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Again she didn't touch anything, not even letting the gem come close before opening the bag again and sending the bag toward it with a wave of her other hand. The opened mokeskin pouch soon engulfed the jam, and she sighed with relief as she telekinetically closed the pouch before returning it to her side.
Around her a loud rumble suddenly began, and she heard a crash from somewhere in the distance. The ceiling above her began to crumble, a stone slamming down right next to her. "Oh you have got to be kidding me!" Jean summoned her powers again, speeding out through the corridor and away as around her the ceiling and the walls shattered and fell.
She had to dodge aside several times along the corridor to swerve around falling rocks, but eventually she was back in the stairwell racing up through the air. The stairwell too was collapsing, even the entrance was and Jean barely escaped out into the scorching air of the Atacama desert before for the entire edifice simply collapsed, leaving nothing but wreckage. After it was all done, you would be very hard pressed to tell this rock from any other.
Jean lay on the ground outside, gasping in air as fast as her telekinetic abilities could allow. "Well, this was one of the most unpleasant experiences I've had lately," Jean groaned, pushing herself up off the ground after several minutes of rest.
She leaned against the fang shaped rock with the blue marking just to regain her strength for a moment, noticing that the mark too was now gone. She reached again down to the belt and pouches Harry had prepared for them all and pulled out an energy bar biting into it hungrily. It didn't really help her mental and telekinetic exhaustion, but it helped her physical and mental ones at least.
Jean reached down to her belt again, picking up the radio and talking into it for a moment. "This is Phoenix to Hogwarts, this cache is done, I'm going to rest here and then make my way to the next one slowly."
Dennis's voice came back quickly. "Roger that Phoenix, good to hear from you, you were out of com range for a while there. Take your time, there's no rush."
"Thank god for that," Jean muttered closing her eyes for a moment, "Phoenix out."
About ten minutes later Jean stood up eventually, still shaky from the experience. "I hope the other caches aren't as bad as this…" She began to walk away, unsteady at first but regaining her strength slowly, despite the oppressive heat and dryness of the air. Eventually Jean felt up to finally taking off, and she pushed off the ground into the air. She still wasn't feeling up to flying all the way up High Note though, and simply flew over the desert then up into the mountains and down again. If I can get someplace with some water, maybe I can rest enough to make the run up.
"Or maybe I can just find some place to crash for an hour or so," Jean muttered, as she skimmed along the mountains. Eventually she left them behind like she had the desert, and she let her shield slowly falter leaving only a bare minimum around her, continuing to fly on above the rain forests. Jean didn't realize that she had just passed from Peru into Brazil.
Jean did notice however when she came upon what looked like a semi-active volcano, and was about to skirt around it when she noticed a young woman standing at the very lip of the volcano. On the other side of the short, squat volcano she could see a city, like the one she had briefly seen on the news about the Neo-romans, set like a white pillar of impossibility in the middle of the rain forest.
Ignoring that for now Jean raced downwards thinking that maybe this was some very odd suicide attempt, until she saw the woman's form suddenly shift into something that looked like flame and molten lave flow and she seemed to add a bit of rock to the lip of the volcano's top, before standing back.
She looked up suddenly, looking straight at Jean. "Who are you?" she said getting into some kind of combat stance that Jean hadn't seen before.
Jean thanks the stars that Harry had hit her with that translation spell. With Ororo having gotten over her irritation at it Jean predicted that it might turn out to be one of the most useful spells in his repertoire. She raised her hands in the air, saying "Easy, friend. Or at least not an enemy, passing through?"
"You mean fly through," the girl said amused. "How exactly are you flying Ms. 'not an enemy'?"
"I'm a mutant, same as you I suppose." Jean chuckled, landing next to the woman. All that time spent on trying to figure out how to find mutants, and I suddenly stumble into one? If Murphy is a God, he is making us his bitches.
"Mutant," the woman muttered one finger tapping the upper arm of her other arm. "Yes, that is what the Brazilian delegates that have come here have said I am. All my people now is that I am unusual, I have been outcast enough for that, putting a name on it won't make things any better."
Jean nodded, sitting down on the lip of the volcano to stare at her. the girl was lithe, somewhere between her and Kitty in age, though her body was much more that of a gymnast or track athlete than either Kitty's dancer look or Jean's slightly tougher, more muscled (and larger chested) form. She had black hair falling straight down past her shoulders to midway down her back, and tanned skin. She was also wearing a bit of lipstick and what looked like a toga.
She pulled out another energy bars bit into it before waving the remainder at the girl who declined wrinkling her nose. "Sorry," Jean muttered, "but I just had quite a bit of exercise I suppose you could say, I had to use my power quite a bit. Not on your land, or in Brazil at all. In some desert whose name I can't remember that way," she pointed over her shoulder.
The younger girl smirked a bit, somewhat disarmed by the other woman's attitude. "If you were in the Atacama you passed straight through Bolivia before reaching here. What's your name stranger? Mine is Amara Juliana Olivians Aquilla."
"Phoenix," Jean muttered then swallowed.
"The immortal firebird? You must think highly of your skill to take such a powerful avatar." Amara's tone wasn't judging, just evaluating.
