HPMoR Origins: Reflections on Atlantis (Omake)

Aurelius giggled to himself, anxiously waiting for his sister Julia's return.

"Aurelius!"

He involuntarily jumped and screamed, wishing, not for the first time, that apparition made some sound to announce a person's arrival. "Uncle Marcus. What are you doing here?"

"What am I doing here? What are you still doing here? You should have been evacuated by now."

Aurelius frowned, "I'm not an idiot. Atlantis is the safest place in the world. And this is Loki's Day. I know a prank when I see one."

"Loki does not deserve a holiday. If he ever comes back from Scandinavia, he'll be locked up for..."

Aurelius flinched as Marcus muttered a string of very bad words, which don't translate well but are a few syllables short of completing a very illegal torture curse. "Half of Atlantis has been destroyed with hundreds dead, and somehow Loki's still responsible. They all must have assumed the danger was just a joke...I need to find Antonius. Where is he? Or Cornelia?"

"Mom and dad both had meetings scheduled all day. They're not supposed to be back for hours."

"Well, let's go find them."

A moment later, they had arrived in the apparation room of the Atlantean capitol building. Walking down the main hallway, they quickly realized that the building was deserted.

"What exactly-" The sound of a muffled explosion interrupted Aurelius' question. A slight tremor shook the floor.

Marcus hesitated, then moved quickly to the staircase. "Hopefully someone is still in the command room."

As they ran up the stairs, another explosion shook the building, almost sending them back down.

They emerged into the command room. Through the windows, which provided a clear view of the entire city, Aurelius could see that his uncle had not been joking. To the south there was a large void, like a wide, shallow crater, extending from the nearby towers into the distance. Many of the buildings nearby were engulfed in an unnatural purple flame.

The next explosion threw them to the floor. When they got back up, the room was filled with a bright purple glow; the fire had spread to the outside of the tower.

Marcus muttered another curse, then added, "That's it, I'm going to use one of the Wands of Power."

Aurelius looked at him, shocked, "You're not allowed to do that."

Marcus walked toward a table with four stone boxes on it in the center of the room. "Look around. The Central Court is in flames and the council appears to have fled. There are no laws at the moment and someone has to do something..." He tapped one of the boxes with his wand. "Dammit. The Wand of Preservation and Invincibility is gone. I could've used that to cast a protection ward over the surviving parts of the city... The Wand of Creation and Life and the Wand of Change are also gone..." He sighed in relief, "Not my first, second, or third choice, but at least the Wand of Death and Destruction is still here."

"Um... how is that going to help?"

"It shouldn't be difficult. I'll ask it to conjure an army of something capable of eliminating the threat." Marcus picked up the blacker-than-black wand and closed his eyes to concentrate.

A moment later, the room filled with dozens of cloaked figures. Marcus lowered the wand and the figures quickly flew out the windows in all directions. The room dimmed as the flames froze and fell away.

Aurelius shivered, "Those things look evil. Why do they have to look like that? Were you trying to make flying corpses? Are you sure they're not worse than- What exactly are we fighting?"

Marcus sighed, "Some kind of magical fire zebras, apparently."

Aurelius turned pale, "Zebras?"

"Yeah, does that mean something to you?"

"No, that was just a prank! It's Loki's Day!"

"Aurelius, what did you do?"

"Julia's started studying wandless magic..."

"Get there faster."

"After some of the beginner stuff, I added a page with a spell that conjures a zebra. And a page after it with the instruction to use the spell 'geminullus' to dispel it. The description noted that some emotions, like surprise or frustration, prevent that spell from functioning correctly. She was supposed to spend all day chasing the zebra through the city trying to dispel it with a fake spell."

Marcus immediately grabbed Aurelius' arm and apparated south near the edge of the crater. "We have to look for your sister."

Aurelius looked around. The ruined buildings were caked with purple ice and there was a zebra corpse in every direction he looked.

