“-. December 23, 1995 .-“

  “Firefly! How’s my hat?”

  Dougan Flannhamr was a most jovial little man who Charlie once said had been his mentor during his Doctorate in Applied Material Science and Engineering – which Charlie had set indefinitely aside to come work for them – and also the man who’d be in charge of building the Large Hadron Collider right now, if he hadn’t flat-out refused for ‘reasons of personal ethics’ in favour of a purely advisory position.

  Dougan Flannhamr was also a jovial little man who greeted Nicolas Flamel like an errant child he’d once done a quaint little favor to.

  “Firef- how do you know that nickname – your hat?” For the first time in all his lives combined, Harry Potter was graced with the dubious honour of witnessing the six hundred years-old immortal alchemist spluttering. “It can’t be, he was tiny, just like the other – but with spells … Manteaubrillant?!”

  Manteaubrillant. ‘Manteau’ and ‘brillant’. French for ‘mantle bright.’ Or ‘bright mantle.’

  “Loaned possessions are easy to turn into homing beacons, don’t you know!” The not(?)-dwarf blithely stage-whispered to Harry after Nicolas remained frozen in the doorway to the parlour that ‘Dougan’ had practically marched Harry into earlier.

  “How are there stages of nothing?” Harry groaned bleakly as he sank back in his couch with hands pressed hard against his eyes. “I already understood jack shite, how is there an even bigger level of not understanding anything under that fat noth-wait… a hat… wait!” Harry abruptly set up and looked between his newest guest and his foster fath-teacher. “Are you talking about that hat? The same hat from the chamber?”

  ‘Dougan’ turned from Flamel to Harry, looking inordinately pleased. “Oh, you know about it?”

  Harry gave him a look of disbelief.

  “Don’t assume omniscience so easily, the only place it exists is fantasy. Granted, loaned possessions can be used to spy too, but I have more scruples than that!”

  “Scruples? You?” Charles Gordon wondered in disbelief from the armchair he’d been unable to rise from, ever since he found out his doctoral mentor was in reality some manner of mystical god-dwarf that he had to recontextualize his entire adult life around. “Do I have to start quoting your water-cooler tirades back to you?”

  “Everything I said was true, and it’s not like I told any of it to their faces even though they’d have deserved it, did I?”

  “No, just to my face.”

  “And you’re now the most knowledgeable human on Earth in addition to the most intelligent, you’re welcome to praise me with great praise!”

  “Keep dreaming,” Charlie muttered.

  “The disrespect! See, this is why I keep all the nukes to myself.”

  “WHAT?!” Charlie screamed in shock. Charlie.

  Doctor Flannhamr pulled a hole in space out of his beard and turned it to face them with its flat side. Inside was a seemingly interminable aisle with briefcase bombs, suitcase bombs, airdrop bombs, torpedo bays seemingly ripped right out of ships, more torpedo bays seemingly ripped out of submarines, and huge missile silos of various make on both sides.

  “You think all the crazies are bluffing when they threaten to blow up buildings or launch missiles on television?” ‘Doctor Flannhamr’ asked in exaggerated disbelief. “Then there’s the ones smart enough not to give any forewarning at all! If all them special agents and elite forces and torpedoes or what have you weren’t so good at their jobs, the Cold War wouldn’t have died cold.”

  Had it really been that bad?

  “There were plenty of attempted launches, and the bomb plots! Convenient for me since I got to stuff a lot of them in my sac just as the evidence-destroying ‘protocols’ happened. I won’t complain that I didn’t have to directly intervene like some people, but really!” Dougan stuffed the portable hole back into his beard and turned a gimlet eye past Nicolas to the door behind, raising his voice. “The way you lot enforce your Statue of Secrecy has much worse effects on people’s paranoia and general mental health than any of you think, and the people with the hand on the red button are the ones you inflict it on the most!”

  Is this why it didn’t happen in the other reality either? Harry thought faintly. Without all the obliviations and other mind control, people should be saner… unless the Ascended did something on their side too?

  Albus Dumbledore came through the door – too late Harry realized that the Pottery’s wards had told him of his arrival a while ago – and gave everyone in the chamber a steady look, before settling on their newest acquaintance. “I have done all I could do raise awareness on that front, Mister…?”

  “You can call me Sinn-Seanair!” The little man proudly proclaimed. “Only you, though, other that young Harry here.”

  “With all respect, sir, if I had a grandfather of your description, I’m certain I would have known.”

  Grandfather, that’s what the word means, Harry’s past life as Herla supplied. ‘Sinn-seanair’ sounded more modern Scottish, but the word’s roots-

  “I may not be your body’s granddaddy, but I can sure lay claim to the best of what’s between your ears! Tell him, Firefly.”

  “… The yearly walk,” Nicolas said faintly. “When I started the yearly walks, my third one was nothing like young Harry’s. My hat,” Nicolas reflexively brought a hand to his head, though it was bare right now. “I was already an adult, had reached bottlenecks in everything before that night-“

  “-Not your fault, Magic was particularly vampire-like when it came to you, I just gave a workaround.”

  “- the hat I lent you in the Chamber, Harry, that was what I got at the end of my third Walk.”

  The hat that made Harry all-knowing? Or, well, knowing everything Harry himself could ever know? At least the Harry of back then-

  “He means he wound up in a graveyard and wrestled a score of imps all night in the mud,” Dougan happily supplied. “Thought they were dwarves, ha! A redcap has more in common, what few dwarves did stay behind on Earth were the ones so greedy they turned into your goblins!” Say what now? “But eh, what can you do? The old lore had already been perverted back then, dogmatic ideology is a persistent plague, you’re all lucky it was home-grown instead of something else we all may or may not know and despise.”

