yeah," Harry sighed. He snuggled further into the snow and trickled water from his wand down his throat.

"Over the next year, the sixth of the seven years of schooling Hogwarts offered, Dumbledore taught me what corrupt magics Voldemort had used to forestall death. Evil devices known as 'Horcruxes,' a cursed artifact which houses a severed piece of the user's soul, thus binding them to the mortal plane as long as it exists. In order to shear off a piece of his blackened soul, the Dark Lord had to commit an atrocity directly against nature, a purely selfish murder of an innocent. Combined with a gruesome ritual, some extensive prep work, and a list of sealing spells, He could split off a piece of his own soul and encase it in an artifact, hide it, and be functionally immortal.

"Voldemort was not content to simply make one Horcrux, so he made six. Seven pieces of soul enshrouded in precious historical artifacts permanently tainted because of his terror of death. Dumbledore and I learned the location of one of these artifacts, the locket of the legendary Salazar Slytherin. The man had founded Hogwarts over a millennia ago and was still spoken of with reverence. He espoused the virtues of cunning and ambition, widely known to have a wily mind as flexible as his morals.

"In the blackness of night the two of us traveled from the castle to a cave set under a cliff overlooking a treacherous rocky stretch of water. Accessible only by magic, we made our way to the last rock jutting out of the foamy waves before the wards prevented any sort of travel magic. We swam through the frigid sea and dove beneath the waves, emerging in a narrow cave with a tiny ledge. Upon giving a blood sacrifice as tribute, we secured passage into an enormous cavern filled with a deep black lake. A narrow ledge led around the water. Dumbledore cleverly located a rickety boat designed to allow only one wizard across the murky depths.

"Charms and curses prevented us from retrieving the locket any way but through the twisted gauntlet Voldemort had set before us. Since at that time I was still counted as a child, the boat allowed both of us to pass. The boat moved itself across the cursed waters to a tiny island in the center of the lake. In the middle was a pedestal filled with a murky green liquid. Dumbledore deduced that the liquid could only be drunk. He refused my offer to drink and despite his failing health, downed nearly all of the potion before needing me to force the rest down his throat. The potion forced the drinker to relive their most painful and miserable moments. For a man such as Dumbledore, old as he was in his second century, it was terrible to watch."

Harry's eyes stung hot and wet.

"He had a lot of regrets. Dumbledore wasn't perfect, but even I can't bring myself to hate him for what he did. He made mistakes in his youth, and spent his entire life atoning for them. I've never met a better man. By the end of the drink he was begging to die rather than drink one more sip of the potion, but he had made me swear no matter what to force him to drink it all." Harry was defending himself more than explaining. He did not want to admit to himself that he had sealed Dumbledore's death that night.

"After downing the last goblet, we retrieved the locket. I guided him to the boat and we were about to leave, but Dumbledore was begging for water. No matter what I did, I couldn't get him any water. I conjured it directly into the goblet, but it would vanish before touching his lips. I tried spraying it directly from my wand into his mouth, but it never reached his face. Desperately, I filled the cup with water from the lake. He could drink it, but that was the last step which sprung the trap around us.

"Legions of animated corpses crawled out of the lake, intending to drag us under the surface and add us to their number."

Garzhvog looked revulsed. "It was terrible," Harry agreed. He made a concerted effort to cheer himself, falsely injecting bravado into his tone. "Dumbledore recovered a bit and cast this crazy firestorm thing that kept the Inferi at bay. We sailed across the water and swam beneath the sea back out to that rock. He couldn't focus properly, so he asked me to Apparate-" The Urgal looked on blankly. "It's like what I did to get us out of that cave; disappearing and reappearing instantly in another place.

"I apparated us to the village Hogsmeade, right outside the school, when we saw the Dark Mark flying above the castle. The Dark Mark is like Voldemort's personal sigil. There's a spell, here, Morsmordre!" Harry gestured straight up and an enormous glowing green mark hung in the air above the camp. The bleached bone of the skull leered down at them before Harry swiped his wand and the image vanished like a mirage.

He elaborated. "Basically the Death Eaters, that's his servants, would send this over the dwellings of anyone they killed. It inspired terror because back in the first war, you never knew if you were safe. You'd dread coming home to find the mark over your house, your family killed gruesomely inside. Dumbledore was worried it meant Voldemort had infiltrated the castle and killed a student. We flew up to the tower the mark hung over and landed our brooms. He made me put on my invisibility cloak. Draco Malfoy, a classmate I KNEW was up to something the whole year and every waved me off about, came charging up the stairs and disarmed Dumbledore."

Harry pointed at his companion. "Which was ridiculous, by the way. Dumbledore had outdueled Voldemort himself, there's no way he'd lose to a second-year disarming charm by a junior Death Eater with all the subtlety of a trainwreck. Whatever. With the last instant before Dumbledore was disarmed, he petrified me so I couldn't help or interfere." He sighed bitterly.

"Snape, who Dumbledore insisted to everyone on his side that he trusted so much, and would everyone please shut up about how obnoxious, greasy, and generally unpleasant the git was and just trust him for everyone's sakes, came up the stairs, had a little chat with Dumbledore and his own Death Eater buddies, and killed him."

Harry's eyes went unfocused, the stars blurring into a ghostly echo overlaid on his vision. Resentment welled up in his chest.

"Dumbledore left me this enormous task of hunting down the supposed remaining three Horcruxes; A big snake the Dark Lord always kept close at hand, a chalice whose location we had no idea where it was, and a complete unknown. We had no idea where or what it was. And if we wanted to be able to kill Voldemort, we had to destroy all of them, myself and my two closest friends, by ourselves with no help." Harry sighed again.

"Remember that my world is a whole lot bigger than this one. Seven billion people lived across all seven continents covered in huge cities. The hiding places were endless. We basically relied on Voldemort being egotistical enough that he wouldn't just bury one a hundred feet below ground in the middle of nowhere."

Garzhvog kept silent, though Harry could feel his attention. "Throughout last year, Ron, Hermione, and I ran around Britain on the run from the government which got overthrown within weeks of Dumbledore dying, camping with nothing but a wizarding tent and our wands plus whatever supplies Hermione managed to scrounge together in the weeks after his death. None of us had ever hunted for our own food before; it was either prepared for us at Hogwarts or we bought it from supermarkets."

Harry raked his hands through his hair and laid down in his bedroll, speaking now only to the stars. "Long story short, we managed to get ahold of two of the remaining Horcruxes. The locket Dumbledore and I retrieved that turned out to be a fake had been hidden in the house Sirius Black left me. It was stolen by a thief, one of Dumbledore's followers, and confiscated by one of our enemies." A hateful sneer curled Harry's face. "Dolores Umbridge. Thankfully, she was too stupid to realize what it was, and she was so evil there was nothing left for the locket to corrupt. We stole it back from her in the middle of the government building which was taken over by the enemy.

"The next one we found was the chalice. It was hidden in the high security bank vault of Voldemort's most evil servant: Bellatrix Lestrange. We successfully robbed Gringotts bank, which had a record of zero successful robberies," Harry bragged, "and made away with our prize on dragonback-"

Garzhvog interrupted him with wide eyes. "You have dragons?" he breathed.

"Yeah, loads, why?" Harry asked. "I even fought one when I was fifteen for that tournament I mentioned."

