Thank you to all of my readers and reviewers!
Beta: Zerubel
I know it's a little late in the day, but here's the new chapter. I don't have anything to say at the moment, except that it was a lot of fun to write, but there is an author's note at the bottom that I think you all should read.
Enjoy.
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He'd never been to Moody's home before, and the arrival alone was the most amusing thing to happen to him in weeks. He stood silently by the fireplace for a few minutes while Moody went about dismantling no less than a dozen wards and traps (some of them physical, with sharp things involved, and he could have sworn he saw Moody stepping around, was that yarn? on the floor), rocking back and forth on his feet and looking around. It wasn't what he'd expected.
The fireplace was located in the kitchen, oddly enough, though Harry supposed that may not be unusual for a wizarding home. The kitchen was painted a bright, cheery yellow, with white cabinets and tile. There was a large spice rack, and a few shelves with assorted knickknacks; clay cats and owls, a few painted plates, a child's drawing (Moody didn't have kids, did he?), variouspotion bottles, plants, books, and other odds and ends. The shelves were accompanied by framed photographs, a mix of wizarding and muggle, some in color and others older; in sepia tone and grayscale. In one corner of the room was a tiny little iron-wrought table, the sort you might expect to see in a garden, covered in various envelopes and papers. Accompanying the table were two matching chairs; one of which had several coats piled on top of it.
There was a large open archway that led into a cozy living room, painted green, with a cream-colored couch that was covered in a knitted blanket. There was, for that matter, a basket with several balls of yarn and knitting needles sticking out of the top sitting on the floor next to said couch. Moody saw him eyeing it as he finished taking down his magical traps and shrugged.
"Tis a very calming hobby, knittin'." He said simply in explanation. "Ye'll like it." Harry blinked, while Moody calmly took off his glamour, attached to a ring he'd been wearing, and put the ring on a stand by the door (which Harry hadn't noticed before, but which had several rings, necklaces, and belts stacked haphazardly atop it). They each had a similar magical signature to Harry's own glamour band, and it was a little staggering to see just how many disguises he had.
"Pardon?"
"I'm goin' ta teach ye how to knit." Moody declared, taking off his single boot and walking into the living room, wooden leg tapping along the wooden floor with every step. "Take yer boots off." Harry did so, confused.
"You brought me here to teach me how to knit?"
"Aye, an' ta duel, later. We'll eat lunch too, in a bit." The younger wizard was baffled, but nodded.
"I-" Moody grinned at him, all crooked teeth and stretched scars.
"Yer not much fer keepin' in touch, boy, but yer a friend, all the same. An' I can tell when a friend ain't at 'is best. So Aye, Imma teach ye ta knit, an' we're gonna have us a nice visit an' a chat." His grin eased into a smile. "Ye need to relax, boy, an' that's what yer here for." Harry shook his head and smiled crookedly, brows furrowed in bewilderment.
Moody was a very strange man, he thought to himself.
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Being taught how to use two metal sticks to try and work a length of what was essentially string into a scarf by a grizzly old man with a peg leg was easily one of the (if not the) strangest things he had ever done. Of course, with all the things he'd done while he'd been travelling, Harry wasn't at all against trying new things.
Moody had taught him just the single simple knit stitch, and Harry was, very slowly, making progress. His scarf was reddish brown and already a little uneven, with some stitches being larger than others, but his brow was furrowed in concentration, and now that he'd started it he was determined to finish. Mad-eye said he was doing well for a beginner, but it was still somewhat disheartening when the man was sitting there fingers and needles flying, churning out a scarf of his own where every row looked so perfectly even it may as well have been by magic (Harry even eyed him for a minute to be sure one of his knitting needles wasn't really a wand).
"Good an' distractin' innit?"
"Hmm?" Harry paused and looked up, careful to hold tight to the yarn. He'd already made the mistake of letting go once and having half of what he'd done unravel (and dammit if he was going to do something, even knit, then he was going to do it right and finish what he started).
"Knittin'. It's distractin'. Takes yer mind off the things that're botherin' ye." Harry paused.
"I suppose." He said carefully. He did feel a little calmer at the moment than he had before Moody had found him on that bench.
"Course it's not really the knittin. Jus' lettin' yerself take time fer yerself an' doin' somethin' that's not necessary." Harry smiled a little, thinking of some of the rune-projects he had waiting for him to finish them. "Was somethin' me mother taught me how ta do. Taught me so I could make meself hats, and scarves, and blankets fer winter time. Said it t'was as good a hobby as any, and useful too. She was an Auror herself, me Mum. Me Father too, though not as good of one." He was smiling a little sadly. "'Constant Vigilance' was her motto, an' I used to roll me eyes at her, till the first war with You-Know-Who." He paused, finishing off the row he was on and moving to the next. "She died before then, inna raid on a Dark Wizard's house. Me father wasted away after tha'. She was his reason fer livin', ya see." He sighed and looked up at Harry, who was listening with genuine interest, having never known anything about the older male's past. "I made lotsa mistakes in tha' first war. In the beginnin', I wasn't cautious enough, an' then, later when I'd lost me leg and me eye, I got too cautious, paranoid. I once ripped up a present from a friend, 'cause I was sure, was so sure,it was a basilisk egg. It was a clock, in the end. Ye gots ta find a balance, lad. Prepare fer just 'bout everythin', but don't let yer worries rule ye. Live, let things happen as they will, an' be ready ta pick up the pieces iffin it all falls apart. Ye understand?" Harry, frowning, nodded. Moody went back to his knitting. He'd forgotten Moody's perceptiveness, and he thought about Hel's warning.
"What do you do if something bad is coming, something horrible, and you know it's coming, but you don't know what it is? How do you prepare for something like that?" Both the man's eyes were on him, studying him carefully.