  Harry’s eyes snapped to the small stocky man, that sounded like-

  “And then you showed up after the lot of them fled with the morning,” Nicolas reminisced, sounding conflicted. “While they laughed at me and the fake prize disintegrating in my hands, you came over and gave me your hat instead.”

  “Would’ve taken you back home too, but I was pretending to be a knee-high critter and you’d have smelled a rat where there wasn’t one. Also, you were too lucid for a ‘suddenly you woke up in bed’ scenario to sell well, or it might’ve ruined your belief that any Walks were real at all.”

  Nicolas watched the small man tensely. “The year after that I was buried alive in that same graveyard by a hag.”

  Dougan’s face slackened. “My word! How’d you get yourself out of that one?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I was only in that time briefly, that my journey intersected with yours was completely unplanned on my part, I didn’t know about you at all until then! I checked on you four years into the future, since walk seven is always the hardest, but you were fine and didn’t need anyone’s help anymore. After that, everyone knew you became a great sage and alchemist so I let you be.”

  The sheer amount of everything that those three sentences implied or outright revealed were enough to give Harry a headache for the next thirty years.

  “Who are you?” Sirius Black finally erupted from the shadowed corner where he’d been watching in mounting disbelief the whole time. “What are you? Because if you’re one of those ‘Ascended’ that Harry ran into before, we’re going to have problems.”

  “Ah,” Dougan said mildly, though he wasn’t happy or amused. “So you do know about them.”

  Sirius winced and palmed his face. “Me and my big mouth.”

  Dougan’s eyes lingered on Sirius for another moment, before he turned to look at Harry intently. “Trauma carries some very obvious consequences, and the sort inflicted spiritually has some very obvious spiritual consequences. But neither are entirely comprehensive even to those whose sight is keen enough. I won’t ask what was done to you, I’ll just ask this: do the words aveo amacus, Taura Atlantus or Ava Lona, mean anything to you?”

  Farewell my friends. Atlantis Prime. Avalon the Galaxy.

  Said in Ancient Alteran language.

  Dougan read the answer off Harry’s face, and his reaction was a strange mix of anger and patience finally rewarded in a worse way than he’d bothered to ever dread properly. “I’ll admit, this is not the news I expected when-”

  “They didn’t come to this side,” Harry cut him off with a sudden feeling that a big misunderstanding was taking place. “I crossed to – over there. It was an accident, sort of… I did it intentionally? I just didn’t realize what I was doing at the time…” And then he was living another life as an entirely different person, over and over and over a whole bunch of times.

  “… Oh dear.” Dougan blinked several times, then shut his eyes and raised his hands to rub temples with his thumbs. “Well. At least one of us will feel vindicated.”

  One of who? Who was he talking about? “Are you talking about Ed?”

  “Alas, I’ve been reliably informed that I’m not the one to dispel that particular mystery tonight.”

  What was up with that wording?

  “Informed by who?” Sirius asked before Harry could.

  Dougan scowled good-naturedly at the man. “I’ve been equally reliably informed that I’m not going to answer any other immediately relevant questions either, tonight or any other night for… some time that was left deliberately ambiguous.” His glance switched to Harry again. “Not outside the young one’s Yearly Walks at any rate. Although…” The short man glanced at the grandfather clock on the wall – it showed four past two – then turned his head eastward as if looking at the horizon right through the several tapestries and walls in between. “I suppose technically the Walk could still resume tonight, so it could even be considered ongoing right now. By a very long stretch.”

  Dougan stared at nothing, pondering something or other. Everyone else looked at him. And glanced at each other wondering who should break the silence next, somehow, if it would even do anything useful.

  “You were there for something else,” Harry threw out when he finally managed to produce an independent thought in a form other than a question. “In the past. Back with Nicolas, way back when. What you said earlier, it sounded to me like you were there for… something you didn’t find? At least not in Nicolas’ time.”

  “Weapons powerful enough to kill gods.” Holy what now-?! “Well, weapons not made by gods but could still kill gods. And no, I didn’t find anything good enough so far back in the past. Even the nukes of now aren’t ideal, but enchantment, hallowing and numbers will just have to make up the difference unless someone comes up with something better.” How was this their conversation all of a sudden?! “I’m on a self-imposed quest myself, after a fashion, but it’s not one you need to worry about.” Not something to worry about?! After he just said that?! “Oh! I suppose I was playing demon bait too, but that’s definitely not for you to concern yourself with either, anymore.”

  “What are you even talking about?” Sirius exploded. “Explain! Speak sense!”

  “What do you mean?” Dougan asked with completely and deliberately obviously fake incomprehension. “You’re a Black, aren’t you? Didn’t you wonder where all of Crowley’s gribblies disappeared to? Your grandparents were all over that! ‘Course most of the things were just tulpas and familiars falsely advertised as free agents, as a way for their true masters to entrap, control and leech off other would-be mystics who took the Ars Goetia at face value. But some of the devils and demons in there were the real article. You thought they just vanished in a puff of logic? A secondary objective of your Gellert Grindelwald was actually to eliminate the dregs of the olden days, along with the Cabal entangled with them. That was why he left Britain and joined the Germans instead.”

  Harry… had no idea how to describe the emotions that shook Dumbledore right where he stood.

