"Once I saw a Devil in a flame of fire,

who arose before an Angel that sat on a cloud,

and the Devil uttered these words.

'The worship of God is:

Honoring his gifts in other men each according to his genius,

and loving the greatest men best:

those who envy or calumniate great men hate God,

for there is no other God.'"



Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres ran through his checklist as he floated underwater, just outside the arch leading into Atlantis.

He held an actual laminated checklist. Studies done nearly two-hundred and fifty years ago conclusively demonstrated that even experts with thousands of hours of training - like pilots and surgeons - sometimes forgot a critical step. Harry considered himself the world's foremost living authority on Atlantis. But he had no actual experience with it, yet.

Nobody did. The greatest living expert merely meant Harry was the least ignorant. He went methodically down his checklist to ensure he hadn't forgotten anything. He reviewed the defenses he expected to encounter and the correct countermeasures, from first down to the last. Reminders as to which spells to favor. He flipped the checklist over to the back, then went to the second page.

Even by Harry's rather demanding standards he felt prepared. As prepared as possible. Harry had spent two decades practicing for this moment in an underwater training facility.

Despite what earlier conservative politicians proclaimed, you could eventually disband a government agency without violent uprising. All you had to do was make the effective human life span "As much as you'd care to enjoy" and spend several generations training people to think. Once you did that even politicians started widening their time horizons and raising their level of discourse.

It took decades longer than he'd hoped. But there had been progress.

Humanity no longer lived solely on one single frail eggshell. Bowie Base One supported nearly a million souls. The Sovereign Moon held a seat on the U.N. Security Council. Some time ago the American government ministers (or more likely, their constituents) had read the writing on the wall. Humanity had far fewer problems during the Third Enlightenment (as the History books called it), but they had problems nonetheless. Each innovation usually brought more rewards than challenges, but there were constant issues to deal with.

And even when all your problems were smaller, you still spent most of your time dealing with them. Problems - no matter how big or small - required resources to be allocated efficiently.

Once corporations routinely captured and mined asteroids and frontier towns had sprung up on other planets and moons, space had long ago ceased to be a 'research' problem, and just one of scale. The (original) world's nations had other problems to address and so a controversial measure proposed by the Distinguished Gentlewoman from Costa Rica made its way into law.

N.A.S.A had been privatized in 2089.

Harry had snapped up a fair percentage of the assets to prepare for his inevitable exploration of Atlantis. He kept one of the original Apollo space suits back at Hogwarts because obviously they deserved to be seen, and few people alive had a real appreciation for that part of humanity's history. Publicly buying space trinkets was just Harry being Harry, snapping up mementos from a bygone age few remembered was the sort of thing people expected Harry Potter to do. It was no stranger than anything else he'd done. If Harry could hide his true intentions by publicly appearing to be what the media portrayed him as, that was fine with him. A good move has multiple purposes. If Harry could inspire his students with a few props that was an added benefit.

But as he made the purchase Harry knew that one day he'd swim into Atlantis.

Once he discovered where it was.

He'd started that task even before his marriage. Scholars told him Atlantis would be impossible to find. All legends agreed there were no clues and no traces of the civilization to be found. But that had not been tested experimentally. He started researching, but just in case there really weren't clues or tricks, that left Harry one option.

He brute forced it.

Before Harry celebrated his thirtieth birthday he'd discovered a renowned Muggle exploring the ocean floor and mapping its depths. Harry Potter simply introduced himself, demonstrated enough magic to be convincing, revealed everything he knew about Atlantis and swore him to secrecy.

What explorer could resist?

Even during the decades Harry Potter spent petrified his high-tech search for Atlantis continued. Long after Harry's dispirited acolytes had thrown their hands up in frustration and abandoned their tasks, one man hunted for Atlantis. After a century, it remained undiscovered.

Harry - awake again - went back and re-examined the data. A painstaking analysis revealed ... nothing.

Harry ran the analysis again - this time under the watchful eyes of Aurors - they noticed some discrepancies and the tell-tale sign of Obliviation. Harry narrowed down the search to a few specific sites. After that it was a matter of time, and after another decade, the location.

As far as Harry could tell, James Cameron was the first, second and fourth person to discover the entrance to Atlantis - only to have his memory altered each time.

Now Harry floated in front of the gate, giddy.