"Ye make yerself as strong as ye can, and ye gather up as many people as ye can ta watch yer back, and ye watch their backs, best as ye can, but other than that, ye can't do anythin'. Tha's life, boy. There's always gonna be things ye can't prepare fer. And I know better 'an anyone that ye can't live yer life worryin' and lookin' over yer shoulder every second of every day. Not that ye shouldn't be careful, of course. Ye can't make much plans neither. 'No plan survives contact with the enemy'."
"So I just... Do nothing?"
"Yep." Harry relaxed a little. He'd been trying to convince himself, all this time, that there had to be something specific he could do that would make him ready. He'd forced himself into believing that he just wasn't seeing a solution where there was one... But he'd known, logically, that maybe he wasn't seeing one because there wasn't a solution to see...
Maybe training as he had, and working hard, and getting closer to Loki... He was already doing everything he could do (and he'd known that, really he had, he'd just needed someone else to tell him the same); and, frightening though the thought may be, it was also comforting, in a strange sort of way.
And Harry, the weight on his shoulders lighter than it had been in months, sat and knitted while the retired Auror told him stories about growing up in Scotland, Auror raids and cases long past, and even funny anecdotes about his own years at Hogwarts.
For such a weird day, it was actually one of Harry's more normal ones. And normal turned out to be just what he'd needed.
It was very peaceful...
At least up until Moody suddenly screamed about constant vigilance, and Harry had to jump aside when the seat he'd been in was viciously stabbed by a knitting needle. But really, with Mad-Eye that was just par for the course.
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"Come on now, lad, you can do better 'an that!" Moody cackled, and Harry ducked under another spell, spinning to the side in the next moment to dodge another one, and went zigzagging along the ground on all fours, tail flicking wildly and half responsible for helping him turn, and then used one of the walls as a spring-board to evade a third spell, as well as to launch himself back in Moody's direction in an attempt to go on the offensive. The man's basement was just one huge training room, and Harry had forgotten just how hard the old Auror could make him work for every successful hit. He had already worked up a sweat, and felt disturbingly out of practice. He hadn't realized how much he had put his spellfire training to the side in favour of physical and weaponry training with Sif. He'd fallen into an Asgardian mindset without even realizing it.
He was already making plans to rectify that, both for himself and his brothers, once he got back to Asgard. Maybe Odin had some empty room in that enormous castle of his that he would give up for Harry to use for practicing his magic (Because he didn't think the King would appreciate him damaging their private quarters trying to practice there, and it wasn't the right sort of space to begin with. He also didn't think he could get away with using the regular training grounds without upsetting anyone). But there wasn't any time to consider all that just then, because the animagus had to throw up a shield charm and then duck and spin to the side, firing off a string of curses as he did so.
"Reducto! Flipendo! Diffindo! Jipu!" Moody stopped the first with a shield of his own, dodged the second, caught the third on the tip of his wand and deflected it, and, in an interesting move, conjured a large bird to intercept the last. It made a horrible screeching noise and fell to the ground before it vanished. The old Auror let his wand drop a bit and Harry paused in his movements, still on all fours with his tail up and almost ramrod-straight; ready to spring away and back into action at any moment. Mad-eye only lowered his wand when he was done dueling, or trying to trick Harry into thinking he was.
"That las' one was a nasty piece o' magic. What was it?" He asked, appearing entirely too delighted.
"African boiling spell. It's usually for water for when you're cooking but it works on blood too." He looked impressed, and nodded.
"Good, good. Ye need to think outside the box more. Yer spells 'ave gotten better, an' yer much faster 'an last time we dueled, but yer predictable. Ye only use offensive an' defensive spells." Harry frowned.
"Aren't those the sort of spells I'm supposed to use?" Moody rolled his non-magical eye at Harry, and, quicker than he could dodge it, had hit him with a cleaning spell. It smacked right into his face, creating suds that disappeared quickly, but Harry snapped his eyes shut and yelped, startled, hands flying up to wipe away the soap even as it vanished.
"Ye see? S'not a duelin' spell is it? But it works. Gotta think outside the box a bit more, boy. Ticklin' spells, cleanin' spells, spells fer bindin' up broken bones, Merlin, even spells fer fixin' up yer hair and what not! They've all got a use in a fight. Ye can use anythin' to yer advantage. Fight dirty. Be more creative. Come on then, I've got somethin' fer ye." He put his wand away in its holster, and Harry, still irritated about the cleaning spell and the way his face felt raw and dry afterwards, followed him, grumbling under his breath all the while.
May-eye led him back up the basement stairs and further up into his house's second floor (and it must have been made almost entirely from magic, because when he was downstairs he hadn't thought the ceilings were high enough for the house to be two-stories. Like the bottom floor, thewalls here were covered in various pictures, portraits, and knickknacks.
"Wait here." The man ordered, and went over into one of the rooms, wooden leg clopping with every step. Through the open door, Harry spied bookshelves filled with tomes of all shapes and sizes. A library then? He waited with his tail weaving lazily to and frothrough the vague sound of shuffling, and the occasional grumble, as the old Auror mucked about in the room. He came back out shortly, a couple of books in hand, with a scroll on top of it all. The man pulled it off, and handed him the books one by one; he looked carefully at them, reading the titles aloud:
"Practical Battlemagic: What You Can't Learn In School, By Wilbert Slinkhard. Dirty Dueling, By-" He paused, glancing upwards. Moody grinned at him. "Alastor Moody. I didn't know you'd written a book." The man shrugged.