  “I feel completely mind-blown right now,” Sirius groaned, cradling his head. “But… I did always wonder why Grindelwald didn’t try to take over the Muggle side of the war, if he was so deep in bed with them.”

  “I cannot believe it,” Dumbledore breathed. “He’d have said something – I would have known!”

  “No offense, but that’s clearly false.”

  Dumbledore made to say something, only to bite back whatever it-

  “Unless you’re lying,” Sirius instead said what Dumbledore wouldn’t. “We don’t know you from Satan after all.”

  “He’s not lying,” Nicolas murmured. “He would very much like to speak plainly, but can’t. Or won’t.”

  “The latter,” Dugan admitted wryly. “I’m not one to accept instruction, but being informed of events that have already occurred is something else entirely. Especially from the mouth of what I am hopeful is a future friend.”

  Harry… actually understood that. And more besides. “The best thing an armchair general can do is trust the man in the field?”

  Dougan snapped his fingers. “That certainly accounts for a big part of it.”

  Harry wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Or everything else that was now very strongly implied, about the future.

  His future.

  “You will not be seeing Ed again tonight,” Dougan spoke after a while, alerting Harry that he was the one being addressed again. “And I will leave with the dawn. There is still some time until then, however, if you don’t want this Yearly Walk to slip by with nothing to show for it.”

  Nothing to show for it? What about him? What about everything he said? And everything he didn’t say but was coming together into the most outrageous scenario in Harry’s head? “I thought you said the secrets of the world were screaming to be revealed?”

  “And they have been, that you didn’t instantly put the pieces together is simply because you’re not intelligent enough.” Harry gaped in wounded outrage, but unlike Sirius who began to tear into the small man on his behalf, the feeling drained with the same, nigh-instant speed that it took Dougan to ‘coincidentally’ glance in the direction where lay the bedroom of one Jayson Strauss.

  He said ‘instantly’, Harry thought as their uninvited guest stoically endured Sirius’ tongue-lashing. He didn’t say I was too stupid to put it together, just that I wasn’t smart enough to do it right here and now. “Alright, everyone stop! That’s enough.” Harry shouted while standing up, cutting Sirius off mid-tirade. “Alright then. Yearly Walk. What are you proposing, so that it doesn’t go to waste?”

  “Unbelievable,” Sirius groused. “Godson mine, I mean absolutely no offense but your willingness to let everything go when it’s from a weird and total stranger that just barged into your life is not normal.”

  Not everything.

  “For a normal teenager perhaps,” Nicolas said grimly. “But not for a seasoned soldier. Or a king.”

  Dougan looked surprised, but Harry had the odd feeling it wasn’t for the same reasons as everyone else. “Surely not? Have you been delving past lives? Aren’t you too young? But then, I suppose Firefly would be very careful about the dangers… I did wonder, Magic as it is now would never allow a spirit to grow so large as yours now is, never mind so dense! Odd though, it doesn’t work out this way for everyone else who tries past life regression now… Wait.” Dougan’s bright blue eyes suddenly turned enlightened. “You crossed over there, is what you said. Does that mean… But if so, then…”

  Good thing we have pensieves, because there’s no way I’ll get everything useful out of tonight without one.

  If nothing else, Harry could rule out the idea that Dougan Flannhamr was his mysterious ‘master.’

  Assuming the Bartender Man wasn’t talking out of his arse. Or even completely wrong about whatever he thought he figured out.

  That still left Ed.

  “… This is not a trade,” Dougan said with a tone so careful compared to everything he said before that everyone stood warier, now. “I will not make you choose.” I’m not making you choose, came Nicolas’ words that he spoke at Harry’s bedside after the Chamber of Secrets. Was it an attempt to manipulate, or honest coincidence? “I incurred a debt when I interrupted your Walk, and I will honor it. But… I feel very strongly now that I will only choose the best way to do so if I know, at least broadly, what you meant by those words.”

  Harry didn’t feel so certain or confident anymore, even compared to just moments earlier. He glanced questioningly at everyone else. They didn’t seem very keen on the request made, but nobody came out and outright said not to grant it. Charlie was in favor of trusting his old teacher, despite everything, but didn’t want to inject himself uninvited. Nicolas was the same, if for different reasons. Sirius was so frustrated that he held everything back, afraid he’d influence Harry wrongly as he always did wrong in the past, from his perspective. And Dumbledore…

  He was committed to not influencing Harry in any way whatsoever, now.

  Harry spent… probably more time than necessary thinking about his answer. The little man was cryptic but probably honest, and clearly more powerful than any of them, at least with spatial magic when considering his… portable hole? That held nuclear silos. Harry was sort of coming up with vague ideas for achieving the same, now that he had the result in front of him. The way he and Charlie stole the Tel’tak was certainly a good starting point. But Dougan had clearly been doing this for a while.

  Then, too, if you took even the things he skirted around seriously, Dougan had some manner of power over time. Or to travel through time, even if it was just… using the Portal in the Rollright Stones?

  Harry was sure he wasn’t wrong about what he read from it earlier. It wasn’t a portal through dimensions or realities as he’d originally thought, it was a portal through time. Maybe not one cast or controlled by either Dougan or Ed, exactly, but… something they guarded? As much as used, at least.

  He doesn’t seem to be spying on us either.

  Dougan was clearly aware of a lot of things, like their identities, and some of their goings on since he already knew Charlie was working with them, even though Charlie swore he didn’t reveal that to anyone other than Doctor Strauss. Dougan was also familiar with said doctor, but that didn’t prove anything either. He knew where in the house he was too, but that didn’t prove anything either, besides him having very keen extrasensory abilities maybe. Harry’s own senses could find people all across a home too, since last year. Maybe not on the same distance yet, he’d have to do some walking around, but he could.

