Chapter 1

Glastonbury, England

October 13, 1989

Harry shivered slightly as he waited in line with the rest of his grade 3 class. He wasn't the only one shivering in the brisk morning air, but he was one of the only kids not wearing a jacket.

He did have on a sweatshirt from a cheap thrift shop, so that the Dursleys could keep up minimal appearances, but it did little to shelter him from the bitter cold that passed through the thin weaves of the material. He gave a furtive glance to Dudley who was strutting around in a brand new windbreaker meant for an overweight teenager, not for the first time wondering what it was about him that the Dursleys hated so much.

He quickly looked away when he noticed Aunt Petunia coming back from her gossip session, a slight scowl marring her face as she looked his way before turning and fussing over her 'precious duddykins.' Harry held in a snicker at the name, not wanting to bring his overweight cousin's attention upon him. His arms were still bruised from the last session of 'Harry hunting.'

This was the first time that he had ever been on any sort of trip outside of Little Whinging, and after the blistering lecture he had received this morning, it was likely to be one of the only ones that he would have for years to come. The entire third grade of his school were here on the trip, and his relatives had decided that it would cast far too much suspicion on them if they refused to let him go on the trip with everyone else.

Once the teachers had finally organized the multitude of children coming off the coaches, they fell in line behind their teachers. For Harry, that was Ms. Wagner, a thin and strict-looking woman, who, despite appearances, was quite nice to her students. At least those that behaved.

Dudley was always picking on the other children in their class, and though he and the few friends he had in their class tried their best to blame most of their misdeeds on Harry, Ms. Wagner had the sharp eyes of an owl. Even when she had her back fully turned to the board, she knew exactly who was misbehaving, and would give the transgressors a harsh stare before returning to her lesson.

To Harry, she was the nicest person in the world. She was the one who let him into the school library during recess so that he could read to his heart's content. She was the one that helped him up after Dudley and his friends pummeled him into the ground, always asking if it was his cousin that had hurt him while Harry refused to say a word.

The last thing Harry wanted to be was a tattletale, no matter how hypocritical it was that Dudley had always been one and never got punished for it. But Harry knew that if he admitted that Dudley and his little gang had been punching him around, then he would get in serious trouble once he got back to Number 4. It didn't help that the school principal was an old friend of his uncle's and would rarely give Dudley more than a slap on the wrist, no matter what he did.

Harry quickly followed his classmates when he noticed them start moving from the parking lot to the beginning of the trail. Many of his classmates were still yawning, after all it had taken them nearly three hours to get here, and they had all arrived at school around six in the morning.

The tour guide was a happy looking woman around thirty to thirty five years old. She was dressed casually in jeans and a loose shirt, the brisk weather not seeming to bother her at all.

"Hello everyone, my name is Emily, and I'm here to show you all the magical town of Glastonbury." She paused and gave a look around, frowning slightly. "We are still waiting for another group of students, so I think I'll start by telling you a few stories while we wait. How does that sound?"

She got a few sleepy "sure"s and "yes"s and smiled. "Alright, well, to start, can anyone tell me what they know about Glastonbury?"

"It's a town." Came one cheeky answer, and a smattering of giggles followed. Emily smiled good-naturedly at the joke. "Yes, it is a town, what else?"

"It's really old?" Another one asked/answered. Emily nodded appreciatively. "Yes, that's right; this town has been here since at least 800 AD, and probably a little before that."

Harry twitched slightly as he heard the sound of buses pulling into the parking lot behind them. Several of the other students turned to stare at the new arrivals as they started forming themselves into lines.

Emily frowned as she looked at her watch again. "This is the third time this week that he's late..." She sighed under her breath. As close as he was even Harry had a hard time understanding her, mostly relying on her lips to read what she was actually saying.

"For those of you who are just joining us, my name is Emily..." Here she gestured at her colorful blue-green nametag, "...and I will be giving you all a tour of Glastonbury today, starting with the beautiful Glastonbury Abbey about five minutes that way."

She pointed roughly towards the north, and started walking at an average pace. The student lines followed, most of them dissolving into irregular clumps of students while chatting loudly, others, such as Harry's line, doing the same, until Ms. Wagner gave them all a sharp-eyed look and they quietened almost immediately.

