A/N: Was going to split this one too, but eh, may as well let the scene flow as it wants.
(VI)
Cedric Diggory and Cho Chang were clearly not satisfied with just that, but the revelation of the Room of Requirement more than appeased them. When inside, though, the sight of not only Harry's friends, but also Sirius, Nicolas, Charlie, and Dumbledore there, was enough to vindicate all their beliefs.
"Well hello there, sir," Charlie welcomed Harry more formally than usual, eyeing the two newcomers with intense, cool eyes. "Are we recruiting already?"
"Looks like. They haven't figured out anything important, but they still want in on pure faith that I'm not a bad guy."
"Not pure faith." "More like a reasoned conclusion."
Or that. "Is there anything particularly actionable that might slip out if they decide not to swear secrecy after whatever this meeting is about?"
Hermione cradled her forehead and began to shake hear head in exasperation. Charlie eyed her with amusement, and looked back to Harry. "Nothing anyone will believe out of context."
"Alright. Then unless anyone objects? No? Come on you two, let's sit over there out of the way."
Seeing that Harry made the final call, seeing it not be Dumbledore that took the lead on that confrontation – it banished whatever lingering hesitation the two had.
"So Hermione, or Charlie? Both? What did you call us all for?"
The answer, it turned out, was Hermione wanting to play with legos. Or, rather, to make a presentation using legos. This was what Hermione had been so secretive and constantly absent over, since Harry woke up from his parallel reality coma. She'd been working with Charlie on something.
Hermione took the small, purple, beaded handbag she always seemed to carry with her these days, and upended it in the middle of the room. A sheer deluge of legos poured out, and it was some time and creative floor shifting on the Room's part before the things stopped piling.
With wand in hand, Hermione made a bunch of the lego blocks fly and form into a fence that enclosed most of the Room's floorspace.
"Picture this," she said in what was clearly a thoroughly practiced speech, how nice of Charlie to let her have this. "There are twin brothers living in one house. They have all the power, water, gas and food they could ever need, and sufficient space to live forever comfortably. But they also have a horrible neighbour who wants their property, and will stop at nothing to get it. Harassment, sabotage, throwing trash over the fence and roadkill through their windows, he'll do whatever it takes to run them out, or even kill them, and soon even develops a taste for the suffering he inflicts."
While Hermione practiced her transfiguration and animation charms to bring Charlie's speech to life, Charlie himself tuned to a whiteboard he'd set up and wrote:
Twins = Alterans
Bad neighbour = Ori
"The brothers agree that violence won't work because the bad neighbour has too many sycophants that will gang up on them. They don't agree on the next best thing. One twin wants to go all-in on defense, while the other wants to do something else. Maybe train, maybe build weapons instead of just walls, maybe he wants to go out and gather his own support base, to eventually give the bad neighbour a taste of his own medicine."
Charlie wrote on the whiteboard:
Brother = Ascended
Twin = Gods (?)
"Unable to resolve their differences, the siblings divide their legos - resources equally, and build a thick wall right through the middle of their house so neither can interfere with the other, while they each focus on their approach of choice."
In a grand, whooshing display worthy of a musical, Hermione made a new bunch of legos build themselves into a long, thick wall that split the room in perfect halves. From where Harry stood, he saw both sides equally, the wall's edge being right in front of where he sat. The wall was a thick one, made of half a dozen intermingled layers horizontally.
Charlie, meanwhile wrote on the whiteboard again:
Right half = Wormhole X-Treme reality
Left half = Harry Potter reality
Don't name it after me if it's just to lump me in the same box as that silly show.
"So," Hermione continued while trying to hide how proud she was, of pulling off such a sprawling NEWT-level animation spell modification. "What happens when time passes, the bad neighbour refuses to give up, and the first twin runs out of his half of the legos, because an eternity of defensive warfare costs endlessly more than going on offense just the once? Especially when no defense is perfect and he constantly has to rebuild it? Even after he's perfected it as much as he could?"
"You keep trying," Cho said, surprisingly, though she didn't seem entirely sure. "After a point, you've gone too far to give up."
Charlie solemnly wrote on the whiteboard:
Sunk Cost Fallacy.
"What's the other twin doing?" Ron asked. "While the first one's doing all this?"
"That's the thing, we don't know for sure," Hermione replied. "Maybe he trains, maybe he builds traps and home-made bombs and cannons for when the neighbour decides to change which side of the house he attacks. Maybe he isn't even home, and instead is out running a campaign of hearts and minds in the hopes of overwhelming the bad neighbour with his own gang in the future."
