Harry did not return to the physical world immediately. Korra was interesting, Raava was considerably more interesting, and bending had given Harry enough new ideas that he knew perfectly well he would eventually go back. None of that changed the fact that the physical realm had felt like someone had wrapped wool around half his senses and then made everything heavier out of spite. Harry had come home wanting familiar currents, familiar people, and several stretches of existence in which mountains were allowed to have opinions. Raava's trail gave him something better to do in the meantime.
Now that Harry knew what her presence felt like, he could distinguish it from the countless other currents crossing the Spirit World. It wasn't a path in any ordinary sense. Raava had existed for far too long, accompanied too many Avatars, and passed through too many places for her presence to resemble footprints. Her spiritual impression surfaced and disappeared, sometimes remaining clear across entire regions before sinking beneath older currents and emerging somewhere Harry would never have thought to look. Harry loved it.
He had already spent a very long time looking for former Avatars before Korra ever opened the portal. Back then, his search had depended on stories. A spirit remembered Kuruk at a lake. Another claimed Yangchen had once sat beneath a particular tree. Old serpents had stories passed down from elders who had met Kyoshi. Iroh knew histories from the physical world, but even he could only tell Harry what people remembered. Raava was different because she was the continuous thread, and Harry followed her. Fox came because Fox nearly always did.
They traveled through forests where every tree whispered a slightly different version of the same story, crossed rivers that insisted on asking Harry personal questions, and passed fields where flowers turned to watch Many-Paws walk by. Harry usually traveled in his Animagus form now, not because he expected trouble but because six legs felt right for wandering. His displacement stayed suppressed. Two additional Harrys were useful when something wanted to kill him and excessive while sightseeing. One particularly old strand of Raava's trail led directly toward a mountain. Harry stopped at the base and looked up.
The mountain rose high enough to disappear into cloud, its slopes steep but perfectly climbable. Raava's trail, unfortunately, did not go over it. It went straight through. Fox looked at the cliff, then at Harry. "Go through."
Harry turned his head far enough to stare at him. "I cannot walk through a mountain."
"You walk through air."
"Air is noticeably less solid than granite."
Fox thought about that distinction and apparently decided it was irrelevant. "Go through." Harry opened his mouth to explain the problem one more time. Then something surfaced inside his mind. He went quiet. Fox leaned over his head. "What?" Harry stared at the rock.
There was a way. The knowledge wasn't Harry's originally. He recognized that immediately. It had the same peculiar completeness as the advanced runes, rituals, ward theory, and other things Voldemort had left behind: no memory attached, no voice explaining it, merely expertise waiting for the right problem to make it relevant. This particular technique altered the caster's interaction with matter. Harry examined it more carefully.
"Oh."
Fox's tail began wagging.
"I might actually be able to walk through the mountain."
"I was right."
"You accidentally suggested something possible."
"I was right."
Harry refused to dignify that with an answer. He changed back into human form and spent a long while reconstructing the technique before attempting anything. Harry had grown comfortable using inherited knowledge, but he refused to let that become the same thing as blindly trusting it. The magic was sophisticated enough that getting it wrong seemed likely to produce the deeply embarrassing result of Harry Potter becoming a permanent geological feature.
The basic principle was elegant. Magic surrounded and permeated the caster's body, then altered its relationship with ordinary physical matter just enough that both could occupy the same space without interacting normally. It wasn't invisibility, teleportation, or transformation. Harry simply ceased colliding with the obstacle. He tested it on a loose boulder. His hand passed through. Harry stared at his fingers emerging from the opposite side of solid stone. The sensation was strange. He could feel the rock's presence without pressure or pain, as though his magic and the stone had politely agreed not to acknowledge each other's physical existence. Harry pulled his hand back.
Fox immediately said, "Mountain." Harry looked at the enormous cliff again. Going around would have been easier. Probably. Harry shrugged.
"Fine."