From there, the tour degenerated into a long tedious process for Harry, as their guide explained the history of the town and its inhabitants. For him, History had always been boring. Even the interesting stories that Emily was telling about the legends and myths surrounding this place made him scoff inside.

As far back as he could remember, he had been told that there was no such thing as magic. And though he despised his relatives, subconsciously, he believed what he had been taught. There had been no Father Christmas and no Easter bunny in the Dursley house. Anything that had the slightest magical connotation at all was belittled and then ignored in the Dursley household.

Harry did appreciate the town itself, though. Glastonbury had a certain rustic atmosphere to it, friendly people (though he wondered how much of that friendliness was faked in order to attract more visitors), and the smells coming off of the various food shops and street vendors was enough to make his mouth water. Not that he'd be able to sample any of those treats.

Before he knew it, it was lunchtime. Harry mentally grimaced as Aunt Petunia gave him a small sandwich with old ham and suspiciously green cheese in a plastic bag and he glumly sat down on a bench far away from Dudley and his Aunt.

His chosen seat was in the middle of the other group's area. He shrugged to himself and kept his spot. If one of the parent volunteers had a problem with him sitting there, then he would move, but not before.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the first years sitting at a table without any food. He frowned as he looked at the boy, noting the frayed clothing and cheap shoes that must have been worn and discarded by two different people in succession long before he received him. The boy was looking longingly at the other first years in his group as they ate, not seeming to have anything for himself.

Harry knew that feeling very well. Whenever his relatives wanted to punish him they would lock him in the cupboard without food for a day, and only the bare minimum of water. He sighed to himself before making a small gesture to get the boy's attention and then stood up from his table to go where the rest of his class was sitting.

He glanced back, seeing that his half-sandwich was gone from the table, and smiled. Even if he went hungrier than normal today, that other boy would get some food for lunch as well.

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Once lunch was finished, they moved into their groups again. They had already toured St. Benedict's Church along with Glastonbury Abbey, and were moving slower after having just eaten lunch.

Harry was now glad that it had been so brisk in the morning, a thermometer in a passing window told him that it was now 30 Centigrade (86 F). Dudley was sweating like the pig he was, and whined that he wanted a T-shirt. Harry rolled his eyes as his aunt asked the tour guide to stop in the shops for a bit and though she was quite subtle about it, he could tell that Emily was slightly exasperated, though she did grant the request.

Their final destination was the most out of the way, but thankfully for the sanity of the parents chaperoning, not too far. Of course, Dudley started complaining the very moment they left the town and he saw the hill they were to climb, but for the most part he was ignored by the other parents, who sent him the occasional annoyed glance, as well as Aunt Petunia.

Harry enjoyed the trip though. There was something different about the grassy hill compared to the town before. Almost as if there was something more there, just out of sight.

Harry shook his head. He was being ridiculous again. It was just a stone tower, there was nothing special about it.

He half-heartedly listened to Emily explain several legends of the Tor, mostly for the benefit of the listening parents. The fact that according to legend, the Tor was a link to the underworld that King Arthur himself had used and then returned from, in order to fight an invading enemy, was somewhat interesting, but still ridiculous.

Despite his belief that there could not be something special about the Tor, the strange moreness (for lack of a better term) seemed to be increasing in strength the closer they came to it. By the time they had reached it Harry felt as if he were almost suffocating, but as he looked around, the only other person that seemed to be showing any sort of adverse reaction to the Tor was the same boy he gave half of his meager sandwich to.

Must have been the sandwich. He thought to himself as he unconsciously began to move away from the rest of the group. There was something that he had to see...

Almost as if in a trance, he kept moving forward, a small hum building up in the air around him before he disappeared.

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Joshua was glad for the sandwich the other boy had left on the table for him, even if it hadn't tasted very good. He'd seen the other boy's face while he was eating it, and had also seen the boy get it from the woman who looked like a rail. The rail-woman's other son was really fat, and got everything that he wanted, which made Joshua feel a little sick inside.

Joshua was an orphan. His parents had been killed in a freak car accident when he was only four, and frankly it had been a miracle that he had survived without so much as a scratch when he should been crushed by the Lorry that ran headlong into their car. .