"Maybe the first twin does some of that himself," Charlie idly threw in. "Perhaps they even work together on it, if only to relive some of the brotherly love and loyalty they used to have before."
"What we do know," Hermione continued. "I think, is how far the first twin was willing to stretch himself before it came to that."
Harry didn't get it until Hermion cast a new spell, which thinned the dividing wall between the brothers to a single thin stack of blocks, with blocks sticking out in places, and outright holes in others. The majority of the blocks, now removed, then flew to become additions and reinforcements to the outer fence, which had long since become a wall under Hermione's repeated spellcasting, during her explanations.
"The wall between realities," Harry snapped his fingers on finally getting it. "The sound of staff weapons and Al'kesh I heard during the first Walk, the jaffa warrior and his goa-uld snake. You think this is why things from their side slip into ours on all Hallow's Eve? By now it's thin and full of holes – the first twin used it all up to reinforce the outer defenses, didn't he?"
"That's how this model would explain it," Hermione nodded after looking at Charlie for confirmation. After a hesitant glance at Cedric and Cho, she continued. "It stands to reason that this is also why you were able to punch through to that side at all, never mind so easily or without realising what you were doing."
So that's why I was able to reincarnate sideways, when I couldn't find a past life that fit? That answered some of Harry's questions, but it also came with some nasty implications for the near future. "If that's true, then brother one is out of options. Or soon will be."
"That's what my model would suggest." Charlie said this time, and underlined 'Sunk Cost Fallacy' twice. "So. In this situation, what recourse is left? You've used up all the lego blocks on your side of the house. You've also filled out all your space. What happens?
"You stop," Cedric risked saying, though his heart wasn't really in it because he could guess it wasn't the right answer.
"You can't afford to, you still haven't solved the problem of the asshole neighbour next door."
The right answer came not from Harry, or Ron or the entirely confused Cho and Cedric.
"You take your brother's legos." The answer came from Neville. "And when he objects, you take them by force."
Charlie nodded and wrote on the whiteboard:
In-fighting.
"I still have no idea what you lot are talking about," Cedric cautiously said. "But I'm assuming that laws, aurors, or even just a neighbour's association aren't notions that apply to – whatever this thought exercise is?"
Charlie shook his head. "My original analogy was for three princes, where one of them inherits the parents' realm, and the other two flee their older brother's tyranny to build their own realm around a lake on an island on far side of the neighbouring sea. The first brother eventually comes looking for the other two and does his thing because he's just that kind of prick."
"Oooh," Cadric and Cho said, even though they still didn't understand anything because they lacked all the context.
"Still doesn't need to end like that," Ron scowled. "The second twin could just back down."
And then we'd all-
"He can't anymore," Neville pointed out. "It's not the same as before, they know now that the arsehole neighbour isn't giving up, and the first twin's idea failed, even if he won't accept it. It's not just a matter of sibling rivalry now, it's survival."
"Yeah," Ron said glumly. "Survival can be used to justify just about everything."
"And the twin has other reasons of his own to resent the first one by now."
"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," Harry murmured. "All of which would be soured if his brother betrayed him like that."
"Not just soured," Hermione said. "Lost, unless I misunderstood something Mister Gordon?"
Charlie moved to the other half of the whiteboard and wrote: Load-bearing wall.
Belatedly, harry realized that almost all of the other load-bearing walls on the first brother's side had been taken apart to reinforce the outer bulwark.
"Naturally, to get the Twin's legos the dividing wall has to come down." Charlie underlined 'Twin's half' three times before he turned around. "We don't know how honorable either side is, so we can't be sure which brother will break first. But it's possible that this issue has already been rendered moot."
Harry didn't need Charlie's pointed stare to figure it out. "I breached into the brother's half of the house first, from the twin's side," he groaned, rubbing his face. "Or at least I'm the first one who did it anywhere near that level. They – the first brother can twist it as the twin being the first to violate their agreement."
"If they're as petty as that," Hermione tried to be the voice of optimism.
Harry certainly hoped they weren't, the bartender guy's surprise at Harry being there had seemed genuine in the moment. But now Harry was wondering if successfully kicking him out of his head hadn't been a bad thing, since it meant he might not know that Harry was there by complete accident. And completely ignorant of everything too.
"You keep saying defenses." Sirius said from somewhere behind, where he and the other adults had moved to be out of the way.
From the starts of everyone else, Harry wasn't the only one who'd forgotten they were there. Was his situational awareness really that bad, without the eye at the back of his head?
"I'm guessing you don't mean actual walls."
