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(Enchanting Melodies) Chapter 445: Covered Bases
🕑 Added 2025-03-20 14:00:15 +0000 UTCChapter 445: Covered Bases
21 June 1995, Hogwarts
And just like that, with a heavy heart, Albus committed the greatest act of sacrilege in his life and stabbed Excalibur into the boulder. The Light screamed and the world itself turned white.
Harry opened his eyes, still in shock at what he had witnessed. His ears were still ringing by the scream he heard when it happened. There was still the normal ‘wrongness’ when destroying a prophecy but there was more to it. There was a horror, an anger, expressed in the form of a high-pitched scream.
It wasn’t hard to guess that the Light itself was angry. Seriously, what the actual fuck. That sword in Dumbledore’s hand was by far the most bullshit weapon that Harry had ever seen, and he wasn’t kidding. It could dispel practically any magic, create Light beams that literally cut through an entire hill, manage to wound Marinakis even with the whole Lightning Avatar he had going on, and literally cut through anything. The only thing that trumped it was Harry’s invisibility cloak, which allowed him to phase through it.
The weapon basically amplified most Light attacks, and it was most likely barely a scratch on the surface of what it could do. It was obvious that Dumbledore was not experienced when it came to using the sword, but that didn’t detract from the fact that it was a very impressive weapon. That’s not to mention the whole ‘weaponized fate’ thing and the healing factor it granted Dumbledore.
To be honest, it had taken Harry embarrassingly long to realize what it was. It wasn’t until he translated a few of the fae runes on the boulder that he realized that Dumbledore was wielding Excalibur, the Sword of Promised Victory, formerly Caliburn, the sword of selection before it was stolen by Merlin and turned into the weapon before him.
And Dumbledore had destroyed it.
Harry blinked as he opened his eyes and saw the shattered boulder which Dumbledore used to destroy the sword, as well as small fragments of the weapon, slowly fading into Light, with the former headmaster being nowhere to be found, even with his Arcane Hearing.
Harry slumped slightly, a mixture of frustration and relief.
It was nice that the fight with Dumbledore was over, but with what happened with the Light, it was possible that Dumbledore would be at his weakest. Not that Harry would have bet his life on that. With Ragnarök coming soon, the Light would not so easily abandon its champion, despite the obvious betrayal.
Next to him, Marinakis groaned, “He’s gone?”
“Seems so,” Harry answered.
“So much for stopping him from breaking the prophecy. Who would have thought that his sword was the prophecy he wanted to break? It seems foolish to destroy a weapon like that.”
“Not if you know Albus Dumbledore,” the young wizard commented, “He’s a man who would kill his entire family twice over if it helped advance his goals. He probably thinks that this is a great sacrifice or something like that. At least that thing is gone now, I don’t think I’ve ever seen something as abominable as that before.”
The former headmaster hummed, “Then why did he leave then? It doesn’t seem like him to leave an enemy alive.”
Harry shook his head, “I’m not sure. I think he realized that the fight between us would drag out and that he won nothing by doing it. He already achieved his purpose. Either way, it doesn’t matter. The plan was for us to escape anyway, so this changes nothing really.”
In the privacy of his mind, the last Potter would admit that he was worried about Dumbledore’s reaction. The magical release had been a lot more violent than Harry expected, not just because of the prophecy, but because of the Light’s rage. He never considered the fact that his former headmaster would betray his own patron like that. It was an extremely reckless move on Dumbledore’s part, to say the least, and if Harry had to guess, the man suffered massively for it, and that was what made him leave.
No matter how much it would have pained Dumbledore, the right choice was to fight them and try to kill them. After all, without Harry there, his main opposition lost its figurehead, and most importantly, the greatest threat to his plans would be gone.
Nevertheless, even with the changes in Dumbledore’s behaviour, Harry’s main objective was achieved, and the Greek mage seemed to notice that Harry wasn’t displeased, “So, did you get what we came here for?”
Harry grinned smugly, “Not yet.”
“What do you mean, not yet?”
“Time is such a beautiful concept, isn’t it?”
The Greek mage looked at the remains of the rock and probably saw the floating rocks. The young wizard did not let the man say anything and just waved his wand, letting the rocks keep falling. Slowly, a pulse of golden light seemed to materialize, and Harry raised the Elder Wand, letting it absorb the energy coming his way.