"T'wasn't published properly. They only made a few copies before they decided it might not be the best thing in the hands o' the wizardin' public." His grin was darker this time, and Harry was both disturbed by the sight, and excited to take a look. Then the man gave him the scroll. "S'not to do with duelin', but I thought ye might like ta 'ave it. Ye gots a thing fer runes, don't ye lad?" He knew very well Harry planned on getting his mastery in it, just as the animagus had told him not even a couple hours ago over lunch (Moody had baked up a bit of fish and potatoes and made some sweet raspberry tea; it hadn't been the best meal Harry had ever had, but the ex-Auror wasn't all that bad a cook). He nodded simply and accepted the roll of parchment, carefully unrolling it to take a look.
His eyes alighted on drawn examples of the most complex rune configurations and bases he had ever seen, and widened comically. Layered sets of basic runes, diagrams of the various parts of the configurations shown, and notes, in English thank Merlin, of how to set them up, what sort of runes he could use where, what different rune combinations could accomplish, even tips on how to design and construct his own configurations from scratch; all of it hand-written.
"This is amazing!" He looked up at Moody, shocked. "Where did you get this?" The man chuckled, a scratchy sound.
"Me grandfather was a warder, an' more paranoid than me mum. Never published any of 'is work, but he left some things behind. Come an' visit me again sometime, an' I'll have more fer ye. Better they go to someone who'll use em right." Harry, touched and ecstatic, couldn't help it. He threw his arms around the other man in a joyous hug.
It was completely worth the body-bind he found himself under and Mad-eye's semi-apologetic and flustered lecture on how he should know better than to startle him like that.
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His Aunt had gained a couple more crow's feet around her eyes, but was otherwise exactly as he remembered her. She smiled a little awkwardly at him when he arrived on her doorstep, and his answering smile was just as uncertain, but she let him in and patted his shoulder. She even told him she was happy to see him, and that he looked good, and he smiled at her and returned the pleasantries.
"Though I really think you could use a haircut." She commented. He chuckled. She never had liked when his hair became too long or unruly, though her attempts to cut it when he'd been a child had rarely turned out the way she hoped.
"Harry!" That was all the warning he had before he was gathered up in large muscled arms with an 'oof'. He hugged his cousin in turn and patted his back.
"Hey Duds." The boy-turned man pulled away, and Harry observed that, unlike Aunt Petunia, Dudley had changed quite a bit.
He was taller than Harry remembered, and he'd lost quite a bit of fat, replacing it with muscle. The baby-fat on his face had finally gone too, and he'd let his dark blond hair grow out a bit; it was set atop his head in messy little half-curls. He looked good, really, and Harry recalled how he'd been working out before the war ended, and had already lost quite a bit by then.
"You've shrunk, Harry!" The wizard rolled his eyes.
"No, you just went and turned into a bloody tree on me." He laughed, dimples showing, and Harry smiled.
"There you are, boy." And there was Uncle Vernon. He'd lost a bit of weight too, though not much really, just enough for his neck to be a little less thick, and his middle a little less round. He was still a big man. "You've been well, I hope, staying out of trouble?"
"Mostly." The man nodded, and for a moment, he looked as awkward and unsure as Harry felt; not seeming to really know what to say next.
"Mum's cooked a lot." Dudley said. "She made a big Sunday Roast, with Yorkshire pudding. There's even some meat pies and bangers. And there's Chelsea buns, for dessert. Scones too!" Harry beamed at his Aunt, and the awkwardness dispersed a little. She smiled a little embarrassedly.
"I wasn't sure what you'd want to eat." she told him, and he relaxed.
If there was one thing he had missed about his home country, it was the food.
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Some things had changed, and others were just the same. Uncle Vernon still worked at Grunnings (he'd managed, apparently, to take a leave of absence back when Harry had brought them into hiding at Bogdon, and gone back to work after it all), Aunt Petunia was still something of a gossip, and Dudley was still into wrestling. But his Aunt had taken on some volunteer work at the local hospital to pass her time, since Dudley had apparently moved out, and was living in a tiny flat in Guildford. His cousin was quite happy having his own space, and single, like Harry, but seemingly happy with that too. He worked at Grunnings, like his father, but he was attending University part-time as well.
"I want to be an engineer." He told the wizard proudly. "I like to build things, and put broken stuff back together. There's a lot I could do as an engineer, even at Grunnings. They're gonna promote me once I get my degree, move me to the Machining Department. It's as good a start as any, I think." Harry nodded.
"That's great. I think you'll be brilliant at it." His cousin smiled brightly at him, eyes practically twinkling.
"What about you? Still travelling the world?" Harry cleared his throat.
"A little bit. I've got a townhouse in New York I've been coming back to a lot lately. I'm thinking of settling down there soon." He would have already settled if someone hadn't gone and brought about an alien invasion, speaking of which-
"New York?" His Aunt sputtered. "I wouldn't want to live there, not after what happened." Vernon nodded beside her.
"Aliens, of all things, really," He muttered. "What's the world coming to?" Harry smiled tightly, and Dudley, it seemed, had grown more observant these past years.
"Were you there?" He asked lowly, his parents both growing quiet as well. "When they...?" The wizard nodded.
"I helped fight." He told them. "It was..." He hadn't thought much about the fighting itself, when it came down to it. Whenever he considered that day, it was his interactions with Loki and the Avengers that were most prominent in his memories. "Chaotic." He settled on, carefully. "There were so many of them, and a lot of people died. Tony-" He hesitated. It was not so widely known, he knew, exactly what the man had sent into that wormhole. Many people thought it was an old weapon he'd kept for a rainy day, and it was better they believe that. With the Avengers working with Shield, as Tony had told him, it was better for his friends if the public trusted Shield (and the Dursleys counted as the public). "-sent something at them." Hardly a good explanation, but his Aunt had always been too good at discerning whether or not he was lying when he'd been a child for him to risk it."If not for him we might have lost, in the end."
"Tony?" His uncle questioned, eyes wide. "You don't mean Tony Stark?"
"Yes."
"You know him?" Vernon and Dudley spoke as one, looking shocked and excited. Harry frowned, brow crinkling, before the realization hit him.