"No indeed." Two new lines were written on the whiteboard.
Defense strategy = stacking time loops
Twin's legos = needed for more loops
At a glance from Charlie, Hermione made an 'o' sound and hastily arranged everything other than the fence in the first brother's side of the room into the closest thing to a giant ball of yarn that legos allowed.
When that last touch-up was finished, Charlie added one more line to the whiteboard.
Twin's half of the house = space/ span to put more loops
Shit. "The time loop machine," Harry blurted as the memory of that ridiculous mission report resurfaced. "P4X-639." Harry stood up and walked to the center of the room, the lego structure vanishing in bits and pieces ahead of him to make space for a table and pensieve. "Lorne wasn't one to memorise planet designations, but he made an exception for this one."
Thankfully, the Room still made it possible to view memories without diving into the pensieve itself. He only had memories of reading SG-1's reports about it, but that still meant he could conjure geminio copies of the pages as they came up in the memory space.
Cho and Cedric were beyond bewildered by this point, but Harry was too preoccupied to care. "When the plague broke out, the Ancients attempted to make a time travel device to go back and prevent the galactic pandemic from happening. They didn't succeed – not then – but they did manage to make a localized machine of time reversal. When the man – Malakai – found it, he tried to finish what the Ancients started because his wife died and he wanted to see her again. The resulting time loop lasted for months on the outside, but it only kept repeating the last ten hours, and not only affected that planet but thirteen others relatively close, including Earth."
"Yes, your summary about that was sparse, but it's what gave me the starting point," Charlie admitted. "The Lanteans and the Pegasus Galaxy as a whole raise some questions about just how far the range of that looped spacetime is, especially since it pretty much would have to include the much more distant Othala Galaxy." Where the Asgard were. "Perhaps it's not an issue of space at all, and the ultimate refinement of that device consists of different, higher-dimensional mechanics the Ancients only accessed after ascension."
It made sense if that was the level when the main Ancient-Ori opposition took place, but...
It didn't change the basic realities of conflict. To win a conflict, you needed the will, the resources, and the space to maneuver.
If Charlie was right, the Ancients in the no-magic side were running out of the last two, so they might want to move on this one.
What will happen to us then?
Would realities merge? Would time be undone to – whatever the point was when the two branches split? To make way for a second ball of wibbly wobbly, timey whimey stuff? Or make the other one bigger?
Who was the 'Master' the bartender guy was talking about? Harry wondered not for the first time. What does he have to do with this? Does he know about this? Does he care? Is he why there are time loops on this side too? Is he doing anything? Should he? Why?
Harry didn't know. But he did know what he experienced on the other side, and his conclusions remained the same: time did not work that way naturally. Now, if Charlie's model was correct, it meant they'd thinned the 'wall' between the branches of reality. Or the 'master' on this side had.
Harry didn't know anything about the latter to make any judgments. But if it was the 'Others' that did it, it meant they must be running out of whatever resources or space it took to twist time on itself, for lack of any better terms. Localized area or not.
Harry wondered how much less he'd understand, if he asked Charlie to show him the undoubtedly massive stack of notes and papers and charts he used to draw up his – whatever actual theoretical model he'd recruited Hermione to dumb down for the rest of them.
The meeting turned into a long, drawn-out speculation session after that, which challenged, avoided, skirted, denied and confirmed Harry's dreadful conclusions over and over.
Despite his every hope to the contrary.
Eventually the meeting wound down, but only because Dumbeldore, finally, said something. "I understand that 'wall' is not used literally here, but I assume you chose that word because it fits the context best?"
Charlie regarded the old wizard. "I did."
"Does that mean that when we think of ground, or floor and roof, they are also only loosely accurate? In both nature and function?"
"Yes. What are you asking?"
"Because then it is not only the separating function that is important. From what you say, the 'wall' is the only thing the two 'rooms' have in common. And since galaxies don't rest on a solid surface, never mind time, then the floor of this room cannot be more than a visual reference for this demonstration. I am sure that many explanations could occur, but I will hazard a guess and say that the wall between the rooms is the only part that matters, other than the fence. It is not just a separator, but also the only thing keeping the two realities connected, as well as consistent relative to each other."
"The sympathetic principle," Harry sat up in his chair. "You have to work with it and against it to make – what? The opposite of a protean charm? On an intergalactic scale? Bigger? Hermione, is the ball of yarn analogy random? Charlie?"
"It's not," they both said.
"All the loops in a ball of yarn could, in theory, run through the same hollow object, right? Like if it's knotted through a circle? Or ring…"
"What, like Earth's magnetic field goes through the poles?"