The whole process took about ten minutes, after which Harry’s wand started to heat up, showing that it was nearing its limit as to how much magic it could contain. Marinakis raised an eyebrow, “How did you do that?”
Harry let out a small grin, “I just created a miniature temporary subspace around the entire ritual space. I made it right as I realized what he was about to do. All of the excess magical release from the ritual would have been spread into it, frozen in an instant of time. I just opened it back up and let time go back to normal and absorbed the energy on my own terms.”
Marinakis frowned, “Then why not have it absorb the entire magical release then?”
“Because Dumbledore would have easily found out and dispelled the whole thing without too much trouble. The original plan was that I’d access the subspace after we escaped his retaliation, not that he ended up doing that. Still, the idea was to be subtle, to steal as much of the magical release and use it against them.”
“But you could have stopped Dumbledore from using the magical release and stolen it for yourself. Wouldn’t that have been a risk worth taking? You aimed too low and now we missed a viable chance at stopping Ragnarök.”
Harry let out a feral grin, “This was never about stopping Ragnarök, Alexander Marinakis. This was always about fulfilling it.”
Without saying anything else, the young wizard raised his wand, and two very familiar items appeared in his hands. He heard Marinakis gasp in shock at the sight of the artefacts, “Is that the Philosopher’s Stone?”
The last Potter nodded, “It is. Flamel arranged for me to get it, knowing what I could achieve with it. This, on the other hand, is the Fang of the World Serpent, capable of rupturing through dimensions, containing the very essence of Jörmungandr, or at least what remains of it.”
It had been a challenge, to say the least, but the Chamber of Secrets, Jörmungandr’s prison and corpse, was now gone, its essence distilled, its energy concentrated in a single glowing golden fang that hid the small dimension worth of energy contained within. Harry couldn’t have managed to do it without Solomon’s magic system, which gave him a lot of leeway when it came to magic efficiency. The Norse runes surrounding the tooth were nothing more than the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it all were millions, if not billions of runes, carved through space and time, in a subspace of magic of sorts, utilizing Solomon’s multidimensional warping of magical formulas. This was, by far, the pinnacle of Harry’s master of space and time magic, the ability to literally condense a dimension into an artefact.
Similarly, the Philosopher’s stone was filled with runes, but Flamel had already used Alchemy to condense the energy very admirably. The runes were to turn the stone into the weapon he was slowly turning it into.
With another flick of his wand, the two artefacts levitated, and Harry moved his hand like a musical composer, and in a way, he was. And just like that, he sang. Golden light started to envelop both weapons as if assessing them, with hundreds of runes appearing out of thin air, enveloping them, being absorbed into them.
Slowly but surely, the fang slowly started to elongate, becoming less physical, and more akin to a fractal, that was shifting in and out of reality. It seemed impossibly big and yet fit in the palm of his hand. Similarly, the Philosopher’s Stone didn’t look like it was made of energy, rather than a physical item.
Harry slowly channelled the Philosopher’s Stone, taking the Light essence inside it to pinpoint the multidimensional location of the Light. A small spark of Light appeared, which he shaped into a ball, which he touched with the tip of Jörmungandr’s fang. He grabbed his wand, took most of the energy he had just absorbed from Dumbledore’s ritual, channelled it into the Fang, and then slashed the air.
A rift appeared, like a tear in reality itself. The rift pulsed, jagged and raw, the very fabric of reality peeling apart like torn parchment. Beyond it was no swirling void, no endless abyss—just Light. But not Light as mortals knew it, not the gentle warmth of the sun or the soft glow of a Lumos spell. This was absolute. Immutable. A presence so vast and rigid that it defied description, pressing down on existence like an unrelenting law that had never once been questioned. It did not shimmer or flicker, did not cast shadows. It simply was.
Yet, Harry was unperturbed, and instead, put the small spark of Light back into Nicholas Flamel’s masterpiece, and then made the connection with the fragment of the Dark inside the World Serpent’s fang, to create another rift next to it. Yet, this one was the opposite in every way. Where the first rift radiated an unyielding, rigid Light, this one devoured, shifting and writhing like a wound in reality that refused to heal. The edges bled into existence, not sharp and defined, but fluid, unfathomable, as if it were never meant to be contained in the first place. The darkness beyond was not a mere absence of light—it was a presence, a force that moved, that breathed, that hungered.
