Harry dragged his fingertips across the bark of the tree. He'd decided on a place to set up. Mindful of Carvahall's distance, he did not want to be so far away that he'd be seen as unapproachable. Nor did he want to slap down a great big castle and find out only later that the location was all wrong.

He had a vague sense that he wanted to put it over the river, so he spent the day walking upstream along the bank, looking for a second natural feature that would clinch it for him. He found it in the form of the mouth of a cave, set into the base of an especially prominent, tree-covered mountain.

It was close. Almost perfect. Swap the mountain for craggy highlands covered in grass, and the river for the Black Lake, and it would be just like home. Harry conjured a paper and pencil and began mapping the area. He wondered how the Marauders had done it. Had one of them painstakingly drawn every wiggly line in the castle, or was there a spell that did it all in an instant? If there was a ward for unplottability, there had to be plotting charms.

Harry dredged up his memories of charms with Professor Flitwick. He felt sure they had had an assignment to use a charm to map gingerbread houses during christmas time in third year. How did it go again? He flicked his wand at the bit of paper. "Cartometheus!"

The map filled in, like ink dropped into grooves in the paper. Just like the Marauder's Map. The river was a wending strip that threaded the low point between the spiky mountain Harry liked and a more flat-topped one to the east.

He wandered up to the spiky mountain and climbed a ways up the sloping base, then found a tall, sturdy tree and shimmied up the branches. From his vantage, Harry let his imagination propose ideas to him. How would it look, if there was a castle down there? Where would the walls run from, how would he make use of the grounds inside the inner walls, how would he mark out the outer grounds? Where would the castle itself go? He had heard enough from Professor Binns to have some idea what a good castle needed.

Perhaps the Goblins would have had a harder time overrunning Langwych Roost if the castle had not been built next to a hill that granted their siege machines free high ground over the defenders. It was best to build on a rock shelf so attackers couldn't tunnel beneath the walls or keep. Ideally, in the midst of as big a clearing as he could handle, so he could see attackers as they approached from far away. Better still, he'd put the castle such that it was backed against an unsiegeable feature like a cliff over water.

Failing that, backing one side into the mountain and rendering the opposite side somehow unclimbable seemed the best option. He sketched on the inked map for a while, scribbling and erasing plans, having ideas and rejecting them, until he'd produced a somewhat workable schematic. He set out making it a reality.

Harry found a clearing in the middle of the planned grounds to work from. He tested out the spells he had in mind for landscaping there first, on a smaller scale as he worked to turn the clearing into a bit of level ground with an even carpet of grass. He put up a table and bench along with the map, then copied the map to carry with him as he worked.

The first stage was to clear out stuff that was in the way. Harry was very conscious of preserving what he could, and cutting out only what he had to directly build over. He'd plotted out a rather large area, enough space to put in a patch of woods if the castle proper didn't grow so big it needed the space.

Harry was finally putting Herbology classes to use. The uprooting charm worked just as well for trees as plants, provided he pushed enough power into it. He used cutting charms to split the root systems from the logs, then employed another unorthodox use of a culinary charm he'd seen Mrs. Weasley use – the husking charm – to rip off all the branches.

Denuding the underbrush took a bit longer. He was tempted to just burn off all the shrubbery and weeds he uprooted, but the frugal way Carvahall lived gave him pause. Until he was sure he couldn't use them, it didn't hurt to just pile them up in the clearing.

It was the first time Harry had ever really done something with magic, aside from fighting. Most projects at Hogwarts were guided. The professors gave ingredients, incantations, expectations, and graded the cookie-cutter results their students gave them. Relying on his own knowledge to solve whatever unexpected problems arose was the first time Harry had cause to truly test the flexibility of magic. It was intuitive in a way he had come to expect, but only now to appreciate.

Spells read his intentions, twisted themselves to better fit his goals. When confronted with a problem like rendering a tree into lumber, Harry lacked the specialized spells to do the task. Yet a creative reinterpretation of shucking corn husks from corn cobs let the spell rip branches and bark from trees just as easily.

