8Author's Note:
I'm sorry this took so long – I'm sure people that had waited for anything related to this have given up long ago. As it is, I'm writing something (epic length, hopefully) on FictionPress (you all know how to get there, right?), and that's taken up a large amount of my free writing time, which is already limited, what with exams…
I have final year exams this year, so please bear in mind that updates will be few and far between, as I am currently taking a more formal (and hopefully professional) approach to my writing – which means repeated reviewing and actually writing out a plot.
This chapter came out of nowhere, and I'm sure it's a heck of a lot better than the previous examples of my writing, either here on FFiction or FPress.
WARNING: There are references to homosexuality in this chapter. If you are that against to homosexuality that you can't stand a kiss that isn't even described, then you… uh… have strong, rigid morals. Glad to see someone around here does.
Disclaimer:
Prove that the author is not J. K. Rowling.
The author is not Caucasian.
The author's surname starts with the letter C and their given name with the letter K – hence it is true that the author is not J. K. Rowling.
QED
Harry Potter and the Enigma of the Foreign Matrices: Epilogue
The floor is cold, and hard, unforgiving upon the cheeks of her face and the raw skin on her palms. She opens her eyes, greeted by the dull monotonous grey stone floor, and she swings her eyes up, peering through her bushy hair. Small lights bright enough for her to be unable to distinguish the shape of the bulbs dot the ceiling at frequent, regular intervals. The ceiling and the walls are as undistinguished as the floor.
She struggles up onto her knees, black school robes crumpled up beyond the power of the ironing charm. Her fingers flicker over the wand holster strapped to her right arm, seeking reassurance in the presence of the smooth polished wood. She looks to her left, to her right, down and up the long hallway that disappears off into the distance, doors of varying material breaking the monotony every few paces, on either side of the hallway. From her position, it seems like the hallway is perfectly straight and to the best of her knowledge – which, despite her prodigious intelligence, is currently well and truly stumped – it is all infinite.
Just to make sure, she scrabbles around in her pocket, trying to find something disposable that she can use to mark her starting point. Not her watch (she would need that), not her quill (that cost five galleons, it did!), not her shrunken copy of Hogwarts: A History (best book known to wizarding and witching kind, she always argued), definitely not her wand or the holster it resided in… Ah, there it was – a Chocolate Frog, still in its packet.
She and the others had taken to carrying large amounts of chocolate somewhere on their person – who knew when they'd encounter a Dementor, or had been kidnapped and locked up without food, or just plain needed that extra kick to last the night up reading? She pulled it out, and attached it to the floor with a Sticking Charm.
The Chocolate Frog looked up at her, trying to leap about like they normally did, but the Charm held. It looked to its left, to its right, down and up the long hallway, then looked back up at her. The Frog blinked once, twice, slowly, then burst into flames.
She stared – completely and utterly shocked and nonplussed. What in Merlin's name was going on? Was it the Sticking Charm? Another Chocolate Frog, sans Sticking Charm – this one leapt from the floor and flipped up into her hair, and she could feel it looking left, looking right, down and up the hallway, and then it burst into flames.
A quick fluvium and a jet of water shot out of her wand, putting her flaming, bushy brown hair out. She sighed, something was definitely wrong here. She pulled out a packet of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, pulled one out, inspected it carefully – oh, wait, this was a pizza flavoured one – popped it into her mouth, picked another one (either earwax or toffee, she wasn't sure and didn't want to find out), and dropped it to the ground.
She stared at it, one, two, three seconds, and after half a minute, secure in the knowledge that it was going to stay there, she breathed out in relief.
With a plop!, the dull monotonous grey stone floor rippled like the bean was a raindrop and the floor a pool of water, and the golden yellow Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Bean slowly disappeared into the floor.
Hermione – mouth open wide in indignant shock – stood there for another half a minute, then dropped another bean. This time, as if the floor had merely been wanting to mock her just that first time, the floor starting rippling immediately and the bean disappeared again.
