And we are now on a weekly schedule. New chapters on Fridays. I currently have through Chapter 28 drafted, so I feel good about the buffer.
Harry and Dean amused themselves the rest of the holiday using the cloak to pull pranks around the hotel, and admitted that they probably weren't mature enough to have unmonitored access to the Potter family artifact. While he'd miss having it at school, Harry handed it over to Pepper before leaving for the ride back to Hogwarts.
The rest of Harry's Midgardian friends finally got to meet Tony on New Year's Eve, where he'd hosted a small party at the hotel for kids that were going back to school the next day. Tony didn't stay around long—heading out to a much more debaucherous party—but Hermione, Seamus, Padma, and Parvati all got to meet him, along with most of their parents. It wasn't really much of a party, other than the novelty of having it in a five-star hotel, since 11-year-olds fade quickly after midnight.
On the 2nd, they showed up early enough at Charing Cross station to get to spend some time shopping in the Goblin Market, before they were expected to step through to the long hall where they could travel through the flames back to the train platform. Over all, the winter break had been a fun outing for all concerned. They met back up with Neville and Lavender on the train ride back to school, and neither could understand why everyone was buzzing about meeting Harry's aunt's boss.
Hogwarts was freezing in the first two months of the year, really testing Dean's friends in his insistence that they continue getting exercise for their defense classes (where they were on to learning to use knives from the agile hag). Harry almost lost track of time, with the weird disconnect between Earth and Vanaheim's calendars, but managed to send a birthday letter to his aunt probably only a day or two late after some complicated math: February 12 on Earth was the 23rd of a month called "Horning" on Vanaheim. Harry had also sent a small present with Hedwig, since he'd gotten a necklace he'd seen his aunt admiring at the Goblin Market during his school supplies trip.
It proved a timely letter: Pepper immediately sent a return letter back with Hedwig thanking him for the gift, but revealing that Tony had gone missing in an attack the day after her birthday. He'd been giving a weapons demonstration in Afghanistan and was in a military convoy on the way home that was hit by insurgents. They didn't find his body, so she hoped he was still alive and being held prisoner, but they didn't know anything else yet.
Harry was devastated, and he could only imagine what Pepper was going through.
He tried to concentrate on his schoolwork, which was really picking up throughout the spring term as they finally had enough of the basics to do more practical spells and transfigurations. After several more letters from Pepper indicating no progress had been made on the search, though, he got the sense that his aunt was about to fall apart emotionally and sent a letter to the Masters of the Mystic Arts asking if they could do a spell to locate Tony.
The letter that came back a few days later simply said:
Absolute Point in Time. I'm sorry. -TAO
"What's an Absolute Point in Time?" Harry asked his friends. "I think the Ancient One's saying that's why she can't help me find Tony."
"I don't know," Hermione said, clearly bothered that, though it was in clear English words she understood individually, she'd never heard of them in that arrangement. "We could look it up?"
They had already been spending quite a bit of time in Hogwarts' enormous library to study for classes, and throwing in searches for the new phrase simply increased the duration so they were hardly ever anywhere else. It was frustrating, since the simple English words made it harder to find the answer in the obscure indexing scheme that the reference books used. It was possible that Vanaheim simply used a more Norse-derived word, so they were left to try to dig through books on temporal magic that were way too advanced for first-years.
"Here's another picture of that eye," Dean showed them a book, the stylized eye illustration the only thing he could understand in the dense, spidery text in Latin. "I think I remember something like that from the room I went through in Kamar-Taj to get to the London Sanctum from New York."
"I remember it, too," Harry agreed. "Maybe it's some kind of amulet that lets you see the future?"
"It may not be an eye," Hermione disagreed. "Because it's really a simple ellipse with some circles in the middle and we shouldn't assume–" she cut herself off as she actually looked at the text and said, "Oculus Agamotto. No, you're right, I think 'Oculus' means eye. That's neat. I wonder if there are instructions for building your own such device…"
Hermione was really sad she couldn't read Latin. Yet.
"Wonder what Hagrid's up to," Harry said, distracted by the huge man acting incredibly suspiciously, trying to sneak out of the library with an armload of books. He glanced at the shelves where Hagrid had come from and said, "Not surprising he was in the creatures section, I guess."
Dean, needing a break from reading and also curious, stood up and walked over to the aisle, coming back a minute later to explain, "Looks like he cleaned out most of the books on dragons."
"I don't think they show those at Hogwarts," Hermione mused. "Too dangerous. Doesn't Ron's brother do something with them at a preserve? I think those are the only spaces on Vanaheim they're allowed. Only truly native to Muspelheim."