"Let's just say that it was sort of an obvious choice shall we? As to your powers," Jean went on, "and being ostracized like that, it isn't unfortunately unusual for mutants to run into. In fact it is becoming a major issue on both sides. A lot of mutants seem to think that their powers put them above humanity. that we should be ruling them. Others seem to think it inevitable that we will be persecuted for our powers and want to strike first, and then there are regular people who either think we're a minority group that needs to have its rights protected, or think we're dangerous freaks and want to either wipe us out or use us." She shrugged. "Human nature I guess, though that doesn't make it any better, and it won't stop me from trying to change it."
The young woman chuckled. "True, though I personally have only run into some persecution here. I am the only mutant among my people, and apparently there are few enough in Brazil as a total to make it a very small issue there, but my power is much greater than most of the ones that have been reported."
"You simply turn into magma or create it or what?"
"No, my powers are geothermic based as far as I can tell, I can open fissures and manipulate magma. I can turned into my magma form without difficulty, control comes much harder." She looked embarrassed for a moment gesturing at the volcano. "I created this when I was… bullied a few weeks after I had my first period. It was when my powers awoke, and even under the circumstances at the time it was a bit too much. I have yet be able to control it all the time, and I need to take this form to do it." she gestured down at her body which suddenly transformed, looking now as if it was covered in flowing magma and fire. It was actually rather beautiful the Jean, but she could see it might be off putting to others.
"How old are you?" Jean asked.
"17 going on 18 in three months, why?" Amara cocked her head, looking at the older woman.
"Tell me," Jean said slowly looking at her thoughtfully. "What do you think about the issues I just mentioned? And are you happy with your life here?"
Amara frowned tapping her arm again. "I would say I am more content than happy. I am the daughter of a senator, a member of the ruling body here. It's an easy life, but not exactly interesting or very engaging. I was excited when the Brazilian's made contact with us, even more so when they were able to punch a road through the rainforest to us so that we could open up formal dialogue. But even with that there doesn't seem to be any way I can break out of the mold. To my father and his fellows my powers are strange freakish things they'd prefer not to acknowledge.
She laughed suddenly. "My mother has even mentioned I need to find a way to get rid of them or at best control them because not being able to hurts my marriage prospects. But I'd rather use these powers that I have been given, and fighting for the good of all would be a good cause. Do you know anyone who's hiring?" she asked jokingly.
"Actually," Jean smiled "I do." She went on to describe a bit about the team they were putting together, leaving out everything about Harry's powers, plans outside the team, High Note (which she couldn't have talked about anyway) or Hogwarts. She ended with "and I can have's a the messenger drop off a communication device for you if you want to think about it and get back to us later."
Amara again tapped her upper arm with a few fingers, thinking thoughtfully. "It's certainly interesting, and my parents would jump at the chance for me to be able to go to someone to help me train in my powers. As I said I've made some headway, but having someone to help would be excellent. For that alone I think they would let me go to this school you all are setting up, and I can even suggest another student, or perhaps even a member of your team. I will warn you though he's an arrogant little asshole."
The sudden curse word from the woman who had been so poised and polite startled Jean into a laugh. "Is he that bad?"
"You have no idea, though it might be just his attitude to me because I'm a woman. His names Roberto da Costa and he has a Brazilian. He's a star in his soccer team and the son of a wealthy businessman, and around here soccer players can become bigger than movie stars. Either because of his upbringing or his soccer aspirations he is massively egotistical, arrogant and more than a bit of a peacock. Luckily his girlfriend seems to be able to control them when she's around."
She shook her head, "I met him on a trip with my father to Rio de Janeiro. I know he's run into some problems lately because of his powers which seemed to have awakened under similar circumstances to my own. Luckily I believe that his girlfriend has refused to abandon him, though if she has a mutant power I do not know what it is. Heck, I only know that much because my father and his hit it off."
"Interesting," Jean said nodding. "I don't think I have enough energy to deal with him today, but if need be I can smack him down if we go see him. I long do you think you'll need to think about this?"
"Oh I'm sold already," Amara laughed. "The idea of using my powers for a good cause like that is fantastic."
"And it gets you out of being the 'daughter of a senator'," Jean laughed.
"That too," Amara replied without a hint of embarrassment. "It'll take me a few days though to talk my father into letting me go, I don't want to simply run off. If you have your messenger delivery a device to me as you said, I'll get back to you as soon as I can. How will I recognize your messenger?"
"Oh trust me," Jean laughed again as she pushed herself to her feet, swiftly rising into the air. "Hedwig is very noticeable. You'll know her when you see her." With a firm handshake of farewell she zoomed off, leaving behind a young woman who suddenly realized that the world was open to her filled with possibilities. She chuckled then turned back to head towards the city the distance.
OOOOOOO
Dr. Doom turned from one of his experiments to stare at the window as his suits security features warned him that something was looking at him. When he turned, he noticed that it wasn't a person so much as an owl, a beautiful look Bubo Scandiacus, if he was any judge. However it was staring at him with possibly the most intelligent eyes he had ever seen on animal, and he had met several humans who could turn into animals before. On one claw she was carrying a message and inside his mask Doom raised an eyebrow. "An owl delivering a message? How quaint."
Her eyes narrowed and Doom was amused to feel a bit of danger in the air from moment as if she was going to attack him. Evidently the owl was much more intelligent than that however and decided against it, instead simply holding out her leg to him. With one steel gauntleted hand he reached forward plucking the message off her leg. "I don't suppose you'll tell me how you got through my defenses?"