Was it the Elder Wand doing that? Or was it just the nature of magic, unappreciated until finally, Harry had cause to stretch and squeeze at the limits he had come to expect of it?

By afternoon, Harry had only just finished clearing the broad, curving band of grass where the main wall to the grounds would stand. It started and ended on opposite sides of the mountain. From there, he spent the next two days just clearing out the encircled area. It got to the point that diffindo and the husking spell were ironed into his brain. He barely needed to think the incantations for the spells to spring forth. He moved outwards from the clearing, carving out tree roots and backfilling them with dirt, ripping up shrubbery and adding it to the enormous brush pile.

The shrub pile became a shrub mountain, and the grounds began to take shape. It started to look familiar to Harry. He could let his eyes unfocus (as much as his blurry vision could manage to get worse) and the emptying field almost looked like the yard with the fountain and benches out front.

When the grounds were two-thirds cleared and a smaller section of woods remained well away from the mountain, Harry called it there. He had amassed a huge pile of massive logs, stacked into pyramids by what had once been the clearing, and was now a spot of grass like any other. The deforested field was pockmarked with dirt scars where trees had been uprooted. Harry chose to be ambitious and tried a rather large piece of magic.

Envisioning the entire field, Harry flicked the Elder Wand. "Herbivicus." He focused on what he wanted, what the magic ought to do. With that single spell, the grass carpet filled itself in. A single even covering of green bloomed over the whole field. The root holes still left divots, but Harry could fill those later.

He glanced down at the wand in his hand. Was it the power of the Hallow, or had he simply never been challenged like this?

When he grew hungry, Harry conjured a sled and levitated a stack of logs on top. He magicked it down the steep, wooded descent from the Spine and back into Palancar Valley. Why didn't he shrink them and apparate down? Harry told himself it wasn't quite time yet. He'd drop some hints, feel the villagers out before dropping the bomb on them.

He was spotted well outside Carvahall, by a boy headed towards him already. The guy looked fifteen or sixteen, a pair of tubes and a backpack slung over his shoulder. The fletched backs of a bundle of arrows stuck out from one tube.

"Hey," the kid hailed, raising a hand. Harry waved back. "Are you Harry Evans?"

"Yeah. Who're you?"

"Eragon," the boy answered. "I was just about to go hunting in the Spine." He studied Harry's face for a reaction.

"Weird, I was just building myself a home there." Eragon raised a brow. Harry gestured to the sled. "I'm hoping to sell this lumber in Carvahall for some food. Know who I should ask?"

Eragon thought for a moment. "Fisk is the carpenter, so he always needs it, but Ansil is hoping to build a new barn, so he might buy 'em all off you, especially if you'll take produce for payment."

Harry asked him for directions. "Ansil's farm is the biggest of the close farms around the village, that way-" Eragon pointed with his arm. "If he doesn't want them, Fisk lives in the only other two-storey house in the village. He's got a workshop out back. You'll be able to find it."

The boy's gaze ran over the lumber. "That's a lot of wood. Hey, can you tell me where you're building your home up there? It would be nice to see it."

Letting his breath between his teeth, Harry rubbed his hair. It would be immediately obvious upon seeing the clearing that the work of teams of muggles had been done in a day. Nonetheless, Harry gave him general directions. He'd neither confirm nor deny he used magic. Let Eragon puzzle over it.

He tugged the sled onwards. Eragon was right, Ansil's farm was impossible to miss. It started hardly three hundred yards from the edge of Carvahall proper, and extended almost up to the border of the river that streamed from the falls as it flowed south.

Ansil was a greying man with little nicks all up both his arms, a bit potbellied but still jacked, probably from a lifetime of being a farmer. He was not part of a single family that worked the fields, but the head of a group of fifteen farmhands he employed who otherwise lived in Carvahall. Ansil took the logs for a handful of seed for each of his staple crops and a bag of assorted produce, mostly potatoes. Aware that he was being shortchanged, Harry left Carvahall again before anyone could corner him and ask questions.

