Jewel of the Harem: The Grindelwald Continuum Book One

A Tour Guide to "Jewel of the Harem: The Grindelwald Continuum, Book One." Its People, Places, and Things.

This is going to be a very, very long fic. Every bit as long as GoF. Maybe longer. Not only that, it's the first book in a series of three. And there's foreshadowing all over the place for the second and third books. Given these facts, the sheer multitude of people, places, things, events, and dates may get overwhelming. (It certainly does for me.) There's so much coming up! We're going to learn about the sinister hidden background of the Malfoys... the real reason why Voldemort couldn't kill Harry...the untold secrets of the dollar bill, and how they relate to wizards...whether it's true what they say about boys with big hands... ahem, anyway, it's a lot to keep track of. So I've prepared a tour guide for you! :) (Please keep your hands inside the car at all times...fasten your seatbelts... now hang on tight, it's going to be a bumpy ride.) As you can see, it's being posted as Chapter 6, but there will also be a link to it on my webpage, posted in a later chapter. Chapter 7 is the next regular chapter, posted along with this one. (Hopefully, it'll be up at the same time.) Some of these definitions are OC's and outside references; some of them explain what's been happening to characters since GoF to get them where they are now, or add more information on a canon place or object. Some of them provide enough real historical detail so that the events of JOTH make a bit more sense. If a person, place, thing, or event is associated with a particular year, that's noted in parantheses. It will all be updated with each new chapter as more information is added, and the updated versions will be on the webpage.. Please bookmark and visit often. And thank you for being a JOTH reader.

BTW... you've absolutely GOT to read my beta Sally's amazing fic. Heartbreakingly beautiful writing. I really think it's all her fault, too, that Sirius and Remus showed up in JOTH at all.;) Find "Black Dog" at

http://www.thedarkarts.org/authorLinks/Essayel/

Please click on one of the links below for more information; they'll take you where you want to go and you can just scroll through the list-- the "People" links are clickable individually too, because that got very long.

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PEOPLE

PLACES

GODS, GHOSTS, AND IMMORTALS

THINGS

People:

Al-ladin al-Rashid (1566)

Sirius Black

Vincent Crabbe

Colin Creevey

Albus Dumbledore

Nicolas Flamel

Cornelius Fudge

Gregory Goyle

Hermione Granger

Neville Longbottom

Remus Lupin

Draco Lukas Malfoy

Gabriel Malfoy

Lucius Malfoy

Narcissa (von Drachen)Malfoy

Alistair Moody

Ivy Parkinson

Pansy Parkinson

Peter Pettigrew & the Death Eaters

Harry Potter

Severus Snape

Marie-France Tessier

Klaus and Cisselinde von Drachen

Ginny (Gwenhyfar) Alvean Weasley

Ron Weasley

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Al-ladin al-Rashid (1566)

We don't know too much about him yet, except that he lives in Istanbul in 1566 and is a member of the Order of the Tower and the Pheonix. Draco communicated with him (in 1996) through the Kitap-an Dus, and Al-ladin told him the story of the Jewel of the Harem, warning that the time of great evil was at hand. We WILL be seeing this guy again.

Sirius Black

Still has that slight wanted-for-the-murders-he-didn't commit problem going. As this story begins, he's hiding out in the Cheviot hills, on the border between Scotland and England, with frequent visits from Remus Lupin. What Ginny doesn't yet know (and, of course, Draco doesn't know this either) is that he's been informed of the search for the Jewel. He was involved in the mysterious events of Yule 1995, and will definitely be coming into the story very soon.

Vincent Crabbe

Vincent Crabbe, along with Gregory Goyle, has been slipping in his post of crony, security guard, and general large-immovable-object to Draco in the past year and a half.(Crabbe and Goyle's fathers, of course, deserted Lucius Malfoy after the fall of Lord Voldemort, when they didn't yet know which way the wind was blowing) Now, they're both back at Draco's side, but are they going to behave the same way as they did before? Of the pair, Crabbe is the less unpleasant, and has a certain resemblance to Arnold Schwarzenegger back in his Mr.Universe days. Also, he stutters. He never talked enough in canon for us to tell. Guess what? He's going to get actual character development later in JOTH. There's more to him than meets the eye.

Colin Creevey

Did you ever think that Colin was a bit creepy in canon, what with his camera and his fawning hero worship of Harry? Well, if so, you don't know how right you were. Colin has been spying for the Death Eaters for nearly a year. Once he found out that some of the Slytherin girls would sleep with him if he did, well, that was that. Like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, but whinier and not as cuddly. Yet he seemed reasonably stable until the mysterious events of one year before, in the Forbidden Forest. What happened? Also, he was left behind at Hogwarts when the rest went through the clock tower to 1566. And what mischief is he making there? We'll find out...

Albus Dumbledore

We met the 1996 Headmaster of Hogwarts briefly in the Prologue, discussing the time travel plans at the top of the North Tower with Alistair Moody. He was left behind to hold down the fort, and we will be hearing from him again.