Sighing, she muttered flagrate1, and drew a flaming red and gold cross into the stone. The flames danced merrily, and after a few minutes (she knew there was a reason why she needed her watch), Hermione turned her back on the flame and walked down the hall, the crackling of the flaming cross echoing in her ears.
After a couple of doors, she realised she couldn't hear the crackling anymore, and she hurried back where she'd come. No flaming cross could be seen anywhere – she'd even counted the number of doors that she'd passed on her way from the cross, and retraced her steps, but there was definitely no flame anymore. Not even some soot, or a bit of melted rock.
"Damn," Hermione cursed – non-magically, of course. It seemed that the hallway she was in didn't want her to know how far she'd been. Perhaps it didn't matter, but Hermione liked order, and order demanded that she be able to find her way back.
This was getting her nowhere, so she decided that maybe she'd open a door – if she could. She strode to the closest door (a hickory door, that hummed vaguely when she placed her right palm on the door and grasped the brass handle with her left hand), and inched it open slowly. Hermione wasn't so unhinged by the hallway's attempts to disorient her that she'd forgotten that she didn't know where she was and that it was most likely that danger lurked on the other side.
The hickory door swung open, and she was greeted by a view of Katrina and another woman kissing frantically and bearing down quickly on the bed. With a slam, Hermione hurled the door closed. She leaned against the smooth wood, eyes focussed on the whorls in an effort to forget about what she'd just seen. Coupled with her fast paced breathing was an unshakable certainty in her mind that she was most definitely not going to open that door again. Nor was she going to enter wherever that place had been, but she was glad that at least they hadn't seen her.
Hermione moved to the next door, pausing nervously, then opened the sweet-smelling sandalwood door. There, sitting at a metal table was Katrina again, but a little older than Hermione remembered (that is, compared to the good memories of her) and the Katrina she'd seen through the other door. This Katrina was smiling contentedly at the handsome man across from her – he was familiar, Hermione had seen him around at Hogwarts sometime prior to Katrina's disappearance – and the two small children that were also sitting at the table, all digging in happily.
Hermione spent a few minutes standing there, watching Katrina who was smiling freely and loosely, fully content in her life. The extent of the technology around the room indicated that it was a fair amount of time after Hermione had last seen, well, her Katrina, but she couldn't be sure, because after a few metres, her view of what was in the room blurred as if a barrier of prescriptive lens glass surrounded the area.
This wasn't her place, and Hermione knew it, as she shut the door. Palm resting against the sandalwood, letting the scent wash over her, and seep into the hollow in her chest that had gaped open in the last minute or two of seeing Katrina so happy.
The next door was made of some dark rough wet branches, moss trailing here and there. A chill stung her hand when she rested her hand on the handle which was made of the same unknown wood. She pushed the door open, and there were people standing there in blacks, the sky was overcast and drizzling down, and the rough patches of grass on the ground were more yellow than green. The people were standing around a stone of some sort, smooth and rounded, but then they broke away and Hermione could read the lettering carved into it, could see the engraving of the face of the person buried there.
Katrina Elena Dolohov
16 March 1986 – 02 April 2001
Beloved Sister, Daughter and Comrade
May the Swords of Hell Ne'er Come Again
Hermione stared at the stone pill, and her heart broke again. She shut the branch-made door and strode immediately to the next door, a marble one inlaid with gold.
Katrina had wings – glowing white wings that were made more of power than feathers – coming out of her back, but they weren't what was holding her up in the air. She floated there in the air, and within the five or so metre radius that Hermione could see clearly in, other winged people flew, and she knew this was the realm of the Gods. Not Heaven, where worthy souls of mortals went, but Tenkai, where the gods and goddesses were born and raised and lived when they weren't meddling in the lives of mortals.
This Katrina exuded an aura of regret and sorrow, and Hermione, somehow (perhaps it was the magic of the hallway and the doors) understood it was because her closest friends had perished in a war, and she was the only one left to carry their stories into the future.
Hermione closed the door, and distracted herself by wondering why no-one had been able to see her looking on into their worlds. Perhaps the people waiting on the other side of the door meant for her would be able to see her, and she'd be able to see more than a few metres into the 'room'.