"I'd forgotten he was famous." He chuckled, and really, he had. Tony had never been a celebrity to him, not really. He was just his rich friend who liked to irritate him by teasing about his height. "And sort of. They, erm, the guy who opened the portal was using a magical scepter covered in runes, and I... know a lot about runes." He finished lamely. "They called me in to help with that, and we fought together when the- you know..."
"You fought with the Avengers?" Dudley quizzed. The look on his face was... Frighteningly similar to Colin Creevy's hero worship of him. He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck nervously.
"A little yea. Um-"
"That's so cool! Are they friends of yours? What are they like? Have you ever seen Mr. Stark build anything? He's such a great engineer. His intentions are AMAZING! Is he like what they say on the telly?"
"Erm..." Harry blinked rapidly at his cousin, who was leaning half the way over the table and looking intently at him, very uncomfortable. "I'm friends with some of them. Um. They're nice people. Tony's kind of annoying sometimes and Captain Rogers is a little odd, I like them all well enough though. Uh... I watched him build this," He waved a hand. "transportation device, thing, a little, but I didn't really understand much of what he was doing."
"What's it like hanging out with them? They must be so-"
"Dudley. Leave Harry be." Aunt Petunia suddenly spoke, voice sharp, and Dudley's mouth snapped shut. He seemed to realize his behaviour then and flushed red.
"Er, sorry Harry."
"It's fine." He took a sip of his drink, and the situation remained a little awkward for a while. It stopped eventually, and otherwise dinner with the Dursleys was far more pleasant than he initially expected it to be.
Though not as nice as his time with the Malfoys or the Weasleys had been.
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He hadn't stayed at the leaky Cauldron in a long time, but it was just as he remembered it. The room he'd gotten was a little dark, but it was clean, the bed comfortable, and the tub in the bathroom large enough for Harry to take a nice soak, which he did. He could have portkeyed over to Bogdon for the night, but he'd decided against it. As much as he might have liked going back to his castle, all these visits with people had left him feeling nostalgic. So here he was, at least until tomorrow.
Harry sighed, sinking into the water a bit. There were bubbles in it. There'd been a bottle of the stuff on the counter by the sink and it had occurred to him that he'd never taken a bubble bath before, so he'd impulsively done so. He poked at them a bit. It was a potion of some sort, he was sure, because some of them were floating about and dancing in simple patterns, occasionally bumping into things without popping. His glamour was off (he felt safe enough, with the multitude of security spells he'd cast on his room), and his tail was flopped over the edge of the tub, fin sliding back and forth along the tiled floor. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes, letting himself slip into a meditative state. He hadn't meditated since coming back to Earth, even though he'd made the effort to meditate most nights before he went to sleep while in Asgard.
The world around him faded away. The flowery smell of the bubble bath, the crinkly sound as some of them popped and the light slosh of the water, and the soft noises of outside in the Alley and downstairs in the pub all disappeared. The feeling of the water itself remained, and then changed, becoming colder, the air crisper, and when Harry opened his eyes, the bathroom was gone.
Occlumency was a complicated art, and one few people had truly mastered (he was almost positive, though he had never successfully entered the man's inner mind, that his father was one of them). It was the sort of thing that took years and years to completely develop, for a multitude of reasons. It wasn't just about protecting your mind, though that was the main focus, and the one most people never went beyond. Occlumency was also about managing your thoughts and emotions, discovering yourself, gaining a greater understanding of the feel and nature of your magic, and becoming more in tune with said magic, as well as the world around you.
Mahdi, actually, had given him something of a boost in his occlumency training. Connecting with Mitera (and here, back on Earth's soil, he could feel her again, thrumming like a heartbeat in the back of his mind, his connection to Tom dwarfed in comparison) was part of occlumency, something that took some wizards and witches decades to discover. It was, you could say, 'against the rules', for someone to directly guide another person into making that connection, rather than leaving them to find it on their own. What Mahdi had done to help him could have gotten him in a great deal of trouble, had anyone known.
Mostly because of the danger; Mitera was a huge consciousness, and it was easy for someone not expecting it, not in tune with their magic and her magic already, to be overcome; to lose themselves, who they are, within her. It could all but kill you. Mitera was a being who loved all her 'children', and who would jump, so to speak, at the chance to connect directly with one of them. She was... overeager, as Harry understood it, and could destroy those who connected to her in the sense that she absorbed them into her. It was like the light-magic version of a dementor's kiss; and had Mahdi been any less powerful in the mind arts, or Harry any less powerful in his magic, the same may well have become of Harry.
But that didn't happen, and while Harry had initially skipped some of the steps in-between learning to protect his mind, and connecting to Mitera, he'd since been working on completing those steps. One of which was the mindscape. In the beginning, his mind hadn't had one, as no one's really had one. Over time, it had begun to form, slowly. At first, when he meditated, there was nothing more than vague impressions of thought and memory, and shields. Then there had mostly been mist and light and flickering images. Later they'd grown more solid, and so had the castle-wall-like bubble surrounding them.
But now, after his time travelling, and in Asgard, meditating often and working at his shields, and in consciously forming his mindscape into something definite...
A vast black ocean spread out around him, waves rolling and crashing. Overhead was a vague impression of clouds and lightning, a part not yet completed. The water churned, tossing him around.
This was his greatest accomplishment in occlumency. It had taken him ages to figure it out. He'd spent so much time thinking of castle walls and steel barriers, barbed wire and shields of stone, before it had occurred to him to make something that wasn't so solid. But he'd done it, and now, here, was his occlumency shield, or, part of it, at least. It wasn't quite finished yet. He'd thought it was, but then he'd learned about gods and mutants and a flaw in his design had been made clear to him.
He let himself go under.
