Chapter 357: Heaven’s Gate

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I would like to thank my beta, Awdyr, for his help in this chapter.

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8 April 1995, Olympus Academy, Greece

Olympus, one of the most historically significant locations, was a place that the ancient Greeks considered to be the home of the gods themselves and he could see why. It was a place probably filled with as many secrets as Hogwarts, maybe even more. Yes, coming here was the right call. This was definitely going to be fun.

Daphne was gaping at the sight for what seemed to be at least a couple of minutes and Harry couldn't really blame her. The mere sight alone would bring awe to whoever gazed on it, and that wasn't even considering the marvel of magic that this mountain was.

The blonde finally spoke up, "This is amazing!"

The headmistress seemed to enjoy the response and went into 'teacher mode', "Oh, yes, it's quite the magical marvel. No one knows the true origin of the enchantment, or even what they are. All we do know is that it's been there for thousands of years. Many have tried to climb the mountain, to see what was at the top of infinity, but no one ever returned. To be fair, the most common theory is that there's some kind of modified expansion charm that makes the mountain spread into infinity. It literally has no peak and anyone who tries to reach it will simply eventually run out of food or water. Nevertheless, the sight was magnificent enough that the muggles in Ancient Greece considered it to be the home of the Gods, themselves."

"So, there aren't any gods up there," Harry asked with a mixture of curiosity and amusement in his tone. He mostly wanted to know if there were any legends about the mountain. The beings who had proclaimed themselves to be gods left after the first war between the Light and Dark, having sealed them away into their own dimensions. They retreated soon after. The age of gods started to wane when Atlantis fell and officially ended when the fey banished themselves away to defeat Merlin and Morgana.

Still, it would have been interesting to know what the locals thought about the mountain, mostly because most likely, their coming task was probably going to involve it in some way.

The transfiguration mistress chuckled, "Not likely. Yet, no one knows what's up there. The school was set up long ago and stopped anyone from entering, claiming that it was for their own protection. If I had to guess, it would have been because of the resources the mountain provides them. It's full of magical creatures and magical herbs, some of them even unique to the mountain, and it's an immense source of wealth to whoever has control over it."

"What about the gods of Olympus?" Daphne asked leadingly.

"From whatever meagre sources we have of that time, they seem to be nothing more than very powerful wizards and witches, that were worshipped as gods, which was relatively common at the time, and they died thousands of years ago. As much as this school tries to get inspired by their tales, it's very likely that any tales of divine intervention are nothing more than that, tales. Still, they like to call their students 'heroes', and only invite people from very old Greek bloodlines. The rest of the population are either forced to enter some lesser school in Greece or even go to another country to be guaranteed a better education. To their benefit, while the Olympus Academy, doesn't graduate a lot of students every year, those who do tend to be some very powerful wizards."

Harry was going to ask something else, only to be interrupted by the headmistress, "I believe that this has been enough talk about the school. I have to go meet some of the other headmasters. I've been trying to convince the ICW that the situation in Britain is far more volatile for Hogwarts to host the final task of the tournament, but they seem to insist upon it. You-Know-Who is fighting an army of enhanced werewolves and for some reason, they don't think that this is concerning. Minister Fudge foolishly agreed to pay a very significant fine if they asked to withdraw Britain from the tournament last year, and the ministry is not in a position to pay something like this, especially with the state of the economy!"

Her Scottish accent had gotten very heavy at the end and had run out of breath by the end of her rant. She seemed to have noticed her misstep, "I apologize. I shouldn't have said that. I've been under a lot of pressure in the last few months, and I guess my temper has gotten the better of me."

Harry gave her a sympathetic look, "It's alright professor. We all need to yell at the world sometimes."

She smiled back, "Thank you, Mr. Carmichael. Now, why don't you go meet the rest of the delegation? I asked Mr. Diggory to show you around and inform you of any detail you might need to know."

He noticed that they were near a familiar metallic dragon, the Hogwarts Express, and just nodded, "Thank you, professor."

Daphne echoed his words and the woman disapparated with a pop. The blonde gave him a good look, "So, Dumbledore is forcing the ICW to hold the task in Hogwarts."

Harry nodded, "It seems like the most likely scenario. He probably already has a prophecy ready there and he can't exactly wipe out years of planning because magical Britain has suddenly become unstable."

The blonde looked like she wanted to say something, only to start coughing for a few seconds. Harry jumped at his girlfriend, his wand ready to see if she was hurt or something, only for her to raise her hand, "I'm fine, Harry."

"Daphne, that didn't sound fine."

"It's nothing, I just choked on a bit of my saliva."

Harry gave her a concerned look, "Are you sure?"

"For fuck's sake, Harry, I'm not made of glass. It's just an accident!"

Harry was about to say something only to freeze a bit on the expression on her face, she looked weirdly angry, especially about something this benign. He didn't really want to push her, but her reaction was still strange.

He didn't have time to think more on it since Diggory's familiar voice spoke up in front of them, "Oi, Greengrass, Carmichael, welcome back. McGonagall asked me to show you around the Academy a bit. Put your luggage in a compartment and get changed. You'll need to choose your classes here as well. Now, get on with it, we're already late."

The older wizard then turned and left them neat at the entrance of the Express. Daphne mumbled, "Well, Diggory's certainly gotten pricklier."

A voice responded to her, "Don't worry about him, he's grumpy because he lost his place in the next task because of you two. He's been trying to 'clear his name and honour' after his performance in the previous task."