The Urgal's eyes bulged. "And you won?" He asked incredulously.

"Well, I didn't need to kill it or anything," Harry shrugged. "The task was just to retrieve an egg from a nesting mother."

Garzhvog's eyes widened even further. He did a fair impression of Dobby meeting the 'Great Harry Potter;' looking so awed his eyes might just pop out of his skull like toast from a toaster. This scarcely eighteen year old man had victoriously fought two dragons before adulthood. For the first time since he had heard the stories about the Mad King, hope bloomed in Garzhvog's heart. This human, not even a rider, could be the key to lifting the shadow of oppression the Urgralgra had lived under for over a century. And best of all, he came with no prejudice against Urgals

"This Voldemort, he is dead, yes?" the Urgal asked gruffly.

"He will be." Harry promised. "I made sure of it."

Garzhvog relaxed "Good."

Harry took a moment to immerse himself back into the story. A moment later, he resumed. "I knew then that after breaking into the bank, Voldemort would know what we were hunting. Soon after we were gone, he came to Gringotts and started killing all the goblins who ran the bank in fury. I watched through his eyes as he murdered every goblin he saw before fear gripped his blackened heart,"

"The connection I had with him occasionally allowed me glimpses of the Dark Lord's emotions and when he was feeling a particularly intense emotion, the ability to see through his eyes. Paranoid as he was, he immediately went to check upon his remaining Horcruxes. I watched with mounting excitement as he visited each hiding place personally. He was going to unintentionally show me exactly where the last unknown one was!"

Harry spoke with urgency as if mimicking Voldemort. "After visiting the lake of inferi, the Gaunt Shack where Dumbledore had destroyed one himself, and furiously questioning Lucius Malfoy whom he had entrusted yet another to, he learned that the only one left besides Nagini, his serpent, was located at Hogwarts.

"Elated, the three of us dismounted the dragon the goblins had used to guard their vaults and apparated outside the castle, sneaking through a secret passage to a magical room the muggleborn and dissidents were hiding in. We interviewed a ghost to find the location of the penultimate Horcrux; the diadem of Ravenclaw. Upon its destruction, I was gripped with another vision.

"After being so repeatedly foiled by me whenever we came into conflict, Voldemort was searching for a weapon to give him the edge he thought he needed; the Elder Wand. A legendary weapon thought to be crafted by Death herself, the wand was reputed to be unbeatable, allowing the user to win duels against any opponent no matter their strength.

"He had followed the trail of the wand through history by interrogating and then slaying ancient wandmakers, old and defeated dark lords, and eventually coming to the conclusion that Dumbledore had last been in possession of the legendary wand. Upon returning to Hogwarts, he immediately set about defiling the ancient wizard's grave, seizing the weapon from the hands of his corpse."

Harry's audience listened with bated breath. "But the wand did not work for him, for Voldemort had not 'defeated' Dumbledore. It would answer only to its master. Foolishly thinking that Severus Snape owned the wand's allegiance, the vision took me to a battered hovel which a werewolf used as its den, carefully isolating itself from any unknowing victims being turned in his mindless rage.

"The first thing I noticed was Voldemort's snake. Nagini was floating in a protected cage of magic, safely ensconced in the shack away from the fighting. The three of us snuck into the Shrieking Shack under the cover of my invisibility cloak, up through the secret passage which led into the building. From within the darkness, we watched as the Dark Lord treacherously slew Snape, hoping to win the allegiance of the Elder Wand from the man who had struck the killing blow upon Albus Dumbledore."

He was quiet for a moment before continuing. "He left immediately, confident Nagini had dealt Severus a mortal wound. Voldemort abandoned the man in his death throes and rejoined his servants in the forest around the castle.

"When the three of us crept up, with the last of his strength, Snape gave me a strand of memories. He expired, and the three of us returned to the castle with conflicted feelings."

Harry explained to Garzhvog, "He was our Potions professor for six years, and saved my life several times. But he was also a git. He delighted in our suffering and insulted us at any opportunity. He made no secret he hated me, my father, and Sirius Black in reverse order. He killed Dumbledore, he helped us when he didn't need to while on the run. He avoided conflict with the other teachers and reigned in the Death Eaters' more sadistic tendencies towards the students when possible. He was a mess of contradictions."

Harry sighed. That tangle of emotions had yet to be unraveled. Even a universe away, he harbored a spark of resentment against the triple-agent potions master.

"To watch the memories, we needed to use Dumbledore's pensieve, a stone bowl which lets its user re-enter memories and review them at their leisure. But the Horcruxes on hand needed to be destroyed in a very specific way. We split up. I went to watch the memories Snape left, Ron and Hermione went to the Chamber of Secrets to retrieve a basilisk fang, one of the two things that seemed to be able to destroy Horcruxes. The first was surprising; Severus Snape had been the one to leak a prophecy concerning me to Voldemort, and ultimately was the reason Voldemort killed my parents."

Harry's voice dropped to a whisper.

"Then I learned of Dumbledore's betrayal.

"It turned out Voldemort's soul was unstable from all the tearing and murder he'd done. Riddle had prepared the first half of the Horcrux ritual the night he killed my parents. He intended to make his sixth and final Horcrux from the murder of the baby prophesied to overthrow him. When he was vanquished, his shredded soul broke apart and ended up making me into a Horcrux." Harry was bitter and angry.

"You know, thinking back on it now, it makes a twisted sort of poetic, ironic sense. Dumbledore probably thought he was so clever. How do I even describe it? You remember that Voldemort used my blood to form his new body? Dumbledore was very sympathetic to me when I returned from the graveyard, yet when I told him that little detail–for just a moment–he wore an expression of triumph, like Voldemort had just made an unforced error in the highest-stakes game of chess between them."

Harry made a sudden realization, even as he worked through his own thoughts aloud with a stranger. The wroth drained from him. Dumbledore never meant for him to stay dead.

With a grin, he explained. "Dumbledore flipped the Horcruxes on Voldemort. Voldemort had used this hateful, evil way to keep himself alive, and my mother selflessly gave her life in my protection. When he took my blood, Voldemort made himself into my Horcrux. As long as he lived in that particular body, I could always choose to return from death. We were each other's Horcruxes, and since Voldemort was impatient, rash, and violent, he killed me first. Merlin, that realization puts so much into perspective. No wonder Dumbledore never tried to kill Voldemort after his resurrection; he wasn't willing to take away my death insurance!"

"Then?" Garzhvog wondered.

"I told a trustworthy person about Nagini so that three people would continue to know about her significance. Then I walked to the forest where Voldemort waited, let him kill me, and woke up here in Alagaesia." Harry spoke with false cheer.

The camp fell silent. The fire had long since burned out and the blue embers were nearly faded. "A worthy tale." Garzhvog finally grunted. "Were you a ram of my tribe, we would beg our chanters to tell your story every night."

Despite the Urgal's crude speech, Harry was touched. This was the first time he'd just laid out the truth in front of someone, without lying or deception. It was compressed and slightly dramatized, but in essence, it was the greater part of his life.

The pair both laid on their backs. "Ron, Hermione live, yes?" the Urgal asked quietly. Harry made a noise of assent. "Then you see them again."

He smiled privately at the sky. That had put things into perspective. He had a chance to do it over. "Perhaps I will," He agreed quietly.