Nicolas Flamel (1566)

The historical Nicolas Flamel was a French alchemist who lived in the fourteenth century. He received a mysterious book from an angel, and supposedly interpreted it to learn the secret of the philosopher's stone. He probably learned about alchemy from the Arabs, who formed the basis of most of Ottoman culture in the sixteenth century (Turks were rather lacking in culture, but were very good at conquest.) Leaving the realm of actual history and entering canon, Nicolas Flamel got tired of living forever and happily reliquished the philosopher's stone to Albus Dumbledore in 1992. In JOTH, Nicolas Flamel is the headmaster of Hogwarts in 1566-- and he feels the coming storm about to break over all the world if Grindelwald gets control of the Jewel.

Cornelius Fudge

The Minister of Magic is every bit as clueless as ever. Even worse, he's pretty smug now, too. He believes that the fall of Voldemort proves he was right about ignoring the threat he posed. So he certainly isn't going to be willing to understand that when one dark lord falls, another rises. Expect trouble from him on the home front in 1997.

Gregory Goyle

Dumber and meaner than Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle has (seemingly) returned to Draco's side now that everything is working out so well with Lord Grindelwald. But he's harboring a lot o' resentment, and I wouldn't bet on him being willing to just slip back into his old role.

Hermione Granger

In the past year and a half, Hermione has grown up a great deal. Always the most mature of the Trio, she went through a long thinking process after the events of GoF. Her obsession for the preceding year has been the Jewel of the Harem project. In some ways, she is the student most committed to it. However, her know- it-all tendencies have only been reinforced by this, and she's more bossy than ever. She and Ron were drawn together after the events just preceding last year's Christmas holidays. However, even Hermione is never sure exactly how serious the relationship really is, and they've gone through a couple of "just friends" periods. They alternate between snogging and fighting, and, of late, the fights have increasingly been about Ginny. Hermione is fond of Ginny and in many ways even has a deep friendship with her, but in her heart of hearts she doesn't trust the younger girl and is leery of her strong emotions and unpredicable reactions. Compared to both Ron and Harry, Hermione's a paragon of mental stability these days.

She spent the summer of 1996 on a project that she won't talk about now. However, it was somewhere that had enough sun so that she ended up with a tan. A hint just for my glossary readers: it was in Palos Altos, California.

Neville Longbottom

Neville is still sorely lacking in self-confidence, but the fact that he was chosen to go on the Jewel mission has certainly kicked it up a notch. His abilities with herbs and herbal medicines have increased, but he's still not doing too well in Potions due to his nervous terror of Professor Snape. He feels most self-assured when he's around Ginny, since he's woven a fantasy involving himself as the strong, manly hero and her as the shy maiden in desperate need of rescuing. Of course, he's put her on a weird kind of pedestal and doesn't really know her at all, but he means well. To date, all he's dared are a few sloppy kisses and highly inept fumbling sessions which generally end with Ginny slapping his hands away from her breasts. As much as he dreams of going to bed with her, he'd never get up the courage to ask.

Remus Lupin

After leaving Hogwarts in the spring of 1994, Lupin had a curious series of adventures involving the Edinburgh Ministry of Magic, French werewolves, Sidewinder venom, and a trial. They are detailed in DMP's "Sins of Lycaos" and "Wolf By Ears." Go read them on Schnoogle after finishing this. His friendship with Sirius Black was deepened over all these events, especially the ones of Yule 1995, and they are now working together to monitor Hogwarts in 1996-7 while the team hunts for the Jewel. Their job is going to be a lot harder than they thought.

Draco Lukas Malfoy

When we last saw our anti-hero on the Hogwarts Express at the end of GoF, he was a fifteen-year-old Death Eater-in-training, Evil's Golden Boy, and quite happy with the direction in which life was headed. Then it all kind of went to hell in the next year and a half. First, Voldemort fell too far to ever rise again. Then, there were the mysterious events in the south of France that took place one year before the events of JOTH. Then, over the summer, Draco overheard some very unpleasant things at the von Drachen manor about the Malfoys, and after fleeing to England he made some shocking discoveries about the truth of his family's past. These will be revealed in a later chapter. He spent the months leading up to Christmas in a haze of increasing sleep deprivation, losing mental stability by the week and recalling those halcyon days when he was shagging every girl in sight.

And how, oh how, did the Rat-Faced Boy of GoF become the Sultry Sex God of Slytherin, anyway? Over the 1995 Christmas holidays, right after turning sixteen, he was seduced by his much older, redheaded, French third cousin in St.Tropez. (The full story of Draco and Marie-France Tessier will be told in a later chapter. Oooh la la.) He then went back to Hogwarts with loads of sex appeal and proceeded to seduce others in great numbers; however, he had an unfortunate and increasing tendency to call them "Ginny" at the worst possible moment. His obsession with Ginny Weasley has been growing since fourth year, but he's always been able to deny it... until now. On the night of the Yule Ball, he finally kissed Ginny (and a bit more!) at the top of the North Tower, and she became his heart's desire. Since Draco is so used to getting what he wants when he wants it, he doesn't react well to the fact that she keeps escaping him. God only knows what's going to happen when he finally gets ahold of her. He's torn between this inexplicable passion for her and his rejection of everything she is and represents. That kind of thing has a tendency to not go well.