They turned and saw Fred and George Weasley smiling mischievously at them. The other twin continued for him, "Apparently, causing your school to finish last and getting us down to second place makes a person lose their popularity. He thought that without Potter overshadowing him he would get the chance to shine."

He could understand Diggory growing frustrated with his performance in the tournament. He probably thought that he was Hogwarts' best student. He was in his seventh year, with very high grades, good in Quidditch, and obviously tutored in duelling. The professors sang his praises, and he relished it. He reminded Harry of the people who peaked in High School, who never considered the fact that the real world was just fundamentally different. He was a decent enough wizard, that Harry would admit, but that was really it. There was nothing remarkable about him, he was just a relatively attractive popular boy that's good in school and sports.

He was told by everyone that he would be Hogwarts' only chance at victory, and that must have put a lot of pressure on him and expectations that he just didn't live up to. In the first task, Harry was, by far, the main source of attraction, in the second one, Cho Chang was the one whose efforts were celebrated. In the third one, his victory was overshadowed by Longbottom saying that Voldemort was back. In the duelling tournament, he came in behind both Weasley twins, and he flopped hard in the fifth task.

McGonagall must have lost a lot of faith in him for that last stunt and chose to replace him for this task when she was forced to put in Daphne and 'Eddie', and that must have stung a lot. That's not to mention that it was unlikely that Diggory would get to compete in the last task, especially since she'll have to get younger students to compete since a few of them didn't really get to do so, being forced to return to the castle when Voldemort officially revealed himself.

There were five students from each year in the delegation, starting from the fourth years, of course. In Harry's year, only Susan Bones remained as a student who wouldn't have competed in the final task, with Granger, Longbottom, Daphne, and himself as the rest of the delegates in this year.

However, Cho Chang was the only fifth year who had the chance to compete, and with 'Eddie Carmichael' participating in this one, that left three students who still had to contractually compete in the next task. It was funny, they were all so forgettable. He only barely remembered that Katie Bell and Cormac McLaggen were part of the delegation, and even then, he had to think back a lot. Well, Harry was never good with names.

Anyway, since the rest of the delegation participated in any task, that sort of forced the four students to be champions in the next task, which McGonagall was probably going to make sure to have, at least, four champions. It was probably why she jumped at the chance of letting Daphne and 'Eddie' compete, but even then, the chances of Hogwarts winning in their own nation were on the slim side with most students being on the inexperienced side.

To be fair, Hogwarts did surprisingly well so far, even if Diggory's blunder put them in second place, tied with the Greeks. They had won three tasks out of the seven, which was the same number as Beauxbatons' victory – who won the second, fourth, and fifth tasks.

His train of thought was broken by Daphne commenting to the twins, "It's still not a valid reason for Diggory to act this way."

The redheads nodded at once. It was weirdly synchronized, as if they had practised it before, "We're not saying he's right. Anyway, you might want to hurry up before Diggory gets even grumpier. No one wants an angry Puff, after all."

They left at once, and the two newcomers went into their designated rooms. A few minutes later, they came out in fresh clothes and left to see Diggory. The older boy was obviously disgruntled with the task, but that didn't stop him from helping them out. They walked towards the school, with the older student explaining the electives that they could choose during their stay. Daphne was interested in one in elemental magic. It was a bit of a hot commodity for all the delegates, even if it was a bit of a scam since it took years to actually learn anything useful in the field, not just a handful of weeks.

Anyway, when they arrived near the bottom of the school, something started to niggle at the back of Harry's mind, like a third sense. He instinctively used his Arcane Hearing and almost recoiled in surprise. The mountain wasn't enchanted to be infinite, not this was far more elaborate than that. It was a kind of magic that Harry was probably one of the few familiar with, on the entire planet. Olympus wasn't a mountain, it was an entrance, and everything forward was in another dimension, another plane of existence.

There was an elegance to it that he had never seen before, a thing that made Lily's efforts seem amateurish, maybe even childish. The way it was incorporated so seamlessly, meant that a master of dimensional magic was involved, someone far above anyone Harry had even heard of. Even the gardens of Avalon, the Fey's crown jewel, paled in comparison. For the first time, Harry was tempted to believe that something 'divine' might have been involved in this creation.

However, all those thoughts were overwhelmed by a very faint memory of a conversation of Arcturus Black. In fact, it was one of the earliest conversations he ever had with the man, one regarding the founder of his house, of the creator of the first magical crest, a man rumoured to have bent space and time itself to his liking, a man who had discovered the very source of magic itself, "Kronos."

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AN: Sorry again if the chapter's quality is a bit off. I didn't really have enough time to plan it properly and I was relying on notes about the lore I put aside a couple of months ago. The good news is that work has started to ease up a bit, so I only have to catch up with a few things I neglected in my personal life for the next couple of days. I know I said it before, but everything should be back to normal in either the next chapter or the one after.

Anyway, this chapter is a bit lore-heavy and has a few things that I wanted to scatter in a lot of previous chapters, but since I scrapped the fourth and fifth tasks, I had to do it in a bit of a single dump. Anyway, the task itself will be announced in the next chapter and I'm really excited with what I have planned for this Arc. I've always been a fan of Greek Mythology and I'm pretty proud of how I integrated it into the story's lore and am very excited to show it to you. Anyway, I don't mind rewriting the chapter depending on your feedback so, as usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.

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If you want to support me check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr

I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.

Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.