---

The next morning the pair broke camp in silence. Garzhvog led them through the most treacherous terrain Harry had experienced yet. The wizard's sharp eyes caught movement several times, but never enough to pinpoint its location. He asked Garzhvog about it.

"Watchtowers," he said shortly. "It is better to find your enemy than to be found."

From there out, Harry kept his eyes peeled. Now behind several dens in the mountainside, he noticed heads covered in white cloth peering out small slats in dugouts, cleverly camouflaged against the snowy terrain.

They descended a mountainside into a deep valley backed up against the base of a ravine. When he spotted thatched roofs, Harry asked, "Should we take out the bear now?"

Garzhvog grunted. "Your kill. Yours to do with."

"It is just as much yours as mine," Harry argued. "You saved my life and nearly killed it yourself."

"You struck killing blow," Garzhvog disagreed. "Only fair. Hunter's Law."

"We can share," he refuted stubbornly. "I only really want the hide, anyways."

Garzhvog thought for a moment, then acquiesced. "It is traditional to bring the beast upon a spit before the elders, before feeding the tribe. A kill like this will feed us for weeks."

Harry nodded and withdrew the bear in a mind bending display of spatial warping. "Need tree" the ram said.

Harry selected a relatively small pine with sparse branches. One murmured diffindo later, a trunk of wood lay in the snow. He trimmed off the branches. Garzhvog withdrew several lengths of rope from his pack and skillfully lashed the bear's hands and feet together in a hogtie around the trunk. He heaved the log over a shoulder with his massive muscles, resting it near the crook of his neck. The bear was so huge, its back scraped against the grass even supported eight feet off the ground on Garzhvog's shoulder. It looked comically huge compared to the Urgal. Harry could not fathom how a man of his size could possibly carry what was essentially a whole house.

The wizard looked at the tree for a moment before rightfully concluding that trying to physically pick the thing up would be futile. "Wingardium Leviosa," he incanted. The wood smoothly lifted to perfectly level. Garzhvog blinked. Then he shrugged and went on.

With the bear in tow, the pace slowed down to a more laborious trudge. Some Urgals must have noticed them since a horn blew and many emerged from their huts or caves to watch the spectacle.

At the sight of the colossal beast, cheering and exultation rose from the villagers. Rams beat on their chests with their fists and shouted in victory. The dams were more composed but no less enthusiastic with their cheers.

Harry felt a strange sensation, like his heart was too big for his chest. The fluttery feeling felt like winning a quidditch match in front of the whole school. He knew that they were cheering for Garzhvog, but he had saved his life and ultimately killed the thing.

A wizened old ram approached, neck bowed by colossal gnarled horns protruding from steel grey hair. "Come, stranger." The man said in the ancient language. He led the procession down a worn road which formed the main lane of the village. As they passed, other Urgals caught a glimpse of Harry floating his end of the load.

Some smiled encouragingly, grinned mischievously, or scowled hatefully. Harry wasn't sure if it was because he was human or because he was a wizard. A pair of rams in particular had crossed meaty arms and were scowling between each other, glaring hatefully at the pair.

As they passed long arched houses covered in birch bark, more Urgals made their way outside to watch the strange procession. A wolf and her puppies barked eagerly and dashed out from between two longhouses, begging silently with big eyes for goodboi scritches.

Harry obliged and sunk his fingers in the thick fur around their ears, grinning happily when their little tongues lolled out in pleasure. How these guys could be barely this side of domesticated and still miles nicer in temperament than Marge's dog Ripper, he'd likely never know.

The procession extended as four other ancient Urgals found their way out of the village and joined them. Harry felt a great presence ahead as they continued to the center of the lane. A large circular clearing of grass was in the center of several sturdy buildings, a sudden departure from the longhouse birch building style.

The closer he got, the more defined the presence was. Many supernatural beings were watching. The instant he stepped upon the grass, the weight of their gaze became nearly physically heavy.

At the center of the circle a tall thick totem was planted in the ground, as large around as the largest trees the wizard had seen on his journeys through the spine. The carvings were exquisite, more detailed than the most intricate and well preserved native american totems he'd seen in primary school books. The topmost carving had enormous golden horns curling up through the area the next head might have been carved out of, smiling benignly down at the entire village from her perch thirty feet above.

Several other snarling animals and urgralgra with exaggerated features and animalistic traits were stacked atop each other. The totem emanated some of the most potent magic Harry had ever felt. The presences touched upon his mind, a cacophony of disparate personalities pressing up against his mind. It was like Voldemort was trying to get into his head, but gentler, and more curious than malicious.

As he struggled to keep his mind clear and the totem's mental presence out, the pair deposited the bear in front of a great bonfire surrounding the totem. The second he glanced at the pole from up close, the pressure increased tenfold. Harry instantly clapped his hands over his head and groaned.

The Urgals around him were quietly discussing something in their harsh language, but Harry could not spare the brainpower to apply his rudimentary understanding of the tongue to their words under the intense mental attack.

After nearly thirty seconds of holding out, a new voice joined the cacophony. The distinctly female and somewhat maternal presence instructed the others to leave. Miraculously, they obeyed.

The familiar feeling presence emboldened Harry to lower his shields. Though it was not his mother, she felt exactly like Lily's protection; fierce and protective, yet also nurturing and gentle.

Harry relaxed. She ghosted through his mind, zipping through his memories at incomprehensible speeds. As she made it back to his childhood, the presence became distinctly approving. Harry no longer felt judged. The presence was simply curious. She felt back to when Lily cast her ritual. The memory shouldn't have even been stored that far back.

'I am Ranha, friend-of-urgralgra Harry Potter,' the presence spoke in his mind.

Harry silently questioned who she was, ghosting his eyes along the gods on the totem, pausing at each in turn.

Ranha seemed to laugh in his mind and directed his gaze to the top. The golden horns and eyes of the dam at the summit of the pole glowed brightly. Harry swore he'd seen the delicately carved features wink mischievously down at him.

While Harry was communicating with the deity, the other Urgals were not idle. The five elders kneeled in worship. Others sat at hide-covered drums and beat a complicated tempo. Both the males and the females added their voices to the noises. The harsh language and deep voices should have, when combined with the driving beat, created an urgent aggressive sort of song. But the many voices were guided by some invisible conductor. Together they melded together in a beautiful melody.

The music invoked powerful and alien feelings in the wizard. He saw the life cycle of the Urgal, starting with a tiny child, smooth headed and smiling in the arms of a dam. The baby grew up. Through adolescence, training and learning from its mother and father how to hunt, fight, read and write, and venerate the gods.

The boy learned fighting and warcraft, how to strap on the complicated Urgal armor and helmets, how best to use his horns, what was required to be considered a ram. Images ghosted past of a smaller boy swimming in armor far too large for him, fighting awkwardly with a much too long sword. A much bigger horned version of him guiding the boy through a forest, silently indicating tracks and clues to follow their prey, guiding the arm of the boy as he struggled to draw back a massive bow, the thrill of the successful kill.

The images continued. The familiar face of Garzhvog formed out of the baby face of the child. Little nubs began to poke out of his dark-haired head. He shot upwards, taller and stronger, until it became obvious the suit of armor would not fit him anymore. Garzhvog's parents looked on proudly as he stooped awkwardly to enter their family's longhouse. Their son had the old blood in his veins so they must move to one of the caves.