He dragged the sled out only as far as a thin copse of trees before shrinking the sled, throwing the bags over his shoulder, and apparating back up to the clearing. He wondered how he'd excuse that if Eragon managed to find him. 'Oh I doubled back the instant you left and sprinted back up here.'

Harry cooked a potato with incendio. It was a failed experiment. One side was charred black, the other was just as tough as a raw spud straight from the dirt. He sliced up some of the branches from the stack and hit them with a drying charm to turn them into firewood. Then he conjured a grill and stuffed the branches inside. This yielded much more edible results.

The produce was abnormally small. He was used to potatoes two fists in size. The ones he got were half that at best, and ranged down to two or three thumbs large.

Likewise, Harry was sure he'd seen wheat fields in the British countryside that looked very different from the bundle of wheat he got. It felt like all stalk, with a tiny bit of grain at the tip.

Was Carvahall falling on hard times, or had muggles managed to improve plants themselves?

Harry was tempted to just start conjuring like crazy, but the thought of Eragon stumbling across him in the act stopped him. It would be much more fun to keep messing with him. This time, let him find an empty clearing. Next time, Harry would hurry to make sure the walls were completely finished. Let him scratch his head over how.

Instead, he put up a hut. It was easy to rein in the Elder Wand's overachieving instincts; tims time, he had a perfect image in his mind. He flicked his wand, smiling at the fond memory. The stone hut and wooden door were ingrained in his memory. Harry pushed open the front door. His vision was clear enough to even include furniture in the first cast. There was the giant-sized bed, the table with three normal-sized chairs and one big one. An empty stone hearth held up a blackened kettle. Harry wondered how Norberta was doing.

"Brilliant," he murmured to himself, throwing his back into a perfect copy of Hagrid's bed.

When Eragon did come around, Harry threw his cloak over his head and ran out the back. He followed a few paces behind Eragon, watching the guy examine the site.

"How long has he been here for?" Eragon muttered to himself, looking over the enormous field, pocked with root holes. He walked up to the mountain of shrubs, touching one with his hand. "They're all still fresh."

Eragon spotted the picnic table in the middle of the clearing and trotted over. He glanced down. Harry berated himself for leaving the drawings and maps out.

"Ambitious," Eragon mused. "Harry?" he called. Harry hosted an intense mental debate for a second before concluding that he had no way to sell just happening to be in earshot.

Eragon moved on, jogging to the edge of the treeline and heading further into the Spine.

Once he was gone, Harry tugged the cloak off and sat down. Why was telling the truth so damn hard all of a sudden?

Harry cracked his knuckles and twirled the Elder Wand between his fingers. It was time to really cut loose, push his limits and find out just what he and the Hallow were capable of together.

He drew up memories of the Hogwarts walls. They were fifteen feet or so tall, about eight feet thick, and spanned the length of the castle grounds. He recalled the neatly-fit blocks of stone that formed the backbone of Hogwarts architecture. He didn't have enough grounding in geology to know the names, but he had some guesses. Professor Binns liked to drone on about limestone versus granite versus sandstone, and which of the three Goblins favored versus wizards, and how their choices affected the rebellions.

Harry could not recall the details. Remembering something Binns had said was hard enough in the best of times; his soporific voice created a veil of uncertainty in his memory. Something as truly dull and inconsequential as stone choice would have flown in one ear and out the other.

He decided that he did not need to know the name of the stone to make it. His vision was clear enough. He hoped. He had no incantation for his purpose; if McGonagall ever taught the castle-conjuring spell, he had missed that class. Harry flicked the Elder Wand, intending to cast on will alone, when a word popped into his mind.

"Omnifors."

The ground rumbled. Like the gateway to Diagon Alley ran in reverse, giant blocks of dark stone wobbled into existence, stacking themselves like a thousand invisible hands playing Lego in sequence. He sucked in a breath and popped his ears against the loud rumbling.

