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XXXV. Myth

Myths may not necessarily be true- but knowing them and appealing to them can also add to your legitimacy. Building your own myths is a little tricky, at least at the start, but you can search for mythical precedents to follow or artifacts to use… or you can fabricate a passable fake.

There is, of course, the tempting possibility of a small fragment of truth in that fiction, but do not lose yourself in the quest.

Harry's concerns about mundane fatherhood we're interrupted when it came to something else: the dragon eggs he had collected. While Harry was initially very gung ho about the whole thing… he would admit that the moment he got his hands on time slowing spells he used them. He wasn't down with Hagrid's particular brand of monster madness, and was going to try to acquire an adequate habitat first.

There was just so much preparation you needed before you could even begin raising a dragon. He raised some more islands- rocky, craggly things in a remote stretch of sea- in hopes of somewhat mimicking the Hebrides. They were really far south, for two reasons: hopefully they would be remote enough not to mess with the sea routes too much, and to sort of replicate the environment the dragons had at home.

Some part of him wondered if dragons conformed to the typical muggle ideas of warm and cold blooded creatures. Maybe cold blooded, but with their own sort of internal, magical fire? Would that count as being warm-blooded?

Perhaps asking scientific questions on the nature of dragons was folly, but he did still want to care for the little creatures as best he could. He couldn't believe that he actually had to use the very same book on raising dragons that Hagrid did all those years ago… but here he was.

A few of his braver citizens took up the challenge of keeping an eye on them, thankfully, so he wasn't the only figure in the dragon's lives. Was it possible to get them used to people? To domesticate them, even?

The magic carpet Harry had acquired was big enough for two- far more than two, actually- letting Harry and Astoria do some exploring. He had to get her back to Britain before it got too late, so Harry wouldn't 'get fresh' with her or whatever. Of course, it was already late in India- time zones and all that- but whatever. Seeing the sights at night was a pleasure all its own.

Harry did have a brief chat with the wizarding authorities in India- or at least the piece of India he made landfall in- about magic carpet rules. Not much surprising there- don't fly high enough to cause trouble with the planes, but don't buzz people's houses either- but the spells to keep the whole thing hidden from muggle eyes were neat, and efficient enough you could basically have a picnic above a populated area with no worries.

There was, quite obviously, a lot of land to cover, but despite that there were a few obvious targets like seeing the Ganges, and of course, while they were there, it only seemed obvious to look at one of the most famous buildings to ever sit upon its banks (or its tributary's banks, whatever).

It took a bit of carpet flight to get all the way up to the Taj Mahal, the mausoleum and her splendid domes almost bringing a tear to the eye- it was, in some way, a single man's grief frozen in time.

"It's beautiful. Who made it?"

"The Mughals, I think."

"Well I know it was the muggles, I meant which muggles?"

"Not muggle- Mughal. Like moo, not mug."

Harry was rather interested in magic from different cultures colliding- he profited from it himself- and he figured that the Mughal culture, or whatever was left of it, might help. An empire spanning most of India, with influences from Persia and the Steppe as well? There was so much to learn.

The architecture was remarkable as well- compared to the big, somewhat clumsy bricks which composed portions of Harry's castle, the Taj Mahal was incredibly detailed, the outside covered in intricate plant motifs and beautiful calligraphy, and that was just the building itself. It was the centerpiece of a complex with beautiful gardens and surrounded by walls.

Magic still hummed over the place. Quite obviously, there were no wards that kept muggles out, considering that it was a major tourist destination, but there were more subtle ones. The Emperor who constructed the tomb clearly didn't find the idea of someone disturbing the grave of his beloved wife amusing, and took measures against magical grave robbers, measures which were maintained even if the Empire was long gone.