Garzhvog grew into a natural leader, heading hunting parties into the Spine, returning with great Nagra and Shrrg's between them, the massive boars and wolves fed the happy village. He began to learn the oral traditions from the village chieftain, Nar Talrok.

Garzhvog studied and learned, speaking to the people and learning their needs and wants. He wanted to be the best chieftain he could be, worthy to lead his tribe in times of peace and war.

Several challenges, won and lost, flitted across. A ram who contested the kill of a Nagra. He wanted the tusks to mount on the wall of his home. He argued that it was he who struck the killing blow, but Garzhvog thought otherwise. Both unarmed, they wrestled one another until the other yielded. The younger Urgal bested the ram, catching him in a chokehold. After the fight, the younger offered the tusks as a peace offering. They shook powerful hands and agreed to set the conflict aside.

Harry watched as sadness and rage filled his mind. Fourteen Urgals this season, four of them children, dead at the paws of the 'monster-in-the-mountain.' Iron resolve filled Garzhvog's mind. For his 'coming-of-age' trial, he would slay the monster haunting their tribe. They were the northmost village in the Spine, so the Urzhad rarely strayed past the first source of food it found.

Garzhvog set out unarmed, as was custom, to the north. Through the harshest terrain known to Urgralgra, the massive Urgal plowed through thick snowdrifts and across treacherous ridges, following Urzhad's tracks with vengeance in his heart.

They watched him circle game trails and nearly eroded tracks, using cunning and great skill in woodcraft to follow the beast to its lair. Two weeks later, Garzhvog spotted a dark cave at the peak of an icy cliffside. He fought through the terrain to the base of the mountain, deftly moving with an enormous frame that belied his excellent climbing skills.

At the summit, he dove behind a bush at the sight of movement. A small human bundled in strange clothing laboriously heaved himself over the ledge.

Harry found it bizarre to watch himself from the third person. He winced as his clumsy footfalls stood out in stark contrast to Garzhvog's silent prowling. The frenzied pace of the earlier memories slowed to realtime.

Garzhvog's yellow eyes penetrated the darkness much easier. The Harry's face burned when he saw himself pawing at the cave walls like a blind man. He watched himself withdraw his wand and light it. Garzhvog immediately picked out the Urzhad's sleeping form in the darkness while Harry blundered about blindly searching. The impulse to warn the human came to mind when the beast silently stirred and awoke, but the Urgal discarded the idea. After all, Garzhvog was unarmed and the human could easily slay him before bothering with the bear.

Harry found it rather humiliating to watch the bear observing carelessly where he stood before getting up silently. It decided to play with its food a bit and made deliberate noises with its claws against the cave floor. Harry saw the bear strike him in the side with a massive paw, dismissively leaving him to die against the cavern wall.

'Now for the real threat,' it seemed to think. The big horned man whose tribe it had been snacking on had hunted her for revenge. The Urzhad nearly didn't bother taking the fight seriously. It had fought and killed dozens of other tall-horned-men who came for revenge in the centuries it had lived. It even remembered the difficult fights between the scaled flying menaces, two strange pairs, a pointy-ears-no-horns and a round-ears-no-horns, each with their own dragon. The little ones would block her lethal blows and send arrows or slash with their sharp swords, but in the end her powerful strikes would always overwhelm the invisible shields and leave the pair battered wrecks.

The third dragon had come alone, and was all the more challenging for it. She remembered the skillful clawing and biting of the ruddy orange dragon with the scarred muzzle. When she finally managed to batter its neck and break it, she took a moment to respect her fellow hunter before stripping the tasty, dense meat from the menace's skeleton.

Urzhad's thoughts quickly changed when she began to fight. The Urgal was scrappy, seizing any advantage or opening she left, climbing her thick winter fur. Using those handholds, it clambered along her thick neck, its immense strength grappling around her neck to choke her with his arms. She shook and bucked like a bull, twisting to throw the ram, but to no avail.

She was starting to run low on air, so she tensed her legs and launched herself up and back into the cave walls, crushing her assailant between her enormous back and the unyielding stone. When she heard the sickening crunch, she nodded in satisfaction. Two snacks had come to her today, and to top it all off, a good fight with a worthy opponent.

The bear filled Garzhvog's greying vision, mouth open wide enough to fit his entire head, horns and all in her maw, when a green light shone from below its mouth. She collapsed to the cave floor.

The elders whispered among themselves as they watched through Garzhvog's eyes. The little human had saved an Urgal's life. The wound seemed mortal though, so how Garzhvog returned to them?

The next vision showed Garzhvog in the wizard's home. The room he woke up in, and the human who had saved his life collapsed on the floor, exhausted from healing the Urgal and paying no heed to his own injuries. The audience was silent while Garzhvog bound Harry's wounds.

He winced seeing his own battered body. He did a rather poor job fixing himself up before starting on the ram's injuries.

The journey back through the mountain blurred again, flickering past Harry's own stories, for which he was grateful. He told them to a friend in arms, the first person who'd saved his life in Alagaesia, not the man's entire tribe. Rahna must have seen the desire in his mind for privacy, and respected his wishes.

'He is worthy.' Ranha's voice echoed in Harry's mind. The images cleared and the wizard sat heavily on the ground. Garzhvog looked proud. 'For the qualities of ambition, selflessness, leadership, responsibility, and strength, we find Garzhvog worthy to lead this tribe.'

The other gods rejoined Rahna in her proclamation. A chorus of voices in unison spoke.

'Nar Talrok, chieftain of the Bolvek Tribe. For seven-and-eighty winters and eight moons you have led your people in trying times. You have weathered strenuous trials and harsh winters, done your duty and protected your tribe well. Do you find Garzhvog worthy to lead your people?'

The ancient Urgal who welcomed them to the village stepped forwards. In the Urgal tongue he spoke. "I do. For years I have watched Garzhvog grow into a fine ram, and again I have witnessed the trials he has weathered. I accept."

'Then kneel, and remove your symbol of headship.'

Nar Talrok knelt and unfastened a thick girdle from around his waist. Carved with imagery of the tribe and its history, the craftsmanship was of the same breathtaking quality of the totem. It was a stiff leather with metal bangles and embossed imagery adorning the thick material. It floated off his hands and into the air.

The voices abandoned their unison speaking and one at a time, they spoke.

'For your prowess in battle and cunning in war, I, Svarvok, find you worthy.'

'For your sharp mind and quick wit, I Ahno find you worthy.'

'For your loyalty…'

'For your strength…'

'For your dedication…'

'For your selflessness…'

'WE FIND YOU WORTHY.'

'Rise, Nar Garzhvog, and accept this as a symbol of your headship.'

The belt dissolved into brilliant light and in the glare of the sun, reformed into an armband of burnished gold. Tiny scrolling script and minute bas relief scenes surrounded the wide bangle. Garzhvog accepted the token and slipped it onto his right arm.

'I, Rahna, mother of Urgralgra and queen of the gods, name you Nar Garzhvog, thirty-seventh chieftain of the Bolvek Tribe. Serve long and well.'

The drums and chanting resumed then immediately at a frenzied pace. Cheers rose up from the village. Shouting and cries filled the valley, and horns blew grandly. Kull emerged from their caves lining the valley, beating their breasts with their fists and shouting victoriously.