The mental representation of a person wasn't capable of anything their physical self wasn't. There were some exceptions when within one's own mindscape, because, to an extent, every person was a god in their own mind. When invading someone else's head, memories, and thoughts, you were bound by your limitations; and most people couldn't breathe underwater. It wasn't as simple as casting a bubble-head charm either, because magic of the usual sort, with spells and gestures and incantations, wasn't possible inside the mind. Any magic here had more to do with belief than spellwork.
Harry swam, the water too dark to see through, and that too, was another layer of protection. It was hard, when underwater, to keep your sense of direction without light. It was difficult to be sure which way was up and which was down, and if you got turned around and became lost-
Well, connecting with Mitera wasn't the only thing that was dangerous.
It was his mind, though, and he knew exactly where he was going. He swam straight down, and came back up above the water on the other side. There was no 'bottom', after all, to his ocean. Not every rule of logic applied to a place like this.
There was land there, and he swam to it, and surveyed what was there. Here, too, the sky was unfinished, but on this side it was meant to be clear and calm, as the waters here were also calm, lapping gently at sand made of gold. It wasn't so much an island, though it may as well have been one. The details of it only went so far before fading, like a picture with the edges all blurred out. Before him stood a castle made of white stone, similar to Bogdon, but with more turrets and towers, like Hogwarts. Some parts of it were missing, others faded like the edges of the land around them. It wasn't done yet, probably wouldn't be for many many years, but Harry was extremely proud of the progress here.
Within the great structure were Harry's memories and thoughts; his secrets, his knowledge, everything he was, woven into the stones themselves.
Including a representation of his magic.
Harry wandered lazily in across a white marble hall. There wasn't much color here. Details like that would come later. Finishing off the structure itself would come first, and then he could fix everything else up. For now, there were only a few detailed rooms, one of which was hidden. Like his old school, the walls of Harry's mental castle had secret passages and tunnels running through them, modelled after the Hogwarts' Keeper's tunnels. He slipped into them, past a blank, moveable wall, and down stairway after stairway, to a set of large, obsidian doors. He opened them.
On the other side, there were no walls; nothing but the large arch and the doors set into it to suggest the space beyond was a room at all. He stood on the edge of a clearing within a forest, and smiled at the trees. This space was mostly created in the likeness of the forbidden forest, but since the twins' transformation in Asgard he'd made the trees themselves larger, like the ones in that enormous forest. The trunks of the trees themselves were black, the leaves above his head in shades of red and orange and yellow, like in Autumn. He travelled into them, making his way deep inside himself, to his core.
It wasn't a common occasion that he went this deep while meditating. More days than not he went no further than outside the castle walls, because the bulk of his building was done there. But every month or so, he felt the need to come here. There was a sort of path, though not a visible one, that led from the doors to where he was going, and you could only go so far from that path before the forest became insubstantial. It was a strange thought to Harry, that though he could feel grass beneath his feet and a breeze through his hair, and smell pine, and though he occasionally had to shield his eyes as sunlight filtered down upon him through the treetops; none of this was real. It was all in his head, and that had certainly taken some getting used to, when this place first started to take on recognizable forms.
There was a break in the trees, and there it was.
He'd always thought that if magic had a properly visible form it would look like an intangible ball of light and warm; something with every color or no color at all, that maybe crackled with energy. And that may well have been the truth. But in a wizard or witch's mind, their magic typically took on a form that was recognizable to them, and Harry's was no different. Before him was his animagus form, only slightly different.
Where his black scales were randomly interspersed with the occasional silver, this mishipeshu was entirely black, only the space between its scales glowed green wherever its muscles shifted. Its horns were longer, curving back and twisting and splitting jaggedly, looking more like the horns of a stag than the ones he had, which he might have compared to a bull or a ram. The spikes, where his were a dull white, were bright white, like snow, and aside from its mane, it had no other fur. Its tail was longer too, twisting away from its body like a lazily dropped length of cord, and tipped with a fin that was hard and sharp like an axehead, rather than his own, which wasn't any different than a merman's fin, except perhaps for the thickness.
Both familiar and alien, and always, when he came here, sleeping; breathing slowly, its eyes closed.
Around it were what looked like roots or vines, coming up from the ground and curling around it, pinning parts of it (a paw, sections of its tail, one of its sides), to the ground. They glowed gently in different hues of color; each one representing a bond he had. Promises and oaths, debts he owed and debts owed to him. Physical markers of his love for others; his bonds with his family and friends and acquaintances.
He could feel them, survey them, without going much deeper than the surface of his mind. He didn't even need to meditate, just concentrate, and there they were, like intangible threads. But it was practically a compulsion to come and look them, and his magic, over from time to time; to check and see if anything had changed or was damaged even when he knew very well nothing was different.
He walked slowly, making a lap around the creature, and then stopping to rest a hand on its snout, feeling its breath tickle him. He hummed to himself, and sat down beside it, leaning against the great beast as he did so. He closed his eyes and let himself feel his magic (the energy like lightning and ocean waves), with the green glow between the Mishipeshu's scales growing brighter wherever he touched it.
It was his deepest, most secret joy, that he had magic. No matter that he may occasionally live like one, he couldn't imagine being a muggle. The very thought of having this taken from him-
Well, there were many possibilities for what his boggart might be, if it had changed, and he knew that was one of them.
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He spent most of the next morning just wandering around. He walked about London, exploring the muggle shops as he had never done before, and sat down to eat at an Indian restaurant for lunch. He didn't buy much: a few new clothes, mostly shirts, and a couple books on basic science concepts (he wanted to have a better idea of what Bruce was saying, the next time he got excited and started talking about his experiments). Still, it was a nice day, sunny with a breeze. He liked going where he pleased and the time alone wasn't bad either.
He missed travelling the world a little.