The owl proceeded to preen itself with quite a bit of smugness in her manner, and Doom surprised himself by chuckling a little. "I did not think so."
With keeping one eye on the owl, he reached over and touched a small device in the center of his room, which controlled a defensive system based of using quantum energies to create a cage over any other living being in the room. It was one of his better designs, working off several former defensive installations he had created previously, many of which the FF had run into. It should have immediately captured any other living creature, human or otherwise in the room yet the field didn't appear around the owl, only a brief flicker of red energy that disappeared quickly.
Instead she simply glared at him more as if wondering how he dared try and trap her. Doom scowled in response. That was a minor mystery however, and instead he turned his attention to the letter.
Lord Doom, King of Latveria,
At our first meeting you mentioned a desire to, in your words, do business with me. While I realize that it has taken me overly long to get back to you, I am ready now to meet with you on neutral ground what business you have in mind. I would prefer someplace in Europe, but in the end the decision of the place I is up to you so long as it is on neutral ground. Naturally, I will choose the time, thus neither of us can prepare any untoward surprises for the other. A person of your intelligence will not need to be told this but I will state it plainly that I will be prepared to deal with you fairly so long as you deal fairly with me. Take that however you will.
Signed, Harry Potter, Wizard.
Doom stared down at the message thoughtfully, while in his heads up display some information about the owl appeared. He smiled faintly, seeing why the cage of energy hadn't worked. The owl was in fact generating her own energy field, and had automatically modified it in some fashion to counteract the energy field that his device put out. If she could do that so quickly, then it was almost certain that she could continue to do so even if he modified it to keep changing frequencies. Though that still didn't answer his question on how she came to be here...
Moreover his sensors were indicating that the owl had another sort of energy inside of her leading off into the distance, one that his computer had seen before albeit nowhere near as powerful in a few other animals when he had dealt with witches is in the past. So the owl is Potter's familiar he thought, he is either very foolish, very trusting or wishes to show that he is taking our correspondence seriously. Which is it I wonder? Given the fact that Potter's has not come out into the open or allied himself with any government that might negate the idea of him being trusting, and possibly foolish as well. And a man who can be as dangerous as the recordings from London indicate, would be intelligent enough to take our correspondence seriously.
Doom too had an intelligence service, though his was more electronic and robotic based than was normal. Doom was not one who trusted agents easily, especially agents that would sell out their own countries or groups. This probably made him much saner than most people would give him credit for. However he had robotic spies in nearly every major city in Europe. The one stationed in London had captured some of the activity in London after rebooting itself from being deactivated in some magical fashion. The information he had gleaned from that as well as the machines deactivation had helped him come to understand how powerful Potter was, and how dangerous.
While it has taken him quite a while to get back to me it has not taken long enough for me to take offense from that. And the issue I need his… aid for, no matter how distasteful it is to admit that, is dire enough that I will agree to meet him on neutral ground. But he would do well to remember that Doom is not to be trifled with. A show of knowledge for now. With that he turned and picked up a pen and paper.
Harry Potter,
While I would have preferred that you contacted me earlier than this, I cannot take offense at the amount of time it has taken you especially given the activities you were a part of in London. I presume that clearing up after the madwoman Selene has taken up much of your time? What runic system was that Selene was using, I recognized a few runes from the Cimmerian system but not the others? A fate worse than death indeed for those in London.
Know however that any further delay will be unseemly, and might result in our current neutral stance changing. Due to this, I will meet you in Barcelona, Spain on Tuesday and you may determine the place in the city itself and the specific time. Naturally I will follow the letter of any agreement we reach. I would prefer this meeting is between the two of us alone.
Dr. Doom, king of Latveria.
Done with his message he rolled it up tight then Doom turned back to see the owl still staring at him, her body relaxed yet Doom knew that was a lie. "Return to your master with this," Doom said handing over the note, then waved one gauntleted hand. "You may go now."
He almost laughed aloud as the bird gave him a rather huffy look as if to say 'I don't need your permission'. Evidently the bird was very hard to impress, and he continued to watch as the bird lit off the windowsill, and flew out over the grounds of his Castle. Doom swiftly connected to all of the surrounding cameras, and was able to catch the moment the owl disappeared.
Swiftly he moved over to another computer and began to run the video of that disappearance through several different image analyzers. His whole castle was protected against magical teleportation or scribing or anything else he could think of, and of course was protected electronically as well, but it the owl had disappeared almost completely, without anything he had built even registering her departure. After a moment he sat back chuckling a little at the minor mystery and setting up a few of his computers to work on it. With that done Doom turned back to his own computer screen, mind already back on his current task.
OOOOOOO
At the same time that Jean was having her bit of adventure Harry had decided to find the dark places that King William had mentioned. With Dr. Druid's help he created a holographic map again like the world globe, though this time it showed just the UK.
The older man shook his head smiling faintly. "There aren't many dark places anymore, most died decades ago, and one I know collapsed during the wars due to some errant bombing, though it was only noticed later. In fact there are only three left. This one," he said pointing to one that was almost central Britain, "is very small, possibly the size of a place for rituals? It isn't quite over lay lines but it is close enough that the wards there could be tapping into the closest, I'm not quite sure but I'm certainly not going to say it would be impossible for wizards. It's deep in the valleys there, so it's kind of out of the way even so and I think only someone very conscious of their environment would be able to notice that they had just been guided to one side somehow."