Quieter now, and in only the heads of the elders, Garzhvog, and himself, Harry heard Rahna once more. 'For your selfless service, for the second time in this age, I name you friend-of-urgralgra. Farewell, Harry Potter.' And the presence was gone.

The totem stopped glowing and its otherworldly presence vanished. The chanters and drummers switched from the perfectly constructed choir into merely a group of great and well coordinated musicians. Harry could still feel a hint of the totem's potential, both in the totem and in the armband Nar Garzhvog now wore.

The ram was speaking to a group of women approaching with rendering implements. He gestured to Harry and back at himself, before indicating the bear at the foot of the fire. "Come," Garzhvog shouted over the chanting to Harry. They dragged the bear over to a circular building in the style of the longhouses.

He smiled. Harry thought he may have just made some new friends.

---

The women in the lead pushed aside a flap and helped maneuver the beast through the opening, dropping it on a large sturdy wooden table. "Which parts do you claim?" The lead one asked.

"Hide," Harry tried in Urgalish. He was surprised how suddenly easy the language was to him.

The group fastened aprons around themselves and wielded long bone knives and other implements skillfully, deftly cutting the pelt off the bear. After it was set aside, Harry watched in eager fascination while they rendered the rest of the beast. Enormous cuts of meat formed a growing pile. Despite the colossal size of the Urzhad they were rendering, the dams made the task look trivial. They carefully cut out organs, drained blood, and prised bones from the body, neatly arranging them on the table.

"Thank you my friend," Nar Garzhvog said with a smile. "You have helped me become chief of my tribe, saved my life, and slain a great threat to the village."

Harry accepted the gratitude gracefully. "Nar Garzhvog now?" he asked with a smile.

"Yes, the gods accepted me. Now we have a revelry which lasts an entire week. The chanters will compose a story for the last chief and go through all the previous ones during each dinner. The totem fire changes color to reflect me, and will not go out until I die or the next chief is chosen," The urgal explained. "Come, Neya will set your hide aside. There is much I wish to show you."

Harry allowed himself to be led from the lodge around the village. "There was much I could not tell you as an outsider, but now you are a friend, and our secrets are your secrets."

Garzhvog showed him back to the totem. The orange flames had turned a deep red. "This is the totem of our village. Every tribe has one. It holds the protective enchantments and wards over our village."

For the next ten minutes, the chief pointed out carvings and explained who they represented, their patron gods, and what domains they ruled over.

They wandered over to the sturdier buildings surrounding the circle of grass. "These are communal buildings we all use, like the smithy, armory, carpenters' workshop, and library." Garzhvog led him into a building with a stone foundation and a chimney spewing endless smoke into the air.

Inside, the ringing sound of hammers on steel sounded. A great stone forge rose from the floor with several openings. It stood in the center of the room. On every side were anvils and standing racks of tools. Dams worked hot steel with their tools, forming beautiful weapons. At a table against the wall, a woman worked with tools and a magnifying glass, carefully inscribing designs into the crossguard of a sword. A wheeled cart had circular buckler shields stacked ten tall braced against tall metal poles. Wooden bins held hundreds of simple forged items like long nails, hooks, studs, and hinges.

Quenching troughs protruded from the walls, rippling slightly as water was cycled from hidden pipes in the walls. Soot covered aprons hung from pegs on the wall, and gloves rested on shelves below them.

Sunlight poured through arches in the walls and holes in the roof, cleverly positioned to let light in but keep wind out. Torch brackets lined the wall, occupied by unlit sconces.

"If you are interested in learning our forging techniques, you may beg to apprentice under one of the dams here," Nar Garzhvog announced. "But beware," he grinned, "They are fiercer than any ram, and you will have to work against being a man here. The Mooneater learned well from us, and still carries one of our blades, 'Albitr.'"

One of the women hollered at him to shut up without even looking up from her project. Another one gave the pair a spine tickling glare as she replaced her gloves on the shelf and swept out of the building through an arch.

"Mooneater?" Harry asked as he was led to the next building.

"She goes by Angela among humans," he said dismissively, leading them into what looked like an infirmary. It was rectangular like the residences along the lane the Urgals lived in. Beds lined one wall, tables on the other. Only two beds were occupied. One had a woman sitting upright on it. She was getting her left arm wrapped into a sling. The healer was speaking to her sternly, by the looks of it thoroughly cowing the younger dam.

"I mean it Ahrak, if I see you in the forges even once before I say so, you'll be cleaning soiled linens here for me for a month!" the dam shouted after her patient who was fleeing the hospital eagerly. An unintelligible affirmation drifted from the opening, still swinging from the Urgal fleeing.

"The other urgal-friend?" Harry asked.

Garzhvog nodded. "A talented chanter. She has stories that make your blood run hot, and tales which chill the blood in horror. I have no doubt your paths will cross, you are far too interesting for her to resist meeting."

The chief introduced Harry to the head healer Raava, who gave off serious Madam Pomfrey vibes. He was proved correct when she refused to let the chief and his honored guest leave without a once-over.

Raava looked suspicious, but let them leave after a quick examination. She looked doubtful that Harry could have healed them well enough to escape whatever healing she might choose to inflict upon them.

After fleeing the madwoman, the pair made their way to the 'library.'

"Much of our knowledge is passed through oral tradition, stories and chants we tell our children. But for knowledge too precious to risk dying out, we embroider on animal skin. It is designed to last as long as possible." Nar Garzhvog led Harry up and down aisles of racks with embroidered hides hanging from them. He was awed by the quality and intricacy of the 'scrolls.'

The text was in perfectly even rows of small and neat characters. Surrounding it was elaborate scrollwork and illumination. The details were so small Harry nearly forgot it was embroidery and not inked.

"The short ones have better ways of preserving knowledge, but copying them would not sit well with us. Come, this section is for mediums or pieces from other races." Garzhvog led Harry down the end of the aisle to a flat wall covered in shelves, cubbyholes, and drawers made from solid cedar. Three quarters of the shelves were full. They contained stone tablets, scrolls, leather bound books, parchment, papyrus, and other unfamiliar pieces.

Harry groaned when he saw the human literature. It was written in ancient nordic runes. When Garzhvog raised an eyebrow at the funny human's reaction, he elaborated.

"These characters-" he gestured to the human books, "-I had the opportunity in school to learn this language, but I deemed it useless and took an even more useless class instead. We called them ancient runes. Now I have to learn another language and writing system to interact with humans. And whatever other races I come across." He sighed and dropped into a wicker chair.

"Where I'm from, there are hundreds of languages and dialects around the world. I only know my first language and one other; an innate bloodline ability to speak to snakes. At least it looks like Dwarven and Human runes are the same."

Harry gravitated towards a thick tome with gilded and embossed covers. When he flipped it open, it was filled with beautifully illuminated pages.

"That is called 'Dominance of Fate' Garzhvog grunted. It's supposed to tell the complete history of Alagaesia from the perspective of all the races." His face soured. "It only mentions the Urgralgra as monsters in the night. But," he sighed, "the human section is very accurate."

The chief shelved the tome and led Harry out of the library. "If you wish to learn the story of our race, our chanters will speak of it tonight during the revels."

