Corporealizing the incorporeal proved a frustrating topic to research. On the one hand, it theoretically shouldn’t be any more difficult to master than other magical disciplines. On the other hand, spells like that had fallen out of use so very long ago, and rituals even further back, that precise methods weren’t written down anywhere anymore. Harry was already way ahead of most people thanks to the ghost-affecting spells he’d been using since the first Walk.

  Even those spells should have been much harder and dangerous, the only reason they weren’t was Magic – it did the legwork for them as it did for every other mystical discipline now. Since no one knew for sure if Magic even reached past low orbit, it was almost a guarantee that it wouldn’t be there for Harry if he ever wound up in that diner again, in a different reality. Or timeline, if there even was a distinction.

  No, if they wanted to get anywhere, they had to find out how their antideluvian ancestors did it. Calling it a ‘slog’ was not inaccurate, since they’d been left with just old fairy tales and half-recorded poems and inscriptions to extrapolate from.

  As his research with Nicolas became a long-term affair, Harry thought of Peeves more than once. The poltergeist was such a menace that more than one Hogwarts professor or headmaster should have gotten fed up with him over the centuries. Since they hadn’t eliminated him, that meant they couldn’t.

  Nicolas still contacted Dumbledore with a request to find whatever books he could on the subject, but even this didn’t turn out anything new.

  Then, too, was the issue of the Astral Diner, and its obviously confected and transient nature. It was a sort of conjuration, but closer to an illusion than solid. Or maybe the other way around and it was a shared delusion instead. In either case, it was completely made up of the power of those entities. Parts of their own energy bodies, maybe, or at least shaped and projected by them.

  In short, Harry couldn’t expect to draw a ritual circle in make-believe chalk and expect the floor to cooperate with him. Same for anyone else that came with him. Somehow. Or went there without him, if it was at all possible.

  Harry was too ashamed to admit it, but he shied away from the thought of confronting those people again. Or doing anything to make them come after him. A big part of him wanted to just… let it all go. Set aside all the divination and whatever else, to live a normal life. Whatever passed for normal for him. The Goa’uld didn’t return during any of his other lives as Harry Potter.

  It wasn’t like being a diviner was even Harry’s idea, he was just doing it because he thought he’d finally found something he could do well. At least, something that wasn’t just an inferior copy of what his parents were good at.

  What am I even thinking? Harry felt suddenly angry at himself. Following in my mom and dad’s footsteps, why would that be bad?

  His first thought was leftover stuff from living with the Dursleys, they always made his mum and dad sound like losers he should be ashamed of. But he was over that, wasn’t he?

  Harry was not too ashamed – barely – to admit to this confusion to Nicolas and Pernelle at dinner one night.

  “Perhaps resentment over inherited expectations?” Perenelle wondered. “The idea that teenagers always rebel is a modern lie, but still. Not a few people rebelled throughout history against expectations imposed upon them, even heirs.”

  “I don’t think that’s it,” Harry said dubiously. “It’s not like the teachers at Hogwarts ever pressured me to be more like my parents or anything, or made me feel ashamed when I wasn’t as good as them in class. Except Snape, kind of, he just hated me for being James’ son.”

  “And possibly for not being his own son,” Nicolas mused. “If he fancied your mother, it stands to reason he’d resent her children not being his.”

  Harry pictured himself with Snape’s hooked nose and oily hair and grimaced in disgust. He’d never be rid of that image now. He wondered if maybe his life wouldn’t be better if he had aphantasia.

  Unfortunately, the research didn’t advance much after that point. The one thing they hadn’t done was seek access to the vaults of the Department of Mysteries, but Harry doubted even they could help without miraculously being in possession of a pre-flood collection of ritual instruction materials. Even then, they’d be in an impossible situation – they needed to recreate ancient spiritual magic, possibly necromancy, but Magic would either substitute or syphon off whatever power they collected in whatever ritual they put together. This meant they couldn’t even test if they had a solution that would work if Magic didn’t exist.

  In any case, whatever they came up with would have to be completely fuelled by the caster’s personal spiritual power, which Magic’s very existence here meant Harry was never going to be able to build up anywhere near the necessary point.

  Charlie made assenting noises when they brought up the idea of pushing Magic itself away from an area – but not the power – but he was still busy with his model.

  “Perhaps we can use Gryffindor’s sword as a battery,” Nicolas wondered one day, because even he was reduced to just speculation. “But changing one spell energy type to another has its own problems.”