Draco has been an increasingly tortured soul over the past year. He was possibly starting to drift from Lucius Malfoy's teachings, and if Grindelwald hadn't appeared, we don't know what might have happened. But then the new dark lord did appear, and Draco accepted darkness at his hands. He's sworn allegiance to Grindelwald out of ambition and a thirst for power, but it's safe to say that he doesn't really know yet what's going to be involved. He really despises Peter Pettigrew, and he's pretty much lost respect for his father by now, partly because of what he learned over the summer, and partly because Lucius cheats on Narcissa constantly.

Could he be redeemed, or has he fallen too far? Hard to say. He certainly hasn't hit bottom yet and has a long way to go (yes, we'll be there for every bit of it, dear reader!) Draco's main hold on humanity at this point lies in two things. One is his intelligence and profound intellectual curiousity, which has often driven him to learn things that he knows his father won't approve of. That's why he knows who R.D. Laing is-- he asked the ghost of Sigmund Freud, who was was one of his main positive influences as a child. (Now that's a sentence I'll bet you never thought you'd see.) However, his knowledge is spotty to say the least, and particularly bad when it comes to Muggle history ( And yes, this will be very important in the second book.) The second thing is his love and protectiveness for his mother, which is not an emotion that really seems to be spilling over into his feelings for anyone else. Over the summer, however, he did refuse to allow his father to sacrifice a child from the nearby village.

In appearance, Draco always looks as if he's ready to step into a Noel Coward play any minute, lounging insouciantly against a mantelpiece with a snifter of brandy. or trading barbed witticisms on a tennis court-- if he doesn't set fire to the entire estate first out of pique. He's a little too pretty to be as conventionally handsome as Harry is turning out to be, but once you've seen him, you couldn't care less. There's something about him that's impossible to ignore, and perhaps it's the hint of untamed wildness beneath his urbane exterior that's been such a chick magnet. If I had actual artistic talent, I would draw you my Draco. Since I don't, however... he looks a bit like Jonathon Rhys-Meyers in Velvet Goldmine, and a bit like Edward Norton in Primal Fear. Ooh! OOO! StarEyes is drawing Draco for me, and a lot of other characters too! She'll have a website up soon with all of it, and there is a FILM!! based on her artwork. There's a pic of him in the clock tower looking all broody and pouty and dangerous in black leather boots...

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Gabriel and Michel Malfoy:

For now, two pretty mysterious figures. Gabriel (1874-1945) was Lucius's grandfather, and Michel (1901-1962) his father. As you can see by the dates, they weren't very long-lived for wizards, and neither survived long enough to see Draco born. They.were collaborators with the (real) Nazi-installed government of Vichy France during WWII, but were both cleared by the post-war wizarding courts at Nürnberg. These served much the same purpose as the (real) denazification tribunals and courts, of which the best known were also at Nürnberg. So they must have done something very unpleasant.

Michel was obsessed with raising a son who could pass as old money in the highest and most exclusive circles of wizard society, and this was what he trained Lucius to be. The attempt was never as successful as he had hoped; it took another Malfoy generation to acquire that polish. However, it certainly helped when he loaned impoverished aristocracy money in the post-war devastation of their society, never asking for it to be returned. Michel and Gabriel were actually the ones who founded the Malfoy fortune in 1932, in an unexplained way involving a mysterious Turkish artifact..

Gabriel died in the siege of Berlin at the hands of Stalin's troops moving in from the East. Michel moved to England and bought Malfoy Manor after the war. He left behind many relatives in France, mostly in the South of France and the Basque region near the Pyrenees, especially the Tessier cousins, who were always Squibs. (The Tessiers made money also, but in what was, for the wizarding world, an even more disreputable way-- through scientific development and genetic patents.) So the Malfoy wealth, while considerable, isn't old money at all, particularly by wizarding standards.. Draco , then, was the first generation who knew nothing about the truth of the poverty-stricken Malfoy past.

Lucius Malfoy:

A man of silence and secrets and a trusted trigger in the Death Eaters' underworld of organized crime, wizarding-style. Of course, he'd be furious beyond measure to hear the noble and pure-blooded cause discussed in such terms, but really, they make La Cosa Nostra look good. He lost everything he'd been working for when Voldemort was unexpectedly jolted out of his physical form after Harry Potter dueled with him at the end of the Third Task of the Triwizard Tournament. Lucius has plotted for at least a year to resurrect Grindelwald and take the Death Eaters to sixteenth-century Istanbul to find the Jewel of the Harem, which will restore the dark lord to his full power. In the process, he became very mentally unbalanced. He seems to be back on an even keel now that everything is going according to plan... but is he? And what about this power struggle he seems to have going with Draco?

In character, Lucius is very similar to Charles "Lucky" Luciano, 1897-1962, who was, of course, a real person, and even looks like a blond and British version of the Sicilian mobster. (See a link and pics of Lucky here.) Pimp, druggie, and criminal mastermind extraordinaire, he was one of the principal players in the heyday of the American Mafia. Like "Lucky" Luciano, Lucius's smoothness and urbanity is only a mask, and sometimes his true character shows through. Expect some secrets to come out about him.