She opened the next door, a heavy stone door the likes of which she'd only seen in Gringotts. On the other side, in the dirt and beneath the thick tree branches, lay a skeleton, a metallic dart lying within the bones. Poison, Hermione thought to herself, and she knew this Katrina had died alone, her passing unmarked.
Hermione shut the door, and swung open the next (a cold, hard steel door, with criss-crossing security-type bars). Katrina stood there, snarling and growling, beads of saliva inching their way past the SHARP POINTY TEETH and the claws were heading her way and Hermione slammed the door shut, crying 'Colloportus!'. The door swept open a few centimetres (Hermione screamed this time, sure the mad Katrina with the swirling wolf tattoos was going to get her), before the spell acted and it squelched shut again. Loud bangs and thuds could be heard, and the door shuddered time and again.
Hermione backed away from the door, and wondered just what in Merlin's name she was going to do. How had this Katrina seen her? Was this the door she was expected to go through? She'd seen, even as she screamed hysterically like that time with Fluffy, that the floor had been littered with chunky hunks of flesh and bones and splattered with blood, viscera and various organs everywhere.
She opened the next door, and the next, and the next after that, working her way down the hallway. Sometimes she saw Katrina with another woman, sometimes with a man, sometimes with children, sometimes standing side-by-side with her dearest friends, sometimes dead and buried or just plain dead… There was the occasional 'mad wolf', but Hermione learned to avoid those steel security doors.
One door – made of what seemed to be misty marshmallows – opened to a fairy-tale like world, where Katrina and Co. battled with fierce monsters and saved villages and altogether did all the fantastical things Hermione had only seen in Muggle fairytale books and within the pages of Lockhart's biographies.
In none of them – save the 'mad wolf' ones, and she didn't want to think about that – did any of the inhabitants of those realities see her looking on. Perhaps she was undetectable by any of the normal and supernormal senses that Katrina or whoever else inhabited those worlds possessed, save the animalistic nightmare wolves.
Hermione glanced at her watch – she'd been travailing the halls of what she'd come to realise as the many doorways that led to different alternative realities that contained Katrina for five hours now. She'd eaten all of the candy on her person, apart from the truly detestable flavours of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, and was now ready to try conjuring some food the way she'd heard Harry describe Professor Dumbledore did. If anything, hunger would provide the concentration she'd need to do something so complex.
She glanced left, glanced right, down and up the hallway, and saw that the hallway behind her, where she'd tried all of the doors apart from the metal security doors, had darkened, the glowing lights in the ceiling disappearing completely. When she tried to go back, an unseen barrier stopped her where the light ended, and she didn't bother trying to rupture it with a reducto – for all she knew, it might rip the space-time continuum or something, hurling her into a Star Trek nightmare where people ate only purple things and talked in limericks without using the letter 'e'.
She continued opening doors, sometimes seeing a younger version of Katrina, sometimes an old geriatric one, sometimes one missing an arm or a leg or both, sometimes a male version of Katrina named Kastor…
Until she realised that the hallway that seemed to go on and on had ended suddenly, and she was at a dead end, the path behind her black and off-limits, with only one door left to her.
It was a black door that seemed so black it grabbed at the light emitted by the sole glowing mass in the dull monotonous grey stone ceiling above.
Hermione paused, hesitant – what if this last dimension wasn't hers? What would happen? She raised her left hand, her right ready to flick out her wand from its holster in record time. The shadow door had a bright silver looking handle, that was shaped like a dragon – not like the ones that had been in the Triwizard Tournament, not like the ones she'd seen in Muggle picture books, not like the ones depicted in Chinese artworks or Japanese shisaa (stone guardian statues that scared off evil spirits), but a regal smooth scaled glittering creature that she'd seen somewhere before.
She opened the door, heart in her throat, hoping that what was on the other side would be somewhere safe, somewhere happy, somewhere Katrina was alive.