Harry had been happy most of his life, but bouts of giddy-ness had become increasingly rare. Harry speculated that giddy-ness (closely related to surprise) followed a pattern similar to the Prime Number Theory and became more infrequent as you got older, but never really disappeared.

Unlike primes and pure maths (which followed their own deep mysteries) Harry could adjust his expected giddyness by trying new things. Harry resolutely ignored all arguments that other people could do this. Atlantis was not his life's work, but it had always been there, in the background, and he was not about to give into those who said it was too dangerous for him. So he put aside all the words from the people who told him to delegate. Thankfully Luna wasn't one of them.

But he listened to their arguments.

Harry might be risking his life, but life was meant to be lived. Still, he'd listened. He'd taken every precaution suggested and even more. All he could think of.

His backed Bubble Head spell with state of the art rebreather equipment, and then scuba equipment. And an emergency rebreather. He had a plastic bag full of gillyweed in case things got desperate and he decided to stay, and five portkeys to scattered safe spots at a variety of depths (to avoid the bends). One portkey led a pressurized chamber in London, with healers waiting. Legend said you couldn't Apparate into Atlantis but no countermeasures prevented leaving, assuming you didn't take anything with you.

The stories - evidence was a strong word, too strong for his research - felt accurate. Harry knew that wasn't evidence, but evidence was not forthcoming.

Eventually Plupplup and Blboblb - the Mermish Aurors who'd demanded that Harry tell them the location of Atlantis so it could be investigated 'by the proper authorities' - had blown bubbles of exasperation and agreed to swim just outside Atlantis and allow Harry his moment.

For anyone else (well, almost anyone else) they'd have ignored his complaints and gone on their own.

Harry knew how to use the awe his name inspired. Blboblb and Plupplup had asked him nicely instead of simply shutting him down when they'd first visited him, decades ago. After Harry demurred, they placed a bewildering array of what they considered ridiculous demands. They expected Harry to object, after which they would go over his head. In the name of safety. Harry's safety.

They'd heard the legends of Harry Potter. But they didn't understand them. Not yet.

Harry complied with their demands.

He turned over every scrap of lore about Atlantis (except its location) and agreed that he'd have to best a crack Mermish Auror Trio in underwater combat before he'd swim through the gates. Harry also agreed that his test would involve situations where he'd swim in without advanced knowledge of the territory set up with whatever non-lethal trap they desired.

The Aurors complained that they had much better facilities for this. Harry privately agreed, but didn't want to publicly spend years training with Merfolk. Even the Muggle press would grasp the implications. But he'd taken sabbaticals at his American retreat for decades. That would arouse no suspicion. Harry un-mothballed an old NASA underwater training facility, tossed Plupplup the keys and said to call when they were ready.

Only then did the two mermen stop and really think about Harry Potter's childhood, before he became famous.

They set off to work.

Harry hadn't had that much fun in decades. It was like the childhood he'd never finished.

It took years. The Aurors felt surprised after they'd defeated Harry the first time. It had been ... easy. Harry Potter boasted respectable fighting talent, but the world had caught up during his years of stasis. He kept surprises up his sleeves but he'd taught his students well. Neither merman had Harry's innate cleverness, but they'd been diligent, and had been taught well by students of Harry's techniques.

Harry thanked the Aurors for the battle, learned from his mistake, and improved his plan. The next battle took longer.

Harry lost. He reviewed, learned, and studied. Harry Potter had all the time in the world. He kept up with his other duties, disappearing for a long weekend here and there to relax. Nobody really noticed. Harry was never particularly social, but he kept up correspondences. Harry lost his third battle and the fourth. As he lost battles he won over the Aurors' respect, as they learned the fundamental truth about him.

Harry Potter was not a God, just a clever man in an increasingly clever world. A world which (thankfully) no longer needed him, but respected his position and the influence he'd had. Harry had drifted into legend - for a while - but after he'd been revived he drifted back out of legend as people met him and judged him. The clever ones realized that he'd done everything with the tricks he'd taught them. He might have new tricks (there were always new tricks) but now they understood his techniques, even if they didn't always use them.

The world had thanked him, rewarded him well, listened to his advice and humoured Harry. They let him do pretty much anything he wanted, within reason. And sometimes beyond reason, at least in this case. That's what the Aurors had initially done. But as they defeated him over and over with less and less margin for error they watched the smiling man thank them, retreat, recover, regroup and rejoin the fight. Within two years Harry was a knowledgeable underwater tactician, albeit with physical skills only equal to a Mermish teenager.