He transformed into Many-Paws, expanded the phasing field to include his larger body and Fox, and stepped directly into the mountain. Every instinct Harry possessed objected to the first step. The second was easier. Then the world became stone. Harry could still perceive his surroundings, though not through ordinary sight. Magic outlined density and composition around him while his spiritual senses continued following Raava's trail. He passed through veins of crystal, buried water, metals, mineral deposits, and layers of rock that had existed without seeing daylight for periods Harry had no interest in measuring. Fox remained quiet for almost half a minute.
Then he said, "I was right." Harry sighed. "Yes." Fox settled triumphantly into his fur. They were well inside the mountain when the mountain noticed them. The first sign was a vibration. Harry stopped.
A deep hum traveled through the stone surrounding him from every direction, resonating through the space his body occupied without actually touching him. Fox lifted his head. A voice came slowly. Not from ahead. Not behind. From everywhere.
You are inside me. Harry looked around at the impossible quantity of rock surrounding them.
"Yes."
The mountain hummed again. Why? Harry considered explaining Raava's trail, phasing magic, and his investigation into previous Avatars.
"Fox told me to."
Fox immediately added, "Good reason." The stone around them shifted almost imperceptibly. Harry had spent enough time around spirits to recognize amusement. Others climb me. Others tunnel. Some cut pieces from me. Some sleep upon me. Spirits travel through paths within me. You simply walk through stone.
"I only recently remembered how."
Remembered? Harry hesitated.
"Complicated."
The mountain accepted that much more easily than a human would have. You take nothing.
"No."
You break nothing.
"No."
Another long hum passed through the stone. Interesting. Harry began walking again. The mountain kept talking. What should have been a shortcut became significantly longer because Harry somehow ended up explaining phasing magic to the geological formation he was currently walking through. The mountain wanted to understand what Harry felt inside stone. Harry wanted to know what a mountain considered inside when so much of its identity seemed spread across miles of rock. They eventually reached a cavern filled with crystals larger than houses. Harry stopped because the mountain asked him to. These crystals had grown untouched deep inside it, and almost nothing capable of appreciating them had ever seen them.
Harry let his paws become solid against the cavern floor. Light moved through enormous translucent columns in slow pulses. He stared.
"That's beautiful."
The entire chamber warmed. Fox flew onto a crystal and pressed both forepaws against it. "Pretty." The mountain hummed approvingly. They stayed for tea. Harry wasn't entirely certain how that happened. He changed back into human form, conjured a small table and cups, and eventually found himself asking, "Can mountains drink tea?"
The mountain took so long considering the question that Fox finished his own cup. I do not know.
"Would you like to?"
That became an experiment. The mountain couldn't drink in any human sense, but it could perceive heat, moisture, scent, and the magical qualities Harry infused into the leaves. Harry poured a little tea onto the stone and waited while the mountain contemplated the experience with the seriousness of someone being introduced to civilization's greatest achievement. It eventually decided tea was pleasant. Harry promised to bring better leaves next time. When he finally emerged from the opposite side of the mountain, Fox climbed back onto his shoulders and announced, "We have a mountain friend." Harry glanced backward.
The cliff hummed faintly behind them.
"I suppose we do."
"Because I told you to walk through it."
Harry transformed back into Many-Paws.
"I am never giving you credit for anything."
"You will."
Unfortunately, Harry suspected Fox was right.
His search continued for a long time. Long enough that the mountain became somewhere Harry visited rather than merely somewhere he had passed through. Long enough that Iroh eventually stopped raising an eyebrow when Harry announced that he was going to have tea inside a mountain. Long enough that Harry stopped thinking of the phasing technique as Voldemort's magic and started thinking of it as simply another thing he knew how to do. Harry became better at following Raava too.
What he had initially thought was one trail gradually revealed itself as layers. Korra's connection was the newest. Beneath it were older impressions, the shapes left by people who had carried Raava before her. Some lasted only briefly before fading beneath stronger currents. Others ran astonishing distances. Harry followed them. He returned to Iroh. He wandered elsewhere. He crossed back over old paths. He sometimes forgot about the search entirely for stretches long enough that, if he still cared about time, he might have found the length embarrassing.