He and Astoria took a brief moment to pay their respects in the tomb- at the actual sarcophagi on a lower level and not the fake ones. Harry was fascinated by the place on a mostly architectural level, although he did find something quite sweet about the way the Shah poured so much into a fitting memorial for his wife. Perhaps he could eventually build a fitting memorial for Sirius, Remus, Tonks, and all the others. Astoria found it a touch romantic, in a sort of tragic way. To be loved this passionately… well, wasn't that what everyone wished for, really?

Harry was familiar with the snake charming cliche about India, and he was definitely intrigued to possibly learn some things about the intriguing art… the problem was finding them. As it turned out, snake charmers- at least of the mundane, non magical variety- were something of a dying breed in India. In fact, it was technically illegal, so the muggle sort could only really be found in hinterlands where the government wouldn't get upset with them.

But magicians? They could circumvent a lot of muggle laws quite easily, and in the magical world there was a lot more you could do with snake charming than just impressing passerby (although from what Harry understood even that was becoming more difficult).

Still, they were going on fairly strong in the magical portions of India, although comparing the charmers who made snakes sway to Parselmagic users who could mend wounds and cure poison seemed a little unfair.

Of course, Harry was curious, and they did actually have a shared language in Parseltongue.

"Are you a natural born speaker?" The man asked.

"Something like that." Harry said. He decided that perhaps mentioning the imprint on his mind potentially left by a dark lord was not something to be mentioned in common conversation.

"It's a pleasure- I've never met a natural speaker before now."

"But you speak so well!"

"Well, I suppose I'm as close as to a natural speaker as you can get- my father hissed my first lullabies to me."

"Really?" Harry supposed that if one could learn Parseltongue, one could learn it at young enough of an age for it to basically be their native tongue…

As the two of them talked shop (with the occasional question or comment from Astoria, who seemed to be taking notes) some part of Harry was already thinking of a suitable snake to give to Teddy.

Kumari Kandam was something Harry was kind of skeptical about, in the same way one might doubt Atlantis. Instead of being Plato's warning against decadence and arrogance (the flaws which had supposedly led Atlantis to the bottom of the sea), Kumari Kandan was very much a nationalist thing, mired in myths of a lost land to the south.

Of course, the land had to be attached to Sri Lanka and India, in order to support the idea of the Tamil people being indigenous to the region and not invaders. Then the idea got tacked to Lemuria- a proposed sunken landmass which existed solely as a stopgap: it explained how lemurs ended up in Madagascar and India, but nowhere between the two, like the Middle East. And that was an idea- at least before continental drift.

There were plenty of reasons to think that it was a load of shit in the same way Atlantis might have been. You could even point to things that might have influenced said myths- Lemuria in Kumari Kandam's case, the Minoan eruption in Greek antiquity. There was every reason to think the stories were dreamt up to fulfill someone's ideological/nationalist fantasy.

But of course, there was also every reason for the muggles to think that the world was completely mundane and not alive with magic. Cover ups were possible- that wasn't to say Harry fell for the ideas hook, line, and sinker, of course. He was just willing to entertain the idea that there was a tiny nugget of truth buried in the myth and legend.

In Harry's opinion the only wrong choice was not looking into it at all. Of course, he faced the typical translation hurdles that came with being in a foreign locale. Perhaps he would have had slightly better luck with finding English speakers who could translate or share about obscure folk tales and myths if he could look among the Muggles, who tended (as far as Harry could tell) to be a touch more cosmopolitan than their wizarding neighbors. However, there was a rather obvious problem with trying to find magical sources for said myths without accidentally breaking the Statute.

Eventually, at some point he just figured that it would be better to just dive and find out- and there wasn't much, at least not at first. Trying to find the outline of a sunken landmass that may or may not have existed thousands of years ago wasn't exactly easy, even with help from the mermen.

What eventually did the trick was flipping the script a little, by trying to search for it indirectly. Presumably, he wasn't the first searcher of these waters, and it was possible that the sunken landmass might have had some sort of defense mechanism. Admittedly, that was playing with fire, but trying to find sunken ships could still be useful by itself- like if he managed to find a slightly less well known sunken ship.

