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Aether Continuum Part 1 | ||||||
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Category: Alternate Universe Characters:Albus Dumbledore, Harry/Ginny, Other Genres: Action/Adventure, Romance Warnings: Death, Mild Language, Mild Sexual Situations Story is Complete Rating: R Reviews: 53 Summary: Two mysterious beings that claim to be Nephalem send Harry's soul back in time to fix the mistakes of the powerful and save his world from more than just Voldemort. This is a change in the Time Travel trope where Harry originally never went to Hogwarts, where events spiraled out of control and Voldemort had risen with the Philosophers Stone and Diary Riddle forced another side to the conflict. Hitcount: Story Total: 52004; Chapter Total: 1475 Author's Notes: I'm so sorry this is incredibly late! I just couldn't write a chapter I liked until I made the draft for this. However, I have also started the first draft of the actual 1st Book of my series. If you would like, I can send you a link over google docs to the prologue for that story. Again I apologize and hope you enjoy this! Thank you and please review! |
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Year 2 Chapter 2: Nephalem Magics “There are four dragons that Nephalem lore claim created the original planet, from before the universe was born. These four represent each of the four main elements that create all matter; earth, fire, water, and wind. The four dragons, they are referred to as ‘Kings’ by the Nephalem, each strove to create the perfect being in their war with my current species. This, I feel, is an inadequate way to show the immense power these four beings had, and having seen firsthand the destruction one can cause, I truly hope that others remain ignorant. “The four ‘Kings’ have each shown their support our enemies, unfortunately. Though, fortunately for our side, only three remain as I was a witness when Ikelius slayed the ‘King of Fire’, who was arguably the strongest in terms of raw power. In confidence after the battle, Ikelius revealed that he believed his paternal grandfather was the easiest of the four to deal with, as the other three dragons were more cunning.” From the journal of Kesh’rak, Chapter 2; page 18 ********************************** **************************************** ************************** A few days passed since Harry and Ginny’s encounter with Dobby, and he now sat on his camp bed in Ron’s room as redhead and the twins played a game of exploding snap. Harry, however, was re-reading the letters that he’d gotten back from the house elf. He’d read them all, of course, but something in one of them triggered a feeling in his mind, one that he couldn’t quite place. He was currently reading the second to last letter that Ginny had sent, when the card the Weasleys were playing with decided the end of the game had arrived, exploding in Ron’s face and leaving it blacked in soot. As the twins howled in laughter, the younger boy wiped his face off on the orange Chudley Cannons sheets, leaving the fabric black where it had been wiped. Rolling his eyes, Harry turned back to where he’d left off in the letter. I know they’re trying to hide it, but mum and dad are getting worried about you not answering any of mine or Ron’s letters. The twins have said they wrote to you once shortly after my second letter, they seemed more upset about you not writing back then I was. Harry looked up at the twins, who had just finished setting up the next game of snap. They had been a bit terse with him when he’d first arrived at the Burrow, but once it had become widely accepted that neither side had received letters they’d returned to their normal selves. He turned back to the letter once more. Anyway, mum is also frustrated about the cracks that Shadow left behind when he did… whatever it was that he did. We’ve tried repairing the damage, but after a few days the cracks begin to reappear and the wood around it greys. We’ve even tried to replace the areas with new wood, but the cracks always appear. Harry frowned, re-reading the passage a few times. He hadn’t seen any cracks in the kitchen for the few weeks he’d been here. Maybe they’d found some way to fix them from appearing again. That is, until he heard the screeching of Mrs. Weasley, shouting about ‘bloody cracks’ and ‘if I ever see that man, I’ll throttle him.’ This was it, he’d seen cracks appear before when Lars had done magic back during that final fight before the ritual. He’d been distracted at the time to really stop and think what was causing it, but if these new cracks were the same, he’d have weeks to study it and possibly find a way to fix the damage, or even reenact the casting. Standing up and moving to the doorway, he waved off the twins when they asked if he was sure he didn’t want to join them in their game. He closed the door to Ron’s room behind him after exiting and took the stairs down two at a time. He waved to Percy when passing the Prefects room, who had been peeking out to see what the commotion was down in the kitchen. Harry jumped down the last three stairs, pausing for a moment to reflect on his sudden childish behavior, then entered the kitchen to see a fuming Mrs. Weasley being followed by her daughter who appeared to be making an attempt at calming her mother. He ignored them for a moment, moving in towards the sink, and seeing for the first time the cracks upon the floor. There were two of them, each stretching parallel across the floor for near two feet. The two cracks were unnaturally straight, but the ends of each began to curve towards the other. Inside the cracks was pure darkness. They didn’t just split the wood for an inch, revealing the ground underneath, but nothing was visible where there should have been. Tilting his head to the side, Harry did something very stupid, placing a finger into the crack. Except his finger didn’t pierce into the darkness, it met something solid and felt much like the wood around it. Prodding it, he reached out with his own magic, feeling at the cracks. He mentally lurched back at what he felt. The makeup of the world itself had been pulled away, yet the world around it wasn’t screaming in agony. In fact, it continued on as if part of itself hadn’t been removed from existence. Harry pulled back his magical awareness and, after sitting down and crossing his legs, began to poke at the edges, feeling the differences. It was at this moment that the two female Weasleys noticed him in the kitchen studying the floor. The two whispered at each other in a heated discussion before the elder Weasley, with her hands on her hips, shrugged and walked into the front room. Ginny sat down next to Harry and touched his forearm. “Harry?” Harry didn’t answer right away, his eyes behind his spectacles were unfocused, and he was mumbling softly to himself. She was about to call out to him again when he blinked rapidly, turning to face Ginny with a small smile on his face. “I think I might have figured out how they use their magic.” Ginny merely looked at him with a blank face, “The Nephalem! They use the elements, you know, earth, fire, water and wind. One of them, Lars, told me that it’s linked to their race, how they’re connected to the dragons who are the elements given form. Except, I think I might know how I could do it…” A look of concentration came upon his face and he back down at the cracks. Reaching out a hand, Ginny could feel the power build up in front of them, when suddenly it disappeared. The two looked at each other with wide eyes, then Harry’s widened even more and he looked around frantically. “You were reeeeeaaaaaally close to killing yourself there, kid.” A deep voice, filled with merriment came from behind them. Jumping to their feet, the two turned around to see who spoke. There stood a giant of a man, his hair white with a hint of green appearing and wearing leathers with strange metal placed in protective areas. He was moving one of his hands along the wall, turning things that were protruding from it. It wasn’t until now that Ginny noticed they weren’t in the kitchen at the Burrow anymore. Instead, the room was completely made of metal, and there were dials and screens showing an odd set of glyphs. The were two screens larger than the others, the one of the left showed a large circular object, littered with small lights, spinning on its blank screen with what looked like a timeline next to it. The other screen showed a massive planet, with small lights zooming around in the empty space around it. The noticed where she was looking and placed his hand on a half sphere and the two screens phased out. “Sorry, that’s too much information for you little brains to hold. Can’t have them imploding on us, I’m sure Shadow wouldn’t want another Ward dying on my watch… Er. Not that that hasn’t happened before mind you, at least not really.” The giant rambled on, Ginny had stopped caring what he was saying and looked around once more around the room. She spotted another tall figure standing in one of the doorways leading out of the room they were in, leaning against the wall with his blackened arms crossed in front of his bare, blackened, veiny chest. His violet, horizontal pupils were looking right at her and she screamed. Harry moved like lightning, his wand flashed into his hand, pointing at the creature, and moving Ginny behind him protectively. “What the hell is that thing, Lars?” He