FicWad

Harry Potter and the Celestial Zone
Chapter 18
01st September 2005


"Hey Hagrid, how are you?" Hagrid was working on his pumpkin patch when Harry walked up, grinning broadly at him and carrying a strange bag. The half-giant looked up and grinned back, "Hey Harry, me pumpkins doin juz fine. How're Ron an 'ermione?" Harry chuckled, "They're fine I believe, just preparing for the Order meeting later. Listen, I need your opinion on something. Can I come by tomorrow or something?" Hagrid beamed at him, "Any time's fine Harry. Now why dontcha give me some help 'ere with me rock cake?"

.........

"YOU WHAT????" The Order meeting had turned into an interrogation of sorts, which Harry knew, and Harry had just revealed what he'd done that fateful night in early summer. Mad-eye, of course, was up in arms, completely in character, considering his constant "Constant-Vigilance" teachings. Harry sighed, "Do you people have any idea what you're even talking about here? I've just given you the very generalized overview, and you're out for blood. Now shut the hell up and sit down so I can finish and get out of this damn interrogation of yours."

Harry spoke quietly, but his voice again carried all the warmth of Antarctica, combined with a tremor of power that sent a shiver down everyone's spines. He glared round the room, still seated, before continuing, "Now then. With every one of you in this room, the first thing you did when you set eyes on me was to glance at my scar. Not study the lines around my eyes, which would indicate an attack, or the muscles in my neck, which would indicate my mood. No, it's the scar that matters to you. Same with the Death Eaters; even when I dueled Bellatrix, she glanced at my scar. The guy I escaped with did not bat an eyelid at it. He was far more intent on my eyes." Harry glared at them again before nodding to indicate he was finished.

Albus cleared his throat, restoring his claim on leading the interrogation, "Harry m'boy, I believe it's in fact more important for us to know who this person was. It is vitally important that we know so we can keep you from an more of his harmful influence." Harry laughed loud and long, stunning the assembled Order members. When he finally stopped and glared, the room temperature seemed to drop sharply, "That's Mister Potter to you Headmaster, unless you're forgetting the teacher-student relationship, which I'm more than happy to remind both you and the board of.

"You won't be getting his name. And even if you did, it would be impossible for you to find him. After all, you have no idea where I learnt my new skills from. Now I'm also sure that none of you have heard of him before because all of you have been restricting your knowledge to the European continent rather than branching out. As for harmful influence, I'm quite sure that standing up for oneself is nothing wrong, unless they've changed the laws again, and that being an adult gives me quite a few rights." He glanced round at the stunned faces, "Yes I'm of age. Where I went this summer is something of a time enigma. I spent just over a year there, where here it is more like a few months. I already had a beginners training in controlling my energies because of the magic involved. My coming of age released the rest of my potential, as well as the extra power from the older lines.

"I'm quite sure you also know that magical wills are carried out by magic herself rather than the goblins or ministry. The reading and physical will is very ceremonial, and a farce. No being except the one who made the will has the authority or power to change it, as you know, and Sirius left almost everything to me. You have no authority over my private movements Headmaster, do not try." The Order was in an instant uproar. Most were calling for his decapitation, some for his expulsion, but the general idea was that he'd just done something wrong.

Harry calmly extended his magic and wandlessly pushed everyone back into their seats, "I've done something wrong have I? Someone please enlighten me?" Molly Weasley rose from her chair with a speed a trained athlete would envy and strode towards him, "NEVER IN ALL MY YEARS! WE TREATED YOU AS A SON! ALBUS DUMBLEDORE HAS DONE NOTHING WRONG AND DESERVES YOUR RESPECT! NO SON OF MINE WOULD HAVE SUCH BAD MORALS AND BEHAVIOUR!" Having had enough, Harry called up his spirit sword and forced her back into her seat with it, "He's in fact upset over two, maybe three, things that have occurred.

"First would be the Celestial Arts that you've now seen thrice. The Headmaster can sense magic, and magical potential, so he knows he has no chance to defeat me. That's why he worse those magical enhancing artifacts when he dueled the late Xuan Mao, probably still thought of as Blaise Zabini by most of you. Even with nearly triple his normal power he still lost to someone who, at the peak of her powers, lost to me. That's the first reason he's upset.

"The second is that I'm actually thinking for myself. I don't know what his plan really is, but all I know is that for it to succeed he needs my help. Of course, it probably won't go according to plan with my help, which is why he needs my unquestioning obedience.