He tapped another one down in Wales. It was actually somewhat close to his own area, but it covered much more land. "This one might well have covered a small community. Again the wards around it are very subtle. People think they can't enter, turn aside or other issues. I think there are other wards deeper in, I for one keep having issues with my bowels when I try to get through, and I cannot get a hold of the wards for some reason to get past." Harry chuckled and Dr. Druid went on quickly. "It's also helped by the fact that it's out of the way in the hills, but I'm not certain what you'll find there."
"And this one?" Harry asked, pointing at one where the doctor had marked out the third dark zone. This dark zone was right over a ley lines, so there was no mystery as to how it was still powering its wards.
Dr. Druid nodded, a faint frown on his somewhat scarred face. "Yes that one is quite a bit larger than the other two almost four times the size of the second one actually. It is almost certainly the one that the King and his government figured out first, as you can see," he said gesturing at the map. "It's right in the middle of the Thames Valley, and that isn't exactly an out-of-the-way area. If anyone thought about it mathematically they would figure out that their maps and land surveys are missing something. Couple that with satellite data on the size of the area, and there is no chance of it remaining hidden."
Harry frowned thoughtfully. "Regardless of anything else unfortunately I might have to sell that one. It's too central a location, and if I have to take down the wards to enter I can't very well argue that it isn't part of Britain can I?"
"I believe that he would be most interested in it yes," Dr. Druid chuckled dryly. Even if it's just used as farmland that could add a third again to the amount of farmland in the Thames Valley. It's quite a chunk of land, and I have to think that you should probably visit that one first Mr. Potter."
Harry nodded, and suddenly Hedwig appeared on his shoulder. "Excellent timing as always Hedwig." he murmured lifting one hand to gently stroke her plumage, surreptitiously looking at her legs but not finding a note there. Hedwig precked, leaning into the caress slightly and nipping at Harry's ear affectionately. They had only been able to spend a few hours together over the past week as Harry was in a rush to finish the work on the room of requirement, and test himself, and spending time with Melody, Jean and Ororo. Hedwig did not begrudge ay of the human females their own time with her Harry, but still wanted to spend time with her human so was looking forward to this.
"Did you have any trouble dropping off that message for me?" Harry asked, carefully not looking at Dr. Druid or Dennis where he sat in front of the map of the world, reading some kind of printout.
Hedwig shook her head all the way around signifying no, holding out her forearm with a note on it.
Harry immediately pulled it off and read the message, frowning faintly. I suppose that's the best I'm going to get. Whatever Doom wants from me must be something major though for him to not even try to intimidate me. I don't like the fact he really has dabbled in magic, or the fact he somehow knows about Selene and what happened in London, but I can live with it.
He quickly put the note away in a pocket and changed the subject. Harry gestured at the spot on the map, blowing it up momentarily to allow Hedwig to look at it. After a few seconds perusal she precked affirmatively before Harry could even tell her what he wanted. "We've got a bit of a mystery there Hedwig, so if you could go and find a suitable location for me to pop into, you and I can try to solve it. Your senses will almost certainly be useful once we get there."
Hedwig nodded, and pushed herself off of his shoulder. A moment later she disappeared and Dr. Druid chuckled quietly, rubbing at his eyes, deactivating his mage sight. "That is like no teleportation I've ever seen. Not even your little house elves move in quite the same way."
"I have no idea what she does," Harry replied honestly. "Every time I think of looking into it something else comes up, but I'm happy to allow Hedwig her little mysteries."
Dr. Druid chuckled. The two continued to talk quietly to one another for about an hour or so before Hedwig came back, and she and Harry communed for a moment before he nodded. "Good spot Hedwig," he murmured and nodded to Dr. Druid. "We'll be back."
The doctor nodded at the younger man, who promptly disappeared without loud pop in the air. "I have got to learn how to do that, even Mr. Potter's teleportation is much easier than my own," Dr. Druid muttered pushing himself up and out of the table he had been sitting at wincing occasionally. Even now there were just some pains that he still had to deal with after his battle with Selene.
Harry appeared in a small clearing in grove of trees about 5 minutes' walk away from the area where the wards were set up. He could feel them him even from here, and they were indeed running off a small drizzle of power from the ley lines. They were nowhere near taking as much power as the wards in Hogwarts even now, so it was no wonder they were still standing.
He moved towards them, and almost immediately as soon as he faced that direction he felt the first ward hit him. "It isn't all that subtle," he muttered shaking his head. It wasn't a suggestion it was almost a command to look away, and with every step he took in that direction it got worse. "Even normal people would recognize this," he said sighing a little. "Wizards and subtlety just do not go together alas. Well in some cases it does," he laughed quietly, he could do subtle of course and he knew several back in his dimension who could, if they chose to. "It's just that the vast majority of wizards would not even know what it meant unless you forced them to look it up in a dictionary."
That thought cheered him up and Harry forged through the ward ignoring it easily until he had to stop for a second when he came to a second one. This one was not a modified confounding ward to push interest away, this was a full on dissolution, hiding the area in front of him from view.
It looked to his nonmagical eyes as if he could step forward and suddenly be on the other side. It was much subtler than the first, and Harry wondered idly if maybe they had been set down by two different people.