  “What do you think, Godric?” Harry spun the sword-pen around his fingers. “You think you have enough energy?”

  ‘Not for two things at once,’ said the sword spirit. ‘I do have an upper capacity, and it took much of it just to harm that one careless man. Avada Kedavra works by fatally wounding the spirit, but it doesn’t destroy it outright despite what the incantation means. Clearly, those people won’t die from one glancing hit. In either case, warding them away and powering some manner of ritual at the same time is beyond me, especially such a powerful one.’

  “Well, we’ve done all we can for now,” Nicolas finally decided after Harry relayed all that. “We will have to live and see what other opportunities emerge.”

  Harry both resented and envied his pragmatism, but he really wished they’d gotten somewhere. He didn’t want to think he’d have to rely on just the spells from his mum’s ghost, seeing as they were just to trap and restrict. Only temporarily too. If they’ll even work on whatever Ascended were.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  He especially didn’t want to think what it could mean that he just ‘happened’ to learn about the Cauldron of Nodens just before all this happened, but the questions came on their own anyway.

  Was it just chance, or some grander design? Was that bartender man lying, or was Harry’s life really at the whim of some unseen ‘master’? Did that ‘master’ mean for Harry to use it? On what? Who? Did the unseen master mean for Harry to become the sort of person who’d sacrifice other people to build up his own personal power? Harry already resented that he even had to think about such a thing, did anyone expect him to go through with something like that?

  Why wouldn’t they? Harry thought morosely. I already know at least one person I wouldn’t mind using it on.

  Voldemort. He deserved that and worse, didn’t he? He’d already done worse to himself, even. Since Tom was even undead, having his spirit drained so his soul could pass on would be a mercy, wouldn’t it? For him, and especially everyone else who would be better off with him gone.

  If Harry was right about how the cauldron – the goblet worked, he should get even more than just a base boost to spiritual power. Voldemort had almost certainly done a bunch of rituals too, and Harry was… fairly sure they’d all come back when he was revived in that first life in the graveyard. He always dominated Harry in speed, strength and reaction time, and was better than Dumbledore when the Headmaster still had the Elder Wand. So, some physical enhancements were probably spirit-deep too, at least.

  Harry didn’t share any of this with Nicolas. He didn’t want to know what he’d say. How he’d even look at Harry for what was going through his head right now.

  He was just 14.

  Harry Potter was just 14 years old and he was already premeditating murder.

  Even Voldemort hadn’t done that until he was two whole years older.

  To Harry’s growing shame, he couldn’t bring himself to share his dark thoughts even with Ron or Hermione.

  To his even bigger embarrassment, he did end up sharing them with Neville instead. The boy in question visited the Pottery alone one Saturday morning to badger Harry into coming to Raptor Mountain with him for the weekend, and show off his all-new firearm skills.

  That was how, in-between marvelling at Harry loading, aiming, shooting, disassembling and reassembling his guns blind-folded, Neville got Harry to tell him about some of his more exciting missions.

  It was somewhere amidst all that that Harry went and slipped about what was on his mind.

  Instead of being disturbed at Harry’s evil thoughts, Neville looked almost relieved, if anything.

  “It’s just – you seem a lot less waffly now,” Neville ‘explained’ when Harry stared weirdly at his reaction for a bit too long, and it made absolutely no sense because Harry was more afraid than ever and those dark thoughts were– “About giving as good as you get, I mean. I was getting kinda worried, honestly.”

  “Worried?” Harry asked bewilderedly. “Why? About what?”

  “You know,” Neville waved vaguely. “Never getting around to being a hero. You, I mean.”

  “What?”

  Neville became frustrated, like he wasn’t sure how to explain, but he tried anyway. “Everyone keeps saying my mum and dad are heroes, but they’re not.”

  Harry suddenly wondered if everything since he woke up wasn’t just another alternate life.

  “Heroes aren’t… they’re not losers.” His own mean words seemed to make Neville ashamed, but he bulled through. “Least they don’t lose on anyone’s terms but theirs. Whatever happens in a hero’s life that’s most important – it happens because of something they decide to do. My parents, even your parents, they didn’t do that. They did what other people told them to do. What my parents did, how they ended up – maybe it was the right thing for me, maybe it wasn’t, I won’t just judge my parents like that, but it wasn’t the heroic thing. The heroic thing would’ve been – I don’t know, something. Something that wasn’t that.”

  Harry disassembled and reassembled his weapons while his thoughts wrapped around all that.