Narcissa (von Drachen) Malfoy:

Draco's mother, she has long golden hair and blue eyes, and resembles a young,.sorrowful Grace Kelly. She is very silent and mysterious, and we don't know where her loyalties lie. She's very young to have a child Draco's age, since she was yanked out of Hogwarts at barely sixteen to marry Lucius. She is the perfect hostess and society lady, and has provided the final and much needed (from their point of view) stamp of legitimacy for the Malfoys, since Bavarian aristocracy is valued above all others in the upper crust of the pureblood wizarding world. (.And if you're thinking,"Wait a minute! The von Drachen estate is in Linz, and that's not Bavaria!," read the Bavaria vs. Austria entry in the "Places" section, and all will be made clear.) Draco loves her, but we don't really know-- yet-- exactly what her feelings are for her son, or for anyone else.

Alistair Moody

The real one, of course! Extraordinarily paranoid, but a bit more articulate than Barty Crouch's imitation. He's been the DADA teacher for the past year and a half, and terrorizes students at least as effectively as Snape ever did (especially Ginny.). For a year, he's been working on the JOTH-time travel project. He knows more than he's letting on.

Ivy Parkinson and Pansy Parkinson

Wow, is Pansy ever a bitch. But there's also more to her than that-- she seems to be a lot more in the information loop than Draco is, and is probably plotting something very unpleasant. When they were both thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen, they dated off and on, since it pleased their families so much. Even though something about her has always made Draco's skin crawl, in those years his hormones continually drove him to try to get her to sleep with him. The tables turned last year after Christmas holidays, and he's no longer interested... but for her own reasons, Pansy is. She is a major player in the JOTH plots that Lucius Malfoy has been hatching. And how odd-- Hermione, Neville, Colin, and even Professor Moody can't touch the Kitap-an Dus, but, like Ginny, Draco, and Harry, Pansy can. Is that important? (Yes.) Her sister Ivy, who's one year younger, remains at Hogwarts to scheme and plan in 1996 with Colin Creevey. Expect the pair of them to stir up a lot of trouble.

Peter Pettigrew & the Death Eaters

Peter staked everything on Voldemort, and it was a horrible shock when the dark lord was destroyed. However, rats are nothing if not adaptable, and he swiftly attached himself to Lucius Malfoy and moved into a guest room of Malfoy Manor, hiding from the authorities (and especially from Sirius and Remus, who have been looking for him ever since.) Draco can't stand him, and the feeling is quite mutual. Always with an eye on the main chance, Peter would cheerfully betray everyone he's ever known to save his own skin. Expect him to cause trouble later on.

Harry Potter

In the year and a half since the last events in GoF, Harry has changed, well, a lot. The death of Cedric sent him into a fairly major depression, but he was able to hide it better than Ginny Weasley hid her problems right after CoS. Actually, in the past year Ginny and Harry have been reinforcing each other's denial without either of them actually realizing it, as each watches the other keep an ever stiffer upper lip. He probably could have benefited from Prozac or at least some therapy, but-- as we already know-- the wizarding world is astoundingly backward on the subject of psychiatric treatment. After thinking about how Ginny was packed off to St. Mungo's, Harry was more determined than ever to keep his mouth shut. (And of course he isn't going to get Muggle help, because then he'd have to tell the Dursleys. He surmises correctly that they'd throw him in the loony bin and drive away laughing.) Maybe Harry was headed this way sooner or later anyway; living in a cupboard under the stairs from the ages of one to eleven is bound to produce some personality disorders. But he might have pulled out of it as it became increasingly obvious that Voldemort was never rising again. However...

Then came the events of the previous Yule, in the Forbidden Forest. (They haven't yet been revealed in full, but they will, and soon.) Harry was forced to do something to Ginny that he bitterly regrets, although it was necessary. At the same time, he, Ron, Hermione, and Neville began to work on the time travel project surrounding the Jewel of the Harem, one that became increasingly desperate. None of them have been able to discuss it with anyone outside the group, of course, and strangely enough it's Harry who has felt this prohibition most keenly. Probably because the old closeness with his two best friends has changed in an indefinable way.

Compared to the way we last knew him in canon, Harry is much more silent, secretive, sober, and introspective. He certainly has much more of an interior life that nobody else knows about. Most of his impulsivity has gone. Yet he hasn't changed in quite the same way that Ron has changed, and this increasing difference between their personalities is causing an ever-increasing amount of tension. Also, Harry has taken over the leadership position among the group of friends on the project.It wasn't planned; it just seemed to happen that way, and he isn't really very happy about it, but Ron resents it.

Severus Snape

In the past year, Snape has been carrying out a number of secret orders from Lucius Malfoy. The nature of these will become clear in later chapters. However, he's the only one of the Death Eaters who seems to know anything at all about sixteenth century magic. Does this mean that he's been a *triple* agent all along? Read on and see.

In personality, he's about as nasty and sarcastic to everybody else as he ever was. The closest thing he has to a soft spot is reserved for Draco, although this certainly does not manifest itself in raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Plenty of secrets about Snape's past will be revealed in JOTH, too.