He went back to the Leaky for the afternoon, lazing about, studying the scroll and books Moody had given him, and writing down quite a few notes on things to try later. Evening came quickly, and it was time to go before he knew it. He had a note from Fudge, and he made his way to the man's home via Knight Bus. Stan didn't recognize him, thankfully, and Harry held tight to one of the railings as it went on its way. He could hardly remember the last time he'd made use of the Knight Bus.
There were many things he'd missed about the wizarding world, but that death trap wasn't one of them.
Dinner with Fudge and his wife that night (a portly woman who was very beautiful, with cherry blonde hair and dark eyes) was tiring, but went well enough. Harry was treated to the political experience of talking around something without actually speaking directly on a subject. It was interesting, and he managed to convey that he knew Fudge knew things he didn't want him to know, and wanted him to keep quiet, and Fudge managed to imply that he would be keeping his mouth shut as long as he had no reason to open it. He also mentioned a wine brand he was fond of shortly following that, and Harry got the hint easily enough to send an owl to the wizarding winery company once he got back to the Inn that evening. He checked out, feeling restless, and for the first time in a while, portkeyed to Bogdon.
He landed in the snow in the courtyard, and the change in temperature was jarring. He jerked a little, and laughed at himself, but waited a minute to get up from the snow. He liked the cold, and it had been some time since he'd been anywhere chilly. Asgard was steadily mild in temperature, and commonly sunny. It had rained a grand total of once, for a day and a half, in all the time he'd spent there. Thor had implied that was the norm year-round, with not much of a fall season, and only a small drop in temperature to suggest they had a winter and spring at all.
He got up, brushed himself off and cast a drying charm, and made his way inside to be immediately faced with his familiar, grumpy, house elf.
"Master has returned." Kreacher watched him silently, his tone professional. He had a slightly disgruntled expression on his face.
"Just for tonight... And tomorrow night too, maybe. I'm not sure yet." After his day with the Lupins, he wasn't sure if he would be staying in Grimmauld or leaving. It would depend how he felt. The elf nodded. "Would you make me some tea? I'm going to be down in my quarters."
"As Master wishes." The elf vanished with a crack of displaced air, and Harry made himself through the hallways and down into the basement. He was used to Bogdon being filled with people, like back at the end of the war when he'd given everyone shelter here. It was strange to see it empty.
He hadn't stuck around, but he'd given Blaise, Seamus, and Draco power over getting everyone home once things were safe, with instructions to let everyone stay there as long as they needed to while they were all getting back on their feet. As he understood it, most people had left immediately, but some had stuck around a little, a few as long as a month. The floo had been opened up during that time for people to go back and forth as needed, and then Blaise had closed the connection up for him afterwards for the sake of security, and had one of the elves take him out.
They hadn't even needed to ask about his desire to leave so suddenly, or tried to convince him to stay. Instead, they'd managed what was left to be dealt with, and kept what little they'd known about where he went to themselves.
Harry hadn't really thought about it much, beyond a few passing thoughts, but...
He missed the wizarding world, and the people in it that he cared about.
He'd gotten so caught up in his life... First in travelling and learning and training and trying to heal too, after the war; trying to get to a place where he didn't leap to his feet with a snarl on his face at every loud noise, or have nightmares nearly every time his eyes closed, or blame himself for every casualty... Then in the invasion and the fighting, his family, the Avengers, Loki, Sif, Asgard...
Somewhere along the line he'd gone and pushed his past aside. He hadn't forgotten, really, but he'd been compartmentalizing without realizing it, and had tried so hard to focus on the present that his past had slipped away a little. He'd forgotten how much he loved his friends, how important they were to him. He'd forgotten the things they'd done together, and the wonder he'd once had in places like Diagon, and Hogwarts, and the like.
He'd been trying so hard to forget everything connected to Voldemort and fighting, that he'd separated his life into 'before the final battle' and 'after', but he'd separated more than just the fighting, and it was only now that he was starting to realize the deeper consequences to that. He'd missed so much of his friend's lives, and so many chances to get to know them better. He'd missed Draco getting married and having a son, and the birth of Bill and Fleur's daughter. He'd missed Neville falling in love, Seamus adopting a child and becoming a single dad with a 'damn what the world thinks' attitude. He'd never known that Moody liked to knit, or that Blaise wasn't an only child, or that Dean liked to paint in what little free time he had. He'd missed a lot, and that hurt.
And the worst part was that, now, when he'd finally realized all that and figured out how badly he missed them and wanted to reconnect with the wizarding world and its' people, he was fully committed to his task with Loki. Now that he wanted it, he was in a position where he couldn't have it.
He had to spend most of his time in Asgard. He couldn't slip away all the time to visit like he wanted to, though he could maybe do it with some regularity. But the fact of the matter was, he was missing things, and was going to continue to miss things. It was painful, but not something he should dwell on, because he couldn't really do anything about any of it. Even so, the thoughts persisted, and he knew Muhammad would kick him in the head if he was there because he was sulking of all things.
Harry shook his head and sighed as he reached his room and opened the door. It hadn't changed any, he noted absently. All the furniture was still the same. His map was still on the wall, though the pinless-pins had fallen off, the sticking charms having worn off at some point. His desk even still had a few scattered papers with notes on them on it.
He cleared them off, and sat down. Kreacher popped in long enough to give him his tea, and left. Harry sipped at it, and then, with a moment of hesitation, he pulled up his left sleeve and looked at the bracer of his armor there. He pushed a bit of magic into it, and a pale, familiar wand popped out. He pulled up his right sleeve and repeated the action, and with it came his invisibility cloak. He folded it, carefully, and set it aside, next to but not touching the wand. Then he took the ring off his finger and set it between them. He stared at them all for several moments with narrowed eyes, gathering up knowledge of as many testing spells as he could.