  Dougan also seemed pretty open about things, only holding back because he was ‘informed’ he ‘didn’t do it today’. Not that he wouldn’t but that he didn’t. Going to the logical conclusion, that meant that…

  Whether or not Dougan ever travelled through time, someone he met in the past had experienced some of the future. Or at least some of Dougan’s future. That person was, or would be, intimately familiar with everything Harry and the rest were up to. Would be up to, even, in the coming years.

  Unless I’m manifesting the most ridiculous hubris right now, ‘I’m my own master’ just took on a whole new meaning.

  Harry could still be wrong about that, but the hints were really piling up. Deliberately too, on the part of everyone in the know.

  That left that thing about devils and demons…

  No, no…

  No.

  Harry already had too much on his own plate. If Grindelwald went and cleared out that one before Harry was even born, before Harry’s parents were even born, more power to him.

  Slowly, eyes fixed on Dougan, Harry brought his wand to his temple. Strangely, for the first time since after the Chamber of Secrets, he didn’t feel afraid that he was inviting a mental attack by meeting another mystic’s eyes.

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  Even so… Harry Potter couldn’t make the full leap to sharing the memories of his time in the Stargate dimension. By dint of his history with Charlie and Nicolas, Dougan Flannhamr wasn’t a stranger, but…

  Sirius war wrong. He didn’t just let everything go. It was still too much, too soon.

  He decided to draw the memory of Charlie and Hermione’s lego block presentation instead.

  Everyone but Dougan tensed. The short man himself didn’t approach.

  Harry walked over and held out the white thread.

  Dougan took it between two fingers and closed his eyes briefly. His face went through a rapid gamut of emotions, before his eyes opened again and he handed the memory back. Psychometry too, then. Or the ability to use pensieve magic without the pensieve itself?

  By the time Harry returned the memory to his mind, Dougan’s eyes were more stormy than clear, and his mood was not jovial anymore. “You got the ages of the Brothers a bit mixed up, Charlie old boy,” Dougan said, though he still looked at Harry. “But you’re not too far off-track about the broad strokes, as things go.”

  “Let me guess,” Sirius groused. “You ‘didn’t answer questions’ about that tonight either.”

  Clearly, Harry wasn’t the only one making crazy connections between everything said and implied.

  “Does this manor have a duelling room?” Dougan asked suddenly. “If not, then one that can be cleared for enough space?”

  “Not a duelling room exactly,” Harry replied, since it was his home in the end, he should at least get to answer all the questions about that. Even those that came out of nowhere like this one. “But the arms gallery should have the space, and was used for that sort of thing in the past, I think. There might even be wards for it.”

  “That will do.” Dougan made to turn, but stopped and gave Harry one more considering glance, before turning to treat Charlie to the same. “In the interest of full disclosure, I can sense traces of cosmilite on you. You lot wouldn’t happen to have handled certain circular relics of bygone people recently? Or perhaps other leftovers of certain snake-shaped parasites that history will never malign too much, and who tended to refer to the same substance by its egyptian name?”

  Naquadah. The Stargate. Osiris’ spaceship.

  As before, Dougan read the answer off Harry’s face. “In that case, please spend the next little while contemplating all you know of how magic and technology interacts. Especially if you’re considering any space adventures. If he doesn’t mind overmuch, Mister Black can show me to the room and take advantage of the chance to – not interrogate me if possible?” The short man turned to Harry’s godfather. “I won’t pretend I can assuage any worries of yours to your hearts full content, but I will volunteer whatever information the spirit is willing.”

  By virtue of simple exposure to Charlie over the years, Harry knew… probably more than any wizard outside the DoM about how magic interacted with technology. And because Charlie had come at the problem from the other direction, Harry had a lot of insight into that perspective especially.

  Wards, contrary to what Hermione had once not-entirely-jokingly speculated, weren’t being used to force electronics to malfunction as a means to artificially enforce the muggle-wizard segregation. Three of the four big magical places in the UK – St. Mungo's, Diagon Alley, and the Ministry – were all in London firmly amongst muggle businesses. Not something sustainable if the protective enchantments caused huge spots of power outages and so on, never mind Magic itself. It would draw far too much attention to areas the wizards were specifically trying not to draw attention to. Even with notice-me-nots and so on, it would still be noticed if they had certain areas where constantly having outages, circuits blowing, power surges, and what else.

  Wards could do all that, but the Magic-copper relationship made it unnecessary. Also, many of them degraded without maintenance, especially when under heavy constant use and not powered by a leyline. When wards didn’t degrade, they could go sour and attract dark creatures, and generally cause issues, but it still didn’t disrupt technology more than usual. The wards on Grimauld Place, for example, made the place seem so very unpleasant that everyone else in the neighbourhood moved away, but electronics still worked in the area around it (though not inside).

  If anything, wards were being used to keep the concentrated magic in those areas contained, such that magical places could go on existing without disruption.

  Naturally, Charlie had asked Dumbledore to get the Ministry and DoM ward schemes in case they could be used for the goa’uld spaceship. It was a work in progress.

  The more Harry thought back to Charlie’s various explanations and rants, the more it seemed to him like it wasn’t magic being at the heart of it, exactly. Most problems other than the copper-orichalcum thing weren’t so much related to magic, as to certain phenomena that magic tapped into or replicated for its own ends.