Bricks twirled and danced, forming the masonry curtain of his imagination in reality. Harry got a feeling from the magic itself, a gut instinct, that the spell wasn't one and done. He experimented with modifying it on the fly. As he walked north, following the curved stretch of cleared land, he flicked the Elder Wand. A guard tower, please.

Thrumming in hand, the spell obliged. The blocks grew bigger, pounding into the earth as the spell excavated dirt for the masonry foundations. The Elder Wand grew warm in his hand, surging with power. Harry's vague idea for a battlement came out embellished with the wand's personal flair.

Celtic knots engraved themselves into the smooth vertical surfaces of the battlement. A carved alcove and pedestal recessed on the interior surface, unoccupied yet waiting. Harry could almost see the suit of armor standing there, shuffling in his place, chatting with its buddy, or drumming its fingers boredly on the hilt of its weapon.

A laugh of wonder burst from Harry's throat. How incredible was it, that he had only to fantasize about what might be, and his magic would make it a reality? Harry was surprised to note that, for the first time in a while, he was having fun.

He came across the river at last, thickening up the wall for the main front-facing stretch. He fed the progressive spell ideas. A great archway sprang up over the gushing flow of water. He flicked his wand again, and a wrought iron lattice gate filled the arch. The topmost segment grew taller to fit the gate in its upward position, a pair of gatehouses popping out of the stone crenellations on either side.

A boathouse, Harry commanded. A wooden construction formed at the outer embankment, fashioned from sturdy timber and stone foundations. A pair of submerged gates led inside, along with a stone arch doorway on the far side. If Durmstrang could build an enormous ship that was capable of submerging in one place and resurfacing in another, and if Arthur Weasley could make a car fly, Harry was sure he could make a riverboat that could do the same.

He added a bridge spanning the river and linked the boathouse to it with a cobbled path. Lampposts sprouted from the side of the path. A thought occurred to him that got him excited.

If there wasn't a lake now, who said there couldn't be in the future?

Harry flicked his wand at the thickening segment of wall near the river gate. A doorway sprouted from the ground. He pushed it open, carving out a room within. Another flick and stairs sprouted from the wall leading first to a balcony, then in a second flight to the top of the wall.

He climbed out onto the flagstones and surveyed the grounds. There was plenty of room for it, he decided. On the eastern edge of the grounds, perhaps spanning up to a couple dozen yards from the far wall. If he cut a great big depression into the ground, ripped out the soil and shaped the lakebed with transfigured rubble, he could half dam the river and let it collect until the lake was full. If he added a sluice gate a few dozen yards upstream, he might control the flow of the river so that Carvahall was not deprived of water while the lake was filling. And he could always help it along with the aguamenti charm.

Harry crossed the river gate, conjuring as he walked across the walls. Steps grew into the stone arch, mounting the high point of the gate and then descending again on the other side. It was easier to use omnifors from on top of the walls. He could see further ahead. Harry began to jog over the flagstones. He'd go back after the wall was finished to add gates.

Once he reached the other side of the mountain, Harry left the wall with one last guard tower. It wasn't ran right up to the slope; he was not sure how to button everything up. Instead, he backtracked to the stretch of wall west of the river gate and spent some time puttering with transfiguration. He eventually decided he was happy with something similar to Hogwarts's grand arch and portcullis.

The bits Harry was unhappy with, he resolved to go back and fix later. And there were many such places. Spots where the wall ran through a ditch or hill and looked odd for it, angles and bits of geometry that seemed wrong, and lapses in focus that deviated from the theme he was going for, he'd go back and iron out later.

Returning to the picnic table, Harry sat back and observed the enormous walled-in field he had wrought. He'd still have to fill in the root holes and redo the grass layer. The pair of gates looked a bit odd and could use some work. And his idea for a lake would not leave him alone. But for today, he had done enough.

He cooked himself a big dinner with the produce he'd gotten from Ansil. Months on the run had taught him how to throw together a quick meal with nothing but a wand and some ingredients.

As he dined, Harry wondered if this had been what the Founders felt like when they built Hogwarts.