Within five years, he routinely defeated unsuspecting Mermish Aurors in underwater duel.

After ten years Blboblb formally withdrew his objection. Harry Potter said there was no rush and he still had much to learn. After twenty years he'd defeated every challenge they could think of.

Then - and only then - Harry started preparations in earnest. He could finally see the endgame.

It had been fun. He thought he probably could have done it ten years, maybe eight. You can't rush physical skills. But he'd only spent a third of his time preparing for Atlantis. He'd had policies to craft, made sure to spend time with all the friends he accumulated over his life. As Harry said, there was no rush, and much more important matters to attend to.

The melding of Science and Magic meant barriers fell at an amazing pace.

Practically every day another iota of enlightenment could be squeezed from the advances. Every decade saw another major discovery. Grasping the implications an exploring them was Harry's full time job. The speed of light hadn't fallen. There were still hopes, but the maths were difficult. Research was slow and (by definition) had no fixed endpoint. Humanity had time to expand but eventually even the solar system would get full.

Births had fallen dramatically, but not nearly as dramatically as deaths.

Construction of the Dyson Disk had already started. It wouldn't house anyone for centuries and would probably never be finished. For now, they were only using materials already in orbit, but at some point those would run out ... by now most people doubted that the speed of light would ever be defeated.

Harry demurred an opinion. Prophecy was a tricky thing. Harry was just a man, but he had insider information. and how could he destroy the very stars if he couldn't get to them? In any case, assuming that they were stuck in this solar system was practical for now, so Harry just shrugged his shoulders and let the physicists do their work.

Harry's other main task was the same it had ever been. Encouraging and educating humanity. Now - thanks to his legend - that task consumed most of his time. if not much of his thoughts.

Harry had a canned intro he used during the numerous speeches he gave. Commencement speeches at Schools of Wizardry around the world were all basically the same. The speaker, some accomplished whitchard who seemed ancient to hir teenaged students but was a century Harry's junior, would extoll Harry's accomplishments - all long overshadowed by those who stood on his shoulders - and end with something like "I am honoured to present your speaker, the Legend, The Boy-Who-Lived, Harry Potter!"

Harry had his speech memorized, but held a note card with the Symposiarch's name. (The sole item on his "Speech" preparation checklist). Harry would smile and nod or wave as the mood struck him, then go into his speech.

"Thank you, but I would like to remind insert previous speaker's title and name here that we live in the Age of Symbiosis. I am not a legend, just a man. Perhaps a man ahead of his time, as people say. But times have caught up and surpassed me. The times have surpassed us all, even you who are about to embark on your new adventures. Our worlds are too big for any one person to explore, but that also means that they are big enough that any one person can find something new. You can be the first to glimpse some distant vista or uncover some new scientific principle. Build a better boggart trap. Invent a new flavor of ice cream. Age is no barrier. The only barriers exist inside you. If you have a strong desire, a good work ethic, a bit of cleverness, and the courage to believe in yourself, you can do anything. Those four attributes make the Herald of a little school I attended long ago and ran a while later. You may have heard of it."

Harry would wait for the polite laughter at his unfunny joke to die down before continuing.

"They say I'm a legend, but I'm just a man. There are no more mystical figures of legend. As a former legend I can tell you a secret: Not only are there no more, there never were. No legends. Just people. Any of you ... no make that all of you ... could become what people call a legend. But if you do you'll learn what I know. You'll feel the same. If you become a quote legend unquote you'll get there the way any quote normal person does. Because there are just people. There are no legends."

That was another applause line, and every time when Harry gave his speech he paused for the claps and murmured approvals.

But during that moment - before he pivoted into the main topic, whatever lesson he felt like discussing that day - as he said the final words and explained that there were no legends, while he waited for the applause to die...

In that moment a small voice in his head always spoke up. To chide Harry and remind him.

There is still one legend left.

That voice that kept Harry focused during the long decades. That voice - which sometimes named Gryffindor, sometimes Slytherin, sometimes Ravenclaw but usually Hufflepuff - strengthened Harry's resolve to complete the Herculean tasks set before him by those Aurors. That voice forced him to smile when he wanted to rant, to persevere past most people's endurance.

That was the voice Harry worked to quiet. And on this day he would succeed. Harry Potter swam through the gates of Atlantis.

The time had come to destroy one more legend and rescue one man.