  Earth’s magnetic field alone did some wonky things. The CRT tubes used in colour TVs were extremely sensitive – if you turned a TV upside down, the colors went all mad. They also went crazy and didn’t change back if you brought a magnet close to the screen.

  The more solid state electronic of Lorne’s future would be hardier that vacuum tubes filled with lightweight electrons, but even they wouldn’t be immune to all hazards, like EMPs or cosmic rays.

  “Hey Charlie,” Harry called when the silence got too awkward with not just him but also Nicolas and Dumbledore there. Those two were talking via legilimency again. “Do cosmic rays have any effect on technology?”

  “Very much yes. Cosmic ray strikes can cause literal bit rot, and I mean that at hardware level. When a computer gets a blue screen of death, it’s not far-fetched to think a cosmic ray could’ve caused it. There’s a reason you should never let any system accumulate more than six months of uptime. A single neutron ripping through a chip at some terrifying fraction of lightspeed will flip hundreds of transistors, and thus hundreds of values in the system programs. Sooner or later ECC RAM gets flipped exactly right so the parity matches the data, and now it's permanent. Most of the time you end up with one slightly-less-pink pixel in the giant prepress photo, but sometimes it's the kernel pointer for the maximum allowed CPU temperature and the machine melts in a fiery conflagration.”

  That sounded a lot more serious than Harry expected, even with Lorne’s memories at the back of his head. “But that’s just because our PCs are binary, right? Radioactivity flips transistors.” On second thought, Lorne did know some things. Bit rot had been causing Prius cars not to brake in his future, it caused a big uproar that led to new redundant brake systems being made standard for all vehicles.

  “Goa’uld ships use some manner of crystal-based computers,” Charlie picked up where Harry’s thoughts had wandered off. “Their shields seem the sort that will defend from cosmic rays too, much like the sun’s heliosheath keeps the overwhelming majority of them out of the system. Earth definitely won’t enter the true space age before we catch up on all that. But we don’t need to go that far for our test drive, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Harry actually wasn’t, until Charlie mentioned it.

  “It’s true that we get more of this cosmic radiation the higher you go, but that’s why airplanes have redundant systems. Also, space rockets have four different computers simultaneously running identical software for everything. That said, there’s about thirty bit flips per day on average up in orbit. If we stay there longer than a few hours, it’s practically guaranteed that instead of the computer it will be our eyes or nerves now and then. Inevitably, it will be much worse deeper in the system, never mind interstellar space. We’ll probably see a lot of flashes of light when we’re up there.”

  “You mean Sirius will,” Harry groused, still not happy that he won’t get to be at the heart of their biggest milestone. “Is this why we don’t just do what you said, but in reverse? Put in the anti-magic field and fly the ship to wherever, then deactivate the array, and then pilot back carefully until power anomalies start showing up…”

  “We have some tough materials, but we don’t know how a charm will survive re-entry,” Charlie said wryly. “Or even before re-entry, the radiation up there is dreadful, and while we can alleviate friction heat with slow speed, we don’t know how far high magic reaches. So unless it’s extra-atmospheric, the harness might simply be damaged too much before the magic kicks back it, if it even does.”

  Godric proved that some heavy-duty enchantments functioned even outside Magic, but that didn’t guarantee everything, and brooms had a lot of spells going into them. Too many points of potential failure, Harry supposed.

  “Also, I’m worried about things we don’t have a reason to expect – what if Magic is primed to react with hostility against an incoming alien spaceship? Or outgoing ones? Granted, the risk exists regardless of how we get up there, or in what order, but if we use flight spells to go up, then if Magic does react catastrophically, Sirius will be close enough to, potentially, survive long enough to portkey back to safety. We’ll be sending him up in a NASA-rated spacesuit and with Nicolas’ Goa’uld hand device, for that reason. Magic substitutes well enough for bloodstream naquadah, at least, but we’ll still inject him with some of the traces in the canopic jars for redundancy.”

  “Guess you’ve got it all figured out.” Or not, but only time would tell. “Speaking of Sirius, he and our guest should be done by now, so I guess I’ll be off?”

  The adults came with him of course, and Harry didn’t exactly mind. He wasn’t confident that his spells or even the Pottery’s wards would be enough in case Dougan was planning mischief. He wasn’t sure the adults’ combined firepower would be enough either, depending on how ancient their guest was. If Pre-Magic ancients were as ridiculous as the legends – as the true histories said, as Harry’s readings of the Cup of Nodens implied…

  When Harry entered the Arms Gallery, the room had been vastly enlarged and all the floorspace further in than three meters had been changed to look… not like the ruins of an old stone tower, exactly, but maybe the ruins of the various buildings you’d expect to see all around it? Dirt ground was all over the floor too, like outside.

  Sirius was by the entrance, and shrugged helplessly when Harry looked at hm.

  Dougan waited at the centre of the hall, bouncing back and forth on the tips of his feet.

  When Harry was within optimal wand distance, Dougan firmed his stance and transformed from a short man back to his dwarf self, with bright white hair and snowy beard. His garb wasn’t the same as before though. His beard still reached his shins, bunched in several braids, but the clasps were normal brass rings, and instead of plate armor he wore a frilly tunic with long sleeves done in red and white stripes, a green jacket with yellow scalelike pattern, blue trousers, black leather boots up to his knees, and a red sash worn around the waist. The cloak was gone as well. Only the broadsword at his side was the same, but he still didn’t draw it out.