"Could be fun to bother him about it," Harry shrugged. "And maybe he'll have heard of absolute time-points. Tea time is pretty soon, yeah?"
Though he'd skipped the initial invitation from Hagrid, they'd eventually learned that Hagrid regularly invited students over to have tea with him. It was usually older students, but it wasn't like Harry was being singled out. So they'd been a few times over the last few months. They mostly felt like the big man was trying to act as an unofficial guidance counselor for the students, asking them about their classes and giving them an opportunity to bring up any problems they were having.
It wasn't totally clear whether Hagrid had any actual power to fix problems, but it was nice of him to make the gesture.
The trio made their way out onto the Hogwarts grounds. The spring weather in this mountainous and forested part of Vanaheim alternated between reasonably pleasant and impossibly chilly, which Hermione and Dean seemed to take in stride from growing up in England and New York, but which was really stressful for Harry, long used to California's climate. Hagrid kept a shack on the edge of the forest, and they noticed that all the curtains were drawn, though huge plumes of smoke were wafting out of the chimney even in the middle of a reasonably warm day.
"Bets on whether he has an actual dragon in his house?" Harry said.
"No bet," Dean shook his head. "That guy's crazy."
"It's a wooden house," Hermione said. "Surely he wouldn't be that irresponsible?" She was clearly uncertain, and also unwilling to take the bet.
They knocked on the door (more pounded, really, to make any sound on the thick oak), and after a moment it cracked open a couple of inches and Hagrid's enormous bearded face peered out at them. "Err… I weren't plannin' on havin' tea today. Sorry."
"We'd like to see the dragon," Harry shrugged.
Hagrid's face fell. "Who else knows?"
"Probably just us. We aren't going to tell anyone," Harry assured him.
The big man sighed. "Fine. But it's not hatched yet. Come in." Not shockingly, the inside of the hut was stiflingly hot, Hagrid having lit a roaring fire in the hearth with an oblong dark shape resting amongst the coals. "Been tryin' ter bring it up ter temperature," Hagrid explained. "But I may need ter get a bellows or somethin'. They usually hatch in the fires o' Muspelheim itself! I don' know how they breed 'em in the preserves."
"Where'd you get a dragon egg?" Harry asked, before Hermione could start in on him about the danger. Dean was distracted by being furiously licked by Hagrid's very-friendly boarhound, Fang.
"Chap I met in the Goblin Market o'er the Yule break," Hagrid nodded, starting to fix a pot of tea from a kettle hung over the roaring fire. "Near as big as me he were, and some kinda lizard man. All types in the Market! Won it in a game o' cards. Even then, I had ter assure 'im I knew how ter take care 'o big beasts."
Hermione couldn't keep herself from asking, "But what are you going to with it when it's hatched?"
Hagrid gestured at the books he'd clearly taken from the library, "Gonna do the readin' an' make sure I can feed it. I figure I can tame it and train it up right. I've always wanted a dragon."
"Is that legal?" Dean asked.
"Hogwarts is kinda its own law," Hagrid shrugged.
"Do you have permission from the headmaster, then?" Hermione asked.
Hagrid bit his lip, "Better ter not bother 'im 'til I'm sure I kin hatch it, right?"
"Ah, the 'beg forgiveness' plan," Harry nodded. That was his normal strategy with Pepper, when she found out about things Happy let him get away with. "Maybe at least set up an area lined with stone or ceramic so it doesn't burn your house down?"
"That's a good idea," Hagrid nodded, eyeing one side of his house to figure out if he had room for such a pen. He started pouring the tea and asked, "So you lot just here ter ask about the dragon?"
Hermione swallowed her lecture about how he was going to burn to death and instead said, "We were also curious about whether you'd ever heard the term 'Absolute Point in Time.'"
"Sounds like prophecy stuff ter me," Hagrid shrugged. "Have yeh asked Sibyll?" On their blank looks he said, "Professor Trelawney. Teaches divination class."
"We couldn't find her," Harry admitted. They'd really only done a cursory check, after hearing from the older Gryffindors that the professor was mad, even by Hogwarts standards. None of them were planning on taking her class when electives opened up in third year.
"She likes ter move her classroom every year ter wherever's 'most auspicious,'" Hagrid nodded. "And don' come ter many meals. I think she's down in the dungeons this year. She'd be yer best bet." They all nodded, taking that in, and Hagrid asked, "That's all yeh wanted ter know? Heard yeh ran inter Garm, and been expected yeh ter ask 'bout 'im."