Had the four of them simply found each other, stumbled across a promising bit of land, and decided to make real a common vision? Harry had to admit, he had expected building such a huge wall to be a challenging, long, and laborious affair. How much of it was the Elder Wand, and how much was him, he was unsure. But he had a hunch that it was a bit of both.

In magic, knowledge was power. And as a function of teaching and learning, knowledge increased over time. Each successive generation discovered new things with their time and handed those discoveries over to the next, so they could start further ahead and pursue the next mysteries. Did it not then follow, that a thousand years ago everyone was worse at magic?

He didn't think he was at the level of the Founders or anything, but perhaps…perhaps that difference in skill wasn't as large as people thought.

Harry flicked his wand. "Herbivicus!"

A wall of potato knocked him off his feet, exploding from the planter box. He got to his feet spitting out dirt. "What in Merlin's wrinkled old-"

The planter box was done for. A giant potato had warped the cast iron sides apart like so much wire, its patina fleurs-de-lis smushed into the grass. It stood as tall as a refrigerator, its root system bulging from beneath the box.

Working with magic outside of its intended context often yielded bizarre results. Harry had labored to create indoor plumbing using only the vanishing and water-conjuring charms, yet it had taken twice as long to stop the whole system from randomly flooding. The fix was often simple; clarifying his intent, specifying with exact instructions usually achieved exact results.

Grumbling, Harry cleared out the box, levitating the enormous potato off the planter. "Reparo."

He gouged out a potato eye with his conjured knife and stuck it back into the dirt. He tried again. "Herbivicus."

His second attempt yielded better results. Green shoots sprouted from the soil. He tugged them up from the dirt. One normal potato emerged.

Harry gave the spud a gimlet look. Actually planting the seeds would take an irritatingly long time. He was keenly aware of how quickly chores could stack up on the shoulders of the unwary. One or two of Petunia's tasks were easy enough to finish, but one of her favorite ways to 'keep him out of trouble' was by dumping a whole list of chores on him and expecting that to take all of his time.

If he intended to be a one-man wizard who did everything himself, he could not afford to let little tasks like replanting take up his time. Herbology was not big on plant management spells. Harry knew they existed; Mrs. Weasley had used a few in his presence, yet Professor Sprout was unconcerned with mundane plants. Most spells of convenience did not work on the magical breeds of plants.

Still, there had to be a better way. Harry mulled over the task at hand. First he had to remove the eyes from the potato. A cutting charm would require manual input, and scale up with the volume of food he wanted to produce. Puncturing charms might get rid of the eyes, but he needed them to replant. His second instinct was the reductor curse. It 'reduced' targets to rubble. Could it not reduce potatoes into their constituent parts? Potato and eye.

But he could not get it to work. After several sacrificed potatoes reduced to mush, and one which had been neatly cubed but unsorted, Harry took a different approach.

Could the idea of 'extracting' be repurposed to literally extract the eyes? The charm's intended purpose was to aid in potion brewing (a tip courtesy of the Half Blood Prince) and worked to dessicate its target to juice it as thoroughly as possible. A younger Snape had noted that it also worked to extract a solute from a solution, which if caught early enough, could reverse some minor brewing errors.

Harry jabbed his wand at the newest starchy test subject. "Evello."

The chunks were ripped out, half tearing the potato apart. Harry gave a grin of triumph. The spell would normally just juice the potato. This was proof of concept. It only took him three more potatoes to refine his intent to properly cut out the eyes.

In this manner of pseudo spell creation, Harry managed to work Tonks's pack spell to plant the eyes in a grid pattern within the planter box.

He refined the pair of spells until he was able to replant all the produce he'd gotten without ever touching a plant. Evello also served to extract grown plants from the soil.

Harry left the planter boxes and put dinner out of his mind. Now that he had a reliable food source, he could move on. The planters had taken over the spot where a pumpkin patch might have gone near the Groundskeeper's hut.