Searching for metal did have the tendency of catching false positives- there was the occasional lode underwater, or just unusually large piles of debris- but there were a few finds that were definitely interesting.

Some of the finds were already public knowledge, like the wrecks of the Hermes and the Vampire off the coast of Sri Lanka. At least at first, Harry was tempted to just leave them there, as remarkable as having a vampire aboard the Vampire might have been, but his dive revealed ghosts. The Vampire had a relatively meager complement of ghosts, as by some miracle only eight men died during her sinking, but the Hermes… well, some of the ghosts had moved on, but a significant portion remained. Harry had to wonder if the structure of the military, or perhaps just the duty inherent to the job made ghosts more likely to stick around.

Whatever the cause, more than half of the three hundred or so men who had perished with the Hermes were still around, and while Harry didn't want them to languish they were loyal to the old boat. So he pulled out his staff and got to work- without passing out this time! Sure, he was majorly tuckered out, to the point that Astoria had to help him stand, and he had to give her instructions on spells to keep the muggles away, but Harry found the idea of a fleet immensely gratifying.

It took a lot of touch ups (and a quick call to Margaret for a repeat of her furnace trick) to get the ships back in… well, ship shape, but the result was definitely to Harry's liking. Sure, it would mean more work on dedicated harbors or the like, but it also meant that he had a lot more flexibility when it came to where he travelled. He could (and did) send a ship back to the Americas, so he could set up a base over in that direction.

Seeing the ghosts of the Hermes and Vampire react to those of his own ship were pretty interesting as well- the immediate assumption would have been that they were from the same time period, since they were driving a liberty ship… they were more than a little shocked to learn that Harry's boys had fought during the American Revolution.

Harry realized that raising every single shipwreck in the world would probably be impossible… but if he bumped into any more, especially if they were haunted, he would definitely consider it.

Of course, this did serve as a considerable distraction from his original plans of searching for Kumari Kandam, but he did spend a little bit longer trying to find hints about the legendary landmass.

While no great sunken cities or caves had revealed themselves to Harry quite yet, he did find something interesting- another shipwreck. No ghosts this time, although there was definitely something unusual about the wreck, considering the feeling of magic that was thick around it.

Even if the flag of the ship had decayed away to the point that it was impossible to guess what standard they may have flown, the wood itself was in remarkable shape, not nearly as eaten away at or covered in barnacles as the wreck of a sailing ship should have been. The lines were still smooth, the caulking to keep the water out still there- although the giant hole in the ship's side made matters of water-proofing rather moot.

It was too big to be caused by a cannonball, at least one launched from any cannon Harry had ever seen. The shape was odd too, a long jagged tear instead of the circular shape one would expect from a cannonball.

There was also the matter of the space expansion charms that were used on the ship- paired with the great gap in the ship's side, you could peek in and take in dimensions that just did not make sense. The decks were just too damned big for the ship's body.

Swimming inside did not reveal much of any value, but did seem to show that the wreck had been visited recently. Broken boxes littered the floors, their contents dumped out across the decks- at least, some of them. Some of them were completely cleaned out, while others were sitting piles of spice or tea leaves, ones that looked… well, not edible, considering that they were stewing in saltwater, but much better than several hundred year old foodstuffs should have looked. There was a bit of broken chinaware, too, although not much.

Harry was struck with the feeling that the empty boxes were filled with goods that were a lot harder to come by (today) than tea and spice. And if he had to point a finger at anyone who he suspected of getting to the ship before him… well, it seemed like it would be Jean Paul.

Was he searching for Kumari Kandam as well though?

XXXVI. Soft Power

Soft power is understood to mean sway over another country achieved through means that don't involve a wand to the back or a spell to the face. While a bit of the ol' ultraviolence is useful from time to time, being able to sway others without the threat of violence is useful, especially if you may not have the manpower to actually follow up.

The magical world muggleborns were introduced to in 1999 was quite different from the one they would have encountered a couple of years ago.