When he activated his mage sight however he could see the wards laid out on the land, and noticed there was a third ward. Cracking his neck for a moment he raised his hands and began to weave his own spells through the wards, pulling their lines of power this way and that. Eventually he was able to make a hole in it, and moved through it quickly with Hedwig perched on his shoulder.
Suddenly around them the area which had been clear plane and fields, was now a small group of dilapidated houses and wild fields of grass and weeds everywhere, crisscrossed with the remains of very low walls practically everywhere, which had probably marked separate warding lines which failed over time, unlike the third ward, which was directed at keeping creatures in. Here and there Harry could see bones of large creatures, ranging in size from a large deer to much larger. "Interesting, I think we know now why the wards covers so much area."
Harry moved through the area, all of his senses alert his mage sight active and a ready spell in one hand. On his shoulder Hedwig too was tense and ready.
There were fifteen houses all clustered together, sharing a common green between them and an outer wall surrounding them about waist high separating them from the fields where Harry supposed they raised the animals he could see, which he was most certainly going to examine before he left.
The wall was made of stone and was still in generally good repair, though the houses, like the walls Harry thought possibly separated the animals, did not look so good. The wooden thatch rooms had caved in, the wood had rotted, and there didn't seem to be anything else or anyone living here of course. Harry hadn't thought there would be, but a small part of his mind had held out hope.
After making a careful external examination of the small community Harry moved around the interior wall until he came to a entrance where his mage site told him was another, much nastier ward, and he began to dismantle it entirely. That took him about thirty minutes. He could of course have just powered through it, but he didn't want to get into the mindset that exchanged brute force for thought without having a very good reason. Besides it was good practice.
Once inside Hedwig left his shoulder circling the area looking for any dangers while Harry made his way towards the well he could see at the epicenter of the shared common green. He stopped momentarily when he nearly stepped on the remains of a sign, which had probably been blown here from the gate. He turned it over, and could barely make out one letter in five, not enough to really figure out what it said.
A minute Later harry reached the well and he looked down into it shaking his head. He could barely make out a rune down below, but the spell it was powering, either to clean the water or create it as there wasn't any in the well, was gone now. It looked as if the only wards around that had been linked to the ley line underneath this land were the ones defending it from outside interest.
The main stone was also easy to find with his mage sight. It was in the largest house, set up in one of the corners and Harry scowled at it, for it was obviously of bad (i.e. cheap) quality because it was coming apart at the seams despite having nowhere near the load the hearth stone at Hogwarts handled with ease, let alone the amount it had handled for centuries on a wartime footing. The fact it was small, only about three feet tall couldn't explain the amount of decay he saw. He could also see that bits of it were not proper granite but some other stone mixed in.
"No use taking that alas. Pity, I could seriously use another hearth stone. On the bright side there don't appear to be any human remains left," he muttered, shaking his head. "I've had enough of that thank you so much." Indeed, so much time had passed that even the bodies of people who had been killed in their houses had decayed utterly, for which Harry was very thankful.
Harry explored each house in turn, trying to find anything of interest here, and in one of them he found a passageway leading down into the basement. Inside the basement he found several shelves cut out of the surrounding ground, and his eyes lit up as he saw what was there. "Potion ingredients, excellent!"
Moving forward he cast a few spells on all of them using a spell he had learned from Professor Sprout and smiled happily at most of the returns. Only a few of them had gone bad, and some of them probably had increased their potency over time. He could recognize a few vials of preserved Dragon's blood, and he wondered if maybe the bones outside were still good to use for ingredients.
If so, this place is a major find even if I can't keep the land itself. I will definitely need to check on that.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his shrunken trunk, expanding it quickly to normal size, then began to grab everything off the shelves, stuffing it all into the trunk. With that done he exited the house, checking the others to see if they had similar setups but they didn't. As soon as he finished with the last one Hedwig zoomed down, landing on his shoulder and he shook his head. "I didn't find anything, did you?"
The snowy owl hooted mournfully shaking her head.
"Didn't think so, well now out into the fields I guess. We'll start with the largest skeletons first." Hedwig nodded and launched from his shoulder again in search of anything small and squeaky or big and dangerous.
Harry went from skeleton to skeleton trying to identify them and only succeeded in doing so to four. One was the very few remains of a manticore, consisted of a rib cage and one paw. The second were the bones of a three headed snake of some kind, while the third was most definitely the bones of a small basilisk. The fourth was probably what had killed everything else, the remains of a nundu, a huge cat creature who was known as one of the few animals more dangerous than a basilisk or dragon due to its poisonous breath, magical immunity and brute power. It was also the most complete skeleton, and Harry shuddered a little guessing that it had died of starvation after killing and eating all the other animals.
Regardless of his ability to identify them he magically gathered them all up and put them into his trunk to join the potion ingredients he had found earlier. A last perusal from the sky with Hedwig and Harry nodded, deciding they had found everything they could here.
With that Harry began to cast spells, shattering the walls one by one outside of the house that contained the hearth stone. This took him about forty minutes, and after he was done the entire community was simply gone, the houses utterly demolished, the walls torn down and the stones that had made them shattered, their bits and pieces scattered. After that he searched out the surrounding ward stones and frowned in thought. Take the wards down now, or wait until William pays me for the land?