Marcus exclaimed suddenly, "Dammit, your fake spell sounds close to 'gemino'. She must have been trying variants in the pronunciation. That could explain this."

"Multiple zebras I understand, but what about the fiery explosions?"

"'Gemino' normally conjures objects purely by magic, but a degraded form could make copies by reshaping nearby matter instead. Everything would be consumed; buildings, vehicles, even the ground itself. The sudden appearance of voids would sound like thunder and such a spell could easily release enough heat to start fires... Where would your sister have gone?"

Aurelius gestured, "She liked to practice in the park-" The rest of his answer was interrupted by apparating away. Marcus quickly cast a locater spell and they apparated away again.

They arrived a few blocks south of the park, and immediately found Julia. Her eyes were open, and she was breathing but unresponsive. Marcus cast a series of diagnostic spells then shook his head. "Nothing..."

"Nothing? I don't understand." Aurelius looked up at him, panicked, "She stopped breathing. Do something."

Marcus took three deep breaths, leveled his wand and commanded, 'resurrectus mira'.

"She's breathing again." Aurelius shook her shoulders, "Julia, wake up!"

"Please help me!" They spun to see a man running toward them, with a flying corpse closing in on him. He tripped on the uneven ground and it descended onto him. Marcus fired a series of blasting curses at it. It stared at him for a few seconds then flew off.

The man didn't move. Marcus cast the diagnostic spells on him, then shook his head, "It's the same thing." He pulled out the Wand of Death and stared at it for a moment. "No one should ever use this. Why would anyone even make it?", he asked, then snapped it in half and dropped it.

"Uncle, look", Aurelius pointed to one of the flying corpses, which had turned and started flying toward them. "And there's another."

Marcus quickly apparated them back to the capitol building, into a large storage room. "Try to find a chrono-apparation orb. I can fix this."

Aurelius questioned, "I know those let you apparate up to six hours forward or backward but you can't use them to change anything. How will that help?"

"The charms on the orb limit the user from doing those things. If I blast open the orb, I can release the Sands of Time within and use that magic directly. It's considered extremely dangerous, but I don't see how things could get any worse... Ah, here's one."

As he broke the orb, a flying corpse broke through the door. It dived and grabbed him just as he disapparated and both disappeared.

Aurelius suddenly found himself in a space made of white light. He was somehow able to watch the entire world below him. He saw that the monster had disrupted his uncle's control over time, so they had apparated much earlier than intended. That thing killed the founders of Atlantis as they were deep in meditation, channeling the magic necessary to conjure the island. By killing them, the flying corpse apparently absorbed sufficient magic to reproduce itself thousands of times. Aurelius briefly wondered whether anyone would even remember Atlantis or its magic. It had become the city that never was.

Aurelius noticed a doorway in front of him. On other side were his family members, Julia, Marcus, and his parents. He ran forward to meet them but fell after bumping into a glass... window? No, a mirror. He stood and found that he was somehow on the other side.

Julia smiled, "I got you this year."

Cornelia snapped, "Julia, apologize!"

She rolled her eyes, and recited in a monotone voice, "I'm sorry I trapped you in a magic mirror."

"What? How long have I..."

Julia smiled, "About a year."

Cornelia warned, "Julia."

She sighed, "Just 16 hours. It's less than you deserve for what you did last year. But at least you missed all of Loki's Day."

Antonius frowned, "Loki does not deserve a holiday. If he ever comes back from Scandinavia, he'll be locked up for a very long time."

Marcus smiled, "Now that all that's settled, let's go to Rome for dinner. They've recently invented something called 'pizza' that I think you'll enjoy."

As they turned to leave, Antonius turned back to the mirror, "Why is it still showing that world? Shouldn't it have stopped once no one was left inside the mirror?"

Cornelia shrugged, "Yeah, that's a little strange. I'll ask one of the experts about it tomorrow."

Marcus shuddered, "Naturally of all the worlds people have built in that mirror, that abomination with its soul-eating monsters and no Atlantis would be the one it decides to preserve."