Well, in all likelihood they wouldn't have made it to the magical world in the first place, considering the regime, but still. The magical world had also regained some of its vivaciousness- parents who walked with their children into Diagon Alley weren't walking through shops that still seemed locked in the terror of a civil war…

Weasley's Wizard Wheezes was doing well- really well. They had a line of rather tame pranks for the wee muggleborns, and a few slightly more practical (but suitably subtle) products for the parents. George had managed to convince Ron to jump ship from the Ministry (who were getting rather… concerned about his links to Harry Potter) and work at the shop.

Admittedly, selling To-Dye-For Drop Candies (Change your hair into any number of fun colors- for only fifteen minutes, to keep the parents calm) and muggle pens with endless ink wasn't quite as glamorous as Auror work, but Ron liked it a little better.

If a child could manage to drag their parent into the shop, parents frequently found themselves face to face with a definitively non-human magical creature, complete with tails and ears that looked very real. Well, a few of the more impolite or curious kids would go for a yank, certain it was just some magical prosthetic, and Chiharu would give off a fittingly fox-like cry before the parent dragged away their child in embarrassment.

Due to the fact that creatures like Kitsune had never really been considered when it came to writing the Ministry's laws, Chiharu wasn't technically supposed to be under Ministry observation… that came with the massive catch that the Ministry didn't really consider her a person.

Of course, while a very interesting destination, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes wasn't a necessity for the average muggleborn preparing for their first year at Hogwarts. A wand shop and a bookstore, though? Those were required.

Ollivander was starting to face the repercussions of loaning Harry those books on wandlore. The recent duel had sent the popularity of staves- almost always a niche product, one that several of his ancestors had never seen a single request for- through the roof. They were finicky things, and almost always required being built with a purpose- the cost of the materials made cranking them out like wands infeasible.

Still, the amount of Galleons one could earn from custom orders was considerable. Very considerable. And grudgingly, he would admit that sometimes making wand after wand after wand got a touch boring. He had piles of them saved up- more than enough to suitably impress anyone coming in.

The bookstore was similarly piled high with interesting little bits of the magical world- including The Magician's Guide to Parseltongue by Harry Potter. This tended to be one of, if not the first introduction some people got to Harry Potter, and was actually a surprisingly good one- it seemed to show skill and generosity (something that a muggle might feel was a little lacking in wizards, considering the whole staying hidden thing) when it came to sharing his knowledge. That was if you could get over the fact that it was talking to snakes.

There was also lighter magical literature you could look at, if you pleased. The Prophet and the Quibbler were the main papers, and there was a rather obvious difference between the two, at least to the average father or mother guiding their child into the magical world. The latter was typical tabloid trash, even if the occasional technical article on staves or non-European magical creatures snuck in there, it was surrounded by a sea of conspiracy and delusion. In contrast, wasn't the Prophet the voice of reason?

The Daily Prophet was looked upon slightly less favorably by those who remembered its role as the mouthpiece for the Voldemort regime, but unsurprisingly few people were very open about the whole wizarding civil war thing, it still being a fresh memory and with it posing a genuine risk of scaring those parents off. So they typically bought into the stories told by the paper, especially if they were backed by their own preconceptions: werewolves bad, vampires bad, wizarding playboy who hung out with those creatures? At absolute best, teetering dangerously.

That wasn't everyone, of course- some people took the paper with a grain of salt, along with just about everything else- a fair view to take, when your world had recently been turned upside down. Reading between the lines- and maybe looking at the back issues of the Daily Prophet, if they could get their hands on them- a far more complex, and frankly a little disturbing story began to take shape. At the very least, a look at recent history of the wizarding world would reveal Potter's remarkable dance between the Prophet's punching bag and wizarding hero.