snarled. Lars sighed overdramatically and gave the creature an exasperated look. “Mate, could you not scare every bloody human we meet? Put that worthless piece of wood away, Potter, you can’t do magic this far from your Galaxy.” He waited until Harry hesitantly lowered his wand, noting he kept it in his hand, ready to be used. “This here, is our friendly academic, Kesh’rak. Yes, he is a demon, no he will not bargain for, eat, or somehow trick you out of your own soul. Poor bastard already had that happen to himself.” “Thank you, Lars, shall we tell them the entire story of both my lives while we’re at it?” The demons asked dryly in a surprisingly soft voice besides being gravelly. He entered the room fully and raised his hand out in a familiar way. “Harry Potter, and I assume the fiery Ginny Weasley. A pleasure.” Ginny hesitantly placed her hand in his, and the demon stooped down and kissed her knuckle with his dry lips. Harry narrowed his eyes, but the demon dropped the girls hand and extended his hand towards the bespectacled boy. Warily, he shook the demons hand. Ginny turned to the giant. “Lars, was it? What did you mean when you said we were really close to killing ourselves?” Lars rubbed his hands together. “Yes, the reason I stopped you and brought you upon my, well our ship. Well, you see, Harry here was about to do something incredibly stupid for anyone that doesn’t have a drop of dragon blood in him.” He raised his eyebrows, as if waiting for them to answer. When they stared blankly at him, he sighed dramatically and continued. “He almost cast elemental magic, and that is bad in two ways. Number one,” He held up one of his giant fingers. “He has received absolutely no training, whatsoever in the elemental arts. And two,” Another finger rose to join the other. “Because of him not having said dragon blood, he would have used his own elemental makeup to power the spell, which would have destroyed him, turning him into whatever element he was about to cast. In this case, he would have crumbled to dust and Ginny would probably be taken to a mental institution because she’d be babbling about how her boyfriend went poof!” The giant mimed this by moving his hands away from each other. “I don’t believe you.” Harry said hotly. “You should.” the demon said. “Seen it with my own eyes.” Harry eyed Kesh’rak, “So how do you safely use it?” Lars smiled widely before answering. “You can’t, as I’ve said before. Us Nephalem can by using the makeup of the world around us, which is why the cracks appear.” He paused for a moment. “I’ve said to you before that this subject would take years to explain so I’ll try to give you the summary. “Now, the four elements and split into two groups. Destructive, which is fire and wind, and Creation, water and earth. The former two, due to their destructive natural states cause the cracks to appear. They can be fixed by the two creation elements.” Ginny interrupted before the Nephalem continued. “But water and earth can destroy as well. Why are they considered differently?” Lars looked at the young girl appraisingly. “Oh, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders girly. I can see why you like her, Harry.” The raven haired boy shook his head, and they could hear him mutter ‘Shut up’, and Ginny blushed scarlet. This caused Lars to smile even wider. “Oh ho! Struck a nerve! Now to answer your question, red. Yes, those two can be used to do such and are destructive when and external force causes them to be, however, in their natural state they are rather calm.” Ginny thought on his answer for a minute, then asked another question. “Could you fix the cracks that Shadow caused in my mums kitchen. She’s doesn’t like it she can’t fix something and they’ve cause her a lot of stress this summer.” Harry nodded softly at her words. Lars grew solemn. “Ah, unfortunately not, I’m afraid. We’ve already risked much by sending Shadow to get you into a position to help Harry, and because of that we can’t do much else on the planet for another few years or our enemies will track onto it and everything we did when we…” He glanced at Ginny, then Harry, who shook his head in answer to the silent question, before continuing. “Expelled them from your galaxy before would have been for naught. I promise we’ll fix your mums kitchen when we do go back.” Ginny, who appeared to be enthralled by the Nephalem and his unique manner of teaching, missed the small interaction between the two. “Well, I should be getting you two back. I do, after all, have the difficult job of putting you back in the Burrow within a timeframe where Molly won’t have noticed your not in her kitchen. I think five seconds after transporting you here should do.” He turned