"Who's Garm?" Harry and Dean asked.
Hermione vaguely recognized the name, "The giant wolf?"
"Such a sweet boy he is," Hagrid nodded. "Was glad ter get permission from the Asgardians ter use him as a guard dog."
"We just figured the convergence happened to go into his lair," Harry shrugged.
"Oh, no, got 'im special ter keep the wrong sort from goin' deeper into the series."
"Probably for the best," Hermione said, still a little scared from her encounter with the giant wolf. "I take it there's a whole set of convergences through the portal past him?"
Hagrid nodded sadly, "Whole series opened up when we hid the thing. It's like it don't want ter be secure, after the break-in."
Harry finally made the mental connection and said, "Oh! Was the break-in at Gringotts to try to get whatever you took out?" Hagrid just tapped his nose in agreement. "And that's what the trolls were after on Halloween. Huh. Well, nothing to do with us, I guess. We should go track down Trelawney. Thanks for the tea, Hagrid!"
The big man nodded, clearly a little upset that the Boy-Who-Lived wasn't at all curious about the puzzle Dumbledore had carefully set out for him. Hagrid would have to go back to the headmaster for guidance on how to make the kids interested, though he wasn't sure himself why it was so important for Harry to involve himself in the business with the Stone.
Rather than go straight to stumbling around the dungeons looking for Trelawney—it was Slytherin territory, and they pretty much only knew how to get to Snape's classroom down there—the kids headed back to the Gryffindor common room. They asked around, hoping to find an upper-year that was taking the class. "We want to go with you!" Parvati insisted, grabbing Lavender Brown. "We're both planning on taking the class in third year. I heard she's brilliant!"
"She's… intense," Rose Wax, a fifth-year who was taking divination told them. The older girl was of Asiatic stock, but dyed her hair the color of her namesake. At least, everyone assumed it was dye, but with magic anything—at least anything grooming-related—was possible. "Anyone want to bet on which of the firsties Trelawney says is going to die when they go talk to her?"
The Weasley twins quickly descended on the word "bet," and were soon offering odds that had Harry as the favorite, with Hermione as a close second. With money on the line, there were half a dozen older Gryffindor students happy to guide them down to the dungeons after dinner that evening. The chemistry classroom was pretty close to the main stairs, so all five first-years were a bit baffled at how extensive the school's underground was. "Were these ever actually used as dungeons?" Hermione asked.
"Probably," Rose said. "Alright, in here." The door was basically indistinguishable from any other room in the dungeon, except that it had quite a few mystic-looking trinkets nailed to the wood.
The professor was hard to notice, initially, as packed as the office was with additional mystical trinkets, particularly the implements of divination—the collection of crystal balls alone would take several minutes to fully take in. It didn't help that the place was dimly lit by dozens of candles, rather than the bright and eternally-burning magical torches that lit most of the rest of the school. With her large, round glasses and complex robes, they initially took her for just another piece of the scenery.
"I knew you'd come," Professor Trelawney intoned, finally drawing their attention to her. In motion, she separated from the background, pale hands festooned with glittering rings, white face barely visible beneath the giant glasses and framed within her cloud of hair. She had Hermione and Harry both beat for untameable hair. Her overall look seemed to be the kind of tribal goth aesthetic that would be either hot or terrifying (maybe both) on someone that could pull it off, but which didn't fit the unassuming woman with clearly quite terrible vision. "But you must tell me what you want, to ensure the formalities are met."
Parvati and Lavender sighed in appreciation of the theater, and Harry pushed through. "Ma'am, we were hoping you could tell us the meaning of the phrase 'Absolute Point in Time.'"
One thing the professor had going for her: with those thick glasses that magnified her eyes quite a bit, you could really tell when you had her full attention. "Who spoke such a thing?"
"The… uh… the Ancient One. On Earth," Harry explained, rubbing the back of his head since he didn't really want to name-drop like he could just write letters to the Sorcerer Supreme. "I asked the Masters to help find someone, and she apologized and just said that."
"Oh, my!" Trelawney exclaimed. "You are in touch with one of the foremost seers of the Nine Realms! I am almost certain that I am descended from her, you know, with as strongly as the Gift has run in my own family? They say she cannot merely see the future, but travel backwards and forwards in time if the need is dire!" She finished intoning and simply asked, "And who are you, that has spoken with the Ancient One?"
"Harry Potts… er… Potter," he explained. "We're first-years, so we haven't had a chance to take your class yet."
