Magic Knows No Boundaries Chapter 31 (Patreon)

Chapter 31:

Title Pending

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Harry and Alastor exited the tent to beautiful, bright sunlight breaking through the hundreds of towers and thousands of hanging rugs that made up the city of Irem in sharp blades of white. The entire affect made the city itself very dark, like living in a cave full of tents, for it was a tent city more multicolored than the most vibrant of circuses covering every square inch of ground not taken up by the glorious towers.

These were not just plain old towers but tall, thin windcatchers whose very highest points were cut in cross sections to siphon the cool breeze from above and bringing it to the ground. The beautiful music of windchimes sang from within the towers. This is why Irem was known as the city of pillars and the city of windchimes. To Muggles? A myth. To wizards? The central hub of Persian wizardry.

It exemplified everything Persians valued. Their love of beautiful and ornate rugs or tapestries, a love that made the ancient Greeks think them feminine, but a civilization of pederasts who viewed masculinity in such hedonistic ways were about as expert on the nature of masculinity as a porn star feminist in her nineties who had never been married nor had any children was on the nature of femininity. Which is to say, not at all.

"Welp." Said Harry. "Best get a move on or we'll miss our flight."

And so they were off, dancing through the crowd of animated witches and wizards who swayed to and fro in reverence to the indecipherable melodies of the pillars, often singing in equally unmelodious Persian. Not Arabic, Persian. Wizards of the middle east too great offense to being called Arabic or, worse, Mozlem. They had separated from Muggles long before anybody else, with the collapse of Persia in four hundred BC or so and since then have kept to the ways of ancient Persia.

They never succumbed to Christianity nor Islam nor secularism, but kept the Pegan traditions of the pre-monotheistic Asia minor. Though occasionally you could find a Zoroastrian or Christian among them.

From what he understood, they had kept to the changeling policy even to this day. In which, they would constantly seek out and find Muggleborn children and infants, straight up kidnapping them to raise as their own. Usually, this involved leaving a homonculus in its place, an artificial human body made of transfigured materials and lazily animated. They did not "live" for very long and the natural parents would come to believe their baby died from an inability to eat or some other such malady, mourn, and move on with their lives.

Those children would be raised never knowing anything other than wizarding society, loved by adopted parents and never knowing the culture, religion or problems of their Muggle parents.

Morally? Very questionable policy. As to its effectiveness in terms of keeping the statute of secrecy? Best policy to date. Which is why many other wizarding societies want to bring it back, and work around the issues it involves with heavy use of the imperius and obliviation curses on doctors and parents as necessary. Just assigning aurors to the changeling and having them make sure it goes swimmingly would do the trick, in theory at least.

The fact that such plans require the use of an unforgivable and the closest spell to an unforgiveable - one that requires many layers of or approval and mountains of paperwork to greenlight on a case by case basis - means such proposals never get past the drafting stage of the legal process. Rightly so, in Harry's opinion.

Magical England and most of Europe has similar policies, normally kidnapping via house elves back when they were called brownies. That was until around the eighth century when dissecting the dead for medical research became popular in Muggle society. Nowadays it's pretty much impossible outside of remote, third world countries, what with modern medicine. Morticians tend to freak out when they're asked to determine the cause of death for a baby only to find it with no internal organs to speak of, or worse, fake ones, and that the blood tests show it's a hybrid pig, chicken and rose bush.

Creating a homonculus convincing enough to trick a modern medical doctor dissecting it? Plausible, if so difficult as to be in the realm of transfiguration specialists of Minerva's caliber. Good enough to trick DNA testing? that is a level of alchemy that he doubted Nicholas Flamel could pull off. I neither case, both had far better things to be getting on with.

In other undeveloped nations wizards just outright bought muggleborn wizards and witches from their parents and spirit them away to wizarding society to raise. The worse the Muggle part of the world, the better the wizarding part of the world. Usually.