He had never studied the... 'Deathly Hallows' before. With everything suddenly coming up in regards to the title he'd gained alongside their possession, he thought that maybe it was high time he did.
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Harry sighed, rubbing out his third cigarette in as many hours into a transfigured ashtray, and laid his head on his crossed arms, spinning the ring around like a coin on his desk (not that it spun very well, with the stone putting too much weight on one side). Three hours casting every manner of spells he knew (and even looking up a few, as the short stacks of opened books scattered around him could attest), and the only thing he had learned was that the wand had a thestral tail-hair core, the stone was made of onyx, and the invisibility cloak wasn't made from a demiguise's hide, though he couldn't figure out what it was made of.
The magic in each of them was on the border between neutral and dark, and had a cold sort of feeling to it, but anything beyond that was frustratingly elusive to him. He could sense the magic in them of course. It was powerful, but subtle too which was strange in and of itself. He sighed again, and stopped spinning the ring. It was starting to get late and he was hungry.
"Kreacher." He spoke lowly, a little crestfallen at his failure to discover anything new (though really, what had he expected to find that would teach him more about the situation he was in?), and didn't bother to lift his head up at the pop that sounded through the room. "Could you get me something to eat please? Some fish, I think, and maybe another cup of tea." He paused. "And a shot of firewhiskey too please." He wouldn't have any more than that (he'd been drinking too much lately, and he was starting to worry that he'd wind up like Tony, who Bruce had told him drank far more often than was appropriate or healthy), but maybe the warm feeling it gave his stomach would ease some of his regrowing stresses.
"Kreacher will do so."
"Thank you." He continued to stare at the objects on his desk, uncertain what to do now. The way these three things had entered his life and proceeded to thoroughly turn it upside-down was really sort of preposterous when he thought about it. He'd blamed Dumbledore before, but really, he didn't know if the deceased headmaster had been aware of what these objects were, beyond, perhaps, knowing that his wand was one of power. He might not have realized the significance of the ring, or, maybe he had, but had believed the crack down the center had broken it (so far as Harry could tell, however, the magic was as stable as in the other two objects), making it useless. As for the cloak, there was nothing to suggest the man realized it had been anything other than a regular invisibility cloak, and even if he had, it had belonged to James, and was Harry's as his Heir, so it wasn't as though the old wizard could have kept it from him indefinitely. And when it came to the wand, he'd left it in Severus' safe-keeping. He'd have had no way of knowing that it would end up in Harry's hands.
He picked said wand up, twirling it between his fingers a bit. This object wasn't even useful to him, he thought to himself. He couldn't use one because of the nature of his magic, and after having used the stone-inlaid band made for him by Mahdi, he had to admit that wands were, really, terribly inconvenient. And the cloak too, though much more useful for him, was also somewhat inconvenient. It was less a cloak and more a blanket, when it came down to shape. Sticking charms didn't work on it, so he couldn't keep it on him, which meant it could too easily be removed (just a simple summoning charm was enough), and all it took was a situation where the end lifted up or someone was underneath him for him to be seen. Besides that, it was just a tad bit unwieldy. Not every situation gave him time to take it out of wherever he stuck it and cover himself up, and it wasn't like his armor. He couldn't wear it all the time (and Muhammad told him he was paranoid to do such a thing), because there was no way to 'turn it off'.
Kreacher popped back in, and Harry sighed again, turning around to get his food from him with a smile and a muted thanks. He knocked back the firewhiskey at once, and drank a little of his tea to wash away the taste, and then turned around, putting the tray on his desk so he could eat, and he'd taken a few bites, thankful to the elves in his castle that were such good cooks, when he suddenly went very very still.
Three objects sat in a cleared space in the middle of the desk, just as they had before he'd gotten his food, but only one of them was the ring it had been before he'd turned around. Where the wand had been was a thin bangle, pale, almost white in color. It was yew wood, as the wand had been (or at least he thought it was), and perfectly circular, with dark stones set at even intervals all along it (he wasn't sure what they were made of, and wondered where the thestral tail-hair had gone); but it looked as though it would be a little too big on him. Where his cloak had been were two other circular rings, a dull bronze in color and larger in size than the ring with the stone, but too small to fit on his wrists. He stared at them for several minutes before it came to him where they were meant to go.
Oh. Well, that was interesting... It seemed he had finally learned something new about the Hallows.
They were capable, somehow or other, of responding to his needs, and altering themselves to suit him.
He took another bite of his food, thoughtful, before pushing it to the side. He put the ring back on, and grasped the bangle. He put it on his left hand, opposite the band from Mahdi. It was too large, like he'd thought, but even as the thought came it shrunk just small enough that he doubted he could pull it back over his hand without effort (and probably some lubrication too). He hummed in contemplation, but didn't cast any spells with it just yet. Then he picked up the last items, and after looking at them thoughtfully for a moment more (making sure he had judged the size correctly), he reached up and slid them onto the horns on his head. Like the wand-turned-bangle, they shrunk to fit securely. These he did send some magic into, and after a few minutes of experimentation, he figured out sending magic into one seemed to turn him invisible, and into the other did the opposite.
It was extremely useful.
He sighed, a small smile on his face. It wasn't what he'd been hoping to accomplish, but it was pretty cool nonetheless.
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I wanted to go over the evolution of occlumency a little bit, and have Harry finally look into the nature of the Hallows, like he should have done some time ago, so this chapter accomplished that. As far as the mindscape goes, I know it's an overused concept in fanfiction, but it's a concept I enjoy, mostly. It always bothers me when Harry seems to have one right from the start, since it seems like the sort of thing that would take time to develop and perfect, and I hope, considering that, that I gave it a little of a fresh spin here.