  Instead, he reached inside his beard and pulled out a pair of bracelet-like clasps. He tossed one to Harry, which flipped open the moment he caught it.

  Then Dougan drew his sword and latched the thing around the base of its blade, right above the guard. The whole sword shimmered briefly, before the effect disappeared.

  “This way we won’t be able to inflict permanent harm.” Dougan looked around the place. “Not on another living being at least.”

  Harry reached into his pocket, and pulled Godric who instantly grew from pen to sword. What do you say, should we risk it?

  May as well, Godric replied. If it’s a trick, you can always use Avada Kedavra on it.

  Harry supposed that if it came to it and that somehow didn’t work, they had way bigger problems.

  He put the latch around Godric’s blade. Psychometry told Harry a lot when the spell took hold, though he didn’t understand much of anything.

  That makes two of us, Godric groused in his head. Maybe because it’s not in use – WARE!

  SCREECH went the blades as Godric moved Harry’s arms to deflect the surprise thrust.

  “Your own skills first,” Dougan ordered while Harry was still trying to catch up to his pounding heart. “Then the sword’s –“ Harry had to jump back from how hard Dougan pushed. “Then we’ll see!”

  Harry took two hits before he barely deflected a third, then failed to react to five out of the next six – painfully – before Dougan suddenly stopped moving so damned fast.

  “Not there yet, I suppose,” Dougan commiserated while Harry was too busy gasping for breath between failed parries to wonder what he was commiserating about. “Self-transmutation is a fair path to physical enhancement. You can think about how to apply that while I test your sword’s skills now, yes?”

  Let me at him!

  Harry’s legs jumped forward, his back straightened, his arms moved own their own from the guard of the Dragon to the Taurus, but his perfect attack was deflected, his follow-up feint was ignored, and Dougan’s own thrust completely shattered Harry’s guard.

  What would have been a fatal stab to the chest instead sent Harry rolling arse over heels, feeling like an elephant had rammed into him.

  “Not quite Bonetti’s Defense,” Dougan commented as he paced around Harry in a circle, his weapon changing from a broadsword to a rapier. It was the weapon Nicolas sometimes used when he helped him practice, the one Harry most often trained against, he realised with shame. “The starting shades are there, but the style is crudely applied.”

  He speaks of skills after my time, Godric groused in Harry’s mind with wounded pride. But if he thinks older warriors were poorer, he can think again!

  Harry threw Godric like an arrow and was already lunging when the deflected sword reappeared in his hand mid-way through a swipe at the unguarded side-

  Dougan deflected Godric with the Long-Tail guard, swept Harry’s feet from under him and nailed him with a thrust to the throat before Harry even slammed down on his back. The dwarf hopped away from Harry’s subsequent flailing, waited for Harry to scramble back up, caught Harry’s next lunge under his arm and nailed Harry in the throat again before jumping back even farther.

  All that distance when he only hops with his ankles?

  “Capa Ferro isn’t a bad follow-up,” Dougan said as he moved around a section of worn-down castle wall. “But Thibault cancels it out quite nicely, if you don’t put some actual strength into it.”

  Harry’s mind was awash in Godric’s indignation as the sword moved him to attack using the same moves Dougan had just used, to only slightly less unpleasant results.

  “Alas,” Dougan said as Harry bore down on the shorter man with a snarl only half his own. “Thibault only cancels out Capa Ferro if the enemy hasn’t studied Agrippa.” Dougan shoved Harry back so hard that he would have gone rolling uncontrollably, if Dougan hadn’t softened the force by hopping back as well.

  Harry regained his balance just in time to see the dwarf pull out of his beard an authentic seventeenth century cavalier hat.

  “One can only wear so many hats at a time, but can acquire any number of them over the course of his life.” He tossed it like a frisbee, and it flew unerringly right into Harry’s surprised hand. “More so the longer it goes on.”

  Harry glared helplessly at his infuriating guest, and put on the hat.

  Godric attacked with the Brave Serpent, almost touching Dougan’s immaculate moustache thanks to Harry’s longer arms, but the Bastard Cross deflected his next attempt and rammed him in the throat so hard that the pain made him see white, and he couldn’t breathe for several moments. When he recovered – because Dougan waited again – Godric swiped wide with the Lady’s Right Guard aiming for the head, only for Dougan to counter with the same and nail Harry in the sternum instead.

  But he was ready for the pain this time, and a sudden insight came to Harry then, about how much Godric’s skills didn’t transfer because of their difference in build, and how to fix it.

  His forward lunge was still parried, Dougan’s sword even glanced Harry’s cheek, but Harry’s follow-up swipe at his foe’s chest was just a little too fast for the counter.

  Dougan deflected and hopped back, but left behind was one single hair of white, slowly fluttering to the floor.

  I reached him, Harry thought in euphoric disbelief. All at once, it just clicked – the hat!

  Without warning, Dougan initiated the same exchange. Harry replied in kind, not even having to think about it this time. He didn’t get another hair, but only because Dougan briefly moved with the superior speed he’d earlier displayed.

  Not just understanding, experience too!

  The hat – Godric thought in his mind, awestruck. It didn’t show you what you did wrong, it let your mind learn from experience! It stored all the insight that should have slipped away in the moment, it’s still-

  His epiphany was being assimilated into his long-term memory right now, Harry could feel it. Semantic memory, muscle memory, all of it, progress that would have taken him hundreds of repetitions before, all achieved in seconds.