Eventually he decided to leave them up for now. Harry didn't think he'd require the land here, and space expansion charms could do so much anyway. Still he would rather wait on that decision until he could talk it over with his ladies, and besides William was a politician. "Despite William being a generally nice old man, I would prefer to continue to deal with him from a position of strength rather than hand him the land and expect to be reimbursed."
After saying that aloud Harry chuckled quietly. "You think I'm picking up some of this business acumen stuff, Hedwig?"
Hedwig declined to answer tucking her head underneath her wing in reply. "Thank you for that vote of confidence."
With that they popped back to Hogwarts wards and filled Dr. Druid in on what he had found. After a few minutes they were off once more, teleporting to the entrance to Dr. Druid's house. The older man moved inside, taking this opportunity to grab a few items that he wanted, and with one of the elves helping him, began to shift all of his furniture to one of the rooms in Hogwarts that he had been living in for the past week and a bit. After that Dr. Druid would take down the wards around this place, while Harry moved on to the dark place nearby.
Moving from Dr. Druid's house down to the dark place in Wales was easy. Harry simply drove there, enjoying the day with Hedwig actually amusingly sitting on her perch right in the midst of the air stream coming in from the window and from there connection he could tell she was enjoying it. Harry refrained however from making any jokes about how much she resembled a dog however, he liked his ears where they were.
He stopped and parked in a small town which was the nearest point he could drive to that wasn't private property near the dark zone, then disillusioned himself and disappeared into the woods surrounding it, moving up the hills. About 20 minutes' walk later through the woods both Harry and Hedwig suddenly stopped a feeling of unease hitting them. It was very subtle, almost as if he felt he was being watched or approaching a wild animal of some kind that he shouldn't go near. "Okay, now we've seen what the subtle wizards of this world can do. Damn that's good…"
With that he began to cast spells, activating his mage sight and looking around. He frowned however when he noticed that the strange fear ward was the only one he could see. He nudged his head against Hedwig and said, "Keep your eyes peeled, if they were subtle enough to put something like that up they might have something else some kind of trap even more hard to spot inside. And you're better at spotting things like that then I am."
Hedwig precked affirmatively, staring ahead with her unblinking owl eyes. Harry moved forward cautiously but nothing happened for the next 15 minutes. the next few wards were easy enough for Harry to spot, they were simple prank wards really, very odd to see protecting a magical community yet they would certainly be effected.. There was a bowels loosening one, which Dr. Druid had mentioned, a dizziness one and several others of similar natures. "Why do I get the impression Hedwig that we are coming on something that the Marauders would've liked quite a bit? I halfway expect Sirius to pop out of from behind tree somewhere."
Hedwig precked amusingly at that putting her head against his and Harry chuckled. He no longer felt much sadness when he thought of Sirius. His other friends were another matter, because they were so much younger. His dog-father been middle-aged, and despite his time and Azkaban had lived through a pretty full life. Neville and the others however had died young after a little over a year of pain and death, and that had made their deaths all the more tragic.
Five minutes later and four more prank wards of varying power Hedwig precked sharply nipping Harry's ear and he stopped suddenly. "What?"
Hedwig launched herself from his shoulder, flying ahead and circling around what looked like a regular moss covered rock. She flew back without touching it For a moment even with his mage sight on Harry couldn't see what had caught his familiar's attention, then he did and Harry blanched. Good grief, that is nasty, a ward that would pull out my bones and make the dance in front of me as I died? That is both immensely inventive and incredibly disturbing. Why do I get the impression that the people who sent this up are just like the group that set up the wards on the Buckingham Palace?"
His familiar nodded her head affirmatively and Harry looked at her "You think so or you know so?"
Hedwig's abilities to see and understand ward structures were amazing even to Harry. She could see things that he couldn't, magical connections that seemingly did not exist to his senses. Or perhaps his human brain simply couldn't quite fathom them. Whatever the case it had been proven that she could see things that he couldn't, and sometimes those things are very important.
The snowy owl replied in the affirmative again and he frowned faintly. "But those wards weren't so old they could've been there before Buckingham Palace was built. Did one the conclaves not retreat entirely from non-magical interaction?" He smiled faintly "I love a good mystery, so long as I can solve it anyway."
With that he got to work dismantling the ward, taking it apart slowly. It was dangerous work, as there were more than a few traps built into it as well and he chuckled admiringly as it finally came apart under his assault. "I think I would've liked to meet the people who put this up, it would have been an interesting learning experience.
Hedwig landed on his shoulder, and the two went on. Harry paused for a moment as he looked at the back of the stone and he laughed aloud when he saw what was written there. "'Laugh this one off'! Oh that's good."
He continued on his way, and about 10 minutes later came upon what this was all supposed to protect, a small community built around and under trees, smaller than the community he had been before. There were about seven houses, one of them was so dilapidated he wasn't certain if it was a house or something else. They were all spread out under the trees, with no walls between them only one surrounding wall at head height. Or at least it should've been at head height, age and the effects of wind and rain had taken its toll, and it was now simply a pile of rocks rather than a wall.
Harry sighed, some of his good humor leaving him at the sight. "I shouldn't have gotten my hopes up to find anyone alive, but I did anyway." With his mage sight on he could see that there was a hearth stone, nowhere near the size of the one Hogwarts had but still large for community like this set into the center out in the open which was odd in and of itself. Normally heart stones would be protected or hidden away somewhere, like the one at the last community which had been hidden behind wooden panels that had rotted. Here it was as if the group didn't want to hide it away.