"Harry Potter! The Boy-Who-Lived!" she announced, furiously grabbing a handful of white dice from a bowl on her desk and letting them clatter in front of her, several rebounding off of her teacup. She looked down, rings clacking as she quickly sorted the results and announced, "The fingerbones of a draugr are these! They announce that the Boy-Who-Lived may yet die! Beware those with two faces. The knife in the dark may not be meant for you, but could stab you in the back all the same!"
Outside, they could overhear the clink of coins and laughter, as the twins settled up the bets.
"But you've asked about Absolute Points in Time," she remembered, sweeping the dice back into the bowl. "A term of advanced divination indeed. I suspect you would not find it written of in any book here, for only the strongest of prophets such as the Sorcerer Supreme regularly deal with such impediments to the third eye. The term simply means that things must happen as they are foreseen."
Hermione asked, "But what use is divination if you can't use it to avert something terrible?"
"A pertinent question, if asked impertinently," Trelawney agreed. "There is a subtle difference between common divination and true prophecy. Divination reveals shades and shadows of the future: you know just enough to try to chart a better course. True prophecy shows what will be, and is often absolute. Many feel that they are better off with their Sight slightly occluded, so they are not certain that they are crashing into unchanging fate!"
"Don't we have free will?" Hermione insisted.
"Let me put it another way," the professor tried, placing various trinkets across her desk as visual aids as she described a timeline. "Imagine you could travel back in time. Something terrible happens, and you move back in time to avert it. But should you avert it, the very impetus for your trip is undone."
"Paradox," Hermione realized.
"Just so. Now imagine instead of traveling to the past, you sent a message to your past self with what you needed to do. How is this any different than a true prophecy, from the point of view of your past self? If the thing did not come to pass, then the message would never have been sent. There is a reason that prophecy is often worded in a way that it is not entirely clear what was meant until the event has occurred: if it came through completely clearly, it would be averted and thus never said in the first place."
"So an Absolute Point in Time is just a clear prophecy?" Harry tried to determine.
"It is even stronger than a normal prophecy," the professor corrected. "Seers as powerful as the Ancient One can often bypass the whims of paradox, sighting many possible futures and choosing the one they want, even moving backwards to change the particulars of an event while preserving enough of it to maintain causality. But an Absolute Point is one so important that it resists all change, for so much hinges upon it playing out as written. Reality itself would correct manipulation of the event. In short, whoever you have asked her to find, it is somehow of extreme importance that they remain missing."
"Huh," Harry nodded. "Well, thanks, professor."
"Certainly," she nodded. "I do so appreciate the chance to educate students on the finer points of my art, before they have made the choice of third-year classes. If any of you feel your third eyes opening, do not forget to elect divination!"
"She's so cool!" Parvati gushed as they were walking away from the classroom. Their escort of older Gryffindors had left once the bets were paid off, so it was just the five of them trying to remember the way back to the main stairs.
"I'm taking that class!" Lavender agreed.
"She was very knowledgeable," Hermione said. "Though I could have done without the theatrics."
"Why would Tony going missing be so important?" Harry wondered aloud.
Dean guessed, "Maybe the US needs to decide to go after him on their own, and that will change the War on Terror?"
"Maybe he'll decide to stop making weapons, after seeing war firsthand?" Parvati ventured, perhaps her own third eye partially opened by her encounter with the divination professor.
"Either way, if he was definitely dead or going to die, she'd probably tell you, right?" Hermione figured.
"I guess so," Harry agreed. "Hopefully we'll find out soon why it's such a big deal."
None of them could begin to imagine that, even now, Tony Stark was trapped in a cave, building a power source and suit of armor that would begin an age of heroism on Earth, just in time to prepare it to fend off threats from other worlds that most of humanity couldn't even conceive existed.
"Is someone playing the violin?" Lavender asked, a few moments before they all heard the music wafting through the dungeons.
"Sounds like a lullaby," Hermione considered. "Doesn't sound like they're very good, yet, though."
"Hogwarts doesn't have music classes," Harry added. "Maybe someone else is trying to learn a skill on their own like us and math?"
"Let's invite them to the study group!" Parvati agreed.
But when they pushed open the door to the classroom that seemed to be the source of the playing, it immediately cut off and all they saw was an empty room, a second door closing on the other side of the room, and the lightest sense of stealthy escape, not even the sound of footfalls in the hallway to guess where the secretive musician had run off to.
Dean shrugged, "Guess they're still sensitive about their playing."