Marie-France Tessier

She is Draco's third cousin through their grandparents, and lived in a villa in St. Tropez, along the coast of the South of France. (She has since mysteriously disappeared.) Like all the rest of the Tessiers, she's a Squib; however, that entire branch of the family has made a lot of money in genetic engineering and basic genetic patents. (The Tessiers will become very important in the third book. Yup--this is a crossover with William Gibson's Tessier-Ashpools of Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive. But again, if you haven't read Gibson's cyberpunk, it doesn't make any difference at all. You really should though.) She's of an indeterminate age (it's hard to tell with witches, squibs or not) and is very beautiful, with red-gold hair and light brown eyes. Yes-- she does look something like Ginny. Last Christmas holiday, when Draco had just turned sixteen, he spent several weeks at her villa while Lucius Malfoy went off to do as yet unknown things. Marie-France seduced him and was his first lover (of many, but then, you guessed that.). We don't know any more details yet, but we will. It was a very important episode, both for the shaping of Draco's character and the future events of the Grindelwald series.

Klaus and Cisselinde von Drachen:

Narcissa's parents, Draco's maternal grandparents,they live at the ancient estate in Linz . We don't know much about them yet, but we know that they really despise Lucius. So why'd they give their daughter to him?

Ginny (Gwenhyfar) Alvean Weasley:

A Hint, because some have been wondering... don't worry too much about the "Gwenhyfar" thing yet. We won't learn about that until the second book. There is a connection, though.

In some ways, Ginny seems so much older than the average not-quite-sixteen-year-old; in some ways, so much younger. She holds a tiny spark of hope that she will eventually find her place in this world. She has been scarred forever by the betrayal of Tom Riddle, and her betrayal of her friends that culminated in the Chamber of Secrets. Nobody else particularly wanted to understand what happened there, even the people who loved her the most. Nobody really has any idea what goes on in her head most of the time. There are many secrets surrounding her that have not yet been revealed. Yet deep within her is a core of strength that has never been tapped. Her love of music and writing has sustained her. In some ways, she's probably more intelligent than Hermione, and certainly more creative, but she isn't as disciplined or organized. Over the past year and a half, she's felt herself more and more excluded from the Trio. She really wishes that she had the courage to break off the dull half-hearted thing with Neville, but she doesn't-- yet.

Physically, she is tall, with a rather strong, athletic build (she wishes she was small and delicate, of course!) She's extremely uncomfortable with the ways her body suddenly matured in the past couple of years, and it certainly has done that.. She has long red-gold hair and light golden eyes, and a much more Nordic-looking face than the rest of her family, with high cheekbones, a square jaw, and a pointed chin. She looks a bit like a Viking, or perhaps one of the Valkyries who welcome fallen heroes to Valhalla. But the first thing one notices about her is the guarded, suspicious look in her eyes.

Her own emotions frighten her deeply, and although she is capable of a great deal of passion, she doesn't yet know it. She has a strange unacknowledged fascination with Draco Malfoy, although everyone she has ever cared about hates him and his entire family. Ginny doesn't begin to suspect his obsession with her until the night of the Yule Ball. She has a kind of self-torturing hero worship of Harry, believing him to be everything she admires, infinitely out of her grasp. However, this has also protected her from needing to deal with a number of things. In some ways, she has been extremely sheltered and can act very shy; however, she proves the truth of the saying that shy people are profoundly angry people. On the night of the Yule Ball when Colin Creevey gave her Disinhibio potion, something was released in her that will have profound implications. Impulsive, brooding, torn between the extremes of joy and despair, fiercely creative, Ginny's feet have been set on a path she would have shrunk from if she could. But now, she must meet the challenges that are waiting for her.

Ron Weasley

In some ways, Ginny's brother is very different from the Ron Weasley we last saw in GoF, and in some ways, he hasn't changed one bit. He wasn't affected by the seeming resurrection of Voldemort in the same way that Harry was, of course; but there were many fights over his stubborn unwillingness to take the threat as seriously as his friends were. He went along with the JOTH project rather unwillingly. What changed Ron the most were the events of one year before JOTH begins-- the events in the Forbidden Forest surrounding the beginning of the search for the Jewel. Ron knows it isn't terribly rational, but deep down he's never really forgiven Harry for what he had to do to Ginny. In some ways, the events of that day caused Ron to grow up a lot very quickly, to lose many of his childish and immature qualities, but it's hard to say how deep this change really goes. At the core of his personality, Ron is very fragile; he breaks rather than bending. He started dating Hermione shortly after all this happened, but at bottom they're such different people that neither one of them knows if the relationship will last. He needs her more than she needs him, although he's always trying to hide this fact.

Ron's overriding emotion is his protective love for Ginny, which became quite smothering after that day in the Forbidden Forest one year before. Yet it is a bond that goes very deep. He's becoming rather irrational on the subject of Draco Malfoy. Although he certainly knows that the Malfoys are trying to find the secret of time travel as well, the real reason is probably that Ron senses Draco's totally unspoken obsession with his sister. If he ever found out the whole truth, nothing would be likely to keep him from killing Draco with his bare hands.

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Gods,Immortals,Ghosts, and not-quite-earthly beings:

The Bloody Baron (t/n Lukas von Drachen)

The Slytherin House ghost, he never says anything in canon. Turns out he only speaks German, except occasional forays into English for Peeves the poltergeist. (Is this significant?Yes.) He seems to know something everyone else doesn't, and helped both Ginny and Draco to get out of Hogwarts and to the sixteenth century. Many mysteries surround him, such as why he has the same surname as Narcissa.