Katrina was bent down under a worktable, rummaging for something. She came back up in a smooth languid motion, muscles moving smoothly and bones shifting without any creaking or groaning, like a well oiled machine. The small hammer she held in her hand was smooth metal, dinted here and there from frequent use, the handle bound by thin rope that was just that side of rough, enough for someone to grip comfortably.
Her clothes – a long sleeved pale blue shirt underneath a darker blue tee, coupled with long baggy black tracksuit pants, the tips of comfortable looking sneakers peeking out from underneath – hung comfortably from her steady frame, and the hammer twirled up and over and around Katrina's hand, lithe fingers moving smooth and agile.
Hermione munched on the blueberry muffin she'd finally been able to conjure, and watched as Katrina continued working on refitting a hilt to the long blade on the workbench, her back to the doorway Hermione was standing in.
Tap, tap, tap, the hammer went, and the hilt was pegged to the blade tightly. Katrina nodded minutely, put the hammer away and picked the sword up in one hand.
A pause, and then Katrina turned and faced Hermione's direction, the sword held out hilt first to Hermione.
Katrina smiled. "You can come in, you know."
Hermione's eyes widened, couldn't believe, really, that this dimension was where she belonged. Hesitantly, she stepped in, fingers discreetly brushing the last crumbs of blueberry muffin off on her robes. Katrina wiggled the sword a little. "Go on, it's yours."
Hermione reached out, fingers grasping at the soft cushioned handle of the long blade, grasping it firmly. She looked at the blade and the swirling guard and the soft but tough silk covered hilt. There were runes marked all over the masterpiece, and there was a small name-circle rune, in which names could be carved in runes that spelt out the owner's name phonetically.
Hermione frowned at the runes, her lessons in Ancient Runes (and the brief week pertaining to name-circles) rising to the forefront, and she muttered allowed as she puzzled out the phonetics.
"Ir… uh… Ir Nio- oh wait, that combination means 'Hir'. Uh… 'Hir', Mara Sarez – that's 'Myon', so… 'Hir Myon', and… Nurekazat Ehwaz: 'Ne' for short and Ehwaz means 'change', so in name-circles, that's the end of the name. So… 'Hir Myon Ne'." Hermione blinked. "Oh! 'Hermione'!"
Katrina smiled cheerfully. "This is wonderful!" Hermione gasped, and she flung her arms around Katrina – the sword's blade carefully out of the way, of course.
Katrina returned the hug, and she said "I'm glad you like it, Hermione."
Hermione smiled widely, and at that moment, she realised that she couldn't see the doorway she'd come in through, but she could see all of the large workroom.
"This…" she murmured, gazing around at the room and the stairs leading upwards to what would undoubtedly be the rest of the house.
Her sword – which was still in her grip – shifted, and Hermione looked down, to see that Katrina was fitting a scabbard on. She changed her grip so that she was now holding the scabbard, the hilt pointing upwards. "Thanks," she murmured, as the scabbard was as much a work of art as the sword.
Katrina smiled. "It's okay. This-" she gestured to the workroom, and then also vaguely upwards. "This, is, well, my house. Do you want a tour?"
Hermione blinked. "You- you know I'm not…?"
"Not from this dimension? Of course – but it's your dimension now, and you'll be wanting that sword if you want to gallivant around the countryside on adventures with the rest of us!"
Something made its way up into Hermione's throat, constricting her speech. "A… a… adventures!" Her previous experience with 'adventures' tended to lead to danger and people being attacked by dangerous entities and invariably someone incapacitated for some time or even dead. As such, she was definitely wary of embarking on any such 'adventures'.
Katrina smiled, amused. "Not the dangerous kind – at least, it won't be dangerous for you now, although it may have been before."
Hermione's eyes narrowed, and she glared suspiciously at Katrina. "What are you talking about?" She drawled her words out warily.