The sun was finally fully risen by the time they reached the edge of the city-valley. The entire forest of windcatcher towers was situated within a tiny canyon in the middle of the desert, protecting it from the sun and keeping it cool and wet, and on the plateaus on either side of said canyon were muggle establishments and a small airport. A city in plain sight, hidden by magic from Muggles within spitting distance. Like Diagon Alley but on steroids.

Harry and Alastor made their way to the left side cliff, away from the restaurants and gas stations and muggle freeway on the right and towards the airstrip. It, like everything else here, was small with small biplanes beside small, shaded overhangs. Within each shaded overhang was at least one person.

Harry knew from studying up ahead of time that every single person in the airstrip and surrounding establishments were either squibs or the Muggle spouses. Each of whom made a good living here being the bridge between Muggle and Wizard society, and their job as bridges mostly amounted to ferrying wizards to and from Muggle places safely. Although the local wizards would probably call them the padding between themselves and Muggle society. An extra layer of safety between their city and the outside world.

Harry and Marchbanks followed the numbers labeling the canopies to their reserved pilot and found themselves standing before a woman nearly as ancient as Alastor, if a little more spry with her cargo jeans and sandswept hair. She kinda reminded him of a more sundamaged Madame Hooch.

"Professor Morrigan I presume?" The woman asked. "Off to Egypt correct?"

"That's right." Said Harry. "At your earliest convenience."

"Well, now is pretty early and pretty convenient." She said, holding out two pairs of goggles for them to take. "If you're both watered, fed and unwatered and unfed we can be on our way to Cairo."

"Actually." Alastor interrupted, taking the goggles offered. "We would prefer Akhenaten."

This naturally came as a surprise to Harry, who looked at Marchbanks questioningly."

"I could have sworn we were going to Cairo?" He said.

"That's where you want to go to buy land through the Muggle government." Alastor said. "Which adds several more layers of bureaucracy, taxes and fees. We are going to the wizarding capital of Egypt, to buy land from wizards. It's a shorter trip anyways, so the nice lady will get paid the same for less work."

When the nice lady didn't object, Harry shrugged and relented to go along with this new plan of action. The olderm an was much more experienced in buying properties than him, Harry having bought exactly one to date, and it was more of a lease than a purchase. And so, they crawled into the three-seater byiplane, donned their goggles, and strapped in.

Before he could even get comfortable Harry noticed that Marchbanks was positively vibrating in his seat.

"What has you so giddy there, Alastor?" Harry asked.

"Well, It's not every day you get to visit the birthplace of monotheism, and Judaism itself." He said.

Harry frowned at his words.

"But isn't Israel in the opposite direction?" Harry asked.

"It is." Said Marchbanks as the engine came to life and the rotors began to spin, he then had to yell the next part. "But Israel isn't the birthplace of monotheism, nor is it the birthplace of the Hebrews."

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Voldemort woke up in chains.

This was not, despite what some people may think, a novel experience for him. You don't spend decades freedom fighting with small groups around the world without being captured from time to time. Now, being chained up by a longtime friend and ally? Very novel. At least when it lacked the kinkiness that this situation did. But for the life of him he couldn't guess what he'd done to enrage this Lady of House Black, but he was fast realizing he just had that effect on them.

"Good morning Tom. All recovered from your portkey?" Walburga asked sweetly.

Yup. She was pissed. Was she on team Marchbanks team too? How the hell would that have happened?

"You must know how your recent actions look." She went on. "Killing the only other remaining Knights and leaving such a message for the media to find."

She picked up a newspaper and threw it at his feet. He couldn't quite read the title from his chained position but he assumed to detailed the nice eulogy he had given Fenrir. Yada yada disease destroyed is mind, yada yada werewolves would not be utilized in the war any longer, yada yada werewolves need help not war, yada yada the Marchbanks werewolf sanctuary does good work. He wondered if Hadrian had gotten word of it yet. He sure would like to see/hear his response.

"And now here you are, destroying your anchors to immortality." Walburga said. "Have you abandoned your mission, or have you simply forgotten eat and given up?"

Tom sighed, allowed himself to show his tiredness.