"Lastly is something of a combination of the first two. I'm thinking for myself, and he doesn't know where I've learnt my new skills. Therefore he doesn't know how he can get me back. It's a feeling of helplessness that's eating away at him that he doesn't like. He loves the feeling of total control, of absolute power, and losing all semblance of it is probably the last straw for him. Come to think of it, did he even tell you about the Prophecy? Probably not. C'mon then Headmaster, lets see your great memory of the prophecy that everyone risked their lives to protect without a good reason from you."

He flicked his sword away and put up a privacy bubble so he could watch everything in peace. Dumbldore alone, apart from himself, sat quietly, though he couldn't disguise from Harry's finely tuned senses the anger that emanated from him in waves.

.........

"Harry! She's a beauty! Oh my beau'iful darling! Come to pappa!" Harry sat at Hagrid's table with Hermione, beaming as Hagrid wept tears of joy and beckoned to a pair of small bears. Harry had picked a specific pair of bears for Hagrid and carried them down to his hut the day of the Order meeting and left them buried near the fireplace on the outside so they'd be kept warm. Now a month on, and the exams around the corner, they'd hatched, spilling out a pale white baby bear with crystal blue eyes and a slightly larger brown bear with firey red eyes.

Though he didn't tell anyone, Harry knew they were plainly magical in their paws when they reached adolosence, and their breaths and jaws when they reached adulthood. The white bear would eventually become snow-white and had freezing attacks. The brown bear was the opposite, and used a melting attack at adolescence, with a flaming attack when full maturity was reached, which was shown with red flecks in his fur. Hagrid would probably be ignorant for quite a while more and Harry couldn't find it in his heart to interrupt Hagrid's joyful play with his two new friends. Even Fang, who could undoubtedly sense the magic, joined in and nosed the white cub around.

...

Harry and Hermione were on their way back to the castle and their wing. He had his arm round her waist and her head on his shoulder, biting her lower lip in a way that told Harry she was thinking about something important. Sighing in resignation, he rose to the bait, "What's on your mind 'mione?"

She grinned at him, "You really know me, don't you?" She paused and considered, "So where are these eggs? Aren't you going to bring me there? In fact, more importantly too, how many animals are there?" Harry laughed, "You could have just asked and I'd have told you anyway." He paused and thought about it for a few moments, "I'll bring you there in a few days actually, I want to get my thoughts together on it and discuss several things with the guardian too. And of course it's in our wing.

"To answer your bigger question, the eggs have a regular reproduction cycle. Apparently, some strange ancient magic, maintained through the magic running through the entire school, duplicates every single egg there, with multiples stored in what would be a magical pocket. So I could have a hundred eggs of every animal in the world and you'd only see one at a time in the chamber. In fact, I'm thinking that we have dinosaur eggs there too. Not that I want to wonder if any would choose someone, more that there are eggs of every kind of animal and creature with the exception of humans there, including those that give live birth like humans."

Hermione giggled and he frowned at her. She giggled harder and almost dragged him down as she lost her footing, "You know what? You sound almost like me nowadays. I thought when you told Professor McGonagall about your forms that you were more professor-like than even you knew, and you've just proven me right." She laughed loudly, music to his ears, and kissed him, "Don't ever change, Harry."

.........

"C'mon 'mione, it's time." It was the evening after their last exam, and they'd been celebrating in their own way in their wing. Hermione had been almost asleep and Harry spent the time holding her and watching the moon run its course. When the moon, incidentally full, reached half way past the window frame, he woke Hermione who was slow in awaking, "What's up Harry?" She asked in the cute blurry voice he simply adored.

He smiled at her, "Let's go look at the eggs. I'll explain on the way." She blinked, her mind not quite working yet, but quickly stood and moved towards the door. Harry turned back to the window again, just as a large white bird flew in and perched on his shoulder, "Great timing Hedwig. Let's go." He led them down the corridor to a torch slightly higher than the others. Taking it down, he passed his hand over the flame, facing the wall under the torch holder, and the wall melted away to reveal a passageway large enough for a single person, "We're here. C'mon then."

As they walked, Harry explained the late night expedition, "It's a strange thing the full moon. Over the years with the Werewolf curse, people have come to abhor the full moon when in fact it is the time at which magic is at its greatest. The elements come in line, the ambient magic is suddenly in tune, boosting the magical potentials everywhere. That's why werewolves and other were-creatures transform in the full moon. So it's easiest to find some sort of match at the full moon, and Hedwig's here to help. In fact, I'll probably find myself a match too."

...

"Qin! Where are you?" a small figure bounced out from the multitude of eggs. Hermione paid him little attention. Instead she was busy inspecting one of the eggs, "Harry, I think this is a Snake of some sort." Harry chuckled; he knew that already, when he'd first walked around, he'd asked to be shown the serpent section, where he'd of course found eggs of snakes, lizards, and of course, dragons. Qin was the caretaker, and Harry had been discussing finding a match for Hermione and possibly himself too.