"Well…" Katrina flung her hands up in a vague gesture. "You've spent a heck of a lot of time in that dimensional hallway, right? And looking through doors and all that, no? With that, you've absorbed a substantial amount of the, well… um… it's not 'magic' per se, or the spiritual power of the gods, or the chakra of the shinobi, or the reiatsu that Shinigami emit, or… well, just think about it as the essence of the trans-dimensional portals, and also about whatever 'element' the worlds you looked at possessed… that essence and those 'elements' would have embedded themselves in your, uh… um…" Here, Katrina tried to find the correct word. "Um… well, let's call it your 'soul', so yeah, they embedded themselves into your soul – depending on how long you stayed in the hallway and how long you watched through the portals… And so you would have minor 'talents' in several quite powerful skills. The strongest being teleportation, as you spent the longest time in the hallway."
Hermione let this large amount of information sink into her brain – which was quite powerful, if she did say so herself. "So… hang on, if I absorbed some 'skills' from the worlds I looked at through portals, and all the worlds – including the one I came from – have 'powers', right?" Katrina nodded. "Do all the people in those worlds possess the 'skill' that I absorbed from that world?"
Katrina shook her head. "No, they don't. Well, they possess the capability of the skill, but only if they move to another dimension where the limiter for that skill doesn't exist. So, your strongest 'skill' would be the one you got from the dimension you're from, then the one from the trans-dimensional hallway's essence."
"Hmm…" Hermione pondered over this nugget of an explanation. "Hang on, how do you know so much about this?"
Katrina blinked. "Because you're not the first person that's come through to this dimension from the hallway – almost fifty people have passed through to here that way, and it's all documented. You're the first person that's opened a doorway next to me, though."
Hermione sighed. It wasn't as if she was the kind of person that had new and unimaginable things happen to them – Harry was the one that attracted 'adventures' and 'trouble', and she'd been merely caught in the crossfire.
"So uh… adventures?"
Katrina smiled again. "Yeah, adventures."
They stood over the cooling remains of a Basilisk. As much as a cold-blooded animal could 'cool'. At least, Hermione thought it was a cold-blooded animal.
She'd thrown daggers of steel that she'd morphed out of her Steel Skin skill – hey, alliteration! – and blinded the Basilisk, whose killing sight hadn't been able to affect her as she'd… well… been standing to its left and it had been sleeping. And she'd been two kilometres away, using Eagle Sight.
Katrina looked at her, and smiled. The other members of the group had split off already, chasing after some pack of wolves. They had stayed because wolves brought bad memories to Hermione and Katrina wasn't sure if Hermione would get lost within five weeks or five minutes.
"Good work."
A blush from Hermione. "Thanks."
Hermione wondered, not for the first time, why this dimension had chosen her – or why she'd chosen it, she wasn't sure which it was.
Katrina spoke up suddenly. "I'm free, you know."
The non sequitor threw Hermione for a moment, until she saw that the bandages that were normally wrapped around Katrina's forearms had been unrolled, and the wolf tattoos were melting and the colours were whirling together, melting down in great fat gobs, landing on the ground where they hissed into smoke and dissipated.
"What just happened?" Hermione asked.
"The others must've killed the wolves they were chasing." Katrina offered.
Hermione frowned. "You mean that there's a pack of wolves in each dimension and they are represented by those tattoos? And to remove those insanity tattoos… you have to kill said pack of wolves?"
Katrina looked pensive for a few moments. "That's about right."
Hermione blinked, incredulous. Even though she'd gone from thinking about this dimension's Katrina as 'the other Katrina' and the one she'd met that had gone insane from her home dimension was no longer 'her Katrina', she was still thoroughly incensed that so many lives could have been saved by-
She was broken out of her thoughts by Katrina. "I'm free." She repeated, arms finally bare, for the first time ever, unstained by the world and vengeful fathers that wished that the little bastardette didn't look so much like the man her mother had had an affair with.
Fin.
A/N: And that is the finish. The endless amount of doors was a small token to the little tour to the Department of Mysteries in Book 5 and those revolving endless amount of doors. There's also a little backstory to Katrina Elena Dolohov.
There may be a cross-over between Naruto and HP in the works, but don't take my word for it. Heh.
1 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Australian Hard Cover 1st Edition), pg. 681