Eragon hiked back through the game trails. It wasn't the path he usually took, and he'd probably lose a day on the way back to Carvahall, but he hoped to find that Harry guy again and ask him how long he'd been clearing space for. It was a huge undertaking for a single dwelling. Eragon couldn't think of anything large enough to demand such a massive clearing. Not even castles were so large.

He had to wonder if Harry was actually alone, or if he worked with others to deforest his spot in the Spine. Eragon knew well how much effort it was to keep just a farm plot clear of weeds. At a certain point, Harry would probably have to spend all his time beating back nature instead of clearing more space.

Slung over his shoulder, his game bag had three rabbits in it. He had seen a herd of deer and contemplated taking one, but he was already carrying two rabbits by then, and dragging a big kill like that all the way down the mountain would have been exhausting. The meat would have gone bad before he got back.

He was confused to find a massive stone wall in his path. Constructed from dark flagstones fitted perfectly, each one cut to a smooth block, it stood some fifteen feet high. Eragon had never seen the wall before. He had been sure he was in the right place, too. Was this not where he'd departed from five days back?

But it was impossible for the wall to have been constructed since then, even with a team of a thousand. It had to have been there before. Eragon knew the Spine well, but not that well. Not well enough to be certain he hadn't gotten turned around. He knew the Anora River and Igualda Falls well enough, but perhaps he wasn't where he thought he was, and the river was further away.

Eragon searched for a way past the wall. It curved out of sight, but the treeline was close to the wall and blocked his sight of the end. It couldn't be far, though. Not if he had managed to never stumble across it in all of his time exploring the mountains.

Except, as he walked along, Eragon grew more and more certain that something very unusual had happened. He began to pass landmarks that he knew put him in the right place. And the wall just kept going. What he had thought to be an impossible keep of some sort, hidden in the Spine, was now seeming to be a ludicrously-sized city wall that had popped up overnight.

His sneaking suspicion was confirmed when an enormous gate came into view. His ears were able to pick the Anora out from the rustling trees.

The gate was open. Shrugging, Eragon headed inside.

Sure enough, the same field and hut that he had seen just days ago greeted him. Except that field had not had walls like these.

He headed over the grass to the hut. If Harry was indeed responsible for the walls, why had he built something so massive for a single person? A castle that size, he couldn't hope to defend by himself if it was attacked. The hut looked out of place. There was nothing else in the giant field except the foothills of the knife-like mountain to the north. It was as if the hut was what was being protected by the walls in the most overly-enthusiastic castle defense the world had ever seen.

There was more to the building than Eragon remembered. A garden of boxes spread out in front of the house, already in full bloom with many of the plants he knew Ansil's farm to grow. The chimney was emitting smoke and the sound of pots and pans clinking came from inside.

He knocked.

"Eragon," Harry greeted, pulling the door open. He was wearing different clothes to the ones he'd had on before. His strange cotton jerkin was dyed bright red with a gold image on the front, that of a snarling lion like might be on a crest of some lord.

Eragon opened his mouth before realizing he did not know exactly what to say. "Did you see the walls?" he came up with lamely.

The stranger snickered. "Bit hard to miss, aren't they?"

Eragon nodded. He could feel his cheeks warming. "They weren't here when I came through a few days ago."

Harry bobbed his head. "True."

He grasped for words. "That was very quick," Eragon said. "Did you do it all by yourself, or is there a whole army of stonemasons somewhere in the Spine?"

"All me," Harry grinned.

"You must be very fast." Eragon got the feeling he was being laughed at. It was a very odd feeling.

"Your mum's never complained." Harry cackled.

Eragon felt a flush of anger course through him. "My mother died when I was born," he said hotly. Not entirely true, she had disappeared back to wherever she had come from, but she had been terribly sick when she left, and no one expected her to still be alive.

"Sorry," Harry apologized. "It was just too perfect."

He relaxed. "Fine." Eragon glanced behind him at the walls. They were as solid and unmoving as stone. "...How?"

"Well, there's plenty of stone around here, I can use a hammer and chisel-" Eragon knew he was being deliberately obtuse. When something could not be explained any other way – and there was no evidence of a massive team of workers, no path or trail or lodging, no tools or open quarry – then there could only be one explanation.