Foster care was not a happy place for him. He had seen other children adopted, and always felt the stirrings of jealousy because he had not once been chosen, or even looked at. No one looked at him. No one seemed to even care that he existed.

No one, at least until that boy had left him half his lunch.

Joshua was not ashamed to admit that he was watching the other boy as they traveled up the hill. For some strange reason he felt like he knew that boy, in the back of his mind he recognized him somehow, even though they had never met.

He watched him as the boy started acting strange, walking away from the group and into the tower itself. Even stranger was the fact that no one else seemed to notice the boy leaving the group, not even Emily the tour guide, and he had literally walked right past her as she started to speak.

He watched in fear as that strange feeling that he had had all the way up to the tower intensified for an instant, and the other boy disappeared into thin air.

The orphan from Wool's Orphanage watched as Harry Potter disappeared from the minds and eyes of everyone but him, and quickly backed away from the tower before it took him as well.

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Harry came to consciousness slowly, feeling like he was laying on concrete. As he blearily opened his eyes he gaped at his surroundings. He was in some kind of cave. It was very hard for him to see, as the only light was a slight greenish glow by what appeared to be water. He slowly got up, feeling a strange tingling in his limbs, but ignoring it for now.

He hated dark places, absolutely hated them. Sleeping in a cold, dark space for most of his life had desensitized him to any fear of the dark, but that did not mean that he wanted to be in there in the first place. He hated not being able to see around him, to know if something was going to attack him. It was a lesson that he had learned all too well from his cousin; if you did not pay attention to your surroundings, then it was much easier for you to get hurt.

Slowly, he shuffled forward, ears straining to hear something, anything, that could be a threat to him. His imagination, the only thing that had kept him sane after all these years of isolation, was going wild with images of wolves or bears or even monsters that lived in caves and ate innocent travelers. The strange green glow never wavered or diminished, and squinting in the gloom, he wished that he could see better. He closed his eyes for a moment, knowing from experience that it would help him adjust to the darkness that much quicker. When he opened them again, the green light seemed to have spread, as he could suddenly see much better in the gloomy room.

Vaguely, he could see the shape of something sticking out of a pedestal, it looked almost like…a sword?

A bit nonplussed, Harry moved closer to the pedestal. A low humming sound soon reverberated around him, and he jumped back as a white light filled the room. Harry blinked in complete confusion and growing fear as an old man with a long white beard and staff came into being.

"Who are you?" Harry demanded, backing away slowly as he searched for anything that he could conceivably use to defend himself with. There was nothing except loose rocks….and the sword behind the man.

Merlin frowned at the hostility, before he gestured around him. "My name is Moros, but you may know me as Merlin Ambrosius."

Harry stared at the man and gave off a hysterical laugh that poorly hid how scared he really was. He was stuck in a cave with an old madman "No, really, who are you?"

The man's face darkened, which sent Harry back another few steps. "I already told you who I was, boy, and I do not appreciate you insinuating otherwise."

Harry narrowed his eyes. He hated being called boy. That was all that Uncle Vernon called him all the time. "There is no such thing as magic, my Aunt and Uncle told me so." Not that he would ever admit that he was quoting something that they had said to him.

Merlin rolled his eyes. "I never said that I was a wizard; that was what the dirt-skinned fools of the time thought I was. No, I was a man of science, with more knowledge of the true nature of the universe than you could possibly comprehend!"

Harry was glad that he had spent so much time in the library, otherwise he would have likely been confused by the man's almost archaic mode of speech.

"Dirt skinned?" Harry asked. Was this guy a racist or something?

"Those ignorant morons who refused to bathe and slept in the straw of their animals." Merlin explained. Harry made a face at the thought of never bathing. That sounded disgusting.

"So…" Harry began hesitantly. "Why am I here?" The last thing that he remembered was standing outside of the Tor, and suddenly he ended up in this cave? How did that happen?

"You are here because my tower sensed that you were a child with potential, one that I have been searching for for nearly a thousand years."

Harry made a strangled noise. A thousand years?! What was so special about him specifically? And how the heck had this man lived so very long?

He nervously cleared his throat. "Why me? I'm not special."

Merlin's brow furrowed. "You are very special indeed, young Harry, but you will not understand why unless I share with you my story." He sighed, then made a gesture. "Sit down, young Harry, and let me tell you the story of my people."