On an unrelated note, muggleborn parents would typically visit the apothecary as well, obviously not wanting to miss out on anything. The gross out factor of some of the ingredients tended to make questions about providers or supply chains a distant priority; however, if you were to ask, you would find that a significant portion of the ingredients, especially the herbal ones, were provided by the Greengrass family. Trying to find their sources would be tricky- they had every reason to keep that information secret- but a lot of digging might lead to the conclusion that their recent coups in the herbs market were courtesy of Doggerland.

Astoria would admit that she found the prospect of returning to Hogwarts a bit of a bummer. Still, it was just one more year- Harry had gone ahead and repeated the whole blood and marrow replacement process again, just to be safe.

Harry had requested a favor from her- she needed to grab something real quick from the Chamber of Secrets. Suffice it to say that it sent her head for a spin, and the careful instructions written in Parselscript describing how to get there were only more stunning.

Of course, she did have to wonder how exactly he learned that the Chamber was located inside a women's restroom… It required Parseltongue ability in order to open, which thankfully wasn't that much of an ask for Astoria. The tunnel was extremely gross, but with some careful broom flight, she made it to the bottom- only to step foot on piles of bones. She jumped back onto the broom. The great heap of snakeskin sent a chill down her spine- she was a Slytherin gal, sure, but a snake that big? Yikes.

She had to squeeze her way through a collapsed section of the tunnels and use Parseltongue again, but the end result… well, Astoria had a hard time believing it at first. Sure, she had seen the shed skin back there, and logically knew that it had to be attached to a creature of similar size, but seeing the remains of the beast itself… Something that big barely seemed killable at all.

Did Harry want her to collect the entire cadaver? It was huge! But she supposed that with some careful spellwork- like that neat space connection/collapse spell that Harry showed her- the bones could be moved to the island…. There was a definite appeal to that, Astoria thought. Being the lady of some suitably glorious hall, a great basilisk skeleton hanging in it… it was perhaps a bit on the nose, but it sounded sort of fun.

Still, as she started collecting the corpse and even the shed skin, she started doing some thinking. Obviously, this little misadventure of Harry's couldn't have been too recent, as the corpse had rotted quite a bit, but she figured Harry wouldn't send her to pick it up if he didn't have some claim to it. If he did kill it, that was a major achievement all on its own- the thing was huge!- but when exactly was the question…

Admittedly she wasn't exactly sure how much time each of Harry's little misadventures took up- could he double book somehow, have the Crazed Godfather and Giant Snake in the same year? She was trying to think of any possible timeline that could possibly result in Harry killing the basilisk at any age older than twelve, but was coming up short.

That was when he saved the Weasley girl from the Chamber- and Astoria was definitely in the chamber right now, no doubt about it- and while she wasn't entirely sure how a basilisk could cause petrification, it seemed to make some sort of sense, time wise. Of course, just because it made logical sense didn't mean she wanted it to.

Other than the horrifying fact that her sister spent a year- well, two technically, if you counted her first year- in the same castle as a snake that big, there was the fact that Harry killed the thing when he was twelve. Twelve! When Astoria was twelve, she was watching Potter dodge dragons at the Triwizard!

And somehow, Dumbledore thought several hundred house points were sufficient compensation instead of, say, a medal? If the man wasn't dead, she might have hit him. She supposed that the actual value of the remains would probably be some comfort to Harry, though... she remembered enough lessons from her father to know just what Basilisk venom was going for this in this day and age.

Tibet was nestled between two mountain ranges- the Himalayas to the south, where Everest stood as the tallest peak in the whole of the world, and the Kunlun range, which was not to be confused with Kunlun in the mythical sense. In between the two you had even more mountains, which wasn't really that surprising.

Even with his supernatural resistance against altitude sickness, Harry had to be careful around Everest- above a certain altitude on it and several other mountains, the air was literally too thin to support human life continuously. Sure, some crazy bloke had climbed the mountain without any supplemental oxygen whatsoever a couple of decades back, so it was perfectly possible, but Harry decided against it.