---

Nar Garzhvog tugged Harry along towards the sturdiest building he had yet seen. It was two levels high, made of thick log frames and planks. The gabled roof gave it a somewhat similar feeling to Harry's own dwelling. A strange symbol was burnt into the crossbeam directly above the entrance.

"Welcome to the armory, Harry Potter. Here we keep extra stockpiled weapons and armor in case of a large attack, and for young rams to borrow before they have the chance to fashion their own." He gestured proudly with a sweeping arm at the racks upon racks of weapons, armor, and shields adorning every available surface.

Mannequins held aloft full suits of plate armor, massive enough to fit on even the enormous frames of the largest Kull. Shields of every shape - diamond, round, curved rectangle, teardrop, and more - hung on pegs on the walls and in bins on the floor. Bone-handled weapons like swords, axes, maces, and knives were displayed in all their gleaming and polished glory, hung across racks, pegs, stands, and shelves everywhere Harry could see.

Strange bows strung with black thread hung from hooks in neat rows, varying from merely large to enormous. Next to them were buckets full of bone, steel, stone, and bronze tipped arrows, fletched with many different shades of feathers.

Harry crossed the floor straight to the bows and ran a hand across one of the limbs. It seemed oddly familiar…

"Nar Garzhvog, do you use Urgal horns for your bows?" He asked in a strained voice.

"We do," the Kull nodded. He withdrew a tube from his back, popped the cork, and slid out an exquisite dark colored horn bow. "My father made this for me when his father entered the endless hunt. It is believed that wielding a bow made of the horns of an ancestor will grant us their skill and strength. These-" he gestured to the bows in front of him, "-are from families whose lines have ended, or which have been donated to defend the tribe in times of need."

Garzhvog proffered his own bow to Harry. The wizard quickly replaced the one he was examining and took up the offered weapon.

It was a gorgeous weapon. The horns were straightened and polished until they gleamed black. Delicate scrollwork and carvings which Harry was beginning to associate with Urgals wound along the limbs of the bow. Subtle ink and carvings told the story of an old Urgal who'd since died, showing poses of the ram hunting many beasts. It was currently unstrung, the burnished steel tips of the limbs unconnected. A black string was spooled around the lower limb, and an indent where a loop would rest in the upper tip was empty.

"Could you string it?" Harry asked hesitantly.

Wordlessly, the ram took back the bow, uncoiling the string from the lower limb. He slipped the bottom edge into a loop on his boot and stepped over the limb, massive muscles bulging as he struggled briefly to bring the string to its bracket. Soundlessly, the enormous horns contorted and bent before relaxing smoothly into a tense strung bow. Garzhvog withdrew his leg from within the bowstring, and proffered the weapon again. He plucked an arrow from the bin and led Harry out the back of the building towards a field with a row of targets.

Nocking the arrow, he handed it over to the wizard horizontally, balancing the arrow on the limbs and nock. He watched in stoic silence as Harry wrestled with the enormous weapon. In order for him to hold the bottom limb off the ground, the top end extended over two feet above his head. After fumbling and dropping the arrow from the string twice, Harry managed to get more or less in position.

"Left foot further forwards."

"Keep your left arm fully extended."

"Watch your elbow."

Several corrections later, Harry managed to hold the thing the way Garzhvog wanted. "Now, you can draw the arrow."

Harry heaved with all his might against the unyielding string. All he managed was a measly hand's length. It felt like he was trying to bend steel. The arrowhead stuck several feet out in front of the bow, but it was as far as he was going to get. Harry sighted as well as he could along the seemingly endless shaft, made his final adjustments, and let the string roll off his fingers.

The arrow barely made it halfway down the range. Even if it hadn't, he certainly wouldn't have hit the target. It skewed off nearly thirty degrees, entering a full lane over and clattering to the dirt. Harry personally thanked God there was no one else in the range to witness his humiliation.

His heart sank. A wheezing cackle came from behind him. Sitting in a rocking chair outside an ancient urgal- female' he supposed, quietly knit a breathtaking tapestry. A bow was propped up against a box of arrows within arms reach of the chair. She set aside her materials and shouted at Garzhvog. "Go on then, I can spare the time to teach this midget how to shoot."

The ram stooped to pick up his wayward arrow and plucked the bow from Harry's bruised fingers. He strode out of the field grinning, and left Harry alone with the madwoman.

"Right, midget, you'll never be able to draw a horn bow- Humans just don't get that strong." The dam strode back into the armory for a moment before emerging with a simple wooden bow. Harry noted that it was unstrung. She tossed the thing at him.

"You don't really need the stringer, Garzhvog just likes to use it because he's lazy. Unwind the bowstring, prop it up against the ground- no not like that, like this," she demonstrated with her own bow. "See, you can push with your off hand and pull with the other. Now bring the loop up, there."

What followed was one of the most brutal lessons Harry had ever received. Snape's insults had nothing on the scorn the old dam managed to infuse into a few words in a language he had only been learning for a week.

The Urgal rose from her chair, plucked her bow from its spot, nocked, and drew her bow in a single fluid movement, not even glancing down the arrow before releasing it. The arrow streaked down the range in an instant and embedded itself in her target dead center. She did it again, this time stopping at full draw. "Watch," she demanded. "When I release the string, it is an instant motion. If you snatch at it or Rahna forbid- let it roll off your fingers-" she glared at him, "It will throw the shot. Unless you release the string exactly lined up with the bow and arrow, you won't hit what you are aiming for. Get your fingers clear of the string as soon as possible and-"

Thwack! The arrow sank dead center, splitting the shaft of her first arrow. "Zhara's going to yell at me," she muttered, observing the split arrow in dismay.

"Now," the old woman addressed Harry. "You know generally what you should be doing. The rest is practice. When you run back to wherever you came from, if you wish to master the bow, two hundred shots per day." She snatched the bow Harry was using from his hands and deftly unstrung it, sliding it into a hide tube. Grabbing a fistful of arrows, the dam stuffed them into a leather quiver with loops to feed the unstrung limbs through, and pushed it into his chest.

"Garhzvog will surely be waiting. He knows better than to interrupt me!" she cackled.

---

Harry emerged from the front of the armory to a truly heavenly smell. The Urzhad bear he and Nar Garzhvog slayed was being prepared. It was so big the cooks- the three dams who took the bear off him earlier- could prepare different sections in different ways. Some were grilled, some roasted, some stewed. The scent rising from the totem fire wafted up and down the lane.

The sun was just starting to set, casting the sky in multichromatic glory. Wives ushered their kids out of their longhouses, hurrying them along the road. Long wooden tables had been dragged from somewhere and set out on the grass. Softer music floated on the light breeze from a group of performers, standing on a collapsible wooden platform. The mood was buzzing, an energetic and eager feeling which saturated the clean mountain air and buoyed Harry's spirits.

One of the rams noticed him exiting the armory and smiled, clapping a hand on his shoulder and congratulating him on a good kill. He joined the stream of people making their way to the picnic grounds. Harry cast about searching for the new chief but did not immediately locate him, so joined the tide of horned men over to the grounds. Each time he was recognized, the Urgals clasped forearms, cheered, or otherwise signaled their appreciation.

Once he arrived at the grassy circle, Harry could make out the grounds in more detail. The tables were arranged two down with a gap in between, radiating out from a semicircular table around the totem fire. Behind the totem was the elevated stage where a group of Urgal performers played their strange respective instruments. On the semicircular table the meat and other foods were set out buffet-style. Tubs of simple metal cutlery and stacks of wooden plates, bowls, and cups piled high on one side. Baskets of bread and cheese, butter, fruits and veggies, and bear meat were arrayed on the other.