Eventually Raava's oldest trails led him somewhere different. Harry noticed the quiet first. Not the suffocating spiritual quiet of the physical world. This place still possessed currents and spirits and all the strange life Harry expected from the Spirit World. The difference was gentleness. Forests tended to remain forests. Rivers flowed in consistent directions. Gardens looked cultivated.
Structures appeared along paths, and unlike many Spirit World buildings, they seemed designed primarily for people to live in rather than because some spirit had briefly become interested in architecture. Harry slowed. Fox noticed immediately. "Different."
"Yes."
Then Harry saw the woman beneath the tree. She was reading. That wasn't especially remarkable. Her being human was. Harry stopped so abruptly that Fox slid several inches down his back. The elderly woman looked up from her book.
She saw Many-Paws standing in the path. She blinked. Harry blinked back.
"Hello," he said.
"Hello."
Harry stared for several seconds longer than politeness allowed. The woman finally smiled. "Is something wrong?" Harry changed back. His Spirit World clothing settled around him as his feet touched the path.
"Sorry. You're human."
Her smile became gentler.
"I was."
That sentence rearranged several things inside Harry's head at once. Of course. Iroh had been dead before Harry ever met him. Harry knew perfectly well that a human spirit could remain here. Yet in all his wandering, Iroh had been the only human Harry had encountered with any regularity.
"Are there more of you?"
"Dead humans?"
Harry nodded.
"Many."
She gestured farther down the path. Harry followed her hand. Human figures moved among the trees and buildings. Not hundreds packed together. Not some enormous city of the dead. Just people.
Harry's chest tightened. For one treacherous instant, several names arrived at once. Sirius. Mum. Dad. Cedric.
Harry pushed the hope down before it could become expectation. This wasn't his world. The Veil had thrown Harry across something death could touch more easily than life, but that did not mean everyone Harry had ever lost had conveniently ended up waiting a few valleys away. He knew that. It still hurt. The woman seemed to recognize that Harry needed a moment and quietly returned to her book.
Harry liked her for it. He continued down the path. The region wasn't a universal afterlife. Harry figured that out fairly quickly. Some humans remained here because of strong connections to spirits. Others seemed to have chosen it. Some stayed near people or places that mattered to them, while others wandered as freely as any spirit. This was simply a part of the Spirit World where the dead gathered more often. Harry finally understood why Iroh had seemed unique. He wasn't.
He simply preferred living among spirits. Harry understood that too. His fascination with seeing other humans lasted surprisingly little time before he remembered that humans asked questions. Lots of questions. Where did Harry come from? Why were his clothes strange?
Why did he float instead of walking? Was Fox really speaking? What kind of animal was Many-Paws? Why did Harry occasionally disappear into solid objects? After one particularly persistent conversation, Fox flew beside Harry while Harry walked several inches above a muddy path.
"You don't like humans."
"I like humans."
"You keep leaving."
"I like them selectively."
"You like Iroh."
Harry considered that.
"Iroh barely counts anymore."
Fox nodded. "Human-shaped spirit."
"Exactly."
It was nevertheless among these dead humans that Raava's trail became clearer than Harry had ever seen it. Past lives lingered here—not all of them, and not conveniently, but enough. Harry could feel old human impressions wrapped around portions of Raava's path in ways he had never been able to distinguish elsewhere.
The Avatars had passed through this region. Some might still be here. Harry had spent so long searching that the realization should have sent him racing through every path asking questions. It didn't. He had changed too much for that. Harry explored at his own pace, speaking to people when he wanted to, leaving when he didn't, and following trails until he became bored enough to wander somewhere else. The Avatars had existed for thousands of years. They could survive Harry not finding them immediately. That was how he found the dragon.
Harry smelled tea before he saw it. That was enough to alter his course. Smoke drifted through a volcanic region ahead, carrying the scent of heated stone, mineral springs, and something floral that Harry was almost certain involved roasted leaves. Fox sniffed.
"Tea."
"Definitely."