Magic also meant he got to skip past the boring parts of the trip- arranging Sherpas, camping to acclimate himself to higher altitudes, all that nonsense- and he supposed he could have just used a broom to go straight to the top, but that felt a bit like cheating. It was also possible that he could have used magic to go back to a warm bed and hot food in Doggerland, but that was definitely cheating, as far as he was concerned.

Perhaps someone less generous would have said that covering every last inch of his clothing in warming charms also counted as cheating, and if it was, Harry would have gladly counted himself as cheated out of the official Mount Everest experience. He wasn't a masochist. A bit of magic helped him get up any particularly steep bits as well, for the same reason as mentioned before.

Things were as normal as could be for a single climber attempting to scale Everest, at least until he got to the death zone at eight thousand meters. He kept the lower slopes of the mountain at the forefront of his mind- he would need somewhere to Apparate to, should the air grow too thin even for him. And yes, the air was dreadfully thin, even for him- he was panting like a dog by the time he stumbled his way towards the final stretch.

There was a sort of isolate beauty to it all, Harry thought. Even before reaching the peak, there was almost nothing above you in any direction- it almost seemed as if his vision narrowed (if that wasn't a health thing caused by the funky air), his eyes focusing solely on that little scrap of land which was above. For a moment, when he reached the summit, he was confused- where had the land gone?

Then he looked around. The whole of the world stretched out beneath him- great rocky peaks and dense packs of snow, the other peaks of that incredible chain- and he couldn't help but feel a thrill run through him. He couldn't have possibly imagined being in his state- at the top of the world, a prince, with people who actually gave a damn about him- a decade ago, perhaps even less, yet here he was.

Some part of him was almost tempted to turn into his crow form all the way up here- but then he realized that perhaps turning into a creature that flew at a place where the air was unbelievably thin was a bad idea. Something about the thinness of the air and the incredible chill did give him some interesting ideas for spells, though…

Curiously, some of the monks at a nearby monastery would see a cheerful little crow pecking about in the coming days. Some of the monks with magical talent noted that the bird was particularly interested in their archives- ones that had, through use of magic, survived the terror of the Cultural Revolution. Of course, birds couldn't read, but the little fellow seemed quite interested.

Of course, who would believe reports of an intelligent, reading bird from an isolated Buddhist monastery? Especially one with those brilliantly green eyes? It didn't seem entirely normal...

Dudley Dursley was thoroughly sick and tired of the nickname "Owl Boy". The origin of the name was fairly obvious- the owl that seemed to doggedly pursue him, wherever he went. Sometimes it would wander off to get food or sleep, or at least it seemed like it, but it would always return. Earlier on, his father had attempted a few tricks to get rid of it- it proved a little too cautious to get shot or caught, and any attempts to shake it failed.

He knew it had to be related to the magical world somehow- the owls carried their mail, after all- the question was how. The more paranoid part of him considered the possibility it was some sort of tail or tracing thing, but unfortunately, he knew that if the wizards wanted him dead he would have been dead already.

If Harry had lost, he figured there would have been some sign of it, the baddies eventually going for total domination of Britain or something. There was no sign of that, as far as Dudley could tell, and the number of mysterious deaths recently had decreased- so the question was what Harry wanted from him. Sure, in theory, it could have been some other magical person contacting Dudley… but who else would want to? Who would know?

Perhaps it was an olive branch of some sort from Harry, even if the owl didn't look quite like the one Harry used to own… but if it was an olive branch, it seemed like Harry was leaving the whole taking initiative thing up to Dudley. No letters ever arrived, the bird just sort of waited, maybe getting a little closer if it saw Dudley carrying a piece of paper.

Of course, Dudley had difficulties even beginning to put his feelings about Harry into words. Maybe he'd wait a bit, just to parse everything out… sending him a letter around Christmas seemed a bit less weird (on top of the inherent weirdness in this whole situation) since it would be kind of like a Christmas card, or something.

At the very least, the owl was kind of a conversation starter.