Qin bounced over to Hermione's side. He was small, roughly 3 feet tall, with no hair but a magical aura displaying power that rivaled Dumbledore's. The man was apparently the third generation guardian caretaker of the eggs, which placed him easily over Dumbledore's age. He studied the egg Hermione was poking at for a moment before speaking up, "Yes Mistress Granger, that is the egg of an ancient snake. It is the Greater Basillisk, and the last one was bonded to a man named Salazar Slytherian. This one you're interested in has been around roughly 500 years."

Hermione had been listening and nodding, taking in the information as quickly as possible when she suddenly tensed and seemed to notice something, "Harry, is that you? No it can't be, your voice isn't that low?" Harry laughed from behind her, "Hermione, meet Qin, third generation caretaker of the Beastiary of Hogwarts, guardian of the Hogwarts warding stone, even though I don't know what he means by that. Qin, this is Hermione Granger, the love of my life."

Hermione straightened and shook his arm while studying him intently. Qin, for his part, just sat on the Greater Basillisk egg calmly and watched her, "you would do Mistress Ravenclaw proud. She was particularly known for her mind." Hermione cocked her head to one side, "you're a part demon. House-elves are bred but you don't have the ears which mark their race. Few creatures have such small but bright eyes, and all of them are part dark, or at least part demon. But I don't know what you are."

Qin smiled, "Not to worry, it took Mistress Ravenclaw some time, and as far as I know no more of my kind exist in your world. I am a third elf. That's why I can sit on this egg with hardly an effect. I am a third magic, which is from the magical binding of my creation parts, and the magic that created this body, as well as summoning my demonic third to this plane. I am a Demonic Junior Invoker, which is why I have so much magical power. I didn't get through all my training, though I can tell you that being here now, I have much more room to wield and practice m,y powers with all the ambient power particles.

"The first generation guardian was a full Invoker. But he eventually became upset because none of the eggs would bond with him. He was lonely and wanted companionship. He was already very old when he started, which was why he could be summoned, so he found an elf who would take his place as second generation guardian. I don't know about the mystical abilities that would interact between the two, but eventually I came along. Unfortunately, this plane could not sustain my initial existence, and so I was returned to the demonic plane where I mastered the initial levels of Invoker powers. Master Gryffindor soon combined his uncommon power with Mistress Ravenclaw's almost unique intelligence, and created this body for me to inhabit. It is most useful because I can inspect the eggs much more clearly, and lets this plane sustain me because it came from this plane."

Hermione listened intently and nodded at the end of every sentence before finally getting an over excited look in her eyes and speaking up, "I'm sure she wrote most of it out though, do you know where to find where she wrote all this?" Qin smiled wryly, "If I did, I'd have to be guardian of it too. Unfortunately, no I don't. All I know is what's in this chamber, the library, and the dueling room." He paused and let her disappointed look fade away, "Now why don't you walk around and see if any eggs exert a pull over you? The moon's influence should last another few hours."

...

She stood in the middle of the large chamber while Harry paced around talking to Qin about the various other people who'd used the wing. He soon noticed and stopped, "What's wrong Hermione? Why are you just standing there?" She shook her head, "I can't which way to go first Harry, I feel like I'm bring pulled in 2 directions at once." Harry chuckled; leave it to Hermione to be worried about which egg she'd choose first, "Don't worry, Herms, just pick one. In fact, turn right first. You can retrace your steps later."

Giggling, she rushed off away from Harry, and Qin jumped over eggs and pathways to reach her and see what had chosen her. Harry sighed and continued on his walk. He'd been round the egg paths several times, and each time he'd been unsuccessful. Closing his eyes he continued down the now memorized paths, waiting for a pull on his mind to stop him short. Harry ignored excited cries from Hermione, knowing that there wasn't a problem on her side, and instead focused on the task at hand. Soon he'd gone through half the chamber and absently noticed Qin and Hermione were avidly discussing her familiars.

An hour later he finally felt a pull on his mind. Opening his eyes, he concentrated and gazed through the egg shell, seeing a set of small, curled forms resting in the egg. He couldn't tell because of the overlapping silhouettes, but he thought they were dragons of some sort. Raising an eyebrow at the impact his training was actually having on him, he hefted the egg and carried it with him. Out the corner of his eye, he saw Hedwig sitting on top of an egg and glaring at him as if to say 'this one for me', something which caused him to chuckle. Shifting his own egg to one hand, he concentrated, pushing more internal power into his hands and arms before picking up Hedwig's egg as well.