Caroling Rhine Fairies

Imported from Austria for the Yule Ball at Hogwarts, they're a common sight around the von Drachen estate, too. (Yes, they do hang out other places than the Rhine.)

Dream (aka Lord Morpheus, the Sandman, Lord Shaper, the Lord of Stories, Oneiros)

There are seven Immortals that have existed since the beginning of time-- Dream, Death, Desire, Delirium, Despair, Destruction, and Destiny. Each is the personification of an idea. All of 'em belong to Neil Gaiman. If you haven't read his Sandman series, go do it. Most amazing graphic novels ever. Yup, that means that it's crossover time, but if you haven't read Sandman, I swear it won't make any difference at all, and you'll understand JOTH just as well.

Dream, most pretentious of the Endless and the one with the least sense of humor, drifts around through the nights of mortals wearing black. He controls dreaming, imagination, and storytelling. All the gods walk through his realm before they are worshipped. He was there when the Caliph of Baghdad decided to imprison the spirit of evil in the Jewel of the Harem in 1154, and tried to warn him that it was an amazingly bad idea. Since then, his powers have been diminished, although we don't yet know why. Unlike Loki, though (and they have a long hate-hate relationship that Gaiman goes into more detail on) Dream does not have a penchant for interfering with human affairs. But sometimes even one of the Endless must make a deal with mortals to get what he wants.

The Ghost of Sigmund Freud

According to some theories, ghosts are beings who must stay on the earthly plane to complete unfinished business. Freud (1856-1939) was the father of modern psychiatry, but he had horribly sexist ideas about female psychology, including that idiocy about penis envy. So when he shuffled off this mortal coil, he was informed by the Afterworld Transfer Station that he'd have to stick around for awhile. He's not nearly as smug and overbearing as he was in life, and enjoys his work as the librarian at the von Drachen estate. He's been there since Draco's babyhood, of course (yes, he calls him Ziggy) and Freud's ghost is one of few positive influences he's ever had.

Lady Death

Oldest of the Immortals (because beings could die before they could dream, desire, destroy, feel despair, foretell the future, or go nuts,) Lady Death has a smile of such beauty that mortals spend the rest of their lives trying to find it again. She has her favorites among mortals, and Ginny Weasley is one of them. Normally, you see her twice: once when you're born, and once when you die. Because of the advent of medical technology, however, people are having a lot more near-death experiences than they used to. You get to see her then, too. She always wears an ankh around her neck.

The other Immortals may or may not show up. I confess to a fondness for Delirium, who has differently colored eyes and orange hair, and there are many points in JOTH where Despair certainly would be appropriate. They are the oldest sentient beings in the universe, predating everyone and everything else.

The Librarians

A mysterious fraternity of knowledge to which all magical librarians belong. Some are people (like Madam Pince,) some are elves, dwarves, etc., and it's also a very popular job for ghosts.The head of the order is known as "The Librarian" and can be accessed through specific secret books, which are more or less heavily guarded (the book in the Malfoy Library, of course, can only be accessed through a genetic code.) Yup-- he's a Neil Gaiman crossover character. The Librarian knows or can find out every piece of information that has ever existed, as well as a copy of every book ever written or imagined. (You know that book you wrote in your head every morning on the sixth grade school bus, "My Adventures with Penny the Magical Pony"? He's got a copy of it.) The copies of him in magical libraries across different worlds and dimensions are simstims, which is an idea from William Gibson's world--kind of like a hologram you can interact with.

Lord Grindelwald

His origins are mysterious, but we know that he's either German or Austrian (he may be so old that the distinction is academic.) Like Lord Voldemort, he was once a living man. Canon tells us that Dumbledore defeated him in 1945. When he was raised by Lucius Malfoy's Necromancy ritual, Grindelwald said that he was destroyed during the siege of Berlin, when Soviet and American forces moved in on either side of the city. (There will be much, much more about World War Two from a wizarding perspective in the second book.) Now, he seems mellower than Voldemort, but that may be only an illusion. We don't yet know the extent of his powers.

Loki (aka the Green Man, Robin Goodfellow, Pan, Puck, the Year-King, the Horned One, the Consort of the Goddess, He Who Runs With the Deer, the Ifrit, the Djinn, Ahura Mazda, Set, Susano-o-san, Prometheus, the archangel Lucifer, Son of the Morning, and Satan.)

Loki is the trickster god of Norse/Germanic cultures, and a very untrustworthy character. He killed Baldur with a sprig of mistletoe and was sentenced to be chained to a rock and tortured by venom from the serpent Nidhogg until the day of Ragnarok, the fall of gods and men. Like all gods, he is allowed to appear to mortals only on the eight great feast days of the pagan year, when the veil between the world grows thin : Samhain, Yule/Saturnalia, Imbeholc, Ostara, Beltane, Midsummer, Lughnasa, and Mabon.. Although he appears as Loki, he is really one immortal being called by many names, some of which are listed above. (He always insists that Satan just had bad P.R.) He represents chaos, instability, and the adversarial principle, and is the god of liars, card cheats, and computer hackers. Since all times are one to him, he tends to mix his metaphors, and indulges in a lot of anachronisms. It's impossible to ever get a precise fix on his appearance, but they do say that the Prince of Darkness is very fair to look upon. As John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost, he falls eternally through fire. He's been imprisoned in the Jewel for over 400 years by 1566, and really wants out-- so he's trying to get Ginny to free him. He can be very convincing and charming when he wants, and he's always been fascinated by mortals. But he's also the Father of Lies, remember. Should she accept the devil's deal?