He looked around, trying to see if there was any other active ward in the area and frowned when he noticed a very major one, a heavily modified disillusion ward still up and running in a small house set near the hearth stone, Harry had never seen some of the little add-ons to it, but he thought that maybe it could have been designed to hide something from the dementors. It was so small he had missed it at first, and it was with a start that he realized it was a house elf dwelling. Harry and Hedwig exchanged a look, and Hedwig leapt from his shoulder into the air circling the property once before coming back down precking affirmatively.
Harry jumped up over the mound of rocks that marked where the surrounding wall had once been, making his way through the community. The insides of the houses were utterly trashed, but this wasn't just caused by wind and rain, Harry could still see burn marks on the rock, several other signs of combat everywhere, and he chuckled darkly. "These people put up one hell of a fight, though I wonder why they remained here rather than retreat to Hogwarts?"
Eventually he moved out of the houses and towards the house elf dwelling, and spent several minutes taking down the ward around it, then looked inside. Inside were four small cribs, holding house elf babies. They looked no more than a few months old or at least the house of equivalent, Harry didn't know how house elf babies matured. He looked up from the inside and noticed a small stasis ward that he hadn't noticed from the outside, and smiled. "Whoever did this wanted these babies to remain alive come what may."
Harry glanced over his shoulder at the heart stone which showed absolutely no sign of wear and tear. The wards around this place hadn't anywhere near the power requirement necessary to pull enough power from the ley line to hurt the hearth stone and unlike the stone at the last place this one was of excellent quality. The wards could've stayed up for literally forever, so long as nothing happened to the lay line itself. Someone would have eventually gotten through, and found these babies, and hopefully care for them.
With a sigh he stood up and moved to the hearth stone, erasing the wards on it slowly one by one, until it stood free of them all. That took them about an hour and a half, because he didn't want to damage the hearth stone. This and the house elves were a major find. The house elves not so much admittedly, though of course he was happy to have found them and be able to let them have a chance to actually live rather than sleep on, the years not touching them. But another hearth stone would allow him to use one somewhere now and still have one in reserve. Pity Charles' mansion isn't anywhere near a ley line. Of course he'd do a few tests to make sure that there was no hidden damage anywhere, but that was for later.
As soon as the last ward went down he said in a loud voice, "Mertie?"
An old house elf matron appeared in front of him, gasping a little. "M, master, huh, calls Mertie?"
"Sorry Mertie, I know you're not the best popper," he said kneeling down next to her and placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. "However I think this requires a mother's touch."
Mertie was the female equivalent of the majordomo, the oldest female house elf though not by a wide margin. There were several others close to her own age, but she was the undisputed leader of the group. Her eyes widened when she looked past Harry's waving arm into the small house elf house. "Babies! Master whys they be…"
"I don't know why they were here," Harry said shrugging. "I think they just didn't trust the wards of Hogwarts, or perhaps didn't know Salazar had found a way to protect them." Or maybe, a darker part of his mind thought, they knew of Dumbledore's stupid plan to have the house elves slowly die off, and decided that their house elves at least would have a chance to live no matter how far in the future it might be. He shook that thought off and asked "Is there anything I need to do for them?"
"Master be bonding them when they are able to walk," Mertie said firmly. "Until then house elf magic be helping them, it be like baby food," she explained trying to put it in human terms.
"Whatever you need you will have Mertie," Harry said formally, and then waved his hand. "You need any more help, want me to call one of the others?"
Mertie nodded and Harry called three of the other similarly aged matrons, and one of them helped Mertie take the entire house elf house, popping off with it back to Hogwarts with its precious cargo. Once Harry uprooted it from the ground the other two took the hearthstone back to Hogwarts.
Once they were gone Harry stood there for a moment looking around. This had once been a really nice place, and he could easily picture it full of life and people. He debated putting up his own wards to guard this place until he decided what to do with it but after a moment shook his head sadly. This place deserved to have people living in it, people coming in and seeing it, and it would be a long time before he had enough workers of his own to set up in a community like this.
With that thought he got to work burying the few not completely decomposed bodies he found, setting them up in a series of graves outside the community.
After that he went to work on erasing any trace of magic from the area. Let that rest of it stand, he thought to himself, let the wind and rain finish their work, and let other people come and see, I don't have the heart to destroy it all.
Harry never noticed the half buried sign by what had been the entrance to the small community, a sign that still held, badly faded but still visible, the Welsh letters for the name Duchairn.
Once he was done he shook his head. "One more Hedwig, then it's back to Hogwarts and a well deserved rest for the evening."
Hedwig precked rather sadly, looking around, her own feelings much the same as her human's yet also thinking o the variety of small tasty things she could find in the fields around them.
With that Harry popped them back to where he had parked his car, and after undoing the dissolution spell on himself they got in, driving up from Wales to near where he remembered the last dark zone was. Once they were in the area he called the castle on his communicator and had Dr. Druid help them find a place to park, but it was quite a ways distance, since this place was deep into the woods and hills.
"My advice would be for you to fly there Mr. Potter," Dr. Druid said via the communicator. "That is, unless you have a secret desire to be hiking for the next several hours."