"Exactly, Hermione! If time works like that…"
"… Yes?"
"I think I might know what the 'ring' would be." Harry leaned back and frowned, wondering if he was really following any sort of logic or if it was just some… weird divination thing he was going through right now. Skipping all the steps to the conclusion. "The Quantum Mirror," the murmured. "SG-1 ran into a weird mirror-like device early on, that let people go to and back from alternate timelines, near identical but more and more distinct the farther you changed the settings."
It was strange that it existed, and doubly strange that it was never used again after… conveniently being found and utilized once, to save the Ascended Others' preferred timeline. No way would the US government resist using and abusing it for the rest of time, never mind the NID. If it was destroyed at any point, none of the reports Harry read had mentioned it.
But if it had another purpose than being a door to the realms of 'what if,' then the Others would definitely meddle to secure it, non-interference be damned.
"I'm sure they used something to force the timeline split," Hermione agreed with something completely different than what Harry's mind was winding towards. "But I doubt it would it be the same thing they used to reset their side, especially so many times."
I'm wondering if maybe there might not be a split at all.
How would you split a hair length-wise? Why would you? Even if you could, it sabotaged the structural integrity. What if instead you just looped and looped and looped until you ran out of room and had to let the thread continue on for a while until you had more room? Was there a whole string of timey whimey balls between now and… whatever moment in the past the timeline 'split' happened?
Harry had had to reincarnate forward, which meant this reality was the one that was going to end. The dread from that realisation was only dampened by the memory of his other lives where he lived long enough to die of old age. And, he supposed, there was no guarantee that their reality wouldn't loop again anyway, for whatever reason. Since it did loop at least a few times, were they really the Twin's half, instead of the other one? Were both brothers doing the loop thing? Or was it that the Twin only did it a few times, to fix mistakes, instead of a dedicated defense system that had to constantly happen, like Borther 1?
Ugh, he was thinking in circles.
What actually mattered? If there was a single string, a single timeline, it only mattered which one was the more recent loop. So far, signs pointed to that being 'not this one.' It didn't bear thinking about. Was this the first loop of the new ball, or the last of the old one?
On look, another reason for me to lose all will to live, how lovely.
If time was like an ever-growing tree, then split branches made more sense, especially since it left 'room to grow' as the only concern. But then the issue of subsuming the neighbouring branch didn't apply, and how would you 'reset' a branch? Cut and graft? Let the severed branches fall and become fertilizer while the tree grew another branch in its place? Or from near the cut knot?
Right, I'm not getting anywhere, Harry scowled internally. Or I'm missing something.
Dumbledore was right, analogies were more confusing than helpful after you've had time to think past the surface.
Then again, maybe Harry shouldn't expect to understand time in a single afternoon, never mind how one messes with it.
There was something he did understand, though. Maybe. "The Sympathetic principle," Harry muttered after a while. "The best way to create it would be if you didn't need to put the work in at all, right?"
"So you see it too." Charlie remarked, with that rare approval that meant the world to you when you knew it came from the smartest man in the world. "I'm impressed. I'm not saying my model is incontrovertible, but it's nice when someone reaches the same conclusion, especially without my advantages."
"Yeah, no, we're not doing the whole talking in circles for another hour thing," Sirius scoffed. "Harry, please explain because this guy sure won't."
"The wall between the rooms," Harri waved at it. "Dumbledore was right, it's not just a wall. It's also the thing keeping the two realities glued to each other. The common part that keeps them consistent relative to each other. If we look at it like some ritual or big spell, then there has to be the equivalent of a ritual array somewhere. It would be big, way big, galactic-big or more, maybe, but… more or less identical in both realities because it's the same one. It was already there when they still were the same reality. Way back."
As usual, Hermione got what he was talking about first. "The stargate network."
"The stargate network." And Atlantis, the Antarctica facility, the knowledge databases, the ships, space stations, any other dedicated facilities, Proclarush, Taonas, the planet Agnos that may or may not exist, the quantum mirror itself. Any one or all of those things could serve. Maybe even the ruins all over space. Those things never degraded despite no material being eternal, no matter what substance or alloy, and most of them certainly were never subjected to energy state locking technologies, or whatever Samantha Carter might ramble about.
Could this be the real reason the Ascended Ancients didn't clean up after themselves?
"Hey Cedric."
"Yeah?"
"You reckon your dad will be looking for you by now?"