They followed it uphill. Steam curled from pools between dark volcanic rocks. Twisted trees grew where Harry would have assumed nothing could survive. Heat radiated pleasantly through the ground. Then Harry saw the dragon. He stopped. Harry had seen dragons before. The Hungarian Horntail remained particularly memorable, and the knowledge inherited from Voldemort contained enough information about magical dragon species to make Harry uncomfortable whenever he considered how some of it had probably been acquired. This dragon resembled none of them.
It was enormous and long-bodied, with great horns sweeping backward from its head and whisker-like tendrils framing its face. Its scales caught the light in layers of color Harry couldn't decide how to describe. The dragon opened one eye. Then the other. Harry remained Many-Paws. Fox went very still on his back.
"Big," Fox whispered.
"Yes."
The dragon raised its head. Then it spoke. The language was not Parseltongue, not exactly. It was deeper, older, and carried meaning through breath, tone, and resonance in ways ordinary serpents could never reproduce. Harry understood anyway—not perfectly, but enough. Underneath the differences lay a serpentine structure close enough to Parseltongue that Harry's mind instinctively followed it. The dragon regarded him for a long moment before speaking. "You are an unusual little thing."
Harry's ears rose. He answered in Parseltongue, "I've heard that before."
The dragon's head snapped higher, considerably more movement than Harry expected from something so large, before it leaned closer. "You understand me?"
"Mostly."
The dragon lowered its great head until one enormous eye filled Harry's view. "You are not a serpent."
Harry deliberately looked down at his six feline paws before meeting the dragon's gaze again. "Very observant." The dragon stared for another second, then laughed. The sound rolled through the volcanic valley. Fox nearly fell off Harry.
"What did it say?"
Harry translated. Fox immediately replied, "Tell him you have too many legs." Harry looked back at him.
"No."
The dragon asked what Fox had said. Harry reluctantly translated. The enormous creature considered his six legs.
"The little winged creature is correct."
Fox watched Harry's expression. "What did he say?"
"Nothing."
"It agrees with me."
"You don't know that."
Fox smiled. "It does." The dragon laughed again. Harry liked it. That was how the friendship started. Harry returned because speaking with the dragon fascinated him. Parseltongue had survived everything that had happened to Harry and was common enough among serpent spirits that he sometimes forgot how unusual it once seemed. The dragon's language was different enough that every conversation became an exercise in finding shared meanings between two magical traditions that had never been intended to meet. The dragon found Harry equally entertaining.
Many-Paws wasn't any creature it recognized. Harry smelled human despite clearly behaving like a Spirit World resident, carried magic the dragon had never encountered, walked through mountains, and occasionally transformed into something with far fewer legs. Eventually Harry brought tea. The dragon looked at Harry's ordinary-sized teapot. Then looked at Harry. Harry looked at the dragon.
"Fair."
He conjured something closer to a stone basin. That wasn't enough. Harry enlarged it. Then enlarged it again. By the end, the dragon possessed what was essentially a bathtub with a handle and an elaborate serpentine pattern curling around the outside. Harry filled it.
The dragon drank. Silence followed. Harry waited. The dragon lowered the vessel.
"Again."
Harry smiled. That made the arrangement permanent.
Iroh met the dragon because Harry eventually realized keeping the two of them separate was absurd. He was sitting beside Iroh's waterfall describing the dragon's opinions on magical fire when Iroh stopped him.
"A dragon."
"Yes."
"A true dragon?"
Harry thought about that wording.
"I don't know what qualifications you're requiring."
Iroh's expression had become unusually focused. Harry noticed.
"You want to meet him."
Iroh smiled.
"Very much."
Harry should have expected that. He had known for a long time that dragons held a special place in Firebending tradition, and Iroh had spoken enough about learning the true nature of fire that Harry understood his relationship with them was not casual. The next visit therefore involved Iroh. The monkey came too. Fox considered this excellent because it gave him someone else to fight over cups with. The dragon noticed Iroh before they reached the pools.
Its head lifted. Iroh stopped walking. For once, Harry watched the old man's easy humor disappear into something quieter. Respect. The dragon breathed slowly. Then spoke in its serpentine language.
Harry understood enough to translate.