The chefs kept transferring slabs of cooked meat and buckets of stew over to the sturdy wooden table, which groaned under the enormous weight. The arrivals in front and behind him began to fill out the tables haphazardly, grouping between familiar families, friends, and prospective mates. Rams and dams laughed, flirted, joked, and sang merrily up and down the fairgrounds.

Despite their location in the inhospitable and frigid Spine, the valley felt temperate and warm. A pile of dyed and embroidered furs and leathers grew at the entrance to the grass. Some of the younger Urgals laughed and rolled around in the grass, relishing the warm temperature. Several field games were being played off to the side, and the sound of cheering rang out intermittently over the live music. Harry grinned despite himself. It was already awesome and the party hadn't even started.

While he was watching enormous barrels of what must be liquor being wheeled in on wagons, he caught Garzhvog's eyes. The chief was helping with the prep, shooing the younger ones from the alcohol, and some of the older ones too.

Harry waved over the crowd (rather difficult when most of them were several feet taller than him) and saw recognition in the ram's eyes. He elbowed through several people standing in the middle of the aisles between tables, making his way over to the man.

"Ezra let you go?" The Urgal asked amusedly.

"She gave me these" Harry grinned enthusiastically, displaying the bow and arrows he'd been gifted.

Garshvog laughed. "Mother gave you my childhood bow," he grinned. "I killed my first buck with this when I was eleven winters old."

"That's your mother!?" Harry exclaimed. "Why didn't you say anything?"

The urgal chuckled. "It's much more rewarding to watch you learn after having met her. Harsh teacher, but good, no?"

Harry smiled back. "Thanks," he punched the burly man's shoulder playfully. The Urgal responded by slapping him on the back. It felt roughly like the sky falling on him. Harry stumbled forwards. "So how does the celebration work?"

Nar Garzhvog explained. "As soon as everyone's ready, I make a speech. We get the first choice of food, and then everyone gets free reign. The guys up on stage play a few songs and when the sun sets, the chanters take over. Tonight's the opening feast. Tomorrow and for the next week, during the day we have games and events. At the end of the week, I announce the direction I wish to go with the clan, and we call the celebration there."

"Speeches?" Harry asked nervously.

He laughed boisterously. "You don't have to–though you can if you want. No one expects anything grand, anyways. Oorvak the Oblivious's speech was just a few grunts. Rarely is there a call for loquacious speeches."

"I'm sure you will manage to break his record, son." Ezra smacked him on the leg with her walking stick. She had snuck up on the pair, wielding a walking stick with a stance that clearly said 'I'm only using this as an excuse to carry a bludgeoning tool with me.' "If you learn as fast at everything as you do at archery kid, you'll be fine," she addressed the wizard. The old woman embraced the kull. "Congratulations, Garzhvog. Skgahgrezh will be proud."

She pulled off her heavy woolen shawl and tossed it upon the growing pile as she crossed the grassy boundary. "We look forward to the feast. Skgahgrezh has something for you after the revels."

Garzhvog waved Ezra off and returned to helping the ram drag the wine wagon over towards the buffet. "It's nearly time," he mentioned to Harry. The musicians had placed their instruments in stands off to the side of the stage and dragged their chairs out from the middle. After kicking wooden blocks underneath the wagon wheels, Garzhvog way over to the stage and climbed the three steps.

The chief strode confidently over to a tall podium and gripped it with his thick fingers. "Welcome, Bolvek tribe! With chants, games, and good food waiting, I shall try to be brief. Since the Fall of the Riders, urgralgra have experienced a renaissance. Humans and Elves no longer come to slay us with impunity. Our fields and flocks have grown, our families expanded, and our village strengthened. The lack-horned betrayer, the Mad King Galbatorix shall not dare send troops against us again after Nar Tulkhqa's great victory at Stavarosk!" Everyone cheered, stamping their feet, bellowing, or pounding fists on their tables.

Nar Garzhvog held up a hand for silence. Gradually, the cheers quieted. "We are growing too large for our land," he said quietly. "Unless we wish to war against our brother and sister tribes, something must change, and soon. It is no secret that humans hate us. The Varden; the insurrectionist faction of humans and dwarves in the Beors, the Surdans, and Galbatorix, his empire, himself, and his cursed black dragon, would all ride against us should we try to conquer land to the east."

Harry listened carefully. He had a feeling Garzhvog's speech would be illuminating. "No, if we wish to survive, Galbatorix must die. He has killed us in droves, his servants even more. He has twice attempted to eradicate us, and he holds much empty land in an iron-fisted grip for nothing other than to soothe his vanity." This was news to Harry.

"This I promise; as chieftain of the Bolvek tribe, should a Rider rise in opposition to the Mad King, I will support him. For too long, we have cowered in the spine like frightened dwarves, stuck in the ground as the snow piles over our heads. I ask you all, Will you support me!?"

Even louder cheering rang out. Promises of aid, shouting, clapping, stamping, and vocal adulations blasted the air. Harry was sure anyone at the peak of the mountains surrounding the valley could hear the cheers clearly.

Garzhvog stepped down and like a switch had been flipped, food and drink flowed up and down the length of the long tables. The ram approached, indicating another Urgal with similar features.

"Harry, meet my brother, Skgahgrezh. He is a master spearman, and a skilled archer besides." The group set their plates and drinks down and slid onto the benches.

"Hello, Harry," Skgahgrezh greeted, tipping his drink to the human. He raised a piece of meat to his mouth before Ezra slapped it away.

Skgahgrezh sighed as Ezra proffered her hands. They each took one, and Garzhvog offered his spare one to Harry. "Thanks be to Ahrvok, god of the Hunt, for this meal which we eat," they murmured. Harry felt a sort of benevolent presence smile happily in approval.

They all dug in eagerly. The heavenly smell of the meat was nothing compared to the incredible taste. It was cooked expertly, soft enough to easily chew yet fully cooked all the way through. The Urzhad was juicy and greasy, seasoned with all sorts of exotic flavors Harry hadn't ever tasted, even back at Hogwarts.

The music had started up again. "Have you tried the mead?" Ezra asked mischievously. She gave a meaningful look towards Harry's filled cup. He took a sip and immediately regretted it.

The liquid burned on the way down, tasting like old cherries. "What the hell is this stuff?" he sputtered, hacking and coughing with watery eyes. When recovered, he sniffed the beverage accusingly, setting it carefully back down on the table. "It tastes like 200 proof vodka."

All three of them laughed. "'Tis a staple brew of the Urgralgra, we distill it from crushed berries and tree bark," Garzhvog told him. "Tell us of this vodka, if you think it similar to grog, we shall enjoy it very much."

As they ate Harry explained the Russian beverage to the merry Urgals. He had a wonderful time listening to the excellent music, eating exquisite food, and twice more braving a sip of the strong grog liquor.

When the impatient Urgal cubs finished scarfing down their food, boredom drove them to return to the field games while their parents chatted amongst themselves. Occasionally a dam would scold their cub for trying to sneak a drink of grog, gently pushing them towards the other children. Garzhvog's family were gracious meal partners, including Harry in their discussions, asking questions and listening attentively when he answered. They enjoyed watching the kids run around laughing and yelling, rolling in the soft grass, basking in the merry atmosphere.