This sight, this contrast between the two powers would have made most people run away, terrified by the sheer presence alone. Harry knew that this was barely more than a pinprick, that he was only able to do it because of the World Serpent’s very nature as a weapon against enemy realms.
It wasn’t hard to reconfigure it to make the whole thing one-way. After all, despite the rip, the gods’ protection of the material realm which stoped the powers from invading, still existed. Mordred still remained in his post, protecting Midgard as he had for centuries.
Yet, Harry had made a small hole in these protections, not enough to cause an invasion, but enough that it could be exploited in some way. The young wizard could already feel the small interest towards him. He had been noticed.
However, he didn’t panic. After all, this was all part of the plan. Nevertheless, he needed to work quickly, and he threw the Philosopher’s Stone into the Dark’s domain, and threw Jörmungandr’s fang at the Light’s domain, before closing the breach with a flick of his wand.
And just like that the world calmed down, the intense pressure and wind that he’d felt previously disappeared and a smile grew on Harry’s face, “Now, I’ve done it.”
“That was the Light and Dark,” Marinakis muttered, his face pale in the face of what he was seeing, “You could have started Ragnarök right here and now.”
“No, I couldn’t have,” the young wizard denied, “Believe me, I took precautions.”
“Precautions could be circumvented, you know that,” the Greek mage protested.
Harry had to admit that Marinakis had a point there, but that he was also lacking in information. Not a lot of people knew about the protections that the Elder Gods gave Midgard specifically against the Light and Dark invading. It was why Gjallarhorn was so dangerous. It could rip through these protections, allowing the entities through unimpeded.
That aside, there was also the fact that Harry had added his own measures, which would stop anything from getting in, and had even made sure that he’d be able to close the rifts permanently from his side, specifically enhanced with what remained of the magical release stored in the Elder Wand.
After all, he spent weeks fine-tuning and obsessing over the whole plan, trying to account for every possibility. Still, for Marinakis’ sake,
“Of course, but the risk was minimal given the fact that I held the breaches open for less than a second. There were risks, of course, but they were more than worth it for what I achieved.”
“And what did you achieve? You just threw away two of the most powerful artefacts in history. You burned through half of the energy you stole from Dumbledore. And you ripped open reality. Tell me it was worth it, Harry.”
Harry let out a snicker, “Believe me, it was. No matter what happens in the battle, I just made sure that Dumbledore and Grindelwald would lose. For now, the only thing we need to do is stop Grindelwald’s ritual.”
Marinakis shook his head, but with a small smile on his face, “Well, that’s easier said than done. What about Dumbledore?”
“He already lost; he just doesn’t know it yet. Grindelwald’s ritual is his own where he betrayed Dumbledore, and I just changed the course of Ragnarök. He can be a troublesome opponent, to say the least, but while he technically won this battle, he lost the entire war. If he’s in Nurmengard, then we’ll fight him there. If he’s not, then that’s one less thing to worry about. Our chances of victory have climbed significantly. We only need to delay Grindelwald’s ritual as much as possible.”
Marinakis was about to reply, only to stiffen, “Your girlfriend was just kidnapped from the stands. My agents say that it was the vampires. They left a message for you.”
Harry stood rigid as well, “Grindelwald finally made his move, then.”
The Greek mage put his hand on Harry’s shoulders, comforting him, “She’ll be alright. She’s a strong girl, and this was all part of the plan, your plan.”
He nodded, “Yes, it is. Now, why don’t you go to Nurmengard and join the rest of the army? Vlad should have broken the wards by now. You’ll be needed on the battlefield. As for me, well, Grindelwald left me a message. It’s only polite that I see it in person.”
Marinakis’ grin turned bloodthirsty, and with a crack of lightning, he was gone.
Harry exhaled, turning toward the waiting storm.
Grindelwald had called.
And now, Harry would answer.
AN: That chapter was weirdly hard to write. I wanted it to show Harry’s plan, having him use Dumbledore’s own ritual against him, and you lot already know where I’m going with this. I’m sure it came out exactly like I wanted it to. It feels a bit underwhelming, I guess. I tried making it more exciting, but I couldn’t really manage to do it. As usual, I don’t mind rewriting this depending on your feedback, so, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
Comments
Afterdark230
Someone is about to be bitch slapped.
Abe 7
Sacrificing a battle to win the war. Classic! Wonder what’s Harry cooking up for Grindelwald. Any spoilers for us?