"This one carries the old fire."
Iroh's expression changed. Harry looked between them.
"You know what he means?"
Iroh bowed deeply to the dragon.
"I believe so."
The dragon examined him. Iroh raised one hand. Fire appeared. He did not attack. He moved. The flame curved through the familiar forms Harry had seen him practice countless times, flowing rather than exploding outward. It shifted with Iroh's breathing, alive without becoming uncontrolled.
The dragon watched. Then flame emerged from its jaws. It was not a blast but a flowing ribbon of color that curled around Iroh's fire without consuming it. Harry sat down. This was clearly going to take a while.
Fox sat beside him.
"What are they doing?"
"Talking, I think."
"They aren't talking."
"Neither are mountains half the time."
Fox accepted that. When the flames eventually disappeared, Iroh looked younger somehow—not physically, simply happy. The dragon lowered its head. Harry translated its next words.
"You learned from those who remembered properly."
Iroh smiled.
"I was fortunate."
That was enough. Iroh became part of the tea visits. The dragon appreciated his tea almost as much as Harry's enchanted varieties, although the two immediately developed disagreements over preparation that Harry found deeply satisfying after spending so long being outnumbered by Iroh. Sometimes Harry translated. Eventually Iroh and the dragon became good enough at understanding each other's intent that Harry wasn't always necessary. That offended him slightly.
Fox thought it was funny. The monkey did too. Harry retaliated by teaching the dragon how to recognize when Iroh was deliberately avoiding answering a question. Iroh called this betrayal. Harry called it cultural exchange.
The dragon and Iroh taught Harry different things about fire. Iroh understood it as a human discipline: breath, life, movement, intent, restraint. The dragon understood fire the way a river understood water. It wasn't something separate from itself. Harry had magic rather than bending, but he learned from both. He stopped thinking of magical flame purely as something produced and controlled. Fire had movement before Harry imposed movement upon it: heat spread, flame consumed, pressure changed behavior, and oxygen mattered in the physical world even when magic could bypass ordinary limitations. Harry's elemental manipulation became better because he stopped expecting the element to be passive.
In return, the dragon became fascinated by Harry's stories. Basilisks caused particular interest.
"The eyes kill?" the dragon asked one day.
"Directly, yes."
"And its venom destroys enchanted things?"
"Among other things."
The dragon was quiet.
"Humans created these creatures?"
Harry thought about Salazar Slytherin.
"Humans make very strange decisions."
Iroh, sitting nearby, laughed.
"That is true in every world."
Harry couldn't argue. The friendship continued for a long time. Harry sometimes brought the dragon calming tea, concentration tea, or varieties designed to enhance warmth. The dragon declared the last one insulting because it was already a dragon living beside volcanic springs. Harry brought it again out of principle. The batch that made hair glow unfortunately did nothing useful to scales. Harry considered that one of his greater disappointments.
He did not introduce the dragon to the intoxicating tea. Fox had taught Harry limits. Eventually Harry stopped thinking of visiting the dragon as part of his search at all. That was why Roku's name caught him completely unprepared.
Harry, Iroh, Fox, the monkey, and the dragon were having tea beside the steaming pools. Iroh had brought a darker roasted blend. Harry had contributed a magically infused variety that sharpened flavor without altering alertness. The dragon had declared Harry's version unnecessarily complicated and then consumed an enormous amount of it. Harry reached for the remaining leaves. The dragon spoke.
"Do not use all of those. Roku likes that one."
Harry continued measuring. Then stopped. His fingers remained around the leaves. For a second, the name meant nothing. Then everything connected at once. Harry slowly looked up.
"Roku?"
The dragon opened one eye.
"Yes."
Iroh lowered his cup. Harry sat very still.
"Avatar Roku?"
The dragon looked mildly confused.
"Do you know another?"
Harry stared. Fox looked at him. Iroh's eyebrows rose. Harry very carefully returned the leaves to their container.
"Roku comes here?"
"Sometimes."
Harry put both hands over his face. Fox immediately started laughing.
"You found one."
Harry spoke through his fingers.