to the dials on the wall, and after spinning a few, Ginny with a look of surprise on her face, disappeared in a burst of light. Lars grew serious, his blue eyes boring into Harry, “Well then, Potter. We have maybe five minutes before I have to put you back. I’m sure you’ve got questions for me now that your girlfriend is out of the way.” “She’s not my girlfriend.” “Isn’t she?” The Nephalem wagged his eyebrows provocatively, then looked down at his wrist and tapped it mockingly. “Time’s ticking, Potter.” “Where’s Shadow?” Harry asked. Lars tutted, “That’s your question? Shame, because I don’t know exactly where he is.” When it looked like Harry was about to burst, the demon, who had been extremely quiet in the corner spoke up. “He’s having a meeting with the voices inside his head, as Lars so eloquently told you before the ritual. Just this time they’re doing it face to face.” Harry just looked at Kesh’rak in confusion, but the demon shrugged. “We can’t exactly say much more than that because we don’t really know who these voices are. He just tells us he’s going to meet them and without an explanation, he’s gone. We get the feeling they aren’t very happy with him using the Aether Continuum ritual. Lars was tapping his wrist again to show Harry he was running out of time. He thought for a moment before asking. “How exactly did the ritual expel your enemies from the galaxy and have you used it before? The Nephalem began to slow clap. “And there’s the two questions I was expecting. Good, now for your first question, the answer is easy. The Aether Continuum ritual essentially reverted your galaxy, the Milky Way, I believe you call it, back fifteen years while the rest of the Universe continued to trundle along like normal. Everything went back to how it was, so all the other Nephalem, Demons, and Dragons that were there that weren’t fifteen years prior, were removed from existence. They are gone, dead, and the ones that were outside have no clue what happened. The screen you saw earlier on the right was the headquarters of our enemies. They’ve been scrambling for weeks trying to figure it out.” Lars explained all of this in a very excitable way, pacing with a slight skip to his step. “The answer to your second question is… yes. Of course we used it before. You don’t think we’d use it on one of our Wards without testing such a powerful and dangerous spell did you?” He shrugged. “We first tested it on some bloke who called himself Merlin. He was a bit of a tosser, in my opinion, but Shadow was adamant we use him.” Harry and Kesh’rak snorted in laughter. Lars looked down at his imaginary watch. “We’ve got time for one more question, bed-head. What’ll it be?” Meeting the Nephalems eyes, Harry asked. “When can we expect you to come to Earth openly?” Lars see-sawed his hand, “Roughly a little over two years from now. Should be an exciting year.” The giant shared a look with the demon. “Right, time to be off Harry. Make sure to hold onto your private parts, we’ve had a nasty case of lost ones by using this device.” As Harry looked at the man with disgust, Lars laughed, throwing his head back then turned the device. Harry too, disappeared into a flash of light. Kesh’rak shook his head at Lars. “Shadow’s going to kill you for revealing all of that without his permission.” The half-dragon shrugged. “Doubt it. If he did, who’d fly the ship?” **************************** **************************************** ******************************** H arry and Ginny appeared back into the kitchen of the Burrow exactly where they’d were before Lars had ‘abducted’ them. They stood there for a second before Ginny poked her friend in the side, hard. “They have a spaceship, and can travel in time! Why didn’t you tell me!” She spoke in a whisper, but the excitement was very apparent in her voice. Harry rubbed at his side. “We didn’t know, just suspected. And would you have believed me if I told you anyways?” But she didn’t hear him as she danced around the kitchen. “I was in a spaceship, and I met a demon who was nice. He kissed my hand Harry!” “I was there.” He grumbled. They heard Mrs. Weasley calling them from the front room, causing Ginny to stop mid-skip. “Ginny, your school lists have arrived! There’s also a note from Hermione for you Harry, asking if we could all meet her and her parents in Diagon Alley next Tuesday for your school shopping.” Ginny’s face lit up even more, which Harry didn’t think was possible, and skipped out of the kitching exclaiming in happiness at her acceptance into Hogwarts. Harry followed, shaking his head but he too had a smile on his face. He just hoped this year would go much better than he feared. |
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