"Are you a magician?" Eragon asked bluntly.

Harry frowned. "I wouldn't call myself that. And no one's ever called me that, either."

"Then how did you do it?" Eragon asked exasperatedly. "No man's hands can build something like that alone, in less than a week no less."

A mischievous grin crept back onto Harry's face. "Why are you so sure? Have you ever met a stonemason?"

"Yes," Eragon said flatly. "Anders takes many times as long to do a single foundation for a small house."

Harry turned his head a bit away. "Well Andrers might just suck."

"Suck?" Eragon had never heard the term used, as Harry obviously had, to insult someone. A moment of reflection and Eragon was able to pick out the profane implications.

"Be terrible." Harry stepped over the threshold. Eragon was able to see inside before the door fell shut. There was a cauldron stewing over the hearth. On the counter, Harry was in the midst of preparing dinner. A great big bed with a stuffed mattress, giant pillows, and layers of quilts and bedding was stuffed in a corner. A bed fit for a king, sitting in the humble hut. Although if the walls had not existed last week, perhaps Harry was not done building, and the rest of his domicile would better reflect the scale of the walls.

"Not that I'm not happy to see you, but did you have a reason for coming back?"

"Wanted to see wuz'goinon with the walls," Eragon mumbled. Harry headed down to the planters and uprooted a potato that would have won prizes and envious gazes. He knocked the dirt off the tuber and ripped off the stem, chucking it into a bin. Eragon noted that the planter boxes were made from elaborate wrought iron, the sort of thing Horst would work on for weeks to give to his wife.

Harry gestured broadly at the walls. "I thought I'd make myself a nice home."

"Very nice." Eragon tried to tamp down the laughter in his throat. "Are you sure it wasn't magic?"

Harry shrugged. "What an outrageous claim. How unlikely would that be?"

Eragon fought a smile. "Very. Only, it seems like a very large wall for a rather small house."

Harry glanced over his shoulder at the hut. Eragon hoped he wasn't offended. "Maybe. Who says it's finished?"

Nodding, Eragon hefted his bag over his shoulder. "How long from now should I come back to see what your incredibly fast craftsmanship has wrought next?"

Harry tapped his chin with a thin stick of ornate white wood. Eragon had not noticed him holding it, nor seen where it came from. "Hm. I'd give it a week or two. Depends on how impressed you want to be."

"I'll come back in two weeks," Eragon promised. "The world will sing legends of your speedy bricklaying."

A sudden seriousness fell over Harry that had not been there for their entire conversation. "Hey, if, er, the world – or at least the village – did encounter a strange magician, what would they do? Should the magician expect a parade or fire and pitchforks?"

Eragon rocked back on his heels. "Neither, I think." Some people were more superstitious, some were more open-minded. He did not like Harry's chances with, say, Quimby, but Gertrude probably wouldn't bat an eye.

"That's good I guess," Harry said.

Eragon looked back up at the open portcullis in the massive gate. It was wide enough for four horse carts to pass abreast. "You intend to leave the gate open?"

Harry nodded.

"Then why build the walls?"

The man (magician?)'s eyes unfocused. "They go with a certain aesthetic."

AN: I got a comment asking a question that I want to head off now, so my readers don't spend the entire story waiting for something I have no intention of doing.

There will be no fourth egg, no extra dragon for Harry. He will not become a Rider.

I know that will disappoint some of you, but in the last fic I got accused of having Harry steal Eragon's thunder. If Harry does become a Rider, Eragon has nothing to do in this fic that Harry couldn't/wouldn't do better.

I also dislike magically inserting another dragon egg when the existence of only three is so critical to the plot of the series. If Galbatorix thinks there are only three eggs and is so sure that he has given up searching, you can bet that the instant he discovers the existence of a fourth, he would scour Alagaesia for more. It causes too many problems and really sees Harry shoehorning into Eragon's role in the story.

No shade on authors who do that, I'm just allergic to AU.