The Three Girls in the Hogwarts Portrait (1996):

For now, we don't know anything about them, except that one is blonde, one red-headed, and one dark-haired. The portrait was painted the year Hogwarts was founded (the wizarding world figured out the secret of oil paints rather earlier than Muggle artists did.) Also, Ginny thought there was something familiar about them. And one of them is wearing a silver locket identical to the one that Rhiannon gives to Ginny in 1566.Very strange.

Rhiannon

She doesn't exactly appear to be hostile. However, the first time she meets Ginny, she's guarding Hogwarts and shooting at her with a bow and arrow. Then, she sends Ginny through the dangers of the Forbidden Forest, giving her a silver locket identical to the one worn in the portrait of the three girls. She looks like the woman in the priestess card of the Cabbalic tarot laid out by Ginny in Professor Trelawney's office the day before she fled Hogwarts. We don't know exactly what she is, or what powers she has. We will be seeing her again.

Lord Voldemort

Basically what he is in canon. After dueling with Harry near the end of GoF, however, the dark lord was jolted out of his physical form and has never been able to return to it, or to take shape again. But then Grindelwald stepped into the power vacuum, and, as Draco saw in the Book of Dreams, all the evils are really one evil.

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Places:

The Ban-Righ (1566)

The Elizabethan galleon that Harry, Ron, Hermione, Neville, and Professor Moody sail on to Istanbul, its name means "great queen" in Scottish Gaelic. It had a crew of about 20-30 and wasn't terribly large as galleons go, but a smaller ship, like a creyer, the Dutch heu or fluitship, or a boyer just wasn't large enough to make such a long voyage. Galleons were sailing ships, relying entirely on wind power, unlike the Turkish barge or galley, which was powered by slave labor at the oars. They didn't charter the Ban-Righ although they did pay for the voyage as passengers; it was headed to the Ottoman Empire to trade, which some enterprising British were doing at the time. Many more details about 16th century shipboard life in later chapters. (You didn't really think I was serious about all that research, now did you? O ye of little faith.)

Bavaria vs. Austria

The von Drachen estate is near Linz, which is in Austria. Yet the terms "Bavaria" and "Austria" get thrown about rather freely in this fic. There IS a reason, and I DO know that they're not the same thing-- now. But once they were.

In 911, the four East Frankish peoples-- the Franks, Swabians, Bavarians, and Saxons-- formed the kingdom of Germany, which corresponded roughly to what the borders of West Germany used to be. The von Drachen estate was already there, and had been since Roman times. If you look at a map of Germany in the 11th century, you can see that a big chunk of what is now Austria was then Bavaria. As you can see, Linz is close to the border, and was not always Austrian-- the borders around Branau-am-Inn have shifted too. In the wizarding world, the Bavarian aristocracy has a power older and stronger than any other, a power that has reached even into the Muggle world in a thousand ways. All this may seem like an academic question now, but trust me, it's not. You'll see. (If you know about the Illuminati and you're wondering if they have anything to do with this, they definitely do; if not, don't fret. )

The Clock Towers

There are four that can be modified and used for time travel. Two are at Hogwarts and Malfoy Manor, but the location of the other two is unknown right now.. We don't know more yet. However, the one at Hogwarts seems rather sinister, and everyone avoids it.

The Dreamtime

The realm of the gods and immortals, it lay rather closer to our world in 1566. At a number of spots, the worlds touch. The Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts is one; another is Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, an extremely old city that has always been a major worship center for many different religions. The Kitap an-Dus seems to have extra powers in the Dreamtime.

The Good Queen Bess (1566)

Another galleon and very similar to the Ban-Righ, but this is the one that the Death Eaters sailed on. Sounds like a fun voyage, huh? Carnival Cruise Lines had nothing on it.

Hogwarts (1566)

We don't really know anything yet, except that Nicolas Flamel is the headmaster, and that it seems to be a whole lot more guarded than in 1996. But we'll learn more later on.

Istanbul (1566)

As They Might Be Giants sang, Istanbul was Constantinople, and before that, Byzantium. It was conquered by Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453, which was the beginning of the Ottoman Empire. The Turks were always conquerors and invaders, and tended to take art, culture, and literature from a number of sources, including Arabs, Persians, Indians, and the opulent Byzantine culture that was already there. The Ottoman Empire was one of history's success stories, lasting until the late nineteenth century. The state religion was Islam, but it was, for the time, extraordinarily tolerant of other religions, especially Judaism (and yes, this will be important.)In 1566, it was close to taking over the known world, and was overrunning the borders of Austria. It was at its apex under the rule of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, who dies on campaign just as the Good Queen Bess and the Ban-Righ come into the harbor known as the Golden Horn. Topkapi Palace (which still exists,) on the tip of the peninsula overlooking the Bosporus Sea, was the living and governing quarters of the sultan. It was actually a tremendous maze of palaces, villas, gardens, private lakes, bakeries, schools, gates, courts, government offices, slaves' and eunuchs' quarters, and, of course, the Grand Seraglio-- the harem. At any given time, several hundred women lived there. Some were servants and relatives; the rest were carefully trained in the art of pleasing the sultan.