Harry looked around himself in confusion, then yelped as he realized that there was a simple wooden chair behind him. That had not been there before.

Merlin chuckled as he sat down in his own chair, and Harry followed suit reluctantly.

"Well, to start, I should tell you that I was born on a planet in another galaxy, on another planet known as Lantea, named for our people."

Harry stared at the man, and suddenly had the feeling that everything he knew about the world was wrong. Somehow, though, he knew that the man before him was telling him the truth.

"My people were known as the Lanteans, and yes, I know the name of our planet was horribly unimaginative, but it had been our home for millions of years…"

Harry felt like his mouth was going to be permanently open at this point. Millions of years?! Human civilization, as far as anyone knew and could confirm, had only existed for maybe 12,000 years. This was beyond insane.

"Our people had once lived upon Earth, but we were forced to flee this galaxy, Avalon, and settle on the planet Lantea after a terrible plague afflicted us, one that our medicine, no matter how advanced, could not cure. Upon leaving this galaxy, we wiped it clean of all life, later reseeding it so that the terrible plague could not take root again."

Harry was just nodding along at this point. He felt like his brain was going to overheat with the information that was now being shared with him.

Then, Merlin spoke of the great war with the Wraith, a powerful race of nigh-immortal creatures that literally sucked out the life of their victims using their hands. That war was eventually lost, and the Lanteans fled from the Pegasus galaxy back to Avalon. Some of them resettled on Earth while trying to avoid notice from the inhabitants of the now populated planet, many discarding their technology out of despair and self hate, while others decided to ascend, leaving their bodies behind and becoming beings of pure thought and energy.

Merlin had been one of the few to save as much of their technology as he could, safeguarding it in hidden vaults located all over the world. He had then ascended, using his power to secretly change the descendants of their people into what they were today.

It was here that Harry broke in. "These people are still around?"

Merlin nodded almost hesitantly and Harry wondered why. "These people had abilities that both surpassed and fell beneath what we, the Lanteans, were once capable of. They have the ability to alter matter, to affect the laws of the universe in ways that do not make sense to us."

Harry threw up his hands. "Then why haven't people heard of them before?"

Merlin coughed lightly, then continued as if he had not been interrupted. "These people came to call themselves Wizards and Witches, and they hid themselves away from the rest of the world after the Witch burnings and other such violence against them grew too common."

"Witches and Wizards are real?" He managed to ask, his voice easily betraying his

amusement.

Merlin nodded resignedly. "They have no idea of their true history, and when I was last with them, they were arrogant, much like we were before we fought and lost our war against the Wraith. I tried to show them the proper way, but they did not listen, not really. They abused their power, creating great creatures and horrible monsters that likely still plague the world today."

"But I've never heard of anything like that..." Harry said unsurely.

"Really?" Merlin looked almost amused. "You have never heard of dragons?"

Harry's mouth opened and closed, trying to form the words. Dragons were real?

Merlin's mouth twitched. "Yes, there are many things in the world that have been hidden by the wizards." Then his face smoothed out. "But that is not why you are here."

Harry gave the man a confused look. "Then why…"

"Did I bring you here?" Merlin asked.

Harry nodded.

"Simply put, you are the first of our descendants with a strong enough expression of our genetic makeup to come here before becoming completely ruined by the provincial mentality of the Wizards. "

"What do you mean?"

Merlin rolled his eyes in remembered exasperation. "They believed, and still believe, that they are blessed by Mother Earth, and as such are intrinsically better than 'non-magical' people."

"How do you know…" It was then Harry realized something. "Earlier, you said that you had ascended, that you weren't here on Earth anymore...why did you come back?"

Merlin grimaced slightly. "I came back because I learned of a threat to the races of this galaxy that could not be ignored, a threat in the form of other ascended."

Harry openly showed his confusion to this statement.

"But you said that they didn't want to interfere."

Merlin mentally grimaced as he realized that he would have to hide part of the truth from the boy. "I was afraid that in the future another hostile race, such as the Wraith, would learn to do the same, and that there would be no stopping them if they had sufficient numbers to overwhelm us."

Harry nodded, a little shaken.

"At the same time that I descended, I discovered a young man named Arthur, and believed that he had a great deal of potential. I advised him as he grew older, while I also began making preparations for the creation of an anti-ascended device."