The sun was nearly set an hour later. The darkness forced the cubs closer to the fire where they quietly sat on the ground with crossed legs, jockeying for positions near their best friends. Soon the totem fire was the only light in the clearing, casting long shadows behind the crowd. The children went from chatting to murmuring to whispering as the clearing gradually quieted.

A group of Urgals stepped forth, entering the firelight. They wore very different attire from the norm. Bedecked in carved wooden jewelry, colored feathers, cloth, and hide, the outfits they wore looked culturally significant. "Chanters," Garzhvog whispered to Harry quietly. "They will tell the stories of my people and many others besides."

A couple of hide drums were dragged over to the fireside along with other tribal instruments Harry couldn't guess the purpose of. The anticipation was building, the tension silencing even the rowdy children.

Harry watched eagerly as the drummers set a driving beat. Dancers sang and twirled about, bringing the chanter's words to life.

"Many, many centuries ago, the Urgralgra left their birthplace for reasons forgotten to the sands of time. Though we cannot know what happened then, we keep diligent records of what happened from then on in our hearts. Hearing these chants is our duty to our race, to refresh our memory every harvest and with every new chieftain. Tonight we honor Nar Garzhvog, thirty-seventh chief of the Bolvek tribe. May he remember where we come from and learn from our mistakes so that he may avoid making them again.

"Some unnamed and unspoken horror first drove the humans from our land many years ago. It is said that the chieftains thought at first, 'this can only be good, our greatest competitors and enemies have left us to the land alone.' But it was not to be. Soon, we followed the humans to this new land of Alagaesia.

""They were not the first. Two great races, the Dwarves and the Elves lived in sturdy strongholds and beautiful cities among the land now known as the Broddring Empire. Their capital was called Illirea, a beautiful city of elvish design.

"And along the breadth of the entire continent, Dragons roamed the skies. Beautiful, fierce, and magical, they were tied to the land in an inexplicable way. When they flourished, every race reaped the rewards. When a thunder of dragons flew over in that glorious rainbow, it is said that they blessed nature herself. Harvests were richer and the game more plentiful. Sickness could not touch us, disease and famine a distant memory.

"Long before we ever arrived on these shores, the dragons and elves fought a brief but bloody war. When it ended, they agreed such a catastrophe could never happen again, and bound themselves to each other in a way more permanent than any treaty; the Rider Pact.

"They were established as a separate tribe, above and apart from any squabbles among the races. Dragon riders were initially established to seal a treaty between dragons and elves, but they grew to be peacekeepers for elves, dwarves, and eventually, humans and Urgralgra.

"It is said that the dragon and its Rider were bound by more than magic. Their very beings melded into one mind, one soul, two bodies.

"It was this pact that Galbatorix entered into in his youth. When he came of age, the riders tested him with dragon eggs as was their custom. One chose him and hatched for the man, a dragon named Jarnunvösk. They grew together and learned from the riders all that it meant to be a keeper of the peace. When his education was finished, the pair and their friends flew into the Spine unprovoked in a foolish attempt to slay us in droves. His dragon was slain and himself grievously injured, yet he managed to escape.

"The leagues he had contemptuously flown over on dragonback stretched endlessly in front of him. When he returned nearly dead to the riders' stronghold, he begged for another dragon to replace the one he had lost. The elders refused his request. "Dragons are not tools to replace when broken," they said, "they are the partners of our hearts and minds."

"Galbatorix was banished from the order. His last hope crushed, he disappeared into the wilderness again. It was then that he met a foul being, a shade named Durza. Durza twisted and enflamed Galbatorix's anger, stoking him into a maddened fury. The banished rider snuck back into the rider stronghold and slew two elders in a fit of rage before fleeing again.

"He was not seen for many moons. Unbeknownst to the riders, he plotted his revenge. Galbatorix met a young and ambitious rider named Morzan and whispered gilded lies into the man's ears. Swayed by the treacherous words, Morzan agreed to leave the gates to Illirea unbolted for a night and the way to the dragon eggs clear.

"The dragonless rider snuck in under the cover of night, pilfering an egg. The pair vanished to the wilderness again, wherein the shade Durza lent his twisted sorcery to binding the hatchling's mind to Galbatorix's in a perverted parody of the rider bond. The dragon was named Shruikan.

"When Shruikan was large enough to ride, Morzan and Galbatorix revealed themselves to the riders, and thus began the Fall."

Harry took everything in with the intensity of a deaf man hearing for the first time. This was relevant information he had never heard, and a chilling yet enrapturing tale nonetheless. The sun had long set, the only light came from the reddened fire which cast demonic light on the inhuman features of the Urgals. Shadows flickered menacingly, seemingly swaying with the low tones of the chanters as they recited their stories.

"It is said that blood rained from the very sky. Dragons and riders were slain left and right. Galbatorix gathered to himself twelve additional riders who with Morzan were known as the thirteen Forsworn. So furious were the dragons at the traitorous beasts who bore the Forsworn, they banded together to enact the third Great Magic since the dawn of time. They stripped them of their names.

"The characters that represented them could still be written down on scrolls but they held no meaning anymore. The dragons could no longer identify themselves by nicknames, pronouns, or even their true names. Their very identities were torn from them so they could only act as dumb beasts and be treated the same."

The audience shivered. Harry thought of a sinister Fidelius charm. He was viscerally reminded that he was not on Earth anymore. This was a harsher time and place. Stripping thirteen intelligent beings' identities seemed nearly level with tearing one's own soul apart. If that's what the dragons did to traitors, he thought, imagine what they'd do to Voldemort.

"They went on to hunt down every last rider, exterminating them relentlessly and without mercy. The only riders Galbatorix was content to spare were those sworn to him with unbreakable vows of fealty. The riders did not go quietly into the next life, yet when Galbatorix was done, only two riders remained in this world; himself and Morzan.

"During the current age, Galbatorix has done little to consolidate his empire. The Surdans ceded from the Empire with little to no resistance. A rebel group called the Varden hides in the shadows, striking out at the empire in general futility. Both groups would fall like leaves before winter gales, yet Galbatorix is content to leave them to their devices, holed up in his castle in Uru'baen.

"The story ends with us here, tonight. Though we may be growing as a people ever faster thanks to the absence of the riders, we must never forget the crimes of the Mad King. Only scant years past, Galbatorix sent nearly his entire army through these mountains in an effort to exterminate us. He has no love for us for we killed his first dragon. Should he ever think to come here personally, our race would end there. Should Nar Tulkhqa's clever strategies have failed, we would already be consigned to the annals of history.

"As a people we must always be ready. If a chance presents itself to dethrone the black king we must seize it with both hands, for the good of our people and for the good of Alagaesia."

---

AN: This rewrite has been in the works for a while. It's tedious and embarrassing to read my old work, but I think it's necessary since this stuff is what new readers will see first and decide if they want to continue or not. I understand that some of this will break some continuity later on–especially the introduction of Phineas as a reluctant mentor–but that will be resolved as the rewrite progresses through the story. This doesn't mean I will stop posting new chapters, though. And I do apologize if these updates spammed your notifications, but there's not really a better way to do it.