"I have spent an unreasonable portion of my existence looking for dead Avatars."
Iroh was beginning to smile. Harry lowered his hands and glared at the dragon.
"You knew I was following Raava."
"Yes."
"You knew I was looking for information about Avatars."
"Yes."
"And Roku regularly visits you for tea."
The dragon considered.
"You never asked about Roku."
Harry opened his mouth. Closed it. Iroh took a slow drink. Harry pointed at him.
"Do not."
"I said nothing."
"Your face did."
Fox was laughing harder. Harry thought through every conversation he'd had with the dragon: fire, tea, basilisks, the mountain, the physical realm, Korra, and Raava. Harry had talked about the Avatar frequently enough, but he had apparently never actually said, I have spent ages trying to find the dead ones. That was entirely his own fault. Harry hated that.
The dragon spoke again.
"He should be here soon."
Harry's irritation vanished.
"Soon?"
Iroh looked toward the path. The dragon nodded. Harry's heart started beating faster. That surprised him. He had met beings older and probably more powerful than any human Avatar. He had spoken with mountains, dragons, ancient spirits, and Raava herself, however briefly. This was different.
Harry had searched for the previous Avatars for so long that they had become almost conceptual. Now one was apparently coming for tea. Fox climbed into Harry's lap. Harry barely noticed. Then another thought arrived. Kyoshi.
Harry slowly smiled. Fox immediately noticed.
"No."
Harry looked down. "What?"
"Prank face."
Iroh glanced at Harry. Then sighed. Harry's smile widened. If Roku existed here as himself, and visited the dragon casually enough to have a preferred tea, then Kyoshi could also be somewhere in this region. Harry had already spent his first meeting with Korra allowing her to believe he might personally know Kyoshi. He had then spent an absurd amount of time collecting obscure facts about her because making the misunderstanding increasingly convincing amused him.
Actually meeting Kyoshi had not been part of the plan. That possibility had just become very real. Iroh recognized the direction of Harry's thoughts.
"Harry."
"I haven't done anything."
"Yet."
The dragon looked between them and asked what Harry was planning. Harry answered in Parseltongue.
"The current Avatar believes I may have known Kyoshi."
The dragon stared. Harry clarified.
"I encouraged the misunderstanding."
The dragon remained silent for several seconds. Then started laughing. Iroh closed his eyes. Harry pointed at the dragon. "Raava thought it was funny." That made things worse. Even Iroh eventually joined in.
Harry sat there surrounded by ancient beings who were supposed to be wiser than him and realized, not for the first time, that age apparently guaranteed absolutely nothing. Then the dragon's attention shifted toward the path. The laughter quieted. Harry followed its gaze. A human figure was climbing toward them. An elderly man with white hair and a long beard walked easily between the volcanic stones. His clothing matched styles Harry recognized from Iroh's descriptions of the Fire Nation, but Harry barely noticed that.
His spiritual presence stopped Harry cold. There it was: Raava—not Raava herself, but an imprint, the shape left by someone who had once carried her.
Harry had followed those traces across impossible distances. He had walked through a mountain because one disappeared into it. He had wandered until he discovered where human dead gathered because those echoes became stronger there. Now one was walking toward him. For several seconds Harry forgot every clever question he had ever planned. The man reached the top of the path. He looked first at the dragon. Then at Iroh.
Recognition flickered there, though Harry had no idea whether the two had met before. Then Roku's attention moved toward Harry, who was floating cross-legged beside an enormous dragon-sized teacup with Fox sprawled across his lap. The dragon spoke.
"Roku. This is Many-Paws."
Roku looked at Harry's extremely human hands. Then his feet. Harry closed his eyes. Fox immediately said, "He has six paws sometimes." Harry opened them again.
"Thank you, Fox."
"Good name."
Roku's mouth slowly curved into a smile. Iroh quietly poured another cup. Harry looked at the man he had spent so long trying to find. For once, he didn't have a joke ready.
"Hello."
Roku inclined his head.
"Hello, Many-Paws."
Harry smiled. Finally. He had found one.