Here, his expression darkened again. "The other ascended were not happy with my new research, so I created a device to hide myself from their sight. At the same time, I realized that the abilities of the Wizards and Witches were growing in power, and that they would need someone to guide them lest they destroy themselves out of ignorance. So, I cloned myself, giving him the task of working on the weapon while I remained here on Earth and pretended to have abandoned my work on the device. Since then, I have mostly been in stasis, using this tower that I once helped build to look for those with the potential to revive my race.

Harry had a small headache from the sheer amount of worldview changing information that he was trying to hold in his head, so he could be excused for being a little slow on the uptake.

"You want me….to..." He stuttered.

"I want you to be my apprentice, young Harry, to be the new face of our people in this galaxy and to bring your people to enlightenment with us."

"No pressure." Harry mumbled, suddenly very glad for the chair he was sitting in.

Merlin gave him a small, but heartfelt smile. "Like all wizards, the potential to use your latent abilities lies within you, albeit stronger than most because of your greater expression of our original genes. Few of the wizards have even come close to learning how to properly use these gifts to their fullest potential when it is so hard to do so. In general, the usage of their magic has made the 'wizards' and 'witches' complacent and lazy, and so they refuse to develop themselves further, to improve and innovate on what their ancestors discovered and honed long ago."

Upon seeing the glassy-eyed look on Harry's face, Merlin chuckled, before standing up, his joints cracking quietly. "I think that I've given you quite enough to think about for today, and now I would like to give you something."

There was a small flash of light, and a small silver chain with a triquetra pendant attached appeared on top of the pedestal.

"This pendant will allow you to come back here whenever you wish." Merlin explained. "I have many things that I would like to teach you further, but I know that you will need to get going soon."

Harry gave the man an unreadable look, his familiar mask slipping back on, now that he was leaving.

Still, Merlin could tell that Harry was confused, and probably unhappy with having to leave so soon.

"Until next time." Merlin said softly, and Harry felt a strange pulling apart sensation before he disappeared from the cave.

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Aunt Petunia hadn't been very pleased with his disappearing act, but he had a feeling that it was more because he had managed to come back and not because he had been lost in the first place. He ignored her disdain for him, as usual, and followed the rest of his school back to the buses when it was time to leave, noticing that the other group was nowhere to be seen.

His mind was elsewhere, focusing on the incredible things that Merlin had told him. To think that there was an entire hidden world of witches and wizards was mind-boggling, especially since if they were as arrogant as Merlin had described them, then he would have thought that they would have tried to assert their dominance over the regular population by now.

And then there was the whole 'you-are-a-member-of-a-race-that-is-millions-of-years-old' side of things. The thought that humanity, as a people, had been created by another, older version of themselves was something that was hard to fully grasp. The level of technology to just casually create a sentient race... He shook his head.

He gently fingered the pendant around his neck, tangible proof that what he had experienced was real, and wondered yet again how Aunt Petunia had not spotted it yet. She was usually the first in the household to notice if there was anything he had on his person that she believed he didn't deserve. But when she looked at him, her eyes seemed to slide off of his neck and onto his face. It was incredibly strange.

The days that followed after that fateful field trip were pretty much the same as always. The Dursleys gave him his chores, he made sure to have worse grades than Dudley, and he continued to try and keep attention off of himself at all times when at school. He was at the point of seriously considering just skipping school altogether, but he knew that would get him in trouble, and then that in turn would make his relatives even angrier than usual at him for the hassle of the school calling them and bringing unwanted attention upon them.

Not to mention that he didn't want to disappoint Ms. Wagner.

It wasn't until Halloween that he had a chance to get out of the house. He grasped the pendant tightly, feeling a bit foolish for doing so, but his fears were put to rest when he felt that same strange feeling come over him again, and he disappeared from the house.

End Chapter

Authors Note:

So Here is the revamped version of Last Ancient, as promised. There are a number of changes that were made and are being made in this story to make more sense, along with hopefully much better character development.

The next chapter should be coming along fairly soon, within a few weeks, but work and travel make me unsure about when any other chapters after that will be ready.

Also, Thank you to my Beta Joe Lawyer, who managed to fit working on this into his very busy schedule

Posted 7/28/2015