"Sound advice Dr., and a very accurate summation of my feelings at the moment," Harry said dryly. "I'll call you back if I need help."
With that Harry and Hedwig took the air after once again disillusioning himself, and flew on in the direction that Dr. Druid had indicated. Hedwig flew ahead, but she was quickly back, precking angrily.
No, Harry realized, as the snowy owl came closer, it wasn't anger so much as fear. "Oh joy, he muttered "that's just what I need. Back away Hedwig, head back to the car, I'll meet you there."
Hedwig nodded, increasing her speed as she passed him. That, Harry reflected as he watched his familiar fly off, was probably not a good sign. The only thing that could scare Hedwig that much were dark creatures such as dementors or lethifolds.
Did someone else find a way to capture a few dementors? But wouldn't Death have pointed me in that direction, she really didn't like the fact that the others had escaped her. Harry paused a moment in midair and said softly "Magia Erebea," activating his defensive spell, and with a faint touch to his chest deactivating the illusion of regular clothing he had been wearing. He still hadn't gotten out of the habit of wearing his crisis suit 24/7, though Ororo was trying to break him of it.
Harry floated on, keeping his eyes peeled and about 5 minutes later came upon what had so scared Hedwig and he stood back with a hiss. "By Merlin, Morgana and Maeve…"
Harry had come upon places that had been the sites of some very dark rituals during his war against Voldemort and his followers. That was what he was feeling now. Whatever was ahead of him, hidden behind wards to keep out unwanted visitors and any non-magical was the site where something dark, something incredibly powerful had happened, something so powerful that whatever it was continued to power the wards without any connection the ley lines or anything else.
Harry moved forward again, and began to deactivate the wards but these were not subtle wards these were simply powerful, and they had multiple magical signatures on them something Harry had seen only rarely before outside of Hogwarts. Deciding enough was enough he simply summoned up his power. His eyes crackling with power, Harry reached out and gripped the magic of the wards, shattering them, ripping them asunder with his own magic. There was a boom and a crash of thunder and the ground shook but Harry was willing to deal with a bit of damage to the environment to get in and deal with whatever was in there.
With the wards down, so too did the illusion that had been part of them collapse. What had been a small hill covered with trees like the dozens of others around was now revealed as a plain hill with a single badly overgrown dirt path leading up it. It was also obviously raised by magic in some way, the uniform nature of the hill said that much, though it hadn't weathered he test of time and erosion any better than anything else Harry had seen today. On top of that hill was a large stone table, shattered now, as was the remains of the hearth stone that had centered the wards.
Harry landed next to it, shuddering a little at the feeling around him. There were a few remains in a few of the seats, and were a few remains around it, just a few pieces of metal that might have been pins and one or two small rings. At each position along the table were small family crests of some kind. Harry didn't recognize any of them, though he had only done a brief perusal of the history of the wizards in this dimension.
That was enough however to tell Harry where he was. "Ahh," he said rather sadly, touching the stone table. "So this is where it began. This is the meeting place that portrait of this universe's Dumbledore spoke of, where that Celestial appeared and summoned up the dementors and set them upon wizard kind." He shuddered again, feeling the evil that remained in the very air here. Souls had been pulled from the afterlife here and then twisted and mutated into the darkest, most vile of beings imaginable. No wonder this place felt so vile.
Harry growled, his eyes lighting up further, words failing him at the moment yet he knew what he had to do now. He raised himself into the air again, and began to chant a spell of purification. It was holy spell, one of the ones he had learned from a book he'd borrowed from Dr. Strange in return for allowing the doctor access to his own library. The spell had been developed to cleanse an area after a demon summoning by a Sorcerer Supreme in the distant past. Harry hoped it would work well enough here, and he would take great pleasure in destroying the remains of this enclave of wizards.
The chanting and spell casting went on for several minutes, since the spell was not a wizard spell it had to be modified to not call upon other powers. Harry was still firmly of the belief that that was a bad idea in the long run, though he had to admit that it seemed to be working for the Sorcerer Supremes. It just gave him the willies really.
About fifteen minutes later he cast the spell, and a hard white light enveloped the area blooming and blossoming from the tips of his fingers each beam zooming down into the area around the stone. Lights flashed up from where the original beams impacted the Earth, and soon they intersected creating a woven net of white lines. With the final word of power they imploded in some fashion and Harry closed his eyes reflexively. After a moment he opened them, sighing faintly as he realized the spell had worked, dispelling the sense of evil in the air.
Harry breathed slowly in and out for a moment, and was not surprised to hear the flap of wings behind him. "All done, Hedwig," he muttered, "well with that at least."
He started casting spells again, reducing the remains of the table and the shattered heart stone under it to rubble then scattering the rubble down the mountainside, smashing and changing the hill's shape enough so that it looked more natural, and finally transplanting a few of the trees nearby up onto the top of the hill so that it at least looked from a distance as if nothing had ever been there. It would take a while for it to actually look that way, but he hoped that no one would stumble on it and ask awkward questions. Frankly he didn't think they would, right now it looked as if something weird happened, but nothing pointed to magical weird.
"And if they ask other questions it's not my problem," Harry said to himself and Hedwig precked agreement. With that Harry turned, and headed back to his car, now eagerly looking forward to a well-deserved night of leisure.