Once a girl entered the harem, she generally never left it again. It was a society unto itself, with strict rules, regulations, and status or rankings. The vast majority of the women and girls were known as the gedlikis, or favored ones. One or more of these were called the guzdeh, or "in the sultan's glance," those who had attracted his favor but had not yet slept with him (favorable dates for this event were generally determined by court astrologers. Not very spontaneous.) They tended to his personal needs, pouring coffee, giving him towels in the baths, rubbing his back, singing to him, peeling grapes, etc. The ones who had been to the sultan's bed and had pleased him enough to retain favor were called ikbals, and the ones who had had his sons were the kadins. The mother of the heir was called the bas-kadin, and if her son became sultan she was then the Sultan Valideh, or Queen Mother, also called the Crown of Veiled Heads. Her power was absolute. The amount of scheming and intrigue that went on was beyond belief, because the oldest son was not automatically the heir, and when the sultan died there was a frantic race for power that, until the eighteenth century, ended in one son killing off all the others under the official Law of Zanen-Nameh. (Charming, huh? Personally, I don't think I'd have liked to live there.)

Some sultans, like Süleyman, were basically faithful to one woman their entire lives (his bas-kadin was Roxelana.) Some, like the deranged Ibrahim or the drunkard Selim, indulged in an awful lot of orgies. Now, you already know that Draco's going to be the sultan, at least for awhile...which kind do you think he's going to be??

Leith (1566)

In 1566, Leith was far and away the principal port of Scotland, since Berwick (the largest medieval port) had been largely destroyed in the 13th century and never quite recovered. Most trade (most of which was wool at the time) went through there.So it made sense that both Moody's group and the Death Eaters set sail from there. The town, however, also has a number of curious properties, many of which will be explored in the second book. In MY little world, it's about thirty miles north of Hogwarts.

Other Schools of Magic:

Very significant in future chapters. You knew that Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, and Durmstrang couldn't be the only ones, right?

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Things:

Kitap-an Düs:

A Book of Dreams. Professor Binns talked about them in a History of Magic class once. These mysterious books create a link of communication between the writer and the dreamer. Still unexplained, though, is exactly what causes this link to be established in the first place, or what the other powers of the Kitap an-Dus might be (not to mention where it came from in the first place.) Draco has this specific book, and has used it to communicate with Al-ladin al-Rashid, a member of the Order of the Pheonix and the Tower who lives in Istanbul in 1566. The an-Dus is covered with the geometric designs of sixteenth century Islamic art (which didn't allow depiction of the human form,) and the corner of each page is studded with rubies. Ginny has the edge of one of these pages with the tiny rubies on it. The same page was used by Hermione to draw calculations and diagrams related to the time-travel wormhole.

Pyramid and Eye:

Emblazoned on the ceremonial robes Lucius Malfoy was wearing when he greeted Draco at the door of Malfoy Manor. We will be seeing this design again. And you have seen it before. In fact, you look at it every day of your life (if you live in America.)

Pheonix/Eagle:

The crest of the pheonix/eagle with a spray of laurel leaves in one claw and a quiver of arrows in the other is the symbol of the Order of the Tower and the Pheonix, founded in 1154 in Istanbul by an alliance of Jews and Muslims (yup, the same year as the founding of Hogwarts!) to guard the terrible power of the Jewel of the Harem. You see this every day, too, and it's in the same place as the pyramid and eye.

Hexensymbols:

These are real, and they really are Germanic/Teutonic magic (well, that's what research and Great-Grandma Molly said, anyway.). Did you ever have that Fisher-Price barn, the one that opened in half and had the chickens that sat on the fences, and the cows, and the pig that always got lost, and the little farmer in the hat? If so, you have seen a hexensymbol. There was one printed onto the side of the barn. There are many of them in Pennsylvania Dutch country particularly--anywhere that Germans settled down to farm. The barn ones are protection symbols from evil and witches, but there are all kinds of them, for all kinds of purposes. The one Draco remembers Narcissa drawing for him when he was a small child was an affection symbol. What Draco doesn't know is that this type of hexensymbol has one meaning when used to bond a mother and child, and quite a different one when he uses it for his own purposes in Chapter 9..

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Events

Dig at Catal Hüyuk,The:

When trying to get through the Dreamtime in the Forbidden Forest in search of Ginny, Draco has many memories dragged up from his past that he'd rather forget. They don't go away, and he begins to dream them from then on. One of them is the fateful conversation he overheard at the von Drachen estate in Linz in the summer of 1996. Narcissa's parents, Klaus and Cisselinde von Drachen (Draco's grandparents) were discussing Lucius Malfoy in very unflattering terms, and called him an upstart, musing on the subject of whether Draco would turn out to be like his father. So we learned that the Malfoys aren't quite what they appear to be, although we don't know all the details yet. But Klaus and Cisselinde also mentioned a mysterious archaeological dig at Catal Huyuk, a real site of ancient civilization in present-day Turkey. Gabriel and Michel Malfoy were there.

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