  In front of him, Dougan nodded with a satisfied smile. “This should bridge the skill gap with fair alacrity.” Languidly, the dwarf hung his sword far back over his right shoulder in the Lady’s High Guard. “Mastery of skills doesn’t normally come before mastery of body, but you’re clearly no normal lad.”

  For the next whole hour, Harry attacked and defended with all the guards of the sword, tried and tried again all the plays of the sword, drew on all of Godric’s skills with a sword, he even drew on all of Herla’s skills with the sword, little by little and more and more as the duel went on.

  Still the lone white hair lying on the floor remained without companion.

  Finally, more than another half hour later when Harry was so exhausted he didn’t know how he was still fighting at his peak, the Full Iron Gate guard allowed him to outright fake a feint, and score a slash that cut a second hair.

  Harry fell to a knee, gasping for air, and watched the hair slowly fall to the ground. By the time it finally did, it felt like he’d sweated enough to add a whole new river to Wales’ map.

  “Good!” Dougan praised, tossing Harry a very medieval sort of waterskin filled with a sweet mead that somehow chased away all his exhaustion. “Now do it all again faster!”

  Harry had no idea how to ‘go faster,’ ‘be faster’ wasn’t something his ever so elusive metamorphmagic knew what to do with. But after he made an uncoordinated fool of himself for twenty minutes trying to make-believe animal-like joints into existence, he finally caught a sense of how his terrible skill in self-transfiguration differed from that long ago, first Harry Potter’s hard-won skill in human transfiguration.

  Fundamentally.

  The hat, it turned out, worked for things other than sword skills too.

  By the time Dougan Flannhamr finally stopped increasing his physical capabilities every time he was in danger of being matched, Harry Potter was forced to make peace with a fundamental truth: he would never be a Tonks-like metamorphmagus. He lacked the mindset, and the temperament. He was very invested in his self-image, in himself, in his very humanity, to ever make a change to his anatomy that wouldn’t inflict him with terrible body dysphoria.

  But he had an all-new understanding of the true upper limits of that anatomy, and knew how to achieve those heights at any time. At will. Without fear, pain, and without permanent harm.

  Healing, in the end, was just a matter of morphing back to that version of himself that was in perfect health.

  The clock struck 4.

  Dougan morphed his sword into another sword, and made Harry fight until he could hold his own against that too. Then every other sword he could come up with, which were many. Then spears. Then shortspears. Then longspears. Maces, flails, pollaxe, dagger, staff, the man even pulled out a fauchard at one point, he was insane! When he ran out of weapons, he disarmed Harry and kept disarming him every time he pulled Godric back out of his pocket.

  But Harry was drunk too now, on his mad success, and a terrible rush of competitiveness. He was too angry to back down too, and King Herla had too much pride to lose a challenge waged against him with such soft child’s gloves. At last, where skill and ability had failed, his stubbornness finally prevailed over his enemy’s. He kept drawing and redrawing Godric just in the nick of time until Dougan gave up.

  With an exasperated eyeroll, Dougan blocked instead of deflecting Harry’s next attack, and tapped the magic clasp around Godric’s blade before Harry could break away.

  Godric transformed into a rubber chicken.

  The sword spirit spent the next five minutes howling outrageously in Harry’s head, and the rest of the night seething uselessly as Harry was forced to instead fight with any weapon he could grab from the armors all along the walls, and the many display cases.

  Not one of them survived intact, but they always seemed to break just as Harry finally mastered them. It was an incredible learning experience, but also the absolute worst frustration that Harry Potter had ever had to go through while awake.

  When even the biggest and baddest cast-iron war spade went and broke to pieces, Harry apparated for distance to the opposite end of the room in sheer frustration.

  Huge mistake, by breaking ‘the rules’ the little man was free to also break the rules, and he did that by reaching into his beard and pulling out a portable gatling gun HOLY SHIT-!

  CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-BR-BRR-BR-RR-RRR-RRRRRRRR!

  “AAAYE!” Harry screamed as he dove behind the nearest section of wall. “BLOODY BUGGERING SHITE!” He wondered madly where all the responsible adults had gone. “Are you insane?!”

  “Can’t handle it?” The wall above Harry’s head was blasted full of holes. “You need your friends to come save you boy?!”

  “OH, YOU’VE DONE IT NOW!”

  A normal wizard shouldn’t have been able to do it, especially one that had barely finished fourth year and missed all of his fifth so far. But the few past lives he remembered gave him a leg up in everything, and the Hat of Attainment meant that he didn’t make the same mistake twice. It wasn’t helping him right now, he’d barely had it for a couple of hours and already found its limit – it was already at capacity holding onto the combined arms experience while Harry assimilated it, and it couldn’t preserve more than one epiphany at a time – but these were firearms.

  Harry Potter was a diviner, and a history scryer by touch and sight, and Evan Lorne knew firearms very well.

  So well that Harry Potter knew by ear when a gun ran out of bullets, how to break for cover, draw his wand, and conjure guns of his own wholesale, the whole kit in one go.

  He barely remembered to pull the clasp off Godric the rubber chicken and strap it to his gun muzzle instead.

  “Say hello to my little friend!”

  He always wanted to say that.

  Armors, glass, wallpaper, and everything else on the western side of the arms gallery was punched full of holes this time, as the MP90 unleased at full auto.

  Dougan had to pass on reloading in favor of jumping behind some cover of his own.

  That was when the other adults finally came down on the two of them, spells and power words almost shaking the walls, but it had barely been twenty seconds since the first guns came out, and Harry was too deep to let anyone interfere now. He called on the Pottery’s wards to suppress everyone but the two of them.