...

"Ah! Master Potter, that's a dragon in there. A Selingue Hakarmasannar, loosely translated from Elfish it is a Holy Dragon. It is a close relative of the Celestial Dragon, and more closely resembles a Peruvian Vipertooth in many aspects. It is also smaller, and the various people who've been have speculated that it had to evolve in some way when larger dragon species came into being.

"It is a small dragon, and more serpentine than many. It measures roughly 20 foot when fully grown and is usually grey with green markings on its large wings. There have been speculations that the present day serpants like the anaconda evolved from the Selingue, but that hasn't been proven to date. The species breathes a purple fire unlike, say, the Hungarian Horntail which breathes red fire, and also sports venom glands just inside the jaws. It was also noted not so long ago that this species has an extremely hard exoskeleton, enabling it to with stand spells that would have had the Ironbelly trembling.

"All in all, an excellent choice, though I'm actually not surprised that you were picked by a dragon. Back in the time of the founders, the Celestial Zone wasn't quite as secluded as it is now. In fact, Master Gryffindor himself was great friends with the Green Dragon then and Mistress Ravenclaw was always planning tactics against the Sage of Divine Pine Peak." Qin trailed off, lost in his thoughts.

Harry glanced at Hermione, who seemed to be trying to process everything at once. Chuckling, he broke Qin from his musings, "Tell me my friend, my friend Hedwig picked an egg herself, what does that mean?" Qin instantly woke up and stared at Hedwig hard as if identifying her, "I'm not entirely sure, but I have a feeling this owl is actually much more than meets the eye. Tell me my snowy friend, do you understand Master Potter perfectly when he speaks to you?" Hedwig hooted and nodded once, sharply.

Qin smiled and turned to Harry, "I have no idea how it happened, but your friend here is a magical owl in several ways, not just as a post owl. Firstly, he somehow has an intelligence of at least human level. That in itself is almost unheard of. Second, she seems to be a result of a magical evolution, and has a kind of unlimited stamina. She gets tired, but she will always be able to fly as long as she wants to. Lastly, I can't be sure, but I think she has a slight fire affinity."

He paused, considering the egg Hedwig had picked, "I can't exactly remember what's in that egg, but I'm sure it is a Frostiphorm. I also can't be sure what it does. Master Slytherian's snake became an arctic eagle and Master Gryffindor's Griffin became a Pegasus, so I can only say that it changes the form of the animal, meaning Hedwig here may become a ferret for all I know." Harry turned to Hedwig and raised an eyebrow questioningly, "What say you Hedwig?" She considered him for a moment before pecking the egg with her beak hard, slowly cracking the egg open.

...

It was rather ugly, of that there was no doubt. Harry had thought the Frostiphorm was going to be white or blue and a rather solid sort of thing. Hermione recoiled slightly, her impression being that it should have been closer to a snowman. Hedwig, however, hopped up to it and hooted.

It was red. A translucent but bright red, and was spherical in shape. Eyes perched on the upper side and the centre seemed to pulse with life. From nowhere it cooed back at Hedwig, and became a bowl pulsating red, which Hedwig stepped into. With a hoot and a coo, the red mass engulfed Hedwig completely in the sphere. Qin noticed Harry's shell shocked expression, "Not to worry Master Potter, It has happened every time, though it has never been the same color. Now, let us have a look at Mistress Hermione's familiars."

"Hmmm... at one time wizards experimented with animals widely. I believe these two are the results of successful experiments. They're tigers, as you can see, but not ordinary. I believe the one with ice blue eyes is more powerful magically, while the one with red stripes is more powerful physically. Now, if I'm right, the magical one was an experiment by Mistress Ravenclaw. She wanted to create an animal with above human intelligence, and experimented with transferring much of her knowledge widely. I think most others failed, but for some reason the tiger came through, and in fact possesses phoenix-like capabilities. It is highly magical, forms a bond with a wizard or witch, and can teleport. If I remember correctly, you stand to gain much of the Mistress's knowledge through that bond, using which this tiger can inform you.

"Now the red striped tiger is another matter. Master Slytherian experimented with animals based on potions' effects on them. He wanted to make animals permanently stronger, quicker, and hardier. He actually worked with a fair few animals, and deduced that potions are more suited to animals because they're closer to nature than humans. Where potions work on humans for a few hours, they worked on animals for days. He postulated that by fusing potions with animals in growing stages, they would make the potion a part of them. This one was made for its attacking prowess, and boasts enhanced senses, endurance, and stamina. I have no idea how, but he actually worked in a bonding ability too." Hermione stared wide eyed at the tiger cub, but Harry couldn't guess what she was thinking.