"I have no neither, Walburga." He said. "I have merely failed it, as have we all."

She punched him then. It was an impressive jab, just as impressive as Bella's and Narcissa's. Now all he had to do was cross paths with an irate Andromeda Tonks and he'd have earned a shiner from each woman of house Black yet living... then again, there was little Nymphadora who wasn't so little anymore. Hmmm. And Sirius was courting that duelist. Perchance he had three more black eyes waiting for him in the future?

"You failed? How can you fail when you have all of eternity to accomplish your mission." Walburga the Chatty continued. "You who conquered death, and yet are now set on unconquering it."

"Your eternal guardian, I know." Tom said. "Like Salazar's basilisk at Hogwarts, ready to be unleashed on any army foolish enough to siege Hogwarts, I was to protect the sacred bloodlines and be your most powerful defender, when needed."

"So you DO remember." She said. "You achieved half of it, to find the secrets of immortality and lead us to a world without death. So why are you undoing that success?"

"Because it was my success in that that led me to failing my other task." Tom declared. "I have failed to protect them. They are all dead."

She sighed exasperatedly.

"Yes Tom, people die." She said in a mocking tone. "But they all lived long lives in pursuit of worthy goals. Did they not?"

Tom laughed, his normal mirthless laugh.

"Long lives? Fenrir was the lognest lasting after me and he was in his seventies!" Tom roared. "Remind me again, what's the average wizard lifespan?"

She shrinked away at his tone, and blinked at his question.

"That's right, one hundred and sixty, with half of us living longer than that. None of them made it halfway, and you think this a mere coincidence?" He demanded.

"Don't give me that tripe! You're undoing your immortality because you are tired of living, tired of fighting." She demanded. "Don't take me for a fool, I've seen it before. Men who make war lose themselves in it and cannot go on living. You sit there serenading me with your woes and regrets of our friends and lovers passing on before their time and yet opt to follow in their footsteps like a COWARD! They died fighting! They deed in service to something they believed in, which I know, is a foreign concept to a wretch like you who thinks the length of ones life determines its value."

Ouch! Now that one stung. Leave it to Walburga to plunge the knife exactly where it hurt the most. He must have shown how much he felt it, because she sighed and switched tactics.

"You are hurting, Tom. I get that." She said. "But what I don't get is why you didn't come to one of us with that hurt? We are your friends. That's what we are for. They all love you. I still love you. Hell, Orion still loves you. You have all the time in the world, why throw it away."

That last one was a sore topic, and Tom knew she hadn't meant it as a barb, but it still felt like one. He let it go. She must ohave realized the faux pas, because she knelt down and placed a hand on his cheek.

"Do you truly believe our tactics had nothing to do with their early deaths?" Tom asked, look up but still leaning into her touch. "We have been going about things wrong way, our tactics have been reprehensible. And my Horcruxes were the wrong path to immortality. Like you said, I have all the time in the world. Even with a mortal life I have another century to find a better way to extend human life, to conquer death. But the Horcruxes must go."

She removed her hand from his cheek and backed away from him.

"I don't believe you Tom, your handsome good looks alone aren't enough to make me believe your words alone. I'm not a little girl anymore." She said. "I want your word. You've never broken that, and I know you won't start now. I want your word that if I help you regain your mortality, you won't seek death. I want your word that you won't die before me, at the very least. And I remind you, us witches live longer than you dumb wizards."

He snorted at the boast. He knew he couldn't lie to her, he knew that if he gave that promise he would have to keep it, and it was a painful promise to make. On a fundamental level she was right, he was tired. He was very nearly ready to go on. Could duty and his word keep him going? Yes. Would it be orered of magnitude more torturous than his life thus far? also yes.

And yet, his mission must be carried out.

"You have my word, Walburga. I will live to sit on your bedside as you're withered and ugly and your great grandchildren mourn you." He promised.

She swped him over the back of his head for the lip there, but his shackles fell as she did so.

"Very well, Tom. Let us go visit the Rainbow Serpent, shall we?" Walburga said.