"Well, you did send him that message-"
"He means yes," Cho was less shy about wanting to escape this insane situation, which had gone on way too long for all of them as it was. "We should probably be checking out. Maybe get back to this later? When we're more up to speed on – whatever this is…"
"Yeah, I figured. How would you two like to visit Antarctica with us?"
"Wait, what?"
"-. July 8, 1995 .-"
It wasn't until the first weekend of July that they went to Antarctica, since not everyone could just drop everything and travel to the south pole on a whim. They also needed to prepare portkeys, extra portkeys, emergency portkeys, the hardiest wizard tent ever enchanted, arctic weather clothes, and protection spells for each of them. Also, food and water, but wizard tents came with five star amenities so that went without saying.
When they did go to Antarctica, Cedric and Cho managed to come along, though only Cedric had the benefit of a father that deliberately didn't ask for details. Cho had to sell it to her parents as a weekend stay-over at Sirius Black's house. Which was where the trip started and would complete, but it was a bit too much truth stretching for Harry's tastes. Hopefully, Dumbledore would make good on his promise soon, to help Sirius develop some way to read people in safely.
They two additions had spent much of the intervening time being some manner of frazzled, as Hermione, Neville and Ron filled them in on what they knew. Which wasn't anywhere close to what the adults knew, or even everything Harry knew. But it was still a lot.
As far as field trips went, it was actually really good. The adults freely taught the younger ones whatever struck their fancy, something Harry and his friends gleefully took advantage of. It wasn't every day you could cut loose with magic outside of school, after all. Even Cedric shared in the sentiment, he hadn't been of age long enough for the wonder of that freedom to fade yet. Besides, one-on-one tutoring from Nicolas Flamel and Albus Dumbledore? Who wouldn't be over the moon?
Since they needed to not only find the right spot but also dig to it, the last stretch of the journey made for some very intense spell practice indeed. Harry thought he acquitted himself well, even compared to the two senior students.
When they finally found the stargate, there was much boggling and amazement. Even the adults weren't immune to it, including Nicolas with all his six hundred years of life. Harry himself, who'd travelled through the stargate many times during his life as Evan Lorne, still felt tight in the chest from awe and excitement, however muddled by anxiety.
They dug a good cove inside the ice, set up the tent, and lights, and even a barbecue. Finally Harry had no more excuses to waffle about dialling out.
It didn't work.
Harry dialled over two dozen addresses he knew should have worked on the dial-home device, or clavis as the Ancients called it. Not only did the stargate not connect, it didn't react at all. It was like it didn't have power, despite Harry's inherited experience from Lorne letting him determine that the clavis and its connections to the gate were all fine. Energy reading spells further confirmed it. The stargate was certainly receiving power, and it was perfectly intact too.
"It could be Magic," Dumbledore guessed, which was fair because not much else made sense. "Perhaps it is draining the power from it like it does most other electronics. Like it used to do with the pyramids."
Harry agreed. Why the same didn't happen to the clavis was eventually explained by psychometry – it wasn't a power source at all, but a power generator, or perhaps converter. Harry lacked the frame of reference to understand how it functioned, but Charlie surmised it was either geothermal, or more likely – due to the dial home device's self-contained, transportable nature – gravitic somehow. Or maybe cosmic rays? All of those at once?
Giving up, Harry walked up to the gate and used psychometry on – it – i -
Infinite unmoderated mutations isn't evolution, it's cancer.
- i-instead, and-
When a man's heart overshadows a god's, what will the gods punish? What will they forgive?
-and – a-nd-
~ Oh, the torment bred in the race, the grinding scream of death, and the stroke that hits the vein, the haemorrhage none can staunch, the grief, the curse no man can bear. But there is a cure in the house, and not outside it, no. Not from others but from us, our bloody strife. I sing to you, true gods on time's far side. Now hear, you blissful powers departed – answer the call, send help. Bless we children, give us triumph now. ~
When Neville and Ron wrenched him away from the ancient ring, Harry Potter was left dizzy and shaken.
What was that? A rite? An incantation? Prophecy?
Whatever it was… it had been his voice. His own voice. From the past. And the future.
The stargate wasn't defective. It was already in use, just not to travel space. It was being used in a magical ritual. Would be used in a magical ritual.
In the past.
And the future.
Halloween, Harry thought woozily as Ron and Neville helped him into the tent, and from there to a chair because he was too scatter-minded to even stand anymore. Even when it's not Halloween everything still goes to hell on Halloween.
The next chapter is available on P treon (karmicacumen),Ko-fi (karmicacumen) and Subscribestar (karmic-acumen), along with advance chapters on The Unified Theorem (Warcraft) and Bylaws of Babel (Warhammer).