  The duel degenerated into a running firefight all over the Pottery, and by the end of it Harry Potter could finally claim to have found a skill he wasn’t inferior in.

  Still not superior though, much to his dudgeon.

  The running gun battle only came to an end up in the Entrance Hall, where there was no cover. Dougan pulled one of his beard clasps off and tossed it on the ground. On hitting the floor, gravity completely disappeared. The curtains swayed in the sudden draft, every piece of furniture along the walls lifted off the ground, the chandeliers began to swing and creak in the wind caused by their jumps and boosts, as they strove for balance and direction any way they could.

  Here, though, finally, the dwarf made a mistake.

  As startling as weightlessness was for the average man, Harry Potter was a seasoned flier several times over, and Evan Lorne had undergone everything from zero-gravity to vacuum training and he’d aced it.

  Harry dropped all his guns, boosted off the grand stairway’s railing, swung around by one of the chandeliers, and kicked off the ceiling on a collision course with his maddening guest.

  Dougan didn’t manage to dodge this time.

  He still rebuffed Harry’s attempted tackle, and they both went rolling uncontrollably in opposite directions, but that was enough.

  Finally, finally, the first and second stray hairs were joined by a third, clenched tight in Harry’s fist.

  Harry looked around, frantically trying to spot a grip or something to regain some control over his trajectory. All he saw was the antigravity device, which looked too much unlike a scientific device for Harry’s comfort, just when it shut down after exactly one minute.

  When his weight returned, Harry had neither the position nor leverage to control his fall. “Unh!” He landed heavily on the floor, hurting his shoulder and the joints in his legs. But self-transfiguration mended that quickly, now that he knew how to do it. “Shite…” He felt like Magic could morph him back to full health forever, but the more he changed – the more often he changed, the more he felt sore everywhere, and – faint and weak, even without self-psychometry he knew that if he tried to enhance himself physically right now, he wouldn’t be anywhere as fast or strong as at the start. “Guess – that’s not free either.”

  “Nothing is free, lad.”

  That he couldn’t deny.

  Don’t get hit, Harry thought wryly as he rolled over to his side, waiting for his energy to return. Even if you can heal from everything.

  Nothing more happened. No more gun shots, no more sharp objects thrown his way, no more blades or maces trying to do him in, and no shouting. Harry pawed at his own head. The hat had fallen off somewhere, at some point. How strange that he didn’t notice, you’d think it would be impossible not to when it was directly plugged into his brain. Sort of.

  Dawn’s light was faintly peeking through the large windows. Being the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, that meant a lot more time had passed than he had though.

  Dougan stepped into view, standing over Harry with the hat in his hands. He held it out.

  I can keep it? Harry got up, trying not to let his joy run away with him. He reached out but hesitated. “Nothing is free?”

  “If people couldn’t pay the price for others, there would never be any gifts.”

  Harry took the hat and put it back on. Nothing happened, but that was fine. His brain was feeling a bit mush now too. “It knows when to take a break? Or give me one…”

  “Limited number of charges per day.” Dougan smirked. “But I think I’ll leave out the specifics.”

  Harry wondered how that fit everything else the mad dwarf had done to him that night. “Achievement in ignorance?”

  “There is no such thing,” Dougan denied firmly. “What is possible is possible. What isn’t, isn’t. There is achievement in an open mind. For example, I know what I can do, but I don’t know what all you can do. Or will be able to. Even if it’s never more than what we can do, ability is just one of many factors.”

  “So… ignorance is bliss because it makes it harder to lock myself out of options?”

  Dougan smiled awkwardly, letting Harry know that was wrong about this too.

  “I’ll leave it to you to puzzle out the specifics. Fair warning, you might be cross with me by the end.”

  From somewhere or other, Sirius said something. Or cussed. So did Charlie. Only Nicolas and Dumbledore weren’t joining in, though not for lack of input. They were clearly building up to something too.

  Harry couldn’t spare them any attention. It was all captured by the way Dougan’s outline began to disperse into white misty motes where the faint dawnlight touched him.

  Dougan held up one hand. Between his fingers swayed the other two threads of hair that Harry had cut off of his beard, gleaming white.

  Feeling silly, Harry nonetheless took them. With that, he had all three.

  “When the time comes that you need help which no one else can give, burn a hair and I’ll be there.”

  What a fairy tale thing to say.

  But then, how many of them had actually been real?

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a portal to catch just before closing time.”

  Dougan turned around and walked normally until his foot was outside the door, at which point he turned into a white cloud that shot away like a comet, disappearing over the tree line between one eyeblink and the next.

  Harry watched the empty doorway for a while. He didn’t think he’d ever feel someone’s absence so strongly after just one meeting, but Ed had proved him wrong, and now he’d been surprised again.

  Walk four complete.

  Walk four was complete and everything didn’t go to hell, for once, on Halloween.

  Harry Potter reached up to pinch the brim of his new hat.

  Maybe he was finally ready, now, to stop worrying about which future Halloween it would be that he’d get all the answers to his questions.

  “Doctor Strauss,” Harry said three days later at Christmas dinner, after everyone of all ages had had time to finish freaking out over what had just been. Including himself. “I’ll be having that brain surgery of yours now, please and thank you.”

  Dwarf hats were literal miracles, but when the one specifically designed to make you a genius could only do the bare minimum of its job because you were just so damn slow, well…

  It was hard to imagine a more blatant hint.