  “Heroes – they aren’t minions,” Neville finally managed to properly articulate, how long had he been wrestling with this problem? His own problems? “I know some like Cu Chulainn and Heracles were technically slaves for some parts of their lives, but that didn’t matter. The world turned on their actions, not the other way around. The rules don’t matter when it comes to doing the right thing. Or the least wrong thing, even the worst thing as long as the arsehole earned it. I’m a scaredy cat, but if I weren’t, I know I’d not hesitate at all if I had the chance to kill Bellatrix Lestrange.”

  … Huh.

  “Hermione punched Malfoy for making up bad rumours about you while you were under, did you know that?”

  No he hadn’t.

  “She felt really good about it afterwards, but then she became all ashamed for feeling good about it. Said that if you hurt someone and don’t immediately feel bad afterwards, even if they’re the worst people ever, there’s something wrong with you,” Neville made a face. “She doesn’t understand. She’ll never understand unless real stuff starts happening to her too.”

  “Poetic justice, huh?”

  “Revenge,” Neville snarled. The light of the magical sun seemed to skirt off his face, too fake to touch him for that moment. “When justice and vengeance are the same thing, regardless of what some popinjay in purple robes has to say, that’s when you’ve got a hero. That’s what I think, at least.”

  Did Neville Longbottom just preach sedition? Against the Wizengamot?

  Holy crap.

  After his amazement passed, though, Harry wasn’t sure he completely agreed. By Neville’s understanding, Sirius Black did the heroic thing when he set Harry aside in favour of going to pursue justice and vengeance on Peter Pettigrew.

  But that’s not really true, is it? Harry aimed his sniper rifle and shot a dinosaur all the way on the other side of the valley. Sirius went along with Dumbledore’s orders to give me up, as relayed by Hagrid.

  “Great shot, Harry! Do your own spotting for a bit while I go and collect the kill, any other beasties should’ve run away but it never hurts to be careful.”

  Harry watched Neville leave, but his thoughts were elsewhere.

  Sirius chose to be a minion, and he took the fall for it. Also like a minion. And then his master washed his hands of him, like one does when a minion becomes more trouble than he’s worth.

  Now it was Harry’s turn to be ashamed of his uncharitable thoughts, but even so…

  He didn’t feel like he was wrong.

  Harry thought about that night in first year, when they were all set to follow ‘Snape’ into the third floor corridor, before Harry changed his mind at the last second. His memory of his life that he got the Patronus from were still vague and spotty, but he was very sure he hadn’t had cause to change his mind at the last second then. He, Ron and Hermione followed ‘Snape (actually Quirrel) through the traps, and…

  And what?

  “Freedom,” Harry muttered to himself, that was what changed the course of his life, wasn’t it? Why he himself was able to change it in first year, to stop being the same as that first Harry Potter. “Bravery. Boldness.” He looked at the guns he’d been able to conjure wholesale because Evan Lorne – because he just knew firearms that well. “Self-determination.” Commitment to self-determination, maybe, but even combined those words didn’t seem enough.

  Guocaun, King Herla’s long buried memory supplied, as if through distant fog. Wulthuz, farr, kleos, ollerus, Ullr the Renowned,

  “… Glory,” Harry barely managed to murmur, irrationally shy of the word even when no one else was around to hear. “The trait of kingship.”

  Harry waited until Neville got back, and after scanning the area for any leftover game, they went together to field dress the kill and carry the proceeds to his secret jungle home. It took two trips, but they made it back before dark.

  That night, as he went to sleep, Harry used psychometry on himself. Followed his history all the way back to birth, and then further back until he rewound that entire life too. He may or may not have skipped over a bunch of other Harry Potter lives until he found that first one – and it was the first one as Harry Potter – but he didn’t look too closely. He was still too scared to commit to past life regression fully.

  But if he couldn’t cope with recalling a single night, he may as well resign himself to being a coward forever.

  Harry stopped at the moment when Hermione immobilized poor Neville with Petrificus Totalus, and relived that night.

  Except he wasn’t ready for what all happened, and had to morbidly indulge snapshots and highlights of the next couple of weeks just to confirm if what he saw was true.

  When he woke up just fifteen minutes after falling asleep, Harry Potter stared at the ceiling and felt torn between horror and incredulous disbelief.

  I killed a man, Harry thought as the disbelief won. I killed a man when I was eleven. And nobody acted like it was a big deal! Even Dumbledore!

  What the hell was wrong with everyone?