As for Moody, I've always had this headcanon that he knits. I have no idea where the thought came from, but it was formed when I was a child and first read about his character. 'This paranoid man sounds like someone who would knit', was the thought little 10/11 year-old me had, so I included it here. The small mentions about yarn on the floor and him trying to stab Harry with a knitting needle are contributions from a conversation I and my beta, Zerubel, had on the subject.
The only other thing I had to say about this chapter is that no, I didn't go over the dinner with Fudge in-depth. I tried, several times, to write it out but it just never came out how I intended, wound up too long, or felt out of place. In the end I got frustrated and decided to just mention it in passing instead of writing out the scene because I wanted to give you guys another update without taking forever on it.
Okay, moving on.
So. There's something I've been meaning to explain for a while. I initially planned to include the explanation in-fic at some point, and I might still do so, eventually, but I forgot about it for some time because, surprisingly, no one really pointed it out. Or rather, one person did, a little while ago, but they were rather rude about doing so, and I didn't feel the need to acknowledge the subject then because of that.
Still, rude or not, they pointed out that your normal straight male (and I will point out, of course, that in this fic Harry is better described as bisexual or pansexual), particularly one in their later teens and early twenties, generally isn't as touchy-feely as Harry is, except maybe with someone they're sleeping with. I didn't like the way they pointed it out, but, they were correct in that, given typical social norms, Harry's behavior (that is, his tendency to hug his brothers often, his willingness to cuddle and sleep in the same bed as his family members, and the fact that he has very little problem with one of his siblings touching him casually, or doing so himself, often) is a little out of the ordinary.
But there's a reason for it. I didn't just write his character that way because I'm a touchy-feely person myself, though I am; I wrote him that way with the following explanation in mind.
Harry is affected by his less-than-human instincts in a lot of ways, and many of them are much more subtle than pack-bonds or a desire to be in the water. His need for showing physical affection is one of those things.
Instinct-wise, I designed this version of Harry as being a sort of weird cross between a cat, snake, fish, and a dog. When I thought up this particular instinct, I did so with the various dogs and cat's I had in mind. Specifically the way that cats will come and rub up on you when they want your attention or affection, or hop on your lap, and the way the various dogs I've had will come and lick your hand and put their head on your leg, and the way both generally like to cuddle and be petted.
Harry craves physical touch. He's drawn to it, and if he didn't have relationships that allowed for it, it'd probably drive him up the wall. He needs to hug and touch and be near his family (and you'll notice he doesn't do these things much with his friends or those he isn't as close to) as a way of both showing them he cares about and loves them, and as a way for him to know those feelings are returned.
He doesn't realize this is unusual either. It hasn't even occurred to him that there's something off about this behaviour, or that from a social standpoint it would be taken as either strange or the sort of thing to be expected between two people in a less platonic relationship.
Between his early behavior with the Dursleys, and his later on living most of his teenagerhood constantly worrying about Voldemort trying to kill him, Harry is socially stunted. It's subtle, but he doesn't know everything about what is and isn't socially acceptable. His saving grace, in this case, is that he's very good at picking up on behavior, and can recognize if those around him think he's done something strange. So it might come up later on, but for right now, it's not something he's noticed or had pointed out to him, which is why he doesn't know it comes from the Mishipeshu (and from himself too, because I think after the childhood he had that Harry personally would be a little starved for physical affection).
Of course, this still begs the question of why no one else has called him out on his behavior.
The primary people he's displayed this aspect of his nature with are those he considers his closest family. Severus, Muhammad, Bruce, and the twins.
In Severus' case, I think he's spent so much of his life isolating himself from others, and also, given that he doesn't exactly have a normal childhood himself, that he's not entirely certain how close platonic relationships are supposed to be. He may not realize there's anything odd about the way Harry is, and, if he does, he probably doesn't feel a need to point it out. Harry is strange in a lot of ways, and I imagine that Severus is used to that enough not to really care one way or the other about it.
The twins, like Harry, wouldn't see anything strange. They have a very close relationship with each other that breaks a lot of social norms on its own. They are always together. They hug and touch often, and they sleep in the same bed (there are deeper, less appropriate aspects of their relationship that are implied in this fic, but I like for you all to come to your own conclusions based off what you're comfortable imagining, so I've never made it a stated fact). They were the ones who first pulled Harry into a bed with them. I don't think they thought it was unusual. Growing up with so many siblings, there were probably similar same-bed sleep-overs when they had a nightmare and would rather go to Bill or Charlie or Percy as opposed to their parents, or with Ron or Ginny when one of the later two were in the same situation. They're a little more aware of social norms than Harry is, but they don't think that behaviour is unusual between family members.
As for Muhammad and Bruce. Both are more than aware that it's odd. But they're also aware that Harry himself is odd, and they both, while being very different, have very go-with-the-flow type personalities. They just sort of take it as Harry-being-Harry, let him do it, and return the favour because they're in tune with him enough to recognize that it's important to him. Also, in Muhammad's case, he doesn't have all that many personal boundaries, so he really doesn't care much.
Now, if Harry were to become close enough to, say, Draco, or Blaise to display this sort of behaviour, it would definitely come up as being strange. In the blond's case, he would point out how weird it is, and would, I'd like to think, be courteous enough to explain the why to Harry when he realized he didn't know. I'm not sure if he would allow that behavior in private, or if it would make him uncomfortable. Blaise, of course, would take Harry's showing physical affection as him coming on to him, and would probably try to jump on that. If Harry denied him, he would realize that's not the nature of it, and would, like Draco, have to explain to Harry that that wasn't normal behaviour.
But thus far, it hasn't come up in-fic, so I thought I could finally explain it for anyone who might have been wondering. I'm done now, so I'll see you all next chapter. It'll either be next Saturday, or the one after. Not all of my updates will come weekly like this, but they WILL always be on Saturdays or Sundays, because that's easiest for me and allows for some consistency with updates.
Goodbye for now.
Sincerely,
Mr. Hate